Jess Weatherbed

Following Netflix’s growing “podcast” investment and a similar deal with TikTok, six more video podcasts are coming to Disney subscribers in the US, starting with the official Jonas Brothers podcast, Hey Jonas!, on August 14th across both Disney Plus and Hulu, leading up to the release of Camp Rock 3.

Muse Glimmer — essentially an open-weight version of Meta’s Muse Spark — is a 30 billion parameter model that can run on a Mac or PC with a single graphics card, allowing users to generate code, text, and images. While bigger parameter counts doesn’t necessarily mean better performance, Glimmer’s 30 billion is notably smaller than models from Chinese rivals, including Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max (2.4 trillion) and Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 (2.8 trillion).

This report from The New York Times lays out the impact that Flock camera’s are having on communities in Texas, noting that 700 police departments across the state have now contracted with the surveillance company. Locals are pushing back, including cellphone tower repairman Philip, who uses the DeFlock app to publicly map the cameras: “Am I just being paranoid? No, they’re actually everywhere.”

Xbox and PC gamers in Australia are reportedly being notified that they’ll soon need to verify their age before purchasing 18+ rated apps and games on both the Xbox Store and Microsoft Store. Existing purchases and downloads won’t be affected. Microsoft has a September 9th deadline to comply with Australian online safety rules, or risk facing an almost AUS$50 million fine (about $34.9 million in US monies).

Podnews found evidence of the new ad-skipping function appearing “for Premium users in selected markets,” with the button appearing on screen as soon as ads, promos, or intros start. In a statement to the publication, Spotify noted that many people are skipping those things anyway: “We’re exploring ways to make podcast listening and viewing more intuitive for Premium subscribers based on how people use the platform.”

A roughly five-ton upper stage of a discarded Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon on Wednesday after floating in space since its launch last year. The impact, which SpaceX says was unintentional, was too faint for ground telescopes to see, but South Korea’s lunar orbiter has now shared images of the crater it created.

The company has reportedly slashed its revenue forecast for 2026 by a third after relying too heavily on frontier models from other providers to drive AI features on the platform. According to Startup Daily, here’s what CEO Melanie Perkins had to say in an update to shareholders:

A new study published in the journal Science used genome language models to produce viruses we’ve never seen before in nature. The resulting bacteriophages pose no threat to humans. The research simultaneously raises hope for medical advances, while stoking fear that AI could enable the creation of new diseases and biological weapons.