C’mon Apple, Buy HBO!
HBO Max might be on the market and I want Apple to buy it! Coinbase is on an acquisition tear. Is the Amazon job apocalypse nigh? Is OpenAI plotting to take over Wall Street in a literal sense? And a brain implant startup has leapfrogged Neuralink in terms of helping blind people see again. Warner Bros. Discovery says it’s open to a sale; shares jump 10% (CNBC) Coinbase Strikes Deal for Crypto-Investing Platform Echo (WSJ) Anthropic brings Claude Code to the web (TechCrunch) Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots (NYTimes) OpenAI Looks to Replace the Drudgery of Junior Bankers’ Workload (Bloomberg) This retina implant lets people with vision loss do a crossword puzzle (MIT Technology Review) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
21 Loka 19min
The Winners Of The AI Boom You Never Thought About
Big AWS outage took down half the internet overnight. X wants you to be able to snap up dormant or desirable X handles. Blackwell chips look like they’ve hit volume production in the US. And you know who else is benefiting from the AI boom? Crypto miners and makers of plain old cables. Major AWS outage took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more (The Verge) OpenAI pauses Sora video generations of Martin Luther King Jr. (TechCrunch) X to launch marketplace for buying inactive handles (TechCrunch) Oura redesigns app with expanded stress tracking (The Verge) Exclusive: Nvidia and TSMC unveil first Blackwell chip wafer made in U.S. (Axios) $500 purple cables put this little-known company in the middle of the AI boom (CNBC) Crypto Miners Riding the AI Wave Are Leaving Bitcoin Behind (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
20 Loka 19min
Skills For Claude As A New AI Paradigm?
Do Skills for Claude represent a new sort of user paradigm for AI? Battlefield 6 seems to be doing what EA needs it to do. Nintendo seems to be killing it. Is Wikipedia in trouble because it’s losing human users? Now Uber drivers can earn new money thanks to AI. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Anthropic turns to ‘skills’ to make Claude more useful at work (The Verge) Claude Skills are awesome, maybe a bigger deal than MCP (Simon Willison) Steam just broke its concurrent user record with 41.6 million gamers (TweakTown) Nintendo Aims to Make 25 Million Switch 2s to Set Gaming History (Bloomberg) Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors (404media) Uber Launches Data Tasks as Option for Some US Drivers to Earn Money (Bloomberg) Apple and F1 reach 5-year media deal, bringing all races to Apple TV streaming in the U.S. (CNBC) Weekend Longreads Suggestions AI Data Centers, Desperate for Electricity, Are Building Their Own Power Plants (WSJ) Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital, and the American dream (Colossus) How Sam Altman Played Hollywood (The Hollywood Reporter) TiVo Has Sold Its Last DVR. These People Refuse to Let Go. (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
17 Loka 19min
A $300 Trillion Oopsie
So, a huge, huge, like bigger than the entire world’s GDP fat finger episode in the world of stablecoins. Zuck has poached another one from Apple. Potentially huge state sponsored hack of a key infrastructure company. The most interesting new phone concept I’ve seen in a while. And are we in an AI bubble episode 72. Printing Money: Paxos Mints, Then Burns $300 Trillion in PayPal Stablecoins (Decrypt) Apple’s Head of ChatGPT-Like AI Search Effort to Leave for Meta (Bloomberg) F5 says hackers stole undisclosed BIG-IP flaws, source code (BleepingComputer) Anthropic launches new version of scaled-down ‘Haiku’ model (TechCrunch) Honor’s Robot Phone concept features a fold-out camera arm (The Verge) ‘Of course it’s a bubble’: AI start-up valuations soar in investor frenzy (FT) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
16 Loka 19min
M5 Chips Are Here
The new Apple M5 chips are here, and I’ll tell you what devices got them and what they can do. ChatGPT wants to allow you to have sexy time. Waymo is coming to London. Netflix wants to bring podcasts to your streaming diet. And its officially the end of the road for Windows 10. Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro gets an M5 chip bump and faster storage (The Verge) Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults (The Verge) Waymo’s robotaxis are coming to London (The Verge) Spotify partners with Netflix for video podcast distribution deal (TechCrunch) YouTube has a new video player (The Verge) OpenAI makes five-year business plan to meet $1tn spending pledges (FT) Windows 10 support “ends” today, but it’s just the first of many deaths (ArsTechnica) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
15 Loka 19min
Sam Altman’s Financial Engineering
The Dutch government has taken control of a Dutch chipmaker that had Chinese owners. Yet another big OpenAI deal, this time with Broadcom. The first AI desktop workstations are arriving. And we check in with Matt Levine to get his take on what he says is Sam Altman’s genius for financial engineering. Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia (FT) OpenAI, Broadcom Forge Multibillion-Dollar Chip-Development Deal (WSJ) Thinking Machines Lab Co-Founder Departs for Meta (WSJ) Nvidia to Start Selling $3,999 DGX Spark Mini PC This Week (PCMag) NotebookLM Video Overviews add Nano Banana visual styles, Brief or Explainer formats (9to5Google) OpenAI Keeps Doing Deals (Matt Levine) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
14 Loka 19min
(BNS) Jennifer Hyman Of Rent The Runway
Jenn Hyman shares her journey from early influences of entrepreneurship to founding Rent the Runway. She discusses the impact of the internet on her career, the challenges of fundraising during a recession, and the importance of building relationships in the fashion industry. Hyman emphasizes the unique advantages of starting a business in New York City and the collaborative spirit of the startup ecosystem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13 Loka 43min
China’s Getting Tetchy Again
China is stirring the pot on the tech trade wars once again. Sora has grown faster than even ChatGPT did. Is OpenAI now better at vibe coding than Anthropic is? How just a handful of malicious documents and poison an LLM. And in the longreads, the one game that has the fate of EA on its shoulders. China blacklists major chip research firm TechInsights following report on Huawei (CNBC) OpenAI’s Sora hit 1 million downloads in less than five days (CNBC) OpenAI Is Catching Up To Anthropic in AI Coding (The Information) Meta Tells Its Metaverse Workers to Use AI to ‘Go 5X Faster’ (Wired) It's trivially easy to poison LLMs into spitting out gibberish, says Anthropic (The Register) Kalshi, a Prediction Market, Raises Funds and Expands Overseas (NYTimes) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Battlefield 6 is a pivotal moment for the series — and EA (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
10 Loka 19min
