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This has been a difficult news week. Like everyone else, the news also took a vacation.

The feeds were feeding, the scrapers were scraping, and the tokens were tokening - and I had a major tool breakdown due to a change to using Sonnet 5, which I’m still trying to figure out. Even the movie.. sheesh…

And I don’t need a calendar to know when it’s vacation season. I have detailed newsletter stats to tell me that!

So wherever you find yourself this lovely Friday morning (for me, anyway), enjoy.!

And.. there’s less free content this week, ‘cuz that’s just the mood I was in.

If you want it all — all 73 (or whatever) articles and summaries this week, upgrade! If you want a corporate rate, I’m happy to do that as well. Just ask. It’s less expensive than the office supplies everyone steals every month 😁 - and more useful.

QUICK HITS:

MP says third day of internet outage "disgraceful", contractor damage to Openreach's underground cable network left about 3,000 customers in Maghull, England without internet or phone service for three straight days.

My Take: This is exactly the kind of outage distributed acoustic sensing is built to prevent, since a fibre network wired for sensing can detect an excavator approaching before it makes contact. Three thousand customers dark for three days over a sewer repair is a solvable problem, not bad luck. The economic impact? At least 29x the cost of the repair.

India plans seabed cable network to hunt Chinese, Pakistani submarines, India's DRDO is deploying a fibre-optic seabed surveillance network fitted with acoustic sensors to provide round-the-clock submarine detection across the Indian Ocean.

My Take: The real story is that subsea infrastructure is becoming defence infrastructure. India’s plan shows how fibre networks are moving beyond connectivity and into surveillance, sovereignty, and deterrence. The challenge is that once the seabed becomes strategic territory, cables are no longer just assets to protect, they become targets too. No idea why they would announce this.

QUICK HITS:

QUICK HITS:

QUICK HITS:

Apple Hide My Email vulnerability exposes real email addresses, researcher Tyler Murphy found a flaw letting anyone uncover the real email address behind an Apple Hide My Email alias, first reported it to Apple in June 2025, and in tests with volunteers found 100% of Hide My Email addresses were exploitable, even as Apple twice claimed the issue was resolved.

My Take: A privacy feature that leaks the exact thing it's supposed to hide, for over a year, with no public disclosure until a journalist forced the issue, is a genuine failure of Apple's vulnerability process. Marketing a feature as private while quietly sitting on a bug that defeats it is worse than not offering the feature at all.

The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI, TechCrunch's tracker now shows roughly 120,000 tech jobs cut in 2026 with AI cited as a factor, spanning Oracle, Amazon, Meta, Block, Salesforce, and more, often at companies simultaneously reporting record revenue.

My Take: Companies reporting record profits in the same quarter they cite AI for mass layoffs is the pattern that should make everyone skeptical of the stated rationale. Some of this is genuinely AI efficiency, and a lot of it is cost-cutting wearing an AI costume because that story plays better to investors.

Microsoft joins AI-driven tech layoff wave with 4,800 job cuts, Microsoft cut 2.1% of its workforce, two-thirds of it in the struggling Xbox division, as rising data centre spending squeezes cash flow even while Azure demand booms.

My Take: The Xbox cuts are really about console economics, not AI, but Microsoft folded them into the same announcement as the AI-driven realignment anyway because it's easier to explain one narrative than two. That's the layoff-messaging trick becoming standard practice across the industry.

Apple iPhone Ultra price rumor, Apple's first foldable, expected to be branded iPhone Ultra and unveiled in September, is rumored to start around $1,999 to $2,500, which would make it the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever released.

My Take: A $2,000-plus starting price lets Apple protect its core Pro Max pricing while creating a new premium tier for the top five percent of buyers, and that's a smarter move than raising prices across the whole lineup. It also means Apple has basically conceded it can't win the foldable price war with Samsung and isn't trying to.

"Definitely felt a big bang": Delta plane hit by firework while landing in Chicago, a Delta flight landing at Chicago Midway felt a shock wave from what's believed to be a private firework at around 200 feet on final approach, and landed safely with no reported damage.

My Take: Oops.

Inside the Luddite Festival harnessing Gen Z's rage against Big Tech, New York's week-long Summer of Ludd festival taught roughly 300 attendees to date offline, fight data centre expansion, and disconnect from Big Tech, promoted entirely through paper posters with no online presence.

My Take: 🙄

Fi's newest smart dog collar taps Starlink mobile tech to track pets on the go, Fi launched the Ultra, the first consumer wearable running on T-Mobile's T-Satellite with Starlink, automatically switching between LTE and satellite so a runaway dog stays trackable even outside cell coverage.

My Take: If you’ve ever used an existing GPS tracker, you’ll appreciate this is a new alternative.

Meta wants its AI glasses to seem less creepy. Its AI strategy says otherwise, Meta added a safeguard that disables the camera if a glasses wearer tampers with the recording LED, while simultaneously rolling out features that use people's public Instagram photos and Camera Roll images for AI without proactive consent.

My Take: Meta wants people to believe the LED safeguard makes the glasses less creepy. But the company is also building an AI business that depends on more data, more images, more personal context, and more always-on devices. That tension is hard to ignore.

Netflix dabbles in shorter video content with its new set of publisher deals with Variety, others, Netflix is licensing short-form video from BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Hearst, and Penske Media brands like Variety and Rolling Stone, running two to twenty minutes, starting August 3 in six countries.

My Take: Whatever… I’m tired of being asked to “update my home” or if “I’m traveling”.. Let me use it wherever I want.

Netflix invented binge-watching. Now it may have outgrown it, Netflix is struggling to retain viewers between Season 1 and Season 2 of top shows as it now competes with TikTok, YouTube, and microdrama apps like ReelShort, which pulled in $1.2 billion in consumer spending in 2025, up 119% year over year.

My Take: The model that killed cable is now being outcompeted by something even faster, and Netflix's own attention-span audience helped drive demand for microdrama apps that are eating into its engagement. The solution? Don’t wait that long between seasons.

My Take: The US represents roughly 41% of the global total.

IMDb: 4.1/10

JMDb: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿/10 (4.1 on IMDb. A new low. Even for me)

Five telegenic besties fly to the Caribbean for a wedding, immediately abandon their phones on a rickety boat "for the adventure," and act genuinely stunned when a shark treats them like a floating charcuterie board.

The emotional subplot — an ex-girlfriend reunion after a brutal hate-crime attack — deserves a whole movie of its own, yet gets wedged between bikini shots and gasp-worthy fin sightings like an afterthought scribbled on a napkin.

The shark itself is the most professional cast member, showing up on time and fully committing to the bit, unlike some of the human dialogue, which sounds workshopped by a group chat running on airplane Wi-Fi.

Gorgeous cinematography does a lot of heavy lifting here, propping up a script that treats "common sense" as a plot twist. Watch it for the scenery; stay for the deeply questionable boat-safety decisions.

Eighty-six minutes of chaos, zero life jackets, maximum drama.

Jason’s Industry Insights is produced by Verity Aptus.

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