The FAQ says that players will be prompted to link the two the first time they load the game. And if you unlink later, you “will be constrained to relinking to only that specific and originally linked” Microsoft account.
The requirement stings given that there’s no cross-platform saving, so the progress you make in the PS5 version isn’t reflected in the Xbox version. It’s the same situation for the Steam version, as the FAQ points out. As the page also notes, Horizon 5 players will need a PlayStation Plus subscription to access the game’s multiplayer feature, and there are “no plans for a disc release.”
When Forza Horizon 5 releases on the PS5 on April 29th, it will be the latest Xbox exclusive to make the leap to Sony’s console, joining games like Sea of Thieves, which also requires you to link a Microsoft account before you can play.
Gamers haven’t been keen on required account linking when Sony has done it in the past. The company actually removed a requirement for you to sign in with your PSN account for some PC versions of some games, including Helldivers 2and, more recently, God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
It’s been rumored for months now that Apple was planning to release a device early this year that would serve as a smart home hub with a display, similar to devices that its main smart home competitors, Amazon and Google, have both offered for years. The device is expected to be the first Apple smart home hub with support for Apple Intelligence. It’s also rumored to run on tvOS and support native Apple apps like Calendar, Notes, and, according to recent rumors, compatibility with Apple’s Messages app.
Apple said last week that its upgraded smart assistant is taking “longer than we thought,” and will be released in the “coming year,” hinting that it may not be an iOS 18 feature as originally promised. The version of Apple Intelligence that we have now doesn’t really offer any smart home features so Apple releasing a smart display that’s wrapped up in the Siri AI upgrade wouldn’t make much sense right now.
Apple’s competitors, at first glance, seem to be forging ahead. Amazon, which has had its own struggles integrating AI into Alexa, has announced it’s finally doing just that with Alexa Plus, starting with its own robust Echo Show smart display lineup that most recently included the addition of the Echo Show 21. Google began its own similar rollout of Gemini in December, though only for some Nest speakers. But in both cases, they’re limited rollouts and not truly in the public sphere quite yet.
The Retroid Pocket Mini has an unfixable issue that’s causing certain graphical effects for emulated games not to work properly. Retroid, the China-based company that makes the Pocket Mini, announced on Discord that it will accept returns of the device but only during a limited March 8th to March 14th window — and capped at just 200 returns from owners who live outside of China, as RetroHandhelds reports.
Earlier in the week, the outlet says Retroid acknowledged it couldn’t fix the issue, which affects how the screen shows scanline and pixel grid shaders used to give classic emulated games the appearance of being played on the CRT displays they were designed for. The effects can show up as “misplaced scanlines, uneven pixels, or a slightly distorted image,” RetroHandhelds writes.
In this morning’s message, Retroid says carrying out this return campaign is a “large and costly endeavor,” and that it expects “a lot of return requests outside of screen-related issues.” Retroid also mentions it is asking customers to pay to ship their returns, which it promises to reimburse. Finally, the company added that it will offer all Pocket Mini owners “a $10 stackable coupon” for two of its future handhelds.
As Russ from the Retro Game Corps YouTube channel notes in a post on Reddit asking for recommendations to pass along to the company for dealing with the situation, Retroid is in a hard situation as a small company that now faces having to pay for very expensive shipping on returns. But that doesn’t change the fact that many gamers who bought the $199 handheld specifically to play retro games are left with a device whose otherwise impressive display does a bad job with some of the oldest tricks in the emulation book.
Warner Bros. Discovery just released a new trailer for the second (and maybe last) season of The Last of Us, offering an action-packed view of the fraught world Pedro Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are facing.
Things look bleak for both of them, and the show’s fungal-based zombies don’t seem to have become any less dangerous. The trailer’s centerpiece is a snowy human settlement that, at one point, is assaulted by a zombie horde. There are lots of explosions and at one point, a monstrous zombie being blasted by a flamethrower. There are also brief clips of characters fleeing in the woods and an ominous close-up of a sickle just before a shot of someone being hanged.
Interspersed with shots of them are flashbacks of Joel and Ellie, the latter of whom is intense in shots of her sprinting and firing a handgun or running over the top of an underground train. There are brief clips of other characters, including a man and his daughter who seem to be fleeing something — or someone — in the woods. The trailer closes on Ellie saying to what looks like a guilt-stricken Joel, “You swore.”
The Last of Us season two also stars Jeffrey Wright as Isaac Dixon, Isabela Merced as Dina, and Kaitlyn Dever as Abby. It debuts April 13th on Max.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is still pushing to break up Google, according to a revised proposal filed Friday with federal Judge Amit Mehta. As in its proposal last year, the DOJ says Google should be forced to sell its web browser, Google Chrome, and potentially Android, as punishment for being a monopolist, as Judge Mehta found last year, reports The New York Times.
In its new filing, the DOJ calls Google “an economic goliath” that it says “has denied users of a basic American value—the ability to choose in the marketplace.” To deal with that, “Google must divest the Chrome browser … to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the internet.” The department also still recommends that Google must change its Android business practices to enable competition or be ordered to sell the operating system. It dropped a suggestion that the company be allowed to sell Android in lieu of making the changes.
Both spin-offs were part of the proposal the DOJ filed last year. But whether it would hold that line under Trump, whom tech companies have plied with money and praise since his election, has been a mystery. The President has stepped back some Biden-era tech regulations on things like AI safety and cryptocurrency, but has also suggested that the threat of regulation can be useful for getting the results he wants.
The department’s proposal eases up in some ways. The DOJ now supports letting Google pay Apple for services unrelated to search. It also no longer calls for Google to drop its AI investments — the Times writes that, instead, the DOJ reccomennds requiring the company to “notify federal and state officials before proceeding with investments in AI.”
Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels told The Verge in an email that the DOJ’s updated proposal goes “miles beyond the Court’s decision, and would harm America’s consumers, economy and national security.”
Google filed its own proposal that doesn’t include selling Chrome but instead suggests the court place restrictions on the sorts of deals it can make, such as barring it from requiring that a phone maker that licenses Google Play also preinstall other Google software, like the Google Search app or Chrome. As noted by the Times, a hearing on the proposals is scheduled for April.
Update March 9th: Added a statement from Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels.
If you, like me, still have your DVD collection hanging around, now is a good time to dust off your DVD player and make sure they haven’t succumbed to disc rot. That’s because many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely, the company acknowledged in a statement to JoBlo in an article update this week.
The company gave JoBlo this statement on the matter:
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008, and the company has been actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.
Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.
Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at [email protected].
Disc rot is not a new phenomenon, but as ArsTechnica notes, properly-cared-for DVDs should be playable for up to 100 years, according to Sony. However, failing WBHE discs have stood out in particular amongst the physical media faithful, who have been posting about the problem for years in forums like DVD Talk and Home Theater Forum.
The above 2021 video from YouTuber Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader that Ars points to suggests disc rot is affecting a broader range of discs, from 2006 to 2009, than WB has acknowledged. As for figuring out which of your discs may have the issue, he says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.
Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online, as well as those from his own collection that seem to be affected. The list features discs for popular series like Batman: The Animated Series as well as movies, such as a Stanley Kubrick Director’s Series edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and all of the Superman films up to Superman Returns.
Another of Crusader’s Google Docs largely pins the faulty DVDs made “roughly from 2006 through 2009” on a Cinram manufacturing plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. WB hasn’t substantiated the claim, as Ars notes. Crusader says you can identify discs produced there using codes printed on the inner ring of a disc’s underside.
There are plenty of us who have held onto our physical media as a bulwark against losing access to the films, TV shows, and games we love — something that can happen without notice as platforms are deprecated or distribution licenses dry up. But even maintaining a physical collection isn’t perfect if some manufacturing issue that occurred years earlier can break your discs.
It’s nice to know that even if I hadn’t backed up my DVDs to my home server in the last couple of years, Warner Bros. appears to be doing the right thing and I wouldn’t necessarily lose them. But there’s no guarantee that other companies will do that if their discs start failing in large numbers. It makes a great argument for taking up the digital packrat lifestyle 404 Mediawrote about last month, and backing up your physical media early and often.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today it has criminally charged 12 Chinese nationals it says are behind attacks that hit more than 100 US organizations, including the Treasury, in a string of attacks going as far back as 2013.
The DOJ accuses the people of carrying out their attacks either on their own or at the behest of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). It says two are officers of the MPS, while eight others are employees of an “ostensibly private” Chinese company called i-Soon, which allegedly had the capability to hack Gmail and Microsoft Outlook inboxes, as well as Twitter and X, using the latter to help the Chinese government monitor public opinion overseas. It called that last tool the “Public Opinion Guidance and Control Platform,” according to the government’s indictment.
The last two are members of a group called APT27, or Silk Typhoon, which has been behind hacks of organizations like healthcare systems and universities, according to the DOJ. The group has more recently focused on IT systems that include management software, recent Microsoft research concluded. Such software was the target of the Treasury hack reported in late December.
The DOJ says the hackers were motivated by money, as the “MPS and MSS paid handsomely for stolen data.” Of the i-Soon group:
i-Soon and its employees, to include the defendants, generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue as a key player in the PRC’s hacker-for-hire ecosystem. In some instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions at the request of the MSS or MPS, including cyber-enabled transnational repression at the direction of the MPS officer defendants. In other instances, i-Soon conducted computer intrusions on its own initiative and then sold, or attempted to sell, the stolen data to at least 43 different bureaus of the MSS or MPS in at least 31 separate provinces and municipalities in China. i-Soon charged the MSS and MPS between approximately $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully exploited. i-Soon also trained MPS employees how to hack independently of i-Soon and offered a variety of hacking methods for sale to its customers.
And of Silk Typhoon:
The defendants’ motivations were financial and, because they were profit-driven, they targeted broadly, rendering victim systems vulnerable well beyond their pilfering of data and other information that they could sell. Between them, Yin and Zhou sought to profit from the hacking of numerous U.S.-based technology companies, think tanks, law firms, defense contractors, local governments, health care systems, and universities, leaving behind them a wake of millions of dollars in damages.
Other victims of hacks from i-Soon include two New York newspapers, the US Department of Commerce, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and more.
None of the defendants is in custody, the DOJ says. The US government is offering as much as $10 million for information that helps it identify any of those accused of directing or carrying out “i-Soon’s malicious cyber activity.” It’s also offering “up to $2 million each for information leading to the arrests and convictions, in any country, of malicious cyber actors Yin Kecheng and Zhou Shuai,” the two Silk Typhoon members.
After over a year and a half, Apple is updating the Mac Studio with a curious new quirk: it straddles two generations, with an M4 Max for the base model and an M3 Ultra for the upgraded model. You can preorder both versions at Apple’s site for $1,999 (M4 Max) and $3,999 (M3 Ultra), and they’ll be available to buy on March 12th.
Apple says the M4 Max Mac Studio is “up to 3.5x faster” than the original M1 Max version, with a 14- to 16-core CPU and 32- to 40-core GPU. Like the M4 Max MacBook Pro, this version of the Studio starts with 36GB of RAM (up from 32GB in the M2 model) and can be had with as much as 128GB, a bump from the 96GB ceiling of the M2 Max Studio. Like its outgoing predecessor, it starts with 512GB of SSD storage but can go as high as 8TB.
Meanwhile, the Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra chip sounds like it’s going to scream. It gets up to 32 cores, 24 of which are performance cores — something Apple notes is “50 percent more than any previous Ultra chip.” The GPU has a base 60-core configuration that maxes out at 80 cores, and Apple says it has a 32-core Neural Engine for machine learning and AI applications.
The M3 Ultra version of the Studio has 96GB of RAM to start, but it can go up to a gobsmacking 512GB of RAM — enough to run some very hefty AI models locally. Finally, you can bump the base 1TB internal storage to as high as 16 terabytes.
Apple says the Mac Studios’ GPUs will feature dynamic caching — that is, it will store frequently accessed data in cache to drop latency — and hardware-accelerated mesh shading, both firsts for the company’s graphics chips. It will also have “a second-generation ray-tracing engine for more seamless content creation and gaming.”
On the outside, the new Mac Studio is the same squat, square-ish silver box as before, with two USB-C ports and an SD Card slot on the front. Around the back, you’ll find four more USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and one port each for ethernet, power, and audio, as well as an audio jack and the power button. Both CPU configurations come with Thunderbolt 5 connections, but as with older-generation Studios, only the four rear USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Max — you’ll need an M3 Ultra Mac Studio to get it on all six.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today dismissed a lawsuit against Early Warning Services, the company that runs the Venmo-like Zelle payment platform, as well as the three banks that share ownership of it, reports CNBC.
The CFPB, which enforces regulations against the financial services industry, had claimed in its December 2024 lawsuit that the organizations had not effectively protected Zelle users “from widespread fraud,” causing customers of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo to lose a combined $870 million since Zelle launched in 2017.
The regulator’s filing says it is dismissing its court case with prejudice, meaning that it can’t bring its claims again. Eric Halperin, the CFPB’s former head of enforcement, told CNBC that doing so also means there’s no way “of clawing back funds for consumer relief.” Representatives from Zelle, JPMorgan, and the Consumer Bankers Association each praised the ruling in statements to the outlet.
President Donald Trump’s administration, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have pushed hard to effectively shut down the CFPB. The agency has only published one enforcement action since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and under acting Director Russell Vought it’s dropped several cases that were brought by its Biden-era leader, Rohit Chopra. Agency employees are currently fighting in court to halt the move, alleging they’ve been prevented from carrying out legally mandated duties — including responding to urgent consumer complaints.
Yesterday morning, billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong published a letter to readers letting them know the outlet is now using AI to add a “Voices” label to articles that take “a stance” or are “written from a personal perspective.” He said those articles may also get a set of AI-generated “Insights,” which appear at the bottom as bullet points, including some labeled, “Different views on the topic.”
“Voices is not strictly limited to Opinion section content,” writes Soon-Shiong, ”It also includes news commentary, criticism, reviews, and more. If a piece takes a stance or is written from a personal perspective, it may be labeled Voices.“ He also says, “I believe providing more varied viewpoints supports our journalistic mission and will help readers navigate the issues facing this nation.”
The news wasn’t received well by LA Times union members. In a statement reported by The Hollywood Reporter, LA Times Guild vice chair Matt Hamilton said the union supports some initiatives to help readers separate news reporting from opinion stories, “But we don’t think this approach — AI-generated analysis unvetted by editorial staff — will do much to enhance trust in the media.”
It’s only been a day, but the change has already generated some questionable results. The Guardian points to a March 1st LA Times opinion piece about the danger inherent in unregulated use of AI to produce content for historical documentaries. At the bottom, the outlet’s new AI tool claims that the story “generally aligns with a Center Left point of view” and suggests that “AI democratizes historical storytelling.”
Um, AI actually got that right. OCers have minimized the 1920s Klan as basically anti-racists since it happened. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a guy who’s been covering this for a quarter century https://t.co/WUsIxHQMFl
— Col. Gustavo Arellano (@GustavoArellano) March 4, 2025
Insights were also apparently added to the bottom of a February 25th LA Times story about California cities that elected Klu Klux Klan members to their city councils in the 1920s. One of the now-removed, AI-generated, bullet-pointed views is that local historical accounts sometimes painted the Klan as “a product of ‘white Protestant culture’ responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement, minimizing its ideological threat.” That is correct, as the author points out on X, but it seems to be clumsily presented as a counterpoint to the story’s premise – that the Klan’s faded legacy in Anaheim, California has lived on in school segregation, anti-immigration laws, and local neo-Nazi bands.
Ideally, if AI tools are used, it is with some editorial oversight to prevent gaffes like the ones LA Times is experiencing. Sloppy or nonexistent oversight seems to be the road to issues like MSN’s AI news aggregator recommending an Ottawa food bank as a tourist lunch destination or Gizmodo’s awkward non-chronological “chronological” list of Star Wars films. And Apple recently tweaked its Apple Intelligence notification summaries’ appearance after the feature contorted a BBC headline to incorrectly suggest that UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione had shot himself.
Microsoft has announced Microsoft Dragon Copilot, an AI system for healthcare that can, among other things, listen to and create notes based on clinical visits. The system combines voice-dictating and ambient listening tech created by AI voice company Nuance, which Microsoft bought in 2021.
According to Microsoft’s announcement, the new system can help its users streamline their documentation through features like “multilanguage ambient note creation” and natural language dictation. Its AI assistant offers “general-purpose medical information searches from trusted content sources,” as well as the ability to automate tasks like “conversational orders, note and clinical evidence summaries, referral letters, and after visit summaries.”
The goal of all of this is to “free clinicians from much of the administrative burden of healthcare” so they can focus on patient care, according to Joe Petro, Microsoft VP of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms. Microsoft says its own surveys found that clinicians who have used the Nuance tech that makes up Dragon Copilot suffered less burnout and that 93 percent of their patients reported a “better overall experience.”
Microsoft is one of many companies offering such AI tools for healthcare settings. A Google Cloud blog published today highlights how healthcare firms are using Google’s medical AI offerings, like by creating medical assistant AI agents for identifying patient health risks; they’re also using the new multimodal image-searching features Google debuted for its Vertex AI Search for healthcare product.
