Techmeme
April 8, 2026, 2:25 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Meta says Muse Spark powers Meta AI's “shopping mode” feature and that it plans to release a version of Muse Spark under an open-source license  —  Meta on Wednesday debuted Muse Spark, a homegrown AI model it says significantly narrows the performance gap with models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others.
New York Times:
An investigation suggests Blockstream CEO Adam Back, a British cryptographer who invented Hashcash, is Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto; Back denies the claim  —  One evening in the fall of 2024, my wife and I were sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway when …
Financial Times:
An Iranian union official says Iran will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in crypto for oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz  —  Country's oil exporters' union says toll to be paid in cryptocurrency and vessels monitored for weapons  —  Iran will demand that shipping …
Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:
Mythos Preview's hacking ability is not a publicity stunt; sources say tech companies privately spoke to Trump officials about the implications for US security  —  Normally right now I would be writing about the geopolitical implications of the war with Iran, and I am sure I will again soon.
Brent D. Griffiths / Business Insider:
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Matt Burgess / Wired:
AI Forensics: in 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram groups, 24K+ men are sharing nonconsensual images of women and girls, buying spyware, and engaging in doxing  —  In Telegram groups, men are sharing thousands of nonconsensual images of women and girls, buying spyware, and engaging in doxing and sexual abuse.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
AWS debuts Amazon S3 Files, a new capability built on Amazon's Elastic File System that lets applications and AI agents access S3 buckets as local file systems  —  Amazon Web Services is making it possible to access data stored in its S3 cloud storage service as a traditional file system …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Patreon says it now has 7.6M paid podcast memberships and revenue generated by podcasters on the platform hit $629M in 2025, up 33% YoY  —  On Patreon, podcasts have become the largest content category in terms of revenue and they've continued their upward trajectory, says chief operating officer Paige Fitzgerald.
Andrew Liszewski / The Verge:
Amazon says Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 and earlier won't be able to access the Kindle Store from May 20; downloaded books can still be read  —  Starting May 20th, Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 and earlier won't have access to the Kindle Store.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
FBI: US victims lost nearly $21B to cybercrime in 2025, up 26% YoY, driven by investment scams, business email compromise, tech support fraud, and data breaches  —  U.S. victims lost nearly $21 billion to cyber-enabled crimes last year, driven primarily by investment scams, business email compromise …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
X rolls out automatic post translation worldwide, powered by xAI's Grok, and updates its iOS image editor with features like drawing, text tools, and blurring  —  Social media platform X is now rolling out a new feature that automatically translates posts.  The company is also launching …
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The US FDIC proposes a rule to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers, including requirements involving reserve assets, after the GENIUS Act  —  Quick Take  — The FDIC voted to propose a rule that would set forth standards for stablecoin issuers, including requirements involving reserve assets.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Z.ai releases GLM-5.1, a 754B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model that it says outperforms GPT-5.4 and Opus 4.6 on SWE-Bench Pro, available under an MIT license  —  Is China picking back up the open source AI baton?  —  Z.ai, also known as Zhupai AI, a Chinese AI startup best known for its powerful …
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Sources: Perplexity's estimated ARR rose to $450M+ in March, jumping 50% in a month after the launch of its Computer agent and its shift to usage-based pricing  —  San Francisco-based start-up surges from push into more complex and potentially more lucrative AI services
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
Anthropic announces Claude Managed Agents, offering developers an agent harness and other infrastructure to help businesses build and deploy AI agents at scale  —  Amid rapid enterprise growth, Anthropic is trying to lower the barrier to entry for businesses to build AI agents with Claude.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Internal memo: Julia Liuson, head of Microsoft's developer division, will resign after 34 years and move to an “advisory role” at the end of June  —  Veteran Microsoft executive Julia Liuson is leaving after 34 years. … Microsoft is losing another veteran executive.
More: CNBC
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
The FBI, the NSA, and other US agencies warn that Iran-linked hackers targeted industrial control devices used in critical US water and energy infrastructure  —  As Trump threatens Iranian infrastructure, the US government warns that Iran has carried out its own digital attacks against US critical infrastructure.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Meta & Microsoft's Claude Slowdown, His Agent Leaked His Banking Info, Don't Bully Your AI
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:25 PM ET, April 8, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Jude Joffe-Block / NPR:
Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg: