According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast's NBCUniversal subsidiary and Google are the "top contenders" for Netflix's upcoming ad-supported streaming tier. "After many years of resisting ads, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the plan for an ad-supported tier in April," reports Ars Technica. "Netflix's stock price dropped 35 percent the day of that announcement, and Netflix revenue growth has been slowing amid a loss in subscribers." From the report: A deal with NBCUniversal would likely mean that "Comcast's video ad unit, FreeWheel, would supply technology to help serve up ads, while NBCUniversal's ad-sales team would help sell ads in the US and Europe," the report said. The Alphabet-owned Google, of course, has plenty of experience serving ads, including on its own YouTube and YouTube TV video platforms. Netflix already uses Google's ad-buying tools.

A deal with either NBCUniversal or Google would likely be exclusive, the WSJ report said. Comcast/NBCUniversal and Google aren't the only contenders, as "Roku has also had early talks with Netflix about ad partnerships," the report said. The Information reported last week that Netflix executives recently "met with representatives of both Roku and Comcast to discuss arrangements under which those companies would handle either the ad sales or the technical infrastructure for Netflix's forthcoming ad-supported tier of service."

Netflix "is looking to start doing some pre-roll ads, which run before a show starts, in the fourth quarter," The Information report said. Netflix is also negotiating with entertainment companies to put ads into shows that Netflix doesn't create itself. Licensing TV shows and movies for both ad-free and ad-supported streaming will cost Netflix about 20 percent more than for ad-free streaming alone, The Information report said. Variety has confirmed the streamer is "letting go of roughly 300 staffers [...] across multiple business functions in the company, with the bulk of the jobs lost in the U.S." Netflix also laid off 150 employees, and dozens of contractors and part-time workers in May.

"Today we sadly let go of around 300 employees," a Netflix spokesperson told Variety. "While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth. We are so grateful for everything they have done for Netflix and are working hard to support them through this difficult transition."

Canada approved legislation that targets what video- and audio-sharing platforms like YouTube and TikTok can broadcast to a Canadian audience, as the country follows in Europe's footsteps in imposing a heftier regulatory burden on the digital sector. From a report: This marks the second attempt in as many years by Canada's Liberal government to compel digital platforms, including streaming companies like Netflix, to prominently feature Canadian artists on their services when users with a Canadian internet-protocol address log in. As contemplated under the new measures, users who search for music, television programming, films or do-it-yourself video shorts would get results incorporating a certain quota of Canadian-made content.

YouTube, a unit of Alphabet, TikTok, and the big streaming companies, among them Netflix, as well as legal experts and some Canadian artists, have either opposed Canada's move or warned of unintended consequences -- such as hurting the people the new policy is intended to help. Countries like Canada are increasingly turning to regulatory changes to protect domestic interests in light of the big inroads the world's biggest digital companies have made in transforming how households watch programs, listen to music, conduct day-to-day business and consume news.

A $14.95 smart lamp from Ikea apparently has enough computing power to run the classic PC game Doom. From a report: A software engineer named Nicola Wrachien removed the smart lamp's computer chip and used it to build a miniaturized Doom gaming system. Over the weekend, he uploaded a video to YouTube, showing his creation in action. The system runs a downsized version of Doom that requires less RAM. The chip from the Ikea lamp has enough processing power to play the game at 35 frames per second over a cheap 160-by-128-pixel display. Wrachien, who is from Hungary, embarked on the project after reading headlines about Doom purportedly running on a pregnancy test. In reality, the pregnancy test was only able to run the game due to an added OLED display and streaming it from a PC.

