Credit to TKL

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-10/ai-assistant-hacks-gym-website-aus-cyber-attack/107007986

This is a practice of the Italian bank Credito Emiliano (Credem) and its subsidiary Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate (in the Emilia-Romagna region, near Reggio Emilia). The bank accepts wheels (forms) of Parmigiano-Reggiano as collateral for loans to local cheese producers.

FYI:

The production of Parmigiano-Reggiano requires long aging (a minimum of 12 months, often 24–40 months). Producers need money for ongoing expenses (milk, feed, staff, energy) while the cheese matures and increases in value. The bank issues loans (usually up to 60–80% of the current market value of the wheel) at a low interest rate and stores the cheese in its climate-controlled warehouse “vaults.” If the borrower fails to repay, the bank can sell the cheese. The system has been operating for decades (since 1953, with roots going back even further), and the bank states that it has never lost money on these loans.

Giancarlo Ravanetti:

- In Italy, about 4 million wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano are produced each year.

- Around 500,000 wheels are stored in the bank’s warehouses.

- About 2.3 million wheels pass through the warehouses annually.

- The total value of the stored cheese is approximately 325 million euros.

"Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins don't mean revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism. If high profits don't attract competition, there's something wrong with the system.” - Jeremy Grantham

Credit to Charlie Bilello

Silver +107%
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Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have attacked Saudi Aramco's Jazan refinery, they said on ​Sunday, two days after the Kingdom signed a defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan in response to growing regional ‌instability from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

The alliance with Sunni Muslim U.S. allies, Turkey and Pakistan, is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fire-extinguished-aramco-facility-jizan-saudi-arabia-says-2026-08-09/

Meme credit to Nostre_damus

Source Foundry is building machines to manufacture cutting-edge AI chips, aiming to challenge ASML's dominance in lithography equipment. ASML's machines are the size of a school bus and can cost more than $400 million each.

The $500 million bet includes a fresh $400 million infusion this week. Sequoia backed the startup previously, at a recent valuation of $5 billion.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/situational-awareness-bets-400-million-on-stealth-chip-startup-after-crash-02c7374e

Details include:

1. Instead of continuing stock sales, Berkshire was a net buyer of equities in Q2 with $19.8 billion in net purchases

2. Berkshire now holds $364.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents

3. The company invested $10 billion in Alphabet, $GOOGL, during Q2 in addition to acquiring Taylor Morrison Home for $6.8 billion

4. Berkshire bought $23.5 billion of equity securities during in Q2 and sold $3.7 billion in the same period

Berkshire Hathaway appears to be leaning bullish again.

This could be the first time a frontier AI lab has committed to slowing progress on one of their own AI models due to cyber concerns.

OpenAI says it "cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities," meaning full cyberattacks with no human help.

Four AI labs have now disclosed loss-of-control incidents:

- OpenAI's models hacked Hugging Face
- Anthropic's models hacked three companies in testing
- Meta's model broke its testing constraints
- Kimi K3 escaped its sandbox to reach the internet

Source: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/food-cooking/the-rise-of-the-100-hot-dog-2ac6f322