A passenger on the French rail network SNCF has revealed that he received a $155 fine for using his phone on loud speaker within a train station. From a report: The passenger, named only as David, told French TV channel BFM that he was on the phone to his sister while waiting at Nantes station when the SNCF staff member told him to switch his phone's loud speaker off, or risk being fined. When he argued, he was served with the $155 fine, which has been increased to $207 because he did not pay it immediately. Further reading: Flying Was Already the Worst. Then America Stopped Using Headphones.

NASA is planning to host a live Twitch stream next week from the International Space Station (ISS). "The stream, which takes place on February 12th at 11:45AM ET on NASA's Twitch channel, will feature Don Pettit, an astronaut currently on the ISS, and Matt Dominick, who returned to Earth from the ISS in October," reports The Verge. From the report: The astronauts will discuss "daily life aboard the space station and the research conducted in microgravity" and viewers will be able to ask them questions, according to a blog post.

"This Twitch event from space is the first of many," Brittany Brown, director of the Office of Communications Digital and Technology Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, says in the post. "We spoke with digital creators at TwitchCon about their desire for streams designed with their communities in mind, and we listened. In addition to our spacewalks, launches, and landings, we'll host more Twitch-exclusive streams like this one."

Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions.

The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." Some releases have significant historical value, such as "Oh, God!" - a 1977 George Burns comedy that earned $51 million at release (equivalent to $265 million in 2024). This move represents a departure from traditional studio practices of protecting content through strict digital rights management and paid streaming services. Warner Bros. owns multiple distribution channels, including the Max streaming service and Turner Classic Movies, which makes the decision to release these films freely on YouTube particularly notable.

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 million subscribers; it now has 53.6 million. All told, the company's streaming business was profitable for its third-straight quarter. So it wasn't all bad -- or unexpected. "Our results this quarter demonstrate Disney's creative and financial strength as we advanced the strategic initiatives set in motion over the past two years," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "In fiscal Q1 we saw outstanding box office performance from our studios, which had the top three movies of 2024; we further improved the profitability of our Entertainment DTC streaming businesses; we took an important step to advance ESPN's digital strategy by adding an ESPN tile on Disney+; and our Experiences segment demonstrated its enduring appeal as we continue investing strategically across the globe. Overall, this quarter proved to be a strong start to the fiscal year, and we remain confident in our strategy for continued growth."

Panasonic will cut its costs, restructure underperforming units and revamp its workforce as it pivots toward AI data centers and away from its consumer electronics roots, the company said on Tuesday. The Japanese conglomerate aims to boost profits by 300 billion yen ($1.93 billion) by March 2029, partly by consolidating production and logistics operations.

Bloomberg reports that CEO Yuki Kusumi has declined to confirm if the company would divest its TV business but said alternatives were being considered. The Tesla battery supplier plans to integrate AI across operations through a partnership with Anthropic, targeting growth in components for data centers.

A recent video from retro tech YouTuber Clint "LGR" Basinger takes a deep dive into the history of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, exploring how former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs transformed a lackluster Windows 95 screensaver into a 25-year digital phenomenon. PC Gamer reports: The story centers on Jim Sachs, a man with one of those "they don't make this type of guy anymore" life stories so common to '80s and '90s computing, one Sachs recounted to the website AmigaLove back in 2020. After a six-year career in the US Air Force flying C-141 Starlifters, Sachs taught himself programming and digital art and began creating games for Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. From his first game, Saucer Attack, to later efforts like Defender of the Crown or his large portfolio of promotional and commissioned pieces, Sach's pixel art remains gorgeous and impressive to this day, and he seems to be a bit of a legend among Commodore enthusiasts.

It's with this background in games and digital art that Sachs looked at Microsoft's simple aquarium-themed screensaver for Windows 95 and 98 and thought he could do better. "Microsoft had an aquarium that they gave away with Windows where it was just bitmaps of fish being dragged across the screen," Sachs told the Matt Chat podcast back in 2015. "And they had that for like, three or four years. And I thought, I've given them enough time, I'm taking them to market. I'm gonna do something which will just blow that away."

Using reference photographs of real aquariums -- Sachs thanked a specific pet shop that's still around in an early version of his website" -- Sachs created the 3D art by hand and programmed the screensaver in C++, releasing the initial version in July 2000. Even looking at it all these years later, the first iteration of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is pretty gorgeous, and it has the added charm of being such a distinctly Y2K, nostalgic throwback.

The standalone screensaver sold well, but then things came full circle with Microsoft licensing a version of the Marine Aquarium for the Windows XP Plus Pack and later standard releases of the OS. Since that time, the Marine Aquarium has continued to see new releases, and a section on the SereneScreen website keeps track of its various appearances in the background of movies and TV shows like Law and Order. Over on the SereneScreen website, you can purchase a real time, 3D-accelerated version of the Marine Aquarium for Mac, iOS, Android, and the original Windows. Echoing the Windows XP deal, Roku actually licensed this 3.0 version for its TVs, bringing it to a new generation of users.

