Instinct’s powerful AI assistant is raising privacy and security concerns | TechCrunch

August 24, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Everyone is buzzing about Instinct, an AI personal assistant still in private access, not only for its incredible capabilities, but also for its potential privacy concerns. The agent, a veritable taskmaster, has been praised as feeling “like magic” and being one of the “most exciting launches” since OpenClaw. However, some testers have also raised concerns about the AI agent’s security model and its worrisome terms of service.

To be fair, Instinct is still in private testing for now, so these concerns haven’t yet scaled to the wider public at this time.

Created by a small team led by former Sierra research scientist Noah Shinn, San Francisco-based Instinct is operated by Spear Street Technology, per its terms and California business filings. It’s currently operating in stealth, per PitchBook.

Zillow and Redfin settle FTC antitrust case | TechCrunch

August 24, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Zillow and Redfin have reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and five states, ending a legal fight over a 2025 partnership that the FTC claimed hurt competition in the rental-listing market. The settlement was announced on Monday, just as the case was scheduled to head toward trial this morning.

The case stems from a deal announced last year in which Redfin agreed to display Zillow’s rental listings on its websites rather than compete directly with Zillow for rental advertisers. The arrangement could have kept Redfin out of the rental advertising business for as long as nine years. Redfin owns Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com, two major rental-listing platforms.

What It Really Takes to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service

August 20, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Nearly every company claims to deliver superior customer service. Yet, despite the focus on creating memorable experiences, many customers still report dissatisfaction when interacting with hospitality, retail or call center representatives.

The reason is straightforward: Customer service levels have declined significantly in recent years, especially since the 2020 pandemic. While some attribute this to a lack of communication skills among younger workers, I have observed a decline across all age groups.

How Growing Businesses Lose Clarity (and What It Costs Them)| Entrepreneur

August 20, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As companies grow, the clarity that once shaped every customer interaction often disappears. What begins as a single, consistent premise changes across teams and channels they’re working on. The result is not a single dramatic change but a slow accumulation of friction that customers feel as extra effort, conflicting signals and moments where the brand no longer feels like itself.

I have seen this pattern in companies that scaled from a tight founding group to dozens or hundreds of people. Early decisions carried a single logic. Everyone who touched the experience understood what the customer needed to grasp first. As headcount increased and responsibilities split between marketing, product, sales, support and operations, that shared logic dissolved. Each group optimized for its own outcomes. The website reflected one set of priorities, the product interface another, and support flows a third. Customers encountered seams where none had existed before.

TikTok reportedly tested a safety feature by withholding it from millions | Mashable

August 18, 2026August 17, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

For millions of TikTok users, protection from harmful content spirals depended on which side of an experiment they landed on.

A confidential internal document obtained by Bloomberg Aug. 4 found that TikTok excluded 10 percent of its U.S. users from an algorithmic safety update in early 2022. At the time, that would have amounted to roughly 15 million people.

Samsung Galaxy phones could soon get a popular Apple feature | Mashable

August 18, 2026August 17, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Samsung might borrow a good Apple feature soon.

And you might not even need new hardware to use it. Leaker Fahad Ali Javed (via AndroidAuthority) posted screenshots of the upcoming One UI 9.5 update, which included several new features for Samsung devices. Perhaps the most noteworthy one, though, is the seeming addition of app mirroring. This feature allows iPhone users to receive notifications and otherwise control their phones using a linked Mac computer.

SpaceX revenue jumps 92% but stock tumbles as investors weigh AI spending | CNN Business

August 5, 2026August 4, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company blew past expectations. But it continued to burn through cash in pursuit of CEO Elon Musk’s vision for an AI-powered, Mars-colonizing future, putting investors on edge and sending SpaceX shares down in late trading.

The newly public satellite, space, and AI behemoth brought in $7.8 billion in revenue in the April-June quarter, which SpaceX said was up 92% from the same period in 2025. But the company remained unprofitable, losing $541 million in the second quarter, following a $4.3 billion loss in the first three months of the year.

Mortgage rates climb to highest level in a year | CNN Business

August 5, 2026August 4, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Five months into the war in Iran, rising oil prices and stubborn inflation are driving mortgage rates to the highest level in a year.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.66% this week, the highest since July of last year, according to Freddie Mac. That’s up from 6.58% last week, marking the biggest one-week jump in mortgage rates in 10 weeks.

Just a few months ago, mortgage rates dipped below 6% for the first time in years, fueling hopes that lower borrowing costs would revive the sluggish housing market.

‘We are not giving up yet’: Private mission to rescue NASA’s Swift telescope is spinning out of control, and engineers are racing to fix it | Live Science

August 3, 2026August 2, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A private mission to rescue an ailing NASA space telescope may now need a rescue of its own. The LINK spacecraft — designed by private company Katalyst Space to boost the orbit of NASA’s ageing Swift Observatory — is reportedly spinning unexpectedly in the weeks after its launch, so much so that stabilizing the spacecraft will likely delay the telescope rescue.

Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft launched July 3 from a mid-air Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket mounted aboard a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 airliner. The spacecraft lifted off after less than a year of development, on a mission to catch NASA’s nearly 22-year-old Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory before the telescope falls back to Earth.

Total eclipse, shooting stars, and the Milky Way: Why Aug. 12 could be the greatest single day and night for skywatching for years | Live Science

August 3, 2026August 2, 2026 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Skywatchers across North America and Europe should mark Wednesday, Aug. 12 on their calendars. From a daytime solar eclipse to the peak of the Perseid meteor shower beneath a moonless sky, the date offers an exceptionally rare combination of celestial events within a 24-hour period. Add brilliant Venus and the glowing band of the Milky Way after sunset, and the result is a full day of astronomy that could become one of the standout skywatching opportunities of the year.

The first spectacle arrives during daylight as the moon partially covers the sun across Alaska, eastern Canada and parts of the northeastern U.S. A dramatic total solar eclipse will be visible along a narrow path stretching across eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain — and that’s where eclipse chasers will be. However, about 779 million people in North America, Europe and North Africa will see at least a 10% partial eclipse, according to Time and Date.