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🍎 Apple wants Patreon to pay up: Content creator platform Patreon told its users today that Apple threatened to remove the app from its App Store over issues surrounding in-app versus third-party payment systems. Luckily for Patreon users, there are multiple options here, and the company announced it has already started the lengthy migration process to get these creators on Apple's in-app purchase system by next fall. Read more

🛰️ Making milestones (and memories): Defense tech companies Anduril and Palantir announced that they hit the first milestone of their $178 million contract with the U.S. Army. The companies did so by delivering the first Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), which is a military truck designed to collect data from sensors in space and beyond. Read more

🖊️ Perplexity pens partnership with Polymarket: Polymarket, known as a platform for betting on real-world events, inked a new deal with AI chatbot and search engine Perplexity. Now when users go to look at a potential event, they will be given a summary of information that Perplexity pulled from its search results. Hopefully those search results come with the proper citations. Read more

A Message from Airtable

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch

🔒 Security synopsis: If you couldn't make the Black Hat Def Con security conference this year, don't sweat it: TechCrunch's security team has you covered. From new hacker tech to keynotes from big names in the security space, Zack Whittaker put everything you need to know from last week's conference into one spot. Read more

📳 Group chat lovers rejoice: TikTok is launching yet another way to connect with friends: It's adding group chats to its offerings, letting users watch, comment and react together all on TikTok. Read more

💶 Synopsys under fire: U.K. antitrust regulators confirmed that they're starting an inquiry into chip design software maker Synopsys' intention to buy Ansys, a simulation software developer that helps engineers model and analyze the physical behavior of products. The deal would be worth $35 billion if it goes through. Read more

🎶 Musical AI: Meta and Universal Music Group (UMG) announced an expansion of their multi-year music licensing agreement, which lets people use UMG's catalog across Meta's apps. Notably, the agreement states that the two companies are addressing "unauthorized AI-generated content." Read more

📣 Made by Google: Google's annual hardware event starts at 10 a.m. PT Tuesday, and we'll be covering it extensively. Here's how to watch the event, and for a rundown of what we expect, Brian Heater has you covered.

A Message from Daniel P McLaughlin & Co. Auctioneers

Public Auction on August 20

You're invited to join a public auction for the business assets of InvestFin, a former fintech startup based in Delaware. Assets include finserv software and various intellectual property. The auction takes place on Tuesday, August 20, in New York City at the offices of Feuerstein Kulick LLP. Bid in person or by teleconference.

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Around the web

🔐 Crypto firm in trouble: The SEC is suing NovaTech, a crypto firm co-founded by Cynthia and Eddy Petion, alleging that they fraudulently raised more than $650 million from more than 200,000 investors around the world. Regulators called the fraud "a pyramid scheme." Reuters has more

🚦Search boost: Google's search algorithm updates last year had some real impacts across the web—traffic to smaller sites was throttled, but some sites saw significant gains. Among those is Reddit, which, from August 2023 to April 2024, saw readership grow from 132 million visitors to 346 million monthly visitors. Read more