SteamDB, the widely used Steam analytics and database site, has been sold to Chosen, the company behind Nexus Mods. Co-founder Pavel Djundik said running the site solo had become unsustainable after burnout following years of increasing workload since launching it in 2013 with Marlamin. Chosen CEO Victor Folmann said the site will be commercialized through partnerships and affiliate links rather than ads, while preserving what makes it useful to users.
Researchers combined 2019 reconstructed marine fisheries landings from Sea Around Us with FAO inland fisheries and aquaculture data to measure how much invertebrates such as mollusks, crustaceans, sea cucumbers and jellyfish contribute to global seafood production. They standardized species names using the ASFIS taxonomic system and checked their findings across multiple years from 2014 to 2019 to confirm consistency. The analysis treated marine and inland fisheries separately due to gaps in reconstruction data for freshwater systems.
AI training-data startup AfterQuery has reportedly raised new funding valuing it at $3.2 billion, just five months after its $30 million Series A priced it at $300 million. Y Combinator partner Gustaf Alströmer called it the fastest launch-to-unicorn run in the accelerator's history, achieved by founders who are just 22 and 23 years old.
Val Town's team found that most new Pro subscribers in July were referred by AI systems, chiefly Claude, even before the company deliberately optimized its site for machine readers. They discovered that many of these referrals came not from clickable citations but from the models' training memory mentioning Val Town as plain text, meaning standard referral tracking like utm_source and Referer headers missed much of the actual traffic source.
Harvard Business School has launched an eight-week online entrepreneurship program priced at $699 that uses AI-generated avatars of its faculty to provide round-the-clock guidance to participants. The course lets aspiring founders interact with digital clones of professors instead of relying solely on scheduled lectures or office hours, and early participants have reportedly responded positively.
Consumer TVs top out around 98 to 115 inches, with large sets like TCL's 115-inch QM7K costing nearly $14,000, though smaller Mini LED models under $1,000 exist at 75-85 inches. Projectors like the Anker Nebula X1 and Valerion VisionMaster Pro, priced similarly to mid-range TVs, can project images up to 300 inches, offering far larger displays for comparable or lower cost.
upGrad has completed an all-stock acquisition of Unacademy, valuing the Bengaluru-based edtech startup at roughly $206 million—about 94% below its 2021 peak valuation of $3.44 billion. CEO Gaurav Munjal confirmed the deal's closing on X, noting that Unacademy shareholders received upGrad shares while angel investors were cashed out.
California's Assembly passed Bill 1856, amending the Digital Age Assurance Act to exclude operating systems and software meant to be freely copied, redistributed or modified from mandatory age-verification requirements. This shields most Linux distributions, though derivative projects with proprietary layers like Valve's SteamOS may still need to comply. The bill also fixes the DAAA's overly broad definition of 'user' and restricts sharing of age data to law enforcement requests.
A leadership guidance piece argues that the toughest calls executives face aren't really about missing information but about competing values pulling in different directions. It recommends leaders conduct a personal 'values inventory'—systematically identifying and ranking their core priorities—to clarify decision-making when facts alone don't point to an answer.
Tim Cook appeared in the Oval Office to praise President Trump and presented him with a glass-and-gold trophy in front of press cameras, an event the author calls the most embarrassing act ever done in Apple's name. The piece contrasts Cook's deferential display with Steve Jobs' history of defying authority and institutions, noting Jobs himself was the son of an immigrant on a student visa.
USC PhD student Zhivar Sourati and colleagues published a March paper arguing that widespread reliance on large language models is homogenizing writing, creativity, and even cultural values, drawing a parallel to 'McDonaldization' of society. Unlike past information technologies, they argue, generative AI actively reshapes content rather than simply distributing it, flattening stylistic diversity across users. Duke computer scientist Emily Wenger adds that this convergence could pose an existential risk by encouraging groupthink and eroding independent judgment.
Roughly 12 terabytes of data from Valve's old Steam2 backend, covering games published between 2003 and 2013, has surfaced online after being left exposed in a public repository. The trove reportedly includes prototype builds like an early version of Left 4 Dead with a different HUD, materials tied to the canceled Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and files from non-Valve titles such as Grand Theft Auto 5. Content creators covering Valve say no hacking was involved, and only game data was exposed, not player information.
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