At a later date, the project will expand to include a dedicated sports news hub. The website will feature a dashboard where you’ll be able to set the specific teams, leagues and players you want to follow. You’ll be able to access all of the content on The Matchup as long as you have a subscription with one of the local publications that’s taking part in the project. According to the Local Media Consortium, all subscription revenue will go back to the local companies providing content for The Matchup, and any money the hub makes off of sponsorships will be shared between them as well.
Over the last few years, Google has launched several other efforts to support local journalism. In 2018, for instance, the company started providing free two-year G Suite licenses to publications with fewer than 500 employees. More recently, the company announced Project Oasis, a research initiative that aims to develop resources for the broader local news ecosystem. Compared to those efforts, The Matchup feels more immediately tangible.
The idea to explore hydrogen fuel cells originated in 2018, when researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO used a proton exchange membrane (PEM) hydrogen fuel cell to power a rack of computers. Mark Monroe, a principal infrastructure engineer on Microsoft’s team for datacenter advanced development, said his team watched a demonstration and was intrigued with the technology.
Monroe’s team developed a 250-kilowatt fuel cell system, enough to power a full row of data center servers, and in September 2019 installed it at an Azure datacenter near Salt Lake City, Utah. In June, the system passed a 48-hour test. The team plans to test a 3-megawatt fuel system next, which matches the size of current diesel-powered backup generators.
It’s possible that an Azure data center could be equipped and run entirely on fuel cells, a hydrogen storage tank and an electrolyzer that converts water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, Monroe said. These systems could integrate with the electric power grid to provide load balancing services. Further, hydrogen-powered long-haul vehicles could come to datacenters to refuel. By continuing to develop hydrogen fuel technology, Microsoft could eventually serve as a model for use of hydrogen fuel cells elsewhere.
Mere hours after it started raising money for Eiyuden Chronicle onKickstarter, developer Rabbit & Bear has successfully funded the project. The game is the spiritual successor to the Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) series Suikoden. Some of the key creatives who worked on the franchise, including Suikoden and Suikoden II director andwriter Yoshitaka Murayama, founded the studio that’s working on the new title. Suikoden fans have been waiting years for the classic JRPG series to make a comeback. Series publisher Konami hasn’t released a new mainline title in the franchise since 2006’s Suikoden V.
Eiyuden Chronicle is currently on track to pass the $1 million funding milestone. Should it do so, Rabbit & Bear will also release the title on consoles like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and their next-generation counterparts. Given that the campaign ends on August 28th, it’s very likely the game will make its way to consoles.
Citing Zuckerberg’s 2018 testimony, Gaetz says that Zuckerberg lied to Congress when he described Facebook as “politically neutral.” He said that a recent report from Project Veritas, the right-wing activist group known for dubious “undercover” investigations, proves the social network unfairly censors conservatives. Project Veritas has a history of hidden camera “stings” that use deceptively-edited video to fuel outrage against YouTube executives, CNN, George Soros and other liberal boogeyman. (Notably, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in 2010 after being arrested for trying to tamper with a Senator’s phone.)
#BREAKING: I’ve filed a criminal referral against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for making materially false statements to Congress while under oath. https://t.co/p81BefScHx
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but claims that the social network is biased against conservatives is nothing new. Republican officials have long accused Facebook (and other social media companies) of discriminating against their viewpoints.
Gaetz makes no mention of the fact that Zuckerberg and Facebook have repeatedly declined to fact check or otherwise apply their rules to President Trump, and that an official review into conservatives’ grievances has so far turned up little evidence. Posts from conservative media also consistently rank among the most widely-shared stories on the platform, and multiplereports suggest Facebook has in fact shut down proposed changes that may disproportionately affect conservatives.
The letter comes days before a high-profile antitrust hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, when Zuckerberg will appear, along with his counterparts from Apple, Google and Amazon. That Gaetz, a member of the committee, would send his letter just days before the hearing suggests he plans to grill Zuckerberg on more than just Facebook’s market dominance.
Amazon’s Alexa app is finally getting a much-needed revamp. Starting today, the Alexa app will have a whole new home screen with updated navigation that highlights Alexa-centric skills and a more personalized experience. Third-party skills have also been moved off the main screen in favor of more first-party features.
The main screen will now have personalized suggestions based on your Alexa usage. So if you use Alexa to play music a lot or control your smart home, you’ll see those commands prominently featured on the screen. According to Amazon, customers will see controls for currently active features, so you could, for example, adjust the volume level for the Echo Buds right then and there. First-time users, on the other hand, will see suggestions on how to get started with Alexa, as well as how to use other Amazon services like Amazon Music or how to add to their Amazon shopping list.
