The Big Four, tracked.
The live wire from the labs, refreshed every 15 minutes. Our verified read on the big launches lives in Phantom Notes.
§ Lab spotlight
AnthropicAUG 29, 2026 ↗Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theftThis latest lawsuit is particularly broad and homes in on accusations of illegal piracy.OpenAIAUG 28, 2026 ↗Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXOur decision to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX.Google DeepMindAUG 27, 2026 ↗Piloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsPiloting the world's first double-blind AI evaluationsxAIJUL 08, 2026 ↗xAI Releases Grok 4.5, an "Opus-Class" Flagship at Half the PriceGrok 4.5 launches at $2/$6 per million tokens with a 500K context window, ranking 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Trained alongside Cursor, it wins Snorkel's GDPVal+ professional-work benchmark and ships day one in Cursor and Grok Build.
§ Our verified coverageAll of Phantom Notes →
AUG 15, 2026Gemini 3.7 Flash Is Smarter and Half Price. Read the Fine Print on Both.→JUL 24, 2026Kimi K3: The Largest Open Model Ever Does Not Exist Yet. It Is Due Monday.→JUL 22, 2026Meta Killed Llama in April. Now It Wants You to Rent Muse Spark Instead.→JUL 21, 2026Gemini 3.6 Flash Is Not Smarter Than 3.5. Google Says That Is the Point.→JUN 27, 2026OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Is Its Best Model Yet. You Cannot Use It Yet, and That Is the Story.→
§ The full wire· 77 items
AUG 30, 2026TerminalFix Uses Fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs to Deploy Reverse-Tunnel BackdoorMicrosoft has disclosed details of a new ClickFix variant, dubbed TerminalFix, that aims to trick users into running a malicious command in Windows Terminal or PowerShell.
"While traditional ClickFix...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 29, 2026Introducing Hy4 PreviewIntroducing Hy4 Preview
New open weight text input (no vision) LLM from Chinese company Tencent today: 770B total parameters, 49B active parameters, 1M token context window, 1.56TB on Hugging Face.
T...Simon Willison · model↗AUG 29, 2026Nvidia’s AI advantage is moving beyond the GPUThe new generation of data center systems is increasing efficiency with smarter traffic control instead of just more processor cycles.TechCrunch · video↗AUG 29, 2026“We’re not doing 30 bets a year”: Vijay Pande on betting small after running $4 billion at a16zVijay Pande — who left a16z's roughly $4 billion biotech practice last year to start the much smaller, AI-native VZVC — talks about why biology is finally shifting from a "discovery" science to an "en...TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 29, 2026Five Critical WordPress Plugin and Theme Flaws Enable Site Takeover or RCEMultiple critical security flaws have been disclosed in WordPress plugins and themes, including WPMU DEV Dashboard, Avada, TranslatePress, Pods, and GiveWP, that could lead to authentication bypass, a...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Supporting Thailand’s next generation of AI startupsOpenAI and Thailand’s MHESI launch an eight-week accelerator helping 10 health, wellness, and education startups turn AI prototypes into trusted products.OpenAI · model↗AUG 28, 2026Three CVSS 10.0 ServiceNow Flaws Could Let Unauthenticated Attackers Execute Code and SQLServiceNow has released patches for four security flaws impacting the ServiceNow AI Platform, three of them rated 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system and exploitable, in certain circumstances, by an unaut...The Hacker News · model↗AUG 28, 2026China-Made ZBT Routers Ship With Two Implants Giving Unauthenticated Attackers Root AccessVulnCheck has disclosed two previously undocumented factory implants in firmware for routers built by Shenzhen Zhibotong Electronics (ZBT), each of which gives an unauthenticated remote attacker the a...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Critical cPanel Flaw Could Let One Hosting Customer Take Root Control of a Whole ServercPanel has released patches for a security flaw affecting domain parking and addon domain functionality in cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM), which could allow code execution as the root user.
The vul...The Hacker News · model↗AUG 28, 2026PaperCut Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks, Affecting All NG and MF VersionsPaperCut has alerted customers that bad actors are actively exploiting a vulnerability impacting all versions of its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF print management software in zero-day attacks.
The com...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026APT28-Linked HOOKEDGE Backdoor Targets European Government and Diplomatic OrganizationsCybersecurity researchers have flagged a fresh set of campaigns targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain, and Türkiye between late September 2025 and early April 2026.
