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Hacker News·Jul 21, 2026

Anthropic’s landmark $1.5B copyright settlement is approved

The final approval settles one case, but it doesn't resolve the broader issue of using copyrighted works to train AI models.

TechCrunch·Jul 21, 2026

Colossal Biosciences reportedly in talks to raise new capital at $20B–$30B valuation

The de-extinction startup is looking to double or triple its previous valuation, according to the report.

Trump’s latest AI czar has already resigned

The director role for the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) has become a revolving door since David Sacks left his position as czar.

Here are the 30,000 songs Sony is suing Udio’s AI music generator over

Sony Music Entertainment has filed another lawsuit against Udio, accusing the AI music generator of infringing the copyright of more than 30,000 of its songs, ranging from Elvis Presley's Hound Dog to Beyonc 's Say My Name, and Harry Styles' As It Was. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court on Monday, claims that this list represents "only a small portion of Plaintiffs' works that Udio infringed," as reported earlier by Music Business Worldwide. In 2024, Sony, along with Universal Music Group and Warner Records, filed a lawsuit against Udio and the AI music-maker Suno. After gaining access to Udio's training data through discovery, Sony cla … Read the full story at The Verge.

The FCC is planning to retroactively ban disguised DJI gadgets

The Skyrover X1 vs the DJI Mini 4 Pro. | Image: AirPhotography Last October, we told you how the FCC had given itself the power to retroactively ban gadgets that have already received its approval to be imported and sold in the United States. Now, the FCC's getting ready to wield that power for the first time, by cracking down on the "DJI front companies" suspected of sneaking the Chinese company's tech past its foreign drone ban. Two Fridays ago, the FCC had already proposed a $25,000 fine on eight of those "front companies," including the ones behind the Skyrover drones and Xtra cameras. But now, the FCC is proposing a lot more than a slap-on-the-wrist - it's planning to ban those same companies from … Read the full story at The Verge.

The Odyssey turned me into an IMAX believer

After seeing Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey for the first time early last week, I came away impressed, but somewhat conflicted about two of the film's more fantastical set pieces. While those scenes were beautifully crafted and tremendously acted, there was something a little bit off about the way they hit my eye. I spent days wondering what, exactly, wasn't quite working for me during that first theatrical viewing, and I thought that might have just been splitting hairs. But it wasn't until I saw the movie again over the weekend - this time in IMAX - that the issue became crystal clear. Though I'd heard all of the buzz about The Odyssey b … Read the full story at The Verge.

Google is working on a new AI chip designed to make Gemini more efficient

Alphabet, Google's parent company, is reportedly working on a new chip designed to make its Gemini models run much more efficiently.

Writer's AI harness cuts token spend nearly 40% — without sacrificing accuracy

Enterprise AI is facing an ROI paradox. While throwing more compute at the strongest foundation model works well in product experiments, the costs become unbearable when the product is deployed in production.A new paper from researchers at Writer provides a solution that is accessible to engineering teams. The study takes a systematic look at optimizing the different components of the orchestration layer that wraps around the foundation model, aka the AI harness. By optimizing the harness, the researchers show dramatic reductions in tokens per task, a drop in cost-per-successful-task by up to 61%, and quality that holds steady, all without changing the underlying foundation model.Because the harness is fully under the developer s control and requires no model fine-tuning, engineering teams can apply these findings to build highly cost-efficient AI applications.The ROI crisis of tokenmaxxingThe current state of AI engineering is plagued by tokenmaxxing, an industry trend where developer

VentureBeat·Jul 20, 2026

SpaceX in your index fund, explained

AUUUUUGH | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Index funds are touted as one of the safest ways to invest. Rather than picking and choosing individual stocks, index funds let you bet on the market as a whole. So what happens when a company like SpaceX - a giant gamble, and, in my opinion, terribly overpriced - is fast-tracked into the Nasdaq-100? Does it suddenly threaten the stability of index funds based on the Nasdaq-100? Can a $1.77 trillion IPO crater the retirement funds of regular people who would ordinarily have no interest in investing in Elon Musk's meme stock? The answer has less to do with SpaceX and more to do with index funds - how they work, their history, and why they've … Read the full story at The Verge.

AI’s most important protocol is getting a little bit easier to use

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is one of the basic building blocks of AI interoperability, giving AI models a secure way to access external data sources and services. It s the plumbing that lets a chatbot reach into your calendar, your database, or your internal tools, instead of engineers building custom pipes for every connection. Next [ ]