Not surprisingly, the massive weekend-long music festival Lollapalooza isn’t happening in Chicago this year. Perhaps also unsurprising is the fact that there will be a massive Lollapalooza livestream in its place. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Lolla2020 will take place over the same four days as the original festival, Thursday July 30th through Sunday August 2nd, but it’ll all be streaming on YouTube. Past Lollapaloozas have also been livestreamed on YouTube, but this is naturally the first that has no in-person event at all.
That said, there will be some live performances here — the Tribune says there will be new sets from H.E.R., Kali Uchis, Kaskade, Louis the Child, Vic Mensa and others as yet unnamed. Billboard also says that the show will feature the first Porno for Pyros performance in 24 years — the band is on the official lineup that was released today, and frontman Perry Farrell is the founder of Lollapalooza. In addition to these new sets are over 150 classic performances from over the years, including LCD Soundsystem, Metallica, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ellie Goulding, Run The Jewels, Lorde, Alabama Shakes, Tove Lo, Paul McCartney, Chance The Rapper, OutKast, Arcade Fire and others.
Notably, Warner Bros. told Variety it doesn’t have a plan to release Tenet in China yet. Behind North America, the country is the second-largest movie market globally. When theaters in China first started reopening, the country’s Film Administration (CFA) said they couldn’t show movies longer than two hours. However, according to Variety, some cinemas recently started playing older films like Inception that are longer than two hours, so that policy may no longer apply.
If Warner Bros. goes through with the release of Tenet, it will be the first major movie to hit theaters since the coronavirus pandemic shut down most cinemas in March. With the pandemic still a major issue in the US, a lot could change between now and September, making even a limited release untenable. Whatever happens, don’t expect you’ll be able to watch the movie online anytime soon. Unless something drastically changes, Nolan’s latest won’t skip theaters for a video on demand or streaming premiere.
From June 2016 to December 2018, Google account holders were met with a pop-up that explained “optional features” to accounts regarding how the company collected their data. Consumers could click “I agree,” and Google would begin collecting a “wide range of personally identifiable information” from them, according to the ACCC. The lawsuit contends that the pop-up didn’t adequately explain what consumers were agreeing to.
“The ACCC considers that consumers effectively pay for Google’s services with their data, so this change introduced by Google increased the ‘price’ of Google’s services, without consumers’ knowledge,” said ACCC Chair Rod Sims. Had more consumers sufficiently understood Google’s change in policy, many may not have consented to it, according to the ACCC.
Google told the Associated Press it disagrees with the ACCC’s allegations, and says Google account holders had been asked to “consent via prominent and easy-to-understand notifications.” It’s unclear what penalty the ACCC is seeking with the lawsuit.
Last October, the ACCC sued Google claiming the company misled Android users about the ability to opt out of location tracking on phones and tablets. That case is headed to mediation next week, according to a February Computer World article.
“We believe that what we’re doing is creating a natural viewing experience,” Fox Sports executive VP Brad Zager told the Washington Post. “Sports is supposed to be an escape and when people have that escape we want it to feel as normal as possible when there’s very little normalcy, like a crowd at a baseball game on a Saturday.”
The first game to get the virtual fans treatment was the 1PM ET match-up between the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs. At first, it looked like players were in an empty Wrigley Field, which would normally be jam-packed with fans on opening weekend. But suddenly, as if by magic, a quick shot of the bleachers revealed a spattering of what appeared to be a crowd of people standing and cheering. The shot was far enough away that the “fans” blurred together, and if you squinted, you could almost be fooled into believing they were real. For one brief moment, it was as if legions of fans were in the stands, pandemic be damned.
Unfortunately, that moment didn’t last very long. For one thing, the appearance of the virtual crowd wasn’t consistent. Sometimes they’d be there, sometimes they wouldn’t. Sometimes they’d be in the bleachers, but not behind the batter’s box, and vice versa. Sometimes the camera would show virtual fans in every seat, and sometimes the ballpark would just be empty again. This on-again off-again transition was jarring to say the least, and was one of the most complained about aspects of the game on Twitter. Andrew Marchand, a New York Post reporter, tweeted that one of the reasons for the sporadic appearance of the virtual crowds was that the network was “being cautious” in how it rolled it out. Be that as it may, it was still not a good look for the technology.
