Techmeme
October 22, 2026, 12:55 PM

Top News

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  —  Amazon Web Services logged attempts to leverage the internet-melting PHP2Shell bugs four days ago.  They're now being “broadly exploited” across the internet.
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.
Wired:
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 …
Madison Mills / Axios:
Sources: US banks are restricting third-party AI agents from accessing customer accounts, after some agents appeared to act independently of user instructions  —  Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting …
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 …
Rhea Rose Abraham / Reuters:
Epic says “Fortnite is coming back to the App Store in Australia” on Thursday after an Australian federal 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 …
Claude:
Anthropic debuts Claude Duet, a proactive agent app for iOS, Android, and the web that works in the background, in research preview for US Pro and Max users  —  A research preview is available by waitlist today, starting with US Pro and Max subscribers.  —  Join the waitlist … ShareCopy link
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Sources: DeepSeek raised ~$15B in its latest fundraising round, one of China's largest ever, with CATL and Tencent among the biggest contributors  —  The Chinese AI pioneer DeepSeek has raised about 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in its latest fundraising round, one of the country's largest ever …
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.
Meta:
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 …
Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg:
Warp Sciences, founded by ex-OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil to speed up AI drug development, 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 …
More: Crypto Briefing.  X: @dyett, @kevinweil, and @kevinweil.  LinkedIn: Rebecca Torrence
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
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  —  Walmart is embracing agentic commerce with the launch of its own Agent Gateway to manage transactions and other new features aimed …
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 …
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  —  Many apps, including Netflix, Microsoft Word, and Zoom, are taking advantage of the Duo's extra screen real estate.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Victoria Craw / Washington Post:
President Trump says he called Sundar Pichai to ask Google Maps to rename the Atlantic Ocean, though 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 “probably pass” …
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  —  Ukraine says it still doesn't know why the military satellite internet service, a sister to Starlink, was abruptly throttled, leaving troops vulnerable to Russian attacks.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft reveals pricing for Xbox Cloud Gaming without Game Pass, for Xbox Insiders now and everyone in November: 10 hours for $4, 25 for $8, and 50 for $12  —  Microsoft is opening up Xbox Cloud Gaming to anyone in November. … Microsoft announced last month that it will let anyone …
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% coming from support and developers  —  Barclays to Cut 5,000 Jobs as AI Starts to Create Efficiency  —  Video Player is loading.  —  Unmute  —  Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 69.77% Playback Rate
Milana Vinn / Reuters:
Source: Elon Musk's public endorsement of a SpaceX-Tesla merger rattled some insiders, who worry his comments could invite shareholder scrutiny and delays  —  Elon Musk's public endorsement this week of a potential $3.5 trillion merger between SpaceX (SPCX.O) and Tesla (TSLA.O) …
Will Maddox / Axios:
Nirva, which plans to launch a wearable AI personal companion that offers relationship advice and more, raised $25M, bringing its total funding to $33M  —  Nirva, a startup developing wearable AI personal companions, raised $25 million ahead of its November product launch, CEO Wei Lyu tells Axios Pro exclusively.
More: TechCrunch
Aarian Marshall / Wired:
GM says it plans to debut OnStar AI, an in-car assistant that can execute vehicle functions and run diagnostics via voice commands, in the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq  —  The Detroit automaker wants your next vehicle to be a personal assistant, a best friend, and an autonomous errand-runner.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Copilot to autopilot: Why no single safeguard is enough  —  Microsoft designed a layered model that lets an AI agent resolve network incidents on its own within defined boundaries.
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:
Diwali 2026: Your festive planning checklist with Zoho Notebook  —  The Diwali countdown is on!  From lighting up every corner of the house to going a little overboard with the festive shopping …
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.

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Jacob Cooper / Railway Blog: