2023 was a bad year for Elon Musk. Even before his antisemitic tirade, the billionaire’s mounting failures at X/Twitter took Musk from media darling to a near-laughing stock. His bid to take SpaceX pubic is faltering after its satellite internet business Starlink brought in just $1.4 billion of the $12 billion Musk…
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI organized in Nevada as a for-profit benefit corporation, The Information reported on Tuesday. The company behind the Grok chatbot is the latest AI startup to give itself an unusual corporate structure that, on paper, prioritizes the public good alongside its profits,…
Sometimes, you need a little comfort food—and at io9, that can mean “re-watching a favorite Star Wars show” or “guzzling midnight margaritas while watching Sandra Bullock play a witch” or “picking up a book and rediscovering the joy of reading.” We love new releases, don’t get us wrong, but we also dig revisiting past…
Into fossils? Taking a road trip across the country and looking for a side quest? Perhaps you’re just looking for an escape from modernity writ large. Well, these are the places for you. More than 320 dinosaur species have been named in the United States and most of the states have produced at least one dinosaur…
Talk about an eyesore. In a case report this month, doctors have described finding a wooden splinter lodged inside a man’s cornea for apparently 15 years. Amazingly, the man’s vision appears unaffected by the foreign object and doctors have opted to simply monitor him for now rather than try to remove it.
AI’s effect on our world will be dramatic, but nothing will ever be as dramatic as the collective freak-out we all had about the emerging technology in 2023. With billions of dollars on the table and the promise that AI will transform every corner of modern life, everyone from businesses, to regulators, to regular…
Amazon has started notifying Prime Video subscribers that they have to pay extra if they don’t want their viewing experience interrupted by commercials. In an email the company has sent to customers, it said that it will start showing “limited advertisements” with its service’s movies and shows starting on January 29. Those who want to keep their accounts ad-free will have to pay an extra fee of $3 a month on top of their Prime subscription or their standalone $9-a-month Prime Video membership.
The company first announced that it was going to serve ads with its content — and that the initial regions to be affected are the US, UK, Germany and Canada — back in September. Customers in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia will have to make the decision whether to endure the advertisements it serves or pay extra by late next year. Amazon mentioned back then that it’s aiming to “have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.” While “meaningfully fewer” is pretty vague, Variety said at the time that four minutes per hour seemed to be the lowest amount of ad time for a streaming platform.
Amazon reiterated that goal in the email it sent to subscribers. It also explained that introducing ads to its service and charging more for an ad-free viewing experience will help it invest “in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.” The company told subscribers that they’ll automatically start seeing ads by the end of January and linked to a website where they can pay for ad-free viewing. In an information page about the change, Amazon clarified that it will not be showing ads with rented or purchased content. It also said that Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands and American Samoa are excluded from the rollout for now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-prime-video-will-start-serving-ads-on-january-29-unless-you-pay-extra-040529534.html?src=rss
Bre Tiesi, who shares a 1-year-old son with Cannon, gave “The Masked Singer” host a memorable present for the holidays.
Indian authorities allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi have questioned Apple on the accuracy of its internal threat algorithms and are now investigating the security of its devices, according to The Washington Post. Officials apparently targeted the company after it warned journalists and opposition politicians that state-sponsored hackers may have infiltrated their devices back in October. While Apple is under scrutiny for its security measures in the eyes of the public, the Post says government officials were more upfront with what they wanted behind closed doors.
They reportedly called up the company’s representatives in India to pressure Apple into finding a way to soften the political impact of its hacking warnings. The officials also called in an Apple security expert to conjure alternative explanations for the warnings that they could tell people — most likely one that doesn’t point to the government as the possible culprit.
The journalists and politicians who posted about Apple’s warnings on social media had one thing in common: They were all critical of Modi’s government. Amnesty International examined the phone of one particular journalist named Anand Mangnale who was investigating long-time Modi ally Gautam Adani and found that an attacker had planted the Pegasus spyware on his Apple device. While Apple didn’t explicitly say that the Indian government is to blame for the attacks, Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, is mostly sold to governments and government agencies.
The Post’s report said India’s ruling political party has never confirmed or denied using Pegasus to spy on journalists and political opponents, but this is far from the first time its critics have been infected with the Pegasus spyware. In 2021, an investigation by several publications that brought the Pegasus project to light found the spyware on the phones of people with a history of opposing and criticizing Modi’s government.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-reportedly-faces-pressure-in-india-after-sending-out-warnings-of-state-sponsored-hacking-073036597.html?src=rss
The mayors of Chicago, New York City and Denver have renewed pleas for more federal help over the growing number of asylum-seekers arriving in their cities.
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