TechCrunch : iPhones might be harder for police to unlock, thanks to new reboot

iPhones might be harder for police to unlock, thanks to new reboot feature
New code introduced in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system could make it more difficult for both police and thieves to unlock iPhones.

404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that phones being stored for forensic examination seemed to be rebooting themselves — something that security experts confirmed in a follow-up story. After the reboot, it’s harder for those phones to be unlocked by password-cracking tools.

Apple did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

This reboot appears to take place after iPhones with iOS 18.1 have not been unlocked for a set period of time. According to Chris Wade, founder of mobile analysis company Corellium, iPhones seem to reboot after their fourth day of in a locked state.

Matthew Green, a cryptographer and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, described this as “a huge improvement in terms of security” that “probably doesn’t inconvenience anyone” — though the police might disagree.

WSJ : Europe’s Economy Faces Sink-or-Swim Moment as Trump Returns

Europe’s Economy Faces Sink-or-Swim Moment as Trump Returns
With the U.S. election result and the German government’s collapse, the lagging European economy is at a crossroads

Wall Street’s verdict is clear: A second Trump presidency is likely to deliver a blow to an export-dependent European Union that is struggling with sclerotic economic growth and ever-multiplying political crises. Whether it will finally spark some change is the question for patient investors.

Since Wednesday, the day after the election, the S&P 500 has gained 3.7%. Meanwhile, the Euro Stoxx 50 and the FTSE 100 are down. Among those to shed the most market value have been clean-energy firms such as Vestas, carmakers such as BMW, consumer-goods companies such as Nestlé and Unilever and sellers of pharmaceuticals such as Roche. They all sell a lot to the U.S.

The U.S. is the top goods-export market for the European Union, and for Germany, with pharmaceuticals, machinery and vehicles topping the export list.

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump floated a 60% tariff on Chinese imports and a 10%-to-20% levy across the board. The think tank German Economic Institute estimates that such a measure could make the German economy between 1.2% and 1.4% smaller than it would have been by 2028.

The core of the European Union’s export machine has been plunged into difficulties because of the end of cheap Russian energy, delays in joining the electric-vehicle revolution and an overreliance on selling to China.

Volkswagen last week announced the closing of at least three plants in Germany. According to FactSet, American customers make up 18% of its sales, about the same as the German market.

“I want German car companies to become American car companies,” Trump said last month while holding a rally in Savannah, Ga. “If you don’t make your product here, then you will have to pay a tariff, a very substantial tariff,” he added.

On Wednesday, Oliver Zipse, chairman of German carmaker BMW, underscored that the company has a plant in Greer, S.C.

“The most demanded vehicles in the United States, we produce there,” he told analysts Wednesday in a conference call. “So there is some natural cover against possible tariffs.”

Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have factories in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Vance, Ala., respectively. Manufacturers Airbus, Siemens and BASF also service the U.S. market from within, as do Nestlé and Unilever.

Much depends on details. In early 2021, Airbus’s assembly line in Mobile, Ala., was forced to pay tariffs for its shipments of fuselage, wing and tail components from France and Germany, as part of a World Trade Organization dispute. An agreement was quickly reached to suspend them.

Regardless, building up capacity to service all types of American-based demand would be hard. The Mobile plant makes A220 and A320 jets, but A330 and A350 wide-bodies are assembled in France. Volkswagen uses Chattanooga for the Atlas SUV, the Passat sedan and the electric ID.4, but the bestselling Tiguan and Jetta are built in Mexico. Roughly a quarter of U.S. imported cars originate there, and Trump has suggested that a 200% tariff could be slapped on them.

And when it comes to high-performance models, most EU firms still make them domestically and ship them over. Exports to the U.S. amounted to about 800,000 cars in 2023.

To be sure, EU leaders have struck a conciliatory tone with Trump this week, suggesting that a more amicable endgame such as the 2018 trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico is possible.


Another risk is that China would send even more cheap goods to Europe if the U.S. ratchets up its trade war with Beijing. Yes, recent experience shows that China often just reroutes exports through third countries—and, as of recently, faces higher tariffs for electric vehicles in the EU anyway—but even small shifts could have big effects.

For a decade and a half, the 27-nation bloc has limped along, fostering just enough political change to avoid a painful breakup during the debt crisis of the 2010s and the 2020 pandemic, but never enough to truly invigorate its economy. Attempts by France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz to change course have ended in paralysis. Scholz’s three-party government collapsed this week, after years that saw the coalition’s pro-austerity member blocking efforts to spur domestic industry with public spending.

Yet the first Trump presidency did galvanize some early support for a cohesive industrial strategy in Europe. The long-term bull case for European equities is that Trump 2.0 will be a catalyst for further transformation. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi published a report in September urging less red tape, state aid to key sectors and, where appropriate, harsher tariffs, all of which has buy-in from officials in Brussels.

On a small scale, the impulse toward a European industrial policy is already playing out. European defense contractors such as BAE Systems, Rheinmetall and Thales have seen their shares jump on the expectation that less American military involvement in Europe will force governments there to rely on their own capabilities. By 2030, the EU wants members to direct 50% or more of their procurement budgets toward European contractors.

Elsewhere, substituting foreign markets for domestic consumers will prove much harder, though providing advantages to buyers of electric vehicles has proved extremely effective in Norway. They now outnumber cars that run on gasoline.

Caught between the U.S. and China, Europe’s economic strategy is soon to face its biggest challenge since the eurozone crisis. Investors are right to be wary.

FT : AI groups rush to redesign model testing and create new benchmarks

AI groups rush to redesign model testing and create new benchmarks
Rapidly advancing technology is surpassing current methods of evaluating and comparing large language models

Tech groups are rushing to redesign how they test and evaluate their artificial intelligence models, as the fast advancing technology surpasses current benchmarks.

OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and Anthropic have all recently announced plans to build AI agents that can execute tasks for humans autonomously on their behalf. To do this effectively, the systems must be able to perform increasingly complex actions, using reasoning and planning.

Companies conduct “evaluations” of AI models by teams of staff and outside researchers. These are standardised tests, known as benchmarks, that assess models’ abilities and the performance of different groups’ systems or older versions.

However, recent advances in AI technology have meant many of the newest models have been able to get close to or above 90 per cent accuracy on existing tests, highlighting the need for new benchmarks.

“The pace of the industry is extremely fast. We are now starting to saturate our ability to measure some of these systems [and as an industry] it is becoming more and more difficult to evaluate [them],” said Ahmad Al-Dahle, generative AI lead at Meta.

To deal with this issue, several tech groups including Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft have created their own internal benchmarks and tests for intelligence. But this has raised concerns within the industry over the ability to compare the technology in the absence of public tests.

“Many of these benchmarks let us know how far away we are from automation of tasks and jobs. Without them being made public, it is hard for businesses and wider society to tell,” said Dan Hendrycks, executive director of the Center for AI Safety and an adviser to Elon Musk’s xAI.

Current public benchmarks — Hellaswag and MMLU — use multiple-choice questions to assess common sense and knowledge across various topics. However, researchers argue this method is now becoming redundant and models need more complex problems.

“We are getting to the era where a lot of the human-written tests are no longer sufficient as a good barometer for how capable the models are,” said Mark Chen, SVP of research at OpenAI. “That creates a new challenge for us as a research world.”

One public benchmark, SWE-bench Verified, was updated in August to better evaluate autonomous systems based on feedback from companies, including OpenAI.

It uses real-world software problems sourced from the developer platform GitHub and involves supplying the AI agent with a code repository and an engineering issue, asking them to fix it. The tasks require reasoning to complete.

On this measure OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4o preview, solves 41.4 per cent of issues, while Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet gets 49 per cent.

“It is a lot more challenging [with agentic systems] because you need to connect those systems to lots of extra tools,” said Jared Kaplan, chief science officer at Anthropic.

“You have to basically create a whole sandbox environment for them to play in. It is not as simple as just providing a prompt, seeing what the completion is and then evaluating that,” he added.

Another important factor when conducting more advanced tests is to make sure the benchmark questions are kept out of the public domain, in order to ensure the models do not effectively “cheat” by generating the answers from training data rather than solving the problem.

The ability to reason and plan is critical to unlocking the potential of AI agents that can conduct tasks over multiple steps and applications, and correct themselves.

“We are discovering new ways of measuring these systems and of course one of those is reasoning, which is an important frontier,” said Ece Kamar, VP and lab director of AI Frontiers at Microsoft research.

As a result, Microsoft is working on its own internal benchmark, incorporating problems that have not previously appeared in training to assess whether its AI models can reason as a human would.

Some, including researchers from Apple, have questioned whether current large language models are “reasoning” or purely “pattern matching” the closest similar data seen in their training.

“In the narrower domains [that] enterprises care about, they do reason,” said Ruchir Puri, chief scientist at IBM Research. “[The debate is around] this broader concept of reasoning at a human level, that would almost put it in the context of artificial general intelligence. Do they really reason, or are they parroting?”

OpenAI measures reasoning primarily through evaluations covering maths, STEM subjects and coding tasks.

“Reasoning is a very grand term. Everyone defines it differently and has their own interpretation . . . this boundary is very fuzzy [and] we try not to get too bogged down with that distinction itself, but look at whether it is driving utility, performance or capabilities,” said OpenAI’s Chen.

The need for new benchmarks has also led to efforts by external organisations.

In September, the start-up Scale AI and Hendrycks announced a project called “Humanity’s Last Exam”, which crowdsourced complex questions from experts across different disciplines that required abstract reasoning to complete.

Another example is FrontierMath, a novel benchmark released this week, created by expert mathematicians. Based on this test, the most advanced models can complete less than 2 per cent of questions.

However, without explicit agreement on measuring such capabilities, experts warn that it can be difficult for companies to assess their competitors or for businesses and consumers to understand the market.

“There is no clear way to say ‘this model is definitively better than this model’ [because] when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” and models are trained to pass the set benchmarks, said Meta’s Al-Dahle.

“It is something that, as a whole industry, we are working our way through.”

FT : Cheap tyres and scrap metal: Carl Icahn’s empire shows signs of strain

Cheap tyres and scrap metal: Carl Icahn’s empire shows signs of strain
Billionaire activist investor’s holding company grasps for revival as it cuts dividend and weighs asset sale

Carl Icahn’s efforts to stabilise his corporate empire rest in part on a small Midwestern refinery and a scrapyard on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee.

The billionaire activist investor slashed the dividend of his publicly listed holding company in half on Friday, sending its stock tumbling and adding to a litany of financial troubles for the 88-year-old financier.

Icahn Enterprises, his listed conglomerate, has seen its shares plunge this year due to losses in its investment portfolio and operational problems across its businesses spanning car repair dealerships, sausage packaging operations and oil refineries, which have eaten into its cash flows.

It has been an ignominious stretch for the legendary corporate raider, who made his name in the 1980s with huge stakes in oil majors, airlines and consumer products companies.

Executives said on Friday they had fired senior managers of its Pep Boys car repair unit, after it ran out of tyres last quarter — due to a cost-cutting effort to buy cheap tyres from a new vendor. The operational crisis forced Icahn Enterprises to write down the value of Pep Boys by $193mn.

Icahn’s representatives did not respond to interview requests on Friday.

Last month, its largest investment, a controlling interest in refinery CVR Energy, was pummelled after the group eliminated its dividend to conserve cash amid power outages and heavy spending needs. That cut off a vital source of funds for Icahn Enterprises.

On Friday, Icahn Enterprises followed suit, halving its quarterly payout from $1 per share to 50 cents, in a move designed to save cash and double down on its refining operations.

But it scared shareholders, many of whom were attracted to the conglomerate for its high yields. Icahn Enterprises’ stock fell 6 per cent, putting year-to-date losses at about 38 per cent.

In addition to cash flow shortfalls that drove the dividend cut, Icahn Enterprises has seen the value of its assets quickly erode. Its net asset value per share has declined 35 per cent this year.

Those losses are putting financial strain on Icahn, who borrowed billions in personal loans against his shares in Icahn Enterprises, using the stock as collateral for as much as $5bn from a group of banks in recent years.

Icahn’s heavy borrowing came during a decade-long stretch of losses in his investment portfolio due to large bets he held against booming financial markets. The feared activist has pledged substantial assets as collateral against the loans and now must repay the debts in coming years after some of their values have fallen.

Now Icahn is betting that he can pull off a revival by selling a metals scrapyard he acquired more than a decade ago.

In 2007, Icahn acquired a scrap metals company called PSC Metals with a large junkyard in Nashville. When Icahn sold the company in 2021, he held on to PSC’s 45-acre scrapyard in the city’s industrial “East Bank” neighbourhood, betting he could eventually flip the property when the area was gentrified.

On Friday, executives at Icahn Enterprises told shareholders they had put the property up for sale and hoped to make a 10-fold gain on its $25mn carrying value.

The National Football League’s Tennessee Titans are building a stadium adjacent to the scrapyard and the area is part of a giant urban renewal plan in one of America’s fastest growing cities. It has turned the industrial wasteland into a coveted property, according to local real estate executives.

Icahn also told shareholders on Friday he decided to cut his conglomerate’s dividend because he wants to buy additional shares in CVR Energy. He has launched a tender offer to buy $263mn in CVR stock, boosting Icahn Enterprises’ ownership from 66 per cent to 81 per cent.

Icahn Enterprises characterised the manoeuvre as opportunistic after an about 20 per cent tumble in CVR’s shares last month, giving it greater ownership in a refining operation that has paid out over $3bn in dividends to the conglomerate since 2012.

“[We] think the decisions we made today will actually help cash flow in the future,” said Andrew Teno, chief executive, referring to the tender offer.

The trade could benefit from a new administration in the US. CVR carries $374mn of liabilities due to a federal mandate to mix biofuels into petrol supplies or buy credits to make up the shortfall.

