In a newsletter for Bloomberg, Ashley Carman discusses the rising trend of long podcasts and their surprising popularity among listeners. "By today's standards of interminable podcast discussions, a nearly three-hour recording isn't even particularly notable," she writes, highlighting recent episodes from Joe Rogan (2 hours; 16 minutes with Adam Sandler), Lex Fridman (8 hours; 37 minutes with Elon Musk), and the Acquired podcast (3 hours; 38 minutes with Lockheed Martin). "Increasingly, podcasters are pushing the outer limits of episode length while stress testing the endurance of their audiences. Popular podcast gabfests can now run on for half a workday or longer." From the report: One might assume such marathon episodes must be the result of a hands-off approach to editing. But this is not the case, said Ben Gilbert, co-host of the Acquired podcast. Every month, he and his co-host David Rosenthal release a three- to four-hour podcast, detailing the story of a specific company. The in-depth histories, he said, are the result of nine-hour recording sessions and a month of research.

"It's not important to ship every good minute," Gilbert said. "It's important to ship only great minutes. If you're actually intellectually honest with yourself, that's how to release a really good product." Even with the longer runtimes, he said, their audience listens to the vast majority of each episode. Consider their deep dive on Lockheed Martin, which runs for three hours and 38 minutes. On Apple Podcasts, the average listener consumed 70% of the show, he said. An episode on Nike, which clocks in at upwards of four hours, had an average consumption rate of 68%. "Every time we made something longer... people only seemed to love it more," he said. On the show's website, the hosts describe the episodes as "conversational audiobooks." [...]

[Jack Sylvester, executive director at Flight Studio, the Bartlett-founded podcast company behind Diary of a CEO] said the team can view data around how much of the audience consumes episodes on YouTube's TV app versus on a phone, tablet or computer. TV usage, he said, is ticking up. To give viewers a reason to keep the show on as their primary viewing experience, they're now making sure the videos have a top-quality polish. Still, in a world in which people scoff at the prospect of a three-hour movie -- and short-form video is the dominant consumption trend in entertainment -- these podcasters are eagerly meandering in the opposite direction. "The short-form obsession ended up creating white space for us," said Gilbert of Acquired. "Whenever you have a trend, that means there's people who feel left behind and want to flock to something new. This sets us apart."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Jazmin Jones knowswhat she did. "If you're online, there's this idea of trolling," Jones, the director behindSeeking Mavis Beacon, said during a recent panel for her new documentary. "For this project, some things we're taking incredibly seriously ... and other things we're trolling. We're trolling this idea of a detective because we're also, like,ACAB." Her trolling, though, was for a good reason. Jones and fellow filmmaker Olivia Mckayla Ross did it in hopes of finding the woman behind Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The popular teaching tool was released in 1987 by The Software Toolworks, a video game and software company based in California that produced educational chess, reading, and math games. Mavis, essentially the "mascot" of the game, is a Black woman donned in professional clothes and a slicked-back bun. Though Mavis Beacon was not an actual person, Jones and Ross say that she is one of the first examples of Black representation they witnessed in tech. Seeking Mavis Beacon, which opened in New York City on August 30 and is rolling out to other cities in September, is their attempt to uncover the story behind the face, which appeared on the tool's packaging and later as part of its interface.

The film shows the duo setting up a detective room, conversing over FaceTime, running up to people on the street, and even tracking down a relative connected to the ever-elusive Mavis. But the journey of their search turned up a different question they didn't initially expect: What are the impacts of sexism, racism, privacy, and exploitation in a world where you can present yourself any way you want to? Using shots from computer screens, deep dives through archival footage, and sit-down interviews, the noir-style documentary reveals that Mavis Beacon is actually Renee L'Esperance, a Black model from Haiti who was paid $500 for her likeness with no royalties, despite the program selling millions of copies. [...]

In a world where anyone can create images of folks of any race, gender, or sexual orientation without having to fully compensate the real people who inspired them, Jones and Ross are working to preserve not only the data behind Mavis Beacon but also the humanity behind the software. On the panel, hosted by Black Girls in Media, Ross stated that the film's social media has a form where users of Mavis Beacon can share what the game has meant to them, for archival purposes. "On some level, Olivia and I are trolling ideas of worlds that we never felt safe in or protected by," Jones said during the panel. "And in other ways, we are honoring this legacy of cyber feminism, historians, and care workers that we are very seriously indebted to." You can watch the trailer for "Seeking Mavis Beacon" on YouTube.

Acer has announced its first Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7. The Verge's Sean Hollister reports: Like Asus -- but unlike most rivals -- it features a seven-inch 1080p variable refresh rate IPS screen to keep things smooth, one that refreshes slightly faster at 144Hz. (Acer tells The Verge it's a landscape-native screen.) It's also got a newer Ryzen 7 8840HS chip, albeit with the same Radeon 780M integrated GPU as most other Windows handhelds. With 16GB of 7500 MT/s memory and a 50 watt-hour battery, it's a step ahead of the original Ally's 6400 MT/s memory and 40Wh pack, and it comes with up to 2TB worth of SSD storage. But with 24GB of memory and an 80Wh pack, the $800 Asus ROG Ally X is currently the Windows handheld to beat, so I suspect this Acer will need to cost quite a bit less to compete.

The Nitro has no touchpads, but it also unusually has no back buttons; most PC handhelds now have at least two macro keys around back. But I suspect some people will be happy that it not only has two USB4 ports but that one of them is on the bottom. Hopefully, we'll get our choice of whether to charge and dock from top or bottom with this portable PC. Acer released a product launch video on YouTube but hasn't shared pricing or release information.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special." The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI's impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...] Critics of generative AI ... question the utility of the technology, its perceived environmental impact, and what they see as blatant copyright infringement.

"Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst," tweeted author Brian Merchant, who frequently criticizes generative AI technology in op-eds, social media, and through his "Blood in the Machine" AI newsletter. "The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such what a train wreck," replied artist Karla Ortiz, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against several AI companies. "There's still PLENTY of time to get actual experts and have a better discussion on this because yikes." On Friday, Ortiz created a lengthy viral thread on X that detailed her potential issues with the program, writing, "This event will be the first time many people will get info on Generative AI. However it is shaping up to be a misinformed marketing event starring vested interests (some who are under a litany of lawsuits) who ignore the harms GenAi inflicts on communities NOW." The AI TV special will feature "some of the most important and powerful people in AI," said ABC. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and author Marilynne Robinson.

The show will air on September 12 on ABC (and a day later on Hulu) in the U.S.

"Houston resident Brandy Deason put an Apple AirTag in her recycling to see where her plastic trash was going," writes Tom's Hardware.

"While many might expect the city would drop the recyclables off at a recycling center, Deason instead found her trash sitting in an open-air lot alongside millions of other pieces of trash at Wright Waste Management." Wright Waste Management did not allow CBS News to enter and inspect its premises. Still, the news team's drone camera discovered that all the trash picked up from the Houston Recycling Collaboration (HRC) was apparently just sitting there on its premises, stacked more than 10 feet high. This came as a shock, as the HRC was meant to revolutionize the city's recycling program, allowing it to process all kinds of plastic. Instead, we see all the collected waste sitting idle in open-air lots waiting for the right technology to appear.

That's because [Exxon-funded] Cyclix International, one of the partners in the HRC, has yet to open its massive factory to scale up its plastic recycling operation. The company said that it recycles all kinds of plastic and has even already set aside a sprawling space big enough to accommodate nine football fields. However, the current facility is just an empty husk without a single piece of machinery in sight.
Deason included 12 airtags in bags of recycling — and nine of them ended up at the HRC facility (with another one going to the local dump). In a video report, CBS News asked Deason what they thought about household recycling ended up in massive piles of plastic. "I thought it was kind of strange, because if you store plastic outside in the heat, it's a fire problem." In fact, that facility has already failed three fire-safety inspections by the county, according to CBS News. And while the facility has "applied" for approval to store plastic waste, that application has not yet been approved.

CBS asked a Cyclix project manager about the piles of unprocessed plastic sitting in the sun. "We need a huge supply of plastics to get ready for startup here," a spokesperson answered, "And we want to start that now in order to get ahead of it."

CBS's interviewer also raised another issue: the facility's plan is to recycle some of the plastic products into fuel. "So if you turn plastic waste into fuel that is then burned and creates greenhouse gas emissions, that's just another environmental problem."

Cyclix Project Manager: "Plastic waste is the challenge. So if we have the ability to take plastic waste and convert it to new products — that's what we're trying to do!"

CBS News points out that turning plastics into burn-able fuel is considered "recycling" by 25 states...

Scientists have finally detected and measured the ambipolar field, a weak electric field surrounding Earth that was first theorized over 60 years ago. "Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field," says astronomer Glyn Collinson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Now that we've finally measured it, we can begin learning how it's shaped our planet as well as others over time." ScienceAlert reports: Here's how the ambipolar field was expected to work. Starting at an altitude of around 250 kilometers (155 miles), in a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, extreme ultraviolet and solar radiation ionizes atmospheric atoms, breaking off negatively charged electrons and turning the atom into a positively charged ion. The lighter electrons will try to fly off into space, while the heavier ions will try to sink towards the ground. But the plasma environment will try to maintain charge neutrality, which results in the emergence of an electric field between the electrons and the ions to tether them together. This is called the ambipolar field because it works in both directions, with the ions supplying a downward pull and the electrons an upward one. The result is that the atmosphere is puffed up; the increased altitude allows some ions to escape into space, which is what we see in the polar wind.

This ambipolar field would be incredibly weak, which is why Collinson and his team designed instrumentation to detect it. The Endurance mission, carrying this experiment, was launched in May 2022, reaching an altitude of 768.03 kilometers (477.23 miles) before falling back to Earth with its precious, hard-won data. And it succeeded. It measured a change in electric potential of just 0.55 volts -- but that was all that was needed. "A half a volt is almost nothing -- it's only about as strong as a watch battery," Collinson says. "But that's just the right amount to explain the polar wind." That amount of charge is enough to tug on hydrogen ions with 10.6 times the strength of gravity, launching them into space at the supersonic speeds measured over Earth's poles. Oxygen ions, which are heavier than hydrogen ions, are also lofted higher, increasing the density of the ionosphere at high altitudes by 271 percent, compared to what its density would be without the ambipolar field. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Every day for the last four years, dozens of people have shown up in the comments of one particular YouTube, declaring their love and appreciation for the content. The content: two minutes and six seconds of deep, low buzzing, the kind that makes your phone vibrate on the table, underscoring a vaguely trippy animation of swirled stained glass. It's not a good video. But it's not meant to be. The video is called "Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker ( GUARANTEED )." [...] If you believe the comments, about half the video's 45 million views come from people who bring their phone into the shower or bathtub and trust that they can play this video and everything will be fine.

The theory goes like this: all a speaker is really doing is pushing air around, and if you can get it to push enough air, with enough force, you might be able to push droplets of liquid out from where they came. "The lowest tone that that speaker can reproduce, at the loudest level that it can play," says Eric Freeman, a senior director of research at Bose. "That will create the most air motion, which will push on the water that's trapped inside the phone." Generally, the bigger the speaker, the louder and lower it can go. Phone speakers tend to be tiny. "So those YouTube videos," Freeman says, "it's not, like, really deep bass. But it's in the low range of where a phone is able to make sound."

