Tag: Techmeme Newsletter

“Anthropic notches win in DoD fight, Apple plans to open up Siri.”

Views expressed in this science and technology update are those of the reporters and correspondents.

Accessed on 27 March 2026, 2132 UTC.

Content and Source:  “Techmeme.com Newsletter.”

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.com).

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	Thu, Mar 26

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A US judge grants Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction in its suit against the Trump administration over the DOD’s decision to blacklist the company (Ashley Capoot / CNBC)

@deanwball:  This is a devastating ruling for the government, finding Anthropic likely to prevail on essentially all of its theories for why the government’s actions were unlawful and unconstitutional.  One of the things she mentions is the huge range of amici briefs supporting Anthropic (by the way, 0 supported USG)—so thanks to everyone here who signed on to FAI’s brief, or to one of the many many others.  These things do matter.  More importantly, you were on the right side of history.  @hadas_gold:  Judge Rita Lin wrote “”Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,”

Sources: Apple plans to open up Siri to run any AI service via App Store apps in iOS 27, dropping ChatGPT as exclusive partner in Apple Intelligence and Siri (Mark Gurman / Bloomberg)

@markgurman:  This is all completely separate from its – unchanged – deal with Google Gemini to help it rebuild its Apple Foundation Models and own technology underpinning Siri and Apple Intelligence.  @mikeisaac:  narrative for a while was “apple is behind on AI” — which was true when siri was a bust after trying in house but now they’re in a position where they’re not spending the insane amounts of capex the other hyperscalers are AND using their models for siri dumb like a fox?  @munster_gene:  Two things investors should keep in mind as Apple works to do something unique in AI: 1️⃣ The scope of their AI ambitions is bigger than last year’s WWDC comments.  It’s now expected to include conversational AI and using Siri as a UI to access third-party models.  The substance remains unchanged, about using Siri to power personal AI.  2️⃣ WWDC won’t be a “flip the switch” moment for Siri.  The first leap forward likely starts with the new iOS in September, with a phased rollout over the next six months.  In other words, we’re about a year away from having access to the new Siri in its entirety.  My take: This will be worth the wait.

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Netflix raises US prices following a January 2025 hike; standard with ads rises $1 to $8.99/month; standard with no ads and premium rise $2 to $19.99 and $26.99 (Todd Spangler / Variety)

@ddayen:  Netflix just got a $2.8 billion termination fee for dropping the Warner Bros. bid. So why not double dip and raise subscription prices another buck or two?  @leehepner:  In 2016, the price of a Netflix Standard w/o Ads plan was $9.99. Following its second increase this year, it will be $19.99. That’s a 100% increase against 39% inflation. 47% of users say they pay too much for streaming services. Netflix’s gross *profit* in 2025 was $21.9B.  @fischerking64:  Prices rise as quality declines. Representative of products and services almost across the board today.

Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, an audio model with improved tonal understanding and lower latency for real-time dialogue, watermarked with SynthID (Valeria Wu / The Keyword)

Google expands Search Live, its AI conversational search feature previously limited to the US and India, to all languages and regions where AI Mode is available (Aisha Malik / TechCrunch)

Sources: OpenAI has shelved its erotic chatbot “indefinitely” as it refocuses on its core products after technical issues and concerns from staff and investors (Financial Times)

Fannie Mae will accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time; Coinbase launches a mortgage product allowing buyers to pledge bitcoin or USDC as collateral (Wall Street Journal)

The $6M LA social media verdict is a win for the plaintiffs bar, not kids or society; parenting helps mitigate the harms and most kids don’t face severe issues (Wall Street Journal)

Back-to-back jury verdicts holding Meta liable could spur a flood of litigation against social media companies and threaten to undermine Section 230 protections (Wall Street Journal) As US lawmakers struggle to pass online safety laws, LA and New Mexico juries take the lead, holding social media companies accountable for harming young users (Cecilia Kang / New York Times) Meta stock fell 8% on Thursday after juries in two US trials found the company failed to adequately warn or protect young users (Reuters)

Defense tech startup Shield AI raised $2B at a $12.7B valuation, up from $5.3B after raising $240M in March 2025; half of its business is autonomous software (Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times)

Sources: Anthropic executives have discussed an IPO as soon as Q4, and bankers vying to take the company public expect it to raise more than $60B (The Information)

Apple expands its American Manufacturing Program, adding Bosch, Cirrus Logic, TDK, and Qnity Electronics to make components in the US for products sold globally (MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC)

The US DOJ charges a Chinese national and two Americans for allegedly trying to smuggle nearly $62M worth of export-controlled Nvidia A100s and H100s into China (Michael Kan / PCMag)

The European Commission opens a DSA investigation into Snap for failing to protect kids on Snapchat, including whether it does enough to assess its users’ ages (Eliza Gkritsi / Politico)

The EU accuses Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos of failing to protect kids from exposure to pornographic content, in preliminary DSA investigation findings (Barbara Moens / Financial Times)

Apple discontinues the Mac Pro and says it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware (Chance Miller / 9to5Mac)

In an interview, David Sacks says he has relinquished his role as AI and crypto czar after using up his time as a special government employee (Bloomberg)

A US federal judge dismisses X’s antitrust lawsuit that accused the World Federation of Advertisers and a group of major companies of illegally boycotting X (Mike Scarcella / Reuters)

Uber partners with China-based Pony AI and Croatia-based, Rimac-spinoff Verne to launch Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service, initially debuting in Zagreb (Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge)

X limits X Pro access to subscribers of the $40/month Premium+ plan without notifying users in advance; it was previously available in the $8/month Premium plan (Juli Clover / MacRumors)