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March 18, 2026, 9:10 PM
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Top News

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.
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 …
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.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Cloudflare says it has appealed the €14.2M fine issued by Italy for refusing to block pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, calling the amount “staggering”  —  Cloudflare said it has appealed a fine issued by Italy over the company's refusal to block access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service.
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”.
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
Laurent Giret / Thurrott:
Perplexity releases its Comet browser app for iOS and iPadOS with a built-in AI assistant, four months after launching on Android  —  Perplexity's Comet AI browser is coming to iOS and iPadOS today, four months after its previous launch on Android.  The mobile browser comes with a built-in AI assistant …
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.”
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
Anirban Sen / Reuters:
Google DeepMind appoints Jasjeet Sekhon, Bridgewater's chief scientist and head of AI, as chief strategy officer; Sekhon helped build Bridgewater's AIA Labs  —  Jasjeet Sekhon, a top Bridgewater Associates executive, is joining Google's artificial intelligence unit DeepMind as its chief strategy officer …
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
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 …
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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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:10 PM ET, March 18, 2026.

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.

From Mediagazer

Lucas Manfredi / The Wrap:
Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro details priorities in a staff memo: maintaining creative excellence, leveraging technology, and operating as “One Disney” to align teams

Minho Kim / New York Times:
Email: USAGM names Christopher Wallace, a former Newsmax news director and former Fox News producer, as deputy director of Voice of America

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
MS Now overhauls its lineup from morning through night, including Morning Joe returning to three hours from 6am to 9am, as it prepares for the 2026 US midterms

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

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
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
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
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
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