Airlines are implementing changes to attract passengers, with free wi-fi becoming standard across major carriers. JetBlue was the first US airline to offer free wi-fi in 2017, and now the five other largest US airlines either already have it or are rolling it out.

Most airlines require passengers to sign up for their loyalty programs to access free wi-fi, which have become major moneymakers. According to a Business Insider analysis of SEC filings, in 2024, airline loyalty programs netted more than $6 billion each for American and Delta, and more than $2 billion each for United and Southwest.

Airplane seating is also getting a makeover. United Airlines announced it would roll out a new class of seat rows that guarantee nobody will be in the middle seat. United also plans to offer seats next year that transform economy rows into couches, a feature already offered by Air New Zealand. Emirates said it was fitting its planes with new headrests that can fold out to resemble cushy neck pillows.

Delta and United have been experimenting with taking free perks away, so that they can charge less for premium tickets and attract a broader swath of passengers to splurge on business class.

Waymo recently called the police on a pair of teen riders who were suspected of criminal activity, raising questions about its surveillance capabilities.

The teens were allegedly shooting toy guns and drinking. Cops reportedly treated the incident as a high-risk traffic stop after receiving a call from a Waymo employee who was monitoring the ride's live camera feeds.

According to NBC: The caller thought the teens were using a real firearm, but they were actually shooting Orbeez (squishy gel pellets). After alerting police, Waymo turned off the vehicle remotely and blamed the stoppage on mechanical issues to keep the passengers unsuspecting and seated until cops arrived. The teens were detained, but ultimately released to their parents without arrest.

John "Jack" Bogle launched the first publicly available index fund, which became the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, 50 years ago (in August 1976). Today, according to the Investment Company Institute, US stock index funds, comprising both mutual funds and ETFs, hold 50% more assets than active funds.

While critics say markets become less efficient when too much money floods into indexed products, that doesn't tell the whole story. A report from LPL Financial shows dispersion increasing and correlations declining, which refutes the argument that price discovery is now more inefficient.

Index funds comprise 60% of mutual funds and ETFs combined. However, this doesn't mean that only 40% of the US stock market is active. That's because only about 30% of stocks are held by mutual funds and ETFs. So 60% of the 30% translates to approximately 18% of US stocks being held by index funds. The rest are held directly by individual investors, pensions, hedge funds.

Artificial intelligence is hogging memory chips needed for consumer electronics, raising device prices across iPad, Xbox and other consumer products.

China refines roughly 90% of the world's rare earth elements, found in the magnets behind modern defense and tech: think fighter jets, EVs and robotics. On June 22, Beijing placed fresh export controls on US producers, a grip it has flexed for years.

The US and its allies are racing to build supply China does not control, from a Pentagon stake in MP Materials to new refineries springing up elsewhere.

Kam Benbrik (Head of Research at Bitwise Onchain Solutions) laid out the divergence thesis with data showing that Ethereum transactions nearly doubled year over year, Solana's tokenized equities volume went from $1M to $3B in twelve months, and Avalanche processed 4x more transactions - all while token prices sat near the floor.

Kam's view is that fees got cheaper on purpose so networks could onboard the next wave of users, and the market hasn't caught up to what's actually happening onchain yet. He points to institutions staking record amounts of ETH as proof someone's already paying attention. Kam thinks the gap closes once people start reading the reports instead of just the charts.

Marc Vanlerberghe (Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at the Algorand Foundation) called out current AI agent security models as fundamentally broken. Right now these agents hold every password and credential users hand them, which is how OpenClaw ended up wiping databases and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars trading onchain.

Algorand's fix borrows straight from crypto wallets: Persistent agents get zero secrets, they just ping a wallet for approval on every transaction. Marc says they're about to launch this as an open protocol, which would also solve the spoofing problem of knowing whether an agent actually belongs to a legitimate entity.

John Gillen (Host & Crypto Analyst at Milk Road) pointed to a list of crypto companies winding down (Storage Labs, Movement Labs, Poolin) plus a string of exchange layoffs as a classic bear market bottom indicator - NOT a death spiral.

His logic is that every cycle purges projects that never found product-market fit, and that shedding tends to show up right before capital rotates back in. He's backing that view with cash, sitting on one of his largest cash positions in years while waiting for a clean signal, either a wick into the 50s or a breakout above the high 70s.

John isn't buying the idea that agentic trading takes years to matter, since mercenary capital moves too fast for that timeline to hold. Seventy million ETH bridging onto Robinhood chain in its first week, in his view, previews how fast market share can flip.