|
 Affirm and Klarna today announced that their pay later options are now available for in-store Apple Pay purchases.
|
|
The event is slated for September 30, and the timing puts Amazon back on track for its usual fall preview of its latest wares. Amazon skipped its typical fall event last year in favor of a smaller Kindle-only unveiling.
The Amazon invitation shows what appears to be Alexa's telltale blue light ring, along with the famous Kindle logo, so it seems like new Echo devices and Kindle tablets are safe bets.
The upcoming event will mark the first full-on Amazon Devices fall showcase since the arrival of Alexa , the AI-supercharged version of Alexa. Alexa made its splashy debut back in February following a lengthy delay, and it's been rolling out ever so slowly over the past several months.
Amazon's big fall hardware event will also be the first to feature Panos Panay, the former Microsoft executive who took over Amazon's Alexa and Echo divisions. Panay, who succeed outgoing Amazon exec David Limp back in September 2023, hosted a scaled-down Kindle event last fall, as well as the Alexa reveal earlier this year.
Several of Amazon's most popular Echo devices are due for a refresh, including the ever-popular Echo Dot. The fifth-generation Echo Dot made its debut back in 2022, most notably with the new ability to act as an extender for Amazon's Eero mesh Wi-Fi routers.
The four-year-old Amazon Echo Show 10 with its swiveling display is also ripe for a re-do, as
|
|
NEW RESOURCES Vanderbilt University: AI requires responsible stewardship. Peabody's new online hub guides the way. . "Through an interactive gallery of student-made AI applications and projects, visitors can tinker with innovative machine-learning […]
|
|
Apple may see further fallout over its failure to comply with a court order that led to last week's contempt ruling. A class action suit filed on behalf of developers claims that Apple's actions cost Pure Sweat Basketball (and other developers) revenue during the period it was found to have violated the original court order. "Had Apple complied with the injunction, as required, Pure Sweat would have been able to sell subscriptions to its app directly to its customers," the law firm, Hagens Berman, alleges.
The original 2021 court ruling forced Apple to allow App Store developers to direct user to other payments systems so that they could bypass the 30 percent of of in-app payments taken by Apple. The App Store was supposed to stop preventing developers from including buttons or links in their apps and metadata that would allow allow users to make purchases outside the App Store environment.
However, developer Epic Games accused Apple of "malicious compliance" with the ruling because it still charged a commission of up to 27 percent on any sales made through links to external payment systems. It also said Apple came up with onerous restrictions on external buttons, among other violations.
In her ruling last week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said Apple "chose the most anticompetitive option" at every turn. She even alleged that Apple lied under oath to hide the truth about its actions and referred the case to a US attorney for a criminal contempt investigation.
"The court ultimately held that Apple will
|
|
In a development that can only be seen as positive, non-consensual deepfake porn site Mr. Deepfakes has shut down for good, reports 404 Media. This news comes due to the site losing one of its service providers.
"A critical service provider has terminated service permanently. Data loss has made it impossible to continue operation," a notice on the site reads. "We will not be relaunching. Any website claiming this is fake. This domain will eventually expire and we are not responsible for future use. This message will be removed around one week."
As sites continued to crack down on non-consenual deepfake porn, Mr. Deepfakes became an open space for it. Users could upload videos and connect with creators to commission videos. People also used it as a way to collaborate on new techniques, share their methods and provide datasets. All of it was with the goal of creating this non-consensual media, sometimes with a strong likeness to real people.
The creator of Mr. Deepfakes is still technically anonymous. However, German newspaper Der Spiegel reportedly tracked down one of the individuals behind it, a 36-year-old in Toronto.
Governments across the world have been taking steps to make sexually explicit deepfakes illegal. Last week, the
|
|
