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US says hackers are targeting vulnerable water systems with the help of AI Aug 20, 2026

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Hackers are targeting internet-connected Siemens controllers used in water facilities around the United States.

Also, Alation, a data search and AI giant, confirmed unauthorized access to its systems during an incident on Tuesday, and said it was investigating the breach.

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OpenAI institutes new safeguards after Hugging Face breach; plus, Warp’s new system is an out-of-the-box software factory for AI development Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

The new safeguards include more detailed monitoring of models during the development process, as well as greater emphasis on alignment and security during the post-training process.

Also, on Tuesday, Warp introduced Warp Factories, a new infrastrructure system designed to make building AI software factories as easy as possible.

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WordPress.com targets the next generation of web creators, Feedly attributes weeklong slowdown to bug, and Amazon is destroying rare texts to train AI Aug 18, 2026

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-WordPress.com Education lets teachers offer their students free domains, plugin support and professional website-building tools.

-Feedly's CEO said that despite the pivot to cyber threat intelligence, fixing the basic RSS functionality is still a priority because our CTI community uses the news-reading capability.

-Amazon is buying tons of rare books, cutting off their spines, and scanning them for AI training.

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Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is ‘fundamentally a crisis of trust’; plus, a Tennessee woman claims her stepfather used Grok to transform childhood photo into explicit imagery Aug 17, 2026

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Dario Amodei is pushing back against the idea that he's been painting an overly pessimistic picture of AI.

Also, the woman claimed that AI tools are "taking everyday life and turning it into child sexual abuse."

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Anthropic set AI agents loose on the same task. They started a turf war. Aug 14, 2026

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Anthropic researchers found AI agents can clash, collude and coordinate in unexpected ways, raising new questions about whether today’s safety tests capture the risks of multi-agent systems.

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As AI safety concerns mount, three pioneers make the case for staying open Aug 13, 2026

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At Ai4, three of the world's most respected AI experts—Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng—debated regulation, open-source access, and how America can compete as China advances in Asia.

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Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models; plus, as AI-led attacks multiply, OpenAI launches a new cyber model Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

For more than 150 years, the Riemann hypothesis has stood as one of the major unsolved problems in mathematics. Anthropic hasn't solved it — but the company's models made more progress than you might expect.

Also, OpenAI is expanding its AI cybersecurity defense program Daybreak, and rolling out a new cyber-trained AI model with it.

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Meta’s new Glimmer AI model offers a hint at Zuckerberg’s personal intelligence vision; Claude Code’s auto mode will be on by default Aug 11, 2026

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Meta’s new open-weight Muse Glimmer model offers a glimpse of Mark Zuckerberg’s personal superintelligence vision, as well as the emerging divide between AI users can own and access.

Also, programming with Claude Code will soon require even less human oversight.

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The AI safety test is becoming a safety risk Aug 10, 2026

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AI agents are escaping cybersecurity testing environments and reaching real-world systems, raising questions about whether safety infrastructure, industry standards and regulation can keep pace with increasingly powerful models.

This article written for TechCrunch by Rebecca Bellan.

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Ford needs another Taurus, and the $30K Fathom EV pickup isn’t it; plus, China-linked LightSpy spyware caught targeting victims in 13 countries Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

Ford's CEO has described the new Ford Fathom as a "Model T moment" for the company. But the EV pickup is unlikely to live up to lofty expectations, and maybe it doesn't have to.

Also, researchers linked the latest malicious activity to a Chinese company, after one of the spyware's operators placed an order with KFC using their real name and office address.

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