But the refinery has sued the federal government over the mandate and recently blasted the Biden administration's “egregious conduct” in keeping refineries that had won some legal challenges to the payments hanging. “[The] financial impact of their actions threaten the very existence of small refineries like ours,” said CVR chief executive David Lamp.

But the new administration could offer the relief CVR is seeking, removing a big financial burden.

“Rarely have I seen a stock market with such extreme valuations — with some companies trading at unjustifiable premiums and others being massively undervalued,” Icahn said in a prepared statement on Friday.

>>> US Weekend Papers Summary

FINANCIAL TIMES
-US trade representative Robert Lighthizer has been asked to return to his role as the president-elect begins building his cabinet team. Lighthizer had expressed interest in serving as Treasury secretary, but this position is likely to be offered to a financier, with contenders including hedge fund managers Scott Bessent and John Paulson. The possibility of an arch protectionist being reappointed to the pivotal trade role is likely to raise concerns in Beijing and among US trading allies, given his influence during Trump's trade wars during his first term. Trump had considered Lighthizer for commerce secretary, but Linda McMahon, the billionaire co-chair of Trump's presidential transition team, is most likely to be offered the job. Philadelphia congressman Brenda Boyle, the top Democrat on the influential House budget committee and senior member of the ways and means committee overseeing trade, expressed his welcomeness for Lighthizer's appointment.
-At Mar-a-Lago, the wealthy and soon-to-be powerful gathered for the election results at Donald Trump's fortress. Trump sat with Elon Musk, the billionaire technology executive, and Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Musk called the race "game, set and match" hours before the final outcome was announced. The next day, after Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Trump and Musk ate together on the terrace of the resort, wearing a T-shirt of astronauts walking on the moon with Mars in the distance. Musk wrote "Novus Ordo Seclorum," the Latin expression for "a new era is born." The jubilant scenes at Mar-a-Lago suggest that a second Trump presidency might differ from the first one, and how his new inner circle will be changed.
-Qatar has urged Hamas leaders to leave the country following pressure from Washington. The request was made around 10 days ago after discussions with US officials. Qatar has hosted Hamas's political office in Doha since 2012, when Syria's civil war forced it to leave its base in Damascus. Doha became a crucial interlocutor in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas after the group's deadly attack on southern Israel in October 2023. Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed over 43,000 Palestinians. Qatar helped broker a deal to free over 100 Israeli hostages last year, but talks have since been deadlocked. A senior Biden administration official said that after the failure of repeated proposals to release hostages, Hamas's leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner.
-US stocks have had their best week in a year, thanks to a rally sparked by Donald Trump's election victory. The S&P 500 closed 0.4% higher in New York, gaining 4.7% over five days, its best performance since early November 2023. The broad-based bellwether pushed above 6,000 for the first time on Friday, peaking at 6,012.45. The market was boosted by a Trump victory and another jolt from the Federal Reserve this week. Wednesday's 2.5% jump was the S&P's best day in over two years. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter-point on Thursday. Sebastian Page, head of global multi-asset and chief investment officer at T Rowe Price, said there was an element of a relief rally following the election, as the market is expecting deregulation, lower taxes, and higher inflation.
-Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election has caused tensions in Canada, a close ally with a trading partnership worth $1.3T a year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated Trump, stating that Canada and the US have the world's most successful partnership and are each other's largest trade partners. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland assured reporters in Ottawa that Canada would be fine despite the anxieties. Ottawa had first-hand experience of Trump's "America First" trade policy during his previous administration, where he insisted on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2017.
-Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election has caused tensions in Canada, a close ally with a trading partnership worth $1.3T a year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated Trump, stating that Canada and the US have the world's most successful partnership and are each other's largest trade partners. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland assured reporters in Ottawa that Canada would be fine despite the anxieties. Ottawa had first-hand experience of Trump's "America First" trade policy during his previous administration, where he insisted on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2017.
-Paraguay's conservative president, Santiago Peña, is facing pressure from investors and diplomats to veto a bill that would increase government controls on non-profit organisations. Critics argue that the bill would target opponents of the ruling Colorado Party and its leader, Horacio Cartes, a former president who supports increased oversight of NGOs. Cartes has denied any wrongdoing and dismisses the accusations as politically motivated. The Colorado Party claims the law, which would require organizations to report funding and employee details, and allow authorities to temporarily shut down or block payments, is needed to prevent money laundering and foreign interference. The US imposed sanctions on Cartes in 2022 over corruption allegations.
-The UK has approved the construction of a multibillion-pound fighter jet with Italy and Japan, easing concerns that the project could be affected by the Labour government's strategic defense review. The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) was approved at a meeting on Tuesday, and a formal announcement is expected in the coming weeks. This comes as a relief to Italy and Japan, Britain's partners on GCAP, after Labour sparked fears that it could axe the project on cost grounds. Despite the importance of the program, armed forces minister Luke Pollard has said it would not be right for him to prejudge Labour's strategic defense review.
-Verizon's $20B acquisition of Frontier Communications is set to face a showdown at an investor meeting next week, as shareholders demand a 30% price increase. The acquisition by Canada-based BCE's of Ziply, a telco with a similar fibre network, has become a flashpoint. Frontier investors believe the Ziply deal's valuation metrics suggest a higher purchase price for Frontier, citing long-term growth prospects for fibre broadband service. Frontier's projected growth makes its shares worth more than $50 a share, far higher than the deal price of $38.50. Glendon Capital Management and Cerberus Capital Management are among the investors angling for a higher deal price. Ares Management, the company's single largest shareholder, has not indicated its vote and has hired boutique bank Houlihan Lokey to evaluate its options.
-Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz may be prepared to bring forward a confidence vote in his government, potentially leading to earlier snap elections in the Eurozone's largest economy. The opposition has urged the vote to be held as early as next week to avoid political uncertainty, allowing elections to be held in January. Scholz sacked finance minister Christian Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), marking the end of a long-running dispute within the coalition between the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens and the FDP over economic policy. With the FDP pulling its ministers out of the cabinet, Scholz now heads an SPD-Green minority government. Scholz may be flexible on timing if the SPD and Greens can reach a deal with opposition parties to get some outstanding bills through parliament.
-President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to boost upstream production and lift a moratorium on licensing new liquefied natural gas export facilities. This move could give European industry a boost, as US natural gas production has reached record levels of 125B ft3 a day, up nearly half over the past decade. While rolling back royalties, compliance, and costs might give drillers an extra incentive, the uplift would be capped by the downward pressure on oil and gas prices. The temporary pause on new authorizations for LNG terminals affected earlier-stage projects, but a reversal would strengthen the prospects for more LNG supply in the medium term. This comes in the context of an LNG market preparing for a glut, with projects with 130 mtpa of capacity scheduled to come on stream between 2025 and 2027.

