News

The Download: US robot restrictions, and ICE’s DNA grab
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Trump’s AI protectionism has come for robotics   —James O’Donnell  Humanoid robots usually elicit more cringe than awe: They stumble, kick chi…
MIT Technology Review
[Sponsor] MCP vs. REST: The Right Way to Connect Agents to Your API
REST serves the developers building against your API. MCP serves the agents now trying to use it. Most teams treat these as competing standards and have to pick one. They’re not rivals, they’re layers: most MCP servers just call REST internally to do the real work. The best ones …
workos.com
Why R&D Waste Persists Despite Widespread AI Adoption
This report examines R&D waste and how AI adoption has outpaced the intelligence needed to make consequential decisions well. What Attendees will Learn Where R&D budget is lost. More than a third of organizations spend 25 to 40 percent of their R&D budget on projects that never …
content.knowledgehub.wiley.com
‘Minions & Monsters’ Is Coming Home Faster Than You Can Say ‘Banana’
The hit Illumination sequel will be available to download on August 11 ahead of a September physical release.
gizmodo.com
Bending Spoons to Buy Airtable for $1.3 Billion
Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch: In its first acquisition since going public last month, Bending Spoons on Tuesday said that it has agreed to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised over $1.4 billio…
techcrunch.com
Waymo opens up robotaxi service in Dallas to everyone
Waymo has dropped the waitlist for its robotaxi service in Dallas, the latest step in the company's bid to scale its self-driving technology across the United States, U.K., and Europe.
techcrunch.com
International tech
DeepSeek V4-Flash Tops Global Token Consumption: Chinese Models Sweep OpenRouter Top 5 as Price-Performance Kill Line Reshapes Developer Defaults
DeepSeek V4-Flash leads OpenRouter weekly rankings with 7.1 trillion tokens, Chinese models claim nine of the global top 10 slots, and global weekly AI token usage crosses 56.8 trillion.
pandaily.com
We treat happiness as one thing, a good mood to maximise, but psychologists find it splits in two: the pleasant feeling of getting what you want, and the deeper sense that your life means something, and it is the second that lasts once the pleasure fades
The pursuit of feeling good and the search for meaning are not the same thing—and only one of them survives the initial rush.
siliconcanals.com
TNGlobal Acquires Jumpstart Media, Strengthening Hong Kong’s Bridge to Asia’s Innovation Ecosystem
KUALA LUMPUR and HONG KONG — TNGlobal (formerly TechNode Global), one of Asia’s leading technology and startup media platforms, today announced the acquisition of Jumpstart Media, publisher of Hong Kong’s renowned Jumpstart Magazine. The acquisition marks a significant milestone …
technode.com
Autonomous-driving company WeRide enters Nordic market through Denmark partnership
Chinese autonomous-driving company WeRide has partnered with Danish shared-mobility platform GreenMobility to develop Denmark’s first commercial autonomous shared-mobility project, marking WeRide’s first entry into the Nordic market. Subject to regulatory approval, the partners p…
technode.com
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sat in the US Capitol and tapped out ‘What hath God wrought’ to his assistant Alfred Vail 60 kilometres away in Baltimore, a phrase chosen not by Morse but by Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of a friend, who picked it out of the Book of Numbers and then traced every letter of it on the tape in ink herself
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse tapped out a four-word message from the US Capitol to Baltimore over 38 miles of copper wire. The verse was chosen by a 17-year-old named Annie Ellsworth from the Book of Numbers that morning.
siliconcanals.com
WorkBuddy Security Center Goes Live: Tencent Brings OS-API Layer Sandboxing, Recoverable File Deletion, and Version Rollback as Default Agent Safety Defaults
Tencent WorkBuddy 5.0 ships default security sandbox, recycle-bin file deletion, and version-restorable edits at the OS API layer, addressing the agent safety crisis without slowing agent efficiency.
pandaily.com
Commerce AI has a measurement problem no one is talking about
Presented by Rezolve Ai Most brands know something is shifting in how consumers find and choose products. What most don't know is how much of that shift has already taken place, where it's happening, or whether they're on the right side of it. That uncertainty is the problem. An…
venturebeat.com
TerminalWidget 1.0
New app from Brett Terpstra: TerminalWidget lets you send output from commands, scripts, APIs, and Shortcuts directly to widgets across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS with rich formatting, progress bars, sparklines, and image support. It is available as a universal app on the App Store f…
terminalwidget.app
FBI Agent Accused of Stealing $1 Million in Crypto Apparently Missed the Corruption Tutorial
Tough to get caught doing something illegal in this administration.
gizmodo.com

Trending

All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
Article URL: https://www.valleynewslive.com/2026/08/04/every-flock-camera-winona-minnesota-cut-down-stolen-coordinated-theft/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656 Points: 297 # Comments: 160
valleynewslive.com
Testing Hundreds of Used LFP Cells Requires Some Automation
Although Li-ion cells have become a lot cheaper over the years, if you wish to buy hundreds of high-quality ones for that performance go-kart project, you may feel financially pressured …read more
hackaday.com
Show HN: Simple algorithm and color space to generate diverse skin tones
Hello HN! I found that picking out plausible but diverse skin tones for my digital art and game development projects was kind of difficult, and I got curious about if there was a way to define a color space that made it easy. I've built a color picker and procedural generation al…
toneyalexander.github.io
Un Ordinateur Pour Le Minitel-1 (A Computer For The Minitel-1)
In the 1980s, France was the stage for one of the boldest public computing projects of the era. Minitel was the French take on viewdata, and instead of making it …read more
hackaday.com
BornHack Radio 102.8 FM, Playing Radio At A Hacker Camp
Over the years I have been to many hacker camps and done a lot of very cool things, but BornHack 2026 brought me something entirely new: Radio. By which I …read more
hackaday.com
Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
Article URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/xbox-goes-down-you-cant-play-games-you-own-on-disc/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49167448 Points: 450 # Comments: 514
birchtree.me
AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
Article URL: https://nelson.cloud/ai-generated-images-discourage-me-from-reading-your-blog/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49167113 Points: 684 # Comments: 417
nelson.cloud
At Last! CP/M for Protected Mode
If you used a serious computer pre-IBM PC, there was a fair chance its operating system was CP/M. CP/M was a staple among 8080 and Z80 computers and while there …read more
hackaday.com
Road Trains Roam The Backroads of Australia
Trains and the railways they run on are a great way to move lots of stuff, or lots of people, a long way. Steel wheels on steel rail can shift …read more
hackaday.com