It’s easy to forget just how powerful Apple is...until something like yesterday happens then it all comes rushing back.

After revealing that an Apple privacy change was denting its ad business Thursday evening, Snap stock plunged 27% yesterday—its worst day ever—and dragged other social media stocks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest down with it. In all, more than $150 billion in value was wiped out.

What did Apple do? In April, Apple introduced a privacy feature that asks users whether they want to be tracked by apps. If users opt out, apps like Snapchat won’t be able to target them with the most relevant ads. Then, once a campaign is over, collecting and analyzing data to see how it went also becomes a challenge.

Basically, Apple threw a smoothie on the mobile ad market’s windshield. And while its impacts were projected to be bad, “Apple iOS ad changes played out worse than virtually anyone had expected in Snap's Q4 outlook,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote.

Did anyone benefit from the update?

There is one company whose ad business is booming, and its name is...you might want to sit down for this...Apple.

As it undercut its rivals’ visibility with its privacy update, Apple has become a major player in advertising, more than tripling its market share since it introduced the feature six months ago.

• “It’s like Apple Search Ads has gone from playing in the minor leagues to winning the World Series in the span of half a year,” Alex Bauer, head of product marketing at Branch, told the Financial Times.

Apple’s ad business will earn $5 billion this year and $20 billion per year within three years, according to estimates from Evercore ISI.

Looking ahead...this story will only heat up next week, when Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter report their earnings.—NF

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Actor Alec Baldwin shot two crew members with a prop gun on the set of his upcoming Western, Rust, Thursday afternoon. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed, and director Joel Souza was hospitalized, but has since been released.

Baldwin was questioned by local authorities, and has since posted his condolences to the Hutchins family, saying his “heart is broken."

How did this happen?

It’s still under investigation, but the area’s local film and TV union emailed its members saying the gun contained a “live round.” That means it may have contained a bullet, as opposed to a blank cartridge, which has gunpowder and a chemical “primer” but no projectile. Live rounds are not allowed during filming, but productions sometimes opt for blanks over empty barrels because they create a realistic “bang!” sound.

Both live rounds and blanks have been fatal on set:

• Actor Jon-Erik Hexum died while playing Russian roulette with a blanks-loaded gun on the set of 1984’s Cover Up.
• Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, died during the filming of The Crow because a bullet was in a gun that was supposed to contain a blank.

Time for a change? In the wake of this tragedy, many film industry pros are calling for more stringent safety measures during filming, specifically a ban on using blanks. Some crew members reportedly walked off the Rust set earlier in the day to protest unsafe working conditions, which included two accidental prop gun discharges last Saturday, per the LA Times.—JW

Maybe we won’t go that far, but one CEO’s posts on Twitter did lead to a policy change that could help alleviate the unprecedented bottleneck at West Coast ports, where more than 100 ships are waiting to unload your precious holiday presents.

Ryan Petersen, the head of logistics startup Flexport, rented a boat to tour the Port of Long Beach on Thursday. In a Twitter thread, he described what he saw:

• Operations at the Port of Long Beach and the neighboring one in Los Angeles were “at a standstill. ​​In a full 3 hour loop through the port complex, passing every single terminal, we saw less than a dozen containers get unloaded.”

Petersen also offered some solutions, including that officials override zoning laws to allow truck yards to store empty containers six high, rather than the current limit of two.

What do you know, yesterday evening the mayor of Long Beach tweeted that his city will permit cargo to be stacked up to 4 or 5 containers high in lots across the city as a temporary measure. Coincidence? We think not.

Looking ahead...do the Philadelphia Eagles next, Ryan.

Stat: A former Deutsche Bank employee was paid nearly $200 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for providing “timely original information” on an investigation into the manipulation of the Libor interest rate benchmark. It's the agency's largest-ever payout to a whistleblower.

Quote: “To say the box office has turned a corner would be an understatement at this point.”

Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice.com, is bullish about the movie theater industry’s recovery as Covid (maybe) recedes for the final time. 2021’s box office haul has already topped 2020’s total receipts; it lags 2019 by about 70%.

Read: On the difference between being smart and having new ideas. (Paul Graham)

You’re gonna want to see this. We partnered up with Vanguard to create our Guide to Active Fixed Income. Check it out here.*

The road to Jeopardy! Our copyeditor Holly Van Leuven, who competed on Jeopardy! this week, describes what it was like to appear on the game show during such a turbulent time—for her, the show, and the world. Read her essay here.

Weekend conversation starters:

• Twitter is amazing
• Is this the perfect resignation letter?
• How do the Yawalapiti people of the Amazon rainforest mourn their leader?
• What’s a funnier Halloween decoration: Witch crashing into tree or bone dog?

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An absolute banger of a crossword from Mary Tobler today with just the right amount of difficulty. Play it here.

Btw, if you have any feedback or kind words for Mary on all the puzzles she's been making for the Brew, be sure to say hi on Twitter.