Techmeme
October 18, 2025, 12:00 AM

Top News

Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:
Q&A with Andrej Karpathy on AGI still being a decade away, why reinforcement learning is terrible, superintelligence, his AI education startup Eureka, and more  —  Transcript 00:00:00 - AGI is still a decade away Dwarkesh Patel 00:00:00 Today I'm speaking with Andrej Karpathy.
Ari Levy / CNBC:
Marc Benioff apologizes for saying Trump should send the National Guard to SF, says the comments were made out of “an abundance of caution” around Dreamforce  —  Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff apologized on Friday for making comments in support of President Donald Trump sending federal troops …
Heather Knight / New York Times:
Axios:
At TSMC Arizona, Nvidia and TSMC unveil the first Blackwell chip wafer made in the US, representing that Blackwell has reached volume production  —  Nvidia and TSMC announced Friday their first completed U.S.-made wafer that will eventually become Blackwell chips for AI purposes, Nvidia first tells Axios.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Google says North Korea hackers are using “EtherHiding” to embed malware on blockchains, the first time it has seen a nation-state threat actor using the method  —  North Korean hackers have adopted the ‘EtherHiding’ technique that leverages smart contracts to host and deliver malware …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Li Lin, founder of crypto exchange Huobi, and some of Asia's earliest Ethereum backers have raised ~$1B to launch a digital asset trust to buy Ether  —  Li Lin, the founder of crypto exchange Huobi and chairman of investment firm Avenir Capital, is joining forces …
Carly Nairn / Courthouse News Service:
A US judge bars NSO Group from targeting WhatsApp users and cuts the ~$168M damages verdict awarded to Meta by a jury in May to $4M, ruling it was excessive  —  Meta previously won $168 million in damages over claims spyware compromised WhatsApp users, but a judge reduced the damages down to $4 million.
Kendra Barnett / Adweek:
Google is phasing out its Privacy Sandbox technologies; the initiative was launched in 2019 to develop privacy-protecting tech to replace third-party cookies  —  The elimination of many remaining Privacy Sandbox APIs come six months after third-party cookies got a reprieve in Chrome.
Thomas Beaumont / Associated Press:
Senate Republicans share an AI-generated video falsely depicting Chuck Schumer saying on camera comments he made in a print interview on the government shutdown  —  Add AP News to Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.  Share
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Apple and Formula One announce a five-year US media rights deal for all races, starting in 2026; sources: Apple is paying ~$140M/year, up from ESPN's ~$85M/year  —  Apple and Formula 1 announced a five-year media rights deal Friday that will bring every F1 race to Apple TV beginning in 2026.
More: Apple, Variety, BBC, 9to5Google, Android Police, Los Angeles Times, The Athletic, The Hollywood Reporter, Financial Times, Driven, Stuff, SportsPro, CGMagazine, Frontstretch, iThinkDifferent, Motorsport.com, ESPN, Front Office Sports, How-To Geek, Fast Company, Motorsport.com, Bleacher Report, BlackBook Motorsport, Supercar Blondie, OutKick, Motorsport Technology, Motor Sport Magazine, StreamTV Insider, CBR, TheDesk.net, Sports Video Group, RACER, Front Office Sports, Sports Business Journal, Motorsport.com, American Cars And Racing, The Athletic, Spyglass, Ars Technica, Appleosophy, Inc, iPhone in Canada, Wall Street Journal, The Wrap, iDrop News, Apple Must, The Drive, Tom's Guide, Screen Rant, The Athletic, CNBC, Axios, Daring Fireball, Streaming Better, Six Colors, The Streamable, iClarified, Sports Media Watch, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch, Thurrott, Forbes, Engadget, Broadband TV News, Barrett Media, Reuters, TechRadar, Daily Mail, The Verge, and South China Morning Post
Fortune:
Sources: Tempo, a stablecoin-focused blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm, raised a $500M Series A led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital at a $5B valuation  —  As fervor around stablecoins grows from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, one of the most high-profile new crypto projects has drummed …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says it paused Sora's ability to generate videos resembling MLK Jr. at the request of his estate, after some users created “disrespectful depictions”  —  OpenAI announced Thursday it paused the ability for users to generate videos resembling the late civil rights activist …
Robert Hart / The Verge:
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Anthropic's Claude Skills, which are conceptually extremely simple, may become a bigger deal than MCP, whose high token usage is its most significant limitation  —  Anthropic this morning introduced Claude Skills, a new pattern for making new abilities available to their models:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Revolut is nearing the completion of a $3B fundraising round that values the company at $75B, up from $45B in a 2024 secondary share sale  —  Revolut Ltd. and its backers are nearing the end of a $3 billion fundraising spree that values the London-based fintech behemoth at $75 billion.
CoinDesk:
Astra Nova, which develops no-code tools that enable creators to launch blockchain-based entertainment experiences, raised $48.3M  —  The company develops no-code tools that enable creators to launch blockchain-based entertainment experiences.  —  What to know:
More: Ventureburn

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
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

Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:00 AM ET, October 18, 2025.

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

Foreign Affairs:
William Wan / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

David Ingram / NBC News:
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Bloomberg:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Kosta Andreadis / TweakTown: