US tech CEO in viral Coldplay concert video resigns
The incident led to relentless memes and sparked discussions about workplace relationships and accountability.
Internet sleuths and social media amplified the controversy, with mascots even recreating the moment for laughs.
The CEO of an American tech company resigned Saturday after a video of him embracing an alleged colleague at a Coldplay concert went viral and fueled relentless memes.
'Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met,' New York-based Astronomer said in a statement shared on LinkedIn.
'Andy Byron has tendered his resignation,' the firm said, after previously launching an investigation.
During a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, the jumbotron zoomed in on a man and a woman embracing in the stands.
But the canoodling pair appeared shocked and horrified when they spotted themselves on the big screen, with the man ducking out of frame and the woman hiding her face.
'Uh-oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy,' joked Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
Within hours, internet sleuths tracked down the man as Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and said the woman was the company's chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, alleging that the two were having a not-so-discreet affair.
The video has garnered millions of views on TikTok and other social media, giving rise to memes discussing everything from the folly of having an affair at a Coldplay concert to the hypocrisy of an HR representative seemingly caught in a workplace relationship.
'The craziest thing about the Astronomer CEO cheating scandal is that it was the HR lady,' said one X user. 'The person who would warn you against fraternising with coworkers.'
Furry mascots of the Philadelphia Phillies Major League Baseball team jumped on the trend and recreated the scene for the jumbotron at a game after the video went viral.
However, an apology statement attributed to Byron, which spread rapidly online, was fake and appeared to have originated from a parody account.
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Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Sandler, Shooter and me: What happened when I joined the 'Happy Gilmore 2' cast on the golf course
At first, I was skeptical about why the beloved comedy needed a sequel at all. Now I get it. BEDMINSTER, New Jersey — After spending a day zooming around a country club in a golf cart, feeling the balmy breeze filter through my collared sweater vest, I saw the best thing I'd seen all day: Dozens of middle-aged golf tournament participants, clad in baseball hats and polo shirts, hollering 'Shooter McGavin!' with unbridled joy. From my perch on the back of the bougie vehicle, I could see actor Christopher McDonald in the cart ahead of me, beaming with joy as real-life golfers recognized him as the uppity villain he played in a movie that premiered 29 years ago, Happy Gilmore. On the greens of Fiddler's Elbow Country Club on July 13, the 1996 comedy about a belligerent failed hockey player who transforms into a golfer to save his grandmother's home might as well be in theaters today. I don't think the real-life golfers knew this, but McDonald and I were there — along with Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Benny Safdie and a gaggle of other journalists — for a press event on behalf of Happy Gilmore 2, its long-awaited follow-up, which starts streaming on Netflix July 25. Any questions I had about why Happy Gilmore is one of the few Sandler characters to get his own sequel dissipated when I saw that crowd erupt. People aren't just going to stream this movie because they love seeing familiar material rebooted and rehashed. They love this guy — the outsider who invaded their sport, messed it up and defeated the established Goliath of golf. Earlier that day, I sat with McDonald and Safdie on a hill overlooking the course. They gushed to me about the timelessness of Happy Gilmore, excitedly quoting the original movie to each other as they talked about why it needed a follow-up film. 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He put his hands on his hips, mocking me as if I were the fancy one, then broke into a smile to share that he'd met Sandler during their New York University days. I might have been at a ritzy country club, but a few scenes from the sequel were filmed here, and this was Sandler's domain. I took the portable neck fan Netflix had given me the night before at a screening, now smudged with the orange streaks of the makeup I sweated off, and hopped in a golf cart that took me to a driving range. There, a kind staffer handed me a Boston Bruins jersey and a hockey stick and invited me to try to put a golf ball into a hole. I could not do it in less than four swings, no matter how hard I tried or how close I stood, even after the country club's staff professional gently encouraged me to 'just tap it in.' I wanted to blast the ball into the stratosphere or drop to my hands and knees on the green and shriek, 'That's your home! Are you too good for your home?!' at the menacing little sphere, but I had to go meet Sandler. And my sweater vest was a rental item I couldn't afford to cover in grass stains. When I met the megastar, he was wearing an oversize polo shirt and shorts — in keeping with the country club's dress code, but true to his signature style. Sandler's laid-back demeanor instantly put me at ease as he fired off jokes and sipped from a venti Starbucks drink with his old pal, Bowen, aka Virginia Venit, the gorgeous PR director who quickly fell for Gilmore's rough-around-the-edges style and became his 'happy place.' Their love anchors the original movie, so I was surprised when I heard Bowen say she didn't expect to be in the sequel. She thought she might be replaced by a younger actress. 'My kids were like, 'It's never gonna happen for you, old lady!'' she told me, adding that Sandler didn't owe her anything. Sandler rejected that, saying, 'She was wonderful in it. Our characters love each other!' 'In real life, I don't love being near her so much,' he added, joking that their best day on set was when Bowen finally left. Family matters I was moved by how much the sequel was centered around family. Sandler and Bowen's characters are still very much in love and have several sons and a daughter, played by Sandler's real-life kid, Sunny. His daughter, Sadie, and wife, Jackie, also have roles in the new film. Sandler told me the first time his real-life family was all together onscreen was in 2008's Bedtime Stories — in one scene, Jackie is holding Sadie while pregnant with Sunny. I flashed back to my own screening of Happy Gilmore 2 the night before, where members of the press gathered at a fancy hotel in New York City to watch it, and how I couldn't stop thinking about how it was impossible to pinpoint when I'd seen the original film because it had probably been one I stumbled upon playing on TV while channel flipping with my dad. I bonded with other journalists about this bygone era of content consumption: How we, now entertainment reporters, used to watch so many movies in short bursts between commercials, censored by networks and abbreviated for time — never sitting down to watch something from beginning to end. We absorbed them through osmosis, which somehow made the jokes we caught even more memorable and quotable. I know my dad will watch Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix at home in North Carolina without me and text me about it after, but I wish we could have seen it together in the living room of my childhood house, cackling together when Sandler yells something goofy or when the smack of his hockey stick against a golf ball results in a rocket-launch sound effect. The sequel's touching father-daughter storyline would have added a sweetness to the raucous premise we initially bonded over. 'Ask if he ever considered having Bill Murray reprise his role as Carl from Caddyshack in Happy Gilmore,' my dad texted me when I told him I was interviewing Sandler. He gets it. My dad is a big sports fan — a college track athlete and a longtime high school football coach. He's always bonded with my brothers over sports, but I was lacking in the athleticism and attention span departments. Not wanting to miss any opportunity to hang out with him, I started playing a game with myself every time we watched a sporting event: I'd think of how rules could be added or subtracted to games to make them more fun. To watch a game closely enough to know exactly how to best break it is a twisted but profound love language. Happy Gilmore put this into practice by treating a golf ball like a hockey puck. The fictional character knew that people should be able to smack it with as much ferocity as possible and maybe beat up a few haters on the sidelines, so long as they're technically fine after. I applied this to my own thought experiments: Football players should have to hug the people they tackle afterward. If a hockey player gets put in the penalty box, they should be able to choose a song that plays for the length of their stay. While watching the sequel, I realized that having a guy come in and break all the rules of a sport and unexpectedly become the best at it is kind of a trend right now. There's Happy Gilmore, of course, but Brad Pitt's character does the same thing in F1, crashing into people constantly. I asked the Happy Gilmore 2 cast members to pitch other sports that would be fun to break the rules of for future movies. Bowen suggested Ping-Pong, and Sandler pointed out that Marty Supreme, a movie about table tennis legend Marty Reisman starring Timothée Chalamet, is out this year. (When I told him I can't hear 'Chalamet' in my head without saying it in the voice Sandler did at the 2025 Golden Globes, he kindly performed the soundbite for me.) Safdie suggested basketball since it's so popular — Space Jam and Air Bud pushed the sport to its limits, but there are plenty more rules to break. He directed The Smashing Machine, a mixed martial arts biopic starring Dwayne Johnson that's out later this year and likely fits the bill, though he didn't plug his upcoming project. McDonald couldn't think of a sport that needed to be broken in the moment, but he approached me after the interview to pitch that someone should ruin curling — maybe with a hockey stick? Not a bad idea for the next Happy Gilmore installment. 'I love the fans. They just think the movie's the bomb,' McDonald told me. I saw it firsthand. From the dudes rallying around Shooter McGavin to Sandler's girl-dad tendencies to my own memories with my father that this whole experience brought up, it makes perfect sense to me why Happy Gilmore is a character that deserves revisiting. The nostalgia he inspires is tinged with warmth and community, uniting sports-loving fathers and pop culture-loving daughters as well as country club golfers and belligerent hockey players over a film about family, rule breaking and lighthearted physical violence. Happy Gilmore forever.
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5 minutes ago
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CNET
7 minutes ago
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I Tried AI as My Astrologer. It Told Me Something Profound
If you're cosmically inclined, in tune with all the retrogrades and speak in star signs, you'll love an artificial intelligence-generated interpretation of your natal chart. This is one of the most fun use cases of AI. Birth charts are notoriously difficult to interpret but ChatGPT can help you make sense of it and allow you to ask specific questions about your reading. You can use AI as a self-discovery tool, to supplement therapy sessions, as a tarot card reader and to get career guidance. Have a conversation with your higher self, with ChatGPT. While you should avoid making any major life decisions from this conversation alone (especially during Mercury Retrograde), it can serve as a mirror to better understand yourself. Get a down-to-earth birth chart analysis using AI. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Prompt your way to future predictions Because AI is known to convincingly hallucinate -- that is, make things up based on bad information on the internet -- it's better to get your natal chart from a specific astrology website so you know it's accurate, then feed the report into ChatGPT. There are plenty of websites out there, like Café Astrology and Co-Star. You'll need to input your location of birth, date of birth and time of birth. Make sure the time is right, because guessing it will skew the results. These websites usually generate long reports so I downloaded the PDF option. I ended up using Café Astrology because Co-Star didn't have a PDF download option. Over to ChatGPT to help me decipher what this means: Café Astrology/Screenshot by CNET First, I asked ChatGPT to give me a tailored astrology reading based on my birth chart, then attached the PDF. The devil is in the details with astrology and out of the gate, ChatGPT got an important detail wrong: it switched around my birth month/day (I think because I wrote it in the American format but said I was born in Australia -- so it read the date in the Australian format). I corrected it and it generated a new chart. First of all, I love how ChatGPT describes what the dominant houses mean. For example, your rising sign is how the world sees you vs. your sun sign, which is how you see yourself. My sun sign is in Taurus, so I crave loyalty, longevity and consistency, yet my moon sign (emotional world) is Sagittarius, so I need freedom and variety. I asked which part of me is more important to nurture -- the security or the freedom -- based on my chart. This is where AI shines, because you can't have a conversation like this with a PDF chart (and it would cost a lot of money to have a conversation with an astrologist). Here's what it said: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET ChatGPT shared a powerful perspective I hadn't considered: My need for stability vs. adventure aren't opposites but rather complementary. But I need a secure foundation in order to feel free. I always thought of it as a battle but, in fact, I can have both. The foundation enables freedom. Pretty insightful stuff. I like how it breaks down action steps to tend to both sides of my psyche: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET Next, I asked what's interesting about my chart that's not obvious to me. ChatGPT revealed that my need for security vs. surprise also comes through in my love life. I need love to feel surprising and non-traditional, even if I crave long-term connections. It even told me about how I interpret and show love. ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET Not surprised that banter is important, as Aussies love good quips. It also picked up that I require freedom and impact in my work, even suggesting women's health advocacy, which is a growing passion of mine (after coming out and trying to conceive via IVF). ChatGPT even touched on past-life tendencies and then gave me some themes for the year: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET Relinquishing timelines -- a powerful lesson for me this year, as I navigate infertility. As I chatted with my AI astrologer, two big questions came up for me: What the second half of 2025 will bring. When I'll get pregnant. Here's some of my reading, which was filled with an impressive amount of info and predictions: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET It also gave me a "thematic timeline" for the rest of the year, and "themes to lean into." Can AI use astrology to predict your future? I asked ChatGPT when I will get pregnant and, to its credit, it said it can't predict exact events. One point for ethics! But it can help identify windows of emotional readiness, karmic timing and cosmic support based on my chart and current planetary transits. Here's what my AI astrologer predicts: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET I asked one final question: When should I do an embryo transfer based on my transits? It gave me two windows: Oct. 28-Nov. 22, 2025, and Feb. 7-Feb. 20, 2026. It described why those windows would be strong according to the planets and stars, and which would be the best transfer days within those windows. I even asked what was happening in June, when my latest embryo transfer failed. It explained what was going on in the planets and how the Capricorn Moon isn't a fertile placement. I ended the chat here on a high note: ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET The verdict? Time will tell whether this comes true but I felt empowered and excited about my future after my AI astrology session. I won't be surrendering all control to the cosmos (or ChatGPT for that matter), but it's an insightful exercise to add to your self-discovery toolkit.
