James Altucher:

Epic Games Reportedly Pivoting to "AI First" Game Development Model

Epic Games is shifting to an "AI first" development strategy for its collaboration with the Walt Disney Company, letting AI models write all the code and guide all the artwork for an upcoming shooter.

Human developers will be tasked with managing and guiding code and art assets generated by models such as Anthropic's Claude, according to internal Epic employee messages. That means "no more hand-written code" and art assets "generated with full AI workflows."

The $1.5 billion collaboration between Epic and Disney, announced in early 2024, was slated to release a Marvel- and Star Wars-themed shooter in March 2027. That project has now been delayed indefinitely amid the AI-related shakeup and understaffed, slower-than-expected development thus far.

CEO Tim Sweeney and Epic have long been bullish on what they see as an impending game development revolution spurred by AI. In an interview with IGN in June, Sweeney saw the technology resulting in games with "the possibility of infinite dialogue with a really simple setup for creators," leading to situations where "small teams will be able to create games with immense amounts of characters and immense and interactive worlds."

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Chris Campbell:

Hackers Break Into Supermarket Fridges and Spoil All the Groceries

Over Sunday night, some spoilsport hackers hijacked the fridge systems of hundreds of supermarkets across France and cranked up their thermostats to temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit, ruining incalculable stores of groceries and even causing fires.

The Paris prosecutor's office described it as a "large-scale" attack that affected "several major food retailers across France."

The numbers are incredible. The chain Carrefour said that 80 of its supermarkets were attacked. The owner of Intermarche said that fridges at 150 stores were heated up to 122 degrees for six hours overnight. And Monoprix, which has 490 stores in France, said that about 5% of its locations were affected.

Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard estimated that the attack has caused losses amounting to "tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day," calling it "unprecedented."

Supermarket fridges and freezers are designed to be accessible over the internet so organizations can monitor their temperatures and remotely adjust them as needed. But evidently these setups weren't as secure as they should have been. France's National Cybersecurity Agency is reportedly investigating the attack and has identified a vulnerability in the software supplied by the Danish firm Danfoss.

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James Altucher:

Carlos Gutierrez: ADHD Diagnosed at 65, Career Lessons

Carlos Gutierrez, the guest on the latest episode of The James Altucher Show, was diagnosed with ADHD at 65. By then, he had already run Kellogg. He had already served in George W. Bush's Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.

And only then did someone explain the procrastination, the disorganization, and those stretches where he could lock onto one thing for weeks and almost nothing else existed.

Seeing as he ran a department where trade was one of the biggest parts of the job, I had to ask him about tariffs. Carlos is not a big tariff guy. He thinks broad tariffs raise prices and hurt businesses. But he also said something about Trump that I didn't expect.

Carlos also touches on China in our discussion. And at the end, I asked what he would tell a 25-year-old trying to build a career today. His answer is basically the opposite of a lot of what I've written over the last decade. And he might be right.

His new book is Sheer Will: Learning to Lead When There Is No Path.

Here's Carlos Gutierrez.

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