Technology

Broadcast television networks, inundated with competition from cable and streaming services, have learned the power of franchises. Last week's Nielsen company list is a stark reminder: 12 of the 20 most popular scripted series last week were parts of existing franchises — the three “Chicago” dramas on NBC and the three “FBI” shows on CBS, for example. ABC, in announcing its new fall schedule on Tuesday, said it will try to create its own franchise by spinning off a companion version to its show “The Rookie” in the fall. CBS won the week in prime time last week, with NBC coming in second.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter can’t “move forward” unless the company shows public proof that less than 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake or spam. Musk made the comment in a reply to another user on Twitter early Tuesday. He spent much of the previous day in a back-and-forth with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Agrawal posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

A NASA spacecraft on Mars is losing power and is headed for a dusty demise. The InSight lander has just a couple more months of science work before succumbing to the Martian dust on its solar panels. NASA said Tuesday it will keep using the spacecraft's seismometer to detect marsquakes until the power peters out. Officials expect operations to cease in July, almost four years after InSight's arrival at Mars. InSight is one of three NASA spacecraft operating on the Martian surface. Rovers Curiosity and Perseverance are still going strong, thanks to nuclear power.

Experts are calling for a broader discussion around livestreams after a white gunman killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The self-described white supremacist mounted a GoPro camera to his helmet to stream his assault live on Twitch, the video game streaming platform. Twitch and other sites like Twitter and Facebook have learned painful lessons from dealing with the violent videos that now often accompany such shootings. Experts are discussing whether livestreams should exist at all, since once such videos go online, they’re almost impossible to erase completely.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has given the strongest hint yet that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his $44 billion offer made last month. Musk told a Miami technology conference that a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question. That's according to a Bloomberg News report. Also at the All In Summit, Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, a percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment. The appearance came a few hours after Musk began trolling Twitter CEO Paraj Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

During a week in mid-May, broadcast television networks traditionally unveil their fall plans in flashy presentations before advertisers in New York. Fox is no different, but this year the network is trying something new by announcing some programs but not its schedule. NBC, which had its first large-scale programming announcement in three years because of the COVID break, emphasized its place in the larger media conglomerate with the Peacock streaming service and cable networks. Fox says the absence of its schedule is an effort to try something new and give equal weight to its Tubi streaming service. Fixed schedules are slowly becoming obsolete as viewers decide what to watch and when.

During a week in mid-May, broadcast television networks traditionally unveil their fall plans in flashy presentations before advertisers in New York. Fox is no different, but this year the network is trying something new by not announcing its schedule. TV schedules are slowly becoming obsolete as more viewers decide on their own when they want to watch or stream shows, but they still provide a guide. Fox Entertainment CEO Charles Collier says the network is trying something different, to give equal weight to its broadcast network and streaming service. Fox also hasn't nailed down deals with producers of “911” and “The Resident,” two shows it expects air in the fall.

Social platforms have learned to remove violent videos of extremist shootings more quickly over the past few years. It’s just not clear they’re moving quickly enough. Police say that when a white gunman killed 10 people and wounded three others Saturday in a “racially motivated violent extremist” shooting in Buffalo, he livestreamed the attack to the gaming platform Twitch. It didn’t stay there long; a Twitch spokesperson said it removed the video in less than two minutes. While that's much faster than the 17 minutes it took Facebook to remove a similar video in 2019, copies of the video continued to circulate online Sunday.

A toxic cesspool. A lifeline. A finger on the world’s pulse. Twitter is all these things and more to its over 229 million users around the world. For Elon Musk, its ultimate troll and perhaps most prolific user on the verge of taking ownership of it, Twitter is a “de facto town square” in dire need of a libertarian makeover. Whether and how he’ll achieve this, at this stage in the game, is anyone’s guess. But if Twitter’s history is any indication, the process will be messy — inside and outside of the company. 

A toxic cesspool. A lifeline. A finger on the world’s pulse. Twitter is all these things and more to its over 229 million users around the world. For Elon Musk, its ultimate troll and perhaps most prolific user whose buyout of the company is on increasingly shaky grounds, Twitter is a “de facto town square” in dire need of a libertarian makeover. Whether and how this will happen, at this stage in the game, is anyone’s guess. But if Twitter’s history is any indication, the process will be messy — inside and outside of the company. 

A SpaceX rocket has carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation into orbit. The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Friday afternoon. Minutes later, the first stage landed on a droneship in the Pacific Ocean. The second stage continued toward low Earth orbit, and SpaceX later confirmed that all satellites had been deployed. Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world. Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has hundreds of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 340 miles.