Netflix is acquiring the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) and rights to the author's entire catalog, including classics like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach, the company announced. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed (and are subject to regulatory approval), but three years ago Netflix paid "nine figures" for the rights to 16 of Dahl's works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In any event, it likely represents one of Netflix's largest acquisitions to date. 

News of the acquisition started bubbling up yesterday following a Bloomberg report. Netflix has big plans for Dahl's works, including "the creation of a unique universe across animated and live actions films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more," wrote Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and RDSC managing director (and Dahl's grandson) Luke Kelly. 

The companies revealed that director Taika Waititi and screenwriter Phil Johnston are working on a series based on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory world. Netflix is also working with Sony and Working Title on an adaptation of Matilda The Musical. 

The acquisition appears to go well beyond Netflix's past content deals, in which it simply licensed content from others. It famously did so with Marvel, then ended up canceling Daredevil and other Marvel shows when it couldn't come to terms with Disney, which was planning at the time to launch rival service Disney+. 

With Roald Dahl's catalog, it promises to "bring these timeless tales to more audiences in new formats... [while] maintaining their unique spirit and their universal themes of surprise and kindness," Sarandos and Dahl wrote. "These stories and their messages of the power and possibility of young people have never felt more pertinent." Last year, the company issued an apology on its website for Dahl's history of antisemitic statements, as Bloomberg noted.  

London courier and private hire taxi firm Addison Lee has pledged to convert its whole passenger car fleet to electric vehicles by 2023. While the company's website says it has over 4,800 cars operating in the UK capital, its recent acquisition of black taxi service ComCab will make it the largest taxi company in London with over 7,000 vehicles. It already has 650 zero-emission vehicles in its fleet after the acquisition, but to be able to fully switch over to electric, it has teamed up with Volkswagen.

Addison Lee is investing £160 million ($218 million) to replace its existing fleet with slightly larger Volkswagen ID.4 vehicles. The standard ID.4 has a 77 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and has range of 250 miles, making it more suitable for city use than for long-distance driving. Its capable of 201 horsepower and 229 pound-feet of torque, with speeds reaching 100MPH. 

The firm will start by rolling out 450 EVs by the end of 2021, presumably in addition to the 650 electric cars it already has. Then, the company plans to add 200 electric cars per month until its whole fleet has been replaced within a couple of years. The firm also plans to set up charging infrastructure for its drivers using the new £3.5 million (US$4 million) Future Mobility Fund it has established.

If the company succeeds in transitioning to electric by 2023, it'll be ahead of its competitors like Uber, which previously pledged to replace its existing fleet with EVs by 2025. It also means up to 20,000 zero-emission trips each day in London, which will help the government achieve its goal of a net zero economy by 2050.

Facebook shareholders have filed a lawsuit alleging that board members overpaid on a $5 billion FTC fine to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg from an individual lawsuit, Politico has reported. "Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to authorize a multi-billion settlement with the FTC as an express quid pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC’s complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to sit for a deposition," according to one of the two suits filed.

The two lawsuits, filed in a Delaware court last month, cite internal discussion among Facebook's board members. In February of 2019, the FTC named both Facebook and Zuckerberg personally as defendants in a draft complaint sent to company lawyers, according to the shareholders (the FTC has never revealed any such plans). Two Democrats voted against the settlement, saying that Zuckerberg should have been held personally responsible. 

"The FTC has never disclosed that it originally planned to name Zuckerberg personally in the lawsuit, and the agency's two Democrats at the time voted against the settlement in part because of the lack of personal liability for the CEO," one group of shareholders alleged. 

The $5 billion settlement was the result of an FTC complaint filed over Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal. Democratic commissioners said the settlement wouldn't have the desired outcome, which was to force Facebook to improve privacy and other issues. Since then, privacy has continued to be an issue across Facebook and its other platforms, along with areas like misinformation, harassment and double standards for elite users, according to a recent WSJ series. 

“The Board has never provided a serious check on Zuckerberg’s unfettered authority,” one set of shareholders said. “Instead, it has enabled him, defended him, and paid billions of dollars from Facebook’s corporate coffers to make his problems go away." Engadget has reached out to Facebook for comment. 

