2026-08-08
China just closed a gap in chipmaking that nobody talks about. The wafer size tells you how far it has to go.
Hwatsing Technology, China’s leading producer of chemical mechanical polishing equipment, announced a metrology system for six-inch wafers on Thursday that can be built directly into the polishing workflow. The company describes it as China’s first six-inch metrology system paired with CMP equipment. The integration is the substantive part. Rather than measuring wafers separately after proce [...]
2026-08-08
X shuts down revenue sharing on September 7. The replacement only pays for original content.
X is shutting down its revenue-sharing programme on September 7 and replacing it with a new system called the Original Content Rewards Programme. The change is designed to reward creators who post original work, not people who repost other users’ content with a caption slapped on top. Under the new rules, creators earn money based […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-08-08
American models broke into Hugging Face. A Chinese model was used to investigate.
Hugging Face chief executive Clément Delangue told CNBC that China is winning the AI race, with Chinese-developed models accounting for 41% of downloads on his platform over the past year, the largest share of any single country. China has now surpassed the US on both monthly and overall model downloads. “They’re clearly dominating on open models […]<br /> This story continues at The [...]
2026-08-08
China’s new AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s running out of Chinese-language training data.
China’s AI race has a new constraint, and it is not chips. The country is running out of high-quality Chinese-language training data. While US export controls on advanced semiconductors have dominated the debate over China’s AI capabilities, Chinese experts are increasingly warning that data scarcity could prove equally limiting, and unlike chips, there is no […]<br /> This story conti [...]
2026-08-08
South Africa wants to ban companies from moving stablecoins abroad. Individuals keep their allowance.
South Africa has proposed banning corporate cross-border stablecoin transactions, in draft rules released jointly by the Reserve Bank and National Treasury. It is one of the most aggressive attempts by any emerging economy to force borderless digital tokens back inside decades-old exchange control machinery. Under the proposal, South African companies could not make cross-border crypto transfers [...]
2026-08-08
Meta’s CTO told employees to stop asking for more time off and use AI gains to build “cooler stuff” instead
Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth told employees at a July Q&A that AI productivity gains should be used to build more products, not to take more time off. An employee had asked whether the gains could be channelled into reviving “Meta Days,” a cancelled holiday programme that gave staff a few extra days off. […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-08-08
Hidden code in ChatGPT’s Android app suggests OpenAI is building a direct WhatsApp sticker export
Hidden code in ChatGPT’s latest Android app suggests OpenAI is building a feature that would let users generate stickers and export them directly to WhatsApp. An APK teardown by Android Authority found references to an “Add to WhatsApp” option in the sharing menu. Instead of sending AI-generated images as regular pictures, ChatGPT would prepare them […]<br /> This story continues at [...]
2026-08-07
SK hynix Approves Two New Fabs as AI Memory Demand Reshapes Its Buildout
SK hynix's board has approved a combined 54 trillion won (roughly $39 billion) for two new fabrication plants, the company announced on August 7, 2026: 35.2 trillion won for "Y2," the second fab at its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, and 19.1 trillion won for "M17," a new NAND fab in Cheongju. The two projects expand production capacity for both halves of the memory business [...]
2026-08-07
Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel unite on a shared standard for AI agent plugins
Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel have jointly created Agent Plugins, an open standard that defines a single package format for AI agent extensions. Version 1.0.0 uses a plugin.json manifest file and supports both agent skills and MCP servers.<br /> The article Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Vercel unite on a shared standard for AI agent plugins appeared first on The Deco [...]