The European competition commission has fined Qualcomm almost $1 billion for paying Apple to use its chips exclusively in the iPhone and iPad.The deal was struck in 2011 until the end of 2016, and meant Apple would need to repay Qualcomm if it decided to use a rival's chipsets.The commission found the deal blocked Qualcomm's competitors from doing business with Apple and stifled innovation.

The European Union has slapped a €997 million (£873 million, $1.2 billion) fine on Qualcomm for paying Apple to use its chips exclusively in the iPhone and the iPad.

The EU's competition watchdog ruled that the chipmaker had taken advantage of and then cemented its dominant position when it agreed to pay Apple from 2011 to use its chips exclusively.

Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: "Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals from the market for LTE baseband chipsets for over five years, thereby cementing its market dominance.

"Qualcomm paid billions of US dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals. These payments were not just reductions in price — they were made on the condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm's baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads."

The agreement meant that no challenger could take on Qualcomm, hurting innovation in the chip sector. It also meant Apple would have to repay all of Qualcomm's money if it decided to give its business to a rival.

The investigation found that Apple had considered switching to Intel, a major competitor, but decided not to in part because of its exclusivity agreement.

Qualcomm's fine represents 4% of its turnover in 2017. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EU is separately investigating Qualcomm for undercutting rivals in the broadband chipset market by selling its chips below cost. That investigation is still ongoing.

Original author: Shona Ghosh

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Original author: James Cook

10 things in tech you need to know today, January 24 - Business Insider

Original author: James Cook

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Andy Bryant, COO of BitFlyer Europe. BitFlyer

BitFlyer has trading volumes of $150 billion in November and December of last year, European COO said. Japanese exchange now averaging $50 billion in monthly trade. Disclosures came as BitFlyer announced its European launch.

LONDON — Japan's largest bitcoin exchange saw trading volumes of $150 billion in the last two months last year, according to the company's European head, more than doubling the company's expected annual volume.

BitFlyer's European COO Andy Byrant told Business Insider: "When we launched in the US we were telling people our trading volume data. At that time, just between January and November, we were quoting year to date volumes of $100 billion. Full-year was $250 billion. December was certainly an interesting month."

The exchange charges fees between 0.01% and 0.15% per transaction in Japan, where it offers leverage of up to 15x, allowing traders to boost their profits or losses.

BitFlyer is launching in the UK and Europe, offering free trading until the end of February but no leverage. 

Bitcoin's price rocketed from around $5,000 to a peak of over $19,000 in December amid an explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies. It has since fallen back to around $10,000.

"Of course [volumes] are up and down, you have to even them out," Bryant said. "It seemed like December was a big month in terms of awareness. Now we're clocking $50 billion a month so it's certainly a higher pace than it was this time a year ago."

Recode reported on Monday that US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase had revenue of $1 billion last year as it rode a wave of interest in cryptocurrency.

Asked about BitFlyer's revenues, Bryant said: "I can't really comment on our financials because we're a private company. Suffice to say, on trading volume, $250 billion just last year is a huge number and we will continue to build on that strength."

Bryant was talking to Business Insider at London Blockchain Week on Tuesday, where BitFlyer was announcing the launch of its European operation. BitFlyer has obtained a license to operate a bitcoin-to-euro exchange in Luxembourg and is targeting institutional and high-volume clients looking to trade bitcoin.

"It could be funds, it could be day traders, anyone who's trading multiple times a day or multiple times an hour even," Bryant said.

BitFlyer was founded in Japan by former Goldman Sachs banker Yuzo Kano in 2014. The company claims to process around 25% of all global bitcoin trading volumes, according to Coinhills, thanks to strong interest in the cryptocurrency from Japanese investors. Coinhills ranks BitFlyer the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world by volume. Rival data provider CoinMarketCap.com ranks the exchange as the 6th biggest.

"It's always been our goal to be a global company and right now we're the world's biggest bitcoin exchange by volume," Bryant said. "Based on our strengths in Japan and our track record, it was an obvious next step to expand internationally."

BitFlyer now operates in Japan, the US, and Europe. It is licensed in all three markets.

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

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BTCC founder and CEO Bobby Lee. Matteo Giachetti Photography

China banned bitcoin exchanges at the end of 2017. BTCC was one of the largest operators in the country and CEO said it had "a huge effect on revenues." BTCC has now pivoted to bitcoin mining and a mobile wallet product.

LONDON — The CEO of one of China's biggest bitcoin companies says Beijing's decision to crackdown on bitcoin trading in the country lost his businesses tens of millions in revenue.

Founded in 2011, BTCC was the world's oldest bitcoin exchange until it shuttered its exchange in September last year under pressure from Chinese authorities.

BTCC founder and CEO Bobby Lee told Business Insider: "We always knew it was a risk that the Chinese government would look unfavourably on bitcoin and put some strong rules around it.

"We were always running it with a sense of uncertainty, we were operating in a grey area. Finally last year, 2017, they made a final decision, which was to essentially shut down all exchanges. It was unfortunate but it was in the realm of our worst possibility."

Asked about the financial impact, Lee said it cut off revenues in the tens of millions more or less overnight. China was one of the world's most active bitcoin markets until the government crackdown. 

"It has a huge effect on revenues so as a company we have to pivot," Lee said. "We’re doing the mining pool and we’re also doing the Mobi wallet."

The Mobi wallet is a digital wallet that lets people send crypto and fiat currencies to each other worldwide. Lee said the app has had over 100,000 downloads across over 180 countries.

BTCC's headcount has declined since the government crackdown but Lee wouldn't be drawn on specific numbers. The company currently employs around 100 people in Shanghai.

Lee also hinted the company may move some operations out of China, saying "come back in a few months or a few weeks" when asked.

Lee said BTCC is interested in raising money, saying: "We’re constantly working with investors on how to upgrade our company to the next level."

Asked how much he was looking to raise, he said: "That’s not something I talk about in the press."

Lee, who is the brother of litecoin creator Charlie Lee, was talking to Business Insider at London Blockchain Week.

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

Original author: Rachel Gillett and Áine Cain

Facebook is asking its users to decide how trustworthy news outlets are — and its survey is only two questions long.The social network has been repeatedly criticised over the spread of misinformation and hoaxes.Facebook argues it will look at how news sources are viewed across different demographics — but it's not clear if "trustworthiness" is the best way to rank them.

We've got our first look at the survey Facebook is going to use to assess how trustworthy news outlets are — and it's only two questions long.

After months of criticism over its role in the spread of misinformation and fake news, Facebook is making sweeping changes to its News Feed. The social network announced last week that rather than judging the reliability of news sources itself, it is going to ask users to assess their trustworthiness for themselves via surveys and then promote or demote the websites in the News Feed algorithm accordingly. 

BuzzFeed News has now got its hands on the survey — and on the face of it, there's not much to it.

First, it asks: "Do you recognize the following websites," and gives only two options in response: "yes" or "no."

It then follows up with "How much do you trust each of these domains?" The possible answers are "entirely," "a lot," "somewhat," "barely," and "not at all."

The brevity of the survey has attracted the ire of some critics and journalists. "Trust in news is much more-complicated," tweeted Bloomberg reporter Sarah Frier. "How well-sourced is the article? Are other sites verifying it? Is it news or analysis?"

Guardian audience editor Dave Earley chimed in: "Come on. This is a joke, right?"

Facebook argues that it will only rank publications higher or lower if people across different groups and demographics agree on how trustworthy a given news source is — and users can't opt in to do the survey if they haven't been selected, so bad actors can't group up together to skew the results one way or the other. 

On Twitter, Facebook's News Feed boss Adam Mosseri defended the change, writing that "how we incorporate survey data is every bit as important as the specific questions we ask."

He added Facebook will also be tracking what people read and using that to affect how people's responses are weighted. "The other important thing to understand is this isn’t a simple vote. We are not just valuing more publishers that a lot of people trust, but rather valuing more publishers that a lot of different types of people (based on reading habits) trust," he wrote.

(Mosseri also admitted Facebook explained the trustworthiness change badly when it was announced, saying: "We should have done a better job explaining this one, we were trying to balance clarity and detail and didn't quite get the balance right. But that's also why we're here and on Facebook answering questions.")

But weighting based on users' reading habits can't account for reading behaviour that takes place outside of the Facebook ecosystem. For example, the binary option for the first question doesn't differentiate between someone who's subscribed to the print edition of The Guardian for 40 years, and a fringe conspiracy theorist who only has the vaguest conception of what The Guardian publishes.

And by treating publications as monolithic entities, to be considered trustworthy or not in their entirety, it means that those that publish a mix of news and non-news content could be penalised.

Take BuzzFeed. The media organisation publishes everything from deeply reported investigations on targeted Russian assassinations on British soil to quizzes about "What Do You Love Based On Your Zodiac Sign?" One of these is a trustworthy, researched news story. The other one is clearly just for fun — but could contribute to a negative overall perception of the website's trustworthiness.

Regardless of the exact phrasing of the survey, there are arguably broader concerns about this approach: Is asking users for their views on trustworthiness really the best way to stamp out misinformation?

In a blog post published last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company wasn't "comfortable" assessing the trustworthiness of news outlets itself, and that asking outside experts wouldn't be "objective." So, he wrote, "we decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective."

In other words, Facebook is making a big bet on the wisdom of the crowd. Sometimes, that pays off. But sometimes, the wisdom of the crowd is dead wrong.

Original author: Rob Price

Little more than five years ago, Netflix looked like a train wreck. The company had announced then quickly aborted a widely ridiculed effort to set up its profitable DVD business as a separate operation and rename it Qwikster. Customers were incensed by a big price hike. And investors were none too happy about the company's overseas expansion efforts, which were weighing on its profits.

Boy, how things have changed. Netflix dominates the streaming media market and its DVD business is an afterthought. Its stock price has doubled in the last 13 months. And, as this chart from Statista shows, its profit is now more than double what it was in the good old days before the Qwikster debacle. Of course, it's still borrowing billions of dollars to keep its library of videos well stocked and it faces a potentially dangerous threat in the form of an upcoming streaming service from Disney, but those seems like minor quibbles when everything else is going so well.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Original author: Troy Wolverton

Original author: Daniel Brown

Shutterstock

Researchers have looked at more than a dozen studies on marijuana's effect on the heart, and their takeaway is far from conclusive. That finding contradicts a study published in August that claimed marijuana users faced a threefold higher risk of dying from hypertension than nonusers. The August study had some major limitations, including that it defined users as anyone who'd ever tried the drug.

A study published in August claimed that marijuana users faced a threefold higher risk of dying from hypertension than those who had never used the drug.

The findings sounded alarming. But like any study, this one had key limitations, including the fact that it defined cannabis "users" as anyone who'd ever tried the drug. More importantly, however, it highlighted an important gap in our current understanding of the science of cannabis: How does the drug affect the heart?

A new paper highlights how clouded this picture currently is. Scientists simply don't know the overall impact of cannabis on cardiovascular health.

For the new study, researchers in California, Pennsylvania, and New York looked at dozens of studies on marijuana and the heart. Those studies examined links between cannabis and health problems that put people at a higher risk of developing a heart condition — like high cholesterol or high blood pressure — as well as links between cannabis and actual heart conditions, such as heart disease. 

But they found that all of the past studies were plagued by problems. Some were too small, others were too short-term, and others failed to study the right groups of people, such as those who would be the most at-risk for these conditions.

So the researchers came to a depressing conclusion: "Evidence examining the effect of marijuana on cardiovascular risk factors and outcomes ... is insufficient," they wrote.

That jibes with previous research on marijuana and the heart.

What we know about marijuana and heart health

Blair Gable/Reuters

There's plenty of reason to be concerned about how marijuana impacts our health. Yet in many areas, we simply lack enough comprehensive research to draw any conclusions.

Scientists know that using marijuana increases your heart rate by between 20 and 50 beats a minute for anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours. That sounds like it could be enough to impact heart function, but again, we need more research.

A large, recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found "insufficient evidence" to support or refute the idea that cannabis might increase the overall risk of a heart attack, though it also found some limited evidence that using the drug could be a trigger for the phenomenon.

Another study, albeit a very small one, found an increase in blood pressure — but only when regular pot users stopped using the drug, not before. That aligns with research from the Mayo Clinic, which suggests that using cannabis could result in decreased, not increased blood pressure.

With this in mind, Francesca Filbey, director of cognitive neuroscience research of addictive disorders at the Center for Brain Health, told Business Insider in August that future studies should assess a wider range of factors linked with cannabis use and heart health. That could include weight, BMI, and the use of other substances.

How one study came to such a stark conclusion

Given the limits of our knowledge about marijuana and heart health, how did one study come to such stark conclusions about the drug and our hearts? As it turns out, multiple factors muddled the picture, including the authors' decision to define "regular" marijuana users as anyone who'd ever tried weed.

iStock

For their study, the researchers looked at more than 1,200 people age 20 or older who had been recruited previously as part of a large and ongoing national health survey. One question on that survey was whether an individual had ever used marijuana. People who answered "yes" were classified as marijuana users; those who answered "no" were classified as nonusers. Researchers took that data and merged it with statistics on death from all causes pulled from the US National Center for Health Statistics.

A statistical analysis suggested that the people deemed marijuana users were 3.42 times as likely to die from hypertension, or high blood pressure, than those who said they had never used. That risk also appeared to rise by a factor of 1.04 with what the researchers labeled "each year of use."

That's a pretty stark finding. But in reality, more than half of Americans have tried cannabis, which would classify all of them as users in this study. Just a fraction of those people use it regularly, according to recent surveys.

In addition, the study was observational, meaning it followed a group of people over time as opposed to assigning specific groups to try specific interventions. That type of study cannot be used to conclude that there's a cause-and-effect relationship between two things, which the authors acknowledged in their paper.

Original author: Erin Brodwin

Original author: Fionna Agomuoh

On Tuesday, Anthony Noto, the man running Twitter under part-time CEO Jack Dorsey, resigned to take a CEO role at a fintech startup.Noto was credited for creating Twitter's growth strategy in video and was the person who knew Twitter more intimately than anyone.This can only be seen as a bad sign for the endlessly struggling internet company, says one top internet analyst.

Rumors had been swirling for days that Twitter's COO, Anthony Noto, was talking with fintech startup Social Finance (aka SoFi) to become its next CEO.

And on Tuesday, it happened. Two weeks before Twitter will report its fourth quarter and year-end financials, the news became official. Noto resigned from Twitter effective immediately. He will begin as SoFi's CEO on March 1.

It's a move that makes sense for Noto in many ways. Noto is an ambitious former Goldman Sachs banker who was widely known to be dreaming of a CEO role.

Noto was credited for designing Twitter's most recent strategy to drive growth: its expansion into video. Most insiders thought that he was hoping to become CEO of Twitter, if cofounder Jack Dorsey ever decided to stop being a part-time CEO and focus on his other company, Square. But Dorsey has shown no signs of that and so Noto has taken his final bow at Twitter.

But the news and the timing of it, so close to the release of Twitter's year-end quarter, is not a good sign at all for Twitter, says RBC Capital's Mark Mahaney. Mahaney is one of the gurus of internet stocks, and he's been bearish on Twitter for a while. 

"I don’t see how anyone could interpret this as a good thing for Twitter," Mahaney told Business Insider. "Twitter started out with a managerial hole, with the CEO part time. That gap has deepened."

Noto made it possible for Jack Dorsey to be a part time CEO

Anthony NotoAsa Mathat for Vox MediaAs we previously reported, Noto was the reason that Dorsey could be a part-time CEO in the first place. Noto was notorious for working nearly inhuman hours as well as for being a hard-charging, opinionated executive who was both intimidating and brilliant with all things numbers.

Beyond the management hole, Noto's departure is a red flag for other reasons: it highlights the question of whether Twitter will ever find a path to growth.

There was a glimmer of hope among investors in October after Twitter's third quarter earnings. Twitter sent shares soaring when management said Twitter was on track to turn a profit in the next quarter. This, thanks to the cost-cutting measures under Noto's watchful eye. The stock had been up about 40%, above $24 a share, since that earnings report.

