Month: November 2022

Enlarge / Most smart TVs should work with Netflix's new ad-supported plan. Somehow, it's far more powerful, newer devices that may have issues. And the PS3. (credit: Getty Images | Christopher Ames)

Netflix's newest offering, a $7-per-month "Basic with Ads" plan, comes with inherent compromises: five minutes of ads per hour, one device at a time, no downloads, 720p resolution, and some unavailable content. But there are also a number of device compatibility issues, including on brand-new devices.

On Netflix's help center page for people encountering the error "Basic with Ads is not supported," Netflix notes that "Basic with Ads isn't supported on Apple TV." "You'll need to upgrade your Netflix plan to the Basic, Standard, or Premium plan," Netflix advises, or else "use a different device." That last bit links to Netflix's list of officially supported devices, which unhelpfully shows an Apple TV logo with no footnotes or other details about its limitations. Netflix told 9to5 Mac in a statement that Apple TV support is "coming soon."

The same is true for any Chromecast except the newest model, Chromecast with Google TV. "Basic with Ads is supported only on Chromecast with Google TV," Netflix states, meaning that any model bought before September 2022—like the 4K version Google sold until then— is out of luck.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

With Twitter losing $3 million per day, Elon Musk has ordered whatever Twitter staff he has left to start making up the difference by cutting Twitter infrastructure costs by $1.5 to $3 million per day. Musk is hoping to save $1 billion in annual costs in what Reuters reported has been dubbed Twitter’s “Deep Cuts Plan,” part of Musk’s ongoing scramble to turn Twitter profits around, seemingly even if it risks platform outages during high-traffic times.

Twitter is not commenting publicly yet on the Deep Cuts Plan, but Musk tweeted Friday morning to express how “extremely messed up” he thinks Twitter’s ad revenue loss is. Many major brands, including Cheerios and Audi, have paused advertising on Twitter, Reuters reported. Both brands told Reuters they would continue to evaluate the situation at Twitter before resuming.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation, and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Enlarge / PS5 owners, ask yourselves: Does this landscape truly look as good as it could?

Destiny 2 developer Bungie says a "notable" number of PS5 owners are still playing the worse-looking PS4 version of the game on their high-end console hardware.

Bungie first offered a free PS5 update for the PS4 version of Destiny 2 in late 2020, shortly after the console's release. To take advantage of that update, though, PS5 owners need to go through a few steps to find and manually download the PS5-specific files, as outlined in a Bungie support page and a PlayStation Support page.

Without that download, the PS5 simply plays the PS4 version of the game in the system's backward-compatibility mode. Digital Foundry's write-up goes into detail on the "true 4K resolution" and 60 to 120 fps gameplay offered by the upgraded PS5 version of the game. Bungie's latest "This Week at Bungie" update also explicitly notes that players on the PS4 version are missing out on improvements in frame rates and graphics.

Enlarge (credit: VIEW press / Contributor | Corbis News)

A day after it was reported that Twitter would lay off 50 percent of staff, Twitter has temporarily shut down its offices to begin layoffs. Some staff told Reuters that hundreds of employees who got this news yesterday immediately logged into Slack to say goodbyes before access was removed. Other workers told Reuters that the content moderation team is expected to be hit hard by layoffs.

One Twitter user whose bio says he formerly served as a Twitter senior community manager tweeted to mark the moment he lost company Slack access. That Twitter staffer assumed that losing Slack access confirmed he was no longer employed but won’t know for sure until today, when employees will find out if they’re fired when they receive an email to their personal inbox. Every employee expected to stick around Twitter will receive an email to their work inbox.

Those email announcements are expected to arrive by noon ET on Friday, according to a Twitter internal email reviewed by Reuters, which informed Twitter staff, "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday."