3 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Tech Archive

Archives for December 2024

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
The Netflix effect.

Here’s a nice, long read from n+1 on Netflix’s victims, from Blockbuster to residuals for TV and film creators (which it now must pay) to the Hollywood film, buried in what author Will Tavlin calls the Typical Netflix Movie:

From the outside, the TNM looks ... designed to cater to each of Netflix’s two thousand “taste clusters,” the genre-like groupings Netflix uses to ... recommend films and shows to subscribers. The TNM covers every niche interest and identity category in existence, such as a movie about a tall girl, Tall Girl, but also Horse Girl, Skater Girl, Sweet Girl, Lost Girls, and Nice Girls.

Kindle Scribe (2024) review: nothing to write home about

6

Verge Score

Amazon’s finally added a key feature to the Scribe, but it has a long way to go before it’s actually useful.

Sheena Vasani
Nilay Patel
Nilay Patel
Trump spoke with TikTok’s CEO after asking the Supreme Court to delay the ban.

So reports CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. It seems inevitable that Trump will try to broker a sale to a US company and take credit for “saving” TikTok, but the open questions are whether China allows that to happen, and who might be able to afford it.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Salt Typhoon breach update.

Bloomberg quotes White House official Anne Neuberger saying, “...we still see companies not doing the basics” in a briefing about its investigation into the telecom breaches attributed to Chinese espionage that have led to officials recommending using secure messaging.

Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.

The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Sony’s stats hint at who the PlayStation Portal is for.

Sony’s handheld seems to have found an audience since launching a year ago, and this info may help explain who that is. With usage that peaks an hour after the PS5, Sony’s exec figures people use their Portal while the family’s big screens are otherwise occupied, something that could be even better now that Sony’s testing cloud streamed PS5 games.

Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
A whole mess of TikTok trial briefs.

The Supreme Court will consider TikTok’s case against a divest-or-ban law early next year, and a wave of filings has hit the docket this afternoon — from the parties involved as well as numerous institutions and public figures, including President-elect Donald Trump. If you want a firsthand look, the full list is linked below.

Supreme Court

[www.supremecourt.gov]

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Netflix has released the Beyoncé Bowl.

According to Netflix and Nielsen, peak viewers for the streamer’s Christmas Day NFL games reached over 27 million during Beyoncé’s halftime show. Now, it’s available to stream directly without the football game.

Promotional image showing Beyonce holding a football while wearing a cowboy hat on a car covered in roses.
Image: @Netflix (Threads)