Fans of the fab four, take note. Apple has uploaded a new version of the band’s 1 compilation album that includes support for spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. First released in 2000, 1 brings together nearly every number-one single the Beatles released between 1962 and their breakup in 1970. Among the songs you’ll find on the album are “She Loves You,” “We Can Work It Out” and “Get Back.” Giles Martin, the son of legendary Beatles collaborator George Martin, produced the new spatial mix. And as before, the tracks are sequenced according to release order, so it provides some sense of the band’s musical evolution.

To get the most out of the mix, you’ll want to listen with a pair of AirPods or Beats earbuds or headphones with an H1 or W1 chip. The effect is most noticeable when you enable head tracking. You can do that by pulling down the Control Center shade in iOS, long pressing on the volume slider that appears and then tapping the spatial audio icon. The mix isn’t revelatory, but if nothing else, it’s an excuse to revisit some of the most influential songs in rock history.

At the behest of the country's government, Meta took its most significant action yet against Russian state media organizations amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. On Sunday, Nick Clegg, the company’s recently promoted president of global affairs, said Meta was restricting some Russian accounts within the war-torn nation.

“We have been in contact with the government of Ukraine, and at their request we have also restricted access to several accounts in Ukraine, including those belonging to some Russian state media organizations,” said Clegg. We’ve reached out to Meta to ask the company to clarify how it’s restricting those accounts.

Clegg noted Ukraine also asked Meta to limit Russia’s access to Facebook and Instagram. For the time being, the company denied that request, claiming people in the country have used its platforms to organize anti-war protests and access independent information. “We believe turning off our services would silence important expression at a crucial time,” he said.

This most recent move comes after Meta blocked Russian state media outlets from accessing its advertising platform or using other monetization features. Russia’s Roskomnadzor telecom regulator threatened to throttle and restrict access to Facebook after company officials declined to stop fact-checking state-backed media organizations on the platform. Clegg said on Sunday the company would continue to label and fact-check content from those outlets. He also confirmed, following reports from internet monitoring organization NetBlocks, that the Russian government had started restricting access to its social networks.

Russia has moved to restrict access to Twitter as its invasion of Ukraine continues. Starting early Saturday morning, internet monitor NetBlocks saw a nearly complete blackout of the platform across all major domestic telecom providers, including Rostelecom and MTS. For the time being, Russian residents and those visiting the country can still access Twitter using VPN services but reaching the website directly is nearly impossible.

Twitter confirmed the reports at 11:51AM ET. “We’re aware that Twitter is being restricted for some people in Russia and are working to keep our service safe and accessible,” the company said.

At the moment, Russians can reportedly still access Facebook and Instagram, but that may change. On Friday, the country’s telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor, began partially restricting access to Facebook after Meta refused to stop fact-checking and labeling content from state-owned news organizations. At the time, Roskomnadzor accused Facebook of violating “the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens.”

It’s unclear why Russia has moved to block Twitter, but all the videos of the conflict you see on the platform may have played a part in the decision. For instance, Russia claims its airstrikes haven’t targeted civilian infrastructure, but several widely circulated videos appear to show otherwise. Those clips and others would appear to paint a picture of the invasion that is quite different from the one Russian-state media has pushed. 

"Russia's restriction of Twitter will significantly limit the free flow of information at a time of crisis when the public most needs to stay informed," NetBlocks director Alp Toker told the BBC.

Facebook has blocked Russian state media outlets from using its advertising platform or using other monetization features in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The move comes after Russia regulator Roskomnadzor said it would restrict access to the social network after Facebook officials declined to stop fact checking Russian state-run media outlets on the platform. Now, Meta’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher says the company is stepping up its restrictions on Russian state media, which are now barred from running ads or using monetization features anywhere in the world. He added that the company continues to “to apply labels to additional Russian state media.”

It follows a similar move from Twitter, which announced on Friday that it was suspending all advertising in Ukraine and Russia in order to better highlight authoritative information and guard against misinformation. Facebook has also previously enabled a “lock profile” feature for people in Ukraine as an added security feature, and has formed a “Special Operations Center” to track how the invasion of Ukraine is unfolding on its platform.

Twitter has temporarily paused ads in Ukraine and Russia, one of several steps the company is taking to highlight safety information and minimize “risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine.”

“We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it,” the company wrote in an update that was also shared in Ukrainian. Twitter also said it’s temporarily halting the recommendations feature that surfaces tweets from accounts users’ don’t follow in their home timelines in order to “reduce the spread of abusive content.”

Twitter didn’t indicate how long these measures would be in place, but said it was part of its ongoing work to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We’re actively monitoring for risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine, including identifying and disrupting attempts to amplify false and misleading information,” the company said.

The company added that it’s directing users to Moments and Events curated by its editorial team in order to provide additional context about what’s happening in Ukraine. Researchers have warned that misinformation and disinformation about Ukraine will continue to flood social media platforms. 

Twitter said it’s also working to keep “high-profile accounts” safe from hacking attempts. “We’re actively monitoring vulnerable high-profile accounts, including journalists, activists, and government officials and agencies to mitigate any attempts at a targeted takeover or manipulation.” The company’s move comes one day after Facebook announced it was enabling its one-click “lock profile” tool for people in Ukraine to help users there safeguard their personal information.

Russia is partially restricting access to Facebook. Telecom regulator Roskomnadzor says the move is in response to parent company Meta restricting the official accounts of four Russian media outlets. It said Meta was violating Russian law by doing so.

Roskomnadzor asked Meta for an explanation and to remove the restrictions on Thursday. After the company "ignored" the demands, officials decided to restrict access to Facebook, a measure Roskomnadzor says is in accordance with the law. The watchdog claims to have recorded 23 cases of "such censorship of Russian media and Internet resources by Facebook" since October 2020 (per a Google Translate version of its announcement).

The extent of these restrictions on Facebook is not yet clear. Engadget has asked Meta for comment.

Reports suggest Russia tried to spread propaganda and misinformation for weeks in the lead up to its invasion of Ukraine. According to NBC News, experts expect the level of disinformation to increase significantly.

As the invasion began on Thursday, Facebook enabled its "lock profile" tool in Ukraine to help residents protect their accounts. Twitter's Safety team, meanwhile, shared some tips in Ukrainian on how to keep accounts secure.

This article contains a reference to suicide.

Right now, we’re living in a golden (micro) age of prestige TV adaptations depicting notable startup failures. In the first half of 2022 alone, we’re getting shows about the rise and fall of Uber, Theranos and WeWork all fronted by A-list talent. It’s a sign of how far the public’s tastes have changed that the travails of a tech, well, “tech” company is now mainstream entertainment.

Yesterday, I binge-watched seven of the eight episodes of Hulu / Star’s The Dropout, Disney’s adaptation of the ABC podcast series of the same name. It stars Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the fraudulent blood-testing startup Theranos. Holmes is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of committing fraud, while Seyfried can probably expect to pick up a number of plaudits for her performance come awards season.

The series covers the broad strokes of Holmes’ life in roughly chronological order, albeit with the odd timely flashback where necessary. We meet Holmes as a WASP-y teen with dreams of Stanford, backed by her Enron-executive dad and Washington insider mom. From there, Holmes travels to China to study abroad, where she meets Sunny Balwani, her future business and life partner. When she gets to Stanford, she’s frustrated at senior academics who tell her that her biotechnology idea is unworkable, and drops out to start her own company.

Given Theranos’ penchant for secrecy, it amused me that Disney asked critics not to reveal any “surprising plot points or spoilers.” I’ll keep details to a minimum here, but obviously it’s hard to imagine a large number of people not already knowing the bones of this particular saga. In fact, since Theranos closed in 2018, it’s already been the subject of a major podcast, a book, an Alex Gibney documentary and a long-gestating Adam McKay movie in development at Apple.

