GitHub and digital rights group EFF have filed briefs supporting stream-ripping site Yout.com in its legal battle with the RIAA. GitHub warns that the lower court's decision threatens to criminalize the work of many other developers. The EFF, meanwhile, stresses that an incorrect interpretation of the DMCA harms people who use stream-rippers lawfully. TorrentFreak reports: In 2020, YouTube ripper Yout.com sued the RIAA, asking a Connecticut district court to declare that the site does not violate the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The music group had previously used DMCA takedown notices to remove many of Yout's appearances in Google's search results. This had a significant impact on revenues, the site argued, adding that it always believed it wasn't breaking any laws and hoped the court would agree. Last October, the Connecticut district court concluded that Yout had failed to show that it doesn't circumvent YouTube's technological protection measures. As such, it could be breaking the law. Yout operator Johnathan Nader opted to appeal the decision. Nader's attorneys filed their opening brief (PDF) last week at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking it to reverse the lower court's decision. The YouTube ripper is not the only party calling for a reversal. Yesterday, Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub submitted an amicus brief that argues for the same. And in a separate filing, the EFF also agrees that the lower court's decision should be overturned.

GitHub's brief starts by pointing out that the company takes no position on the ultimate resolution of this appeal, nor does it side with all of Yout's arguments. However, it does believe that the lower court's interpretation of the DMCA is dangerous. The district court held that stream rippers can violate the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The court noted that these tools allow people to download video and audio from YouTube, despite the streaming platform's lack of a download button. According to GitHub, this conclusion is premature, dangerous, and places other software types at risk. In the present lawsuit, GitHub reiterates that stream-ripping tools should not be outlawed. The fact that YouTube doesn't have a download button doesn't mean that tools that enable people to download videos circumvent technological access restrictions. "YouTube's decision not to provide its own 'download' button, however, is not a restriction on access to works. It merely affects how users experience them," GitHub writes. If the court order is allowed to stand, GitHub warns that a broad group of developers could be exposed to criminal liability, effectively chilling technological innovation. YouTube download tools are not the only types of software at risk, according to GitHub. There are many others that affect 'how users experience' online websites. These could also be seen as problematic, based on the district court's expansive interpretation of the DMCA. These widely accepted tools could put their creators at risk if the DMCA is interpreted too strictly, GitHub warns.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also submitted an amicus curiae brief (PDF) yesterday. The digital rights group takes interest in copyright cases, particularly when they get in the way of people's ability to freely use technology. In this instance, EFF points out that stream-rippers such as Yout.com provide a neutral technology with plenty of legal uses. They can be used for infringing purposes, but that's also true for existing technologies -- the printing press, for example. "Like every reproduction technology -- from the printing press to the smartphone -- these programs, colloquially called 'streamrippers,' have important lawful uses as well as infringing ones. "Video creators, educators, journalists, and human rights organizations all depend on the ability to make copies of user-uploaded videos," EFF adds. In common with GitHub, EFF notes that the absence of a download button on YouTube doesn't imply that download tools automatically violate the DMCA, especially when there are no effective download restrictions on the platform. [...] According to EFF, Yout and similar tools provide the same functions as video cassette recorders once did. They allow people to make copies of videos that are posted publicly by their creators. In addition, these tools are vital for some reporters and useful to creatives who use them for future work.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica: The month before Dwarf Fortress was released on Steam (and Itch.io), the brothers Zach and Tarn Adams made $15,635 in revenue, mostly from donations for their 16-year freeware project. The month after the game's commercial debut, they made $7,230,123, or 462 times that amount....

Tarn Adams noted that "a little less than half will go to taxes," and that other people and expenses must be paid. But enough of it will reach the brothers themselves that "we've solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people." It also means that Putnam, a longtime modder and scripter and community member, can continue their work on the Dwarf Fortress code base, having been hired in December.

The "issues of health/retirement" became very real to the brothers in 2019 when Zach had to seek treatment for skin cancer. The $10,000 cost, mostly covered through his wife's employer-provided insurance, made them realize the need for more robust sustainability. "You're not just going to run GoFundMes until you can't and then die when you're 50," Tarn told The Guardian in late 2022. "That is not cool." This realization pushed them toward a (relatively) more accessible commercial release with traditional graphics, music, and tutorials.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork... for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl "adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards," writes MUO, "meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!"

