Meta is finally peeling back the curtain on how political and election ads are targeted on Facebook. The company is making information about how political and “social issue” ads are targeted available to researchers and the public, Meta said in an update.

Researchers who are part of the company’s Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) program will get access to the most detailed information. “This data will be provided for each individual ad and will include information like the interest categories chosen by advertisers,” Facebook writes.

The company had previously experimented with making some targeting data available to researchers via FORT last year, but the information was only available for political ads during a three-month period before the 2020 election. Now, researchers will also be able access “all social issue, electoral and political ads run globally since August 2020.”

Meta is also making a more limited amount of political ad-targeting data available to the public via its Ad Library. That update, expected in July, will allow anyone to see more general information about how specific Facebook Pages are targeting their ads. “This update will include data on the total number of social issue, electoral and political ads a Page ran using each type of targeting (such as location, demographics and interests) and the percentage of social issue, electoral and political ad spend used to target those options,” the company writes. “For example, the Ad Library could show that over the last 30 days, a Page ran 2,000 ads about social issues, elections or politics, and that 40% of their spend on these ads was targeted to ‘people who live in Pennsylvania’ or ‘people who are interested in politics.’”

Facebook

Questions about how political ads are targeted on Facebook have been a thorny topic for the company. Researchers have long argued that understanding how election and political ads are targeted is just as important as having a record of the people and organizations behind each ad. But Meta has resisted making detailed targeting data available, citing privacy concerns.

But that hasn’t stopped groups from trying to study the issue on their own. A team at New York University created a browser extension to help them understand how political ads are targeted on Facebook. Using the data, they uncovered multiple flaws in Facebook’s Ad Library. Meta accused the team of scraping and disabled their accounts, which also cut off their ability to use the company’s CrowdTangle tool to study misinformation.

Making more detailed targeting information available through FORT may still not go as far as some researchers would like — researchers still need to be vetted and approved by Facebook to access FORT — but it at least offers one avenue where the data is available. And, with the 2022 midterms coming up later this year, there’s likely to be significant interest in learning more about how political ads spread through Facebook.

Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Team Coco's other podcasts now belong to SiriusXM. O’Brien has sold his digital media company and podcast network to the satellite radio giant.

As part of the deal, which The Wall Street Journal says is worth around $150 million, O'Brien has signed a five-year talent agreement to keep hosting his podcast. He'll also create and produce a Team Coco comedy channel. In addition, SiriusXM will have the right to distribute some videos from O'Brien's podcast, along with archival footage from his TBS late-night show.

Team Coco's staff of around 50 will continue to produce existing shows and work on other SiriusXM content. The network's other podcasts include Conan O’Brien Needs a Fan (a spin-off of the flagship show) and Parks and Recollection, a Parks and Recreation behind-the-scenes show hosted by star Rob Lowe and writer Alan Yang. Collectively, the 10 podcasts have been downloaded more than 418 million times.

Don't worry too much if you listen to Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and other Team Coco shows elsewhere. They'll still be available on other podcast platforms.

"When I started in television my ultimate goal was to work my way up to radio," O'Brien said. "This new deal with SiriusXM builds on the great relationship that began several years ago with a team that is the standout in their field."

SiriusXM has been trying to become a bigger player in podcasting amid stiff competition from the likes of Spotify. Over the last couple of years, it has scooped up the Stitcher platform and podcasts such as 99% Invisible. SiriusXM has also beefed up its original content with exclusive shows from the likes of Marvel. It bought podcast hosting and analytics platform Simplecast too.

One of the biggest takeovers in the history of the gaming industry is complete — Take-Two now owns Zynga. The companies announced the $12.7 billion acquisition in January. The two sides have cut through all the red tape and, after shareholders gave the thumbs up last week, the deal is done.

Zynga has joined the likes of Rockstar Games and 2K under Take-Two's umbrella. As s result of the deal, Take-Two now has a bigger stable of well-known mobile and casual gaming franchises, including Words with Friends and Farmville. Among the games Zynga is working on is Star Wars: Hunters, a free-to-play arena shooter for mobile and Nintendo Switch that's supposed to arrive this year.

“As we bring together our exceptional talent, exciting pipelines of games, and industry-leading technologies and capabilities, we believe that we can take our portfolio to another level of creativity, innovation, and quality," Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. "Each of our teams has a strong history of operational execution, and together, we expect that we will enhance our financial profile through greater scale and profitability, paving the way for us to deliver strong shareholder value.”

Take-Two's buyout of Zynga is part of a major wave of consolidation across the gaming industry. In January, Sony announced it was buying Destiny 2 studio Bungie for $3.6 billion. That news came just days after Microsoft said it planned to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Both takeovers are pending regulatory approval. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted in favor of the Microsoft deal last month.

Electronic Arts is actively courting buyers — or another company willing to merge with it, according to insider news site, Puck. The video game company reportedly held talks with several potential buyers or partners, including major players Disney, Apple and Amazon.

EA remains a company of its own for now, but Puck said it’s more proactive in its quest to find a sale since Microsoft announced it's snapping up Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. In short, it shows that some companies are willing to throw around enough money to buy a gaming giant like EA.

The company, arguably best known for its legion of sports games, recently parted ways with FIFA for its soccer/football series. It’ll be called EA Sports FC going forward. No, it is not catchy.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Hitting the Books: How winning the lottery is a lot like being re-struck by lightning

• Recommended Reading: Inside Apple's mixed-reality headset project

• Boeing's Starliner successfully docks with the ISS despite issues

• WhatsApp will end support for iOS 10 and iOS 11 on October 24th

• Boeing's Starliner carried a 'Kerbal Space Program' character to the ISS

• 'Big Hero 6' sequel 'Baymax!' hits Disney+ on June 29th

• How does the new PlayStation Plus stack up against Xbox Game Pass?

• The best grilling gear for this summer

• How to see everything you've watched on Netflix and other streaming services

Leica’s latest smartphone collaboration is with Xiaomi

The camera brand has already worked with Sharp and Huawei.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi finally confirmed its "long-term strategic cooperation" with Leica, and that they've been co-developing a flagship smartphone for launch in July 2022. Teaming up with camera companies has been done several times over – especially by Chinese phone manufacturers trying to stand out from the crowd. In 2020, Vivo joined forces with Zeiss, while Oppo and OnePlus started releasing handsets jointly developed with Hasselblad, including the Find X5 series and the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Harder to stand out when everyone is doing the same thing, though.

Continue reading.

Amazon beamed its new Prime Video sci-fi show into outer space

Why?

Amazon beamed the first episode of sci-fi series Night Sky out of Earth's atmosphere. It’s calling it "the first-ever intergalactic premiere for a TV series."

Prime Video’s press release said the transmission won't be caught by broadcast satellites and sent back to terra firma, as is usually the case. "Theoretically, this makes the broadcast available to anyone open to receiving satellite signals 384,000 kilometers away from Earth and beyond — the equivalent distance from Earth to the Moon."

Theoretically.

Continue reading.

Watch the first 8 minutes of 'Stranger Things' season 4

The last episode will be longer than some movies.

Netflix

Netflix is trying to build up hype for Stranger Things season four in a not-so-subtle way: sharing the first eight minutes of the introductory episode. It’s heavy on the flashback, but there should be enough to hook intrigued parties.

Watch here.

The FCC has a plan to boost rural broadband download speeds to 100 Mbps

Some users could get a 20-fold speed increase.

The FCC wants to boost rural broadband internet speeds through proposed changes to the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program. It wants to crank up download and upload speeds to 100/20 Mbps in areas served by carriers that receive A-CAM support. The current baseline is 25/3 Mbps.

Last week, the Biden administration launched a $45 billion project to bring all Americans online by 2030.

Continue reading.

Baymax!, the Disney+ sequel to 2014’s Big Hero 6, will debut on June 29th. Disney shared the release date on Friday, alongside a new trailer showing the loveable healthcare robot from the film attempting to help the citizens of San Fransokyo. 

“In each of our six episodes, Baymax just wants to help someone—and a lot of times they don’t want to be helped,” said creator Don Hall. “He sets out to fix a physical issue that he’s identified, and in the process, gets to a deeper, more emotional place and can be almost transformative in that role.”

