Year: 2020

The European Parliament will temporarily allow electronic voting by email as MEPs are forced to work remotely during the coronavirus crisis.

A spokeswoman for the parliament confirmed today that an “alternative electronic voting procedure” has been agree for the plenary session that will take place on March 26.

“This voting procedure is temporary and valid until 31 July,” she added.

Earlier this month the parliament moved the majority of its staff to teleworking. MEPs have since switch to full remote work as confirmed cases of COVID-19 have continued to step up across Europe. Though how to handle voting remotely has generated some debate in and of itself.

“Based on public health grounds, the President decided to have a temporary derogation to enable the vote to take place by an alternative electronic voting procedure, with adequate safeguards to ensure that Members’ votes are individual, personal and free, in line with the provisions of the Electoral act and the Members’ Statute,” the EU parliament spokeswoman said today, when we asked for the latest on its process for voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The current precautionary measures adopted by the European Parliament to contain the spread of COVID-19 don’t affect legislative priorities. Core activities are reduced, but maintained precisely to ensure legislative, budgetary, scrutiny functions,” she added.

The spokeswoman confirmed votes will take place via email — explaining the process as follows: “Members would receive electronically, via email to their official email address, a ballot form, which would be returned, completed, from their email address to the relevant Parliament’s functional mailbox.”

“The results of all votes conducted under this temporary derogation would be recorded in the minutes of the sitting concerned,” she further noted.

Last week, ahead of the parliament confirming the alternative voting process, German Pirate Party MEP, Patrick Breyer, raised concerns about the security of e-voting — arguing that what was then just a proposal for MEPs to fill and sign a voting list, scan it and send it via email to the administration risked votes being vulnerable to manipulation and hacking.

“Such a manipulation-prone procedure risks undermining public trust in the integrity of Parliament votes that can have serious consequences,” he wrote. “The procedure comes with a risk of manipulation by hackers. Usually MEPs can send emails using several devices, and their staff can access their mailbox, too. Also it is easy to come by a MEP’s signature and scan it… This procedure also comes with the risk that personally elected and highly paid MEPs could knowingly allow others to vote on their behalf.”

“eVoting via the public Internet is inherently unsafe and prone to hacking, thus risks to erode public trust in European democracy,” he added. “I am sure powerful groups such as the Russian intelligence agency have a great interest in manipulating tight votes. eVoting makes manipulation at a large scale possible.”

Breyer suggested a number of alternatives — such as parallel postal voting, to have a paper back-up of MEPs’ e-votes; presence voting in EP offices in Member States (though clearly that would require parliamentarians to risk exposing themselves and others to the virus by traveling to offices in person); and a system such as “Video Ident”, which he noted is already used in Germany, where the MEP face identify in front of a webcam in a live video stream and then show their voting sheets to the camera.

He also suggested MEPs might not notice manipulations even if voting results were published — as looks to be the case with the parliament’s agreed procedure.

It’s not clear whether the parliament is applying a further back-up step — such as requiring a paper ballot to be mailed in parallel to an email vote. The parliament spokeswoman declined to comment in any detail when we asked. “All measures have been put in place to ensure the vote runs smoothly,” she said, adding: “We never comment on security measures.”

Reached for his response, Breyer told us: “My concerns definitely stand.”

However security expert J. Alex Halderman, a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan — who testified before the US Senate hearing into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Election — said e-voting where the results are public is relatively low risk provided MEPs check their votes have been recorded properly.

“Voting isn’t such a hard problem when it’s not a secret ballot, and I take it that how each MEP votes is normally public. As long as that’s the case, I don’t think this is a major security issue,” he told TechCrunch. “MEPs should be encouraged to check that their votes are correctly recorded in the minutes and to raise alarms if there’s any discrepancy, but that’s probably enough of a safeguard during these challenging times.”  

“All of this is in stark contrast to election for public office, which are conducted with a secret ballot and in which there’s normally no possibility for voters to verify that their votes are correctly recorded,” he added. 

NationBuilder probe closed

In further news related to the EU parliament the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) announced today that it’s closed an investigation into the former’s user of the US-based political campaign group, NationBuilder last year.

Back in November the EU’s lead data regulator revealed it had issued its first ever sanction of an EU institution by taking enforcement action over the parliament’s contract with NationBuilder for a public engagement campaign to promote voting in the spring election.

During the campaign the website collected personal data from more than 329,000 people, which was processed on behalf of the Parliament by NationBuilder. The EDPS found the parliament had contravened regulations governing how EU institutions can use personal data related to the selection and approval of sub-processors used by NationBuilder.

The contract has been described as coming to “a natural end” in July 2019, and the EDPS said today that all data collected has been transferred to the European Parliament’s servers’.

No further sanctions have been implemented, though the regulator said it will continue to monitor the parliament’s activities closely.

“Data protection plays a fundamental role in ensuring electoral integrity and must therefore be treated as a priority in the planning of any election campaign,” said EDPS, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, in a statement today. “With this in mind, the EDPS will continue to monitor the Parliament’s activities closely, in particular those relating to the 2024 EU parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, I am confident that the improved cooperation and understanding that now exists between the EDPS and the Parliament will help the Parliament to learn from its mistakes and make more informed decisions on data protection in the future, ensuring that the interests of all those living in the EU are adequately protected when their personal data is processed.”

At the time of writing the parliament had not responded to a request for comment.

If you weren’t playing games when Half-Life came out, it’s hard to drive home just how shocking a departure it was from what had come before. Though some familiar mechanics served as a base to build off of, the injection of elaborate scripted sequences that put you into the action, mature humor and genuinely engaging set-piece driven plot put Half-Life into its own special section of the stratosphere.

It’s not often that you can say that a product changes everything in its category from that moment on. Half-Life did that.

And then when Half-Life 2 debuted, it did it again with its method of delivery, incredible building tools and yes, inventive-as-hell gameplay.

Half-Life: Alyx does that again for VR, making such a direct impact that this will be a demarcation line forever in the way we craft immersive virtual experiences.

Alyx begins in the period of time between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, taking place mostly just before the action in the latter. The world is familiar, as are most of the cast of characters (along with some bespoke new additions). Given their high-fidelity look and carefully stepped variety, even newbies to the Half-Life universe should be kept entertained as they encounter new threats.

Those of you returning will find a large part of the new experience in inhabiting the same virtually physical space as headcrabs, barnacles and combine forces. Let me tell you, seeing the underbelly mouth of a ‘crab flying towards your face in VR versus on your monitor definitely hits different.

That sense of presence that is so pivotal to VR is something Valve leaned into hard with Alyx. You are rewarded for treating environments and encounters as a place to pretend to be rather than progressing through. There are a variety of tricks that Alyx uses to make you comfortable existing in this world, not the least of which is the presence of a voice in your ear in the form of an engineer named Russell.

Played hilariously by Rhys Darby, Russell’s voice serves to mitigate issues that many VR aficionados may recognize. One of VR’s primary powers is that of embodiment — making the experience of being there so convincing that you generate real memories of presence. Along with that, though, comes isolation. Long VR sessions can make you feel cut off from reality, and horror experiences, especially, can become overwhelming. Having Russell there offering humanity and humor to punctuate the darkness of this supremely dystopian environment is a fantastic choice. You’re a solo operator, but you’re not alone.

The environmental intensity of Alyx is well paced, too. An intermix of heart pounding horror with moments of harsh beauty and humor can often be a difficult cocktail.

“There’s a lot of different things that we give you the opportunity to do that give, I would argue, different types of players, different things to go deep on,” says Half-Life:Alyx character animator Christine Phelan. “With intentionality, we definitely spent a bunch of time trying to figure out what is that line?”

Phelan notes that when there are horror elements, VR is well known to be an intense experience, and modulating that was key to not alienating players. Rather than a relentless onslaught, you are brought up and down.

I checked my Apple Watch heart rate data over the past week that I’ve been playing Alyx and, sure enough, there were the spikes in rate during my play sessions to prove the impact of those choices. Some of the more intense segments play like the best horror action movies you’ve seen — Aliens comes to mind, as well as more recent fare like A Quiet Place.

Keeping you engaged in that environment, of course, means that control schemes are incredibly critical. Valve’s choices on Alyx reflect a desire to make sure that the widest array of people can experience the game. They offer all of the accepted travel modes including teleporting, a continuous travel mode like walking and my favorite, shift — a sort of zooming snap that keeps a sense of context to your movement.

Personally, I am unable to walk continuously in VR without wanting to toss my cookies, and Alyx is no different here. In fact, the game takes a lot of pains to make sure it moves the character involuntarily as little as possible, even offering a ‘toggle barnacle lift’ setting to avoid the motion sickness some people may feel being virtually hoisted in the air. A wise choice as there’s a lot going on in Alyx already, with some encounters forcing you to move rapidly through the environment to combat enemies or solve puzzles.

The sheer accessibility of Alyx’s options speaks to the desire by the team to make sure it accommodated as many people as possible. Standing, seated, either hand, choice of dominant eye, room-scale or not — if there’s a way to play a VR game, Valve has you covered.

One of the biggest effective bits is the presence of Alyx’s hands in the game world. Because most people interact with the world via their hands (though not all), Phelan notes that you get a lot ‘for free’ when you make those the primary interaction method. People already know what to expect when they do things with their hands and at that point your job just becomes to make them act exactly as you’d expect in as many situations as possible.

And they do. Your hands realistically grasp, tap, push and poke the environment (and there is a lot of environment with the most interactive objects I’ve ever seen in a VR game).

The hands even adapt to the contours of things, curving or turning corners as you slide them across objects. The fingers are used to tell you that you really can’t interact with this, but you can feel it — this is not an action point for you. But then, when there is an action point, the hand naturally curves around something, and you get the message “Oh, yeah, I can grab this.”

A lot has been said about the Knuckles controllers that come with the Valve Index headset, and they’re great. But the marquee feature for me is the soft hand strap that keeps them attached to you. This frees you up to make grabbing and grasping motions with your whole hand, as you would normally.

I have the Vive controllers, the Oculus controllers, and the Knuckles. Certainly, the Knuckles, with the individual finger control, absolutely locks it in, I think, for people on the hand interaction. If every company doesn’t dupe the work that Valve has done with these, they’re dumb.

“I think the Knuckles and the Index broadly is essentially Valve’s attempt to say, “This is pointing towards a heightened VR experience. This is what we think of as a really great direction for this hardware to go,” says Valve’s Chris Remo, who also added that they did a lot of work to make sure all the compatible VR hardware turned out a great play experience. “It was obviously pretty important that this wasn’t a Valve Index game. It’s a VR game. We genuinely tried our best to support those features, [including] all the finger tracking the Index does on the Knuckles controllers and everything else.”

A lot of the work on interactions mirrors what other creatives have done in VR, but polishes it up a level. And a lot of that work is hidden unless you look very hard for it. Doors open in the direction of your hand’s travel, for instance. Magically outwardly opening doors that open inward is a perfect affordance. Most people will never notice. The people that care will, and that’s fine, but most people will just have a better time of going through this way versus that way without fussing too much.

The gravity gloves shown off prominently in the gameplay trailers are another such affordance. They neatly avoid the VR problem of people constantly inching out or down and ramming into things outside of their play area while trying to grab objects on the ground or inside containers. They also give the player the ability to quickly utilize the environment to fend off enemies or distract them with a speed and agility that you’d never be able to realize otherwise.

Call it fate or design that Half-Life 2’s gravity gun offered the perfect in-world explanation, but it works incredibly here. Grabbing a gas mask off the ground and attaching it to your face, fending off a headcrab with a trash can lid, throwing a brick to stagger a zombie, it’s all possible with the Russells.

“You can move through a space just as quickly physically, but people do end up taking longer, because you’re naturally invited to do so,” says Remo. “You can look around something in a physical way that just, there’s no equivalent to that in a non VR game. It also meant that you can get up close to props in a way that isn’t really possible or feasible as much in a non VR game, which meant that all that stuff has to actually hold up and be worthwhile.”

I can vouch for the time put in. At one point I grabbed a random half-crushed water bottle laying in a corner and looked inside the mouth to find the interior dimples of the bottom lovingly rendered. One person’s trash, etc.

There’s so many other things that I could talk about here. The use of spatial audio anchored in what seem to be gaussian spheres that attach sound and (incredible) music to environments, with nested encounter scores inside. The dynamic loot system that keeps the balance of the resources you have available to you tuned so that the game remains fun. The encounters that take those early scripted scenes in Half-Life and plus them to create a symphony that taxes and rewards the player for creative and thoughtful gameplay.

It’s not so much that Valve has executed One Weird Trick for making VR good. Many of these major ideas has been tried by one team or another over the past few years. But the execution has never been more precise and thoughtful. One after another the good choices keep coming — and the whole adds up to something truly special and bar-setting.

Inventive, clever and completely engaging, Half-Life: Alyx is the first masterwork of VR gaming.

But that could actually be understating its eventual impact on VR, if that’s possible. Though the template for what a truly A-list title looks like has now been truly sketched, it has always been Valve’s willingness to share its tools that has made the most impact on the gaming scene at large.

That’s why I’m looking forward to an eventual SDK. Hammer 2 is easily one of the best game building tools ever created. Valve is already going to ship Source 2 tools for building new VR levels in Alyx, but as fans of history will remember, the level building scene really took off once the deeper tools to craft a game became available. The ripple effect on the industry will be felt long after people have dissected every sliver of what makes this game so fun. You can trace a major portion of the $1B e-sports industry directly back to mods enabled by Valve being generous with their internal tools.

Imagine what that kind of impact looks like for VR, a field that has been experimenting like mad but has no real coda of best practices for building. It could be massive and though members of the team have said that they’re not currently planning to release an SDK, my hopes are high.

Until then, we have Alyx, and it is good.

Fake news about the novel coronavirus disease is a rampant problem across our social timelines. Think misinformation about treatments, symptoms and anecdotes tainted with racism and xenophobia.

As scientists and health professionals are still scrambling to find a cure, and even contain the outbreak, falsehoods can resonate more than they might during a time of confidence and stability. 

New Jersey, which has roughly 2,000 confirmed cases of COVID19, has partnered with New York-based Yext to get accurate and up to date information out to residents. Yext partners with businesses to send verified answers to consumers, and, in this case, verified information about the outbreak to residents. 

The New Jersey Office of Innovation and Yext created an online portal tacking live state updates and orders, testing information and assistance information for businesses and employees. It also has a hub that presents the most researched questions, like “how can I prevent myself from getting the virus” and gives answers from scientists. 

If you scroll to the bottom of the portal, there’s an interactive map detailing COVID-19 cases by county. Beyond the portal, residents can find information through Yext integrations with Google, Bing, Alexa, Siri, Apple Maps, Uber, Lyft, Facebook and more. 

Yext is working with other state agencies and businesses right now and offering its services pro bono, after seeing an uptick of users searching for COVID-19 answers on its platform. The New Jersey online portal was initiated and launched in five days, per a blog post.

This isn’t the first example of fighting misinformation that we’ve seen. WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messenger system, has become a hub for misinformation spread through viral texts. This weekend, to help people “prepare, not panic,” India launched at chatbot on the popular platform to create awareness about COVID-19 (and my mom, who is in New Jersey but lives on WhatsApp, says she received messaging about it).  

Twitter responded to fake news threats by prioritizing its blue checks, its verification badge, for experts and professionals around COVID-19 so users can know when facts are coming from a trustworthy source. 

It also broadly banned any tweets about COVID-19 that could help the virus spread. Ideally, this would target tweets with false claims about the outbreak. Twitter’s efforts proved weak when a tweet from Elon Musk about how children are not vulnerable to coronavirus did not get deleted. 

We’re also seeing efforts from the CDC and WHO to make sure everyone is informed on best practices during this scary time. The flurry of efforts of different organizations, both private and public, comes to show that while washing hands is an important tip to remember, our education, when accurate, most definitely shouldn’t stop there.

Over the last five-plus years of my podcast, I’ve turned down a number of interview offers with artists who weren’t able to meet face to face. I know a lot of folks who do great podcasts remotely, and I’ve even done a few (relatively okay) ones myself. But there’s really no replacement for being able to do an interview face to face. So much nuance is lost amongst the cloud compression algorithms.

Over the last few weeks, however, it has become increasingly clear that the option won’t be available for while, as we adjust to this new normal. I’ve spent some of the downtime assessing the options, and the best way forward, both for my own (again, relative) sanity and, hopefully, to provide some comfort for folks who are similarly stuck at home for the foreseeable future.

Couple of caveats here. First, this one. This event is going to fundamentally alter a number of aspects of our lives for a while. Things like the way we work, socialize and consume will be different for a while. We’re also going to have so, so many podcasts. Like a stupid number of podcasts from bored people attempting to be bored together. I’ve always felt that more podcasts is generally a net positive, but this event is certainly going to test that hypothesis.

Second is the usual caveat of this series: This is what works best for my current situation. Your mileage may vary.

One of the things I’ve realized in all of this is that people are pretty forgiving. Expectations shift a bit when you can flip on CNN and see conversations with pundits on bad webcams through spotty Skype connections. Suddenly a low-fidelity video podcast doesn’t seem so bad. Even so, you still want to present the best product you can, even in far less than ideal circumstances.

One of the nice things about this gig is all of the hardware that comes through for testing. For those who don’t have the means to pay for pricier studio options, there are now a number of solid USB microphone options on the market. Blue’s stuff is generally decent quality for most of your podcasting and remote meeting needs, but a number of different companies have entered the market as well, as podcasting has exploded.

Currently I’m using the AKG Lyra. I’m pretty satisfied with the sound quality here. It’s priced about the same as the Blue Yeti and $100 cheaper than the Yeti Pro. The design is pretty eye-catching, though for my set up, it’s entirely out of frame. The controls on the mic are simple, a definite plus for those looking to plug and play. Lights on the front clearly indicate which of the four patterns (front, front and back, tight stereo, wide stereo) you’re using. I’m sure tens of thousands of podcasts have suffered sound issues from people with decent USB mics who simply have the thing in the wrong mode.

I also highly recommend buying a clip on windscreen. The one pictured above is the EJT Upgraded Microphone Pop Filter. It has a small adjustable vise grip on the side that connects to a wide range of models. It seems like something minor, but those popped Ps make a bigger difference that you’d think while editing podcasts.

Honorable mention goes out to the powerful little Rode NT-USB Mini. It’s got surprisingly great sound for its size — though less surprising coming from a company like Rode. At $99, this has replaced the Blue Raspberry as my favorite low-cost, ultra-portable mic. I fully plan to make it a fixture in my suitcase when traveling is an option again. Also worth pointing out is the clever magnetic stand that pops up to reveal threads for mounting atop a mic stand.

I am still using one important piece of Blue gear, however. I really prefer a pair of over-ear headphones for this purpose, and the Mo-Fi are big, solid and comfortable, with large earbuds that block ambient sound (I live in a New York apartment building, mind). For most intents and purposes, whatever headphones you have lying around should work, but if you plan to do this for a while, I recommend investing in a solid pair of headphones.

I’ve been using the webcam built into my Mac for video podcasts. Again, people are pretty forgiving. I do, however, highly recommend doing some video tests before going live. For starters, figure out what’s in-frame. If you have the ability to move your computer around, find an aesthetically pleasing background. But what’s just as — or perhaps even more — import is lighting.

Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my setup. The current is… well, “jury-rigged” is probably the nicest way to say it:

Yes, it’s a small bedside lamp hung from a wall stud above my computer. Yes, you can see it in my glasses’ reflection when you watch the videos.

I’ve been using a handful of different options on the software side of things. Zencastr continues to be an excellent option for audio only. The software is custom built for podcasts and includes some excellent touches like simultaneously uploading individual tracks to the cloud. The company also greatly reduced the restrictions on their free tier to encourage amateur podcasting during this pandemic.

