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March 18, 2026, 6:55 PM
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Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Google, iVerify, and Lookout researchers discover DarkSword, a hacking tool used by Russia-sponsored and other hackers to target iOS 18 via Ukrainian websites  —  A powerful iPhone-hacking technique known as DarkSword has been discovered in use by Russian hackers.
Zach Vallese / CNBC:
Facebook launches Creator Fast Track, offering big Instagram, TikTok and YouTube creators guaranteed monthly pay and boosted reach to post on Facebook  —  Meta on Wednesday launched a new program aimed at luring top creators from TikTok and YouTube to Facebook, offering guaranteed pay and boosted reach.
Brent Lang / Variety:
Director Coerte Voorhees says he is using AI to feature Val Kilmer in “a significant part” in an indie film, with the cooperation of the late actor's estate  —  Five years prior to his death in 2025, Val Kilmer was cast as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, in “As Deep as the Grave.”
Alfred Ng / Politico:
During a Senate hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel says FBI does purchase “commercially available information” that can be used to track people's location history  —  The U.S. Supreme Court has required law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for getting people's location data …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard, who pioneered quantum information theory, win the ACM A.M. Turing Award; the pair developed the BB84 cryptography protocol  —  Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard pioneered quantum information theory.  Now they've been awarded the highest honor in computer science.
Madison Mills / Axios:
Ramp data: Anthropic is capturing ~73% of all spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time, up from a 50/50 split with OpenAI in January  —  Anthropic is now capturing over 73% of all spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time, according to customer data from Ramp.
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Samsung and AMD sign a preliminary deal for Samsung to supply its next-gen HBM4 for AMD's MI455X accelerators, used in data centers, and DDR5 for AMD's Helios  —  Samsung Electronics Co. agreed to supply and collaborate with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on next-generation AI memory and computing technologies.
Jyoti Mann / The Information:
Meta confirms a critical security incident after an internal rogue AI agent's actions led to the exposure of sensitive data to employees without authorization  —  A rogue AI agent recently triggered a major security alert at Meta Platforms, by taking action without approval that led …
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
Stripe and Paradigm-backed blockchain startup Tempo launch the Machine Payments Protocol, which uses Tempo's new blockchain to handle AI agents' transactions  —  The fintech giant Stripe along with Tempo, a blockchain startup incubated by the payments company as well as the venture firm Paradigm …
Kanika Talwar / WWD:
Meta makes its Meta Lab NYC pop-up on Fifth Avenue a permanent flagship location after signing a 10-year lease; it opened its first flagship store in LA in 2025  —  The tech company has signed a decade-long lease for its Meta Lab town house on Fifth Avenue.
Graham Fraser / BBC:
The UK government withdraws a proposal to let AI companies train on copyrighted works unless creators opt out, after backlash from artists like Dua Lipa  —  The UK government has backtracked on its position on copyright and AI, stating it must take time to “get this right”.
The Information:
Sources: Apple stops vibe coding apps from pushing updates, citing rules on running code; Replit thinks Apple may approve opening AI-generated apps in a browser  —  Apple has quietly prevented AI vibe coding apps such as Replit and Vibecode, which help people create games and other applications …
Bloomberg:
Chengdu's government says Tim Cook attended Apple's 50th anniversary event in the city; Chinese state media called for Apple to fix its “monopolistic” App Store  —  Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook showed up at a company event in China on Wednesday after the company lowered …
Upstarts Media:
Compute startup Andromeda raised new funding from Paradigm at a $1.5B valuation, bringing Paradigm's total to $60M; it passed a $100M revenue run rate in 2025  —  Once a service spun up by AI investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Andromeda has now raised $60M from Paradigm to stand alone.
ProPublica:
Investigation: the US FedRAMP authorized Microsoft service GCC High to handle sensitive government data in 2024, despite years of concerns about its security  —  In late 2024, the federal government's cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft's biggest cloud computing offerings.
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
A Stanford study of 391K+ messages across nearly 5,000 chats: AI chatbots affirmed user messages in nearly 66% of replies, often validating delusional thinking  —  AI chatbots are reinforcing unhealthy beliefs in their users by agreeing even when users express delusional or harmful ideas …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Micron reports Q2 revenue up 196% YoY to $23.9B, vs. $19.7B est., expects 2026 capex to exceed $25B, vs. $22.4B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates  —  Micron Technology Inc. warned that it will need to spend heavily on production to meet burgeoning demand, overshadowing …
Financial Times:
Sources: Microsoft is weighing legal action against Amazon and OpenAI over whether AWS can offer OpenAI Frontier without breaching OpenAI's Microsoft agreement  —  Rift deepens as start-up tests limits of Microsoft's exclusive rights to host its models  —  Microsoft is weighing legal action …
Jasmine Sun / The Atlantic:
How AI's post-training process suppresses the creativity and whimsicality seen in earlier models, like GPT-2, leading to poor writing from many top AI models  —  In a certain, strange way, generative AI peaked with OpenAI's GPT-2 seven years ago.  Little known to anyone outside of tech circles …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
A US judge rules Apple can remove apps “with or without cause”, a loss for Musi, a streaming app Apple removed from the App Store that played music from YouTube  —  Musi, a free music streaming app that had tens of millions of iPhone downloads and garnered plenty of controversy …
Bernard Goyder / Bloomberg:
Sources: Polymarket is looking to hire a chief risk officer following a CFTC demand; the company has expanded its legal team in recent months  —  Prediction markets platform Polymarket is looking to hire a chief risk officer as it works to expand its regulated business in the US, according to people familiar with the matter.

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From Mediagazer

Reuters:
Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta plans to shut down after 30+ years, following pressure from Russian authorities and the persecution of its reporters

Bruce Gil / Gizmodo:
Fan fiction site AO3 says it will be offline for two to four weeks after a security incident; it hosts over 18M works and has 11M registered users

Selome Hailu / Variety:
Sources: Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine lays off about 30 employees, roughly 50% of its staff, as it focuses on film and TV projects and its book club brand

More News

Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware:
Jensen Huang dismisses social media criticism of DLSS 5 at GTC 2026, asserting that claims that the generative AI tech homogenizes games are “completely wrong”

Earlier Picks

Simon Sharwood / The Register:
The Linux Foundation says Anthropic, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI gave $12.5M in grants to help FOSS maintainers handle AI-generated security findings
Esther Fung / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon, long the USPS' biggest customer, plans to cut packages it ships via the service by at least two-thirds this fall, when its contract expires
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