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Archives for August 2026

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Sony brings free TV to the PS5.

With PlayStation Vue long gone, Sony added a new FAST package today for PlayStation 5 owners in the US and soon in Canada, available under the Media section.

You will need an adult PlayStation account and to set up a Sony Pictures Core account (according to Variety, the same package is coming to Bravia TVs) for channels like The Ringer, Hot Ones, NHL, Sony’s own Crunchyroll, and others with a mix of live and on-demand videos.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
California unanimously passed a Linux age verification exemption.

AB 1856 redefines an “operating system provider” to exclude open-source software from the state’s age-gating law, set to go into effect on January 1st, Tom’s Hardware reports. It follows a similar exemption added to Colorado’s age verification bill earlier this year.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Pflugerville, Texas, cancels its Flock contract after a records request found outside agencies searched its data 1.6 million times.

The San Antonio Express-News reports that a request from Pflugerville, TX, resident Sam Aly found that hundreds of unauthorized agencies were searching the city’s Flock data, even though the company claims only two agencies were improperly included. The City Council canceled Flock’s contract last week and covered its cameras.

Aly:

Between February 16 and August 15, 2026, outside agencies searched Pflugerville’s camera data 1,597,918 times. 1.6 million searches in six months. 459 different agencies searched us. That works out to roughly 8,900 outside searches per day, every day. Our own police department ran 5,078 searches in the same period. So for every 1 search by Pflugerville PD, outside agencies ran 315.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
MapQuest downloads surge after refusing to rename Lake Ontario.

It’s the top navigation app on Apple’s and Google’s app stores after it took a stance against renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Google Maps changed the name of the Great Lake over the weekend, while Apple Maps may make the switch following the company’s chat with President Trump, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Screenshot: MapQuest
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
OpenClaw 2.0 launches as Peter Steinberger says, “Local harnesses feel like relics of the past now.”

After the initial hype, the often-imitated OpenClaw is continuing to push new updates, releasing version 2.0 and promising a cleanup that touched every area of the bot’s framework with simplified installs, setup, and a rebuilt browser app.

Founder Peter Steinberger touted the use of shared cloud sessions to work on this update, with “Multiplayer coding + infinite compute” that kept everyone on the team up to date with others’ progress.

Screenshot of OpenClaw’s rebuilt browser app with the message “Welcome to OpenClaw 2.0” typed in the chat box.
Image: OpenClaw
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
George Santos is the first person banned from Kalshi for life.

Kalshi says that in February, the former Republican congressman “placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended upon his own attendance” at the State of the Union. He’s now permanently banned and penalized $71,356.

In other news about everything being gambling now:

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Huawei redesigned the folding mechanism for its next trifold phone.

The Mate XT was the world’s first trifold smartphone when it launched last year but the sequel has debuted with a major change. Instead of the original’s Z-shaped arrangement of folding panels, the Huawei Mate XT 2’s side panels each fold inwards meaning you can only use its larger screen when the device is fully unfolded. Preorders are now open in China, but full pricing won’t be known until September 7th.

<em>The Mate XT 2 will be available in multiple configurations with 512GB to 2TB of storage, but all versions will come with 16GB of RAM.</em>
<em>The three color options include obsidian black and white plus purple for those opting for the 16GB/2TB option.</em>
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The Mate XT 2 will be available in multiple configurations with 512GB to 2TB of storage, but all versions will come with 16GB of RAM.
Image: Huawei