After teasing it last month, Motorola has officially announced the successor to the Motorola Razr. The "razr," as it is called, "keeps the same general form factor but replaces the T9 keypad and small LCD with a 6.2-inch foldable plastic OLED panel and Android 9 Pie," reports The Verge. "It'll cost $1,499 when it arrives in January 2020." From the report: The new Razr is a fundamentally different take on the foldable phones that we've seen so far: instead of turning a modern-sized phone into a smaller tablet, it turns a conventional-sized smartphone into something much smaller and more pocketable. [...] The core of the phone is, of course, the display. It's a 6.2-inch 21:9 plastic OLED panel that folds in half along the horizontal axis. Unfolded, it's not dramatically bigger than any other modern phone, and the extra height is something that the Android interface and apps adapt to far better than a tablet-size screen. The screen does have a notch on top for a speaker and camera and a curved edge on the bottom, which takes a bit of getting used to, but after a minute or two, you barely notice it.

There's also a second, 2.7-inch glass-covered OLED display on the outside that Motorola calls the Quick View display. It can show notifications, music controls, and even a selfie camera mode to take advantage of the better main camera. Motorola is also working with Google to let apps seamlessly transition from the front display to the main one. There are some concerns about durability for the folding display, especially after Samsung's Galaxy Fold issues. But Motorola says that it has "full confidence in the durability of the Flex View display," claiming that its research shows that "it will last for the average lifespan of a smartphone." There's a proprietary coating to make the panel "scuff resistant," and it also has an internal nano-coating for splash resistance. (Don't take it swimming, though.) Motorola says that the entire display is made with a single cut, with the edges entirely enclosed by the stainless steel frame to prevent debris from getting in. Aside from the mid-range specs, like the Snapdragon 710 processor and "lackluster" 16-megapixel camera, seasoned reviewers appear to really like the nostalgic look and feel of the device. Did you own a Razr phone from the mid-2000s? How do you think the new model compares?

First, Instagram killed Snapchat when it cribbed its Stories feature. Now, the social media platform is reportedly gunning for TikTok with a new format called Reels. From a report: Reels is currently being rolled out in Brazil. Available on both iOS and Android, the feature lets users record 15-second clips that can then be set to music. Users can adjust speed, as well as borrow audio from other videos to remix and riff content. It also appears Instagram is adding video editing tools, like the ability to add timed captions and ghost overlays for transitions. Once a user is finished editing, the video can then be posted to their Stories -- and may also be shared to a new "Top Reels" section in the Explore tab. At the moment, there's no concrete timeline for when we might see Reels stateside. An Instagram spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company is simply excited to test the feature in Brazil for now, and "incorporate learnings and feed back from the community as [it] goes."

A new article at Motherboard remembers when the MIDI file format became the main way music was shared on the internet "for an incredibly short but memorable period of time..." [I]n the hunt for additional features, the two primary developers of web browsers during the era -- Microsoft and Netscape -- added functionality that made audio files accessible when loading websites, whether as background music or as embedded files with a dedicated player. Either way, it was one of the earliest examples of a plug-in that much of the public ran into -- even before Flash. In particular, Microsoft's Internet Explorer supported it as far back as version 1.0, while Netscape Navigator supported it with the use of a plug-in and added native support starting in version 3.0. There was a period, during the peak of the Geocities era, where loading a website with a MIDI file was a common occurrence.

When Geocities was shut down in 2019, the MIDI files found on various websites during that time were collected by The Archive Team. The Internet Archive includes more than 51,000 files in The Geocities MIDI Collection. The list of songs, which can be seen here, is very much a time capsule to a specific era. Have a favorite song from 1998? Search for it in here, sans spaces, and you'll probably find it...! They sound like a musical time capsule, and evoke memories of a specific time for many web surfers of the era. "Even in an age of high-quality MP3s, the chintzy sounds of MIDI files resonate on the Web," writer Douglas Wolk wrote for Spin in 2000, immediately adding the reason: "They play on just about anything smarter than a Tupperware bowl, and they're also very small...." The thing that often gets lost with these compositions of popular songs done in MIDI format is that they're often done by people, either for purposes of running a sound bank (which might come in handy, for example, with karaoke), or by amateurs trying to recreate the songs they enjoy or heard on the radio.... [I]ts moment in the sun reflected its utility during a period of time when the demand for multimedia content from the internet was growing -- but the ability for computers to offer it up in a full-fat format was limited. (Stupid modems....) MIDI is very much not dead -- far from it. Its great strength is the fact that a MIDI-supporting iPad can communicate with some of the earliest MIDI-supporting devices, such as the Commodore 64.
Using a browser plugin called Jazz-Plugin, their writer even re-discovered John Roache's Ragtime MIDI Library. "[I]t occurred to me that I should spend more time writing about one of the things that makes the Web so special -- labors of love. Unlike any medium before it, the Web gives people with unusual talents and interests a chance to share their passions with fellow enthusiasts -- and with folks like me who just happen to drop by."

