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Consumers lost in the United Auto Workers’ deals with Ford, GM, and Stellantis. Higher labor costs, while a win for autoworkers, will have to be absorbed somewhere, and it’ll probably mean higher car prices.
Instagram and Facebook users in Europe are getting an ad-free version. The paid options that parent company Meta unveiled yesterday are in response to the continent’s changing data privacy laws.
Adani Green Energy’s profit more than doubled in the second quarter. Energy sales were up more than 87% in the reporting period, largely driven by solar and wind demand.
Lower battery production in Japan sent Tesla shares down. The electric vehicle maker’s long-time partner Panasonic further stoked worries that EV demand is cooling.
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Today’s iMacs fall pretty far from the tree
It’s a good time to usher in a new season for the iMac. Apple’s first product to use “i”—for internet!—in its name hasn’t had a new iteration since 2021, and with competitors like Qualcomm claiming its PCs will be 50% faster than Apple’s last chip, the company’s feet are being held to the fire.
But if Apple were competing with itself, the latest iterations of its iMacs couldn’t be more different than the originals:
25: Years ago that the first iMac debuted
15: Inches of display it had
280,000: Units of the machine sold in the six weeks after it launched on Aug. 15, 1998
26 million: iMac units Apple sold last year
Quartz’s Ananya Bhattacharya took a look back at the design evolution of the iMac.
Person of interest: Katherine Maher
Former Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher is stepping into the now-infamous shoes of Paddy Cosgrave, the ex-Web Summit chief who resigned from his 14-year-tenure after his controversial statements about the Israel-Hamas war.
Maher’s resume sits at the intersection of tech and dialogue. In the past, she has been an adviser for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institute, and the World Bank, among others, and continues to chair messaging platform Signal.
But with individuals and behemoths like Google, Meta, Intel, Amazon, and Stripe having already pulled out from the Nov. 13-16 conference in Lisbon, could Maher’s pitch to deliver “an event as compelling as any that have come before” be a little too late?
Defense spending isn’t driving the US economy
The US has been increasingly spending more on weapons and defense, even adding 0.28 percentage points to the 4.9% annualized economic growth the country saw in its latest quarter. But that’s not what was behind the booming economy (cue “Barbenheimer” and Taylor Swift).
While the defense business is doing well, it still faces concerns over supply chains to obtain key materials and components for weapons. Quartz’s Tim Fernholz has the latest.
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Surprising discoveries
Gene therapy is allowing some deaf children in China to hear. One child who couldn’t hear a chime that ended naptime now can.
The world’s biggest Spider-Man gathering occurred in Argentina. More than 1,000 people in red and blue costumes took part in the meetup.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs likely stopped plants from photosynthesizing. Fine dust that obscured the Sun possibly stopped the critical process for two years.
The winner of Barbenheimer was neither Barbie nor Oppenheimer. It was IMAX.
Anger can help people perform tough tasks. One explanation could be a link between the emotion and greater persistence.
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