Signal: A Cosmic Orange 📧
Since tomorrow's newsletter will go out after pre-order time and quite a few folks have pinged me apparently not having read all the way to the bottom of my 2,000-word post on the matter (😜), I'll just reiterate my intent is to buy the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Yes, in 'Cosmic Orange' which could get old fast but because fun.
And yes, I'm tempted by the iPhone Air, but ultimately, the camera and battery life matter far too much to me to "trade down". Apple did a nice job making it more compelling than I originally thought though!
I Wrote...
It seems to me that the KPop Demon Hunters phenomenon may have given Sony – and perhaps Netflix – an interesting opportunity to experiment more with some models for the movie business...
M.G. Siegler
Take One...
🗣️ Apple's iPhone Strap – As all of my "European Carry-All" jokes may have indicated, I haven't been sure what to make of Apple's crossbody iPhone strap. But actually, Jess Weatherbed makes a lot of good points here about the potential usefulness – in particular with Apple's easy-to-adjust magnetic innovations. And not just for women either. Might Apple mainstream such an accessory (in Western markets) just as they've done with so many other things that seem sort of ridiculous to many at first (see: AirPods)? As a recent victim of a phone-snatched-out-of-hand theft, I think I'm sold to at least try it. Now to pick a color... [Verge]
A Few Notes...
- Vimeo ends not with a bang, but a whimper as it sells to Bending Spoons for $1.38B. Which sounds big until you read that it had lost about 90% of its value since spinning out of IAC. YouTube is probably worth what? $300B? More? [TechCrunch]
- Meta keeps sending money to partners to bolster their AI tools, first Midjourney, now Black Forest Labs (best known for powering Grok's, um, permissive AI images), with a $140M deal. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- With competition mounting, NVIDIA moves to make a more dedicated inference chip – the 'Rubin CPX' will come at the end of 2026. [Information 🔒]
- Speaking of, while NVIDIA has clearly had some success playing the politics game of late, the weaponization of "AI doomerism" may backfire because it's so obviously intentionally conflating two very different issues... [NYT]
I Quote...
"Applicants send out thousands of AI-crafted résumés, and businesses use AI to sift through them."
– Annie Lowrey, describing the current state of the job market for The Atlantic. She continues, "What Bumble and Hinge did to the dating market, contemporary human-resources practices have done to the job market. People are swiping like crazy and getting nothing back."
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Amazon's AR Glasses
• Meta's New AI Unit Sparks Tensions
• The Rise of Small Language Models
• Crypto Holding Firms Struggle
• 'Good Will Hunting' with Guns
• and more...