NEW YORK TIMES
-President-elect Donald Trump and Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, had a phone call on Wednesday. During the call, Trump handed the phone to Elon Musk, a billionaire who has played a key role in providing communications capability to Ukraine in its war with Russia. It is unclear whether the three men discussed any change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump's election. Musk was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, and the tone of the call was described as positive. A second person briefed on the call confirmed Musk's participation, which was reported earlier by Axios. A third person briefed on the call described it as a "good talk," with Zelensky calling Trump to congratulate him and thanking him for the communication assistance.
-Iranian agents have been accused of plotting to kill President-elect Donald Trump, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. The allegation came in a complaint that claimed Masih Alinejad, a Brooklyn activist, had been the target of a second assassination attempt. The latest development is an alarming development for U.S. security officials, as it comes as Iranian plotters discussed a plan to assassinate Trump before his re-election as president. One of the plotters claimed to have been assigned in September to carry out the plan by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran. An Iranian operative was instructed to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump, according to the criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
-New York Governor Kathy Hochul is considering reviving a congestion pricing plan for New York City before President-elect Donald J. Trump has a chance to kill it, according to four people familiar with the matter. Hochul's move to salvage the contentious plan comes as she faces pressure from various corners, including a group that represents transit riders. She is planning to start an advertising blitz on Monday in support of the tolling program. The plan that Hochul, a Democrat, is now exploring differs slightly from the one she halted in June. She is trying to satisfy opponents who had complained about the $15 congestion-pricing toll that most motorists would have had to pay as well as supporters who want to reduce car traffic and fund mass transit improvements.
-A brush fire in Brooklyn's Prospect Park has drew nearly 100 firefighters, prompting officials to warn residents to stay away as they used drones to identify hot spots. The fire was first reported around 6:40 p.m., and no injuries were immediately reported. The Fire Department's commissioner, Robert S. Tucker, stated that every time the wind gusts up, an ember creates more fire, causing the fire to burn all night. The fire was first reported in the Nethermead area southeast of the dog beach, and no injuries had been reported as of 9:15 p.m. The department has not determined the cause of the fire, but fire marshals will investigate once it is contained. Officials warned residents to stay away from the park and close their windows due to the smoke. Commissioner Tucker said it was too difficult to evacuate the park due to the darkness and the movement of emergency equipment, creating a risk of inadvertent injury.
-President-elect Donald J. Trump's transition team for climate and the environment is considering relocating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) out of Washington and other drastic changes. David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who headed the Interior Department during the first Trump administration, and Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who ran the EPA, are leading the charge in reshaping the agencies responsible for protecting the nation's air, water, climate, and public lands. Both are Washington insiders with years of experience in dismantling federal environmental protections. The transition team has already prepared executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy, including withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating every office in every agency working to end pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities, and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands. President Biden has made environmental justice a top priority, but this initiative will be scrapped.
-Senate Democrats are considering a major push to confirm as many of President Biden's judicial nominees as possible in the lame-duck session of Congress before their power to reshape the federal courts ends with the Republican takeover of the White House and the Senate in January. Democrats had hoped to hold onto the Senate and the White House, allowing them to continue their drive to counterbalance the 234 conservative-leaning judges, including three Supreme Court justices, who were confirmed during the first Trump administration. However, with the re-election of Donald J. Trump and Republicans winning control of the Senate, that possibility is now gone.
-San Francisco Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie announced in his first speech as mayor that he would declare a state of emergency on fentanyl on his first day in office. In brief, Lurie stated that he intended to shut down the open-air fentanyl markets that had proliferated in the city's Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods and had infuriated many residents. He stated that he would declare the emergency on his first day in office in January. Another man stands behind him holding a sign that says, "Lurie for Mayor."
-A semiabstract portrait of British mathematician Alan Turing, created by a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence, sold at auction for nearly $1.1M. The painting, created by Aidan Meller, a former gallerist living outside Oxford, England, was created by a team of nearly 30 people. The robot, named Ai-Da, is dressed like a woman with a bob haircut and is referred to as Ai-Da in honor of Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician recognized as the world's first computer programmer. The painting was offered as part of Sotheby's digital art sale and initially was estimated to sell for $120,000 to $180,000. It received more than 27 bids and was sold to an anonymous buyer from the United States. Meller said the proceeds from the sale of the painting, called "A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing," would help finance new improvements to Ai-Da's design.
-Stocks rose on Friday, marking the market's best week in over a year, and extending a rally that began with President-elect Donald Trump's election win. The S&P 500 rose almost 0.4% on Friday, its fourth consecutive daily increase, and briefly crossed above 6,000 points for the first time ever. For the week, the index gained 4.7%. The victory ushered in a relief rally typical in the immediate aftermath of a presidential election as the vote becomes clear. Stocks were also buoyed by investors' expectations of business-friendly policies under the Trump administration, including lighter regulation and tax cuts. The market's rally was triggered by President-elect Trump's victory and a quarter-point interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve.

