Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, who has overseen the Marvel Cinematic Universe's unprecedented success, has expressed his longstanding appreciation for sequels and world-building in cinema at a time when Disney's top executive has admitted that the company has diluted audience's attention by making too many TV shows and movies.

"I was never cynical or rolling my eyes the way people still do today for some reason, even though there've been sequels since the '30s and they're an absolute pillar of the industry," Feige told Variety in an interview, highlighting his enthusiasm for returning to beloved characters and expanding on established narratives. The studio's ambitious expansion into streaming content for Disney+ has led to what Disney CEO Bob Iger described as "some disappointments" in theatrical releases. In July 2023, Iger cited the increased output for streaming as a factor that "diluted focus and attention" at Marvel. In response to these challenges, Disney announced a strategic shift in May, with plans to reduce Marvel's output to a maximum of three films and two TV series per year. This move aligns with Iger's commitment to prioritize quality over quantity, a strategy he believes is "particularly true with Marvel."

Re-visiting the Napster era, Stephen Witt's book How Music Got Free has been adapted into a two-part documentary on Paramount+. But the documentary's director believes "The real innovative minds here were a bunch of rogue teenagers and a guy working a blue-collar factory job in the tiny town of Shelby, North Carolina," according to this article in the Guardian: By day, [Glover] worked at Universal Music's CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina, from which he smuggled out hot albums by stars like Mary J Blige and 50 Cent before they were even released. For the documentary, Glover spoke openly, and largely without regret, as did others who worked at that plant who did their own share of stealing. Part of their incentive was class revenge: while they were paid piddling wages by the hour, the industry used the products they manufactured to mint millions. To maximize profits on his end, Glover set up a subscription service to let those in his circle know what CDs and movies were coming. "He was doing what Netflix would later do," Stapleton said...

In the meantime, the record companies and their lobbying arm, the RIAA, focused their wrath on the most public face of file-sharing: Napster. In truth, all Fanning's company did was make more accessible the work the pirates innovated and first distributed... For its part, the music industry reacted in the worst way possible, PR-wise. They sued the kids who made up their strongest fanbase. "One of the key lessons we learned from this era is that you can't sue your way out of a situation like this," Witt said. "You have to build a new technology that supersedes what the pirates did."

Eventually, that's what happened, though the first attempts in that direction made things worse than ever for the labels and stars. When Apple first created the iPod in 2001, there wasn't yet an Apple store where listeners could purchase music legally. "It was just a place to put your stolen MP3s," said Witt. Labels couldn't sue Apple because of a ruling dictating that the manufacturer of a device couldn't be held responsible for piracy enacted by its users. While Steve Jobs later modified his approach, creating a way for fans to buy individual songs for the iPod, "that did more damage to the industry than anything", Witt said. "Whereas, before they could sell a $15 CD to fans who really just wanted one song, now those fans could get that song for just a dollar...."

Eventually, the collective efforts of the streaming companies returned the music industry to massive profitability, though often at the expense of its artists, who often receive a meager slice of the proceeds.... Things ended less favorably for the pirates, some of whom now have criminal records. Likewise, Glover served a short prison sentence though, today, he is chief maintenance technician at the Ryder Truck manufacturing plant in his home town.
A Forbes senior contributor (and director Alexandria Stapleton) believe that for the younger generation it may be "their first introduction to why the music industry is the way that they're used to."

And Stapleton says their sympathies are with those factory workers. Stapleton: They were completely underpaid. They were making literally nothing. It's important for people to understand that while the industry was charging $20 for a CD, it cost like 20 cents to make. That's a big profit margin. And to have a factory that was paying barely enough for people to put food on the table, I think there's something wrong with that...

Witt: It's amazing to think about what they were really doing, which was essentially filling the technological vacuum that the record industry was refusing to fill, right? The record industry was not building out the successor technology to the compact disc because the compact disc was just too profitable for them. Instead, a bunch of random teenagers built the next generation of technology for them, and yeah, it caused a lot of damage. But I don't think that teenagers were necessarily trying to hurt anyone... They weren't malicious. They just were fascinated by how this stuff worked. And of course, they were also completely entranced by the celebrity of the musicians themselves.
In the interview Witt adds that a lot of those teenagers "were really kind of traumatized by their experience with the FBI I would say, and they wanted to get that story out there."

The documentary was produced by LeBron James and Eminem, "who rode the tail end of the CD boom to stratospheric heights," remembers a Fast Company opinion columnist. (And 25 years later, that columnist has gone back to listening to vinyl records, which "reignited for me a long-missing air of full engagement... Technology marches forward, except when it occasionally lurches backward...")

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Bob Newhart, whose stammering, deadpan unflappability carried him to stardom as a standup comedian and later in television and movies, has died at age 94. He remains best known for the television shows, "The Bob Newhart Show" (1972-78) and "Newhart" (1982-90), both of which were built around his persona as a reasonable man put-upon by crazies. A younger crowd may remember Newhart from his roles in the movie "Elf" (2003) and TV's "The Big Bang Theory" (2013-18).

Less known about Newhart is that he was an early Commodore PET owner, recalling for the LA Times in 2001: "I remember leafing through a copy of Popular Science magazine and seeing an ad for a Commodore computer that had 8- or 16 kilobytes [in 1977]. It had an awful-looking screen, and it was $795. I thought I'd better get one because I had sons who were going to be in high school and might want to know about computers. Later, I moved up to the 64 KB model and thought that was silly because it was more memory than I would ever possibly need.

"I got them for the kids and then found I was fascinated by them. The first ones had tape drives. You would get a program like a word processor, put the tape in and then walk away for about a half an hour while the computer loaded it. But the first time I used a spell checker and it corrected a word, I thought, 'We are getting close to God here."

J. Michael Cline, the co-founder of Fandango, died from suicide this week after falling from the twentieth floor of a Manhattan hotel. The New York Times reports: Mr. Cline, who was 64, co-founded Fandango in 2000 and left the company in 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company -- familiar to many from its splashy logo, an orange "F" in the shape of a ticket stub -- was later acquired by Comcast and is currently owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. For years, the company dominated movie-ticket sales, handling ticketing for several major theater chains and making money by charging a processing fee for online ticket sales and by selling advertising on its site.

At the time of its launch, Mr. Cline offered a pithy explanation for the company's name: "A Fandango is fast and fun," he told Variety. "Fandango is the perfect match to a service designed to make going to the movies easier and more enjoyable than ever before." Art Levitt, the co-founder and former chief operating officer and president of Fandango, remembered Mr. Cline as brilliant, creative and loyal, sticking it out even in "tough" times. TechCrunch provides additional information about Mr. Cline: He left the company in 2011, roughly four years after the company was acquired by Comcast. Some early investors in the online ticketing service were General Atlantic and TCV. Cline was also managing partner of Accretive, a venture capital firm he founded in 1999. He built startups throughout his career, including R1 RCM, Accumen, Accolade, Everspring, Dresr and Insureon. Starting in 2018, Cline served as the executive chairman at the venture firm Juxtapose, which invests in technology businesses. During his time there, Cline enjoyed investing in healthcare companies, according to his staff page. Some of Juxtapose's portfolio companies include Tend, Nectar and Great Jones.

From The New York Times: The key to "Eno" comes near the beginning of the film — at least, the beginning of the first version I saw. The musician Brian Eno, the documentary's subject, notes that the fun of the kind of art he makes is that it's a two-way street. "The audience's brain does the cooking and keeps seeing relationships," he says.

Most movies are made up of juxtapositions of scenes, carefully selected and designed by the editor. But "Eno," directed by Gary Hustwit, turns that convention on its head. Writ large, it's a meditation on creativity. But every version of the movie you see is different, generated by a set of rules that dictate some things about the film, while leaving others to chance. (I've seen it twice, and maybe half the same material appeared across both films.)

Eno, one of the most innovative and celebrated musicians and producers of his generation, has fiddled with randomness in his musical practice for decades, often propelled along by new technologies. He agreed to participate in "Eno" only if it, too, could be an example of what he and others have long called generative art... "Brain One", programmed by the artist Brendan Dawes, generates a new version of the film on the fly every time the algorithm is run. Dawes's system selects from a database of 30 hours of new interviews with Eno and 500 hours of film from his personal archive and, following a system of rules set down by the filmmakers with code, creating a new film. According to the filmmakers, there are 52 quintillion (that is, 52 billion billion) possible combinations, which means the chances of Brain One generating two exact copies of "Eno" are so small as to be functionally zero.
"But the ambitions of Eno are greater than the film itself," writes the Verge, with director Hustwit hoping for a cinematic future exploring generative filmmaking with their software and hardware package. "We have a patent pending on the system, and we just launched a startup called Anamorph that is basically exploring this idea further with other filmmakers and studios and streamers."

In an interview with the Verge, Hustwit points out that Brian Eno did the soundtrack for his previous film. "I was having these thoughts about, well, why can't showing a film be more performative? Why does it have to be this static thing every time?"


The film just began a two-week run at Greenwich Village's nonprofit theatre Film Forum, and in the U.K. is appearing this week at 17 Picturehouse Cinemas across England and Scotland. Check this online schedule for upcoming dates this week in Nashville (Thursday), Austin (Friday), Dallas (Saturday) — with later dates this month including Toronto, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and more cities in August.

A report from TechSpot: For home videographers and data hoarders who still rely on optical discs for archiving, some bad news just dropped: Sony is winding down production of recordable Blu-ray media... In an interview Sony gave to AV Watch recently, the company admitted it's going to "gradually end development and production" of recordable Blu-rays and other optical disc formats at its Tagajo City plants in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Essentially, 25GB BD-REs, 50GB BD-RE DLs, 100GB BD-RE XLs, or 128GB BD-R XLs will soon not be available to consumers. Professional discs for video production and optical archives for data storage are also being discontinued. Sony says it's pulling the plug because the cold storage market never really took off like they hoped, and the overall storage media business has been operating in the red for years...

It's not all bad news, though. The commercial Blu-ray discs you buy movies and games on will still be produced, so there's no need to panic about the death of physical media just yet.
Share your thoughts and reactions in the comments. (Long-time Slashdot reader storkus wonders if it's possible there are still other companies, possibly Chinese, that are still making the disks?)

Speaking of Xbox, the Xbox 360 Store and Marketplace are coming to a close later this month. From a report: Microsoft announced this last year and put an official end date of July 29, according to its official FAQ page. In case you didn't notice, the end of July is fast approaching. All of the games, DLC and any gaming tidbits for Microsoft's second generation console won't be available to purchase or download on the Xbox 360 console. Your games and movie purchases are still safe, however, if you've got any throwback titles on your Xbox One or Series X/S console. You can also still watch your purchased movies and shows on Windows 10 and 11 devices.

DVD kiosk-rental business Redbox is all set to close the shutter. LowPass: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox's corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment's CEO Bart Schwartz, who had only joined the company two weeks ago, stepped down this morning for unrelated reasons, according to the attorney representing the debtors in the case.

Companies use Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases to reorganize, allowing them to continue to operate while they rid themselves of debt, while a Chapter 7 bankruptcy generally results in a trustee selling off company assets to pay creditors, and winding down the company. "There is no means to continue to pay employees, pay any bills, otherwise finance this case. It is hopelessly insolvent," United States bankruptcy judge Thomas Horan determined during a hearing Wednesday, adding: "Given the fact that there may also be at least the possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees, there is more than ample reason why this case should be converted. So I am going to grant the motion." The firm operates a network of 24,000 DVD rental kiosks.

Mojang Studios, the creator of the globally popular video game Minecraft, is diversifying its revenue streams amid slowing growth in the gaming industry. Chief Executive Asa Bredin revealed in an interview that the company is exploring new partnerships in merchandising, education, and content streaming. The company is also venturing into film and television, with a Warner Bros. movie adaptation set to premiere in April and a Netflix series in development. From a report: Mojang's push follows repeated forays by Nintendo and Sony Group to broaden the appeal of their gaming properties at a time that spending in the industry has hit a lull. Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on the Legend of Zelda franchise, following the blockbuster success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, while Sony has turned The Last of Us into an HBO series and created games based on the Spider-Man movies.

theodp writes: As with last year," tweeted College Board's AP Program Chief Trevor Packer, "the most challenging free-response question on this year's AP Computer Science A exam was Q4 on 2D Array." While it takes six pages of the AP CS A exam document [PDF] to ask question 4 (of 4), the ask of students essentially boils down to using Java to move from the current location in a 2-D grid to either immediately below or to the right of that location based on which neighbor contains the lesser value, and adding the value at that location to a total (suggested Java solution, alternative Excel VBA solution). Much like rules of the children's game Pop-O-Matic Trouble, moves are subject to the constraint that you cannot move to the right or ahead if it takes you to an invalid position (beyond the grid dimensions).

Ironically, many of the AP CS A students who struggled with the grid coding problem were likely exposed by their schools from kindergarten on to more than a decade's worth of annual Hour of Code tutorials that focused on the concepts of using code to move about in 2-D grids. The move-up-down-left-right tutorials promoted by schools came from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org and its tech giant partners and have been taught over the years by the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and President Obama, as well as characters from Star Wars, Disney Princess movies, and Microsoft Minecraft.

The news of American high school students struggling again with fairly straightforward coding problems after a year-long course of instruction comes not only as tech companies and tech-tied nonprofits lobby state lawmakers to pass bills making CS a high school graduation requirement in the US, but also as a new report from King's College urges lawmakers and educators to address a stark decline in the number of UK students studying computing at secondary school, which is blamed on the replacement of more approachable ICT (Information and Communications Technology) courses with more rigorous computer science courses in 2013 (a switch pushed by Google and Microsoft), which it notes students have perceived as too difficult and avoided taking.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, the parent of DVD rental operator Redbox, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after months of financial struggles and piling unpaid bills. The Associated Press reports: Chicken Soup for the Soul has accumulated nearly $1 billion in debt, the Chapter 11 filing submitted Friday in Delaware bankruptcy court shows, after reporting loss after loss over recent quarters. The filing also discloses that Chicken Soup for the Soul owes millions to over 500 creditors -- which range from big names in the entertainment world like Sony Pictures and Warner Bros, to major retailers like Walgreens and Walmart. As of March of this year, Friday's filing shows, Chicken Soup for the Soul had about $414 million in assets and $970 million in debts. Shares for the public company have fallen more than 90% over the last year. "Redbox, founded in 2002, is best known for red-colored, self-serve machines that sit outside of pharmacies or groceries stores to rent or sell DVDs," notes the report. It was acquired by Chicken Soup for the Soul in 2022. There are currently about 27,000 Redbox kiosks across the U.S. -- down from 36,000 at the Redbox acquisition was finalized in August 2022.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've been mindlessly scrolling through streaming services and have been feeling even less enthused than usual, you may not be entirely to blame: almost all major US streamers have been cutting their original TV output this year, according to new analysis (paywalled) from Variety.

From content monolith Netflix, which released 203 original shows in the first half of 2023 compared with 174 in H1 '24, to Disney+, which has halved its already-slim original TV library as it continues an apparent shift to quality over quantity, shrinkage has hit the streaming world hard. Indeed, of the 8 major streamers Variety studied from Luminate data, only Max and Peacock maintained their output level year over year. All told, the number of original seasons fell 19% at the 8 streamers tracked.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We're at a transitional moment in streaming -- user growth is slowing and major players are looking to consolidate, but the long-promised dream of profitability finally seems within reach (especially if you're Netflix). The perfect time, then, for The New York Times to interview many of the industry's big names -- including Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Amazon's Prime Video head Mike Hopkins, and IAC chairman Barry Diller -- about what they think comes next.

There seemed to be broad agreement on most of the big themes: More ads, higher prices, and fewer big swings on prestige TV. These changes are all united by the shift towards profitability, rather than growth-at-all-costs. If the initial prices of many streaming services seemed unsustainably low at launch, it turns out they were -- prices have been steadily rising, while the streamers have also introduced more affordable subscription tiers for viewers who are willing to watch ads. In fact, some execs told The Times that streamers will keep raising prices for the ad-free tiers with the aim of pushing more customers to sign up for ad-supported subscriptions instead. The growth of ad-supported streaming could also affect the kinds of movies and shows that get produced, since advertisers generally want to reach a mass audience -- think of the heyday of ad-supported network TV, with its endless shows about doctors and cops, compared to the more ambitious fare on subscription-supported HBO.

Roku TV owners are complaining that motion smoothing is "suddenly enabled on their TVs with no way to turn it off," reports The Verge. From the report: Contributors on Reddit and in Roku's community forum reported seeing the change on TCL TVs running on Roku OS 13, as did a few staffers on The Verge. However, for others who have access to "Expert" picture settings, the same update is in place without a change, and the settings to control it are still available. For some people experiencing the problem, they said this is the first time their TV offered Roku's motion smoothing feature at all and that there's nowhere in any menu (either the standard settings or the picture settings available while watching TV) to turn it off. The update notes for Roku OS 13 mention a new "Roku Smart Picture" feature that will optimize based on the content being watched, so there may be a bug there. However, people in older threads have reported similar issues with some Roku devices before.

A Roku community moderator responded on the forum that the team is looking into the incident. Roku also offered its typical instructions for disabling the settings, which involves clicking the Star button on the remote during playback and heading to the Action Smoothing submenu under Advanced Picture Settings. [...] Naturally, a lot of people who work in film and television aren't a fan. Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson once went so far as to say it makes "movies look like liquid diarrhea."

Hollywood actor and venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher believes that one day, entire movies will be made on AI tools like OpenAI's Sora. From a report: The actor was speaking at an event last week organized by the Los Angeles-based think tank Berggruen Institute, where he revealed that he'd been playing around with the ChatGPT maker's new video generation tool. "I have a beta version of it and it's pretty amazing," said Kutcher, whose VC firm Sound Venture's portfolio includes an investment in OpenAI. "You can generate any footage that you want. You can create good 10, 15-second videos that look very real."

"It still makes mistakes. It still doesn't quite understand physics. But if you look at the generation of this that existed one year ago, as compared to Sora, it's leaps and bounds. In fact, there's footage in it that I would say you could easily use in a major motion picture or a television show," he continued. Kutcher said this would help lower the costs of making a film or television show. "Why would you go out and shoot an establishing shot of a house in a television show when you could just create the establishing shot for $100?" Kutcher said. "To go out and shoot it would cost you thousands of dollars,"

Kutcher was so bullish about AI advancements that he said he believed people would eventually make entire movies using tools like Sora. "You'll be able to render a whole movie. You'll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you'll input the script into the video generator, and it will generate the movie," Kutcher said. Kutcher, of course, is no stranger to AI.

An anonymous reader shares a CR report: Based on the name, you'd think Filmmaker Mode is strictly for watching movies. But in our labs, we find that it can get you pretty close to what we consider to be the ideal settings for all types of programming. Filmmaker Mode is the product of a joint effort by the Hollywood film community, TV manufacturers, and the UHD Alliance to help consumers easily set up their TVs and watch shows and films as they were meant to be displayed. The preset has been widely praised by a host of well-known directors, including J.J. Abrams, Paul Thomas Anderson, James Cameron, Patty Jenkins, Rian Johnson, Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and Martin Scorsese, as well as actors such as Tom Cruise. Right now, you can find Filmmaker Mode on TVs from Hisense, LG, Philips, Samsung, and Vizio. And more sets may get the feature this year.

Most newer TVs have fancy features that manufacturers say will improve the picture. But these features can actually have the opposite effect, degrading the fidelity of the image by altering how it was originally intended to look. To preserve the director's original intent, Filmmaker Mode shuts off all the extra processing a TV might apply to movies and shows, including both standard (SDR) and high dynamic range (HDR) content on 4K TVs. This involves preserving the TV's full contrast ratio, setting the correct aspect ratio, and maintaining the TV's color and frame rates, so films look more like what you'd see in a theater. For most of us, though, the biggest benefit of Filmmaker Mode is what the TV won't be doing. For example, it turns off motion smoothing, also referred to as motion interpolation, which can remove movies' filmlike look. (This is one of three TV features that it's best to stop using.) Motion-smoothing features were introduced because most films, and some TV shows, are shot at 24 frames per second, while most TVs display images at 60 or 120 frames per second. To deal with these mismatches, the TV adds made-up (interpolated) frames, filling in the gaps to keep the motion looking smooth. But this creates an artificial look, commonly called the soap opera effect. Think of a daytime TV show shot on video.

Space.com calls it a movie "adding more combustible material to the inferno of AI unease sweeping the globe." Its director tells them James Cameron was a huge inspiration, saying Atlas "has an Aliens-like vibe because of the grounded, grittiness to it." (You can watch the movie's trailer here...)

But Tom's Guide says "the reviews are just as shocking as the movie's AI." Its "audience score" on Rotten Tomatoes is 55% — but its aggregate score from professional film critics is 16%. The Hollywood Reporter called it "another Netflix movie to half-watch while doing laundry." ("The star plays a data analyst forced to team up with an AI robot in order to prevent an apocalypse orchestrated by a different AI robot...") The site Giant Freakin Robot says "there seems to be a direct correlation between how much money the streaming platform spends on green screen effects and how bad the movie is" (noting the film's rumored budget of $100 million)...

But Tom's Guide defends it as a big-budget sci-fi thriller that "has an interesting premise that makes you think about the potential dangers of AI progression." Our world has always been interested in computers and machines, and the very idea of technology turning against us is unsettling. That's why "Atlas" works as a movie, but professional critics have other things to say. Ross McIndoe from Slant Magazine said: "Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand...." Todd Gilchrist from Variety didn't enjoy the conventional structure that "Atlas" followed...

However, even though the score is low and the reviews are pretty negative, I don't want to completely bash this movie... If I'm being completely honest, most movies and TV shows nowadays are taken too seriously. The more general blockbusters are supposed to be entertaining and fun, with visually pleasing effects that keep you hooked on the action. This is much like "Atlas", which is a fun watch with an unsettling undertone focused on the dangers of evolving AI...

Being part of the audience, we're supposed to just take it in and enjoy the movie as a casual viewer. This is why I think you should give "Atlas" a chance, especially if you're big into dramatic action sequences and have enjoyed movies like "Terminator" and "Pacific Rim".

Visa is rolling out new technology that will allow the payments giant to share more information about customers' preferences [non-paywalled source] based on their shopping history with retailers as it seeks to remain a top player in the competitive e-commerce space. From a report: The data will be shared via the payments giant's proprietary "tokens," which provide an added layer of security between a consumer's bank information and a merchant. Shopping inclinations and other information based on past transactions -- such as preferred categories, like movies or golf -- will be shared via token with retailers with the consent of consumers.

"It's almost entirely blind to almost all consumers," Visa Chief Executive Officer Ryan McInerney said in an interview of the company's token technology. "They just know their payments work better." The sharing of shopping data via token is one of a handful of innovations Visa unveiled at a conference in San Francisco, where it's based. Visa, one of the largest e-commerce technology companies in the world, is finding itself increasingly fending off competitors seeking larger slices of the fees merchants must pay to carry out consumer transactions.

Police officers in Britain could be armed with Ghostbusters-style devices that fire electromagnetic rays to shut down the engines of ebikes being used in a crime. From a report: Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), said the weapon was in development and could be months away from being available, though it is expected to be longer than that. He said it would be housed in a backpack, reminiscent of the equipment used in the Ghostbusters series of movies. It could tackle crime linked to newer vehicles such as electric bikes and electric scooters.

The device is being developed with the Defence Science and Technology Lab, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence, alongside other technological innovations that British police are hoping to use. It would fire an electromagnetic pulse at a vehicle that an officer wants to stop because the rider is suspected of involvement in a crime. The electromagnetic weapon works by tricking the engine into thinking it is overheating, which shuts down the engine and brings the vehicle to a stop. It requires a line of sight to work, Stephens said.

Stephens told a media briefing: "Basically, it interferes with the electric motor, to trick the electric motor into thinking it is overheating. It sends a signal to confuse the electric motor. All these electric motors apparently have an inbuilt safety system that if it thinks it's overheating, it shuts down. At the minute, it's like a ginormous backpack." The equipment was demonstrated to police leaders at the Farnborough technology show earlier this year. Stephens said: "They were also telling me it has the potential to be useful with normal combustion engine vehicles."

At its I/O developer conference today, Google announced Veo, its latest generative AI video model, that "can generate 'high-quality' 1080p resolution videos over a minute in length in a wide variety of visual and cinematic styles," reports The Verge. From the report: Veo has "an advanced understanding of natural language," according to Google's press release, enabling the model to understand cinematic terms like "timelapse" or "aerial shots of a landscape." Users can direct their desired output using text, image, or video-based prompts, and Google says the resulting videos are "more consistent and coherent," depicting more realistic movement for people, animals, and objects throughout shots. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said in a press preview on Monday that video results can be refined using additional prompts and that Google is exploring additional features to enable Veo to produce storyboards and longer scenes.

As is the case with many of these AI model previews, most folks hoping to try Veo out themselves will likely have to wait a while. Google says it's inviting select filmmakers and creators to experiment with the model to determine how it can best support creatives and will build on these collaborations to ensure "creators have a voice" in how Google's AI technologies are developed. Some Veo features will also be made available to "select creators in the coming weeks" in a private preview inside VideoFX -- you can sign up for the waitlist here for an early chance to try it out. Otherwise, Google is also planning to add some of its capabilities to YouTube Shorts "in the future." Along with its new AI models and tools, Google said it's expanding its AI content watermarking and detection technology. The company's new upgraded SynthID watermark imprinting system "can now mark video that was digitally generated, as well as AI-generated text," reports The Verge in a separate report.