This week Australia passes the digital news bill, Fry’s is shutting down, Spotify made a few announcments and, Star launches internationally on Disney Plus. Also, Twitter nakes a couple of feature announcements, US judge approves privacy lawsuit about Facebook facial recconition, there was a Pokemon Presents presentation this week, and the Intesting Things of the Week.
Australia News Law
This week Austrailia passed a law that institues a link tax on tech platforms that requires them to pay news publishers to link tho their content. In the runup Facebook and Google payed news publishers huge sums of money for the ablitiy to link to their content. This breaks the concet of the open web, just read the coverage of this on Techdirt fir a good explaiation of the cituation.
– here’s a summary of the whole situation froim Techdirt
Fry’s
On Wefnsday, American electronics retail chan Fry’s announced that they are closing for good. This isn’t suprising for the past few years Fry’s locations have been ghost towns (see this Bitwit video). Due to being forced to switch to a consignment model they have been unable to find suppliers.
Disney+ Star
On Tuesday, Disney Plus launched Star which is where all Hulu and Fox content are going internationally but not in the US. Outside of existing Disney+ markets Star also implements ESPN sports content. I love Star it makes streanubg much easier and I’d think that it makes Disney Plus a more compelling subscription for anyone.
- Twitter says it is planning a safety mode that would let users automatically block and mute accounts that “might be acting abusive or spammy” (Jay Peters/The Verge)
- Twitter announces Super Follow feature to let users charge for tweets, and a Communities feature to let users create and join groups based on specific interests (Jacob Kastrenakes/The Verge)
Spotify Announcmrnts
On Monday, Sporify made a number of announcements mostly about podcasts. They announced an ad marketplace for ads inserted into podcasts via Megahone and also that they’d be launching paid subscription podcasts in Anchor. But in my eyes the biggest annoucment is Spotify Hi-Fi which adds a lossless streaming for extra cost.
Facebook Lawsuit
Pokemon Presents
On Friday, The Pokemon Company held a Pokemon Presents event to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Pokemon. During the presentation they announced the long-awaited remakes of Diamond and Pearl and a new game Pokemoin Legends: Archeus. Also they gave more details about and the release date for New Pokemon Snap and a few in-game events to celebrate the anniversary. You can read more about it here.
Interesting Things Of The Week
- Bil Gates Interview about Climate Change – MIT Tech Review
- The Verge’s Pokemon 25 Feature
- Inside Chess.com’s streaming success, with Twitch users watching 18.3M hours of chess content in January, nearly as much as they consumed throughout all of 2019 – Protocol
- First Audio form Mars – NASA Press Release
If you want more from The Tech News Source follow the site on Twitter at @technewssoure and also follow Me on Twitter at @SamGreenwoodTNS. If yu want to support The Tech News Source on a monthly basis go to patreon.com/thetechnewssource or by making a one-time donation at paypal.me/thetechnewssource. You can also go to my website to see more that I do including my photography and the occasional movie review at samgreenwood.ca.
Update: I just found out that famed Imagineer Joe Rhode joined Virgin Orbit for some reasom.
Former Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde Joins Virgin Galactic Team – Inside The Magic