For the digital media industry, 2024 was a year characterized by ongoing disruption and challenges, balanced by emerging opportunities for resilience and growth.
For many digital publishers and media brands, much of last year was spent modernizing core infrastructure and systems (e.g., CMS upgrades, dynamic paywalls, authorization systems), improving site performance (e.g., core web vitals and SEO) and optimizing subscription strategies.
Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.
The Oscars of porn and the industry’s largest trade show will begin in one week, on January 22 at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas. Inside, adult performers, producers, directors and crew will find out whether they’ve won the prestigious AVN Award in categories including “Best All-Girl Group Sex Scene” and “Best Big Butt Movie or Collected Release,” but outside, hospitality workers are picketing for a better union contract. It’s a massive week for the adult industry, but porn workers are conflicted about crossing the picket line, with many choosing to sit this one out entirely.
The Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) and the Adult Video Network Awards, collectively often referred to as AVN, is expected to bring more than 45,000 attendees to Vegas for three days of signings and meet-and-greets for fans, panels and programming about the adult industry, and booths for hundreds of brands, studios, and sex toys. It’s also the biggest event of the year for the industry’s indie performers, who come out to shoot content and network, spending weeks and months planning agendas and setting up unofficial parties and meetups. The show has been going for decades—since 1998 when it shared space and dates with the Consumer Electronic Show, and later at the Hard Rock Hotel when vendors and performers were forced out of CES and started their own event a few weeks and a couple blocks away.
Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165, Nevada affiliates of UNITE HERE, represent 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno according to their website. They’ve been on open-ended strike since November, and are fighting for a new five-year contract for 700 workers. Union representatives said last month that the latest offer from Virgin Hotels Las Vegas was a 30-cent-a-year wage increase, which they rejected.
Virgin Hotels, formerly the Hard Rock before renovations and a rebrand in 2020, was AVN’s first home when it split from CES’ dates and venue in 2011 (AVN became its own event in 1998 but shared space and time with the mainstream electronics show, where attendees would drift from one to the other). Today, AVN is actually multiple events, including the AEE and the awards but also the Adult Novelty Expo (ANE), interNEXT Expo, GayVN Awards Show, and the “O” Awards. In 2020, when the hotel reopened, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas CEO Richard Bosworth called AVN and other conferences “very cherished clients.”
🪧 @VirginHotelsLV ON STRIKE! Hospitality workers are pushing to win a union contract. Virgin Las Vegas workers are strong and they will stay out on strike until they win a contract. ATTN: Customers: Support workers & DON'T cross picket line.
Performer Electra Rayne told me on Monday she’s still planning to boycott the event as long as the strike is ongoing. She corresponded with the Culinary Union, and confirmed with them in an email she posted to X that striking workers are asking people to refrain from patronizing the venue in solidarity, which the union has since said publicly in statements.
“Thankfully I'm local so it's not like I spent a ton of money on travel or anything, and I'm supposed to go sign at the booth for my agent who has been super understanding about me needing to cancel should the strike be ongoing (which it seems it will be),” Rayne said. “I'm bummed to not see my fans, but the really sad part is that I was in a feature that's up for multiple awards this year, and I won't be able to celebrate that at the awards with the cast. We worked so hard on that movie and I'm so proud to have been a part of it, it's a really bummer to not get to participate in that moment.”
Other people in the industry are planning to attend despite the strike, but still find the decision difficult. “It saddens me to hear that Virgin is not paying their workers a fair wage, as that is something everyone deserves. With that said, I will still be attending AVN as it is the biggest convention of the year for my industry and I do have agreements and obligations that were arranged far ahead of these strikes,” performer Leya Falcon told me. “I do find it quite disturbing to hear that some of those on strike are ‘allegedly’ harassing and sometimes even following in an intimidating manner those that decide to enter the property as we have nothing to do with their employment situation, we are simply doing our job, which to be fair, does not always pay fairly either. [The Culinary Union did not respond to a request for comment on this alleged harassment, but we will update if we hear back.] Just as they are working to care for their families, we are doing the same and we should not be bullied for it, especially in this economy. I do hope that they can see the other side of the coin here, much as we do see theirs, and understand that none of us are against them receiving fair pay, we are simply doing what we need to do to provide for our families as not all of us have the luxury to just decide to sit this one out.”
