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00:20:53
Apple continues its week of product refreshes, now with MacBooks, now with new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. People continue to get rich frontrunning news on the betting markets. And Sam Altman says, no, sorry, we rushed things. The government swears it won’t use our AI for mass surveillance after we asked them nicely not to.
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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Techbrew Write home for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today Apple continues its week of product refreshes now with MacBooks, now with new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. People continue to get rich front running news on the betting markets and Sam Altman says no, sorry we rushed things. The government swears it won't use our AI for mass surveillance after we ask them nicely not to. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech, Today is going to feel like a replay of yesterday's episode because Apple has unveiled the M5 MacBook Air and 13 and 15 inch sizes, boosting its starting price by $100 to $1,099 and doubling base storage to 512 gigabytes shipping from March 11. Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. While the M4 MacBook Air started at $999, the new M5 MacBook Air returns to the 101099 price that previous models have had. The $100 price increase isn't all bad though. Apple has doubled the base storage from 256 gigabytes to 512. Apple also introduced 16 gigabytes of RAM across the board, compared to just 8 gigabytes a few versions ago when the MacBook Air was priced from 1099 while the M4 MacBook Air was configurable with up to 2 terabytes of storage. The new M5 MacBook Air doubles the top tier storage to 4 terabytes for the first time. RAM configuration remains the same between models with 16, 24 and 32 gigabyte options. The move from M4 to M5 also sees the MacBook Air upgrade from Wi Fi 6e to Wi Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 replaces Bluetooth 5.3. Battery life remains unchanged at 18 hours and the charger included in the box now appears to be a 40 watt dynamic power adapter with 60 watts max instead of either the 30 watt USB C power adapter or 35 watt watt dual USB C port. Compact power adapter like the previous model, the M5 MacBook Air is available in two sizes, 13 and 15 inch and four colors, Sky Blue, midnight starlight and silver.. quote the MacBook Pro gets a boost too, with one key difference. The new M5 Pro and M5 Max chip options come to the MacBook Pros, which Apple says will get you up to four times faster LLM prompt processing. Also, they've tossed in up to two times faster SSD speeds and 1 TB and 2 TB base storage options. Quoting MacRumors M5 Pro models now start at 1 TB while M5 Max models start at 2 TB. Thunderbolt 5 carries over from the M4 generation, but each port now gets its own dedicated controller on the chip so all three ports can run at full bandwidth simultaneously. For external displays, M5 Pro supports up to two high resolution monitors while M5 Max supports up to four. The 14 inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at 2,199 bucks while the 16 inch starts at 2,699 bucks. The 14 inch M5 Max model starts at $3,599 and the 16 inch at $3,899. The previously announced base 14 inch MacBook Pro with M5 starts at $1,699. All models are available in space, black and silver with pre orders opening tomorrow March 4th and availability beginning Wednesday March 11th. But let's get some details on those new chips. Quoting TechCrunch Apple says the chips are engineered around its new Fusion architecture, an advanced design that merges two dies into a single high performance system on a chip which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, media engine, unified memory controller, neural engine and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. Both chips feature an 18 core CPU, marking an upgrade from the 14 core configuration in the M4 Pro and the 16 core on the M4 Max. The CPU now features six super cores, which is Apple's term for its highest performance cores alongside 12 all new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for pro workloads. The GPU scales up the next generation architecture introduced in M5 to an up to 40 core GPU, Apple explained in a press release. With a neural accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 Pro and M5 Max are over four times the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation. Graphics performance is up to 20% faster overall with ray tracing workloads improving by as much as 35% M5 Pro supports up to 64 gigabytes of unified memory, up from 48 gigabytes on the M4 Pro. M5 Max continues to support up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory with bandwidth increased as well, End quote. Worth noting that the price bump on the MacBook Pro models with these new chips are both up by $200 and I am told that with these Latest chips the MacBook Pro now maxes out at $7,349 if you do go whole hog in terms of maxing things out. Finally, if you are just in the business of throwing your money at Apple, good News back to 9to5Mac quote Apple has officially announced the Studio Display XDR which it says delivers the most advanced display technology and a robust set of features for pro users who need the ultimate front of screen performance. The new Studio Display xdr features a 27 inch 5K retina xdr display with 5120 x 2880 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and more. The Studio Display xdr has a 12 megapixel center stage camera with support for Desk View. There's also a high fidelity 6 speaker system with spatial audio support and a 3 mic array for what they call Studio quality recording. The overall design of the Studio Display XDR is basically identical to the standard Studio display. For instance, it does not carry over the iconic lattice pattern from the Pro Display xdr. The Studio Display XDR with a tilt and height adjustable stand starts at $3,299. It will go up for pre order tomorrow March 4th at 6:15am PT with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11th. It's available with standard glass and Nano textured glass options with the latter coming in at an additional $300 upgrade. In addition to the high end Studio Display XDR, Apple has also launched a new version of the standard Studio display at the old $599 price point, end quote. Polymarket trades on contracts tied to strikes on Iran hit $529 million and six accounts profited a total of more than $1 million each by betting on the US to strike Iran by February 28. Quoting Bloomberg, six accounts on polymarket made around $1 million in profit by betting on the US strikes to Iran by February 28. According to analytics firm Bubble Maps SA. The accounts were all freshly created in February and had only ever placed bets on when US strikes might occur. Some of their shares were purchased in some cases at roughly a dime apiece. The first explosions were reported in Tehran. Those are the hallmarks that blockchain analysts associate with insider trading and prediction markets and industry without widespread oversight and no agreed upon methodology for distinguishing luck from leaks. And they're far from conclusive on their own. Similar patterns suggested that an insider made a big profit betting on the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro in January and have also been used to identify several other cases of alleged insider trading. By the time the February 28 contract resolved on Saturday, it had attracted around $90 million in trading volumes