A spokesperson for Amblin, the production company run by director Steven Spielberg, has told IndieWire that Spielberg plans to support an effort to change the rules of the Oscars to bar some films primarily distributed via streaming platforms like Netflix from nomination for Academy Awards.
"Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation," the spokesperson told the publication. "He'll be happy if the others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the Academy Board of Governors meeting]."
The conversation in Hollywood about the legitimacy of films made for streaming has been fierce since critical darling Roma—a Netflix-backed film from Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men, and Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón—took home Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Cinematography in an unprecedented sweep for a streaming film. However, Roma lost Best Picture to controversial film The Green Book, which Spielberg backed.
Google has given raises to thousands of men after an analysis of Google's pay structure found that the company would otherwise be underpaying those men relative to their peers, The New York Times reports. The analysis also led to raises for some women.
Google determines annual pay raises in a three-phase process. First, Google adjusts every employee's compensation based on standard factors like their location, seniority, and performance ratings. Managers can then seek additional discretionary raises for their best-performing employees.
Finally, Google performs a company-wide analysis to determine whether these raises are biased in terms of race or gender. If biases are detected, the disadvantaged workers are given additional raises to eliminate the discrepancies.
White House staff apparently ignored Trump’s demands to intervene in DOJ review.
Enlarge/ US President Donald Trump speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Saturday, March 2, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump tried to pressure the Department of Justice into blocking AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner Inc., according to a new report by The New Yorker. However, White House staff apparently ignored the president's orders to pressure the DOJ, and it's not clear whether Trump ever made any demands to the DOJ directly.
The New Yorker report—titled "The Making of the Fox News White House"—details Trump's close relationship with Fox and his disdain for Fox competitors that provide less-glowing news coverage of his presidency.
Trump has long made his hatred of CNN well-known, and during his campaign he promised to block AT&T's proposed takeover of CNN owner Time Warner. The Trump administration's DOJ in November 2017 filed a lawsuit to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner. But whether Trump had intervened wasn't clear—AT&T ultimately succeeded in court and completed the merger, despite failing in an attempt to prove that Trump meddled in the merger review.
"This letter is to offer my sincerest apologies and regret for THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna's interaction with the controversial website 8chan last Tuesday, February 26," the statement from THQ Nordic AB co-founder and CEO Lars Wingefors reads, in part. "I condemn all unethical content this website stands for. Even if no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize simply appearing there gave an implicit impression that we did."
After days spent conducting what he calls an "internal investigation" into the matter, Wingefors writes that "every member of the organization has learned from this past week's events. I take this matter very seriously, and we will take appropriate action to make sure we have the right policies and systems in place to avoid similar mistakes in the future."
A California federal court has sanctioned attorney Lincoln Bandlow for willful disobedience. Bandlow, who’s a partner at Fox Rothschild where he handles hundreds of piracy cases for Strike 3 Holdings, failed to meet the court’s deadlines on many occasions. The attorney’s explanations of insufficient staff and an overactive spam filter, were unacceptable, according to the court.
Two years ago, Strike 3 Holdings had never filed a single lawsuit, but today the company has thousands of cases on its record.
These lawsuits were filed across the United States, targeting people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright infringing content via BitTorrent.
In the case of Strike 3, this refers to adult videos which are made available via the Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen websites. The company’s legal campaign has kept the courts busy and contributed to the record-breaking breaking number of piracy lawsuits that were filed last year.
Many of these cases were handled by veteran lawyer Lincoln Bandlow, who’s a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild LLP. While the attorney, who’s also a visiting professor at USC, has plenty of experience it turns out that handling dozens of cases at once can be quite a challenge.
Last November, Bandlow was slapped on the wrist for failing to meet the court’s deadlines. The attorney explained that this was due to calendaring issues or incorrectly reading the court’s orders. He apologized and promised to take steps to prevent similar issues going forward.
However, it didn’t take long before more deadlines were missed in two dozen cases at the Eastern District of California. This time the attorney forgot to submit status reports. Again, the court requested clarification, asking Bandlow why he shouldn’t be sanctioned for failing to follow its orders.
In this reply, Bandlow attributed the failures to a variety of reasons including technical issues such as an overactive email spam filter, as well as a lack of personnel over the holidays. The attorney also highlighted his track record by noting that he was never sanctioned in 25 years.
This reply didn’t convince the court. In an order issued last week, US Magistrate Judge Carolyn Delaney wrote that Bandlow’s excuses and explanations are unavailing, especially since he was already reprimanded just weeks earlier.
The technological ‘issues’ are no excuse, the Judge writes, noting that people were already practicing law long before there were computers.
“The practice of law predates the computer. Computer and technological problems do not justify failing to comply with court-ordered deadlines, especially under the specific circumstances of these cases.
“Once Mr. Bandlow became aware of his technological problems, he could have—and indeed should have—manually calendared and tracked all deadlines,” Judge Delaney adds.
In addition, Strike 3’s attorney’s explanation that 19 out of the 24 cases with missed deadlines were the result of inadequate staffing, is both “unacceptable and inexcusable”. Especially since Bandlow explained that his law firm Fox Rothschild LLP employs 900 lawyers.
Taken together, the Magistrate Judge concludes that the attorney’s actions are not mere mistakes, but willful disobedience of the court.
“After he was reprimanded for failing to meet deadlines in related matters, Mr. Bandlow was on notice of problems with his calendaring procedure and he was explicitly warned to make sure that he properly calendared all future deadlines.
“Instead of doing so, Mr. Bandlow failed to comply with court-ordered deadlines twenty-four additional times. Mr. Bandlow’s conduct constitutes willful disobedience of court orders, which is tantamount to bad faith,” Judge Delaney notes.
So, after 25 years of practicing law Bandlow now has his first sanction.
Sanctions
The good news for the attorney is that the “bad faith” is not the worst of its kind. Also, the court believes that his apology is sincere. Nonetheless, this type of conduct is unacceptable, especially for an attorney with over twenty-five years of experience. As such, a $750 sanction is warranted.
While this amount can easily be recouped via a single settlement against an alleged pirate, it’s not good for one’s reputation. In any case, Law.com quotes the attorney saying that the $750 will be paid “immediately.”
Whether the massive volume of cases has anything to do with it is unclear. It wouldn’t be a surprise. However, Bandlow is not slowing down much in the new year and has already filed more than 100 new cases on behalf of Strike 3 in 2019.
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A copy of Magistrate Judge Carolyn Delaney’s order is available here (pdf).
Volkswagen goes back in time to the days of the dune buggy.
I never knew I wanted a buggy until today. [credit:
Volkswagen
]
In a move guaranteed to delight half of you and mortally offend the other half, Volkswagen revealed yet another electric concept car. It's called the I.D. Buggy, which is a great name because it's an electric buggy. The inspiration is, of course, the dune buggies of the 1960s, which were built from the ubiquitous VW Beetle. Here, it's given a futuristic facelift. Instead of the venerable flat-four engine at the back, the Buggy gets VW's new MEB architecture, which provides the lithium-ion power pack and electric-motor setup.
MEB is the toy box of parts and software that VW will use to create a new range of electric vehicles. Over the past few years, the company has been reinventing itself for life after diesel, doubling down on electrification as the answer. Roadmap E was the answer, which promises 50 new battery EVs from the VW Group as a whole by 2030. Porsche and Audi are working on a separate architecture called PPE, which will show up in larger vehicles like the next Macan SUV. But for anything a bit smaller, MEB is where it's at.
At VW the brand (not VW Group the corporate overlord), the whole electro-mobility thing is happening under the I.D. banner. The first I.D. production cars will be aerodynamic hatchbacks that go into production in Europe late in 2019. Sadly, those hatchbacks will probably not be available in North America. Here in the United States, VW's Chattanooga factory in Tennessee will start building a production version of the I.D. Cross crossover in 2020.
Over the past few months we’ve seen developers port Windows 10 to run on smartphones and Raspberry Pi computers. So what’s next? The Nintendo Switch, apparently. Over the weekend, Ben Imbushuo posted a couple of pictures to Twitter showing …
Over the past few months we’ve seen developers port Windows 10 to run on smartphones and Raspberry Pi computers. So what’s next? The Nintendo Switch, apparently. Over the weekend, Ben Imbushuo posted a couple of pictures to Twitter showing the progress he’s made getting Microsoft’s desktop operating system to run on Nintendo’s hybrid handheld/living room […]
Google has temporarily disabled Android TV photo sharing after reports of a brutal bug popped up on Twitter. Through the Google Home app, Android TV has a "linked accounts" feature that lets several people (like, say, you and your spouse) share photos from multiple Google Photos accounts to the TV. Apparently something went horribly wrong with this feature earlier, as pictures and videos show hundreds of accounts from strangers listed under "linked accounts."
When I access my Vu Android TV through the @Google Home app, and check the linked accounts, it basically lists what I imagine is every single person who owns this television. This is shocking incompetence. pic.twitter.com/5DGwrArsco
Twitter user Prashanth posted two videos of the "Linked Accounts" feature going haywire. After the above video scrolling through linked accounts, a second shows him enabling the display of photos from random accounts. "Oh my god." Prashanth tweeted, "Private @googlephotos of strangers are being shown to me in the ambient mode screensaver. SERIOUSLY WHAT THE F--K?!"
Prashanth speculated earlier that the issue was a problem with his Vu TV, since his other Android TV device, a Xiaomi Mi Box 3, did not show random accounts. A Vu spokesperson spoke to Gadgets 360 and blamed the issue on Google, though. “We were recently notified that there was a malfunction of Google Home App in some of the Android TVs." the spokesperson told Gadgets 360. "After verifying the incident we have informed our customers that it was not an issue of Vu Television but it was software malfunction of the Google Home App. We take your privacy very seriously. Vu has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of the personal information that our customers entrusts to us.”
Rakuten is running another sitewide sale today, which means you can save 15-percent (up to $60) on just about anything the retailer sells when you use the coupon SAVE15 at checkout. Looking for a Dell laptop, monitor, or other accessory? Then eBay may …
Rakuten is running another sitewide sale today, which means you can save 15-percent (up to $60) on just about anything the retailer sells when you use the coupon SAVE15 at checkout. Looking for a Dell laptop, monitor, or other accessory? Then eBay may have you covered with an even better sale. Dell and eBay are […]
Rakuten is running another sitewide sale today, which means you can save 15-percent (up to $60) on just about anything the retailer sells when you use the coupon SAVE15 at checkout. Looking for a Dell laptop, monitor, or other accessory? Then eBay may …
Rakuten is running another sitewide sale today, which means you can save 15-percent (up to $60) on just about anything the retailer sells when you use the coupon SAVE15 at checkout. Looking for a Dell laptop, monitor, or other accessory? Then eBay may have you covered with an even better sale. Dell and eBay are […]
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