Crayta, a platform that lets players create, share, and play games with friends, is coming to Facebook Gaming's cloud-streaming service. The Verge reports: The collaborative game-building platform is built on Unreal Engine 4 and features a library of thousands of player-made games users can browse or add to with their own creations. While Crayta shares the element of game creation with Roblox, it also takes some cues from Fortnite, with the most obvious being its bright and cartoonish art. It also has rotating seasons, offers a battle pass, and lets users customize their own avatars. But probably one of the coolest -- and most unique -- things about Crayta is that it lets you share a game with just a single link, allowing your friend to hop right in from their browser. "A lot of times today, people think about the metaverse as 3D experiences you can have in virtual and augmented reality, but I think what Crayta shows is that you can both build and enjoy these kind of experiences really easily on all kinds of 2D environments including just within the Facebook App on phones and on computers," Mark Zuckerberg said in a video showing off Crayta's addition to its cloud gaming platform.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At Roku, a video-streaming platform operator that's suffered a punishing stock plunge, employees are buzzing about the possibility of an acquisition -- and their talk and hopes are pinned on Netflix. Employees at Roku have been discussing the possibility of a Netflix acquisition in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The chatter comes as Roku's stock has dropped about 80% since late July on weaker demand for video streaming and lower set-top-box sales.

Roku competes with Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung in the market for streaming devices, and some of those industry titans are battling with the smaller company for lucrative video-ad dollars. The collapse in Roku's stock made it hard to compete with its larger tech rivals on pay in a tight labor market. The result has been a staggering increase in equity grants to employees, leaving Roku well underwater on stock-based compensation. Roku has been seen as an acquisition target before -- including last year, when, according to The Wall Street Journal, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts considered purchasing the company. In January, the departure of a top Roku executive stoked questions about the company's future.

This week saw the premiere of The Orville: New Horizons on Hulu — a third season, now streaming after two seasons on broadcast TV from 2017 to 2019. Seth MacFarlane (the show's creator/star) tells the Hollywood Reporter how that will change the Orville: "The biggest difference for me being on Hulu is that I don't have to tell a story that's exactly 43 minutes long every week because I have to make room for a certain number of commercials.

"That's not how storytelling works — different stories are different lengths, and you start to fall into this cadence where you're shaving scenes down, you're cutting things that don't need to be cut. The best part about being on Hulu is that those moments where you want to linger on an actor's face because it's meaningful and it helps to tell the story? You can do that. You have the time; you can be indulgent in that way."
MacFarlane tells TV Guide the series is now "a dramatic sci-fi show with comedic elements that come about from the character's personalities." And MacFarlane tells ABC News, "I think people can expect a lot more than they think they can." It's not just Covid that's the reason that it's taken so long. It's a pretty massive uptick in scope. We're only doing 10 episodes, as opposed to 12, they're longer episodes. The scope of these episodes is much more film-like. I think people are a little unprepared for what's to come. Disney and Hulu really gave us the resources to do this right, and we've put it all on the screen.
Long-time Slashdot reader Marxist Hacker 42 wrote a journal entry (with some spoilers) about the new season's premiere episode, noting "a very powerful morality tale" that led to a fifth act with "some prime technobabble worthy of the show's Star Trek heritage." (While long-time Slashdot reader antdude calls it "better than the newer Star Trek like Picard," long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo calls it "an enjoyable watch, and would have been the highlight of the week if it wasn't for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds overshadowing it."

GameRant argues that The Orville in general "is actually truer to the Star Trek spirit than any of the franchise's contemporary entries."

And the series will also stay true to its Yaphit, reports Yahoo Entertainment: Behind the scenes, The Orville team bid farewell to one longtime crew member during the production of Season 3. Comedian Norm Macdonald has voiced fan favorite character, Lt. Yaphit, since the show's freshman year and completed recording his dialogue prior to his death from leukemia last September.

MacFarlane says that he wasn't aware of Macdonald's illness during their three-season collaboration. "As I finish the episodes, the emotion that I feel more than anything is gratitude that he left us with all this great stuff," he remarks. "I was very moved by the fact that he had continued to record for us and continued to play this part. As sad as it is, I'm happy there's more Norm yet to come through The Orville."

Asked whether Macdonald's passing means that Yaphit's tenure aboard The Orville will also conclude at the end of Season 3, MacFarlane suggests that fans may not have seen the last of the gelatinous lieutenant. "We do have a plan," he teases. "We would not do Yaphit without Norm, but there is a plan for how we are going to handle it if we are lucky enough to do Season 4." (As of now, a fourth season is up in the air as the cast's contracts have expired.)

