Today’s Storystream

In what can be described as both an entirely predictable turn of events and history (spiritually) repeating itself, Netflix has canceled Vanessa Ramos’ Blockbusterworkplace comedy after just one season.

Blockbuster featured a solid cast, and there was a twisted irony to it debuting on the very streamer that ushered in the business that ultimately killed its namesake. But at a time when Netflix has been tightening its purse strings and cutting shows in service of its bottom line, Blockbuster’s lackluster reception meant that it was all but certain to be axed.

I’m thrilled that Apple finally improved its Spotify Wrapped competitor, and that YouTube is making its version more accessible. But my eyes nearly rolled out of my head when I opened Raycast, the app I use as a Spotlight replacement, and saw that it had added a year-end stats feature too.

... and then I looked through it and decided it was pretty cool. Now I want Omnifocus to tell me how many tasks I’ve knocked out (and deferred or dropped) since January.

You only have a few more days left to order gifts online and avoid paying extra for faster shipping. Tomorrow is the last day you can send First-Class Mail and Retail Ground packages via USPS, while other retailers and shipment carriers have deadlines that start early next week. We’ve curated a list of every major deadline you should know to ensure your present arrives on time.

The CPSC just unanimously agreed that utilities can pay you 75 percent less for your solar electricity during the day — unless you get grandfathered into the previous NEM 2.0 rates by April 2023. Solar companies are angry; environmental advocates were divided.

I’d get a move-on, unless you plan to buy batteries alongside your solar and sell power to the grid in the evenings. Permitting and inspection can take a while.

The audio room feature was (mostly) turned off on Thursday night, after Musk joined a Space filled with multiple people he had suspended from the platform who were somehow still able to use the feature.

According to Musk, its temporary absence was to fix “a Legacy bug.” It’s possible it took over 15 hours to fix because most of the Spaces team was laid off or resigned.

The Communications Workers of America accused Apple of breaking labor laws at a store in Columbus, Ohio, saying the tech giant held mandatory anti-union meetings and tried to shift organizing activities to a labor group it had control over. You can read the full complaint below.

The union has filed several charges against Apple for its actions at different retail locations — and the National Labor Relations Board has found merit to a few of them.

Friends told me Persona 4 Golden was excellent, and they were right — but what kind of game lets you lose loads of progress if you don’t buy items just so you can teleport back to its save points?

Ain’t nobody got time to backtrack through repetitive dungeons forever, and it looks like Atlus now agrees: the PC version is getting updated to add quick saves. More like this please.

It ain’t much, but the Wear OS 3 Google Home app will make it easier to view your devices — as well as control those that haven’t been assigned to a home yet. Small potatoes, but I’ll take incremental Wear OS 3 updates over Google prematurely throwing in the wearable towel... again.

This podcast was recorded before Elon Musk’s Twitter ban extravaganza reached its peak, but we dug into the @ElonJets mess. From Apple, we’ll check out the report that it will allow outside app stores on iOS as well as the hole left by a missing M-series Mac Pro in its desktop lineup.

I tried to recap Sam Bankman-Fried’s transition from media tour to handcuffs, and then we talked more about the golden age of streaming and why David Zaslav’s biggest problem might be in his presentation.

Many of my colleagues in the industry are now quitting Twitter for some of the same reasons I did. And honestly — Elon hasn’t changed much. It has been a hive of scum and villainy for many years. I won’t say “I told you so” — I’ll just be glad for anyone who escapes its clutches.

James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar follow-up is a letdown in the same way that many multimillion dollar movie sequels years in the making often are because it’s hard for them to live up to the hype building in people’s minds. Between its discomfitingly high frame rate and middling story, Avatar: The Way of Water probably won’t blow your wig back the way the first film was able to.

But it’s very fair to say that The Way of Water is a visually-stunning testament to all of James Cameron’s aesthetic sensibilities and skills as a visual storyteller. It’d just be nice if the whole thing worked as an interesting narrative, and not like an overlong tech demo. Critics are split on whether the movie’s any good, but You can find out for yourself now, as Avatar: The Way of Water just hit theaters today.

If your family lags behind on their iOS updates, or you use an iPad as a HomeKit hub, the new Apple Home may not be for you. But if you’re excited to try out Apple’s promise of better performance and reliability on its smart home platform, here’s a guide on upgrading to the new Apple Home.

Tapbots, the company best known for its third-party Twitter client Tweetbot, plans to work on features for its (currently in early alpha) Mastodon client first and then push “relevant” ones over to Tweetbot, per co-owner Mark Jardine.

Tweetbot will still get updates, but this feels like a big shift for a company that put Twitter first even during the darkest days for its API.

Avatar: The Way of the Water is only showing in theaters, meaning you can’t hit pause like you can at home to run to the restroom. Thankfully, Polygonwrote this spoiler-light guide on when during the three-hour “very wet” movie you can excuse yourself without missing out on vital movie moments.

As it turns out, you can skip...quite a bit of it.

That’s clear after listening to the latest All In podcast that is co-hosted by longtime friends of Musk, including Jason Calacanis and David Sacks — both were advisors to Musk during the early days of his Twitter takeover.

Some quotes from their discussion of Musk banning journalists and other accounts for tweeting publically accessible data showing the whereabouts of his private jet:

Jason Calacanis: “Could have been done better”

David Sacks: “Maybe in the first few hours of that decision it wasn’t handled perfectly”

Chamath Palihapitiya: “I would like to see him get back to landing rockets on barges, getting to Mars”

Bari Weiss, one of the journalists Musk picked to give access to the Twitter Files, also tweeted: “The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem.”

the way people talk about it feels exactly like people describing their dreams: tedious and of no consequence, but you have to be nice and pretend to care since it was obviously important to them. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone for a few weeks now, but I only realized what that specific feeling is after Adi wrote this great piece about AI-generated art. This feeling needs a name!

One of the services we mentioned in our article about the race to build a better Twitter was Hive Social; however, at the time, you couldn’t use it after the operators shut down to fix a few security flaws.

Hive is now back online, with an updated app available for iOS, and an update coming for its beta app on Android.

Still, it’s not a great sign that the best place to find updates on Hive’s service status is its Twitter account.