Techmeme
July 18, 2025, 7:55 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
President Trump signs the GENIUS Act, and says the first federal bill to regulate stablecoins will “secure the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency”  —  President Donald Trump signed the first federal bill to regulate stablecoins, hailing it as a “giant step …
Washington Post:
Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg:
Joel Kaplan says Meta won't sign EU's AI code of practice, calling its guidelines overreach that will throttle development and deployment of AI models in Europe  —  Meta Platforms Inc. said it won't sign the code of practice for Europe's new set of laws governing artificial intelligence …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple sues YouTuber Jon Prosser and an Apple staffer's friend over iOS 26 leaks, for allegedly accessing the staffer's iPhone; Prosser denies the claim  —  Earlier this year, YouTuber Jon Prosser shared multiple videos showing off what he claimed to be re-created renderings of what was then presumed …
Eleanor Hawkins / Axios:
Source: the CEO and the chief people officer of Astronomer were put on leave after a video of them cuddling on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert went viral  —  Astronomer — the software company that made headlines after a video of its CEO Andy Byron and chief people officer Kristin Cabot canoodling …
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft shuts down the Movies & TV storefront on the Microsoft Store on Windows and Xbox; users will continue to be able to access their past purchases  —  After 12 years, Microsoft is shutting down its storefront that let Windows and Xbox users buy or rent Movies & TV shows natively on the platform.
Sabrina Ortiz / ZDNET:
Adobe updates its Firefly video model and adds a beta Generate Sound Effects tool that can create custom sounds from text prompts and the user's voice  —  Just a year and a half ago, the latest and greatest of Adobe's Firefly generative AI offerings involved producing high-quality images …
Jessica Lyons / The Register:
Google files a lawsuit in the US against 25 unnamed individuals in China, accusing them of operating the BadBox 2.0 botnet, compromising 10M+ devices worldwide  —  Ads giant complains of damage to its reputation and finances ... and crime, too  —  Google has filed a lawsuit …
Osmond Chia / BBC:
Ted Sarandos says The Eternaut featured the first GenAI final footage in a Netflix original and that the VFX costs would have been too high otherwise  —  Netflix says it has used visual effects created by generative artificial intelligence (AI) in one of its original TV shows for the first time.
Eugene Kim / Business Insider:
Reuters:
Source: Blackstone has withdrawn from the consortium led by Susquehanna and General Atlantic seeking to invest in TikTok US, after considering a minority stake  —  Private equity giant Blackstone has withdrawn from a consortium seeking to invest in TikTok's U.S. operations, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Sources: Cursor maker Anysphere acquired Koala, an AI-powered CRM startup that raised a $15M Series A five months ago; Koala plans to shut down in September  —  The startup behind the viral AI coding app Cursor is snapping up top talent from AI enterprise startups in a bid to bolster …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Introducing User Journey in Zoho PageSense  —  Your visitors have a path.  Now you can see what it actually is.  You've built a website journey.  Product page to pricing to signup.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
The Ezra Klein Show: The A.I. Revolt Is Here
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
Apple's Most Ambitious Roadmap Ever? + OpenAI vs. Google vs. Anthropic Revisited
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:55 PM ET, July 18, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Tom Hals / Reuters:
Jay Peters / The Verge: