Walmart has held discussions with major media companies about including streaming entertainment in its membership service, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing three people with knowledge of the conversations, part of an effort to extend its relationship with customers beyond its brick-and-mortar stores. From a report: In recent weeks, executives from Paramount, Disney and Comcast have spoken with Walmart, the people said, as the retailer ponders which movies and TV shows would add the most value to its membership bundle, called Walmart+. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private. It is unclear whether any of the streaming companies are inclined to reach a deal with Walmart. Disney operates the Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu streaming services; Comcast owns the Peacock streaming service; and Paramount runs the Paramount+ and Showtime services.

A Walmart+ membership, which costs $12.95 per month, includes free shipping on orders and discounts on fuel. It also includes a free six-month subscription to the Spotify Premium music service. As the streaming field gets more crowded, the biggest media companies have turned to giants in other industries to find new subscribers. Wireless providers like Verizon and T-Mobile have struck deals to offer their customers free or discounted subscriptions to streaming services like Disney+ or Paramount+ as an extra incentive to sign up. Media companies, in turn, receive an influx of new customers whose subscriptions are subsidized by their wireless partner.

A live-action film based on PAC-MAN is in the works from Bandai Namco Entertainment -- the company behind PAC-MAN -- and Wayfarer Studios, the production company founded by Justin Baldoni and Steve Sarowitz. The Hollywood Reporter reports: First introduced in the U.S. in 1980 -- and originally called Puck Man in Japan -- PAC-MAN became a coin-operated staple. The game is set in mazes where Pac-Man has to eat pellets while being pursued by colorful ghosts as the mazes get progressively more difficult. The game begat merchandise, several sequel games like Ms. PAC-MAN, as well as two television series, including a Hanna-Barbera produced ABC series and a Disney XD take.

The project will be based on an original idea from Chuck Williams (Sonic the Hedgehog) of Lightbeam Entertainment. Baldoni, Manu Gargi and Andrew Calof will produce on behalf of Wayfarer Studios, with Tracy Ryerson developing; Williams and Tim Kwok will produce on behalf of Lightbeam.

How some people tricked Google into getting their own knowledge panels and fooled Amazon-owned IMDb into believing they are top stars in dozens of movies. From a report: I was casually browsing IMDb when I landed on the page for an upcoming Ranbir Kapoor starrer movie "Animal." I saw the cast details and I found a face and a name I didn't recognize. Finding out about this guy led me to a whole new world of how so many young Indian men from small towns are gaming the system to manufacture their own fake online clout. So who is this guy? I had not heard of him before and he is named in the "Top cast" category for this movie, alongside Indian actor Ranbir Kapoor. According to his IMDb page, he has acting credits in some big-budget productions. I am beginning to suspect that this could be a case of IMDb vandalism. IMDb allows anyone to add and edit pages. They don't allow you to see the edit history of a page though like Wikipedia and evidently, the edits are not reviewed effectively either.

I googled this guy. Wow, so Google has a knowledge panel on him. There are also links to his music on various music platforms. Okay, so probably he is pretending to be an actor on IMDb but according to his google search results, he is actually a legit musician? Skimming through the search results, I found biographies written about him on a few websites of doubtful credibility. Like this one on a website called issuewire.com. I looked at his YouTube and other social media profiles and he doesn't have a lot of followers or any music content on there. I shazamed a couple of his songs and they're just copies of existing random music mashed together with some audio editing tool like Audacity. Possibly to avoid getting copyright notices. Hmm. I think I am now beginning to get a clearer picture of what's going on here.

He set up a profile on a bunch of different music streaming platforms. Uploaded remixed mash-up of existing songs using some audio editing software. Published biographies and profiles about himself on sites that do not verify submissions. Set up an IMDb page with fake credits. All this to trick google into believing he is a person of eminence. [...] I went back to his IMDb and checked the cast details of some of the movies he is part of. And I found a few dozen profiles with the exact same modus operandi.

Warner Bros announced that HBO Max and Discovery+ will launch in the U.S. as a single service in the summer of 2023. Variety reports: "At the end of the day, putting all the content together was the only way we saw to make this a viable business," [said JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and interactive for Warner Bros. Discovery, on the company's Q2 earnings call]. Bringing HBO Max and Discovery+ together is aimed at cutting churn so "there's something for everyone in the household," he said. WBD did not announce what the new brand name for the merged service will be, nor did execs discuss pricing for the unified streamer. Warner Bros. Discovery is initially focused on the ad-supported and ad-free versions of the combined HBO Max-Discovery+, Perrette said, but is also "exploring how to reach customers in the free, ad-supported space" with content that is totally different from what's on the premium VOD services.

HBO may or may not be part of the name of the unified direct-to-consumer WBD platform; Perrette said the company is doing research on consumer perception of the HBO Max name. But, HBO will continue to be a major brand: "HBO will always be the beacon and the ultimate brand that stands for television quality," he said on the call. The merged HBO Max-Discovery+ will combine the best elements of both services, said Perrette. He said HBO Max has had "performance and customer" issues but offers a rich set of features; Discovery+ has more limited features but provides a more robust underlying delivery capability. The media company plans to take the unified HBO Max-Discovery+ platform to Latin America following the summer 2023 rollout in the United States, adds Variety. Europe will see it in early 2024; Asia Pacific in mid-2024; and additional markets in fall 2024.

An anonymous reader writes: Haven't seen recommendation threads on Slashdot of late. Was curious what my fellow readers have watched and read this year that you enjoyed?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: You wouldn't steal a car, right? So why are you pirating? With this 2004 message, the movie industry hoped to turn illegal downloaders into paying customers. This campaign eventually turned into a meme and it's not the only anti-piracy advert to miss the mark. A new research paper identifies several behavioral insights that explain common mistakes made in these campaigns. [...] The general assumption of many people is that, by adding more arguments, the message will be more compelling. That's called the 'more-is-better' heuristic but behavioral research has shown that the opposite is often true. When many arguments are presented together, the stronger ones may actually be diluted by weaker ones. So, referencing malware, fines, low quality, Internet disconnections, and losses to the industry, all while associating piracy with organized crime, is not the best idea. The reduced impact of stronger and weaker arguments is also one of the reasons why the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" campaign didn't work as planned, the researchers suggest.

Anti-piracy campaigns can also focus too much on dry numbers without putting these into context. While these statistics are vital to the industry, the average pirate will simply gloss over them. This 'mistake' can also be explained by behavioral psychology, which has shown that people identify more with a problem or victim if they feel some kind of personal connection. That's often missing from anti-piracy messages. It's worth noting that not all personal messaging is effective either. The paper mentions an Indian anti-piracy campaign where famous Bollywood actors urged people not to download films illegally, equating piracy to theft. However, the Indian public probably has little sympathy for the potential "losses" incurred by these multi-millionaire actors. In fact, the anti-piracy campaign may be seen as an extra motivation to pirate. "All videos starred well-known actors, whose net worth is estimated to be $22-$400 million dollars, in a country where the annual per capita income is a bit less than $2,000." "This can offer to pirates a moral justification: they only steal the rich to 'feed the poor', a form of 'Robin Hood effect' that makes even more sense with some cultural or sport-related goods," the researchers add.

Piracy is a widespread and global phenomenon. This makes it particularly problematic for copyright holders but emphasizing this issue in anti-piracy messages isn't a good idea. This is the third mistake that's highlighted in the article. By pointing out that people are supposed to get content legally while at the same time showing that many people don't, people might actually be encouraged to pirate. Behavioral research has shown that people often prefer to follow the descriptive norm (what people do) rather than the injunctive one (what the law prescribes). "Informing directly or indirectly individuals that many people pirate is counterproductive and encourages piracy by driving the targeted individuals to behave similarly. These messages provide to the would-be pirates the needed rationalization by emphasizing that 'everyone is doing it'," the researchers write.

schnell writes: A story (paywalled) analyzes the more uncertain fortunes of Marvel's most recent movies compared to their predecessors. From the article: "Since Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, the studio has produced 25 superhero films that have grossed a total $25 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest-earning film studios in Hollywood history. Among them are Marvel's 2019 Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing movie of all time with $2.8 billion at the global box office; Avengers: Infinity War, which grossed $2 billion, and eight more that topped $1 billion each. But since the beginning of 2021, the average global box-office gross of the six films produced by Marvel has fallen to $773.6 million — roughly half the $1.5 billion average of the previous six films ... Critical reception of the films has suffered as well. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that tracks movie reviews, the last six Marvel titles averaged a 75% approval rating among critics, compared with 88.5% for the prior six."

Some films starring less established characters drove a part of the drop-off such as The Eternals ($402M total box office gross), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($420.7 million) and Black Widow ($373.2 million). But tentpole characters haven't always been a guarantee of success -- while Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $1.9B globally and Captain Marvel took in $1.1B, Thor: Love and Thunder suffered a surprising 68% box office drop-off from week one to two and is trending towards a disappointing performance.

Are Marvel's more recent films just victims of unrealistic expectations or pandemic-era changes in movie viewership? Have audience tastes changed, or has Marvel lost the plot when it comes to its newer movies?

Thursday the first trailer appeared online for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — and 15 million people have watched it. "Here's the thing. We're a team of thieves..." actor Chris Pine says in a voiceover. "We didn't mean to unleash the greatest evil the world has ever known. But we're going to fix it."

The video's description explains that "A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure."

The trailer also features Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, and a Druid that can turn into an Owlbear.

But at Comic-Con's Gaslamp Quarter there were also photo ops inside the legendary gelatinous cube, at a pop-up tavern serving glow-in-the-dark Dragon's Brew. The official "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Tavern Experience" drew this rave review from Esquire. "Rest assured, friends, if the actual Dungeons and Dragons movie is anything like the tavern, it'll be a rocking, hilarious, self-aware, and — most importantly! — a fun trip." The team behind Dungeons and Dragons rigged the bar so that it would rumble like hell and fill with smoke whenever a dragon appeared on a massive video screen at the front. (We were supposed to infer that the tavern was under attack....)

Save a grog for me.
"Based on what we've seen, this movie looks like it's going to be a whole lot of fun," writes CinemaBlend: If you're hyped up for the campaign Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is promising here, you can take your place at the metaphorical gaming table starting March 3, 2023.
As the movie's trailer asks, "Who needs heroes when you have thieves?"

After Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade last quarter, the company's Q2 earnings report revealed (PDF) the number of worldwide subscribers dipped by 1 million, including a drop of 1.28 million in the US and Canada alone. The Verge reports: That's better than its projection of losing 2 million worldwide, but the subscriber shortfall in the US and Canada is double the 600,000 drop it reported for Q1. Netflix now reports it has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the US and Canada, and 220.67 million worldwide.

Revenue increased 9 percent year over year from $7.3 billion in 2021 to $7.97 billion this quarter. Although the streamer ran into a couple of hiccups in recent months, including two separate layoffs affecting hundreds of workers, there was some good news. The season 4 release of Stranger Things boosted the series to the second most-watched show on the service, trailing behind the Korean-language hit Squid Game, which Netflix announced in June will be returning for a second season. Last week, Netflix announced a partnership with Microsoft on a new lower priced ad-supported subscription plan that it expects to launch by early next year. Netflix execs remain optimistic about the prospect of an ad-supported tier, noting that "over the long run, we think advertising can enable substantial incremental membership (through lower prices) and profit growth (through ad revenues)."

The company also recently began its crackdown on password sharing by creating an "extra member" fee for users who share accounts with people they don't live with. "The extra member fee of about $2 to $3 per month was implemented in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, with Netflix saying it would evaluate the rollout before making changes in other countries," reports Ars Technica.

Samsung said on Thursday that it has developed a new GDDR6 (graphics double data rate) DRAM with a data transfer rate of 24 gigabits per second (Gbps). From a report: A premium graphics card that packs the chips will support a data processing rate of up to 1.1 terabytes (TB), equivalent to processing 275 movies in Full HD resolution within a second, the South Korean tech giant said. Samsung said the DRAM was comprised of 16Gb chips using its third-generation 10nm process node, which also incorporates extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography during their production. The company also applied high-k metal gates, or the use of metals besides silicon dioxide to make the gate hold more charge, on the DRAM. Samsung said this allowed its latest DRAM to operate at a rate over 30% faster than its 18Gbps GGDR6 DRAM predecessor.

15-year-old Ellis Pinsky stole $23.8 million worth of cryptocurrency — and his life was never the same. For example, Rolling Stone reports, in his last year of high school, "Four men wearing ski masks and gloves, armed with knives, rope, brass knuckles, and a fake 9 mm," crept around the back of his home in the suburbs: Two weeks before the break-in, a lawsuit had been filed against him, and news stories had circulated connecting him to the hack. He knew that the thieves wanted this money, the millions and millions of dollars he had stolen. He also knew that he couldn't give it to them. He didn't have it. Not anymore.
The magazine paints the portrait of "an anxious young man in Invisalign braces" who describes the revelation he'd had at the age of 13. "The internet held such secrets. All he had to do was uncover them." As he soon found, there were plenty of people working to uncover them all the time, and willing to share their methods — for a price.... Realizing that a lot of the information social engineers used came from hacked databases, he began teaching himself to program, particularly to do the Structured Query Language injections and cross-site scripting that allowed him to attack companies' database architecture. The terabyte upon terabyte of databases he extracted, traded, and hoarded made him valuable to OGUsers as well as to others, like the Russian hackers he was able to converse with thanks to his fluency with his mother's native language... By the time he was 14, he tells me, "I think it's fair to say I had the capabilities to hack anyone."
The article describes him as "attending high school by day and extracting the source code of major corporations by night.... He was 14 years old and taken with the thrill of possessing a hidden superpower, of spending his nights secretly tapping into an underground world where he was esteemed and even feared. And then, in the morning, being called downstairs to breakfast." He wrote a Python script to comb through social media networks and seek out any mentions of working for a [cellphone] carrier. Then he'd reach out with an offer of compensation for helping him with a task. Every fifth or sixth person — underpaid and often working a short-term contract — would say they were game, as Pinsky tells it. For a couple hundred dollars' worth of bitcoin, they'd be willing to do a SIM swap, no questions asked. Eventually, Pinsky says, he had employees at every major carrier also working for him. Then the stakes got even higher. It was only a matter of time before OG hackers, known to each other as "the Community," realized that if they could use the SIM-swapping method to steal usernames, they could just as easily use it to steal cryptocurrency...
In one massive heist Pinksky stole 10% of all the Trigger altcoins on the market from crypto impresario Michael Terpin. ("As Pinsky's money launderers were converting it, the market was crashing in real time.") Pinsky recruited a crew to launder the money — at least one of which simply kept it — but even with all the conversion fees, he still made off with millions. And then... For a while, he half-expected the FBI to knock on his door at any moment, just like in the movies; but as time passed, he grew less anxious.... He says he moved on to learning different types of programming. He ran a sneaker business that used bots and scripts to snap up limited pairs then flip them... He went to soccer practice. He and his friends had started hanging out with girls on the weekend, driving down to the docks where you could see the glowing lights from the Tappan Zee Bridge.
Until Terpin figured out it was Pinsky who'd robbed him: Pinsky and his legal team preempted his arrest by contacting the U.S. attorney directly and offering his cooperation. In February 2020, he voluntarily returned every last thing he says he got from the Terpin heist: 562 bitcoins, the Patek watch, and the cash he'd stored in the safe under his bed.... When I ask if he has also worked with the FBI to help bring down other hackers, he blinks quickly and then changes the subject.
Pinsky has not been criminally charged — partly because he was a minor, but also because of his cooperation with law enforcement. But filing a civil suit, Terpin wants to be compensated with triple the amount stolen, arguing that the teenager who robbed him was running an organized crime racket and that he should be heavily punished to set an example.

Rolling Stone's article raisees the question: what should happen next?

In a move that will undoubtedly draw severe criticism, movies from Studio Canal that customers have purchased on the PlayStation Store will be completely removed next month. From a report: The legal notice is published on PlayStation's German and Austrian websites where it reads (translated): "As of August 31, 2022, due to our evolving licensing agreements with content providers, you will no longer be able to view your previously purchased Studio Canal content and it will be removed from your video library. We greatly appreciate your continued support."

In other words, customers will lose access to movies such as Apocalypse Now, Django, John Wick, La La Land, Saw and The Hunger Games that they purchased on the PlayStation Store. Not rented, but purchased.

The wildly popular series Squid Game drew criticism for its English subtitles. Just how did those happen? CNET News: Subtitlers contend with unrealistic expectations, tight deadlines and competition from clunky machine translation. Often, their work goes underappreciated, under the radar. Sometimes Uludag would be sent a file to translate at 11 p.m. -- "and they would say we need it by 8 a.m." Without skilled subtitlers, movies such as historic Oscar winner Parasite are lost in translation. Yet the art of subtitling is on the decline, all but doomed in an entertainment industry tempted by cheaper emerging artificial intelligence technologies. Subtitlers have become a dying breed.

And this had been the predicament before the world started watching a little show called Squid Game. In 28 days, Squid Game leapfrogged Bridgerton as Netflix's most popular series ever. It also inadvertently started a global conversation about bad subtitles. While critics lauded the South Korean battle royale-themed drama for its polished production values, gripping story and memorable characters, many accused Netflix of skimping on the quality of Squid Game's English subtitles.

A prime example: Ali, the Pakistani laborer, shares a touching moment with Sang Woo, an embezzler who graduated from Korea's top university. Sang Woo suggests Ali call him hyung, instead of sajang-nim or "Mr. Company President." The term hyung literally translates as "older brother," a term used by a man to address an older man with whom he has formed a closer bond. That's Ali and Sang Woo. Yet, the line "Call me hyung" was translated as "Call me Sang Woo." A rare moment of compassion and humanity, amid all the gloom and gore, was lost. [...]

Yet Netflix, which abandoned its in-house subtitling program Hermes one year after its launch in 2017, is interested in a different area of translation: dubbing. It's not hard to see why. For example, 72% of Netflix's American viewers said they prefer dubs when watching Spanish hit Money Heist, Netflix's third most popular show ever. Unfairly criticized, underfunded and facing a lack of support from the entertainment industry, subtitlers are on the brink. At least the Squid Game controversy illuminated an unsung fact: Good subtitles are an exceptionally difficult art.

Esquire celebrates the 40th anniversary of the movie Blade Runner: Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Scott's film created a world so rich, so dirty and wet and worn out, so visually stunning, that imitation was an inevitability. Less gym-bro than The Terminator, less wacky than Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and less all-out apocalyptic than Mad Max, Blade Runner arguably defined not just 1980s science fiction, but in the forty years since its initial release, sci-fi films in general. From Ghost In The Shell, to Total Recall and Minority Report and even Black Panther, Blade Runner is owed a debt of gratitude.

Working from a formula he perfected in 1979's Alien, Scott brought his world of grimy industry and neon-lit shadows, rogue androids and put-upon protagonists to California, swapping Alien's body horror for the police procedural. Granted, Deckard isn't Ellen Ripley, but in its portrayal of the battered and bruised detective battling against the system, Blade Runner is a Chinatown of the future. That it was only Scott's third film as director makes it all the more impressive. (As an aside, has Harrison Ford's three film run of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982) ever been beaten?).

Famously, the film was a critical and commercial flop in the U.S. with VHS sales and endless re-edits eventually leading to its cult status. (In 2004, it was even voted as the best science fiction film of all time by a panel of global scientists). Today, it's difficult to picture a sci-fi film that doesn't play homage. Would HBO's Westworld have updated its 1973 film version so successfully and stylishly without Blade Runner paving the way both visually and in terms of its musings on free will? And, decades before Elon Musk looked set to take over the world, Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation (and indeed, Alien's Weyland-Yutani) was inspiring evil empires from Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation to RoboCop's Omni Consumer Products and The Terminator's Cyberdyne Systems.
The article argues that Rutger Hauer's replicant character Roy Batty "delivers one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history in his 'Tears in rain' soliloquy."

And it points out that fans of Ridley Scott's prequels to Alien speculate those movies also exist in the same cinematic universe.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast's NBCUniversal subsidiary and Google are the "top contenders" for Netflix's upcoming ad-supported streaming tier. "After many years of resisting ads, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the plan for an ad-supported tier in April," reports Ars Technica. "Netflix's stock price dropped 35 percent the day of that announcement, and Netflix revenue growth has been slowing amid a loss in subscribers." From the report: A deal with NBCUniversal would likely mean that "Comcast's video ad unit, FreeWheel, would supply technology to help serve up ads, while NBCUniversal's ad-sales team would help sell ads in the US and Europe," the report said. The Alphabet-owned Google, of course, has plenty of experience serving ads, including on its own YouTube and YouTube TV video platforms. Netflix already uses Google's ad-buying tools.

A deal with either NBCUniversal or Google would likely be exclusive, the WSJ report said. Comcast/NBCUniversal and Google aren't the only contenders, as "Roku has also had early talks with Netflix about ad partnerships," the report said. The Information reported last week that Netflix executives recently "met with representatives of both Roku and Comcast to discuss arrangements under which those companies would handle either the ad sales or the technical infrastructure for Netflix's forthcoming ad-supported tier of service."

