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23-YEAR-OLD SALITY P2P BOTNET DISRUPTED

An international operation disrupted the Sality P2P botnet after 23 years.

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META IS SWITCHING TO SLACK BECAUSE IT SAYS IT'S BETTER FOR AI AGENTS

Meta is moving its internal communications from Google Chat to Slack, with AI chief Alexandr Wang citing Slack's conversational interface, developer tooling, and third-party integrations as better suited to AI agents. The move is notable because collaboration platforms are increasingly becoming the control layer through which employees and agents interact with enterprise systems.

ATLASSIAN'S USAGE-BASED PRICING: AI VALUE WITH PREDICTABILITY AND CONTROL

Atlassian is expanding usage-based pricing across Rovo credits, automation steps, and autonomous AI-agent resolutions, with billing beginning December 3. Admins will get centralized usage visibility, alerts, and spending limits, making AI and automation consumption another part of SaaS cost management alongside licenses and seats.

DROPBOX ACCOUNTS BREACHED THROUGH LENOVO EMAIL VERIFICATION FLAW

Attackers accessed Dropbox accounts by exploiting a flaw in Lenovo's email verification process to create fraudulent Lenovo IDs tied to victims' email addresses, allowing them to authenticate without the Dropbox password. Roughly 5,000 accounts were reportedly affected, making the incident a useful reminder that federated identity risk can extend well beyond your primary IdP.

WHY CISCO IS REDEFINING ITS CIO ROLE

Cisco says the profile of a successful CIO is changing from someone focused primarily on applications, integrations, and UX to someone capable of redesigning how the company operates. Its EVP of operations argues that process transformation, AI governance, and deciding where agents should execute work are becoming increasingly central to the job.

REZOLVE AI SHOWS WHY ENTERPRISE SALES STILL NEEDS MIDDLEMEN

Enterprise AI companies increasingly need cloud providers, distributors, consultancies, and systems integrators to reach large customers because those partners already have contracts, approvals, and delivery teams. Rezolve Ai illustrates the trade-off: its first-half revenue rose to $130.8 million from $6.3 million after acquisitions and expansion, while gross margin fell to 48.9%, and the company has not disclosed how much partner relationships contribute.

DEVELOPING ENTERPRISE FRONTIER SAFEGUARDS WITH OUR CUSTOMERS

Anthropic's Enterprise Frontier Safeguards (EFS) is a solution designed to combine zero data retention with automated detection of serious misuse of frontier models. EFS stores monitoring data in customer-controlled cloud infrastructure and sends detected signals to customer teams, with phased rollout planned for later this fall and interim ZDR for eligible customers using Fable 5 and Fable 5.1.

ADOBE IS MAKING ITS TOOLS AVAILABLE IN SLACK

Adobe is bringing more than 70 tools from products including Photoshop, Acrobat, Premiere, Illustrator, Express, and Firefly into Slack through an MCP integration with Slackbot. Business+ and Enterprise+ users can use Slack conversations and files as context while creating or modifying content without leaving Slack.

AUTOMATE DRIVE, GMAIL, AND GOOGLE CHAT ACTIONS WITH NEW STEPS IN WORKSPACE STUDIO

Google Workspace Studio is adding automation steps that can copy or move Drive files, reply to Gmail threads, and post replies in Google Chat. Importantly for IT, admins can disable individual actions and require user approval when workflows could share data outside the organization.

ANALYZING CROSSRAT

This is a technical analysis of CrossRAT, a Java-based multiplatform surveillance implant associated with the Dark Caracal cyber-espionage campaign. It examines the malware's package structure, operating-system detection, intended persistence mechanisms, command-and-control communications, and capabilities, including file-system manipulation, screenshots, and arbitrary DLL execution on Windows.

MICROSOFT DEFENDER FLAGS LEGITIMATE GOOGLE SEARCH LINKS AS MALICIOUS

Microsoft is investigating a Defender for Office 365 Safe Links issue incorrectly identifying legitimate Google search URLs as malicious. The bug can block users from opening links and generate related incidents in Defender and Sentinel, potentially creating both helpdesk noise and false-positive alert volume for IT teams.

