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"Anthropic wins Pentagon blacklisting case."

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 29 August 2026, 0014 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencemonitor.blogspot.com).

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	Fri, Aug 28

Tomorrow's events:  HYBRID: gamescom (day 4)

TOP NEWS

A US judge blocks the Pentagon from blacklisting Anthropic, ruling that its designation as a supply-chain risk was “illegal and baseless” (Jack Queen / Reuters)

@andrewcurran_:  A federal judge has ruled that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was illegal and violated the First Amendment by designating Anthropic a supply chain risk ‘based on a desire to make a public example’ out of them.  @sethbannon:  Inspiring to see a company refuse to bend the knee, fight in court, and win. Ironically putting principles over profits is often good for business!  @hadas_gold:  There it is - Judge rules in Anthropic's favor in Pentagon Supply Chain Risk designation lawsuit. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,"' the Judge wrote.

Sources: Advent and Stripe are no longer pursuing a deal to acquire PayPal after previously offering more than $50B for the company; PYPL closes down 12.71% (Bloomberg)

@quinnypig:  Ugh. Best of luck to Stripe and Advent on getting a refund from Paypal.  @jimcramer:  Do you know that at one point Paypal had a bigger buy now pay later business than Affirm  @hedgefundtips:  Kudos to the $PYPL @paypal Board @EnriqueJLores for not accepting an inadequate offer (<9x FCF) from @Stripe and not allowing them to steal meaningful upside from current owners.  Continue to execute the turnaround playbook, buy in shares and grow the ad business for additional margin expansion over time.

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Tencent releases Hy4 Preview, a 770B-parameter open model with a 1M context window, and says it narrowly beat GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3 in internal engineering tests (Bloomberg)

@tencenthunyuan:  🚀 Hy4 preview is here. 770B, 49B active, 1M context. Built for productivity. Open source frontier. Consistent affordable price. Use it. Tell us what breaks. More on Hy blog： HuggingFace： Github：  @andrewcurran_:  Tencent says it's a early version, and that they will continue to polish it post release, but it already appears to be very strong. They have been increasing their AI spend, looks like it's starting to pay off. Input: $0.834/m Output: $2.501/m  @teortaxestex:  Wow. Given Hy3-preview to Hy3 trajectory, I think Hy4 should exceed Opus 5. Another derivative of DeepSeek architecture, which makes it lowkey tragic how it dunks on the Whale-0813 in... almost everything, at ≈GLM-5 size. Tencent wants to join the top tier.

a16z creates a $1.1B Machine Age fund focusing on hardware to “open the throttle and accelerate the physical buildout of AI” (Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch)

South Korea unveils a project with KT, SK Telecom, and Kakao to provide premium AI tools to the public for free, a move that treats AI like a public utility (Jiyoung Sohn / Wall Street Journal)

Sources: AI cloud computing provider Lambda raised ~$1B of private short-dated debt to finance the purchase of Nvidia GPUs, which will be leased by Microsoft (Emily Graffeo / Bloomberg)

Apple TV raises prices in the US, with the monthly price up by $2 to $14.99, its fourth increase in four years; the individual Apple One tier rises $2 to $21.95 (Todd Spangler / Variety)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Z.ai releases GLM-5.3's weights under a new license requiring companies with $10B+ in revenue over 12 months to pass Z.ai's security review to host the model (Frederic Lardinois / The New Stack)

A deep dive into Grok Bot, including its architecture, use cases, and alternatives, as xAI adds shareable bot templates and online purchases through Stripe Link (Flavio Copes)

How Meta founded FAIR in 2013, fell behind as it was distracted by the metaverse, and is spending an unprecedented amount of money trying to catch up (Harry McCracken / Fast Company)

Sources: the US is drafting a rule to close an export controls loophole that lets Chinese companies access AI chips via data centers in countries like Thailand (The Information)

Unlike internet's one-dimensional, flat-fee growth, AI grows across two exponentials, user penetration and tokens per user, allowing AI labs' economics to work (Fin / @fi56622380)

A look at Beijing's AGI Bar, the unofficial clubhouse for China's AI industry where entrepreneurs trade gossip, recruit talent, and court investors over beers (Bloomberg)

EARNINGS

Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT reports H1 revenue of ~$22.4B, more than double its 2025 sales, and ~$11.5B in profit, compared to a loss a year earlier (Bloomberg)

Workday reports Q2 revenue up 12.8% YoY to $2.65B vs. $2.63B est., and total subscription revenue backlog up 8% YoY to $27.4B, vs. $28.6B est. (Brody Ford / Bloomberg)

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Bluesky launches a feature to let users hide their posts from non-followers in its Discover feed; other AT Proto apps can choose whether to respect the opt-out (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

Meta intensifies its pressure campaign on TikTok and YouTube, running full-page ads in US newspapers demanding they adopt comparable teen safety protections (Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg)

PREDICTION MARKETS

An appeals court rules states can regulate prediction markets, finding Kalshi's sports event contracts are bets, not swaps, and subject to state gambling laws (Lauren McCarthy / New York Times)

Sources: federal authorities prepare to charge a US serviceman and a KPMG employee with insider trading on prediction markets, as part of a new batch of cases (Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal)

CRYPTOCURRENCY

The UK Treasury tells the Bank of England to boost innovation in payment systems and digital money, as it seeks to promote the UK as a hub for stablecoins (Financial Times)

BitGo agrees to buy NYDIG's institutional trading business and related assets, expanding BitGo's derivatives offerings; ~30 NYDIG employees are joining BitGo (Tanaya Macheel / CNBC)

PUBLIC LISTINGS

Shares of French quantum computing company Pasqal closed up 95% in their Nasdaq debut on Friday following a merger with a SPAC (Emily Forgash / Bloomberg)

How Shein pivoted to a Hong Kong IPO and sought to build Chinese government ties, after its New York and London bids failed to secure Beijing's approval (Reuters)

FUNDING DEALS

Stock trading app Ajaib raised a $270M Series C from SBI Holdings, the largest round since 2022 in Indonesia, where startups raised just ~$340M last year (Olivia Poh / Bloomberg)

Owner, which makes AI agents that manage restaurants' websites, marketing, and other functions, raised a $240M Series D at a $2.3B valuation (Joe Guszkowski / Restaurant Business)

Filing: Lone Palm Labs, the startup behind friend-focused photo sharing app Retro, raised a $21M+ Series A from Thrive Capital and others (Sydney Bradley / Business Insider)

MORE NEWS

Sources: Meta is testing robots from ABB and others to handle data center tasks such as swapping cables and resetting servers as it seeks to lower labor costs (Paresh Dave / Wired)

CISA says that cyberattacks on critical US infrastructure targeted 100+ internet-exposed water and wastewater systems in July, largely attacking PLCs (Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch)

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Meta's India and Southeast Asia VP Sandhya Devanathan is joining OpenAI to oversee consumer growth and enterprise adoption across SE Asia and Australia (Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch)

Sources: some tech companies are courting Democrats and hiring advisers to prepare for potential investigations if Republicans lose control of the House (Wall Street Journal)

Modders get an experimental version of Nvidia's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering library running in over a dozen games after it leaked in NBA 2K27's early access build (VideoCardz.com)

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