France’s tax agency lost data on 678,000 people to a stolen login
France’s tax agency lost data on 678,000 people to a stolen login

The French tax agency says an attacker took data belonging to 678,000 individuals and businesses. The intrusions happened in June and July. The agency did not establish that anything had left its systems until the attacker said so in August. The Direct…

California’s first self-driving trucks are on the road, and the rules behind them are in court
California’s first self-driving trucks are on the road, and the rules behind them are in court

California has issued its first permits to test autonomous trucks on public roads, to Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, with Kodiak already running vehicles around Mountain View. Teamsters California filed suit on 5 August asking a court to repeal the r…

The Supreme Court will not help Verizon recover $47mn over location data
The Supreme Court will not help Verizon recover $47mn over location data

The US Supreme Court has refused Verizon’s request to amend a June ruling so it could pursue a refund of the $47mn it paid over selling access to customer location data. AT&T, whose case is procedurally different, can still seek reimbursement of it…

The US is about to make its allies pick a side in the AI cold war
The US is about to make its allies pick a side in the AI cold war

Washington is preparing to hand its partners an ultimatum, and it is not a subtle one. According to a draft State Department letter reported by Reuters, the US is about to tell friendly nations they must choose between the American and Chinese artifici…

Mastercard took down payments across Australia with a scheduled update
Mastercard took down payments across Australia with a scheduled update

Mastercard transactions were declined across Australia on Saturday afternoon after what the company describes as a scheduled system update, with more than 1,900 outage reports logged by mid-afternoon. Mastercard says the problem is resolved and all sys…

The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI
The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI

Michael Martina reported the draft for Reuters on 14 August, citing a US official and an internal document. The letter goes to the 35 signatories of an American “AI Opportunity Statement” from June. Its message is that countries must choose. The wordin…

Anthropic ran 133 million contractor chats with its bioweapon filters off
Anthropic ran 133 million contractor chats with its bioweapon filters off

Anthropic published the Risk Report on 14 August, covering the period to 15 July. Axios got the company on the record and led on the misalignment rating, as did most of the coverage. Anthropic raised its estimate of catastrophic harm from misalignment …

Your phone gets five years of updates by law. Your car gets nothing
Your phone gets five years of updates by law. Your car gets nothing

Robert Ferris put the question to forecasters and executives for CNBC on 15 August. The average American car is now 12.8 years old, on Mobility Global’s figures. A new one costs close to $50,000, and nobody selling software-defined vehicles will say th…

The US told Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips. It has no rule that stops it
The US told Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips. It has no rule that stops it

The commerce secretary made the comments to The Wall Street Journal on 14 August, in a piece by Rolfe Winkler, Raffaele Huang and Amrith Ramkumar. “The Trump administration is not in favor of that,” Lutnick said. There have to be “other solutions to th…

Pipeline for $165 Billion Oracle Data Center Delayed to Next Year
Pipeline for $165 Billion Oracle Data Center Delayed to Next Year

The Green Chile pipeline that would fuel Oracle’s Project Jupiter data centre in New Mexico has been pushed from 15 August to 1 February 2027, according to a filing by Energy Transfer’s Transwestern unit. The state land commissioner has twice refused t…