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Microsoft and Starbucks demand a Seattle safety plan from socialist mayor
All HELL breaks loose in NYC ahead of 9/11 as angry patriots demand Mamdani “STAY HOME!”
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Microsoft and Starbucks demand a Seattle safety plan from socialist mayor
Starbucks, Microsoft, T-Mobile and other Seattle executives pressed Mayor Katie Wilson on Thursday for a 100-day public safety plan after a poll found only 34% of voters trust the city’s crime strategy.
City Hall gets named: The Thursday letter went to Wilson, Council President Joy Hollingsworth, Public Safety Committee Chair Robert Kettle and other council members seeking measurable results.
Hard clocks demanded: Leaders want more patrols and CCTV, a seven-minute priority 911 response time standard with public miss reports, and designated encampments cleared within 72 hours.
Staffing trails big peers: Seattle had about 1.31 sworn officers per 1,000 residents by mid-2026, about 40% fewer than Denver, 43% fewer than San Francisco and 58% fewer than Boston.
Incentives already pulled: The city had just ended police hiring bonuses of up to $50,000 for lateral transfers. An Aug. 17 poll found each proposal drew at least 75% support citywide.
Iran used Claude to build targeting books on the US Navy
Anthropic said Thursday it disrupted an Iran-linked actor that used Claude to build targeting recommendations against U.S. naval forces and separately banned accounts tied to dual-use biological research.
Open-source hunt kit: The group compiled ship and aircraft transponder feeds, military photographs and commercial satellite images to track American warships and probe shipboard communications.
154-page misuse report: Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI laid out five Claude case studies in advanced biology with potential weapons crossover; accounts were banned and findings shared with authorities and other labs.
Chikungunya grant draft: One researcher asked Claude to help write a gain-of-function proposal to make the mosquito-borne virus more transmissible and more dangerous; Anthropic blocked it.
Relay then other models: Investigators later found a third-party platform bypassing regional blocks and auto-routing rejected prompts elsewhere; other cases covered bird flu, orthopoxvirus and non-transmissible venoms.
All HELL breaks loose in NYC ahead of 9/11 as angry patriots demand Mamdani “STAY HOME!”
New Yorker patriots marched in the streets of Manhattan Thursday demanding Mayor Zohran Mamdani not attend Friday’s 9/11 ceremony and even clashed with left-wing counter protesters.
NSA says Chinese labs ran industrial-scale AI distillation
CISA, the NSA and the FBI accused six China-based AI firms of industrial-scale copying of U.S. models, as Anthropic said Alibaba ran more than 151 million Claude exchanges from May to July.
Alibaba set the peak: Anthropic called it the largest distillation campaign it has measured, peaking near 3 million Claude exchanges a day from more than 3,500 fraudulent accounts to feed Qwen.
Moonshot hid the handoff: The Kimi builder silently forwarded customer prompts to Claude, logged more than 23 million exchanges from May to July, and pulled reasoning transcripts for training.
DeepSeek’s two-week burst: Anthropic logged more than 12 million distillation attacks over 14 days in July and said some routed chats carried data from users, multinationals and state-linked actors.
Six names on the advisory: The Tuesday CISA-NSA-FBI notice also listed MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI, said the work likely had Chinese government awareness, and branded it malicious industrial distillation.
Hot core CPI lifts Sept. 16 hike odds to 82%
August consumer prices rose 0.4% and 3.4% from a year earlier, matching forecasts, but core CPI increased 0.3% versus 0.2% expected, lifting Sept. 16 hike odds to 82%.
Four-day skid breaks: Nasdaq and the S&P 500 each gained 0.8% after the print as the major averages tried to end a four-session losing streak, even with hike bets rising.
Odds spiked, then settled: Markets priced a Sept. 16 increase at 68% before the report, touched 90% after the core miss, then settled near 82%. Polymarket printed 81%.
Ten-year tagged 4.98%: The benchmark yield hit 4.98%, a three-year high, then eased to about 4.92%. The 2-year yield rose to 4.594% after jumping as much as 8.8 basis points.
