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The Morning After: Apple teams up with the creator of ‘Bob’s Burgers’

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It’s also setting releases for ‘Amazing Stories,’ ‘Home’ and ‘Trying.’
Apple unveils animated musical series from the creator of ‘Bob’s Burgers’

Apple’s latest announcement for TV+? Central Park, an animated musical comedy series from Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard, fellow BB producer Nora Smith and Frozen’s Josh Gad (who also helps produce). The series follows a family who lives in a castle in New York City’s legendary park while resisting pressure from an heiress who wants to turn the greenery into condos.

The company has only narrowed the release down to “summer,” but you can already expect a star-studded cast. On top of Gad, you can also expect voiceovers from Hamilton alumni Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr. as well as Kristen Bell, Tituss Burgess, Kathryn Hahn and Stanley Tucci.

The deal will keep navigation an option despite a US blacklisting.
Huawei finds a new map app option after Google

Now that Huawei is effectively cut off from Google, how is it going to provide navigation on its phones? By finding a non-American partner, of course. TomTom has revealed that it struck a deal with Huawei to provide maps, navigation and traffic data for the Chinese manufacturer’s apps. The arrangement was struck a while back, according to TomTom’s Remco Meerstra, but hadn’t been revealed until now. The company declined to share more details.

It could score major pop and sports podcasts.
Spotify may be in talks to buy culture outlet The Ringer

Spotify might be making one of its biggest moves yet in its bid to conquer the podcasting world. Wall Street Journal sources say the streaming company is in “early” talks to acquire The Ringer, the sports- and pop culture-oriented outlet founded by ex-ESPN personality Bill Simmons. While it’s not guaranteed this would lead to a deal, a purchase would give Spotify control of over 30 podcasts (including The Bill Simmons Podcast) that rake in over 100 million downloads per month. Beating a dead horse, here, but Spotify is aggressively chasing podcasts.

Still.

Most people prefer to find IGTV videos in their usual feeds.
Instagram removes the IGTV button you weren’t using

Are you watching IGTV? I’ve barely watched it a handful of times — and it looks like I’m not alone. Instagram’s IGTV was supposed to usher in a new era for video in the social network, but that’s not quite how it panned out. A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch that Instagram is removing the IGTV icon at the top of its main interface. “Very few” people use the icon, Facebook said — instead, most are watching IGTV videos through their main feed, the relevant Explore channel, user profiles or the dedicated IGTV app.

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FBI seizes site dedicated to selling data breach information

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WeLeakInfo claimed to have over 12 billion usernames and passwords siphoned from around 10,300 breaches at various companies and websites. It had organized that information into an easily searchable database, letting users look up someone’s email address to find out what passwords, names, phone numbers and IP addresses were linked. The site offered access to all the info via subscriptions starting at as little as $2.

The site promoted itself as a legitimate way to perform security research, even though it offered phone numbers, IP addresses and other personal info that’s protected by law. (If you want to find out whether your username and password has been stolen, you can go to security expert Troy Hunt‘s excellent haveibeenpawned.com site and get the information for free.) As part of the operation, the FBI is asking people with any information about WeLeakInfo to file a complaint.

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Samsung appoints Roh Tae-moon as its new smartphone CEO

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Roh, who came on board with Samsung in 1997, helped develop the Galaxy device lineup and is supposedly a stickler for engineering and design. He’ll reportedly try to bolster Samsung’s reputation for quality after it stumbled over the past few years. Under Koh, Samsung was forced to kill the flammable Galaxy Note 7 and had to delay the Galaxy Fold due to issues with the display.

Roh’s primary goals will be to shepherd foldable products into the mainstream and help Samsung expand in China and India. Roh is also known as a cost-cutter who outsourced smartphone production to better compete with aggressive Chinese rivals like Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo. He’ll be getting to work right away, as Samsung should be unveiling its new Galaxy S20 flagship series and possibly a second-generation foldable device at a February 11th event in San Francisco.

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Jennifer Aniston lands Apple TV+ a SAG award for ‘The Morning Show’

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Apple had likely hoped for a pair of trophies, as Billy Crudup had won as best actor in a drama series at the Critic’s Choice Awards. However, that prize was taken by Peter Dinklage for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Another surprise was Amazon’s ensemble in a comedy series win for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, since Fleabag had been tipped for that prize. “I voted for Fleabag,” joked Mrs. Maisel star Alex Borstein. Tony Shalhoub also took the male actor in a comedy series prize for his role in Maisel — his fourth SAG win.