The FDA published considerations for generative AI devices in healthcare last year, in which it noted many potential benefits of the tech, but also the risks of models making things up. In a study last year, researchers found that was an issue at times with Nambla’s OpenAI Whisper-powered medical transcription software. Microsoft says it is “committed to developing responsible AI by design,” and that Dragon Copilot’s “capabilities are built on a secure data estate and incorporate healthcare-specific clinical, chat and compliance safeguards for accurate and safe AI outputs.”
EV maker BYD unveiled “Lingyuan,” a vehicle-mounted drone launching system developed in collaboration with DJI that is available for all of the company’s vehicles, reports Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. The system is only available in China, like BYD’s vehicles, and costs 16,000 yuan (or about $2,197).
BYD’s video below, reposted by YouTube channel ShanghaiEye, has some real science fiction vibes: the driver taps a button on their vehicle’s touch screen, and doors slide open on the top of the car, revealing a rising landing platform with a drone on it. The drone is shown lifting off while the EV is in motion in some shots, then following the car down the road.
A CnEVPost story says the drones can take off and land “at speeds up to 25 km/h” and that they can return automatically as long as they’re within two kilometers of the vehicle. The story also says the drone can follow at up to 54 kilometers per hour. The hangar charges the drone when it’s docked.
The Lingyuan purchase price includes a DJI drone — reports don’t seem to say which, but the video shows a DJI Air 3S — as well as the roof-mounted drone hangar, and apps that work with the system, according to South China Morning Post. The apps include one for video editing (possibly one of DJI’s existing apps) as well as one for “AI recognition,” whose function isn’t specified by SCMP. Google-translated text from BYD’s demo video revealing the system mentions “AI Posture recognition, Lingyuan takes photos around the car.” It’s not clear whether BYD owners can install the system on a vehicle themselves.
BYD and DJI collaborated in “developing a fully integrated system from the ground up,” BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said at a launch event in Chinese tech hub Shenzhen on Sunday, writes SCMP. The automaker also reportedly introduced a version of its Bao 8 SUV that comes “pre-equipped with the Lingyuan system.”
It’s not BYD’s first venture into drone launchers. Its luxury brand, Yangwang, launched an off-road variant of its U8 SUV with one attached to its roof rails, but that looks much larger than the Lingyuan featured in BYD’s video.
Lingyuan sounds a lot like DJI’s Dock 3 drone-in-a-box solution meant for use in tasks like power line inspections or emergency response. The Dock 3 was the first verson of the DJI Dock to let you launch the drones from a moving vehicle, but it costs quite a bit more than the Lingyuan system: it starts at $21,059, a price that doesn’t include installation, for a bundle with a DJI Matrice 4D drone.
In a pair of social media posts today, President Donald Trump named some cryptocurrencies he says will be part of a Crypto Strategic Reserve being created by an executive order he signed in January. Those include Bitcoin and Ether, which he says “will be the heart of the Reserve.”
Trump said in the first of his two Truth Social posts that his order “directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve” that also includes XRP, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA). Trump hinted at such a reserve on the campaign trail, telling attendees of a crypto conference last year that the US would never sell its Bitcoin holdings.
Under Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has quickly backed away from the wary stance toward cryptocurrencies it held prior to Trump’s inauguration this year. The agency has recently dropped multiple investigations and lawsuits against cryptocurrency firms that alleged securities violations.
One of the currencies Trump mentioned today, Ripple’s XRP, was the subject of a 2020 SEC lawsuit in which a judge ruled that it functioned as an unregistered security, but only when Ripple sold it to institutional investors. The SEC appealed that decision in October last year; as of this writing, that appeal is ongoing.
An FAA Air Traffic Control tower at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in Newark, New Jersey. | Photo: Angus Mordant / Bloomberg via Getty Images<br>
Officials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday ordered staff “to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal” to upgrade air traffic control communications, anonymous sources have told Rolling Stone. The story follows reports that Starlink may be taking the job from Verizon, which already has a multibillion-dollar contract with the government to improve the system.
According to Rolling Stone, the talks “have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally,” something its sources say is “unusual for a matter like this.” One person the outlet spoke with suggested that it looked like “someone does not want a paper trail.” Rolling Stone says it’s not clear whether the Verizon contract has ended yet, nor if any Starlink deal is official. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which DOGE head Elon Musk owns.
Referring to previous reporting in a statement issued yesterday, House Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and James Clyburn (D-SC) called the reported deal “a glaring conflict of interest” in light of Musk’s government role at the head of DOGE, which has been directing massive, chaotic changes to federal bureaucracy. The two said the deal’s changes would represent “dangerous actions that put Elon Musk’s personal wealth over the American people’s lives.”
Musk insisted last week that Verizon’s system was “breaking down very rapidly” and putting flyers at risk. He later corrected himself, noting the Verizon system is “not yet operational” and that the one he was criticizing “was made L3 Harris.” He also claimed Starlink is providing terminals for free to “restore air traffic control connectivity.”
Apple Intelligence was supposed to finally deliver a more natural version of Siri, but now, people who work in Apple’s AI department believe the company won’t release a ”truemodernized, conversational version of Siri … until iOS 20 at best in 2027,“ writes Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter.
Apple is expected to roll out an LLM-powered Siri upgrade in iOS 18.5, but Gurman says this will work as its own separate model from the old Siri, a system that “doesn’t work as smoothly as it could.” According to Gurman, the modernized Siri would merge the two into a new architecture that can handle both simple requests, like setting timers, and the advanced AI-powered abilities Apple showed off last year, like carrying out tasks across apps using context like personal details and what’s on your screen. Apple planned to introduce this combined Siri architecture in iOS 19.4, but it’s “running behind” and “won’t be unveiled in June,” when the company usually holds WWDC, Gurman writes.
Amazon reportedly struggled with its own AI assistant upgrade of Alexa; Amazon head of Devices and Services Panos Panay told my colleague Jennifer Tuohy that the new Alexa Plus system has involved a “hundred percent re-architected” system that blends the old Alexa with the new. That’s now coming in early access soon, though only to certain devices.
Apple is on the same path but with extra challenges. Gurman reports that people in Apple’s AI department say its models “are reaching their limits,” but the company has had a hard time securing the AI training hardware it needs to improve things. At the same time, he writes that the department has been plagued by “ineffective leadership” and workers defecting to rivals, all while those rivals seem to be pushing farther and farther ahead.
The Ikea Timmerflotte, as represented in an FCC filing.
Ikea has registered its first Thread device, a new Matter-supporting temperature and humidity sensor called the “Timmerflotte,” with the FCC, reports HomeKit News. A diagram from the filing, which was spotted by CybermodStudios, shows a circular device that’s powered by two AAA batteries and features a QR code and 11-digit number for Matter setup.
The Timmerflotte doesn’t appear to use any other wireless protocol other than Thread, HomeKit News notes. That means Ikea, which tends to use the Zigbee or Wi-Fi protocols for its devices, doesn’t offer a hub that this device could natively integrate with. Ikea’s Dirigera hub lacks both Thread border router capability, for one thing. And although it can now act as a Matter bridge, it’s not a Matter controller, meaning you can’t control Matter products with it.
That said, Ikea originally announced that the Dirigera would have Thread support. It ultimately didn’t launch with it, but the Timmerflotte’s listing may be a sign Ikea is ready to switch on the Dirigera’s Thread radios and Matter controller functionality. That could let it serve as a standalone smart home hub, similar to the Aqara M3 hub or Flic’s LR and Mini hubs.
Federal workers started getting emails on Friday night, “asking them to provide a list of accomplishments from the week,” reports The New York Times. According to the outlet, the message told workers they’ll now be expected to provide such a list every Monday by 11:59PM ET.
This time around, the Times writes that “employees who worked only on classified or sensitive activities were instructed to write ‘all of my activities are sensitive’ in response.” The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reportedly sent the email to agencies that include the FBI, the General Services Administration, and the Departments of Defense, Justice, Labor, and Agriculture. In at least one other case, it was sent by an internal department address, according to The Associated Press.
The Times notes that it’s not clear whether there are any consequences for those who don’t respond to the new email or future ones. After a similar email was sent to federal workers last week, Musk wrote on X, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation” — a detail that was missing from the original email, something a number of legal experts have said is illegal.
On Thursday, a federal judge said the OPM cannot fire employees of another agency and ordered it to rescind directives that resulted in the mass firings of probationary employees, many of whom were senior workers in key roles. In an open letter the same day, Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) urged Musk and the OPM to stop sending emails to employees of legislative branch offices and agencies “who are not subject to personnel actions by the Executive branch.” Padilla said the messages are “wasting time and resources and potentially misleading employees into responding and sharing legislative branch information in an unauthorized manner.”
