JD Vance becomes the first Tech industry player, and especially Venture Capitalist, to ever be on a major presidential ticket. It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone. Why are the major record labels suing Verizon? And why an AI innovation around spreadsheets could be a big deal.

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Links:

• J.D. Vance Is Trump’s Pick for Vice President (Wired)
• It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone (The Verge)
• Microsoft Investigated by UK Over Ex-Inflection Staff Hires (Bloomberg)
• Record labels sue Verizon for not disconnecting pirates’ Internet service (ArsTechnica)
• Microsoft’s new AI system ‘SpreadsheetLLM’ unlocks insights from spreadsheets, boosting enterprise productivity (VentureBeat)
• Apple releases public betas for iOS 18, macOS, and more (The Verge)

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The biggest tech exit in years might be in the offing as Alphabet eyes scooping up Wiz. The weird story of that huge AT&T hack. A new ARM-powered CoPilot+ PC is maybe the most powerful yet. And is India the reason Apple’s stock has been on the rise lately?

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• ArcticWolf.com/techmeme
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Links:

• Google Near $23 Billion Deal for Cybersecurity Startup Wiz (WSJ)
• Zero to Billions: The Startup on the Verge of the Biggest Tech Exit in Years (WSJ)
• AT&T says criminals stole phone records of ‘nearly all’ customers in new data breach (TechCrunch)
• AT&T Paid a Hacker $370,000 to Delete Stolen Phone Records (Wired)
• HP's new OmniBook Ultra beats every single Copilot+ PC on the market in TOPS, and it runs on an AMD Ryzen AI 300 processor (Windows Central)
• Apple’s India Sales Surge 33% to Record in Shift From China (Bloomberg)
• India clings to cheap feature phones as brands struggle to tap new smartphone buyers (TechCrunch)

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More about Josh Wolfe and Lux Capital here.

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All the headlines from what was largely a foldable phone event from Samsung yesterday. Apple has settled with the EU. More numbers on Apple Vision Pro sales. Why the sparkle emoji is the defacto symbol of AI. And, of course, the Weekend Longread Suggestions.

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Links:

• Galaxy Z Fold 6 goes official with 7 years of updates, wider displays, starting at $1,899 (9to5Google)
• Galaxy Z Flip 6 starts at $1,099 with battery, cover display, and camera upgrades (9to5Google)
• Apple Avoids EU Antitrust Threat With Tap-and-Pay Probe Settlement (Bloomberg)
• Apple’s Vision Pro Won’t Cross 500,000 Sales This Year, IDC Says (Bloomberg)
• Has Artificial Intelligence Co-opted the Sparkle Emoji? (Bloomberg)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

• Defeated by A.I., a Legend in the Board Game Go Warns: Get Ready for What’s Next (NYTimes)

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Suddenly nobody wants to be on OpenAI’s board, even as observers. I’ll tell you why. More on how AI has thrown everybody’s carbon neutral plans into chaos. A monster raise in the AI and robotics space. And a16z has found a way to get chips into the hands of their AI startups.

Links:

• Microsoft and Apple drop OpenAI seats amid antitrust scrutiny (FT)
• Microsoft gives up observer seat on OpenAI board (Axios)
• Google Is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutral (Bloomberg)
• Amazon Says It Reached a Climate Goal Seven Years Early (NYTimes)
• Microsoft is hiking the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and launching a new ‘Standard’ tier (The Verge)
• This $1.5 Billion AI Company Is Building A ‘General Purpose Brain’ For Robots (Forbes)
• Andreessen Horowitz Is Building a Stash of More Than 20,000 GPUs to Win AI Deals (The Information)

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The new nothing phone costs almost nothing. I’m not punning. Sam Altman has founded yet another AI startup. Is the hype around AI PCs underdelivering? And two other back the future stories about updating Notepad in Windows, and abandoning floppy disks in Japan.

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• Dragon Ball Legends

Links:

• Nothing’s CMF Devices Prove Yet Again Cheap Doesn't Have to Mean Boring (Wired)
• Amazon announces new $79 Echo Spot alarm clock (CNBC)
• OpenAI and Arianna Huffington are working together on an ‘AI health coach’ (The Verge)
• Spotify is going to let you leave comments on podcast episodes (The Verge)
• Qualcomm, Microsoft Lean on AI Hype to Spur PC Market Revival (Bloomberg)
• After 41 years Microsoft quietly adds spellchecking and autocorrect to Windows Notepad (Tom Hardware)
• Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks (Reuters)

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Ok, fine. Give me a thinner watch if it’ll also somehow have a bigger screen. Apple and Epic are just petty, squabbling children at this point. What if AI as it currently exists, is simply too expensive to be profitable? And a new social network is sort of back to the future.

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• Ramp.com/techmeme
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Links:

• What’s Next for the Apple Watch: Bigger Screens But a Similar Look (Bloomberg)
• Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe (Reuters)
• In a major update, Proton adds privacy-safe document collaboration to Drive, its freemium E2EE cloud storage service (TechCrunch)
• AI industry needs to earn $600 billion per year to pay for massive hardware spend — fears of an AI bubble intensify in wake of Sequoia report (Tom's Hardware)
• noplace, a mashup of Twitter and Myspace for Gen Z, hits No. 1 on the App Store (TechCrunch)

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This about the man who invented the modern disc operating system (the OS) and the concept of the software platform. That man was Gary Kildall. And the question we examine in this episode is, why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world, and not Gary Kildall? Could things have turned out differently?

In this episode we use audio from the following documentaries:

Triumph of the Nerds

and

Computer Chronicles

Special thanks to Justin Schwinghamer for the original score and the voice acting.

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