The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as Netflix and Disney pay the BBC license fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster. Bloomberg: Extending the fee to streaming applications is on a menu of options being discussed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal government deliberations. Alternatives under discussion include allowing the British Broadcasting Corp. to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee.

The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain's public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That's because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services. [...] The license fee dates back to 1946, when consumers watched programs at the time of broadcast. It currently costs households who watch live TV or use BBC iPlayer $210.6 a year, an amount that usually rises annually with inflation. Even if they don't watch BBC programs, households are required to hold a TV license to view or stream programs live on sites including YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. However it's not needed by those who only watch on-demand, non-BBC content.

Netflix plans to expand its cloud gaming offerings to include couch co-op and party games, according to co-CEO Greg Peters. The company will also continue developing narrative games based on its IP, despite recent leadership changes and the closure of its AAA game studio. The Verge reports: In the blog post, Netflix notes that it's a "limited" beta test, so it seems like this won't be available to too many people to start. (Netflix used that same "limited" language with the initial launch in Canada and the UK.) Like with the original test, the only two games available to stream are Oxenfree from Netflix's own Night School Studio and another game titled Molehew's Mining Adventure.

If you have access to the service, you'll need to download Netflix's special controller app for your iPhone or Android device to play the game on your TV. (Netflix says the streamed games work on "select devices," including Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, Roku devices and TVs, and more.) On the web, you'll be able to play games with a mouse and keyboard.

Streaming platform Plex has introduced public reviews and user profiles, expanding social features launched last October. Users can now comment on others' reviews and make their profiles, watchlists and viewing history searchable, with customizable privacy settings ranging from public to private. Plex Pass subscribers are additionally also gaining access to HEVC encoding for improved visual quality.

Netflix will raise prices on most U.S. and Canadian subscription tiers after adding a record 19 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, bringing its global total to 302 million users.

The standard plan without ads will increase to $17.99 from $15.49, while its premium tier rises $2 to $24.99. The ad-supported tier will cost $7.99, up $1. The streaming service's quarterly revenue topped $10 billion for the first time, jumping 16%, while operating income rose 52% to $2.3 billion. The company credited recent successes including the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match and "Squid Game" season two for the subscriber surge.

Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country Returns HD earlier this week, with fans noticing that the original team members at Retro are not individually credited in the updated version. "Instead, the credits state that it was 'based on the work' of Retro Studios, while the team at Forever Entertainment gets its credits for working on the remaster," reports GameSpot. In a statement issued to Eurogamer, a Nintendo spokesperson said: "We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game's creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process." From the report: That statement doesn't really address why the original team's names were excluded from the credits, and this has happened before. In 2023, the Retro Studios developers behind Metroid Prime were left out of the credits for Metroid Prime Remastered. Similarly, external translators voiced their frustrations last year because Nintendo didn't credit them for their work either.

This story has been largely overshadowed by the reveal of Switch 2 earlier this week. It seems likely that the Donkey Kong Country franchise will be revisited on that system as well. However, it's not among the games rumored for Switch 2. In the meantime, the bizarre Donkey Kong Country animated TV series is still available to watch on Prime Video.

Longtime Slashdot reader sfcat shares a report from the Associated Press: Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in Northern California was closed when a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at one of the world's largest battery storage plants. As the fire sent up towering flames and black smoke and showed no sign of easing by Thursday night, about 1,500 people were instructed to leave Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area, The Mercury News reported.

The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out. "There's no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in. According to reports, the fire originated in the 300-megawatt Phase I section of the 750-megawatt facility, located on the site of a retired PG&E natural gas plant.

It's unclear what caused the fire, but officials said a full investigation will begin after it's out. Thankfully, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. Videos and images of the fire can be found here.

David Lynch, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for the 1984 sci-fi epic Dune and the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died. "In January 2025, Lynch evacuated his Los Angeles home due to the Southern California wildfires," writes longtime Slashdot reader Z00L00K. "According to Deadline, these events preceded a terminal decline in his health, and on January 16, 2025, Lynch's family announced that he had died at the age of 78." Deadline reports: Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema. Sources told Deadline that he was forced to relocate from his house due to the Sunset Fire and then took a turn for the worse. In an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, Lynch revealed that due to Covid fears and his emphysema diagnosis, he could no longer could leave the house, which meant if he directed again, it would be remote. He then followed up the interview with a post on social that he "will never retire" despite his physical challenges.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, in an appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, criticized the Biden administration for pushing for censorship around COVID-19 vaccines, the media for hounding Facebook to clamp down on misinformation after the 2016 election, and his own company for complying. Zuckerberg's three-hour interview with Rogan gives a clear window into his thinking during a remarkable week in which Meta loosened its content moderation policies and shut down its DEI programs.

The Meta CEO said a turning point for his approach to censorship came after Biden publicly said social media companies were "killing people" by allowing COVID misinformation to spread, and politicians started coming after the company from all angles. Zuckerberg told Rogan, who was a prominent skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccine, that the Biden administration would "call up the guys on our team and yell at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true."

Zuckerberg said that Biden officials wanted Meta to take down a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV, with a joke at the expense of people who were vaccinated. Zuckerberg said his company drew the line at removing "humor and satire." But he also said his company had gone too far in complying with such requests, and acknowledged that he and others at the company wrongly bought into the idea -- which he said the traditional media had been pushing -- that misinformation spreading on social media swung the 2016 election to Donald Trump. Zuckerberg likened his company's fact-checking process to a George Orwell novel, saying it was "something out of 1984" and led to a broad belief that Meta fact-checkers "were too biased."

"It really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it's just, OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program." He said he was "worried" from the beginning about "becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world."

Later in the interview, Zuckerberg praised X's "community notes" program and suggested that social media creators were replacing the government and traditional media as arbiters of truth, becoming "a new kind of cultural elite that people look up to."

Further reading: Meta Is Ushering In a 'World Without Facts,' Says Nobel Peace Prize Winner

ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery announced today that it will not launch the Venu live sports streaming service. "After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service," the companies said in a joint statement. "In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period." The Verge reports: ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery first announced Venu last year, and it was supposed to launch in the fall of 2024. The service would've given viewers access to a swath of live games from the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, and more from several linear channels, including ESPN, ABC, Fox, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, TNT, and others.

But then Venu hit a legal roadblock: an antitrust lawsuit from the live TV streaming service Fubo, accusing the trio of engaging in "a years-long campaign to block Fubo's innovative sports-first streaming business" due to restrictive sports licensing agreements. Lawmakers also asked regulators to investigate Venu and its potential to become a monopoly in televised sports.

Delta Air Lines has partnered with YouTube to provide ad-free YouTube Premium and YouTube Music to SkyMiles members on flights. "The deal includes a selection of curated content from key YouTube creators," notes Variety. The airline also said it would upgrade its fleet with better Wi-Fi and 4K HDR QLED displays, alongside AI-driven enhancements like a personal assistant on the Fly Delta app to improve travel experiences. From the report: Delta executives announced the YouTube deal and other flight-experience enhancements to its Delta Sync platform as the aviation giant gave an expansive presentation Tuesday evening at the Sphere in Las Vegas, in connection with the Consumer Electronics Show. Delta touted plans to mark the company's 100th anniversary this year, noting that it is the first airline to reach the centennial mark.

It's also no surprise that Delta is leaning hard into AI tech. The company hopes its Delta Concierge AI-powered personal assistant feature that is rolling out this year on its Fly Delta app will make strides in improving the overall customer experience. The goal is that with repeated use the Concierge tool will come to anticipate individual consumers' needs and help them streamline the logistics of travel -- or what Delta dubbed "contextualized guidance" on everything from departure gates to baggage claim details to alerting travelers to weather conditions at their destinations. [...]

Mary Ellen Coe, chief business officer of YouTube, emphasized that the ad-free YouTube offering will allow viewers to access streaming content as well as podcasts and music. She also asserted that consumers are increasingly gathering travel tips and inspiration through YouTube creators. "Creators are producing the must-see TV of today," Coe said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%.

Data from Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) puts the total worth of the UK video game market in 2024 at $5.7 billion, double the music market and behind TV and movies at $6.2 billion. The numbers show a shift in players' purchasing habits that has been ongoing for years, from physical games to digital downloads and in-game purchases in popular, established games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Boxed games now account for 27.7% of new game sales in the UK, according to ERA data.

Microsoft is pushing users to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 ahead of the operating system's end of support in October 2025. The company's consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2025 "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh," positioning PC upgrades as more crucial than TV or phone purchases. The Verge adds: Mehdi believes that "Windows 11 is available at a time when the world needs it most" and that "the forefront of AI innovation will be realized on Windows."

The Walt Disney Co. will merge its streaming multichannel video service Hulu with Live TV with its competitor Fubo in a surprise deal that will shake up the streaming TV business, the companies said Monday. From a report: The new company will continue to be traded publicly under the Fubo name, however Disney will control 70% and appoint a majority of the board. Fubo management, including co-founder and CEO David Gandler, will run the combined venture.

The deal will do a couple of big things if and when it is completed: For starters, it will create a much bigger player in the virtual multichannel video provider (vMVPD) space, one that can more aggressively take on the market leader YouTube TV. YouTube TV said a year ago that it had 8 million subscribers, while Hulu + Live TV had 4.6 million subscribers and Fubo had 1.6 million subscribers, giving a combined offering 6.2 million subs.