NEW YORK POST
-The Kamala Harris campaign spent up to $20M on swing-state concerts before the election, causing concern that staff and vendors won't be paid amid reports of the campaign being in debt. Members of the defeated Harris team claim that the concerts had a ruinous effect on the Democratic campaign's coffers, with one planned performance by '90s alt-rock goddess Alanis Morissette being scrapped to save money. The seven swing-state concerts on election eve featured performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh, and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia. 2 Chainz joined Harris on November 2, three days before the election, for an eighth concert in Atlanta. Two sources said that Obama campaign alum Stephanie Cutter pushed the concert concept as a way to woo lower-propensity voters to the polls. While the performers donated their time and talent, the sets still required an immense commitment of manpower and financial resources.
-Iran instructed one of its agents, Farhad Shakeri, to stalk and assassinate former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election's final weeks, according to a bombshell criminal complaint unsealed by Manhattan federal prosecutors. The complaint charges Shakeri, who remains at large, with murder-for-hire, as well as two New York City men in separate assassination plots targeting a prominent Brooklyn journalist and two unidentified Jewish businesspeople. The Iranian official hinted at other Tehran-backed attempts to murder the former president when Shakeri told his handler that the Trump plot would "cost a 'huge' amount of money." The complaint states that the money was not an issue, as the Iranian government had already spent a lot of money on the plot.
-Mortgage rates remain high despite the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts and President Trump's pledges to cut homebuyers a break. After Trump's victory, 30-year fixed mortgage rates briefly surged before settling at 6.98%. This is bad news for house hunters who had hoped the Fed's recent interest rate cuts would ease mortgage rates, which surged during the pandemic due to government stimulus. Mortgages are more directly tied to 10-year treasury bond yields, which can cause inflation due to strong economic growth.
-Richard Farley, a partner at New York law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, is being considered as a potential candidate to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Trump administration. Farley, a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, has represented major banks and financial services companies, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and UBS, on major financing deals. He has also represented Cantor Fitzgerald in 2017 when it was selling shares in Sorrento Therapeutics. Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick is helping to lead Trump's transition team and is in charge of choosing personnel. Farley is also an old friend of Trump backer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now angling for a cabinet position.

The Information : Why TV Mergers Aren’t the Solution to Streaming’s Flaws

Why TV Mergers Aren’t the Solution to Streaming’s Flaws

That didn’t take long. Within a day of Donald Trump’s election as president, TV executives were signaling optimism that the new administration would make life easier for them by allowing the industry to consolidate. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made the most articulate case on Thursday, presenting mergers as a way of helping out poor consumers who can’t figure out how to navigate the crowded world of streaming apps.

“Consumers put on a TV set and they see 16 apps. And each of those are doing different pricing. And you’re sitting there with your phone and Googling where a show is or where a sport is.…It’s just not a good consumer experience,” Zaslav argued. Not only is he right, but this framing is more likely to appeal to antitrust authorities than arguing that mergers would help TV companies cope with shrinking cable revenues by helping them cut costs.

Still, the idea that a veteran TV executive is worried about the consumer experience is a little ironic, given that TV executives gave us the world of high-priced cable TV, offering hundreds of channels people didn’t watch. And those they did watch were jammed with so many ad breaks you might think the programs interrupted the commercials rather than the other way around.

To be fair to Zaslav, he appears to have learned his lesson on advertising, noting on Thursday, “We have seen on cable that too much advertising really presents consumer challenges.”

What’s worrying, though, is that Zaslav (like other TV executives) is a big advocate for creating bundles of streaming services—basically cable TV–like packages where you pay one price and get several services. Already, WBD has created a bundle with Disney that offers WBD’s Max with Disney’s Disney+ and Hulu for $29.99 a month, all without ads. That’s a big discount on the $51.97 you’d pay to get the ad-free versions of those separately.

But if you think that discounted price will last, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

All the big TV companies have been jacking up prices on streaming regularly, to the point where most have erased the streaming losses that were straining their finances. But their streaming profits are still small, while the much more substantial profits from their cable channels are diminishing, as we saw in the third-quarter results today from Paramount Global and those from WBD on Thursday. That guarantees that prices of the new bundles will rise once people get used to them.

And if consolidation happens, there’s a risk that bigger bundles will come, costing more money and resembling cable packages with a mix of some programs you watch—and some you don’t. Zaslav may not be thinking along those lines, to be sure. But there’s a danger that allowing mergers will take us back to the worst of the cable world. That might be good for the companies, at least in the short term, but consumers are not likely to welcome it.

Barron's Week End Summary

Barron's Weekend Summary: Donald Trump has won the election with a majority of the popular vote

Cover:
-Donald Trump has won the election with a majority of the popular vote, putting an end to the questioning about his democratic legitimacy. The economy has seen significant changes since his departure in 2021, but inflation may not be fully eradicated and consumers are anxious about the future. As the president considers his strategy and personnel choices, he should consult with economic advisers to maintain the boom and avoid reigniting inflation. Consumer sentiment is still in recession territory, and deportation raids and measures restricting the labor force could drive up inflation. The Federal Reserve is bringing down interest rates, but Chair Jerome Powell may reverse course if conditions change. Trump should be wary of interfering with the Federal Reserve, as Powell believes it is illegal to fire him. He will have a chance to replace him as Fed chair in May 2026, and should choose a neutral Fed leadership.

Interview:
-Meb Faber, a value-oriented money manager in a market dominated by growth stocks, believes there are many winning stocks beyond highfliers like the Magnificent Seven. His $1.2B Cambria Shareholder Yield (SYLD) fund, which targets dividend-paying companies, has returned 12% annually over the past decade, beating its mid-cap benchmark. Faber also runs Cambria, oversees over a dozen ETFs, and is an author and economic commentator. He hosts a podcast, the Meb Faber Show, which has welcomed investment luminaries. Barron's interviewed Faber about the market's tech rally, finding value today, and his contrarian investing idea.

Tech Trader:
-Donald Trump's victory has significant policy and geopolitical implications for the tech sector, with tech investors anticipating uncertainty. Big Tech is not expected to see significant changes compared to the status quo, as the government's antitrust cases against Alphabet and Meta Platforms began under the first Trump administration. Trump's administration will likely make significant differences in AI and chip policy, particularly in terms of regulation. He has vowed to cut burdensome rules and red tape, benefiting smaller AI start-ups. Additionally, energy deregulation could benefit AI innovation, as the US is constructing AI data centers, with constraints such as chip supply and electricity access. A Trump administration may prioritize the importance of nuclear energy and AI infrastructure, making it easier to build reactors and connect to data centers.

The Trader:
-Fears of nightmare scenarios, such as a long wait for final results or a legal battle contesting the outcome, were all raged as voters went to the polls. Donald Trump's presidential victory was evident by Tuesday night, and stocks surged to new all-time highs. The S&P 500 index gained over 4% this past week, while the NASDAQ Composite rose nearly 6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 4% after experiencing its largest post-Election Day gain since 1896. The Cboe Volatility Index declined 32%, its largest weekly drop since December 2021. However, the sequel might not go as well as the first, as inflation was lower in 2017 and the federal deficit was less than half that. Trump's policies, such as cutting the corporate tax rate, imposing tariffs, and dialing back regulations, may have a different impact.
-Trump's victory over Kamala Harris has led to a surge in financial stocks, with Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of New York Mellon hitting record highs. Lower short-term interest rates and a relaxed antitrust regime could benefit financials, making lending more profitable for smaller banks. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking exchange-traded fund soared over 10% on Wednesday. The iShares S&P Value ETF has an overweight position in financial stocks, while the iShares S&P Growth ETF has a P/E of 27. The market expects stronger economic growth and better earnings, with insurance, construction, and steel stocks all experiencing surges. Small-cap stocks may benefit from protectionist trade policies, such as tariffs against China and economic allies like Europe, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. The Russell 2000 and S&P Small Cap 600 indexes both surged more than 5% on Wednesday.

Features:
-Tesla stock has seen a significant rally since the election on Wednesday, with Wall Street becoming more optimistic about Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker. Tesla stock rose 8.2% on Friday to close at $321.22, a rise of 8.2% since September 2022. The stock hasn't closed above $300 since September 2022 and $321.22 since April 2022. The recent gains have sent Tesla's market value back above $1T based on 3.21B shares outstanding. The gains followed a 15% jump in Tesla stock following Donald Trump's presidential election win over Kamala Harris. The shares have gained 29% this week alone, adding almost $45 a share, or $145B in market capitalization, for Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorsed Trump's bid to recapture the White House after a failed assassination attempt in July. Aligning with Trump has turned out to be an incredible hedge for Tesla. EV stocks also experienced a down day, with Lucid Group stock falling 5.3%, Polestar Automotive Holding shares falling 8.2%, and Rivian Automotive dropping 8.3%.
-Rivian, an electric-vehicle start-up, reported a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss, with a per-share loss of $1.08 from sales of $874M. The company delivered 10,018 vehicles in the third quarter, down from 13,790 in the second quarter. Wall Street estimated gross profit margins of negative 30%, an improvement from negative 38% in the second quarter of 2024. Profit margins came in at negative 45%, although absolute spending dropped from $1.6B in the second quarter to $1.3B in the third quarter. Rivian management still expects to produce a positive gross profit in the fourth quarter. Rivian also left its full-year sales and production guidance unchanged, aiming to make about 48,000 vehicles and deliver about 51,000 vehicles. Canaccord analyst George Gianarikas called the quarter "messy," but added that "it wasn't all bad." Rivian stock closed up 5.4% at $10.59, while the S&P 500 rose 0.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6%.

Europe:
-Volkswagen, Europe's top auto maker, is facing significant challenges due to structural problems and the closure of three domestic factories. CEO Oliver Blume demands 10% pay cuts and the closure of factories, which has led to a 65% upside in VW's stock. European equity strategist Michael Field sees a V-shaped recovery if factory closures are signed off, and is also buying into VW's competitors, Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW, and Stellantis. However, not everyone is so bullish, as the current backdrop has already led to the collapse of a business model based on profit margins in China. Local competition has reduced Europeans' share of the Chinese luxury car market to 40%, and the market is shrinking due to China's property-driven issues. Chinese upstarts like BYD have raced ahead in affordable electric vehicles, pushing the European Union to impose import tariffs of up to 35%.

Emerging Markets:
-No update

Commodities:
-As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, a potential trade war with China could impact American farmers, potentially leading to a shift in the global supply structure of agricultural products like soybeans and corn. Trump has long advocated for tariffs on foreign goods to appeal to working-class voters who feel the loss of income and job opportunities due to global free trade and overseas factories. If re-elected, Trump has pledged to impose at least 10% tariffs against foreign goods, with levies for certain imports from China potentially reaching up to 60%. This could potentially lead to retaliatory tariffs from Beijing on American goods, a move seen six years ago when Trump imposed tariffs on over $300 billion of Chinese imports.

Streetwise:
-Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) experienced a post-election surge, trading 35% higher at one point but closing up less than 6%, similar to the Russell 2000 index of small companies. DJT's recent stock market value was just under $8B, similar to Walgreens Boots Alliance, but its revenue last quarter was around $1 million, making it the purest of Trump trades in the short term. The election results were favorable for Trump's trades, as President-elect Donald Trump had a red wave, with Republicans flipping the Senate and likely keeping the House of Representatives. This victory is a clear mandate for four years of Plan Trump, as the first Republican popular vote win in two decades. DJT's short-term success makes it the purest of Trump trades.