Google Pixel Buds can now alert you to the sounds of a crying baby, barking dog, or the siren of an emergency vehicle when you're listening to something and may not otherwise hear the sound. From a report: The feature reduces the volume of whatever music or podcast you're listening to and plays a chime sound to signal an alert. Attention Alerts is part of an AI-powered experimental feature being added to Google's flagship earbuds today in a larger firmware update. Google trained AI systems to recognize the trio of sounds by scraping audio from publicly available videos, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. Amazon's Echo speakers have the ability to detect sounds that may be important in a home setting, like alarms, breaking glass, or sounds indicating someone is in your home when you're away.

In recent years Amazon has become a major force in television and film, so we have seen that the company can succeed in generating popular mass entertainment. Why is the company struggling so badly with games? Discussing the question with people involved with Amazon Games, some common themes emerge. From a report: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making games," Mike Frazzini, Amazon's vice president for game services and studios, told me in March. That isn't working because video games are fundamentally a creative endeavor, not the sort of purely quantifiable mass consumer product or service that Amazon knows how to make. No less than great novels or films, great top-end games cannot be created through user data requirements, A/B testing, behavioral analytics, user surveys and iterative critiques by departments ranging from security to finance. Yet games must jump through all those hoops at Amazon, according to people in a position to know. That product development sensibility can work for chintzy mobile games that are made to extract as much money as possible from players but does not work in creating multibillion-dollar long-term franchises that generate not just revenue but emotional loyalty. Instead, thinking of games like tech products just leads to watered-down games without a strong point of view or creative direction.

For example, Amazon executives told me that while designing Crucible they solicited private input from hundreds of streamers and esports figures -- people who play video games for a living and definitely know fun when they feel it. So how could the company ingest that input and still churn out a mediocre product? Turns out, the questions Amazon asked the game pros were generally incremental -- "Which weapon do you prefer?" "What classes and enemies do you enjoy?" -- rather than stepping back and asking, "Does this overall concept work?" That's why Crucible can feel like it was put together with bits and pieces of other successful games, rather than forging a strong vision of its own. The entire structure of most successful game publishers is built around protecting and insulating the creative people -- writers, artists and designers -- from the business. Take-Two does not tell Rockstar what the story of the next Grand Theft Auto should be. Mike Morhaime spent decades shielding the creative engine at Blizzard Entertainment from various corporate owners as Blizzard created StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo -- iconic franchises all.

Many precincts of the entertainment business are run by financial professionals, but the successful ones -- whether in television, music, film or games -- learn to let the creative people create. "Amazon is run not even by finance guys but by tech guys who instead of putting their creatives outside the bubble and protecting them from the culture, hired them into the bubble and expected them to work within that confine," said one person involved with Amazon's game efforts. "Amazon culture is great for product, horrible for creative endeavors." It is impossible to imagine Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, issuing her own version of Frazzini's pronouncement: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making movies." That is because when it comes to film and television, Amazon lets people with deep industry experience run the show and acquire projects being made by outside professionals. Salke was president of NBC Entertainment before joining Amazon two years ago. Her boss, Mike Hopkins, who joined Amazon in February, was previously chief executive of Hulu and chairman of Sony Pictures Television. Frazzini, meanwhile, had no significant game industry experience before joining Amazon.

The Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, long mainstays of the US presidential election cycle, have been forced online, creating the biggest test yet for conducting life remotely during the coronavirus. From a report: Robbed of the energy of convention halls, the parties will seek to re-create that enthusiasm in high-production streaming events that beam their luminaries from around the country to online audiences. The Democrats, whose convention begins on Monday after a roughly month-long delay, have lined up the party's most visible figures, including former President Barack Obama. The Republicans, who will make their case for four more years in the White House, grab the spotlight on Aug. 24. Done with savvy and pizzazz, the Democrats and Republicans could galvanize support for their candidates -- former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, respectively -- despite the absence of cheering crowds, over-amplified rock music and blizzards of confetti. If technical glitches hobble the proceedings, the parties risk broadcasting a mammoth Zoom call derailed by freezes, connection mishaps and mute fails.

The company that owns Fortnite is making an in-your-face challenge to Apple: We're not going to obey the rules you've set for your powerful App Store. And we dare you to do something about it. From a report: It's a fascinating standoff between a very profitable, highly valued gaming company and one of the most powerful companies in the world. The way it plays out could have consequences for Apple, its tech rivals -- and antitrust regulators. Epic Games, the North Carolina-based developer behind Fortnite and other games, announced on Thursday morning that players who want to buy Fortnite's virtual currency no longer have to buy it via Apple's App Store. Instead, they can buy it directly from Epic. The difference for players, however, is that Epic will charge them 20 percent less if they buy the currency from Epic instead of Apple. It's a small change that's a big deal because Apple has explicitly prohibited developers from promoting these kinds of end runs around its powerful App Store. Instead, Apple wants developers to sell their digital goods within its marketplace, where it takes a cut of up to 30 percent for each purchase. That stance has long upset developers, who argue that Apple's fee is too onerous and gives its home-grown products a leg up on competitors by essentially letting Apple sell its own stuff with a much better profit margin. Apple sells its music service, for instance, for $10 a month; if a rival music service sold subscriptions via Apple's store for the same price, it would have to fork over as much as $3 of that to Apple. Update: Apple Kicks Fortnite Out of App Store for Challenging Payment Rules.

Apple is readying a series of bundles that will let customers subscribe to several of the company's digital services at a lower monthly price, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the effort. From the report: The bundles, dubbed "Apple One" inside the Cupertino, California-based technology giant, are planned to launch as early as October alongside the next iPhone line, the people said. The bundles are designed to encourage customers to subscribe to more Apple services, which will generate more recurring revenue. There will be different tiers, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private plans. A basic package will include Apple Music and Apple TV+, while a more expensive variation will have those two services and the Apple Arcade gaming service. The next tier will add Apple News+, followed by a pricier bundle with extra iCloud storage for files and photos. Apple's plans, and the structure of the bundles, may change. But the goal is to offer groups of services at lower prices than would be charged if consumers subscribed to each offering individually.

Today, Google announced that Google Maps for iOS will be adding both an Apple Watch app and support for CarPlay Dashboard, increasing the likelihood that Apple users will reconsider Google's potential contribution to their walks and rides. VentureBeat reports: Google Maps for Apple Watch appears to be a very stripped-down version of the iPhone app, offering users step-by-step directions and estimated arrival times -- but only for destinations already stored within the app or shared from the connected iPhone. You can tap on a list of destinations you've saved to conjure up directions from your current location -- otherwise, navigation needs to start on the phone. Simple icons, foot/mile distances, and street names are indicated when walking, bike riding, or driving. Public transportation support is also included. In addition to displaying full-color maps, Apple's own Watch app includes voice recognition, handwriting input, access to contact lists, and a variety of point-of-interest categories to help users navigate without using a phone. It's unclear at this point whether Google will actively try to add more functionality to its Apple Watch app -- the Wear OS version of Google Maps includes voice input and map browsing features.

On the CarPlay front, the iPhone version of Google Maps is gaining the ability to work in the Dashboard mode already supported by Apple Maps, such that the screen is split into a moving map on the left, turn-by-turn directions at the upper right, and music, podcasts, audiobooks, and calendar appointment details at the bottom right. CarPlay Dashboard was opened to third-party developers in iOS 13.4, and while Google Maps isn't the first app to take advantage of the feature, it and Waze are arguably the ones most people have been waiting for. Google has supported CarPlay with a full-screen Maps mode since 2018. Google Maps' CarPlay Dashboard support is available now for all CarPlay vehicles, while the Apple Watch app "starts rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks." Both should be accessible from the iOS App Store's Google Maps app.

Amazon is making it easier for Prime subscribers to play games, the latest effort to extend the appeal of a loyalty program designed to keep shoppers engaged. From a report: The world's largest e-commerce company on Monday gave its more than 150 million Prime members access to free video-game content, eliminating a step that required them to link their Amazon account with one on Twitch, the company's live-streaming subsidiary. The service, once known as Prime Twitch, is now called Prime Gaming and offers special in-game perks and free downloadable PC games. Prime, which now costs $119 a year in the U.S., began as an unlimited free-shipping program designed to entice customers. Amazon has since tacked on a suite of digital perks, such as video streaming, music and photo storage. Members spend far more on the retail site than non-members, surveys show.

From a report: A judge was forced to suspend the virtual bond hearing of the 17-year-old accused of being the "mastermind" behind the recent massive Twitter hack, after several people got into the Zoom meeting posing as CNN and BBC staffers and played loud music and even a porn video. Multiple reporters who attended the hearing via Zoom on Wednesday confirmed the incident. According to independent security journalist Brian Krebs, the problem was that the judge and his clerks did not set up the meeting in a way that would mute attendees and prevent them from taking over the screen (these are features that can be easily set when one creates a Zoom meeting). "Judges holding hearings over Zoom need to get a clue," Krebs wrote on Twitter.

Facebook's Instagram photo-sharing app is launching its clone of TikTok in more than 50 countries, a week after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's copycat strategies to U.S. lawmakers at an antitrust hearing. From a report: The product, called Reels, lets people edit 15-second clips of videos together alongside music, just like on TikTok. It will be embedded into Instagram in the U.S. and elsewhere, the company said Wednesday in blog post. Reels is the second major Instagram feature that follows an almost identical one popularized by a competitor. Instagram Stories, the tool for posting videos and photos that disappear, was inspired by Snap. Reels isn't Facebook's first attempt at challenging TikTok. Facebook's Lasso, a separate application with similar features that was tested in limited markets, was shut down last month after it failed to win over an audience. Reels may have better luck: it's launching just as TikTok's existence in the U.S. is being challenged by President Donald Trump.

The last dance is looming for Google Play Music, the subscription service that will be fully subsumed into YouTube Music by December 2020, the internet company announced. From a report: In streamlining its music offerings, Google is coming down the home stretch of a months-long migration of users from Google Play Music -- which will start shutting down in September -- to the YouTube Music app. In May, the company launched a migration tool (available at music.youtube.com/transfer) that lets Google Play Music customers transfer their music libraries to YouTube Music. Starting in September 2020 in New Zealand and South Africa -- and in October for all other global markets -- users will no longer be able to stream from or use the Google Play Music app. However, according to Google, it will retain users' playlists, uploads, purchases, likes and other data until December 2020 to give them time to transfer to YouTube Music. After the end of the year, Google Play Music libraries will no longer be available.

Late Friday night, the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted its objections to banning TikTok in the United States. "Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical."

More details from TechCrunch: "With any Internet platform, we should be concerned about the risk that sensitive private data will be funneled to abusive governments, including our own," the ACLU wrote in a subsequent statement. "But shutting one platform down, even if it were legally possible to do so, harms freedom of speech online and does nothing to resolve the broader problem of unjustified government surveillance."
But TechCrunch also reports TikTok is facing another threat: On Tuesday, a clutch of the company's largest celebrities, with a collective audience of some 47 million viewers, abandoned the platform for its much smaller competitor, Triller.

Founded in 2015, two years before TikTok began its explosive rise to prominence, Triller is backed by some of the biggest names in American music and entertainment including Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd, Marshmello, Lil Wayne, Juice WRLD, Young Thug, Kendrick Lamar, Baron Davis, Tyga, TI, Jake Paul and Troy Carter...

[T]he creators say they're leaving TikTok because they've grown wary of the Chinese-owned company's security practices. "After seeing the U.S. and other countries' governments' concerns over TikTok — and given my responsibility to protect and lead my followers and other influencers — I followed my instincts as an entrepreneur and made it my mission to find a solution," Richards, who's assuming the title of Triller's chief strategy officer, told the LA Times.

YouTube is "embroiled in a very public spat with songwriters and music publishers in Denmark," according to one music-industry news site. They cite Koda, the group that collects royalties and licensing fees for musicians, as saying that YouTube is now threatening to remove all music written by Danish songwriters: The cause of this threat is a disagreement between the two parties over the remuneration of songwriters and publishers in the market. YouTube and Koda's last multi-year licensing deal expired in April. Since then, the two parties have been operating under a temporary license agreement... In a statement to media Friday (July 31), Koda claims YouTube is insisting that — in order to extend its temporary deal in Denmark — Koda must now agree to a near-70% reduction in payments to composers and songwriters.

YouTube has fired back at this claim, suggesting that under its existing temporary deal with Koda (which expired Friday), the body "earned back less than half of the guarantee payments" handed over by the service.
Koda says it "cannot accept" YouTube's terms, according to the article, adding that Google and YouTube "have now unilaterally decided that Koda's members cannot have their content shown on YouTube".