And yet, at the same time, Twitter reported a year-over-year decline in revenues and an admission that it didn't really have as many monthly users as it said it had.  Analysts are projecting it will report yet another decline in revenue for the fourth quarter.

If Twitter was on the verge of rebound, Noto would have known

Noto is liked and respected on the Street, Mahaney says, and Noto had "the single best visibility into the fundamentals."

If Twitter was on the verge of "a big inflection point" that would make the stock jump, Noto would know it. "If he says, 'I’m leaving,' it makes you wonder if you, as an investor, should follow his footsteps," Mahaney says.

We don't know how much money Noto is leaving on the table by resigning from Twitter. But we do know that he was a very highly paid exec, mostly from stock grants. Between 2014 and 2016, Noto was granted about $100 million dollars worth of stock, on a varied vesting schedule, and he had a new set of performance grants in the wings for 2017 through 2019.

In other words, he definitely had a lot of wealth tied to the performance of Twitter's stock.

So, what will Twitter do now?

Without Noto the workhorse running the show, the board will likely face increasing investor pressure to get Dorsey to either come back full time or step aside and let them hire a CEO who will. It was already a constant topic for both Dorsey and Noto.

There's one more possibility for Twitter's future to consider. If Noto's leaving is a harbinger of things to come, and the stock drops low enough, Twitter may become an acquisition target again, Mahaney believes.

Original author: Julie Bort

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Business Insider

Apple released new updates for older versions of its Mac operating system to protect against the Meltdown and Spectre attacks.
The company had previously issued a patch for macOS High Sierra, the most recent version of its Mac operating system, but it put out a new update for High Sierra also.
The updates shouldn't cause the rebooting problems that some PC users experienced after installing similar fixes for Meltdown and Spectre.  

If you've got a Mac running an older version of Apple's computer operating system, you can now download a software patch to protect your device from the Meltdown and Spectre attacks.

Apple on Tuesday issued updates for macOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan, the two versions of its computer operating system that preceded macOS High Sierra, which the company released last fall. Although the company had previously released a fix for High Sierra to protect against Meltdown and Spectre, it also released a new update for that version of macOS on Tuesday to address the vulnerability that can be exploited by both of those attacks.

Intel on Monday warned users not to install its latest patches for Meltdown and Spectre, because those fixes can cause computers to reboot unexpectedly. However, an Apple representative said these latest updates for macOS and OS X don't include Intel's faulty code and shouldn't trigger the reboot problem.

The Spectre and Meltdown attacks are made possible by an underlying vulnerability related to a feature called speculative execution that's been used by nearly every computer chip found in PCs, tablets, and smartphones made over the last 20 years. The attacks, which became public earlier this month, could allow a malicious actor to exploit that vulnerability and get access to the secret data that's on a computer, including passwords. Intel chips, which underly not only most Windows PCs but Apple's Mac computers, are particularly vulnerable to the Meltdown attack.

Florence Fu/Tech Insider

Apple has another patch for Spectre in the works

To protect against those attacks, Mac users running OS X El Capitan should look for version 10.11.6 in the updates section of the App Store app on their computers. Those running macOS Sierra should look for version 10.12.6.  The newly released version of High Sierra is 10.13.3.

With the updates, Apple is protecting against Meltdown and one version of the Spectre attack, the company representative said. The faulty patches issued by Intel address another variation of the Spectre attack, but one that is more of concern to cloud computing service providers, the representative said. Apple computers aren't widely used in cloud providers' data centers; still, the company has a fix for that variant in the works, the representative said.

"Not to minimize the risk. We are still planning to issue a mitigation," the representative said.

Get the latest Intel stock price here.

Original author: Antonio Villas-Boas

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Inside Plenty's first farm in South San Francisco, California. Plenty

The vertical farming startup Plenty just announced that it plans to build 300 organic, indoor farms in or near Chinese cities. In late 2017, the company scored $200 million in the largest-ever ag-tech deal. The funding round was led by Softbank Ventures and included DCM Ventures as well as funds that invest on behalf of Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.  Due to rising concerns surrounding food safety, middle-class Chinese consumers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for organic produce.

In the past two decades, China has experienced several food scandals. Between 2001 and 2006, toxic mushrooms killed 148 people and poisoned over 500 others in Yunnan. In 2010, Hunan police shut down a large operation that produced "green beans" from dyed soybeans.

As a result, a growing number of Chinese residents are turning to organic produce, which is considered safer since its production is more regulated, according to The Guardian.

A Jeff Bezos-backed indoor farming company called Plenty will soon harvest some of this organic produce. But unlike traditional farms, it will grow crops on LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers, which do not require soil, pesticides, or even natural sunlight. The technique is called vertical farming. 

Plenty says it will build 300 vertical farms in or near major Chinese cities, where it will capitalize on the country's growing middle-class demand for organic produce. The first farm will open next year, Bloomberg reports. In Beijing and Shanghai, the company will also build centers where customers can taste produce.

To date, the Silicon Valley startup has raised $226 million. In July, $200 million came from a Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision in the largest ever ag-tech deal. The round included DCM Ventures as well as funds that invest on behalf of Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. 

In a past interview with Business Insider, Plenty CEO Matt Barnard said the company hopes to eventually sell its organic produce for the same price as traditional produce. Plenty plans to drive down operational costs by automating its growing processes as much as possible.

In the spring, Plenty will open a 100,000-square-foot farm in the greater Seattle, Washington area. The 100,000-square-foot warehouse facility will grow 4.5 million pounds of greens annually, which is enough to feed around 183,600 Americans, according to the USDA. The company also has a smaller non-production facility in Wyoming, where it has tested different growing processes for over 300 crops.

Original author: Leanna Garfield

"Mudbound." Netflix

Netflix netted eight Oscar nominations on Monday, surpassing its total haul from all previous years.  RBC analyst Mark Mahaney spoke to Business Insider about how Oscar hauls will help Netflix, but "may not be critical" for its success moving forward. 

 

Netflix grabbed a record eight Oscar nominations on Monday, signaling that the streaming service's film business has started to overcome what some critics have called an "anti-Netflix bias" in Hollywood and among Oscar voters. 

Netflix's critically acclaimed original drama "Mudbound" earned four nominations for the company, including nods for best supporting actress (Mary J. Blige) and best adapted screenplay (writer-director Dee Rees). The streaming service also earned three nominations for its documentaries "Icarus," "Strong Island," and "Heroin(e)," and one nod for the foreign language film "On Body and Soul."

In previous years, Netflix earned a total of seven Oscar nominations, dating back to its first nod for the 2014 documentary "The Square." Last year, Netflix grabbed three nominations for documentaries and won its first-ever Oscar for the documentary short "The White Helmets."

Netflix makes a big push into film

But the Academy has taken a while to warm up to the streaming service.

In 2016, critics cited the Oscars' snub of Netflix's critically acclaimed drama "Beasts of No Nation" as evidence that the industry was "turned off" by Netflix's business model, which debuts films on the streaming service simultaneously with theatrical releases.

"Dunkirk" director Christopher Nolan, for instance, called Netflix's film strategy "mindless" last year, while praising Amazon Studios for instituting a 90-day theatrical release window for films that it will later stream. 

Netflix's notable success with "Mudbound," however — its first non-documentary feature to earn an Oscar nod — comes amid a huge push for the company into the realm of original film. The streaming service has said it plans to release more than 80 original movies over the course of 2018.

But what do critical acclaim and awards season recognition really mean for the success of Netflix's original content moving forward?

RBC analyst Mark Mahaney spoke to Business Insider about how the streaming service will likely continue to prioritize audience numbers over critical acclaim as its barometer of success. 

Will Smith and Joel Edgerton in the fantasy thriller "Bright." Netflix

Critical success "may not be critical" 

Mahaney pointed to the commercial success of Netflix's critically panned, Will Smith-led original movie "Bright" as an example of how critical reception may not mean too much to Netflix. 

"Positive critical reviews and things like Oscar hauls I think are very helpful for the company," Mahaney said. "But I'm just struck by the fact that critical reviews may not be as critical as the market, and the evidence of that is the commercial success of 'Bright,' at least according to the company, versus the fact that it got relatively low ratings from the critics."

