www.theverge.com/games/889954...
06.03.2026 00:35
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Also, some great news on Lowpass: Osmo is back!
The pioneering kids AR edutainment startup is being relaunched by a group of former employees, who acquired its assets out of bankruptcy. www.lowpass.cc/p/osmo-is-ba...
Some news from me on Fast Company: Netflix has acquired InterPositive, an AI company founded by Ben Affleck.
The company had been in stealth, but I managed to find its patent applications ... www.fastcompany.com/91503235/net...
Some TV apps, especially on Samsung and LG TVs, let viewers watch with fewer ads. The catch: They first have to opt their TVs into a global proxy network that scrapes public web data for AI training and other purposes. www.lowpass.cc/p/smart-tv-w...
Today in Lowpass: Your smart TV may be scraping the web for AI www.lowpass.cc/p/smart-tv-w...
15 years ago, a small group of music tech hackers built an app that tried to bridge the gaps between streaming service silos. Now, one of them is resuming the work, with some help from AI www.lowpass.cc/p/parachord-...
15 years ago, a small group of music tech hackers built an app that tried to bridge the gaps between streaming service silos. Now, one of them is resuming the work, with some help from AI www.lowpass.cc/p/parachord-...
Jeff Bezos: It's always day one!
Washington Post reporter: Well, in that case ...
Also coming: A Gorilla Tag TV show and ... Gorillacon 👀 www.lowpass.cc/p/gorilla-ta...
Gorilla Tag is the biggest game in #VR. Now, it's working on a mobile app. www.lowpass.cc/p/gorilla-ta...
Today in Lowpass: Gorilla Tag is the most popular game on Meta's Quest VR headsets. Now, the company behind it is building a mobile app, making a TV show and planning a live event. www.lowpass.cc/p/gorilla-ta...
New in Lowpass: Game consoles built streaming — until it outgrew them www.lowpass.cc/p/netflix-ps...
The maker of that device soon got used out of business, but the concept survived, and in fact is now bigger than ever. The twist: Nowadays, Chinese device makers are targeting mainstream America ... and they're finding buyers everywhere. www.theverge.com/streaming/87...
And other immigrant communities as well, for that matter. I remember walking through Koreatown in LA, and stumbling across a billboard advertising TVPad.
Piracy, in a box, paid for by an upfront hardware purchase: That proved super popular among Chinese expats, and those boxes started popping up everywhere.
The UI was clunky, the thing was obviously running Android on cheap hardware ... but it streamed Chinese TV stations for free. Oh, and it also had a bunch of Western movies, and even a grainy live feed of HBO.
There's a bit of a backstory to this one. Around a decade ago, someone I know got a weird little box called the TVPad as a gift. The thing looked like a cheap Apple TV knockoff, but supposedly cost $200 retail.
I wrote a feature story about rogue streaming boxes for The Verge: www.theverge.com/streaming/87...
It's the end of an era. For context: Netflix used to do a lot of innovation on the PS3, because it was easier to test and tweak things than on some of the other early platforms. One example: The first Netflix TV client to support casting was on the PS3.
Related: www.lowpass.cc/p/casting-hi...
New on Lowpass: Zuckerberg: All videos will be 3D worlds www.lowpass.cc/p/zuckerberg...
Today in Lowpass: What Netflix's Warner Bros. deal could mean for TVs and remotes www.lowpass.cc/p/netflix-de...
If you're wondering why today's Lowpass newsletter ended a bit abruptly ... here's an explanation: sfba.social/@jank0/11594...
Telly owners have also long complained about many TVs arriving broken at their doorsteps. Thanks to newly-leaked numbers, we now know that 10% of Tellys delivered by FedEx were damaged. www.lowpass.cc/p/telly-3500...
When Telly launched in 2023, execs boasted that they would give away 500,000 TVs before the end of the year. In Q3 of 2025, the real number of Telly TVs in people's homes was just 35,000 😲 www.lowpass.cc/p/telly-3500...
Scoop: Telly had only 35,000 TVs in people’s homes last fall www.lowpass.cc/p/telly-3500...
Text reading "Netflix built its voting tech to only allow one vote per Netflix profile. But those early tests showed that fairness was as much about the way different options were presented, and that long-held beliefs about user interface (UI) design could introduce perceived biases. One example: Designers such as Iyengar like to direct the eye to simplify smart TV interfaces. When you open up the Netflix app on your TV, you’ll find that one title is always preselected, which helps to understand what to do if you want to navigate to the title right next to it, or perhaps one in a row below. “On TV, you should always have something in focus,” he says. “Otherwise people don’t understand where the focus state is.” When Iyengar’s team built the interface that people will use to award stars to Star Search performers, they initially followed that same principle and highlighted the third star to direct the eye. Test audiences immediately pushed back. “People did not like that we were filling up the stars for them,” he says. “They were, like, ‘Why are you voting for me?’”"
I loved this tidbit about the live voting feature of Netflix's Star Search reboot. www.fastcompany.com/91477533/how...
My latest for Fast Company: How Netflix brought interactive voting to ‘Star Search’ www.fastcompany.com/91477533/how...
Also on Lowpass today: JWX acquires AI video studio Augie www.lowpass.cc/p/jwx-aug-x-...
The full story is behind the paywall, but you can unlock it with a 7-day free trial: www.lowpass.cc/upgrade?offe...
Today in Lowpass: Why Netflix abandoned casting after 15 years, and why others think that there's still demand for this tech www.lowpass.cc/p/casting-hi...