Two Wall Street research notes this week argue that Meta's heavy AI investment is starting to show results. Bernstein said AI-powered ad targeting helped Meta grow ad revenue 27% year-over-year in Q2, gaining market share from Google, whose ad network revenue actually declined. Separately, Bank of America highlighted Meta's upcoming personal AI agent, Hatch, reportedly featuring a customizable dashboard and possible premium subscription tier costing up to $199.99 a month, as a potential new revenue source beyond advertising.
John Ternus, formerly Apple's senior VP of Hardware Engineering, has officially become Apple's new CEO after Tim Cook's fifteen-year tenure ended. In his first staff memo, Ternus previewed a major product event on September 9, widely expected to unveil Apple's first foldable iPhone and a broader rollout of an upgraded Siri.
Scientists studying hurricanes have identified a pattern in ocean surface temperature gradients that appears tied to episodes of rapid storm intensification, a phenomenon that has long confounded forecasters. By tracking how sharply temperatures shift across ocean regions a storm passes over, researchers believe they can better anticipate when a hurricane is about to strengthen abruptly.
Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner issued a statement defending his firm's involvement as lead investor in FIFA's now-abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, which would have sold private investors a 20% stake in FIFA's commercial rights for $4.2 billion. The plan collapsed after European and North American member associations objected to outside private-equity influence, and FIFA scrapped the proposal before it could go to a vote. Kushner said he still believes the underlying concept was sound but would not have gotten involved had he anticipated the fallout.
The nonprofit Fermi Explorer Mission, led by Philip Johnston, has spent a year designing a low-cost interstellar spacecraft meant to actually launch toward Alpha Centauri, unlike Yuri Milner's stalled Breakthrough Starshot project. Facing a persistent engineering puzzle over powering a lightweight solar craft without adding excessive weight, the team turned to artificial intelligence tools to help chart a viable trajectory. The mission, backed by private donors and budgeted at $15 million, plans to carry a small payload including art, messages, and a copy of the Golden Record.
Paramount released a new trailer for its upcoming live-action Street Fighter movie, directed by Kitao Sakurai, showing off exaggerated special moves like real hadoukens and Chun-Li's kicks alongside a CGI Blanka played by Jason Momoa. The footage leans heavily into the franchise's over-the-top, colorful style rather than plot details.
A new ranking evaluated U.S. cities for retirees based on cost of living, healthcare access, quality of life and available activities. The analysis found Wyoming locations outperforming traditional retirement hotspots, offering an alternative to the well-worn path to Florida and Arizona.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told CNBC that many AI data center developers disregard the concerns of communities where they build, contrasting them with companies like Chobani that engage locally. His remarks followed an August executive order imposing strict new requirements on data center projects and removing them from a fast-track approval process.
A programmer describes using an AI system called Fable to convert a 65,000-line-of-code Go project into Rust, spending roughly $400 in the process. The approach relied on representing the codebase as data structures like graphs, state machines and constraints, then operating on those representations rather than translating code line by line, contrasting with a more mechanical file-by-file porting method used in an earlier Bun-to-Rust rewrite.
At the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, the Trump administration pushed back against AI regulation, with OSTP director Michael Kratsios warning that outdated rules could stifle innovation and cause countries to fall behind. The US is promoting the 'Carolina Principles,' a pro-innovation framework favoring industry-led standards over government oversight, while AI czar David Sacks argued that creating an 'FDA for AI' or 'DMV for AI' would be disastrous for the sector.
New survey data shows AI and automation use has surged in workplaces, with Bain & Company reporting 95% of U.S. companies now using generative AI and Intapp finding 72% of professionals using AI at work, up from 48% a year earlier. Despite these productivity gains, PwC's 2025 workforce survey found many employees remain anxious about how AI will reshape their jobs, revealing a widening gap between operational efficiency and employee confidence.
Google released its monthly Android feature drop this week, adding tools like a motion sickness reducer for screen use in moving vehicles, shared notes within chat threads, camera-based object identification, and customizable Google Messages chat themes. The update also lets users ask Gemini to remember where they placed everyday items, such as passports or keys, storing that information in Google's Find Hub tracking app.
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