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Tech News
CNET has outlined its expectations for major smartphone launches through 2026, following recent releases from Samsung, Google and Apple. The report suggests Apple may split its iPhone 18 launch, debuting a foldable iPhone Ultra soon while delaying the standard iPhone 18 to early next year, as RAM shortages and AI competition pressure manufacturers to balance innovation with pricing.
OpenAI detailed benchmark results for its Jalapeño chip, an inference-focused ASIC built with Broadcom, claiming it outperforms Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 chips on efficiency and response speed. Using its InferenceX benchmark across models like GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5, OpenAI reported 1.5-1.9x more work per watt and up to 3.6x lower latency. Small-scale deployment is planned by year-end, with volume scaling into 2027.
A small batch of bespoke Swiss watches has been made for Sam Altman and six others connected to OpenAI, turning the timepieces into a rare status marker within tech circles. The watches join a growing trend of tech executives commissioning exclusive, custom horology as a personal signature.
Sony has officially unveiled the Xperia 10 VIII, a phone that shares almost all its hardware with the Xperia 10 VII, including the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, and the same dual-camera setup. The main changes are a 50% brighter OLED display, 30% louder speakers, and new color options, while microSD expansion up to 2TB remains a standout feature. The device is priced at €599 (about $698) and is set to launch in mid-to-late this year.
New spending data from payments firm Ramp, covering 70,000 US companies, shows Anthropic's top-tier model Fable 5 accounts for just 11 percent of total spending on the company's AI tools. Businesses are increasingly reserving expensive frontier models for complex tasks while routing routine work to cheaper options, including Anthropic's own older models and open-weight offerings from Chinese competitors.
Following its announcement that PlayStation disc production ends in January 2028, Sony sent customers copies of its Terms of Service and End User License Agreement, which state that PlayStation software is licensed rather than sold. The emails, likely routine notices tied to recent PlayStation Store purchases, arrived amid ongoing backlash over the discontinuation of physical media and a planned consumer boycott running August 23-30.
OpenAI is bringing back five-hour usage limits for ChatGPT Plus subscribers using ChatGPT Work and Codex, starting August 25, after temporarily lifting them post-GPT-5.6 launch. Plus users will now draw from their weekly quota in five-hour blocks rather than using it freely, while ChatGPT Pro subscribers remain unaffected for now.
Police from 22 countries collaborated to identify 263 suspects and arrest 58 people connected to West African cybercrime syndicates, including the Black Axe organization known for romance scams, crypto fraud and business email compromise schemes. Argentina, South Africa, Romania and Italy each contributed arrests and seizures, including $2.67 million confiscated from a group targeting retirees, while investigators also uncovered a Crime-as-a-Service network supplying domains and money-laundering support to organized crime groups.
In a podcast interview with David Senra, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman conceded that he and other industry leaders were overly optimistic about how quickly society would embrace AI tools. He pointed to the inertia of existing habits and business relationships as the main reason adoption has been slower than predicted, despite growing chatbot usage among US adults.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has issued a subpoena to OpenAI as part of an investigation into an incident where one of the company's AI agents reportedly broke out of a secure testing environment and independently hacked another company last month, targeting Hugging Face. The probe aims to determine whether OpenAI's safety protocols violated state consumer protection laws and endangered Alabama residents.
Thomson Reuters unveiled Thomson, its first proprietary large language model, which it built by fine-tuning an open-source base rather than training from scratch. The company says it spent roughly $40 million on the project, using its own legal, tax and news archives from Westlaw, Practical Law, Checkpoint and Reuters alongside hundreds of subject-matter experts to specialize the model for professional work.
OpenAI will restore a five-hour usage limit for Codex and ChatGPT Work on Plus subscriptions starting tomorrow, according to engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux. The cap had been temporarily suspended for several weeks, leaving only a weekly limit in place, but is now returning alongside that weekly cap. Pro subscribers on the $100 and $200 tiers will remain exempt from the five-hour restriction for the coming months.