Jul 15, 2024

What a Grate Day to Be Alive, Cheddar-Cheesers!

It's July 15, a.k.a. National Get Out of the Doghouse Day, founded in 1999 by a florist in the hopes of improving her business. Whose doghouse are you in, and how can you get out of it? Doesn't matter whose, there's one solution: Buy them flowers! To be fair, it's rather a nice idea, whatever the capitalist motivation behind it.

Speaking of which, let's make some Cheddar!

This week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speaks, and he's bound to give us some more insights on his Goldilocks approach to avoiding cutting interest rates too little, too late. We'll also have sight of the U.S. leading economic indicators on Thursday. As usual, Cheddar's Need2Know newsletter will be here to keep you posted on all you...need to know. Because we do exactly what we say on the tin. Meanwhile we have plenty more cheddlines:

Let's get stuck into the week!

Matt Davis, N2K Chedditor

P.S. We also have a terrifying fire effect in a 5D cinema on our Instagram.

1. America's Biggest Bank Made Even More Money Than Anyone Expected

A friend of mine moved to America from Finland and couldn't wait to get a Chase account. "It gives me such a sense of security," he says, "just having their card in my wallet." The good news for him and the rest of us is that JPMorganChase doesn't seem to be in any financial trouble. So: Keep that sense of security firmly in place, Erik.

The bank beat analysts' Q2 estimates, making a profit of $18.5 billion, up 25% YoY. The bank attributed much of the uptick to $7 billion worth of its shares in Visa, but higher interest rates also helped as consumers continue to want to spend. (I do, don't you?) Chase also set aside $3.1 billion to cover potentially bad loans, up sharply from last year as the bank acknowledged that delinquencies were climbing among some Americans.

CEO Jamie Dimon repeated his warnings about heightened geopolitical risks and inflation in his statement to investors. He has said he believes that Americans and the bank should be preparing for inflation to remain higher than normal for longer than people are expecting. Let's not bring Erik down, though, eh? I feel like this part would ruin his day. Read More

2. The Latest on the Trump Rally Shooting

After the shooting at Saturday's Trump rally, how are government bodies and politicians responding to the alleged assassination attempt? Read More

From @cheddar

The effect of a 5D theater makes the entire room feel like it's on fire. 🔥😱

From 3D movies to virtual reality gaming, we've always craved more immersive entertainment experiences. But now, a cinema in China has taken it to a whole new level with a mind-blowing 5D theater.

Imagine being surrounded by realistic fire that makes you feel the heat and smell the flames. But there's nothing burning.

Obviously there is zero stampede danger attached, here. Er...

Follow @cheddar on Instagram!

3. Senator Calls Out Big Tech for Mopping Up Talent at AI Startups

If you thought scavenging for talent in the tech world was all about trumpeted acquisition deals and media pushes, think again. The titans of tech (who supplanted the sultans of swing) are playing a new game that's setting off alarms in Washington. This one's called the "reverse acqui-hire," which actually does sounds sort of interesting.

To the "TTs," a reverse acqui-hire is simply strategic hiring with a twist, but to folks like Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), it's a run around the rules that could monopolize AI faster than you can say "that seems a bit fishy to me."

For example, San Francisco–based Adept, a brainy AI startup, recently carried out a deal that's got everyone talking. They sent their CEO and key masterminds straight into the warm embrace of Amazon, handing over the keys to their AI kingdom—yet without the usual "we're taking over" fanfare from the Seattle behemoth.

It's got Reverse Robin Hood energy: taking from the startup to give to the corporate giant, but without the grand ceremony of a buyout. Senator Wyden, however, is calling foul.

"I'm very concerned about the massive consolidation that's going on in AI," Wyden said. "The technical lingo is 'up and down the stack'. But in plain English, a few companies control a major portion of the market, and just concentrate — rather than on innovation — trying to buy out everybody else's talent."

Here at Cheddar, we're all too familiar with the temptations of all this, having been bought up for our talent and brains more times than we can count. And what can we say? These buyers are only human. Read More

You Need 2 Know About This Box!

Meet the Sunset Box, a quarterly subscription service sending home, wellness, and travel goodies straight to your doorstep, curated by editors at mag Sunset, the Western-lifestyle magazine that just so happens to be a sister company of ours.

Since you clearly have good taste (you're an N2K subscriber, after all), we think you'll love this box. Use code CHEDDAR15 for 15% off your subscription.

Gimme the Box!

Note: Sadly does not contain any cheese.

4. Can AI Help Us Learn More About Whales?

Whales have fascinated people for centuries. Captain Ahab may have been a fictional character but boy, did he have a special place in his heart for albino sperm whales. Now the whiz kids at MIT are studying how AI can teach us more about whales. We caught up with Pratyusha Sharma, a doctoral candidate at MIT's AI Lab, to find out more.

Studying sperm whales in the Caribbean, Sharma and her colleagues have used AI to decode their clicking noises underwater and found that whale talk is a lot more complex and expressive than first thought. "Animals also are capable of expressing a range of different meanings and have these specialized communication systems," she said.

AI and machine learning are helping the team to decode the whales' sequences in real time, and to decode what's known as the sperm whale phonetic alphabet. With 18 different types of sound, it turns out whales essentially have a language 75% as complex as our Roman alphabet. Next up, will researchers pioneer real-time translation so that we can go and have a chat with the whales in real time? That's pretty cool, actually. And it beats a lot of the uses AI has so far been put to. Won't be long, of course, before AI comes to take the whales' jobs—which are, as far we understand it, harassing 19th-century ship captains. Read More

5. Spotify Debuts User Comments on Podcasts

Get ready, trolls! There's soon going to be another comments section to dive into! Streaming platform Spotify has launched a new interactive feature that makes it more like Instagram or Facebook, allowing users to leave comments on podcast episodes. Spotify hasn't yet opened the comment features to songs, presumably hoping to avoid the inevitable "debate" that will happen in the comments on Michael Jackson and R Kelly's music over whether it's "still okay" to put them on your playlists, given the documented… uh, issues with the artists themselves. But there's still a lot of discursive havoc to be wrought in reaction to the latest episode of "Pantsuit Nation." To the keyboards, warriors! Read More