French officials are continuing their centuries-long battle to preserve the purity of the language, overhauling the rules on using English video game jargon. From a report: While some expressions find obvious translations -- "pro-gamer" becomes "joueur professionnel" -- others seem a more strained, as "streamer" is transformed into "joueur-animateur en direct." The culture ministry, which is involved in the process, told AFP the video game sector was rife with anglicisms that could act as "a barrier to understanding" for non-gamers. France regularly issues dire warnings of the debasement of its language from across the Channel, or more recently the Atlantic. Government officials must replace words such as "e-sports" and "streaming" with approved French versions, the new rule says.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece, written by Macworld's Michael Simon: Apple killed its Touch Bar on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro last year, but PC makers seem determined to prove the company wrong. First Dell introduced the XPS 13 Plus which sports a "new capacitive touch experience that allows you to switch between media and function keys easily." The laptop is available for purchase but back-ordered for weeks, and there haven't been any reviews so we don't know for sure how it will be received, but Dell's touch bar concept seems even less useful than Apple's: the buttons are static, they merely float above the actual keyboard, and they don't appear to add any functionality. Then Dell added a touch bar to the trackpad on the Latitude 9330. [...]

Now there's a new PC touch bar, this time on the Voyager a1600, Corsair's first-ever gaming laptop. Corsair hasn't named or even officially announced the new feature -- it only appeared as a sneak peek -- but the company told The Verge that the strip features "10 easy-access customizable S-key shortcut buttons." [...] Corsair's Touch Bar doesn't replace the row of function keys but it is in an odd location -- on the hinge below the display. Even in pictures, it looks incredibly uncomfortable to reach. According to renders, you can still access the Touch Bar when the laptop is closed, which seems like an accident waiting to happen (not to mention a battery drain).

But the biggest question I have is: why? No one shed a tear for the Touch Bar when it was killed. While it has its merits, it was never a proper pro-level feature and the implementation didn't evolve past the original idea. It was too skinny, lacked tactile feedback, required constant scrolling, and didn't actually save time. It looked nice, but even Apple didn't seem to know what to do with it. The MacBook Pro Touch Bar was one of Apple's most polarizing features and it never really caught on with developers. Maybe a niche use like gaming or video conferencing will have better results, but ultimately the Touch Bar, Apple's or otherwise, is a failed concept that should stay in the past.

Industry trade group the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) could be dropping the "cable" moniker as it eyes a potential name change. Fierce Video reports: A trademark application filed by NCTC on May 17 shows one proposal for a new name: National Content & Technology Cooperative. An NCTC spokesperson confirmed to Fierce that the organization will be changing its name, but said it is considering a large number of options and hasn't yet settled on a final decision. The spokesperson noted it's taking time to register potential names, but some of the other choices on the table include simply "NCTC," "NCTC Online" or even sticking with its current brand of the National Cable Television Cooperative. [...] According to the application, it appears NCTC is also considering losing the image of a coaxial cable that's currently featured in its logo.

So why the potential shift away from cable? One factor could be that the industry has clearly changed since NCTC formed in 1984, with cable operators in recent years deemphasizing traditional video offerings. The "Cable Television" part of the group's name is becoming less accurate over time, said Brett Sappington, VP of Interpret. "Broadband, not television, is the cash cow for the cable industry," he told Fierce Video. "Many of the organization's members are actually moving away from offering their own video service and are, instead, focusing on broadband bundled with streaming services." [...] Along with industry changes come some shifts in perception as well. "Cable TV doesn't necessarily have a positive connotation today," Sappington noted. "In fact, many online TV services such as Sling TV or FuboTV emphasize why consumers should 'drop cable' and go with their services instead," he continued.

"62-year-old Val Kilmer was just 26 when he played Iceman in the 1986 movie Top Gun," remembers long-time Slashdot reader destinyland.

But in 2015 Kilmer lost his voice to throat cancer, remembers Parade: In his 2020 memoir I'm Your Huckleberry, Kilmer joked that he has less of a frog in his throat and more of a "buffalo." He said, "Speaking, once my joy and lifeblood, has become an hourly struggle."

Kilmer has teamed up with Sonantic, a U.K.-based software firm that uses artificial intelligence to copy voices for actors and production studios, to replicate his speech, using old recordings of his voice and existing footage. Kilmer elaborates on the process of finding his voice again through AI in a video posted to YouTube in August 2021. In his new AI-enhanced voice, which does indeed emulate the speech audiences are familiar with, Kilmer says: "People around me struggle to understand me when I'm talking, but despite all that, I still feel I'm the exact same person, still the same creative soul. A soul that dreams ideas and stories constantly.

"But now I can express myself again, I can bring these dreams to you, and show you this part of myself once more. A part that was never truly gone, just hiding away."

Kilmer's health struggles, his childhood tragedies and his ambitious career were recently documented in the acclaimed 2021 feature-length doc Val, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Top Gun: Maverick screened at the Cannes Film Festival to rapturous reviews, with thunderous fanfare including an air show. Though reports say audiences gave the action picture (currently sitting at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) a five-minute standing ovation, with audible responses throughout the picture, mainly at the groundbreaking stunt work, it's also been reported an audience-favorite scene is the "overwhelming" emotional response to the reunion of Tom Cruise and Kilmer.

Napster has been acquired again, this time by two companies from the web3 sector: Hivemind and Algorand. "Dear friends, we are excited to share that we've taken Napster Group private, and to bring the iconic music brand to web3," wrote Hivemind founder Matt Zhang on LinkedIn. From a report: "Volatile market and uncertain times often bring exciting opportunities. At Hivemind, we believe in developing thesis and building enduring value. Music x Web3 is one of the most exciting spaces we've come across, and we are thrilled to work with Emmy Lovell and many talents to unlock value for the entire ecosystem and revolutionize how artists and fans enjoy music."

Lovell has been named interim CEO of Napster, with the former WMG exec stepping up from her previous role as chief strategy officer, having joined the company in April 2021 shortly after its last acquisition by music VR company MelodyVR. The newly-merged company then delisted from the AIM stock exchange in the UK as part of its plan to relaunch a hybrid music streaming / video / VR service later this year, and then go public again in the US. The new owners appear to be pivoting that strategy with a web3 focus. There will be plenty to unpack around these plans. For example, Hivemind and Algorand aren't the only companies involved: they have an 'investor consortium' that includes ATC Management, BH Digital and G20 Ventures.

Slashdot reader XXongo brings word of a new three-part documentary — streaming free now — that tries to understand America's early inaction on climate change. Looking back over the last few decades, The Power of Big Oil explores how the fuel industry "successfully set up a campaign to discredit climate science and targetting individual politicians to vote against measures to curb climate change."

The Guardian notes that the series includes an interview with a U.S. senator who they say "blames the oil industry for malignly claiming the science of climate change was not proved when companies such as Exxon and Shell already knew otherwise from their own research."

As far back as 25 years ago, the senator says, "they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly. I mean — they lied." The documentary's makers have dug out a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists and public relations strategists who lay bare how the US's biggest petroleum firm, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes — called Denial, Doubt, Delay — the series charts corporate manipulation of science, public opinion and politicians that mirrors conduct by other industries, from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for America's opioid epidemic.

Some of those interviewed shamefacedly admit their part in the decades-long campaign to hide the evidence of climate change, discredit scientists and delay action that threatened big oil's profits.

Others almost boast about how easy it was to dupe the American public and politicians, with consequences not just for the US but every country on the planet.
In one video clip an aide to a climate-conscious senator remembers that "You had reams of material coming out of the government. They were at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at NASA — this expanding network of people, working on this day in and day out, saying that this was a legitimate issue, and that we needed to do something about it. And on the other hand, you had two or three guys who went around to conferences and said, 'Oh, I'm not sure. Oh, maybe there's clouds....' It quickly became apparent that these were private interests who had a stake in the status quo." He refers to it as "emerging industry of nay-sayers."

There's also a discouraged assessment from climate activist looking back over a lack of progress in the early decades. "You want to make an assumption that it's a meritocracy — a good argument will prevail, and it will displace a bad argument. But, what the geniuses at the PR firms who work for these big fossil-fuel companies know is that truth has nothing to do with who wins the argument. If you say something enough times, people will begin to believe it."

This week at the 2022 NAB Show Streaming Summit, Google launched in general availability Media CDN, a platform for delivering content using the same infrastructure that powers YouTube. From a report: With a presence in over 1,300 cities across 200 countries, Google says that Media CDN is designed to -- in the company's words -- "automate all facets" of "serving content [close to users]." The pandemic led to an explosion in demand for streaming content as business closures and shelter-in-place orders forced folks to stay home.

Media CDN, which joins Google's CDN portfolio for web and API acceleration, is by no stretch of the imagination the first of its kind. There's plenty of CDNs optimized to serve media. But Google touts ostensibly unique benefits like delivery protocols tailored to individual users and network conditions and "industry-leading" offload rates. "With multiple tiers of caching, we minimize calls to origin -- even for infrequently accessed content," Google VP Shailesh Shukla wrote in a blog post yesterday. "This alleviates performance or capacity stress in the content origin and saves costs." Media CDN also features tools for ad insertion, allowing customers to dynamically inject video content with ads. Moreover, the service is "built with AI/ML" to power interactive experiences, Google says, like real-time stats during sporting events and purchase links embedded in virtual billboards.

As the old saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, partner up with another overly powerful cable giant to give yourself a better shot. From a report: This morning, Comcast and Charter announced a new joint venture that will see the two companies teaming up to develop "a next-generation streaming platform on a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs." This new platform and the devices that run it will square off against Amazon, Roku, Google, Apple, and other established streaming hardware players. The new venture is evenly divided between the two companies and is exclusively focused on streaming; it "does not involve the broadband or cable video businesses of either Comcast or Charter, which will remain independent." Comcast says its Flex streaming platform will serve as the foundation for what's coming next. It's also contributing "the retail business for XClass TVs and will contribute Xumo, a streaming service it acquired in 2020." Comcast introduced its XClass TVs last year as an alternative to the many popular budget TVs that come preloaded with Roku, Amazon, or Google software. For its part, Charter -- known better to many for its Spectrum brand -- is kicking in $900 million over the course of several years.

YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming platform, has removed the account of John Lee Ka-chiu, the policeman-turned-politician who is poised to take over as Hong Kong's next leader. From a report: All content on Lee's YouTube page has been removed. In its place is a message that reads: "This account has been terminated for violating Google's Terms of Service." Lee's campaign office said on Wednesday that it had been informed by Google that the removal of the account was in accordance with the company's compliance with U.S. sanctions. "We find this very regrettable and completely unreasonable, but we think they can't stop us from spreading our candidate's message -- our campaign's message -- to the public," said Tam Yiu-chung, head of Lee's campaign office.

Lee is one of a dozen officials who were sanctioned by the U.S. in 2020 and had been deemed responsible for the implementation of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law in July that year. Lee is now the only candidate in next month's small circle election for Chief Executive. The election, which is not open to the public and instead involves just 1,500 carefully-selected voters, will go ahead on May 8. Lee's five-year term of office will begin from July 1, 2022. "Google complies with applicable U.S. sanctions laws and enforces related policies under its Terms of Service. After review and consistent with these policies, we terminated the Johnlee2022 YouTube channel," told the South China Morning Post.

Sony is building a program to let advertisers buy ads in PlayStation games. From a report: It's doing testing with adtech partners to place in-game ads, similar to an initiative by rival Microsoft. The program is expected to launch before the end of the year. Sony is working on a plan to put ads inside PlayStation games, sources said, similar to a move by Microsoft to run ads in Xbox. Three people who are involved in the plans said Sony is doing testing with adtech partners to help game developers create in-game ads through a software developer program. The idea is to encourage developers to keep building free-to-play games, which have soared in the pandemic, by giving them a way to monetize them, they said. PlayStation's current ad inventory is limited to in-menu ads like game publishers promoting their own titles in the console's store, the sources said. PlayStation also serves ads on streaming video to people who stream via their consoles through apps like Hulu .

An anonymous reader shares a report: A federal class-action lawsuit involving Maple Heights and 2,000 other U.S. communities against Netflix and Hulu took a detour Wednesday through the Ohio Supreme Court, with Maple Heights officials asking state justices to define the streaming giants as "video service providers." If the Supreme Court agrees, the streaming services would be subject to the same video service provider fees paid by cable companies. Those fees in Ohio are 5% of the companies' gross revenues they earn in the city and go directly into city coffers. The streaming companies argued they are instead "specified digital products" under state law. Therefore, they pay state sales taxes, and Ohio would lose money if the court determines they owe the local franchise fees since they would be exempt from state sales tax under Ohio law. The Ohio Supreme Court will determine whether Netflix and Hulu are video service providers, among other legal questions, in the coming months. After the Ohio Supreme Court issues an opinion, the case in federal court in Cleveland can resume. That case involves around 2,000 cities, but U.S. District Judge James Gwin directed the Ohio Supreme Court to answer legal questions first.

Privacy is one of the selling points of Apple products. But for employees who develop these products, it can be a pain. The Information: Apple doesn't collect a lot of customer data from its services, including Apple Maps, the Siri voice assistant and its paid video-streaming service, according to more than a dozen former employees. And the customer data it does collect from products like the App Store and Apple Music aren't widely accessible to employees who work on those and other products, these people said. That makes it difficult for Apple to mimic popular features developed by its competitors, which collect more data and have fewer restrictions on employee access to such information, they said.

Look at Apple TV+. The paid video-streaming service, unlike its bigger rivals, doesn't collect demographic info about customers or a history of what they have watched, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation at Apple. That means Apple TV+ employees can't analyze how customers move from one piece of content to another, making it next to impossible to recommend more videos to them based on their preferences -- a contrast to Netflix, Disney and other streaming services, which use such data to get customers to watch more videos. [...] From Apple's app recommendations to new features for Siri and the company's Goldman Sachs-backed credit card, Apple engineers and data scientists often have to find creative or costly ways to make up for the lack of access to data. In some cases, as with Apple TV+, employees simply have to accept limitations on what they can do.

After launching as "IMDb Freedive" back in 2019, IMDb TV quickly faded into the background of the ongoing streaming wars that parent company Amazon had already established a respectable foothold in. While that initial rebrand never quite managed to put the fledgling platform and its content on the map, Amazon's just announced its plan to reintroduce the streamer yet again under new branding ahead of a massive content push. From a report: Going forward, IMDb TV will be known as "Amazon Freevee," a name meant to emphasize that the ad-supported platform is free to viewers. In a press release detailing its vision for Freevee's future, director Ashraf Alkarmi framed the service as a supplemental platform meant to appeal to consumers interested in watching "premium" series and films with significantly fewer commercial interruptions.

"English rock band Pink Floyd has released new music for the first time in 28 years," reports UPI, "with proceeds from the track going to humanitarian relief in Ukraine amid its ongoing conflict with Russia."

"The single will be available on all streaming and download platforms..." the band said on their official web site. [Including downloads on Amazon Music and Apple Music]. "This is the first new original music that they have recorded together as a band since 1994's The Division Bell." The track sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long-time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards and features an extraordinary vocal performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox.... David, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren says: "We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world's major powers...."

"Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music." While writing the music for the track, David managed to speak with Andriy from his hospital bed in Kyiv where he was recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury. "I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing...."

Speaking about the track David says, "I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities and raise morale. We want to express our support for Ukraine and, in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become".

All proceeds will go towards Ukrainian humanitarian relief.
On March 11 the band had posted another update on their official site: To stand with the world in strongly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the works of Pink Floyd, from 1987 onwards, and all of David Gilmour's solo recordings are being removed from all digital music providers in Russia and Belarus....