The News

Netflix’s Warner Bros purchase is tech eating Hollywood

Netflix has surprised everyone by buying Warner Bros late last week (Guardian). After a long courtship by Trump-aligned Paramount, the streaming-first company swooped in with a $125 BILLION bid (requiring an $88B bridging loan according to FT) for Warner Bros Discovery (Netflix). Netflix spruiked its acquisition of legacy IP like Harry Potter and Friends. The deal has immediately prompted calls for antitrust action but Trump has posted surprisingly warmly about the deal (CNBC).

The Sizzle: If you want a sense for why there’s a lot of apprehension about Netflix in particular buying one of the most storied studios in Hollywood history, have a look at this quote from the announcement that caught a lot of people’s eyes.

Netflix has a reputation in the industry for not giving a shit about cinema and television as an art form, and instead viewing everything as content that exists to fight churn (for more details about Netflix’s ruthless approach, read this excellent essay). Like, you know it’s bad when the headlines after an acquisition are like “Is Netflix Trying to Buy Warner Bros. or Kill It?”

The truth is, whoever bought Warner Bros was always going to be criticised for their role in the consolidation of a limping industry. It hurts that little bit more when the person buying you out doesn’t actually care about what you do. They just want to strip you for parts.

Further reading: The Inside Story of How Netflix Won the Warner Bros. Auction (Bloomberg, $)

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Meta’s friendship with metaverse is over, now AI is my best friend

Meta is reportedly cutting spending into its namesake — the metaverse — by as much as 30% as the company pours everything into AI (BBC). After it had lost more than $105B over the past few years, Mark Zuckerberg has told his Reality Labs division that it needs to go further than the company-wide mandate to cut 10% of their budgets (Bloomberg, $). The company said it is funnelling that investment into AI glasses and wearables, something that still hasn’t really taken off but, compared to Meta Horizon and the Quest headsets, I guess they’re a runaway success. Maybe the real metaverse was the friend we made along the way… (Also if you have any Meta metaverse gear, please let me know!)

Relatedly: Meta buys AI pendant start-up Limitless to expand hardware push (FT,$)

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Guy realises he wasted 8 years of his life in crypto

I came across this essay I Wasted 8 Years of My Life in Crypto which I thought was uncharacteristically honest. The author, an angel investor, says he was sucked in by the cryptolibertarian ideal of cryptocurrencies, but recently realised “it’s just speculation and a gambling hyper-system that’s really just a mirror of what the economy is now.” It echoed a similar bit from Bloomberg’s excellent money explainer guy Matt Levine last week:

With mainstream financial institutions increasingly getting into bed with crypto, with prediction markets, sometimes with both at the same time, it really does feel like everything is just a casino now.

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

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Oh, Also

Turn your optical mouse into a digital camera

This rocks so hard. Redditor u/Dycus posted to r/electronics about building a digital camera out of an optical mouse, complete with a screen! It shoots at 30×30 pixels, can store 48 photos in 32kB FRAM and can even lock and unlock exposure. Good use for the 6 dusty mice sitting in a box in your house somewhere!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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