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Takes two percent stake as rumours swirl Uncle Sam could do something similar

Japanese tech investment concern SoftBank has made a $2 billion investment in Intel.…

CEO says if you buy all your infosec stuff from him, life under assault from bots will be less painful

Brace for a new round of browser wars, according to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora.…

The UK government has agreed to withdraw its order requiring Apple to create backdoor access to encrypted iCloud data following intervention from the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance negotiated the agreement during his recent UK holiday after the January order issued under the UK Investigatory Powers Act prompted Apple to pull its iCloud Advanced Data Protection service from Britain in February. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the UK agreed to drop demands for access to "the protected encrypted data of American citizens." Apple had filed a complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal scheduled for hearing early next year.

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OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Go, a $4.57 monthly subscription tier initially available only in India. The service provides, compared to the free tier, extended access to GPT-5, image generation, file uploads, advanced data analysis, longer conversation memory, and custom GPTs at Rs 399 per month. ChatGPT Go excludes features found in the $20 ChatGPT Plus tier including legacy models like 4o, Sora video generation, deep research, agent mode, and connectors. OpenAI said "other countries and regions may be eligible in the future" for ChatGPT Go. India has emerged as a key market for American technology firms looking for users. In the past 15 years, firms like Amazon, Google, and Meta, alongside venture capitalists and private equity, have poured more than $200 billion into the country, all chasing its vast pool of users and the businesses serving this population. India is the second largest market for OpenAI, startup's chief executive Sam Altman said in a podcast recently. Perplexity partnered with Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel last month to provide its premium Pro service to 360 million customers for free for an entire year.

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Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment the embattled chipmaker. SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel's common stock. The investment is a vote of confidence in Intel, which has not been able to take advantage of the AI boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that has yet to secure a significant customer. "Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment," Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement. Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company's more than half-century on the public market.

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Single spacesuit now worn 20 times

Taikonauts aboard China’s Tiangong space station used an AI model to prepare for a spacewalk.…

Hollywood comedy production has declined 27% since 1990 despite audience demand ranking the genre second among those viewers "want to see more of," according to Letterboxd genre data and a 68,000-consumer survey. Comedy films average $26.5 million production budgets and double their investment returns at 102%, yet represent just 9.3% of sequel releases compared to action's 27.6%. The shift reflects studios prioritizing internationally marketable franchises over domestically-focused comedies, which earn most revenue from US and Canadian audiences. Films like 1984's Beverly Hills Cop ($977 million inflation-adjusted) and Ghostbusters ($882 million) remain unmatched by contemporary releases -- with half of Letterboxd's most popular 2020s "comedies" being either non-comedic films like Saltburn or IP-driven movies like Barbie.

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Fujifilm will increase prices on most of its US camera lineup starting August 30, marking the second price adjustment this month following retailer-announced increases two weeks earlier. The company cited "volatile market conditions" in its official statement. The recently released X half and X-E5 cameras will maintain their launch prices, while the backordered X100 VI faces price changes. The company characterized the adjustments as a long-term solution to uncertainties including tariffs and manufacturing circumstances.

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England has declared a "nationally significant" water shortage as reservoirs dropped to 67.7% capacity, their lowest levels in at least a decade. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology warned of exceptionally low river flows while groundwater continues dwindling across the country. Hosepipe bans now affect all of England, with additional restrictions probable in coming months. Water companies lose approximately one trillion litres annually through leaky pipes -- 20% of all treated water -- while the annual pipe replacement rate remains at 0.05%. No new reservoir has been built in 30 years despite population growth. Government forecasts project England's public water supply could fall short by 5 billion litres daily by 2055 without urgent infrastructure investment. The economic cost of water scarcity could reach $11.48 billion over this parliament, according to thinktank Public First.

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More than 60 years after first demos of this tech, Kairos will bring it back to Oak Ridge

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, could be home to a molten salt reactor once again if Google-backed Kairos Power has its way.…

High accuracy scores come from conditions that don't reflect real-world usage

Facial recognition technology has been deployed publicly on the basis of benchmark tests that reflect performance in laboratory settings, but some academics are saying that real-world performance doesn't match up.…

Meet the new COPILOT function

Microsoft, in its ongoing effort to AI-ify every product it has, is now adding it right into the cells of Excel.  Available on Monday to beta users of Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new COPILOT function allows you to task Redmond's AI with performing generative tasks right in, for example, C2 or B23.…

Got a particle accelerator? Here’s your tritium startup idea

Tritium is ridiculously rare, incredibly expensive, and central to most fusion energy reactor designs. If research out of Los Alamos National Lab proves to hold true, it might soon become easier to obtain.…

Spy vs spy in the chips

Comment Chinese state media called the US an aspiring "surveillance empire" over its proposed use of asset tracking tags to crack down on black-market GPU shipments to the Middle Kingdom.…

MIT NANDA study finds only 5 percent of organizations using AI tools in production at scale

US companies have invested between $35 and $40 billion in Generative AI initiatives and, so far, have almost nothing to show for it.…

A plan to standardize IT record keeping is incomplete after 8 years, and the GAO wants someone to act

The US federal government first planned to standardize its categorization of IT costs, resources, and solutions back in 2017. Eight years later, the project has mostly stalled, say auditors, and now they're demanding that it either get priority or get the axe.…

Traditional business applications will become the mainframes of the 2030s - functioning but obsolete systems replaced by AI agents, predicts Microsoft corporate vice president Charles Lamanna. AI agents featuring generative AI interfaces, goal-oriented processing, and vector databases will supplant today's form-driven, workflow-based enterprise software within five years, said Lamanna, who leads Microsoft's business applications and platforms division. The executive projects industry patterns for agent-based systems will solidify within 6-18 months. Microsoft MVP Rocky Lhotka called the 2030 timeline "very forward-looking and optimistic," noting that capital-intensive industries cannot readily replace existing infrastructure with virtual agents.

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Trading volume on AI prediction markets reached approximately $20 million this month across platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket. Kalshi reports ten times the AI trading volume compared to early 2025. Bettors place wagers on outcomes including monthly AI model rankings, federal AI regulation prospects, and Sam Altman's potential OpenAI equity stake.

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Surprise – updated plans way more expensive than initially suggested

AWS has introduced new pricing for Kiro, its AI-driven coding tool, but unlike the pricing originally announced, the latest plans are "a wallet-wrecking tragedy," according to many of its users.…

Supply chain breach has been a major target of legal action

Microsoft-owned talk-to-text outfit Nuance has agreed to cough up $8.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit over the sprawling MOVEit Transfer mega-breach – although it admits no liability.…