Author Archives: Danny Gallagher

Paramount’s strategy of purposeful digital rot doesn’t even make sense

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Sometimes as we navigate our way through the daily doom scroll that is our current news cycle, it’s nice to go back and remember how things used to be. Those times sucked too but a distraction is still a distraction. One of my favorite ways to look at the past was by going through old clips of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central’s website.

Paramount went on a content teardown this week and pulled old clips and episodes of its signature satire shows from the Comedy Central website, as well as content from cable channels like TV Land, CMT and the Paramount Network, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Those sites now contain a notice that tells views the clips are unavailable there, but that they can "sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows."

It’s a bizarre move because most of those old episodes aren’t available on its Paramount+ streaming service. Essentially, there's no longer a free, legal means to consume the archive of these shows. It wouldn’t be so insulting if you also couldn’t watch all of Carlos Mencia’s comedy specials on the platform.

If you’re itching to watch some of Comedy Central’s older shows, some are available on the streaming service and you can still purchase some episodes of The Colbert Report on AppleTV or the iTunes store. If you’re also like me and you still use DVDs, you can buy used copies of The Best of the Colbert Report and The Daily Show’s Indecision 2004 coverage of the presidential election from online retailers. Paramount can’t take away physical media… yet. But it seems likely some portion of these shows — as well as the entire MTVNews archive — are now effectively lost to time for no good reason.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paramounts-strategy-of-purposeful-digital-rot-doesnt-even-make-sense-204613382.html?src=rss

Toys ‘R’ Us uses OpenAI’s Sora to make a brand film about its origin story and it’s horrifying

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The rise of artificial intelligence in our media and entertainment industries has raised a lot of concerns about programs like Open Al’s text-to-video maker Sora replacing the artistic endeavors and aspirations of humans. If those AI made movies are anything like a new brand film about the Toys 'R' Us toy store chain's origin story, the only thing we’ll have to fear is watching them.

Toys ‘R’ Us’s current owner WHP Global worked with the Emmy nominated creative agency Native Foreign to create a short brand film called The Origin of Toys ‘R’ Us using OpenAI’s text-to-video creator Sora. The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and can currently be viewed on the toy retailer’s website.

The Origin of Toys ‘R’ Us is only a little over a minute long but it’s a mix of confusing and eerie. The film features the young version of the toy store chain’s founder Charles Lazarus coming up with the idea for his signature retail creation and its giraffe mascot Geoffrey but almost the entire thing takes place in some kind of cosmic fever dream. It’s like someone tried to take the hollow behavior of M3GAN, dressed her up like Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show and let it loose in the remnants of a toy store that blew up near the edge of the universe.

In the movie, Mini-Charles is a starry eyed kid hanging out in a bicycle shop owned by his father who looks like a cross between Billy Eichner and John Denver. Little Charlie falls asleep and has a weird dream about some of kind of Dr. Seuss planetarium where every kind of generic toy you can dream of sits on shelves and floats above his head. This magical place is where he meets Geoffrey the giraffe, the store’s iconic mascot, that looks like Sona used a different AI to generate it.

The film leaves out the part where Lazarus wakes up in an emergency room after accidentally doing “all the mushrooms” that caused him to have his retail fever dream.

Sora is a generative AI model that creates “realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions,” according to the OpenAI website. OpenAI premiered its video generating model in February. Sora can generate videos that are about a minute long from text prompts. It’s not available to the public yet.

The current state of Toys ‘R’ Us isn’t as rosy as its brand film makes it out to be. The toy store chain filed for bankruptcy in 2018 closing all of its stores in one fell swoop. The acquisition firm WHP Global took over the brand’s parent company Tru Kids Inc. in 2021. Two years later, the firm announced plans to expand the toy store brand with new locations in airports and cruise ships starting with a location in Dallas-Fort Worth international Airport and locations of the department store chain Macy’s.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/toys-r-us-uses-openais-sora-to-make-a-brand-film-about-its-origin-story-and-its-horrifying-214730500.html?src=rss

Hamish Linklater is the new voice of Batman

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Replacing a talent like the late Kevin Conroy, the man who voiced Batman in fan favorites like Batman: The Animated Series and the Arkham game trilogy, must be a monumental feat. Conroy’s deep, steady voice defined the character for decades — it’s a challenge just to think of a cartoon Batman and not hear Conroy’s voice behind the mic. Sadly, Conroy passed away in 2022 and Batman must carry on without him.

A new series is coming to Amazon Prime starting on August 1 called Batman: Caped Crusader and Vanity Fair revealed that actor Hamish Linklater will provide the voice for Batman/Bruce Wayne on the new noirish animated series. Linklater is best known for roles in movies including The Big Short and Midnight Mass, and shows like the recent Apple+ limited series Manhunt, where he played President Abraham Lincoln.

Batman: Caped Crusader aims to be more of an old-fashioned detective story with the art style of the original 1939 comics. Linklater’s take on the character seems more subdued to match the tone, and it’ll be interesting to see how a Batman show will work in the style of a Mickey Spillane-esque story.

No Batman movie or show is complete without his menagerie of villains. Only three of the voice actors have been revealed so far: Christina Ricci will voice Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Diedrich Bader will voice Two-Face/Harvey Dent and Jamie Chung will play Harley Quinn.

Based on the full cast list, there should be more villains on the roster. The series will also feature the voices of McKenna Grace, Minnie Driver, Gary Anthony Williams, Tom Kenny, John DiMaggio and Michelle C. Bonilla, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Fans of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold will also be happy to know that some of those shows’ original writers and creators are joining the new Amazon Prime series. Bruce Timm, the artist and co-creator of Batman: The Animated Series, and James Tucker, the producer and one of the writers of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, are the showrunners and executive producers of Batman: Caped Crusader.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hamish-linklater-is-the-new-voice-of-batman-214608627.html?src=rss

Five men face jail time for running the illegal streaming service Jetflicks

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The illegal streaming service Jetflicks once boasted on its website that visitors could watch just about any TV show or movie “Anytime. Anywhere.” Now the five people behind the bootleg streaming service are facing some serious jail time.

A jury found Kristopher Dallman, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi and Peter Huber guilty in a Las Vegas federal court on Friday for conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann was also found guilty on two counts of money laundering and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement for leading the Jetflicks operation, according to court documents and a US Department of Justice press release.

Jetflicks used computer scripts and software to scour the internet for illegal copies of movies and television shows and posted hundreds of thousands of illegal copies as far back as 2007 from torrent and Usenet sites. The defendants created a catalog of bootleg shows and movies bigger than the combined collections of streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, according to the Department of Justice.

Users could pay a subscription fee to access the site on pretty much any media streaming device with a web browser. Jetflicks claimed to “offer more than 183,200 television episodes and have more than 37,000 subscribers,” according to the initial indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2019.

Dallmann, the leader of the group, and his co-conspirators “made millions of dollars streaming and distributing this catalog of stolen content,” according to the press release.

At one point, operators and employees of Jetflicks were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from its subscription service. Dallman wrote in an online chat that his site made $750,000 in one year, according to the indictment.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) took notice of Jetflicks in 2012 and sent cease and desist letters to the site’s operators. Four years later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started its undercover operation of the site by paying for a six-month subscription. Undercover agents recorded multiple instances of illegal uploads of shows like Shameless, Ray Donovan, The OA and SyFy’s 12 Monkeys alongside charges for accessing them. Then the agents traced those charges back to the defendants’ bank accounts, according to court records.

A sentencing hearing has yet to be scheduled. The Department of Justice says Dallman could face up to 48 years in prison and the four remaining defendants could each face five years in prison.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/five-men-face-jail-time-for-running-the-illegal-streaming-service-jetflicks-202758485.html?src=rss

Amazon says it’s cut down on those plastic air pillows in packages

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You know those little plastic air bags in your more fragile Amazon purchases that make perfect popping noise makers when you crush them? Amazon says it's reduced its usage of them and plans to completely eliminate using them by the end of the year.

The ecommerce behemoth announced on its news blog that it has reduced the use of plastic air pillows by 95 percent and switched to crumbled paper filler instead. Amazon also says it plans to use paper filler for “nearly all” of its customer deliveries on Prime Day.

The company says its decision to phase out the use of plastic air cushions at its distribution centers aims to eliminate unnecessary waste and focus more on using recycled materials.

Plastic pollution has always been a concern when it comes to our environment but it has dramatically increased as a result of Amazon’s meteoric rise especially during the COVID pandemic. The nonprofit ocean conservation group Oceana released a study in 2021 showing that Amazon produced 599 million pounds of plastic waste in 2020. The group also estimated that the waste produced from plastic air pillows alone “would circle the Earth more than 600 times.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-says-its-cut-down-on-those-plastic-air-pillows-in-packages-222953642.html?src=rss

New York Governor signs two new bills into law protecting kids from social media

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New York has passed two new laws restricting how social media companies interact with and collect data from users under the age of 18.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed two bills into law on Thursday including the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act.

SAFE requires social media companies like Facebook and X to restrict addictive feeds to minors on its platforms. These include feeds that are “algorithmically driven” to prevent “unhealthy levels of engagement,” according to a press release.

The New York Child Data Protection Act also prevents online sites and devices from collecting, sharing or selling the personal data of anyone under the age of 18.

Both laws require companies to obtain consent from parents before allowing kids to access feeds driven by algorithms or collecting data from them. The new laws also require social media companies to create age verification and parental consent controls for its platforms based on guidelines set by New York’s Attorney General.

New York passed two new laws restricting how social media companies interact with and collect data from users under the age of 18. Governor Hochul said in a released statement that these new policies will “provide a safer digital environment, give parents more peace of mind and create a brighter future for young people across New York.”

Other parts of the country have passed laws restricting or limiting children’s access to phones and online platforms. The California State Senate approved a bill similar to New York’s SAFE Act that would also prevent social media apps from sending notifications to minors during school hours and from midnight to 6 a.m. throughout the year. The Los Angeles Unified School District instituted a ban that restricts students’ phone usage during school hours. California Governor Gavin Newson responded to the decision by promising to work with lawmakers on a similar statewide law.

These new policies and laws aren’t just about keeping kids off of their phone while they’re in school. They are designed to address mental health issues caused by social media platforms. The New York Times published an op-ed on Monday from US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calling social media an “important contributor” to the detriment of mental health in teenagers and called for social media companies to post a warning label for adolescents on its platforms and apps.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/new-york-governor-signs-two-new-bills-into-law-protecting-kids-from-social-media-211935749.html?src=rss

Proton can now back up photos and videos on your iPhone

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If your iPhone is digitally bulging at the seams from all those photos on it, Proton has a new way to back them up with Photo Backup for iOS. Photo Backup has been available for Android users since December and it officially migrated to Apple devices.

The Swiss company isn’t just offering another way to automatically upload your photos to a new online storage space. Proton also promises they will be securely stored with secure end-to-end encryption so no else can see or access them.

Proton also promises seamless integration with your iPhone and photo library. The feature can automatically upload and sync your photo and video collection, and provides simultaneous access on the web and mobile devices. There’s also an “Available offline” mode so you can keep your access to certain photos and videos without internet access while maintaining its encrypted safety status.

Proton’s Photo Backup offers free storage up to 5 GB and a $4/month plan for 200 GB of storage space. The Proton Unlimited plan offers 500GB of storage space for $10 per month and access to other Proton services such as Proton Mail and Proton VPN.

Proton started in 2014 as Proton Mail, an encrypted email service funded by a successful IndieGoGo campaign that raised over $550,000 from more than 10,000 backers. Since then, the Swiss company added new encrypted services such as a VPN, cloud storage and a calendar and rebranded itself simply as Proton. The company reinvented itself against on Monday by announcing it would transition to a non-profit model because “a Swiss non-profit structure provides additional security, which a corporation alone cannot achieve,” according to a company blog post. Specifically, the company says that it has no venture capital investors and also noted that Swiss foundations don’t have shareholders, so setting itself up in this new model could be beneficial for the company to stay afloat in a world where Google, Microsoft and Apple’s offerings are dominant.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/proton-can-now-back-up-photos-and-videos-on-your-iphone-with-100036501.html?src=rss

Netflix House will open two locations in Texas and Pennsylvania in 2025

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Netflix announced that Dalla and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania will host the first incarnations of its Netflix House entertainment complex concept. The Netflix blog Tudum posted the announcement Tuesday morning along with an artist’s rendering of one of the locations. Both will open sometime next year.

Netflix House is the streaming giant’s first attempt at a brick-and-mortar retail business. The Dallas and King of Prussia locations will offer dining, live events and interactive sets and experiences based on some of Netflix’s most popular shows and movies.

The “experiential entertainment venue” will let fans of shows like Bridgerton, Money Heist, Stranger Things and Squid Game interact with some of its most iconic scenes and settings. The announcement promises that guests can do things like “waltzing with your partner to an orchestral cover of a Taylor Swift song on a replication of the Bridgerton set.” Then you can enter another area of Netflix House and “compete in the Glass Bridge challenge from Squid Game” presumably without experiencing a really messy death in the end.

Presumably, no high concept entertainment experience is complete without taking a forced path through a gift shop. You can pick up special merchandise like a Hellfire Club T-shirt, a copy of The Queen’s Gambit board game or an “I survived a rich guy’s game of death” coffee mug from Squid Game. Don’t forget to check out the clearance bin for a Too Hot to Handle oven mitt.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflix-house-will-open-two-locations-in-texas-and-pennsylvania-in-2025-213033751.html?src=rss

Paradox Interactive closes Life By You’s studio after canceling the life sim game

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Paradox Tectonic, the Berkeley, California studio behind the unreleased life simulator game Life By You, has been shuttered by its parent company Paradox Interactive. All 24 employees have lost their jobs, according to a press release.

The news of Paradox Tectonic’s closure comes just one day after Paradox Interactive announced its decision to cancel the release of Life By You. The game’s troubled development was punctuated by blown deadlines on three different early access release windows before the title was scrapped entirely.

“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who’ve worked hard on Life By You’s Early Access release,” Paradox Interactive Chief Executive Officer Fredik Wester said in a released statement. “Sadly, with cancellation of their sole project we have to take the tough decision to close down the studio. We are deeply grateful for their hard work in trying to take Paradox into a new genre.” Wester said in a separate statement that the life simulation did not “meet our expectations” and could not deliver a version “that we’d be satisfied with” in time for release.

Paradox Interactive has good reason to be wary of releasing a bad game. The studio is still feeling the blowback from Colossal Order’s Cities: Skylines II. The game had a number of bugs following its release in October that put a huge strain on PC graphics cards making it difficult to play in 4K. The sequel also failed to launch with promised features like mod support, and its Beachfront Property asset led to an “Overwhelmingly Negative” review on Steam that forced Colossal Order to issue refunds.

It’s also the third major publisher to close a game studio in just the last week. Embracer Group announced on Monday that it would close Pieces Interactive following its release of the Alone in the Dark reboot. Galvanic Games, the Seattle based developer behind Wizard with a Gun, announced its dissolvement on Friday.

These closings are also just the latest bits of bad news in a year that’s already full of layoffs and studio closures. Obsidian Publishing’s Games Industry Layoffs tracker estimates that this year will see 10,800 layoffs, an alarming number that’s already outpacing last year’s totals.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paradox-interactive-closes-life-by-yous-studio-after-canceling-the-life-sim-game-201135761.html?src=rss

Apple hit with lawsuit for allegedly underpaying female employees

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A class action lawsuit filed by two women against Apple seeks damages for 12,000 current and former female employees for allegedly underpaying them. The complaint says the tech giant “systematically” paid them a lower wage than their male employees over a four-year period.

The lawsuit filed in a California state court in San Francisco County on Thursday claims Apple’s systematic behavior of sexual discrimination stems from a policy that set employees’ salaries based on their previous employment, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Prior to fall of 2017, the complaint states that Apple used job applicants’ provided prior pay rates to set their starting salaries. The following year, Apple asked applicants for their pay expectations. The lawsuit alleges that both of these practices led to lower pay rates for women in the workplace. It also claims the latter policy of asking prospective employees for their pay expectations is “highly correlated with prior pay; studies show that persons asked for pay expectations generally provide a number slightly higher than the pay at their current or last job.”

The pay policy for job applicants created a pattern of lower pay for female employees, the lawsuit alleges: “Apple’s policy or practice of collecting information about pay expectations and using that information to set starting salary has had the effect of perpetuating past pay disparities and paying women less than men performing substantially similar work.” 

The lawsuit goes even further by suggesting that Apple regularly punishes female employees because of “scored categories” of job performances that drive pay bonuses and increases.

“Apple’s performance evaluation system is biased against women because for scored categories such as teamwork and leadership, men are rewarded and women are penalized for the same behaviors,” the complaint reads.

The class action lawsuit seeks payment for damages and “declaratory relief” as well as repayment of low earnings and benefits due to the alleged discrepancies by Apple. The plaintiffs are also asking the court to hold a jury trial to hear their complaint.

In 2022, reporters for the Financial Times talked with several female Apple employees who alleged they were the victims of sexual abuse and bullying on the job. Then when they filed complaints with human resources, they alleged that their cases were either minimized or ignored, or they received retaliation for filing their complaints.

One of the most jarring examples came from Apple’s former legal department director Jayne Whitt who says a colleague hacked into her devices and issued death threats. She filed a complaint with HR and was assured action would be taken. Whitt claims that Apple’s HR team not only failed to even reprimand the employee but they eventually fired her. She blew the whistle on Apple in an online essay describing the situation that prompted a wave of support and similar stories from other female Apple employees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-hit-with-lawsuit-for-allegedly-underpaying-female-employees-214538519.html?src=rss