If Fox Sports really believes virtual fans will enhance the viewing experience, they need to make sure fans are in every shot. Right now I’ve only seen fans in the bleachers from the high home plate cam. Every other camera angle shows nothing but empty seats. So this is dumb.
Also, the virtual crowd seemed to work a lot better when you couldn’t see it up close. Otherwise, it looked obviously fake, as if they were characters copied and pasted straight from The Sims. In close-up shots, you could tell that several characters were sporting the same exact hairstyle and body shape, with the women always sitting with their legs closed together, and the men always sitting with theirs apart. The virtual fans also often appear to be seated on top of chairs instead of on them, and there were times when it looked like they were standing on them too, completely throwing off any semblance of reality.
It was also a little odd that the Fox announcers didn’t really address the existence of the virtual crowd until later in the game. For the Brewers vs Cubs matchup, they mentioned it at the top of the 2nd inning, which was about 40 minutes into the broadcast. In the 4PM ET game between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Fox announcers didn’t even mention the virtual crowds (which had been appearing on-and-off for over an hour at this point) until the bottom of the 4th. And even then, those mentions were just a few minutes at most. There was no indication anywhere on screen that virtual fans were being used. If you had just tuned into the game, you might’ve been a little confused and weirded out by the weird-looking fans and wondered what was going on.
And, of course, there’s the fact that none of the fans were doing what most fans would do at a baseball game. No one was drinking a beer, no one was eating a hot dog, no one was holding up cardboard signs and no one was wearing a garish homemade costume. In one amusing instance, Fox Sports producers had both Dodgers and Giants fans do the wave, and as several fans on Twitter pointed out, well, Giants fans just don’t do that (call it a longstanding/sitting tradition). Perhaps the most realistic thing that the virtual crowd did was that it started to thin out towards the later innings, much like real-life Dodgers fans would do in order to beat LA traffic.
Interestingly, the virtual fans were a no-show at the primetime 7PM ET match-up between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals, which is likely to be the most-watched game out of all three. According to Marchand, Fox Sports had “technical difficulties” that prevented the virtual fans from being used. Seeing as several viewers took to Twitter to voice their displeasure over how the virtual fans looked, those “technical difficulties” were probably for the best.
The concept of virtual fans isn’t new. Spain’s La Liga has tried so-called virtual crowds during soccer games, but with amorphous colored blobs instead of Sims-looking characters, which drew mixed reactions. When Coppa Italia implemented the same sort of virtual crowd tech in its final match last month, many fans seemed to find it distracting and unpleasant.
The NBA, however, is taking a slightly different approach. It’s equipping arenas with 17-foot tall LED screens that will display real-life people watching the game via Microsoft Teams. Fans will actually be viewing a live feed of the game at the same time, plus a view of their fellow “spectators,” so they can feel as if they’re at the game. This solution isn’t quite as feasible in a large ballpark or stadium due to the number of seats, but that’s an idea of “virtual fans” that might actually work. Not only can players feel a little more engaged with the fans, fans can in turn feel like they’re part of the game and and the thrill of maybe being on “camera.”
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
As goofy as they might seem, cardboard cut-outs could potentially be preferable than Fox Sports’ idea of “virtual fans.” Not only do these cut-outs feature faces of real people, some teams are allowing fans to pay for their faces to be on them, with the proceeds going to charities.
In the end, even Fox Sports acknowledges that it’s not fooling anyone with its virtual fans. As broadcaster Adam Amin said in the Brewers vs Cubs broadcast, “It’s not gonna look or sound like what you’re used to. We’re not fooling you. It’s just making it a little normal once in a while.”
“Embrace the weird, is what I’d say about the 2020 season,” he said. With a global pandemic, a shortened season, and plenty of rules changes, fans have been willing to embrace plenty of weird already. But Fox Sports’ “virtual fans” could prove to be too much, even for them.
In a welcome change, here’s some news about something that hasn’t been delayed too much by COVID-19. The third season of Star Trek: Discoverywill start streaming on CBS All Access on October 15th. As was the case with previous seasons, the 13 episodes will debut weekly instead of all at the same time.
A teaser video doesn’t show much beyond Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) sticking a ragged Federation flag into the ground on a barren planet, but there’ll surely be a proper trailer or two in the coming months. Filming on season 3 wrapped before lockdown measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 were enforced in March. According to Deadline, it sees the crew of the USS Discovery travel into “an unknown future far from the home they once knew” and work with new friends “to restore hope to the Federation.”
