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Friday, April 24, 2026

Good morning — DeepSeek has returned with 1.6 trillion reasons to reconsider frontier AI pricing, Witkoff and Kushner are boarding a plane to Pakistan for talks that Iran has not yet confirmed it is attending, and a Bank of England deputy governor would like a brief word about equity markets. Here is what happened.

AI Tech News

DeepSeek Returns to Rattle Silicon Valley, This Time With 1.6 Trillion Parameters

China's DeepSeek, having made something of a name for itself last year by causing a minor panic among people who had assumed the AI race was America's to lose, emerged on Thursday with its V4 model — a 1.6-trillion-parameter system that it describes as approaching the frontier at a price so low that competitors have reportedly begun looking for other distinguishing features. The V4 Flash and V4 Pro models topped coding benchmarks, introduced a technique for remembering conversations at what the company terms "remarkable length," and are available open-source on Hugging Face for anyone who would like to run a near-frontier model in their garage at a cost of $0.14 per million input tokens — a figure that prompted at least one Silicon Valley valuation to experience what observers described as "brief difficulty with spatial orientation." The gap between frontier AI and whatever one finds for free on the internet is, once again, rather narrower than the pricing of the incumbents would suggest.

Source: TechCrunch

The Protocol That Connects AI to Everything Now Has a Foundation, a Governing Board, and 97 Million Installs

Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, the rather clever standard that allows AI models to reach into external tools and databases as naturally as a man reaching for his hat, has crossed 97 million developer installs and been formally placed under the governance of the Linux Foundation's newly formed Agentic AI Foundation — a nonprofit arrangement co-chartered by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block, which one imagines will produce a great many governance documents before it produces anything else of note. The foundation's stated aim is to ensure that the infrastructure undergirding the next generation of AI agents evolves in a transparent and community-driven fashion, which is the kind of sentence that foundations produce with almost mechanical regularity and which contains within it the implicit acknowledgment that transparency is not a thing that simply happens on its own. Whether neutral governance produces better protocols than mildly competitive product teams remains one of the open questions of the software era; the protocol, at least, continues to function regardless of how many committee meetings are held in its honor.

Source: Linux Foundation

US Politics

Witkoff and Kushner to Fly to Pakistan for Iran Talks That Iran Has Not Confirmed It Is Attending

Presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel to Islamabad on Saturday for what the White House described as "direct talks" with Iran, which Iran's state media simultaneously described as not happening — a scheduling disagreement of the sort that seldom bodes well for diplomacy but which has, in this particular negotiation, become something of a recurring motif. The prior round of Islamabad talks, a 21-hour affair involving 300 Americans and 70 Iranians that concluded with everyone returning home without a deal, apparently gave sufficient encouragement to try again, on the principle that if one marathon conversation has failed, a second one might not. A naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in place, the ceasefire with Lebanon has been extended by three weeks, and Vice President Vance, who attended the first round, will not be attending this one — a detail the White House did not explain and reporters were perhaps too polite to press. The situation is described by officials as "progressing," which in diplomatic usage covers an enormous amount of territory without committing to any of it.

Source: CNBC

Facing Approval in the Mid-30s, the White House Develops a 2026 Strategy Best Described as Vigorous Misdirection

The Trump White House, confronted with approval ratings that have migrated into the mid-30s and a Fox News poll showing Democrats beating Republicans on economic competence for the first time in sixteen years, has settled on a 2026 midterm strategy that might be described as the electoral equivalent of pointing firmly at the other fellow's hat and hoping no one looks at your own. The plan, as reported by CNN, is to make the election a referendum on the Democratic Party rather than on the sitting president — a sensible enough approach in theory, though it rests on the somewhat optimistic assumption that voters can be reliably redirected from a man who has been governing them, at considerable volume, for the past year and a half. Historically, opposition parties in the sixth quarter of an administration do absorb the public's anxieties; historically, this also tends to work rather less well when the president in question has continued opinions about everything and the means to broadcast them. One imagines the next several months will be, at minimum, brisk.

