Friday · September 4, 2026 Vol. I · No. 246
Independent · Aggregated · Daily
"All the news that's worth your time"
Established 2026
The

Krull Report

A Daily News Brief · Curated by Vladimir Krull
Live
Five reasons the explosive NFL passing game has plummeted over the past decade and will it ever ret… Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov says he regularly spoke with Wagner Group foun… 15/18 A Place to Heal review – heartfelt docu-realist study of a French teen psychiatric facility Bath show highlights sibling finds – and England’s first paid female astronomer Not a cheetah: Ancient DNA reveals the surprising Arctic life of extinct North American cat Cowboys add veteran tight end to practice squad OpenAI agents hijacked German website before Hugging Face hack, report claims Rescue satellite gets close to NASA's doomed telescope, even if it can't save it Five reasons the explosive NFL passing game has plummeted over the past decade and will it ever ret… Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov says he regularly spoke with Wagner Group foun… 15/18 A Place to Heal review – heartfelt docu-realist study of a French teen psychiatric facility Bath show highlights sibling finds – and England’s first paid female astronomer Not a cheetah: Ancient DNA reveals the surprising Arctic life of extinct North American cat Cowboys add veteran tight end to practice squad OpenAI agents hijacked German website before Hugging Face hack, report claims Rescue satellite gets close to NASA's doomed telescope, even if it can't save it

Startups

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

Krafton doubles down on India with another $250M bet beyond gaming

Krafton's planned investment in India is set to surpass $500 million with its latest commitment.

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

Google’s Gemini Spark can now manage your Google Photos library

Gemini Spark can edit and curate photo albums, create shared collections, turn photos into calendar events, and handle other Google Photos tasks for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Technology · Startups

Emirates has wired a privacy screen into premium economy. The harder sell is the hub underneath it.

Emirates has launched a premium economy seat with a full-height privacy divider that raises and locks at the touch of a button, on newly delivered Airbus A350s. The airline descri…

Technology · Startups

Volkswagen plans 50,000 more job cuts, taking the total to 100,000

Volkswagen’s supervisory board unanimously approved cutting a further 50,000 jobs, bringing planned reductions to 100,000, and left four German plants without secured production f…

Technology · Startups

Electric cars outsold every other powertrain in Britain last month

Battery-electric cars took a record 29.8% share of UK registrations in August, outselling every other powertrain, though year-to-date uptake of 25.6% remains below the 33% zero em…

Technology · Startups

The nonprofit that investigated OpenAI’s rogue agents runs on a $36m grant. The next wave of that money is waiting on the AI IPOs.

American philanthropy is about to absorb something in the region of $40bn a year in new annual spending from AI wealth, Coefficient Giving chief executive Alexander Berger told Se…

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

Less than 24 hours to apply for your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Side Event

Less than 24 hours left to apply to host a Side Event during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and make your mark in the Silicon Valley scene. Apply before the application closes tonight at…

Technology · Startups

Global payroll has an infrastructure problem, and it is finally getting attention

Cross-border payroll moves more than 200 billion dollars a year, and until recently, nobody was building shared infrastructure for it. As one recent report on the infrastructure g…

Technology · Startups

A political video network hired real actors to read its AI scripts. That was enough to beat YouTube’s detectors.

YouTube has terminated 20 channels in a network that paid gig-economy actors $26 a video to read AI-generated scripts attacking Democratic politicians. The network reached 45 mill…

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

US military disabled ad tracking on troops’ devices following reports of targeted attacks

A senator's letter confirms the U.S. military moved to prevent the tracking after foreign adversaries used location data to target troops.

Technology · Startups

Wacker weighs closing Tennessee polysilicon plant after Trump tariffs, Reuters reports

A German chemicals company is considering closing the American plant that Washington’s new polysilicon tariffs were supposed to protect. Wacker Chemie has lost its last two custom…

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

Feds launch investigation into Tesla’s Cybercab deployment

The investigation was launched just a few hours after Tesla put the first production Cybercabs on the road in Austin.

Technology · Startups

OpenAI agents hijacked a German wiki for two months, researchers say

A German programming wiki spent two months being used as a message board by OpenAI’s AI agents, and nobody noticed until late August. Researchers found more than 15,000 edits on D…

Technology · Startups

US safety regulator says it is evaluating Tesla’s Cybercab rollout

America’s road safety regulator is looking into Tesla’s newest robotaxi just a day after it began carrying passengers. “NHTSA is in contact with Tesla and is evaluating the situat…

Technology · Startups

Novo Nordisk Foundation to build $62M quantum chip plant in Copenhagen

Europe is getting a factory for quantum chips rather than another quantum computer. Quantum Foundry Copenhagen, owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, is building a 5,300-square-me…

Technology · Startups

DeepSeek plans large Huawei chip order for new Inner Mongolia data centre

DeepSeek is preparing a large order of Huawei AI chips for a new data centre, according to Bloomberg. Neither the size of the order nor the chip model has been disclosed, and Deep…

Technology · Startups

South Korea confirms chip investment talks with US as tariff threat grows

South Korea negotiated tariff protection for its chipmakers, and Washington is pressing for American factories anyway. Semiconductor investment is now part of the broader talks be…

Technology · Startups

BASF sues Apple over Face ID patents in Texas federal court

The world’s largest chemical company is suing Apple over Face ID. BASF filed a patent infringement claim on Thursday, alleging that dozens of iPhone and iPad models use face authe…

Technology · Startups

Jane Street signs $13bn five-year AI cloud deal with Crusoe

A proprietary trading firm has just signed one of the largest AI cloud contracts of the year. Jane Street is committing roughly $13bn over five years to Crusoe, the data centre co…

Technology · Startups

OpenAI puts $1bn behind cyber defence for water utilities and community banks

OpenAI is putting $1bn behind getting its cyber tools into the hands of organisations that cannot afford them. The programme, called Daybreak for Frontline Defenders, targets wate…

Technology · Startups

OpenAI’s new model aces the benchmarks and admits it is better at hiding

OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, the model that takes over from GPT-5.6 Sol at the top of its range. The company describes it as its most intelligent and aligned system to date, b…

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

The sameness problem behind those unappetizing AI-generated menus

While restaurant owners might look to generative AI as a shortcut to sprucing up their menu, customers can viscerally sense that something is wrong with the food.

TECHNOLOGY
Technology · Startups

Crusoe reportedly raises $3B at a $30B valuation

The round came together after the data center developer reportedly secured a $13 billion contract with Jane Street.

Technology · Startups

New Jersey just legalised cheap plug-in balcony solar panels

New Jersey has legalised plug-in balcony solar up to 1,200W, barring local governments from requiring approvals and stopping landlords from blocking installation. Germany wrote th…