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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
Snapchatters frustrated with login issues began flooding social media with complaints early Tuesday.
Users were tweeting about the issue around 6 am PT, noting that Snapchat was freezing for some while others were automatically logged out — if they could access the app at all. The problems were reflected on uptime monitoring sites like Down Detector and Services Down. Both sites showed significant spikes in outage complaints beginning in the early morning and lasting past noon Pacific Time.
The majority of reports focused on logging in. Santa Monica-based Snap’s support account tweeted about 90 minutes after the problems first surfaced that they were “aware of an issue preventing some Snapchatters from logging in” and asked users to “Hang tight, we are looking into it and working on a fix!”
The outage, unusual for the relatively reliable service, was prolonged and widespread enough to get traction on Twitter. In a survey released by ToolTester.com in September 2021, Snapchat was no. 10 among the top 30 most outage-prone sites, according to data from DownDetector.com — and problems were usually related to sending and receiving messages. The social site most often flagged by Down Detector was Discord, Instagram was no.3.
About four hours after acknowledging the login issues, Snapchat Support tweeted that the problem had been fixed.
dot.LA reached out to Snapchat for more information about the outage and will update if the company responds.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
Hello Sunshine’s Liz Jenkins on How Young Studios Are Disrupting Hollywood
12:04 PM | March 25, 2022
Image courtesy of Liz Jenkins
On this episode of Office Hours, Hello Sunshine Chief Operating Office Liz Jenkins joins the show to talk about how she aims to disrupt the way storytelling is produced, in Hollywood and beyond.
Hello Sunshine is a media brand and content company founded by actress Reese Witherspoon that highlights female authorship and storytelling across all its platforms, putting women and girls at the center of each narrative. Jenkins joined the company as its CFO in 2018, overseeing its finances and growth as a business. She oversees Hello Sunshine's scripted, unscripted content and its kids and animation studios, along with its book club.
Jenkins sees Hello Sunshine as a new media company amid an industry dominated by massive legacy companies, rethinking the way content studios have worked in the past, and changing the way women’s stories are produced within the industry.
“I think one of the things that has taken the industry a long time to catch up with, frankly, the innovation that's been driven by technology companies, has been the fact that these legacy companies have massive legacy businesses – ie. cable networks that generate billions of dollars of cash,” she says. “It’s the innovator’s dilemma, effectively, right?”
By contrast, she says, Hello Sunshine started from “a blank piece of paper” and a mission to bring “content, commerce and community” to a mission-driven storytelling brand.
“When we talk about commerce, we don't just mean selling things to people,” Jenkins adds. “We mean really engaging with the users and our audience on a really deep level.”
Jenkins’ experience in technology and business, as head of strategic ventures for Sony PlayStation, and senior VP of corporate development and strategy at Media Rights Capital, have served her well in her role at Hello Sunshine.
“I do have that really kind of entrepreneurial business and building mindset that one would always say exists in the Bay Area,” she says. “But I think it's very much the same in the entertainment business, right? Every film is a startup, new business, you're bringing together like a couple 100 people who never worked together before–potentially a couple of them have–to build something overnight."
Jenkins also discussed the ways Hollywood has been shifting in recent years to reflect a greater diversity of storytelling and talent both in front of and behind the camera. She says she’s seen progress in the greater efforts to include more women and people of different backgrounds has had an impact on the larger culture.
“We don't have to rewind the clock back very far to see a really different space that we were in,” Jenkin says. “And I think that if anything, the last few years have proven to us that even the most sacred and long-standing institutions are fragile – right? – And require a lot of vigilance to protect.”
Still she sees there’s still a lot of work to be done, especially in creating the kinds of pipelines to attract talent and to sustain the number of decision-makers who will focus on telling more inclusive stories.
“It requires a real commitment to excellence and authenticity,” she says. In order to sustain the kind of changes that have reshaped Hollywood in the past several years, “you can't be complacent.”
Jenkins also talks about how Hello Sunshine chooses the streaming partners it works with on their shows, based in part on their audiences, their interests and the amount of marketing their willing to put into a project. She also talks about how young viewers, readers and listeners are changing the way media is being produced.
Want to hear more episodes? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Fellow Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
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Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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