Tech News — 2026-04-16#

Story of the Day#

Anthropic has simultaneously released Claude Opus 4.7 for general coding while heavily restricting its more advanced “Mythos” model to select banks and US government agencies. Internal experts warned Mythos was simply too dangerous for the wild due to its potent cybersecurity capabilities, triggering both fascination and genuine alarm across Wall Street and global governments.

Top Stories#

OpenAI Arms Codex With Desktop Control OpenAI drastically updated its Codex coding agent, granting it the ability to operate macOS desktop applications in the background without interrupting users. The update lays the groundwork for the company’s long-rumored “super app” and introduces 111 new plugins to counter Anthropic’s agentic tools. It also brings memory features and a built-in browser, fundamentally shifting the tool from a code completion utility to a proactive, multi-purpose AI coworker.

Global RAM Shortage Drives Up Meta Quest Prices Meta is hiking the price of its Quest 3 VR headsets by $100 and Quest 3S by $50, blaming the global memory shortage as AI data centers voraciously consume available chip supplies. The cost increase, taking effect April 19, highlights how the generative AI boom is creating supply chain ripple effects that are penalizing consumer hardware.

Anna’s Archive Hit With $322 Million Judgment for Scraping Spotify A New York federal judge ordered open-source library Anna’s Archive to pay Spotify and three major record labels $322 million after the pirate group allegedly scraped 86 million songs. The anonymous operator failed to respond to the lawsuit, resulting in a default judgment for copyright infringement and breach of contract. Despite the massive penalty, the creators remain unidentified, making it highly unlikely the labels will ever actually recover the damages.

Reed Hastings Exits Netflix Board After 29 Years Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings will step down from the company’s board this June to focus on philanthropy, ending a nearly three-decade run that transformed the video rental industry into the modern streaming era. Hastings stepped down as co-CEO in 2023, passing the reins to Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos, who will now steer the company as it expands into live sports and gaming.

EU Pushes Google to Share Search Data With Rivals The European Commission proposed new Digital Markets Act measures that would require Google to share ranking, query, click, and view data with third-party search engines on fair terms. Regulators argue that access to this proprietary data is essential for developing competing services, particularly in the AI space. A final, binding decision is expected by July 27, guaranteeing a fierce legal battle in the coming months.

Intel Unveils Core Series 3 Chips on 18A Node Intel officially announced its Core Series 3 laptop processors, returning to new silicon for budget chips by building them on the cutting-edge 18A process. While these chips boast fewer cores and PCIe lanes than their “Ultra” counterparts, they still offer a 47 percent improvement in single-thread performance and greatly enhanced efficiency over previous generations.

Apple and Google Promoted Explicit Deepfake Apps A new report reveals that the iOS App Store and Google Play have actively promoted AI “nudify” apps, many of which were bizarrely labeled “E” for Everyone. Despite clear policies banning non-consensual sexual content, these platforms hosted and profited from apps that generated over $122 million in revenue before Apple and Google began removing them following the investigation.

Also Worth Knowing#

• Canva AI 2.0 Preview: Canva overhauled its workspace suite with an orchestration layer that connects its design tools via a unified conversational AI assistant capable of handling multi-step tasks.
• DJI Osmo Pocket 4: DJI announced the Osmo Pocket 4 with an upgraded 1-inch sensor and new physical zoom controls, though the device will noticeably skip a US launch due to pending authorization.
• Perplexity Personal Computer: Perplexity released a new Mac application that utilizes multi-model orchestration to let AI agents control files, apps, and workflows directly on your machine.
• EU Age Verification App: The European Union is preparing to release an open-source, anonymous age-verification app to help enforce Digital Services Act restrictions on content like pornography and gambling without harvesting personal data.
• Gemini Personal Intelligence: Google’s Gemini can now utilize the Nano Banana 2 image model to generate highly personalized AI images directly referenced from the user’s connected Google Photos library.