☕️ OpenAI slows new model over cyber risks

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

🔒 OpenAI slows new model over cyber risks

☁️ Cloudflare launches a browser built for AI agents

🇺🇸 US sanctions two crypto exchanges

💬 Claude Code sessions can now interconnect

📹 Flock proposed Uber drivers scan plates

📱 iPhone 17 may cost more next week

Plus: 🎁 12 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

🔒 OpenAI slows new model over cyber risks LINK

OpenAI is slowing development of its upcoming Astra model after internal tests found it may have "critical" cyber abilities, expanding safety checks and pausing work that does not meet its tighter security rules.

The company said it "cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities" in Astra, triggering its 2023 preparedness framework, which requires stronger safeguards; any future release could be delayed, though Astra was not tied to recent Hugging Face exploits.

OpenAI is adding stricter controls such as isolated testing environments and monitoring across Astra's agentic uses, in what may be the first time a major AI lab has slowed one of its own models over cyber worries.

☁️ Cloudflare launches a browser built for AI agents LINK

Cloudflare has released Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted web browser made not for people but for AI agents, giving developers a ready-made tool for software that navigates sites and completes online tasks.

Built in just 12 weeks, Kitesurf runs on Cloudflare's serverless Workers platform and skips visual features like tabs and extensions, instead handling context windows, token costs, and threats such as prompt injection attacks.

Cloudflare says Kitesurf uses less CPU and memory than Chromium for tasks like screenshots and HTML extraction, already passes over 215,000 web platform tests, and is free during its beta inside Browser Run.

🇺🇸 US sanctions two crypto exchanges LINK

The US Treasury has hit two crypto exchanges, Shelbit and Iran-based Aban Tether, with sanctions, accusing them of helping Iran move money outside regular banks and fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Treasury's OFAC also sanctioned Siavash Kayvanpour and firms linked to him in Georgia, Poland and the UAE, saying wallets he controls sent over $2 million to Nobitex, Iran's biggest crypto exchange.

Officials say IRGC-linked wallets sent more than $1 million to Shelbit and got over $2 million back, while Aban Tether processed millions in deals with sanctioned Iranian exchanges like Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex.

💬 Claude Code sessions can now interconnect LINK

Anthropic has added cross-session messaging to Claude Code, so separate sessions on macOS and Linux can now message each other to share findings, ask questions, and coordinate work on the same project.

Starting with Claude Code v2.1.224, one session can warn another when a change breaks its work or send an answer that unblocks it, and Claude writes the actual message from the content you provide.

The feature won't approve permission requests or change settings, and commands like /compact arrive as plain text, so a receiving session still prompts you for approval when acting on a message needs one.

📹 Flock proposed Uber drivers scan plates LINK

Flock planned to turn hundreds of thousands of Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers into roving surveillance vehicles, using their dashcams to scan license plates as they drove, according to a company presentation shared with 404 Media.

The plan relied on a partnership with dashcam maker Nexar that would have covered about 350,000 devices, though Flock told 404 Media it never actually carried out the deal it pitched to potential customers last August.

Unlike Flock's usual pole-mounted cameras that scan passing cars, the Nexar tie-up would make data collection mobile, and it isn't clear whether Uber, Lyft, or their drivers would have known about the scanning.

📱 iPhone 17 may cost more next week LINK

Apple could raise iPhone 17 prices as soon as Monday, August 10, according to a new rumor, well before the widely expected increases tied to next month's iPhone 18 Pro launch.

The claim comes from Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital, who wrote only that "rumors are circulating" without naming a direct source, though the leaker has a solid track record of accurate information.

Apple raised prices on many products earlier this summer but left the iPhone untouched, and it remains unclear whether all iPhone 17 models would cost more or just some of them.

Other news you might like

• Trump Media Abandons Crypto Treasury, Prediction Market VenturesLINK

• CEO of company that printed money with GTA 6 digital pre-orders shockingly says "discs don't make sense"LINK

• Suno hopes to go legit with watermarks for AI-generated musicLINK

• Trump reveals $2B investment plan to boost US domestic critical mineral supply chainLINK

• Amazon cracks down on 'CPU waste' among engineers as agentic AI crunch intensifies — CPU demand makes low-utilization EC2 instances a hot commodityLINK

• The Hottest New AI Chatbot Is Just a Guy Answering Your QuestionsLINK

• Nvidia-backed Firmus raises $2 billion at $10.5 billion valuation to build AI factories across Asia-PacificLINK

• Retailers Steer AI Traffic Back to Own CheckoutsLINK

• Is Google Gemini trained on Google docs? One indie developer thinks so, after it told players about his unreleased game plansLINK

• xAI's Imagine Image 2.0 lands just behind OpenAI's GPT-Image-2 in Arena benchmarksLINK

• Microsoft Edge follows Google Chrome as it begins killing uBlock Origin and all such add-onsLINK

• X scraps revenue sharing program, unveils new creator rewards initiativeLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Coldtea.ai: an agentic IDE that combines coding agents, visual QA testing, and AI production monitoring to catch regressions before they break your app.LINK

BAP Studio: a browser-based beat maker with 16 velocity-sensitive drum pads, step sequencer, swing control, sampling, and WAV export-free, no signup required.LINK

ShootClip: a macOS video editor with AI-generated captions and a built-in MCP server that lets AI assistants edit alongside you directly.LINK

AstraPixels: an animated pixel-art solar system map showing 171 objects at their real current positions, calculated from orbital elements, with sourced facts and purchasable asteroid naming rights.LINK

Toolport: gateway that consolidates MCP servers behind four meta-tools, cutting per-request token overhead by roughly 90% while preserving full tool access, free, open source, cross-platform.LINK

Hexis: centralizes and manages AI agent skills, tools, and knowledge with Git-backed version control, letting employees connect once via a single key to any MCP-capable agent while enforcing role-based access and review.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Position tagging for AI vision models fixes a flaw where chatbots that mix text, images and video miscalculate spatial and time relationships between them, improving accuracy without added setup cost.LINK

Skill Training for AI models lets a model discover and absorb step-by-step problem-solving strategies into its own weights, lifting success rates by ~8 points and retaining ~85% of that gain even after removing the outside guide.LINK

Self-improving language models can be locked to a tiny safety circuit, under 2% of their internal features, so they keep upgrading their skills without evolving into unsafe systems, beating reward-based safety fixes.LINK

Modular instruction tuning lets a business add a new task to its custom chatbot by training one small add-on module, matching full retraining's quality while skipping the need to redo the whole model.LINK

Pooling method choice for compressing a chatbot's internal text signals into one summary vector measurably changes accuracy, with the best method beating the industry-default "last token" approach at statistically decisive confidence, showing teams have been leaving performance on the table.LINK

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