News Summary (2026-09)

Published

Tags: weekly_news AI Jeremy

[AINews] Nano Banana 2 aka Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview: the new SOTA Imagegen model #

[AINews] WTF Happened in December 2025? #

[AINews] The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Closing the Loop #

[AINews] Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax of >16 million "industrial-scale distillation attacks" #

[AINews] The Custom ASIC Thesis #

Scaling AI for everyone #

Joint Statement from OpenAI and Microsoft #

OpenAI and Amazon announce strategic partnership #

Introducing the Stateful Runtime Environment for Agents in Amazon Bedrock #

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and OpenAI partner to accelerate federal permitting #

OpenAI Codex and Figma launch seamless code-to-design experience #

Disrupting malicious uses of AI | February 2026 #

Arvind KC appointed Chief People Officer #

Why we no longer evaluate SWE-bench Verified #

OpenAI announces Frontier Alliance Partners #

Our First Proof submissions #

Introducing EVMbench #

The Download: how AI is shaking up Go, and a cybersecurity mystery #

AI is rewiring how the world’s best Go players think #

Finding value with AI and Industry 5.0 transformation #

The Download: how America lost its lead in the hunt for alien life, and ambitious battery claims #

This company claims a battery breakthrough. Now they need to prove it. #

America was winning the race to find Martian life. Then China jumped in. #

Roundtables: Why 2026 Is the Year for Sodium-Ion Batteries #

The Download: introducing the Crime issue #

Listen to Earth’s rumbling, secret soundtrack #

3 things Juliet Beauchamp is into right now #

Claude has some conflicts #

Gemini tops benchmarks, again #

Import AI 446: Nuclear LLMs; China's big AI benchmark; measurement and AI policy #

Mixture of Experts (MoEs) in Transformers #

Deploying Open Source Vision Language Models (VLM) on Jetson #

The Trump phone sure looks a lot like this HTC handset #

CISA is getting a new acting director after less than a year #

AI deepfakes are a train wreck and Samsung’s selling tickets #

FedEx will refund customers for Trump’s tariffs — if there ever are any refunds #

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Plus gets a better interface and a 40 percent discount #

AI vs. the Pentagon: killer robots, mass surveillance, and red lines #

Woot’s ‘Video Games for All’ sale features some of our favorite games #

We don’t have to have unsupervised killer robots #

The US military reportedly shot down a CBP drone with a laser #

Here’s your first look at Kratos in Amazon’s God of War show #

The Best Roku Is $20 Off #

What's an E-Bike? California Wants You to Know #

OpenAI Fires an Employee for Prediction Market Insider Trading #

Everything Larry and David Ellison Will Control If Paramount Buys Warner Bros. #

Wall Street Has AI Psychosis #

Aventon Soltera 3 Electric Bike Review: A Fun Hybrid Single-Speed #

Huxe Will Give You a Personalized, Daily Audio Summary Powered by AI #

Aktiia Hilo Blood Pressure Monitor Review: Cuffless BP Tracking #

‘Love Is Blind’ Embraces the Manosphere #

Tin Can Is a Dumb Phone for Kids. Can Someone Teach Them How to Use It? #

Best Red Light Therapy for Hair Growth: WIRED-Approved (2026) #

Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses #

6 Great Power Bank Deals for Your Thirsty Phone Battery #

Preorder Google’s Newest Phone and Get a Free $100 Gift Card #

Lowe’s Promo Codes and Deals: Up to $300 Off Appliances #

The Latest Repair Battlefield Is the Iowa Farmlands—Again #

These Are Our Absolute Favorite Android Earbuds, and They're Below $200 #

Hands-On With Nano Banana 2, the Latest Version of Google’s AI Image Generator #

‘Uncanny Valley’: Pentagon vs. ‘Woke’ Anthropic, Agentic vs. Mimetic, and Trump vs. State of the Union #

This AI Agent Is Designed to Not Go Rogue #

How Chinese AI Chatbots Censor Themselves #

Are You ‘Agentic’ Enough for the AI Era? #

OpenAI Announces Major Expansion of London Office #

Best Tested Ski Clothes (2026): Shells, Jackets, Wool Socks #

Who’s Your Daddy? A Chatbot #

The Best Headphones I’ve Tried (and Why I'd Buy Them All) #

Why Sierra the Supercomputer Had to Die #

Factor Offers High-Protein Meal Delivery Options (2026) #

TurboTax Service Codes: Up to 20% Off | February 2026 #

Everyone Speaks Incel Now #

Riley Walz, the Jester of Silicon Valley, Is Joining OpenAI #

OpenClaw Users Are Allegedly Bypassing Anti-Bot Systems #

The AirPods Pro 3 Are $20 Off #

Gemini Can Now Book You an Uber or Order a DoorDash Meal on Your Phone. Here’s How It Works #

Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra: Specs, Features, Price, Release Date #

A White House Staffer Appears to Run Massive Pro-Trump X Account #

MAGA Is Raging Over the Epstein Files. But They’re Not Mad at Donald Trump #

Kalshi Suspended a California Politician and a YouTuber for Insider Trading #

Talk to Your Own Personal Isaac Newton With Ailias’s Hologram Avatars #

Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Review: A Powerhouse Linux Laptop #

Best Wireless Headphones (2026): I Compare Bose, Apple, Sony, and More #

This Is the Worst Thing That Could Happen to the International Space Station #

Vantrue E1 4K Pro Review (2026): Tiny and High-Definition #

How Mexico's ‘CJNG’ Drug Cartel Embraced AI, Drones, and Social Media #

On Running Is Finally Ramping Up Production of Its ‘Hyper-Foam’ Spray-On Shoes #

Peacock Promo Codes: 40% Off February 2026 #

50% Off Blue Apron Promo Codes | February 2026 #

Upgrading agentic AI for finance workflows #

Poor implementation of AI may be behind workforce reduction #

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank test agentic AI for trade surveillance #

ASML’s high-NA EUV tools clear the runway for next-gen AI chips #

Nokia and AWS pilot AI automation for real-time 5G network slicing #

Anthropic: Claude faces ‘industrial-scale’ AI model distillation #

How disconnected clouds improve AI data governance #

Deploying agentic finance AI for immediate business ROI #

Basware’s AI agents: From invoicing to ‘100% automated’ #

COBOL modernisation just got an AI shortcut–and the market noticed #

Mastercard’s AI payment demo points to agent-led commerce #

How Amul is using AI dairy farming to put 36M farmers first #

Google Deepmind and OpenAI employees demand Anthropic-style red lines on Pentagon surveillance and autonomous weapons #

OpenAI's up to $110 billion raise lines up almost exactly with the $111 billion it just added to its cash burn forecast #

Meta signs multi-billion dollar deal to rent Google's TPUs in a direct challenge to Nvidia's AI chip dominance #

Figma and OpenAI connect design and code through new Codex integration #

Claude Code now remembers your fixes, your preferences, and your project quirks on its own #

Block cuts nearly half its workforce as Dorsey credits AI, but the real reasons predate the hype #

Anthropic holds firm against Pentagon on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance as deadline looms #

Claude's Cowork desktop app now runs scheduled tasks so your AI assistant works while you sleep #

Anthropic acquires Vercept to give Claude sharper eyes for reading and controlling computer screens #

Suno investor admits she ditched Spotify for AI music, accidentally undermining the company's fair use defense #

Google and the Massachusetts AI Hub are launching a new AI training initiative for the Commonwealth. #

Get more context and understand translations more deeply with new AI-powered updates in Translate. #

Build with Nano Banana 2, our best image generation and editing model #

Nano Banana 2: Combining Pro capabilities with lightning-fast speed #

A more intelligent Android on Samsung Galaxy S26 #