An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: In 2022, due to "evolving licensing agreements" with distributor StudioCanal, German and Austrian users had hundreds of movies disappear from their PS accounts, long after buying them through Sony. Then in 2023, it happened again in America, specifically when Sony ended its licensing agreement with Discovery after the Warner Bros. merger, which, of course, has since been bought by Paramount Skydance. That resulted in customers having hundreds and hundreds of episodes of TV shows deleted from their accounts. Nowhere in any of this were there refunds, of course. No recompense at all, actually. Just a thing you thought you'd bought taken away from you by the very people you thought you bought it from.

And now it's happening again. Due to another licensing agreement fallout with StudioCanal, hundreds of movies and TV shows are being ripped from the accounts of PS Store customers, and there appears to be fuck all that they can do about it. [Kotaku reports:] "This news was brought to people's attention by X user somatyk, who posted the notification they had received from PlayStation this week. Along with the unapologetic news that the purchased movies would be deleted from their account on September 1, the message concluded with, 'Click here for a full list of affected titles that will no longer be supported. Thank you.' The same warning is now reproduced in full on the PlayStation website, along with the list of 551 films and TV series that are being pulled from people's libraries."

As Kotaku notes later in their post, part of what is striking in all of this is the sheer mundanity of the announcement. Because there have been no consequences, or any action at all from the public or government, Sony treats this all as if it's perfectly normal and no big deal. You can tell me all you want about how the Ts and Cs in these purchases do in fact note that the nature of the purchase is a temporary licensing of the content for an undetermined time period... but I can promise you that the public in general doesn't understand that. They think they're buying a thing, not a license.

Spotify is testing a new "Talk to Spotify" AI feature for Premium subscribers that will let them chat with an AI assistant to explore music, podcasts, and audiobooks. The feature can answer questions about what users are listening to, adjust playback through follow-up prompts, and offer more personalized recommendations. The Verge reports: Amazon Music introduced a similar feature last year when it integrated Alexa Plus into the service. Spotify's chatbot goes a step beyond providing AI-powered recommendations and general trivia, however, because it references your playlists, favorite artists, repeat listens, and listening data when responding to requests. That means you can ask questions about your own listening history to check when you first heard a specific song, or see what genres you've been into lately if you can't hold out for the annual Wrapped insights.

The updated AI capabilities are more conversational than older features like Prompted Playlist, which automatically builds playlists based on descriptions. Now, you can ask the Spotify chatbot to "play some songs I haven't heard before," and control what's being played with further instructions like requesting specific artists or asking to make it "more upbeat." Spotify says the new conversational experience aims to make the platform "more personal and useful for every listener," making this one of several ways that the company is trying to address complaints about its algorithm.

You can also ask the Spotify AI general questions about whatever you're listening to, making the feature feel similar to using chatbot services like Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT. That includes asking for when a song was released, exploring other titles an author has written when listening to one of their audiobooks, or checking if a podcast guest has appeared on other audio shows.

A hacker who breached Suno reportedly revealed source code and training-library details showing the AI music generator scraped millions of songs and lyrics from sources including YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, and podcast RSS feeds. "The hacked data is a rare look at exactly how AI models and tools are built," reports 404 Media. "Suno is one of the largest AI music generation tools on the internet, and has been the subject of several major lawsuits from the record industry, which accused the company of training on millions of copyrighted songs." Suno maintains that its models were trained on publicly available music files and metadata as fair use. 404 Media reports: The Recording Industry Association of America accused Suno of ripping songs directly from YouTube; the hacked data seen by 404 Media confirms this. The hacked material includes source code that appears to be from 2023 and 2024 that includes scraping instructions and details about the scope of at least some of the scraping. For example, the comments in one file note that they will pull from "genius_hq, youtube_music, freesound, jamendo, imp, deezer, ytm_tagged," and that "non-music will be filtered out." A file called "youtube_music" notes that at the time the file was last updated, it had ingested "2,013,545 music clips." Another file contains comments about different datasets Suno had created, which included "113,879 hours of youtube_music," "17,615 hours of genius_hq," "410 hours of free sound," "19,514 hours of imslp," "3,726 hours of jamendo," "62,117 hours of pond5_music," "12,287 hours of deezer," "152,162 hours of ytm_tagged," and "103 hours of musescore_lyrics." In total, this is at least decades worth of music.

Other code the hacker shared with 404 Media appeared to look specifically for vocals by searching specifically for acapella versions of songs on YouTube. The code also suggested that Suno was using proxies to scrape songs from YouTube through a company called Bright Data, which sells scraping tools, infrastructure, and data services. Additional code shows that with the help of an online tool called PodcastIndex, Suno identified 420,000 different podcasts that had at least five, 30-minute episodes and sought to download roughly 1 million hours of podcasts.

[...] The hacker, ellie.191, told 404 Media they breached the company by hacking an individual employee using the Shai-Hulud worm, a supply chain attack that allowed hackers to harvest GitHub and cloud service credentials. They said they also accessed Suno's customer list, which included customers' emails and/or phone numbers and Stripe payment details, depending on what they used to login. The hacker provided a sample of some of the customers, some of whom confirmed to 404 Media they had used their phone number to sign up for Suno and said they were never notified of a breach. The hacker told 404 Media they had no specific motivation for hacking Suno and said "I like to hack anything and everything."

The FCC plans to vote on repealing local TV ownership limits, including the 39% national audience cap that currently restricts how much of the U.S. market a single broadcast group can reach. Engadget reports: On August 6, commissioners will hold a ballot to repeal Section 303 of the Communications Act, and with it the 39 percent rule. In essence, the rule limits the reach of a local TV network to no more than 39 percent of the U.S.' total audience market. In its place, the FCC would move to a system whereby it would personally approve or reject TV ownership deals on a case-by-case basis.

It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature. As Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the Yale Journal on Regulation back in January, Section 10 of the Communications Act expressly forbids the FCC from bending the rules around Section 303. "Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media. That figure is even lower among Republicans -- sitting at a mere three percent."

"... Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood," he alleged. "That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."

Disney is exploring a free tier for Disney+ that would make some content available without a subscription. According to Nielsen data, the three largest free streamers accounted for 18.7% of watch time on U.S. TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024. Business Insider reports: Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon, one staffer said. Smith didn't share a timeline for this initiative or a sense of the scope, this person added. A person familiar with Disney's streaming strategy said these talks are part of an ongoing discussion about concepts to better serve fans. Currently, the Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs $12.99 a month with ads or $19.99 without ads at full price.

CNN reports: Prehistoric human relatives, nicknamed "hobbits" due to their short stature, may have been scavengers, rather than skilled hunters capable of taking down big game or building cooking fires, according to new research. The study adds to growing evidence that Homo floresiensis, which had a brain only slightly bigger than that of a chimpanzee, wasn't as advanced as scientists previously believed....

The researchers believe that much like how Komodo dragons hunt water buffaloes today, they were using their venomous bite to take down Stegodons — and after the scene was clear, Homo floresiensis swept in to cleave meat from what remained... The new study reinforces a long-held suspicion that Homo floresiensis is not a dwarfed form of Homo erectus but a descendant of a more primitive Homo habilis-like or Australopithecus-like form that arrived on the island more than1 million years ago, said Dr. Chris Stringer, a research leader specializing in human origins and paleoanthropology at London's Natural History Museum.

EchoStar's satellite pay-TV unit Dish DBS has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reports Reuters. The move also applies to its wireless subsidiaries, according to the article, and "facilitates the wind-down of Dish Wireless's 5G network operations following an unexpected delay in a spectrum license sale to AT&T... under which EchoStar agreed to sell about 50 megahertz of its nationwide spectrum for $23 billion."

Some context from Deadline.com: Charlie Ergen, who co-founded EchoStar and Dish, recently returned as chairman and CEO to steer the company through its recent challenges... Even prior to the merger, Ergen had been working to pivot from the pay-TV business, where Dish now has just 5 million subscribers and streaming sibling Sling TV has another 2 million, toward wireless telecom. With wireless spectrum hitting the market due to the Sprint-T-Mobile merger and then Elon Musk's Starlink looking to ramp up in the sector, it seemed more attractive than the cord-cutting-ravaged pay-TV business. But it is still entails plenty of risk, especially given how tightly regulated the spectrum is due to security concerns.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

The Onion joked the new movie Supergirl is about a hero who must single-handedly save the world "after the catastrophic collapse of interest in the genre."

Unfortunately, The Hollywood Reporter says the film's reviews "range from negative to tepid praise (averaging a 58 percent Rotten Tomatoes score)." Many point fingers at the film's script, with Variety's line — "a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember" — going viral... Not to pile on, but there's another recurring gripe from the reviews that stood out: Critics bashed the film as being murky, dark and gray, with poor VFX: "Muddy CG sludge" wrote one. Another said the film was full of "sludgy browns and grays" and "the visual murkiness of the settings makes it hard to follow the already unintelligible action sequences." A third wrote the "VFX is so rough it makes The Flash look like Avatar." Moviegoers increasingly despise murky, dark visuals (often used to hide weak effects), along with obvious CGI and incoherent action. They've seen it so many times they've become allergic.
The Bulwark agrees that the action sequences are "terribly lit, incoherently staged, and just generally weightless and ugly... [I]t's reminiscent of the disaster that was The Flash: It's just very obvious during certain sequences that everyone was in a big green-screen warehouse and the camera was whipping around with the knowledge that everything would be painted in later, so who really gives a crap how anything looks on the day of."

But they also call the movie "a tremendous slog of a film, a real step backwards for the James Gunn-overseen DC Universe of movies and TV shows" that's "neither fun nor exciting" and "feels empty." The film does have one bright spot: Lobo, who is played by Jason Momoa as something like Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice by way of Jason Momoa's Aquaman. He's blustery and cantankerous and saucy and just a little menacing; it's a perfect piece of casting and a really nice performance. Unfortunately, it's the only spark of life in what is otherwise a deeply dour, deeply boring piece of filmmaking... Supergirl is just a misfire on nearly every level, one that lacks the sincerity and fun of last year's reboot of this universe or the comic pathos present in Gunn's Peacemaker series on HBO Max.
Reason calls it "dark, depressive, and dull" and "a downer of a movie in nearly every way." It's not fun. It's barely even righteous. It's just miserable. At one point, Supergirl flat-out murders a guy by pushing a giant sword through his neck. Somehow, I suspect even Zack Snyder would be appalled.
Time argued fans of last decade's superhero movies "should be demanding more, not less." Though "Will there be rioting in the streets once audiences get some idea of how lousy Supergirl is? Probably not."

Google is investing roughly $75 million in A24 as part of a research partnership with DeepMind to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools and workflows. "The deal represents the latest marriage between a Hollywood studio and AI in an era where companies have oscillated between partnerships and lawsuits," reports Variety. From the report: A24 partner Scott Belsky, who leads the studio's technology division A24 Labs, told the Journal the studio's Google partnership differed from other deals because AI developers mistakenly advertised their products as a means to make films cheaper and faster. His division is developing applications for AI-generated storyboards, another reimagination of the production process that has seen filmmakers like Martin Scorsese rubber-stamp. "We think there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking," said Belsky, arguing the new tools "won't look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with."

Amazon MGM has dropped Luca Guadagnino's nearly completed Sam Altman biopic Artificial and is seeking another distributor for the film. The move comes months after Amazon expanded its multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, fueling speculation about a potential conflict given the movie's reportedly unflattering portrayal of Altman. The Independent reports: Artificial would have marked the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director's third Amazon film, following the critically acclaimed Zendaya-led tennis romance Challengers (2024) and the academic scandal drama After the Hunt (2025), starring Julia Roberts. The new movie is said to chronicle the brief period when Altman was abruptly ousted as OpenAI's CEO in 2023 and subsequently rehired. Monica Barbaro and Ike Barinholtz star alongside Garfield as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while Yura Borisov, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Angus Imrie, Chris O'Dowd, Mark Rylance and Margo's Got Money Troubles breakout Thaddea Graham round out the cast.

It is unclear exactly why the film was dropped, but according to Variety, the news came after it had already undergone positive screen tests. An early viewer told the publication that the film's portrayals of Altman and newly minted trillionaire Musk are the two characters audiences would "like the least." It was also reported that Amazon had already seen every early iteration of the script before Guadagnino was hired to direct. Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have developed a high-profile friendship over the years. In fact, the former was in attendance at Bezos's wedding to Lauren Sanchez, which took place in Venice, Italy, in 2025. In recent months, the two have continued to deepen their professional partnership that began in 2015, when Amazon became one of OpenAI's first investors. Ten years later, the companies closed their first major deal in November 2025, allowing the ChatGPT maker to run its systems on Amazon's U.S. data centers.

Special-effects designer Brian Johnson, known for his groundbreaking work on Space: 1999, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, and Aliens, has died at the age of 86. Johnson began his career creating models and explosions for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson productions, later designed the iconic Eagle Transporter, and became one of science fiction cinema's most influential behind-the-scenes artists. Longtime Slashdot reader sandbagger remembers the SFX legend, writing: "The Space: 1999 Eagle is one of the great space ships of science fiction."

Fox is buying Roku for $22 billion, combining Fox's sports, news, entertainment, Tubi, and Fox One offerings with a streaming platform that reaches about 100 million people. The companies say the merger would create the "third-largest player in US television by share of viewing," while Fox insists Roku will remain open to competing apps after the deal closes. CNN reports: Fox has dabbled in streaming over the past few years -- finally launching its Fox One competitor last August -- but has lacked a serious streaming business with the ability to compete in a space dominated by YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock. With CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery receiving initial US regulatory approval to combine with Paramount, Fox's purchase of Roku became more urgent. [...] The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027 with the companies forecasting $400 million in savings. "This is a defining moment for Fox, and a natural extension of the deliberate and focused strategy we have been executing for nearly a decade," said Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. "Today, we take the next step: bringing together the most valuable live content portfolio in video consumption with the preeminent streaming platform through which America watches it."

Murdoch said Roku will continue to offer competing apps. "It's essential that Roku remain open and partner-friendly business. We don't see that changing at all."

Steven Spielberg grants that his 1977 UFO film Close Encounters was "speculative," writes the Associated Press, but "Disclosure Day, he insists, is the real deal." "It's my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction," Spielberg said in a recent interview. "It's much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak." Spielberg, at 79, is trying to revive and reconsider the alien wonder that's long lingered in his mind, from "E.T." to "War of the Worlds." "Disclosure Day," Spielberg's first summer movie in a decade, is already being hailed as one of his best in years. But this time, Spielberg is testing whether he can conjure some of his trademark movie magic less with imagination than with conviction. "I've been a believer since I made 'Close Encounters' 50 years ago," Spielberg says. "But I would always say: Until I've seen a UAP or a UFO with my own eyes, I'm not going to categorically state that life from out there has come here. But I've changed that," he adds. "I'm now willing to change my mind because of the circumstantial evidence which is overwhelming..."

Spielberg, having long followed reports of alleged alien encounters, was inspired by the 2023 House Subcommittee on National Security hearing on UAPs: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Among the witnesses was whistleblower and former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who testified that the government concealed a program investigating UAPs. The Pentagon then denied it... Those 2023 testimonies and others so fueled Spielberg that he produced a 50-page treatment on what would become "Disclosure Day." During the writing process with Koepp, he texted him more notes, he says, "than I've ever sent to anyone in my life."

"There was a period in there where I believe he re-read the script every single day for a year," Koepp says. "We'd be in different time zones and I would wake up to 30 or 35 texts from his most current reading of the script. When the leader of the project has that level of commitment, it tends to bring along everyone. You up your game."
The article calls it "a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically-minded moviemakers of our time." But the man who filmed some of the world's first summer blockbusters also shared his thoughts on the future of movies. "Even though the numbers are still not pre-COVID level numbers for any films being released now, it's more robust than it has been for many years. The audience gives me belief that people still want to congregate in a dark space in the company of strangers to share an experience of a film made by storytellers. And that gives me faith to continue making films."

Rolling Stone wrote that "There's a lot to love in Disclosure Day." Though they also offer this pithy summary of its plot. "Remember when Steven Spielberg digitally replaced the guns in the hands of government agents for the 20th anniversary of E.T., then expressed regret about the decision? Imagine that he not only restored the weapons but crafted an entire two-and-a-half-hour feature around that one sequence as a mea culpa. That's Disclosure Day." The filmmaker may be staging a pulpy campaign with this sci-fi throwback, but he sincerely seems to believe the truth is out there — and will set us free... [W]hile the quality of his output can vary wildly when you look at the big picture of his career, there's still a baseline of love — for filmmaking, for storytelling through images, for giving people an experience that pushes emotional buttons and taps adrenal glands — that gives his work a sense of vitality and displays the sensibility of an artist at work...

There's also a weird full-circle feel to it, and not just because he's returning to the fertile ground of Close Encounters and his other science fiction spectacles. You can see traces of everything from Duel to Minority Report show up, to the point where this almost doubles as a career retrospective in miniature... Yes, Spielberg does believe that we are not the only game running in the cosmos. But he also believes that our better angels have not left the building, and that movies still have the power to communally blow minds and open hearts.
The Associated Press calls it "a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically-minded moviemakers of our time" and "a distant answer to the final notes of Close Encounters."

The Trump administration released another large batch of government UAP records, including videos of glowing orb-like objects appearing to split and rejoin, witness accounts, illustrations, and decades-old investigative documents. Axios reports: The documents indicate that government agents have spent years monitoring, investigating and documenting suspected UAP incidents. At lease some of the sightings took place near sensitive government facilities, according to the reports. Videos showing red and yellow light-emitting orbs, some of which appear to split apart and then reattach as they fly across the sky. The videos were taken by witnesses whom the government deemed "credible."

Illustrations and videos showing reenactments of what observers saw, and the positions they were in when they viewed them. Memos from government agents describing their experiences seeing flying objects. An illustration of a grayish-white balloon-like object hovering above an area near Colorado Springs, Colo. An illustration depicting a series of incidents that took place in the "western United States" where government officials reported seeing UAPs in 2023.

There also are decades-old records documenting the government's involvement in investigating UAPs, including a 1949 letter then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote federal agents after receiving a message from an American citizen expressing their belief they'd seen a non-human-made flying object. The records released by the administration do not express any conclusions as to whether the government believes the UAPs represent the existence of alien life. They also do not indicate any conclusions as to whether UAPs represent a national security threat to the U.S.

The Root reports: A New Mexico jury has found the Gila Regional Medical Center negligent in the death of Nichelle Nichols, who famously played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on the hit television series "Star Trek."

According to KRQE News 13, Nichols' family filed a lawsuit against the hospital last year following her 2022 admission for shortness of breath. Nichols' family claimed that she should have received a full cardiac examination, but the medical personnel sent her to the observation unit, and she was discharged the next day. After being transported to her assisted living home, the 89-year-old passed away just seven hours later.

In response to Nichol's tragic passing, the lawsuit alleged that Gila Medical Center "hired, credentialed, and inappropriately supervised unqualified medical providers" who treated the actress. The lawsuit also alleged that the hospital failed to secure a bed for Nichols or transfer her to a facility that had one. Furthermore, the attorney argued that the staff should have known that the assisted living center was not equipped to handle a patient with her medical needs.

On Thursday (June 4), a jury found the hospital negligent and awarded Nichols' estate $13 million.
KRQE got this quote from the estate's attorney about the death of the 89-year-old acctress. "At the end of the day, Nichelle Nichols had a heart attack that was missed. Thatâ(TM)s why she died." The jury deliberated for "just two hours."