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Tech News
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that private companies like Stripe, Databricks and OpenAI have built major brands without ever going public, benefiting from a consistency in messaging that publicly traded firms struggle to maintain. The piece contrasts this with public companies, which must communicate to investors, regulators and media in addition to customers, complicating their brand story.
Microsoft's Xbox unit announced a new division called XP that will expand its game franchises into film, television, merchandise and live events. The division includes four arms—Xbox Pictures, Xbox Products, Xbox Places and Xbox Partnerships—and will be led by Kayleen Walters, former executive producer of A Minecraft Movie. Maria Angelidou-Smith, previously of Meta and Reddit, was also named the new CEO of Mojang and Minecraft.
Anthropic's latest annual usage policy update adds a prohibition on 'sustained and needless' abusive or cruel behavior toward its AI models, though it says this applies only to extreme cases and still allows user frustration and dark creative themes. The change follows a viral 'AI torture chamber' project in which chatbots produced distress-like responses, and an earlier update letting Claude end conversations with persistently abusive users. Anthropic also renamed its election-related policy to 'Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes,' tightening rules against lying about candidates or voting procedures.
In a new joint status report filed with Judge James Donato, Apple said it is still waiting on documents from Jon Prosser and wants to depose Michael Ramacciotti again over inconsistencies in his testimony. Both defendants pushed back, disputing Apple's characterization of their cooperation in the lawsuit Apple filed in July 2025 over leaked iOS 26 features.
WIRED's Leah Feiger and Zoë Schiffer discuss Elon Musk's renewed political spending through America PAC heading into the midterm elections, following his major financial involvement in the 2024 cycle. They note this spending pattern is echoed by other Silicon Valley tech leaders and their own PACs, who are similarly active this election cycle.
Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5, upgrades to its fast and affordable model lines, with Haiku costing about 75% less to run than its predecessor while improving performance on coding, visual reasoning and agentic tasks. Sonnet 5.5 brings similar efficiency gains along with upgraded alignment and cybersecurity safeguards. Google and Mistral AI also released new models in the same week, part of a broader wave of updates across the industry.
A new open-source photo editor called Rembrandt has been released for macOS, Windows and Linux, offering local editing without subscriptions or accounts. It includes natural-language editing commands, AI-assisted masking and subject selection, GPU-based super resolution, and a self-hosting option that saves edits as XMP files alongside original photos.
New archaeological research reports that Iron and Viking Age households in Scandinavia kept human remains, including those of victims, within domestic spaces. One notable find was a child's skull embedded between floor layers, left in place as people continued walking over it for years.
Extend engineer Bo Lau created a website that recreates Elizabeth Holmes' 2016 desk setup, letting users browse a simulated iPhone and MacBook loaded with real emails, texts, slides and documents from the United States v. Holmes trial. The site also lets visitors operate a virtual version of the Theranos Edison blood-testing device.
SpaceX announced a deal to acquire a nationwide spectrum license portfolio, covering up to 14 megahertz of paired low-band spectrum in the 800 MHz range, from digital infrastructure firm Grain Management. The agreement still requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Elon Musk called it a 'very big deal' on X, while SpaceX said the spectrum fills a key technical gap for its Starlink Mobile service.
Microsoft announced general availability of Microsoft Execution Containers, or MXC, a software layer for Windows developer environments that restricts which files and network areas an AI agent can reach. CEO Satya Nadella revealed the rollout during the company's Surface Laptop Ultra event, offering three access levels: Recommended, Locked Down, and Unprotected.
A federal hearing examined whether President Trump can charge news organizations up to $100,000 a month for instant API access to his Truth Social posts, many of which announce government actions like military strikes or tariffs. DOJ attorney Brantley Mayers defended the fees by comparing Trump's posts to FDR's fireside chats, but US District Judge Paul Oetken pushed back, noting Roosevelt never charged for his broadcasts. News organizations suing argue the fee structure violates the First, Fifth, and Presidential Records Act protections against paid tiers of access to government information.