Still, Fleabag did win in the best female actor in a comedy series for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who has now won an Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG prize for the show. It also means that Amazon Prime Video took three SAG awards in total, topping all other streamers. Netflix picked up its only prize in the best ensemble drama award for The Crown, nearly getting skunked again after leading all nominees.

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ESA opens plant that turns moondust into oxygen

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As that suggests, this process could have an upshot for Moon explorers by producing useful alloys to construct habitats or repair vehicles.

There’s a lot of work needed before plants like this can go to the Moon. It needs to store oxygen instead of simply venting the gas. Likewise, scientists would need to determine what alloys would be the most useful byproducts. A Moon-worthy test plant should be ready by the mid-2020s, though, so it may just be a matter of time before explorers are producing air far from Earth.

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Opera accused of offering predatory loans through Android apps

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The conditions only got worse for borrowers who missed their payments. Falling short by just a day could raise the APR as high as 876 percent. Also, the apps reportedly scraped phone contacts to harass family, friends and others with calls and texts in hopes this would pressure customers into paying up. These same notices often threatened legal action. And the consequences aren’t trivial. Many users are young people whose financial futures and even careers may be in jeopardy with credit trouble on their records.

Hindenburg further suggested that Opera was using the loan apps to artificially prop up financial growth despite lower profit margins than its main browser business, and that the company has poured millions of dollars into apps and entities owned by its CEO despite questionable disclosures and business practices.

We’ve asked Google and Opera for comment. If the report is accurate, though, Opera is in trouble. Google could easily pull the loan apps (if not more) from the Play Store, and Opera’s reputation will be trashed. That would be good for the future of potential loan targets — just not for the company’s long-term health.

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Huawei will use TomTom for maps now that it’s cut off from Google

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It’s not shocking that Huawei would forge a partnership like this. With the US blacklisting Huawei over alleged security concerns, the Chinese firm had to either find a global navigation partner or else accept that its map software would be limited at best. At the same time, it’s still big news. Even if Huawei will still miss out on the Google apps that are often important to success outside of China, it won’t have to worry so much about losing vital functionality.

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Elon Musk expects SpaceX’s first crewed mission between April and June

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Now that SpaceX has completed Crew Dragon’s in-flight launch escape test, when can you expect a mission with humans aboard? At last, the company has a more specific answer than early 2020. Company chief Elon Musk told attendees at a post-test conference that the crewed mission to the International Space Station will likely take place in the second quarter of the year, or sometime between April and June. SpaceX was “highly confident” the hardware would be ready in the first quarter, “most likely” in February.

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Apple unveils animated musical series from the creator of ‘Bob’s Burgers’

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The company has only narrowed the release down to “summer,” but you can already expect a star-studded cast. On top of Gad, you can also expect voice-overs from Hamilton alumni Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr. as well as Kristen Bell, Tituss Burgess, Kathryn Hahn and Stanley Tucci.

There are more shows on deck beyond this. Steven Spielberg’s anthology show Amazing Stories will premiere March 6th, while the luxury housing documentary series Home arrives on April 17th. The Chris Evans thriller Defending Jacob surfaces April 24th. Apple’s recently unveiled Dear… documentary series appears June 5th. Anglophiles will be happy to know that Apple’s first UK series, the relationship comedy Trying, debuts May 1st.

To top this off, Apple is continuing its streak of renewing its early shows. The tech giant has ordered second seasons for both the young investigator series Home After Dark as well as its gaming-themed Mythic Quest before their respective April 3rd and February 7th debuts. It’s not completely surprising that Apple would renew either series when the TV+ roster is still relatively thin, but it still shows a degree of confidence in these productions. And Apple needs that right now — TV+ is young enough that any bombs would reflect poorly on the service as a whole.

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Facebook says glitch led to rude translation of Chinese leader’s name

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The company added that it was working to “fix this as quickly as possible.” Google’s translation engine didn’t have a similar problem.

It’s hard not to laugh a little at the slip-up, especially when Xi Jinping is known to be sensitive to ridicule. However, Facebook’s Burmese translation flaws have also highlighted the company’s problems addressing the anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar. In one case, a post calling for genocide was interpreted as “I shouldn’t have a rainbow in Myanmar.” More accurate translations can not only avoid embarassment, but help document and defend against horrible acts.

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