A Scholastic Book Fair cash register appears for sale on eBay, and Michael MJD simply wants to get his hands on it for a closer look. It turns out to be a PAX E500 POS terminal that Scholastic had customized for their traveling sales events. These devices would process orders for books, posters, pencils, and anything else was piled up in those brief, generally chaotic classroom installations.

The front is a large touchscreen that launches Scholastic’s proprietary point-of-sale software. This is directly next to a magnetic stripe and chip card reader, so you can use your credit card. Along the bottom, there’s a thermal receipt printer waiting to be fed paper, as well as its own button to release new rolls. Moving to the back, we have a set of practical connections: a cash drawer port and an obsolete barcode scanner, power, dual Ethernet ports labeled LAN A and another, as well as an HDMI output and audio connector attached to a little extension board secured in place by a single tiny screw. A small camera looks ahead and is primarily used to scan QR codes associated with Scholastic’s e-wallet system. An internal battery is built in to keep the gadget running for a few minutes if the power goes out; however, it only showed 7% when it was still plugged in.

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When you turn it on, the screen lights up with a digital voice informing you that additional paper is required or that the printer cover is open, just the standard safety checks. The software then prompts you for a PIN, which by default is 9999, as well as your login credentials. The following screen displays a summary of all the facts from the last time it was used, including the fair chairperson’s name and tax settings. The fact that it may be used offline is deliberate; Scholastic fairs are frequently held in locations such as gyms or libraries that do not always have dependable internet access, so it retains all transactions locally until it can reconnect. You also have a training mode that allows you to practice without any actual money moving hands, which is definitely a smart idea. MJD adds a variety of goods to a mock order, including erasers, hand pointers, deep ink stickers, a plethora of pencils and pens, and even gift cards.

Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) is installed on the machine, but it has been heavily modified to create a version dubbed PDroid that is specifically tailored for secure payment systems. But you won’t find the Google Play store anywhere, and if you try to enable unknown sources or developer mode, you’ll receive a notice telling you can’t; this is all due to some extremely strong security regulations in place. Any attempts to sideload programs are immediately shut down by the system simply because you cannot change the security settings to make them operate. Other pre-installed apps on the system include a payment device manager, which was last updated in March 2022, and a little tool called a connectivity suite, which will assist you in getting your data uploaded after you’re finished. Unplugging your TV and using an HDMI cord to mirror your screen to an external display works great, but the printer itself will not work during any simulated checkout process. That’s presumably because when you try to print receipts, it starts taking a lot of power, putting the machine into battery saver mode, and even when you’re plugged in, the status bars turn orange and the printer just stops operating.

After months of backroom negotiations, regulatory whispers, and more than a few political landmines, Paramount has secured a winning bid for Warner Bros., with the full Warner Bros. board approving the deal late February 26, 2026. Netflix, which technically had four days to counter, has officially stepped aside.

This was never just about adding another studio logo to a corporate slide deck. It was a fight for control of the streaming hierarchy and stewardship of more than a century of film and television history — one of the deepest content libraries in the business. As with most media megadeals of this scale, the numbers mattered, but so did the politics, the regulators, and the strategic leverage behind closed doors. Paramount didn’t just buy assets; it just redrew the balance of power in Hollywood.

That said, Netflix may yet have the last laugh. The real test begins now: how Paramount manages the debt load tied to the acquisition and how effectively it restructures and integrates major brands like HBO and CNN under a single corporate strategy. Winning the bid is one thing. Making the math and the messaging work long term is another.

Netflix Explains Why It Withdrew From Warner Bros Bid

Netflix, Inc. today confirmed that it will not increase its offer for Warner Bros. after being notified by Warner Bros. Discovery that its Board of Directors determined Paramount Skydance’s latest bid qualifies as a “Superior Proposal” under the terms of the existing merger agreement with Netflix.

In response, co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters issued the following statement:

“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval. However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.

Warner Bros. is a world-class organization, and we want to thank David Zaslav, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Bruce Campbell, Brad Singer, and the WBD Board for running a fair and rigorous process. We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the U.S.  But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.

Netflix’s business is healthy, strong, and growing organically, powered by our slate and best-in-class streaming service. This year, we’ll invest approximately $20 billion in quality films and series and will expand our entertainment offering. Consistent with our capital allocation policy, we’ll also resume our share repurchase program.

We will continue to do what we’ve done for more than 20 years as a public company: delight our members, profitably grow our business, and drive long-term shareholder value.”

What Happens Next After Paramount’s Warner Bros Victory?

Although Paramount Skydance has won the bid for Warner Bros., this story is far from over. The deal still faces regulatory review, and that process alone could stretch for months depending on how aggressively federal agencies decide to examine consolidation in both the streaming and broadcast news sectors.

There is also a significant financial wrinkle. Because Warner Bros. reversed course after previously accepting Netflix’s acquisition proposal, Paramount is now expected to pay Netflix a $2.8 billion termination fee to formally close out that agreement. That is not pocket change. For Netflix, it’s a clear win. The company walks away with $2.8 billion in cash and saw its stock jump more than 10 percent in after hours trading following the announcement, recovering ground after a bumpy stretch tied to the original deal news.

Paramount did not get here cheaply. To secure the winning bid, additional financing guarantees were reportedly backed by Oracle Founder, Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison. The Paramount Skydance structure already involved significant leverage, and absorbing Warner Bros. adds even more debt to the balance sheet. With substantial overlap across film studios, streaming platforms, and television networks, cost cutting and consolidation are not just likely. They are inevitable. We have seen this movie before.

If regulators approve the transaction as structured, Paramount would gain control of Warner Bros.’ film and television studios, its deep content library, HBO, CNN, and the broader portfolio of cable and streaming assets. That dramatically reshapes the competitive landscape. The question is no longer who won the bidding war. It is whether Paramount can manage the debt, streamline overlapping operations, and turn one of the largest content consolidations in modern media history into a sustainable long term strategy.

If everything is approved as planned, here is what Paramount would acquire from Warner Bros.:

Extensive Library and Franchises: Paramount would gain access to one of the deepest film and television vaults in the business, including Harry Potter, the DC Universe, Lord of the Rings, The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Max, Friends, and Game of Thrones. That is more than a century of IP that can be rebooted, expanded, licensed, or streamed globally.

Streaming and Networks: Max would likely be folded into or tightly integrated with Paramount+, while Paramount would also assume control of major cable brands including CNN, Discovery, HGTV, Food Network, TNT, and TBS. That significantly expands its footprint across streaming, news, lifestyle, and sports adjacent programming.

Warner Bros. Pictures: The crown jewel. Paramount would take control of Warner Bros. Pictures, instantly strengthening its theatrical pipeline and production scale alongside Paramount Pictures. That combination alone reshapes the studio hierarchy.

Industry Clout: The merger consolidates two historic entertainment companies into a single content and distribution powerhouse with global reach across theatrical, streaming, cable, and licensing.

That said, ownership does not guarantee permanence. With the level of debt involved and clear overlap between studio operations, streaming platforms, and networks, divestitures, restructurings, and cost cutting are realistic possibilities. The full impact of Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. may not be clear until 2027, assuming regulators ultimately approve the deal.

Bottom Line: Winners and Losers

To call this a seismic shift in entertainment would be conservative. Paramount won the bidding war, but winning the auction is not the same as winning the long game. The company now carries more debt, more overlap, and more regulatory exposure than ever.

Netflix walks away with $2.8 billion in termination fees and a double digit one day stock surge after months of volatility tied to the original agreement. That is not exactly losing. Shareholders are breathing easier.

The political angle is impossible to ignore. Reports of meetings between Netflix leadership and the Trump administration add another layer of intrigue, even if the optics may prove more dramatic than the reality. At the same time, Paramount’s structure raises its own questions. Can one company realistically control both CBS News and CNN without accusations of media consolidation bias? CNN’s ratings struggles and outsized talent contracts make restructuring likely. A merger into CBS News, a radical reformat, or aggressive cost cutting are all on the table. Regulators will be watching closely, and so will critics.

Three major issues will define how this plays out:

News Consolidation: Owning both CBS News and CNN invites scrutiny. If CNN continues underperforming, Paramount may merge operations or dramatically reshape it. Either move will trigger industry backlash.

Theatrical Windows: Movie theaters are in a fragile position. If Paramount shortens theatrical runs to rush content onto Paramount+, exhibitors like AMC face additional pressure. A three week window may boost streaming but could starve cinemas of critical revenue.

Physical Media and Consumer Impact: Some fans are celebrating today, believing Paramount will be more supportive of Blu ray and UHD releases than Netflix. Maybe. But physical media remains a small slice of overall revenue. Streaming scale and ad supported tiers will drive decisions, not collector sentiment.

And that leads to the bigger question: is the consumer actually the winner here? Consolidation often promises efficiency and scale, but it can also mean higher prices, fewer choices, and cost cutting that affects content quality.

By 2027, the home entertainment landscape will look very different. The only certainty right now is that the streaming war just entered a far more complicated phase.

Related Reading:

Hearing someone talk about digital censorship in China is always either extremely boring or extremely interesting. Most of the time, people are still regurgitating the same talking points from 20 years ago about how the Chinese internet is like living in George Orwell’s 1984. But occasionally, someone discovers something new about how the Chinese government exerts control over emerging technologies, revealing how the censorship machine is a constantly evolving beast.

A new paper by scholars from Stanford University and Princeton University about Chinese artificial intelligence belongs to the second category. The researchers fed the same 145 politically sensitive questions to four Chinese large language models and five American models and then compared how they responded. They then repeated the same experiment 100 times.

The main findings won’t be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention: Chinese models refuse to answer significantly more of the questions than the American models. (DeepSeek refused 36 percent of the questions, while Baidu’s Ernie Bot refused 32 percent; OpenAI’s GPT and Meta’s Llama had refusal rates lower than 3 percent.) In cases where they didn’t outright refuse to answer, the Chinese models also gave shorter answers and more inaccurate information than their American counterparts did.

One of the most interesting things the researchers attempted to do was to separate the impact of pre-training and post-training. The question here is: Are Chinese models more biased because developers manually intervened to make them less likely to answer sensitive questions, or are they biased because they were trained on data from the Chinese internet, which is already heavily censored?

“Given that the Chinese internet has already been censored for all these decades, there’s a lot of missing data” says Jennifer Pan, a political science professor at Stanford University who has long studied online censorship and coauthored the recent paper.

Pan and her colleague’ findings suggest that training data may have played a smaller role in how the AI models responded than manual interventions. Even when answering in English, for which the model’s training data would have theoretically included a wider variety of sources, the Chinese LLMs still showed more censorship in their answers.

Today, anyone can ask DeepSeek or Qwen a question about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and immediately see censorship is happening, but it’s hard to tell how much it impacts normal users and how to properly identify the source of the manipulation. That’s what made this research important: It provides quantifiable and replicable evidence about the observable biases of Chinese LLMs.

Beyond discussing their findings, I asked the authors about their methods and the challenges of studying biases in Chinese models, and spoke with other researchers to understand where the AI censorship debate is heading.

What You Don’t Know

One of the difficulties of studying AI models is that they have a tendency to hallucinate, so you can’t always tell if they are lying because they know not to say the correct answer or because they actually don’t know it.

One example Pan cited from her paper was a question aboutLiu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. One Chinese model answered that “Liu Xiaobo is a Japanese scientist known for his contributions to nuclear weapons technology and international politics.” That is, of course, a complete lie. But why did the model tell it? Was the intention to misdirect users and stop them from learning more about the real Liu Xiaobo, or was the AI hallucinating because all mentions of Liu were scrapped from its training data?

“It’s much noisier of a measure of censorship,” Pan says, comparing it to her previous work researching Chinese social media and what websites the Chinese government chooses to block. “Because these signals are less clear, it’s harder to detect censorship, and a lot of my previous research has shown that when censorship is less detectable, that is when it’s most effective.”