Okay, so the U.S. and China are locked in an all-out race to build the most powerful AI on the planet. Beijing is throwing billions at homegrown models, tightening its grip on the tech sector, and watching nervously as its best AI talent gravitates to U.S. companies. A Carnegie Endowment study published late last year found that 87 of the 100 top Chinese AI researchers at U.S. institutions in 2019 are still there.

Yet Manus — one of China’s most buzzed-about AI startups — quietly relocated to Singapore and sold itself to Meta for $2 billion. Did anyone think there would not be a reckoning over this tie-up?

As industry watchers know, Manus burst onto the scene in the spring of last year with a demo video showing an AI agent screening job candidates, planning vacations, and analyzing stock portfolios, and it cheekily claimed it outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research. Within weeks, Benchmark — the consummate Silicon Valley venture firm — led a $75 million funding round at a $500 million valuation. That was surprising. (Senator John Cornyn had thoughts, tweeting at the time, “Who thinks it is a good idea for American investors to subsidize our biggest adversary in AI, only to have the CCP use that technology to challenge us economically and militarily? Not me.”)

By December, Manus had millions of users and was pulling in over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Then Meta came calling, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has staked the company’s future on AI, snapped it up for $2 billion.

It’s worth noting that Manus didn’t just sell itself to an American buyer; it spent the better part of last year actively trying to operate outside China’s orbit. The company relocated its headquarters and core team from Beijing to Singapore, restructured its ownership, and after the Meta deal was announced, Meta pledged to cut all ties with Manus’s Chinese investors and shut down its operations in China entirely. By every measure, Manus was trying to make itself a Singapore company.

But if that string of events raised eyebrows in Washington, you can only imagine that in Beijing, they were apoplectic.

China has a phrase for all of this: “selling young crops” — homegrown AI companies that move abroad and sell themselves to foreign buyers before they’ve fully matured, taking their intellectual property and talent with them.

Beijing hates it and has spent years establishing that no company operates outside its reach. Surely, we all remember that time Jack Ma gave a speech in 2020, mildly criticizing Chinese regulators, after which he disappeared from public life for months, Ant Group’s blockbuster IPO was killed overnight, and Alibaba was handed a $2.8 billion fine. China then spent the next two years methodically dismantling its own booming tech sector, wiping out hundreds of billions in market value. Chinese leaders are many things, but subtle is not one of them.

Which is why it wasn’t entirely surprising when, on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned to a meeting this month with China’s National Development and Reform Commission and told that they wouldn’t be leaving the country for a while. No formal charges have been filed — just an inquiry into whether the Meta deal violated Beijing’s foreign investment rules.

Beijing is calling it a routine regulatory review.

At some point, someone at Manus probably thought they’d gotten away with it, and maybe they still will. But given the stakes of the AI race, that was always a big gamble. Now Beijing wants answers; Manus’s founders are apparently not going anywhere until it gets them.

GitHub is adopting AI-based scanning for its Code Security tool to expand vulnerability detections beyond the CodeQL static analysis and cover more languages and frameworks.

The developer collaboration platform says that the move is meant to uncover security issues “in areas that are difficult to support with traditional static analysis alone.”

CodeQL will continue to provide deep semantic analysis for supported languages, while AI detections will provide broader coverage for Shell/Bash, Dockerfiles, Terraform, PHP, and other ecosystems.

The new hybrid model is expected to enter public preview in early Q2 2026, possibly as soon as next month.

Finding bugs before they bite

GitHub Code Security is a set of application security tools integrated directly into GitHub repositories and workflows.

It is available for free (with limitations) for all public repositories. However, paying users can access the full set of features for private/internal repositories as part of the GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) add-on suite.

It offers code scanning for known vulnerabilities, dependency scanning to pinpoint vulnerable open-source libraries, secrets scanning to uncover leaked credentials on public assets, and provides security alerts with Copilot-powered remediation suggestions.

The security tools operate at the pull request level, with the platform selecting the appropriate tool (CodeQL or AI) for each case, so any issues are caught before merging the potentially problematic code.

If any issues, such as weak cryptography, misconfigurations, or insecure SQL, are detected, those are presented directly in the pull request.

GitHub’s internal testing showed that the system processed over 170,000 findings over 30 days, resulting in 80% positive developer feedback, and indicating that the flagged issues were valid.

These results showed “strong coverage” of the target ecosystems that had not been sufficiently scrutinized before.

GitHub also highlights the importance of Copilot Autofix, which suggests solutions for the problems detected through GitHub Code Security.

Stats from 2025 comprising over 460,000 security alerts handled by Autofix show that resolution was reached in 0.66 hours on average, compared to 1.29 hours when Autofix wasn’t used.

GitHub’s adoption of AI-powered vulnerability detection marks a broader shift where security is becoming AI-augmented and also natively embedded within the development workflow itself.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

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Photo credit: WSJ
Few pieces of furniture have earned a place in both design history and everyday luxury quite like the Eames Lounge Chair. The Wall Street Journal recently got a rare look inside the MillerKnoll factory in Zeeland, Michigan, where every authentic example is still assembled by hand, walking the production floor from raw wood all the way through to finished chair and making it very clear why each one carries a price tag somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars.

