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October 18, 2025, 4:05 PM
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memeorandum
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| Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: |
WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others — Meta-owned chat app WhatsApp changed its business API policy this week to ban general-purpose chatbots from its platform.| Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: |
Shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure have soared in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year-to-date — Shares of the large-scale computing outfits that make Bitcoin work are once again outperforming the original cryptocurrency … | Carly Nairn / Courthouse News Service: |
A US judge bars NSO Group from targeting WhatsApp users and cuts the ~$168M damages verdict awarded to Meta by a jury in May to $4M, ruling it was excessive — Meta previously won $168 million in damages over claims spyware compromised WhatsApp users, but a judge reduced the damages down to $4 million.
More: Engadget, Reuters, Scroll.in, CyberInsider, Al Jazeera, US District Court for the Northern District of California, MLex, Agence France-Presse, and Pixel Envy
X: @wcathcart, @natynettle, @jsrailton, @jason_kint, @jsrailton, @jsrailton, and @jsrailton. Bluesky: @lorenzofb
| Andy Newman / New York Times: |
Two Wikipedia contributors disarmed a gunman who threatened to kill himself at WikiConference to protest a policy banning editors who identify as pedophiles — After the man walked onto the stage at the “Wiki World's Fair” event and threatened to kill himself, witnesses said, two members of the audience jumped in to stop him.
More: TechCrunch, NBC News, Daily Caller News Foundation, and Mediaite
Bluesky: @lopatto, @andycraig, @mantzarlis.com, @dbcurren, @jvagle.me, @timcushing, and @ivbell. Threads: @originalspin
Forums: Hacker News, r/wikipedia, and Slashdot
| Samuel Axon / Ars Technica: |
An interview with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on the company's new Content Signals Policy, which lets sites fine tune how their data can be used by crawlers — It could be a consequential act of quiet regulation. Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, has updated millions … | Natallie Rocha / New York Times: |
The AI boom has pushed SF's residential rents up by the most in the US over the past year, as AI companies lease apartments and offer rent stipends to employees — The artificial intelligence gold rush has pushed San Francisco's residential rents up by the most in the nation …
More: The Real Deal and The Economic Times
| Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: |
Google says North Korea hackers are using “EtherHiding” to embed malware on blockchains, the first time it has seen a nation-state threat actor using the method — North Korean hackers have adopted the ‘EtherHiding’ technique that leverages smart contracts to host and deliver malware … | Reuters: |
Nexperia's China unit asserts its operational independence and compliance with Chinese laws amid escalating tensions with Nexperia Netherlands — Nexperia's China unit has respected Chinese laws and has the right to operate independently, it said on Saturday, a day after the Netherlands …
More: South China Morning Post, Daily Caller News Foundation, Asia Times, The Register, Reuters, and DutchNews.nl. Forums: r/China
| Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter: |
Inside the discussions between OpenAI and talent agencies about the video app Sora; some agents say studios have been too reluctant to challenge tech giants — OpenAI's CEO brazenly regurgitated major studios' characters to allow video app Sora 2 to spit out clips tailor-made for users.
More: Futurism, The A.V. Club, IndieWire, Tom's Guide, Music Ally, BGR, TechRadar, CNET, Forbes, and TechCrunch
X: @aagave and @simonowens
Forums: r/artificial, r/technology, and r/BetterOffline
| Kendra Barnett / Adweek: |
Google is phasing out its Privacy Sandbox technologies; the initiative was launched in 2019 to develop privacy-protecting tech to replace third-party cookies — The elimination of many remaining Privacy Sandbox APIs come six months after third-party cookies got a reprieve in Chrome.
More: Gizmodo, Thurrott, Privacy Sandbox, Inc, Engadget, Forbes, The Information, and AdExchanger
| John Kang / Forbes: |
Shares of ISU Petasys, a South Korea-based multi-layer PCB supplier for AI servers used by Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft, and others, are up 215% so far this year — Based in Daegu, a city in southeastern South Korea, ISU Petasys makes multi-layer printed circuit boards that hold chips and other components for AI servers.| Muyao Shen / Bloomberg: |
Inside Hyperliquid, a booming DEX for perpetual crypto futures still controlled by a small insider group, raising questions about how decentralized it really is — In just two years, a little-known decentralized exchange built by a small group of engineers has drawn heavyweight investors and billions in trading volume.| Ari Levy / CNBC: |
Marc Benioff apologizes for saying Trump should send the National Guard to SF, says the comments were made out of “an abundance of caution” around Dreamforce — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff apologized on Friday for making comments in support of President Donald Trump sending federal troops …
More: TechCrunch, Implicator.ai, Runtime, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, UPI, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ZeroHedge News, Gizmodo, Newsmax, Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Standard, The Economic Times, San Francisco Examiner, Politico, New York Post, SFGATE, KQED, CBS News, KTVU-TV, CNN, The Information, The Hill, SFist, Business Insider, and NBC Bay Area
Bluesky: @paulthedogman, @chadbourn, @daniloc.xyz, and @annmlipton
Forums: Hacker News, r/politics, r/FluentInFinance, and r/sanfrancisco
| Christian Davies / Financial Times: |
South Korea restricts travel to Cambodia over online scam center kidnappings; the UK and US sanction Cambodia's Prince Group for allegedly running scam centers — Seoul says 330 of its nationals detained or abducted in the first eight months of this year — South Korea has prohibited …
More: Al Jazeera, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, Associated Press, The Record, WTOP News, Associated Press, France 24, Travel And Tour World, UPI, OCCRP, and The Business Times. X: @ft
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