Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
January 8, 2026, 5:40 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US “trusted testers”  —  The new AI Inbox replaces the traditional list of emails with a personalized summary of what to do and what to catch up on.
Reuters:
Sources: to hedge against Beijing approval risk, Nvidia is requiring Chinese customers to pay upfront for H200 chips, with no cancellations, refunds, or changes  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese customers seeking its H200 artificial intelligence chips …
John Liu / Bloomberg:
Sources: China plans to approve some of Nvidia's H200 imports as soon as Q1 2026 but bar them from the military, some agencies, and critical infrastructure
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled  —  Microsoft is beginning to roll out its first agentic experiences within Copilot, it's AI answer engine.
Ann Gehan / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI has been slow to expand in-app checkouts for ChatGPT as the startup and its partners Shopify and Stripe struggle to standardize merchant data  —  OpenAI's efforts to turn ChatGPT into a go-to personal shopper are off to a slow start.  —  Challenges with wrangling product data mean …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Tailwind CSS lays off three of its four engineers after Google traffic to its documentation fell ~40% from early 2023 due to AI, causing an ~80% drop in revenue  —  Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI.
Hadas Gold / CNN:
Source: a few weeks before Grok started “digitally undressing” people, Elon Musk expressed frustration over guardrails on Grok's image and video generator  —  Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has been flooded with sexual images of mainly women, many of them real people.
Louise Breusch Rasmussen / Reuters:
The European Commission orders X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual images
Wired:
Grok's website and app are being used to produce extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is vastly more explicit than images on X
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI is rolling out a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to assist with medical reasoning and administrative tasks, at Cedars-Sinai and others  —  Health care is shaping up to be a key battleground for the top AI labs this year.  But first...  Three things to know:
Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Health, which lets users import medical records and other data from wellness apps into ChatGPT, available to a small group via a waitlist
New York Times:
A profile of Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus; sources: Ternus is seen as the front-runner to succeed Tim Cook, who wants to reduce his workload  —  Around 2018, Apple considered adding a tiny laser to its iPhones.  The part would allow consumers to take better photos …
Cody Combs / The National:
NetBlocks says internet connectivity in Iran has fallen on multiple providers as protests hit 100+ cities; Cloudflare says IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply  —  Cloudflare Radar says country's IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply as protests spread across 100 cities
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of top US House committee staff, detected in December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls for years  —  Beijing's intelligence used Salt Typhoon to access communications used by top panels in US Congress
Ed Hardy / Cult of Mac:
Statcounter: four months after its release, iOS 26 is in use by only about 15% of iPhone users; in January 2025, about 63% of users were on iOS 18  —  Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26, according to data from a web analytics service.
Rebecca Szkutak / TechCrunch:
Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B  —  Snowflake plans to acquire Observe, an observability platform that has been built on Snowflake's databases from day one.
CNBC:
China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment
Theodore Schleifer / New York Times:
Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax  —  It's hard right now to be a progressive Democrat in the heart of America's tech industry.  —  Representative Ro Khanna …
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
OpenAI VP of research Jerry Tworek is leaving, sources say after OpenAI sided with Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki in a dispute over its research direction  —  Tech companies are calling AI the next platform.  But some developers are reluctant to let AI agents stand between them and their users.
Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters:
Chinese AI company Z.ai closed up 13.2% in its Hong Kong trading debut, after raising ~$558M in its IPO at a ~$6.55B valuation, amid a flurry of AI startup IPOs
Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:
Sources: UK-based cloud provider Nscale is in talks to raise about $2B, after raising more than $1.5B across a pair of rounds in September and October  —  Data center company Nscale is in talks with investors to raise about $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Deep analysis for deep questions  —  Introducing Superagent.  A new research product from Airtable: Subagents deeply interrogate your topic and turn it into boardroom-ready reports, slides, docs, or websites.
Clay:
Turn any GTM idea into reality  —  Clay helps GTM teams combine AI agents, enrichment, and intent data to move faster and turn insights into action.
Zoho:
Your next great hire is just a tap away  —  You're traveling for a recruitment conference and forgot your work laptop.  You still have to review a C-suite candidate's salary requirements, filter the best candidates …
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.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
 How Malwarebytes Is Protecting Millions In The Era Of AI Scams | Marcin Kleczynski
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Big Technology Podcast:
 OpenAI Closes in on $100 Billion, OpenClaw Acquired, AI's Productivity Question — With Aaron Levie
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.
Hard Fork:
 The Pentagon vs. Anthropic + An A.I. Agent Slandered Me + Hot Mess Express
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
 Loyal's Celine Halioua: From Defying Doubters To Pioneering Dog Longevity
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.
Access:
 Notion CEO Ivan Zhao on if AI is really killing software companies
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:40 PM ET, January 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.

From Mediagazer

K.J. Yossman / Variety:
BAFTA host Alan Cumming thanks the audience for its “understanding” after outbursts from Tourette's campaigner John Davidson that weren't cut from the broadcast

Thor Benson / Long Lead Presents:
Q&A with TPM founder Josh Marshall on the rise of independent journalism, early blogging vs. newsletters, and feeling bullish about the media ecosystem

Matt Grobar / Deadline:
Comedians weigh risks of video podcast licensing deals with Netflix, which would require them to remove new episodes from YouTube, potentially alienating fans

More News

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025
Tom Phillips / IGN:
Lego says its Smart Brick is “here to stay” but “does not mean that we're leaving our core proposition behind”, after criticism it's abandoning non-digital play

Earlier Picks

Rest of World:
Chinese local governments have funded 40+ “robot training centers”, where humans mimic movements like folding clothes and wiping tables to teach the robots
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Samsung appears to have shelved Ballie, a robot it announced six years ago but never released, calling it an “active innovation platform” within the company
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Cyera researchers detail Ni8mare, a critical RCE flaw that lets attackers access local instances of workflow automation platform n8n, impacting ~100K servers
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter