Hasta La Gadget!

Spotify’s long-promised Batman podcast is almost here. The streamer has announced that DC Comics and Warner Bros.’ Batman Unburied will debut worldwide on May 3rd, with a trailer offering a hint of what to expect. The show will have Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) look for help from The Riddler to understand why Bruce Wayne can’t remember his Batman role and, hopefully, convince him to fight a serial killer wreaking havoc on Gotham City.

Winston Duke (M’Baku in Black Panther) will play Bruce Wayne in the English-language podcast. Other stars include John Rhys-Davies, Lance Reddick (John Wick), Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) and Ashly Burch (Horizon Forbidden West), among others. Spotify is also promising localized versions and actors for Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan and Mexico.

The release comes nearly two years after Spotify first unveiled a multi-year deal with DC and Warner Bros. to produce exclusive podcasts, and roughly a year and a half after the companies teased early details of Batman Unburied. It’s not clear what prompted the long wait, but the news reflects a catch-up of sorts as Spotify’s podcast deals finally become reality. Meghan Markle’s first podcast series, for instance, is arriving on Spotify nearly two years after she and Prince Harry reached a deal.

Whatever the reasons behind the wait, Batman Unburied could represent an important moment for Spotify. It could show whether or not the DC/Warner collaboration was worth the effort, of course, but it might also indicate whether Spotify’s quest for exclusive podcasts was worth the delays and sometimes serious problems.

Intel will suspend all business operations in Russia in response to the country’s continued war on Ukraine, according to a statement from the company late Tuesday. The tech giant has roughly 1,200 employees in Russia.

Read more…

Anker, a company most known for its charging products, is getting into the 3D-printing business. The company has just announced AnkerMake, its new 3D printing brand, and its first model called AnkerMake M5. Anker claims that the M5 solves the most critical issues that have prevented 3D printers from going mainstream, including their typically slow print speeds.

The AnkerMake M5 has a basic print speed of 250 mm/s that’s meant to be used if you’re working on more detailed projects that need a smooth finish. However, the printer also has a much speedier mode that gives it the power to print up to 2,500 mm/s². The end result is rougher and less detailed, and the mode is mostly suitable for prototypes and perhaps random toys, but Anker says it enables the M5 to reduce average print times by up to 70 percent compared to other printers. 

In addition to being speedy, the M5 was designed to be easy to set up: It will apparently only take 15 minutes to get it ready to start printing. To address another pain point — the need for constant supervision — Anker gave the M5 the capability to monitor print jobs with a built-in AI-powered camera. If it detects issues like nozzle plugging, it can send an alert to your phone. You can also view live feeds of your print jobs through the Anker mobile app wherever you are. 

Whether the M5 can deliver on all those promises remains to be seen. At the moment, it’s a Kickstarter project, which means it could take a while for Anker to start shipping the product, and that’s if the campaign reaches its goal. If you want to back the project and don’t mind waiting, you can get the the AnkerMake M5 for its super early bird price of $429. After that, you’ll have to pledge at least $499 to secure a unit.

If you were trying to watch Drake, Taylor Swift, Lil Nas X, The Weeknd, Eminem, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, Kanye West, Michael Jackson and other artists on YouTube this morning, you may not have seen what you expected. Music video network Vevo was reportedly attacked by someone with the Twitter handle @lospelaosbro, who uploaded some extremely strange clips, The Verge reported. Those included video of a rapper called Lil Tjay and a man called Paco Sanz who was sent to jail for scamming donations after lying about having cancer. 

Vevo acknowledged the incident to The Verge, saying that “some videos were directly uploaded to a small number of Vevo artist channels earlier today by an unauthorized source.” It added that no pre-existing content was accessible to the attacker and said that it would be “conducting a review of our security systems.”

Vevo is owned primarily by music labels Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The company says it controls “the largest network of music channels on YouTube,” and essentially acts like a contractor, allowing distributors to merge Vevo channels with existing channels as “Official Artist Channels.” Google supplies ads for Vevo videos and also owns a small stake in the service.

According to a Vevo FAQ, artists don’t post their videos directly, but send them to “content providers” for uploading. Content providers include major labels like Universal Music Group and Sony Music, along with independent distributors. The hacked artist channels belong to multiple labels and Vevo said that they have now been secured and the incident is resolved.

The price for an Amazon Music Unlimited plan is going up from $8 to $9 for Prime members, Amazon has confirmed. It’s also raising the price for a “Single Device” subscription from $4 to $5, as spotted byConsumer Reports reporter Nicholas De Leon. Non-Prime members will continue to pay $10 per month and the Family Plan will still cost $15 per month for Prime members only.

The news means that Prime subscribers are barely getting any kind of deal on Amazon Music Unlimited, whereas Prime Video is still included for free in the plan. The price is still a bit cheaper for Prime members than you’d pay for Apple Music ($10 per month) or Spotify ($10 per month). Amazon also offers Music Prime for free to Prime members, but you’re limited to 2 million songs and can only play on one device at a time.

Amazon Music Unlimited is obviously best if you’re a Prime subscriber and have an Echo or other Alexa device, though it works on tablets, smartphones, TVs, Amazon Fire devices, PCs and so on. However, the user interface is generally considered subpar compared to Apple Music or Spotify, lacking things like biographies in artist profiles. Some of the benefits include downloads for offline listening and HD, Dolby Atmos and Sony 360RA streaming at no extra cost.