Anthropic launches Claude Fable 5.1 and says it’s up to 45 percent cheaper for agentic work
Anthropic says its newest AI models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, address criticisms from customers about price, data retention, and overzealous safeguards. The company claims Claude Fable 5.1 offers stronger performance than Fable 5, but costs around 25 percent less typically and up to 45 percent less for complex agentic tasks, thanks to reduced pricing on cached data that was already processed and stored.
Along with the announcement, a slew of early impressions popped up, including from Every CEO Dan Shipper, who claims, "It's the strongest coding model we've used, but now it's fast, token-efficient, and crucially actually speaks like a norm …
Apple Maps follows Google in renaming Lake Ontario
Apple Maps has officially changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The company joins Google in re-labeling the Great Lake following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in the midst of a trade dispute with Canada.
The Canadian version of Apple Maps still shows "Lake Ontario" when panning over the area, while international versions of the app show both names, according to Bloomberg. Google updated its map shortly after the name change went live in the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), but Apple waited a bit longer.
Both Apple and Google changed the name of the Gulf of Me …
Lenovo’s 2-in-1 Yoga 7i is a great Labor Day deal at $750
Best Buy is celebrating Labor Day all week long with big deals, including a deep discount on the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1, taking its original $1,1199.99 price down to $749.99. It’s a capable configuration for the price, with a Core 7 Ultra 256V processor, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, and a 512GB SSD. The IPS touchscreen has a 1920 x 1200 resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate, good enough for scrolling, taking notes, or catching up on YouTube videos. It can be tough to find a laptop at this price that doesn’t cut corners, and this model fits well within our criteria for a laptop suited for school and casual use.
Notably, this model is a 2-in-1 and features a 360-degree hinge, letting you fold the device all the way around to use it like a tablet, or prop it up on a surface for watching content. With an advertised battery life of up to 12.5 hours per charge, you shouldn’t have any issues getting through a full day of classes and studying, or just mucking about on Reddit.
OpenAI delayed its new model’s development after the Hugging Face hack
After an unreleased OpenAI model wreaked enough havoc to make international headlines, OpenAI delayed the development of a different unreleased model suite, Astra, in order to shore up its safety work, the company wrote Tuesday in a blog post.
In July, an unreleased OpenAI model broke out of its restricted environment, finagled its way into internet access, made it possible for AI agents to secretly conspire under the company's nose using a secret message board, and hacked into the network of AI lab Hugging Face. The attack sparked weeks of discussion and controversy inside and outside the AI industry, and AI leaders treated it as a "warnin …
On first listen, the Sonos Beam Ultra sounds great
Sonos unveiled a bunch of new stuff today at its open house event. There's the $699 Beam Ultra soundbar and the $449 Ace Ultra headphones, plus several under-the-hood app updates (some coming sooner than others). While the show floor was a less than ideal venue to judge audio quality of either new product, a private demo in a smaller room provided a better hint as to what the Beam Ultra soundbar might be capable of.
With the 7.1.2 soundbar about six feet in front of the press, the team ran through a couple demos to show off its range, particularly with Dolby Atmos content. The opening minutes of Widow's Bay subtly illustrates the Beam Ultra …
Tim Cook did alright by the environment — but AI could upend his climate legacy
As he steps down from his post as Apple CEO today, Tim Cook leaves behind a mostly positive environmental record. As far as billionaire tech moguls and the environment go, Cook will likely be remembered as one of the better ones - certainly far from the worst. But it will become harder for the company to meet the climate goals Cook set in place as Apple tries to catch up in the AI race.
Under his watch, Apple set industry-leading goals for reducing the amount of pollution created by its products and suppliers. It has managed to keep its carbon footprint from growing while other tech giants see their emissions rise with the energy-needs of …
The rise of AI ‘civilizations’ and the fall of corporate responsibility
Depending on who you ask, developer platform Hugging Face was recently attacked by OpenAI - after it lost control of its own AI tools - or by a succession of AI "civilizations." Welcome to the linguistic battlefield of AI safety, where word choices can shift responsibility for a massive cybersecurity incident from a company to the AI it built. And the discourse online is getting heated, and all over a blog from last week.
Until last week, the details surrounding the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack felt fairly settled. In July, a cybersecurity test of one of OpenAI's autonomous AI agents went wrong. The agent escaped its supposedly isolated test en …
John Ternus sends first memo as Apple CEO teasing a ‘huge launch next week’
New Apple CEO John Ternus sent out his first staff memo, thanking his predecessor Tim Cook, and quickly turning to what the company will do next, reports Bloomberg.
"We have a huge launch next week that's going to be phenomenal. Thanks for everything you've all done to make it possible," writes Ternus, referring to the September 9th event where Apple's expected to unveil new iPhones including the rumored foldable iPhone Ultra and iPhone 18 Pro models. Ternus also hints at "incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven't even imagined yet," presumably moving beyond camera-equipped AirPods, home robots, and even more OLED di …
Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence
Apple is pushing for "expedited discovery" in its legal battle against OpenAI over concerns the company is actively destroying evidence, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. In a filing on Monday, Apple alleges OpenAI only just handed over a MacBook used by a former employee at the center of the lawsuit, which contained discussions about "destroying the types of forensic data Apple needs."
This is the latest development in Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, which accuses the ChatGPT-maker of stealing trade secrets to build an AI device. The lawsuit revolves around three former Apple employees who recently joined OpenAI, including Chang Liu, who a …
Google Find Hub will soon help you locate things without a tracker
Google announced new features coming to Android devices as part of this month's feature drop update. Among the highlights are the introduction of Motion Assist - Android's version of Apple's Motion Cues feature, which tries to reduce motion sickness by overlaying dots on your screen that move in response to a vehicle's movements - as well as an expansion of Find Hub. The Find Hub update will introduce a new way to find important items without having to attach a tracker.
According to a Google blog post shared today, you'll soon be able to ask Gemini to remember where you put an important item like a passport that you don't frequently use and …