since its creation, making it by far the most popular date for a strike on the platform. The next most traded was a contract for an attack by January 31, which had drawn $42 million. Prediction markets are some of the first products that allow direct bets on geopolitical events, said Nicholas Vyman, chief executive officer of Bubble Maps, in an email. In cases involving war or conflict in information can circulate within a broader circle before becoming public. Combined with the fact that Polymarket generally only requires a wallet to trade, which allows for a high level of anonymity, this can create incentives for informed participants to act early. As the strikes continued over the weekend, Polymarket had already opened new contracts for traders to bet on, among them whether a Gulf state would strike Iran within a week and whether the US Would hit neighboring Iraq by the end of March. All have netted minimal volume thus far. Some of the bets identified by Bubble Maps drew additional scrutiny on social media, where users were quick to label them as suspected insiders. The picture is far murkier than that, though. The US has been telegraphing military action for weeks, drawing in speculators. A contract tracking possible strikes for February 27th just one day earlier had attracted more than 25 million in volume. The timing of US military action wasn't the only Polymarket contract to draw speculation about possible insider activity, though. In mid January, Polycites, another analytics firm, noted a cluster of one sided activity around a market tracking whether Ali Khamenei would no longer be supreme leader of Iran by the end of March. At the time, traders put the likelihood at 40%, but almost 90% of possible insider transactions tracked by Polycites supported the outcome. Those accounts also fit the profile that blockchain detectives have built up as telltale signs of alleged insiders. The terms of the Khamenei contract do not exclude his death as a qualifying event, an omission that has drawn criticism from those who argue it effectively places a fine financial incentive on assassination, Kalshi, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulated rival, said Saturday. It does not offer markets that settle on death as the outcome. In the event of Khomeini's death, it said it would resolve its contract based on the last price offered. Kalshi's CEO Tarek Mansour later said on X that the platform would reimburse all trading fees from such bets. End quote. Another day, another one of these quoting Seeking Alpha Google unveiled Gemini 3.1 flashlight, its fastest and most cost efficient Gemini 3 series model yet. The company said that starting on Tuesday, 3.1 flashlight is rolling out and previewed to developers via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and for enterprises via Vertex AI. The model is priced at $0.25 per 1 million input tokens and $1.50 per 1 million output token tokens, according to the company. Google said that flashlight delivers enhanced performance at a fraction of the cost of larger models. It outperforms 2.5 flash with a 2.5 times faster time to first answer token and a 45% increase in output speed, according to the artificial analysis benchmark, while maintaining similar or better quality. 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Brian McCullough
launched a cheaper $8.99 per month streaming tier in the US versus the usual $14.95 per month for its premium plan. This is all to rival Spotify. One would imagine as the includes ad free podcasts as well, quoting Bloomberg. Under the less expensive option, which is available in the U.S. uK, Canada, Australia, Germany and France, subscribers won't own the audiobooks they consume, but can stream the titles for as long as they remain members. Premium customers, by contrast, don't lose access to the audiobooks they've chosen to download if they close their accounts. The company said it expects millions of new customers to try Audible through the standard plan in the next year. In August, Amazon consolidated some of its wondery podcast team with Audible. The new plan will give subscribers access to ad free podcasts that were once behind a paywall on the Wondry app. Additionally, certain hit podcasts, such as the Shrink Next Door and Dying for Sex, will become exclusively available for Audible members. Audible's primary competitor, Spotify, has raised prices globally while expanding its audiobook offering to new territories in 2025, the Swedish streaming giant said the number of people listening to an audiobook rose 36% in the past year, while the number of hours consumed grew by 37%, end quote. Finally today I told you that today was going to be just like yesterday. Sam Altman now says OpenAI has amended its Department of Defense contract to ensure, quote, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals. Altman says the DoD affirmed that OpenAI's tools wouldn't be used by agencies like the NSA, and services to them would need a further contract modification, sources tell Axios. Sam Altman approached the DOD's Emil Michel to rework the contract after it had been signed. Quoting the FT OpenAI has amended its contract with the US Defense Department just days after it was signed, with Chief Executive Sam Altman saying the rush to make a deal last week looked opportunistic and sloppy. The company agreed terms with the Pentagon on Friday, handing over its AI models for use in classified military operations. The deal came hours after the collapse of negotiations between Anthropic, OpenAI's rival, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. OpenAI claimed its agreement had, quote, more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropics. But on Monday, Altman said the ChatGPT maker was working with the department to add terms to its contract to ensure, quote, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US Persons and nationals. Intelligence services such as the National Security Agency will be excluded from the deal for the time being, he added. OpenAI has come under pressure since signing the deal with the Pentagon on Friday. Employees at the company have voiced concerns internally, according to people familiar with the matter and on social media. At the weekend, chalk graffiti appeared outside OpenAI's San Francisco office, saying no to mass surveillance and urging staff to do the right thing. Anthropic and OpenAI have expressed similar concerns about the use of AI for surveillance and for weapons with no human oversight, leading to questions about how OpenAI managed to strike a deal with the Pentagon where anthropic had failed. OpenAI said it was satisfied it could retain its red lines around domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons with technical measures to stop misuse of its models. They include only deploying through the cloud rather than on computers installed on the military hardware that might carry out attacks and ensuring its employees are in the loop. Altman also suggested he had more trust in existing laws. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with, he said on Saturday. But on Monday, Altman acknowledged some of the concerns that Anthropic raised about how AI could enable mass data gathering. We shouldn't have rushed to get this out by Friday. The issues are super complex and demand clear communication, wrote Altman. We were genuinely trying to de escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy, end quote. The additional terms announced on Monday would prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance or monitoring of US Persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.