Source: CNN

Geopolitics

The EU Approves $106 Billion for Ukraine, After Hungary Remembered Where the Exit Was

The European Union approved a $106 billion loan package for Ukraine on Thursday, ending months of political deadlock maintained largely through the efforts of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had been blocking the measure with the quiet persistence of a man who has found a comfortable chair and sees no reason whatsoever to move. The deadlock broke after oil resumed flowing through a key pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia — a development that apparently resolved several deeply held principles with admirable speed — and Orbán subsequently lost a national election in a landslide, which resolved the remainder. The funds, to be disbursed over two years for economic and military support, were approved unanimously by the EU's remaining members, which for the EU constitutes something of a personal best; a fresh round of sanctions against Russia was passed alongside for good measure. The situation in Ukraine remains, by most assessments, a matter of ongoing concern, and $106 billion is, by any assessment, a number that the word "loan" is doing considerable work to describe.

Source: NPR

Israel and Lebanon Extend Their Ceasefire Three More Weeks, the Parties Having, in the President's Words, "Hit It Off"

President Trump announced Thursday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend their ceasefire for an additional three weeks, describing the envoys from the two countries as having, in his precise diplomatic formulation, "hit it off" during White House negotiations — which, given the context, represents an outcome that would have seemed improbable to most observers as recently as the previous ceasefire. The US naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in place, Witkoff and Kushner are shortly to board a plane to Pakistan, and the broader regional situation is described by officials as "progressing" — a word that in foreign policy usage covers an enormous amount of territory without committing to any particular corner of it. Three weeks, at the pace these negotiations have been proceeding, is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of holding one's breath; the parties involved appear to be managing it with commendable composure. One notes with cautious relief that the available alternative was considerably less tidy.

Source: CNN

Economy

Texas Instruments Surges 19% as AI Discovers It Needs Rather a Lot of Analog Chips

Texas Instruments, a company one might be forgiven for associating primarily with the graphing calculator of one's school years, surged 19% on Thursday after reporting quarterly earnings that beat analyst estimates by a comfortable margin — driven, somewhat improbably, by a 90% year-on-year increase in data center revenue, as it emerged that AI's insatiable appetite extends democratically to the humble analog chip. Revenue grew 19% to $4.83 billion, well ahead of forecasts; the industrial segment was up 30%; and the CEO reported on the earnings call that guidance for Q2 was for revenue between $5 billion and $5.4 billion, which Wall Street received with the enthusiasm of a man who had been looking in entirely the wrong drawer and has suddenly found what he was after. Analysts who had spent the better part of three years regarding the stock with mild skepticism issued several upgrades in rapid succession, which is the financial community's method of acknowledging that one had perhaps been watching the wrong part of the technology stack. The stock is up 63% for the year, and the graphing calculator associations have faded somewhat.

Source: CNBC

Bank of England Deputy Governor Looks at Global Asset Prices and Suggests Everyone Might Want to Sit Down

Sarah Breeden, the Bank of England's Deputy Governor for Financial Stability — a title that carries more irony by the week — told the BBC on Thursday that global equity markets are priced significantly higher than current risks would warrant, and that a "market adjustment" is likely at some point, delivered with the cheerful calm of a person who has noticed smoke but has no wish to cause a scene. She pointed specifically to the $2-trillion private credit sector, which has expanded with considerable gusto over the past several years but has yet to be tested under genuine stress, and which she described as a source of potential "systemic contagion" — a phrase that, translated from central-banker into plain English, means something approximating "rather a problem." Markets, receiving the news that they may be somewhat overpriced, finished the day down a modest 0.4%, which suggests that markets, too, are capable of understatement when the occasion calls for it.

Source: CNBC

Science

Astronomers Believe They Have Witnessed Something the Universe Has Not Previously Got Around to Naming

Astronomers reported this week that a peculiar cosmic event detected in recent days appears to combine the characteristics of two previously understood types of stellar explosion — the kilonova and the supernova — into something for which the textbooks have not yet provided a category, though "superkilonova" has been proposed and has, one must admit, a satisfying ring to it. The object behaved initially like a kilonova, the relatively brief and brilliant collision of neutron stars, before pivoting several days later into what appeared to be a supernova, leaving researchers with the distinct sensation of having been given a puzzle whose pieces belong to two entirely different boxes. Scientists from the University of Toronto are among those suggesting the event represents an entirely new class of stellar cataclysm — which, if confirmed, would be a finding of considerable significance and the sort of thing one imagines made several astronomers spill their coffee. The universe, as ever, turns out to contain more variety than the available nomenclature had anticipated.

Source: ScienceDaily

Ancient Snakes Had Hind Legs, a Cheekbone, and Presumably Considerably More Trouble Getting Under Doors

Scientists published findings this week confirming that snakes, roughly 100 million years ago, possessed functional hind legs and a cheekbone called the quadratojugal that connects the jaw to the skull in most vertebrates — a feature that modern snakes have largely dispensed with, apparently finding the whole arrangement over-engineered for their particular lifestyle. The hind limbs appear to have persisted for longer than previously understood, suggesting that the transition from limbed lizard to limbless serpent proceeded with the unhurried deliberateness that characterizes most major evolutionary decisions, and with considerably less urgency than one might expect from an animal that had, after all, already sorted out the venom. The discovery invites one to contemplate the specific evolutionary committee that determined both features were surplus to requirements, and whether their deliberations were conducted with the gravity the situation deserved. That a creature as apparently streamlined as the modern snake was once a more complicated animal is the kind of information paleontology delivers with some regularity, and which never quite loses its power to unsettle.

Source: Science Friday

Culture

The Michael Jackson Biopic Opens to $85 Million, One Impressive Performance, and a Great Deal of Critical Ambivalence

"Michael," the biographical film about the life of Michael Jackson directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring the late singer's nephew Jaafar Jackson in his film debut, opened Thursday to a projected $85 to $95 million domestic weekend — a figure suggesting that the public's appetite for the subject remains considerable regardless of what critics have concluded about the execution, which is, as a rule, the film industry's preferred state of affairs. Reviews divided along familiar lines: nearly universal admiration for Jaafar Jackson's performance, described as genuinely uncanny, and nearly universal unease about a screenplay that takes the singer from the Jackson 5 through the Bad tour while contriving to sidestep the controversies that occupied rather a lot of column inches during the latter portion of his career — an omission that, given the $165 million budget, one can only assume was a considered creative decision rather than an oversight. A biopic willing to engage fully with its subject would have been a more interesting film; a more interesting film might also have been a considerably less lucrative one; and the studio appears to have made its priorities clear.

Source: Deadline

The Las Culturistas Culture Awards Return, Confirming That Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang Remain the Internet's Unofficial Council of Taste

The fifth annual Las Culturistas Culture Awards, hosted by comedians Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, will premiere on June 17 on Bravo and Peacock, with presale tickets becoming available Friday — an event that, to a certain demographic of very online Americans, functions as something between the Oscars and a neighborhood newsletter, conducted at considerable volume and with opinions that brook no equivocation. The show, which originated as a podcast segment before graduating to television with the sort of organic momentum that marketing departments spend millions attempting to manufacture, has over five years established itself as a genuine barometer for the kind of entertainment that mainstream awards bodies have traditionally declined to notice, and which, it turns out, rather a lot of people care about. Rogers and Yang's particular gift is for treating ephemeral pop culture moments with the seriousness usually reserved for matters of state, a posture that, depending on one's tolerance for strong feelings about reality television, is either the most delightful thing on broadcast or a cause for some quiet reflection about how we spend our evenings. Bravo, which has never been accused of underestimating its audience, seems rather pleased with the arrangement.

Source: Deadline

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DeepSeek returns, diplomacy heads to Pakistan, and other Friday complications