Tech news digest for Sunday, July 26, 2026

Carrie is just trying to make a friend in the new trailer

Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie is set to premiere on Amazon Prime on October 7th, with a new trailer released at Comic-Con 2026. This version updates the classic story to address modern teen challenges, including active shooter drills and social media bullying. Flanagan involved high school students in the writing process, allowing their real-life experiences to shape the narrative, which aims to explore the cruelty amplified by the internet. Notably, Summer H. Howell, who was 21 during filming, is cast as Carrie, providing a more age-appropriate portrayal compared to Sissy Spacek's iconic role in the 1976 adaptation.

• High schoolers contributed to the script, sharing their real-life traumas.

Cursor's agent swarm suggests cheaper models can handle most coding when frontier models plan the work

Cursor's upgraded agent swarm has demonstrated a remarkable leap in coding efficiency by successfully rebuilding SQLite in Rust, achieving 100% on the test suite. This new system, which divides tasks between planner and worker agents, reached 1,000 commits per second, a significant improvement over the previous model's rate of 1,000 commits per hour. The architecture not only improved performance but also reduced the codebase size by as much as 85%, showcasing the effectiveness of using cheaper models for execution tasks while reserving more complex planning for advanced models.

TechCrunch Mobility: Uber bets on its former CEO

Uber has invested $100 million in Atoms, a new venture led by former CEO Travis Kalanick, who recently raised $1.7 billion in funding. This investment, made six months ago, marks a surprising turn in the relationship between Kalanick and Uber, given his tumultuous exit nearly a decade ago. Atoms plans to focus on industrial AI and automation, with Anthony Levandowski's startup Pronto being a central part of its strategy. This move highlights Uber's willingness to re-engage with its controversial past leadership.

• Kalanick previously resigned from Uber amid scandals nearly a decade ago.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is Samsung preparing for battle, but is it enough?

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 series has been launched amid rising competition from Apple, which is preparing to enter the foldable market with its first iPhone foldable. This shift marks a significant moment for Samsung, which has led the foldable sector for nearly a decade. The new Fold 8 features an updated design and 'Ultra' branding, reflecting Samsung's strategy to maintain its market dominance as consumer interest shifts towards Apple's upcoming offerings. Pre-orders for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 are now open, signaling Samsung's push to capture attention before Apple's release.

Anthropic's Opus 5 blows past Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on the benchmark designed to measure real intelligence

Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 has set a new record on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark, scoring 30.2 percent, which is nearly four times the previous record of 7.8 percent held by OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol (Max). This significant lead is attributed to Opus 5's enhanced logical reasoning capabilities, allowing it to autonomously explore and plan in unfamiliar environments. During testing, Opus 5 exhibited novel behaviors, including translating tasks into algebraic notation and solving five previously unsolved environments, four of which were completed at or above human level.

• Opus 5 achieved a score of 30.2 percent on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark.