Alexa Might Not Get Much Smarter Than It Is Right Now

Is it possible that you could make some money?

According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is trying to cut costs by getting rid of unprofitable departments. One of the big ones is the voice assistant software. The business of building, supporting, and licensing a voice assistant platform has been less profitable than Amazon expected. According to the WSJ, the business has lost $5 billion per year.

There are two options for Amazon here. It can either add more functions or scale back its efforts to make the service better. According to the WSJ report, most users tend to only use a few key voice commands. If that is the case, it would make sense for Amazon to letAlexa be instead of adding more features.

There are other voice assistants with uncertain futures. Part of its cost cutting plan de-emphasized the program that puts Google Assistant into partner devices like smart speakers. As companies lay off thousands of employees, there are two reprioritizations. It isn't the end of an era, but it is clear that companies don't see their voice assistants as a priority during an economic downturn

There is more information from the world of consumer tech.

The Apple space is out of place.

Apple wants you to know that it will be with you if you get lost in the woods. Emergency response tech has been pushed into by the company recently. The ability to locate people outside of cellular or wi-fi reception range was one of the new features of the iPhone 14. Apple will be launching a service later this month.

Apple invested $450 million in satellite tracking technology. The majority of the money will go to the US company Globalstar. The US and Canada will be covered by Apple. It is free for two years if you buy an iPhone 14, but Apple doesn't say how much it will charge after that.

There is another one.

Rollables are where it's at. You might one day be able to bend, curl, and warp as you please with the rollable display tech. The South Korean company showed off some stretchable display technology that it says can be used to give screens previously unseen flexibility. The display is made of stretchy material and can be pulled across any surface. It can bend as much as rubber, but it is not taffy. It's possible to wrap screens around just about any surface.

The stretchy sheet isn't a finished product. South Korea has a ministry of trade, industry, and energy. The dream of a stretchy screen is still a long way off. The stretchy screens can be used in consumer devices.

MastodonDigging up

Since Musk took over, the social network has been in a free fall. Advertisers and users alike have left the platform due to the flood of hate speech, the influx of verified scam artists, and the dismantling of ethics teams at the company. People are looking for an alternative that doesn't feel like it's being flipped upside down and shaken for loose change. Mastodon has been used by many people. Mastodon has buckled under the weight of all its users.

Andrew Couts, WIRED security editor, joins the show to find out how Mastodon works, what the vibe is on the platform, and whether it will ever come close to replicating the controlled chaos that is (or was) Twitter.