Techmeme
August 20, 2026, 6:55 PM

Top News

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Vlad Fedorov / The GitHub Blog:
GitHub says its 7+ hour August 17 outage was caused by a capacity failure when peak traffic overwhelmed an infrastructure component in a Central US data center  —  An update on the August 17 outage and the steps we're taking to improve reliability.  —  On August 17, GitHub experienced an outage that lasted 7 hours and 47 minutes.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
OpenAI rolls out an Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on macOS, letting ChatGPT read, search, and analyze chats, prepare and send messages, and more  —  Well, this seems interesting.  ChatGPT's latest update adds a new Mac integration: the ability to work with conversations from Apple's Messages app.
Douglas Gillison / Reuters:
Study: 150+ Polymarket wallets may have traded on internal US military information, making $8M overall with a 97.2% average win rate and attracting copycat bets  —  More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International may have traded on inside U.S. military information, attracting copycat bets …
Qianer Liu / The Information:
Sources: Nvidia plans to begin small-batch shipments of an LPU tailored for Chinese customers by the end of 2026; the chip complies with US export control rules  —  Nvidia plans to begin small-batch shipments of an AI chip specially tailored for Chinese customers by the end of the year …
Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition, its largest yet, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models and tokens are the central currency for businesses  —  The Stripe deal for OpenRouter, founded by an NFT entrepreneur, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Waymo says it has built an ASIC chip that will improve its robotaxis' reflexes and navigational skills and help it diversify away from third parties like Nvidia  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo has built a custom chip that the company said will improve the performance of its robotaxis …
Google:
Google DeepMind says its Gemma family of open models has surpassed 1B downloads and developers have published 100K+ Gemma model variants over the past two years  —  From outer space to underwater, here's how developers are bringing a positive impact with our open models.
Alexander Gladstone / Wall Street Journal:
A bankruptcy court delays Google's $10M purchase of Spirit Airlines' data after former flight attendants objected, seeking assurance their info would be removed  —  The flight attendants want assurance that their confidential information will be removed from the sale of the defunct airline's digital records
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Charter closes its $34.5B Cox acquisition, announced in May 2025, uniting two of the biggest US cable and broadband providers, and completes its Liberty deal  —  “When Liberty first invested in Charter more than a decade ago, we saw an opportunity to build scale behind a great management team and operating model," said John Malone.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to ~$39.64B, meeting est., and net income down 75% to ~$1.54B due to heavy AI spending and weak domestic retail consumption  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s profit plunged more than 75% after the Chinese company ratcheted up quarterly capital spending …
Michael Martina / Reuters:
How Unitree's Go series, which helped the company dominate the quadruped robot market, drew on openly published US university research funded by the US military  —  China's Unitree Robotics - among the world's biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots - based designs …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
How WCAG compliance makes modern workplaces more accessible  —  A workplace's approach to inclusivity starts with its everyday tools.  Some of them can create barriers that inadvertently shut people out.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Jensen and The Honeypot
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.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why PMs are suddenly valuable again | Tulsee Doshi (Head of Product, Gemini)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Machine Gods:
The Purple Tsunami Against Data Centers
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Invest Like the Best:
Ramtin Naimi - The State of Venture
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
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:
Would you let a robot do it?
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:55 PM ET, August 20, 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

Hugo Lowell / Wired:
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
Bloomberg:
Matt Day / Bloomberg: