Happy to Watch at Home Gilmore
Meta's Chiefs Scientist • Apple & Intel • Anthropic at $150B • Intel & NVIDIA • Apple & Vince Gilligan
Look, Happy Gilmore 2 is stupid. There's no sugar coating it. I watched it last night. It's dumb. There are a few funny moments and some nice hits of nostalgia, but mostly it fails at everything it tries to do. And it's trying way too hard to do those things. It's far more interested in cameos than the camera.
And yet. Netflix nailed the strategy here. Given the cult status of the first film, there are undoubtedly many who argued that this should be a theatrical sequel. But it likely would have been a dud in theaters. Again, it's not good. But as a direct-to-Netflix movie, it's totally fine! This is exactly the type of forgettable, mediocre fare at which they excel in elevating.
It plays directly into my thinking that content in theaters and on streaming needs to be far more fluid. Just because the first Happy Gilmore was a theatrical release, it doesn't mean the second one needs to be. And unlike the stigma around straight-to-video in the past, straight-to-Netflix likely means a far larger audience than would ever see it in theaters.
So kudos to Adam Sandler for not having too much ego in that regard. I mean, he still could have made an actually good movie here, but if he didn't particularly care about that – which sure seems to be the case – this is a fine outcome!
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Spyglass
💸 The Have Lots & the Have Nots
A time of $100M+ job offers and also layoffs at the same companies...
4️⃣ Marvel's 'Fantastic' Path Forward
...which they're seemingly *not* taking with the new 'Avengers' movies
Notebook
🤖 Meta's New 'Superintelligence' Chief Scientist
While Zuck clearly wanted to make a big splash around the announcement of Shengjia Zhao as 'Chief Scientist' of the new Superintelligence group, there are a few weird things here. First and foremost, Zhao actually joined Meta back in June, as part of a group of OpenAI employees who came over at the same time. That doesn't mean it's not a big hire or get, it just means it's weird that it wasn't initially framed as a Chief Scientist hire – and a number of subsequent reports indicate they've been trying to hire others in that role, but haven't had much luck (though yes, at least some of that narrative is being driven by Sam Altman). So it must be asked: is Zhao really who Zuck wanted in that role, or did they sort of back into it? "Shengjia co-founded the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one..." feels like something weird to have to say... Second, Meta already had a 'Chief Scientist' for AI – a very high profile one in the form of Yann LeCun. Now they apparently have two such roles, with Zuck also having to clarify that LeCun was going to be 'Chief Scientist' of FAIR – i.e. Meta's old AI group. And both Chief Scientists – Chiefs Scientists? Is that an oxymoron? – will report to Alexandr Wang, the new Chief AI Officer, which is a third C-suite AI role. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🧑💻 Could Apple (Or NVIDIA) Save Intel?
While the company seems to be taking the hard steps needed with regard to headcount, the reality for Intel remains that if the '14A' process doesn't work out for them (as it seems like '18A' is not right now), they're in real trouble. Lip-Bu Tan knows this and is having those partnership conversations, and analyst Jeff Pu (who has a mixed track record, to say the least) thinks those potential partners include both Apple and NVIDIA – two of the largest TSMC partners, of course. Is there any chance Intel can win at least some of their business (the report notes it could just be for low-end NVIDIA graphic chips – i.e. not the key AI chip business, at least not yet)? Could Apple step in to save their old partner that they spurned? It's the same basic question I asked almost a year ago, wondering if Microsoft (or Amazon) might ride in to save the day... [9to5Mac]
💰 Anthropic at $150B
With the awkward bit out of the way – Dario Amodei bracing his staff for an investment from one (or many) Middle East-based entities despite having a clear issue with taking such money in the past – the path is clear to raise a lot more money. Though in a world where OpenAI is raising $40B, I'm sort of surprised that Anthropic would "only" raise $3B - $5B (though I guess they already have more money coming in from Amazon and perhaps Google, per prior commitments). The lower the amount, the faster they'll need to raise again at the incredible burn rates all of these startups face. (Though at least Anthropic has close cloud partners in Amazon and Google, unlike xAI, which is currently burning it alone – aside from other Elon properties...) That's why I wouldn't be shocked to see a new strategic – like Apple – step in here too, if they are in fact about to do a partnership around Siri. And Apple is one of the only other players left without a partner. Also, if MGX is really a key player in this round, that creates an interesting (read: conflicted) overlap with their various OpenAI investments/partnerships... But hey, beggars can't be choosers. [FT 🔒]
I Quote…
"Twenty, 30 years ago, we are really the leader. Now I think the world has changed. We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies."