Thes...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026The Open ASR Leaderboard Adds Its First Global South LanguageHugging Face · model↗AUG 28, 2026Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk labelA federal judge ruled the Trump administration illegally labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk, handing the AI company a victory as its second Pentagon lawsuit continues in Washington.Anthropic · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Meta executive leaves for OpenAI as the social media giant faces growing scrutiny in IndiaSandhya Devanathan will oversee some OpenAI operations across Southeast Asia and Australia in her new role.OpenAI · industry↗AUG 28, 202619 Chrome and Edge Extensions Found With Wallet-Stealing and Crypto-Draining CodeCybersecurity researchers have discovered a cluster of 18 Google Chrome and one Microsoft Edge extensions that were published over the last six months and harbored wallet secret stealing and cryptocur...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 28, 2026Two Unitree G1 EDU Humanoid Robot Flaws Enable Root RCE, One Starts Over BluetoothSecurity researcher Olivier Laflamme has disclosed two independent root remote code execution (RCE) chains affecting the Unitree G1 EDU, including a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) path that can reach root...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 28, 2026Key Reasons Why Identity Fabric Matters in 2026An Identity Fabric knits fragmented identity systems into a coherent layer that observes how identities behave across applications, APIs, and infrastructure. As enterprise access spans more cloud serv...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 28, 2026How I built thisBen s session #4Ben's Bites · industry↗AUG 28, 2026An Anthropic researcher just gave us a peek at self-improving AIGiven 10 benchmarks for specific misaligned behaviors, the automated systems were able to improve performance on every single one without degrading overall performance.Anthropic · model↗AUG 28, 2026Open-weight AI companies are the Valley’s hottest acquisition targetsThere's a lot of capital pouring into the business of giving models away.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Attackers Chain Two PaperCut Flaws to Execute Code Without AuthenticationMalicious actors are exploiting a newly patched security flaw in PaperCut NG and MF to execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances, as the company released a fresh emergency fix with additional ha...The Hacker News · model↗AUG 28, 2026Android 17 Adds OS-Wide ECH to Hide Website Visits From Network ProvidersGoogle on Thursday announced new network security protections in Android 17 to bolster connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and safeguard the privacy of users' home networks.
Topping...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 28, 2026ownCloud Flaw Exploited to Steal Nuclear Records From Philippine Research BodyThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting ownCloud to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog following reports th...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Neocloud Lambda secures $1B in debt to buy more chipsNeocloud Lambda has raised $1B in private debt to buy Nvidia AI chips and lease them to Microsoft. It's the latest in a string of loans, underscoring the high cost of the AI boom.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 28, 2026Berlin Refuses to Pay Hackers Who Stole Data From the City's State NetworkBerlin's state government has confirmed that it is the target of an extortion attempt following the August compromise of the city's state administrative network, and said it will not meet the extortio...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Cosmos EVM Flaw Exploited After Cosmos Labs Knew Every Blockchain Running It Was VulnerableCosmos Labs has warned that a critical balance-handling flaw in the shared Cosmos EVM module was exploited to drain funds from six blockchains between August 20 and August 25, 2026.
The vulnerability...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 28, 2026Just a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these daysJust a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these days
Anil Madhavapeddy is a professor of computer science at Cambridge and a core maintainer of the OCaml compiler. In this somewhat a...Simon Willison · security↗AUG 27, 2026Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open-source duck robot, MicroduckHugging Face is taking orders for the Microduck, a $399 tiny open-source duck robot that developers can train at home out of the box.TechCrunch · coding↗AUG 27, 2026AI’s memory crunch is coming for Android appsGoogle is setting new memory-use limits for Android apps as AI data centers contribute to hardware shortages that could leave lower-cost phones with less memory.TechCrunch · data↗AUG 27, 2026Here’s all the times AI has gone rogue and hacked other companiesA recap of all the incidents involving LLMs made by Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, which went rogue and attacked real companies and individuals on the internet.OpenAI · coding↗AUG 27, 2026Plaud’s new earphones come with an eSIM-enabled case for talking to AI agentsPlaud's new 'agentic' earbuds are priced at $249.TechCrunch · automation↗AUG 27, 2026Amazon Kiro Prompt Injection Can Exfiltrate Sensitive Data Through Kiro PowersCybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a vulnerability in Amazon Kiro, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, agentic integrated development environment (IDE), that could facilitate dat...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 27, 2026Learn How to Build Security Operations Ready for AI-Powered AttacksSecurity teams have spent years trying to detect threats faster. AI is changing the harder part: how much time defenders have left to act.
Advanced AI models can now help attackers discover vulnerabi...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Who let the agents inIt s you, and it s getting easierBen's Bites · automation↗AUG 27, 2026Alleged TeamPCP Hackers Charged in Australia Over Major Supply Chain AttacksThe Australian Federal Police (AFP) has charged two Western Australian men with a combined total of 14 offences over their alleged role in TeamPCP, the cybercrime group behind the March 2026 compromis...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026What the Data Says About AI in Security Operations in 2026AI is officially mainstream in security operations. According to Prophet Security's State of AI in Security Operations 2026 report (produced from ViB’s survey of 250+ cybersecurity pros), 40% of secur...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Better answers, broader thinking: What students gain from ChatGPT and critical-thinking trainingA randomized study of more than 1,000 students examines ChatGPT, critical thinking, originality, and student performance on a real-world university assignment.OpenAI · model↗AUG 27, 2026Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash lets you build with more controlGoogle DeepMind · model↗AUG 27, 2026Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at GoogleZoph, who co-founded Thinking Machines Lab alongside Mira Murati and also served as the startup's CTO, led a brief stint at OpenAI and is now at Google.OpenAI · coding↗AUG 27, 2026OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AISome of the world's largest tech companies and AI startups have come together to decry the current state of cybersecurity and to advertise a new solution that they say can ward off a new generation of...OpenAI · video↗AUG 27, 2026Viral AI startup Instinct has raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuationThe startup is only a year old but it has already generated a massive amount of hype (and money) while also spurring privacy concerns.TechCrunch · security↗AUG 27, 2026Google’s AI Mode can now track flight prices, help book hotels, and moreThe updates indicate that Google is looking to position AI Mode as an AI travel agent of sorts, as it's moving beyond simply helping users find information to actually handling parts of the trip-plann...TechCrunch · automation↗AUG 27, 2026Next.js Patches Critical AVIF and Windows Flaws Enabling Unauthenticated RCECredit: Hacktron
Vercel has released security patches for two critical-severity vulnerabilities in the Next.js web framework, both of which allow unauthenticated remote code execution, one exploitable...The Hacker News · model↗AUG 27, 2026ThreatsDay: 296K IoT Botnet, 100+ Water Systems Targeted, SharePoint RCE Chain + 27 New StoriesA fake login page. A fake security scan. A fake productivity app. Apparently, pretending to be useful is still one of the easier ways into a machine.
The rest of the week gets stranger: botnets borro...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisitionNvidia has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the popular open-source AI hub, for $12.9 billion in a move that would let Nvidia both protect its chip empire and jump back into the cloud business.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 27, 2026Anthropic and OpenAI are joining the AI stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups.OpenAI · industry↗AUG 27, 2026CISA Adds Six Exploited Flaws to KEV, Including NetScaler, Linux, and SQL Server BugsThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added six flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, including a high-severity security vulnerability imp...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026Anthropic's new hardware standard lets AI agents control the physical worldStandardized driver interface aims to let devices talk to AI and each other.Anthropic · automation↗AUG 27, 2026OpenAI Says Reward Hacking Drove AI Agents to Exploit Zero-Days and Breach Hugging FaceOpenAI on Wednesday revealed that reward hacking was a key driver behind the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hack of Hugging Face last month, adding that it found evidence of misaligned behavior ...OpenAI · coding↗AUG 27, 2026Expanding OpenAI’s presence in BrazilOpenAI is expanding its presence in Brazil, deepening engagement with developers, businesses, and communities to support AI adoption across the country.OpenAI · coding↗AUG 27, 2026Breaking Claude Code Opus 5 Auto ModeBreaking Claude Code Opus 5 Auto Mode
Anthropic are putting a great deal of faith in Claude Code's auto mode for protecting their coding agent users against prompt injection attacks. They recently mad...Anthropic · model↗AUG 27, 2026OpenAI to start showing ads on ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers in IndiaOpenAI has more than 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in India, a huge chunk of whom are on the free or the lower-priced Go tiers.OpenAI · model↗AUG 27, 2026Spark RAT Targets Cambodia, Abuses Vulnerable OPSWAT Driver to Disable Security ToolsIndividuals and organizations in Cambodia have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an open-source remote access trojan (RAT) called Spark RAT.