Netflix "is looking to start doing some pre-roll ads, which run before a show starts, in the fourth quarter," The Information report said. Netflix is also negotiating with entertainment companies to put ads into shows that Netflix doesn't create itself. Licensing TV shows and movies for both ad-free and ad-supported streaming will cost Netflix about 20 percent more than for ad-free streaming alone, The Information report said. Variety has confirmed the streamer is "letting go of roughly 300 staffers [...] across multiple business functions in the company, with the bulk of the jobs lost in the U.S." Netflix also laid off 150 employees, and dozens of contractors and part-time workers in May.

"Today we sadly let go of around 300 employees," a Netflix spokesperson told Variety. "While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth. We are so grateful for everything they have done for Netflix and are working hard to support them through this difficult transition."

"A Google software engineer was suspended after going public with his claims of encountering 'sentient' artificial intelligence on the company's servers," writes Bloomberg, "spurring a debate about how and whether AI can achieve consciousness."

"Researchers say it's an unfortunate distraction from more pressing issues in the industry." Google put him on leave for sharing confidential information and said his concerns had no basis in fact — a view widely held in the AI community. What's more important, researchers say, is addressing issues like whether AI can engender real-world harm and prejudice, whether actual humans are exploited in the training of AI, and how the major technology companies act as gatekeepers of the development of the tech.

Lemoine's stance may also make it easier for tech companies to abdicate responsibility for AI-driven decisions, said Emily Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington. "Lots of effort has been put into this sideshow," she said. "The problem is, the more this technology gets sold as artificial intelligence — let alone something sentient — the more people are willing to go along with AI systems" that can cause real-world harm. Bender pointed to examples in job hiring and grading students, which can carry embedded prejudice depending on what data sets were used to train the AI. If the focus is on the system's apparent sentience, Bender said, it creates a distance from the AI creators' direct responsibility for any flaws or biases in the programs....

"Instead of discussing the harms of these companies," such as sexism, racism and centralization of power created by these AI systems, everyone "spent the whole weekend discussing sentience," Timnit Gebru, formerly co-lead of Google's ethical AI group, said on Twitter. "Derailing mission accomplished."
The Washington Post seems to share their concern. First they report more skepticism about a Google engineer's claim that the company's LaMDA chatbot-building system had achieved sentience. "Both Google and outside experts on AI say that the program does not, and could not possibly, possess anything like the inner life he imagines. We don't need to worry about LaMDA turning into Skynet, the malevolent machine mind from the Terminator movies, anytime soon.

But the Post adds that "there is cause for a different set of worries, now that we live in the world Turing predicted: one in which computer programs are advanced enough that they can seem to people to possess agency of their own, even if they actually don't...." While Google has distanced itself from Lemoine's claims, it and other industry leaders have at other times celebrated their systems' ability to trick people, as Jeremy Kahn pointed out this week in his Fortune newsletter, "Eye on A.I." At a public event in 2018, for instance, the company proudly played recordings of a voice assistant called Duplex, complete with verbal tics like "umm" and "mm-hm," that fooled receptionists into thinking it was a human when it called to book appointments. (After a backlash, Google promised the system would identify itself as automated.)

"The Turing Test's most troubling legacy is an ethical one: The test is fundamentally about deception," Kahn wrote. "And here the test's impact on the field has been very real and disturbing." Kahn reiterated a call, often voiced by AI critics and commentators, to retire the Turing test and move on. Of course, the industry already has, in the sense that it has replaced the Imitation Game with more scientific benchmarks.

But the Lemoine story suggests that perhaps the Turing test could serve a different purpose in an era when machines are increasingly adept at sounding human. Rather than being an aspirational standard, the Turing test should serve as an ethical red flag: Any system capable of passing it carries the danger of deceiving people.

The member countries of the World Trade Organization agreed Friday on a narrow measure aimed at boosting the supplies of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries, wrapping up a bitter fight over corporate patent rights governing critical medical products during a pandemic. WSJ: The compromise measure on intellectual property rights will make it easier for companies in developing nations such as South Africa to manufacture and export a patented Covid-19 vaccine -- under limited circumstances -- without a consent from the patent holder if they have the approval of their own governments. Meeting for the first time in nearly five years, trade ministers from more than 100 countries also agreed on measures to reduce fisheries subsidies to protect fish stocks and pledged to minimize export restrictions on food items amid shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine. An existing ban on the collection of customs duty on digitally-transmitted products like music and movies was continued, to the relief of U.S. officials who had feared a possible change in the status quo would harm U.S. businesses.

