JetBlue is revamping its in-flight entertainment system, complete with a new branding. It’s now called Blueprint and brings several features that should make your next flight just a teensy-bit less grueling. The biggest news here is a watch party feature that lets customers view the same TV show or film with up to five other people.

This is actually pretty cool, as watching stuff with friends and family during a long flight typically requires the finicky “push play at the exact same time and hope nobody has to go to the bathroom” method. The watch party feature includes functionality that pauses content for all viewers, should one have to take a break to deal with existential panic from being six miles above the ground. It also works no matter where the seats are.

The watch party tool is just one aspect of the revamped in-flight entertainment experience. The system will now provide content recommendations based on previous viewing history, as it will be tied to individual accounts. This means that customers can save their favorite movies and shows for repeat viewings. It also means that people can pick up where they left off from one flight to the next. JetBlue says this can be useful for a connecting layover flight or even a trip months down the line.

JetBlue has a content partnership with Peacock, so customers have access to the streamer’s catalog during flights. Both Twisted Metal and Mrs. Davis are solid in-flight binges. The company also teased more “exclusive entertainment and offers” coming to Blueprint in the future.

As for availability, Blueprint is ready to go on JetBlue aircraft with AVANT seatback touchscreens. This includes the Airbus A321neo, Airbus A321LR (Long Range) and Airbus A220.

Parents throughout the country just breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of allowing more screen time for their kids that doesn’t revolve around some really loud and annoying YouTube dude. PBS just launched a new free ad-supported channel called PBS Retro, as reported by The Wrap. As the name suggests, this is a repository for all of your favorite edutainment classics from the 1980s, 1990s and beyond. The nostalgia is strong with this one.

PBS Retro is available via The Roku Channel, which is a streaming service on smart TVs and, of course, Roku devices. The 24/7 channel airs all of the shows you’re likely picturing right now, including Reading Rainbow and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. You’ll also be able to introduce your kids to Thomas and Friends, Zoboomafoo and Kratt's Creatures, among others. It’s a collection of old-school classics.

This isn’t the only PBS-adjacent channel available on Roku’s platform. It’s home to other ad-supported channels like PBS Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Road Trip, PBS Food, Julia Child and PBS Nature. There are also plenty of PBS-related channels available via subscription, including PBS Masterpiece, PBS Kids, PBS Living, PBS Documentaries and PBS America. Some of these are available on Hulu+ Live TV.

PBS may become an even bigger fixture in the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) space in the future. The organization says it's in the “early days of experimentation” with a goal of making PBS content “available in new places.” It will “continue to consider additional opportunities” if these FAST channels increase revenue and brand awareness. In the meantime, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood makes for some mighty fine ASMR.

Google keeps promising to phase out third-party cookies on Chrome but not actually doing it. The company vowed to deprecate cookies back in 2020, pushing the date back to 2023 and then 2024. We did get some traction earlier this year, when Google disabled cookies for one percent of Chrome users, but those efforts have stalled. Now, the company says it won’t happen until next year.

It’s easy to drag Google for this but it’s not entirely in the company’s hands. The tech giant is working closely with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to ensure that any tools it implements to replace the cookie’s tracking and measurement capabilities aren’t anti-competitive. These tools are known collectively as the Privacy Sandbox and Google says it has to wait until the CMA has had “sufficient time to review” results from industry tests that’ll be provided by the end of June.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox has stirred up some controversy in recent years. The proposed tools have drawn complaints from adtech companies, publishers and ad agencies, on the grounds that they are difficult to operate, don’t adequately replace traditional cookies and give too much power to Google. To that end, the company said that it recognizes “ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers.” This is another reason given for the delay until next year.

The CMA isn’t the only regulatory agency giving the side-eye to the current iteration of these Privacy Sandbox tools. The UK-based Information Commissioner’s Office drafted a report that indicated these tools could be used by advertisers to identify consumers, as suggested by the Wall Street Journal.

Those in the ad industry want to see cookies given the heave-ho, despite complaints about Privacy Sandbox. Drew Stein, CEO of adtech data firm Audigent, told Engadget that it’s time for Google “to deliver on the promise of a better ecosystem” by implementing its plans to eliminate third-party cookies.

The CMA, on the other hand, has indicated a willingness to keep third-party cookies in play, particularly if Google’s solution does more harm than good. Craig Jenkins, the CMA’s director of digital markets, recently said the organization would delay implementation of Privacy Sandbox tools if “we’re not satisfied we can resolve the concerns”, as reported by Adweek. We’ll see what happens in 2025.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have been something of a pleasant surprise. They make videos, take photos, livestream and act as an adequate replacement for headphones, all while looking like a normal pair of sunglasses. However, everyone’s been waiting for the addition of multimodal AI after early access testing began in January. Now it’s here.

What is multimodal AI? Simply put, it’s a toolset that allows an AI assistant to process multiple types of information, including photos, videos, text and audio. It’s an AI that can view and understand the world around you in real time. This is the underlying concept behind Humane’s maligned AI Pin. Meta’s version is more conservative with its promises and, honestly, we came away impressed during our initial hands-on.

Here’s how it works. The glasses have a camera and five microphones, acting as the AI’s eyes and ears. With this in mind, you can ask the glasses to describe anything you are looking at. Do you want to know a dog’s breed before you go up and give it a good pet? Just ask the glasses. Meta says it can also read signs in different languages, which is great for traveling. We enjoyed exclaiming “Hey Meta, look at this and tell me what it says” and listening as it did just that. There’s even a landmark identification feature, though that wasn’t available to test.

There are some other potential use case scenarios, like staring at loose ingredients on a kitchen counter and asking the AI to whip up a relevant recipe. However, we need a few weeks of real people running the tech through its paces to gauge what it's actually good at. Real-time translation is going to be something of a killer app, particularly for tourists, but here's hoping it keeps the hallucinations to a minimum. Mark Zuckerberg has shown the AI picking out clothes for him to wear but, come on, that’s about as pie in the sky as it gets.

Multimodal AI wasn’t the only update for the smart glasses announced today. Meta revealed hands-free video call integration with WhatsApp and Messenger. There are also some new frame designs for the fashion-conscious. These new styles can be fitted with prescription lenses and are available for preorder right now. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses start at $300, which isn’t chump change but is certainly better than $700 for a clunky pin.

X just announced a smart TV app for streaming video. Or, more accurately, that it claims it's building one, with absolutely no launch date mentioned. The appropriately-named X TV wants to be “your go-to companion for a high-quality, immersive entertainment experience on a larger screen.” By high-quality entertainment, X likely means that one Tucker Carlson video where he’s really impressed by grocery carts in Russia. That’s not a joke. Carlson is featured prominently in the little teaser video.

X CEO and marketing robot Linda Yaccarino promises “real-time” content and wide availability, but other than that details are scanter than scant. There’s some corporate speak nonsense about AI, of course, and boasts about “effortless casting” from a mobile device to a TV. Wait, I thought this was a TV app? So it’s also a mobile app that casts to a TV? Is there another word for less than half-baked? Does raw work?

In other words, we don’t know much. This is X. All we get are word salads that don’t really mean anything and then, one day, the app may or may not actually appear. If it does, it’s likely to be hopelessly broken. That sounds harsh, but there’s plenty of proof-laden pudding to go around. We got receipts.

Back when Twitter first rebranded to X, the company promised the whole thing would soon be “powered by AI.” X eventually did create a chatbot, Grok, but it’s not exactly the sharpest algo in the shed. It also doesn’t look to be “powering” the site anytime soon. Elon Musk promised that X would soon become a payments and banking platform, which thankfully hasn’t materialized. Remember when Musk said that all major X decisions would be conducted via user poll? When was the last time you’ve seen one of those? There’s also the whole ongoing blue check fiasco.

The long-promised Elon Musk says its his turn to have the remote, but it’s just kind of crappy. X did pursue original video content for a while, but things seem to have cooled off ever since the Don Lemon/Elon Musk debacle. Two years after Musk purchased the site, it’s still far from being the “everything app.”

There’s also the question of what kind of content will be streaming on this platform. Again, this is X. I’m just not sure how many people want to sit on their living room couch and watch a guy scream into the void about how the video game site Kotaku is ruining American society. The ad spotlights Carlson, as mentioned above, which indicates an endless stream of videos of people complaining about the word woke without actually defining it. Call me crazy, but I’d rather watch actual TV.

Heck. Even if I wanted to watch a vlog of impotent rage, YouTube is right there. It’s on smart TVs now and it works just fine. It has everything Yaccarino promises that one day will come to X TV. Plus, YouTube can teach you stuff, beyond how to block folks with a blue check next to their name.

X TV may or may not release in the near or far future on some or all smart TVs. It may be an actual app on the TV or an app on a phone that casts to a TV. It may be powered by AI, or not. It may have “tailored search” or it may just show you endless loops of Jordan Peterson bursting into tears. Who the heck knows. Be on the lookout for this latest pivot to video… or not.

