Techmeme
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London-based Callosum, whose software matches AI tasks with different models and chips, raised a $100M seed from Atomico, the UK Sovereign AI Fund, and others (Bloomberg)
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Virginia's Loudoun County hosts 250+ data centers, generating huge tax revenues, as it moves to slow construction in response to pushback from residents (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
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A look at Backstory, an experimental AI image authentication tool from Google DeepMind, offered for testing to journalists, researchers, and other fact checkers (Andrew Deck/Nieman Lab)
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China's humanoid robot makers derive much of their revenue from government-backed training centers that sell training data back to them, raising demand concerns (William Langley/Financial Times)
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Sources: China is restricting or delaying exports to Taiwan of germanium- and quartz-based materials used in fiber optics, photonics, and chip manufacturing (Nikkei Asia)
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How Unitree's Go series, which helped the company dominate the quadruped robot market, drew on openly published US university research funded by the US military (Michael Martina/Reuters)
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Pornhub says the UK's new internet age checks have boosted non-compliant porn sites, which occupied seven of the top 10 search results for "free porn" in June (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)
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The EU appears to be shifting from outsized regulatory fines against Big Tech to technical DMA orders that force compliance, such as sharing search data (Jacob Parry/Politico)
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President Trump says CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring crypto platform Hyperliquid onshore, lifting shares of HYPE-holder Hyperliquid Strategies ~30% (Bloomberg)
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The US Army is phasing out its drone assault battalion, as part of a "back-to-basics" approach; it was created in January to learn from the conflict in Ukraine (Wall Street Journal)
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Samsung announces a virtual Galaxy event for August 27 at 8am ET, where the Galaxy S26 FE is expected (Alan Friedman/PhoneArena)
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German insurance giant Munich Re agrees to acquire cyber insurance provider At-Bay for $575M; At-Bay raised $276M and had a $1.35B valuation in 2021 (Meir Orbach/CTech)
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Trump urges Congress to pass the Clarity Act at a White House event with execs including the CEOs of Coinbase and Robinhood; the bill has stalled in the Senate (Bloomberg)
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Sources: YouTube is offering top creators millions to post videos exclusively on YouTube for a period and will penalize those that post to Netflix concurrently (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)
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Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testifies that Mark Zuckerberg prioritized growth and engagement over child safety on Facebook and Instagram (Reuters)