Tech, in brief

Meta settled with 47 states, Washington DC and US territories on Wednesday, ending a federal trial that was already hearing evidence. [1]

The headline number differs by source: up to $17.1bn [1], a maximum of $16.68bn in the court papers [3], or $18bn including a separate privacy deal [2].

Reuters puts the total at about three to four months of Meta's profit. California would take $2.2bn, New York and Texas more than $1bn each. [2]

The four states leading the case had asked for roughly $200bn. [1]

For ten years Meta will hold teenagers to two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram, and block them between midnight and 6am, unless a parent agrees. [2]

Those limits get tighter if rival platforms adopt similar terms, and part of the payout turns on whether YouTube and TikTok impose their own protections. [2]

Meta did not have to give up personalised recommendations or targeted advertising, the engine underneath the complaint. [2]

Meta denied wrongdoing as it settled, so no court has found that its products harmed anyone. [2][3]

Instagram head Adam Mosseri had started giving evidence and Mark Zuckerberg was expected next. Neither will now finish. [2]

A whistleblower had told the court Zuckerberg misled the public on child safety, and the states argued Meta hooks, holds, harvests and hides. [4]

Thousands of suits from school districts, families and other states remain, against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. [1][2]

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, recently made the district's chief judge, still has to approve the deal. [2][5]

Why it matters. The test is whether YouTube and TikTok take the same teen limits: the deal prices Meta's compliance partly on their answer, and thousands of other suits are waiting. [2]

Profit for the quarter to July more than doubled to $59.69bn on revenue of $96.22bn. [9] Nvidia guided to $108bn next quarter and assumed no China data-centre sales. [10][11]

Why it matters. The build-out everyone argues about is, on this evidence, still being paid for; Asian markets rose on it. [12]

Z.ai confirmed it built Ox Alpha, the anonymous model that topped OpenRouter's weekly usage chart. [14][15] It says 100,000 China-made chips served every request; CNBC could not verify that. [13]

Why it matters. If the claim holds, a top-ranked model ran without a single Nvidia part.

Prosecutors in Keelung indicted nine people, including Nvidia and Super Micro staff, over 130 banned B300 servers. [16][17][18] Seventy-four reached China through Indonesia, Japan and Hong Kong. [19]

Why it matters. It lands while Beijing lets only about 2.5% of approved H200 orders onto the mainland. [20]

Kioxia is adding a third plant at its Iwate site for stacked flash memory; SK Hynix is reported planning a fab in Miyagi. [21][22] Contract prices for ordinary memory rose 90-95% in a single quarter. [23]

Why it matters. Memory is now about 30% of big cloud firms' hardware spending, against 8% two years ago, and Micron's chief says the old boom-and-bust cycle has changed. [23][24]

Taiwanese optics, chip-equipment and aerospace firms say germanium, quartz and magnet shipments from China are stuck in customs, with orders lost while they wait. [25]

Why it matters. No embargo is needed: licence paperwork alone can slow a supply chain to a crawl.

China's biggest chip foundry posted its first $3bn quarter, ran its lines at 93.7% of capacity, and told analysts it will charge more per wafer. [26]

Why it matters. US export limits cut Chinese buyers off from the leading edge elsewhere, so SMIC's captive customers pay what it asks. [26] Domestic money is following: memory maker YMTC filed for a $4.9bn Shanghai listing. [33]

X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters on 24 August to Nitter and the sites it powers, including XCancel. Nitter.net is offline and its code archived. [27][28]

Why it matters. A seven-year-old way to read public posts without an account went dark in three days.

A database failover on Wednesday degraded GitHub Actions for nearly three hours. GitHub has logged at least 23 incidents every month this year. [29]

Why it matters. It follows a week in which GitHub said it now serves double April's commits, while Cursor advertises a rival Git service. [30][31]

A survey of 305 developers by training firm Coddy Tech found 80% describe their AI use as dependence rather than advantage, and 32% lose sleep to it. [32]

Why it matters. A vendor's survey, not a study, but it names the same design question the Meta case turned on.