When it comes to many of Apple's latest services, iPhone users in China are missing out. From a report: Podcast choices are paltry. Apple TV+ is off the air. News subscriptions are blocked, and Arcade gaming is nowhere to be found. For years, Apple made huge inroads in the world's most populous nation with hardware that boasted crisp displays, sleek lines and speedy processors. It peddled little of the content that boxed U.S. internet giants Google and Facebook out of the country. But now that Apple is becoming a major digital services provider, it's struggling to avoid the fate of its rivals.

Apple services such as the App Store, digital books, news, video, podcasts and music, put the company in the more precarious position of information provider (or at least overseer), exposing it to a growing online crackdown by China's authoritarian government. While standard iPhone services like iMessage work in China, many paid offerings that help Apple generate recurring revenue from its devices aren't available in the country. That includes four new services that Apple announced this year: TV+ video streaming, the Apple Card, Apple Arcade and the News+ subscription. Other well-known Apple services can't be accessed in the country either, including the iTunes Store, iTunes Movie rentals, Apple Books and the Apple TV and Apple News apps. Over the past year, Apple's Weather app lost its ability to show air quality index, or AQI, data for Chinese cities -- regardless of the user's location, the report adds. (Though this was due to a business dispute with Weather Channel.)

Xiaomi, which competes with Apple for the top position in the wearable market, today made the competition a little more interesting. The Chinese electronics giant has launched its first smartwatch called the Mi Watch that looks strikingly similar to the Apple Watch in its home market. From a report: The Mi Watch, like the Apple Watch, has a square body with a crown and a button. It sports a 1.78-inch AMOLED display (326 ppi) that offers the always-on capability and runs MIUI for Watch, the company's homegrown wearable operating system based on Google's Wear OS. Inside the metal housing -- aluminum alloy with a matte finish -- are microphones on two sides for recording audio and taking calls, and a loudspeaker on the left to listen to music or incoming calls. The Mi Watch, which comes in one size -- 44mm -- has a ceramic back, which is where the charging pins and a heart rate sensor are also placed. The Mi Watch is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset with four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB storage. The company says its first smartwatch supports cellular connectivity (through an eSIM), Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC for payments. The Mi Watch should last for 36 hours on a single charge on cellular mode, the company claimed. The Mi Watch is priced at CNY 1,299 ($185) and will go on sale in the country next week.

Apple today announced that it is releasing new AirPods Pro earbuds on October 30. Priced at $249, the premium version of its true wireless earbuds includes noise-cancellation feature to block out external sound. From a report: The new Pro model is available for pre-order starting today and will hit the shelves Wednesday, Oct. 30 - but, some hopeful buyers are finding they're already sold out online. The buds have ear tips that could fit deeper inside ears. The larger charging case also has a bigger, longer-lasting battery. Apple says the AirPods Pro can last "up to 5 hours" on a single charge and "over 24 hours" with the case. AirPods Pro cost $249 compared to $159 AirPods and $199 AirPods (with wireless charging case). Pre-orders start today at Apple.com. They deliver on Oct. 30 and will be available in Apple Stores the same day. Apple was widely expected to hold another event where it would have supposedly unveiled the refreshed AirPods and a 16-inch MacBook Pro, but the announcement today was made through a press release. The company has not clarified in that press release what kind of battery improvement the AirPods Pro offer. As it has been documented several times, AirPods' in-built battery becomes useless after a year of use, keeping the accessory on for just a few minutes at best. So unless Apple has somehow made a breakthrough here, it is likely the new AirPods, too, will die after a year of usage. Which means you're effectively paying Apple more than $20 a month for using their wireless earpieces.

Forty of the world's largest music festivals -- including SXSW, Coachella, Pitchfork, and Bonnaroo -- have gone on the record to promise that they will not use facial recognition technology at their events, following a campaign launched by musicians and activists to ban the technology. From a report: Today, organizers of the campaign are declaring victory. "It's so important that people don't just learn about how scary and dangerous surveillance technology like facial recognition is but also learn about successful efforts to stop it," Evan Greer, the deputy director of Fight For the Future, a digital rights rights advocacy group that spearheaded the campaign, told Motherboard.

This victory for digital rights activists and musicians is the first major setback to commercial facial recognition companies in the United States, and could have ripples beyond the industry. In recent years, many music events have become increasingly Orwellian experiences. Biometric surveillance companies and venture capitalists have identified music festivals as a huge potential market for facial recognition technologies, which can be marketed as a way for concertgoers to bypass long lines. But musicians and activists have concerns.

The Fortnite Chapter 2 update that rolled out to gamers worldwide last week has shattered traffic records at Akamai, one of the multiple content delivery networks (CDNs) Epic Games was using to get the game update to its players. From a report: Traffic numbers during the update's rollout peaked at 106 Tbps on Akamai's network, surpassing the 100 Tbps threshold for the first time in the company's history. While exact numbers were not released, the Fortnite update is believed to have accounted for more than half of the peak traffic. Adam Karon, Executive Vice President and GM, Media and Carrier, at Akamai, said the company is regularly reaching peaks of 50 Tbps every day, usually compromised of live streaming video (including live sports), music, e-commerce transactions, financial services, banking, software patches, healthcare information, automobile software updates, and others. "It was just 2008 when we marveled that peak traffic on Akamai crossed the 1 Tbps mark. Now, hardly a decade later, we're talking about a peak two orders of magnitude greater," Karon said.

"A record number" of U.S. schools are now accepting nearly all of their students without requiring an SAT or ACT test score, reports the Washington Post: Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, which opposes the misuse of standardized tests, said the past year has seen the "fastest growth spurt ever" of schools ending the SAT/ACT test score as an admission requirement. Over the summer, more than one school a week announced the change. Nearly 50 accredited colleges and universities that award bachelor's degrees announced from September 2018 to September 2019 that they were dropping the admissions requirement for an SAT or ACT score, FairTest said. That brings the number of accredited schools to have done so to 1,050 -- about 40 percent of the total, the nonprofit said.

While the test-optional list has some schools with specific missions -- there are religious colleges, music and art conservatories, nursing schools -- it also includes more than half of the top 100 liberal arts colleges on the U.S. News & World Report list, FairTest said. Also on the list are the majority of colleges and universities in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the six New England states...

Research has consistently shown that ACT and SAT scores are strongly linked to family income, mother's education level and race... The University of Chicago, which abandoned the requirement last year, reported in July that its decision, along with an increase in financial aid and outreach, led to a 20 percent increase in first-generation, low-income and rural students and veterans to commit to the school.

Physicists at Stockholm University and the Max Planck Institute of Physics have proposed a novel design for an "axion radio" that employs cold plasmas (gases or liquids of charged particles) to "listen" for dark matter. Their paper has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Ars Technica reports: "Finding the axion is a bit like tuning a radio: you have to tune your antenna until you pick up the right frequency," said co-author Alexander Millar, a postdoc at Stockholm University. "Rather than music, experimentalists would be rewarded with 'hearing' the dark matter that the Earth is traveling through." [...] According to quantum mechanics, particles can exhibit wavelike behavior as well as particle characteristics. So an axion would behave more like a wave (or wave packet) than a particle, and the size of the wave packets is inversely proportional to their mass. That means these very light particles don't necessarily need to be tiny. The downside is that they interact even more weakly with regular matter than [weakly interacting massive particles], or WIMPS, so they cannot be produced in large colliders -- one current method for detecting WIMPs.

Physicists don't know what the axion's mass might be, so there's a broad parameter space in which to search, and no single instrument can cover all of it, according to co-author Matthew Lawson, also a postdoc at Stockholm University. That's why physicists have been developing all kinds of smaller experiments for detecting axions, from atomic clocks and resonating bars, to shining lasers at walls on the off-chance a bit of dark matter seeps through the other side. Yet most instruments to date are capable of detecting axions only within a very limited mass range. [...] Lawson et al. have come up with an innovative design for a tunable plasma-based haloscope. Their proposed instrument exploits the fact that axions inside a strong magnetic field will generate their own small electric field. This in turn drives oscillations in the plasma, amplifying the signal. [...] At the moment, Lawson et al.'s design is theoretical, but several experimental groups are actively working on building prototypes. "The fact that the experimental community has latched onto this idea so quickly is very exciting and promising for building a full-scale experiment," said Millar.

