Did Live Nation punish a venue by taking Billie Eilish away?
John Abbamondi had orders to let the CEO of Ticketmaster down easy.
In April 2021, Abbamondi was the CEO of BSE Global, the company that ran Brooklyn arena the Barclays Center. BSE Global's existing Ticketmaster contract would expire at the end of September, and Abbamondi and his team had evaluated proposals from SeatGeek, AXS, and Ticketmaster. The economics of Ticketmaster offer, according to Abbamondi, "was nowhere near as good as the other two." SeatGeek's technology was "superior" to Ticketmaster's on balance, on top of better financial terms including an equity stake in the company, the arena decided. It clinched their decision to go …
A new video from the White House mixes Call of Duty footage with actual video of Iran strikes
On Wednesday, the White House posted a video of actual military strikes on Iran in the style usually seen in Call of Duty highlight videos, and started the video with a clip from Call of Duty. The real-life footage of missiles and other munitions hitting targets in Iran shows clips seen in other Trump administration videos, like this one posted to the U.S. Central Command X account.
As noted by The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, the animation at the start appears to be from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III when a player activates a …
Seven tech giants signed Trump’s pledge to keep electricity costs from spiking around data centers
Leaders from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI, Amazon, and xAI met with President Donald Trump today to sign a "rate payer protection pledge." It's one way they're responding to growing bipartisan concerns about electricity rates rising as tech companies and the Trump administration rush to build out a new generation of AI data centers.
"[Tech companies] need some PR help because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up," Trump said during the event. "Some centers were rejected by communities for that and now I think it's going to be the opposite."
Trump signed a proclamation formally …
Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google until 2032
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world's most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: "crooked," "deceitful," "insanely sneaky," calling Android a "fake open platform," calling both companies "gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with," telling me how Google's Project Hug was "an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale."
But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It's right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google.
On March 3 …
Here’s how Google describes its fee-reducing Apps Experience and Games Level Up programs
Today, Google killed its 30 percent app store fee, partially uncoupled Google Play from Google Play Billing after they were declared an illegal monopoly in the US, and much more.
From July, depending on where you live, Google will now generally charge developers 20 percent for in-app purchases, or 10 percent for subscriptions - but it's also carving out several new categories of app which might pay differently. One of them is the mysterious new "metaverse browsers" category, whose details have been redacted.
But Google is public that two other programs, Apps Experience and Games Level Up will let developers save up to 5 percent more of th …
Epic and Google have signed a special deal for a new class of ‘metaverse’ apps
Epic Games and Google are burying the hatchet, but documents released today reveal that they aren't only aligned on how Google is shaking things up for app stores. The two companies have also agreed to terms about a new class of apps that they're calling "metaverse browsers," according to a heavily redacted section of a revised binding term sheet.
While the term "metaverse" has largely fallen out of favor - Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is now much more interested in AI - Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has been talking for years about the metaverse and how it might work in the future. (Depending on how you define the concept, Epic's Fortnite is alrea …
NotebookLM can now summarize research in ‘cinematic’ video overviews
Google's NotebookLM can now turn users' research and notes into fully animated "cinematic" videos, going a step further than the original video overview feature Google introduced last year.
Previously, video overviews could only generate narrated slideshows, but the upgraded video overview feature uses a combination of Google's AI models, "including Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3," to generate animated visuals based on the content of users' notes. Google says Gemini "determines the best narrative, visual style and format, and even refines its own work to ensure consistency" when generating the videos.
This is the latest in a string o …
The new MacBook Air debuts with a $50 gift card as the M4 model hits its best price
Powered by the new M5 chip, Apple’s latest MacBook Airs are more powerful than ever with double the base storage (512GB), but they also cost $100 more than their predecessor. Fortunately, though, we’ve found a few ways to save. Best Buy is offering the new 13-inch M5-powered MacBook Air for $1,099 with a $50 gift card and the 15-inch for $1,299 with the same perk ahead of their March 11th release date. That said, if you’d rather spend less and don’t mind buying last year’s model, Amazon’s also selling the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM for an all-time low of $1,099, matching the price of the new 13-inch Air.
13-inch M5 MacBook Air (512GB, 16GB RAM) with $50 gift card
Where to Buy:
Before Apple announced the new MacBook Air on Tuesday, the M4-powered MacBook Air was the model we recommended for most people. Even with the introduction of the cheaper MacBook Neo, the Air is still the better choice if you want more power. We haven’t tested the new M5 version yet, but the changes between the two Air models appear relatively minor on paper, so the overall experience is likely to feel very similar. No matter which MacBook Air you choose, you’ll get a thin, lightweight laptop that’s more than powerful enough to handle everyday work and play, and even some light gaming or video editing. Both also offer excellent battery life that should easily last well over a full workday, along with a 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam.
Aside from the newer chip, the biggest differences between the M4 and M5 models largely come down to connectivity. The newer models support faster wireless standards like Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Both M4 and M5-powered 15-inch models also feature a larger display and a six-speaker sound system instead of the four-speaker setup on the 13-inch Air.
Read our Apple MacBook Air M4 review.
The world’s biggest automaker has one of the dirtiest supply chains: report
Tesla, Ford, and Volvo occupy the top three spots in a new ranking of 18 global automakers based on their efforts to eliminate carbon emissions, environmental harms, and human rights violations from their supply chains. Toyota, meanwhile, lurks near the bottom of the list, underscoring the persistent difficulty in getting the world's largest car company to clean up its supply chain.
The rankings were compiled by Lead the Charge, a global coalition of leading climate, environment, and human rights organizations that includes the Sierra Club, The Sunrise Project, and Public Citizen, among others. This is the fourth edition of the coalition's …
Console exclusives might be making a comeback
The near future of game consoles could look a lot like the past. Once a hallmark of the industry, over the last few years console-exclusive games have steadily become rare, as the likes of Sony and Microsoft experimented with offering titles on multiple platforms. Heck, who knows what an Xbox even is anymore? But it seems that the experiments haven't paid off. Signs are pointing to the return of exclusives, as companies lean on other ways to entice new audiences.
The most obvious indication of this shift comes from a Bloomberg report that Sony is pulling back from releasing its big PS5 games on PC, much in the way that it scaled back its li …