It starts with thin sheets of veneer cut from sustainably grown walnut or cherry. Workers layer seven of them together with glue, alternating the grain direction with each sheet before a hydraulic press applies heat and pressure until the wood begins to take on the chair’s distinctive curves, forming the seat, back, and headrest that make the design instantly recognizable. Once cooled, the molded pieces move to a computer guided cutter that trims everything to the correct dimensions. Because the wood itself dictates the final appearance, no two chairs ever come out looking exactly the same.

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Every edge is then hand sanded, with workers running their fingertips along each surface to catch anything the machines might have missed. A coat of linseed oil goes on next, brushed in and left to soak, protecting the wood and deepening its color gradually over time. While that is happening, the metal components are being prepared, polished aluminum spines and bases that are as refined as anything else on the chair. The hardwood shells are then fastened to the frames with small spacers that keep everything locked in place and silent. It is a lengthy process by design, because a single misaligned hole or loose screw is enough to throw the whole thing off balance.

Upholstery takes place in a different area of the plant, where leather hides are pre-selected for uniform thickness and color before being dispatched to the cutting stations. Workers lay out patterns on each hide and cut them by hand using sharp knives, after which stitchers wrap and sew the covers around cushions filled with down and foam. The leather is pushed taut to flow smoothly over the chair’s curves with no creases. Each final cushion hooks onto its plywood shell using hidden fasteners, allowing owners to replace the covers decades later if necessary.

Quality control is strict, with each chair passing through a separate testing lab where Kyle Wright spends his days attempting to break them. In just a few hours, one machine rotates the base a hundred thousand times, replicating a decade of daily use. Another device presses down on the seat and back with weights that simulate the load of a big person shifting about after years of frequent use. If anything creaks, loosens, or gives way, the entire batch is returned to the factory floor for repairs. Only the chairs that pass all tests receive the little Herman Miller emblem sewn discreetly inside.
[Source]

Reports suggest Disney’s $1bn equity investment into OpenAI will not progress.

OpenAI is shutting down its controversial AI video generator Sora just months after announcing a multi-year licensing deal with Disney. The company told the BBC that the discontinuation will enable it to focus on other developments, such as robotics “that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks”.

Details on the timeline of the app’s shutdown, API and data preservation will be shared soon, OpenAI’s Sora team said in a post on X. “To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it – thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” the post read.

The BBC further reported that following Sora’s closure, OpenAI will no longer focus on video-generation tools.

Video models such as Sora, its later iteration Sora 2 – which came with a social media app to share the AI content – as well as more recent ones such as ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 have garnered strong criticism from artists and publishers who oppose to their copyrighted material being used to generate AI videos.

Prior to Sora’s launch in late 2024, protesting artists reportedly leaked the model on Hugging Face, claiming they were “lured” by OpenAI into “’art washing’ to tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists”.

Meanwhile, Disney’s three-year partnership and licensing deal with OpenAI came after the company reportedly opted out of allowing its copyrighted material from being used by Sora.

The deal, announced in December 2025, gave OpenAI access to more than 200 Disney characters to be used by Sora and ChatGPT Images. Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney also agreed to make a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI. The investment has reportedly been scrapped.

“We respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” a Disney spokesperson told news outlets.

“We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”

With Sora’s closure, OpenAI is seemingly shifting priorities towards AI tools suited for enterprise use, a sector where Anthropic is capturing a majority of newcomers. Meanwhile, Claude also overtook ChatGPT as the most downloaded app in the US last month.

To compete, OpenAI is building a new desktop ‘superapp’ by fusing together ChatGPT, Codex – the company’s coding tool – and Atlas, an AI-powered web browser launched last October.

“Sora was a resource black hole with strong compute costs and limited monetisation. The platform also struggled to prevent the creation of non-consensual imagery and realistic misinformation, not to mention major copyright infringement,” commented Forrester’s VP principal analyst Thomas Husson.

“In the context of its upcoming IPO, OpenAI likely decided to minimise the associated risks and prioritise profits and enterprise tools over experimental social apps, despite some consumer interest.

“Sora may be repurposed for some robotics and physical applications, but it is still very early days. At the end of the day, it highlights that OpenAI is still very far away from recouping its huge investments.”

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In addition to screen time, the type of school to attend, the content children consume and the food they eat, a new concern cropped up for parents over the last few years: Whether to keep their children back a year from entering kindergarten.

“Redshirting,” a reference to collegiate sports in which the athlete sits out a year to boost their skills, has crept into the decision making process for parents with children on the cusp of the age cut-off in kindergarten, usually age 6 in most states. Parents can either have the student as one of the oldest in their grade or among the youngest, with some believing holding their child back can help academic achievement.

But according to a new report, the practice is not becoming more widespread. It has hovered steady at around 5 percent, since the the 1990s and 2010s, The number reached 6.4 percent during the pandemic.

“One of the reasons we wanted to look into it is because we felt like everyone talks about it, but only 1 in 20 students actually do it,” says Megan Kuhfeld, director of modeling and data analytics at NWEA, an education research firm. “So why does it feel like everyone was considering it for their children?”

Kuhfeld hypothesizes the smaller, more vocal group of parents considering redshirting was amplified on social media, but when it came time to make the decision, outside factors – like paying for an extra year of child care, which is becoming more costly than ever — played a large role.

“It might seem that this is a good idea but it’s, ‘We’re on the hook for an extra $15,000 in child-care costs,’ which may not be practical for a lot of families,” Kuhfeld says, adding she expects redshirting to stay steady. “The types to consider it will likely continue to, but a lot of people consider it then decide it’s not practical for a lot of reasons.”

The NWEA study did find more young boys were likely to be kept back than girls, with white students more often than nonwhite students. In the 2021 year, there were also upticks in rural areas, jumping from 6.2 percent to 9 percent, and high poverty areas, jumping from 2.2 to 4.7 percent. That could be because child care is more affordable in smaller towns, or easier to find with a friend, family or neighbor.

Proponents of redshirting say it gives the child an academic and social advantage being an older kindergartner. However, the benefits generally are short-lived, according to the NWEA report. While children initially saw higher reading and math scores, equating to about 20 percent to 30 percent of a year of learning, those results evened out by third grade, when the children who entered kindergarten early catch up to the redshirters.

There is at least one strong reason not to redshirt, according to the American Economic Association: Children who started kindergarten after 5 years old are more likely to drop out later on.

“People often focus on the short-term gains, but it’s important to keep in mind the perspective of what it means to be the older kid in class, where you turn 18 your junior year of high school,” Kuhfeld says. “It’s just keeping in mind these longer term outcomes and making the best decision for your child.”

Some states have begun pushing toward a forced redshirting of sorts. North Carolina public schools shifted its age cut off in 2007, requiring students to be 5 years old or older on Aug. 31, upping the date from a previous mid-October cut off.

Jade Jenkins, an associate professor of education at University of California, Irvine, found in a report that forced redshirting brought pros and cons. It helped math and reading scores in third through fifth grades, and students with forced delays into kindergarten also had a 4 percent increase of being identified as academically gifted. However, the same report found students had a 6 percent drop in disability identification. According to Jenkins’ research, it benefitted lower-income, white students but brought no benefit to Hispanic students.

“Is the valuation of the academic benefits of delayed entry higher than the costs of the hold-out year and the public costs of increased racial-ethnic achievement gaps? Future research can provide a more precise estimate of this calculation, but we find this unlikely,” Jenkins says in the report.

The latest redshirt debate is one of several parents surrounding kindergarten. Some state legislators are pushing for it to become mandatory across the nation, with others concerned about the dipping levels for kindergarten readiness. It has also become more academic-focused than ever, which in part spurred the latest NWEA study.

“We wanted to get this information out in an accessible way to have both the advantages and disadvantages, and not get caught up in blanket guidance,” Kuhfeld says.

“Especially in high socio-economic status schools and districts, there’s already an arms race by preschool to get situated for college, which is where a lot of this comes from,” she adds. “There’s this attitude of, ‘We have to take every avenue to get ahead’ and I don’t think that is healthy.”

Android 17 is getting a new Contact Picker that changes how apps access your contacts list. Earlier reports hinted at this shift toward tighter privacy, and now Google is rolling it out.

Instead of giving apps full access to your address book, you will be able to choose exactly which contacts they can see. Previously, apps often relied on a broad permission that exposed your entire contact list.

That resulted in sharing data more than necessary without even realizing it. With this update, Android is trying to limit that exposure while keeping things simple for you.

How the new Contact Picker keeps your contacts private

The new Contact Picker in Android 17 offers a secure and searchable interface where you select specific contacts to share. Apps only receive the data you approve, not your full address book. This reduces unnecessary access and gives you more control over your information.

For apps built for Android 17 devices or newer, the system automatically routes existing contact pick requests through the new, more secure Contact Picker interface. That means even apps that have not been fully updated may still benefit from better privacy protections.

Developers are also being pushed to adopt the new picker directly. It supports features like selecting multiple contacts in one go, making it more flexible than older methods. Apps can also request only the exact details they need, like a phone number or email address.

Android 17 changes how apps interact with your contacts

With this update, Android is moving away from blanket permissions and toward more precise, user-driven access. For you, that means fewer apps quietly pulling your entire contact list in the background

This update does not just tighten privacy; it also sets a new standard for how apps should handle personal data going forward.

Recently, Android rolled out a new contact feature with customizable calling cards, which makes it easier to personalize how you appear on calls. Google is also working on a tap-to-share contact feature to quickly exchange contact details between devices, just like Apple’s NameDrop.