Technology

Now that CNN has made the decision to shut down its new streaming baby CNN Plus less than a month after it went live, you might be wondering what went wrong. A report from Axios has a chart that shows the streaming service was far from reaching its projected year-end viewership goal, and would have burned through $400 million in 2022 alone to try to get there. CNN projected that the service would have two million subscribers by the end of the year, but around two weeks later, they found they’d only managed to attract 150,000 people. At first, this doesn’t sound too bad, but considering services like Disney Plus had 10 million subscribers in its first day — and that Quibi, which was similarly shut down early in life, saw 910,000 people sign up in its first few days — this wasn’t a lot for C...

Let’s end April with a barrage of great deals, shall we? For a limited time (Saturday only, and until stock sells out), Woot is offering solid discounts on both the standard Nintendo Switch (the non-OLED version) and the smaller, cheaper Switch Lite, and if you make your purchase through the Woot app (iOS, Android — just open the following Woot links on your phone and they will redirect), you’ll get up to $20 off. Not too shabby! Really, any price drop whatsoever on Nintendo hardware is rare, so jump on this if you’ve been considering the investment. Starting with the Switch, it normally costs $299.99, but Woot’s discount knocks $10 off, costing you $289.99. Buying it through the app is where the real discount happens, taking a little more off the price, totaling $269.99 before tax. This i...

It sounds like Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch will be a flagship set to compete with Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watches and the Apple Watch, according to new specs leaked by 9to5Google. According to 9to5’s report, you’ll be able to get a cellular version of the wearable, and it will have a 300 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery. It wasn’t necessarily a given that there would be a cellular option for the Pixel Watch. Some lower-end smartwatches, and even some high-end fitness-focused models, are reliant on your phone for connectivity. If the rumor is accurate and there is a cellular Pixel Watch model, it reinforces the idea that Google’s probably not trying to make its watch a smaller or cheaper alternative — it wants that mass-market appeal. As for the battery, its physical capacity seems about right...

Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones finally seems to be emerging from the depths of development hell. As reported by Kotaku, test footage has leaked online, showing off the biggest glimpse of the live-service pirate adventure that’s been seen since its announcement at E3 2017. In the video, a voiceover explains some of the core details of Skull and Bones. A stat called “infamy” is used to gauge how good players are at being a pirate. Players can increase their infamy via raiding ships, completing contracts, and finding hidden treasure. Higher tiers of infamy grant players access to more difficult bounties and contracts, and failure will result in the loss of some infamy. Players will start with a modest pirate ship that they can then upgrade with scavenged materials. It’s the captain’s job to ensure...

Stray, an upcoming game where you play as a cat, will now be released in summer 2022, according to a video in an official PlayStation tweet. Last July, publisher Annapurna Interactive said Stray would be released in early 2022 on PS5, PS4, and Steam, but it seems now we’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer to play the game. What does one do in a cyberpunk cat simulator, you might ask? “Stray is a third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity and the murky environments of its seedy underbelly,” developer BlueTwelve Studio says on the game’s Steam page. “Roam surroundings high and low, defend against unforeseen threats and solve the mysteries of this unwelcoming place inhabited by nothing but unassuming droids and dangerous creat...

Elon Musk appears to be keeping busy, looking for new ways to monetize Twitter beyond just its Twitter Blue subscription service. In a recent report from Reuters, sources have indicated that the tech billionaire is considering the option of charging a fee for embed and quote tweets. The report also noted that Musk is contemplating making money from tweets as well as slashing its top executive’s salaries. He originally promised the banks that helped him to secure funding for his $44 billion USD acquisition that he would “crack down on executive and board pay at the social media company in a push to slash costs, and would develop new ways to monetize tweets.” Sources close to the matter also revealed that job cuts were also a topic of discussion. These decisions are in-line with a recent now...

This is the end of the first week after Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer, and one of the strangest tech transactions ever just keeps adding new twists. A detailed report from The Wall Street Journal has peeled back a few layers on the process that began with Musk accumulating Twitter stock back in January and what that might mean when he eventually closes the deal and becomes its owner. Taken with additional information from The Verge contributing editor Casey Newton in Platformer and a new report from Reuters, the picture starts to become clearer. Reuters is adding more details to earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Washington Post about the ideas Musk pitched to bankers who will loan him some of the money he needs to buy Twitter. According to Reuters’ sources, he ...

Director Jon Watts’ involvement in Marvel’s wildly successful Spider-Man movies from the past few years made Kevin Feige’s 2019 announcement that Watts would be helming the studio’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie make more than a bit of sense. It seems now, though, that the plans for Marvel’s First Family returning to the big screen have hit a snag. Deadline reports that Jon Watts has amicably walked away from the upcoming Fantastic Four movie out of a very understandable desire to take a well-deserved break from making superhero movies. In a public statement, Kevin Feige expressed that working with Watts on the past three Spider-Man films was a joy and that the studio would very much like to collaborate with him in the future. “We were looking forward to continuing our work with him to bri...

Sony has updated its PlayStation Plus FAQ page (tucked away at the bottom here) and is clamping down further on loopholes that gave users early discounts on its upcoming PlayStation Plus Premium service. It’s also pausing the activation of PlayStation Plus and Now vouchers for current subscribers until after its new service rolls out in June, and there’s even an official conversion chart showing the value of those vouchers for its upcoming three services; PlayStation Plus Essentials, Extra, and Premium. After Sony announced its plan to restructure PlayStation Plus into a new three-tiered service to further compete with Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s services, things were slightly vague about how the conversion to the new tiers will work. Users began stacking prepaid subscriptions to PlayStatio...

Recently, several developers complained about how Apple threatened to remove their apps from the App Store because they hadn’t been updated in a “significant amount of time.” Now, the company has responded — by issuing a press release effectively saying that nobody was downloading the apps anyways. The notice, released on Friday evening, reads in part: As part of the App Store Improvements process, developers of apps that have not been updated within the last three years and fail to meet a minimal download threshold — meaning the app has not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period — receive an email notifying them that their app has been identified for possible removal from the App Store. We’ve heard about those emails before — last week, developers l...

While Warner Bros.’ and Mattel Films’ upcoming Barbie movie is sure to have some level of self-awareness about its main character’s status as a real-world cultural icon, Mattel is taking a firm stance against featuring the iconic doll’s very unofficial anthem that basically everyone knows by heart. The small tease of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie that Warner Bros. shared this week — a still image of Margot Robbie all dolled up and driving a dream car — singlehandedly put the project at the back front of people’s minds as something they might actually want to see. Partially because of the bright, colorful, “fun” vibes the image gave off, a number of fans began speculating what sorts of music Barbie might feature, and Aqua’s 1997 Hit “Barbie Girl” almost immediately began bubbling up in conver...

Six months after predicting the global chip shortage would last until at least 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now suggesting it might be 2024 before we’re fully out of the woods. “[W]e believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged,” he told CNBC on Friday. But while that sounds a little doom-y and gloom-y, you should know that the “chip shortage” is an involved, evolving situation that doesn’t affect every kind of chip at every time. Some industries and some kinds of parts have been worse hit than others as things go on. In fact, Intel’s own chips are doing fairly well. “For the first time in years, Intel fabs and our substra...