The great Dolly Parton has died. One of the last living major figures from 1960s country, Parton transcended anything any other country musician has ever done in the world of popular culture, becoming not only a living legend for her music, but an icon of love and hope. I don’t think Parton is above critique, both musically and politically, but for the most part, this is a person who made the world better because she lived in it. She was also one of the smartest American capitalists who ever lived and if you don’t think this is as central to her legacy as her music, you don’t know Dolly.

Born in 1946 in Pittman Center, Tennessee, Parton grew up real poor. This was the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and the poverty in this region was still intense, even with the Tennessee Valley Authority having done a lot of work to pull this region into the 20th century. How poor were they? Her father paid the person who delivered her with a sack of cornmeal. She was always interested in music and her family pushed her in this direction too. Couldn’t be worse than the sharecropping her father did, though he managed to eventually get his own land and grew a little tobacco. Her mother was the singer in the family and Dolly always credited her mother with creating her interest in music.

Dolly sang in church from the time she was a small child and people recognized her talent. She began to sing on the radio at the age of 10, on the Cas Walker Show in Knoxville, which was an important regional country show back in the days when regional country music scenes existed. She first performed on the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 13, when she also recorded a single. Now, she could have just been a kid who liked music and had a brief moment of recognition. There’s a million of those over the century of commercial country music. But Parton was ambitious. Crazy ambitious. She wrote constantly and starring selling her songs by the time she was in her late teens. By 1966, she had written two top ten hits, one for Bill Phillips and one for Skeeter Davis. Not bad for a woman this young!

At first, Dolly’s producers tried to steer her from country. When she first signed with Monument Records in 1965, they tried to make her a bubblegum pop singer. She was young and blonde I guess, but lord that makes no sense at all, not with her voice. Luckily, she defeated them and not many young women could do that. But Dolly was always a force of nature.

Dolly’s first album, Hello I’m Dolly, from 1967 is an incredibly solid and promising country album. “Dumb Blonde” was always a piss take with her—as she would say, she was neither dumb nor blonde. It was written by Curly Putnam and not with the irony Dolly would bring to it. She was so obviously hyper-intelligent and could play this look and stereotype for her own purposes that she put the song over and it was her first hit, peaking at #24 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.

Dolly’s brilliance as a performer was clear enough by her third album, 1968’s Just Because I’m a Woman. Three songs here sum up her brilliant vision. First, there’s the excellent title track, which was a shot at men treating women like trash after sex even though men did this to her and are just as “guilty” as women are. She was hardly the first female country singer to touch on this topic—Kitty Wells’ 1952 response to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” titled “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” was a direct answer song that took on men’s dismissive thinking about sexually active women—but Dolly built on the changes of the late 60s and discussed sex more directly than previous women. This was her own composition. She co-wrote “I’ll Oilwells Love You,” perhaps the best gold digging woman song ever written and one that gets at the power of a woman like herself. Then there’s another song of hers, “The Bridge,” about a pregnant woman about to throw herself off said bridge because her boyfriend got her pregnant and has now abandoned her. The whole album is quite good but these three songs do much to sum up Dolly’s amazing power as a songwriter and singer in a country music world that was fearful of political change in the late 60s.

Everyone who saw Dolly thought that a star was in the making. Porter Wagoner started bringing her onto his TV show as a guest in 1967. It wasn’t easy as she moved into being the co-star of the show. Now, the thing was that any guy needed to have a girl singer but the girl singers were never allowed to upstage the guy, no matter how good they were. Porter’s girl singer (and I use this term because that’s how they were so often called at the time) was Norma Jean, who was by no means any kind of slouch herself. She left after getting married and so Dolly replaced her. The fans weren’t happy, often chanting for Norma Jean while she sang. That stopped pretty fast after they heard her voice.  

Wagoner became Dolly’s mentor and it was mostly a good relationship. It took awhile for her to really get big on the charts. “Just Because I’m a Woman” only reached #17 on the country charts, which frustrated both of them. It took until 1970 for her to really become a big chart topper. Oddly, it was a recording of “Mule Skinner Blues” that proved to be her first real hit. Country audiences wanted to hear an old chestnut once more (really, country music before the rise of douche country in the early 90s recycled old songs all the time) and Dolly hit #3 with it. That led to her first #1 hit, the excellent “Joshua,” in February 1971. She became a stone cold hitmaker right away. “Coat of Many Colors” went to #4. “My Tennessee Mountain Home” and “Travelin’ Man,” both great songs, did pretty well too. So did a few more duets with Porter. These are great songs.

But Porter was starting to hold her back. She didn’t need the mentorship of a very good if not great but most definitely patriarchal male country star anymore. He was older and he was stuck in his style and Dolly wasn’t going to fulfill her destiny if she stayed with him. So she broke up with him in the best way she knew how. She wrote him a song. “I Will Always Love You” is not in fact my favorite country song, but the audiences loved it and it was a heartfelt message to the man who had done more for her career than anyone else. Porter knew it was a great song, but he was also devastated by the end of his partnership with Dolly and it took him years to really get over it (there’s a great Drunk History bit on this).

Dolly made no errors in going solo. In fact, the first release off that album was her biggest hit yet—“Jolene” is one of the all-time great songs. “I Will Always Love You” kicked off the second side of the record. So really, she did what she needed to do. But…..Dolly’s ambitions also started getting in the way of the music’s quality only a couple of years after she went solo. The mid-70s saw some pretty solid albums still in Love is Like a Butterfly and The Bargain Store. But things started getting cheesy pretty quickly. Country music was moving into its urban cowboy phase and a girl from east Tennessee was going to have to change her approach a bit. The glitz and glam went very well with the Parton persona but the music because pretty synth heavy and just not very interesting. She relied on her great voice, but the quality of the songs declined. By the late 70s, very few people talked about the latest Dolly album and for all the well-deserved love she gets, even today no one really talks about these albums. Some singles, sure. But as a body of work? It gets to be a mixed bag very quickly.

Dolly made sure that what mattered most in her music was embracing the current popular sounds in a way that made sense for her country and crossover pop audiences. Dolly consistently changed her style to stay popular. I will argue that this had a negative impact on her overall art—so much of her music sounds dated. But Dolly wanted to bring pleasure to people while also making a lot of money. She was tremendously good at both. Parton started working with pop stars such as Olivia Newton-John, often making amiable but disposable albums. People liked it well enough to buy the singles, if not always the album. She stayed relevant when a lot of her peers did not.

By the 80s, Parton also did a lot of movies. She was such a huge personality that just by being herself, she could be an effective actor in the right role. She was one of the stars of 1980’s 9 to 5, which played on the 9to5 movement of women’s workers and made it a comedy about women reacting to their horrible misogynist boss. She had her biggest and most endearing hit in years with the title track to the soundtrack, which topped not only the country but the pop and adult contemporary charts. She starred with Burt Reynolds in the 1982 film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, running said whorehouse. Both of these films gained her a Golden Globe nomination and they are well-deserved. Unlike a lot of country stars trying to act (Johnny Cash is one notably bad example), she could pull it off. She acted consistently through the 80s. Rhinestone, from 1984, starring Sylvester Stallone, is not a good film, but hey, whatever. She also got some hits from recording the soundtrack. More useful was 1989’s Steel Magnolias, one of those films with a million stars that are all good.

Through this period, Dolly was getting a few top 10 hits on the country charts. But with the exception of her Kenny Rogers duet with “Islands in the Stream,” she wasn’t making much of a lasting impact musically in this period. RCA dropped her at the end of 1986. She did just fine. Columbia signed her right away. But getting dropped from her long-term label suggested that her moves toward pop-country were neither commercially nor artistically successful anymore. She had something of a comeback in 1987 with the release of Trio, her album with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. This was good for all three of them. The mid 80s were after all not great for 70s country and folk figures, no matter who.

Parton the capitalist became more interesting than Parton the singer in the 80s. She decided to use her fame to lift her hometown out of poverty. Now, whether the creation of Dollywood was good or not for the area around Pigeon Forge is open for debate. There’s no question that the region has much more money than it used to. On the other hand, it is the most crass place in the universe, a region of beautiful mountains surrounded by chain restaurants, putt putt courses, tacky tourist shops, and of course Dollywood itself. I’ve never cared for the type of country musician who created their own theaters in Pigeon Forge and once, when trying to show my visiting parents the region during my years in Knoxville, I ran into a ridiculous level traffic jam going through there because Alan Jackson was putting on an outdoor show and this just destroyed any semblance of the town being functional that day. I also never can forgive Jackson for that traffic. Or his music.

There’s no way to talk honestly about Dolly Parton without talking about her looks. The blonde hair and the huge breasts were central to her legend. She always claimed two things—first, the breasts were real and while of course like so many superstars, she had plenty of work done on her body over the years to stay “young,” this was true. Second, she was not a natural blonde but she was open about this and why it matters. She saw herself as a redneck’s ideal of glamour, what she saw growing up in east Tennessee as what beauty was, which was basically Marilyn Monroe. It worked for her, no question about that.

Dolly had one of the most interesting relationships in the history of celebrity. As everyone reading this knows, Dolly Parton would become a celebrity beyond celebrity, one of the most famous people in the world. On the day she arrived in Nashville, still just an 18 year old girl, she met a man named Carl Dean. As she rose in the country music industry, he would support her. But he found out almost immediately that he hated all of this. He didn’t mind if Dolly was a big star, but he wanted nothing to do with fame. So they made a deal—she would do her thing and he would stay completely and 100% in the background. For so many people, this would not work. The reality of fame makes stable relationships difficult. But it sure worked for them. They got married in 1966 and stayed that way until his death in 2025, which by all accounts absolutely devastated her. This worked in part because as absolutely famous as Dolly was and for as public as she remained, she was also an extremely private person and nothing could pierce her persona into the inner Dolly. That might be the reason for a 59 year marriage.

People have often debated Dolly’s politics. She often was portrayed liberal, but was she? What she really pushed was broad ideas of love and tolerance. That definitely makes her not a modern day Republican! She became an icon in the gay and trans communities because of her fashion and her broad-based tolerance. But here was the thing—she was never going to do a single thing that would risk a dollar. So when Tennessee started moving extreme right in the 2010s and passing all sorts of hideous legislation, Dolly was absolutely silent. Now, she’s such an icon that if any single individual in the state of Tennessee could speak out and it would matter, it was Dolly Parton. But she was also probably sure it would not have actually worked. In any case, she said nothing. Fundamentally, Dolly’s vision of the world is apolitical dreams of everyone getting along while they forked over their cash. I’m not really that critical of her here, but it’s hard for me to see as the icon of tolerance that a lot of people want to define her as here. There’s no just no sense of any strongly held belief at all except for love and America and money. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t ask her to be specific in any way that could cost her a dime, you would never get a response. She could have said that Tennessee attacking trans people was wrong. She didn’t.

Through the 90s and into the 2000s, Dolly released albums that fit whatever could make her some money in the larger world of country music. This is past her hit-making era, which is fine, no one makes hits forever. When the larger musical trends were good, she could reach back to her roots and release fantastic music. The Grass is Blue, released in 1999, is a great example. Dolly was not a bluegrass musician, not at any time in her career. But of course she grew up around that in east Tennessee and could certainly sing it. The late 90s was the era of the Americana revival, with alt-country bands become famous and the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack opening up album sales to a lot of people who didn’t usually move a lot of copies. It’s a fantastic album.

It’s possible though that the biggest impact Dolly made in the 90s was Whitney Houston covering “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard. That was an excellent combination of material and singer at the right time. It went gangbusters. Years later, someone asked Parton what she thought about the cover. She said that she loved it because it made her a whole lotta money. Which does describe how Dolly evaluated the world.

So she spent her later decades as a senior figure. She’d zig and zag to whatever popular at a given moment. Again, when Americana hit big, she did a great bluegrass album. 9/11 happened and here came the patriotic songs. Time for another Christmas album? Sure, she’d do that yet again. Someone has an idea to do some classic rock songs, she’s down. Whatever. No one is listening to these albums because they are great.

In the end, Dolly the Icon became far more important than Dolly the Country Singer. That was her choice. She was, in the end, a remarkable businesswoman. Put her up there as one of the best, smartest, and most savvy women in the history of American capitalism. Put up here there too as one of the best shapers of her image that has ever existed in this country and did so in a way that appealed to a lot of marginalized communities. Put her voice on the Mt. Rushmore of country music too. God bless her. But as a very intense fan of country music, I still wish she had the quantity of good albums that she could have made.

The post Dolly Parton, RIP appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

The Mac mini and Mac Studio occupy two distinct points in Apple's lineup of desktops, but lately, they've had something in common: They're popular for local AI inference and software development thanks to the advantages of their unified memory architecture and the fast CPUs and GPUs on their systems-on-a-chip.

Today, Apple announced new iterations of both desktops, along with two new chips: the M6, the first 2nm chip in Apple's M-series lineup for Macs, and the M5 Ultra, now the most powerful chip in the lineup for most things—especially AI workloads.

There aren't any major new features for either machine. This is just a specs bump. But based on how Apple is presenting these refreshes, they're leaning hard into those use cases, which weren't even a thought when earlier iterations were first engineered.

The devices' popularity for production inference took off after macOS 26.2 shipped last December. According to Apple's release notes, 26.2 enabled "low-latency communication between Thunderbolt 5 hosts for use cases including distributed AI inference using MLX." Thunderbolt 5 is a very fast wired data connection, and MLX is an open source array framework designed to help machine learning workflows take full advantage of the M-series chips' unified memory.

Since then, both hobbyists and professional developers and researchers have been essentially daisy-chaining Mac minis or Mac Studios to run inference on local large language models that are much bigger than anything that could run a single mass-market device—providing an alternative to ultra-beefy specialized hardware featuring specialized Nvidia GPUs.

The story here is the chips themselves. The M6 is, as expected, a next-generation SoC (system-on-a-chip) meant for a wide range of consumer applications. It has a 12-core CPU, which includes two of what Apple calls "super cores," alongside four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It's the first Apple SoC to use all three core types. There aren't any verifiable benchmarks to work from yet, but Apple claims it's up to 40 percent faster at multi-threaded CPU performance compared to the M4 two generations ago.

It also has a 12-core GPU, which is two cores more than its immediate predecessors, and faster unified memory with up to 160GB per second of bandwidth. Memory capacity is limited to 32GB, though.

That's where the new M6 Ultra—which will be available in the updated Mac Studio—comes in. Its maximum capacity is a whopping 512GB (for the fortunate few who can afford it). In many respects, it's literally two M6 Maxes running side by side on one SoC, for 36 CPU cores (12 super, 24 performance) and 80 GPU cores. Apple claims it can achieve up to 1.2TB per second in terms of unified memory bandwidth.

Most people would never, ever need that, but that's what we mean when we say that the AI inference use case is really what Apple is optimizing for here. That kind of memory and bandwidth is of course useful for other things, like gaming and other 3D graphics applications, but local inference is a growing use case, particularly for software developers.

Many developers have been changing their workflows to incorporate AI coding agents more heavily, thanks to powerful frontier large language models and increasingly sophisticated harnesses like Claude Code or Codex, but the cost of running those cloud models is steep, and many are questioning whether it will remain practical.

Open-weight models that can be run locally, like some of the latest Qwen and DeepSeek models, can accomplish many of the same tasks but without charging a fortune for tokens, as they're smaller and driven by the user's own local energy and compute.

Still, most standard consumer hardware, like an average-spec MacBook Pro, is just far behind enough in terms of the size of models they can run that we're not fully living in a "just run it all locally on your regular dev workstation" future just yet. That's why some are tapping these chains of Mac minis or Mac Studios.

As noted, that's the main story with these refreshes, but in other respects they're standard upgrades for consumers who aren't interested in all that. Both have Apple's N1 chip, which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Apple claims the storage is up to twice as fast, at 15GB/s. And this Mac mini ships with 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard, with the option to upgrade to 10Gb.

The Mac mini with M6 starts at $899 with 16GB of memory, and configurations with M5 Pro start at $1,699, while the Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499, and the M5 Ultra configurations start at $5,499. They can, of course, get a lot more expensive than that, depending on how you configure them.

Preorders for both start today, and they're shipping on September 22 (though the 512GB memory config for the M5 Max won't ship until late October). Apple also says they'll ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate, suggesting that the annual OS update may arrive by then for other Mac users, too.

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Nvidia has disclosed that it owns nearly 123 million shares in SpaceX, further highlighting the chipmaker’s entangled financial relationships with some of its biggest customers.

The $5.5 trillion company owned SpaceX stock worth nearly $21 billion at the end of June, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Elon Musk’s rocket conglomerate’s shares have fallen sharply since its June initial public offering, meaning Nvidia’s stake would now be worth $17 billion.

The disclosure marks a huge pay-off on Nvidia’s investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Musk combined the AI lab with SpaceX.

It underscores the scale of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang’s effort to use the financial power of the world’s most valuable company to forge complex and often circular financial links across the AI industry, including with some of his largest customers.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk, during SpaceX’s first public earnings call last week, said the company had an exclusive relationship with Nvidia to kit out its data centers.

“We’ve decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think [its] Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture,” he said. “We think it’s the best AI computer and we greatly value our close co-operation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia.”

Nvidia has committed more than $100 billion to AI companies in the past two years, with sizeable investments in cloud computing start-ups such as CoreWeave and AI labs including Thinking Machines and Safe Superintelligence.

It has also invested in Cursor, the code-editing start-up that SpaceX acquired for $60 billion this week.

This week, Nvidia disclosed plans to put together more than $500 billion from a consortium of investors, including Apollo Global, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to help finance its customers. Nvidia plans to partially guarantee loans from the Wall Street investors that are backed by the value of its chips.

Nvidia’s largesse has helped accelerate the building of AI infrastructure and binds parts of the industry more tightly to the chipmaker’s technology.

SpaceX is planning to increase its computing capacity from 2 gigawatts at the end of this year to “closer to 10GW [than 5GW]” by the end of 2027, Musk told investors last week.

The rocket maker’s IPO handed huge returns to its early backers. Google owns roughly 7 percent of the rocket maker, according to FactSet data, having originally invested $900 million in 2015. The search giant told investors in July that its stake was valued at about $94 billion.

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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A new Airbus passenger jet completed an ultra-long test flight between Australia and France lasting more than 24 hours—paving the way for the world’s longest nonstop commercial flights starting up next year.

The Airbus A350-1000ULR was developed specifically for Qantas Airways’ planned nonstop flights between Sydney and either New York or London. The Australian airline has ordered a dozen of the new airliners for its Project Sunrise routes that aim to start offering tickets for sale in 2027.

The aircraft had been doing initial test flights near the Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France, with a small team of test pilots and test engineers before conducting its first ultra long-haul test flight last week. After taking off from Toulouse on July 23, it flew for 19 hours and 13 minutes before landing in Melbourne, Australia, on July 24.

That set the stage for the likely record-breaking return flight that lasted for 24 hours and 25 minutes between takeoff from Melbourne on July 27 and landing in Toulouse on July 28.

The flight from Melbourne back to Toulouse covered 12,460 nautical miles in total, according to Airbus. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 shows the flight route stretched across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans along with North America.

To handle such ultra long-range flights, Airbus describes the aircraft as being equipped with an extra rear center fuel tank capable of carrying 20,900 liters (5,521 gallons). That extends the aircraft range by 1,000 nautical miles to ensure it can cover the nearly 10,000 nautical miles for the nonstop flights between Sydney and either London or New York.

Taking shifts for long flights

The aircraft also features a twin flight crew rest compartment designed to allow pilots to enter or exit rest areas without disturbing each other during commercial flight operations. Multiple pilots are required to take shifts during such long flights.

“To manage fatigue during the 20 to 23-hour flights we implemented four-hour shifts for each pilot, but we rotated the crew every two hours,” said Xavier Pepin, the Airbus test pilot who captained the return flight, in an Airbus post. “This staggered approach ensures that when a new pilot joins the cockpit, they overlap for two hours with the outgoing pilot.”

The first outbound flight to Melbourne included four Airbus pilots and five flight-test engineers who monitored aircraft systems in the cockpit or from work stations in the main cabin. But for the return flight to Toulouse, two Qantas pilots also joined the test flight crew that included three Airbus pilots and five flight test engineers.

“We have organized a schedule to allow a Qantas pilot to take the controls at specific times,” Pepin said. “These pilots are already qualified on the A350, and this mission provided them with their first experience with the -1000ULR variant.”

The aircraft drew considerable attention during its first ultra long-haul round trip. More than 3.6 million people tracked the aircraft during its return from Melbourne to Toulouse, according to Flightradar24. That made it the second-most-tracked flight ever on the flight tracking service, coming in only behind the Royal Air Force flight that carried Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin in 2022.

World record and higher fuel prices in sight

For now, Singapore Airlines currently offers the longest nonstop commercial flights that regularly connect New York City and Singapore and also holds the Guinness World Record for longest-duration nonstop scheduled flight. Such commercial flights typically take between 18 and 19 hours and currently use the Airbus 350-900ULR variant that can carry up to 161 passengers.

By comparison, Qantas Airways expects the maximum Project Sunrise flight time with the new Airbus A350-1000ULR to be 21 hours and 40 minutes during commercial flights between Sydney and New York or London—more than enough to set a new world record. The latest test flight certainly surpassed that benchmark.

Once outfitted for commercial service, each Qantas aircraft would carry up to 238 passengers. That represents the “lowest seat density of any A350-1000 in service in the world,” according to the Qantas Project Sunrise website. The Australian airline is making use of the extra space by including multiple self-serve stations with food and beverages and a “wellbeing zone” that includes room for passengers to stretch out.

Ticket prices have not yet been announced, but Qantas is allocating more than 40 percent of seats to passengers paying higher prices for First, Business, and Premium economy tickets. That could help the airline earn greater profits despite the lower number of overall passengers while pitching the nonstop routes as a unique premium service.

However, Qantas may also consider charging higher ticket prices if it’s still paying higher jet fuel costs in 2027 as a result of the US-Israeli war with Iran and ongoing disruptions to oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Airlines are already facing the prospect of paying an extra $100 billion on jet fuel in 2026 alone, with Singapore Airlines recently reporting its first quarterly net loss since the height of the pandemic in 2022, in part because of soaring jet fuel prices.

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eBay and three former executives agreed to pay nearly $56 million in a settlement over a macabre campaign of cyberstalking and harassment that targeted two journalists in 2019.

As we've previously written, the case involved deliveries of live cockroaches, a funeral wreath, a book about surviving the loss of a spouse, and a bloody pig mask to the home of a couple who run a news website. There were also harassing messages sent via email and Twitter, and an attempt to install a GPS tracking device on the victims' car. Criminal charges resulted in guilty pleas and prison terms for former eBay employees.

The victims were Ina and David Steiner of Natick, Massachusetts, who run the news website EcommerceBytes. "David and I officially settled the lawsuit we filed in 2021 against eBay and its former executives over the stalking and harassment campaign we endured in 2019 designed to stop our reporting," Ina Steiner wrote on EcommerceBytes yesterday. "The landmark civil rights settlement includes $55.7 million in compensation and charitable commitments."

eBay will pay $46.15 million in compensation to the Steiners, announced Scalli Murphy Law, the Steiners' law firm. The settlement includes another $2 million in compensation from former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, $500,000 from former eBay Senior Vice President of Global Operations Wendy Jones, and $50,000 from former eBay Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer.

eBay will give $6 million to various charities, while "Wenig will contribute an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in the name of Ina Steiner," the announcement said. The law firm said that additional "settlements were reached with all other eBay employees named in the civil action." eBay reported $3.1 billion in revenue and $512 million in net income in its most recent quarterly report.

Other former execs went to prison

The main settlement with eBay and former executives did not have any confidentiality restrictions, and it required eBay to "issue a strongly-worded public statement regarding the conduct" of the executives "and the culture of the company in 2019," the Steiners' law firm said.

eBay issued that statement today, saying that "what the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened. We condemn, in the strongest terms possible, the employees who perpetrated and pled guilty to criminal charges for the misconduct against Ina and David Steiner. We also acknowledge the unprofessional tone in internal communications demonstrated, to different degrees and number, by Mr. Wenig, Mr. Wymer, and Ms. Jones."

eBay said that since the 2019 events, "new leaders have joined the company and eBay has strengthened its policies, procedures, controls and training consistent with the company’s ongoing commitment to uphold high standards of conduct and ethics."

Seven former eBay employees and contractors pleaded guilty, and prison sentences were issued to former eBay security executives James Baugh (57 months), David Harville (24 months), Philip Cooke (18 months), and Stephanie Popp (12 months). Two others received a year in home confinement and another was sentenced to time served and a year of supervised release.

"I want to see ashes... Whatever it takes"

Wenig and Wymer were not charged criminally but were accused in the civil lawsuit of giving employees "carte blanche authority" to carry out the harassment campaign.

"Defendants Wenig and Wymer provided the other Defendants with carte blanche authority to terminate the reporting of the Steiners by whatever means necessary, with Defendant Wymer expressing '…I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.' Defendant Wymer promised the Defendants he would, 'embrace managing any bad fallout' if the plan went south, further directing, 'We need to STOP her,'" the lawsuit filed in 2021 said.

An amended complaint filed in 2023 described Jones' alleged role: "Defendant Jones asked Defendant Baugh if he could find a way to deal with the issue 'off the radar since comms and legal couldn't handle it.' Jones added, 'Just get it done. I don't want to know the details, just make sure you sync with Wymer.' After the lunch meeting, Defendant Baugh provided regular updates to Defendant Jones."

eBay itself faced criminal charges and agreed to pay a $3 million fine in 2024, while entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice.

As a result of the settlement, the Steiners yesterday submitted a court filing to withdraw their complaint and end the civil lawsuit.

"Our clients wanted to uncover the truth, protect journalists and publishers, hold those responsible accountable, deter future corporate misconduct, and help ensure others would never have to endure what they experienced," lawyer Christopher Murphy said. "Through years of discovery, motion [filing], and trial preparation, we were able to accomplish those objectives while securing meaningful compensation for two wonderful people."

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It's been nearly five years since Ridley Scott first announced his plans for a TV spinoff of his sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner (1982) and the 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049. It's finally here—or almost, anyway. Prime Video debuted the first teaser for the new ten-episode series, Blade Runner 2099, at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday. We also got a teaser for the third season of Prime Video's Rings of Power and a new trailer for HBO's Lanterns.

Yeoh and Schafer joined show runner Silka Luisa (Shining Girls) onstage for the big reveal, which also included an exclusive clip shown to the audience. Luisa told Entertainment Weekly that the series stays true to the original's "noir principles... and there's a mystery at the heart of the show that looks both forwards and backwards in terms of mythology."  An uprising has occurred and the humans lost, which means they are now the hunted second-class citizens. "The show is really imagining what comes after us, and what does it mean to be human in a world where humanity is no longer relevant," said Luisa.

Per the official synopsis:

Fifty years after the events of Blade Runner 2049, Los Angeles has been reborn, just not by humanity. Cora, a fugitive in a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. Forced to partner with Olwen, a Replicant days from dying, she hunts down a runaway hiding a truth that could collapse their fragile city.

The incomparable Michelle Yeoh stars as Olwen, the dying Replicant, along with Hunter Schafer (Euphoria) as Cora. The cast also includes Hugo Hamlet as Buster Friendly, as well as Dmitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, Katelyn Rose Downey, Daniel Rigby, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, Matthew Needham, Tom Burke, and Maurizio Lombardi—all in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Blade Runner 2099 will premiere on November 25, 2026, on Prime Video.

Rings of Power S3

Prime Video made a major investment in The Rings of Power when it acquired the rights to the source material from the Tolkien estate, even committing to multiple seasons upfront.  We're now coming up on S3 and based on the teaser the streaming platform unveiled at SDCC, we'll finally get to see Sauron (Charlie Vickers) forging the One Ring.

Per the official synopsis:

In season three, Middle-earth is at war. Five years have passed since the fall of Eregion. Sauron’s armies have marched across the whole of the world, conquering all in their path. Only a few isolated pockets stand between the Dark Lord and total victory—Khazad-dǔm, where the Dwarves are now sealed deep within their mountain halls, and the elven realms of Lindon and Rivendell, which are protected by their Three Rings.”

But deep in the land of Mordor, in his newly completed tower of Barad-dûr, the Dark Lord toils day and night, obsessed with harnessing a power that will bring the last of his enemies to their knees: One ring to rule them all… Now, all the free peoples of Middle-earth—Dwarves, Elves, Men, and Wizards alike—must find a way to come together, in a race against time to prevent Sauron from achieving his goal of utter domination of all life

We're also getting some new characters this season, most notably Jamie Campbell Bower as Galadriel's (Morfydd Clark) long-lost husband Celeborn. Zubin Varla will play Khamul the Easterling of Rhun; Eddie Marson will play Thrain, order brother to King Durin IV (Owain Arthur); Andrew Richardson will play Anarion, younger son of Elendil (Lloyd Owen) and brother to Isildur (Maxim Baldry); and Adam Young will play an Orc named Marnukh who "might not be what he seems." Oh, and none other than Simon Pegg will voice the fiery Balrog.

The third season of Rings of Power premieres on November 11, 2026, on Prime Video.

Lanterns

We've seen a couple of teasers thus far for Lanterns, the new DC Universe series coming to HBO Max, both of which made it clear we're in for a show that's closer to a sci-fi True Detective than your standard superhero fare. HBO unveiled a full trailer at SDCC that is a little less Earthbound. It leans into the "space cop" vibe, reveals that shapeshifting Manhunters will be central to the plot, takes us into outer space, and also gives us our first look at Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), a former Corps member gone rogue. HBO threw in seven preview clips for good measure, although these have not been released publicly.

Per the official logline, “The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.” There will be two storylines: one set in 2016 about a murder in Nebraska, and the second set in 2026.

Chandler’s Hal Jordan is a former test pilot nearing retirement from the Green Lantern Corps. He’s training Pierre’s John Stewart Jr., a new recruit, to replace him. Nathan Fillion reprises his Superman role as the obnoxious Guy Gardner; we get a brief glimpse of him in the new teaser. The cast also includes Kelly MacDonald as Kerry, a small-town family-oriented sheriff; Jason Ritter as Billy Macon, Kerry’s husband; Garret Dillahunt as William Macon, Kerry’s cowboy father-in-law; Poorna Jagannathan as a woman named Zoe; and Paul Ben-Victor as an extraterrestrial called Antaan.

Sherman Augustus plays John Stewart Sr., with J. Alphonse Nicholson playing the younger version; Nicole Ari Parker plays Bernadette Stewart (mother to John Jr.), with Jasmine Cephas Jones playing the young version of the character. In addition, Chris Coy plays a suspiciously nervous truck driver, Waylon Sanders; Cary Christopher plays a gifted child named Noah; Laura Linney will play a senior Guardian; and Paula Patton will appear in an as-yet-undisclosed guest role. We also know that the show will feature the inter-dimensional prison and the Checkmate organization introduced in Peacemaker’s S2 finale.

Lanterns premieres on August 18, 2026, on HBO Max.

Spaceballs: The New One

Credit: Chris Frawley / Amazon MGM Studios

This long-overdue sequel to Mel Brooks' 1987 cult classic isn't being released until next spring, but that didn't stop Amazon MGM Studios from putting together an SDCC panel this year anyway in a clever parody of the extravagant Marvel panels of yore. Because it's early days, there haven't been any publicly released teasers or trailers, although some teaser footage was shown at CinemaCon in April and yesterday at SDCC.

Apparently we owe this sequel to Josh Gad, who co-wrote the script and pitched Brooks on a cold call. Gad has said he showed the original movie to his daughter during the COVID-19 pandemic and she loved it so much she wanted to see the sequel. Here's the official synopsis:

Somehow, Dark Helmet has returned! Forty years after the events of the first Spaceballs, fifty years after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, and one year after the events of The Devil Wears Prada 2, the galaxy is once again under threat. A threat so evil, so unstoppable, so completely lacking in any original ideas, that it has vowed to bring back the past… every last bit of it.

With Lone Starr in hiding, Queen Vespa on the throne, and the Schwartz stretched thinner than a franchise releasing TV episodes theatrically, the only hope for the galaxy is Vespa’s undisciplined son, Prince Starburst, and a mysterious Palace advisor named Destiny. Together, they must find Lone Starr, Yogurt, and any other iconic legacy characters fans are demanding before they discover the hard way that, while some threats you can fight, the reboot is not one of them.

The 100-year-old Brooks is reprising his role as Yogurt via motion capture (he filmed his lines in a studio). Also returning: Rick Moranis as Lord Dark Helmet, Bill Pullman as Lone Starr, Daphne Zuniga as Queen Vespa, and George Wyner as Colonel Sandurz. Pullman's son, Lewis Pullman, joins the cast as Prince Starburst, son to Lone Starr and Vespa, along with Keke Palmer as a palace advisor named Destiny. Gad plays a mawg, the same species as the late John Candy's Barf. Anthony Carrigan and Rowan Witt have also been cast in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Spaceballs: The New One hits theaters on April 23, 2027. May the Schwartz be with you!

Credit: AmazonMGMStudios

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