Techmeme
October 17, 2025, 10:55 AM

Top News

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Anthropic's Claude Skills, which are conceptually extremely simple, may become a bigger deal than MCP, whose high token usage is its most significant limitation  —  Anthropic this morning introduced Claude Skills, a new pattern for making new abilities available to their models:
Hayden Field / The Verge:
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Apple and Formula One announce a five-year US media rights deal for all races starting in 2026; sources: Apple is paying $140M/year, up from ESPN's ~$85M/year  —  Apple and Formula 1 announced a five-year media rights deal Friday that will bring every F1 race to Apple TV beginning in 2026.
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Wikimedia says Wikipedia is seeing a significant decline in human traffic, as more people access the site's information via AI chatbots without clicking through  —  The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia, says that it's seeing a significant decline …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says it paused Sora's ability to generate videos resembling MLK Jr. at the request of his estate, after some users created “disrespectful depictions”  —  OpenAI announced Thursday it paused the ability for users to generate videos resembling the late civil rights activist …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Hacker group Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters posts the alleged names, phone numbers, and addresses of hundreds of US DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials on Telegram  —  A group of hackers from the Com, a loose-knit community behind some of the most significant data breaches in recent years …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Nintendo has asked its manufacturing partners to produce up to 25M Switch 2 units by the end of March 2026, surpassing analysts' estimates of 17.6M  —  Nintendo Co. has asked suppliers to produce as many as 25 million units of the Switch 2 by the end of March 2026 …
Kosta Andreadis / TweakTown:
Steam hit a record 41.6M+ concurrent users on October 12, up from 37M+ users in August 2024, after the releases of Battlefield 6 and Hollow Knight: Silksong  —  41,666,455 million PC gamers were online and on Steam on October 12, 2025, setting a new CCU (concurrent user) record for the platform.
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Docs: Salesforce pitched ICE on using its AI tech to help the agency nearly triple its workforce by hiring 10K new officers, to improve investigations, and more  —  The San Francisco-based firm has told ICE that it could use A.I. to help the agency nearly triple its staff.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Amazon's Ring partners with Flock to let law enforcement agencies request footage from Ring doorbell users for “evidence collection and investigative work”  —  Amazon's surveillance camera maker Ring announced a partnership on Thursday with Flock, a maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras …
Robert Hart / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Foreign Affairs:
A look at the challenges facing Europe's chip industry, as the EU will likely fall short of its targeted 20% share of global chip manufacturing by 2030  —  The Continent Needs More Cooperation With America—Not Less  —  European leaders have grand ambitions to reduce the continent's reliance on sensitive technologies from abroad.
Jeremy Stern / Colossus:
A profile of Joshua Kushner, including Thrive Capital's investments in GitHub and Stripe and its role in reinstating Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO in November 2023  —  Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital, and the American dream  —  The road to Rick Rubin's house was long and winding for Joshua Kushner …
Reuters:
Sources: Micron plans to stop selling server chips to data centers in China after a 2023 ban, but will continue selling chips to auto and smartphone sectors  —  - China in 2023 banned use of Micron products in critical infrastructure  — Micron to continue to sell chips to auto, mobile phone sectors, source says
Jennifer Hiller / Wall Street Journal:
AI data centers are building on-site power plants to bypass the overloaded grid and meet soaring electricity demand amid permitting and supply challenges  —  Bypassing the grid, at least temporarily, tech companies are creating an energy Wild West; ‘grab yourself a couple of turbines’

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Featured Podcasts

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Cheeky Pint:
Ben Thompson from Stratechery on AI ads, the end of SaaS, and the future of media
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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More News

William Wan / Washington Post:
More: IJRX: @washingtonpost, @chrisd9r, and @kyoshinoLinkedIn: Ashley Wilson
Bluesky: @damonberes.com and @abbeyarlettoThreads: @karaswisherForums: r/redscarepod
David Ingram / NBC News:

Earlier Picks

Davis Janowski / WealthManagement.com:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter: