August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
OpenAI proposes cutting Cursor off its models as a study shows the harness sets benchmark scores
On 28 August OpenAI proposed ending Cursor's access to its models on 12 November 2026 after SpaceX bought Anysphere. A preprint published on arXiv in the same period held the model fixed and reported that changing only the coding-agent harness raised complete solutions on SWE-bench Verified from 43 to 72. The licensing dispute and the measurement finding both point to how much of a coding agent stack lives in the harness, not only the model.
OpenAI proposes cutting Cursor off its models as Copilot spreads agent sessions into Slack
OpenAI said on 28 August it would end Cursor's access to its models and proposed 12 November 2026 as the cut-off after SpaceX bought Anysphere in a 60 billion dollar deal. GitHub's 24 August weekly changelog opened shared Copilot agent sessions in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Cursor co-founder Michael Truell said OpenAI models make up about 5 per cent of Cursor traffic as the teams talk.
Oral anticoagulants cut events in the atrial fibrillation group guidelines leave undecided
SINGLE-AF in South Korea compared a direct oral anticoagulant with no anticoagulation among 1,803 people with atrial fibrillation and a CHA2DS2-VASc score of 1 in men or 2 in women. After 24 months the combined rate of stroke, systemic embolism, major bleeding and cardiovascular death was 0.5 per cent against 1.5 per cent, and major bleeding did not rise. Healio reports this as the first direct test of a class IIa guideline recommendation that rests on observational studies.
Pistorius and Özdemir press a ban case as Berlin rejects a pre-election ransom demand
Defence Minister Pistorius and Baden-Württemberg premier Özdemir called for a Federal Constitutional Court ban petition against the AfD's Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg branches as soon as possible, days before the Saxony-Anhalt state election. Interior Minister Dobrindt rejected the call. Berlin Mayor Wegner said attackers who compromised city systems had made a ransom demand and that Berlin would not give in, one month before the city election.
POET-II shortened endocarditis antibiotics from 41 days to 26
The European Society of Cardiology and News-Medical report that in 508 people with left-sided infective endocarditis, response-tailored therapy cut the median antibiotic course from 41 to 26 days. The six-month composite safety outcome was 8.2 per cent in the shortened arm against 10.7 per cent on standard therapy. Relapse was more common with the shorter course; most were managed by restarting antibiotics. The results were presented at ESC Congress 2026 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
REACT imaging finds silent artery disease in 57.1 per cent of symptom-free adults
The European Society of Cardiology and EMJ Reviews scanned 16,808 symptom-free adults aged 18-70 from Denmark and Spain with multimodal imaging; silent atherosclerosis was found in 57.1 per cent of those scanned. The finding was present in about 1 in 13 adults aged 18-29 and 9 in 10 aged 60-70. The SCORE2 risk tool classified only a small minority of those with silent disease as high risk. The results were presented at ESC Congress 2026.
Reasoning tokens do not pay off on every task as Copilot makes effort adjustable
A preprint published on arXiv on 29 August proposes the Token Economy Score to measure returns on reasoning tokens; step-by-step tasks scored more efficiently than knowledge-recall sets. With GitHub's August update, Copilot in Visual Studio lets developers set thinking effort to low, medium or high. Research questions efficiency while the product exposes a direct effort dial.
Russia restricts diesel exports as gasoline output falls to 70 per cent of demand
Russia has extended its ban on diesel exports by producers until the end of September to stabilise the domestic market, as recent drone strikes leave domestic gasoline production covering only about 70 per cent of summer demand. Regional authorities have reintroduced sales limits at local filling stations.
RYAM shuts its Témiscaming plant and 425 workers carry the tariff bill
RYAM, which runs the Témiscaming industrial complex in Québec, said it will stop production there on 15 September for an indefinite period. Newsweek reported the decision affects 425 unionised workers, while Northern Ontario Business put the unionised workforce at about 400. Both reports tied the closure to US tariffs and unsustainable operating conditions, and Unifor and FONOM warned of cross-border economic fallout in northeastern Ontario.
SARA builds an action gate as a game archive goes offline after its language-model ban
A preprint published on arXiv on 29 August proposes SARA, which separates the moment a tool's output starts naming an action; attack success stayed no higher than 0.63 percent across four main settings. The Cutting Room Floor, a game archive founded in 2002, went offline after a denial-of-service attack it ties to a user who evaded its language-model block. One line builds preventive authorisation; the other shows reactive site defence after an access ban.