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Comcast Spins Out
00:20:24
Comcast moved to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a new public company. The Supreme Court limited geofence warrants, Australia sued Amazon over Prime Video ads, Chamath returned to lead his AI coding startup, and Gemini's image generation went free.
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Welcome to the Techbore at home for Tuesday, June 30, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Comcast moved to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a new public company. The Supreme Court limited Geofence Warrants Australia sued Amazon over prime video ads. Chamath is returning to the arena and Gemini's image generation is totally free. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech, The older I get, the more I really need a full eight hours of sleep just to function. At least that's until I tried Blueprint's Longevity Mix created by Bryan Johnson. Just one scoop helps support energy, cognitive performance, mood, focus, sleep, cellular resilience and healthy aging. The Longevity Mix is packed full of ingredients like magnesium, taurine, glycine and creatine, all to help you age survive on less sleep. Science backed precision dosed, no BS for a limited time only. Our listeners get 20% off plus free shipping at blueprint.bryanjohnson.com by using code TBRH at checkout. That's code TBRH@blueprint.brianjohnson.com for 20% off and after you purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support this show and tell them we sent you Comcast is spinning off its media and entertainment assets, including NBCUniversal and Sky, into a new publicly traded entity. The deal is set to close by mid-2027. Quoting Variety Comcast, just months after shutting most of its cable TV business into Versant Media, is now again cleaving itself into two separate companies, one housing its namesake cable and tech operations and the other comprising the NBCUniversal and Sky Media biz. Under the proposed separation announced Monday, Comcast intends to make a tax free spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky. After the transaction is completed, Comcast shareholders will own shares in both Comcast and NBCUniversal. The split will create two focused industry leaders, each with significant scale, strong financial profiles and distinct strategic opportunities, the media conglomerate said. Comcast is targeting mid-2027 to consummate the separation, but its boilerplate disclaimer noted that there can be no assurance that the proposed transaction will be completed or if completed, as to its terms or timing. Comcast bought a controlling 51% stake in MBCU in a 2009 deal that was approved in 2011 before acquiring the remaining equity in the media company from General Electric in March 2013 to take full control. The original idea was to wed Comcast's giant cable footprint with NBCU to synergies between distribution and content. Now, according to Comcast, the landscape has changed as technological innovation, consumer behavior and competitive dynamics continue to reshape both media and communications. Comcast board and management team believe each company will be better positioned to pursue its own strategic priorities, invest for growth and create long term shareholder value as independent entities, comcast said the separation of Comcast Cable and NBCU sky is subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions including final approval by Comcast Board of Directors, receipt of tax opinions, regulatory approvals and the completion of financing arrangements. Comcast Cable business sells its broadband, wireless and entertainment services with more than 30 million relationships with residential and business customers across the U.S. nBCUniversal comprises NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, Peacock, Bravo, Universal Film and Television Studios and the Universal Theme Parks Division. The spun off NBCU will also include Sky, Comcast's European media business. In January 2026, Comcast completed separation of Versant, a business that includes CNBC, Ms. now formerly MSNBC, USA Network, Gulf Channel, Oxygen, E, Syfy, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Golf now and Golf Pass. Notably, Bravo remained part of NBCU as its programming drives a sizable portion of viewing the Peacock streamer End quote. The United States Supreme Court has limited the law enforcement use of so called geofence warrants, saying people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location data, quoting TechCrunch in the 6 to 3 ruling. According to the court, that means people have privacy rights when it comes to the location history collected by their phones as well as the services and apps running on them. Because of that, the court ruled that authorities need to obtain a search warrant when asking tech companies such as Google for the location data of their users, including requesting historical geofence location data. In part, the Supreme Court argued that authorities need to obtain a search warrant to get geofence location data because a user is not willingly sharing their location data to a company like Google by simply using its services. If that was the case, then the third party doctrine, which generally says people have no expectation of privacy when it comes to data they willingly share with others, would apply. In those cases, authorities don't need a search warrant to obtain user data from telecom providers. For example, geofence warrants allow law enforcement to force tech companies to hand over information about where any of its millions or billions of users were located at a particular place in time based on a record of their phone's location stored in their databases. In practice, police will draw a shape over a map and ask a judge to allow them to demand that tech companies such as Google search their vast banks of users location data and tell them which of their users was there at the time of inquiry. Critics argue that these oft called reverse search warrants are unconstitutional because they are inherently overbroad and include innocent people's data. The court seemed to agree, but stopped short of banning the use of geofence warrants altogether, allowing police to narrow their data requests when asking for a search warrant. In other words, the Supreme Court simply ruled that the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and effectively protects privacy rights, applies to location data collected by companies such as Google from their users cell phones. The decision doesn't stop law enforcement from getting historical cell phone location data. It's simply ruled that authorities need to get a search warrant when requesting geofence location information and show that there's probable cause that the target may have committed a crime. The decision centers on a case brought by Chatri v. United States, who accused the government of using evidence during his trial for bank robbery collected by an unconstitutional search warrant. Okello Chartres lawyers argued that geofence warrants allow investigators to search first and develop suspicions later, and flouting longstanding norms around how government authorities demand to search or seize data from companies. Authorities typically have to establish probable cause linking a person to a crime to justify a search warrant, whereas critics argue geofence warrants work in reverse. The Supreme Court took on the case after several legal cases involving geofence warrants, including Chatris, split the courts around the United States, including at the appeals level. It's not immediately clear how the ruling will affect past court cases. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. End quote. Literally this past weekend I tried to watch a movie on Netflix and I guess it's been a while since I've tried to do that because I was shocked at the number of ads I had to sit through. I was like, I'm paying quite a bit of money per month and I still have to deal with ads. So this caught my attention, even though it's Amazon and it's not Netflix, quoting Bloomberg Amazon has been sued by Australia's consumer watchdog for introducing advertising to its prime video streaming service and then forcing existing subscribers to pay more to avoid the ads. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Tuesday it had commenced proceedings in the federal court alleging Amazon breached consumer law by including unfair contract terms in its prime subscription contracts. It also alleges Amazon later relied on those terms to introduce advertising to Prime Video. In 2024, more than 1 million subscribers who already paid an annual upfront fee of $79 Australian or $54 US for the service, then had no choice but to pay an additional $2.99 a month to avoid the ads, the ACC said. The regulator also claims Amazon's US headquarters was knowing concerned about the Australian unit's conduct in drafting the contracts and introducing advertising. The ACCC is seeking penalties against Amazon and Consumer Redress. Last year, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and refunds in the US and change its process for how to cancel its prime subscription to settle a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission. End Quote AI in Real Life the future of AI isn't just digital. It's physical. From robots and drones to cars, industrial equipment and medical devices, intelligent machines can transform our lives. But every intelligent device needs an efficient brain, one that can reason locally without cloud inference delays and without draining its battery. That's where Sema AI comes in. With the Agentic Software Environment Palette NEAT and the Modalics Machine Learning System on chip, hardware developers can build high performance physical AI applications not in months, but in days and hours. Join the webinar to see how customers use reasoning enabled AI and agentic workflows to accelerate the development of intelligent machines and autonomous systems. Discover what's possible with physical AI. Head to Sema AI neat. That's Sema AI neat. He's officially back in the arena, I guess. AI coding startup 8090 has announced it has raised a $135 million Series A round led by Salesforce Ventures, founder of 8090. Chamath Palihapitiya has announced that he will lead the company as CEO, quoting TechCrunch. Chamath Palihapitiya, best known for his venture capital firm Social Capital and the all in podcast, announced Monday that the AI coding startup he founded raised a sizable Series a. The company, 8090 Labs, closed a $135 million round led by Salesforce Ventures with participation From Jeffrey Katz, Bloomberg's WonderCo, David Sachs's Craft Ventures fellow All in hosts and besties, David Friedberg, the production board and Jason Calacanis launch and angel investors like Palo Alto Network CEO Nikesh Arora and quora CEO Adam D'. Angelo. Palihapitiya founded 8090 Labs in January 2024 to offer an AI coding agent specifically for corporate programming teams. Its product software factory helps corporate coders use AI to build production quality software, not just vibe coded prototypes with all the controls enterprises need, such as audit trails, the company promises. With the raise, Palihapitiya also announced on X that he will lead the startup as CEO rather than just serving as a board member. He said the AI rush today feels like the rise of social media in his career as an early exec at Facebook, long before it became meta. Since I left Facebook, I was waiting for a moment like this to return to a full time operating role, he wrote. I am convinced that what we are building now is even more important, so there was no decision to make except to be all in, end quote. The U.S. department of Defense is seeking to recruit engineers experienced in frontier AI, machine learning and automation as well as data systems to embed them down to the unit level. Quoting Bloomberg the Trump administration announced plans to recruit engineers to fill high impact technical roles at the Defense Department, the latest step in its bid to bring a more Silicon Valley mindset to the government. America's national security depends on attracting the best technical talent to some of the government's most important missions, office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kapoor said in a statement. The release did not mention what salaries would be offered for the roles or how the hiring process would unfold. But the Pentagon is looking to deepen its bonds with Silicon Valley, where startups and major players alike have cast aside a historical aversion to defense work to become major recipients of weapons contracts. The initiative seeks engineers experienced in frontier AI, machine learning and automation and data systems to build reliable software on behalf of the American warfighter, according to the release. The program would embed engineers down to the unit level across the department, OPM added to deliver tangible results that ensure a more lethal United States military. OPM said the new operation would be established within its broader tech force operation, which, according to its website, envisions an elite corps of engineers to build the next generation of government technology. The jobs are mostly entry level, in line with efforts to bring in younger workers. Fewer than 8% of U.S. government employees are under the age of 30, according to OPM data, compared with 23% for the workforce overall, end quote. Google says the Gemini app now offers personalized Nano Banana image generation, previously limited to Plus Pro and Ultra users to eligible US users for free. Quoting TechCrunch, Google initially announced that Gemini's personal intelligence feature would get Nano Banana powered image generation back in April, allowing users to create images that reflect their unique interests. This means that images can be generated based on Gemini's understanding of your likes and preferences without you having to specify them in your prompt. Gemini utilizes data from your Google account connections such as Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search to achieve this for example, instead of saying create an illustration of me and my favorite things, such as coffee and baking, you can simply request create an illustration of me and my favorite things. Gemini can also pull actual images of you from Google Photos so you don't need to manually upload photos. Google initially rolled out the Personal Intelligence feature earlier this year, making it widely available to all US Users. In March, the company recently expanded this functionality to users in India and Japan. Personal Intelligence is an opt in feature allowing you to decide which apps Gemini can access. Once enabled, it is set as the default for every prompt, but you can disable it using a new toggle in the Tools menu. Additionally, last month Google announced several upcoming updates for the Gemini app, including a new daily brief feature, a revamped interface, access to AI video model Gemini Omni, and a personal AI agent named Gemini Spark. Notably, Google AI chatbot Gemini surpassed 750 million monthly active users earlier this year, reinforcing its position as a major player in the AI space. Finally today, as this family heads to Paris on a trip completely planned and managed by Claude, I found this interesting quoting the FT Hotels, tour operators and travel agencies are rushing to launch proprietary online tools and loyalty schemes to fend off future competition from autonomous bots capable of arranging travel for their users. A survey last year by OnePoll for travel aggregator Skyscanner found that when asked about Future travel plans, 38% of some 22,000 respondents said they would use AI tools to research a destination, while 33% said they would use them to plan a holiday itinerary. This is not something futuristic, said Jean Francois Gualmard, chief data and AI officer at French hotel group Accor. Travelers, holiday planning and booking processes are already changing drastically, he adds. So far, holidaymakers are mainly using AI to search for destinations and compare accommodation while making reservations through online travel agents such as Expedia or booking.com or hotels systems. But Accor, which owns brands including Softiel, Mercure, Fairmont and Raffles, is already preparing for the next step, which is the agentic step, says Glimar. That push includes investing in integrated apps that can facilitate bookings and payments directly within large language models such as ChatGPT, as well as promoting a loyalty program. Bank of America analyst Justin Post noted in a report in January that loyalty ecosystems and personalized rewards would be crucial for travel operators seeking to stay at the forefront of customers minds amid the rise of AI. Guests who want to let an AI agent book for them will want confidence. They will be satisfied, said Guimar. If you trust a loyalty program that will make a difference. Optimists in the hotel sector hope AI agents will provide a cheaper alternative to online travel agents such as booking.com and Expedia, whose fees have been a source of frustration to some. But others fear that AI tools could divert business away from big industry names by reducing brand recognition. The intermediaries might be under the greatest pressure if consumers turn to agentic AI chatbots capable of arranging travel without using their service services. Shares in Booking holdings, which owns platforms including booking.com and Priceline, have dropped 15% in the year to date, while rival Expedia has fallen 7%. End quote. Just like with computers and then the Internet, they come for the travel agents first but never really kill them off. Talk to you tomorrow from Paris.