Spotify angered users when it announced it was discontinuing its music dashboard accessory, effective December 9, 2024.

We have made the decision to discontinue Car Thing. This means that Car Thing will no longer be operational. This decision wasn’t made lightly, and we want to assure you that our commitment to providing a superior listening experience remains unchanged.

Initially, Spotify made no mention of possible refunds for users who purchased the device, leading to massive backlash and at least one class action lawsuit. The company appears to have heard the message loud and clear, and now appears to be offering a refund.

The company’s Car Thing FAQ has been updated with instructions for users wanting a refund.

Individuals seeking a refund can contact customer support with proof of purchase to discuss their options.

It’s a shame that Spotify didn’t start out offering customers a refund and that it took days of complaints and a class action lawsuit for the company to do the right thing.

YouTube has been cracking down on ad-blocking software, using various methods to combat it in recent months. The company has also been rolling out new ad formats and styles in an effort to driver greater revenue.

The latest anti-blocking effort is YouTube’s most aggressive yet, with the company skipping videos altogether if ad-blocking is detecting. As TechCrunch points out, YouTube warned that such action could eventually be taken in an April post:

Viewers who are using these third-party apps may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video.

There are viable alternatives to YouTube, such as Odysee, but users have so far failed to abandon YouTube en masse. Only time will tell if YouTube’s increased focus on ads, not to mention its controversial design choices, will reach a point that it drives people away.

Google has made a number of outreaches to the US news industry in an effort to address complaints that it unfairly benefits from linking to publishers’ news stories, such as the Google News Initiative, a $300 million commitment to help local publishers. The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) is designed to address those complaints, requiring tech companies to pay for the news they link to.

According to Axios, Google is now threatening to pause funding for the Initiative in response to the CJPA. The outlet’s sources said that, while previous commitments should be secure, future commitments could be jeopardized nationwide. If Google decides to take such action, it would likely have a disproportionately large impact smaller news outlets.

Google tried similar hardline tactics in Australia when it passed similar legislation as the CJPA. In fact, the CJPA is loosely based on Australia’s legislation. Ultimately, however, Google ended up capitulating to Australia’s demands, despite its initial posturing.

The CJPA has widespread support within the news industry, but only time will tell if Google retaliates as it says it may.

Spotify users started taking to Reddit to complain of the change. User ‘MeowKat090709’ posted a message and screenshot showing the change.

why did spotify put the lyrics behind a premium payment??? this is really annoying since i’m mostly deaf and i rely on the lyrics to understand the songs, but i can’t get a job due to the deafness so i can’t pay for the premium. this has been happening all day and i can’t find anyone who is talking about this, does anyone know why spotify did this, or when it’ll be reverted back to before??

Other users commented that Spotify is becoming increasingly unusable without a subscription, as the company is removing features that were previously available for free.

Rumors started swirling recently that Paramount was up for sale, fueled by CEO Bob Bakish stepping down and leaving the company. According to Variety, Sony Pictures and Apollo are making an all-cash bid for the company, with the goal of taking it private.

Interestingly, the offer is significantly more than Paramount’s current $22 billion valuation. Sony and Apollo are not the only parties interested in Paramount, with the latter considering a merger offer from Skydance Media.

If Paramount accepts the Sony/Apollo offer, Sony would retain majority ownership of Paramount, with Apollo being a minority owner. Shari Redstone could be a major impediment to the deal, however, with Variety reporting that she prefers the Skydance offer.

As Variety points out, if the Sony/Apollo deal is accepted, it would reduce the number of major Hollywood studios to four, from the current five.

AI companies are making deals throughout the industry for access to content, both to provide users with relevant results to queries and to improve the training of their AI models. As the current industry leader, OpenAI has signed a number of deals, with the FT deal being the latest.

The new deal builds on the two companies’ previous relationship, in which FT became a ChatGPT Enterprise customer earlier in 2024, providing ChatGPT access to all employees.

In addition to the stated goal of helping OpenAI “improve its models’ usefulness,” the outlet says the two companies will “collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers.” The deal will give ChatGPT users access to some of FT’s journalism, as well as select quotes and attributed summaries.

“This is an important agreement in a number of respects,” said FT Group CEO John Ridding. “It recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI. We have long been a leader in news media innovation, pioneering the subscription model and engagement technologies, and this partnership will help keep us at the forefront of developments in how people access and use information.”

“The FT is committed to human journalism, as produced by our unrivalled newsroom, and this agreement will broaden the reach of that work, while deepening our understanding of reader demands and interests,” Ridding added. “Apart from the benefits to the FT, there are broader implications for the industry. It’s right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material. OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation – all essential for us. At the same time, it’s clearly in the interests of users that these products contain reliable sources.”

OpenAI welcomed the expanded relationship with FT.

“Our partnership and ongoing dialogue with the FT is about finding creative and productive ways for AI to empower news organisations and journalists, and enrich the ChatGPT experience with real-time, world-class journalism for millions of people around the world,” said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI.

The deal was first reported by The New York Times. Business Insider reports that current owner G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller sent an email to staff confirming the sale.

“This company is made up of four digital media veterans with a profound love for The Onion and comedy based content,” Spanfeller wrote. “The site’s new owners have agreed to keep The Onion’s entire staff intact and in Chicago, something we insisted be part of the deal.”

Purchasing The Onion is a strange turn of events for the founder of a cloud computing company, although it likely comes as a relief to The Onion staff that Lawson does not appear to be poised to make major changes.

Many third-party YouTube apps offer a better experience than the official one for one simple reason—they provide an ad-free experience. YouTube has been cracking down on ad-blockers, and is now taking its fight to third-party clients.

In a support article entitled “Enforcement on Third Party Apps,” the company draws a line in the sand for third-party apps that continue to block ads.

We’re strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps.

Viewers who are using these third-party apps may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video. We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service. We also understand that some people prefer an entirely ad-free experience, which is why we offer YouTube Premium.

We only allow third-party apps to use our API when they follow our API Services Terms of Service, and when we find an app that violates these terms, we will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers.

The news is not unexpected, but still a disappointing turn of events.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) is designed to boost local journalism, which has been decimated by the rise of the internet, search, and most recently AI. Under the CJPA, at the end of each quarter, journalist platforms and publications would receive payments from advertising revenue, based on the number of views their platform receives.

The bill is by no means unanimously embraced by the journalist community. The News/Media Alliance has come out in favor of the bill, as have many other organizations.

“We applaud the California Assembly for taking decisive and direct action to save journalism through passing the California Journalism & Preservation Act (CJPA),” said News/Media Alliance President & CEO Danielle Coffey. “We are extremely encouraged to see this progress at the state level, which shows that Americans understand the importance and value of journalism to keeping their communities safe and informed and holding those in power to account. We look forward to the CJPA moving on to the Senate and working with policymakers there to pass the CJPA and restore fairness and balance to the marketplace.”

In contrast, Free Press has come out in opposition to the CJPA, saying it is the “wrong solution” to the problem.

“Not all policies to support local news are good ones. Unfortunately, lawmakers in California have devised a bad solution,” said Senior Director of Journalism and Civic Information Mike Rispoli. “The California Journalism Preservation Act fails to properly address the causes of the state’s journalism crisis: namely, a lack of market incentive to produce public-interest journalism, runaway media consolidation, mismanagement, and changing consumer habits.”

Google is clearly not in favor of the bill, with Jaffer Zaidi, VP of Global News Partnerships, saying the CJPA will only benefit large media conglomerates and do little to help local journalism.

By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. CJPA would up-end that model. It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content. CJPA would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers’ access to a diverse local media ecosystem.

Zaidi says the CJPA is “unworkable” in its current form, and the company is testing the removal of links to news sources in California in response.

As we’ve shared when other countries have considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by CJPA would be unworkable. If enacted, CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept. To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users. The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience. Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.

Zaidi says Google is committed to working with lawmakers and publishers to achieve “a healthy news industry in California.”

We’ve been engaging with California publishers and lawmakers throughout the legislative process and have proposed reasonable and balanced alternatives to CJPA. A healthy news industry in California will require support from both the California government and a broad base of private companies. This support should involve predictable, broad-based contributions, structured in ways that do not harm smaller, local publishers to benefit the largest players and hedge fund owners. It must also maintain the principles of the open web, which is critical to ensuring news publishers can connect with people for free.

Looking ahead, we will continue our efforts to work with lawmakers on alternative paths that will allow us to continue linking to news and supporting the news ecosystem in California.

It remains to be seen if the bill will pass. If it does, however, it could completely reshape how Californians get their news.

First reported by Windows Central, Choudhry’s last day was Friday, April 5. The outlet describes Choudhry’s departure as “amicable and coincidental.”