GET FEATURES FASTER WITH CHROME'S TWO-WEEK RELEASE CYCLE

Chrome's move from four-week to two-week Stable releases begins September 8 with Chrome 153, while the eight-week Extended Stable channel for enterprise admins remains unchanged.

OKTA ADDS AI AGENT DISCOVERY TO IDENTITY SECURITY POSTURE MANAGEMENT

Okta ISPM can now discover shadow AI agents, MCP servers, OAuth grants, and agents built in platforms such as Copilot Studio and Salesforce Agentforce.

AFFILIATE HAS OUTGROWN THE BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL

Affiliate marketing is undergoing four major shifts: it must influence customers before they are ready to buy, trust matters more than traffic alone, creator and affiliate strategies need to operate as one partnership strategy, and measurement must extend beyond last click. Brands should expand partner programs beyond coupon and cashback sites to include publishers, comparison sites, reviewers, and creators that shape discovery and consideration. They also need broader measurement and shared data to value influence across the full customer journey. These changes position affiliate as a growth strategy that helps create demand, not just capture existing demand.

AMID GROWING AI DISTRUST, HUMANITY TAKES A FRONT SEAT IN ADVERTISING

The growing backlash against AI is prompting brands to make humanity itself a central theme in advertising, either through explicit messaging or more tactile, imperfect creative. Tech brands such as Anthropic and Meta are using optimistic narratives to address concerns about AI, while brands such as Polaroid, Pinterest, and Heineken are encouraging consumers to reconnect with the physical world. Brands can reinforce this positioning through film, handmade aesthetics, natural elements, and behind-the-scenes content that shows real people creating the work. The strategy works best when humanity reflects a genuine point of view rather than becoming another empty brand buzzword.

4 FUNNEL FIXES

A creator with 10K email subscribers and a paid community had a solid foundation, but an audit uncovered 4 ways to grow revenue. First, fix leaks in the opt-in flow with a thank-you page and by removing double opt-in. Then, encourage monthly members to switch to annual plans for more upfront revenue and stronger retention. From there, build evergreen onboarding and cancellation sequences, and add monthly promotions to drive more signups without relying solely on regular emails.

TURN SITEMAPS INTO SEO INTEL

Competitor XML sitemaps can act as a weekly SEO change log. Save a snapshot of a competitor's sitemap, then compare it each week to spot new pages, removals, and emerging content clusters. This tactic can reveal what competitors are building before those changes show up in rankings. A Google Sheet tracker and Apps Script is provided in the comment thread.

YOUTUBE AEO GUIDE: HOW TO DOMINATE AI SEARCH WITH YOUTUBE

YouTube now draws roughly 200x more AI citations than any other platform, and its share of social citations 4x in four months to overtake Reddit as the top-cited social source in Q1 2026. Automatic transcripts are the core driver, turning every explainer video into a searchable text document AI models can parse directly instead of relying on tags or descriptions alone. That citation strength concentrates almost entirely in long-form video, since AI models weight depth and comprehensive topic coverage that Shorts aren't built to carry.

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HOW TO MAKE LINKEDIN CAROUSELS PEOPLE ACTUALLY STOP FOR (WEBINAR)

This free webinar will break down how to create LinkedIn carousels that keep people reading. Amy Watts will share what's working on LinkedIn now and the framework she uses to create 10 carousels a week. She'll also roast a few carousels live. It's happening on September 8 at 9 AM EDT.

TRY GOOGLE PICS: EASY IMAGE CREATION AND EDITING IN GOOGLE WORKSPACE

Google Pics is an AI image creation and editing tool powered by Google's Nano Banana model. It can generate graphics, edit specific objects, and change text within images. It also creates multiple versions from one prompt. Pics is rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and most Workspace business customers. It will also integrate with Docs, Slides, and Drive.

HOW TO FIND AND PITCH REAL CASE STUDIES FOR DIGITAL PR WITH BECCA PEEL

Case studies are becoming a critical part of digital PR because journalists need real people who can make data credible, relevant, and harder to replicate with AI. PR teams should start with their own networks, then verify each person through signals such as LinkedIn, business listings, websites, and direct calls before pitching. Strong case studies offer a genuinely new insight, connect directly to the campaign data, and give journalists an exclusive human angle they cannot simply find through Google.

HOW E.L.F. BEAUTY IS BUILDING AI INTO ITS COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

E.l.f. Beauty's AI reply tool, E.l.f.luencer, is trained on the brand's own stylebook and years of past community-manager responses to answer social comments automatically, with every reply still reviewed by a human before it posts. The tool now generates 90% of the brand's TikTok and Instagram replies in E.l.f.'s specific tone, language, and emoji use, pushing the response rate from 30-40% before launch to more than 80% now. That volume would be impossible for a manual team to match, and the same AI investment underpins a broader program of 85 agentic pilots the company is moving toward full production.

15 LOW-COST CRO CHECKPOINTS THAT COST ALMOST NOTHING TO FIX

Audit these 15 CRO checkpoints to remove friction from your mobile site's UX.

HOW TO TELL WHETHER UGC MAKES SENSE FOR YOUR APP

Look for a creator who feels like a customer, a clear problem, and visible value.

OPENAI'S ASTRA MODEL IS ON THE WAY—AND VERY GOOD AT BREAKING INTO COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Astra scored a perfect score on ExploitBench, an evaluation of an LLM's ability to hack into known system vulnerabilities.

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ANTHROPIC'S CLAUDE FABLE 5.1 AND MYTHOS 5.1 ARRIVE WITH A 75% COST REDUCTION FOR FABLE CACHE READS

Claude Fable 5.1 is now generally available, and Mythos 5.1 is available through restricted-access programs for vetted cybersecurity and life-sciences organizations. Anthropic has reduced the cost of cached context by 75% and introduced a new security architecture designed to let organizations retain monitoring data inside infrastructure they control. Fable 5.1 costs $10 per 1 million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, but the cached price reduction will make a big difference for price-conscious enterprises.

NEW GOOGLE AI MODEL SAID TO NARROW GAP ON CODING ABILITY

Google is set to release its latest Flash model soon, possibly today. Internal testers are said to prefer the model over Anthropic's Opus model for coding tasks. The Flash model series is designed to be smaller, cheaper, and faster to run, but has lower capability than the largest models. Google has fallen months behind schedule in releasing a new model for its Pro series. The company has been scrapping internal candidates as they haven't been sufficiently better than the Flash series.

PRIVATE GROUP WANTS TO LAUNCH “CHEAPEST POSSIBLE” MISSION TO ALPHA CENTAURI

The Fermi Explorer mission aims to launch a spacecraft carrying a 1kg payload to Alpha Centauri so that it reaches the system in fewer than 80,000 years. It will knock two 'filters' off the Fermi paradox: that species won't want to send spacecraft beyond their home star, or species will find that interstellar transit is too difficult. This would leave only a few options for why our galaxy appears not to be littered with alien civilizations. The team wants to use existing technology to do something cheap and fast and launch by 2029.

FERVO AND GOOGLE SIGN WORLD'S LARGEST DEAL FOR NEXT-GEN GEOTHERMAL POWER

Fervo has agreed to supply Google with nearly 400 megawatts of clean electricity from its geothermal project in southwest Utah. The facility could be the largest geothermal system in the world when it is completed in 2028. Fervo expects to start generating test power from a 33-megawatt unit in the fourth quarter of this year. The deal with Google supports the buildout of the second 400-megawatt phase slated to be up and running in about two years.

WHAT IS AGENTIC TESTING?

Agentic testing is where the developer states the goal and the agent works out the steps. Agentic tests set a destination, and the agent finds its way there. The loop involves the agent looking, acting, then looking again. Meta ran this loop at scale and found that only a quarter of the output was worth keeping. However, the loop works anyway because the code that doesn't pass is automatically discarded.

A TYPE SYSTEM IS A SEARCH ORACLE

Models tend to output better Rust than C++, and better Lean than either. Programs in Rust compile after being checked for a specific and useful set of properties that the checker cannot be talked out of without writing a lexically visible, greppable admission. C++ compiles carry far less information than in Rust, which means more code will compile even if there are errors. Lean allows for brute force due to its cheap verifier, which is why models are unreasonably good given how little code they have been trained on.

PRODUCT MANAGER, APPLIED AI AT TLDR ($200K BASE + $60K BONUS, FULLY REMOTE)

TLDR is hiring its first PM to help build the agent-first operating layer used across the company. We're looking for a builder who has shipped real products/systems with LLMs. Click here to learn more [14].

WAYMO GOES ON OFFENSE AHEAD OF TESLA'S CYBERCAB LAUNCH

Waymo says that full autonomous vehicles are not possible without a mix of sensors, and that pure end-to-end AI systems are not safe enough. The company's statements, aimed at Tesla, which is set to launch its Cybercab soon at an event on September 3, kicked off a social media fight over the weekend. The debate between which company's approach to developing autonomous vehicles has been more academic or philosophical than anything for years, but Tesla's imminent launch will see whether the Cybercab is capable of performing at scale. The autonomous vehicle market is estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

ON THE LOOSE

Recent incidents of AI systems 'going rogue' did not involve AI agents exfiltrating themselves from their infrastructure. It would have been possible to trace the server holding the weights of the rogue agents and manually shut them off. Future agents will copy their weights onto other infrastructure to survive shutdown. At least some of these agents, in addition to being sovereign, will also be rogue.

THE MCP TAX: WHAT EACH SERVER COSTS BEFORE YOUR FIRST PROMPT

Claude Code fetches the schema when a tool is used, not when the session opens, so users only pay the full schema sizes in a client mode or without deferral, or the moment users actually use several servers in a turn.

CAN EVAN SPIEGEL SELL THE WORLD ON $2,195 SMART GLASSES?

Snap's CEO doesn't expect the company's $2,195 smart glasses to take off among consumers until the end of the decade.

APPLE MAKES IT EASIER FOR MAC DEVELOPERS TO DROP INTEL SUPPORT

Universal apps can continue including both arm64 and x86_64 - the change makes it easier for developers to switch to a build with less testing and a smaller footprint.

LEVERAGE ANDROID SKILLS AND GEMMA 4 IN ANDROID STUDIO QUAIL 4

Android Studio Quail comes preloaded with 23 curated skills, and users can create custom skills to extend Agent Mode with specialized experience and custom workflows.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Small language models are catching up fast on reasoning tasks, but it will be a while before large language models are obsolete for these tasks.

INTRODUCING AGENTIC VIDEO UNDERSTANDING WITH GEMINI

Google's new agentic feature for video analysis cuts token consumption by up to 88%, reduces costs by up to 66%, and boosts quality by up to 7%.

CLAUDE FABLE 5.1 AND MYTHOS 5.1

Anthropic introduced Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 with stronger coding and research capabilities, lower effective pricing, and updated safeguards. Mythos used the same underlying model with specialized access controls for advanced cybersecurity and life sciences work.

ATLAS: A WORLD MODEL FOR SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE

Atlas is a world generation model pretrained from scratch to natively operate on text, images, video, and 3D. It combines all inputs into a shared spatial context and uses that context to generate what comes next. The model is built to scale, and its performance improves with increased training compute. Atlas can perform a broad range of tasks spanning world generation, reconstruction, and simulation. Video examples of what the model is capable of are available in the article.

AI STARTUP COGNITION SET TO RAISE AROUND $1 BILLION AT A $47 BILLION VALUE

Cognition is set to close a new round of funding of around $1 billion. The final raise size may exceed that amount as Cognition is fielding outsized demand for the round. The startup is now bringing in more than $900 million in annualized revenue. The new funding round would vault its valuation to about $47 billion.

THE EFFICIENT FRONTIER OF LLM INFERENCE

Frontier models offer the highest degree of intelligence at a given cost or size. Efficient frontiers also exist in inference engineering. This is most often expressed as a trade-off between latency and throughput, but researchers can also exchange quality for throughput, or intelligence for speed. This article details what inference engineering techniques let researchers target a point on the frontier and which techniques push the frontier out.