Arga, a startup led by CEO Philip Li, announced a $10 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with Box Group, Emergence, Gradient and SV Angel also participating. The company builds full replicas of enterprise tools like Salesforce, Workday and email clients, complete with permissions and web hooks, so AI agents can be trained and tested repeatedly without disrupting live systems.
Microsoft has officially introduced a disc-to-digital feature that lets Xbox One and Xbox Series X owners convert physical game discs into digital copies by inserting the disc and launching the title. The feature rolls out to Xbox Insiders on August 31, supporting thousands of titles at launch, and unlocks digital perks like Xbox Play Anywhere and Cloud Gaming access.
AI-driven search tools such as Google's AI Overviews and conversational assistants like ChatGPT are increasingly pulling data from customer reviews to decide which businesses to recommend. This means the volume, recency and quality of a business's reviews are being read and weighted by algorithms, not just prospective customers. A thin or neglected review profile can make a business effectively invisible to these AI systems.
Microsoft has confirmed a new Xbox feature that converts physical disc games into digital entitlements tied to the disc itself, allowing ownership to transfer between accounts if the disc changes hands. The feature begins testing with Xbox Insiders on August 31st before a wider rollout, and supports thousands of titles at launch with more to follow as publishers opt in.
Sony sent PlayStation account holders a reminder email outlining its full Terms of Service, Code of Conduct, EULA and Privacy Policy, emphasizing that digital games are licensed rather than owned. The timing coincided with widespread anger over Sony's plan to drop physical disc drives from the PlayStation 6 and end disc production by January 2028, following an earlier removal of purchased digital movies from user accounts. A player-led boycott of PlayStation logins and purchases began shortly after the email went out.
In testimony from an ongoing lawsuit filed by 29 states against Meta, a former company data scientist revealed that only about 0.165% to 0.2% of teens actually used Instagram's Take a Break feature when it was opt-in, despite Meta previously claiming 90% adoption. The tool, meant to nudge users to pause after extended app use, is now enabled by default for teen accounts following the criticism.
A developer detailed a step-by-step process for running a personal website on OpenBSD hosted on DigitalOcean, using the platform's custom image upload feature to install OpenBSD's miniroot image and configuring the server with httpd and Let's Encrypt for HTTPS. The setup costs about $4.24 per month after tax, positioned as an alternative to free static hosting services like GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages.
Humble Bundle is selling Steam keys for Daniel Mullins' deckbuilder Inscryption at $7.99, down from its usual $20 price, for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The sale comes as Mullins teased a sequel to another of his titles, Pony Island, called Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, at Gamescom 2026.
A large DDoS attack that began early Monday knocked out parts of Norway's shared government digital infrastructure, run by Digdir and operator Vivicta. Services like ID-porten and eSignering were briefly unreachable and remain partially degraded, with users facing connection failures and slow logins. Digdir says no breach or data compromise occurred, and this marks the third such attack on the agency since June.
As sleep monitoring devices become more widespread and sleep-enhancement technology moves from treating disorders to optimizing rest, employers and institutions are gaining new tools to measure and potentially demand better sleep from workers. A 2016 Dutch Data Protection Authority ruling already found that companies tracking employees' sleep via wearable devices violated privacy law, since such data counts as sensitive health information and consent from employees can't be truly voluntary given workplace power imbalances.
Chinese biotech firms and health-tech companies are increasingly partnering with low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, supplying vaccines, medical equipment financing and digital-health systems. Examples include equipment financing in Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire, pharmaceutical production in Zambia, and vaccine supply to Indonesia and Mexico during the pandemic. These bilateral deals are emerging as traditional multilateral aid budgets shrink worldwide.
A contributor for Entrepreneur outlines three digital strategies small business owners can use to grow despite limited resources: prioritizing tools based on efficiency, reach, and customer engagement, using analytics to refine spending, and building a proactive digital roadmap instead of reacting piecemeal to new tools. The piece cites Small Business Administration data showing small businesses make up 43.5% of U.S. GDP and employ over 62 million people, alongside Bank of America Institute figures showing rising small-business spending on tech and AI tools.