Creators

About a month before the famed driver and DC Shoes co-founder Ken Block died in a snowmobile accident earlier this year, he filmed another installment of the popular series in Mexico City that you can watch right here.

After racking up over 650 million views on YouTube for the Gymkhana series, this final video combines his trademark precision driving with Audi’s purpose-built EV and some new modifications: simulated gears that program multiple levels of wheel speed controlled by the paddle shifter, opposite-driven wheels for a standing AWD burnout, the ability to go into reverse at any speed, and instant switching from AWD to RWD.

The Access controller, which is designed to offer a more accommodating way for people with disabilities to play PS5 games, is now widely available to buy for $89.99 / €89.99. To mark the occasion, Sony has put out a video featuring some of the people it consulted with on the project, showing the different configurations the controller can be used in.

This happened last week, but I saw it today because of Techdirt’s great post about the dismissal. Indiana’s attorney general actually filed two lawsuits against TikTok in December 2022, but they were consolidated, the Associated Press reports.

“Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive,” Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said in a blog post. While the company tried to find ways to lower costs, “our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries,” he said.

The service will shut down in Korea on February 27th, 2024. Twitch has a few more details in a support document.

Despite Rockstar releasing the GTA VI trailer early following a leak, it still managed to rake in 72 million views and counting. PC Gamer points out this makes it the most-viewed non-music video on YouTube in the 24 hours following its release — a record previously held by MrBeast.

It’s also getting close to dethroning BTS’s “Dynamite” music video, which currently holds the record for getting the most views on all of YouTube in 24 hours.

YouTuber Charles Cornell recently broke down the unassailable soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2, and his glee mirrors the feelings I’ve had about that song collection for the last cough years.

While you’re watching, check out The Verge’s interview with Yuzo Koshiro, the game’s composer.

A new search tool will let users filter results by body type, starting with women’s fashion and wedding content.

Pinterest is a popular platform — especially for young people — when it comes to mood boarding and finding inspiration for everything from outfit ideas to hairstyles. The company has previously introduced similar filters for skin tone and hair pattern.

US District Judge Donald W. Molloy issued a preliminary injunction (pdf) blocking the ban on Thursday, as reported by Reuters. The ban had been set to take effect on January 1st. TikTok sued Montana shortly after Governor Greg Gianforte signed SB 419 in May.

The money will go towards Project Clover, TikTok’s initiative to house European user data on local servers to address concerns from regulators.

TikTok’s data center in Ireland is already up and running, but it’s already working on another in Norway, where it expects data migration to begin in late 2024. Once complete, TikTok says its Norway facility will be the “largest data centre in Europe.”

Spotify and Apple Music have both released their end-of-year roundups, and now it’s YouTube Music’s turn. This year, YouTube Music will create a custom album art based on what you’ve listened to in 2023, as well as match your top songs to different moods.

You can also access your Recap from the regular YouTube app for the first time, but it might not have any stats if you aren’t a YouTube Music listener.

Bloomberg reports the creative software giant is putting together a proposal to appease regulators currently blocking its $20 billion bid for product design platform Figma.

This may include Adobe divesting itself from its own product design application, Adobe XD, and promising not to lock Figma into Adobe’s Creative Cloud product bundle. Adobe has until December 19th and February 5th to respectively soothe concerns raised by UK and EU regulators.

I’m here in New York at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, an annual gathering of some of the most powerful people in the world.

Over the course of the day we’ll be hearing from people like Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and FTC chair Lina Khan — and we’ll close out the day with an interview with Elon Musk. Check back in for news as the day goes on.

That’s according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal that says the ultra fast fashion giant could IPO in 2024.

Last week I wrote about Shein’s quest to rebrand and shake some of the criticisms of the company — its labor practices, supply chain, and overall secrecy — in the lead up to a potential public offering. It has... not gone very well so far.

Verge pal Taylor Lorenz shared this Game Theory video about over-optimized content on YouTube leading to what MatPat calls the “era of excess” on the platform. Her prediction? A new creator will break out by becoming the “anti-MrBeast” and defying this trend. You can argue it’s already happening on TikTok — and the video itself is a fascinating deep dive into creators gaming a platform’s algorithmic incentives.

Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast studio was once an industry darling, but has been gutted by three rounds of layoffs in the past year. Mia Lobel, former head of content at Pushkin, published a Substack post today that details the business decisions that pushed producers to make more shows than they could sustain and chase growth at all costs.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with taking your phone to the ceramic throne so you can relax, read, and relieve... but a virtual reality headset? That’s next level.

OK, there are clear benefits to taking the new Meta Quest 3 to the bathroom, though. As Redditor Tall_Whole_5777 describes: You don’t need to touch screens or buttons to watch and control a YouTube video.

This kind of video gets me in trouble at home because I will try to emulate it for fun. Just hours of recording noises and editing them, to the exclusion of all of the reasonable, responsible things I should do instead.

Anyway, here’s someone smacking, plucking, and scraping disparate household items to get the Netflix logo sound.

This noise is the price you’ll pay for the uncropped 4K 120fps shots of the Sony A9 III’s global shutter that’s supposed to fix the distortion caused by the usual rolling shutter. (Well, really the price is $5,999)

Okay, so you don’t actually have to hear the sound of an early PC crashing — there’s no mechanical shutter. But this is an awful noise, and I love that it’s there.