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December 5, 2025, 7:00 PM
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Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Netflix agrees to acquire WBD's studios and streaming business in an $82.7B cash-and-stock deal, including debt, to close after WBD splits in two in Q3 2026  —  Deal will transform US tech company into the dominant player in Hollywood  —  Netflix has agreed an $83bn takeover of Warner Bros Discovery …
More: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Axios, Reuters, Deadline, Axios, Netflix, Inc., Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Associated Press, The Verge, Los Angeles Times, Benzinga, The Ankler, Barron's Online, Forbes, Fortune, The Wrap, Bloomberg Law, DNYUZ, CNN, Kotaku, New York Times, Droid Life, Cracked.com, Bloomberg, The Times, Macworld, Adweek, CBS News, TVNewsCheck, USA Today, LinkedIn, MediaPost, Breitbart, The Information, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren …, Barchart.com, Blaze Media, New York Post, today.rtl.lu, The Shortcut, The Daily Caller, Spokesman.com, mxdwn Television, The Daily Signal, and CNN
X: @jasonkilar, @magicjohnson, @senmikelee, @brianstelter, @jacobfeldman4, @sherman4949, @lucas_shaw, @sonnybunch, @senwarren, @danprimack, @pkafka, @lucas_shaw, @mikeisaac, @gentledoofus, @bedoyausa, @austincarr, @mikeisaac, @grahamformaine, @brianstelter, @mikeisaac, @ashleevance, @sherman4949, @ziggys_duck, @daveleedwnundr, @lizrhoffman, @danprimack, @laurenshirsch, @tomwarren, @modestproposal1, @laurenshirsch, and @joemillerjr
LinkedIn: Xavier Collins, Harshita Varghese, Emil Protalinski, Jonah Zalken, David Callahan, and Chris Heatherly
Bluesky: @theonion.com, @davechen, @robertscotthorton, @droog811, @jonathancohn, @carnage4life, @richterscale, @leafwarbler, @ernie.tedium.co, @jeffjarvis, @moleyg, and @badideas
Threads: @davechensky and @chriswelch
Mastodon: @Barredo@mastodon.social, @virtualbri@mastodon.online, and @harrymccracken@mastodon …
Forums: r/HHN, r/iTunesMovieDeals, r/Bluray, r/HBOMAX, r/midcarder, r/cravetv, r/gaming, r/fionnaandcake, r/heatedrivalry, r/movies, r/MediaMergers, r/iTunesDeals, r/HarryPotteronHBO, r/babylon5, r/boxoffice, r/DCU_, r/pcgaming, r/MauLer, r/paulthomasanderson, r/hbo, r/TurnerClassicMovies, r/technology, r/television, r/TheBigPicture, r/universalstudios, r/cordcutters, r/wbdstock, r/battlebots, r/DCcomics, r/pilottvpodcast, r/TubiTV, and r/HBOMAX
See also Mediagazer
Tony Maglio / The Hollywood Reporter:
Netflix says it “expects to maintain Warner Bros.' theatrical releases for films” but “the windows will evolve to be much more consumer friendly”  —  Now that that's settled...  Netflix just solidified itself as the leading entertainment company (and then some), and all it cost was $83 billion.
Chris Kerr / Game Developer:
WBD confirms that Warner Bros. Games will be acquired by Netflix along with its wider streaming and television business  —  A Warner Bros. spokesperson has confirmed the video game division will be acquired by Netflix alongside its wider streaming and television business.
Bloomberg:
Netflix has lined up a $59B unsecured bridge loan from Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, and HSBC to support its WBD deal, one of the largest ever loans of its kind  —  Netflix Inc. has lined up $59 billion of financing from Wall Street banks to help support its planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. …
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
A look at the uphill battle to win regulatory approval for Netflix's acquisition of WBD, and the roles of the US DOJ, EU regulators, and state attorneys general
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Netflix's WBD bid marks a striking strategy shift for a company long known for pivots, especially after years of avoiding full commitment to theatrical releases
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The EU fines X €120M for breaching online content rules, the first fine under the DSA, citing issues like its deceptive blue checkmarks, after a two-year probe  —  Elon Musk's social media company X was fined 120 million euros ($140 million) by EU tech regulators on Friday …
Liv McMahon / BBC:
Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr denounce the EU's €120M X fine  —  The EU has fined Elon Musk's social media platform X €120m (£105m) over its blue tick badges - prompting an angry reaction from the US.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SpaceX is planning a secondary share sale that would value the company at $800B, surpassing OpenAI to make it the most valuable US private company  —  Company's CFO told investors about the transaction in recent days, sources say  —  SpaceX is kicking off a secondary share sale …
Rose Henderson / Bloomberg:
Cloudflare says it has fixed an issue that caused a 25 minute outage on Friday, following a major, hours-long outage last month  —  Cloudflare Inc. said it has fixed a problem that led to the websites for several banks, Shopify, Zoom and LinkedIn to go down Friday.
Echo Wang / Reuters:
Meta acquires Limitless, which makes a pendant-style AI wearable that records and transcribes real-world conversations; Limitless has raised more than $33M  —  Meta (META.O) has acquired AI-wearables startup Limitless, maker of a pendant-style device that records and transcribes real-world conversations …
New York Times:
The New York Times sues Perplexity, claiming the AI startup violated its copyrights and kept using its content despite repeated demands over the past 18 months  —  Filed in federal court on Friday, the suit joins more than 40 other court disputes between copyright holders and A.I. companies.
Bloomberg:
A US judge rules Google must renegotiate annually any contract that makes its search engine or AI app the default on smartphones and other devices  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Google must renegotiate any contract to make its search engine or artificial intelligence app the default for smartphones …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Meta strikes commercial AI data deals with news publishers, including CNN, Fox News, and The Daily Caller, to provide real-time answers in its Meta AI chatbot  —  Meta on Friday said it has struck several commercial AI data agreements with news publishers ranging from USA Today, People Inc. …
Shashwat Chauhan / Reuters:
The US CFTC announces that spot crypto asset contracts will begin trading for the first time on CFTC-registered futures exchanges  —  The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Thursday that spot crypto asset contracts will begin trading for the first time on futures exchanges registered with the agency.
Reuters:
Sources and docs: India is considering forcing phone makers to enable always-on satellite location tracking; Apple, Google, and Samsung have opposed the move  —  India's government is reviewing a telecom industry proposal to force smartphone firms to enable satellite location tracking …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
An overview of the five years of Meta's Oversight Board, whose rulings on the relatively small number of cases that it hears have generally had limited impact  —  Five years after the Oversight Board's creation, few are satisfied with the result.  Can it be saved?
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says general counsel Kate Adams and policy chief Lisa Jackson are retiring, and Jennifer Newstead, Meta's chief legal officer, will replace Adams in March

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From Mediagazer

Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have agreed to part ways following new allegations about her affair with RFK Jr. and her behavior while reporting on him

Alexandra Steigrad / New York Post:
Sources: Forbes has cut ties with dozens of contributing writers; one exec said Forbes needs to ensure the contributor model is “financially sound”

Liam Scott / Columbia Journalism Review:
A look at the First Amendment Watch's SLAPP Back Initiative, a US SLAPP tracker; in 2024, 69 of 500 cases involved the media, of which 46 were dismissed

More News

Hugging Face:
Hugging Face details how it used its new tool, Skills, to fine tune an LLM using Claude, including for writing scripts, submitting jobs to cloud GPUs, and more
About Amazon:
AWS unveils its 192-core Graviton5 chip, with an up to 25% better compute performance than Graviton4, and says Graviton makes up 50%+ of AWS' new CPU capacity

Earlier Picks

Google Research:
Google unveils Titans, an architecture combining RNN speed with transformer accuracy for real-time learning, which can scale to context windows of 2M+ tokens
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Masayoshi Son and the White House plan to build “Trump Industrial Parks” in the US to produce AI infrastructure parts, funded by the Japan trade deal
A.J. Vicens / Reuters:
US and Canadian agencies warn that Chinese hackers are using Brickstorm malware to penetrate and maintain backdoor access to unnamed government and IT entities
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Two studies suggest that AI chatbots can shift political views more effectively than TV campaign ads, by presenting many claims, regardless of their accuracy
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta launches a centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram, with AI-powered search and an AI assistant to answer queries, in its iOS and Android apps
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