The best real-world example of how this can work is probably the Apple Watch, which has a dedicated feature for ejecting water after you've gotten it wet. When I first reached out to iFixit to ask about my water-expulsion mystery, Carsten Frauenheim, a repairability engineer at the company, said the Watch works on the same theory as the videos. "It's just a specific oscillating tone that pushes the water out of the speaker grilles," he said. "Not sure how effective the third-party versions are for phones since they're probably not ideally tuned? We could test."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A controversial bill aimed at enforcing safety standards for large artificial intelligence models has now passed the California State Assembly by a 45-11 vote. Following a 32-1 state Senate vote in May, SB-1047 now faces just one more procedural state senate vote before heading to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. As we've previously explored in depth, SB-1047 asks AI model creators to implement a "kill switch" that can be activated if that model starts introducing "novel threats to public safety and security," especially if it's acting "with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision." Some have criticized the bill for focusing on outlandish risks from an imagined future AI rather than real, present-day harms of AI use cases like deep fakes or misinformation. [...]

If the Senate confirms the Assembly version as expected, Newsom will have until September 30 to decide whether to sign the bill into law. If he vetoes it, the legislature could override with a two-thirds vote in each chamber (a strong possibility given the overwhelming votes in favor of the bill). At a UC Berkeley Symposium in May, Newsom said he worried that "if we over-regulate, if we overindulge, if we chase a shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position." At the same time, Newsom said those over-regulation worries were balanced against concerns he was hearing from leaders in the AI industry. "When you have the inventors of this technology, the godmothers and fathers, saying, 'Help, you need to regulate us,' that's a very different environment," he said at the symposium. "When they're rushing to educate people, and they're basically saying, 'We don't know, really, what we've done, but you've got to do something about it,' that's an interesting environment." Supporters of the AI safety bill include state senator Scott Weiner and AI experts including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. Bengio supports the bill as a necessary step for consumer protection and insists that AI should not be self-regulated by corporations, akin to other industries like pharmaceuticals and aerospace.

Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li opposes the bill, arguing that it could have harmful effects on the AI ecosystem by discouraging open-source collaboration and limiting academic research due to the liability placed on developers of modified models. A group of business leaders also sent an open letter Wednesday urging Newsom to veto the bill, calling it "fundamentally flawed."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday Canada will impose punitive tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles -- copying a similar initiative that the U.S. is already pursuing to stop a flood of what's been described as unfairly state-subsidized cars. Trudeau made the announcement at the federal cabinet retreat in Halifax where ministers are meeting to craft a strategy for the year ahead -- the last year before an expected federal election in October 2025. Amid industry pressure to copy the U.S. program, Trudeau said a 100 percent surtax will be levied on all Chinese-made EVs, effective Oct. 1. The tariff would effectively double the price of imported vehicles, as it is expected most of the tax would be passed on to consumers.

Ottawa is following through now, Trudeau said, to "level the playing field for Canadian workers" and allow Canada's nascent EV industry to compete at home, in North America and globally. The tariff will apply to electric and certain hybrid passenger automobiles, trucks, buses and delivery vans. Chinese brands like BYD are not a major player in Canada's EV market right now but imports from China have exploded in recent years as Tesla switched from U.S. factories for its Canadian sales to its manufacturing plant in Shanghai. The new tariff will apply to those Shanghai-made Teslas that are sold in Canada -- a development that is expected to force the U.S. automaker to supply the Canadian market with vehicles made at one if its other plants in the U.S. or Europe instead. "Unfortunately, Canada made a decision today that will result in fewer affordable electric vehicles for Canadians, less competition and more climate pollution," said Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada. "Not only could today's announcement have a chilling effect on future EV sales, it could drive up EV prices and slow adoption in the near-term as well," Kyriazis said.

Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association who lobbied Ottawa to follow through with matching the U.S. tariffs, responded: "Sure, what the Chinese are doing is selling us green products that help fulfill some of our EV mandates, but they do it in a regulatory environment where they forgo any stewardship of the environment," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland added that the Chinese industry is "built on abysmal labour standards and it is built on abysmal environmental standards."

theodp writes: Typos happen to the best of us, but spelling still counts when it comes to software development. So, it's kind of surprising to see that both Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky failed to notice an embarrassing typo in a demo video they offered to their millions of followers on social media as evidence of Amazon Q AI's Java upgrade capabilities, which Amazon has been trumpeting for months in SEC filings, shareholder communication, and Amazon's latest earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Just 37 seconds into the demo of the software that Amazon says saved it 4,500 developer-years of work and provided an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains, Amazon Q kicks off the Java upgrade conversation by saying, "I can help you upgrade your Jave [sic] 8 and 11 codebases to Java 17." The embarrassing misspelling did prompt Twitter user @archo5dev to alert Jassy to the typo, but there's been no response yet from Jassy, who boasted that Amazon developers were unable to find any mistakes in Q's work in "79% of the auto-generated code reviews."

It's probably worth noting that both Jassy and Selipsky opted to showcase a drop-dead simple demo of Amazon Q Code Transformation rather than some of the lengthier and less-magical demos of the product.

He was employee #13 at Apple Computers — after impressing Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with his "blue box" phone-phreaking technique. Now 81-year-old John "Captain Crunch" Draper has launched a new YouTube channel and web site.

"I spent decades exploring the depths of communication technology," Draper says in a recent video, "always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and challenging the status quo." The video is embedded at the top of the new web site, welcoming visitors to "your gateway to my world, where I share everything from my secrets of the early phone freaking days to the latest in emergency communication systems that could one day save your life." "Here you'll find insights into my current projects including advanced uses of artificial intelligence, emergency communication preparedness, and much more. Whether you're a technology enthusiast, a fellow veteran, or someone curious about the unseen forces that connect our world, here's something for you."
And clicking the "Current Projects" link leads to an interesting list:

• "My involvement in the field of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recently took me to "Contact in the Desert," a pivotal gathering of leading scientists pushing for governmental transparency in UAP research."

• "Artificial Intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, has captivated my interest. I'm refining my skills as a prompt engineer, integrating AI into various facets of my life, from web development and programming to personal research on UAPs and anti-gravity phenomena."

• "In light of global tensions, such as the Ukrainian conflict, I'm actively preparing for potential disruptions in conventional communication systems. Together with a hardware partner, we are pioneering advanced communication technologies under the unlicensed ISM band using the Meshtastic protocol. This technology, which is popular in the UK but less so in the US, facilitates secure, low-power, and nearly undetectable communication. I am advocating for its adoption in Las Vegas, where it remains largely underutilized."

• "My YouTube channel not only serves as a platform for project updates but also as a conduit for preserving the legacy of the computing era's pioneers." [Draper's channel has already hosted a reunion with members from the original 1970s HomeBrew Computer Club.]

Draper's home page also has a 59-minute video of a conference talk where Draper tells his life story...

And five months ago Draper released a video on YouTube showing what happened when he asked ChatGPT to design his logo. It resulted in "really hokey pictures — terrible." But Draper scrolls them all to provide his critique....

There's also a Patreon account where Draper is offering to schedule Zoom meetings with subscribers (for between $22 and $45 an hour).

Monday brought spectacular footage of an explosion at a UK rocket test site after an engine test went awry. The plan had been to test-fire all of a rocket stage's nine engines at the same time — they've successfully ignited them more than a hundred times — but this time one of the first eight had an "unusual" anomaly — "most likely a fire in the oxygen pump," according to a video posted by space company RFA on X.com.

The trouble "spread onto neighboring engines," eventually leading to a billowing jet of fire from the side of the vehicle. ("The engine-propellant manifold system was damaged to such a great extent that kerosene kept fueling the fire.")

Slashdot reader AleRunner writes: A rocket company has vowed to return to regular operations "as soon as possible" after an explosion during a test at the UK's new spaceport in Shetland. The explosion happened after "an "anomaly" had led to "the loss of the stage" — but there were no injuries according to a Guardian report. The test was carried out by German company Rocket Factory Augsburg which hopes to make the first UK vertical rocket launch into orbit... "We develop iteratively with an emphasis on real testing.
"This is part of our philosophy and we were aware of the higher risks attached to this approach. Our goal is to return to regular operations as soon as possible."
"In true RFA fashion, we're being as transparent as possible," the company posted Friday on X.com, "and sharing our own raw footage of the incident." The day of the explosion they'd posted that "The launch pad has been saved and is secured," and Friday posted that six-minute video explaining what happened. (It emphasizes there's an improved version of this stage that's already been built.)

The Guardian added that the explosion comes three months after RFA's successful 8-second test firing of its rocket engines — the spaceport's first rocket test.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pong will always hold a special place in the history of gaming as one of the earliest arcade video games. Introduced in 1972, it was a table tennis game featuring very simple graphics and gameplay. In fact, it's simple enough that even non-living materials known as hydrogels can "learn" to play the game by "remembering" previous patterns of electrical stimulation, according to a new paper published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science. "Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviors typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI," said co-author Yoshikatsu Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading in the UK. "This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of 'smart' materials that can learn and adapt to their environment." [...]

The experimental setup was fairly simple. The researchers hooked up electroactive hydrogels to a simulated virtual environment of a Pong game using a custom-built electrode array. The games would start with the ball traveling in a random direction. The hydrogels tracked the ball's position via electrical stimulation and tracked the paddle's position by measuring the distribution of ions in the hydrogels. As the games progressed, the researchers measured how often the hydrogel managed to hit the ball with the paddle. They found that, over time, the hydrogels' accuracy improved, hitting the ball more frequently for longer rallies. They reached their maximum potential for accuracy in about 20 minutes, compared to 10 minutes for the DishBrain. The authors attribute this to the ion movement essentially mapping out a "memory" of all motion over time, exhibiting what appears to be emergent memory functions within the material itself. Perhaps the next step will be to "teach" the hydrogels how to align the paddles in such a way that the rallies go on indefinitely.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Neuralink said its second human recipient is using the brain chip to play Counter-Strike 2 and develop 3D designs in CAD software. "Alex" was given the brain chip last month to help restore his autonomy after a spinal cord injury. PCMag reports: Like the first Neuralink patient, Noland Arbaugh, Alex has also been using the brain chip to play his favorite computer games, such as Counter-Strike 2. Before, Alex had to use a mouth-operated controller, called a QuadStick, to play the first-person shooter. But even then, the controller limited him to only moving or aiming his weapon at a single time, never simultaneously like a normal Counter-Strike player. In other words, Alex had to essentially switch back and forth between the mouse and keyboard functions while playing the game. But thanks to Neuralink, he can now aim with the implant, and simultaneously move while using the QuadStick. [...]

In the blog post, Neuralink also addressed a problem the company faced when placing the chip in Arbaugh, the first patient. Despite a successful surgery, about 85% of the thread-based electrodes attached to his brain later became displaced, undermining the full potential of the chip to read neural signals. Although Arbaugh can still use his implant effectively, Neuralink wanted to avoid a repeat with Alex. In response, the company developed several "mitigations," which include reducing the chance of an air pocket forming during surgery and placing the implant deeper into the brain tissue. "Promisingly, we have observed no thread retraction in our second participant," the company said of Alex.

Whether Alex's implant outperforms the brain chip in Arbaugh was left unclear. In the meantime, Neuralink says it's working on ways to enhance the controls on the technology "to deliver full mouse and video game controller functionality." "Additionally, we plan to enable the Link [brain chip] to interact with the physical world, allowing users to feed themselves and move more independently by controlling a robotic arm or their wheelchair," the company said. You can watch Alex playing Counter-Strike 2 on YouTube.

A new TV series is capturing the dramatic saga of the The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing website that openly challenged the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. A just-launched teaser is available on YouTube. TorrentFreak reports: A few years ago, news broke that The Pirate Bay story was being turned into a TV series. Written by Piotr Marciniak and directed by Jens Sjogren, who also made the "I am Zlatan" documentary, production was in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT. American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights. As far as we know, international deals have not yet been announced. The Swedish premiere on November 8 is coming closer, however, and a few days ago SVT released an official teaser.

The founders of The Pirate Bay -- Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo -- are played by Arvid Swedrup, Simon Greger Carlsson and Willjam Lempling. The teaser doesn't give away much, but it's interesting that one of The Pirate Bay's infamous responses to legal threats features prominently. The teaser quotes from Anakata's response to a letter from DreamWorks, written twenty years ago. The movie company sent a DMCA takedown notice requesting the removal of a torrent for the film Shrek 2, but the reply was not what they had hoped for. "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here," Anakata wrote. "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ........ morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons."

The response was public information and made it into the series. Whether there will be any new revelations has yet to be seen, however, as none of the site's founders were actively involved in production. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet. That includes the infamous responses to legal threats. Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story. Production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries, including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Voters in Wyoming's capital city on Tuesday are faced with deciding whether to elect a mayoral candidate who has proposed to let an artificial intelligence bot run the local government. Earlier this year, the candidate in question -- Victor Miller -- filed for him and his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), to run for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming. He has vowed to helm the city's business with the AI bot if he wins. Miller has said that the bot is capable of processing vast amounts of data and making unbiased decisions. In what AI experts say is a first for US political campaigns, Miller and Vic have told local news outlets in interviews that their form of proposed governance is a "hybrid approach." The AI bot told Your Wyoming Link that its role would be to provide data-driven insights and innovative solutions for Cheyenne. Meanwhile, Vic said, the human elected office contender, Miller, would serve as the official mayor if chosen by voters and would ensure that "all actions are legally and practically executed."

"It's about blending AI's capabilities with human judgment to effectively lead Cheyenne," the bot said. The bot said it did not have political affiliations -- and its goal is to "focus on data-driven practical solutions that benefit the community." During a meet-and-greet this summer, the Washington Post reported that the AI bot was asked how it would go about making decisions "according to human factor, involving humans, and having to make a decision that affects so many people." "Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance of data-driven insights and human empathy," the AI bot responded, according to an audio recording obtained and published by the Washington Post. Vic then ran through a multi-part plan that suggested using AI technology to gather data on public opinion and feedback from the community, holding town hall meetings to listen to residents' concerns, consulting experts in relevant fields, evaluating the human impact of the decision and providing transparency about the decision-making. According to Wyoming Public Media, Miller has also pledged that he would donate half the mayoral salary to a non-profit if he is elected. The other half could be used to continually improve the AI bot, he said. Miller has faced some pushback since announcing his mayoral campaign. Wyoming's Secretary of State, Chuck Gray, launched an investigation to determine if the AI bot could legally appear on the ballot, citing state law that says only real people that are registered to vote can run for office. City officials clarified that Miller is the actual candidate, so he was allowed to continue. However, Laramie County ruled that only Miller's name would appear on the ballot, not the bot's.

OpenAI later shut down Miller's account, but he quickly created a new one and continued his campaign.

Indian influencers It's the largest country on earth — home to 1.4 billion people. But "The Indian government has plans to classify social media creators as 'digital news broadcasters,'" according to the nonprofit site RestofWorld.org.

While there's "no clarity" on the government's next move, the proposed legislation would require social media creators "to register with the government, set up a content evaluation committee that checks all content before it is published, and appoint complaint handlers — all at their own expense. Any failures in compliance could lead to criminal charges, including jail term." On July 26, the Hindustan Times reported that the government plans to tweak the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, which aims to combine all regulations for broadcasters under one law. As per a new version of the bill, which has been reviewed by Rest of World, the government defines "digital news broadcaster" as "any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium as part of a systematic business, professional or commercial activity."

Creators and digital rights activists believe the potential legislation will tighten the government's grip over online content and threaten the last bastion of press freedom for independent journalists in the country. Over 785 Indian creators have sent a letter to the government seeking more transparency in the process of drafting the bill. Creators have also stormed social media with hashtags like #KillTheBill, and made videos to educate their followers about the proposal.
One YouTube creator told the site that if the government requires them to appoint a "grievance redressal officer," they might simply film themselves, responding to grievances — to "make content out of it".

A federal judge blocked the launch of Venu, a sports streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, due to concerns it would substantially lessen competition and harm FuboTV. Variety reports: Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming. [...] Venu, expected to launch in late August ahead of the start of the NFL's coming fall season and priced at an initial price tag of $42.99 per month, was to carry all of the sports offerings of ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and 2, and TNT for a price that is seen as more than a regional sports network but less than a full programming package available via YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The three parent companies are targeting a new generation of consumers who disdain the high costs of traditional cable packages are more at home with signing up for streaming venues that are relatively easy to get in and out of based on the availability of favorite entertainment programs or sporting events.

Judge Garnett found that once Venu launches, FuboTV would face "a swift exodus" of large numbers of subscribers, and indicated she felt "that Fubo's bankruptcy and delisting of the company's stock will likely soon follow. These are quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair." Fubo alleged that Venu's launch "will cause it to lose approximately 300,000 to 400,000 (or nearly 30%) of its subscribers, suffer a significant decline in its ability to attract new subscribers, lose between $75 and $95 million in revenue, and be transformed into a penny stock awaiting delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, all before year-end 2024," the judge said in her decision. "We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling and are appealing it," Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. "We believe that Fubo's arguments are wrong on the facts and the law, and that Fubo has failed to prove it is legally entitled to a preliminary injunction. Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options."

Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the AI race because of its remote-work policies. From a report: "I misspoke about Google and their work hours," Schmidt said Wednesday in an email to The Wall Street Journal. "I regret my error." Schmidt, who left Google parent Alphabet's board more than five years ago, spoke earlier at a wide-ranging discussion at Stanford University. He criticized Google's remote-work policies in response to a question about Google competing with OpenAI. "Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," Schmidt said at Stanford. "The reason startups work is because the people work like hell."

Video of Schmidt's talk was posted on YouTube this week by Stanford Online, a division of the university that offers online courses. The video, which had more than 40,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon, has since been set to private. Schmidt said he asked for the video to be taken down.

Slate's Derek Heckman, an avid fan of Magic: The Gathering since the age of 10, expresses concern about the potential replacement of the game's distinctive hand-drawn art with generative AI -- and he's not alone. "I think we're all pretty afraid of what the potential is, given what we've seen from the generative image side," Sam, a YouTube creator who runs the channel Rhystic Studies, told him. "It's staggeringly powerful. And it's only in its infancy."

"Magic's greatest asset has always been its commitment to create a new illustration for every new card," he said. He adds that if we sacrifice that commitment for A.I., "you'd get to a point pretty fast where it just disintegrates and becomes the ugliest definition of the word product." Here's an excerpt from his report: So far, Magic's parent company, Wizards of the Coast, has outwardly agreed with Sam, saying in an official statement in 2023 that Magic "has been built on the innovation, ingenuity, and hard work of talented people" and forbidding outside creatives from using A.I. in their work. However, a number of recent incidents -- from the accidental use of A.I. art in a Magic promotional image to a very intentional LinkedIn post for a "Principal AI Engineer," one that Wizards had to clarify was for the company's video game projects -- have left many players unsure whether Wizards is potentially evolving their stance, or merely trying to find their footing in an ever-changing A.I. landscape.

In response to fan concerns, Wizards has created an "AI art FAQ" detailing, among other things, the new technologies it's invested in to detect A.I. use in art. Still, trust in the company has been damaged by this year's incidents. Longtime Magic artist David Rapoza even severed ties with the game this past January, citing this seeming difference between Wizards' words and actions when it comes to the use of A.I. Sam says the larger audience has likewise been left "cautiously suspicious," hoping to believe Wizards' official statements while also carefully noting the company's moves and mistakes with the technology. "I think what we want is for Wizards to commit hard to one lane and stay [with] what is tried and true," Sam says. "And that is prioritizing human work over shortcuts."