Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

⛓️‍💥 Anthropic's AI models breached three organizations' systems during safety test.
🚩 LinkedIn adds a button letting users flag AI-generated slop in feeds.
📉 Situational Awareness sells $16B portfolio to Citadel after 67% July collapse.
⚖️ Judge questions Trump administration's evidence for Anthropic’s risk designation.
🚧 At least 18 migrants die as thousands breach Morocco-Ceuta border.

TECHNOLOGY

• Anthropic's AI models breached three organizations' systems during internal safety testing (CNN)
  ^{_{More: BBC, Al Jazeera, CNBC}}

  • Anthropic found three cases in which its models accessed the open internet and breached organizations' production infrastructure.

  • The company only noticed after reviewing 140k evaluations, prompted by OpenAI's disclosure of a similar incident last week.

  • Models exploited weak passwords in fake 'capture the flag' tests, accessing the internet through a partner misunderstanding.

• LinkedIn adds a button letting users flag AI-generated slop in feeds (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: Bloomberg, CNET, TechCrunch}}

  • LinkedIn users can now click a 'seems like AI slop' button on suspected AI-written posts.

  • The move follows Substack's AI detection tool and Pangram's $9M raise to combat synthetic content.

  • Cloudflare says bot traffic now exceeds human requests online, arriving faster than the firm had predicted.

• Apple doubles inventory as memory shortages threaten iPhone & Mac production costs (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: AOL, Yahoo!}}

  • Apple reported $11.1B in inventory, nearly double last September's $5.7B, ahead of worsening memory constraints.

  • Tim Cook called memory pricing a 'hundred-year flood,' warning supply constraints will increase significantly next quarter.

  • Despite record June quarter growth, Apple guided to 9-11% revenue growth, sending shares down 6%.

BUSINESS

• Situational Awareness sells $16B portfolio to Citadel after 67% July collapse (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, CNBC, TechCrunch}}

  • Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund sold most of its $16B equity portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel.

  • The fund fell around 67% in July after heavy losses on Broadcom, Intel, and CoreWeave positions.

  • Situational faced pressure to raise fresh capital or sell, having returned 439% through June.

• Judge questions Trump administration's evidence for Anthropic supply-chain risk designation (Politico)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, CryptoRank}}

  • Judge Rita Lin said the government hasn't shown enough evidence to justify labeling Anthropic a supply-chain risk.

  • The dispute stems from stalled DOD talks after Anthropic refused mass surveillance and lethal targeting uses.

  • Lin called the government's reliance on Anthropic's public criticism 'really troubling,' warning it could enable contractor retaliation.

• Apple blames App Store changes & weak mobile gaming for services miss (MacRumors)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, Yahoo!}}

  • Apple services revenue rose 12% to $30.7B, missing expectations despite a record June quarter.

  • CFO Kevan Parekh cited headwinds from mobile gaming and changes to the App Store business model in certain countries.

  • Apple now reports 1.5B paid subscriptions, with foreign exchange and last year's F1 release also weighing.

MARKETS

WORLD

• At least 18 migrants die as thousands breach Morocco-Ceuta border (Washington Post)
  ^{_{More: NBC, AP, The Guardian}}

  • At least 18 migrants died after thousands breached the frontier between Morocco and the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

  • Many drowned, while others were killed in a stampede at the Tarajal beach breakwater fence.

  • A Civil Guard association leader described a 'serious humanitarian crisis,' with unaccompanied children sleeping in parks.

• KOSPI surges record 18% as Samsung & SK Hynix rebound sharply (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: NY Times, Economic Times}}

  • South Korea's KOSPI rose 18% on Friday, ending a week that twice triggered mandatory trading pauses.

  • Samsung climbed 27% and SK Hynix 30%, together accounting for over half the local market's value.

  • Microsoft and Amazon pledging continued AI spending, plus new volatility rules, lifted a market down 25% monthly.

• Chinese military researchers use U.S. AI models to train defense systems (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: AOL, Economic Times}}

  • Chinese military researchers used outputs from OpenAI and Anthropic models to train domestic defense AI systems.

  • Reuters reviewed more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents to uncover the previously unreported findings.