– Lip-Bu Tan, the CEO of Intel, in remarks made to employees a few weeks back. While their PR team has tried to suggest he was simply referring to market cap, it sort of works both ways. And it truly is a stunning fall from grace for the company – which, yes, is now valued at just $90B, while NVIDIA is at $4.23T. Just to spell it out in a crystal clear form: NVIDIA is worth $4.14T more than Intel right now.
Loose Leaf
The clearly-coming-soon GPT-5 apparently excels at coding tasks in particular, which should help OpenAI answer challenges posed by Anthropic (and potentially the 'vibe coding' tools that mainly use Anthropic's models, like Cursor). Also in here: OpenAI execs think the current methods for model training can get them through GPT-8?! [Information 🔒]
Related, Google is testing a new 'vibe coding' app, Opal, in their 'Experiments' area. Playing around with it for a minute, I'm reminded of Yahoo Pipes. AI Studio is seemingly a more serious take right now, while this is more visual and fun to try to lure more mainstream users. Their video example is creating a blog and post from a "tech freelance blogger". [TechCrunch]
In other Chief Scientist news, Google's Jeff Dean sure is active in AI investing – which is seemingly very good for his employer in a 'soft power' sort of way, if nothing else. A hedging pipeline, perhaps? [Fortune]
The group trying to reboot the OG "Pebble" smartwatches, can now use that actual branding again, which is good news as 'Pebble 2 Duo' sounds roughly 100x less like an Intel chip than 'Core 2 Duo'. [9to5Google]
This might be a first: a pivot from video. To be clear, SkillUp is keeping their YouTube channel, but they're trying to leverage it to launch an old-fashioned website for gaming news, This Week in Videogames. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Does Huawei really have a new AI system that can rival NVIDIA's top-of-the-line systems? 'CloudMatrix 384' is so named because it weaves together 384 chips, which are less powerful than NVIDIA's, but when combined... If there's any truth to this, things could be able to get a lot more interesting in the AI race... [Reuters]
Microsoft just cannot catch a break with their 'Recall' product. After initially pulling the feature and spending months fixing some obvious security issues, now players like Signal, AdGuard, and Brave are blocking the AI screen memory feature of Windows anyway. [Verge]
It could be worse for Microsoft – because it is worse as the SharePoint security shitshow continues to spiral. Did Microsoft itself tip off Chinese hackers to the vulnerability? [Bloomberg 🔒]
Alien: Earth, the new FX show set in the famous sci-fi universe sounds (and looks) very promising – including the use of practical effects (as opposed to CGI) for the xenomorph. [THR]
Unlike the leaked trailer for The Odyssey, it's actually quite hard to find the footage of the new Avatar film, Fire & Ash (which played ahead of The Fantastic Four this weekend). But there are plenty of fake trailers on YouTube, which remains a major problem despite promises of a crackdown. [THR]
I Spy...
The latest show announced (coming November 7) to be coming to Apple TV+ is by Vince Gilligan – yes, the creator of Breaking Bad (and Better Call Saul – with Rhea Seehorn starring in this one). Yes, this automatically makes it a must-see. And yes, the (gross) teaser for Pluribus, sort of recalls it. This looks to continue Apple's run of hoovering up some of the best content on the television side...