Good morning. The subscription economy has finally bundled the giant bag of pretzels with the TV subscription.
Somewhere, a spreadsheet is having a beautiful day.
Also: AI joins the drug-development team, and Shrek is coming back for your controllers.
Let’s ride. 🤠
Walmart’s membership campaign. Image: Walmart.
🧠 THE BIG PICTURE
Two shopping memberships, one $120 bill
Walmart combined Walmart+ and Sam’s Club Plus on Tuesday for $120 a year, almost $100 below buying the two separately. The pitch covers the weekly grocery run and the warehouse expedition where you somehow come home with 48 croissants.
Existing Walmart+ annual members can add the bundle for $22 more; Sam’s Club Plus members can activate Walmart+ without an extra charge. People already paying for both can link accounts, with most eligible for a prorated Walmart+ refund.
Benefits include delivery and a choice of ad-supported Peacock or Paramount+. Check the small print: scheduled Walmart orders need $35, Sam’s delivery needs $50, and availability restrictions apply.
The interesting move is making two shopping habits share one renewal decision. For customers, the immediate win is simpler: check what you already pay before buying a new membership to save money, an impressively easy trap to fall into.
🚀 HEADLINES THAT MATTER
OpenAI buys help for the messy middle of medicine 🧬
OpenAI acquired Orchestra Bio, which helps biopharma teams coordinate drug programs, and is combining it with Rosalind. Its example is refreshingly concrete: a failed manufacturing batch can delay a trial, so agents trace the affected tasks and compare responses.
Scientists still make the decisions. That’s a useful AI application to watch: helping a promising treatment get through the organizational obstacle course between a finding and a patient, without pretending a software acquisition has already shortened clinical trials.
Netflix’s next act has to earn its audience 📺
Netflix’s quarterly letter reports $12.9 billion in revenue, up about 12%, and a 34.6% operating margin. It says its audience is approaching one billion people, a measure that should not be confused with paying subscriptions.
The upcoming slate includes three NFL games and Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua. Live events give people a reason to show up together; that’s a different selling point from adding another series to the permanent “I’ll get to it” list.
A Kansas factory gives humanoids a specific job 🦾
AGCO and Agility Robotics agreed to a pilot at the farm-equipment maker’s Hesston facility, expected to start in 2027. Digit’s initial assignments include sorting and stacking parts and placing storage totes.
Those are tangible tasks with a clear physical burden. Watch whether the robots handle them reliably alongside existing production, leaving people less repetitive lifting.
For now, this is an agreement and a planned test; the company has not reported factory-wide results from it.
Shrek 2 Remastered promotional artwork. Credit: DreamWorks / Aspyr.
Shrek returns, and this time your friends can join online 🎮
Aspyr announced Shrek 2 Remastered for November 10 at $29.99. The 2004 adventure returns with upgraded graphics, photo and cheat modes, and up to four players through couch, online, or mixed co-op.
That last option is the good bit: your childhood co-op crew no longer needs to fit on the same couch. The game is headed to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2 and PC.
Nostalgia has finally accommodated everybody moving to different cities.
Ancient fingerprints complicate a familiar history 🏺
A newly reported study of the Terracotta Army analyzed 79 fingerprints on 36 figures. Its model estimated roughly 33% came from adult women and 22% from children under 15, challenging the assumption that adult men made all the warriors.
The research paper concerns one area of one pit, so those proportions are not a census of the entire project. Still, people left out of the grand historical account apparently left their fingerprints all over it.
Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus prototype. Photo: Lunar Outpost / NASA.
NASA’s Moon base needs a motor pool 🌙
NASA’s new rover update puts VIPER in final testing ahead of a planned 2027 mission to search the lunar south pole for water and other resources. Astrolab and Lunar Outpost are also developing vehicles astronauts can drive.
Before crews arrive, those vehicles are intended to operate remotely and map the terrain. The Moon base story gets more interesting when you reach the equipment list: wheels, batteries and usable maps determine how far an astronaut can actually explore.
⚡ RAPID FIRE
Madrid, eventually without a driver: Waymo is preparing for Spain, targeting first riders in 2027. Manual driving and local validation come first; commercial rides aren’t available yet.
A useful screen-recording upgrade: ShareX 22 adds native recording, microphone and system audio, and camera overlays. Its developers explicitly warn this major rewrite may be less stable.
A bigger Boeing clears a hurdle: The FAA certified the 737 MAX-10, including design and production approvals. That clears deliveries; individual airlines still have their own rollout plans.
Tonight’s free show: The Orionids peak October 21–22. NASA suggests looking before dawn after moonset, when fewer faint meteors will be lost to the bright Moon.
A different October matchup: The Rays and Brewers meet in the World Series. MLB’s matchup preview gives your usual baseball group chat something new to argue about.
Collectibles became cargo worth stealing: Police reported roughly $963,000 in trading cards stolen from a California FedEx truck. Two pallets included Pokémon and sports cards; the valuation remains preliminary.
🧠 THE THING NOBODY’S SAYING
Mercedes reserves simulated V8 sound for pricier versions of its new electric AMG SUV; the entry model gets a six-cylinder soundtrack. The engine can disappear while its status hierarchy survives.
Apparently, nostalgia comes in trim levels. Buying silence and then upgrading the noise is quite a sales journey.
That’s the briefing. Now go build something.
— Michael
P.S. Which old co-op game would get your scattered friends back together? Reply with the one you’d actually play.
🎧 Podcast archive: Nvidia Buys the AI Community for $13B — September 4.