Baymax! is the second Big Hero 6 sequel following Big Hero 6: The Series, a 2D animated show that ran for three seasons on the Disney Channel. The new series will feature the return of Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter and Maya Rudolph as the voices of Baymax, Hiro and Aunt Cass, respectively.

The inside story of why Apple bet big on a mixed-reality headset

Wayne Ma, The Information

The Information chronicles the development of Apple's upcoming mixed-reality headset in the first of two articles. This first installment covers the initial struggles to get the project going and the constant delays created by a host of challenges. 

Behind CBS’ approach to elevating Serie A in the US

Felipe Cardenas, The Athletic

CBS pried the rights to Italy's Serie A soccer league away from ESPN for Paramount+. The Athletic explains how a mix of "football and fun" helped the network package a league it thinks will become more popular in the US. 

Inside the smell-o-verse: Meet the companies trying to bring scent to the metaverse

Zara Stone, Fast Company

In addition to companies needing to solve the whole no legs in the metaverse problem, there are a number of startups trying to unlock another challenge for virtual worlds. 

What happens when animation geeks get the greenlight to produce whatever they want? You get Netflix's Love, Death and Robots, an anthology series that's meant to remind viewers that cartoons aren't just for kids. You'd think that would be a foregone conclusion in 2022, decades after anime has become mainstream, Adult Swim's irreverent comedies took over dorm rooms, and just about network/streaming platform has their own "edgy" animated series (Arcane and Big Mouth on Netflix, Invincible on Amazon Prime).

Still, it's all too common to see the medium being diminished. At the Oscars this year, the best animated feature award was introduced as something entirely meant for kids, prompting the filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), to demand that Hollywood elevate the genre instead. Even Pixar's library of smart and compelling films still aren't seen as "adult" stories.

Love, Death and Robots, which just released its third season on Netflix, feels like a crash course in the unlimited storytelling potential of animation. It bounces from a cute entry about robots exploring the remnants of human civilization (the series' first sequel, 3 Robots: Exit Strategies, written by sci-fi author John Scalzi), to a near-silent, visually lush game of cat and mouse between a deaf soldier and a mythical siren (Jibaro), to a harrowing tale of whalers being boarded by a giant man-eating crab (Bad Traveling, the first animated project directed by series co-creator David Fincher).

Jennifer Yuh Nelson, supervising director for Love, Death and Robots, tells Engadget that the animation industry has certainly made progress when it comes to telling more mature stories. "Everyone that works in animation has been talking about trying to get more adult things done because it's [about] the freedom of exploring the whole spectrum of storytelling," she said. "You're not trying to do things for a certain age group."

Netflix

But, she says, animators were also told the audience for mature projects wasn't necessarily there. "I think it takes a show like [this] to prove that it can [work], and that makes the whole business and the whole company town basically look around and say, 'Oh, this is a viable thing that people actually want to see.’"

Series co-creator Tim Miller (Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate) also points to the power of video games, which has been telling mature narratives with interactive animation for decades. That's another industry that was initially seen as toys for kids, but has matured significantly with rich storytelling from indie projects, like Kentucky Route Zero, to big-budget blockbusters like The Last of Us. Games and animation are practically evolving together, with audiences demanding more complex ideas and creators who were raised on earlier generations of those mediums. You don't get to the excellent Disney+ remake of DuckTales, or Sony's recent God of War, without a fondness for the simple joys of the originals.

"Animation has grown so much and reflects a taste of the people making it and the people that are watching it," Nelson says. "It's a generational shift. People demand a certain level of complexity in their story, and so it's not princess movies anymore."

With every season of Love, Death and Robots, Nelson says that she and Miller are focused on finding stories that evoke a sense of "nerd joy." There's no overarching theme, instead they look out for projects with scope, emotion and a potential to be visually interesting. And while none of the shorts have been turned into standalone series or films yet, Nelson notes that's a possibility, especially since some authors have explored other ideas within those worlds. (I'd certainly love to see those three quirky robots poking fun at humanity for an entire season.)

The series also serves as a showcase for a variety of animation techniques. Some shorts show off meticulously crafted CG, while others like Bad Traveling use motion capturing to preserve the intricacies of an actor's movement or face. Jerome Chen, the director of military horror short In Vaulted Halls Entombed, relied on Unreal, which makes his piece seem like a cut-scene from a game I desperately want to play. And there's still plenty of love for more traditional 2D techniques, like the wonderfully bloody Kill Team Kill (directed by Nelson, a far cry from her playful Kung Fu Panda sequels).

Netflix

"The tech doesn't replace the art, but the experimentation allows these studios to find ways of doing things better," Nelson said. "[The show gives] freedom for all these different studios to try their own language."

Miller has a slightly different view, saying on some level it's like "tech is the art and they somehow mixed together." While he agrees with Nelson, who was quick to point out "artists can make art with a stick," Miller said you'll still need a certain level of sophisticated technology to create photorealistic stories.

The great thing about an anthology series like Love Death and Robots? Both of those philosophies can co-exist while equally demonstrating the power of animation.

Netflix is trying to build up hype for Stranger Things season 4 in a not-so-subtle way: by letting you watch a significant chunk of it. The service has shared the first eight minutes of the introductory episode in hopes you'll tune in for the rest. We won't spoil the finer points, but we will say that it's mostly a flashback that sets the stage for what's to come.

It's also clear just why the fourth season is split in two — some episodes are exceptionally long. Volume 1, premiering May 27th, includes seven episodes that are conventionally-sized apart from the last, which runs for an hour and 38 minutes. Volume 2, arriving July 1st, is another matter. It consists of just two lengthy episodes, with the last running for nearly two and a half hours. You're effectively watching a feature film.

There are reasons for the long runtime. The Duffer Brothers previously said they'd planned to finish the story in four or five seasons, and this fourth run is the start of that climax. The story is also far-reaching, with scenes in Hawkins, California, Russia and "elsewhere." It's a busy plot, and the creators are apparently determined to tie up every loose end.

Amazon tried a novel marketing strategy to get more eyeballs (or eyestalks) on a new Prime Video show: it beamed the first episode of sci-fi series Night Sky out of Earth's atmosphere. The company pulled off the stunt earlier today for what it's calling "the first-ever intergalactic premiere for a TV series."

Satellite services companies SES and Intelsat used their ground stations and geostationary satellites to send the episode beyond the reach of our planet. Prime Video noted in a press release that the transmission won't be caught by broadcast satellites and sent back to terra firma, as is usually the case. "Theoretically, this makes the broadcast available to anyone open to receiving satellite signals 384,000 kilometers away from Earth and beyond — the equivalent distance from Earth to the Moon," it said.

Prime Video claims it's not only the first streaming service to send its content to space, but it marks the "farthest distance that a TV series has been intentionally distributed." The episode was transmitted using Ku- and C-band frequencies, which are often employed for satellite TV, media distribution and communications. So if there's anyone or anything out there with the right gear, they'll be able to catch the first episode of what sounds like an intriguing series.

Night Sky premiered on Prime Video today. It centers around a couple (played by Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons) who've been hiding a secret for years: there's a chamber buried in their backyard that links to a deserted planet. However, everything changes when a young man (who they believe may be an alien) enters their lives.

Yet another major Star Wars character is about to drop onto the Fortnite island. Obi-Wan Kenobi will hit the Fortnite Item Shop on May 26th, just hours before his eponymous series debuts on Disney+.

Along with being able to play as the iconic Jedi Master, you'll be able to snap up some related cosmetics including back bling, a pickax, a Jedi Interceptor glider and an emote. Those will be available to buy separately or as part of a bundle that includes an Obi-Wan loading screen.

You'll have the chance to win the outfit and back bling early if you take part in the Obi-Wan Kenobi Cup. That's a duos event that will take place on Sunday with lightsabers and E-11 blaster rifles making a temporary return to the island.

The six-episode Obi-Wan Kenobi series will premiere on Disney+ on May 27th. Ewan McGregor reprises his role from the prequel movies. Hayden Christiansen also returns to play Darth Vader once again.

Epic Games and Lucasfilm have been working together for several years to bring Star Wars characters to Fortnite. Boba Fett and The Mandalorian, the main characters of other Disney+ Star Wars shows, have joined the fray, as have Rey, Finn, a Stormtrooper, Zorii Bliss and Kylo Ren.