Techmeme
March 3, 2026, 7:00 PM

Top News

Apple:
Apple refreshes the 14" and 16" MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max: up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing, up to 2x faster SSD speeds, and 1TB of base storage  —  The world's best pro laptop raises the bar again with blazing-fast CPU and GPU performance, plus up to 2x faster SSD speeds and 1TB of starting storage
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils the M5 MacBook Air in 13" and 15" sizes, boosting its starting price by $100 to $1,099 and doubling base storage to 512GB, shipping from March 11  —  Apple has officially announced the new M5 MacBook Air.  While the starting price has increased by $100, it now comes with double …
Apple:
Apple updates the $1,599+ Studio Display and unveils a $3,299+ 27" 5K Studio Display XDR, with a 120Hz refresh rate, a mini-LED backlight, and up to 2,000 nits  —  Studio Display XDR is the world's best pro display, featuring a 27-inch 5K Retina XDR display with a mini-LED backlight …
Apple:
Apple unveils the M5 Pro and M5 Max, offering a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture, a next-generation up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and more  —  Built using the new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture, M5 Pro and M5 Max feature an advanced CPU, a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerators …
Engadget:
George Hammond / Financial Times:
Sam Altman says OpenAI amended its DOD contract to ensure “the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals”  —  Sam Altman says company is working with defence department on provisions covering mass surveillance
Dylan Butts / CNBC:
Sam Altman says the DOD affirmed that OpenAI's tools wouldn't be used by agencies like the NSA, and services to them would need a further contract modification  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Monday that the company “shouldn't have rushed” its recent deal with the U.S. Department of Defense and outlined revisions to the agreement.
The Keyword:
Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, which it says delivers “enhanced performance” at a fraction of the cost of larger models and outperforms 2.5 Flash  —  Get best-in-class intelligence for your highest-volume workloads. … Today, we're introducing Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite …
OpenAI:
OpenAI releases GPT-5.3 Instant, which it says delivers more accurate answers and better-contextualized results when searching the web, for all ChatGPT users  —  Today, we're releasing an update to ChatGPT's most-used model that makes everyday conversations more consistently helpful and fluid.
Marcus Schuler / Implicator.ai:
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Google adds new Android features, including custom calling cards, real-time location sharing in Google Messages, and luggage tracking with partner airlines  —  Google will let users of its Android mobile operating system set up custom calling cards and share their live location in messages …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Junyang Lin, a tech lead on Alibaba's Qwen team, abruptly steps down; two other members of the Qwen team also leave  —  Alibaba's Qwen AI project has lost one of its most visible technical leaders just a day after the Chinese tech giant unveiled its new Qwen 3.5 open-weight small models.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
AWS warns of “unpredictable” Middle East operations after drones “directly struck” two UAE facilities and a drone strike near one of its Bahrain facilities  —  Amazon Web Services said late Monday two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a facility …
Chainalysis:
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
An internal DHS document shows CBP used location data sourced from the online ad industry to track phone locations; ICE has bought access to similar tools  —  Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples' precise movements over time …
The Information:
Source: OpenAI is developing an alternative to GitHub; the project is nascent, and the decision came after OpenAI engineers experienced an increase in outages  —  OpenAI is developing an alternative to GitHub, Microsoft's popular code repository that lets software engineers store …
Andre Revilla / Engadget:
X announces a policy change suspending users from Creator Revenue Sharing for 90 days if they post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict without disclosure  —  The new policy is the platform's first rule requiring any kind of AI content disclosure.  —  X will suspend creators …
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Audible launches a cheaper, $8.99/month streaming tier in the US, vs. $14.95/month for its premium plan, to rival Spotify; the plan includes ad-free podcasts  —  - New plan costs $8.99 in US versus $14.95 for premium offering  — Offering includes ad-free podcasts available on Wondery+ app
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
President Trump says the GENIUS Act is being “threatened and undermined” by banks, following their opposition to stablecoin yield payouts  —  U.S. President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the banking industry is trying to undermine the stablecoin bill he signed into law last year.
SvD:
Investigation: Sama data annotators in Nairobi say they view private videos from Ray-Ban Meta glasses, like bathroom visits; ex-Meta staff say faces are blurred  —  Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded.  Behind Meta's new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce …
Lawfare:
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's and Trump's actions against Anthropic have serious legal issues, and its designation exceeds what the statute authorizes  —  On Feb. 27, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic—the maker of the AI model Claude—a supply chain risk to national security.
Stevie Bonifield / The Verge:
TikTok USDS says users “may temporarily experience lags in posting content” due to an issue at Oracle's Ashburn data center, the second Oracle outage in a month  —  TikTok users in the US may experience lag while trying to post content until the outage is resolved.

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Featured Podcasts

Access:
A top iPhone app developer reacts to Apple's new Siri
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Hard Fork:
'Hard Fork' Live, Part 1: Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn
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:
TBC's Alex Ksendzovsky: The Neurosurgeon Using Brain Cells To Build Better AI
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.
BG2 Pod:
The SpaceX IPO, Fable 5, AI Capex Update & Market Check w/ Gavin Baker, Andrew Fox & Clark Tang
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
All about Interest Rates
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
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.
 

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Earlier Picks

Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware:
Kritika Lamba / Reuters:
Thomas Ricker / The Verge: