Techmeme
May 20, 2026, 12:05 PM

Top News

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
GitHub confirms ~3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension; TeamPCP claims responsibility  —  GitHub has confirmed that roughly 3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension.
New York Times:
Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees, or 10% of its staff, in a push to become an AI-first company; another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to AI initiatives  —  Employees have signed petitions against being tracked by A.I. and were trying to figure out who had been let go on Wednesday …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.50 per 1M input tokens and $9 per 1M output tokens, 3x the price of Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 6x the price of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite  —  Today at Google I/O, Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash.  This one skipped the -preview modifier and went straight to general availability …
The Keyword:
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Central:
Google adds a conversational search feature to YouTube, initially for Premium users, and integrates Gemini Omni into YouTube Shorts Remix and the Create app  —  Seriously, who is asking for all these tools? … What you need to know  — Ask YouTube now supports conversational searches instead of relying only on simple keywords.
Macy Meyer / CNET:
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
The Register:
Cloud provider Railway says Google Cloud suspended its account without cause, resulting in an outage; in 2024, GCP deleted an Australian pension fund's account  —  PaaS platform Railway says Google temporarily suspended its account on Wednesday without cause, inducing a major outage.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba's chipmaking unit T-Head unveils the Zhenwu M890 for AI training and inference, saying it is well-suited for agentic tasks, and plans annual upgrades  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of artificial intelligence development.
Reuters:
Samsung Electronics and its South Korean labor union reach a preliminary pay deal; the union says it has suspended a general strike and put the deal to a vote  —  Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and its South Korean labour union reached a preliminary pay deal on Wednesday …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The Take It Down Act, a US law forcing social networks to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of reporting or face fines, took effect on May 19  —  The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Kickstarter retracts its stricter rules on mature content after creator backlash, and says it adopted the tougher rules because of its payment processor Stripe  —  It explained that it created the new rules due to Stripe's policy.  —  Kickstarter has retracted the new set of rules around mature content …
Jess Kinghorn / PC Gamer:
New York Times:
Google overhauls its search box, letting users input longer queries, including with photos and videos, and automate searches with Gemini 3.5 Flash-based agents  —  Powered by a new Gemini A.I. model, the tech giant is overhauling its search box to answer longer queries …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
S. “Soma” Somasegar, who led Microsoft's Developer Division for 12 years as part of his 27-year tenure at the company before leaving in 2015, has died at age 59  —  S.  “Soma” Somasegar, a fixture in the Seattle tech community who led Microsoft's Developer Division as part …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Threat actors published 600+ malicious versions to npm as part of the Shai-Hulud supply chain campaign; most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem  —  Threat actors earlier today published more than 600 malicious packages to the Node Package Manager (npm) index as part of a new Shai-Hulud supply-chain campaign.
Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
An interview with Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff about plans for Tinder, including a redesign, AI features, live events, and group dating to win over Gen Z  —  The dating app's turnaround bets on live events, group dating and an AI-heavy redesign.  —  At a pickleball venue near Santa Monica State beach …
Jemima McEvoy / The Information:
Sam Altman says OpenAI offered to invest $2M in tokens in each startup in the current YC batch; a source says the offer is in exchange for equity via a SAFE  —  OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman late Tuesday offered to invest $2 million in every startup currently in the Y Combinator startup …
Reuters:
Trump signs an EO calling on regulators and the Fed to review policies that could support fintech growth, including expanding fintech access to payment accounts  —  U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling on regulators and the Federal Reserve to review rules …
Wired:
Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses, with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster frames, and with Xreal's Project Aura, all coming this fall  —  Here's your first look at smart glasses coming from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, powered by Google and Samsung's XR platform.
Brendan Bordelon / Politico:
OpenAI's Chris Lehane says he is pursuing “reverse federalism”, lobbying blue states to pass AI safety laws and create a de facto US standard, as DC dithers  —  OpenAI's effort comes after nearly a year in which the tech lobby has pressured Congress to block states from passing AI laws …
Nan Ransohoff / Nan's Substack:
An analysis based on OpenAI's and Anthropic's current valuations suggests ~$370B of philanthropic assets tied to the two AI companies could soon become liquid  —  AI is about to generate hundreds of billions in new philanthropic funding.  We have a huge amount of work to do to make the most of it.
George Hammond / Financial Times:
Q&A with Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg on launching the legal AI startup in 2022, how AI could shake up law firms' business models, legal AI competition, and more  —  The co-founder of the legal start-up talks about how AI could shake up law firms' business models and how he plans to stay ahead of rivals
Jack Kubinec / Fortune:
Variational, which has built a protocol for decentralized derivatives trading aimed at gathering liquidity from traditional markets, raised a $50M Series A  —  The crypto industry has long defined itself in opposition to traditional finance but, in recent years, the two worlds are on a path to convergence.
More: Ventureburn
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Two research papers describe how Google's Co-Scientist and nonprofit FutureHouse's AI tools can succeed at drug retargeting by developing and testing hypotheses  —  Both tools generate hypotheses; one goes on to analyze some of the data.  —  On Tuesday, Nature released …

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Earlier Picks

Jessica Conditt / Engadget:
OpenAI:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: