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Elon Musk confirms shutdown of Tesla Dojo, ‘an evolutionary dead end’ ... and more tech news Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

“Once it became clear that all paths converged to AI6, I had to shut down Dojo and make some tough personnel choices, as Dojo 2 was now an evolutionary dead end,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday. In other news, Nvidia, AMD may sell high-end AI chips to China if they pay US a cut. The global AI chip race narrative used to be about U.S. national security, but apparently now it's about tariffs: Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of the revenue they make from sales of high-end AI chips to China in exchange for licenses to sell to those chips in the country, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. And the hidden cost of living amid Mark Zuckerberg’s $110M compound. Mark Zuckerberg has spent 14 years gobbling up his leafy Palo Alto neighborhood, according to a New York Times report detailing how the Meta CEO has purchased 11 properties for over $110 million to create his own personal fiefdom in Crescent Park.

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Trump administration stops illegal freeze of $5B EV charger funds after losing in court and more news Aug 12, 2025

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The Trump administration has finally issued new guidance that states can use to dole out $5 billion in funding for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, after spending months withholding the money. Also, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday it has seized the servers and $1 million in bitcoin from the prolific Russian ransomware gang behind the BlackSuit and Royal malware.

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Rocket Lab eyes big defense opportunities with new acquisition, plus Openvibe combines news and social media in one app Aug 11, 2025

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Rocket Lab is taking the concept of an 'end-to-end' space company to new heights with a forthcoming acquisition. In other news, Openvibe, an app for tracking the open social web in one place, now supports RSS.

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Researchers unmasked a prolific SMS scammer and then a new one emerged in its wake and Sam Altman addresses ‘bumpy’ GPT-5 rollout Aug 11, 2025

Show notes

If you, like practically anyone else with a cell phone in the U.S. and beyond, have received a scam text message about an unpaid toll or undelivered mail item, there’s a good chance you have been targeted by a prolific scamming operation. But a series of opsec mistakes ultimately led security researchers and investigative journalists to the real-world identity of the maker of the scamming software, Magic Cat, who researchers say goes by the handle Darcula. In other news, During a Reddit ask-me-anything session on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team were peppered with questions about the new model and requests to bring back its previous model, GPT-4o. They also asked Altman about the most embarrassing — and perhaps funniest — snafu in the presentation, the “chart crime.”

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Hubble Network plans a massive satellite upgrade to create global Bluetooth layer ... and more tech news Aug 08, 2025

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Hubble Network's satellite-enabled Bluetooth network is getting a boost from Muon's new XL satellite bus. Also, Truth Social’s AI search is powered by Perplexity, but the platform can set limits on sources. The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on the iOS and Android apps planned for “the near future.” And Upwork is buying its way into corporate staffing beyond freelancers. The company will merge Bubty and Ascen with its existing enterprise business to form a separate entity later this year.

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Google denies AI search features are killing website traffic Aug 08, 2025

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Google denies AI is impacting search across the web, saying only "some" sites have suffered.

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Some people are defending Perplexity after Cloudflare ‘named and shamed’ it Aug 07, 2025

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In a debate likely to get louder as AI agent usage grows, some people say Perplexity crawling blocked websites isn't a simple matter.

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OpenAI launches two ‘open’ AI reasoning models Aug 07, 2025

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For the first time in more than five years, OpenAI is launching a new open language model that appears to be state-of-the-art.

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Joby Aviation to buy Blade Air Mobility’s ride-share business, also Mastercard denies pressuring game platforms Aug 06, 2025

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Joby is buying the Blade brand and the company's passenger business, which includes operations in the United States and Europe, for as much as $125 million. In other news, Mastercard seemingly denied playing a role in a recent marketplace crackdown on games with adult content, while Valve says the pressure was indirect.

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North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies Aug 06, 2025

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North Korean IT workers are increasingly using generative AI to draft resumes and "deepfake" their appearances to make money for North Korea's sanctioned nuclear weapons program. Also, Apple is reportedly working to create a lightweight competitor to ChatGPT.

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