Day: March 21, 2019

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Nintendo Switch to Get Xbox Live Enabled Games Over the Year

https://www.legitreviews.com/nintendo-switch-to-get-xbox-live-enabled-games-over-the-year_211108

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Shane McGlaun |

Thu, Mar 21, 2019 – 9:02 AM

Nintendo has been doing very well with its Switch game consoles. The hybrid portable and home console has proven very popular with significant hardware and software sales. While the Switch has its own online gaming service, it pales in comparison to the size of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service.

Microsoft has been a bit coy with whether or not Xbox Live will come to the Switch as the online service rolls out to other devices. At one point Microsoft Cloud Gaming head Kareem Choudhry said that there were no specific Xbox Live announcements fo the Switch.

At GDC 2019 going on in San Francisco, Microsoft again touched on Xbox Live for the Nintendo console reports Nintendolife. While there are no announcements now, Microsoft stated at the conference that players could “expect more games like Cuphead to come to Switch with Live enabled…”

The timeframe for games with Live-enabled on the Switch is over the next year. It’s a good thing for Xbox Live fans to get the service on other platforms, but it is rather surprising to see this happen.

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March 21, 2019 at 09:05AM

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MoviePass Co-Founder’s New Startup Must Be Stopped

https://gizmodo.com/moviepass-co-founders-new-startup-must-be-stopped-1833464132

The co-founder of MoviePass wants to make going to the movies more affordable, so long as you’re comfortable submitting to mandatory ad watching and creepy surveillance tech. PreShow, an invitation-only service launched by Stacy Spikes, uses facial recognition software to make sure you are actively tuning into a hellacious amount of ads. In return for this indentured consumerism, you get a free movie ticket.

According to the PreShow Kickstarter, which launched on Thursday, the company uses its “proprietary facial identification software” to ensure you actually watch the 15 to 20 minutes of branded content on your device. “The motion detector automatically pauses playback if you have to step away,” according to the project page. “You can resume watching anytime at your leisure.”

It’s not until you’ve watched the entire ad that you’ll be credited your free movie ticket. The Kickstarter page states that privacy is a “top concern” for the company, and that while no users are recorded and no “personally identifiable data is shared,” they can share aggregated and anonymized data to their partners. So your uniquely personal habits may, as they claim, remain private, but the accumulated data still offers brands insight into the behavior of certain groups of people. That’s valuable and exploitable information for a company that profits exactly from that.

“Well, why can’t you have an ad-supported version that will allow you to go to movies for free?” Spikes told TechCrunch.

It’s possible that PreShow is mostly a B2B play to license their watch-the-fucking-ad technology to third parties. In the world of movie business model “disruption,” such licensing is common. Both MoviePass and competitor Sinemia have attempted to do this with their ticket-subscription tech.

Of course, as we’ve increasingly come to understand, “free” is a loaded word when it comes to reaping the benefits in the digital age—a free service oftentimes means sacrificing your time and your privacy. In PreShow’s case, it dangles the promise of a “free” movie-going experience for what’s a stone’s throw from clamping your eyes open to make sure you consume the necessary content.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

March 21, 2019 at 11:54AM

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Streaming subscriptions overtook cable in 2018

https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/21/streaming-subscriptions-overtook-cable-in-2018/

Cable companies have been nervous about streaming services for a while, but now they have a particularly good reason to be jittery. An MPAA report citing IHS Markit data has shown that there were more subscriptions worldwide to online video services (613.3 million) than there were for cable (556 million) in 2018, reflecting a 27 percent jump in streaming over 2017. Cable subscriptions dropped two percent in that period. IP-based TV overtook satellite, too, indicating a larger overall shift to the digital realm.

The data also indicated that people were spending more on digital video at home than trips to the theater. While theatrical spending did grow ever so slightly in 2018 to $41.1 billion, people around the world spent a total of $42.6 billion on streaming, downloads and video-on-demand. Discs, meanwhile, declined to $13.1 billion — just over half of what it was back in 2014.

This isn’t a decisive victory for online video, at least not yet. Cable and satellite are still larger than streaming when combined. More importantly, cable and satellite are still the most lucrative in terms of sheer revenue, if not necessarily profit. Cable’s influx of cash grew $6.2 billion in 2018 to reach $118 billion, suggesting that those people who did stick with cable were paying more than ever. The MPAA added that most of those who were subscribing to internet services also had conventional TV, suggesting that the number of cord cutters isn’t as large as you might think.

These are nonetheless major milestones for internet video. It’s now the most popular individual TV format in terms of sheer subscriptions, and companies wanting the widest possible reach might have to pay attention. Likewise, movie studios and award groups might have to take streaming releases more seriously even if they’ve been less than thrilled in the past. While conventional TV and theaters are far from gone, they might have reached an inflection point.

Via: The Verge

Source: MPAA (PDF)

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

March 21, 2019 at 12:21PM

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Boeing’s Starliner Test Flight Delayed by Three Months, Sources Say

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=32981

The schedule for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has slipped again, and the company will no longer launch an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station in April, Reuters has reported. The flight is being pushed back to August. Starliner is Boeing’s entry for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to ferry both cargo and people to the ISS and back. The company’s spaceship is a competitor with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which successfully docked with the ISS earlier this month – albeit without c

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March 21, 2019 at 12:51PM

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Amnesty International faults electric vehicle batteries as carbon intensive

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/03/21/amnesty-international-ev-batteries/

LONDON — Amnesty International attacked the auto industry on Thursday for marketing electric vehicles (EVs) as environmentally friendly while producing many of the batteries using polluting fossil fuels and unethically sourced minerals.

Manufacturing batteries can be carbon intensive, while the extraction of minerals used in them has been linked to human rights violations such as child labor, a statement from the rights group said.

“Electric vehicles are key to shifting the motor industry away from fossil fuels, but they are currently not as ethical as some retailers would like us to believe,” it said, announcing the initiative at the Nordic Electric Vehicle Summit in Oslo.

Production of lithium-ion batteries for EVs is power intensive, and factories are concentrated in China, South Korea and Japan, where power generation is largely dependent on coal or other fossil fuels, Amnesty said.

Global automakers are investing billions of dollars to ramp up electric vehicle production. German giant Volkswagen for one plans to raise annual production of electric cars to 3 million by 2025, from 40,000 in 2018.

Amnesty demanded the EV industry come up with an ethical and clean battery within five years and in the meantime that carbon footprints be disclosed and supply chains of key minerals identified.

Last month, a letter seen by Reuters showed that 14 non-governmental organizations including Amnesty and Global Witness had opposed plans by the London Metal Exchange to ban cobalt tainted by human rights abuses.

Instead of banning the cobalt brands, the LME should work with firms that produce them to ensure responsible souring, they said.

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March 21, 2019 at 07:55AM