The director of YouTube Music, EMEA counters that "They are asking for substantially more than what we pay our other partners," according to the article — which also shares this statement from YouTube. "We take copyright law very seriously."

"As our license expires today and since we have been unable to secure an agreement we will remove identified Koda content from the platform."

At Microsoft's Ignite conference in late 2019, the company said it was planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps as it refocuses on business users. Microsoft today is following through with that plan, announcing that it will shut down the current Cortana iOS and Android apps, end Cortana support for the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and remove the original Cortana functionality from the first-generation Surface Headphones starting in 2021. The Verge reports: These changes are still a few months away, but it marks another big step for Microsoft in pivoting Cortana away from a Google Assistant or Alexa alternative to a more specialized, productivity-focused assistant -- changes the company has already started making on the Windows 10 version of Cortana earlier this year. (To that end, Microsoft also put a September 7th date on the already-announced sunsetting of third-party Cortana skills for Windows.) Instead, Microsoft will be focusing on its productivity features that repurpose Cortana as a part of the Microsoft 365 suite of software, citing the revamped Windows 10 functions and integrated Cortana features in the Outlook and Teams apps as replacements. It's not as full-featured as the original Cortana -- which offered additional functions like smart home controls and music integration -- but by offering a less broad set of features, Microsoft is hoping to create a product that better complements its existing software and competes less directly with established players like Google and Amazon.

Microsoft is also offering a consolation offer of a $50 gift card for Harman Kardon Invoke owners, who'll be most impacted by the removal of Cortana -- which effectively will turn the formerly smart device into a pricey Bluetooth speaker when the firmware update arrives next year. Owners of the original Surface Headphones (who will also see their Cortana experience removed) are also being offered a $25 gift card to make up for the missing service.

In a recent interview with Music Ally, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek denied criticisms that Spotify pays insufficient royalties to artists, and insisted that the role of the musician had changed in today's "future landscape." The FADER reports: Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music fans to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their music. "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape," Ek said, "where you can't record music once every three to four years and think that's going to be enough." What is required from successful musicians, Ek insisted, is a deeper, more consistent, and prolonged commitment than in the past. "The artists today that are making it realize that it's about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans."

Ek alleged that artists have said "many times" in private that they are happy with their royalties from Spotify, and said that he believes that musicians who cannot make a living may not be in step with modern standards. "I feel, really, that the ones that aren't doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released," Ek said.

Argos is to stop printing its catalogue after almost 50 years, as the buying bible once found in three-quarters of British homes becomes yet another victim of the inexorable move to online shopping. From a report: More than 1bn copies of the bi-annual catalogue have been printed since its launch in 1973, and at its height it was Europe's most widely printed publication, with only the bible in more homes across the UK. However, Argos is to stop printing the title, with the retailer saying that online shopping offers "greater convenience" than flicking through its print catalogue. Coronavirus has hammered the publishing industry and seen numerous titles closed, including music magazine Q, but the company said the pandemic was not responsible for the decision to cease printing. The catalogue has had its celebrity moments over the years. The comedian Alan Carr chose it as the one book he would take when he appeared on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, and stars from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tess Daly to Holly Willoughby and Emma Bunton have plugged products in its pages.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A massive leak of apparent Nintendo source code is giving gamers a rare, unauthorized look at Nintendo's development process dating back to the Super NES era. The massive trove of files, first posted to 4chan Friday and quickly dubbed the "Gigaleak" by the community, includes compilable code and assets for Super NES, Game Boy, and N64 games in the Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, F-Zero, and Pokemon series. Hidden among that code is a bevy of pre-release art and sound files that have never seen the light of day, as well as fully playable prototype versions of some games. Modders and homebrew developers have been digging through the trove of data over the weekend and taking to Twitter and YouTube with their discoveries. Among the most interesting findings:

