DTNS July 2026 in Review

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1:56Morning Brew Daily is the go-to business news podcast for millions of people. It's a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun, and easy way to start your day. Whether it's the latest in tech, markets, or the trends shaping the economy, the show breaks it all down in a way that's clear, engaging, and actually enjoyable to listen to. Hosts Neil Freiman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends while giving you the context you need to feel smarter and more confident throughout your day. New episodes drop every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

2:36This is the Daily Tech News month in review for July 2026. We're going to take a look back at some of the big stories of the month and what they were. We're going to try and help each other understand all about it again. This month, we've got a rogue AI agent, new foldables from Samsung, and Sony-ending physical game disc manufacturer. That's right. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Jen Cutter. Let's look back on some of the biggest stories of July 2026, the month that was July 2026. so obviously uh tom is not here i think he's he comes back at the beginning of the month right or the beginning of next week and everything so he was here for a lot of days be back real soon and i'm very jealous uh i would love if he could like bring me back souvenirs and stuff but uh shippity canada does not work so i will just have to be jealous of his trip and watch his pictures on instagram for anyone who wants to check that out yes indeed yeah so he's having a great time uh it's always fun uh getting the chance to fill in for him i'm trying to think if i've ever done like a month in review.

3:41So this is brand new for both of us, but we have worked together before. So we are ready to go here. We got this. And apparently Tom likes to start by feeding into an LLM to say, hey, what do you think are the biggest stories of the month? And it looks like it's a bit of a rotation in this month. What do you know? Mr. Claude, Mr. or Mrs. or they Claude, said the prompt was, I'm making the rundown for Daily Tech News shows monthly wrap up of the biggest shows of the month. We usually pick three big stories and then a bonus fourth for patrons. What story should we pick? I look at that prompt. I'm like, oh man, I know how I'd expand on that and make it better.

4:24But you know, sometimes short and succinct actually works with these things. What did it say? It said the strongest big three contenders ai models breaking out of their sandbox and hacking real infrastructure hey nailed it yeah right they got one they don't always get one but this time they got one we're in alignment there the ai infrastructure spending bubble question that feels like really wide and ongoing and not very specific every month every month it's like hey hey do you want to cover this yep yep and then the chinese open weight model surge that is kimmy k3 that is deep seek v4 and other things and actually that's we're in alignment there too but only if you're a patron will you get that one so patrons look for that at the end of this episode uh did throw in some honorable mentions um EU's one uh billion dollar DMA fine forcing Google to open Android to rival AI agents Apple's WWDC and uh payments changes yeah WWDC that we covered that this month for sure yeah yeah so that that happened um and let's see here patron bonus pick let's what is this go weird and specific let's see a recycler in bellevue found a mysterious gold-plated chip in his garage this is coming from anthropic by the way claude uh in his garage is trying to figure out who built it alongside growing research into behavioral patterns emerging in ai systems that weren't explicitly engineered.

5:55This is a story I have not heard of. I don't know that it defines anything, but it's a story nonetheless. The first half going through, I'm like, oh man, this is the biggest hit rate any of them have ever had since we started a month interview. And then it just went off the rails. And then I'm just completely confused. I'm like, where did you come? Is that even a real story? It probably is, but we're not going to talk about that. Did not mention Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 4 being teased. Garmin Circa Smartband. I know I remember talking about that with Wynn on one of the episodes. Comcast splitting into, let's see here, NBC Universal and the internet stuff.

6:41So it's the internet stuff in NBC Universal. uh india pausing whatsapp username rollout okay apple's lawsuit threatening to disrupt open ai's bid to rival the iphone doordash delivery drones actually just talked about that a couple of days ago uh with sarah lane uh global smartphone shipments slumping 13 years lowest level uh for q2 uh which i mean makes sense everyone has a phone at this point everyone has a phone and memory you know the memory crisis or whatever you want to call it ramageddon is impacting people's you know desire to upgrade i guess metaglass is being banned at comic-con which actually also now defcon apparently defcon is also saying no not here too yeah and i'm sure they had a much meaner message for it so i gotta go look that up and be amused because go defcon it's it seems like that's a growing thing um open ai merging chat gpt atlas and codex into its own like super app.

