A smarter, dumber Alexa
It’s not just you. Amazon has taken an unusually long time to give its Alexa assistant the artificial intelligence (AI) treatment, despite its many competitors slathering their every product in the stuff. The delay is not by choice, according to a report from Bloomberg, which reckons the transition hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as Amazon had hoped.
As such, the company’s planned rollout, which was scheduled for late 2024, has been pushed back to 2025, according to “a person familiar with the matter.” Amazon instead pivoted to a quieter, softer launch that involved the announcement of four new Kindle e-readers in mid-October to cover the loss of a newer Alexa.
The underlying issue plaguing Amazon’s AI ambitions lies in its large language models (LLMs). The entire point of the rejuvenated and artificially intelligent Alexa, as reported earlier this year, is to… profit. The idea was to sell a smarter Alexa with a subscription fee. In its haste to make Alexa more capable at answering long-winded questions, it has reportedly dumbed it down enough to make it unable to reliably complete even simple tasks.
That, coupled with Amazon’s lack of a “compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa,” according to employees in the company, has delayed the rollout of the smarter assistant. Whether Amazon can sort out its developmental issues before the planned 2025 release remains to be seen. Our hopes… aren’t high.
Stand back GTA VI – GTA V is back
Rockstar finally has some news about the Grand Theft Auto series, but it’s not the news you were hoping for. Despite the hotly anticipated release of GTA VI supposedly landing in 2025, Rockstar has plans to kit out the PC version of GTA V (Online) with features currently only exclusive to the current-gen versions of the game.
Whether PC players will be forced to bear the cost of a whole new GTA V edition or if Rockstar will grace them with a free update remains a mystery. Rockstar being Rockstar, the company that has since released three different versions of GTA V spanning three consoles. We’re confident Rockstar views this as an opportunity to milk its cash cow one last time.
Rockstar has been vague about what players could see in this update, going no further than stating its plans to “bring the much-requested PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S features of GTA Online to the PC platform in the new year.”
We can assume it will introduce the many missing vehicles currently included in the current-gen version of the game, alongside the many graphical improvements, ray-tracing support, and “Hao’s Special Works, Benny’s Original Motorworks, and Drift upgrades inside The Vinewood Club Garage’s Vehicle Workshop.”
Goodbye, Greg Hildebrandt
It’s a sad day for sci-fi and fantasy. Greg Hildebrandt has unfortunately passed away at the age of 85 as of last week Thursday. There’s a good chance you won’t be familiar with the name, but we’re almost certain you’re familiar with the artist’s work.
You know that iconic Star Wars poster (pictured above), depicting Luke wielding his lightsaber aloft, with a menacing Darth Vader in the background? The one that has informed movie posters ever since its release? Yeah, that was him. Not to mention his work on Lord of the Rings, Magic: The Gathering, and Marvel/DC Comics.
Despite his work on numerous franchises, the iconic “Style B” poster (that’s this one here) for the original 1977 Star Wars poster is certainly his most iconic. Hildebrandt’s poster was only used for roughly a year before Lucas commissioned a “Style C” poster from Tom Chantrell to better include Mark Hammill’s baby face, though it’s clear Chantrell’s work did its best to imitate the original poster, in keeping with the vibe established.
It’s no Crysis, but it’ll do
There was once a time when something simple like Doom running on some obscure hardware had us rather excited. Now that we’ve seen Doom chugging along just fine on a toothbrush and a lawnmower, we’re honestly a little disappointed it took as long as it did to get it going on Nintendo’s latest hardware – a $100 (R1,700) alarm clock.
But hey, it happened eventually, at the hands of one YouTuber, GaryOberNicht. He got custom software running on the Alarmo, as shown in a video posted to his X.com and Mastodon accounts. Despite being a device designed to make sounds (and loudly), Gary has yet to figure out audio support, though we have no doubts about his abilities to get this sorted somewhere down the line.
And if you were one of the few to pick up an Alarmo, you can replicate this beautiful piece of history, too. Gary posted an entire blog post and GitHub with instructions and the tools to pull it off (the Alarmo can boot firmware stored on a single USB and load it that way). It’s a relatively simple method that anyone with a computer can replicate. Now that it’s passed the Doom test, we await the real test: Where is Crysis?
