🐤 A grand opening

✈️ Take a seat: Southwest Airlines has consistently been among the most popular budget carriers around, and passengers might soon have even more to praise. Known for its open-seating policy, the airline conducted some internal research showing that many potential customers chose a different carrier because they preferred assigned seats. The company said it plans to phase out open seating soon, but that’s not the only change in store. Southwest will also begin offering seats with more legroom and scheduling overnight flights.

📺 Bundle up: The streaming content market continues to look more like the cable TV model it disrupted several years ago. An increasing number of platforms are beginning to offer package deals that promise to lower the cost of individual subscriptions while locking customers into service with all of the associated streamers. Most recently, a collaboration between Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery led to the creation of a bundle including Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max that is currently available in the U.S. for as low as $16.99 per month.

💸 Economic boost: Many Americans have been living in limbo for the past couple of years as inflation made life more expensive and the potential of a recession loomed overhead. But the latest economic numbers seem to reveal a silver lining to that dark cloud. The latest gross domestic product report showed a robust 2.8% rate of annual growth, nearly a full percentage point higher than what most economists had predicted. And even though inflation is still higher than the central bank wants it, the 2.6% annual rate is 0.8% lower than first-quarter statistics.

💻 Mapping it out: It’s a tool that has been in the hands of countless iPhone users for more than a decade … but now Apple Maps is coming to a web browser near you. Sure, Macbooks have long offered Maps as a desktop option, but for everyone else this is a brand new experience. For now, it’s limited to a beta release with a relatively limited number of features — like search, guides, and directions. There’s a desktop app available that provides a little more functionality. Of course, it remains to be seen whether there’s a huge demand for this option.

🏦 Markets: Wall Street saw some recovery yesterday after widespread midweek losses, but the future is anything but certain. Tech stocks continue to falter and one prominent market strategist says we’re not in bull or bear territory right now … but something called a “buffalo market.”

Marci McGregor explained it like this: “It might roam, it might wander in the summer months. But ultimately, what will turn the buffalo back to a proper bull is fundamentals.”

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Athletes, spectators, and dignitaries from around the world are gathered in Paris today for what promises to be one of the biggest events the city has ever hosted. The Summer Olympics will begin with an opening ceremony packed with fanfare.

And if you plan to watch any or all of the festivities, keep these tips in mind

Where to watch

NBC has the rights to coverage of this year’s Olympics and will have dozens of cameras set up to bring all of the action from virtually every conceivable angle.

In this age of streaming content, however, there are certainly other options available. Along with traditional broadcast coverage on the NBC network, you can also catch the ceremony and all the highlights on the Peacock app as well as NBCUniversal’s digital platforms NBC and NBC Olympics.

When to watch

The coverage will begin early, with a pre-show at noon, but the ceremony won’t officially begin until 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

If that’s not convenient, NBC will air a prime-time encore broadcast — along with additional coverage — beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET. The entire ceremony is expected to last about four hours.

What to watch

Organizers are promising a particularly special event … even by Olympic standards.

It will include more than 10,000 athletes sailing along the Seine River, which artistic director Thomas Jolly said is a feat of historic significance.

“An opening ceremony has never been held outside of a stadium,” he explained.

The French flag will be on display and the nation’s anthem will play to kick off the ceremony, followed by the traditional Parade of Nations.

NBC hosts will include Mike Tirico, singer Kelly Clarkson, and retired NFL player Peyton Manning.

There’s also speculation about a duet performance by Celine Dion and Lady Gaga.

Ryan Reynolds has expertly mixed raunchy humor and superhero action in a series of “Deadpool” films while Hugh Jackman has been bringing his pitch-perfect portrayal of X-Men member Wolverine to the big screen since the beginning of this century.

Now, the two are joining forces for a movie that premieres today — and that both believe will be a rip-roaring good time for audiences.

Back in the suit

For his part, Jackman initially believed his role in 2017’s “Logan” would be the last time he’d be portraying Wolverine. But during an interview alongside his new co-star, he said that watching Reynolds exploring a “whole different playground” in “Deadpool” made him think twice about hanging up his claws.

If the good-natured ribbing and jokes between the two actors during the promotional interview are any indication, Jackman’s decision to give it another go as Wolverine will pay off with a healthy dose of on-screen chemistry with Reynolds’ Deadpool.

The collaboration is possible due to Disney’s successful bid to attain the rights to both characters after it acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019.

Assuming “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a hit, it couldn’t come at a better time for the studio, which has had a string of disappointing releases in recent years.

“A straight fastball of joy”

Superhero films have seen a dip in their popularity of late, but “Deadpool” might still be a compelling draw after setting a box office record for R-rated movies when it dropped in 2016.

Now, director Shawn Levy says the Reynolds-Jackman team “has a chance of being a game-changing kind of moment” for the respective franchises and the superhero genre as a whole.

For his part, however, Reynolds says he’s just interested in delivering “a straight fastball of joy right into whatever the hell chunk of your brain creates serotonin.”

For a certain “Sesame Street” monster, cookies are always a welcome treat. For billions of internet users around the world, however, they represent a significant loss of online privacy.

And Google seemed to understand this fact, promising its popular Chrome web browser would be eliminating third-party tracking cookies from its system. But those plans have changed.

If you use Chrome to browse the internet, here’s what that means for you.

A little background

Google initially touted its so-called Privacy Sandbox as a way to satisfy users and activists who want enhanced privacy without alienating the advertisers who rely on personal data to deliver targeted ads.

On the surface, the tech giant’s vow to eliminate cookies sounded like a promising step in the right direction, but now Google is taking a conspicuous step back from that goal. Instead of removing those trackers, it now says users will have the option to establish their own privacy settings.

“This shows Google still prioritizes advertisers over user privacy,” asserted one privacy advocate. “Users must take control of their privacy settings to protect themselves.”

Regulators who have been cracking down on Google’s privacy policies haven’t yet decided whether they’re OK with the newest proposal.

Critics and competitors react

Apple is a chief rival to Google and has built a reputation for prioritizing user privacy. As such, it has capitalized on this ongoing debate to portray its Safari browser as a superior Chrome alternative.

Safari (as well as Firefox) have been blocking third-party cookies for several years.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also weighed in, advising that Google’s compromise doesn’t address concerns about advertisers gaining access to the online behavior of Chrome users.

Providing users with customizable privacy settings might be better than nothing — but it’s clearly not as much as competitors are willing to do.