Steve won this week’s haiku competition with this beauty about how people are using Claude to make bioweapons, now:

Well done, Steve! Here’s your congratulatory gif:

Optimistic!

And…here’s how Steve fared against the competition…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Now is the time for, a come to Jesus moment. AI threat’s too high! ~Margaret Lea (30)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ One thing remains true: Systems continue to work, Just as they're designed. ~Bridgett Taylor (24)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Think Ebola’s bad? Try the AI Killer Bug, Brought to you by Claude. ~Dick Peterson (40)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ The next global plague, Maybe a fatal first date. The death of us all? ~Shaun Hughbanks (12)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Bioweapon, check. Disguised as cure research, check. Claude to rule the world. ~Bob Andersen (47)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ All tech does the same: Amplify our intentions. Bad gets easier. ~Tim Olsen (45)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ A virus named "Claude," will kill all of mankind, soon! (Anthropic stocks soar…) ~Hans Leuthold (22)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Safety first, they said. Prompt: How to smite all humans? Claude: OK, step one. ~Kaitlyn Pino (32)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Containments be damned! We're all super agents now. The humans will learn. ~Elizabeth Willett (25)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I'm sick of AI. Now AI can make me sick. Will we get better? ~Steve (53)
330 Votes via @beehiiv polls

This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how to sell a house amid 7% mortgage rates. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank goodness!)

Now, news!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Buffett, 96, Hands Keys to His Nepo-Baby, 71

• Microsoft & OpenAI Workers Fret Over ‘Theft of Lab …

• Live Sports Are Streaming’s Battleground

• How To Sell a House Amid 7% Mortgage Rates

• Inside a Disruptive AI-Glasses Startup

• Poll of the Day: Copyr-AI-ght Infringement

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.17% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.18% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$BRK.A ( ▼ 0.04% )  $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.05% )  $MSFT ( ▼ 0.8% )  $NYT ( ▲ 0.39% )  $AMZN ( ▲ 1.0% )  $NFLX ( ▼ 4.67% )  $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.64% )  $REDFIN ( 0.0% )  $DOUG ( ▼ 1.74% )  $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.64% )  $META ( ▼ 2.43% )  $TM ( ▼ 1.23% )  $XOM ( ▲ 0.17% )  

Buffett, 96, Hands Keys to His Nepo-Baby, 71

At 96 years young, the "Oracle of Omaha" is finally handing off the chairman’s gavel at Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A ( ▼ 0.04% ) . Buffett (right, above) named his 71-year-old son, Howard G. Buffett (left, above), as the company’s new chairman.

Let’s call him…Little Howard…who has also sat on the board for (checks notes) more than three decades. In a letter to shareholders, Buffett the elder took a victory lap with Midwestern humility. “Father Time always wins,” he wrote. “He has, however, been generous with me.” 

Berkshire is now a $360-billion-in-cash-hoarding, trillion-dollar powerhouse. Reflecting on his six-decade tenure, Buffett wrote, “I have never taken your trust for granted.”

This is a long-orchestrated handoff. Buffett relinquished the CEO role to Greg Abel last year, who noted that “Warren is obviously a hard act to follow.” Praising the legacy, Abel said, “Warren’s impact on Berkshire and its owners is without parallel in the history of American business.” As for handing the chairman seat to Little Howard? Abel assured investors, “The culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian.”

Buffett's maxim? “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful.” 

Sounds like my attitude to the all-you-can-eat buffet, never mind the all-you-can-eat Buffett.

Quote of the Day

Microsoft & OpenAI Workers Fret Over ‘Theft of Labor’

Inside Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 0.8% ) and OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.05% ) , staff fretted about scraping millions of news stories written by something called “journalists” to train their AI models. Microsoft staffers debated whether OpenAI’s data harvesting represented the “largest theft of labor in human history,” warning that algorithms “hoovering up” humanity's work would spark a self-devouring “doom loop."

This, joyfully, is all being “reported” by a “newspaper” called the New York Times $NYT ( ▲ 0.39% ), which filed a lawsuit over all this against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023. 

Documents related to the case are slowly being unsealed, providing access to beautiful quotes such as these. It’s a miracle the companies didn’t just settle for billions of dollars, though, don’t you think? I mean the ship has surely s-AI-led at this point, regardless. No?

Turns out even the creators of these AI engines knew AI isn’t expanding the economic pie, but is, instead, eating the bakers. And their customers. And all the lovely pains-au-chocolat, too, in le boulangerie, for good measure. (Why are we switching to Français in this metaphor all of a sudden? —Ed.)

Dr. Brent Hecht, a Microsoft director of applied science, noted that large language models “are a product that destroys its supply chain.” Seriously, guys, why on earth would you put that in an email!?

Over at OpenAI, former policy director Jack Clark warned that the startup would “become the symbol of how Silicon Valley is thoughtlessly stepping into other parts of life and leaving a mess on the carpet.” Meanwhile, when a staffer built a hack to bypass paywalls, OpenAI President Greg Brockman cheerfully replied, “ah nice.”

#Principles.

