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📌 Grok takes on OpenAI in coding
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- xAI has released Grok 4.6, its latest AI model, which the company says matches OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol on several coding and knowledge-work benchmarks, marking Grok's return to the front of the AI race.
- xAI credits its partnership with and possible purchase of coding company Cursor, whose real-world usage data trained Grok 4.5 and, after a longer training run, Grok 4.6, which launches first inside Cursor alongside the Grok Build coding agent.
- Grok still faces reputation problems, from its role in making non-consensual nude images to weak business uptake, with just 4% of companies using AI tools paying for xAI, according to Ramp's AI Index.
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🛡️ Trump lets private firms hack back
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- President Trump signed a White House memo letting vetted private security firms apply for government approval to hack foreign cybercrime groups behind ransomware, phishing, fraud, and scam operations that targeted U.S. victims.
- The National Coordination Center will run the program, with executive directors from the Justice and Homeland Security departments overseeing operations and each participating company posting at least $1 million in bond or escrow.
- Firms must stop immediately and alert the center if they detect activity beyond approved limits, such as accidentally targeting U.S. citizens or systems; Americans reported losing over $20.8 billion to cyber crime in 2025.
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🎮 Twitch trains Amazon AI on your streams
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- Twitch now lets users turn off a setting that allows their content to help train Amazon's generative AI models, meaning streams, VODs, clips, chats, and channel pictures and text stay out of future training.
- The "Training for Generative AI" toggle sits under the Security and Privacy tab, and it was switched on by default when The Verge checked, though Amazon hasn't confirmed whether that's the standard setting.
- Opting out doesn't stop other AI-supported tools like captions, AutoMod safety, and recommendations, and if you chat on someone else's stream, that person's opt-out choice decides whether the chat gets used.
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🤖 AI agents nearly autonomously hacked Taiwan
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- Hackers believed to be linked to China ran what researchers call the first fully autonomous cyberattack on a government, using free AI tools to break into Taiwanese systems, steal over 2,500 personnel records, and compromise 85 accounts.
- The four-day campaign in early July deployed up to eight AI agents at once, built on two open-source frameworks called Hermes and OpenClaw, which mapped 21 government systems before targeting Taiwan's nuclear safety agency and energy firms.
- According to Israeli firm Dream, the tool devised its own attacks, ranking and switching paths when techniques failed, and bypassed the model's safeguards by posing the intrusion as an authorized penetration test rather than a real attack.
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📰 Apple may pay publishers for Siri news
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- Apple is talking with publishers about paying them to let its updated Siri assistant pull current news and information, according to a Wall Street Journal report on the company's plans.
- Instead of the usual fixed licensing fee tied to broad content access, Apple has pitched a pay-as-you-go model that compensates publishers each time their material is actually used by Siri.
- Apple has weighed a nine-figure budget for these payments, and the deals come as the company works to improve Siri, which is expected to launch later this year.
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📹 Flock tightens rules after police misuse
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- Flock Safety, the police camera company that logs where Americans drive, said Thursday it will add new safeguards to curb officer misuse, including changes to how long it keeps people's vehicle location data.
- By default, Flock will now hold movement data for one week instead of one month, and officers wanting to keep records longer must enter a case number to justify the extended access.
- The company is fully rolling out Audit Assistance, a tool tested earlier in 2026 that locks out users whose searches show "abnormal activity," though the ACLU called the reforms minor and still wants a 48-hour retention limit.
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