Month: February 2023

The streaming war continues stronger than ever. While a few years ago Netflix and HBO had almost a monopoly on VOD services, more and more platforms are joining the fray. From international services such as Disney+, Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime Video to national bets such as Movistar+ or Filmin, more and more people are joining this new way of watching TV.

However, this year looks crucial for this brand war, and March in particular will be a decisive month. After years of massive subscription increases, with a special peak in 2020 due to quarantine, the data has finally stabilized. As Disney CEO Bob Iger explained in The Hollywood Reporter, “the platforms have been focused on capturing more and more audiences, but it’s time to make a profit”.

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It is for this reason that Netflix has implemented, both in Spain and in many other countries, its policy of not sharing accounts. It is no longer possible to use the same user from multiple locations, which has forced many families to unsubscribe or change their plan. The boycott of the platform has reached such an extent that a Trending Topic has been created with the hashtag #AdiósNetflix.

We still don’t know how Netflix’s decision will affect its reputation and numbers, but in the meantime another very important battle is going to be fought that will be decisive for the streaming war: The Mandalorian vs. SkyShowtime. March will be a month full of premieres and releases, but these two will undoubtedly be key for the future of the audience.

The Mandalorian Season 3

On the one hand, Disney Plus premieres the third season of its most emblematic and followed series: The Mandalorian. The platform premiered along with this fiction headed by Jon Favreau, and since then it has not stopped gaining followers. Both lifelong Star Wars fans and newcomers to the saga have become loyal to The Mandalorian, and it’s no wonder.

Favreau’s series is set after the original trilogy, and began as a chapter fiction that follows Mando, a lone bounty hunter who makes his way across the galaxy’s most remote frontiers, far from the jurisdiction of the New Republic. After a series of specific assignments, it falls to him to take charge of Grogu, a baby belonging to an alien race all-powerful in the use of the Force.

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For two seasons, Mando (played by Pedro Pascal, the protagonist of The Last of Us) and Grogu have lived all kinds of adventures. In addition, they have faced the great threat of Moff Gideon, leader of a remnant of the Galactic Empire, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who is after little Grogu.

Throughout the chapters, and especially during the second season, The Mandalorian has also served to introduce characters such as Ahsoka or Boba Fett, as well as giving the entrance to the return of Luke Skywalker. Therefore, the series has become the most anticipated of the platform, and many are waiting for its third season.

SkyShowtime

It’s clear that the new batch of episodes of The Mandalorian are going to make all eyes on Disney+ during March. However, it’s not going to be the only platform to stand out. Netflix, HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video all have their own new releases. And, above all, there’s one threat looming over them all: SkyShowtime.

Just a few days after Netflix announced its new policy, it was revealed that SkyShowtime would arrive in Spain. It is a new streaming platform that brings with it both imported series and movies as well as original productions. And it comes with everything to gain a foothold in our country.

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On the one hand, its catalog is very interesting. It will be the platform that premieres in Spain Halo, the series about Microsoft’s video game, and also incorporates all of SpongeBob SquarePants and Fast&Furious. But it has also worked on two original series: Bosé, a fiction about the singer Miguel Bosé that premieres with the arrival of the streaming service; and Los enviados, another original series starring Miguel Ángel Silvestre.

In addition, it comes at a ridiculous price: for only €2.99 per month you can have the entire catalog unlimited if you subscribe for the first two days. Undoubtedly, SkyShowtime is going to fight hard to be the streaming news in March. But are people getting tired of paying for so many platforms?

Elon Musk continues to demonstrate his great leadership skills at Twitter… by firing more workers. When he’s not busy introducing algorithm changes that make his own tweets more visible to the entire social network or removing security features from the app, Musk has a peculiar “habit” of firing Twitter employees.

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If the massive layoffs of his staff last November or the arbitrary firing of engineers for not telling him what he wants to hear seemed to indicate that Elon Musk would not make any more layoffs for the simple reason that there are only “four cats” left, the owner of Tesla has shown us once again that things can always be made worse.

