In This Story
Good morning, Quartz readers!
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
An insurance executive was assassinated in New York City. UnitedHealthcare (UNH) CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down before a company investor conference was set to begin.
The head of Frontier Airlines compared anti-bag fee customers to shoplifters. CEO Barry Biffle said not paying for the fee is akin to stealing from the airline.
Meta’s (META) AI efforts are going nuclear. The Facebook parent is joining the ranks of tech firms looking to power their data centers with reactor power.
Coca-Cola (KO) is under fire for walking back its plastic reduction commitments. Environmental advocates argue the company’s shift is “short sighted” and “irresponsible.”
Sam Altman is not worried about Elon Musk’s closeness with Donald Trump. The OpenAI leader chalked up Musk’s potential xAI boosterism as mere competition.
Apple’s tough terms and conditions
People all over the world use their iPhones to talk to each other. But employees at Apple (AAPL) are required to use their iPhones to talk to each other, and Amar Bhakta, a digital ad tech and operations manager at the company, says in a lawsuit that Apple uses that requirement to snoop on every aspect of their lives.
“For Apple’s employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden,” the suit says. “It is a prison yard. A panopticon where employees, both on and off duty, are ever subject to Apple’s all-seeing eye.”
What is Apple looking for in its employees’ devices? Quartz’s Rocio Fabbro digs into Bhakta’s allegations.
Mysterious price changes in the sky
The Senate had a lot of questions for executives about why it charges so many fees for so many things and changes its prices for fares depending on who’s looking and when. They didn’t get a lot of answers.
The electeds also raised a number of flags about how airlines might use AI to make it even harder to explore flight options with any sort of certainty. None of the executives responded when pressed to say what their companies planned to do with the technology.
Quartz’s Melvin Backman gives a download of the executives’ testimony and how little insight it gave into the logic powering the frustrations of the flying public.
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SURPRISING DISCOVERIES
Hollywood’s biggest action icons are being impersonated to sell erectile dysfunction meds. Deepfakes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallon are among the AI-generated deepfaked endorsers proliferating on YouTube. (paywall)
There’s a booming business in helping people get over breakups. One company pushes $1,000 treatments that inject anesthetics into patients’ necks to quell “ruminations.” (paywall)
Donald Trump’s election is unleashing a memecoin renaissance. DOGE has a market cap that’s larger than Target’s. (paywall)
Domino’s thinks that Squid Game losers should get pizza instead of death. The chain has a partnership with Netflix (NFLX) to feed competitors with the lowest scores on an upcoming promotional experience for the show.
Shohei Ohtani is going to great lengths to get some Shohei Ohtani baseball cards. The Los Angeles Dodgers star is requesting that the government hand over some of the cards seized after his translator pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud charges.
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Our best wishes on a safe start to the day. Send any news, comments, mysterious ticket-pricing algorithms and death-defying pizza slices to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Melvin Backman and Audrey McNamara.