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October 22, 2026, 7:40 PM
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Madison Mills / Axios:
Sources: US banks are restricting third-party AI agents from accessing customer accounts, after some agents appeared to act independently of users' instructions  —  Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting …
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Sources: OpenAI nears an up to $30B round led by investors from the UAE and Coatue at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of an IPO  —  OpenAI is closing in on a funding round that could value the artificial intelligence giant at more than $1 trillion ahead …
Matthew Prince / @eastdakota:
Cloudflare's Matthew Prince says PHP2Shell exploit attempts on its network rose from thousands in the 10 hours before the disclosure to millions afterward  —  Some stats on #php2shell. In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the @Cloudflare network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions now.
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
AWS analysts say that at least one actor attempted to exploit the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities on October 17, four days before their public disclosure and patching
Wired:
The PHP Foundation says its patches for the RCE vulnerabilities are limited to PHP 8.2 and newer, leaving legacy deployments dependent on third-party vendors
Abhirami G / Reuters:
eMudhra says it will exit the SSL/TLS certificate business, 1% of its revenue, after its TLS certificates with private keys of just 3 to 8 bits were compromised  —  Indian digital trust services provider eMudhra (EMUD.NS) on Thursday said it would voluntarily withdraw from the global SSL/TLS …
Rohan Goswami / Semafor:
Sources: Elon Musk has invested ~$1B in Ellisons' Skydance; in 2022, David Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, invested $1B in Musk's deal to take Twitter private  —  Elon Musk has invested roughly $1 billion in Skydance, according to people familiar with the matter, providing …
Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg:
Warp Sciences, founded by former OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil to speed up drug development using AI, emerges from stealth with $215M at an $865M post-money valuation  —  Kevin Weil, the former OpenAI executive who led the ChatGPT maker's AI-for-science efforts, is launching a new startup aimed …
Victoria Craw / Washington Post:
President Trump says he called Sundar Pichai to ask to rename the Atlantic Ocean in Google Maps, but that he would “probably pass” following Pichai's pushback  —  President Donald Trump said he called Google's Sundar Pichai to discuss renaming the Atlantic Ocean, but would …
AJ Vicens / Reuters:
Microsoft says China-linked hackers used AI penetration testing tool ARTEX to compromise ConnectWise as part of a campaign targeting hundreds of organizations  —  A Chinese state-aligned hacking group used an AI-driven penetration testing tool to compromise IT services firm ConnectWise as part …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
The Browser Company says it will shut down its Arc browser on December 22, launched in 2023, shifting attention to its AI-focused Dia browser, launched in 2025  —  New feature development for the innovative web browser ended last year.  Now The Browser Company is telling users to try Dia, Arc's replacement.
Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune:
a16z rebrands a16z Crypto as a16z Frontier and expands the fund's scope to back startups developing AI, robotics, and other emerging technologies  —  In 2018, Andreessen Horowitz made a splash in the venture capital world by launching a spin-off dedicated to digital assets called a16z Crypto.
Anzar Mehraj / Reuters:
METR says a pilot test of OpenAI's monitoring system found vulnerabilities, including an exploit that could have let AI agents hide hundreds of recent actions  —  AI safety research group METR said on Thursday a pilot exercise to stress-test OpenAI's internal monitoring system uncovered several …
Robert Hart / The Verge:
Microsoft says its GPT-5-powered Diagnostic Orchestrator uses agents that mimic panels of experts to diagnose conditions up to 4x more accurately than doctors  —  'We're going to build something that is indistinguishable from human performance ... in the next couple of years,' Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman tells The Verge.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
iPhone Duo review: the outer device is by far the worst iPhone Apple has ever made, while the inner device is a splendid tablet with a UI that bests the iPad's  —  Nothing major, but since publishing at 7:00pm last night, I've made a few additions and changes to my iPhone Duo review.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Apple is rolling out a new “Made for iPhone Duo” badge in the App Store, and touts Netflix, Prime Video, Zoom, Word, and Outlook as Duo-optimized apps at launch
Anthropic:
Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Agentic AI Foundation and says 70+ platforms have integrated it, after donating MCP to the AAIF in 2025  —  Today, we're donating Agent Skills, the open standard that gives AI agents specialized knowledge and workflows, to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).
Wall Street Journal:
US officials say Trump asked Elon Musk to lift Starshield restrictions; Ukraine officials said it was not fully fixed Thursday but was working at higher speeds  —  Military-grade system appeared to be working more normally on Thursday, soon after the call  —  WASHINGTON—President Trump …
Emily Mullin / Wired:
Hugging Face releases Carbon-X, an open-weight, 14B-parameter decoder-only model trained on 300B tokens that lets users query DNA sequences via natural language  —  The new open-source model speaks the language of DNA and can help researchers understand the effects of any changes on gene activity and health.
New York Times:
Ukraine says the abrupt throttling of US-funded Starshield grounded dozens of drones mid-flight, costing one unit $1M+, and halted some strikes for three days
Politico:
Sources: the Pentagon quietly established the Technology Support Office (TSO), a sabotage agency for executing cyberattacks, supply chain disruptions, and more  —  The Pentagon has spent months quietly building an elite new tech agency to help covertly disrupt and sabotage foreign technology …
More: Associated Press.  X: @johnnysaks130 and @ryp__.  LinkedIn: John Sakellariadis.  Bluesky: @rikefranke.eu
Forums: r/stupidpol and r/politics
New York Times:
US SEC filings show how Meta restructured its stock to shield Mark Zuckerberg from California's proposed wealth tax, after he said he'd sell his Palo Alto home  —  The billionaire told Meta's board that he planned to list his Silicon Valley home for sale.  The company remade its stock structure …
Elias Schisgall / Wall Street Journal:
1Password passes $500M in ARR, up from $400M in November 2025, driven by enterprise AI coding assistants and agents, and launches 1Password for Agents  —  And the free cash flow margin is in the double digits amid an explosion in coding assistants and agents in enterprise settings
Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune:
Microsoft and Alphabet join 14 other companies objecting to a plan by OKXICE, a venture of OKX and ICE, to trade blockchain-based versions of their shares  —  A growing number of companies are pushing back against tokenized trading of their shares.  Microsoft and Alphabet are the latest …
Rhea Rose Abraham / Reuters:
Epic says “Fortnite is coming back to the App Store in Australia” on Thursday after a federal court ruled in an antitrust case that Apple must open up iOS  —  Epic Games said its shooter title “Fortnite” will return to Apple's (AAPL.O) App Store in Australia on Thursday …
Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:
Sources: SpaceX is in talks with at least one major cellular infrastructure firm to secure a minimum of 80K US cell sites, as it eyes a wireless carrier launch  —  SpaceX aims to secure a minimum of 80,000 cell sites across the US, and it's in talks with at least one major cellular infrastructure company …
More: Reuters

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:40 PM ET, October 22, 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

Blake Brittain / Reuters:
The NYT, the New York Daily News, and others sue browser maker Brave for allegedly scraping their articles for AI training and letting users bypass paywalls

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Netflix begins rolling out an “AI Discover” tab on TVs in the US, starting with a feature that offers recommendations based on a user's mood

Lizo Mzimba / BBC:
UK High Court rejects a celebrity's bid to stop ITN and the Guardian from publishing his name and sexual misconduct claims; he stays anonymous pending appeal

More News

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Filing: Meta reports ~$825B in lease and contract commitments, up from nearly $700B in July; off-balance-sheet leases total $355.7B through 2036; META drops 5%+

Earlier Picks

William Shaw / Bloomberg:
Barclays plans to cut 5,000 jobs, or ~5% of its workforce, by the end of 2026 as part of AI-driven cost cutting, with ~60% affecting support and developer roles
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Walmart unveils Agent Gateway, an MCP server that lets AI agents shop on its site, and Agent Profiles that authorize agents and track their purchases separately
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