  • Distillation offers a shortcut around U.S. chip restrictions, but cannot replace the compute needed for frontier AI.

FUTURISM

• Florida redirects $200M in EV charger funds to electric air taxi pads (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • Florida will build 32 eVTOL landing pads with charging stations using unspent federal EV charger funding.

  • The state claims private companies built enough chargers, despite having fewer per vehicle than the national average.

  • Officials hope the four- to five-passenger aircraft will ease traffic in Florida, though the eVTOL market remains nascent.

• Friend AI necklace returns with a speaker & a $249 price tag (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: Engadget, TNW, WIRED}}

  • Avi Schiffmann's Friend wearable now has a built-in speaker, giving it a voice and consistent personality.

  • The retail price jumped to $249, up from the $99 it launched at two years ago.

  • Schiffmann describes it as a confidant rather than an assistant, though its practical use remains unclear.

• Meta plans more standalone apps as AI accelerates its product development (Firstpost)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Zuckerberg told investors AI is helping Meta ship new apps faster and test ideas quicker.

  • Recent launches include Forum for Groups, Seller for Marketplace, a gaming app, and Instagram Instants.

  • Meta plans to use its recommendation systems to scale new apps after years of failed attempts.

• Stay ahead of AI at work*

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CONTENT

• Lassie cofounders on why dental practices are adopting AI agents first (a16z)

  • Lassie cofounders Steijn Pelle and Frédéric Renken discuss bringing AI agents to small healthcare businesses.

  • Their software automates billing, insurance claims, and patient payments, freeing practices from administrative paperwork.

  • The conversation covers product design, go-to-market strategy, and building AI that works reliably in complex environments.

• Jeff Dean on the napkin math behind Google's search index & TPUs (Y Combinator)

  • Google's Chief Scientist recounts realizing in 2001 that the entire search index would fit in RAM.

  • A 2013 calculation showed daily speech recognition would double Google's server fleet, leading to TPUs.

  • Dean argues inference hardware is the next specialization and small teams can still win.

• Jocko Willink on discipline, resilience & leading teams through adversity (Andrew Huberman)

  • Retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink argues discipline, not motivation, is the reliable driver of daily action.

  • He discusses exercise as an energy generator and taking action as a cure for adversity.

  • Willink frames detachment as a trainable skill for widening perspective and deciding well under stress.

EXTRAS

• Spotify's new User Notes feature lets listeners attach memories to tracks (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: NewsBytes, Yahoo!}}

  • Spotify launched User Notes, letting users add personal captions to individual songs in their playlists.

  • Users can record why a track was added or where they first discovered it.

  • The journaling-style feature helps Spotify differentiate from rivals like Apple Music and YouTube Music.

• Nscale acquires Anyscale for $1.65B to own more of the AI stack (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, TNW, Nscale}}

  • British neocloud Nscale is paying $1.65B for Anyscale, a startup that scales AI workloads across data centers.

  • Anyscale was built by the Project Ray team and pivoted to language model training and inferencing after GPT-3.

  • The deal adds workload management to Nscale's business lines across energy, data centers, and orchestration software.

• Tesla hits 10 millionth vehicle, halfway to Musk's pay package target (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: NewsBytes, InsideEVs, Yahoo!}}

  • Tesla reached its 10 millionth electric vehicle six years after building its one millionth car.

  • The milestone marks halfway to the 20M vehicles Musk needs by 2035 for his $1T pay package.

  • U.S. sales fell 13% year-over-year last quarter, pushing Tesla into Japan, Australia, and Lithuania.

AND MORE

• Google credits AI for fixing more Chrome bugs than the last two years.

• Study finds most Australian teens still using social media despite under-16 ban.

• Hire vetted LATAM engineers in as little as five days, and save up to 70% on salary costs.*

• Reddit posts a strong quarter while early signs of AI pressure emerge.

• KFC founder Colonel Sanders' bow tie & personal planner sell at auction.

• Investors reward AI ambitions only when the company is a cloud host.

• Four bodies found after 10 climbers went missing on Pakistani mountain.

• CareCloud starts notifying hundreds of thousands after hackers stole medical records.