Spyglass - Nature is Healing

Happy Fed Rate Cut Day to those who celebrate. We should know how large the cut will be in just a few minutes and that, in turn, will likely send Wall Street into a tizzy – though perhaps not as much of one as comments pointing to how big the next rate cut will be, and when it will be.

But in general, any cutting of rates is also going to set in motion a whole range of financial action that has long been frozen in high interest rate amber. Perhaps a bit more muted with the US election looming in just a few weeks now, but still... progress post-inflation, post-COVID, post-ZIRP. Nature is healing?

Some Analysis...

Over-Optimized Apple

Apple got too good at doing what Steve Jobs did…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

John Wick Chapter AI

Lionsgate cuts a deal to work with AI rather than against it…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Snap Keeps Augmenting Their Tricky Reality

The new Spectacles approach seems right, but perhaps still too early…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

As An Aside...

• While Larry Ellison isn't exactly predicting Minority Report-level "pre-crime", his thoughts on police "supervision" + AI are the logical pre-step towards it... [TechCrunch]
• FlappyBird is back! But it's not made by original creator Dong Nguyen, who famously took it offline a decade ago. Instead, it appears to be yet more crypto grifty nonsense... [Polygon]
• Lest we think the EU wins every case against Big Tech, a court just overturned a €1.5B fine against Google over online ads – though it can still go to a higher court (the same one that just ruled against Apple and Google in another case) to be reinstated. [Bloomberg 🔒]
  • Meta may not be so lucky, as EU regulators look set to fine the company up to 10% of their worldwide revenue – so up to $13.5B – over their Marketplace service. This is one of the final Margrethe Vestager cases. [FT 🔒]
• TSMC's new American plant in Arizona is pumping out its first chip: Apple's A16. Not the latest and greatest chip found in the iPhones 15 or 16, but it could be destined for the next iPhone SE. It's a big deal for US production, of course – especially with Intel in limbo... If all of this is accurate, expect Apple to rely heavily on the "Made in America" banner. [Tim Culpan’s Position]
• A revolt at Annapurna's videogame division leads me to wonder once again if there's a path to Paramount here too... [Bloomberg 🔒]
• The joke is that a network where only AI bots reply to you is the same thing as Xitter, except it's almost the opposite because SocialAI's bots can't be mean and aren't just trolling or rage-baiting. Fun idea, though. [The Verge]
• While it sucks that Mozilla is shutting down the Mastodon server, it also apparently only had 270 active users (yikes). And it proves the point of the fediverse, in a way: you can easily transfer your account to another server. Still, is Mozilla okay? [TechCrunch]
• A "Woj bomb" all his own, Adrian Wojnarowski is walking away from ESPN to become the GM of the men's basketball team at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure. I suspect they're not paying him the $7M/year Disney was for all this scoops so... good for him to walk away on his own terms! [The Athletic 🔒]
  • Fun aside: it has long been a joke/complaint that no one wanted to move to Bristol, Conn as they'd have to for work at ESPN HQ – but Woj grew up just two miles from there! [@wojespn – he'll need to change that handle]

A Golden Oldie...

Meta’s Quest Against Apple

Can ‘Horizon OS’ be the Android to visionOS?

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

And I Quote...

"In the true spirit of ‘The Bear,’ we will not be making any jokes."

-- Eugene Levy, who hosted this year's Emmys along with his son, Dan Levy, making a joke about the show which is controversially placed in the "comedy" category each year despite being awfully serious...

John Koblin's story for The New York Times also has some good backstory on the night's big winner: the FX network. Including on chairman John Landgraf, who until now was perhaps most famous for coining the term "Peak TV".