From a press release on Netflix’s “News” website:

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec. 5, 2025 – Today, Netflix, Inc. (the Company) and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.

The cash and stock transaction is valued at $27.75 per WBD share (subject to a collar as detailed below), with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (equity value of $72.0 billion). The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.

According to the aforementioned press release, Netflix will maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and this new “combination will offer more choice and greater value for consumers, create more opportunities for the creative community and generate shareholder value”.

Given the size and influence of both companies, and the fact that Netflix stated that Warner Bros. will be maintaining its current operations, it will be interesting to see how this affects both organizations, how they’re offered to and accessed by users, and the content that they both produce.

In a press release on Apple’s Newsroom website, the company announced some additional changes to the organization’s executive team:

Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice president in January, reporting to CEO Tim Cook and serving on Apple’s executive team. In addition, Lisa Jackson, vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams will report to Apple chief operating officer Sabih Khan.

These leadership changes follow the retirement announcement of John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, as well as the news that Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, is leaving the organization to join Meta as their Chief Design Officer.

Dan Moren, writing at SixColors.com, mentioned the recent reports / rumors related to Apple CEO Tim Cook and when he might consider retiring:

Over all this continues to hover uncertainty about Tim Cook’s future, with some recent reports suggesting that he might announce his retirement sometime next year, though it’s more than possible that he might simply transition into the company’s chairman role. If nothing else, a long era of stability amongst Apple’s leadership has seen a lot of changes recently, and it may not be over yet.

While all of the recent leadership changes may just be coincidence, Dan Moren’s point about Apple having a decent period of stability within the organization’s leadership team only to have several changes over the past week or so makes one wonder what might happen next.

Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, Alan Dye, is reported to be leaving the company to join Meta as their Chief Design Officer.

Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors.com:

Dye is joining Meta as chief design officer on December 31, and he will help Meta in its efforts to further break into consumer hardware. Dye will head up Meta’s new design studio, overseeing hardware design and software design with a focus on improving Meta devices like headsets and glasses with AI features.

According to the aforementioned MacRumors article (which is based on a Bloomberg article by Marc Gurman), Dye will be replaced by Stephen Lemay, who has been a member of Apple’s design team for over two decades.

The news of Dye’s departure comes just days after Apple announced the upcoming retirement of John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy. That said, it seems as though Dye’s departure is on different terms, with Jon Gruber of DaringFireball.net writing:

It sounds like Dye chose to jump ship, and wasn’t squeezed out (as it seems with former AI chief John Giannandrea earlier this week). Gurman/Bloomberg are spinning this like a coup for Meta (headline: “Apple Design Executive Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup”), but I think this is the best personnel news at Apple in decades. Dye’s decade-long stint running Apple’s software design team has been, on the whole, terrible — and rather than getting better, the problems have been getting worse.

Gruber further elaborates on the criticisms of Dye in a follow-up piece on DaringFireball.net entitled “Bad Dye Job”, which is worth a read if you’re intersted in the state of Apple’s design team.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this change will affect the future of design at Apple!

Twitch’s 2025 recaps recently became available! As a frequent Twitch viewer (and occasional streamer), it’s always interesting to see the stats regarding my Twitch usage. Here’s my 2025 Viewer Recap!

In a press release on their “Newsroom” webpage, Apple announced that John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is set to retire in the Spring of 2026:

Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. Apple also announced that renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue to align closer with similar organizations.

Taking Giannandrea’s place will be Amar Subramanya, who is currently CVP of AI at Microsoft and, prior to that, served in various roles at Google for 16 years, including VP of Engineering (where he worked on Google’s Gemini product).

Given that Siri and Apple’s AI efforts are seen as being behind other AI products like Gemini or ChatGPT, this move may not be surprising to some. However, it will be interesting to see how this change affects the state of Siri and AI at Apple going forward.

Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s founder and CEO, announced on Tuesday, November 18th, that he is stepping down from his current role with the organization:

After nearly 10 years, I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon and transferring my ownership of the trademark and other assets to the Mastodon non-profit. Over the course of my time at Mastodon, I have centered myself less and less in our outward communications, and to some degree, this is the culmination of that trend. Mastodon is bigger than me, and though the technology we develop on is itself decentralized—with heaps of alternative fediverse projects demonstrating that participation in this ecosystem is possible without our involvement—it benefits our community to ensure that the project itself which so many people have come to love and depend on remains true to its values. There are too many examples of founder egos sabotaging thriving communities, and while I’d like to think myself an exception, I understand why people would prefer better guardrails.

I’ve been on Mastodon since January 18, 2021, first as a member of the TWiT.social instance and then as a member of the official Mastodon.social instance.

Mastodon was the first federated social network that I joined and, while I still do post on other social networks, I like what Eugen and the folks at Mastodon have built and what the platform stands for.

While Eugen will be stepping away from the day-to-day CEO duties, he did say that he would be sticking around in an advisory role, so he won’t be totally removed from Mastodon. In any case, I wish him all the best!

The new Sailing skill launched in Old School RuneScape (one of my all-time favorite games) today!

From the “News & Updates” section of the Old School RuneScape website:

Sailing is Old School RuneScape’s 24th skill. There is no doubt that this is our largest single update to date – perhaps our largest update ever. There is so much content coming to the game today: over 30 new islands, several new training methods, new rewards, quests and so much more!

Be amongst the first to sail the seas of Gielinor and see what lies beyond the horizon. There is so much content to explore, and you might just find some special surprises along the way!

This is the first new skill to have come out in a while and it definitely seems pretty interesting! I’m looking forward to giving it a try!

Cloudflare, a content delivery network that serves many popular websites and services, is experiencing a pretty widespread outage that’s affecting a number of websites at the moment.

From an article by Les Pounder and Stephen Warwick on TomsHardware.com:

In the last few minutes Cloudflare has confirmed it is aware of a major issue affecting its Global Network, which is causing widespread internet outages ranging from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to ChatGPT, and, ironically, Downdetector. A wave of other websites and services are also experiencing outages.

Cloudflare is working on a fix, with updates available on the CloudflareStatus.com website.

This past Tuesday, WhatsApp announced on their blog that they were launching a version of the popular messaging app for the Apple Watch.

Today we are announcing a big upgrade for your wrist — the all-new WhatsApp app for your Apple Watch*. This new experience will help you stay on top of your chats without needing to pull out your iPhone.

Prior to the release of an official app for the Apple Watch, WhatsApp users were able to view and reply to messages on their watches, but that was about the extent of what they could do.

However, the new WhatsApp app will enable users to receive call notifications, read full messages, record and send voice messages, react to messages, view chat histories, and have an improved media experience.

In order to install WhatsApp for the Apple Watch, users will have to have an Apple Watch Series 4 (or newer) running watchOS 10 or later.

John Voorhees, writing for MacStories.net:

If there’s a theme surrounding the 26.1 updates to Apple’s OSes, it’s that the company is listening to its users. Tinted Liquid Glass, the return of Slide Over, and the updates to the very niche Local Capture feature are all great examples of Apple’s engineering teams turning around meaningful updates to its OSes based on feedback from users. That’s great to see, and a trend that I hope continues long into the future.

While the 26.1 versions of Apple operating systems were released this past Monday, November 3rd, I recently came across John Voorhees’ post on MacStories.net and think it summarizes the updates very nicely. The screenshots that are included are a nice touch, as well.

Regarding the 26.1 updates, the ones that stick out the most to me are the return of Slide Over in iPadOS 26.1 and the ability to choose between Clear and Tinted versions of Liquid Glass in both iOS and iPadOS 26.1.

While I personally don’t mind the default, Clear, version of Liquid Glass, I can see how having the option to apply a darker tint to it would be ideal for many users. Slide Over, on the other hand, is a feature that I am very happy to see returning with iPadOS 26.1, as it’s something that I use pretty frequently on my iPad Mini. In fact, I still haven’t upgraded to iPadOS 26, partly as I didn’t want to lose the ability to use Slide Over for multitasking.

Overall, though, it’s definitely nice to see that Apple is really taking user feedback to heart and implementing changes that users have requested.