Performer London River wrote on X that she would also still attend. “I likely can’t pull out of my commitments to AVN without experiencing losses. Considering that, I will be donating a percentage of my profits from the event to the strike fund,” she wrote, linking to a donation page for their fund. Striking workers are paid $500 a week out of this fund, a representative for Local 226 told me.
“Performers should not cross picket lines!”
There is a lot to unpack here. Many performers and independent production companies have invested a significant amount of money into attending the AVN expo. And most of that money cannot be refunded which means that we stand to suffer…
AVN declined to comment, but last week, it launched a FAQ page for attendees of the event. “The hotel has assured us that the strike will not impact the AVN Expo and Awards. Contingency measures are in place to maintain a memorable guest experience and exceptional service during the event,” the page says.
On January 9, the Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG) issued a statement about the strike: “As the union for performers in the adult industry, care for the safety and well-being of our workers is paramount to our mission,” they wrote. “We feel this for not only our members and other workers in the adult industry but for all workers, regardless of their jobs. As union representatives, we support the sacrifices made by workers on strike, fighting for better working conditions. The officers of APAG voted unanimously to support our fellow union workers in Culinary Workers Local 226, and we will not cross their picket line in a show of solidarity.”
APAG said it “strongly encourages” members to avoid crossing the picket line, as well as cancelling reservations at the hotel and contacting AVN, Virgin Hotels, and companies they were set to sign with at the event to express their concerns.
And on Saturday, marking day 58 of the strike, APAG members joined Local 226 workers and their families for a march from the Las Vegas Strip to Virgin Hotels, blaring vuvuzelas and holding signs referencing Virgin Las Vegas’ contract negotiation offer of an estimated 30 cents an hour in wage increases.
“The Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG)’s decision to stand with Culinary Union strikers and honor the picket line at Virgin Las Vegas demonstrates unity, and the Culinary Union applauds the unwavering solidarity shown by the APAG and their members,” Ted Pappageorge, Secretary-Treasurer for the Culinary Union, said in a statement. “Workers across industries share the same fight for dignity, fair pay, respect, and protections on-the-job, and Culinary Union is proud to stand with APAG in solidarity as strikers continue to take on a billionaire-owned company that refuses to treat workers fairly. APAG’s support sends a powerful message: When workers stand together, we are unstoppable. To APAG members and all customers choosing not to cross the picket line – thank you for standing with workers on strike, with your continued support we will win.”
Last week, Pornhub announced that its team is canceling its upcoming trips to AVN and adult industry event XBIZ LA due to the strike in Vegas, and in Los Angeles, the wildfire crisis that’s required many LA residents to evacuate to hotels. “Unfortunately, this means our scheduled in-person events and workshops are no longer going on as planned. We are working closely with XBIZ to host our scheduled workshop virtually,” they wrote in a post on X. “We're so disappointed we won't be able to get face time with those of you who were planning to attend, and looking forward to seeing you all again soon.”
If workers don’t receive a fair contract soon, AVN won’t be the only event where attendees will have to choose between staying home or crossing a picket line. There are 11 other trade shows and events set to take place at Virgin Hotels in the coming weeks, including the Fancy Food Show, World of Concrete Expo, Academic Surgical Congress, CHAMPS Trade Show, and Kitchen and Bath Industry Show.
Sponsored by CardPointers: The best way to maximize your credit card rewards. 9to5Mac Daily listeners can exclusively save 30% and get a $100 Savings Card.
CES 2025 was a whirlwind of a time. It is the only convention in the world where you can see the future of the toothbrush industry right next to a booth all about robot vacuums with robotic arms coming out of them. Everyone brand now has some sort of AI assistant or smartglasses or health wearable or 1000W GaN charger that can charge 18 different laptops at full speed (A bit of an exaggeration). However, through all that noise, a few products and brands stood out to me regarding Apple-related products and accessories. Here are 5 of the best products I saw at CES.
Drake’s ongoing legal battle with his label, Universal Music Group, has escalated. The artist filed a lawsuit in federal court today, accusing UMG of harming his reputation and endangering him for profit. The suit stems from the diss track “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, another UMG artist. Drake’s legal complaint also again accuses UMG of using bots on Spotify and other streaming platforms, and payola to make the song more popular.
“On May 4, 2024, UMG approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him,” the complaint reads. “Even though UMG enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations against Drake were false, UMG chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
Image: Aubrey Drake Graham vs. UMG Recordings
Drake accuses UMG of using bots to drive up listens and views, and paying for promotion on social media.
The lawsuit details a shooting at Drake’s (real name: Aubrey Graham) home just a few days after the song was released, during which a security guard was injured. Multiple break-ins occurred in the following days, which the lawsuit says were caused by UMG’s actions.
Why would UMG pit two of its own artists against each other? Drake’s team has a theory:
UMG’s actions are motivated, at least in part, by UMG’s desire to best position itself in negotiations with Kendrick Lamar in 2024 and Drake in 2025. With respect to Lamar, on information and belief, UMG was incentivized to prove that it could maximize Lamar’s sales—by any means necessary—after only being able to get him to sign a short-term exclusive contract. UMG wanted Lamar to see its value on an expedited timeframe in order to convince Lamar to resign exclusively and for a longer period of time. As to Drake, in 2024, his contract was nearing fulfillment. On information and belief, UMG anticipated that extending Drake’s contract would come at a high cost to UMG; as such, it was incentivized to devalue Drake’s music and brand in order to gain leverage in negotiations for an extension
Lamar is not named as a defendant in the suit; instead, Drake’s legal team pins the blame on UMG for releasing the song despite knowing the song’s “allegations are unequivocally false.”
“Drake is not a pedophile. Drake has never engaged in any acts that would require he be “placed on neighborhood watch.” Drake has never engaged in sexual relations with a minor. Drake has never been charged with, or convicted of, any criminal acts whatsoever,” the suit reads.
The suit follows a petition filed in November in which Drake accuses UMG and Spotify of artificially inflating the success of “Not Like Us” using payola and streaming bots. The petition — which itself isn’t a lawsuit but a precursor — was withdrawn this week. But the suit filed today includes similar allegations of “pay-for-play” schemes to get “Not Like Us” played on radio stations and promoted on streaming platforms. The suit also again accuses UMG of using bots to “artificially inflate the spread” of the song.
UMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Asimo OS was mentioned at CES 2025 alongside its 0 Series SUV and Saloon sedan EV concepts, but the Acura RSX will be the first production vehicle to get it. The operating system uses technology similar to its namesake robot to recognize external environments and understand people’s intentions, according to the company. It will also assist in the vehicle’s automated and advanced assisted driving functions.
The company's current EVs — the Acura ZDX and the Honda Prologue — are both based on the General Motors Ultium platform. Production of the Acura RSX will take place in Honda’s new Fayette County, Ohio factory. The final beams of the plant were only erected a little less than a year ago, and it's projected to have battery and RSX production up and running by the end of this year. Consumers should be able to get their hands on the new vehicle sometime in 2026.
While Honda is working hard on its EVs, its plans to merge with Nissan, announced at the end of last year, continue. The two companies have been collaborating on making EV components and software since August.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/the-acura-rsx-calls-dibs-on-hondas-proprietary-asimo-os-162231318.html?src=rss
Tires might be one of the more prosaic parts of a car, but they are undoubtedly among the most important. Bench racers might obsess about powertrain specs, and average consumers mostly want to know that there's wireless charging for their phones, but it's the tires that actually make contact with the road. Without them, no one is going anywhere. At least not very far.
In the past, tires have been considered somewhat mysterious, with secret blends of rubber, carbon, and other stuff combined with clever arrangements of belts and wires to hold the whole thing together as it rotates faster and faster without flying apart. These days, we know an awful lot about how tires work. Or at least tire companies like Goodyear do, having amassed enough testing data to be able to simulate them accurately enough to shave months off a development schedule.
In fact, the use of simulation in tire research and development has quite a long history. Chris Helsel, who is now Goodyear's CTO, joined the company back in 1996; he was hired as part of a tiny team doing computer tire simulation. "At Goodyear in '96, it felt like almost late to the party in terms of doing what we call finite element analysis, which is basically breaking a large structure down into little parts," Helsel said.
The Galaxy S25 is set to go official next week, but the leaks keep coming ahead of that. Most recently, quite a few of Samsung’s official Galaxy S25 cases have hit the web via a retailer, offering a preview of what the company will have to offer.
Yesterday, Apple TV+ had a fun marketing pop-up at Grand Central Terminal to celebrate Severance’s return. It turns out, Silo had its own unique marketing appearance too as a way to mark the coming season 2 finale.
Nvidia and Krafton's PUBG Ally is a bad friend and worse co-op buddy, but I prefer it to AI which doesn't know the difference between orange and purple.
Like the wildfire conditions in Los Angeles County, my For You page on TikTok turned overnight.
I woke up last week to a phone screen filled with ravenous flames and video after video of razed homes, businesses, and other structures. Influencers broke from their regular cadence of content to film themselves packing up a suitcase for evacuation; nameless accounts shared footage from streets I didn’t recognize, showcasing the devastation; freshly created profiles asked for help locating their lost pets. Scrolling on TikTok feels like trying to keep track of 1,000 live feeds at once, each urgent and horrifying in its own way.
What all of this amounts to is a different question entirely. Even as there’s no escaping disaster content, the clips, comments, check-ins, and footage are not actually very helpful. Our feeds are awash with both too much and not enough information. Though it’s not yet clear how these fires started, scientists say that climate change will only continue to exacerbate wildfires going forward. Current weather conditions — including a severe lack of rainfall this year in Los Angeles — have created a tinderbox in the region.
Questions like “Where are the shelters?” “Should I evacuate?” and “Where can I get a mask and other supplies?” are left unanswered in favor of frightening first-person reports. And who can blame Los Angeles-area residents? That’s what you’re supposed to do on TikTok. What they can’t do is share a link to mutual aid resources or to a news story about vital, up-to-date evacuation information. They can scroll endlessly on the algorithmic For You page, but they can’t sort content to display the most recent updates first. TikTok is simply not built to disseminate potentially lifesaving breaking news alerts. Instead, it’s filled with endless clips of news crews interviewing people who have lost everything.
The wildfire content machine echoes a similar phenomenon from just a few months ago, when October’s Hurricane Milton tore through Florida, killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damages. Some of the most visible and viral content from the storm came from influencers and other content creators who stayed behind to vlog their way through the event, racking millions of views. So far, there’s not the same risk-taking-for-viral-content dynamic at play with the fires in Southern California, but the overall experience is not that different: a random infotainment feed where a video of a person losing nearly every earthly possession is followed directly by someone testing a new makeup product. Media critic Matt Pearce put it best: “TikTok was largely indifferent to whether I live or die.”
Instagram seemed slightly more useful, but only, I suspect, if you follow people who post relevant content. In times of crisis — during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 or the ongoing bombardment of Gaza — Instagram Stories has become something of a bulletin board for resharing infographics and resources. Linking to relevant announcements and news stories is really only possible through Stories, but at least you can. Instagram search, on the other hand, is a chaotic mixture of user-generated infographics, grainy pictures of the fires that have been screenshotted and reuploaded multiple times, and distasteful selfies from bodybuilders wishing LA well.
It should go without saying that depraved conspiracy theories once again spread on X, including from billionaire owner Elon Musk and other right-wing influencers who falsely claimed DEI initiatives were responsible for the fires. Twitter, once functioning like a breaking news feed, is now overrun with crypto spam and Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile, smaller, more specialized apps like Watch Duty, a nonprofit wildfire monitoring platform, have filled gaps. On Bluesky, an X competitor, users have the option to pin feeds based on trending topics, creating a custom landing page for LA fire content.
We are in for more, not fewer, extreme weather events like storms and heatwaves, and it’s worth asking ourselves whether we are prepared to do this all over again. Platform decay is all the more apparent in times of emergency, when users are forced to wade through astronomical amounts of garbage: video content that scares but doesn’t help us, news websites with so many pop-up ads it feels illegal, or ramblings from tech elites who are looking for someone to blame rather than a way to help. By my estimations, our feeds will return to regularly scheduled programming in five or so business days, and the devastation from these fires will get lost in a sea of comedy skits and PR unboxings. Until, of course, the next one.
Four John Deere combines harvest wheat in tandem near the farm shop and maintenance yard near Pullman, Palouse Region, Washington, USA. | Photo: Getty Images
John Deere’s “unfair” practices raised repair costs for farmers and kept them from being able to make repairs on tractors and other equipment they own, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges in a new lawsuit.
The FTC and attorneys general for Illinois and Minnesota filed suit today in a long-running fight for the right to repair — a battle that’s become more heated as Deere increasingly incorporated software into farm equipment. The complaint accuses John Deere of “decades” of unlawful practices that forced farmers to turn to the company’s own network of authorized dealers for repairs.
“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release today. “The FTC’s action today seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice—lowering costs, preventing ruinous delays, and promoting fair competition for independent repair shops.”
Deere produced “the only fully functional software repair tool capable of performing all repairs” on its equipment, according to the FTC. It says the tool was only made available to the company’s dealers, which charged higher prices than independent shops. That unlawfully gave Deere “monopoly power” for certain repair services, the FTC alleges.
Deere says it supports customers’ right to repair equipment. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) in January 2023 that was supposed to make its software, tools, and documentation available so that farmers and independent shops can make their own repairs.
“We have and remain committed to enabling customers to repair the products that they buy,” John Deere CTO Jahmy Hindman said in a 2021 Decoder interview.
When last we saw Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), he was getting into squabbles out in Oklahoma, but Daredevil: Born Again’s new trailer sends him back to New York City where Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) just so happens to be running for mayor. Fisk seems to be running a strong campaign that has many people convinced he has a plan to make the city a safer place. But Murdock doesn’t need his super senses to sniff out that there’s something rotten at the core of Fisk’s political ambitions.
Along with brief shots of Murdock’s buds Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), and Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), the trailer also spotlights the MCU’s new takes on Hector Ayala / White Tiger (Kamar de los Reyes) and Muse (Muse’s actor has yet to be officially revealed), a supervillain first introduced in Charles Soule’s 2016 Daredevil comics run. The sheer amount of bone crunching and blood oozing in the trailer makes it seem like Marvel is, at least aesthetically, trying to go for some of the grittiness that made Netflix’s Daredevil series feel so distinct from the rest of the MCU. We’ll find out for sure when it premieres on March 4th.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk yesterday over his late disclosure of a Twitter stock purchase in early 2022. Before Musk bought the whole company, he purchased a 9 percent stake in Twitter and failed to disclose it within 10 days as required under US law.
"Defendant Elon Musk failed to timely file with the SEC a beneficial ownership report disclosing his acquisition of more than five percent of the outstanding shares of Twitter's common stock in March 2022, in violation of the federal securities laws," said the SEC lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia. "As a result, Musk was able to continue purchasing shares at artificially low prices, allowing him to underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due."
Twitter's stock price rose 27 percent once Musk belatedly disclosed his stake, the lawsuit said. "During the period that Musk was required to publicly disclose his beneficial ownership but had failed to do so, he spent more than $500 million purchasing additional shares of Twitter common stock," it said.
