The plus-ification of subscription services continues unabated with Amazon becoming the latest company to follow suit with a Kindle Unlimited rebrand. The subscription service is now known as Kindle Plus but will continue to offer unlimited access to a select collection of ebooks, comics, and magazines from the Kindle catalog for $11.99 per month. Thousands of those titles will also still have access to companion audiobooks so you can switch back and forth between reading and listening exactly where you left off, but Kindle Plus will expand that access to include "virtual voice" audiobooks read by AI narrators, according to ZDNet.

"The subs …

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As Amazon blocks AI agents from shopping on its site, Walmart is taking the opposite approach, introducing new technology that lets AI agents make purchases on customers' behalf, with controls over spending and transaction approvals.

Amazon is launching a new lineup of Blink security cameras, including its first 4K, pan-tilt models, and battery-powered spotlight models. These new additions provide better resolution and extended range for monitoring your property compared to Blink's current Mini 2K, Mini 2K Plus, and Outdoor 2K Plus offerings, with a variety of different specializations to best suit your security requirements.

One of the standouts is the $199.99 Blink Frontier XR Plus, a trail camera that's designed for expansive properties that would typically require multiple cameras or specialized monitoring equipment. It can cover up to 7,000 feet with a clear line …

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Flipkart has expanded access to its food-delivery service to thousands of employees ahead of its public launch.

Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.

Amazon and X-energy have inked another deal to deploy nuclear power to the grid. This one will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity.

Amazon has signed an agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to fund the building of a new nuclear energy facility in Indiana. The proposed plant, which would replace the now defunct coal-fueled Breed Generating Station in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, aims to provide up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free energy for both the regional power grid and Amazon's data centers.

No timeline for construction or operation has been announced for the facility, which Amazon says "could" create 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent roles. The facility in Indiana is targeting to build 12 Xe-100 SMR's, an advanced (but unproven) reactor th …

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Panay said that it's possible to recover and learn from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, when building products.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Amazon devices chief Panos Panay described a future where ambient AI devices work in the background, anticipating users' needs instead of waiting for commands.

We knew that a number of big tech firms were helping to fund the construction of Trump's ballroom, but we didn't know just how much they were giving to the cause. Now the Washington Post published a list of all the major donors to the White House ballroom project, along with how much each contributed. In total, Silicon Valley and the crypto industry have reportedly delivered over $150 million for the effort.

Some of that money has come from individuals, some from charitable organizations tied to major firms or industry players, and some directly from the companies themselves. In Google's case, the $22 million was part of a controversial se …

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Last year, Amazon bought Bee, a relatively unknown startup with a $50 always-listening AI wearable that summarized every conversation you had. Today, the e-commerce giant is announcing two new Bee devices - and a new subscription to go with them. First is the $74.99 Bee Frontier, an updated version of the original Bee device. And coming soon is the $99.99 Bee Eclipse, a credit-card-shaped gadget that snaps magnetically onto the back of a smartphone.

Both devices are framed as gadgets to help you stay present in the moment. They listen to your daily conversations and then provide summaries, transcripts, insights, and to-dos based on what ha …

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Amazon-owned Bee has launched its first new AI devices since its acquisition, including an updated wearable and a credit-card-sized recorder that attaches to smartphones. The devices can summarize conversations, create to-do lists, and integrate with Alexa and Amazon shopping, with prices starting at $74.99.

On Equity, we debate the impact of data center moratoriums and whether the AI industry has a communication problem.

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]

Rebranding Artificial Intelligence as "Super" Intelligence will work about as well as rebranding data centers as "theme parks."

Following Donald Trump's lead, billionaire and phallic-shaped rocket enthusiast Jeff Bezos says he prefers calling AI "SI" because nobody likes artificial sweetener or artificial flavoring, and "artificial" sounds as fake as AI is. — Read the rest

The post Jeff Bezos explains AI by comparing it to other things people don't want appeared first on Boing Boing.

The lineup includes three models: Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Amazon Alexa Tablet 11, and Amazon Alexa Tablet 8.

Amazon-owned Ring is entering the smart lock market with a device designed to tackle a common concern: getting locked out when the battery dies.

"I stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made about me based on my purchases and I’m literally speechless," one shopper wrote on Threads.

Non-Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to watch the awards show on the platform.

The CEO of Amazon Web Services tried to push back against widespread suspicion of data centers.