A federal judge (Rita Lin, Aug. 28, 2026) ruled the Trump administration’s move to label Anthropic a “supply chain risk” was illegal retaliation under the First Amendment, also citing “arbitrary and capricious” action and Fifth Amendment due process violations.
On Aug 27, 2026, Bluesky added an account-level opt-out that prevents public posts from appearing in the algorithmic Discover feed, with changes taking up to an hour after enabling. It doesn’t make posts private, and AT Proto third-party apps can choose independently whether to respect the preference.
Barret Zoph returns to Google as VP of Research, bringing RL and post-training know-how to Gemini after bouncing back to OpenAI in January 2026 for five months. He’d exited in October 2024 to co-found Thinking Machines with Mira Murati.
On Aug 27, 2026, YouTube let eligible U.S. creators tag Amazon products directly in Shorts, long-form videos, and livestreams to earn commissions, using its Shopping Affiliate Program instead of Associates links in descriptions. YouTube also added an auto-tagging option that reviews recent uploads to find eligible products. Daily earnings appear in YouTube Studio (no per-item breakdown), returned purchases deduct commissions, and the tags are visible globally.
Google’s AI Mode (announced Aug 2026) can now track flight prices, book hotels, and show point/mile costs. It surfaces options from 300+ airlines and sites, monitors fares with email alerts (180+ countries), and begins U.S. English hotel booking via partners like Booking.com, Expedia, Hilton, and Marriott.
In 2026, Palo Alto startup Hoomanely launched the EverBowl, using sensors and AI to track how dogs eat and drink and alert owners when patterns deviate from a per-dog baseline. In an 18-month beta with ~5M data points across 80+ dogs, it flagged issues later linked to an infected chipped tooth and tick fever.
More than a hundred technology companies — including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft — signed an open letter in August 2026 calling on both the private and public sectors to strengthen…
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has declared a “major incident” following a cyberattack on one of its systems, with the Qilin ransomware gang claiming…
Google announced in August 2026 that it is introducing new memory-use requirements for Android apps, citing hardware supply constraints driven by the AI data center boom that are reducing the…
Twitter.now launched in August 2026 from Operation Bluebird, co-founded by Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates, after X sued over the name. Early access costs $20, and VERA assigns trust scores, checks claims, and lets users filter posts below a threshold.
Australian Federal Police arrested two men in Perth on August 27, 2026, accused of belonging to TeamPCP, a cybercriminal group responsible for breaches affecting more than a thousand organizations…
CivilGrid, founded in 2020 by ex-PG&E engineer Josh Mackanic, raised $26M Series A in Aug 2026 to scale its platform combining underground utility assets, property ownership, and environmental regulations. PG&E reports $60M in avoidable paving costs across 1,600 planned gas projects.