But best of all, "Pages connect and render in an instant—seemingly quicker than a desktop GUI browser, and every page we visited was rendered correctly."
From the article: There are a bunch of good reasons to browse the internet from the comfort of your terminal. It could be that eschewing the bloat of X.org and Wayland, a terminal is all you have. Maybe you like SSHing into remote machines and browsing the internet from there.

Perhaps you, like us, just really, really like terminals.

Whatever the reason, your choices of web browsers have, until recently, been limited, and your experience of the world wide web has been a janky, barely-functional one.... We tested Carbonyl in a range of Linux terminals, including the XFCE terminal. GNOME terminal, kitty, and the glorious Cool Retro Terminal. Carbonyl was smooth, fast, and flawless in all of them.

We even connected to our Raspberry Pi via SSH in CRT, and ran Carbonyl remotely, watching Taylor Swift music videos on YouTube. No problem.
And yes, you can use it to play DOOM.

A group of YouTube contractors in Texas are currently on strike today "in protest of rules requiring such workers -- even those who have always worked remotely -- to report to the office," reports Axios. From the report: All of the 43-person team of contractors for YouTube Music voted to strike, following an edict that they report to an office in Austin starting on Monday. The workers, who are technically employed by Cognizant, were notified of the Feb. 6 return to office date in November. That came after workers had filed the prior month for union recognition, leading some to conclude the move was being made in retaliation. The workers are also seeking to have Google and Cognizant recognized as joint employers. The vast majority of the contractors were hired during the pandemic -- and have always worked remotely. Nearly a quarter of them live somewhere other than Austin. Workers say their pay, which starts at around $19 per hour, isn't enough to cover the costs of relocating to -- and living in -- Austin. Some also care for a child, spouse or parent, which complicates a shift to the office.

Cognizant says that the workers' contracts have always stated that the jobs were in-office jobs and that it communicated to workers since Dec. 2021 that it would provide 90 days notice when employees were expected back in the office. "Cognizant respects the right of our associates to disagree with our policies, and to protest them lawfully," the company said in a statement to Axios. "However, it is disappointing that some of our associates have chosen to strike over a return to office policy that has been communicated to them repeatedly since December 2021."

"My goal is to keep my friends employed," said Katie Marschher, who has worked at Cognizant on YouTube Music for nearly two years. Like many on her team, Marschher said she works more than one job to make ends meet. Although she lives in Austin, one of her other jobs is helping bands on tour, which requires her to travel. That works well remotely but she would have to scale back if required to be in office. "Our hope is we can actually have a dialogue where we are listened to," said Neil Gossell, who joined the YouTube/Cognizant team last year. He took the job specifically because it allowed him to work from home close to his spouse, who has post-traumatic stress disorder. The YouTube Music STRIKE press conference has been shared on Facebook and Twitter.

Spotify packed on 10 million Premium customers in the last three months of 2022 to stand at 205 million, topping its previous guidance. Variety reports: The growth of its paid subs, up 14% year over year, was "aided by promotional intake and household plans," the company said. Overall, the streamer gained 33 million total monthly active users in the fourth quarter -- a record high -- to reach 489 million (free and paid), up 20% year over year. Amid signs of a flagging economy, Spotify posted 3.17 billion euros in revenue, up 18% from the year-earlier period an in-line with guidance, and a net loss of 270 million euros (versus a net loss of 39 million euros in Q4 2021). Operating loss of 231 million euros for Q4 was better than its projection of -300 million euros.

"We ended 2022 with strong Q4 performance as nearly all of our [key performance indicators] surpassed guidance," Spotify said in its quarterly shareholder deck. The company said revenue growth, excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, was ahead of expectations. Meanwhile, Spotify's ad-supported revenue in Q4 grew 14% year over year, to 449 million euros, led by podcasting gains in the mid-30% range. The company's gross margin for the quarter was 25.3%, slightly above guidance "primarily as a result of lower-than-expected spend on new podcast content investments" as well as "broad-based music favorability." Spotify last week cut 6% of its headcount, laying off about 600 employees. On the earnings call Tuesday, CEO Daniel Ek admitted that he had "overinvested" in Spotify's business, requiring the company to cut jobs.

"I still believe it was the right call to invest, and I would do it again," the CEO said. "But things change, and the macro-environment has changed significantly in the last year. And in hindsight, I probably got a little carried away and overinvested relative to the uncertainty we saw shaping up in the market."

