Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
July 18, 2026, 10:50 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

AI Security Institute:
Analysis: recent open weight models lag frontier closed models' cyber capabilities by 4 to 7 months, a narrower gap than the 6 to 10 months through most of 2025  —  AISI has tracked the cyber capabilities of frontier AI models since 2023.  On our evaluations, the most capable models …
Transformer:
Kimi K3 hype shouldn't alarm the US about “losing the AI race” to China; K3 is a good model but not frontier-level and likely lacks dangerous cyber capabilities
Gavin Baker / @gavinsbaker:
Models like Kimi K3, Grok 4.5, and Muse 1.1 may prevent the dominance of 2-3 frontier labs with 90% inference margins from hurting other AI ecosystem layers
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Memo: the DOJ says federal employees can now download TikTok on government devices, citing TikTok US' transfer of control, lifting a 2022 congressional ban  —  The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday that federal employees can now download the short-video app TikTok on government devices.
Claude / @claudeai:
Anthropic says Claude Fable 5 will be included in Max and Team Premium plans at 50% of limits from July 20 and via usage credits for Pro and Team Standard users  —  Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50% of limits. Pro and Team Standard users will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits, and will receive a one-time $100 credit. Demand for Fable has been challenging to
Reuters:
The grassroots group HumansFirst is organizing protests against the “unaccountable” buildout of data centers across 125 US locations on July 18  —  Opponents of the rapid buildout of data centers plan to hold protests on Saturday in at least 125 locations across the United States …
Minxiao Chang / South China Morning Post:
China's National Data Administration says the country's daily AI token consumption hit 140T in March 2026, up from 100T in December 2025 and 100B in early 2024  —  Every month, a Beijing-based ByteDance employee says he burns through close to a billion units of a new corporate currency - one that cannot buy a coffee or pay rent.
Reuters:
Sources: Trump Media pitched a monthly fee of as much as $100K for the Truth API, with fast access to Trump's posts, for banks, algorithmic traders, and others  —  Donald Trump's social media company has discussed charging Wall Street traders and investment firms as much as $100,000 a month …
Bloomberg:
Sources: China's National AI Industry Investment Fund gained voting rights in DeepSeek by joining its $7.4B round; other investors like Tencent and JD got none  —  On a video conference call from Hangzhou earlier this year, one of China's hottest startups held a four-hour pitch meeting …

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
UK tax compliance with Zoho Books  —  The evolving tax landscape in the UK has added an additional responsibility to business owners, accountants, and bookkeepers to ensure their choice of accounting software supports compliance …
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

The Upstarts Podcast:
 The $7B Startup Mapping Your Health In Just One Hour | Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne
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.
Cheeky Pint:
 The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
BG2 Pod:
 Jensen Huang | Does AI Revenue Justify Capex, '27 AI Bottlenecks, Singularity, Open vs Closed & more
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Big Technology Podcast:
 The Bumpy Road To AGI — With Kevin Roose
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:
 How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
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.
Sources:
 Robinhood's CEO on letting AI trade your money
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.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 AM ET, July 18, 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

Wall Street Journal:
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, who said this week she “practiced international transaction law”, hasn't passed the bar exam in the US

Matthew Keys / TheDesk.net:
The BBC launches a 24-hour live streaming simulcast of the BBC News feed on YouTube in the US and UK, expanding to Poland and other countries in the coming days

K.J. Yossman / Variety:
UK Culture Minister Lisa Nandy says she is “minded to intervene” in Sky's proposed $2B takeover of ITV, citing concerns about maintaining media plurality

More News

Reuters:
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank ~10% for the week, its largest weekly fall in over a year, and is now down ~20% from its late-June all-time high

Earlier Picks

Robert Booth / The Guardian:
Amazon apologizes after some AWS users received bills as high as $1.5T due to “an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem”
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple raises the price of Apple Music, with the individual plan up by $1 to $11.99, and some Apple One bundles, citing rising licensing costs
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple and the DOJ are in early discussions about settling a 2024 antitrust lawsuit alleging that Apple violated antitrust laws
New York Times:
Sources: Meta is in talks to rent computing power from its data centers to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth ~$10B over two years
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter