An anonymous reader quotes Slate: The overall argument of Billion Dollar Bully, the new documentary about Yelp released on Amazon and iTunes in May, is that Yelp extorts small business owners for advertising fees in return for helping to manage and improve reviews on their platform… Yelp has fought back against the allegations made in the film, arguing that “There has…
Tag: Entertainment
Bizarre New Theories Emerge About Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
“I am not saying that Neal Stephenson is Satoshi Nakamoto,” writes the features editor at Reason. “What I am saying is: Would it really be surprising if he were?” This prompted a strong rebuke from CCN Markets: The article starts, “Consider the possibility that Neal Stephenson is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin.” Let’s not do that. That’s like saying…
Cringely Predicts The End Of Broadcast TV Within A Decade
In a new essay Friday, technology pundit Robert Cringely remembers the day he got his first home fax machine in 1986, arguing that broadcast television is like a fax machine — in that “they are both obsolete.” Then he offers a quick history of television, cable TV, and the rise of Netflix, concluding “I’ll be surprised if broadcast TV in the…
WarnerMedia Scraps Plan For a Three-Tiered Streaming Service, To Package HBO, Cinemax and its Library Into One Offering For $16 to $17 a Month
AT&T’s WarnerMedia has abandoned its plan for a three-tiered streaming service and instead will likely package HBO, sister channel Cinemax and the vast library of Warner Bros TV shows and movies into one offering at a price of between $16 and $17 a month, WSJ reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The subscription service will…
HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ is Now the Top-Ranked TV Show of All Time
“Chernobyl,” HBO’s gritty and horrifying retelling of the worst nuclear disaster in human history, has jumped to the No. 1 spot on IMDb’s all-time TV rankings just days after the limited series concluded. From a report: As of Tuesday, “Chernobyl” had a 9.7-star (out of 10) average rating from about 140,000 users on the Amazon-owned IMDb site. The five-episode limited series…
NYT ‘Op Eds From the Future’ Launch With Sci-Fi Writer Ted Chiang
Slashdot reader Lasrick tipped us off to the first installment in a new series at the New York Times called “Op-Eds From the Future.” Science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write op-eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years in the future. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments…
Will Disney+ Destroy Netflix?
“Netflix has 175 days left to pull off a miracle… or it’s all over,” argues a headline at Forbes for an article by the chief analyst at disruption research firm RiskHedge: Netflix is not the future of TV. Netflix changed how we watch TV, but it didn’t really change what we watch… Netflix has achieved its incredible growth by taking distribution…
MIDI Association Explains ‘Capability Inquiry’ Features In MIDI 2.0
Friday the MIDI Association published an introduction to MIDI 2.0, describing updates to the already-evolving 36-year-old standard, including MIDI-CI, Profiles and Property Exchange:
MIDI 2.0 updates MIDI with new auto-configuration, extended resolution, increased expressiveness, and tighter timing — all while maintaining a high priority on backward compatibility. This major update of MIDI paves the way for a new generation of advanced interconnected…
Can James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger Revive The ‘Terminator’ Franchise?
“The Resistance’s war against Skynet rages on with the sixth installment of the Terminator series,” reports Variety, adding that the James Cameron-produced film “serves as a direct sequel to the first two movies in the franchise, relegating the events of the intervening films to alternate timelines.” Or, as ET Online: puts it, “Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and James Cameron are together…
‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Movie is Getting Delayed To Redesign the Title Character
Director Jeff Fowler has announced that Paramount had delayed the release of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ by three months, to allow the visual effects team some more time to work on the central character’s redesign. A report adds: To say that reaction to the first ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ trailer was mixed would be overly diplomatic. But at least fans were able to…