Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

YouTube launches a Premium paywall for song lyrics on YouTube Music, after testing it in recent months; users get five free lyrics before they have to subscribe (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Techmeme

The European Commission sends a statement of objections to Meta over WhatsApp blocking rival AI chatbots, warning it will take measures to avoid "serious" harm (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

PE firm Advent, FedEx, A&R, and PPF agree to acquire Polish automated parcel delivery company InPost for €7.8B; the company has 61K automated parcel lockers (Dominic Chopping/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Q&A with YouTube VP of Subscription Products Christian Oestlien on YouTube TV's future, the NFL and Oscars deals, its friendly rivalry with Netflix, and more (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek launches ai.com during the Super Bowl and opens up username handle registration to let users get a private, personalized AI agent (Brayden Lindrea/Cointelegraph)

Techmeme

A look at Tether's global expansion, after it recently hit ~300 staff; sources describe Tether's internal focus on corporate structure and "profit and loss" (Jill R Shah/Financial Times)

Techmeme

A look at the 2026 Super Bowl ads from Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, and others, as AI continued to take center stage in ad creation and AI product promotion (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

China says its trade surplus from digital services rose 100%+ to a record $33B in 2025, boosted by overseas revenue of AI, livestreaming, and e-commerce (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

How Runna, an AI-powered virtual coaching app acquired by Strava in 2025, toned down its aggressive training plans following reports of injuries from some users (Nicole Nguyen/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Blackstone and Coatue grant a $10B loan to Australian AI infrastructure startup Firmus for data center expansion, among Australia's largest private credit deals (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

How China boosts its humanoid robot industry, giving companies land, favorable bank loan terms, and sometimes subsidizing the robots' purchase price by ~10% (Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

An interview with Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, who General Catalyst promoted to president in January, on investing in European tech and defense startups, and more (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

As Section 230 turns 30, a look at how upcoming court cases involving Meta, Alphabet, and others in the US could reshape the bounds of Section 230's protections (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)

Techmeme

Moltbook was peak AI theater, offering less of a glimpse at the future and more of a mirror simply reflecting society's current obsession with AI (Will Douglas Heaven/MIT Technology Review)

Techmeme

How AI is impacting the romance novel industry, with authors failing to disclose AI use and using pen names more, bogging down the publishing ecosystem (Alexandra Alter/New York Times)

Techmeme

T-glass, a type of ultrathin glass sheet used in advanced chips, is in short supply and largely comes from Nittobo, which is not adding capacity for months (Yang Jie/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

A software engineer explains "AI fatigue", compounded by a FOMO treadmill of using AI labs' latest tools and "thinking atrophy", alongside boosted productivity (Siddhant Khare)

Techmeme

OpenClaw partners with VirusTotal and says that all skills published to ClawHub are now scanned using VirusTotal's threat intelligence (The Hacker News)

Techmeme

Sources: Block is notifying hundreds of staff their jobs may be eliminated during annual performance reviews; up to 10% of the workforce is at risk of being cut (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Q&A with mathematicians behind the "First Proof" experiment, which tests AI's mathematical competence on questions drawn from the authors' unpublished research (Siobhan Roberts/New York Times)

Techmeme