Pick pocket

Good morning. A U.K. biotech called CipherX has developed a painless permanent tattoo patch that can be applied in less than 20 minutes without a big scary needle. The company, which is the first to commercialize the microscopic needle tech for tattoos, is now planning to ship its patches so that customers can tattoo themselves at home.  

It’s perfect for anyone who hates needles, loves getting things delivered, and is fine choosing a permanent tattoo from 15 stock designs. 

Today’s reading time is 5 minutes.

Markets: Canadian markets were closed for the holiday yesterday, but U.S. stocks rallied to record highs ahead of a busy earnings week. The tech-heavy Nasdaq led the way with a 2.1% jump, while Snap’s stock climbed 10% after reporting better-than-expected earnings in the second quarter.

Turns out that the “most secure” place to store your Bitcoin wasn’t so secure after all. 

What happened: Hackers exploited a software flaw in Coldcard devices, a Bitcoin storage wallet, to steal around US$100 million worth of Bitcoin.

Why it matters: Because Coldcards never needed to connect to the internet, they were thought to be among the most secure ways to store Bitcoin. That illusion has now been shattered, and it’s a costly lesson that even Bitcoin holders who take security relatively seriously are still vulnerable.

Zoom out: While this attack has not yet been connected to AI, the number of crypto hacks has jumped this year, and the spread of tools that make launching cyberattacks much easier raises some obvious questions about how secure digital assets will be in the future.—TS

WestJet has reached a tentative deal to end the flight attendants’ strike. The Calgary-based airline and the union representing about 4,400 flight attendants reached a tentative contract agreement yesterday following a brief strike that grounded 600 flights. The sticking issue in the negotiations was ground pay (as it was when ~10,000 Air Canada flight attendants walked off the job last year). CUPE says WestJet flight attendants work up to 35 unpaid hours every month on tasks outside of the airplane. (CBC News)

Iran says there are no U.S. peace talks on the horizon. Iranian officials said no negotiations had taken place or been planned between the two countries, despite Trump calling off what he described as the biggest military attack since World War II and claiming negotiations were underway. Allies reportedly talked Trump out of launching the attack, though he said yesterday that he could still press forward with the plan if Iran doesn’t cut a deal or agree to a “Total Surrender.” (Reuters)

Albertans protest Meta’s planned data centre. Sturgeon County, Alberta saw hundreds of protesters over the weekend voicing their opposition to Meta’s planned one-gigawatt, $13 billion data centre in the region. The Alberta government has been actively courting tech giants like Meta to build large data centre facilities in the province, but the projects have faced public backlash over their energy and water usage, noise, and environmental impact. (The Canadian Press) 

What else is on our radar:

What they’re saying: “That was the era of the Kospi mania. I got completely swept up in the frenzy,” Kim Han-kyung, a retail trader in Seoul, told Bloomberg. “Now, I’m honestly scared. I’ve engraved two rules in my mind now. First: don’t invest in the Korean stock market. Second: follow the first rule.”

Why it matters: The Kospi, South Korea’s main stock index, has been the most volatile in the world this year, and is regularly experiencing wild double-digit swings. It lost 22% of its value in July, and trading was halted four times because of volatility. The debut of risky leveraged single-stock ETFs fuelled a rapid run-up in South Korean stocks earlier this year, followed by a crash last month that wiped out scores of retail investors.

Tinseltown is looking to poach some of Silicon Valley’s AI talent. 

Driving the news: Over 10% of new Hollywood job postings in June were for AI-related positions, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.

Catch-up: Hollywood is trying to walk a fine line between embracing AI tools (which can cut their production costs by up to 50%) and not alienating the filmmakers and audiences that have largely disavowed the technology as a creativity killer. 

Why it matters: It’s not just the Hollywood execs advocating for AI anymore — top creatives in the industry like Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Demi Moore have become more vocal in their support for the technology (at least in some use cases). 

Our take: Despite pushback from some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, it now looks inevitable that studios will incorporate AI into their production process. The question now is how much they can get away with before facing a backlash from audiences.—LA

🍿 US$932 million. Global box office sales for Spider-Man: Brand New Day in its opening weekend, the second-biggest movie debut ever. The banner weekend trails only Disney’s Avengers: Endgame, which brought in $1.2 billion back in 2019. And we wonder why they keep making superhero movies!

Shake off that long weekend rust with today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who.