DoNotPay, a free chatbot that offers AI-powered legal counsel, is launching a new feature that will call you when it's your turn in a customer service phone queue. TechCrunch reports: The app today is launching "Skip Waiting On Hold." Just type in the company you need to talk to, and DoNotPay calls for you using tricks to get a human on the line quickly. Then it calls you back and connects you to the agent so you never have to listen to that annoying hold music. And in case the company tries to jerk you around or screw you over, the DoNotPay app lets you instantly share to social media a legal recording of the call to shame them.

Skip Waiting On Hold comes as part of the $3 per month DoNotPay suite of services designed to save people time and money by battling bureaucracy on their behalf. It can handle DMV paperwork for you, write legal letters to scare businesses out of overcharging you and it provides a credit card that automatically cancels subscriptions when your free trial ends. For Skip Waiting On Hold, DoNotPay built out a database of priority and VIP customer service numbers for tons of companies. For legality, if you opt in to recording the exchanges, the app automatically plays a message informing both parties they'll be recorded. A human voice detection system hears when a real agent picks up the phone, and then rings your phone. It's like having customer service call you.

Wired recently remembered Flash as "the annoying plugin" that transformed the web "into a cacophony of noise, colour, and controversy, presaging the modern web."

They write that its early popularity in the mid-1990s came in part because "Microsoft needed software capable of showing video on their website, MSN.com, then the default homepage of every Internet Explorer user." But Flash allowed anyone to become an animator. (One Disney artist tells them that Flash could do in three days what would take a professional animator 7 months -- and cost $10,000.)

Their article opens in 2008, a golden age when Flash was installed on 98% of desktops -- then looks back on its impact: The online world Flash entered was largely static. Blinking GIFs delivered the majority of online movement. Constructed in early HTML and CSS, websites lifted clumsily from the metaphors of magazine design: boxy and grid-like, they sported borders and sidebars and little clickable numbers to flick through their pages (the horror).

Flash changed all that. It transformed the look of the web...

Some of these websites were, to put it succinctly, absolute trash. Flash was applied enthusiastically and inappropriately. The gratuitous animation of restaurant websites was particularly grievous -- kitsch abominations, these could feature thumping bass music and teleporting ingredients. Ishkur's 'guide to electronic music' is a notable example from the era you can still view -- a chaos of pop arty lines and bubbles and audio samples, it looks like the mind map of a naughty child...

In contrast to the web's modern, business-like aesthetic, there is something bizarre, almost sentimental, about billion-dollar multinationals producing websites in line with Flash's worst excess: long loading times, gaudy cartoonish graphics, intrusive sound and incomprehensible purpose... "Back in 2007, you could be making Flash games and actually be making a living," remembers Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp, when asked about Flash's golden age. "That was a really fun time, because that's kind of what everyone's dream is: to make the games you want and be able to make a living off it."
Wired summarizes Steve Jobs' "brutally candid" diatribe against Flash in 2010. "Flash drained batteries. It ran slow. It was a security nightmare. He asserted that an era had come to an end... '[T]he mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards -- all areas where Flash falls short.'" Wired also argues that "It was economically viable for him to rubbish Flash -- he wanted to encourage people to create native games for iOS."

But they also write that today, "The post-Flash internet looks different. The software's downfall precipitated the rise of a new aesthetic...one moulded by the specifications of the smartphone and the growth of social media," favoring hits of information rather than striving for more immersive, movie-emulating thrills.

And they add that though Newgrounds long-ago moved away from Flash, the site's founder is now working on a Flash emulator to keep all that early classic content playable in a browser.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple's decision to greenlight an app called HKmaps, which is being used by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong to crowdsource information about street closures and police presence, is attracting the ire of the Chinese government. An article in Chinese state mouthpiece, China Daily, attacks the iPhone maker for reversing an earlier decision not to allow the app to be listed on the iOS App Store -- claiming the app is "allowing the rioters in Hong Kong to go on violent acts." HKmaps uses emoji to denote live police and protest activity around Hong Kong, as reported by users.

The app's developer denies the map enables illegal activity, saying its function is "for info" purposes only -- to allow residents to move freely around the city by being able to avoid protest flash-points. But the Chinese government is branding it "toxic." "Business is business, and politics is politics. Nobody wants to drag Apple into the lingering unrest in Hong Kong. But people have reason to assume that Apple is mixing business with politics, and even illegal acts. Apple has to think about the consequences of its unwise and reckless decision," the China Daily writer warns in a not-so-veiled threat about continued access to the Chinese market. "Providing a gateway for 'toxic apps' is hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, twisting the facts of Hong Kong affairs, and against the views and principles of the Chinese people," it goes on. "Apple and other corporations should be able to discern right from wrong. They also need to know that only the prosperity of China and China's Hong Kong will bring them a broader and more sustainable market."