7:38So yeah, those are a couple that were on consideration. They did not get picked. Should we should we jump into what did get picked? I think we're ready to go. All right. Well, let's start with what was certainly the buzziest story of the month. And boy, I feel like we've talked about it ad nauseum, a rogue open AI agent hacking into hugging face and also modal. You have to throw that in there because we know that that exists but of course everybody's like really clued into the hugging face side of this modal like was revealed later uh possibly other networks which we don't have any information about but um yeah this is this is like the overall kind of thread of ai agent uh being challenged to do certain things inside of an evaluation environment let's say that is supposedly closed off from the internet that is given information to say, Hey, these are the things that you're allowed to do.

8:36These are the things that you're not allowed to do. And then what do you know, the agent gets crafty. And in this case, it found like a, a, a zero day exploit and was able to manipulate that and then break out of the sandbox, which always sounds so violent, broke out of the sandbox and, uh, do all these things on other people's servers, essentially. Um, yeah. And, and, you know it's quickly becoming a thing yeah well the reason this is definitely the top story of the month is it took up almost all of the oxygen in the month is like even though it's not like it broke on july 1st but this was the story and as much as we know about it doesn't it feel like there's something missing there's something that that hasn't come out yet that we feel like we're going to hear about later but because like this has been the most analyzed thing that has happened And maybe in 2026 so far, I know we're only halfway through, so that will probably change.

9:31But it's a lot of information and there still feels like a gap. And I have nothing to back up that assertion. It's just a gut feeling. I mean, there's still a couple of companies that we don't know, you know, that were involved in this. We know that there were a couple of unnamed companies. We don't know what they are. They aren't talking. That's not part of the conversation. So, yeah, I'm sure that there is information. And I'm sure that there's a shred, there's a shroud of secrecy around parts of this too, because there's also kind of like political and governmental machinery around like, oh, well, maybe what we need to do is have an AI kill switch act, you know, to, you know, so there's people who have their own motivations on using a scenario like this to maybe in one way, make everybody safer, right?

10:19That might be their goal. But in another way, gain more control. Because at the end of the day, it really comes down to control. How do we control? And that's going to come up later when we talk to patrons about the open weights model story as well. But that's definitely at play here, right? Yeah. And the words kill switch, like reflexively, like, oh, yeah, no, no, no. We definitely got to keep an eye on this. We got to be able to stop it faster than humans can. And like, yeah, Hugging Face didn't notice what was going on, but it still took time and effort to address it. But boy, kill switches also bring up reflexive emotions because Canada was negotiating for fighter jets and stuff.

10:58And one of the big parts of that was like, oh, do the Americans have a kill switch on those planes? Do we want to bring that into the country? But with AI, that's less of a physical thing, but still an important thing if this is what's being used to hack. I don't want to say everything at this point, but also everything in the future. And there's infrastructure issues. And there's all kinds of very bad doomsday things where you would want to, oh, crap, off button. Yeah. Or a kill switch, which just has a scary kind of like energy to it. A kill switch heightens the emotional intensity of anything that it's attached to.

11:33Yeah. I'm worried that this is going to be like a top story for next month, too, as there's a follow to this. And what else happened this month? with this. Yeah, well, I mean, just right at the time of this recording, the news today has been about how Anthropic announced its own scenario that is similar but different, right? Its agents broke out of a sandbox, let's say, but it was less of a story of its agents finding a vulnerability and exploiting it to get out. And it was more a scenario of the humans who set up the sandbox forgot to, you know, turn off access to the internet as a simplification.

12:12And so the agent was like, oh, the door's open. I think I'll walk out of it. And then it walked out of the room with a top hat on. In fairness, anyone would do that, even a child. Yeah, right. Look, open door. Let's go explore. What's up there? I don't leave my front door open when my dogs are in the living room, you know, and just expect them to stay in. They're going to run out. My dogs are little agents, you know. Yeah. And because these are, again, as of recording, unnamed companies. This story is coming back in August. Heck yes. We'll see if it's in our top three. Yeah, it might just be. That is only our first topic.

12:47So you're going to have to hang on because there's more. We'll be back in a second. This episode is sponsored by Morning Brew Daily. If you're anything like me, you want to stay informed about what's happening in business and finance, but you also don't have an hour every morning to sift through headlines. Morning Brew Daily is the go-to business news podcast for millions of people. It's a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun, and easy way to start your day. Whether it's the latest in tech, markets, or the trends shaping the economy, the show breaks it all down in a way that's clear, engaging, and actually enjoyable to listen to.

13:23Hosts Neil Freiman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends while giving you the context you need to feel smarter and more confident throughout your day. New episodes drop every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

14:01Great trip. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Book direct and save at bestwestern.com. Hey guys, it's Drew Afualo from the comment section. Listen, it's time to stop settling for hair products that just don't work. With all the prestige brands at Sephora, upgrading your routine is easy. If your hair needs repair, they've got the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. If you're trying to level up your wash day, the Kerastase Elixir All-Time Hair Oil leaves your hair looking ridiculously shiny without feeling heavy. And if you're into that glossy, healthy hair vibe, the Gisu Honey-Infused Hair Oil is a must-have.

14:41Also, Sephora makes it super convenient with free shipping and same-day delivery. Shop hair at Sephora and give your hair the upgrade it's been waiting for. You know that feeling. Too many updates, too many meetings, too many things falling through the cracks. Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up for people and agents to work side by side and deliver more together. Drafting the brief, flagging risks, running a competitive scan. Your agent can do it all. And the best part, anyone can build one. Even you. Try it. Create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com.

15:18There are moments that reveal who we are and who we're meant to become. For those born to lead, such moments call for a vehicle of equal distinction. Dynamic by design, uncompromising in execution, the Range Rover Sport was engineered for those rare individuals who demand the world and possess the conviction to claim it. When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it. The Range Rover Sport. Exclusive offers available now. Explore further at RangeRover.com. all right our next topic is the you know definitely shifting gears product announcement of the month you might think oh was that wwdc and a bit no no we're going to talk about samsung because samsung did their announcement about their foldables the foldate the foldate uh ultra the z fold or sorry the z flip a you know a bunch of new devices they had their unpacked event which Samsung has like a couple of unpacked events throughout the year.

16:21They have one that's really focused on their S series, regular phones, let's say, and their ultra phones or whatever. And then they've got another one that's, you know, kind of their more foldable era devices. And I don't know, things are a little different this time around, specifically the, the, the Z fold eight, no longer a tall, a tall drink of water, but like a squatty fold is what I've been calling it. Well, squatty fold. Yeah. and it sounds like people are like it. Don't you love covering hardware releases as a nice break between all the A stuff? Yes, I do. We got physical things that we get to hold, we get to play with, we get to test, we get to break, complimentary.

17:05It reminds me of a simpler time in tech news coverage where most of the conversation was about, oh, this cool new thing. Oh, this cool new feature. over. Now things are so heavily political. It's like, oh, give me the technology that does the cool thing. Like the flex titanium display that apparently, which Samsung announced like a full week ahead of Unpacked, but apparently, and I say that because I have not experienced it myself, but it's a new type of titanium alloy film. That means it's a stiffer film instead of the like squishier kind of polymer film that they used to use on previous of their foldables.

17:44And so it It means better durability. But more than that, people can stop complaining about the crease because apparently the crease is mostly gone. Do you think the crease was that important to begin with? What do you think? Yes, it always freaked me out because I'm always scared. Like every time I saw one, I'm like, oh, God, it's about to break. Yeah. Because, yeah, like I love the idea of foldables. I've never been convinced to invest in one. My brother was looking at them. And then when he held one, he's like, this looks terrifying. I'm not going to invest in this just in case. so but with this stuff like maybe he will because like me he's with apple right now but he doesn't use an apple watch and he's looking at the the samsung watches so he's like okay well maybe i'll just like fully switch ecosystems and this stuff was uh was interesting to him and it is interesting to me even as an apple watch and iphone person in the uh i'm of course going to make a gaming reference uh sega does what nintendo don't so i always love when one company comes up with a new thing and then the next company has to chase it it's like well ours is a million times better oh yeah well ours is a million and one times better yeah because it drives innovation but also the companies are kind of hedging too it's like okay we know we need to push forward we know ramageddon is theoretically not forever uh but also we need to have something that ordinary people can buy because with a smartphone sales drop like everyone has a phone and everyone is hanging on to it.

19:06I know people with older than iPhone 11s who are like, okay, I can't update anything anymore, but I'm keeping this phone because it's a phone. I can text. I can still use browsers. So rocking it as long as possible. I don't have to deal with a potential price increase, even though Apple didn't raise the price of the iPhones, but you better believe they're probably going to do it on the next one. Same with, you know, Samsung here anyways, did raise the price on most of these foldables so i mean if you're getting their top tier uh z fold 8 you're paying what is it uh oh sorry z fold 8 ultra all the way up to about 2700 you know an increase of around 200 on the top top end of their foldable that's uh that's that's a lot that's a lot but i feel like even in the beginning that was not aimed at uh people who were not really invested in the ecosystem invested in cutting edge and wanting the latest and greatest.

20:01And yeah, I feel bad calling them whales. But you know, it's the people who are always on that that edge. And I don't think the 200 bucks is going to stop any of them. Yeah, that's true. Samsung also usually offers a lot of really great trade in value. So there's that you can get that cost down. They're pretty good at that. So and I think the other story that I think is worth worth telling here, from my own perspective is the battery technology in these devices. Silicon carbon is something we've been circling for the past three to four years in a lot of other less than mainstream, at least here in the US, manufacturer devices.

20:37And now this year, we have Motorola doing silicon carbon. Now you've got Samsung, which I believe those two moves together, but especially the Samsung doing it in the US, mainstreams that battery technology in the US. And so I hope that we see it more because it makes a huge impact in the longevity throughout a given day of what your battery charge actually lasts. So I think that's a big deal. Okay, well, that's two of the three or four if you're a patron. So hang tight. We're going to get back to the third coming up here in a moment. This episode is sponsored by Morning Brew Daily. If you're anything like me, you want to stay informed about what's happening in business and finance, but you also don't have an hour every morning to sift through headlines.

21:27Morning Brew Daily is the go-to business news podcast for millions of people. It's a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun, and easy way to start your day. Whether it's the latest in tech, markets, or the trends shaping the economy, the show breaks it all down in a way that's clear, engaging, and actually enjoyable to listen to. Hosts Neil Freiman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends while giving you the context you need to feel smarter and more confident throughout your day. New episodes drop every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

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22:39Visit OLLI.com and stock up on back-to-school must-haves today. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. There is always, always that one story that feels like it's more than a month old, but right at the beginning of the month, just to get it in just for me, Sony made an announcement, and the announcement was not positive. the announcement was that it would stop making physical discs for games in 2028. So not 2027, because people have been misreading that.

23:172028. And the reaction was pretty loud. Like, I know you said you're not a gamer, but I bet you heard about this too. Oh, well, absolutely. And when I ever say I'm not a gamer, like, let me just be clear. Well, not a hardcore gamer. Let me be more technical. Like, totally. Like, I'm not a hardcore gamer these days, but boy, have I been in my life. And so I see the value. Like, when I see this story, it's hard for me because I have mentioned in previous shows, I'm a very nostalgic person. And it's like, I love going back to back in the day when I played that game or when I was into that show or whatever.

23:54Like, I just, I love nostalgia. And so the idea of kind of capping the nostalgia potential on something that is only digital just makes me really nervous. It's like, well, 50 years down the line, we're looking at like the history arc of video games history. Is it going to be really hard to like capture this era of history because there is no physicality to it anymore? It relies on a server that doesn't exist anymore. You know, that makes me really nervous. Yeah. We talked about this a lot on Friday's show, and since then, I have thought of some more things that I'm about to share. Wow. Now, I never mentioned the obvious.