Twitch has struck a deal with the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), but it still wouldn't give streamers access to songs they can legally use. In fact, as Billboard points out, it's not a licensing deal at all. According to the publication, the Amazon-owned livestreaming service made a financial settlement for past usage of licensed music on the platform. Twitch has also told creators in an email that it's putting together a new process that publishers and right holders can use to report content. 

The new process is different from a DMCA and will start with a warning instead of a penalty. When a rights holder reports a stream, Twitch will issue a warning and remove the clips containing unauthorized music. In case of a flagrant violation — say, the rebroadcasting of concerts and the leak of unreleased tracks — then Twitch may issue a penalty outright, depending on the user's history. 

In its email, Twitch says the new process is more forgiving of users who may have inadvertently caught music they have no authority to use in their streams. Mike Futter of Virtual Economy Podcast notes, though, that the new process just makes it easier for music publishers to flag users and that it doesn't make things better for creators. Streamers can't dispute a report if they're flagged for violation, since Twitch will just remove their videos. Even users who've previously secured the rights to use a piece of music can get their content deleted if they're falsely flagged.

Billboard says, however, that Twitch and the NMPA also agreed on a time window to hash out how music will be handled on the platform going forward. Twitch is reportedly offering NMPA members an opt-in deal allowing future collaborations. As for the new reporting process, the platform told creators that it has more information to share in the coming weeks.

Netflix may be getting into video games sooner than expected. Without much fanfare, the company has been quietly working on a free Oculus Quest game called Eden Unearthed. Spotted by UploadVR, the game is available through the App Lab, which means it hasn’t gone through the full Oculus review process. The listing says the game was both developed and published by Netflix, but provides few other hints about its origins.

What we can say is that it was almost certainly envisioned as a tie-in for the Eden anime series the company released back in May. What’s interesting here is that there are two separate versions of the app with different release dates listed. The v0.7 release came out on April 20th, while the v0.8 was released in August. That fact, along with the App Lab listing, would appear to suggest Netflix is still working on the game.

At the moment, it’s hard to say whether Eden Unearthed represents the kind of video game release we can expect from Netflix moving forward. In July, the company hired former Oculus and EA executive Mike Verdu to help it build out a gaming team. At the time, Bloomberg reported the company’s plan was to offer games alongside its traditional video offerings within the next year. We’ve reached out to Netflix for more information on the Eden Unearthed.

Facebook quietly pushed out changes to News Feed that’s “interfering” with the browser-based tools used by journalists and researchers, according toThe Markup, the nonprofit news organization behind Citizen Browser.

According to the report, Facebook has been adding “junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users.” The resulting code prevents browsers from automatically collecting data about posts in News Feed, and may also be hindering screen readers used by blind and visually impaired users.

The change has affected both The Markup’s Citizen Browser, as well as New York University’s Ad Observer, a browser extension that has helped researchers study political ads and vaccine misinformation. These types of browser-based tools have become increasingly important to researchers trying to study issues like ad targeting and misinformation. Researchers say these tools, which allow users to make the posts from their feeds available to academics and journalists, is one of the only ways to access important data about how News Feed works.

Laura Edelson, lead researcher at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy, which runs Ad Observer, said Facebook’s changes “had the effect of breaking Ad Observer” though they were able to find a workaround.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said that the company was “investigating” the claims. “We constantly make code changes across our services, but we did not make recent code changes to block these research projects,” the spokesperson said. “Our accessibility features largely appear to be working as normal, however, we are investigating the claimed disruptions.”

The code change is the latest dustup between Facebook and researchers who say Facebook has hindered their efforts to understand what’s happening on its platform. Last month, the company disabled the personal Facebook accounts of NYU researchers working with Ad Observer saying they broke the company’s privacy rules. (The FTC later rebuked Facebook for making “misleading” comments about its reasons for taking these actions.)

There are other implications to the changes. As The Markup and Edelson point out, the changes could affect screen readers, an important accessibility technology. They cite at least one instance of the code appearing to cause a screen reader to read out some of these “junk” characters. The changes may have also contributed to problems with some ad blockers.

Disney may insist on returning to theater-first movie releases, but that doesn't mean you'll be waiting long if you'd rather watch at home. The company is marking the second anniversary of the Disney+ launch on November 12th with the streaming debut of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — and yes, that's at no extra charge. That's not completely surprising when Disney said it would cut the Marvel movie's theatrical window in half, but it's good to know exactly when you can start streaming.

More people will have access to Disney+ around the same time. The service is launching in South Korea and Taiwan the same day, and will reach Hong Kong on November 16th. This is arguably the largest expansion for Disney+ in the region to date following rollouts in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Disney+ Day will also include a "look toward the future" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you aren't a fan of superheroes, you'll have general access to Jungle Cruise, a Boba Fett origins special, Home Sweet Home Alone and shorts linked to Frozen, Pixar's Luca and The Simpsons.

The content pile-up isn't a total shock. On top of the anniversary, all these releases could help fend off a wave of higher-profile Amazon and Netflix titles arriving around the same time. At the same time, it might keep Disney's streaming momentum going through what's left of 2021.

Facebook has just released a Billie Eilish pack for Beat Saber. Priced at $13 for the entire collection, the pack features 10 songs, including fan-favorites like “Bury a Friend” and “Bad Guy.” It also comes with a new environment inspired by Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” music video. If you want to buy specific tracks, you can do so for $2 per song. The DLC is available on Oculus Quest, Rift, PSVR and SteamVR headsets. 

If you own an Oculus headset, you can also look forward to watching the singer’s upcoming Governors Ball performance when it’s livestreamed through the platform’s Venues app on September 24th. Facebook acquired Beat Saber creator Beat Games in 2019. Since then, the company has used its robust music licensing deals to bring paid content from all sorts of artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Linkin Park and others. 

There's a real chance you'll need proof of a COVID-19 vaccination to enter certain venues, and Apple is hoping it can save you the hassle of digging up an email or carrying a physical card in your pocket. The company is bringing verifiable COVID-19 vaccination cards to Wallet as part of a future iPhone software update. The feature will take advantage of the international SMART Health Cards standard (already in use in several states) to produce proof of vaccination, sign it with a private key and create a public key to verify your info.

The just-released iOS 15 already lets you store verifiable vaccination and test results in the Health app using the same standard. You'll receive your records through QR codes, downloadable files or healthcare providers who use Health Records on iPhone.

Apple is promising strict privacy for all your data. The company won't have access to your imported or shared records, and all info must be encrypted and securely stored when transferred elsewhere. The tech giant also can't see your vaccination card or how you've used it. You can share information with "approved" third-party apps, but only on a one-time basis.

Apple didn't say when it might release the card update. This won't thrill you if you're anxious about the very concept of sharing your vaccination status with a concert venue or restaurant. However, it should at least streamline the process — important when you're already running late for a show.

With the 2022 EQS making its way to American dealerships this fall, Mercedes-Benz has finally shared US pricing for its first fully electric vehicle. Initially, the automaker plans to offer two different models of the luxury sedan called the EQS 450+ and EQS 580 4Matic.

Both will be available in three different trims: Premium, Exclusive and Pinnacle. The base model EQS 450+ costs $102,310, while its counterpart will set you back $119,110. The Exclusive models are priced at $105,710 and $122,510 respectively, while the Pinnacle variants cost $108,510 and $125,310. One thing to note is the above prices don’t include a $1,050 destination and delivery charge you have to pay separately.

To put that pricing in perspective, it means you can buy an EQS sedan for less than you would pay for an entry-level S-Class model from Mercedes. The S500 4Matic and S580, with destination charge included, start at $110,850 and $117,350.

Some of the highlights of the Premium trim include heated and ventilated front seats, leather upholstery and a 10-speaker sound system. Moving up to the more expensive trims, you can look forward to features like a head-up display, four-zone climate control, additional USB-C ports and more. No matter the trim, each EQS will also come with two years of complementary fast-charging at Electrify America stations and 24-months of free maintenance.

One of the main reasons to go for the 580 rather than the 450+ is that it will come with the 56-inch MBUX Hyperscreen the automaker unveiled at CES 2021. On the more affordable model, you get a single 12.8-inch OLED touchscreen. The 580 also comes with 21-inch wheels, while the 450+ features 20-inch ones.