Netflix released at least one movie a week for the past two years. I challenge you to name them all! – but by 2023, the company is changing course. According Bloomberg, the streaming giant is restructuring its movie division and releasing fewer movies overall. Despite the myriad of titles Netflix has released before, only a handful have earned acclaim, achieved significant streaming hours, or had the kind of cultural impact that some of the biggest blockbusters have achieved. (According to the company’s Top 10 page, its most viewed movies for 2021 and 2022 include Red notice, don’t look up and Crystal Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.)
Netflix accelerated its development of movies after studios began creating their own streaming services instead of licensing their movies to the company. This restructuring will combine the team that works on small projects with a budget of $30 million or less and the unit that produces mid-budget movies that cost between $30 million and $80 million. There’s also a big-budget arm in his movie development unit, likely involved with the aforementioned hits. It is not yet known if the restructuring will affect that part of the business.
–Matt Smith
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Testing the limits of today’s leading AI chatbots.
Engadget
The generative AI race is on, and the current favorites appear to be Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, which is powered by ChatGPT. But what are the limits of the questions you can answer? We asked Google’s Bard chatbots a series of questions to see which one is best at providing information, replacing us at our jobs, or engaging in existential discussions. We also look at their speed, transparency, and how likely they are to break if we start pressing their buttons. And don’t worry, Bing AI got the same treatment.
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On a technicality.
Apple won an appeal against an investigation launched by the UK’s antitrust watchdog last fall. The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) opened a full investigation into Apple and Google in November. At the time, the regulator said many UK companies felt constrained by the “absolute stranglehold” the two tech giants had over mobile browsing. The investigation also sought to determine whether Apple was restricting the cloud gaming market through its App Store rules. The company said the CMA should have opened the investigation at the same time it first published its report on mobile ecosystems last June. The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), the court that oversees CMA cases, agreed with Apple, saying the regulator notified its investigation too late.
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Tesla has also been ordered to rehire a worker it fired illegally.
According to a federal appeals court, Elon Musk violated US labor law in 2018 when he tweeted that Tesla factory workers would give up stock options if they decided to unionize. In May 2018, a Twitter user asked Musk about his union stance. “There is nothing stopping the Tesla team at our auto plant from voting union. They could tmrw if they wanted to,” he tweeted in response. “But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2x better than when the plant was a UAW and everyone is already receiving medical attention.” Tesla has argued that the tweet was Musk’s way of pointing out that workers at other automakers do not receive stock options. The court ordered Musk to delete the tweet. As of this writing, the tweet is still there.
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