Technology

Enlarge / Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Adderall XR brand medication arranged at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, in November 2023. (credit: Getty | George Frey)

Drug shortages in the US have reached an all-time high, with 323 active and ongoing shortages already tallied this year, according to data collected by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP).

The current drug shortage total surpasses the previous record of 320, set in 2014, and is the highest recorded since ASHP began tracking shortages in 2001.

"All drug classes are vulnerable to shortages," ASHP CEO Paul Abramowitz said in a statement Thursday. "Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications stored in hospital crash carts and procedural areas. Ongoing national shortages of therapies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] also remain a serious challenge for clinicians and patients."

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The price of a monthly subscription to Tesla's (kind-of) self-driving software has just been cut in half. Tesla's Full Self Driving (Supervised) subscription now costs $99 per month, a reduction from the previous standard of $199. 

Tesla instituted the $199 monthly upgrade fee in 2021, back when its self-driving system was still in beta. It costs $12,000 to add Full Self Driving (Supervised) — full name, every time — to a Tesla outright, so at the current rate, it'll take 10 years for the subscription to lose its value. As far as installment plans go, this one seems like a solid deal. To be fair, so was the $199 rate, which gave (self-)drivers five years before hitting $12,000 in fees.

You can now subscribe to FSD (Supervised) for $99/month in the UShttps://t.co/0IwC9GC0aF

Upgrades > Software Upgrades > Subscribe

— Tesla (@Tesla) April 12, 2024

Tesla is doing what it can to make its EVs (and its stock) more attractive following a rough financial quarter to kick off 2024. For the first time since 2020, Tesla EV shipments fell year-over-year and they dipped significantly compared with the previous quarter. In the first months of 2024, Tesla deliveries were down eight percent yearly and down 20 percent over the final quarter of 2023. Analysts expected Tesla to ship 449,080 EVs in Q1 2024, but it delivered just 386,810.

The company offered a free trial of Full Self Driving (Supervised), which does not make the vehicle autonomous, to Tesla drivers at the end of 2023, seemingly in an attempt to boost its bottom line before reporting came due. As of March 2024, Tesla salespeople in North America are required to demonstrate Full Self Driving (Supervised) to anyone buying a vehicle. The prices of all Model Y vehicles also rose by $1,000 on April 1.

Tesla hasn't shared shipment numbers for the Cybertruck, which started rolling out late last year. The company is preparing to release a "next-generation low-cost" EV in 2025. Probably.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-halves-the-price-of-its-full-self-driving-supervised-subscription-to-99-per-month-215321467.html?src=rss

As Threads has grown to more than 130 million users, one of the major remaining “missing” features users often complain about is the lack of direct messaging abilities. But those missing out on DMs may soon have a new option to message other Threads users.

Meta is starting to test messaging features that rely on Instagram’s inbox but allow new messages to be initiated from the Threads app. The feature has begun to appear for some Threads users, who report seeing a “message” button atop other users’ profiles where the “mention” feature used to be. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the change, saying the company was “testing the ability to send a message from Threads to Instagram.”

Of note, Threads still doesn’t have its own inbox, and it’s not clear if it ever will. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said multiple times that he doesn’t want to create a separate inbox for Threads, but would rather “make the Instagram inbox work” in the app. A Meta spokesperson further confirmed that “this is not a test of DMs on Threads.”

But even though it’s not a full-fledged DM feature, the ability to send a message from the Threads app without having to switch to Instagram could at least make messaging from Threads a little less clunky. Actually checking or replying to those messages, though, will still require users to head to the Instagram app.

That may still seem like an entirely unnecessary step, but Mosseri has pointed out that building two versions of the same inbox could easily get complicated. “If, in the end, we can’t make the Instagram inbox work for Threads, we’ll have a hard choice to make between (1) mirroring the Instagram inbox in Threads and dealing with notification routing weirdness, and (2) building a totally separate Threads inbox and dealing with the fact that you’ll have two redundant message threads with each of your friends with the same handles in two different apps,” he wrote in a post in November. “Neither seems great.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-testing-messaging-capabilities-for-threads-but-dont-call-them-dms-213536876.html?src=rss

Enlarge / Generic, non-Western Digital SD cards. (credit: Getty)

Western Digital plans to release the first 4TB SD card next year. On Thursday, the storage firm announced plans to demo the product in person next week.

Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Association's Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, under its SanDisk brand and market it toward "complex media and entertainment workflows," such as high-resolution video with high framerates, using cameras and laptops, the announcement said.

The spacious card will use the Ultra High Speed-1 (UHS-1) bus interface, supporting max theoretical transfer rates of up to 104 MB per second. It will support minimum write speeds of 10 MB/s, AnandTech reported. Minimum sequential write speeds are expected to reach 30 MB/s, the publication said.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Highly capable hackers are rooting multiple corporate networks by exploiting a maximum-severity zero-day vulnerability in a firewall product from Palo Alto Networks, researchers said Friday.

The vulnerability, which has been under active exploitation for at least two weeks now, allows the hackers with no authentication to execute malicious code with root privileges, the highest possible level of system access, researchers said. The extent of the compromise, along with the ease of exploitation, has earned the CVE-2024-3400 vulnerability the maximum severity rating of 10.0. The ongoing attacks are the latest in a rash of attacks aimed at firewalls, VPNs, and file-transfer appliances, which are popular targets because of their wealth of vulnerabilities and direct pipeline into the most sensitive parts of a network.

“Highly capable” UTA0218 likely to be joined by others

The zero-day is present in PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and/or PAN-OS 11.1 firewalls when they are configured to use both the GlobalProtect gateway and device telemetry. Palo Alto Networks has yet to patch the vulnerability but is urging affected customers to follow the workaround and mitigation guidance provided here. The advice includes enabling Threat ID 95187 for those with subscriptions to the company’s Threat Prevention service and ensuring vulnerability protection has been applied to their GlobalProtect interface. When that’s not possible, customers should temporarily disable telemetry until a patch is available.

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Enlarge / An image of a boy amazed by flying letters. (credit: Getty Images)

Some weeks in AI news are eerily quiet, but during others, getting a grip on the week's events feels like trying to hold back the tide. This week has seen three notable large language model (LLM) releases: Google Gemini Pro 1.5 hit general availability with a free tier, OpenAI shipped a new version of GPT-4 Turbo, and Mistral released a new openly licensed LLM, Mixtral 8x22B. All three of those launches happened within 24 hours starting on Tuesday.

With the help of software engineer and independent AI researcher Simon Willison (who also wrote about this week's hectic LLM launches on his own blog), we'll briefly cover each of the three major events in roughly chronological order, then dig into some additional AI happenings this week.

Gemini Pro 1.5 general release

(credit: Google)

On Tuesday morning Pacific time, Google announced that its Gemini 1.5 Pro model (which we first covered in February) is now available in 180-plus countries, excluding Europe, via the Gemini API in a public preview. This is Google's most powerful public LLM so far, and it's available in a free tier that permits up to 50 requests a day.

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Back in December, Epic Games won an antitrust case against Google. A jury found that Google held an illegal monopoly on in-app billing and app distribution on Android devices, and that it engaged in anticompetitive practices with certain gaming companies and device manufacturers.

At the time, it was unclear what Epic actually won as the remedies had not been determined. The Fortnite maker has now submitted a proposed permanent injunction against Google detailing what it wants. In short, Epic wants the Play Store to be almost wide open.

The injunction is based on three core points, Epic noted in a blog post. First, Epic believes that Google has to let users download apps from wherever they want without it getting in the way. It says people should be able to add apps to Android devices in much the same way they can from a computer — from any app store or the web.

Epic wants to block Google from scaring people off from downloading apps from the web (though it's okay with letting Google block malware). It also wants to stop the company from working with carriers and phone manufacturers to limit the options consumers have for downloading apps. Among other things, Epic wants restrictions on pre-installed app stores to be outlawed. So, if the injunction is approved, we might see Android phones pre-installed with a Epic Games Store app in the future.

Second, Epic argues that Google has to allow developers and users the freedom to choose how they offer and pay for in-app purchases, "free from anticompetitive fees and restrictions." It asserts that Google has to let developers include links from their apps to websites, where they might be able to make offer discounts as they'd bypass Google's cut of in-app payments facilitated through the Play Store.

Epic kicked off its legal battle with Google (and Apple) in 2020 by pointing out to Fortnite mobile players that they could save money by buying the V-bucks currency directly from Epic. Under the proposed injunction, Google would be prevented from trying to prevent alternative payment options through compliance programs like User Choice Billing.

The third aim of Epic's proposed injunction is to block Google from retaliating against it (or any app or developer) for taking on app store practices. "Google has a history of malicious compliance and has attempted to circumvent legislation and regulation meant to reign in their anti-competitive control over Android devices," Epic wrote. "Our proposed injunction seeks to block Google from repeating past bad-faith tactics and open up Android devices to competition and choice for all developers and consumers."

The injunction has more details about Epic's demands, including for Google to untangle its products and services (such as Android APIs) from the Play Store. For a period of six years, Epic wants Google to allow third-party app stores onto the Play Store without fees, and for them to have access to the Play Store's library of apps. That would also mean allowing the third-party app stores to handle updates for Play Store apps. Epic wants Google to appoint a compliance committee to ensure it's abiding by the injunction too.

We may not have to wait too long to find out just how many of Epic's requests the court rubberstamps. Google will respond to the proposal by May 2 and a hearing on the injunction is set for May 23.

"Epic’s filing to the US Federal Court shows again that it simply wants the benefits of Google Play without having to pay for it," a Google spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "We’ll continue to challenge the verdict, as Android is an open mobile platform that faces fierce competition from the Apple App Store, as well as app stores on Android devices, PCs and gaming consoles.” 

Google is having to make many similar changes in the European Union due to the bloc's Digital Markets Act. However, parent company Alphabet and Apple are already under investigation over concerns that they're not freely allowing developers to bypass the Play Store and App Store.

Meanwhile, as a result of the DMA, Epic plans to release a mobile app store on iOS and Android in the EU later this year. It's also still battling Apple over third-party payments in the US.

Update 4/12 5:55PM ET: Added Google's statement.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/epic-wants-to-blow-the-google-play-store-wide-open-202411585.html?src=rss

Possibility Space, an independent game studio with employees distributed across the globe, was abruptly shut down today by its CEO Jeff Strain, former employees revealed on Twitter. The studio launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a AAA title, and it had also hired industry notables like Waypoint's Austin Walker and Ubisoft designer Liz England. Its closure follows the shutdown of Crop Circle Games last month, another studio owned by Strain's Prytania Media, which he co-founded with his wife Annie Delisi Strain.

In a bizarre studio closure and layoff message to staff, Possibility Space owner Jeff Strain blamed the studio closure on employees leaking information to the press. pic.twitter.com/d4OHrm3z2N

— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) April 12, 2024

In an e-mail obtained by Polygon report Nicole Carpenter, Strain said he was "stunned" to learn that confidential information about the studio's major title, code-named Project Vonnegut, was shared with Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach. Strain claims that an unnamed publishing "expressed low confidence" about funding the studio any further, which led to a mutual agreement to cancel the title. Subsequently, he decided to shut down the studio entirely.

Possibility Space isn't the first studio to have game details leaked to press, and it's unclear why that information was damning enough to lose publisher funding (and don't forget, this is only Strain's version of events). 

Last month, Annie Delisi Strain also issued a similarly baffling e-mail (via IGN) where she blamed Crop Circle Game's closure on economic downturn, but additionally revealed that she was diagnosed with multiple-sclerosis. She claimed, without evidence, that Kotaku's Gach could potentially publish her health details without consulting her: "I stepped down as CEO this winter on a medical leave and while I don't know the content of Mr. Gach's article, I have no assurances that my personal health struggles as a rare female game industry CEO will not be covered in his article."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indie-game-studio-possibility-space-shuts-down-ceo-blames-a-reporter-195001168.html?src=rss

Enlarge (credit: LinkedIn)

An accomplished and prominent transplant surgeon in Texas allegedly falsified patient data in a government transplant waiting list, which may have prevented his own patients from receiving lifesaving liver transplants, according to media reports and hospital statements.

Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center halted its liver transplant program on April 3 after finding "irregularities" with donor acceptance criteria, the Houston Chronicle reported based on a statement from the hospital. At the time there were 38 patients on the hospital's wait list for a liver. Earlier this week, the hospital also halted its kidney transplant program, telling the Chronicle that it was pausing operations to "evaluate a new physician leadership structure."

Memorial Hermann has not named the surgeon behind the "inappropriate changes," but The New York Times identified him as Dr. Steve Bynon, a surgeon who has received numerous accolades and, at one point, appears to have been featured on a billboard. Bynon oversaw both the liver and kidney transplant programs at Memorial Hermann.

