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Amazon's Alexa+ Now Produces AI-Generated Podcasts 4

Posted by BeauHD from the features-nobody-asked-for dept.
Amazon is adding AI-generated "podcasts" to Alexa+, letting users request custom audio explainers on any topic featuring two synthetic co-hosts. Variety reports: Seemingly to dispel the notion that these "podcasts" will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure "accurate, real-time news and information." Those include the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico and USA Today; publications from Conde Nast, Hearst and Vox Media; and more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S.

In an example clip shared by Amazon of the new Alexa Podcasts feature, the two AI-generated hosts discuss "the latest music releases." A male Alexa+ narrator says more than 50% of music listening now comes from unsigned artists. "The monoculture is just gone," a female-voiced Alexa+ narrator chimes in. The male Alexa+ host says there has been "stoner metal," indie pop and experimental hip-hop music "all dropping on the same Friday," and adds, "That's not chaos -- that's the healthiest the music ecosystem has ever been."

[...] To use Alexa Podcasts, users can simply tell Alexa what topic they're curious about and "it does the rest in minutes." Alexa+ will provide an overview of what it plans to cover, and let you adjust the length and direction before it generates the podcast. When your episode is ready, you'll get a notification on your Echo Show device and the Alexa app.

Comment Re:LOL!!! (Score 1) 84

by Rei (#66150845) Attached to: Elon Musk Loses Lawsuit Against OpenAI

JUDGE: The jury has sent a question and the answer is no, the death penalty is not "available for both sides" please return to the jury room and limit your consideration to civil damages.

JUDGE: No, a “light maiming” is also not acceptable, nor is “getting medieval on their asses.” Please constrain yourself to statutes approved by this court.

JUDGE: A further follow-up question from the jury, and no we cannot 'dunk them in a lake and let God decide, like they used to do with witches'. That has not been considered a valid means of determining guilt for several centuries at least.

JUDGE: The jury has sent another question and the answer, again, is no. "Excommunicado" is not real - that's only a thing in the John Wick universe. Civil penalties DO NOT encompass revoking all protections under the law for Mr Altman and Mr Musk.

JUDGE: Court reporter, please note that the jury's latest request, quote, can we let them hang by their thumbs for a few hours, end quote, is also denied.

Comment Re:So they're the Mafia? (Score 1) 362

They were playing nice until someone started bombing them.

In which alternate reality?

Iran is not "a", but "the" supporter and financier behind Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and a bunch of other militias and trouble sources in the region. So no, they were absolutely not playing nice, even if you ignore all the atrocities inside Iran.
Communications

Europe Tests Laser Links As Satellite Comms Outgrow Radio (theregister.com) 8

Posted by BeauHD from the pew-pew dept.
Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades.

PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.

Comment Re:They never were. (Score 1) 25

by fahrbot-bot (#66150629) Attached to: PlayStation Exclusives Aren't Coming To PC Anymore

... Here's a proper title:

Sony Scraps Plan for PlayStation Exclusives On PC

Um... Neither you, TFS and TFA seems to understand what "exclusive" means. A "Playstation Exclusive" would mean only on Playstation, so also releasing it on PC would be the opposite of that. Just sayin'. I know it's quaint these days, especially politically, but words actually have meanings. /pedantic :-)
PlayStation (Games)

PlayStation Exclusives Aren't Coming To PC Anymore (theverge.com) 25

Posted by BeauHD from the pivot-to-consoles dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sony reportedly won't release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation's studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC versions of last year's Ghost of Ytei and "other internally developed games." Online games will still come to multiple platforms following this change in strategy, Schreier reported at the time.

In recent years, Sony has released many of its biggest games on PC, including Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, both The Last of Us games, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 and Marathon. Two years ago, Hulst committed to releasing PlayStation's live-service games "day and date" on PC and PS5, but its single-player PC releases have been less consistent, with Hulst saying that the company takes a "more strategic approach." In April, Microsoft's new Xbox chief Asha Sharma said the company is "reevaluating" exclusive games for the platform. "Players are frustrated," she wrote in a memo. "New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented."

"The model that got us here won't be the one that takes us forward," the memo adds.

Submission + - Before Mass Layoffs, Meta Reassigns 7,000 Workers to Focus on AI (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. tools and apps, Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of human resources, said in an internal memo. The organizations will use “A.I. native design structures” and have fewer managers per employee than other parts of the company, she said, adding that company leaders will send details about the new roles on Wednesday. The restructuring “will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” Ms. Gale wrote. Meta declined to comment further on the changes.

Submission + - PlayStation Exclusives Aren't Coming To PC Anymore (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sony reportedly won’t release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation’s studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC versions of last year’s Ghost of Ytei and “other internally developed games.” Online games will still come to multiple platforms following this change in strategy, Schreier reported at the time.

In recent years, Sony has released many of its biggest games on PC, including Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, both The Last of Us games, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 and Marathon. Two years ago, Hulst committed to releasing PlayStation’s live-service games “day and date” on PC and PS5, but its single-player PC releases have been less consistent, with Hulst saying that the company takes a “more strategic approach."

Comment Let me guess ... (Score 3, Insightful) 52

by fahrbot-bot (#66150337) Attached to: FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, ...

Like with re-surfacing the Reflecting Pool, Trump will "know a guy, that's done work for him" - that he'll later say he's never heard of - and it will end up being be a no-bid contract for $35M, that will end up actually being a large multiple of that, which we find out from a reporter who Trump will call treasonous and/or stupid - for pointing out inconvenient facts/truth. In any case, just another avenue for corruption, at our expense. /s
United States

FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers (404media.co) 52

Posted by BeauHD from the license-to-log dept.
The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: "The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement," a statement of work, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads. ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades, but has become more pervasive in recent years.

The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information. The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million.

The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI's Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency's intelligence mission. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community. The report notes that the contract appears aimed at vendors like Flock or Motorola Solutions, since they're some of the only companies able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking.

Further reading: Small Town Fights Over Flock's AI-Enhanced Network of License Plate-Reading Cameras
Security

New Windows 'MiniPlasma' Zero-Day Exploit Gives SYSTEM Access, PoC Released (bleepingcomputer.com) 19

Posted by BeauHD from the fixed-but-still-broken dept.
A researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a new Windows zero-day dubbed MiniPlasma, which BleepingComputer confirmed can grant SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 11 systems. The researcher claims the bug is effectively a still-exploitable version of a 2020 flaw Microsoft said it had fixed. From the report: At the time, the flaw was assigned the CVE-2020-17103 identifier and reportedly fixed in December 2020. "After investigating, it turns out the exact same issue that was reported to Microsoft by Google project zero is actually still present, unpatched," explains Chaotic Eclipse. "I'm unsure if Microsoft just never patched the issue or the patch was silently rolled back at some point for unknown reasons. The original PoC by Google worked without any changes."

BleepingComputer tested the exploit on a fully patched Windows 11 Pro system running the latest May 2026 Patch Tuesday updates. In our test, we used a standard user account, and after running the exploit, it opened a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges, as shown in the image [here]. Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also confirmed the exploit works in his tests on the latest public version of Windows 11. However, he said that the flaw does not work in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary build.

The exploit appears to abuse how the Windows Cloud Filter driver handles registry key creation through an undocumented CfAbortHydration API. Forshaw's original report said that the flaw could allow arbitrary registry keys to be created in the .DEFAULT user hive without proper access checks, potentially enabling privilege escalation. While Microsoft reports having fixed the bug as part of its December 2020 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Chaotic Eclipse now claims the vulnerability can still be exploited.

Comment Re:Fucking Losers (Score 1) 162

Nobody in their right mind objects to AI applications in medicine, etc. But these are typically not generative AI systems. They are more traditional pattern-recognition systems with a specific area of "expertise".

What I object to is the Generative AI industry, which (as I've written) is fraudulent, immoral and dangerous. It's that industry that people are booing.
Patents

Nintendo Tries To Obtain Touchscreen-Specific Patent On Monster Capturing (gamesfray.com) 20

Posted by BeauHD from the to-be-continued dept.
Nintendo is trying to secure a touchscreen-specific monster-catching patent that could be relevant to Palworld Mobile. Japan's patent office has initially rejected the application for lacking an inventive step over prior art, but the company could appeal or amend the claims. Games Fray reports: The Japan Patent Office (JPO) has now made a new monster-catching patent application by Nintendo public. Patent Application No. 2026-019762 covers monster-catching of the kind already asserted against the PC and console versions of Palworld and is from the same patent family as two of the three patents Nintendo is already asserting against Palworld, but with a touchscreen focus. Potential targets are the upcoming Palworld Mobile game and Tencent's Roco Kingdom: World, which is presently available only in China but likely to expand internationally. Nintendo filed the application this year with a request for a fast-tracked review. The JPO has indeed been quick, and the response is that Nintendo's application lacks an inventive step over the prior art.

Nintendo already amended the claims in February and can try to amend them again. It can try to persuade the examiner and potentially appeal the decision. But the initial rejection suggests that Nintendo will not obtain the desired touchscreen monster-catching patent quickly. The rejection was communicated on April 24, 2026. Nintendo could abandon the application now, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they are more likely to try to persuade the examiner to arrive at a different conclusion, even though the reasons for the rejection are strong. In many patent examination processes, the initial rejection is essentially just an invitation to present one's best arguments. Here, however, the rejection notice is so well-reasoned that it will be an uphill battle for Nintendo. Nintendo's application would cover a touchscreen-controlled game in which a player moves through "a field in a virtual space," uses "a capture item for capturing a field character," and can summon "a battle character" to fight that creature. During combat, the game would display "a plurality of commands including at least an attack command and an item command," selected through "an operation input using the touch panel."

The key claim is that when the capture item is used "during a battle" or "in a non-battle state," the game performs "a capture success determination," and, if successful, "the field character is captured and set to a state owned by the player."

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