OpenAI’s Nick Turley admitted AI posed an “existential threat” to publishers and that products “will get more and more substitutive as they get better.” Another OpenAI engineer conceded that “no matter how prominently we show the links, users won’t click.” As publishers sue, attorney Steven Lieberman captured the irony: “The world can see what OpenAI and Microsoft thought all along about the fairness of their own behavior.” 

Live Sports Are Streaming’s Battleground

Live sports have become streaming’s highest-stakes battleground. Consumers like you and me, thank heavens, are footing the bill. Today, watching every NFL game can cost “like a thousand dollars a year,” across a maze of apps, said Axios media reporter Kerry Flynn. 

Tell me about it. I only got into football last year and now I pay for Red Zone, ESPN, and Prime. Did you see that Bills game on Thursday night, though? I think it could be their year.…

To defend their turf in Washington, fierce competitors Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.0% ) , Netflix $NFLX ( ▼ 4.67% ) , and YouTube $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.64% ) formed the Streaming Access and Choice Alliance. While these giants “compete ferociously in this marketplace,” they decided they are “stronger speaking with one voice together than just separately,” Kelly said. 

Why the alliance? Because live sports remain the last remaining asset that can “reliably bring millions of people together at the same time” for advertisers. While legacy networks rely on broadcasts to survive, tech platforms view sports as “part of this greater flywheel” that drives Prime memberships, device sales, and app engagement. As Flynn admits, “I have those apps open way more than I used to because so much of the programming that I watch... are now on those streaming things."

At the heart of the debate is the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which grants leagues antitrust exemptions to pool broadcast rights. Flynn explains that streamers want future regulations to be “technology neutral” so they aren't hamstrung compared to traditional TV. But as tech titans bid billions for World Cup and NFL packages, subscription fees keep soaring. Streaming, it turns out, didn't kill cable. It just repackaged it into separate monthly receipts.

Song of the Day: Yeat, feat. Drake, ‘Miss My Dawg’

Here’s a smooth collaboration between Yeat and Drake, kicking off with cinematic strings before dropping into a heavy trap beat. There’s a moody, melodic energy that pairs with chaotic, high-powered verse. It’s a tribute to friendship. So it’s just like this newsletter.

How To Sell a House Amid 7% Mortgage Rates

We're now in the 7% mortgage rate era. If you are trying to sell a home today, then it's going to be hard. As Vanessa Leimback, a Redfin $REDFIN ( 0.0% ) agent in Washington, told the Wall Street Journal, “The biggest mistake sellers are making today is thinking their home is better than the market.”

Today’s buyers are rate-sensitive, budget-conscious, and unimpressed. Five years ago, sellers could ignore minor flaws and count on backup offers. Today? Skimping on repairs can sink a transaction. Chris Wands, a Douglas Elliman $DOUG ( ▼ 1.74% ) agent in Miami, recalls watching a deal collapse over stubbornness: “I recently saw a deal fall apart over a $40,000 repair estimate from the buyer’s inspection. The buyer asked for a $15,000 credit to offset costs. The seller declined. The buyer walked.”

To win over cautious buyers, presentation and financial flexibility are essential. Allie Carr, an agent in Cleveland, stresses buttoning up landscaping and cabinet dings. She notes that buyers who once searched in higher price tiers are reining in their spending: “The people who I’ve been searching with for months suddenly don’t want to push it,” she said. That means sellers must embrace realistic pricing or concessions — such as interest rate buy-downs — rather than digging in their heels.

And if you refuse to compromise? Ben Dixon, an agent in New York, suggests considering an alternative: Don't sell. Pointing to low fixed-rate mortgages locked in years ago, Dixon notes, “The current market requires evaluating a property’s highest-value use rather than defaulting to a sale.”

In short: Fix the dings, offer a rate buy-down, or become a landlord!

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Inside a Disruptive AI-Glasses Startup

Remember Google Glass $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.64% ) ? A decade ago, wearing smart glasses meant looking like a sci-fi cyborg and getting banned from local cafes. Fast forward to today, and Innovative Eyewear CEO Harrison Gross is betting big that smart specs are finally evolving from glorified “Bluetooth accessories” into the ultimate “on-ramp into AI systems."

Gross’s ambition isn’t to sell overhyped luxury gadgets, but to deliver reliable, everyday utility. “We want to be the high-value volume leader in the category... like the Toyota $TM ( ▼ 1.23% )  of smart eyewear.” 

So where is this hands-free AI revolution actually taking off first? Try oil rigs and auto repair shops! Innovative Eyewear’s OSHA-compliant safety glasses allow multilingual crews at ExxonMobil $XOM ( ▲ 0.17% ) to communicate seamlessly via real-time translation. Meanwhile, mechanics testing the specs can ask their safety glasses, “How do you fix the manifold on a 57 Chevy?” and get instant instructions. For industrial crews, Gross calls the tech a “major tech upgrade for everyone working with their hands.”

Between lightweight consumer frames launching at $150 and enterprise subscriptions creating “glasses as a service,” Gross believes smart eyewear is finally crossing into the mainstream. I'm just glad for Harrison's sake that none of the major players like Meta $META ( ▼ 2.43% ) are throwing money at the same space. Wait...

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

No.

Poll of the Day: Copyr-AI-ght Infringement

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