Choudhry was well-known for his contributions to the Xbox, and is reportedly well-loved within the company. The exec has a long-standing reputation of prioritizing customers and developers.

Choudhry’s departure will likely be felt throughout the Xbox division, as well as the company at large. There is no indication at this time of the exec’s future plans. Interestingly, as of the time of writing, Choudhry’s LinkedIn profile still lists him working for Microsoft.

“We’ve done really well in terms of streaming.”, said Iger. “In a very, very short period of time we find ourselves second to Netflix, in terms of global subscribers for a pure streaming business. We know that we ended up losing a lot of money on that, more so than we expected initially. Part of that was because we were chasing some growth and not as focused as we needed to be on the bottom line.”

Iger goes on to say that Disney was losing a whopping $4 billion per year when he rejoined the company. Calling that scenario “not sustainable and not acceptable,” Iger set the goal of becoming profitable in fiscal Q4 ’24. The CEO says Disney has already dramatically cut losses, to roughly $130 million last quarter.

“We know exactly how we delivered that improvement, now what we have to do is turn it into not just a profitable business, but a growth business, a business that has margins that this company and our shareholders would really be proud of,” Iger added.

When pressed, Iger agrees with the host that Disney will eventually be able to achieve double-digit growth, with customer engagement being the key.

“It is very, very clear that we need more engagement, in terms of consumers spending time on the platform,” Iger continued. “We just launched…Hulu on Disney+…and I can tell you it is doing extremely well….But we feel great about the engagement of those Disney subs who were not getting Hulu, who are now watching more programs that were on Hulu.”

Iger goes on to say that Disney needs to continue improving its technology, using better recommendation engines to help viewers discover and engage with new content. He also emphasized the importance of reducing the cost to acquire and maintain customers and reduce churn.

In the midst of listing various measures, Iger took aim at password sharing specifically.

“Password sharing is something else,” Iger said. “In June we’ll be launching our first real foray into password sharing, in just a few countries in a few markets. But then it will grow significantly with a full roll-out in September….All of that, obviously, all the things I mentioned are components of what will turn this business that we feel really good about.”

Spotted by TechRadar, Austin Null showed a screenshot of the new feature in action. The short-form videos are accessed via a new Video tab next to the Home tab. The rest of the format is similar to TikTok, YouTube, or any other platform that has adopted the short-form format.

LinkedIn has been a major success for Microsoft. The company recently crossed $1.7 billion in Premium subscription revenue and has consistently proven to be a major growth driver for Microsoft.

Adopting short-form videos could be the next step in helping LinkedIn continue its growth streak.

The FTC was the most determined opponent to Microsoft’s Activision acquisition, continuing to contest the deal long after the EU and UK signed off on it. According to The Verge’s Tom Warren, the FTC says Microsoft’s announcement it would be laying off 1,900 employees—most of them Activision employees—flies in the face of the company’s claims pre-merger.

Warren posted a copy of the FTC’s letter on X:

“Microsoft reportedly has stated that the layoffs were part of an ‘execution plan’ that would reduce ‘areas of overlap’ between Microsoft and Activision, which is inconsistent with Microsoft’s suggestion to this Court that the two companies will operate independently post-merger.”

The FTC is continuing to fight the merger, hoping to win in court and open the door to undoing it. It’s unclear if this latest turn of events will bolster the FTC’s case, but the agency says the layoffs could make it harder to roll back the deal if it does win its case.

“Moreover, the reported elimination of thousands of jobs undermines the FTC’s ability to order effective relief should the pending administrative proceeding result in a determination that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision violated Section 7 of the Clayton Act.”

This development is merely the latest twist in what is already one of the most drawn-out sagas in tech merger history.

According to Ars Technica, Alphabet’s executives announced the news in the company’s earnings call in late January. YouTube has been working to monetize its user base, even going so far as to crack down on ad-blockers to push people toward its Premium subscription.

At $13.99 a month, or $10.99 for just YouTube Music Premium, 100 million subscribers means the platform is becoming a significant part of Alphabet’s revenue.

Apple TV is one of the most popular streaming devices, but it has lacked a big-name native VPN app—at least until now. ExpressVPN, one of the biggest VPN providers, announced the news in a blog post:

Your streaming experience just got better! Today, we’re excited to announce the all-new ExpressVPN app for Apple TV, making it easier than ever for you to watch your favorite content while enjoying the full range of privacy and security benefits you expect from ExpressVPN.

