David Pierce

That’s what this story from The Athletic posits, anyway. Apple reportedly wanted the NFL to let it stream football on “known and unknown” platforms, and AR and VR would be the most obvious unknowns. But the NFL wouldn’t accept such broad language, it seems.

Cameron’s Smartless chat is filled with tech talk, which isn’t surprising given that it’s, you know, James Cameron. Dude loves gadgets. But I thought it was fascinating that he said if and when Terminator comes back, he’d spend less time worrying about humanoid robots and more on the scary power of AI. And, he wonders: would we even know if AI had already taken over?

This is a fun read about a bunch of media nerds playing a super old board game through Slack, and how Twitter and Facebook are giving way to a small-group-based internet. But mostly: chat room games are awesome, and the world needs more of them.

International debates over the true inventor, super influential companies you’ve never heard of, and a key moment in the global tech industry: all that and more in the story of a little tiny thumb drive. Fun weekend read, this one.

This is a big personnel move: Taylor was promoted to co-CEO last year, and was widely seen as Marc Benioff’s likely successor. (Taylor’s also now the second heir apparent to leave before Benioff. Real Bob Iger vibes over here.)

That’s the central strangeness of Avatar, and this story does a good job of explaining what happened. It’s a story about movies, but even more about how franchises and entertainment conglomerates have changed the way movies — and culture — get made. And about the bar The Way of Water has to clear to actually matter.

After Semafor reported that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried owned a stake in Musk’s Twitter, Musk has been loudly denying that SBF is actually an investor.