Charlotte Henry

Netflix has earned a reputation for butchery. Fans and showrunners alike have been left reeling as seeming popular shows are cancelled. But is the streaming service’s cancellation rate really worse than traditional TV networks? Bloomberg News investigated.

Competing networks order pilot episodes to determine a show’s potential. And they don’t churn out the same volume of shows as Netflix, so it’s easier to forget their cancellations. The same year HBO released “Game of Thrones,” it introduced a trio of programs that lasted only a couple seasons. Until a few years ago, Netflix had never made a TV series. Netflix bases its decisions on numbers just like most TV networks. But the metrics differ from the usual Nielsen data shared widely in the industry, according to Netflix employees, TV producers and executives who’ve worked with them. And unlike traditional broadcasters the company doesn’t provide much information about what drives decisions.

How much is your personal data worth to you? According to one survey reported on by MediaPost, for nearly 50 percent of respondents it is less than $10.

They place more value on their personal data and the importance of keeping their information secure. In fact, their willingness to share a home address dropped 10 percentage points, while willingness to share their spouse’s first and last name dropped 8 percentage points; sharing their personal email address, 7 percentage points; and sharing first and last names, 6 percentage points. The report also examines how consumers value their data, revealing that they don’t put a high price on the data they will share. More than one-third said they would give it away and nearly half would sell it for less than $10, while about 13% would sell for between $11 and $20, and about 4% would want more than $20 for each piece of data

U.S. Tesla drivers will soon be able to access Spotify directly from their vehicle’s software. Currently, the service is only accessible via Bluetooth. That’s according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk, spotted by Business Insider.

That’s right: Musk says Spotify is “coming” to Tesla cars soon…While Tesla drivers in Europe have enjoyed Spotify support for years now, Tesla has a deal with the internet-radio service Slacker in North America, so drivers in the US and Canada must contend with that service instead.

In news likely to disappoint lots of users, a Twitter executive admitted Tuesday that an edit button is not a priority for the social network. The company also said it would allow users to follow topics, not just people, Techcrunch reported.

At a press event in San Francisco, Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour talked about a number of product changes coming to the company’s service, he also addressed the oft-memed user request for an edit button. Long story, short, you shouldn’t expect to see the button anytime soon. “Honestly, it’s a feature that I think we should build at some point, but it’s not anywhere near the top of our priorities,” Beykpour said. “That’s the honest answer.”

Israeli security researchers discovered that a company used by the UK Metropolitan police, defense contractors and banks left millions of records unprotected. Data included biometric information. Noam Rotem and Ran Locar handed their research to the Guardian. The loophole had reportedly been closed by the time of this writing.

In a search last week, the researchers found Biostar 2’s database was unprotected and mostly unencrypted. They were able to search the database by manipulating the URL search criteria in Elasticsearch to gain access to data. The researchers had access to over 27.8m records, and 23 gigabytes-worth of data including admin panels, dashboards, fingerprint data, facial recognition data, face photos of users, unencrypted usernames and passwords, logs of facility access, security levels and clearance, and personal details of staff. Much of the usernames and passwords were not encrypted, Rotem told the Guardian. “We were able to find plain-text passwords of administrator accounts,” he said.

Data from Leichtman Research Group showed the rise in cord cutters continues unabated.  Cable companies lost 455,263 subscribers in Q2 2019. Traditional TV as a whole lost 1.53 million subscribers in the quarter.  Fast Company took a look at the research.

Leichtman says this is the fourth consecutive quarter of record losses for the industry, but the bigger story is that cable TV losses are in line with where satellite providers were a year ago. In Q2 2018, Dish Network and DirecTV combined for a loss of 478,000 subscribers, and last quarter, their losses nearly doubled year-over-year, to 857,000 subscribers. Without big changes, cable TV could be looking at similarly bleak results a year from now. Not that they care too much. While satellite providers don’t have other clear business models to fall back on, cable companies can profit from cord cutting by selling more internet service at faster speeds.

Spotify took its podcasters dashboard out of beta Tuesday, The Verge reported. It aims to give podcasters useful data as it establishes itself as a podcasting platform.

Podcasters have long lacked data about their listeners, which poses problems when they’re trying to sell ads. Spotify is uniquely qualified to give podcasters that data because every Spotify user requires an account to listen, where they’ve provided basic demographic data about themselves, as well as their music listening habits. Nothing about the dashboard will change when it comes out of beta, although Hellman says it’ll be refined over time as podcasters respond to the product. The idea is to mirror Spotify for Artists, the dashboard it provides for musicians, but optimized for podcasters.

Dark mode for Facebook’s main app appears to be close. A researcher found the company is testing it for the Android version of the app, CNet reported. Surely an iOS version will follow too?

Reliable researcher Jane Manchun Wong found that Facebook is testing a darker color scheme on the Android version of its app. However, she noted that this feature seems to be in an “early stage of development” — it’s only appearing on the app’s Groups tab with some dark text displaying against a dark background, making it tough to read. So it might be a while before Facebook’s mobile dark mode gets a wide rollout.