Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
September 21, 2026, 8:40 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Li Yuan / New York Times:
As Xi Jinping visits DC, Chinese economists warn that Beijing is pouring too many resources into AI, which creates few jobs, and is doing little for the economy  —  “The U.S. Lead Over China in AI Is All But Gone.”  “China Is AI-Maxxing.”  “China Just Erased America's AI Lead.”
Ezra Klein / New York Times:
After hacking incidents and the industry's existential risk warnings, we need a regulatory ban on RSI, as competition drives unchecked autonomous acceleration  —  There's a chasm right now between how artificial intelligence feels to most of us who use it and how A.I. feels out at the experimental frontier of the technology.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Pacing the frontier may be sincere, but it would also be strategically useful for frontier AI labs to have time to reduce overhangs caused by model advancement  —  There has been, over the last week, what I think is a healthy debate about the philosophy and psychology that undergirds the views …
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Scott Bessent says the US proposed an AI incident “notification mechanism” to China, and both sides agreed to set up an AI dialogue ahead of the Trump-Xi summit  —  Treasury secretary says sides working towards ‘shared vision’ after talks with Chinese counterpart
Olivia Fletcher / Bloomberg:
Ireland's DPC fines Google €403M over how it processed location data after complaints from European consumer rights groups, and gives it six months to comply  —  Ireland's media watchdog has fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google over how the tech company processed location data after complaints …
Elizabeth Chamberlain / iFixit News:
iPhone 18 Pro teardown: its SoC now sits outside the logic board for better cooling, the variable aperture is thoughtfully designed but hard to repair, and more  —  The iPhone 18 Pro's little mechanical pupil is irresistible.  A bunch of moving parts make for a good excuse to put our brand new camera under the microscope.
Politico:
A detailed recap of the White House's 19-day standoff with Anthropic, where a jailbreak dispute led officials to bluntly order Dario Amodei to take Fable down  —  On the evening of April 6, an unusual request began making its way from Washington to some of Wall Street's most powerful executives.
Financial Times:
Big Tech is increasingly using residual value guarantees for off-balance sheet AI spend, giving Nvidia and Broadcom a way to support their customers' purchases  —  Wall Street finds new way to turn tech giants' credit strength into cheaper funding for AI build-out
Toby Sterling / Reuters:
IFR: ~7,000 autonomous humanoids were sold globally in 2025 for industrial and professional use, with many bought for research instead of doing productive work  —  Around 7,000 humanoid robots were sold worldwide last year for industrial and professional service use, figures compiled by the International Federation of Robotics showed.
More: Finimize
Subrat Patnaik / Bloomberg:
Filing: Oura is seeking to raise up to $2.2B in its US IPO, marketing 50M shares at $40 to $44 each, giving it a $14.1B valuation at the top of its range  —  Health and fitness ring-maker Oura Inc. and some of its backers are seeking to raise as much as $2.2 billion in an initial public offering.
prinz:
A researcher used GPT-6 Astra to decipher a WWI German radio transmission from 1918, one of the 50 famous unsolved ciphers listed on a German science blog  —  Scienceblogs.de, a German science blogging portal, includes a relatively famous list of 50 unsolved ciphers, which range …
Newley Purnell / Bloomberg:
Data Center Watch: 45 US data center projects valued at $68B were blocked or delayed by local opposition between April and June, or 50%+ of large developments  —  Opposition to data centers continues to mount in the US.  —  That's according to research group Data Center Watch …
Steve LeVine / The Information:
Eric Schmidt-founded Perennial and eight other drone startups plan to split US DoD orders for 60,000 drones in a competition that requires no China-made parts  —  Last month, the Pentagon threw up its arms in frustration (metaphorically speaking) when most of the drone startups in competition …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
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

Grit:
 Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
 90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
 AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
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:
 AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
 Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
 Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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 8:40 AM ET, September 21, 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

Kaitlan Collins / @kaitlancollins:
Email: Bryan Boughton, who runs Fox News' DC bureau and is the current TV pool chair, says the TV pool will not be covering President Trump's events today

Jon Passantino / Status:
Source: New York and Connecticut AGs have voiced concerns about the potential settlement agreement with Paramount and are pressing for greater concessions

Ashely Claudino / Polygon.com:
Both Disney+ and Disney+ Premium can now feature ads under their updated ToS, with ads on the Premium tier limited to the start or end of an episode or movie

More News

Earlier Picks

Qwen:
Alibaba releases Qwen-Image-2.1, a 7B open-weight model it says outperforms most closed-source models, with native transparency and up to ten reference images
Truman Dickerson / Business Insider:
Jensen Huang says AI leaders calling for regulation don't want new legislation, but to be “relieved of the laws we do have” because of “ulterior reasons”
Josipa Majic Predin / Forbes:
Vercel, Cloudflare, and others quickly add Jev, as it makes AI tool selection much faster and cheaper; TypeSafe: Jev matches GPT-5.6 and Sonnet 5 workflow evals
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
A closer look at the upcoming Siri AI-powered home hub, a key pillar of Apple's strategy for the home; sources: Apple started cutting Fitness+ staff
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter