Google's NotebookLM app has been updated to let you generate custom podcasts from almost any source material. The AI software is also dropping the "experimental" tag. Wired reports: To make an AI podcast using NotebookLM, open up the Google Labs website and start a New Notebook. Then, add any source documents you would like to be used for the audio output. These can be anything from files on your computer to YouTube links. Next, when you click on the Notebook guide, you'll now see the option to generate a deep dive as well as the option to customize it first. Choose Customize and add your prompt for how you'd like the AI podcast to come out. The software suggests that you consider what sections of the sources you'd like highlighted, larger topics you want further explored, or different intended audiences who you want the message to reach.

One tip [Raiza Martin, who leads the NotebookLM team inside of Google Labs] shares for trying out the new feature is to generate the Audio Overview without changes, and while you're listening to this first iteration, write down any burning questions you have or topics you wish it expanded on. Afterwards, use these notes as a launching pad to create your prompts for NotebookLM and regenerate that AI podcast with your interests in mind. [...] Yes, Google's NotebookLM might flatten the specifics of a big document or get some details mixed up, but being able to generate more personalized podcasts from disparate sources truly does feel like a transformation -- and luckily nothing like turning into a giant bug. You can view some examples of AI-generated podcasts here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting on October 14, 2024, news outlets including Yahoo and NME reported that year-over-year, the U.S. vinyl market was down 33 percent. The data for these articles came from a weekly report from Billboard called "Market Watch," which automatically updates with data provided by the company Luminate. Amid the vinyl revolution, this news signified a shift in buyer habits: a sales decline among vinyl for the first time in 17 years.

On October 15, Discogs contacted Chris Muratore, director of partnerships at Luminate, who confirmed that the reported data is incorrect. Vinyl sales are actually up 6.2 percent. Billboard has since added language to their "Market Watch" report, clearing up the error. Luminate has been the gold standard for physical music sales numbers for decades. However, at the beginning of this year, the company changed its reporting process, frustrating many record store owners and industry personnel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The code that runs Redbox DVD rental machines has been dumped online, and, in the wake of the company's bankruptcy, a community of tinkerers and reverse engineers are probing the operating system to learn how it works. Naturally, one of the first things people did was make one of the machines run Doom. As has been detailed in several great articles elsewhere, the end of Redbox has been a clusterfuck, with pharmacies, grocery stores, and other retailers stuck with very large, heavy, abandoned DVD rental kiosks. To many people's surprise, many of the kiosks remain operational even with the bankruptcy of Redbox's parent company, which has led some people to "liberate" DVDs from the abandoned kiosks. Reddit is full of posts by people who say they have taken dozens of DVDs from kiosks all over the country. Free DVDs is one thing. But in recent days, people have realized that they can, in some cases, get free Redbox kiosks. In an August filing, Walgreens told the bankruptcy court that it has 5,400 abandoned kiosks at its stores, and that it is spending $184,000 a month keeping them powered. "Walgreens should not be required to continue to 'store' and power Redbox kiosks across the country without any form of payment," the company wrote. And so tinkerers and reverse engineers have begun asking stores whether they can take the devices off their hands. There are also posts on Reddit by contractors who are selling them, and I was able to find various Redbox DVD kiosks being advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace. (There are far more listings on Facebook Marketplace from people who have obtained hundreds or thousands of Redbox DVDs and are now selling them.)

Recently the operating system for Redbox kiosks was dumped online, and this community is now probing it to see how it works. In a thread on Mastodon, reverse engineer Foone Turing has been posting some of her findings, which include the fact that Redbox machines contain a file that has "a complete list of titles ever rented, and the email addresses of the people who rented them, and where and when." She also found that the first six and last four digits of credit card information was logged. She said that the records on the particular unit that she was looking at contained 2,471 different transactions and had records on it dating back to 2015. Other reverse engineers have found that Redbox kiosks contained information about the physical locations of every other kiosk. The server that they communicated with is currently offline (because the company is bankrupt). But people have also been putting together information about what different error codes in the software mean (for example, the error code "0020BDT" would happen when an obstruction was detected in the machine). They have also found and dumped service manuals for different parts of the device and have found a few login passwords (one password is "US#1Choice4movierentals"). [...] There has also been discussion about how the machines could be modified to talk to a new server, or whether the operating system could be put on a DIY Redbox device. Another person installed Minecraft on their Redbox. It is still very early days, but, with the bankruptcy of Redbox's parent company, ironically these devices are being given new life.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed by Spotify wasn't that album. Instead, at the top of Gong's page was a fake self-titled album supposedly released in 2024.

The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored.

On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."

Imgur announced changes to its content moderation policies, no longer classifying memes with adult humor as mature. Going forward, only memes with sexualized or lewd content will receive the mature tag. The Verge reports: Imgur is making the changes after it collected feedback about its content moderation over the course of this year, including that its policies, "especially surrounding mature content, feel inconsistently applied, too subjective, or just rather confusing as a whole," according to a post from Imgur product manager Martyn O'Neill. Now, mature content consists "solely of sexualized or 'lewd'" content.

Following the adjustments, O'Neill says that "warnings / post removals" are down nearly 35 percent month over month. Far fewer posts are being marked as mature as well; that stat has declined by almost 50 percent.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, NYC-based software developer Nick Spreen received a surprising alert on his iPhone 15 Pro, delivered through an early test version of Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence text message summary feature. "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment," the AI-penned message reads, summing up the content of several separate breakup texts from his girlfriend -- that arrived on his birthday, no less. Spreen shared a screenshot of the AI-generated message in a now-viral tweet on the X social network, writing, "for anyone who's wondered what an apple intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like." Spreen told Ars Technica that the screenshot does not show his ex-girlfriend's full real name, just a nickname.

This summary feature of Apple Intelligence, announced by the iPhone maker in June, isn't expected to fully ship until an iOS 18.1 update in the fall. However, it has been available in a public beta test of iOS 18 since July, which is what Spreen is running on his iPhone. It works akin to something like a stripped-down ChatGPT, reading your incoming text messages and delivering its own simplified version of their content. On X, Spreen replied to skepticism over whether the message was real in a follow-up post. "Yes this was real / yes it happened yesterday / yes it was my birthday," Spreen wrote. In response to a question about it being a fair summary of his girlfriend's messages, he wrote, "it is."

We reached out to Spreen directly via email and he delivered his own summary of his girlfriend's messages. "It was something along the lines of i can't believe you just did that, we're done, i want my stuff. we had an argument in a bar and I got up and left, then she sent the text," he wrote. How did he feel about getting the news via AI summary? "I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn't a bad thing," he told Ars Technica. "Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations, but yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian."

The first scripted Immersive Video project for Apple's Vision Pro debuts on October 10. Called Submerged, the film "invites viewers onto a WWII-era submarine and follows its crew as they wrestle to combat a harrowing torpedo attack." 9to5Mac reports: The short film was written and directed by an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. That makes it stand out from other Immersive Video Apple has produced to this point. The filmmaker, Edward Berger, is best known for films like All Quiet on the Western Front and the upcoming Conclave. You can watch the trailer with commentary from the director here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a "privacy nightmare," according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

The 48-page report, How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era [PDF], cites Ars Technica, other news publications, trade publications, blog posts, and statements from big players in streaming -- from Amazon to NBCUniversal and Tubi, to LG, Samsung, and Vizio. It provides a detailed overview of the various ways that streaming services and streaming hardware target viewers in newfound ways that the CDD argues pose severe privacy risks. The nonprofit composed the report as part of efforts to encourage regulation. Today, the CDD sent letters to the FTC [PDF], Federal Communications Commission (FCC), California attorney general [PDF], and California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) [PDF], regarding its concerns. "Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race, and political interests,â Chester said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, Meta announced a preview of Movie Gen, a new suite of AI models designed to create and manipulate video, audio, and images, including creating a realistic video from a single photo of a person. The company claims the models outperform other video-synthesis models when evaluated by humans, pushing us closer to a future where anyone can synthesize a full video of any subject on demand. The company does not yet have plans of when or how it will release these capabilities to the public, but Meta says Movie Gen is a tool that may allow people to "enhance their inherent creativity" rather than replace human artists and animators. The company envisions future applications such as easily creating and editing "day in the life" videos for social media platforms or generating personalized animated birthday greetings.

Movie Gen builds on Meta's previous work in video synthesis, following 2022's Make-A-Scene video generator and the Emu image-synthesis model. Using text prompts for guidance, this latest system can generate custom videos with sounds for the first time, edit and insert changes into existing videos, and transform images of people into realistic personalized videos. [...] Movie Gen's video-generation model can create 1080p high-definition videos up to 16 seconds long at 16 frames per second from text descriptions or an image input. Meta claims the model can handle complex concepts like object motion, subject-object interactions, and camera movements. You can view example videos here. Meta also released a research paper with more technical information about the model.

As for the training data, the company says it trained these models on a combination of "licensed and publicly available datasets." Ars notes that this "very likely includes videos uploaded by Facebook and Instagram users over the years, although this is speculation based on Meta's current policies and previous behavior."

Amazon is set to roll out a greater number of ads [non-paywalled link] across its blockbuster television shows and movies on Prime Video next year as the US tech giant steps up its push into ad-funded streaming services. Financial Times: The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform eight months ago, allaying fears among top executives of a customer backlash, as it attempts to win over more brands to its streaming service.

Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, told the Financial Times there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025. Talking ahead of its first London "up front" on Wednesday evening -- when television companies present their plans to advertisers to attract money over the next year -- Day said its advertising "load" would "ramp up a little bit more into 2025."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Somewhere over the streets of San Francisco's Mission, a microphone sits surveilling ... for banger songs. Bop Spotter is a project by technologist Riley Walz in which he has hidden an Android phone in a box on a pole, rigged it to be solar powered, and has set it to record audio and periodically sends it to Shazam's API to determine which songs people are playing in public. Walz describes it as ShotSpotter, but for music. "This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals," Walz's website reads. "It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what's popping off in real-time."

ShotSpotter, of course, is the microphone-based, "gunshot detection" surveillance company that cities around the country have spent millions of dollars on. ShotSpotter is often inaccurate, and sometimes detects things like fireworks or a car backfiring as gunshots. Chicago, one of ShotSpotter's biggest clients, is finally allowing its contract with the company to end. Bop Spotter, on the other hand, is designed to figure out what cool music people are blasting from their cars or as they walk down the street. "I am a chronic Shazam-er. Most songs I listen to come from first hearing them at a party, store, or on the street," Walz told 404 Media. "Years ago I had the thought that it'd be cool to Shazam 24/7 from a fixed location, and I recently learned about ShotSpotter, and thought it'd be amusing to do what they do with music instead of gunshots. Was a great weekend project."

Walz said that the phone itself is rigged to a solar panel, and that it records audio in 10-minute blocks while in airplane mode. "Then it connects to WiFi to send the file to my server, which then split it into 20-second chunks that get passed to Shazam's API. The device doesn't Shazam directly, that would use way too much power. Probably $100 of parts," he said. BopSpotter's website has a constant feed of songs it hears, as well as links to play the songs in Spotify or Apple Music. As I'm writing this, BopSpotter has picked up "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar, "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre, and "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley (a Rick Roll already?) among dozens of songs in the last few hours. The site also has a constant feed of the device's power levels. So far in three days, it has detected 380 songs. "I thought the solar panel would be annoying but it provides 4 times more power than the phone needs," Walz said. "The hardest part was scoping out which pole to actually put it up on. I had to balance finding a busy location where lots of music could be picked up, with enough sunlight, and good connection to a public wifi network."

Walz didn't say where exactly the phone is located.

Amazon Prime is launching a new Shark Tank-style competition show where contestants pitch products to a panel of celebrity investors and a live audience called "The 100." If a product wins audience approval, it gets featured in Amazon's Buy It Now Store, accessible via QR codes during episodes. The show, called Buy It Now and hosted by JB Smoove, premieres on October 30, 2024. You can watch a trailer for it on YouTube. The Verge reports: The company announced the show earlier this year but has now released a trailer showing what it will look like. Contestants pitch their ideas to the audience. If the crowd votes for them, then the panelists pick which ones will show up on Amazon's Buy It Now Store: a new storefront launching alongside the show that viewers can reach using a QR code that shows up during episodes. One presenter per episode will get a $20,000 prize, too.

Apart from Smoove -- who you may remember from Curb Your Enthusiasm and Harley -- the show will feature "a star-studded rotating panel of celebrity panelists," including Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Anderson, Tabitha Brown, Tony Hawk, and Christian Siriano. It will also include three Amazon executives, and Ring founder and current CEO of Door.com (formerly Latch) Jamie Siminoff will serve as the "resident judge and entrepreneurial panelist." Oh, and those panelists will be selling their own products on that Buy It Now Store.

DirecTV has agreed to acquire struggling rival Dish Network, creating a satellite TV behemoth with nearly 20 million subscribers. The complex transaction, announced Monday, involves private equity firm TPG acquiring a majority stake in DirecTV from AT&T for $7.6 billion. DirecTV will then purchase Dish for $1 and assume its debt.

The deal provides a lifeline for Dish, which faces $2 billion in debt due November with only $500 million in available cash. EchoStar, Dish's parent company, will retain its wireless spectrum investments and operate independently. Subject to regulatory approval and creditor agreement, the merger is expected to close in late 2025. DirecTV and TPG will provide $2.5 billion to cover Dish's immediate financial needs. The deal's fate remains uncertain, as a similar 2002 merger attempt was blocked on antitrust grounds.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Songs by Adele, Bob Dylan, Green Day, R.E.M., Burna Boy, Rush and many others are currently unplayable on YouTube in the U.S. due to a legal dispute between the platform and the performing rights organization SESAC. Attempts to play many, but not all, songs by those artists on Saturday met with the following message: "This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country."

A similar dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok raged on for several months earlier this year before being resolved. In a statement to Variety, a YouTube rep said: "We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible." A source close to the situation tells Variety that the previous deal actually does not expire until next week, and suggests that YouTube's move is a negotiating tactic. SESAC is far smaller than ASCAP and BMI -- with approximately 30,000 members and 1.5 million compositions while ASCAP has nearly 800,000 members -- but as the caliber of artists affected by the block shows, it represents a comparatively large percentage of the marketplace.

A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal canceled Marvel and DC's jointly owned "Super Hero" trademarks after the companies failed to respond to a request by London-based Superbabies Ltd, which argued the marks couldn't be owned collectively or monopolize the superhero genre. The ruling was "not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation," said Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg. "By establishing SUPER HEROES' place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers." Reuters reports: Rivals Marvel and DC jointly own four federal trademarks covering the terms "Super Hero" and "Super Heroes," the oldest of which dates back to 1967. Richold writes comics featuring a team of super-hero babies called the Super Babies. According to Richold, DC accused his company of infringing the "Super Hero" marks and threatened legal action after Superbabies Ltd applied for U.S. trademarks covering the "Super Babies" name. Marvel and DC have cited their marks in opposing dozens of superhero-related trademark applications at the USPTO, according to the office's records. Superbabies petitioned the office to cancel the marks in May. It argued that Marvel and DC cannot "claim ownership over an entire genre" with their trademarks, and that the two competitors cannot own trademarks together.