Snapchat+ is barely over a month old, but that isn't stopping Snap from adding a few extra perks to its subscription service. The social network has released a "summer drop" for members that, most notably, includes priority replies to stars' Stories. If you're determined to get the attention of your favorite celebrity or influencer, this could bump you up the queue.

The drop also lets you choose a "post view" emoji viewers will see after your Snaps. You'll have more Bitmoji backgrounds, and can set more custom app icons. More features will arrive in the "coming months," Snap said, although it didn't offer a preview of what was coming.

Whether or not you'd find use for these features, the $4 per month offering appears to have strong early demand. Snapchat+ already has over 1 million subscribers, according to the company. That's a tiny fraction of Snapchat's 347 million daily users. but it's no mean feat for a paid plan only six weeks old. Frequent feature drops could keep that momentum going and give Snap a way to stand out against rivals like Instagram and TikTok.

Ahead of Andor’s debut on September 21st, Disney will bring Rogue One: A Star Wars Story back to theaters. The 2016 film will return to IMAX screens in the US on August 26th, along with an “exclusive look” at the upcoming Disney+ series. Details on the preview are sparse, but it’s likely to expand on the most recent Andor trailer Disney shared on August 1st. Either way, Rogue One’s rerelease will give Star Wars fans a chance to rewatch the film before Diego Luna reprises his role as Cassian Andor.

Set five years before the events of Rogue One, itself a prequel to A New Hope, Andor tells the story of how the rebellion began. Disney is billing the series as a spy thriller. With Andor, Diego Luna isn’t the only actor returning to the franchise. Genevieve O’Reilly and Forest Whitaker reprise their roles as Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera. The series was originally scheduled to debut on August 31st, but Disney pushed it back to give more time for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law to find an audience. The first three episodes of Andor will debut simultaneously, with subsequent episodes to follow every Wednesday.

Rogue One is widely considered one of the better films to come out of the Disney Star Wars era. The movie made more than $1 billion during its original box office run and even earned two Academy Awards. If you don’t live near a theater with an IMAX projector, you can watch the film on Disney+.

Given a choice between settling for pathetically slow internet speeds from AT&T or paying Comcast $50,000 to expand to his rural home, Michigan resident Jared Mauch chose option "C": starting up his own fiber internet service provider. Now, he's expanding his service from about 70 customers to nearly 600 thanks to funding aimed at expanding access to broadband internet, Ars Technica has reported. 

Last year, the US government's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds allocated $71 million to Michigan's Washtenaw county for infrastructure projects, with a part of that dedicated to broadband expansion. Mauch subsequently won a bid to wire up households "known to be unserved or underserved based on [an] existing survey," according to the RFP.

"They had this gap-filling RFP, and in my own wild stupidity or brilliance, I'm not sure which yet, I bid on the whole project [in my area] and managed to win through that competitive bidding process," he told Ars. 

He'll now need to expand from 14 to about 52 miles of fiber to complete the project, including at least a couple of homes that require a half mile of fiber for a single house. That'll cost $30,000 for each of those homes, but his installation fees are typically $199.

Customers can choose from 100Mbps up/down internet speeds for $55 per month, or 1Gbps with unlimited data for $79 a month. The contract requires completion by 2026, but he aims to be done by around the end of 2023. He's already hooked up some of the required addresses, issuing a press release after the first was connected in June, with a local commissioner calling it "a transformational moment for our community." 

Running an ISP isn't even Mauch's day job, as he normally works as an Akamai network architect. Still, his service has become a must in the region and he even provides fiber backhaul for a major mobile carrier. "I'm definitely a lot more well-known by all my neighbors... I'm saved in people's cell phones as 'fiber cable guy,'" he said. Check out the full story at Ars Technica. 

Disney+ isn't done raising prices. As part of its third quarter earnings report, Disney revealed that it's hiking the price of the ad-free service in the US to $11 per month, $3 more than today, on December 8th. If you want to keep the same price, you'll have to subscribe to the ad-supported tier launching the same day. In other words, the ad-backed plan won't really be cheaper — you'll just have to pay more to keep the uninterrupted experience you already have.

The media giant also said it would raise the price of ad-free Hulu by $2 to $15 per month on October 10th. If you can accept ads, you'll also pay $8 per month instead of today's $7. A $10 monthly outlay provides both Disney+ and Hulu with ads. A bundle offering ad-free Disney+, ad-supported ESPN+ and its Hulu counterpart is climbing by a dollar to $15 per month, but you'll dip to $13 per month if you're willing to tolerate commercials across all three. You'll have to pay $20 per month to get the trio without any sales pitches.

Disney wasn't shy about the reason for the price hikes. Although it added 14.4 million Disney+ subscribers during the quarter (for a total of 221 million across all services), the operating losses for its streaming-oriented division surged from $293 million a year ago to nearly $1.1 billion. The production costs for Disney+ and Hulu are soaring, and Disney wants to make that money back.

The performance contrasts sharply with a key rival. While Netflix is prepping its own ad-driven plan, it's currently losing customers — it's counting on advertising to return growth where Disney is simply hoping to make a profit. As rough as its finances might be, Disney+ is in a stronger position.

Amazon's palm-reading payment technology will soon be available in many more Whole Foods stores. The company is rolling out Amazon One to more than 65 Whole Foods shops in California, starting with Malibu, Montana Avenue and Santa Monica locations in Los Angeles. More stores in LA, Orange County, Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Cruz will come online in the "coming weeks."

Before, palm-based payments were only available in a handful of Whole Foods stores in Austin, LA, New York City and Seattle. In California, you could also try Amazon One at the company's Style fashion store in Glendale and certain Fresh and Go locations.

As usual, One is meant to streamline retail shopping. So long as you link your palm and payment card to the service, you just have to hover your hand over a scanner to complete a purchase. While you still have to stop at a checkout terminal, you don't have to pull out a phone like you do with Amazon's camera-based Just Walk Out system.

Third-party adoption may be trickier. While Amazon has touted plans to use One at concert venues and sport stadiums, there's been a mounting backlash over worries palm data could be misused or stolen. Amazon has maintained that it holds info in secure, One-exclusive cloud storage, but politicians have still been concerned enough to grill company leadership over its practices. There's a reluctance to trust biometric tech like this, and the Whole Foods expansion isn't guaranteed to assuage people's fears.

You probably weren't waiting for earbuds designed by a reality-TV-star-slash-entrepreneur, but here they are. Kim Kardashian has teamed up with Apple on a custom version of the Beats Fit Pro. The new Beats x Kim collab is available in a trio of skin colors (Moon, Dune and Earth) that are meant to either "blend in or stand out," as Kardashian puts it. In other words, they look less like electronics and more like cosmetics.

They're functionally identical to the regular Beats Fit Pro, although that's not a bad thing. We found the normal ones more comfortable than AirPods, with strong bass (this is Beats, after all) and solid active noise cancelation. You'll also get the usual tight integration with Apple's other devices, although the earbuds will still work properly with Android. You're mainly missing out on wireless charging and that signature AirPods look.

The Beats x Kim models will be available through Apple's online store on August 16th at 10AM Eastern, and they'll sell at the Fit Pro's standard $200 price in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and Japan. Don't expect to find them at all the usual locations when they hit retail on August 17th, however. In-person sales are limited to 10 Apple stores (including 5th Avenue, Regent Street and Champs-Élysées) as well as fashion chains and department stores like Selfridges (in the UK) and SSENSE (in Canada). You can also buy through Amazon in North America, or WeChat in China.

These aren't the first flesh-colored earbuds in recent memory, and they certainly aren't the most affordable. JLab partnered with the nail care brand ORLY to unveil the $20 Go Air Tones in December. The Beats Fit Pro might be the best-sounding, though, and Kim Kardashian's name recognition is bound to give Apple a gigantic marketing advantage.

It took the better part of a year, but HBO Max's app should (hopefully) be more pleasant to use. Warner Bros. Discovery has finished rolling out its redesigned app on desktop, Android and iOS, delivering a more intuitive interface, a performance boost and some arguably overdue features. It finally supports tablets in both portrait and vertical modes, for instance. You'll also find a dedicated video download page, split-screen support, SharePlay (on Apple devices in the US) and a shuffle button on mobile.

The move ends a long and painful saga. In its haste to launch HBO Max, WarnerMedia based the original app on the same foundations as its aging Go and Now apps. The result was, frankly, a mess — it was buggy, sluggish and otherwise less polished than software from competing services. While the new app won't persuade you to subscribe on its own, it could reduce any skittishness.

The timing is less than ideal. Warner Bros. just recently confirmed that it's merging HBO Max and Discovery+ into one service next summer. The app you see today won't last long. With that said, the redesign promises a better starting point for the new platform.

HBO Max as we know it will soon be no more. At its first earnings call since the two media properties merged earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it is planning on combining HBOMax and Discovery+ into a single streaming service — set to debut in the summer of 2023. It's unclear whether the new streamer will reference HBO at all — the company’s head of global streaming JB Perrette said the company is still doing research on how consumers perceive the brand name.

The news arrives on the heels of the newly-merged company’s $3.42 billion net loss during the second quarter. “At the end of the day, putting all the content together was the only way we saw to make this a viable business,” Perrette told analysts.

Warner Bros. leadership is planning a significant shakeup of its streaming offerings and also needs to cut $3 billion in costs, which spawned rumors that a gutting of HBO Max is underway. Executives didn’t reveal the name of the new platform or any pricing details, but did disclose that it will include an ad-free and less costly ad-supported plan. It may also add a free, ad-supported tier to further expand its audience. 

No mention was made of layoffs at HBO Max at today’s earnings call — which The Wrap reported were imminent as the two streaming platforms are restructured. Engadget has reached out to HBO Max for comment, and will update if we hear back.

It’s unclear exactly how the merger will impact future content offerings at the newly unified streamer. The company abruptly announced this week that it was canceling two movies in development for HBO Max — Batgirl and Scoob!. Around the same time, the streamer announced it was canceling the show The Gordita Chronicles and putting an end to live-action kids and family programming altogether. A number of shows and movies have disappeared from HBO Max in recent weeks, including Moonshot, The Witches and An American Pickle, and more are reportedly to follow.

One thing is certain: We’ll see far fewer blockbuster films premiere on the new streamer, as was customary during the pandemic. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said releasing films in movie theaters simply generated higher profits. “That’s why most people got in this business — to be on the big screen when the lights went out,” Mr. Zaslav said. “That is the magic, and the economic model is much stronger.”

Hulu has ordered a limited series adaptation of Devil in the White City, which will star Keanu Reeves and be executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. The streamer announced the news today at the Television Critics Association’s summer tour. Based on the book of the same name by Erik Larson about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the series will be the first time the work is adapted for the screen after more than a decade’s worth of deals and bidding by numerous studios. Todd Field (In the Bedroom,Little Children) is set to direct the series. Deadlinereported that the eight-episode series is aiming for a 2024 release.

As The Hollywood Reporternotes, DiCaprio first optioned the rights to the book in 2010, and was set to star in a feature film adaptation that would be directed by Scorcese. Now, both men will executive produce the limited series, which will be a co-production of Paramount Television Studios and Disney’s ABC Signature.

Disney signed a deal with Comcast where it will buy its 33 percent stake in Hulu in 2024 — granting it full operational control of the streamer. But as CNBC notes, the deal was signed before the launch of Disney+, and there’s current confusion over what role another streaming service will play in the vast Disney empire. Hulu also houses a number of critically-acclaimed series, including Dopesick, The Dropout and The Handmaid’s Tale. With Devil in the White City, it seems Disney is attempting to position Hulu within the crowded streaming landscape as an adult-oriented platform for prestige TV.

You might think a network-specific streaming services like Paramount+ doesn't stand a chance in a grim market when even Netflix is floundering, but it's apparently thriving. The company has revealed that Paramount+ added 3.7 million subscribers in the second quarter, with more than 43 million total users. And that's after withdrawing from Russia — if it weren't for that, the service would have added 4.9 million viewers.

ViacomCBS partly credited the surge to expansions to more countries, including the UK, Ireland and South Korea. However, it also pointed to success with content that included its Halo series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, movies like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and live Champions League matches. Paramount+ is still leaning on its sci-fi audience, then, but not as much as it has in the past.

The overall Paramount+ subscriber count is still tiny compared to Netflix (220.7 million) and Amazon Prime Video (over 200 million). Its growth is a sharp contrast to Netflix's nearly 1 million lost subscribers, though. The firm is also keen to note that it had the most sign-ups and net additions of any US-based premium subscription streaming service in the quarter, according to Antenna data. In other words, Paramount+ was outperforming all its main rivals, including Apple TV+, Hulu and Peacock.

Whether or not that trend continues is uncertain. Paramount+ is still expanding to more countries, and should be available in 60 markets by the end of the year. It can count on those newcomers to boost its numbers for a while. Eventually, though, the streamer will be more reliant on the quality of its catalog to grow its audience. And while there have clearly been some hits, heavyweights like Amazon and Netflix still have plenty of money and momentum in their favor.