For another (unreleased) podcast I’m currently working on, we’re all using Skype and recording locally on Audacity. One of my co-hosts had too many connectivity issues with Zencaster, so we’re doing it more old-school.

This situation has found me playing around with video podcasts in earnest for the first time ever. I’ve been messing around with a number of different formats. My favorite so far is a combination of Zoom and YouTube Live. You’ll have to pay for a premium account to stream directly to YouTube or Facebook. It’s $14 a month for the lowest tier. I plan to keep subscribing at least through the end of the pandemic.

Zoom is great in that it lets you schedule a time and everyone else just has to log in. If you have a premium subscription, attendees can also dial in, in addition to the full webcam treatment. I recommend doing a couple of unlisted trial videos to make sure everything is up and running before you go live for the world. Also, have attendees call in a few minutes before the listed start time to make sure everything is working for everyone.

You’ll need to give yourself at least 24 hours for Zoom to connect to your Google/YouTube account, so I recommend doing that a couple of days in advance so you have time to troubleshoot.

Once you’re live, YouTube’s studio makes it easy to monitor the stream, comments and the like. I generally just set it to gallery mode to keep everyone on screen the entire time, save for musical performances, when I switch over to the single camera. Unfortunately, the watermark is present, unless you upgrade to a higher tier, but otherwise it does the trick. When you’re done, there’s a basic editor on board to trim the beginning and end of the broadcast.

These are, perhaps, not the most elegant solutions, but, again, people tend to be pretty forgiving about this stuff in the current climate. Sometimes they’re just happy to have someone keep them company — even if it’s only virtually.

Tech companies are donating supplies and adjusting priorities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an activist investor takes three seats on the Box board and aircraft taxi company Lilium raises $240 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 23, 2020.

1. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft CEOs detail their companies’ efforts to combat coronavirus pandemic

Over the weekend, the CEOs of Amazon, Apple and Microsoft all shared updates regarding some aspects of their companies’ ongoing COVID-19 efforts, which range from donations of medical supplies and personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare workers to software projects that help track and analyze the global spread.

For example, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared on Twitter that the company has been attempting to source necessary supplies that are needed for healthcare workers both in the U.S. and Europe, and that the company is providing “millions of masks” for this purpose. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said the company’s warehouse and logistics operations will now focus on essential items, including daily household staples, baby and medical supplies.

2. Activist investor Starboard Value taking three Box board seats as involvement deepens

At the same time, two long-time Box investors and allies, Rory O’Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners and Josh Stein from DFJ, will be retiring from the board and not seeking re-election at the annual stockholder’s meeting in June.

3. Lilium raises another $240M to design, test and run an electric aircraft taxi service

Lilium, a Munich-based startup that is designing and building vertical take-off and landing aircraft with speeds of up to 100 km/h, eventually plans to run in its own taxi fleet. It is deploying its latest round of funding to continue developing its aircraft and to start building manufacturing facilities for an expected launch date in 2025.

4. Uber, Ola suspend all rides in India’s capital

The companies have suspended all ride operations in Delhi until March 31. They said the move was in compliance with the local state government’s lockdown order in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

5. Corporate venture business strategies that work

Bill Taranto, president at Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, lays out four business strategies that he says have ensured the firm’s scale and staying power. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. The CDC launches a ‘coronavirus self-checker’ bot called Clara for people in the United States

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced a bot over the weekend to help people make decisions about what to do if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19. Called Clara, the “coronavirus self-checker” was created in partnership with CDC Foundation and — speaking of Microsoft — the Azure Healthcare Bot service.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

Social distancing isn’t stopping the TechCrunch team from cranking out podcasts. Equity has a full episode about fundraising during a recession and a Monday news roundup that discusses a new $116 million funding round for Cazoo. And on Original Content, we’ve got episodes reviewing Hulu’s “Hillary” documentary and the Apple TV+ reboot of “Amazing Stories.”

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Amazon is making a selection of family-friendly and kids programming available for free streaming on Prime Video, as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis which has people trapped at home. The content is available to all Amazon customers, and includes a mix of Amazon Original kids and family shows as well as select third-party family movies and TV series licensed from studio partners.

Amazon says it’s continuing to work with content partners to widen the selection over time.

At launch, the U.S. version of the free service includes the following Amazon Originals: “Click, Clack, Moo: Christmas at the Farm,” “Big Diaries,” “Costume Quest,” “Creative Galaxy,” “Danger and Eggs,” “Dangerous Book for Boys,” “Gortimer Gibbons Life on Normal Street,” “If you Give a Mouse a Cookie,” “Jessy and Nessy,” “Just Add Magic,” “Just Add Magic: Mystery City,” “Little Big Awesome,” “Lost in Oz,” “Niko and the Sword of Light,” “Pete the Cat,” “Sigmund and the Sea Monster,” “The Snowy Day,” “The Stinky and Dirty Snow,” “The Kicks,” “Tumble Leaf,” and “Wisenpoof.”

Among the licensed content in the U.S., you’ll find: “Arthur,” “Bali,” “Caillou,” “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Design Squad,” “Dinosaur Train,” “FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman,” “Kraft’s Creatures,” “Martha Speaks,” “Nature Cat,” “Odd Quad,” “Peep and the Big Wide World,” “Peg + Cat,” “Postcards from Buster,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Ready Jet Go!,” “Wild Kratts,” “WordGirl,” “WorldWorld,” “Zoboomafoo,” “Rugrats All Grown Up,” and “Knight Squad.”

Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that Amazon Original kids and family TV series will be available for free worldwide, but licensed content will vary by country.

The majority of the content, at present, is aimed at the preschool crowd up to younger school-agers. The selection doesn’t include recently released movies or other popular G-rated or PG-rated box office hits that parents will also enjoy. But the offering will help parents who are struggling to work from home and using the TV as a babysitter of sorts to keep little ones occupied.

Typically, Amazon makes free TV and movies available only to Prime subscribers, as one of the many perks of Amazon’s Prime membership program. But in this case, consumers will only need to create a free Amazon.com account, if they don’t already have one, in order to watch the free programs.

Amazon isn’t the first streamer to add free content to help families staying in quarantine and self-isolating during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Last week, Sling TV launched free streaming that included news and entertainment, as well as kids TV. Hulu added free live TV news to its on-demand service on Friday. Elsewhere, studios are breaking the theatrical window to deal with ticket sale losses as theaters close down. NBCU recently said it was bringing “The Hunt,” “The Invisible Man,” and “Emma,” to home viewers.

Disney, meanwhile, is making its own movies available early as well, including through its streaming service, Disney+, where both “Frozen II” and “Onward” are arriving ahead of schedule. (“Frozen II” is live now. “Onward” arrives on April 3).

Amazon says the new free programs will be available on the Prime Video app, which is a free download on  compatible smart TVs, mobile devices, Fire TV, Fire TV stick, Fire tablets, Apple TV, game consoles, Chromecast or via Prime Video on the web.

Google Cloud today announced the beta launch of Game Servers, a managed service that provides game developers with the usual backend services for running their games, including multi-player games, in the company’s cloud. It’s worth stressing that these are not game streaming servers but solely meant to make it easier for game developers to build, scale and manage the backend services for their games.

The service sits on top of the Agones open-source game server, a project Google and Ubisoft first announced in 2018, and the Kubernetes container orchestration platform. As Google Cloud product manager Scott Van Woudenberg also told me, the team is also reusing some parts of Anthos, Google’s service for managing multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters. And while Game Servers can currently only run on the Google Kubernetes Engine, the plan is to allow for hybrid and multi-cloud support later this year.

Quite a few gaming companies have already built their own on-premises server fleets, so just like in the enterprise, having hybrid-cloud capabilities is a must-have for a tool like this. Google will also make it easy for developers who already use Agones outside of Game Servers today to bring those servers into the same managed Game Servers ecosystem by registering them with the Game Servers API.

As Van Woudenberg noted, virtually every game now needs some kind of cloud backend, be that for multi-player features, match-making or keeping persistent game stats, for example. That’s true for indie developers and major game studios. Game Servers, ideally, will make it easier for these companies to scale their clusters up and down as needed. Game Servers also provides for A/B testing and canary tests, and in future updates, it will include integrations with the Open Match matchmaking framework.

To get started, developers still have to containerize their game servers. For those companies that already use Agones, that’s a pretty straightforward exercise, Van Woudenberg said. Others, though, need a bit more help with that and Google is working with partners to walk them through this.

Zillow said Monday it will temporarily stop buying homes in all 24 markets where it operates in response to public health orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest real estate startup to shift how it operates as the disease caused by coronavirus continues to spread.

Zillow said it decided to pause making offers to sellers after several counties and states, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, New York and Nevada, implemented emergency orders requiring people to stay home and all non-essential business activities, including some real-estate related activities, to stop.

Zillow follows action from other real estate startups such as Opendoor and Redfin to temporarily pause making offers on homes.

“We plan to restore Zillow Offers full operations once health concerns pass and local health orders are lifted,” Zillow Group CEO and co-founder Rich Barton said in a statement. “In the meantime, we are working to support our customers and partners in these uncertain times when home has never been more important.”

The company started to slow its pace of buying homes last month, while accelerating sales in the quarter, Barton said. Zillow’s inventory is now 1,860 homes, a 31% decline from 2,707 homes at the end of 2019.

The company said it will continue to market and sell homes through “Zillow Offers,” and will temporarily suspend plans to open additional Zillow Offers markets. Zillow also halted open houses in all markets, beginning last week.

We have a strong balance sheet and cash position, and are taking proactive steps to reduce spending to offset the important financial support we’re giving our industry partners so we may continue to best serve our mutual customers,” added Barton.

Planet 13 is located blocks of the Las Vegas Strip and holds the title as the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. But it’s much more than just a storefront. There’s a lot to the 115,000 square foot facility including entertainment, restaurants, and cannabis processing equipment where the company makes edibles and drinks. This is a destination Vegas-style.

In this video we take a backstage tour into this cannabis superstore.

Over the weekend, Apple introduced the first two episodes of its new Apple TV+ show, “Oprah Talks COVID-19,” for free viewing. In the first episode, Oprah Winfrey interviews actor Idris Elba, who recently tested positive for coronavirus, as well as his wife, Sabrina Dhowre, who is also positive. In the second episode, Oprah talks to longtime friend and supporter, Reverand Wintly Phipps about the pandemic.

The interviews are conducted over FaceTime video calls with guests and are meant to offer hope and thought leadership, Oprah explained on Twitter.

“Like millions of people all over the world, I’ve been staying safer at home for over a week now. I know a lot of people are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, & uncertain,” Oprah wrote in a tweet. “[Because] of that, I want to offer some hope & gather thought leaders & people going through it to add some perspective,” she said.

In her interview with Elba, they talk about his decision to go public and his wife’s decision to quarantine with him, plus the result of her test. The shows have a more inspirational tone, compared with traditional news interviews.

“I think we all lose as human beings if we just think of this as a physical virus. I think it’s here to teach us, show us something about ourselves, as a world. This is a moment for our humanity to either rise or not,” Oprah says, in one episode.

Though the majority of Apple TV+ programming is only available on a subscription basis, this COVID-19 show is available for free.

It can be watched across platforms, including via the Apple TV app for Mac, iPad, iPhone, tv.apple.com, and Apple TV, as well as through the Apple TV+ app for streaming platforms, or via AirPlay-enabled TVs.

The program is one of several Oprah is involved with for Apple TV+.

In 2018, Oprah and Apple announced a multi-year partnership on original content for the Apple TV+ streaming service. That has already resulted in an Apple TV+ show that brings back Oprah’s Book Club as a series of author interviews. Another show, produced in partnership with Prince Harry and focused on mental health, has yet to arrive. A third, a documentary about sexual assault in the music industry, was canceled.

This new show, put together quickly in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis and using lower-production values, is the first show of its kind on Apple TV+, where the content is typically highly produced and made available in 4K. Apple hasn’t said how many episodes will arrive in total, but this is a unique situation.