Fortune

In the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively box-office showdown, both husband and wife came out winners. Reynolds’ Marvel Studios smash “Deadpool & Wolverine” remained the top movie in North American theaters for the third straight week with $54.2 million in ticket sales according to studio estimates Sunday. Worldwide, it’s now surpassed $1 billion. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” though, was closely followed by “It Ends With Us,” the romance drama starring Lively, which surpassed expectations with a stellar $50 million debut. Read more here: bit.ly/46LlSpU

Not even the ultra-rich can get into South Florida’s most exclusive country clubs. Thanks to the influx of high net worth households moving from California, New York, and other wealthy enclaves in recent years, demand for memberships in elite country clubs in Boca Raton, Miami Beach, Jupiter, and Palm Beach has sky-rocketed, area real estate agents say. So what’s the key to getting off the years-long waitlists? Historically, it’s entailed waiting for a slot to open while ensuring your golf stroke is good enough for these elite clubs. But for individuals feeling impatient, there is another wa. Read more:

Gen Z grads are having a hard time landing an internship anywhere right now. But for those looking to get a foot in the door at Goldman Sachs, the benchmark is higher than ever. The hiring rate at the investment banking giant just dipped below 1% for the first time. According to figures posted by Goldman Sachs, the company received a record 315,126 applications for its 2024 internship program. Only some 2,600 interns were hired. That’s a hire rate of 0.9%. To put that into context, it’s easier to land a coveted spot at Harvard University, where the acceptance rate is 3.6%. Read more:

Olympic gold medals are worth more than ever at this year’s Paris games, with the raw materials that go into them having the potential to fetch about $900 each. The medals contain six grams of gold, the price of which soared to a record in mid-July thanks to central-bank buying, retail interest in China and expectations of easing US monetary policy. Prices are also substantially higher this year for silver, which makes up at least 92.5% of the weight of gold medals. Read more here: bit.ly/3WFFrvb

Disney is being brought back to life. bit.ly/3yD6EXu Disney Experiences accounted for $32.5 billion in revenue last year—about 37% of the parent company’s total sales. And Disney is counting on the experiences—especially the resorts—to keep growing. On Saturday, during Disney’s D23 fan festival, experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro announced big expansions at Disneyland; Walt Disney World in Orlando; and at parks in Paris, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. In all, D’Amaro is spearheading $60 billion worth of investments into parks and cruises over the next 10 years Read more: bit.ly/3yD6EXu

Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who died of cancer last week at the age of 56, was a visionary leader in tech and in life. Unlike Elon Musk, who has stoked fear about a population collapse while cutting parental leave at Twitter (now X), Wojcicki understood the importance of paid maternity leave as a retention tool. She was Google’s first employee to take it, having let its cofounders work out of her garage before joining the startup in 1999 when she was four months pregnant. Read more:

American consumers are in open revolt against corporate inflation, forcing companies to cut prices if they still want their business. Speaking on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan warned that households continue to travel on vacation, go to the movies, and dine out, but they are no longer willing to splurge now that their nest egg is shrinking. The post-pandemic revenge spending that turbocharged U.S. growth over the past two years has given way to a nation of coupon clippers. “They’re basically finding bargains,” the CEO of the world’s second-largest lender by market cap said in the interview. “And you’re seeing corporations cut price to respond to that.” Read more:

Starting in Q1 of 2024, Warren Buffett epically downsized his immense holdings of Apple stock in one of the best-publicized selloffs by any famous investor in recent memory. In the past two quarters, the Oracle of Omaha’s Berkshire Hathaway has sold roughly 510 million of the iPhone maker’s shares, lightening its holdings by around 56%. The size and suddenness of the exit stirred speculation that Buffett’s optimism for Apple’s stock had faded following the fantastic run over the past seven years—a surge that Buffett timed and rode to near perfection. Read more:

NEW: In the hunt for software bugs that could leave the door open to criminal hacks, the Def Con security conference, the largest annual gathering for “ethical” hackers, reigns supreme. The event, which took place in Las Vegas over the weekend, is known for presentations of cutting-edge security research, though it often feels more like a rave than a professional gathering. It features thumping electronic dance music from DJs, karaoke, and “dunk-a-Fed” pool parties (where government officials get soaked). Attendees, in colorful hats and T-shirts, swap stickers and wear colorful LED-light conference badges that this year were shaped like a cat and included a credit-card-sized computer, called a Raspberry Pi. The event is known fondly by its 30,000 attendees as “hacker summer camp.” This year, generative AI was among the main topics, attracting leaders from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, as well as federal agencies including the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which serves as the central research and development organization of the Defense Department. Two high-stakes competitions at Def Con spotlighted large language models (LLMs) as both an essential tool to protect software from hackers as well as an important target for “ethical” (as in, non-criminal) hackers to explore vulnerabilities. One competition came with millions in prize money attached and the other had small-change “bug bounties” up for grabs. Experts say these two challenges highlight how generative AI is revolutionizing “bug hunting,” or searching for security flaws, by using LLMs to decipher code and discover vulnerabilities. This transformation, they say, is helping manufacturers, governments, and developers enhance the security of LLMs, software, and even critical national infrastructure. thanks to Jason Clinton Sven Cattell Ariel Herbert-Voss Will Pearce Avijit Ghosh, PhD Andrew Carney

"When Google increased paid maternity leave to 18 from 12 weeks in 2007, the rate at which new moms left the company fell by 50%." https://lnkd.in/gyek9qaN