Hollywood has really begun flexing its video game adaptation muscle in the wake of the spectacular success of the Fallout TV show and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Even indie publishers are getting some of those sweet, sweet development contracts. Case in point? The hit third-person shooter El Paso, Elsewhere is being adapted into a feature length film, as reported by Deadline.

Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield is in talks to both star and produce. Stanfield is known for a slew of great films, like Sorry to Bother You, Judas and the Black Messiah and The Book of Clarence, among others. Di Bonaventura Pictures and Colin Stark will also produce.

The game has players control a drug-addicted vampire hunter as he tracks down a blood-sucking ex-girlfriend who’s set on ending the world. The movie will follow a similar story structure, according to Deadline. The indie title has been praised for being a fantastic homage to third-person action shooters like the Max Payne series, though one that absolutely oozes surreal charm. In other words, it makes sense as a movie.

Of course, this is just the latest video game adaptation to ping our radar. Fallout, The Last of Us and Twisted Metal have all been renewed for second seasons. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is getting a sequel and The Legend of Zelda is finally being adapted into a movie. More recently, it was announced that the horror-tinged fishing sim Dredge is being turned into a movie, as is the action game Sifu.

There are also upcoming cartoons based on Splinter Cell, Vampire Survivors and Golden Axe. That's not all. There are upcoming movies based on Borderlands, Minecraft, Gears of War and so many others, not to mention the multimodal Sonic the Hedgehog cinematic universe. Video games and Hollywood are finally besties, after decades of false starts. Now, give me a series adaptation of the Dreamcast-era “virtual pet” Seaman, you cowards.

The European Union (EU) has opened a second formal investigation into TikTok and has accused the platform of running afoul of the region’s Digital Services Act (DSA), according to a report by TechCrunch. The probe involves the addictive nature of TikTok Lite, which is a smaller version of the app that takes up less memory on a smartphone and was built to perform over slower internet connections.

TikTok Lite launched earlier this month in France and Spain and includes a design aspect that allows users to earn points by watching and liking videos. These points can be exchanged for stuff like Amazon vouchers and TikTok’s proprietary digital currency, which is typically used to tip creators. The EU’s Commission has expressed concern that this type of "task and reward" design language could impact the mental health of young users by "stimulating addictive behavior.”

The Commission hasn’t yet confirmed any breaches of the DSA, but has suggested that it might impose temporary measures to force parent company ByteDance to suspend TikTok Lite in the EU while it continues the investigation. The company has until April 24 to argue against these potential measures, so the app’s still available for EU residents. However, ByteDance failed to provide the EU with a risk assessment document regarding TikTok Lite after being asked last week.

This failure to comply with the DSA could open the company up to steep penalties of up to one percent of its total annual income and periodic penalties of up to five percent of daily income. The Commission hasn’t indicated if it plans on issuing these fines as the investigation continues.

"We suspect TikTok Lite could be as toxic and addictive as” light cigarettes, Thierry Breton, the commissioner for the EU Internal Market, wrote in a press release announcing the probe. “We will spare no effort to protect our children."

ByteDance has yet to respond to the investigation and the potential of TikTok Lite being banned in the EU. This latest inquiry follows a more comprehensive probe issued back in February. That wide-ranging investigation focuses on addictive algorithms, age verification issues, default privacy settings and ad transparency.

February’s probe is ongoing, but ByteDance was already forced to make concessions to allow TikTok to operate in the EU. The company had to give users the choice to disallow algorithms from powering the For You Page and instituted new harmful content reporting options. It also suspended personalized ads for EU users aged 13 to 17.

As for America, the controversial TikTok ban keeps inching closer to reality. The US House of Representatives tucked a revised version of the bill into this weekend’s foreign aid package. Under this new proposed legislation, ByteDance would have one year to sell off TikTok before it would be banned from app stores. It’s now heading to the Senate and will likely be voted on this week. However, it remains to be seen if the Senate will even keep the stuff about TikTok in the foreign aid package. President Biden has previously said he would support a TikTok ban if Congress passes it.

North Korean animators may have helped create popular cartoons for Amazon Prime Video, Max and other streaming services. Researchers from the Washington-based 38 North project allegedly discovered a misconfigured cloud server on a North Korean IP address that contained thousands of animation files, as reported by Wired. US sanctions prohibit commercial activity with North Korean entities, due to human rights abuses and the advancement of its nuclear weapons program. 

The server included animation cells, videos and notes discussing the work, in addition to requested changes. Some images appear to be from the popular Prime Video superhero show Invincible and others from an upcoming Max children’s anime called Iyanu: Child of Wonder. The data, which was analyzed in part by the Google-owned security firm Mandiant, provides a glimpse into how North Korea likely skirts sanctions.

The researchers were able to analyze incoming connections to the server and noted access from three Chinese cities, suggesting front companies of some kind. “All three cities are known to have many North Korean–operated businesses and are main centers for North Korea’s IT workers who live overseas,” the report indicates.

Michael Barnhart, who works at Mandiant, said there was nothing in the research to indicate that Max, Amazon or any subsidiaries knew that the work was being handled by North Korean animators. It was likely subcontracted without their knowledge, as reported by Reuters. Barnhart has “high confidence” that the contracts were with Chinese companies who outsourced to animators who work on North Korea’s behalf.

In 2022, the FBI and the US Treasury issued an advisory to warn businesses about the risks of inadvertently hiring North Korean tech workers through this kind of outsourcing. A spokesperson for the US Treasury told Reuters that it has no comment on this particular allegation, but noted that North Korea's efforts to generate revenue for its weapons programs through abuses of the subcontracting system was an ongoing concern.

Amazon has directed inquiries to Skybound, the company behind Invincible. It says it has no knowledge of any North Korean entities working on its animation projects but has initiated an internal review to verify and rectify lingering issues. "We have also notified the proper authorities and are cooperating with all appropriate bodies," the Skybound’s head of corporate communications Hannah Cosgrove said. Max has not responded to requests for comment.

Do you like rip-roaring science fiction books? Do you like movies? Then you are in for a treat in, well, two years. Amazon MGM Studios just set a release date of March 20, 2026 for Project Hail Mary, according to Deadline. It’s based on the Andy Weir novel of the same name, which was one of our favorite books of the past few years, so color us excited.

The film stars honorary SNL cast member Ryan Gosling and will be directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind The Lego Movie and, allegedly, most of the good parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Lord also wrote a little-known movie called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

The script was penned by Drew Goddard, who cut his teeth on TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost before moving onto features. He directed Cabin in the Woods, which is somehow both iconic and underrated at the same time. If the name Andy Weir sounds familiar, it’s because he wrote a book called The Martian, which inspired the Matt Damon film. Incidentally, Goddard also wrote that script.

I’ve read the book and loved it. It’s more fantastical than The Martian, but still filled with the same science-based solutions to massive life-or-death problems. This time, the entire Earth is on the chopping block, instead of one lone astronaut. It’s also pretty dang funny, just like The Martian, so Lord and Miller are a good match to direct. The pair also signed on to direct an adaptation of another Weir novel, Artemis, but that project looks to have stalled.

Or course, a lot can happen in two years. Here’s to hoping our humble little society keeps clunking along so we can chomp down some popcorn in 2026. Speaking of, that year will also see the release of The Mandalorian & Grogu, the Rey Skywalker film, the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Toy Story 5, The Batman Part II and, reportedly, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. 

Subscriptions to the budgeting app Quicken Simplifi are half off through April 21. The price has been brought down to just $2 per month, which is billed annually at $24. The deal also extends to Quicken Classic, which adds more features for investments and tracking taxes. This tier now costs $4 per month, instead of $8 per month. It’s also billed annually.

Quicken Simplify is pretty much the budgeting app to beat all budgeting apps. There’s a reason, after all, that it topped our list of the best budgeting apps and our collection of the best apps to replace Mint. We’ve consistently praised the user-friendly interface that makes it easy to get started and keep an eye on things. Users have instantaneous access to various metrics, like top-line balances, net worth, recent spending, upcoming recurring payments and more.

We also loved how simple (pun intended) it is to set up customized savings goals and the like. The UI is clean, yet offers playful visualizations to keep things interesting. It integrates with most financial institutions, including Fidelity. Users can also invite a spouse or a financial manager to co-manage the account.

There’s no integration with Zillow, so people can’t track fluctuations in home value, which is something that competing apps like Monarch Money and Copilot Money offer. It requires manual entry of real estate information, just like any other asset. We also experienced some small errors during use, in which the app miscategorized some expenses, though this was in line with other products we tested. There’s no option for a free trial, so $2 per month is about as close as it gets. Just remember to cancel before the year is up if things don’t work out.

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