Netflix is launching two interactive children’s TV shows that let audiences determine the on-screen action.The animated programmes ask youngsters to choose between two options at several points in their plots.The firm says the nature of its online streaming platform has allowed it to experiment with ”branching narrative” tech in a way that would not be possible for traditional broadcasters.But it acknowledges that such shows are more costly to make than normal.”It was actually a little bit more than twice as much animation as a typical episode,” explained Doug Langdale, executive producer of the Puss in Book series, whoch was made in conjunction with Dreamworks Studios.”It was about 50 minutes [of footage] where it would normally be 22. Especially with computer animation, that’s tremendously more expensive.

South Korean web-hosting firm Nayana has agreed to pay a $1m ransom to unlock computers frozen by hackers.It is believed to be a record amount, although it is worth noting that many ransom payments are never made public.Nayana’s chief executive revealed that the hackers initially asked for $4.4m, payable in bitcoin.Security experts warned that firms should not pay such ransoms or enter into negotiations with hackers.Angela Sasse, director of the Institute in the Science of Cyber-Security, said that she was surprised both by the size of the ransom and that the firm went public about paying.”This is a record ransom from what I know, although some will have paid and not gone public.”It could be that it had to disclose the amount under the South Korean regulatory structure or it could have been done out of a sense of public duty,” she said.”From the attackers’ point of view, they might have preferred that the firm kept quiet. It is such a large ransom that it might spur a lot of companies to look more carefully at their security.”

Spotify has confirmed it is experimenting with allowing music labels to promote songs by adding them to users’ playlists as sponsored content.The Swedish-based music platform said subscription payers were not included in the small trial.Those whose accounts are affected are able to opt out via the settings.Spotify has more than 140 million active users but continues to operate at a loss.It recently revealed that while it had revenues of more than 2.9bn euros (£2.6bn) in 2016, it reported a net loss of 539.2m euros (£471.6m).”This is not the silver bullet but instead part of what will be a multi-faceted answer to Spotify’s margin woes,” said Mark Mulligan, managing director of Midia research.”In a broader context, this may presage a wider strategy similar to that of Facebook’s, whereby it effectively starts charging artists and labels for access to fans.”Spotify is considering becoming a public company and listing on the stock market.

Amazon is now the most interesting and important problem in American antitrust law. While it was hardly the first step in the firm’s competitive evolution, Friday’s breathtaking news that the e-commerce giant will acquire Whole Foods brings into sharp focus one of the deepest tensions in our antitrust law as it has evolved under 40 years of conservative orthodoxy. Amazon is enormous, and it is apparently rapacious and remorseless. But at least superficially, it has done nothing in its 20-year life but sell things more cheaply and innovatively than its competitors. That is to say that it’s done just the thing that antitrust law says firms are supposed to do: It has competed on price and quality. The law has therefore proven persistently uninterested in its conduct.While this new merger must undergo federal antitrust review, the Trump administration is unlikely to challenge it. The Obama administration probably wouldn’t have either, and neither would a Clinton administration.