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Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Epic Games has filed a proposed injunction that would stop Google from restricting third-party app distribution outside Google Play Store on Android devices after proving that Google had an illegal monopoly in markets for Android app distribution.

Epic is suggesting that competition on the Android mobile platform would be opened up if the court orders Google to allow third-party app stores to be distributed for six years in the Google Play Store and blocks Google from entering any agreements with device makers that would stop them from pre-loading third-party app stores. This would benefit both mobile developers and users, Epic argued in a wide-sweeping proposal that would greatly limit Google's control over the Android app ecosystem.

US District Court Judge James Donato will ultimately decide the terms of the injunction. Google has until May 3 to respond to Epic's filing.

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Late last year, over 100 employees of Avalanche Studios, the makers of Just Cause, announced an intent to unionize. The workers have officially ironed out a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish labor unions Unionen and Engineers of Sweden. The agreement goes into effect during the second quarter of 2025.

While specifics of the agreement remain unknown, Avalanche said that it “will help standardize frameworks around essential areas such as salaries, benefits, employee influence, and career support.” The company says it’s working closely with both unions to ensure a smooth implementation of these frameworks.

Avalanche was founded in Sweden, but has since become a global entity. With this in mind, the move to unionize only impacts workers located in Sweden, which amounts to around 100 people. The company employs more than 500 workers globally.

Despite that caveat, this is still another high-profile move toward improving the rights of workers in the gaming industry. Avalanche joins several other companies that recently organized under collective labor contracts. Sega of America workers overwhelmingly voted to unionize last year, a move that impacted 200 employees. Over 300 ZeniMax Studios quality assurance workers voted to unionize last year, and parent company Microsoft didn’t stand in the way. Activision, another Microsoft company, boasts a union with over 600 members, which is the largest one in the entire industry.

This is all good news for workers, but there’s also a dark cloud floating around the industry. There have been a boatload of layoffs throughout the past several months. As a matter of fact, over 6,000 people lost their jobs in January alone. Impacted workers hail from many of the companies mentioned above, like Sega of America, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax.

As for Avalanche, it’s continuing work on the forthcoming Xbox exclusive Contraband. The game’s been in the pipeline since 2021 and it looks to be an open-world co-op adventure set in the 1970s.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/avalanche-studios-devs-have-reached-a-contract-agreement-in-bid-to-unionize-183645291.html?src=rss

Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products)

There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding.

Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits, whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns.

Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video).

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Google, the search giant that brought in more than $73 billion in profit last year, is protesting a California bill that would require it and other platforms to pay media outlets. The company announced that it was beginning a “short-term test” that will block links to local California news sources for a “small percentage” of users in the state.

The move is in response to the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would require Google, Meta and other platforms to pay California publishers fees in exchange for links. The proposed law, which passed the state Assembly last year, amounts to a “link tax,” according to Google VP of News Partnerships Jaffer Zaidi.

“If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi writes. But though the bill has yet to become law, Google is opting to give publishers and users in California a taste of what those changes could look like.

The company says it will temporarily test blocking links to California news sources that would be covered under the law in order “to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.” Zaidi didn’t say how large the test would be or how long it would last. Google is also halting new spending on California newsrooms, including “new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”

Google isn’t the first company to use hardball tactics in the face of new laws that aim to force tech companies to pay for journalism. Meta pulled news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada after a similar law passed and has threatened to do the same in California. (Meta did eventually cut deals to pay publishers in Australia after a 2021 law went into effect, but said last month it would end those partnerships.)

Google has a mixed track record on the issue, It pulled its News service out of Spain for seven years in protest of local copyright laws that would have required licensing fees. But the company signed deals worth about $150 million to pay Australian publishers. It also eventually backed off threats to pull news from search results in Canada, and forked over about $74 million. That may sound like a lot, but those amounts are still just a tiny fraction of the $10 - $12 billion that researchers estimate Google should be paying publishers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-a-197-trillion-company-is-protesting-californias-plan-to-pay-journalists-175706632.html?src=rss

Enlarge / File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: SpaceX)

For the first time, SpaceX will launch one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters for a 20th time Friday night on a flight to deliver 23 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.

This milestone mission is scheduled to lift off at 9:22 pm EDT Friday (01:22 UTC Saturday) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Forecasters from the US Space Force predict "excellent" weather for the primetime launch.

Falcon 9 will blaze a familiar trail into space, following the same profile as dozens of past Starlink missions.

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Another day, another dead Google product. The Google One VPN service we complained about last week is headed to the chopping block. Google's support documents haven't been updated yet, but Android Authority reported on an email going out to Google One users informing them of the shutdown. 9to5Google also got confirmation of the shutdown from Google.

The Google One VPN launched in 2020 as a bonus feature for paying Google One subscribers. Google One is Google's cloud storage subscription plan that allows users to buy extra storage for Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos. In 2020, the plan was exclusive to the expensive 2TB tier for $10 a month, but later, it was brought down to all Google One tiers, including the entry-level $2-per-month option.

By our count, Google has three VPN products, though "products" might be too strong a word since they are all essentially the same thing—VPN market segments? There's the general Google One VPN for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac—this is the one that's dying. There's also the "Pixel VPN by Google One," which came with Pixel phones (the "Google One" branding here makes no sense since you didn't have to subscribe to Google One) and the Google Fi VPN that's exclusive to Google Fi Android and iOS customers.

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Roku has disclosed a second data breach in as many months. While it was looking into a previous incident in which 15,000 accounts were affected, the company learned that another 576,000 accounts had been compromised.

In both incidents, Roku believes that the attackers used a method called credential stuffing. "It is likely that login credentials used in these attacks were taken from another source, like another online account, where the affected users may have used the same credentials," the company says.

Roku added that, in fewer than 400 cases, attackers used victims' Roku accounts to buy streaming subscriptions and Roku devices using stored payment methods. However, the hackers did not gain access to full credit card numbers or other payment information.

The company has reset the passwords for all affected accounts and informed users who have been impacted. The company is also turning on two-factor authentication for its more than 80 million active accounts. The next time you log in, you'll get a verification email. You'll need to click a link in the email before you can access your account. Meanwhile, Roku says it's refunding or reversing charges in the cases where the hackers bought subscriptions or hardware.

While the impact of this latest breach doesn't seem too disastrous, it's a good reminder that you should have a strong, unique password for every single one of your accounts. A password manager makes it much easier to have robust login credentials, as you'll only need to remember one main password or log in using biometric data.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/roku-suffered-another-data-breach-this-time-affecting-576000-accounts-170442223.html?src=rss

Ubisoft’s online-only racing game The Crew stopped being operable on April 1. Some users are reporting, however, that things have gone a bit further. They say that the company actually reached into Ubisoft Connect accounts and revoked the license to access the game, according to reports by Game Rant and others.

Some of these users liken this move to theft, as they had purchased the game with their own money and received no warning that Ubisoft would be deleting the license. When attempting to launch the game, these players say they received a message stating that access was no longer possible.

Also removed from my account. I'm in EU.
Lawsuit time? pic.twitter.com/IxRj1lnIi6

— Matthijs Gillot (@MMaRsu) April 11, 2024

On its face, this sounds pretty bad. People paid for something that was snatched away. However, there’s one major caveat. The Crew is an online-only racing game, so there really isn’t anything to do without the servers. Those servers went down on April 1 and the game was delisted from digital store fronts. Also, this move only impacts the original game. The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest are both still going.

When Ubisoft announced that the servers would be taken offline, it offered refunds to those who recently purchased the The Crew. The game’s been around a decade, so this refund likely didn’t apply to the vast majority of players. Some of these people said they had planned to set up private servers to play the game, an option that is now impossible.

This isn’t the biggest deal in the world, being as how The Crew is not operable, but it does highlight a major problem with the purchase and use of digital goods. We pay money for these products. We think we own them, but we don’t own a damned thing. Read the terms of service from Ubisoft or any other major games publisher for proof of that. Philippe Tremblay, Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, recently told Gamesindustry.biz that players will become “comfortable with not owning” their games. I’m not so sure we’ll ever be comfortable with the idea that stuff we paid for can disappear on a dime, even if it becomes standard practice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ubisoft-is-deleting-the-crew-from-players-libraries-reminding-us-we-own-nothing-165328083.html?src=rss

Enlarge / BYD electric cars stand at a BYD dealership on April 05, 2024, in Berlin, Germany. BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, is a Chinese manufacturer that went from making solar panels to electric cars. The company is seeking to gain a foothold in the German auto market. (credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Influential US Senator Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) has called on US President Joe Biden to ban electric vehicles from Chinese brands. Brown calls Chinese EVs "an existential threat" to the US automotive industry and says that allowing imports of cheap EVs from Chinese brands "is inconsistent with a pro-worker industrial policy."

Brown's letter to the president is the most recent to sound alarms about the threat of heavily subsidized Chinese EVs moving into established markets. Brands like BYD and MG have been on sale in the European Union for some years now, and last October, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into whether the Chinese government is giving Chinese brands an unfair advantage.

The EU probe won't wrap until November, but another report published this week found that government subsidies for green technology companies are prevalent in China. BYD, which now sells more EVs than Tesla, has benefited from almost $4 billion (3.7 billion euro) in direct help from the Chinese government in 2022, according to a study by the Kiel Institute.

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Many major tech companies, particularly those that operate in the TV hardware business, have dipped their toes into original content. Although it's had its own free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels for a while, TCL is late to that party. Not for much longer though, as the company is set to release its first special, a short romance movie, on TCLtv+ this summer. There's just one slight hitch: TCL is using generative AI to make original content for its platform, and early signs do not bode well.

The company has released the first trailer for Next Stop Paris, which it's calling "the first AI-powered love story." TCL used human writers, as well as actors for motion capture and voice performances. While it has artists in the US, Canada, UK and Poland working on the project, it relied heavily on generative AI.

“I am excited by this opportunity to differentiate us with original programming. AIGC [artificial intelligence generated content] for us is the beginning," Chris Regina, TCL's chief content officer, told Broadcasting+Cable. "It’s a new approach and it makes sense coming from a tech and hardware company that that’s where we’re going to start.”

The plot of Next Stop Paris, such as it is, sees a young woman going on her honeymoon to Paris alone after her fiancé ran off with someone in their wedding party. She meets a stranger on the train and the pair explore the French capital together.

TCL is hoping that original content can help draw viewers to TCLtv+ and help build a brand identity for the company. While it's not entirely fair to judge a film based on a trailer, the Next Stop Paris clip gives a terrible first impression for both the project and TCLtv+.

The look of the characters changes throughout, from a moderately realistic style to the hyperrealism we often see from the likes of Midjourney, and they project all of the emotion of a pair of dead fish. Lip syncing is almost non-existent and the characters walk in a very unnatural way. 

The trailer feels like the worst kind of fever dream. Saying this looks like garbage would be an insult to garbage. If "content is king," as Regina put it, Next Stop Paris looks like a pauper.

The Hallmark Channel gets a lot of flak for its romance movies and romcoms, but at least there's an earnestness and high level of care behind the network's output, which does a lot to fill a gap in the theatrical slate. TCL is trying to muscle into that space too.

"There's an audience there that's watching our service and we see a hole in the marketplace with theatrical rom-coms not as prevalent," Regina said. "They're a guilty pleasure. You get under a blanket and watch in front of your TV set. So that's the driver." On top of that, TCL plans to make its original content shoppable and have AI-generated "characters in our shows that can be brand ambassadors and influencers for advertisers."

Thankfully, TCL isn't only working on AI-generated guff. "We are looking at doing traditional content. So movies, scripted shows, unscripted content, specials," Regina, who wrote Next Stop Paris with TCL chief creative officer Daniel Smith, said. "The next thing we have brewing isn't AI at all." That's good, because whatever's next can't look much worse than Next Stop Paris.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tcls-first-original-movie-is-an-absurd-looking-ai-generated-love-story-154142740.html?src=rss

Enlarge / Is a name like "Suyu" ironic enough to avoid facing a lawsuit? (credit: Suyu)

Nintendo continues to use DMCA requests to halt projects it says aid in the piracy of Switch content. Discord has shut down the discussion servers associated with two prominent Yuzu forks—Suyu and Sudachi—while GitHub has removed a couple of projects related to the decryption of Switch software for use with emulators or hacked consoles.

The takedowns are the latest aftershocks from Nintendo's federal lawsuit against Switch emulator Yuzu, which led to a $2.4 million settlement weeks later. Yuzu voluntarily shut down its GitHub page and Discord server as part of that settlement, though archived discussions from Discord are still accessible.

That settlement includes a section prohibiting the makers of Yuzu from "acting in active concert and participation" with third parties in the distribution or promotion of Yuzu or any clones that make use of its code. But there's no evidence that anyone enjoined by that settlement is actively working with Suyu or Sudachi on their projects.

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