☕️ Google ships 3 new Gemini models

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

⚡ Google ships 3 new Gemini models

🏭 TSMC to raise chip prices in 2027

⚖️ Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5B author payout

🏛️ Trump’s latest AI czar has already resigned

💳 Samsung launches the Galaxy Card

✋ Judge pauses Paramount-Warner merger

Plus: 🎁 11 other news you might like, 🧰 5 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

⚡ Google ships 3 new Gemini models LINK

Google has released three new Gemini models — 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber — aimed at developers building AI agents who want faster responses, lower costs, and steadier performance.

The main model, 3.6 Flash, uses 17% fewer output tokens than 3.5 Flash on the Artificial Analysis Index, needs fewer reasoning steps, and costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens.

3.5 Flash-Lite is the fastest and cheapest of the group at 350 output tokens per second, while 3.5 Flash Cyber pairs a security-focused model with Google's CodeMender agent for finding and fixing code flaws.

🏭 TSMC to raise chip prices in 2027 LINK

TSMC plans to raise base prices for its chip-making services by up to 10% starting in early 2027, driven by AI demand, higher tool and material costs, and spending on new factories.

The increase covers both advanced nodes (7nm and below) and older ones like 12nm, 16nm, and 28nm, but customers wanting extra HPC capacity face another 10-15% premium, pushing some bills up around 25%.

Since TSMC makes most of the world's advanced chips for clients like Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and MediaTek, the higher costs will spread through the industry and make nearly all electronics more expensive.

⚖️ Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5B author payout LINK

A US judge signed off on Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors who sued over pirated books, making it the largest copyright payout in American history and closing a landmark case against the AI company.

Around 500,000 works are covered, with each earning roughly $3,000, four times the statutory damages for willful infringement, going to copyright owners whose books were pulled from the shadow libraries LibGen and PiLiMi.

Authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed the 2024 suit, and while the court ruled training Claude on books counts as fair use, it found Anthropic illegally acquired millions of titles through those libraries.

🏛️ Trump’s latest AI czar has already resigned LINK

Chris Fall has stepped down as director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, or CAISI, just three months into the role, the agency confirmed to news outlets, with no reason given for his exit.

Fall previously ran the Department of Energy's Office of Science during Trump's first term, and his abrupt departure follows that of predecessor Collin Burns, who was reportedly forced out in April after only days on the job over past ties to Anthropic.

CAISI, which sits under the National Institute of Standards and Technology and builds testing methods for AI models, was left out of the new "Gold Eagle" safety program the White House signed earlier this month, despite that being close to its stated mission.

💳 Samsung launches the Galaxy Card LINK

Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Card, a metal credit card issued by Barclays and running on Visa that gives buyers up to 5% cashback when they purchase Galaxy phones and other devices from the company.

The card's rewards drop below that top rate, paying 3% back on purchases made through Samsung Wallet, 2% on streaming services, and 1% on everything else, plus a 20% discount on the Samsung VIP Advantage membership.

Samsung says the Galaxy Card ties into Samsung Wallet, letting owners store it next to other cards, IDs, and digital keys, though the company hasn't spelled out what extra features it offers beyond a normal linked card; applications opened July 22.

✋ Judge pauses Paramount-Warner merger LINK

A federal judge has temporarily halted Paramount Skydance's planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery after 12 state attorneys general sued to block the deal, saying the combination would reduce competition in film and television.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ordered a 14-day pause on Monday, and the coalition led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta could request another delay afterward, arguing the merger harms movie theaters, cable distributors, and audiences.

The deal would merge two film studios plus streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, and combine networks like CBS, MTV, CNN, and HBO; Paramount CEO David Ellison had aimed to close it by September.

Other news you might like

• If You’re Reading This, You’re Probably an AI BotLINK

• A Chinese AI lab just built a giant data centre with no Nvidia insideLINK

• OpenAI’s Work Agents Reach 10 Million Users, Nearly Doubling in JulyLINK

• OpenAI’s maths-cracking AI kept escaping its sandbox, so it pulled the plugLINK

• Taiwan indicts ex-TSMC manager for allegedly stealing chip secrets for China — first case of its kind links managers to Chinese semiconductor materials analysis companyLINK

• X relaunches a rebuilt Android app after year-long effortLINK

• Samsung establishes a robotics divisionLINK

• Apple debuting new ‘Apple Upgrade’ leasing program next week, per reportLINK

• Bessent says U.S. could sanction China over AI model 'theft'LINK

• Microsoft to fund Mistral’s European AI expansion in multibillion-dollar dealLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Rerun: an SDK and visualizer for logging computer vision and robotics data, helping you debug system behavior over time with minimal code.LINK

Tidy: automatically archives screenshots, ejects installers, and sorts your Downloads folder from the menu bar — one-time $9 purchase, no subscription required.LINK

ProtoFlow: a Figma plugin that converts prototype interactions into visible arrows or FigJam connectors, simplifying developer handoff and single-frame presentations.LINK

PieceKeeper: helps musicians organize their repertoire, run scheduled practice sessions, track progress trends, and sharpen music theory through interactive reading and listening drills.LINK

MeetIsland: turns your MacBook notch into a live meeting hub, showing countdowns and one-click Join buttons for Meet/Zoom by reading synced macOS calendars automatically.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

AI scientific forecasting reveals top AI models can explain how past breakthroughs happened but perform near chance at predicting which future advances are feasible or when they'll actually occur.LINK

GUI agent perception reveals that AI assistants clicking through apps often trust outdated background code over what's actually visible on screen, ignoring correct visuals up to 0.88 of the time.LINK

Automated research pipelines can now produce a full scientific paper for as little as 15, yet frontier AI still fabricates results and misjudges novelty, so human oversight remains essential at every research stage.LINK

Budget allocation systems that decide which chatbot answers get extra fact checking often waste effort because confidence scores are unreliable in some cost brackets, and splitting the budget by cost bracket instead lifts accurate catches by up to 17 percentage points.LINK

Data poisoning shields add invisible tweaks to your files so any company that scrapes them trains a broken model, and this review maps which methods actually hold up.LINK

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