Elon Musk would have carried out at least three rounds of layoffs in recent days in order to “get rid” of much of the staff responsible for managing advertising on Twitter. Those affected, according to The Verge, are dozens of employees in the sales and engineering departments, including the main responsible for advertising on the social network.

Before these layoffs occurred, Musk gave the internal directive to revamp how advertising is segmented in the Twitter feed in less than a week. “We’re sorry for showing you so many irrelevant and annoying ads on Twitter. We are taking the (obvious) corrective measure of linking ads to keywords and topics in tweets, like Google does with search. This will dramatically improve contextual relevance,” Musk said on his Twitter account.

In a tweet following his dismissal, Twitter’s former director of monetization engineering, Marcin Kadluczka, hinted this Saturday at the absolute unfeasibility of the deadline set by Musk: “I think Twitter can actually improve ads in 2-3 months (though not necessarily in a week).” The recent layoffs would have taken place shortly after Elon Musk gave this deadline to his employees, according to sources consulted by The Verge.

Thus, Twitter’s most senior staff (those who know best the “guts” of the social network) is forced to leave a company where its current owner does not know and does not want to know how to manage a social network for the service of everyone, including the advertisers that maintain it. Will we see in 2023 the end of Twitter?

If there are two emblematic series that delighted all children raised in the nineties, those are Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Summed up as Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles in Spain, they were two franchises that delighted youngsters at a time when superhero teams, anthropomorphic animals and giant robots were the order of the day.

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Now, on the cover of an upcoming comic book that mixes both series, they have imagined what would have been the perfect video game of the time. Artist Diego Sanches has drawn a cover showing the Power Rangers in action, but using pixel art, reimagining them as if they were a classic Ninja Turtles video game.

Sanches’ cover is based on Konami’s arcade video game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time. It was released in 1991 and was the sequel to an already successful series, but soon became one of the most remembered games of the time. What Sanches has done is to replace the original characters with the Power Rangers, and the truth is that they have been very well integrated.

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The illustration is the alternate cover for issue 3 of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II series, a comic book series featuring the creative team of Ryan Parrott, Dan Mora, Raul Angulo and Ed Dukeshire.

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It is a comic series based entirely on nostalgia, mixing iconic elements of both franchises and playing with alternative visions of their worlds. It is a very interesting way of combining both sagas, which when you read the comic you see that they come together much better than it might seem at first.

TikTok, the short video app created by Zhang Yiming, is reportedly doing more than its part to try to prove to US regulators that it is a 100% transparent app, and thus avoid being banned in the United States. The company announced this week that it will now give access to its API to a larger group of researchers, who will be able to analyze the data to provide more information on how the app works.

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“We are expanding access to our research API to U.S. researchers affiliated with non-profit academic institutions. In addition to bringing more transparency to the content on our platform, we’re eager to learn from researchers’ findings,” TikTok said on its Twitter account.

In its blog, the company explains that opening access to its API will allow a greater number of research teams to dig deeper into TikTok usage data, as well as discover what are the main trends and the behavior of users when making use of TikTok from the app.

Research that could detail the alleged highly harmful impacts of TikTok’s algorithmic recommendations. A study by The Wall Street Journal found that the app can massively recommend potentially dangerous content to users based on their viewing histories, even going so far as to offer videos related to eating disorders or conspiracy theories.

Similarly, researchers could gather information that highlights the more positive aspects of TikTok, such as how the algorithm recommends relevant content to users, or even how the app detects users’ political biases.

Information that would be vital in determining, at any given time, whether or not the app should be banned in the United States, as any information collected that relates to political or ideological aspects of U.S. users could be linked to the Chinese government, and used as evidence that TikTok poses a threat to U.S. national security.

Star Wars keeps expanding its universe with more series and movies about the franchise created by George Lucas. Since Disney acquired the brand in 2012, the mouse company has not stopped releasing more and more audiovisual productions derived from the brand. The most successful of them has been the series The Mandalorian, which will soon release its third season, but there are many more to come.

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Among all the upcoming series, there is one especially awaited by the public: Ahsoka. The protagonist of The Clone Wars animated series was introduced in live-action in the second season of The Mandalorian and later appeared in The Book of Boba Fett. Now she’s about to premiere her own solo fiction. But when will we be able to see it?

When does Ahsoka premiere on Disney Plus?

Rosario Dawson, actress starring in Ahsoka and who we know from other series such as Daredevil or the movie Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, has revealed the most awaited information. In an interview with an American television, the actress answered without problems when you will be able to see her series:

“Ahsoka will probably come out in the fall. But before that, Haunted Mansion will arrive in August”. Thus, we will have the premiere of the series earlier than expected. Although many of us thought we wouldn’t see it until next year, considering all the releases already announced by Disney, it looks like we will see the Jedi’s adventures a few months earlier.

Haunted Mansion, meanwhile, is a remake of the 2003 film starring Eddie Murphy. In it, Dawson will play Gabbie, a single mother who moves into a strangely affordable mansion in New Orleans. She will soon discover that it is haunted.

Considering the information given by Rosario Dawson, this year Star Wars will premiere three series on Disney Plus: The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. The first two already have previous seasons, but the last one will be its first season, as well as the most anticipated of the three.

The new AI of Microsoft‘s search engine, Bing, is proving to be quite a success, although it has quickly become embroiled in controversy. The AI-powered chatbot, which can be used through the Microsoft Edge browser, had a rather bumpy launch, and it has recently come to light that Microsoft intends to insert advertising into the conversations we have with the AI.

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On top of this, Microsoft recently had to restrict interactions with the chatbot after it started giving somewhat “out of place” responses (going as far as insulting users or even offering porn) and users found ways to expose some of the AI’s hidden rules.

But it seems that Microsoft has had second thoughts and will relax the restrictions in order to test a new option. When starting a conversation with the chatbot, the user will be given the possibility to choose the tone they will maintain with the AI. The three options are Precise, which will give more focused and brief answers; Creative, with longer and more eloquent answers; and Balanced, which will be a middle ground between the previous two.

Microsoft is thus undoing the new rules it established last Friday, which limited the number of interactions users could have to 5 requests per session and a maximum of 50 chats per day. This was initially because long sessions caused Bing to “become repetitive or be prompted/provoked to give answers that are not necessarily helpful or in keeping with the tone we have designed,” according to Microsoft.

After undoing the changes, Microsoft has raised the limit to 6 requests per session, and a maximum of 60 chats per day. According to the company’s blog, its intention is to increase the daily maximum to 100 chats, as well as to allow searches that do not count towards the total number of chats.

Microsoft Edge, the Chromium-based browser that retired the classic Internet Explorer, has been one of the great joys for Microsoft, which saw more and more people adopt its program instead of the all-powerful Google Chrome. A rich cake to which it recently put the icing on the cake, when it decided to integrate the AI of the popular ChatGPT into both its browser and its search engine: Bing.

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A few days ago, we told you that the new AI-powered Bing can be used by downloading one of the three versions of Edge available in the Microsoft Edge Insider program: Beta, Dev or Canary. Now, it seems that Microsoft is giving a “little” push to the use of Edge Canary, encouraging the user to download this browser and not use its competitor: Chrome.

According to Neowin, users who try to install Google Chrome while using Microsoft Edge Canary will get two warnings: the first, the smaller of the two, will appear on the screen once the website loads, while the other, a highly visible megabanner, appears once you start downloading the browser.

With the text “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft”, both the small ad and the megabanner, which appears below the address bar and is part of the google.com/chrome website (inserted by the browser, of course), try by all means to prevent the user from switching browsers and continuing to use Edge.

Google itself already uses a similar strategy, but its method is much less “violent” for the user. If a person opens the Google search engine in a browser other than Google’s (such as Edge or Mozilla Firefox), a small banner will appear in the upper right corner with the text “Google recommends using Chrome”.

Moreover, while Google does this on a website it owns, Microsoft inserts these two ads via its browser on the Chrome website. We do not know to what extent this practice may or may not be legal, but it is far from a morally acceptable action.