- A version of Super Mario 64 including data for a 3D model of Luigi (likely for the scrapped two-player mode). Players have inserted that model into the ROM to create video of Luigi running around. The leak also includes few unused test rooms for the game.
- A Yoshi's Island prototype featuring differences in the map screen, interface, music (and including the prefix "Super Mario Bros. 5" in Japanese). The prototype also features two apparently unused mini-games (No. 1, No. 2) and some unused test levels.
- Pokemon prototypes featuring early and unused sprite designs for many monsters.
- An original prototype named "Super Donkey" featuring a Rayman-style character in a Yoshi's Island-styled world [Update: A previous version of this post mischaracterized the music in this video. Ars regrets the error].
- Sprite data for Luigi giving an apparent middle finger and Bowser outside of his clown-copter in Super Mario World. The code also contains multiple early designs for Yoshi (some of which match art previously revealed in interviews with Nintendo developers) and a completely new map screen design (which also matches previously revealed screenshots).
- A version of Star Fox 2 with previously unseen characters.
- High-quality voice samples from Star Fox 64, F-Zero X and Super Mario 64 before they were compressed to fit on relatively small N64 cartridges.
- Graphics for a Pilotwings prototype called Dragonfly, previously seen only in grainy magazine screenshots.

ArchieBunker writes: In the streaming era, music is accessed from a variety of online services, ephemeral in nature and never living on board the device. However, the online audio revolution really kicked off with the development of one very special format. The subject of bitter raps and groundbreaking lawsuits, this development from Germany transformed the music industry as we know it. Twenty-five years on from the date the famous '.mp3' filename was chosen, HackADay takes a look back at how it came to be, and why it took over the world.

Elon Musk says Neuralink recipients will be able to stream music directly into their brains, with no headphones needed. Futurism reports: It's still entirely unclear if Neuralink's brain-computer interfaces will ever be able to bypass the ear, the cochlear nerves, and beam music magically to the auditory brain. But Musk has already set his sights on bigger things. When asked by another Twitter user if Neuralink's devices could also help "estimulate the release of oxytocin, serotonin, and other chemicals when needed," Musk replied with another "yes." To make that feature and more a reality, Neuralink is looking to add more, well, brains to its operations. "If you've solved hard problems with phones/ wearables (sealing, signal processing, inductive charging, power management, etc.), please consider working at [Neuralink]," Musk tweeted over the weekend. On August 28th, the mysterious computer-brain interface startup will release an update on its progress.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Researchers in Singapore have developed an apparatus that can be placed in a window to reduce incoming sound by 10 decibels. The system was created by a team of scientists, including Masaharu Nishimura, who came up with the basic concept, and Bhan Lam, a researcher at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Their results were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. The prototype is not yet the most practical device in real world conditions, but it points the way toward the development of technologies that may help ease the strain of noisy city living.

Borrowing from the same technological principles used in noise-canceling headphones, the team expanded the concept to fit an entire room by placing 24 small speakers in a window. The speakers emit sound waves that correspond to the incoming racket and neutralize it -- or, at least some of it. The system is based on the frequency of the sound waves and, for now, the optimal range is between 300 and 1,000 hertz. [...] The system uses a microphone outside the window to detect the repeating sound waves of the offending noise source, which is registered by a computer controller. That in turn deciphers the proper wave frequency needed to neutralize the sound, which is transmitted to the array of speakers on the inside of the window frame. The speakers then emit the proper "anti" waves, which cancel out the incoming waves, and there you have it: near blissful silence. Unfortunately, there are some limitations. The system works best from the types of steady noise sources found within the optimal frequency range and isn't great at neutralizing sporadic noises. Also, since human voices don't fit within most of that range, they won't be canceled out.

Researchers at Zhejiang University and Microsoft claim they've developed an AI system -- DeepSinger -- that can generate singing voices in multiple languages by training on data from music websites. From a report: In a paper published on the preprint Arxiv.org, they describe the novel approach, which leverages a specially-designed component to capture the timbre of singers from noisy singing data. The work -- like OpenAI's music-generating Jukebox AI -- has obvious commercial implications. Music artists are often pulled in for pick-up sessions to address mistakes, changes, or additions after a recording finishes. AI-assisted voice synthesis could eliminate the need for these, saving time and money on the part of the singers' employers.

But there's a darker side: It could also be used to create deepfakes that stand in for musicians, making it seem as though they sang lyrics they never did (or put them out of work). In what could be a sign of legal battles to come, Jay-Z's Roc Nation label recently filed copyright notices against videos that used AI to make him rap Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." As the researchers explain, singing voices have more complicated patterns and rhythms than normal speaking voices. Synthesizing them requires information to control the duration and the pitch, which makes the task challenging. Plus, there aren't many publicly available singing training data sets, and songs used in training must be manually analyzed at the lyrics and audio level.