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The proposed merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery is more than a fight over the future of Hollywood. It has become a test of how antitrust enforcement is changing as American politics grows more partisan and state governments take on a larger role.

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The Pragmatic Engineer surfaced the piece in “Headed for the Exit: the Great Engineering Leader Career Break”, Gergely Orosz’s account of an unusual pattern: experienced CTOs, vice presidents of engineering, and heads of engineering are leaving desirable jobs without another role lined up.

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Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial postponed indefinitely amid double jeopardy fight (r/news)

• XfinityHomeWifi: This guy will spend years locked up before he’s actually sentenced for anything. Going to an actual penitentiary by that point will feel like a hotel
• CMG30: He’s got a smart attorney. She’s working all the angles here.
• CleverInternetName8c: I was wondering why he would plead guilty given there didn’t seem to be much of a concession in exchange but it being as part of a strategy to make a double jeopardy argument makes total sense.

Disney sues FCC over challenge to broadcast licenses, claiming retaliation over ‘Jimmy Kimmel’ (r/news)

• OhNoIBoffedIt: Oh God we are in the end times. They have me rooting for Disney’s legal department.
• Successful-Medicine9: Mouse money is nothing to be messed with.
• AMouthBreather: Not a fan of Disney. But the mouse can and should fuck the FCC here and put them in their place. Just wish it wasn’t on all of our dimes.

What “unskilled” job would humble most people after just one shift? (r/AskReddit)

• rastanaut33: Trench digger for a plumber.
• ATXKLIPHURD: Throwing hay. First you go pick up the hay bales and stack them in a trailer. Then you unload the bales from the trailer and stack them in a barn. The bales weigh about 50lbs each and anywhere from 50-250 bales in a day.
• Ready-Laugh6249: Restaurant dishwasher. People call it “unskilled” until they’re three hours into a dinner rush and the dishes are multiplying faster than they can wash them.

What is a skill that looks completely effortless when an expert does it, but is ridiculously difficult when you try it yourself? (r/AskReddit)

• mrclean2323: Drywall finishing
• CoffeeGrinder999: Close up card magic. Looks effortless. Really hard to do.
• SensualEnema: I had a voice teacher who said, “Singing is easy; learning to sing is hard.”

You wake up tomorrow and suddenly find yourself back in 1990. You have \$500 in your pocket — what would you buy with it? (r/AskReddit)

• ExpertIAmNot: Apple stock
• three-sense: I’m going to a damn concert
• RuutuTwo: Dinner for my father and my mother. He dies in less than three weeks from now in 1990. We are drinking the best bottle of wine and eating the best food in the city. My mother is currently 90 and has dementia and to see him and her again could bring me more joy than anything.

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Everyone at Microsoft needs to chill the fuck out about rewards (Blind)

• OSeeEye (Oracle): You guys are getting 1%? I should move to Microsoft
• MSFTbleed (Microsoft): Even a promo is like a 5% raise. Who gives a crap
• whyking (Bloomberg): People might be treating their increment % as an alternative metric to gauge their standing in the team. When layoffs are going on every year, this is meaningful data point. Especially for those whose managers never provide any meaningful feedback all year.

Well done Deepmind folks! (Blind)

• brzz007 (Autodesk): It took gemini 20 minutes of back and forth to read a pdf with events and add them to my calendar yesterday. I could literally do it the caveman way in 3.
• ssupbitxh (VMware): Gemini is crap and I hate that I bought one year subscription
• natcha (Walmart): Ishan trying to promote with Twitter/xitter account. Obviously.

Getting rich in tech is all about luck than anything else. (Blind)

• riddle_ (Meta): Yes, it’s all about right place right time
• agr3ter (ByteDance): getting rich is mostly about luck period
• Shrike22 (Meta): Maybe you’re just too stupid to pick the rocket ships from the rest.

Viral De-Flock America campaign urging people to destroy AI cameras on Halloween night gains momentum (r/technology)

• CautionarySnail: Rowdy celebrations like this are vastly improved by leaving all digital devices safe at home.
• Whargod: Just make it a TikTok challenge, there won’t eb any left by dawn.
• DopamineSavant: DeFlock needs to become official and start endorsing candidates. I’m annoyed as shit trying to research the Flock position of all the candidates on my local ballot.

Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck (r/technology)

• BrainLow6059: This is just corporate propaganda to lower remote salaries. You’re paid for what you do, not where you do it from.
• Hrekires: One thing I appreciated when we were WFH full-time during Covid was not having to maintain an entirely separate wardrobe that I only wear at work.
• CaptZ: I was talking to a coworker today about wfh. There have been multiple days that I didn’t feel good and if I had to go to the office, I would have called in sick. But if I’m home, I don’t have to get dressed nicely, drive and possibly spread my sick germs around the office, and if I’m wfh, I would still work. Saving both my time off and my team being short a person. It’s a win/win.

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A Fair Share of an Unfinished Game

Probability theory began with a practical argument: how should gamblers divide the stakes when chance interrupts their game? The puzzle, known as the problem of points, asks for more than a reward for whoever happens to be ahead. A fair answer must account for what could still have happened.

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Mykhailo Fedorov entered Ukraine’s defence ministry as a proven moderniser and left after only six months. His removal shows why changing a military during wartime is not merely a technical problem. Fedorov could expose waste, accelerate procurement and design ambitious personnel reforms, but he could not overcome a command structure that distrusted his methods or build the political alliances needed to make disruption last.