Oil slipped, diesel record: Brent fell more than 3% but stayed above $104. WTI traded near $100. GasBuddy said the U.S. average diesel price topped $6 a gallon Thursday for the first time.
Nvidia CEO: Circular financing? Let’s do more of that
Jensen Huang told a Goldman Sachs conference Thursday that if Nvidia’s AI financing looks circular, the company should do more of it, arguing $1 in produces $100 back.
Sure-thing contracts: Huang said Nvidia can see about $100 billion of contracted customer demand behind projects it helps finance and called the work lined-up contracts and real stuff.
Balance-sheet footprint: Nvidia disclosed $99 billion of equity investments as of July 26 and $25 billion of future commitments, plus a $500 billion infrastructure platform with six firms including BlackRock.
OpenAI Ohio backstop: Nvidia agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion so OpenAI can lease an Ohio data-center campus that will run on its chips; total guarantees could reach $108.5 billion.
CoreWeave cash example: Nvidia invested $2 billion in CoreWeave in January. Huang said the financing strategy builds newer clouds as distribution channels for the company’s architecture.
$1-a-year OpenAI is over. Federal agencies now get 50% off
The General Services Administration locked a OneGov pact giving federal, state, local and tribal agencies a 50% discount on OpenAI’s most advanced models with no minimum spend.
FedRAMP-only access: The agreement applies GSA AI terms and confines model use to environments already authorized under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.
Try-before-you-buy: Acting Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Laura Stanton said OneGov AI deals exist so agencies can test tools on a consumption basis before a lengthy acquisition.
Altman backs the pact: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said secure access can make government more efficient, strengthen cybersecurity and improve services people rely on.
Door left open: Stanton invited other AI vendors to bring capabilities through OneGov, saying GSA wants more choice, competition and taxpayer value.
Adobe just crossed 1 billion users and Wall Street yawned
Adobe said it hit 1 billion monthly active users and raised full-year guidance after a third-quarter earnings beat, but the stock fell and is down 29% this year.
Third-quarter beat landed: Profit was $1.83 billion, or $4.62 a share, versus $1.77 billion, or $4.18, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were $6.13 versus FactSet’s $6.08 forecast.
Subscriptions carried revenue: Sales rose 13% to $6.76 billion against a $6.69 billion FactSet estimate, with subscription revenue climbing to $6.58 billion from $5.79 billion.
Guidance only inched up: Adobe now sees full-year adjusted earnings of $24.45 to $24.50 a share and revenue of $26.576 billion to $26.626 billion, with ARR growth of 10.2%.
Investors keep selling: Fourth-quarter revenue is pegged at $6.8 billion to $6.85 billion versus $6.84 billion expected. Barron’s said the stock has fallen after 15 of the past 20 earnings reports.
Record 6.1% private-credit defaults meet a $100 oil shock
Fitch’s U.S. private-credit default rate hit a record 6.1% in the 12 months through July as oil near $100 and a possible Fed hike squeeze floating-rate borrowers.
Double hit on EBITDA: Benefit Street’s Anant Kumar said energy-driven inflation, not rates alone, is the risk: 3.4% CPI plus an energy shock squeezes earnings while floating coupons rise.
SOFR resets fast: Direct-lending loans typically price over SOFR. Kumar said a 25-basis-point hike feeds quickly into portfolios, lifting lender yield first, then losses if weak credits miss payments.
Rolling refinance wall: Raymond James’ Sunaina Sinha Haldea said the wall will arrive as amendments, extensions, equity injections and restructurings, not one event, with coverage already near 1x at stressed names.
How far yields must go: Nomura’s Matthew Pallai said another 50 to 100-plus basis points would be needed to force widespread default concern. Thursday’s 10-year yield jumped more than 11 basis points to 4.954%.
Removal of the feckless idiot is the only remedy — but will equally stupid voters ever learn ???!