Here are today’s 9 verified tech & science stories, covering Tech & Apps, AI Tools and Science & Space.
Table of Contents
Every item below links to its original source.
The TLDR
- Tech & Apps: iOS 27 Beta 6 Lands With a Rebuilt, AI-Powered Siri
- AI Tools: Anthropic’s Annualized Revenue Jumps to $65 Billion
- Science & Space: China Returns to Flight With Two Launches After Rocket Explosion
Tech & Apps
iOS 27 Beta 6 Lands With a Rebuilt, AI-Powered Siri
Apple released the sixth developer beta of iOS 27 on August 17, giving testers another look at the AI overhaul coming to Siri, per 9to5Mac. The rebuilt assistant is designed for richer conversations, personal context, and deeper in-app actions, paired with a new visual look tied to the Dynamic Island. iOS 27 is expected to reach the public in September as part of Apple’s usual fall rollout.
YouTube Is Changing How It Counts a ‘View’ Starting August 24
YouTube will begin counting a view the moment a video starts playing, rather than after a set watch-time threshold, aligning its system with how Instagram and TikTok already count views, according to The Verge. The change takes effect August 24 and only applies going forward — past view counts won’t be recalculated, and YouTube says it won’t affect ad earnings or Partner Program eligibility. If you’re into how platforms shape what you see, our guide on how to discover new music by working with the algorithm covers the other side of that equation.
GitHub Suffered a Major Outage That Lasted Most of Monday
GitHub experienced a widespread outage on August 17 that disrupted its website, pull requests, webhooks, and Copilot for several hours, Engadget reports. Error rates reportedly reached around 20% for general site and API traffic and roughly 50% for repository downloads before the issue was fully resolved. GitHub has not yet published a root-cause explanation for what triggered the disruption.
US Kindergarten Vaccination Rates Dipped Again as Exemptions Hit a Record
New CDC data posted this week shows kindergarten vaccination coverage for shots like MMR, DTaP, and polio declined slightly across more than half of states for the 2025–2026 school year, while the share of kids with an exemption climbed to 4.2%, an all-time high, per Ars Technica. That’s roughly 155,000 children nationally, and it marks the fourth straight year exemptions have hit a new record. The CDC posted the figures online without an accompanying full report.
AI Tools
Anthropic’s Annualized Revenue Jumps to $65 Billion
Anthropic’s annualized revenue climbed to about $65 billion, up from $47 billion just two months earlier, according to TechCrunch. That’s an $18 billion increase in two months, continuing a growth pace the report calls historic. The company started the year with roughly $9 billion in annualized revenue, underscoring how fast demand for its Claude models has scaled in 2026.
AI Automation Startup Relay Shuts Down; Founder Heads to Google Chrome
Relay, a workflow-automation startup built as a rival to Zapier, has shut down, with free-tier access already cut off on August 15 and paid access set to end September 14, TechCrunch reports. Founder and CEO Jacob Bank is returning to Google as VP of Product for Chrome, where he’ll lead product and developer relations. Bank said he has plans to bring more AI tools into Chrome, though he hasn’t shared specifics yet. If you’re looking to build your own lightweight workflow tools in the meantime, see our guide on how to build a simple CRM in Notion for free.
Science & Space
China Returns to Flight With Two Launches After Rocket Explosion
Less than a week after a Long March 7A rocket exploded shortly after liftoff on August 10, China launched a Long March 12 and a Long March 2C rocket within hours of each other on August 16, Space.com reports. The Long March 12 carried a batch of satellites for China’s Guowang internet constellation, while the Long March 2C launched an earth-observation satellite for the UAE. Both missions were reported successful, suggesting the earlier failure wasn’t tied to an issue affecting the whole rocket fleet.
Hubble Finds Evidence of an Ancient Galaxy Merger in the Milky Way’s Early Years
New Hubble Space Telescope data shows the Milky Way merged with a dwarf galaxy roughly 11.8 billion years ago, pushing back the known timeline of our galaxy’s formation by 1.8 billion years, according to Phys.org. Researchers studied 39 globular clusters near the galaxy’s center and traced a distinct group back to the dwarf galaxy, nicknamed LKH, which held roughly 500 million times the sun’s mass in stars. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, suggest outside galaxies shaped the Milky Way earlier than previously understood.
Study: More Seafood Could Help Fix Brazil’s Nutrition Gaps
A new study in Nature Food found that Brazilians eat less than half the recommended amount of seafood, despite widespread shortfalls in nutrients like vitamin A, magnesium, and calcium that seafood could help fill, Phys.org reports. Researchers, who analyzed data from over 30,000 people, recommend boosting seafood’s share of Brazilians’ protein intake from about 6% to 25%, paired with sustainable aquaculture and better fisheries management. The country currently has an estimated 33 million people facing food insecurity.
Explore more: how to discover new music by working with the algorithm, how to build a simple CRM in Notion for free.
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Photo: Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.