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US gas prices reach highest ever recorded for August amid stalled talks with Iran (r/news)

• hukep: Not just in the USA. I cry every time, I visit a gas station.
• dontrike: There are no talks with Iran. That title is stupid.
• thegrimranger: With our reserves at record-lows it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And let’s hope we don’t need our reserves for normal reasons rather than hiding tacos awful decision-making

CDC: U.S. kindergarten vaccine exemptions hit record high as coverage falls nationwide (r/news)

• PlacebosForALL: Cultists would rather listen to their orange god and brain worm buddy than actual experts
• thegooddoktorjones: Abortion is bad and illegal, but letting your kids die of measles is a-ok, apprently.
• zer04ll: And measles is back, polio is back, tb is spreading

What’s a physical object from 15–20 years ago that disappeared so quietly that nobody even noticed it left? (r/AskReddit)

• ElectrifiedSword: ITT: People not remembering that 15-20 years ago was 2006-2011 not the 1970s through 1990s.
• cartooned: Swappable mobile phone batteries.
• Dizzy_Wallaby3101: The humble paper map. There wasn’t really a dramatic moment when they disappeared you just gradually stopped seeing them. Now almost everyone instinctively reaches for their phone instead. I can’t remember the last time I actually saw someone unfold a huge road map and try to work out where they were.

What major gets mocked as “easy” but actually requires serious intelligence? (r/AskReddit)

• ScottRiqui: I have degrees in engineering, applied physics, and law, and some of my wife’s readings for her philosophy degree made my brain want to run out of my ears.
• Sensitive_Blood1469: Anything with music
• Miggus_amogus: 90% of humanities if you actually want to be really good at it

Millennials, what’s something our generation was taught to accept that you’re glad younger generations are rejecting? (r/AskReddit)

• CrazyPlato: That discussing your working conditions or pay with your coworkers is wrong.
• KirinG: I love seeing younger retail/service workers take down and just not cater to rude customers. I never would have dared.
• Medical-Potato5920: Women not having to wear heels to go out. Seeing young women wearing sneakers to go out dancing was liberating.

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Coworker uses AI to write all his messages (Blind)

• TXPg31 (NVIDIA): Things like status updates are mostly performative BS anyway. Why wouldn’t he optimize? This is one of the places where slop is actually the right solution.
• jkWb53 (Coinbase): Start doing the same before you become the team bottleneck. Nobody cares about your artisanal code, so get off your high horse and meet your weekly PR quotas ASAP
• f thuggery (Roku): Use Ai to summarize his messages and it won’t bother you anymore

Don’t come to Bloomberg I think we’re doomed… (Blind)

• BBaxel (Bloomberg): Just making stuff up. There’s no 15-20% layoff. Stop the fear mongering. We’ve still had zero layoffs and there’s no real news of one coming up
• merchant0 (Klaviyo): Damn that’s actually so cooked. My dream job was Bloomberg because I assumed no layoffs. Thank the lord I failed r4 of my interviews last year.
• WPslayer (Bloomberg): it was 10% last week in December. 20% by October on he following Monday. By Friday, 75% of us will be getting shitcanned by Sept 1st.

Genuinely why would anyone want to work at Microsoft at this point? (Blind)

• EdSnowden👀 (Oracle): You can either work at Microsoft for \$250k TC or some mid-sized company for \$150k.
• xcdvetyui1 (Microsoft): Unlimited PTO. People regularly go 3 weeks. Especially to India and often 4 or 5 and work weeks from there. The place shuts down 3 weeks at holiday. Tradeoff is extreme politics and everyone worships the CVP. Not innovative at all. Just navigating org politics and endless reviews before you can build anything.
• murderbot6 (Meta): what are the better options? rolling layoffs seem to be the norm now

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility / The shipment was found at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books (r/technology)

• Brick_Cabin2529: 404 is pretty great aren’t they? hope they keep up this quality of work
• Waidawut: An appalling desecration in the name of “progress” – it’s the American way.
• bryguypgh: We need a law against destroying the last known physical copy of a book with astronomical penalties. This is a crime against humanity.

Honey loses over 7 million users and 7,000 stores following YouTuber’s viral expose (r/technology)

• Maleficent-Serve2553: In conjunction with the Phoebe Gates news in the same vein, it feels like an increasing number of companies are battling for attribution of a declining number of legitimate consumer purchases (i.e., stealing someone’s margin is more profitable than creating new organic sales).
• Tasty-Traffic-680: Honey, I blew up my business model
• YAELLINGISFUN: Losing 35% of your users and 20% of your merchants because one guy made a YouTube video is the kind of accountability regulators should be embarrassed they didn’t provide first.

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Flight in the Ignorosphere

Earth’s mesosphere begins roughly 50 kilometers above the surface and extends to about 85 kilometers. Aircraft and weather balloons cannot climb that high, while satellites orbit far above it. The gap has earned the region the nickname “ignorosphere”: it is important to the atmosphere but exceptionally difficult to observe directly.

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Techmeme surfaced Google’s August 18 launch post, “Operation Blue Skies: Reducing Aviation Climate Impact with AI”. The project will use AI weather forecasts to identify patches of atmosphere where aircraft are likely to create persistent, heat-trapping contrails, then ask a small share of transatlantic flights to pass above or below them. The important change is scale: earlier experiments altered individual airline flight plans, while this state-backed trial will coordinate avoidance across a busy section of oceanic airspace.