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Spotify is officially expanding its offerings beyond just audio with the introduction of music videos. The streamer is rolling out a beta program that offers premium subscribers access to music videos on mobile, desktop and TV for a select number of tracks by artists like Ed Sheeran and Ice Spice. 

In an email seen by TechCrunch, Sten Garmark, Spotify vice president and global head of consumer experience said: "We're starting with a limited subset of the full catalog, which includes thousands of music videos. Within this subset, we aimed to prioritize a wide range of genres and artists across our launch markets." YouTube (of course) and Apple Music both already offer music videos, so this new feature helps Spotify match up to some of its biggest competitors. 

To watch a music video, Spotify users listening to a song can click "switch to video" right on the now-playing screen. The music video will always start the song back from the beginning, but users can touch switch back to audio at any point. Even if the music video plays through, Spotify will still queue the next song as audio only.

Currently, the beta option is only available in 11 countries, chosen for a "number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support," Garmark said. While the US didn't make the cut, the countries included represent quite a global audience: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden and the UK. Users from these nations must also have a premium account to watch music videos.

Rumors that Spotify might add music videos started last July following a number of layoffs (and more have come since). This announcement is the first time Spotify has announced the existence of music videos on its platform. However, a Reddit user posted three months back that they had the "switch to video" option on a single song: My Way, by Limp Bizkit.

Neil Young is back on Spotify after boycotting the platform over two years ago, he said in a new blog post. The Canadian singer ditched the platform over vaccine misinformation on the Joe Rogan podcast. He’s returned because Rogan’s podcast is no longer exclusive on Spotify. “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” he said – which isn’t really the stance he thinks it is.

When Young dropped his catalog from Spotify, he added he was fed up with Spotify’s “shitty” sound quality. Nothing has particularly changed there.

— Mat Smith

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In the EU, Apple will allow iOS apps to be distributed on websites

Instead of its App Store.

Days after Apple started allowing iOS users in the EU to use third-party app stores, the company has announced more changes to how developers can distribute their apps. Most significantly, those who meet certain criteria can let users download apps from their websites. The Web Distribution option, available this spring, will effectively let developers bypass the app ecosystem entirely for their own apps. To be eligible, devs must opt in to new App Store rules and pay a fee for each user install after a certain threshold.

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Ray-Ban’s Meta sunglasses can now identify and describe landmarks

It’s one of the more useful AI-powered features.

Engadget

AI-powered visual search features arrived to Ray-Ban’s Meta sunglasses last year with some impressive (and divisive) tricks — but a new one in the latest beta looks quite useful. It identifies landmarks and tells you more about them — a sort of tour guide for travelers. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth explained in a (Meta-owned) Threads post with a couple of sample images explaining why the Golden Gate Bridge is orange (easier to see in fog), a history of the painted ladies houses in San Francisco and more.

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X rival Bluesky will let users run their own moderation services

Users can subscribe to third-party labeling services too.

Bluesky, the open-source Twitter alternative, is about to start testing one of its more ambitious ideas: allowing its users to run their own moderation services. The change will bring Bluesky users and developers together to work on custom labeling tools for the budding social media platform.

Bluesky is seeing a surge in growth after it removed its waitlist and opened to all users in February. The service has added about 2 million new users, bringing its total community to just over 5 million. It might need the extra moderation.

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A startup company called Space One launched a rocket earlier in hopes of becoming the first private entity in Japan to put a satellite in orbit. Unfortunately, its attempt ended in a fiery explosion, mere seconds after lift off at 11AM local time. Its 60-foot-long rocket Kairos launched from the company's Space Port Kii in Wakayama, a prefecture south of Osaka in Japan's Kansai region. Space One director Mamoru Endo told reporters at a conference that the rocket's automated system detected an anomaly five seconds after liftoff and triggered its self-destruct function. The company has yet to figure out what that anomaly is and will be investigating the incident for answers. 

Kairos was carrying payload for the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, which collects and analyzes imagery information for the Japanese government. That satellite was supposed to be an alternative to an existing Japanese satellite monitoring military facilities in and rocket launches from North Korea. Masakazu Toyoda, the company's president, said during the conference that Space One is "prepared to take up the next challenge." He also emphasized how common failed launches are in space travel. And that is true — SpaceX, for instance, lost several Starship vehicles over the past few years when they blew up during testing. 

Space One, backed by Canon and aerospace manufacturer IHI, eventually hopes to offer satellite launch services using small rockets, which it says "offer greater scheduling flexibility than large ones." It's also aiming to provide the "world's shortest lead time from contractual engagement to launch, as well as the world's most frequent launching schedule" while also minimizing the costs of putting satellites into orbit. Since the company must be able to stage a successful launch before customers come knocking on its doors, it will most likely announce its next attempt in the near future. 

Last year, Japanese company ispace also failed to become the first private company to land on the moon when it lost contact with its Hakuto-R lander. But the country's space agency, JAXA, is doing better than its private counterparts: Its SLIM lunar lander successfully touched down in January and is expected to resume its operations in late March after the lunar night is over. 

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Neil Young is back on Spotify after boycotting the platform over two years ago, he said in a new blog post. The Canadian singer ditched the platform over vaccine misinformation on the Joe Rogan podcast, later saying he was fed up with Spotify’s "shitty" sound quality anyway. 

Young returned because Rogan's podcast is no longer exclusive on Spotify. "My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify," he said, without specifically mentioning the Joe Rogan Experience.

There's no way he could also pull his catalog from Apple Music and Amazon as well, he added, "because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all" if he did. Young also expressed hope that Spotify would improve its sound quality, while shouting out Quobuz and Tidal for presenting his songs in high-res. 

"Spotify, you can do it! Really be #1 in all ways. You have the music and listeners!!!! Start with a limited Hi res tier and build from there!" he wrote. (Spotify did announce that it would launch a HiFi tier way back in early 2021, but it has yet to actually do so.) 

Fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell joined Young in the boycott, and her music is still missing from the platform. Both had reason to be incensed about the vaccine misinformation on Rogan's show as both were victims of polio — a disease that was wiped out in North America thanks to vaccines.

It's hard to say how Young's boycott affected Spotify, but it certainly impacted his finances. Last year, Billboard estimated that pulling his songs from Spotify cost him roughly $300,000 in lost recorded music and publishing royalties.

Bluesky, the open-source Twitter alternative, is about to start testing out one of its more ambitious ideas: allowing its users to run their own moderation services. The change will allow Bluesky users to and developers to work together to create custom labeling tools for the budding social media platform.

The new moderation tools arrive as Bluesky is seeing a surge in growth after it got rid of its waitlist and opened to all users in February. Since then, the service has added about 2 million new users, bringing its total community to just over 5 million.

The company has said its approach to moderation is based on the same philosophy that has led it to embrace custom feed algorithms. The goal, Bluesky wrote in a blog post, is to create “an ecosystem of moderation and open-source safety tools that gives communities power to create their own spaces, with their own norms and preferences.”

In practice, these moderation tools will take the form of labeling services. Just as Bluesky allows users to set their own moderation preferences — for example, you can choose whether you want the app to “show,” “warn,” or “hide” explicit content — developers will be able to create their own filtering systems others can opt into. “For example, someone could make a moderation service that blocks photos of spiders from Bluesky — let’s call it the Spider Shield,” the company explains. “If you get a jump scare from seeing spiders in your otherwise peaceful nature feed, you could install this moderation service and immediately any labeled spider pictures would disappear from your experience.”

To help make these kinds of experiences possible, Bluesky is open sourcing its collaborative labeling tool called Ozone, which will allow groups of moderators to respond to reports and add labels to content. But the company notes that developers can also create automated labeling systems using Bluesky’s API.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber has referred to the concept as “composable” or “stackable” moderation. “We're always doing baseline moderation, meaning that we are providing you with a default moderated experience when you come in [to Bluesky],” Graber told Engadget last month. “And then on top of that, you can customize things.”

These new third-party labeling services will start to roll out later this week on the desktop version of Bluesky, with a mobile version coming “soon,” according to the company. And it’s likely users will see more options available in the coming weeks as more developers and groups get their hands on the underlying tools.

Google’s Gemini won’t answer questions about the 2024 election. Reuters reported on Tuesday that the company will block the AI chatbot’s ability to generate responses about elections this year. The company said in December it would restrict the types of political questions the chatbot could discuss as the elections drew closer.

“Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses,” the company wrote in a Google India blog post on Tuesday. “We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously, and are continuously working to improve our protections.”

The guardrails are already in place. When I asked Gemini for interesting facts about the 2024 US presidential election, it replied, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.” In addition to America’s Biden-Trump rematch (and down-ballot races that will determine control of Congress), India and South Africa will hold national elections this year.

When I prompted OpenAI’s ChatGPT with the same question, it provided a long list of factoids. These included remarks about the presidential rematch, early primaries and Super Tuesday, voting demographics and more.

OpenAI outlined its plans to fight election-related misinformation in January. Its strategy focuses more on preventing wrong information than supplying none at all. Its approach includes stricter guidelines for DALL-E 3 image generation, banning applications that discourage people from voting, and preventing people from creating chatbots that pretend to be candidates or institutions.

It’s understandable why Google would err on the side of caution with its AI bot. Gemini got the company in hot water last month when social media users posted samples where the chatbot applied diversity filters to “historical images,” including presenting Nazis and America’s Founding Fathers as people of color. After a backlash (largely from the internet’s “anti-woke” brigade), it paused Gemini’s ability to generate people until it could iron out the kinks. Google hasn’t yet lifted that block, and it now responds to prompts about images of people, “Sorry, I wasn’t able to generate the images you requested.”

The wait is almost over. Nightdive Studios just announced a May 21 release date for the console version of its System Shock remake. It’ll be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, after arriving for PCs last year.

The developer, alongside publisher Prime Matter, dropped a new trailer for the console release, showing off the stunning graphical update to the 1994 first-person shooter/RPG. Combat has also received a significant upgrade, as the mechanics of the genre weren’t quite refined when the game originally released, gulp, 30 years ago.

The PC version of the remake has been well-received, with a positive review score on Metacritic, but this isn’t a simple re-release. Console players are getting some exclusive features to sweeten the pot. It’ll boast 4K visuals with 60FPS on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. There’s also a new ending that “upgrades the final confrontation” with series antagonist Shodan. The controls have been reworked to better suit console gamepads and there’s a new female hacker protagonist.

Prime Matter

There’s also a little bit of something here for collectors. The PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions are getting a physical release, though it’s a digital-only affair for PS4 and Xbox One players. There’s no pricing information yet, but the game costs $40 on PC.

This remake of the iconic shooter has been a long time coming. It was first announced all the way back in 2016 as part of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Nightdive Studios is also working on an enhanced port of System Shock 2.

Children of the Sun is a bullet-bending puzzle game set in a trippy world of cults and revenge, and it's due to hit PC via Steam on April 9. In Children of the Sun, players line up a single sniper shot and then control the bullet as it ricochets among the cultists in their sights. The goal is to take everyone out with the most speed, elegance and creativity, curving the bullet around the environment and through objects as the targets attempt to flee in slow motion. It's a repeatable, satisfying set of mechanics.

It's not all senseless violence, either. The sniper is called The Girl, and she's a former cult member who grew up as a victim of its brainwashing. She's now on a mission to dismantle the cult, member by member and bullet by bullet, before finally taking out The Leader. So yes, there is violence in the game, but it's not completely senseless.

The environments in Children of the Sun have a high-contrast, demonic glow about them, and the enemies appear as thermally lit skeletons as The Girl spies on them, lining up each shot. The visuals alone lend the game an unpredictable, adrenaline-fueled edge.

Children of the Sun comes from René Rother, a developer who's big in the world of game jams. Rother has a history of building minimalistic games with loud messages about violence and death — or, sometimes, chewing gum. Children of the Sun is published by Devolver Digital.

Devolver Digital

The demo for Children of the Sun landed on Steam in early February and offered a seven-course taste of the game's core loop. It was a breakout hit of Steam Next Fest; its demo clocked more than 60,000 players that week.

"It's been a few pretty fun weeks after the first announcement of the game and the release of the demo," Rother said on Steam. "There were lots of really nice words and great feedback coming from you. I appreciate everyone who gave the Demo a moment of their time.... So now that release date is public, I guess I finally need to actually finish the game. Ha!"