The article also claims Apple reinstated a song which advocates for independence for Hong Kong and had previously been removed from its music store.

Google is finally introducing a way for users of its smart speakers and streaming adapters to move media between those devices. From a report: The company introduced a new feature called Stream Transfer Tuesday that makes it possible to move an ongoing music stream, podcast or YouTube video from one compatible device to the next. At launch, these devices include Google Home and Nest smart speakers as well as Google Nest smart displays and Chromecast-equipped TVs. The transfer of a stream can be initiated either with voice commands like "Hey Google, move the music to the living room speaker," via the Google Home app on a mobile device, or through a new media interface on Nest smart displays. Users can also start watching a YouTube video on their Nest Hub or Nest Hub Max smart display, and then press the cast button to move it to their Chromecast-equipped TV. Alternatively, they can move videos with a voice command.

According to Piper Jaffray's fall 2019 survey, teens prefer watching videos on YouTube more than Netflix. CNBC reports: Piper Jaffray found 37% of teens surveyed are streaming video most often on the Google-owned platform, narrowly edging out longtime leader Netflix, which came in at 35%. The firm attributed the shift to YouTube's diversified content library, which includes a "wide array of teen-oriented content" like music videos, video game playthroughs, how-to videos and videos from social media influencers, among other things.

Despite Netflix ceding its pole position to YouTube, teens are flocking to it far more than other streaming services, Piper Jaffray found. Hulu and Amazon's Prime Video served as the preferred platforms for 7% and 3% of teens surveyed, respectively. Cable TV ranked third at 12%, down from 14% in the spring, indicating that cord-cutting continues to be on the rise, the firm said. "Among the subscription services, Netflix is the leader in category that contains massive multi-year growth potential as more content viewing shifts online," Piper Jaffray analysts said. "There will be increasing competition (Disney's Disney+ and Apple's Apple TV+) and unforeseen hurdles, but we believe the market will support multiple players, with Netflix leading the way."

iTunes is officially dead with the release of macOS Catalina today. Apple decided to break apart the app into separate Apple Music, Podcasts and TV apps. "Each is better at its individuals task than it was as a section within iTunes, which was teetering on collapse like the Jenga tower of various functions it supports," writes Dieter Bohn via The Verge.

"In the early days, iTunes was simply a way to get music onto Apple's marquee product, the iPod music player," reports Snopes. "Users connected the iPod to a computer, and songs automatically synced -- simplicity unheard of at the time." It was the first service to make songs available for 99 cents apiece, and $9.99 for most albums -- convincing many people to buy music legally than seek out sketchy sites for pirated downloads. "But over time, iTunes software expanded to include podcasts, e-books, audiobooks, movies and TV shows," recalls Snopes. "In the iPhone era, iTunes also made backups and synced voice memos. As the software got bloated to support additional functions, iTunes lost the ease and simplicity that gave it its charm. And with online cloud storage and wireless syncing, it no longer became necessary to connect iPhones to a computer -- and iTunes -- with a cable."

What did you like or dislike about iTunes? When you look back at the media player, what are you reminded of?

At Microsoft's annual Surface press event today, the company announced the Surface Earbuds to rival Apple's AirPods and Amazon's newly announced Echo Buds. What's unique about the Surface Earbuds is that, unlike the other two wireless earphones, they can be used with Alexa, Bixby, Google Assistant, Siri, or any other competitor -- not just with Cortana. VentureBeat reports: Like the Surface Headphones, the Surface Earbuds don't do anything until you pair them. Surface Earbuds communicate over Bluetooth 5.0 with an Android, iOS, or Windows 10 device. Once paired, you can tap and hold either of the buds to trigger the default assistant on your device. To use a different virtual assistant with the Surface Earbuds, just change the default assistant on the paired device.

"Out of the box, it just works," said Surface Earbuds product lead Mohammed Samji. "On PC, it launches Cortana. On iOS, it will launch Siri, unless you've changed it. And I think it might vary depending on the distribution of Android, but all the ones I've tested, the first time I do it, Android asks me what I want as my default." Surface Earbuds still offer a better experience with Cortana (although without the "Hey Cortana" wakeword), Samji made sure to emphasize. Surface Earbuds can do everything with Cortana that the Surface Headphones can do, like chit-chat, interact with your email, check your calendar, get your daily update, and create to-dos. Samji said his team created a more streamlined flow for all this Cortana functionality. It's called Surface Audio. One of the biggest new abilities with the Surface Earbuds is gestures. "Surface Earbuds' gestures include double tap (go in and out of the call, or play/pause), swipe up and down (control volume), or even swipe forward and back (switch tracks in music, switch slides in PowerPoint)," reports VentureBeat. "Specifically on Android, there's also a triple tap to launch Spotify under your phone's lockscreen -- you can triple-tap again to have Spotify to choose another song using its ML."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Meet AdBlock Radio, an adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts. Its creator, Alexandre Storelli, told Motherboard he hopes to help companies "develop alternative business models for radio and podcast lovers that do not want ads." "Ads exploit the weaknesses of many defenseless souls," Storelli told Motherboard. "Ads dishonestly tempt people, steal their time and promise them a higher social status. Blocking them will be a relieving experience for many."

Most audio ads exploit "auditory artifacts" to produce an ad that can't be ignored or tuned out because it feels louder than it actually is -- this has gotten so bad that there has actually been a "sonic arms race" where ads have been made increasingly louder over the years. "Adblock Radio detects audio ads with machine-learning and Shazam-like techniques," Storelli wrote about the project. He said he's been working on it for more than three years and that it uses techniques such as speech recognition, acoustic fingerprinting, and machine learning to detect known ad formats. It uses a crowdsourced database of ads and "acoustic fingerprinting," which converts audio features into a series of numbers that can be combed by an algorithm. Storelli has made Adblock Radio open-source and given detailed instructions on how to build on it, integrate it into user devices, and deploy it in a way that pressures radio stations (and podcasts) to self-regulate the quality of their ads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sega and Sports Interactive have announced that Football Manager 2020 will be sold in new eco-friendly package that uses much less plastic, and they're pushing for the rest of the entertainment industry to follow suit. The new packaging replaces the now-standard plastic DVD case used for most game discs with a folded, reinforced cardboard sleeve made of 100% recycled fiber. The shrinkwrap surrounding that package has also been replaced with a low-density LDPE polyethylene that's highly recyclable. Even the ink on the cardboard has been changed out for a vegetable-and-water-based version (so it's technically vegan if you're desperate for a snack).

The new packaging does cost a bit more to produce -- about 20 (British) cents per unit (or 30 percent), according to an open letter from Sports Interactive Studio Director Miles Jacobson. But those costs are somewhat offset by reduced shipping and destruction costs for excess units, he added. And as Spanish footballer Hector Bellerin says in a video accompanying the letter, "if there's no Earth, there's no money to spend." All told, Jacobson says the new packaging will save 55 grams of plastic per unit, or 20 tonnes across a print run of over 350,000. That's an extremely tiny dent in the estimated 335 million tons of plastic that is produced annually worldwide. But Jacobson hopes it could add up to a sizable dent if the entire industry follows suit for the tens of millions of discs it produces each year. "We're not the biggest game in the world," Jacobson said. "Imagine what happens if every other game, every film company, every music company switches to this packaging... So I'm throwing down the gauntlet here to ALL entertainment companies who use plastic for their Blu Ray, DVD and CD packaging."

Amazon Music HD is a new tier of Amazon's music service that offers lossless versions of audio files for streaming or downloading at a price that aggressively undercuts Tidal, the main competition for this kind of audio. "Amazon will charge $14.99 a month for the HD tier, or $12.99 if you're an Amazon Prime customer," reports The Verge. "Tidal's Hi-Fi plan costs $19.99 monthly." From the report: Amazon says it has a catalog of over 50 million songs that it calls "High Definition," which is the term it's applying to songs with CD-quality bit depth of 16 bits and a 44.1kHz sample rate. It also has "millions" (read: less than 10 million, more than one million) of songs it's calling "Ultra HD," which translates to 24-bit with sample rates that range from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. Amazon Music HD will deliver them all in the lossless FLAC file format, instead of the MQA format that Tidal uses.

Amazon's VP of Music, Steve Boom, tells me that Amazon chose the HD and UltraHD terminology because it found it was more comprehensible to a mass audience than the current terminology for audio quality. And "mass audience" is exactly what Amazon is going for; it doesn't want Amazon Music HD to be a niche player like Tidal and other lossless music platforms like HDtracks or Qobuz. Boom says that "It's a pretty big deal that one of the big three global streaming services is doing this -- we're the first one." In response to today's news, Rock legend Neil Young said (with no hyperbole whatsoever): "Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses. This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago."