Designator

How to See the Partial Lunar Eclipse and Blood Moon on August 27

A partial lunar eclipse on August 27 will obscure 93 percent of the moon's surface, creating a "blood moon" effect visible across the Americas.

27 Aug3 min read

Viral AI startup Instinct has raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation

Viral AI startup Instinct secured $350 million in funding, achieving a $2.5 billion valuation for its AI assistant, despite ongoing privacy concerns from users.

Mechanical Turk shutting down September 30

Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk on September 30, a crowdsourcing marketplace that connected businesses with a global, on-demand workforce for various virtual tasks.

Zohran and the Short Link

Zohran's videos for NYC initiatives consistently use short, human-readable nyc.gov links, simplifying government engagement and centralizing social media distribution for city services.

26 Aug1 min read

Amazon just tripled its order of Nvidia chips over ‘surging demand’

Amazon tripled its order of Nvidia GPU chips, adding 2 million units to its data centers by 2028, due to surging demand for AI model training and operation.

26 Aug5 min read

Ring introduces a new encryption standard, makes it the default for cloud features

Ring introduced TAKE, a new encryption standard that uses rotating, temporary cloud-stored keys to enable smart features while allowing users to recover access without end-to-end encryption.

Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax and ‘Human Reserved’ jobs to mitigate harms from AI

Bill Gates proposes a "robot tax" on automation to fund retraining and a stronger safety net, alongside designating certain jobs as "Human Reserved" to mitigate AI's labor impacts.

CISA confirms hackers targeted over 100 US water systems during July

The U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA confirmed that hackers targeted over 100 internet-exposed systems within the U.S. water and wastewater sector during July, largely affecting programmable logic controllers.

9to5Google

Galaxy S27 leaks reveal a design that Samsung just won’t kill

Leaked renders suggest the Samsung Galaxy S27 will retain a design nearly identical to its predecessor, while the S27 Ultra model will feature a significantly redesigned camera array.

9to5Google

Galaxy S26 Ultra is the world’s most popular Android phone, and that’s a first

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra became the world's best-selling Android phone in Q2 2026, marking the first time an ultra-premium Android device led sales in a June quarter.

The Verge

Xbox announces disc-to-digital feature that digitizes your physical games

Xbox will introduce a disc-to-digital feature on August 31st, allowing users to convert physical game collections into digital entitlements for preservation and future console compatibility.

Surprise: Z.ai is the AI lab behind the mysterious Ox Alpha model

Z.ai, the creator of the GLM series, confirmed it is the AI lab behind Ox Alpha, a new open-weight model designed for coding and complex reasoning.

26 Aug2 min read

Ars Technica

15,000 years of solar wind in four hours? A Seattle company gives it a go.

Interlune, a Seattle company, simulated 15,000 years of solar wind exposure on lunar regolith in four hours to study helium-3 extraction for potential future mining operations.

26 Aug4 min read

9to5Google

What is the ‘Android Pulse’ app that just appeared in Google Play Store updates? [U]

Google's new Android Pulse app, appearing as a Play Store update, facilitates rule distribution for anomaly detection in critical system resource consumption by the Android operating system.

Robotics startup Generalist reaches $3B valuation, sources say

Robotics startup Generalist achieved a $3 billion valuation after securing nearly $200 million in additional capital, bringing its Series B funding to $600 million.

The brain may be about to have its Ozempic moment

The brain's potential for an "Ozempic moment" suggests a future where neurological conditions could be managed with highly targeted and effective interventions, similar to the drug's impact on diabetes.

Queryable Executables

The SELF format proposes making executables SQLite databases, allowing programs to store their own transactional state, website data, and logs within the same single file.

26 Aug7 min read

OpenAI loses a top data center exec, as stream of high-profile departures continues

OpenAI's head of data centers, Chris Malone, departed the company, adding to a series of executive exits amid a reorganization of its infrastructure team.

Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others

Maiao, a community-forked tool, facilitates Gerrit-style stacked pull requests across various Git hosting providers, enabling granular code reviews and cleaner commit histories by creating one PR per commit.

25 Aug3 min read

The Verge

Garmin’s new Fenix 9 adds brighter screens and smoother map panning

Garmin's new Fenix 9 smartwatches feature brighter OLED displays, increased RAM for smoother map panning, and new software features like Garmin Epic for workout data analysis.

Bomb Fishing Is Wreaking Havoc on Indonesia's Coral Reefs

Researchers estimate that fishers in Indonesia's Spermonde Archipelago detonate over 8,000 underwater explosives annually, transforming vibrant coral reefs into barren rubble landscapes.

25 Aug5 min read

The Verge

Apple’s ‘new’ polishing cloth is the same except $10 cheaper

Apple released a "new" polishing cloth that is identical to its previous version, but now costs $9 instead of $19, a $10 price reduction.

25 Aug3 min read