Netflix is fighting password sharing in Latin America by charging for additional ‘homes’

Netflix has introduced a new way people can share accounts — and, hence, a new way to curb password-sharing — for five Latin American countries. Starting on August 22nd, users in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will have to pay for extra “homes” if they want to access the streaming the service outside of their primary residence for longer than a short vacation. 

Subscribers can watch Netflix on their phones or tablets anytime and as much as they want even while they’re traveling or visiting another place. But if they want to stream on a TV, they can only access Netflix at no additional charge for two weeks while away from their primary residence. Further, they can only stream for free at a particular location once. After those two weeks are up, or if they go back to a location where they previously maxed out free access to the service, Netflix will ask if they would like to add a home for an additional fee per month.

Basic tier subscribers can add one extra home, standard up to two extra and premium up to three extra. Netflix says it uses information such as IP addresses, device IDs and account activity to detect homes, but it’s advising people to make sure their devices are using the same internet connection and aren’t using VPN or proxy services in case its system is insisting that the viewer is outside their primary residence when they aren’t. The company will also allow members to stop paying for an extra home whenever they want and to replace their added home up to three times every six months. 

Earlier this year, Netflix said it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 due to stiffer competition and the abundance of account sharing. According to Bloomberg, password sharing has been especially rampant in Latin America, which is most likely why that’s where the company is testing new features meant to prevent the behavior. In its announcement, Netflix said the service will cost users 219 Pesos per month per home in Argentina and $3 per month per home in the Dominican Republic, Honduras. El Salvador and Guatemala.

The US Government is inspecting Amazon warehouses over ‘potential worker safety hazards’

Amazon warehouses in New York City and elsewhere are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the US Department of Labor over unsafe workplace conditions, ABC News has reported. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted inspections “related, among other things, to Amazon’s required pace of work for its warehouse employees,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

On top of probing potential safety hazards, the investigators were also looking into “possible fraudulent conduct designed to hide injuries from OSHA and others,” the agency added. It said that it opened the inspections based on referrals from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York regarding allegations of safety and health violations. It’s also probing Amazon workplaces outside of Illinois and Florida. 

Over the last several years, Amazon has faced a number of complaints and probes over workplace safety, particularly around demanding tasks. Earlier this year, Washington state’s Department of Labor cited and fined the company for “strenuous work at an unsafe pace” in Kent. Last year, the company issued a rare apology for tweets attacking criticism of working conditions, specifically that drivers and other workers were forced to pee in bottles to achieve objectives. 

Following the collapse of a warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois during a hurricane, the company was criticized by members of congress and the senate for “wholly inadequate” warehouse safety. In April, workers at New York’s Staten Island warehouse voted to form the company’s first US union. 

Netflix’s animated ‘Tekken: Bloodline’ series will arrive on August 18th

Netflix has launched a full trailer for its upcoming animated adaptation of Tekken, Bandai Namco’s famous fighting game franchise, and with it comes the show’s premiere date. Tekken: Bloodline is arriving on the streaming service on August 18th and will be available in several languages, including English and Japanese. The show focuses on Jin Kazama and takes place between the events of Tekken 2, which features his mother Jun Kazama as one of The King of Iron Fist Tournament competitors, and Tekken 3. Jin made his debut in the franchise’s third entry released back in 1996 after losing his mother and his home to Ogre, one of the franchise’s antagonists. 

In the series, Jin trained under his grandfather Heihachi Mishima, the tournament’s founder, in his quest for revenge. You’ll hear Heihachi tell Jin to shed the pacifist Kazama ways and to “stoke [his] Mishima fire.” Yes, Heihachi sounds positively villainous, because he’s the franchise’s main antagonist. The trailer also shows faces that would be familiar to long-time fans, as characters from the games also appear in the show. They include Hwoarang, Julia Chang, Nina Williams, Paul Phoenix, Ling Xiaoyu and Heihachi’s son Kazuya Mishima.

You can watch show’s official trailer below:

Demand for the Justice League ‘Snyder Cut’ was reportedly amplified by bots

The zealous online campaign that helped pave the way for the “Snyder Cut” version of Justice League was boosted by a large number of bot and fake accounts, according to a report from Rolling Stone. An investigation commissioned by WarnerMedia seen by RS found that “at least 13 percent of the accounts that took part in the conversation about the Snyder Cut were deemed fake, well above the three to five percent that cyber experts say they typically see on any trending topic.” In other words, while many real fans certainly pushed for the new version, their voices were amplified disproportionately by bots.

As a reminder, director Zack Snyder stepped down during the editing of Justice League for personal reasons and Joss Whedon completed the film as an uncredited director, overseeing reshoots and other changes to reduce runtime and increase humor. When the film was released in 2017, it was a critical and commercial failure. Following that, an online fanbase pushed for Snyder’s darker original vision, aka the Snyder Cut. When released in 2021, it became the fourth most viewed film on HBO Max and was generally praised as superior to the original.

However, questions arose as to whether the fan interest was completely organic. WarnerMedia decided to launch an investigation following some severe cyber harassment that included calls for boycotts, firings and even death threats. It identified communities “made up of real and fake authors that spread negative content about WarnerMedia for not restoring the ‘SnyderVerse,” and directed harassment toward Warner Bros.’ then-CEO AnnSarnoff and other executives and creatives involved with the project. 

Rolling Stone also hired a security company to check suspicious activity, and it said that “there’s no question that bots were involved.” Another firm used by WarnerMedia to investigate inauthentic activity around the forsnydercut.com domain traced it to a defunct ad agency promising “cheap, instant Avatar traffic to your website.” Snyder fanned the online flames with social media posts including one showing a photo labeled “JL Director’s Cut Running Time 214 [minutes],” but it’s not clear what role, if any, he played in the online campaign. 

As we implied in our review of Zack Snyder’s Justice League last year, the report shows the power but potential pitfalls of fandom. “There are positive ways to influence change for any piece of pop culture, but shouting at each other on social media, not to mention sending death threats, shouldn’t be normalized,” wrote Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar. 

Amazon Prime Video 改版，變得更好用（更像 Netflix 和其他對手）

早前的 Amazon Prime Day 2022 有著大量折扣，有沒有朋友也特意註冊了戶口來免費試用呢？在停用之前也不妨看看 Prime 會員附帶來的其他服務，其中一個就是我們非美區網民也能享用到的 Prime Video 串流影片平台。…