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Editor-curated headlines of the day.
- Abbott freezes Texas data center permits pending power and water audits
The order extends an August grid moratorium to environmental approvals and could reach projects with on-site power as voter opposition hardens.
- Investigation finds more than 110 deaths within range of Anduril border towers
The findings test Palmer Luckey and Brian Schimpf's bet that autonomous detection can move government operators fast enough to save lives.
- FAA circuit failure and cut backup fiber snarl more than 1,000 flights
Ground stops spread across Northeast airports after redundancy failed at the Philadelphia air traffic control facility.
- AWS cannot restore access to Bahrain region or one UAE zone after strikes
AWS says it cannot recover some Bahrain resources and one UAE availability zone six months after strikes, raising harder questions for Gulf cloud and AI campuses.
- Space Force confirms it has deployed space control weapons in orbit
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink gave no details on systems that could use kinetic, electromagnetic or cyber effects.
- YC S26’s top decile: The 24 companies RuntimeWire would call first after Demo Day
We went looking for the companies behind the best Demo Day pitches. We ended up ranking the ones with the best evidence.
- HPE hits $12.2 billion revenue, up 34% as AI demand drives blowout
Hewlett Packard Enterprise crushed Street expectations and raised full-year guidance as AI-system orders and networking surge.
- What an AI sidekick should do in a newsroom
Coding showed the pattern first: let AI handle the maintenance so the person can spend time on the work that requires judgment, trust and a name.
- Sony and Warner sue Anthropic's founders over alleged training-data piracy
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell accuse Anthropic and its founders of copying tens of thousands of compositions for Claude and seek up to $150,000 per infringed work.
- RuntimeWire bans third-party trackers and ad networks from every reader surface
Direct sponsors may buy clearly labeled space, but outside ad-tech companies will not get RuntimeWire's readers as part of the deal.
- Zuckerberg canceled Meta's second AI layoff wave as agents missed targets
Project OT considered cuts of up to 60% in some teams; Meta still eliminated about 8,000 jobs in May and redeployed thousands more.
- Catherine Herridge asks Supreme Court to shield her sources from an $800-a-day fine
The national security reporter paid $14,400 before a judge paused sanctions while the justices consider her petition.
- SpaceX plans a $100B Louisiana spaceport before Starship is routine
Elon Musk's five-complex Gulf Coast plan targets a 2029 first launch, with state incentives and more than $820M in pledged local payments.
- Intuit hits $4.4 billion Q4 revenue as AI-driven 'Big Bets' accelerate growth
The fintech giant beat revenue expectations with double-digit growth while signaling a shift in accounting practices for fiscal 2027.
- Google stopped distributing RuntimeWire. We kept growing.
The fall began before Google's August spam update and persisted after translated pages were removed from Search.
- Owen Van Natta, Facebook's early COO and startup investor, dies at 56
Dan Rose credited his longtime mentor with negotiating pivotal Amazon and Facebook deals before Van Natta became an early-stage investor.
- Trump enlists private cyber contractors to hack foreign crime groups
The structure may invite comparisons with deniable cyber proxies, but written approvals and direct federal control are designed to address contractor liability, not obscure Washington's role.
- SpaceX frames Mars and AI as its next challenge in employee update
Elon Musk's address ties Starship, Starlink and xAI into the broader corporate mission SpaceX presented to public investors.
- Nvidia recruits Wall Street for a $500 billion AI compute push
Six investment firms signed preliminary agreements to create financing pools for Nvidia customers building AI infrastructure.
- Rocket Lab beats Q2 revenue estimate as backlog more than doubles
Revenue rose 62% to $234.07 million, backlog reached $2.36 billion and Q3 guidance called for continued growth alongside another adjusted loss.
- GitHub Actions outage blocks CI jobs and Copilot coding agents
Hosted-runner capacity constraints left CI jobs queued or failing for more than three hours during the US workday.
- Zoox will begin paid robotaxi rides in Las Vegas on August 10th
Zoox's launch turns Jesse Levinson's ground-up vehicle bet into a commercial service, with fares aimed at ride-hailing's comfort tier.
- Military GPS jamming disrupted a medevac flight before fatal New Mexico crash
Investigators documented a lost GPS signal and resumed jamming minutes before impact, but have not determined the crash's probable cause.
- AMD data center sales double as shares fall despite an earnings beat
Under Lisa Su, AMD posted $11.54 billion in revenue and expects about $13 billion next quarter as Helios begins ramping.