Hasta La Gadget!

The Fyre Festival saga is getting an unexpected new chapter. Shawn Rech, who co-founded the TruBlu streaming network for crime and investigative content, is planning to leverage the Fyre Festival name for a new music streaming platform. He’s acquired select intellectual property trademarks for the famously failed music event whose co-founder Billy McFarland went to jail for fraud. However, Rech will not play a role in Fyre Festival’s hypothetical live events. According to him, he’s just trying to capitalize on the name’s familiarity for his own project.

“It has nothing to do with music,” Rech told Deadline in a surprisingly candid statement. “I needed a big name that people would remember, even if it’s attached to infamy, so that’s why I bought these [trademarks] to start the streaming network.”

Deadline reports that the Fyre Music Streaming will have a subscription video-on-demand platform and free ad-supported television channels. Rech claims it will launch at Thanksgiving. “We’re building something authentic and lasting,” he said.

It takes an impressive amount of hubris to use the name of a comically ridiculous music festival fraud and expect people to give you money for it. But considering Rech did manage to get TruBlu off the ground, maybe his music platform will actually exist. If the fact that the second Fyre Festival has already been indefinitely postponed is any sign of what’s to come, though, it will be a hilarious exercise in schadenfreude.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/fyre-festival-is-becoming-a-music-streaming-service-that-might-not-be-a-scam-this-time-221058381.html?src=rss

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decide that its official stance towards AI-use in films is to take no stance at all, according to a statement the organization shared outlining changes to voting for the 98th Oscars. The issue of award-nominated films using AI was first raised in 2024 when the productions behind Best Picture nominees The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez admitted to using the tech to alter performances.

“With regard to Generative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools used in the making of the film, the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination, ” AMPAS writes. “The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.”

While the organization at least reaffirms that human involvement is their primary concern, they also don’t seem to believe that using AI — potentially trained on the ill-gotten work of their membership — is an existential problem. Hollywood labor unions have historically felt differently: One of several issues raised during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023 was that AI could be used to replace the work of real people. The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez used it to modify vocal performances, but you don’t have to connect too many dots to see generative AI playing an even more substantial role in the future.

The Academy is more flexible than it’s been in years, expanding membership, adding new award categories and alongside this AI statement, improving awards voting for the better. But it still seems like most industries are waiting for a decisive legal victory against an AI company to set a new standard before they change their tune towards the tech.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/using-generative-ai-will-neither-help-nor-harm-the-chances-of-achieving-oscar-nominations-201719890.html?src=rss

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to find out exactly what information the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has accessed from federal agencies. The civil rights organization submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to several goverment departments in February; it is now suing to get responses from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The SSA denied the group’s request for expedited processing and has not responded to the ACLU’s appeal, while the VA did not act on the FOIA request, according to the press release announcing the lawsuit.

The ACLU requested any records that would show whether DOGE members have accessed databases that contain personally identifying information about citizens. The request also seeks information about whether AI is being used to analyze government data.

“The federal government cannot dodge accountability by ignoring our lawful demands for transparency,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project within the ACLU. “The American people have an urgent need to know if their private financial, medical and personal records are being illegally accessed, analyzed or weaponized by Trump’s unaccountable team of unvetted outsiders. This is doubly true for our seniors and veterans, who are at particular risk if their data has been accessed illegally.”

DOGE, a group headed by Elon Musk, has been leading the move to cut jobs across federal agencies, including those that oversee Musk’s business endeavors. Although there have been other lawsuits trying to prevent people who are not civil servants from accessing sensitive government data, other reports claim DOGE members have been trying to circumvent court orders that limit their reach.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/aclu-sues-two-federal-agencies-for-transparency-around-doge-activity-195916390.html?src=rss

Nearly four years after it was originally announced, Riot Games has finally shared a look at Valorant Mobile. The mobile version of the competitive shooter was developed by LightSpeed Studios and will launch in China first before coming to other countries and regions.

Valorant Mobile looks like it relies on a lot of onscreen buttons, but based on a brief gameplay video, the game otherwise seems pretty similar to its PC counterpart in terms of speed and intensity. LightSpeed Studios successfully adapted PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds into PUBG Mobile, and Riot Games clearly believes the developer has managed to do the same with the originally mouse-based Valorant.

Coming to mobile has been in the works for Valorant for years, and makes a ton of sense given the current popularity of mobile first-person shooters like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Warzone. This isn’t the first time the game’s precise gunplay has had to be adapted to a slightly more cumbersome control scheme, either. Valorant successfully made the jump to controllers when it launched on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 in 2024. Mobile controls aren’t that much bigger of a hurdle in comparison.

Players in China can pre-register now to be ready for the next playtest, ahead of a more formal launch at some point in the future.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valorant-mobile-pre-registration-is-open-in-china-180132021.html?src=rss

Bluesky is adopting an official verification system after all. In an update, the company said it plans to grant blue checkmarks to “authentic and notable” accounts. It will also allow some “trusted organizations” to verify users as well.

The change is a notable shift for the upstart platform, which previously resisted the idea of centralized verification. Up to now, the company has relied on a domain-based verification system, which allows users to change their handles to match domains that they are associated with. But that approach was often criticized for being overly complicated and offering insufficient protection from impersonation. 

These critiques have only amplified as Bluesky has grown in popularity and attracted more prominent users. For example, when former President Barack Obama joined Bluesky in recent weeks, his handle did not use a custom domain, which understandably led many users to question whether the account was authentic. Instead, individual Bluesky employees ended up publicly vouching that the account was legitimate

Under Bluesky’s new system, the company will proactively verify certain accounts and add a prominent blue checkmark to their profile. It’s not clear what criteria Bluesky will use for these badges or how it plans to verify users’ identities. Additionally, there will be a slightly different blue badge — one with “scalloped edges” — that certain “trusted organizations” can grant through a new “trusted verifiers” feature. 

Bluesky

The New York Times is one such organization, and the newspaper will now be able to hand out blue checks to its journalists. Bluesky didn’t say what other organizations will be able to participate in the program, but added that it will review verification from third-parties in order to “ensure authenticity.”

Notably, Bluesky said that people and organizations are still “highly encourage(d)” to verify themselves via a custom domain. And it sounds like the new blue ticks may be in short supply, at least to start. “During this initial phase, Bluesky is not accepting direct applications for verification,” the company wrote in its announcement. “As this feature stabilizes, we’ll launch a request form for notable and authentic accounts interested in becoming verified or becoming trusted verifiers.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-is-getting-blue-checkmarks-and-an-official-verification-system-173204662.html?src=rss