Tech Brew Ride Home - Anyone Want To Give Me A Betting Market Tip?

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Apple continues its week of product refreshes, now with MacBooks, now with new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. People continue to get rich frontrunning news on the betting markets. And Sam Altman says, no, sorry, we rushed things. The government swears it won’t use our AI for mass surveillance after we asked them nicely not to. Apple announces M5 MacBook Air with 2x storage, $1099 starting price (9to5Mac) Apple Unveils MacBook Pro Featuring M5 Pro and M5 Max Chips With New Fusion Architecture (MacRumors) Apple unveils M5 Pro and M5 Max chips with new ‘Fusion Architecture’ (TechCrunch) Polymarket Iran Bets Hit $529 Million as New Wallets Win Big (Bloomberg) Google unveils cost-efficient AI model Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (SeekingAlpha) Audible Launches Cheaper Plan to Appeal to Streaming Audiences (Bloomberg) OpenAI makes changes to ‘opportunistic and sloppy’ Pentagon deal (Financial Times) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the TechBrew right home for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple continues its week of product refreshes now with MacBooks, now with new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. People continue to get rich front-running news on the betting markets, and Sam Altman says, no, sorry, we rushed things. The government swears it won't use our AI for mass surveillance after we ask them nicely not to. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Today is going to feel like a replay of yesterday's episode because Apple has unveiled the M5 MacBook Air in 13 and 15 inch sizes, boosting its starting price by $100 to $1,099, and doubling base storage to 512 gigabytes, shipping from March 11th, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. While the M4 MacBook Air started at $999, the new M5 MacBook Air returns to the 1099 price. that previous models have had. The $100 price increase isn't all bad, though. Apple has doubled the base storage from 256 gigabytes to 512. Apple also introduced 16 gigabytes of RAM across the board

compared to just 8 gigabytes a few versions ago when the MacBook Air was priced from 1099. While the M4 MacBook Air was configurable with up to 2 terabytes of storage, the new M5 MacBook Air doubles the top-tier storage to 4 terabytes for the first time. RAM configuration remains the same between models with 16, 24, and 32 gigabyte options. The move from M4 to M5 also sees the MacBook Air upgrade from Wi-Fi 6E to Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 6 replaces Bluetooth 5.3. Battery life remains unchanged at 18 hours, and the charger included in the box now appears to be a 40-watt dynamic power adapter with 60 watts max instead of either the 30-watt USBC power adapter or 35-watt. dual USBC port compact power adapter.

Like the previous model, the M5 MacBook Air is available in two sizes, 13 and 15 inch, and four colors, sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver, end quote. The MacBook Pro gets a boost, too, with one key difference. The new M5 Pro and M5 Max chip options come to the MacBook Pros, which Apple says will get you up to four times faster LLM prompt processing, Also, they've tossed in up to two times faster SSD speeds and 1 terabyte and 2 terabyte base storage options. Quoting Mac Rumors, M5 Pro models now start at 1 terabytes, while M5 Max models start at 2 terabytes. Thunderbolt 5 carries over from the M4 generation, but each port now gets its own dedicated controller on the chip,

so all three ports can run at full bandwidth simultaneously. For external displays, M5 Pro supports up to two high-resolution monitors, while M5 Max supports up to four. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M-5 Pro starts at $2,199, while the 16-inch starts at $2,600.99. The 14-inch M-5-max model starts at $3,599, and the 16-inch at $3,899. The previously announced base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 starts at $1,999.

All models are available in Space Black and Solution. silver with pre-orders opening tomorrow, March 4th, and availability beginning Wednesday, March 11th, end quote. But let's get some details on those new chips, quoting TechCrunch. Apple says the chips are engineered around its new fusion architecture and advanced design that merges two dyes into a single high-performance system on a chip, which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, media engine, unified memory controller, neural engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, marking an upgrade from the 14-core configuration in the M-4-Pro and the 16-core on the M-4-max. The CPU now features six supercores, which is Apple's term for its highest

performance cores, alongside 12 all-new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for pro workloads. The GPU scales up the next-generation architecture introduced in M-5 to an up-to-40-core GPU. Apple explained in a press release with a neural accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth. M5 Pro and M5 Max are over four times the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation. Graphics performance is up to 20% faster overall with ray tracing workloads, improving by as much as 35%. M5 Pro supports up to 64 gigabytes of unified memory up from 48 gigabytes on the M4 Pro. M5MX continues to support up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, with bandwidth increased as well.

quote. Worth noting that the price bump on the MacBook Pro models with these new chips are both up by $200. And I am told that with these latest chips, the MacBook Pro now maxes out at $7,349 if you do go whole hog in terms of maxing things out. Finally, if you are just in the business of throwing your money at Apple, good news. Back to 9 to 5 Mac. Quote, Apple has officially announced the studio Studio Display XDR, which it says delivers the most advanced display technology and a robust set of features for pro users who need the ultimate front-of-screen performance. The new Studio Display XDR features a 27-inch 5K retina XDR display with 5120 by 2880 resolution, a 120-hertz refresh rate, and more. The studio display XDR has a 12-mepixel center stage camera with support for desk view.

There's also a high-fidelity six-speaker system with spatial audio support and a 3rd. mic array for what they call studio quality recording. The overall design of the studio display XDR is basically identical to the standard studio display. For instance, it does not carry over the iconic lattice pattern from the pro display XDR. The studio display XDR with a tilt and height adjustable stand starts at $3,299. It will go up for pre-order tomorrow, March 4th at 615 AMPT, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11th. It's available with standard glass and nanotexture. options with the latter coming in at an additional $300 upgrade. In addition to the high-end studio

display XDR, Apple has also launched a new version of the standard studio display at the old $599 price point. End quote. Polymarket trades on contracts tied to strikes on Iran hit $529 million and six new accounts profited a total of more than $1 million each by betting on the U.S. to strike Iran by February 28th. Quoting Bloomberg. Six accounts on Polly Market made around $1 million in profit by betting on the U.S. strikes to Iran by February 28th, according to analytics firm Bubble Maps SA. The accounts were all freshly created in February and had only ever placed bets on when U.S. strikes might occur. Some of their shares were purchased in some cases at roughly a dime apiece hours before the first explosions were reported in Tehran. Those are the hallmarks.

that blockchain analysts associate with insider trading in prediction markets and industry without widespread oversight and no agreed upon methodology for distinguishing luck from leaks and they're far from conclusive on their own. Similar patterns suggested that an insider made a big profit betting on the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro in January and have also been used to identify several other cases of alleged insider trading. By the time the February 28th contract resolved on Saturday, it had attracted around $90 million in trading volumes since its creation, making it by far the most popular date for a strike on the platform. The next most traded was a contract for an attack by January 31st,

which had drawn $42 million. Prediction markets are some of the first products that allow direct bets on geopolitical events, said Nicholas Weiman, chief executive officer of bubble maps in an email. In cases involving war or conflict, information can circulate within a broader circle before becoming public. Combined with the fact that Polymarket generally only requires a wallet to trade, which allows for a high level of anonymity, this can create incentives for informed participants to act early. As the strikes continued over the weekend, Polymarket had already opened new contracts for traders to bet on, among them whether a Gulf state would strike Iran within a week and whether the U.S. would hit neighboring Iraq by the end of March. All have netted

minimal volume thus far. Some of the bets identified by Bubble Maps drew. additional scrutiny on social media where users were quick to label them as suspected insiders. The picture is far murkier than that, though. The U.S. has been telegraphing military action for weeks drawing in speculators. A contract tracking possible strikes for February 27th, just one day earlier, had attracted more than 25 million in volume. The timing of U.S. military action wasn't the only polymarket contract to draw speculation about possible insider activity, though. In mid-January, Polysites, another analytics firm, noted a cluster of one incited activity around a market tracking whether Ali Khamenei would no longer be supreme leader of

Iran by the end of March. At the time, traders put the likelihood at 40%, but almost 90% of possible insider transactions tracked by polysites supported the outcome. Those accounts also fit the profile that blockchain detectives have built up as telltale signs of alleged insiders. The terms of the Kameni contract do not exclude his death as a qualifying event, and a mission that has drawn criticism from those who argue it effectively places a financial incentive on assassination. Kalshi, a commodity futures trading commission regulated rival, said Saturday, it does not offer markets that settle on death as the outcome. In the event of Khamini's death, it said it would resolve its contract based on the last

price offered. Kalsi's CEO, Tarek Mansour, later said on X that the platform would reimburse all trading fees from such bets, end quote. Another day, another one of these, quoting Seeking Alpha, Google unveiled Gemini 3.1 Flashlight, its fastest and most cost-efficient Gemini 3-3 series model yet. The company said that starting on Tuesday, 3.1 Flashlight is rolling out in preview to developers via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and for enterprises via Vertex AI. The model is priced at 25 cents per 1 million input tokens and $1.50 per 1 million output

tokens according to the company. Google said that Flashlight delivers enhanced performance. at a fraction of the cost of larger models. It outperforms 2.5 flash with a 2.5 times faster time-to-first answer token and a 45% increase in output speed according to the artificial analysis benchmark while maintaining similar or better quality, end quote. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

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versus the usual $14.95 per month for its premium plan. This is all to rival Spotify, one would imagine, as the plan includes ad-free podcasts as well, quoting Bloomberg. Under the less expensive option, which is available in the U.S. UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France, subscribers won't own the audiobooks they consume, but can stream the titles for as long as they remain members. Premium customers, by contrast, don't lose access to. through the audiobooks they've chosen to download if they close their accounts.

The company said it expects millions of new customers to try Audible through the standard plan in the next year. In August, Amazon consolidated some of its Wondery podcast team with Audible. The new plan will give subscribers access to ad-free podcasts that were once behind a paywall on the Wondry Plus app. Additionally, certain hit podcasts such as The Shrink Next Door and Dying for Sex will become exclusively available for Audible members. Audible's primary competitor, Spotify, has raised prices globally while expanding its audiobook offering to new territories. In 2025, the Swedish streaming giants said the number of people listening to an audiobook rose 36% in the past year, while the number of hours consumed grew by 37%.

End quote. Finally, today, I told you that today was going to be just like yesterday. Sam Altman now says, opening eye has amended its Department of Defense contract to ensure, quote, The AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals. Altman says the DOD affirmed that OpenAI's tools wouldn't be used by agencies like the NSA, and services to them would need a further contract modification. Sources tell Axios Sam Altman approached the DOD's Emil Michelle to rework the contract after it had been signed. Quoting the FT. OpenAI has amended its contract with the U.S. Defense Department just days after it was signed with

Chief Executive Sam Altman saying the rush to make a deal last week, quote, looked opportunistic and sloppy. The company agreed terms with the Pentagon on Friday handing over its AI models for use in classified military operations. The deal came hours after the collapse of negotiations between Anthropic, Open AI's rival and defense secretary Pete Hegeseth. Open AI claimed its agreement had, quote, more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropics. But on Monday, Altman said the chat GPT maker was working with the department to add terms to its contract to ensure, quote, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals. Intelligence services such as the National Security Agency will be excluded from the deal for

the time being, he added. OpenAI has come under pressure since signing the deal with the Pentagon on Friday, employees at the company have voiced concerns internally, according to people familiar with the matter, and on social media. At the weekend, chalk graffiti appeared outside Open AI's San Francisco office saying no to mass surveillance and urging staff to, quote, do the right thing. Anthropic and Open AI have expressed similar concerns about the use of AI for surveillance and for weapons with no human oversight, leading to questions about how Open AI managed to strike a deal with the Pentagon where Anthropic had failed.

Opening Eye said it was satisfied it could retain its red lines around domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons with technical measures to stop misuse of its models. They include only deploying through the cloud rather than on computers installed on the military hardware that might carry out attacks and ensuring its employees are in the loop. Altman also suggested he had more trust in existing laws. Quote, Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt. comfortable with, he said on Saturday. But on Monday, Altman acknowledged some of the concerns

that Anthropic raised about how AI could enable mask data gathering. We shouldn't have rushed to get this out by Friday. The issues are super complex and demand clear communication, wrote Altman. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy, end quote. The additional terms announced on Monday would prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow. There's a new way to sweet green. Meat, wraps, handheld, hearty, and made for life on the moon. With bold, chef-crafted flavors,

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