24:39Piracy's out there. Emulators are out there. People do have at least the base models of games, like whether or not it has all of the additions right now, but you know people are working it. But in terms of legal emulation, we do have some options. And I do mean in a physical sense. When Nintendo kind of started out with, they launched the NES and SNES Mini, which has everything in the cart. You hook it up directly to your TV and you play and you're good to go. And that's all on there. And no internet kill switch. Does it have the whole library? Not the whole library. It has a good selection of games.

25:17And one of the big selling points for the SNES one was like, oh, and we'll finally give you Star Fox 2, which didn't come out here. Right, right. So that was a big deal. But then Sony did it. Sony had the mini PlayStation. So that was a thing that you could buy and run. And it has those things. Now, they've not done any generation since, but the option exists. They can one day come back and resell you all the games you bought in a new form. But I guess that's my question. But it's physical. And also those things are all infinitely hackable. So people do have whole collections of games. Well, that's, yes.

25:54If you know what to do with those things. Because it's not internet connected. So it's your device start to finish. Yeah, you can insert whatever game ROMs, I suppose, you find online or have legally hanging around or whatever. I just like when I look at those things, yes, they're physical. Like there is a possibility there. but video game history is filled with games that wouldn't be included on those consoles but yet still mean a lot to a particular person or player you know and so you have a triple a you have your your big name indies and then you have your terrible games that are still funny so those get a lot of attention but all of that middleware stuff uh that tends to disappear in history and is that a thing that it will only be preserved in a slightly non-legal form?

26:44Right. So then I guess the question where my mind goes with that is, so then does that mean that video games as an art form is less worthy of holding onto and preserving the way art that you hang up on a wall is or the way music is? You know what I mean? I do see video games as art as art i see it as an art form but yet it kind of feels like it's disposable in a certain sense oh my goodness our video games art has been going on since i was a child i remember roger ebert kicking off oh yeah oh for sure uh back in the day but also people adjust people forget what was the last time you bought a physical pc game even a physical pc program Well, okay, I say that, but I have DaVinci Resolve with the USB stick, so I can't use it without the stick, but it lets me move between devices earlier.

27:36So I was thinking back, and one of my first game journalism jobs was testing the Half-Life 2 release on Steam. So I had the disc version, which they did sell, and then I had the Steam preloaded version, which, of course, even for the disc version, you had to authenticate on Steam. So you had everyone on Earth for one of the biggest game releases at the time for Half-Life 2 hitting this server at the same time. And I mean, talk about a stress test. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. But I think because I was looking at like PC game boxes are gorgeous. And I'm sad that that art form is literally lost because you would have different shapes of boxes, different things.

28:14And even if you buy collector's editions these days where you get like cool statues, cool maps, you get the physical things you can touch. It comes with a game code. It very rarely comes with a disc. That's a special exception. It's true. But nobody thinks about it. You buy from Steam. You buy from Epic. You buy from GOG. So maybe it is. Maybe it's just the way that it goes. Because I hadn't really thought about it in that term, right? When is the last time that I bought physical software for my machine, for my Mac? It's also harder for those companies to then... They can remove those games from stores, but you still have the game.

28:49You can still run it. It's only like if you're playing something online and that server goes off and then you have to figure somebody else is going to make that work. Like the same way you can play some like older like RTS games like Rise of Nations is a third party free thing that you can use to still play those games because boy, our strategy gamer is very attached to certain games. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. But again, you don't think about it, but it can't be taken away because Sony had that whole controversy as well as like, hey, those movies you bought, those were licenses and we're taking them out of the library.

29:19You don't actually own them. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you think were the biggest news stories of the month? Did we miss one that you thought we should have mentioned and didn't even think about? Do you have some insight into a story? Please share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Yes. Thanks to you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Patrons, stick around. Don't go anywhere. We have one more story for you about the Kimmy model and the backlash against open weights and the backlash against the backlash.

29:58That's coming up for patrons.

30:03The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

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31:45Thank you.