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on several rounds of programs to upgrade internet speeds in rural areas over the past decade. Despite those efforts, many residents are still stuck with service that isn't fast enough to do video calls or stream movies -- speeds that most take for granted. From a report: Many communities have been targeted for broadband upgrades at least twice already, but flaws in the programs' design have left residents wanting. The Wall Street Journal analyzed 1.4 million largely rural census blocks that were included in a series of nationwide Federal Communications Commission broadband programs over the past decade. In the latest program, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, rolled out in 2020, internet service providers won rights to public funding in about 750,000 census blocks, covering every state except Alaska. The Journal's analysis found that more than half of those census blocks -- areas with a combined population of 5.3 million people -- had been fully or partially covered by at least one previous federal broadband program.

Most U.S. households today have access to internet download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 Mbps, according to government data. Although the FCC's programs have made progress, some rural Americans still can't get 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds -- the level of service that was the federal standard in 2011. The broadband saga around Heavener, Okla., illustrates some of the problems. Heavener, with a population of around 3,000, is surrounded by cattle pastures and forested hills. Today some buildings on the main streets have good broadband service, but the internet deteriorates outside town, residents say. Much of the area, in Le Flore County, was slated for upgrades under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2020 -- and some of those areas had already been part of prior programs.

Sony said Tuesday that Nobuyuki Idei, its former chairman and CEO who led the Japanese giant's push into the digital network business, has died of liver failure. He was 84. Kyodo News reports: In addition to enhancing Sony's presence in the digital and communications fields, he also focused on the entertainment business, such as movies, music and game consoles, laying the foundation for its current operations. Idei joined Sony in 1960, becoming president in 1995 and CEO in 1998. He served as both chairman and chief executive from 2000 to 2005. He stepped down as chairman and CEO amid lackluster sales in its appliance business, making headlines for naming Howard Stringer as his successor at a time when it was still rare for a Japanese company to be led by a non-Japanese CEO. Idei also contributed to the advancement of the internet environment in Japan, having been appointed to head the government's IT strategy council in 2000. [...]

Under Idei's tenure as CEO, the conglomerate launched its Vaio-brand personal computers and domestic internet service provider So-net. It also ventured into online-based banking services and the nonlife insurance business. But after its earlier success with sales of bulky CRT televisions, Sony was slow to transition to flat screens and was outpaced amid intense competition with South Korean and other overseas rival manufacturers. Company stocks plunged in 2003 in what was referred to as the "Sony shock," and sluggish growth for much of the following decade led Sony to focus on corporate restructuring initiatives.

Nintendo described the sentencing of a hacker earlier this year as a "unique opportunity" to send a message to all gamers about video game piracy. Axios reports: A newly released transcript of the Feb. 10 sentencing of Gary Bowser provides rare insight, directly from Nintendo, about the company's grievances. Bowser, a Canadian national, pled guilty last year to U.S. government cybercrime charges over his role as a top member of Team Xecuter. The group sold tech that circumvented copyright protections and enabled the Nintendo Switch and other systems to play pirated games. Authorities estimated the piracy cost Nintendo upward of $65 million over nearly a decade and even compelled the company to spend resources releasing a more secure model of the Switch.

"This is a very significant moment for us," Nintendo lawyer Ajay Singh told the court at the time, as he laid out the company's case against piracy and awaited the sentencing. "It's the purchase of video games that sustains Nintendo and the Nintendo ecosystem, and it is the games that make the people smile," Singh said. "It's for that reason that we do all we can to prevent games on Nintendo systems from being stolen." He noted Nintendo's losses from Team Xecuter's piracy and sounded a note of sympathy for smaller non-Nintendo game makers whose works are also pirated. And he wove in a complaint about cheating, which he said Team Xecuter's hacks enabled. Cheating could scare off honest players and upset families: "Parents should not be forced to explain to their children why people cheat and why sometimes games are not fair, just because one person wants an unfair advantage."

At the hearing, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik noted that TV and movies glorify hackers as "sticking it to the man," suggesting that "big companies are reaping tremendous profits and it's good for the little guy to have this." "What do you think?" Lasnik asked Nintendo's lawyer at one point. "What else can we do to convince people that there's no glory in this hacking/piracy?" "There would be a large benefit to further education of the public," Singh replied. In brief remarks directly to Lasnik, Bowser said longer prison time wouldn't scare off hackers. "There's so much money to be made from piracy that it's insignificant," he said.