Going in, I was concerned that The Dropout would suffer the same problem as The Founder, 2016’s biopic of Ray Kroc. It’s a fine film, but one that doesn’t know if Kroc is its hero or its villain, despite the stock rags-to-riches tropes it wheels out. In some scenes, he is portrayed as a try-hard who saw an opportunity and built an empire, in others, a ruthless conman who stole the business out from under the McDonald brothers. The tonal whiplash made the film offer two competing arguments, neither of which were very well-explained.

There’s no such problem here with The Dropout, with series creator Elizabeth Merriweather always being clear-eyed about Holmes’ problems. It’s almost a minor-key parody of those rags-to-riches stories, aided by the fact that Holmes’ went from riches to, uh, more riches. Moments that, in any other story, should be triumphant are undercut with dissonant music and there’s always a sense that there’s something not quite right about all of this.

Beth Dubber / Hulu

None of that would work without Amanda Seyfried’s performance which manages to sell Holmes as both a well-meaning neophyte and a cold, calculating monster. In the series' most shocking moment, Seyfried somehow makes you feel abject pity and outrage at the same time. And the show works hard to keep reminding you that this isn’t just about some elderly Republicans who got fleeced backing a boondoggle but, in a phrase repeated throughout the show; “real people.”

It helps that the show has assembled a murderer’s row of talent to appear alongside Seyfried in the series. As well as Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani, there’s (deep breath) William H. Macy, Elizabeth Marvel, LisaGay Hamilton, Michael Gill, Laurie Metcalf, Kurtwood Smith, Kate Burton, Michael Ironside, Nicky Endres and Anne Archer. Deserving extra praise is Stephen Fry, however, who offers some fantastic work as Dr. Ian Gibbons, the chemist who worked with Holmes at the start of her career and died by suicide during a patent dispute. Fry, towering over the rest of the cast and looking every inch the crusty academic in a world of waxen silicon valley models, acts as the warm and inviting voice of conscience when things start to hit the slide.

Disney is marketing The Dropout as a drama, but the sort of drama where the satire is razor wire sharp and the jokes are beyond morbid. Succession fans will find much to love about the series dark humor, especially the all-out fourth episode, which borrows Alan Ruck to guest as Walgreens’ executive Dr. Jay Rosan. In other places, however, the satire of both Silicon Valley and investment culture in general is far more subtle. Only in this series can two characters declare their love for each other while creating a pact for mutually-assured blackmail at the same time.

There is, rather obviously, a gendered element to the endless speculation and hand-wringing about Holmes’ motives and actions. The press never seems to need to psychoanalyze why Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are dick-wagging with their competing space projects. Merriweather chooses to highlight this disparity, mostly through the voice of Laurie Metcalf’s Dr. Phyllis Gardner – the Stanford professor who initially told Holmes that her ideas couldn’t work. She pops up several times in the show to offer meta-commentary on what we’re watching.

One of the things the show serves to highlight is how much of an easy ride Theranos got from investors and the press. Despite refusing to justify any element of its technology, it took far too long for regulators and officials to really interrogate what was going on here. I mean, in 2015, Holmes was appointed to the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School! The scale of the fraud, the scale of the lie, became so great that most people just felt that they had to believe it.

It’s funny, I’m reminded of a story I wrote for Engadget back in 2016 which just summed up John Carreyou’s Wall Street Journal reporting. But despite just citing and quoting Carreyou’s work, I was on the receiving end of a 21-email nastygram from Theranos’ then-PR representatives. The company’s image management team jumped hard on any and all criticism. When Holmes and Balwani were charged by the SEC, I emailed that same PR person to ask if they had any comment on their previous statements. It was the most delicious “no comment” I have ever received.

A common complaint of Peak TV is that most shows could be done and dusted in a third of the time actually allowed. Despite watching almost all of The Dropout over a single day, I actually felt like the show could have been longer. There’s plenty that, by necessity, has had to be cut, glossed and generally trimmed to get things down to a tight eight hours. I could easily have watched another couple hours with more context and detail, but then I’ll admit, I am a nerd. You won’t be able to, however, since Hulu is releasing the first three episodes on March 3rd and then the rest on subsequent Fridays through the start of April. That’s a smart decision, since the first three are more or less designed as a cohesive whole, while subsequent episodes can be enjoyed individually.

Fundamentally, The Dropout is well worth your time, and Amanda Seyfried offers some truly stellar work bringing the duality of Holmes to life.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.

Tumblr may have introduced ads to user blogs several years ago, but it's now happy to take them away for a price. The social media site has launched an ad-free option that removes the marketing from microblogs for $5 per month, or $40 per year. You'll have to set up the feature on your computer through your account settings, but the zero-ad experience will be available on mobile devices as well.

The offering comes less than a year after Tumblr gave bloggers the option to charge for access at prices ranging from $4 to $10 per month. At the time, Tumblr saw the addition as modernizing the site for a younger audience, particularly creators eager to get paid.

It's too soon to say how successful this will be. Tumblr is effectively asking customers to pay to remove ads that weren't necessarily there before. Tumblr's 2018 adult content ban didn't exactly help the site's popularity, either. However, this might be appealing if you're a fan of Twitter Blue and other subscriptions that let you remove at least some ads — you don't have to put up with a cluttered experience if you don't want to.

Twitter has admitted that it mistakenly removed accounts sharing Russian military activity in the midst of the Ukraine invasion. As TechCrunch notes, the deleted accounts, which have since been reinstated, included an aggregator of user-generated posts from Ukraine and accounts owned by people doing open source intelligence investigation (OSINT) to debunk fake news and claims. 

While users first blamed mass reporting for the account deletions, Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth said it wasn't a factor at all. Instead, the removals were a result of errors made by human moderators who are proactively addressing manipulated media on the website. 

In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson explained to TechCrunch:

"We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error. We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts."

In addition to proactively monitoring manipulated media coming from the region, Twitter has also responded to the Ukraine crisis with tips on how to secure accounts. Ukraine's websites have been hit by cyberattacks over the past few weeks, and social media accounts, especially those sharing news and images from the country, might also be targeted. 

Twitter Safety has posted a series of tweets in Ukrainian with tips on how to protect accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication. It also included links to its support page for those whose accounts had been compromised and for those who got locked out. Twitter has linked users to instructions on how to disable location info and how to remove it from previous tweets, as well. Finally, it's advising users to deactivate their account if they feel that the safest option is to delete it completely.

Sure enough, Marvel's outgoing Netflix shows are coming to Disney+... but only for some viewers. Engadget has confirmed a MobileSyrupreport that Daredevil, Jessica Jones and other productions will be available on Disney+ starting March 16th, but only in Canada. If you're fortunate enough to live in the country, you'll only have to wait a couple of weeks to keep watching after the superhero shows leave Netflix on March 1st.

It's not clear when these shows will be available in other countries, but Engadget understands it's just a matter of time before you can watch elsewhere.

You could see this transition coming for a while. Disney said in 2017 that it would ditch Netflix in favor of an in-house service, and Netflix had cancelled all its Marvel originals by 2019. Beyond this, Disney has been dropping not-so-subtle clues about its control of the former Netflix characters, with appearances from a couple of them in Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home.

If there's a looming question, it's whether or not the shows will make their way to Disney+ in other countries or to Disney-owned services like Hulu, where their not-so-family-friendly content might be a better fit. With that said, Disney risks a further split in its Marvel catalog (MODOK is on Hulu, for instance) if it hosts the Netflix shows anywhere besides its main service — it may have to accept that mature and PG fare will sit side by side.