Creative Industries & Tech Stuff
Film & TV
The Beeb has launched a new commitment to improve access for disabled people on and off screen.
Amazon has caught wind of these places called ‘cinemas’ (please Google) and is planning to spend $1bn on movies for theatrical release.
Cc. Netflix. The Knives Out sequel could have made $200m at the box office, but this particular streaming service only let it play in ‘cinemas’ (?) for a week.
Talking of Netflix… Here’s a trailer for the new Harry and Meghan series.
Director Ang Lee (no relation to Bruce Lee) has cast his son Mason Lee (no relation to Bruce Lee) in a biopic about Bruce Lee (no relation to either Ang or Mason Lee).
Fashion
The Balenciaga fallout continues. Celebs are ditching the brand and they’re suing the ad company for $25m. The Telegraph on the shock tactic gone wrong.
Shein has overtaken Zara as the world’s most popular fashion retailer… but, they can't always get what they want, as the Rolling Stones have pulled their partnership after a week.
Music & Radio
The MOBO Awards celebrated its big 2-5 this week. Knucks and Little Simz tied for album of the year.
The Guardian remembers the enigma of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie.
And you can tell everybody, Sir Elton John will headline next year’s Glastonbury as part of his farewell tour. His final EVER UK show, too.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus and Jamie Oliver are three of the guest editors of Radio 4’s Today over the festive period.
Ah, now this is lovely. Former Desert Island Discs host Kirsty Young is returning as a guest over Christmas, as are Steven Spielberg and Cate Blanchett.
Cat Burns, FLO and Nia Archives have been nominated for the next BRITS Rising Star award.
Most streamed song of 2022? Harry Styles’ As It Was. Total streams? 1.5bn on Spotify alone. Sign of the times, I guess? Wrong song.
Tech & Telecoms
Rather surprisingly, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried still appeared at a New York Times conference this week, saying “I didn't try to commit fraud”. Oh, no worries then.
It is expected that 1 billion people globally will be connected to 5G by the end of the year.
Water under the bridge between Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook in case you were wondering, after Elon accused them of planning to block Twitter.
Meta has been fined just a mere €265m by the Irish Data Protection Commission over a data leak.
The US has now completely banned sales and imports of Huawei, ZTE and goods from three either Chinese companies.
A surgical robot has been used to remove a throat tumour for the first time in the UK.
This is interesting. MIT Tech Review on the biotech labs using generative AI inspired by DALL-E to invent new drugs.
Imran Chaudhri, Humane founder and iPhone designer, gave a first glimpse of a post-smartphone world at BoF VOICES this week.
Elon Musk’s brain implant Neuralink should be ready for human testing in six months if anybody fancies it?
San Francisco has voted to allow its police to use ‘killer robots’. Seems fine.
Electric, robot tractors powered by Nvidia AI chips are popping up in the fields of California. Transfarmers.
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