Morning Skim

AI

Google's Gemini app hits 1 billion monthly users

Google said its Gemini app reached 1 billion monthly active users, its 14th product to cross that mark and just weeks after passing 950 million at Q2 earnings. About 63% of users use voice, it generates more than 150 million images a day, and daily users have tripled over the past year.

Why it matters: It puts Google in direct scale competition with ChatGPT, which crossed 1 billion users in June.

Dive deeper → TechCrunch

An unreleased Anthropic model nudges the Riemann hypothesis forward

Anthropic says an unreleased model made real progress on the 150-year-old Riemann hypothesis, raising the lower bound for which it holds by running 60 coordinated subagents over about 36 hours across 650 approaches. Two in-house mathematicians checked the work and it was formalized in the Lean proof assistant.

Why it matters: It is fresh evidence that AI is starting to contribute to frontier mathematics, not just reproduce it.

Dive deeper → TechCrunch

Tech

Microsoft patches 398 flaws, including a Windows driver zero-day under attack

Microsoft's August update fixed 398 vulnerabilities, 62 rated critical, including CVE-2026-68820, a use-after-free bug in the afd.sys WinSock driver already being exploited to escalate to SYSTEM. Check Point tied the attacks to North Korea's Lazarus group and its Operation Dream Job campaign.

Why it matters: The actively exploited driver bug jumps the patch queue for any machine an attacker may already have a foothold on.

Dive deeper → The Hacker News

Poisoned LiteLLM packages may have exposed about 2,500 organizations

Two malicious LiteLLM releases sat on PyPI for roughly 40 minutes in March, running a hidden startup script that harvested OpenAI and Anthropic keys, SSH and cloud credentials, and database passwords from any Python process. CloudSEK counted about 434,000 captured files from around 2,500 orgs, and the attackers got their PyPI access via the earlier Trivy breach.

Why it matters: Long-lived secrets grabbed in that window stay usable until rotated, so the blast radius outlives the 40 minutes.

Dive deeper → The Hacker News

Business

Nvidia pushes 800-volt DC power to feed AI data centers

Nvidia unveiled an 800-volt direct-current power architecture for AI data centers that cuts the repeated AC conversions wasting energy before power reaches the chips. Built with Google and Microsoft through the Open Compute Project and backed by more than 80 vendors, an MGX-compatible 800 VDC rack ships in the second half of 2026 and a 2-megawatt-per-row system follows in 2027.

Why it matters: Power efficiency is becoming the real bottleneck as the AI buildout heads toward trillions in infrastructure spending.

Dive deeper → Investing.com

Foxconn's profit jumps 35% as AI server demand booms

Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's biggest contract electronics maker and Nvidia's main server supplier, reported second-quarter net profit up 35% to NT$59.97 billion (about $1.86 billion) on a 40% revenue jump, beating forecasts. It kept its outlook for strong 2026 growth and is adding AI-server plants in Mexico and Texas.

Why it matters: Foxconn's numbers are a clean read on how hot the AI data-center buildout still runs.

Dive deeper → Al Jazeera

Science

NASA buys Voyager 2 at least another year of power

NASA engineers ran a maneuver they nicknamed the 'Big Bang,' shutting down power-hungry hardware and switching to lower-power alternatives to keep three of Voyager 2's science instruments running. The nearly 50-year-old probe loses about 4 watts a year from its plutonium generator, and the fix delays the next forced instrument shutdown by at least a year.

Why it matters: It squeezes more deep-space data out of a one-of-a-kind spacecraft that took decades to get where it is.

Dive deeper → ScienceDaily

A hidden inherited cholesterol raises stroke risk for 1 in 5 people

Analyzing plasma from 20,070 adults across three NIH trials, researchers found that very high lipoprotein(a), an inherited particle about one in five people carry, independently raised the risk of cardiovascular death by 49% and stroke by 64%, even when standard cholesterol looked normal. A cheap blood test can flag it.

Why it matters: Most carriers never know they have it, and targeted treatments are on the way.

Dive deeper → ScienceDaily

World

Ukrainian strike on Russia's Novorossiysk port kills at least four

An overnight Ukrainian drone, missile and naval-drone attack on Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk killed at least four people, including a child, and injured eight, with President Zelenskyy saying forces hit air-defense positions, piers and seaport infrastructure including a grain terminal. Russian strikes the same night killed two in Kherson.

Why it matters: Both sides are now hammering each other's ports, fuel and food logistics as ceasefire talks stay frozen.

Dive deeper → Al Jazeera

Meta goes to trial against 29 states over teen social-media harm

Jury selection began August 12 in an Oakland federal court in a case where 29 states accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children and hiding the harm. The seven-week trial carries potential damages near Meta's market value and could force changes like age limits and killing infinite scroll, with Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri expected to testify.

Why it matters: It is the biggest courtroom test yet of whether social platforms are legally liable for hooking kids.

Dive deeper → Investing.com

Culture

Rod Stewart scraps the rest of his tour after heart surgery

Rod Stewart canceled the remaining dates of his 'One Last Time Tour,' including a six-night Caesars Palace residency and August and September shows in the US and Mexico, after a routine coronary stent procedure his doctors called successful. He plans to take four weeks to recover before returning to the stage.

Why it matters: It sidelines one of rock's most durable touring acts mid-run, on doctors' orders.

Dive deeper → Consequence

Caroline Rose announces a new album and shares 'Chow Mein'

Caroline Rose announced her seventh album, 'Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall,' due October 23 on her new independent label SUCK Records, and shared the single 'Chow Mein.' Produced by John Congleton, the record leans on surf-rock and spaghetti-western touches with a thread of suburban unease.

Why it matters: It marks Rose going fully independent on a label she built herself.