Techmeme
October 17, 2025, 8:45 AM

Top News

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Anthropic's Skills for Claude, which are conceptually very 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:
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 alleged names, phone numbers, and addresses of hundreds of DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials in a mass doxxing event  —  A group of hackers from the Com, a loose-knit community behind some of the most significant data breaches in recent years …
Kosta Andreadis / TweakTown:
Steam hit a new record with over 41.6M concurrent users on October 12, a surge largely sparked by the release of Battlefield 6  —  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.  —  VIEW GALLERY - 2
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Internal documents: Salesforce pitched ICE on using its AI tech to nearly triple the agency's staff by hiring 10K new officers, 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 that work with Flock request footage from Ring doorbell users  —  Amazon's surveillance camera maker Ring announced a partnership on Thursday with Flock, a maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras that share footage with law enforcement.
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 …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Email: Ron Conway, a close friend of Marc Benioff for 25+ years, stepped down from the Salesforce Foundation board, citing Benioff's comments supporting Trump  —  Ron Conway stepped down from the board of Salesforce's philanthropic arm after the company's chief executive, Marc Benioff …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple readies a slimmer M6 MacBook Pro featuring an OLED touch display with a hole-punch design replacing the notch, for late 2026 or early 2027  —  Apple Inc. is preparing to finally launch a touch-screen version of its Mac computer, reversing course on a stance that dates back to co-founder Steve Jobs.
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’
David Ingram / NBC News:
Three labor unions filed a lawsuit in NY federal court to block the Trump administration from searching visa holders' social media for posts it deems hostile  —  The lawsuit filed Thursday is the latest of several challenges to the Trump administration's screening of visa holders' social media activity.

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Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
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Lenny's Podcast:
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Big Technology Podcast:
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
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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
Davis Janowski / WealthManagement.com:
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Earlier Picks

Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Megan Morrone / Axios: