Techmeme
June 18, 2026, 12:25 AM

Top News

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:
In an interview, Tim Cook says Apple price hikes are “unavoidable” to offset surging memory and storage chip costs, and “the situation has become unsustainable”  —  The CEO tells the Journal in an exclusive interview that soaring costs make price increases ‘unavoidable’
The Information:
Noam Shazeer leaves Google to join OpenAI as lead for architecture research; he rejoined Google as a Gemini co-lead in 2024 during the $2.7B Character.AI deal  —  Noam Shazeer, the Google DeepMind researcher whose work underpinned the generative AI boom, is joining OpenAI, the AI firm told staff on Wednesday.
Financial Times:
Sources: Amodei, Altman, and Hassabis called for US-led collaboration on AI rules at the G7 summit; Macron and Modi raised concerns over the US' block of Mythos  —  Dario Amodei is supported by rival Sam Altman in call for international co-operation  —  Anthropic chief executive Dario …
Hugo Lowell / Wired:
Trump administration officials say Anthropic must ensure Fable 5's guardrails can't be circumvented before rerelease; experts say that may not be possible  —  Trump administration officials tell WIRED that if Anthropic wants to rerelease Fable 5, it will need to ensure the model's guardrails can't be circumvented.
New York Times:
A look at the chaos at Anthropic after it disabled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 with less than 90 minutes of notice, as some staff wonder if Trump is bullying Anthropic  —  Workers at the artificial intelligence company have been puzzled and increasingly concerned by the administration's move to limit their latest A.I. models.
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Midjourney unveils its first hardware product, the Midjourney Scanner, an ultrasound-based full-body scanner; it is unclear how AI fits into the medical effort  —  The AI image generator says this side project will be ‘in many ways superior to even MRI machines.’
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is testing a second-generation iPhone Air, planned for spring 2027, with a second rear camera for ultrawide-angle photos and better battery life  —  Apple Inc. is preparing a second-generation iPhone Air for spring 2027, aiming to boost the appeal of the slimmed-down device …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
AWS Summit: Amazon unveiled AWS Continuum, which uses AI to find and fix code vulnerabilities, AWS Context, which organizes company data for AI agents, and more  —  Amazon Web Services is announcing a new set of AI agents for businesses, developers, and individual users …
Andy Robinson / Video Games Chronicle:
Epic says Unreal Engine 6, planned for early access in late 2027, will unify UE5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite, add Claude and Gemini integrations, and more  —  Epic has detailed Unreal Engine 6, which it says will prominently integrate generative AI models to allow developers to …
Chris Martin / Tech Advisor:
Google confirms it has ended production of the Nest Mini and Nest Audio, but they “will continue to be fully supported” with updates, patches, and customer care  —  But it's not all bad news  —  We had a feeling it was coming, but we now have confirmation from Google …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
A newly discovered data leak has exposed what appears to be a collection of Fortinet and FortiGate VPN credentials for 73,932 firewall URLs across 194 countries  —  A newly discovered data leak dubbed “FortiBleed” has exposed what appears to be a collection of Fortinet and FortiGate VPN credentials …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mastodon adds email newsletters, letting writers send their posts to subscribers' inboxes, even to readers without a Mastodon account, as part of Mastodon 4.6  —  Mastodon, the open, decentralized alternative to Big Tech apps like X and Threads, is betting that email could help solve …
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch:
Snap's stock closed down 8.14% on Wednesday, after the company launched its $2,195 Specs AR glasses on Tuesday; SNAP is down ~41% YTD  —  Snap's long-awaited AR glasses, Specs, didn't have the best debut.  —  The company's stock hasn't been on the healthiest trajectory lately.
Arseniy Shestakov:
Apple's plan of moving Hide My Email aliases to private.icloud.com will let services easily distinguish them from normal iCloud email addresses and block them  —  a small and unimportant announcement appeared in Apple developer news: New domain for Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Anthropic updates Claude Design with design system imports, bidirectional integration with Claude Code, lower token consumption, and more export destinations  —  When Anthropic quietly released Claude Design in April as a “research preview,” it generated the kind of instant traction …
Yusuf Khan / Wall Street Journal:
Frontier, a group including Stripe, Google, Salesforce, and newly joined Anthropic, commits $915M to buy carbon-removal credits, on top of $1B already pledged  —  The commitment comes through buying group Frontier, which aims to scale up the carbon removal sector
Ryan Merket / RuntimeWire:
Joshua Baer, the founder and CEO of Texas accelerator-turned-venture firm Capital Factory, died on Tuesday night in a business jet crash in Laredo, Texas  —  Joshua Baer (@joshuabaer), the founder and CEO of Capital Factory, died Tuesday night in a business jet crash in Laredo, Texas …
Anhata Rooprai / Reuters:
Shoe company Allbirds rebrands to Smartbird as it pivots to an AI infrastructure company and names former AWS executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO; BIRD jumps 39%  —  Allbirds (BIRD.O) changed its name to Smartbird on Wednesday and appointed former Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) …

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
F5:
Accelerate AI Adoption at F5's AI Virtual Summit  —  Learn how to architect, secure, and scale AI for production with real-world insights from industry leaders on June 23.  Register now to save your spot.
Zoho:
10 essential project management reports every team should use  —  Let's be honest about how projects usually go sideways.  A task gets blocked and nobody notices.  A dependency changes and nobody updates the plan.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:
After you ring the bell
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Fact or Fiction: The Fable Ban, Tokenmaxxing, Saaspocolypse — With Ara Kharazian
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:
'Hard Fork' Live Part 2: Dylan Field on Standing Out in the A.I. Era
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
A Hollywood Manager Explains the New Rules of Show Biz
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.
Training Data:
Simulating Humans at Scale: Simile's Joon Sung Park
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:25 AM ET, June 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: