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Want to watch history being preserved in real time? The Internet Archive, the digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts, has started livestreaming on YouTube from its scanning center in California for anyone to watch. Monday through Friday, from 10:30 a.m. ET to 6:30 p.m. ET, viewers can tune in and watch live as fragile film cards are turned into searchable public documents, soundtracked to relaxing lo-fi beats. This work is part of Democracys Library, a global initiative to digitize and make publicly available millions of government records. This livestream shines a light on the unsung work of preserving the public record and the critical infrastructure that makes democracy searchable, said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. Transparency cant be passiveit must be built, maintained, and seen. Thats what this livestream is all about. If youre confused about what exactly youre watching on the livestream, scanning operators are specifically working with documents on microfiche, a flat piece of film containing microphotographs of the pages of documents. This format dates back to the mid-20th century and has been used to archive newspapers, court documents, government records, and more. The livestream features five active microfiche digitization stations, with a close-up view of one in action,” Chris Freeland, the Internet Archives director of library services, explains in a blog post on the site. “Operators feed microfiche cards beneath a high-resolution camera, which captures multiple detailed images of each sheet. Software stitches these images together, after which other team members use automated tools to identify and crop up to 100 individual pages per card.” Each page is then processed, made fully text-searchable, and added to the Internet Archives public collectionscomplete with metadataso that researchers, journalists, and the general public can explore and download them freely,” the blog post adds. This livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, a software engineer and app developer. She is also behind the 24/7 livestream of a Waymo parking lot that went viral last year. In off hours, the Internet Archive livestream turns into a stream of silent films and historical images from NASA to keep viewers entertained. There is also a live chat. This is such a good vibe to work on research, one viewer commented. I hope your work is as mysterious and important as this, Tung replied.
Category:
E-Commerce
Three years after suing to block Microsoft from buying one of the biggest names in video games, the U.S. government is finally giving up. The FTC announced plans Thursday to drop a Biden-era case against Microsoft over its $69 billion acquisition of game maker Activision Blizzard, a decision the regulator said now best serves the public interest. In 2022, the FTC first announced that it would try to kill Microsofts planned acquisition of the gaming giant, which makes hit games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The following year, after the FTC failed to secure a preliminary injunction to stop it, Microsoft actually finalized the massive deal, but the regulator vowed to continue appealing that decision. Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower courts order denying the injunction, ruling that the FTCs claims that the deal would limit competition in the gaming industry were weak. The acquisition was destined for intense scrutiny from day one, both for its size and its potential to totally reshape the landscape for one of techs hottest sectors. Microsoft swooped in to save Activision Blizzard from itself When Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision Blizzard in January 2022, the smaller company had been rocked by emerging allegations of systemic sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Those ongoing scandals eventually forced longtime CEO Bobby Kotick out of the company as Microsoft cleaned house leading into the merger. Microsoft also had to clear major regulatory hurdles in the U.K., resolving antitrust concerns there over its cloud gaming services before getting the green light to close the deal. That bit of regulatory maneuvering resulted in an unusual arrangement to offload cloud streaming rights for its games to competitor Ubisoft in order to appease the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.s powerful trust buster. (This portion of the deal isnt great news for anyone whos wrestled with Ubisofts awkward online gaming service over the years.) A boost to Microsofts online gaming roadmap By bringing Activision Blizzard under its wing, Microsoft can also bring the companys many hit titles into the popular Xbox Game Pass service, which gives players unlimited access to games for a monthly subscription fee. Gaming companies have increasingly turned to monthly subscriptions and live service games over the last decade and many of Activision Blizzards hit franchises revolve around online multiplayer, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. Activision Blizzard also owns Candy Crush, a colorful tile-matching game thats still synonymous with mobile gaming almost a decade after Activision Blizzard bought its developer King for a then whopping $5.9 billion. Microsoft President Brad Smith described his company as grateful to the FTC for its decision to allow the acquisition to settle. Todays decision is a victory for players across the country and for common sense in Washington, D.C., Smith said.
Category:
E-Commerce
Starbucks in South Korea has barred customers from using the names of South Koreas six presidential candidates in their orders ahead of next month’s presidential election. A Starbucks Korea spokesperson told NBC News the policy was introduced in order to prevent inappropriate and abusive use of the names.” The decision comes as South Koreans have increasingly used their Starbucks’ orders to make a political statementordering via app under presidential candidates’ names, and using phrases in support of or to oppose them, forcing baristas to call them out for pickup, per NBC. Some examples of those orders include: “arrest Yoon Suk Yeol” and “[opposition leader] Lee Jae-myung is a spy,” per the BBC. According to Starbucks, the company needs to “maintain political neutrality during election season,” and will lift the ban on June 3 after the election, the BBC reported. Like many South Korean businesses, Starbucks is seeking neutrality amid the charged political atmosphere around the election, stemming from former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief martial law declaration and subsequent impeachment trial, which has deeply divided the East Asian democracy. Similarly, Naver, South Korea’s biggest search engine, has disabled autocomplete on search for the candidates, a common practice for the tech giant during an election cycle, according to the BBC. The six presidential candidates’ names that Starbucks has banned are: Lee Jae-myung, from the country’s liberal Democratic Party (DP); Kim Moon-soo, from former president Yoon Suk Yeol’ conservative People Power Party (PPP); and Lee Jun-seok, Kwon Young-kook, Hwang Kyo-ahn, and Song Jin-ho. As Fast Company previously reported, Starbucks recently posted disappointing earnings results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, ending on March 30. Unlike in the previous quarter, Starbucks did not beat analyst revenue expectations, of $8.83 billion and an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of 49 cents, according to Yahoo Finance, instead posting a revenue of $8.76 billion and an adjusted EPS of 41 cents. One key metric, U.S. comparable store sales, declined 2% in Q2. Shares in Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) were trading up about 1% on Friday.
Category:
E-Commerce
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