The Morning After: Neil Young threatens to pull his music from Spotify over Joe Rogan's podcast

Musician Neil Young has asked his management team and record label to remove his songs from Spotify. "I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines potentially causing death to those who believe [it]," he said. "They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both." The content of the letter was confirmed by Young's manager, Frank Gironda, according to The Daily Beast. Its probably not an empty threat; Young previously removed his music from Spotify due to low audio quality.

The Joe Rogan Experience picks up around 11 million listeners on average, and as you probably already know, some of his guests (and comments) have been controversial. Rogan hosted virologist Dr. Robert Malone, who made baseless claims about COVID-19, saying a "mass formation psychosis" led people to believe the vaccines were effective. This prompted a group of over 1,000 doctors, nurses, scientists and educators to send an open letter to Spotify demanding that it create a misinformation policy.

In an episode that followed, Rogan contended that a rare heart condition had been linked to vaccines when it was actually linked to those that had contracted COVID-19. (You can watch the awkwardness here.) Spotify CEO Daniel Ek previously said he doesn't believe the platform has editorial responsibility for podcasts. The company hasnt yet responded to Youngs letter.

Mat Smith

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Respawn is making three more Star Wars games

A follow up to Jedi: Fallen Order is one of them.

Respawn

EAs Respawn Entertainment is making three more Star Wars games. The studio best known for Titanfall and Apex Legends is working on a follow-up to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, though its not clear if the upcoming game is a direct sequel. There will also be a first-person shooter overseen by a former Star Wars Battlefront producer as well as a strategy game from a studio headed up by Greg Foertsch, who previously worked on the XCOM series. Some Star Wars for everyone.

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Samsung built a fingerprint security chip for payment cards, employee IDs and more

It combines a lot of security tech into one chip.

Samsung has announced the "industry's first" all-in-one fingerprint security chip (IC) for payment cards. It can read biometric information via a fingerprint sensor, store and authenticate data with a tamper-proof secure element (SE) and analyze it with a secure processor. While primarily designed for payment cards, it could also be used for "student or employee identification, membership or building access," the company said.

We might have enough payment options, thanks to our phones, but thats not stopping Samsung. Last year, it announced it was collaborating with Mastercard on a biometric scanning payment card with a built-in fingerprint reader.

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Sony's new soundbar offers virtual surround for $300

There's also a large subwoofer and tight integration with Sony TVs.

Sony has unveiled the HT-S400 soundbar. It has a few tricks while keeping the price down to $300. While it's a 2.1-channel system, it offers virtual surround sound (S-Force Pro Front Surround, if you wanted to know) to provide more immersive audio for your movies and shows. It's also a fairly powerful system for the class, with a rather large 130W wireless subwoofer contributing to a total of 330W output. The soundbar is set to launch in April 2022.

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Report: NVIDIA is preparing to walk away from its ARM acquisition

ARM may be planning an IPO if the deal falls through.

According to a Bloomberg report, NVIDIA is struggling to gain regulatory approval for its $40 billion purchase of ARM and is privately preparing to abandon the deal. Meanwhile, current ARM owner SoftBank is reportedly planning to take ARM public as an alternative to the acquisition. A backlash began soon after the announcement.

The UK, where ARM is based, launched an antitrust investigation into the acquisition in January 2021 while, in the US, the FTC recently sued to block the purchase over concerns it would "stifle" competition in industries like data centers and car manufacturing.

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Google is testing a new replacement for third-party cookies

FLoC seems to have flopped.

With the demise of third-party cookies on the horizon, everyone is scrambling to come up with better ways to get ads in front of our eyes. Google announced FLoC (or Federated Learning of Cohorts) last year. That was then delayed, and the companys Privacy Sandbox faced regulatory scrutiny. Today, the company announced it's testing out a new approach called Topics API, leaving FLoC by the wayside.

Simplified, Topics API uses the Chrome browser to determine your top five topics. It'll figure out what the topics are by comparing known websites (that you visit) against a list of about 350 topics drawn from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google's own data. Then, when partner publishers need to know what topics youre into, they can use Topics API to ping the browser for that data and serve you relevant ads.

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