NerdNews

Over 29,000 Microsoft Exchange servers are exposed to a high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-53786, which could allow attackers to seize control of entire domains. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an Emergency Directive to mitigate the flaw, and security experts are urging organizations to patch their servers immediately.

Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 has been released with a 1-million token context window, allowing for fast and reliable long-context responses. The model was tested on three tasks: long context text analysis, long context code analysis, and AI Diplomacy. While it performed well in terms of speed and accuracy, its text analysis answers were less detailed and its code analysis was less complete compared to Gemini models.

OpenAI's GPT-5 model was intended to simplify the ChatGPT experience, but its rollout has been complicated. The company has reintroduced the model picker with 'Auto', 'Fast', and 'Thinking' settings, allowing users to choose their preferred AI model. Additionally, paid users can access legacy models like GPT-4o, which was previously deprecated. The move suggests that GPT-5's model router has not met user expectations, and OpenAI is working to provide more per-user customization of model personality.

Sam Altman is co-founding a brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, with potential funding from OpenAI. The startup aims to compete with Elon Musk's Neuralink, which is developing implantable computer interface chips. Merge Labs is expected to be valued at $850 million and could revolutionize human interaction with technology.

Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron is leaving to join self-driving startup Waabi as its chief operating officer. Waabi plans to launch driverless trucks on public highways later this year and is working with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to develop custom-built AVs. Ron will lead Waabi's go-to-market strategy and expand key partnerships.

Character.AI, an AI companion startup, has shifted its focus from building superintelligence to entertainment, with 20 million monthly active users and a growing revenue stream. The company's new CEO, Karandeep Anand, emphasizes the importance of safety and trust in AI development, particularly for younger users. Character.AI has introduced features like age verification, separate models for users under 18, and parental insights to ensure a safe experience.

One Network is a unified service networking overlay that provides a single, network-level approach to policy enforcement across public and private clouds, multi-cloud setups, and various deployment models. It's built on five principles: common foundation, everything as a service, unify all paths and support all environments, open ecosystem of service extensions, and apply and enforce uniform policies. The architecture uses Envoy proxy, Traffic Director, and service meshes to provide a scalable and consistent policy enforcement mechanism.

Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday addresses 111 security issues, including 12 critical bugs and a SharePoint RCE vulnerability. None of the vulnerabilities are currently under active exploitation, but users are advised to update their systems as soon as possible. Other companies, such as Adobe, Intel, and Google, have also released security patches this month.

Companies using generative AI for public-facing communications may face copyright infringement lawsuits. AI vendors' terms of service often disclaim responsibility for such lawsuits, and indemnification policies have loopholes. Human review of AI-generated content is necessary to mitigate risks.

Continua, a startup founded by Google vet David Petrou, has raised $8M to bring AI agents to group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord. The AI agents can reduce group chat chaos by joining conversations and offering helpful information, setting reminders, launching polls, and generating documents.

Perplexity, an AI search company, has offered $34.5 billion to acquire Google's Chrome browser and the associated Chromium open-source project. The move comes as Google faces potential antitrust rulings that could force it to divest Chrome. Perplexity's bid is nearly twice its estimated value of $18 billion, with venture capital firms potentially supplying the necessary funds.

Microsoft's VS Code has introduced a new feature called chat checkpoints, which allows developers to revert their chat and workspace to a previous state if they realize their AI interactions have gone awry. This feature is part of a series of AI-related updates, including support for OpenAI's GPT-5 and a revamped tool picker for MCP servers. Additionally, VS Code now includes AI statistics to track the percentage of characters inserted by AI.

Anthropic's Claude AI model can now handle longer prompts, increasing its context window to 1 million tokens, allowing it to process requests as long as 750,000 words or 75,000 lines of code, making it more effective for software engineering problems and long agentic coding tasks.

ARM introduces Neural Super Sampling, a new AI upscaling technique that improves gaming performance on smartphones. This technology can upscale games from 540p to 1080p without notable loss in visual quality, potentially making bigger games playable on mobile devices.

A new beta version of iOS 26 suggests that Apple's AirPods could be getting a live translation feature, allowing for real-time language translation in person. The feature is expected to be triggered by pressing both earbud stems at once and may require an iPhone to function.

A hacker involved in the Kaseya supply chain attack claims he was coerced by the Russian government. The hacker, Yaroslav Vasinskyi, alleges that REvil ransomware gang had ties with the Russian government and that he was blackmailed into preparing the Kaseya attack.

World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency business cofounded by the Trump family, is creating a $1.5 billion crypto treasury. The company will purchase 200 million shares in ALT5 Sigma Corporation, a Nasdaq-listed company, to build the treasury, which will hold roughly 7.5% of the WLFI coin's total supply. Eric Trump will join the ALT5 board of directors.

Hackers claim to have breached a North Korean government hacker's computer, leaking contents online and offering a rare glimpse into the operation. The breach allegedly reveals Kimsuky group's tools, techniques, and cooperation with Chinese government hackers.

Apple has denied Elon Musk's accusation that it favors OpenAI in its App Store rankings. Apple stated that the App Store is 'designed to be fair and free of bias' and features thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists. Musk accused Apple of 'unequivocal antitrust violation' and threatened to take legal action.

Google is introducing a new feature called Preferred Sources, which allows users to curate their search results by prioritizing specific sources such as blogs or news outlets. The feature is rolling out to English language users in the US and India, and can be accessed by searching for a topic and clicking on the preferred sources option. Users can add multiple sources, and their preferences will be saved to their account.