The company is making it as easy as possible to get up and running on an Apple TV:

To get started, simply visit the App Store on your Apple TV, download the ExpressVPN app, and sign in to your account. That’s it. Now you’re ready to connect to a server location in any of 105 countries around the world, all from the comfort of your couch. Even signing in is a snap: Just scan a QR code with your phone or enter your details with your remote control, and you’re in.

ExpressVPN touts the benefits of running a VPN on the Apple TV:

There are many benefits to using a VPN with your Apple TV and Android TV. Besides letting you change your location to widen your entertainment horizons, a VPN also encrypts all internet traffic on your device, preventing third parties like your internet service provider from knowing what you’re doing online or throttling your speeds when you use certain services.

ExpressVPN’s announcement is good news for Apple TV users and opens up a world of possibilities, in terms of privacy and bypassing geoblocking.

Reports began surfacing that YouTube was forcing users to wait for five seconds before loading a video when using Firefox with ad blockers enabled. The reports sparked an uproar, with many believing YouTube was targeting Firefox and exempting its own Chrome browser from the slowdowns.

According to a statement provided to Android Central, however, YouTube says it is applying the slowdown to all browsers that use ad blockers, including its own Chrome.

“To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience,” the company said in an email to the outlet. “Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”

YouTube clearly has every intention of continuing its efforts to making using ad blockers as painful as possible.

The company announced the news in a blog post:

Support for magazine content in Google News is being discontinued beginning on December 18, 2023, which means if you previously purchased or subscribed to magazines, access from Google News apps or news.google.com to your library of magazines will be removed. 

To continue to access previously purchased magazine content, we are providing the opportunity to export and save each purchased issue. In some cases, purchased magazines contain interactive elements that cannot be downloaded and saved for future access, and we are offering a refund for this content.

If you are affected by this change, you will receive an email with the subject line “An update to Google News magazine support” which will contain a link to your download page and/or a unique link to your refund request form if eligible.

You will have the opportunity to export your magazines and/or submit the form to claim your refund until December 18, 2023. 

Google has a long history of killing off products and features, even popular ones, and it appears Google news magazine support is the latest victim.

The company revealed the news in a blog post:

Premium members get a first look into some of the exciting features coming to YouTube through youtube.com/new. We’re especially excited to share that we’re currently providing early access to two new AI experiments, including our first-ever conversational AI tool. Here’s what’s available:

• Conversational AI: Starting today, Premium members can be one of the first to try out our new experimental conversational AI tool that we hope will make your viewing experience that much better. Think of this as your tool that can answer questions, suggest related content, and more, all without interrupting your playback experience. This feature is currently only available in English to a limited number of YouTube Premium members in the United States on Android devices. If you sign up quickly for one of the limited spots, you can access the tool by tapping “Ask” beneath select videos and begin by asking questions about the video or selecting a suggested prompt.
• Comment topics summarized by AI: We’re also experimenting with AI that organizes large comment sections of long-form videos into digestible themes, helping you more easily understand and participate in comment conversations. Creators can use these comment summaries to more quickly jump into comment discussions on their videos, or to draw inspiration for new content based on what their audiences are discussing.

The move underscores the importance of AI across a variety of use cases, platforms, and industries.

According to Next TV, a Munich court sided with Broadcom in a patent dispute, ruling that Netflix can no longer use H.265 for its UHD video streaming in the country.

“Netflix has built a robust video streaming business that relies on Broadcom’s patented technology to deliver content to its users, and Broadcom is pleased to see this recognized by the German court,” said Broadcom VP Mark Terrano.

It remains to be seen what measures Netflix will take, whether licensing the necessary patent from Broadcom or switching to an open source alternative video codec.

An explanation for an Xbox error code showed up on a Microsoft support page:

Note From the moment you connect an unauthorized accessory and receive error code 0x82d60002, you’ll have two weeks to use the accessory, after which time it will then be blocked from use with the console. At that time, you’ll receive error code 0x82d60003. We encourage you to contact the store or manufacturer where you obtained the accessory to get help with returning it.

Needless to say, the revelation has raised questions. Microsoft provided the following clarification to Windows Central:

Microsoft and other licensed Xbox hardware partners’ accessories are designed and manufactured with quality standards for performance, security, and safety. Unauthorized accessories can compromise the gaming experience on Xbox consoles (Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.) Players may receive a pop-up warning that their accessory is unauthorized. Eventually, the unauthorized accessory will be blocked from use to preserve the console gaming experience.

Xbox users can find a full of supported accessories here: www.xbox.com/accessories