Month: July 2024
Marvel has cast Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom in two new Avengers movies
Also news re: Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Enlarge / Robert Downey Jr. will play Doctor Doom in two new Avengers movies from the Russo brothers. (credit: Marvel Studios)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe received a much-needed boost this weekend with the box office dominance of Deadpool and Wolverine, which raked in a record-breaking $438.3 million worldwide and $205 million domestically. And the Marvel panel at this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con kept up the momentum, delighting attendees with sneak peeks of what’s to come—most notably the return of Robert Downey Jr. to the MCU. The twist: RDJ won’t be donning his usual Iron Man suit. Instead, he’ll be playing Doctor Doom for Avengers: Doomsday (2026), with the Russo brothers returning to direct. This will be followed by the Russo-directed Avengers: Secret Wars (2027).
Comic-Con attendees were also treated to exclusive new footage from Captain America: Brave New World, and updates on Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four reboot, titled First Steps, as well as a surprise screening of Deadpool and Wolverine.
“New mask, same task”
The Russo brothers will direct Avengers: Secret Wars and Avengers: Doomsday. (credit: Marvel Studios)
It’s no secret that Marvel Studios originally planned to build its Phase Six Avengers arc (The Kang Dynasty) around Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror (and associated Variants), introduced in Loki and last year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But then Majors was convicted of “reckless assault and harassment” (domestic violence), and Marvel fired the actor soon after. That meant the studio needed to retool its Phase Six plans, culminating in the announced return of the Russo brothers, who directed four of the MCU’s most successful films, which brought in more than $6 billion at the global box office.
Twitch completes its TikTok makeover with new app update
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Twitch’s mobile app is getting a major update that puts its TikTok-like feed front and center. The company started testing the update earlier this year, and over the course of this week, the new app will roll out to all users on Android and iOS, Twitch says in a blog post.
The big change is that the new app will open on a feed of content you might like (a “Home” tab) instead of opening on the “Following” tab. The change follows a lot of steps in this direction from Twitch: the company announced an initial “discovery feed” experiment in August, and it rolled the feed out to all users in April as a “Feed” tab in the mobile app. Earlier this year, as part of his 2024 open letter, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy also discussed the company’s plans to make the discovery feed the “new landing experience in the app.”
More than 50 percent of Twitch users “primarily” watch Twitch on their phone, but “we need to make it easier for these viewers to find content when they visit Twitch and make the experience more fun so that they come back more often,” the company says in its blog post. The intention of the redesigned app is to make it “easy to find streamers that you already love while also exploring and discovering new streamers.”
The new app also has a Browse tab, an Activity tab to see notifications, a profile tab, and a plus button you can tap to access features like starting a livestream. If you want to see what’s going on from the streamers you follow, you can tap the Following feed in the upper-left corner.
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Twitch’s mobile app is getting a major update that puts its TikTok-like feed front and center. The company started testing the update earlier this year, and over the course of this week, the new app will roll out to all users on Android and iOS, Twitch says in a blog post.
The big change is that the new app will open on a feed of content you might like (a “Home” tab) instead of opening on the “Following” tab. The change follows a lot of steps in this direction from Twitch: the company announced an initial “discovery feed” experiment in August, and it rolled the feed out to all users in April as a “Feed” tab in the mobile app. Earlier this year, as part of his 2024 open letter, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy also discussed the company’s plans to make the discovery feed the “new landing experience in the app.”
More than 50 percent of Twitch users “primarily” watch Twitch on their phone, but “we need to make it easier for these viewers to find content when they visit Twitch and make the experience more fun so that they come back more often,” the company says in its blog post. The intention of the redesigned app is to make it “easy to find streamers that you already love while also exploring and discovering new streamers.”
The new app also has a Browse tab, an Activity tab to see notifications, a profile tab, and a plus button you can tap to access features like starting a livestream. If you want to see what’s going on from the streamers you follow, you can tap the Following feed in the upper-left corner.
A decade later, Amazon’s $1 billion Twitch acquisition fails to pay off
In a bold move back in 2014, Amazon shook the tech world by acquiring the live-video startup Twitch for nearly $1 billion. At the time, the acquisition was viewed as a strategic leap into the exploding esports and online gaming
The post A decade later, Amazon’s $1 billion Twitch acquisition fails to pay off first appeared on Tech Startups.
In a bold move back in 2014, Amazon shook the tech world by acquiring the live-video startup Twitch for nearly $1 billion. At the time, the acquisition was viewed as a strategic leap into the exploding esports and online gaming […]
The post A decade later, Amazon’s $1 billion Twitch acquisition fails to pay off first appeared on Tech Startups.
Spotify is adding another 1,000 audiobooks for Premium subscribers
More books from smaller publishers are now available for you to stream
Spotify‘s catalog of audiobooks just got a whole lot bigger. The streamer has signed a new deal with Ingram Content Group (ICG), who have the distribution rights for a lot of smaller publishers and independent publishers; according to the firm, “if you’re reading a book, Ingram Content Group is probably behind it.”
The deal is a significant one because some of the most interesting books published don’t necessarily come from the industry giants. According to Duncan Bruce, director of audiobook partnerships and licensing at Spotify, the deal is “part of our goal to bring more independent authors to Spotify to get their books heard through our Audiobooks in Premium offering”.
What books will you be able to listen to on Spotify now?
According to Publisher’s Weekly, the new titles include “Ada Limón’s self-narrated poetry collection The Hurting Kind… as well as Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize–winning novel The Promise and Anne Berest’s international bestseller The Postcard”. Some of the publishers included in the new deal are Europa Editions, Milkweed Editions, G&D Media, Bard Press, and New Society Publishers.
Spotify has been in the audiobook business since 2022 when it first added audiobooks to its US catalog, rolling them out to the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand later the same year before bringing Canada on board in early 2023. There were 300,000 books available at launch and the catalog has been growing ever since.
According to Spotify, the biggest hits aren’t brand new books but ones from the backlist, which is what publishers call older books that are still in print or available digitally. Nine of the 10 most-streamed audiobooks are backlist titles, and six of them were released more than five years ago.
As with Spotify’s existing audiobook catalog, the new titles will be exclusive to Premium subscribers.
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Crypto Exchange To ‘Socialize’ $230 Million Security Breach Loss Among Customers
An anonymous reader shares a report: Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Saturday a controversial plan to “socialize” the $230 million loss from its recent security breach among all its customers, a move that has sent shockwaves through the local crypto community.
The Mumbai-based firm, which suspended all trading activities on its platform last week following the cyber attack that compromised nearly half of its reserves in India’s largest crypto heist, has outlined a strategy to resume operations within a week or so while implementing a “fair and transparent socialized loss strategy” to distribute the impact “equitably” among its user base.
WazirX will “rebalance” customer portfolios on its platform, returning only 55% of their holdings while locking the remaining 45% in USDT-equivalent tokens. This will also impact customers whose tokens were not directly affected by the breach, with the company stating that “users with 100% of their tokens in the ‘not stolen’ category will receive 55% of those tokens back.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Saturday a controversial plan to “socialize” the $230 million loss from its recent security breach among all its customers, a move that has sent shockwaves through the local crypto community.
The Mumbai-based firm, which suspended all trading activities on its platform last week following the cyber attack that compromised nearly half of its reserves in India’s largest crypto heist, has outlined a strategy to resume operations within a week or so while implementing a “fair and transparent socialized loss strategy” to distribute the impact “equitably” among its user base.
WazirX will “rebalance” customer portfolios on its platform, returning only 55% of their holdings while locking the remaining 45% in USDT-equivalent tokens. This will also impact customers whose tokens were not directly affected by the breach, with the company stating that “users with 100% of their tokens in the ‘not stolen’ category will receive 55% of those tokens back.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Stripe’s easy-peasy acquisition and why is Twitch still losing money?
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.