"Bright," a buddy-cop fantasy film, received a 26% "Rotten" rating from critics on the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes after its December 22 premiere. By contrast, the film's audience score on the site sits at an impressive 86% —  a figure that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently cited to suggest that critics of "Bright" were "pretty disconnected from the mass appeal."

Mahaney went on to predict that, despite Netflix's increased output of original films and the relative commercial success of "Bright," the streaming service will tend to prioritize original TV content over original movies.

"My guess is that they still spend more money on TV series versus film, because I think streaming lends itself so well to TV series," Mahaney said. "With TV series, it involves continuous watching, but over a period of time, and you can binge or not. But with film, there's just a two-hour installment, and that's it for a year or two. So it doesn't lend itself to some of the ease of use of streaming."

Original author: John Lynch

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Rochester, New York, did not make Amazon's short list, though the city thought it may have a shot. Shutterstock

Amazon narrowed its HQ2 search down to just 20 cities. This made people in some cities very happy. People in the losing cities, on the other hand, were left wondering what went wrong.  City officials and local columnists are looking inward after their cities unsuccessfully offered millions of dollars in incentives to Amazon.

A headline from the Charlotte Observer couldn't have put it any more succinctly: "Amazon's HQ2 snub leaves Charlotte wondering, 'What's wrong with our city?'"

Amazon has plans to invest $5 billion and bring up to 50,000 jobs to the city it chooses for its second headquarters. The e-commerce giant's call for proposals sent a frenzy down nearly every main street in North America last fall, and in total, 238 proposals from cities, towns, and regions were submitted.

Amazon has now narrowed it down to 20, and a few cities are understandably upset.

Cities that were not selected for Amazon's HQ2 short list are now turning inward, looking at what they offered Amazon and what they have to offer, period.

Charlotte was passed over in favor of fellow North Carolinian city Raleigh, and the loss has hurt the city's pride a bit, according to local officials quoted in the Charlotte Observer.

"Columbus, Ohio, is on there and not Charlotte? I might say that's a little surprising," Brian Leary, president of local development company Crescent Communities, told the Observer.

Another compared the city to shortlisted Indianapolis.

"When I look at Indianapolis and I look at Charlotte, I would have thought everything we had to offer would at least be equal, if not more," Fred Smith, professor of economics at Davidson College Fred Smith, told the Observer.

An editorial in Rochester, New York's newspaper, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, was even more harsh about the city and the chances it thought it had, saying the city "needs to face hard facts."

"We will never know whether the tech company took our bid for HQ2 as seriously as we allowed ourselves to imagine it did. We took ourselves seriously. We must continue to do so, but with even greater intensity. That means facing some hard facts that we tried to soften in our Amazon pitch," wrote the editorial board. 

Most cities did not get an answer from Amazon as to why their locale was not picked for the short list. Detroit did, however, get a bit of feedback from the company. 

"We were good but we weren't good enough on the talent front," Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, told the Detroit Free Press, highlighting Michigan's "brain drain." Graduates are often leaving the state to take jobs elsewhere, and Detroit hasn't been fully effective in attracting skilled new residents.

Some cities, like St. Louis, are looking on the bright side of not being picked and are trying to turn the momentum from the Amazon proposal into positive energy. Experts speculated to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it may have been the lack of growing population or international appeal that made Amazon shortlist smaller cities than St. Louis.

Sheila Sweeney, the CEO of the city's Economic Development Partnership, told the Post-Dispatch that the effort to woo Amazon was "not in vain."

"For the first time ever a real estate development was proposed for both sides of the river … that's never happened before. We realize the new way forward is to be regional for St. Louis," she said.

Houston officials seems to have a similar attitude.

"I believe this is a wake-up call for Houston," Bob Harvey, CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, which submitted the bid to Amazon,  said in a statement  to local media. "While there has been growing momentum in the innovation space over the last couple of years, this is a clear indication that we have much more work to do as a region to grow our digital economy."

Other cities aren't looking at themselves, however. They've already got their eyes on the next tech prize.

Original author: Dennis Green

Original author: Mark Matousek