Many agencies told employees not to reply to last week’s email, while others said they should. Musk claimed last week, without evidence, that the original round of emails were aimed at finding fraudulent employees. The Times points out he repeated that claim during a Wednesday cabinet meeting, saying there may be “a number of people on the government payroll who are dead.”
First-generation Echo speakers won’t get Alexa Plus.
Amazon is bringing the new AI-powered Alexa Plus to a wide range of its existing Echo devices — but the upgrade will skip many of the earliest models. The majority of the company’s first-generation Echos won’t get support, according to the Alexa Plus FAQ page, though Amazon says they will continue to work with the standard Alexa.
Alexa Plus won’t support “certain older generation Echo devices,” such as the first-generation Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Tap, Echo Spot, and Echo Show; the second-generation Echo Show won’t support it, either. Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt confirmed that is the full list of devices. If so, that still leaves many early Echo devices that will work with Alexa Plus.
That means I’ll be able to ask Alexa to book a restaurant reservation through my Echo Flex, the quirky modular Echo speaker that plugs straight into a wall outlet. And people can still get an AI-generated song piped through speakers they’ve connected their microphone-only Echo Inputs to. And if you have an ancient first- or- second-gen Echo Show 15 or newer Echo Hub, those will apparently get access to the AI-enhanced Alexa, too. Schmidt confirmed that each of those will be compatible.
Perhaps it’s a bummer that some of the older Echo devices won’t use AI to book reservations, track ticket prices, or generate fake songs. But at least they’ll still be able to do the old Alexa stuff, like turn on your lights or tell you the weather. And given rumors about the struggle Amazon has had getting Alexa Plus to work right, that might be a good thing, at least for a while.
Amazon is finally launching the long-awaited generative AI version of Alexa — Alexa Plus — that, if all goes well, will take away much of the friction that comes with talking to a speaker to control your smart home or getting info on the fly.
Some of the new abilities coming to Alexa Plus include the ability to do things for you — you’ll be able to ask it to order groceries for you or send event invites to your friends. Amazon says it will also be able to memorize personal details like your diet and movie preferences.
Alexa Plus is $19.99 per month on its own or free for Amazon Prime members — a better deal, considering Prime costs just $14.99 per month or $139 per year. That comes with access to the Alexa website, where the company said you can do “longform work.” Amazon also said it created a new Alexa app to go with the new assistant. Alexa Plus will work on “almost every” Alexa device released so far, starting with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21. Early access will start rolling out next month.
Alexa Plus will also be able to carry on conversations from uttering its wake word, which is still just “Alexa.” It also has vision capabilities and can take pictures and analyze images. Amazon demoed other abilities, such as Alexa prompting you to tell you about concert ticket availability and being able to tell you about local businesses (referencing Yelp to do so) and book dinner reservations. The company says it can read a study guide and test you on the answers, as well as research trips and create itineraries.
Like before, you can still control smart home devices, with Amazon calling out things like smart home cameras and lights, but the company says it can create routines on your behalf as well. You’ll also be able to use Alexa Plus for music, with the ability to find songs based on relatively vague descriptions. The company also said you can ask Alexa to jump to a specific scene in a movie, though that took a couple of tries.
A lot of what Amazon showed off was clearly well beyond what you can do with the older version of Alexa. In one part of the demo, Amazon SVP of devices and services Panos Panay asked Alexa if anyone had walked the dog recently, and it referenced smart home cameras to respond that, yes, someone had.
Amazon’s director of Alexa, Mara Segal, demonstrated that you’ll be able to share documents with Alexa — such as handwritten notes and recipes, emails, instruction manuals, and pictures — that it can reference later. For instance, Segal asked Alexa to read a housing association document and analyze its rules regarding solar panels. She also asked it for a readout of a SXSW schedule.
Segal also demonstrated how Alexa Plus can take action when prompted, like telling her about a kids’ soccer schedule and adding calendar details and reminders based on it, all using fairly casual, natural language in an ongoing conversation.
A lot of the demonstrated Alexa Plus features were visual, meaning that the dashboard and UI on touchscreen Echo devices have had a facelift. There are new customizable widgets on the homescreen that can be moved to a second page and a whole new widget specifically for controlling connected smart home devices.
When you speak with the new Alexa Plus on Echo devices with a display, you’ll also see a fluctuating blue bar at the bottom of the interface. Panay said this “is Alexa” and that the little animations and icons it displays are called “Alexicons,” which are used to visually express a sense of personality.
The company also showed off some familiar LLM greatest hits — you can get Alexa Plus to make up stories for you, and it seems to be able to generate AI art as well.
Amazon said Alexa Plus is a model-agnostic system, using its own Amazon Nova model, as well as those from companies like Anthropic. It will choose the best model for the task at hand, according to the company.
Amazon also listed a number of partners from which Alexa Plus draws data to understand and analyze financial markets, sports, and more. Some of the partners include The Associated Press, Politico, The Washington Post, and Reuters.
The company demonstrated that by having Alexa answer questions about the Boston Red Sox and asking Alexa to track ticket availability over time. Alexa Plus will apparently also be able to buy those tickets for you. The company says these are day-one capabilities powered by hundreds of models it calls “experts.”
Amazon said its LLM experts can also do things for services from firms like Uber Eats, Sonos, Wyze, Zoom, Xbox, Plex, Dyson, Bose, Grubhub, Levoit, and Ticketmaster. It also noted some of the Alexa Plus features will be available on the web through Alexa.com.
The company is also partnering with AI song generator Suno to allow Alexa Plus to create songs on the fly from a prompt, with the company demonstrating an AI-made country song about a bodega cat.
Amazon first announced it was going to “supercharge” Alexa with AI in September 2023. Back then, the company made a lot of big claims, saying that Alexa would understand context or build automated routines for you — you needed only ask. But by the following June, around when Apple announced its own Siri AI upgrade, reports emerged that the company was struggling to realize its efforts and that some employees were leaving because they didn’t think this version of Alexa would ever work.
The devices team at Amazon also saw a major executive shakeup in the interim, with longtime leader Dave Limp being replaced by Panay, who’d come over from running Microsoft’s Surface lineup.
Now that its AI Alexa is here, Amazon is entering a world very different from the one Alexa was born into back in 2014. It will compete with a crowded field of AI-powered digital assistants like the way-ahead Google Gemini, the category-defining ChatGPT, and Apple’s reportedly also-struggling upgraded Siri. But with some very limited exceptions, those chatbots aren’t on smart speakers yet, and that may be Amazon’s opportunity. Its speakers could bring an AI chatbot to a lot of people a lot faster than competitors. Amazon just needs to finish getting it out the door.
YouTube isn’t a podcast app, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the number one place people who want to consume online radio shows now turn to. According to the company, a staggering 1 billion people are tuning into podcasts every month on YouTube. That’s not just more than either Apple or Spotify can claim — it utterly lays them to waste.
In 2023, Spotify reported it had 100 million regular podcast listeners, and touted that half a billion people had listened to a podcast on its platform since 2019 when it started its push into the world of online radio shows. Apple tends to come out behind Spotify in third-party measurements. If a full eighth of the world’s population uses YouTube for podcasts, it seems like that’s probably where the action is.
Reaching that big chunk of audience takes extra work for podcasters, though. Listeners can’t turn just off their phone’s screen to listen unless they’re paying for YouTube Premium, and people may not want to stare at a static image for an hour straight. That means doing video to really make it count.
Making video for YouTube is far more expensive than it used to be. In a newsletter earlier this month, cooking creator Carla Lalli Music, formerly of Bon Apetit, said it cost her $3,500 to shoot a single video for the platform. Those were more complicated than a podcast video, but it still speaks to the platform’s demand for quality in order to get off the ground. YouTube says that more than 400 million hours of podcasts were watched on TVs alone last year. Video clearly matters; creators can’t just turn on their webcams and get results.
Reaching YouTube’s audience also means playing by YouTube’s rules. The platform doesn’t work with RSS feeds in the same way that most other podcast platforms do — every podcast has to become a native YouTube video. That requires them to play by YouTube’s ad rules, too, and use YouTube’s ad systems. Podcasters can’t serve ads the same way they do everywhere else, and they can’t get the same metrics they’d normally use to sell advertisers on their reach and success.
Still, that tradeoff has clearly been worth it to a great many creators, and YouTube’s stats today show why. It may not be a traditional podcast platform, but it’s a big one that podcasters can’t ignore.