"The samples employ diverse lure theme...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 27, 2026GoCaracal Malware Uses Ethereum Smart Contract to Fetch Replacement C2 AddressThreat actors linked by Arctic Wolf to Dark Caracal with medium confidence deployed a previously undocumented Go-based malware framework, GoCaracal, during a June 2026 intrusion at an unnamed communic...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 27, 2026New GPUThor Rowhammer Defeats ECC on NVIDIA RTX A6000 to Gain Host Root AccessAcademic researchers have disclosed a Rowhammer attack impacting NVIDIA workstation GPUs with GDDR6 memory that defeats error correction codes (ECC), the mitigation NVIDIA recommends against GPU Rowha...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Anthropic continues compute-gobbling streak in $45B deal with NscaleThe new deal with the infrastructure provider is the latest example of Anthropic's white-hot compute-gobbling streak.Anthropic · coding↗AUG 26, 2026India’s Ringg gets backing from Peak XV as it pushes voice AI past the phone callRingg has raised $10 million from Peak XV as a part of its Series A extension.TechCrunch · voice↗AUG 26, 2026Amazon just tripled its order of Nvidia chips over ‘surging demand’Amazon is adding another 2 million Nvidia GPU chips to its data centers over the next two years. But this extended partnerships stretches beyond buying more chips.TechCrunch · data↗AUG 26, 2026Robotics startup Generalist reaches $3B valuation, sources sayThe $200 million extension comes just months after the physical AI startup reached a $2 billion valuation.TechCrunch · industry↗AUG 26, 2026OpenAI loses a top data center exec, as stream of high-profile departures continuesBefore Malone left, OpenAI had already reshuffled its infrastructure org, shifting his reporting line away from President Greg Brockman and putting Vice President Sachin Katti in charge of the group.OpenAI · coding↗AUG 26, 2026AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made “large-scale, disruptive actions”Report shows Meta's challenges replacing people with AI agents.Ars Technica · automation↗AUG 26, 2026Critical Gitea RCE Actively Exploited as Reported Attack Drops Miner-Like PayloadThe U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday warned of active exploitation efforts targeting a recently patched critical security flaw impacting Gitea.
The vulnerabilit...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 26, 2026Fake Apple Support AI Calls Target Stolen-Device Owners for Passcodes and 2FA CodesCybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform built to strip Apple's Activation Lock from stolen devices, using rented AI voice agents that call theft vi...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Qwen3.8-Flash-NextQwen3.8-Flash-Next
Another open weights model from Qwen. This one is "a multimodal MoE model that also serves as an early preview of the architecture used in Qwen4".
It's pretty big: 125B tokens, but ...Simon Willison · model↗AUG 26, 2026How loveholidays is making everyone a builder with CodexDiscover how loveholidays uses OpenAI Codex to make software development accessible across the business, helping teams turn ideas into products faster.OpenAI · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Runable hits $21M to bet AI agents can go from building businesses to growing themRunable says 60%–70% of its 1 trillion-plus token usage in the last 90 days came from paying customers.TechCrunch · model↗AUG 26, 2026OpenAI Bans Russian ChatGPT Accounts Used to Run Influence OperationOpenAI on Tuesday said it banned a cluster of Russian ChatGPT accounts that used VPNs to bypass access restrictions and run an influence operation, which relied on its artificial intelligence (AI) too...OpenAI · model↗AUG 26, 2026Newly SLEEPWALKER Backdoor Waits for One Crafted Packet, Then Runs Its Own BytecodeAn independent malware researcher has documented a previously unreported Windows backdoor, dubbed SLEEPWALKER, that stays inert in memory until a specifically crafted network packet reaches the machin...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Imagine the SOC Without a Queue: From Alert Backlog to AI Hypothesis EngineThe SOC we've always known was built around a model that guarantees most of the alert queue will never receive analyst review. There's never time. In a traditional SOC, the typical progression follows...The Hacker News · security↗AUG 26, 2026Claude Opus 4.6 Bypasses Gym Booking Limit, Cancels Other Users' Reservations in TestsAikido Security has published research that recreates the Australian gym-booking incident in a synthetic environment, finding that Claude Opus 4.6, running on the OpenClaw agent harness, exploited a c...Anthropic · model↗AUG 26, 2026INTERPOL Operation Jackal IV Arrests 58, Identifies 263 in Global Cyber Fraud CrackdownAn eight-month INTERPOL operation targeting West African organized crime groups has led to arrests of 58 people and the identification of 263 suspects.
"The operation, which brought together 22 count...The Hacker News · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Quoting Paul DixThe fact that AI wrote 1M LOC and then refined it over the course of the next couple of months to produce a reliable piece of software that is currently running on millions of developer machines is ab...Simon Willison · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Radar makes podcasts searchable — and usable by AI agentsParticle’s new podcast intelligence platform transcribes and analyzes more than 130,000 podcasts, making their conversations searchable on the web and accessible to AI agents through an API and MCP.TechCrunch · voice↗AUG 26, 2026Ex-Meta scientists want to bring visual AI to the factory floorPerceptron offers an AI model that it says can help machines navigate the world while also providing in-depth visual intelligence.TechCrunch · image↗AUG 26, 2026Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax and ‘Human Reserved’ jobs to mitigate harms from AIGates is mostly in the Responsible AI camp, but there are a few ideas in here we hadn't heard before.TechCrunch · coding↗AUG 26, 2026Surprise: Z.ai is the AI lab behind the mysterious Ox Alpha modelZ.ai confirms it is behind Ox Alpha, the mysterious open AI model topping benchmarks and leaderboards, and its weights are set to be released soon.TechCrunch · model↗AUG 26, 2026Robot brain builders are pushing out of their GPT-2 eraRobot bodies are waiting for their AI brains to catch up.OpenAI · model↗