A Welsh branch of McDonald's has started playing classical music and rationing wi-fi in a bid to deter anti-social behavior. The BBC reports: The fast-food restaurant has taken action after incidents at its Wrexham branch and elsewhere in the city which led to police issuing dispersal orders. North Wales Police said a group of 20 to 30 youngsters had caused "upset" but progress had been made recently. McDonald's said it was committed to being a good neighbor in the area. [...] McDonald's said: "We are aware of anti-social behavior affecting the wider area, and have introduced a number of measures in our Wrexham restaurant to support the police in tackling this issue. These include playing classical music from 17:00 GMT and turning off the wi-fi at certain points in the evening."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Four pixelated cartoon characters talk to each other about coffee, Amazon deliveries, and veganism as they stand apart in a decorated NYC apartment. There is one woman and three men who seem to be the animated versions of Seinfeld's main characters, Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer. But unlike Seinfeld, these characters are set in a modern-era NYC, and their voices and bodies look and sound robotic. That's because "Nothing, Forever" is a live-streaming show that's almost entirely generated by algorithms. It's been streaming non-stop on Twitch since December 14. [...] Skyler Hartle, the co-creator of "Nothing, Forever," told Motherboard that the show was created as a parody to Seinfeld. "The actual impetus for this was it originally started its life as this weird, very, off-center kind of nonsensical, surreal art project," Hartle said. "But then we kind of worked over the years to bring it to this new place. And then, of course, generative media and generative AI just kind of took off in a crazy way over the past couple of years."

Hartle and his co-creator, Brian Habersberger, used a combination of machine learning, generative algorithms, and cloud services to build the show. Hartle told Motherboard that the dialogue is powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 language model and that there is very little human moderation of the stream, outside of GPT-3's built-in moderation filters. "Aside from the artwork and the laugh track you'll hear, everything else is generative, including: dialogue, speech, direction (camera cuts, character focus, shot length, scene length, etc), character movement, and music," one of the creators wrote in a Reddit comment. [...] Hartle also said that unlike most television shows, "Nothing, Forever" is able to change based on people's feedback that is received through the Twitch stream chat. "The show can effectively change and the narrative actually evolves based on the audience. One of the major factors that we're thinking about is how do we get people involved in crafting the narrative so it becomes their own," he said. "As generative media gets better, we have this notion that at any point, you're gonna be able to turn on the future equivalent of Netflix and watch a show perpetually, nonstop as much as you want. You don't just have seven seasons of a show, you have seven hundred, or infinite seasons of a show that has fresh content whenever you want it. And so that became one of our grounding pillars," Hartle said. "Our grounding principle was, can we create a show that can generate entertaining content forever? Because that's truly where we see the future emerging towards. Our goal with the next iterations or next shows that we release is to actually trade a show that is like Netflix-level quality."

The classic 1997 vidoegame GoldenEye 007 "has finally landed on Xbox and Nintendo Switch," writes the Verge: On Xbox, the remaster includes 4K resolution, smoother frame rates, and split-screen local multiplayer, similar to a 2008-era bound-for-Xbox 360 version that was canceled amid licensing and rights issues but leaked out in 2021.
Meanwhile CNET describes the Switch version: You'll need to be subscribed to Switch Online's $50-a-year Expansion Pack tier to access GoldenEye and other N64 games. Online multiplayer is exclusive to the Switch release, the official 007 website noted, but this version is otherwise the same as the N64 original.
But "No high-def for them," adds Esquire: GoldenEye 007 marks a rare case in gaming history, where the title never left the gamer zeitgeist. It has been talked about, wished over, remade, and totally Frankensteined in the modding and emulation community....

Rare, a favorite game studio of mine — its crew is responsible for many of my childhood memories, making Banjo Kazzoie, Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and so many more — was always a Nintendo sweetheart. Until it was acquired back in 2002 by Microsoft. While Rare didn't pump out as many massive hits after the acquisition, the studio is responsible for one of my favorite games, Sea of Thieves. But arguably no game from those folks made more of a splash than Goldeneye.
CNN reports: Based on the 1995 film "GoldenEye," the game follows a block-like version of Pierce Brosnan's 007 as he shoots his way through various locales, all while a synthy version of the signature Bond theme plays....

The return of "GoldenEye 007," often referred to as one of the greatest video games of all time, has been years in the making. The Verge reported last year that rights issues blocked developers from releasing it on newer consoles, including Xbox, since at least 2008. Undeterred N64 fans even attempted to remake the game themselves on several occasions, though the original rights holders usually shut them down.
Modern players "may not realise how many of the features we now take for granted in shooters were inspired by this one game," writes the Guardian. "The game that would introduce a lot of players to the concept of using an analogue stick to look around in a 3D game — it's difficult to overstate how important that was." But it was the multiplayer mode that really counted. Four players, one screen, an array of locations and weapons, and all the characters from the single-player campaign.... We would usually play in Normal mode, but as the hours dragged on and the sunlight began to creep in behind the blinds, we'd switch to Slaps Only, in which players could only get kills by slapping each other to death....

It is interesting how fables around the game and its development have survived — and still intrigue. The fact that it is officially cheating to play as Oddjob in multiplayer mode; the brilliance of the pause music, which has been heavily memed on TikTok, and how it was written in just 20 minutes by Rare newcomer Grant Kirkhope. The fact that Nintendo legend and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto was so concerned by the death in the game that he suggested a post-credit sequence where James Bond went to a hospital to meet all the enemy soldiers he "injured". I think the sign of a truly great game — like any work of art — is how many legends become attached to its making.

It is lovely now, to see the game getting a release on Nintendo Switch and Xbox Game Pass.

Avatar: The Way of Water "has passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time," reports Variety: Director James Cameron's sci-fi epic has now earned $2.075 billion at the global box office. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, another sci-fi sequel released long after previous installments, finished its theatrical run with $2.064 billion after hitting theaters in December 2015.

With this latest box office milestone, Cameron now has three of the top four highest-grossing movies in history — the original Avatar is still the champion [with $2.92 billion], while Titanic sits in third place [with $2.2 billion].

[The second-highest grossing film of all time is Avengers: Endgame with $2.79 billion.] Avatar: The Way of Water has quickly moved up in the record books, surpassing Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.92 billion) on Jan. 18 and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.05 billion) shortly after on Jan. 26....

A third "Avatar" entry has already been set for release in December 2024 and there are plans for a fourth and fifth to continue the intergenerational saga
Some context from The A.V. Club: The highlight of that big pile of planetary currency being a massive $229 million turnout in China, where it's one of the first Disney movies to play in the country's lucrative markets in some time.

As it happens, James Cameron told GQ back in November, ahead of his sequel's release, that his "fucking expensive" movie would have to post these kinds of numbers to be anything other than a loss for the studio. "You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history," he noted at the time. "That's your threshold. That's your break even."
Wikipedia points out that when box office figures are adjusted for inflation, the highest-grossing film of all time is still the 1939 Civil War drama Gone with the Wind. And the next top-grossing films of all-time?

• The original Avatar
• Titanic
• The original Star Wars (1977)
• Avengers: Endgame
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• Star Wars: the Force Awakens

An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it. From a report: Called MusicLM, Google's certainly isn't the first generative AI system for song. There's been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by visualizing it, as well as Dance Diffusion, Google's own AudioML and OpenAI's Jukebox. But owing to technical limitations and limited training data, none have been able to produce songs particularly complex in composition or high-fidelity. MusicLM is perhaps the first that can.

Detailed in an academic paper, MusicLM was trained on a data set of 280,000 hours of music to learn to generate coherent songs for descriptions of -- as the creators put it -- "significant complexity" (e.g. "enchanting jazz song with a memorable saxophone solo and a solo singer" or "Berlin '90s techno with a low bass and strong kick." Its songs, remarkably, sound something like a human artist might compose, albeit not necessarily as inventive or musically cohesive. [...] That's not to suggest MusicLM's flawless -- far from it, truthfully. Some of the samples have a distorted quality to them, an unavoidable side effect of the training process. And while MusicLM can technically generate vocals, including choral harmonies, they leave a lot to be desired. Still, the Google researchers note the many ethical challenges posed by a system like MusicLM, including a tendency to incorporate copyrighted material from training data into the generated songs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ArsTechnica: The operator of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall is being probed by New York's attorney general over the company's use of facial recognition technology to identify and exclude lawyers from events. AG Letitia James' office said the policy may violate civil rights laws. Because of the policy, lawyers who work for firms involved in litigation against MSG Entertainment Corp. can be denied entry to shows or sporting events, even when they have no direct involvement in any lawsuits against MSG. A lawyer who is subject to MSG's policy may buy a ticket to an event but be unable to get in because the MSG venues use facial recognition to identify them.

In December, attorney Kelly Conlon was denied entry into Radio City Music Hall in New York when she accompanied her daughter's Girl Scout troop to a Rockettes show. Conlon wasn't personally involved in any lawsuits against MSG but is a lawyer for a firm that "has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment," NBC New York reported. James' office sent a letter (PDF) Tuesday to MSG Entertainment, noting reports that it "used facial recognition software to forbid all lawyers in all law firms representing clients engaged in any litigation against the Company from entering the Company's venues in New York, including the use of any season tickets."

"We write to raise concerns that the Policy may violate the New York Civil Rights Law and other city, state, and federal laws prohibiting discrimination and retaliation for engaging in protected activity," Assistant AG Kyle Rapinan of the Civil Rights Bureau wrote in the letter. "Such practices certainly run counter to the spirit and purpose of such laws, and laws promoting equal access to the courts: forbidding entry to lawyers representing clients who have engaged in litigation against the Company may dissuade such lawyers from taking on legitimate cases, including sexual harassment or employment discrimination claims." The AG's office also said it is concerned that "facial recognition software may be plagued with biases and false positives against people of color and women." The letter asked MSG Entertainment to respond by February 13 "to state the justifications for the Company's Policy and identify all efforts you are undertaking to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and that the Company's use of facial recognition technology will not lead to discrimination." "To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us," said an MSG spokesperson in a statement. "We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation. Most importantly, to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination."

If it's still too early to declare platform-exclusive podcast deals dead as we move into 2023, it's becoming ever clearer that this business model is likely not long for this world. From a report: Spotify in particular has spent the past few years building up its arsenal of exclusive podcast content, shelling out more than $1 billion to acquire studios, lock down popular shows and secure marquee names. Those include podcasting behemoth Joe Rogan, former Presidential couple the Obamas (through their Higher Ground media company) and even the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But the tide is turning as we enter what many observers project to be a difficult year for the podcasting industry. As in the streaming video space, the major audio players are reportedly reining in their spending amid economic pressures, bringing the booming market of the last several years toward a close.

[...] For one thing, as the digital ad market continues to sag in the months ahead, competition for podcast ad dollars is going to intensify further -- bad news for any creator whose show is limited to a single platform. Despite exponential growth in the number of shows available to listeners -- on Spotify alone, that number grew from around 700,000 at the end of 2019 to 4.7 million in September 2022, per company reports -- the podcast ad market, while still growing, has not expanded nearly as rapidly. Spotify's U.S. podcast ad revenue is projected to steadily increase by about 40 percent year-over-year through 2024, far down from the explosive growth rates of 2020 and 2021 as its podcast operations expanded.

The partisan divisions we've become used to on Capitol Hill are if anything even more stark in the new 118th Congress. But so far, there is one thing Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate seem to agree on: Ticketmaster is a problem. From a report: "In terms of their monopoly power, I'm concerned about it," Senator Josh Hawley told The New Republic in December. "I think we should look into it." Finally, the Senate is going to. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee that oversees antitrust issues, jointly announced a hearing for Tuesday that will be assisted by committee Chair Dick Durbin and ranking member Lindsey Graham. "I look forward to hearing more about how we got here, and identifying solutions," said Graham in a statement.

Ticketmaster has a dark history of confronting political rivals within the music industry. Pearl Jam was the last major live act to challenge the company in Congress in 1994. Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the Justice Department accusing Ticketmaster of being a monopoly. In an obscure House subcommittee, the complaint became an open airing of grievances on MTV by the band and its music industry allies against Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen, who, in turn, wrecked the Seattle grunge band's subsequent tours with last-minute ticketing shenanigans. The government all this time has done nothing to rein in the company. In fact, quite the opposite: In 2010, the Justice Department approved Ticketmaster's merger with Live Nation Entertainment, the company that owns the venues (and therein the concessions) where live music acts Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny perform for millions of adoring fans. For the world's biggest acts, Live Nation offers an all-in-one vendor that can pack stadiums for the artist who, in turn, doesn't have to deal with a galaxy of local players in the live events space, like venue owners, concert promoters, food and beverage vendors, public officials, and other hometown luminaries looking to dictate terms for the show.

In the latest test build of Windows 11, a new volume mixer can be enabled that looks a lot like EarTrumpet. The Verge's Tom Warren reports: The new Windows 11 feature provides quick access from the taskbar to switch audio outputs and control individual app volumes. That's exactly what EarTrumpet was built for nearly five years ago. The awesome utility has improved audio in Windows for years, and I once called it "the Windows 10 volume control app Microsoft should have created." How ironic.

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Amenta and Microsoft MVP Rafael Rivera created EarTrumpet, and Rivera pointed out the similarities of Microsoft's new Windows 11 feature on Twitter this week. "Oh snap. Microsoft is catching up to EarTrumpet," said Rivera. [...]

The operating system has long needed improvements here, and Windows users shouldn't really have to resort to third-party tools that put another volume icon in your system tray. Microsoft's implementation isn't as quick and easy as EarTrumpet, but there's still time for the company to refine it before launch.

The Wikipedia editors are waiting to hear you scream. On Wednesday, Wikipedia is set to make its new skin the default on English Wikipedia -- its first new skin since 2010 -- and the team of designers and volunteer editors are waiting with some mix of excitement and trepidation. From a report: On Sunday, several dozen Wikipedia editors nursed cocktails in midtown Manhattan at the afterparty for Wikipedia Day, the annual celebration of Wikipedia's Jan. 14, 2001, founding. The group -- a nerdy crowd of librarians, students, software engineers, and others who spend their free time creating an encyclopedia -- usually meets in quiet libraries instead of ritzy open bars, but this was a special occasion: Wikipedia's 22nd birthday (as well as its 21st and 20th, which the group had only commemorated online). Plus, someone had offered the space as a donation.

Gathered on a leather couch, speaking loudly over the DJ's groovy music, their conversation meandered from class-action lawsuits against a water park to bird photography to Vector 2022, Wikipedia's first big redesign in 12 years, set to debut as the default on English Wikipedia on Wednesday. Eyes lit up. People leaned in. Anticipation was palpable. "We're going to be able to hear screams from space," joked a Wikimedian who goes by the username Enterprisey, who has spent months contributing to the redesign. Pharos, a longtime contributor, mentioned that Swahili Wikipedia had unanimously voted to reject the new skin and curtly demanded a return to the old skin. "I had never seen Swahili Wikipedia so outspoken about something. Pretty exciting," he said.

For all the hype, Vector 2022 isn't dramatically different -- that's why it shares a name with the previous skin, Vector 2010. All the scaffolding is the same: Wikipedia is still Wikipedia, just with more whitespace, a more prominent search bar and language switcher, and a sticky table of contents. There's also a collapsible sidebar and maximum line width, which make the site more clean and less cluttered. But those changes have been scrupulously discussed and debated (over and over and over). Wikipedia is not the scrappy web experiment it once was. [...] But it doesn't look all that different than it did 23 years ago, when it was run by a few guys in an office in Florida. The text-heavy website resembles an email inbox, or Craigslist, or Old Reddit. It's a barrage of straightforward white and blue text, a rather unsightly assemblage of lines and squares. It's not trendy.

Music streaming service Spotify, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. From a report: The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its App Store rules to stifle competition. It has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30% charge Apple requires developers to pay on its App Store has forced Spotify to "artificially inflate" its own prices. "We are writing to you to call for swift and decisive action by the European Commission against anticompetitive and unfair practices by certain global digital gatekeepers, and Apple in particular," read the letter, which was signed by chief executives of media firms Schibsted, Proton and Basecamp.

Sony has a pair of new Android Walkmans out, the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700. Ars Technica reports: We'll start with the most consumer-friendly of the two, the NW-A300. This basic design debuted in 2019 with the NW-A105, but that shipped with Android 9. This is an upgraded version of that device with a less-ancient version of Android, a new SoC, and a scalloped back design. In Sony's home of Japan, the 32GB version is 46,000 yen (about $360), while in Europe, it's 399 euro (about $430). The NW-A300 is a tiny little device that measures 56.6x98.5x12 mm, so pretty close to a deck of playing cards. [...] The front is dominated by a 3.6-inch, 60 Hz, 1280x720 touchscreen LCD. There's 32GB of storage, and the device supports Wi-Fi 802.11AC and Bluetooth 5. That's about all Sony wants to talk about for official specs. It touts "longer battery life" but won't say how big the battery is, promising only "36 hours* of 44.1 KHz FLAC playback, up to 32 hours* of 96 KHz FLAC High-Resolution Audio playback." Presumably, that's all with the screen off. [...] This is a music player, so of course, there's a headphone jack on the bottom of the unit. You'll also find a spot for a lanyard, a speedy USB-C 3.2 Gen1 port for quick music transfers, and a MicroSD slot for storing all your music. Buttons along the side of the device also give you every music control you could want, like a hold switch, previous, play/pause, next, volume controls, and power.

There's another new Sony Walkman, the NW-ZX700. It's 104,500 yen ($818) in Japan, and while that sounds like a lot for a portable music player, it's actually a relative bargain compared to the "Signature Series" NW-WM1ZM2, which goes for an eye-popping $3,700 thanks to audiophile hocus-pocus like a "gold plated, oxygen-free, copper body." Anyway, back to this $800 model. Unlike regular phone equipment, this has a proper audio amplifier with big, beefy capacitors to power the analog audio output. That makes it much bigger than the A300, at 72.6x132 mm and a whopping 17 mm thick. It also has two audio outs: a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 4.4 mm "balanced" audio jack, which is used by some high-end audio equipment. I'm sure Sony has a wonderful headphone collection to match. [...] Both this and the A300 use the S-Master HX digital amplifier chip, which supports Sony's high-resolution "NativeDSD" audio format, which is also used on Super Audio CDs. If you're some kind of heathen that is just streaming 128kb Spotify, Sony's "DSEE Ultimate" feature dubiously claims to be able to "upscale" your music with AI. There's also a "Vinyl Processor" that will add record player noises to your audio for an "authentic listening experience."

The PC market is in rough waters, and it was for much of last year. Every PC maker except Apple saw year-over-year decline. Laptop sales are said to have suffered the most. From a report: This all made for a somewhat uncertain backdrop heading into CES 2023, the annual conference where tech companies show off the products they'll be releasing in 2023. Throughout the show, executives and representatives from various PC manufacturers acknowledged that the industry has a big task ahead of it this year: keep the laptop exciting. Some companies are trying to do that with goofy hardware things (such as Lenovo's dual-screen, dual-OLED, and touchpad-less Yoga Book 9i). But others are moving away from hardware -- and the raw power that hardware can provide -- and emphasizing quirkier software capabilities in this year's lineups. AMD revealed that some of its new chips will come with its first Ryzen AI engine, built on its XDNA architecture.
Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake chips will also bring AI capabilities.
HP announced new features for its Omen Gaming Hub, including integration with Nvidia's GeForce Now, and new remote management and insight services for IT. A consumer Windows PC, the Dragonfly Pro, was also unveiled, with its integration with HP's new "live concierge" service touted as a highlight. The report adds: And HP isn't alone in this conviction -- quite a few other manufacturers that had a big presence at CES this year emphasized showy software features that utilized camera tracking and AI, from Asus' and Acer's glasses-free 3D displays to Razer's soundbar that follows your head around to optimize your music. Even Lenovo's aforementioned dual-screen Yoga Book is a software offering in many ways; the form factor is hardly new, but the investments Lenovo has made in an impressive system of gesture control are what make it a viable product.

AmiMoJo writes: Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has signed a new law that legalizes piracy of movies, music, TV shows and software owned by rightsholders from 'unfriendly countries'. The law also allows goods protected by intellectual property law to be imported from any country without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

Lukashenko's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to new sanctions being imposed by the EU, U.S. and other countries. In common with Russia, Belarus relies on intellectual property owned by foreign rightsholders that are currently unable or unwilling to supply and/or license it. So, to ensure legal access to pirated movies, music, TV shows and software, the government drafted a new law to restrict intellectual property rights.

"Singaporean inventor and tech pioneer Sim Wong Hoo passed away on January 4th at the age of 67," reports Engadget: Sim may not be a household name these days, but he founded Creative Technology (or Creative Labs in the US), the company behind the Sound Blaster brand of sound cards, back in 1981. Sound Blasters were some of the first sound cards available to consumers, and there was a time when you had to make sure your system worked with them if you wanted to listen to music and play games.

Sim established his business in the US and started selling Sound Blasters a few years later, after which Creative became the first Singaporean company to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The integration of sound boards into the motherboard ended Sound Blaster's popularity, but Bloomberg says the cards provided audio for more than 400 million PCs.

Under his leadership, Creative also launched a range of MP3 players, and Sim once tried to take on Apple by spending $100 million on advertising and marketing in its bid to dethrone the iPod. In 2006, Creative sued Apple for violating its patent for portable media system menus. The companies filed more lawsuits against each other after that before Apple settled with Creative and paid the company $100 million for the technology outlined in its patent.