Once a modest online seller of books, Amazon is now one of the largest companies in the world, and its former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s most wealthy person. We track developments, both of Bezos and Amazon, its growth as a video producer, the popular Prime service, as well as its own hardware, which includes the Amazon Kindle e-reader, Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes.
The FCC application was submitted on Saturday. The low-Earth orbit satellites would communicate directly with unmodified mobile phones and IoT devices, and operate in concert with Amazon’s burgeoning Leo constellation (which requires a dish for connectivity) and the Globalstar system used by iPhones that Amazon is acquiring.
[Advanced Television]
After showing off its new Blade Runner 2099 series, Amazon also put out a trailer for the impending third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show returns to Prime Video on November 11th.
Amazon’s games head Jeffrey Gattis confirmed to The Game Business that the title won’t arrive in 2027 as originally expected.
When commenting on the pair of upcoming Tomb Raider titles, Gattis highlighted Legacy of Atlantis’s February 12th launch date, but noted that the company will “follow on in 2028” with Catalyst.
Amazon’s Blade Runner streaming series has been in the works for ages, but it’s starting to feel a little more real. Entertainment Weekly just dropped the first images from the show, featuring stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer, while also confirming that Blade Runner 2099 is expected to come out this year.
Like Sergey Brin going hands-on with Google’s AI push (and in addition to a rumored bid for Liverpool), Reuters reports Bezos has made an unusual move to become personally involved in the “Lighthouse” project updating Prime Video’s homepage, recommendations, and voice control.
Sources said Bezos felt an initial plan “failed to sufficiently highlight the service’s capabilities in AI and personalization.” Not sure why he may have felt that way, but here’s the apparently AI-generated image Prime Video is using to promote Death Race 2000.
In a statement to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Jackie Burke says the company is “eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI [artificial general intelligence] organization” as the company focuses on “initiatives that matter most for customers.” It’s not clear how many workers are impacted.
Amazon is today delivering on the April promise of Adaptive Display, according to Engadget. The feature increases the size of things like text and menus while scaling the artwork proportionally. Users can choose from large or larger.
One user even reported an AWS bill of $1.5 trillion, as reported by The Guardian. Scary!
AWS blames the root cause of the problem as “an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem.” Amazon says that the billing estimates “do not reflect actual usage and charges,” and affected don’t have to take any action right now.
[Business Insider]
Developer Josh Pigford created a “Knockoff” browser extension that detects alphabet-soup brands — like LUENX, EHEYCIGA, and YXYL — that have become ubiquitous on Amazon. It hides, dims, or labels these listings in your search results based on your preferences.
Knockoff is available for Google Chrome and Firefox.
Neon was one of the only studios that seemed interested in picking up Luca Guadagnino’s biographical drama about Sam Altman after Amazon suddenly decided not to distribute the movie. And now, Neon is reportedly “in advanced talks” for a deal that could get the project into theaters.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
Courtroom Chaos — Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger follows the Snoop Dogg-themed courtroom game that launched last year on Luna, and they’re both part of Amazon’s new plan for games.
This new game adds a single-player mode and a mode where AI Arnold can help you settle bets with friends.
BEAD was a once-in-a-generation chance to fix the digital divide — then turned into a gift for tech moguls.
The redesign, which is a huge improvement, was announced at CES this past January and has been slowly rolling out across devices. It’s now on Ember TVs, the Fire TV 4K Select, and Fire TV Cube. Partner TVs from Hisense recently got the update, with additional manufacturers’ TVs being added later this summer.
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After speaking up for regulation on data centers, Seattle activists say they were called into meetings with HR.
Among the moratorium’s fiercest supporters were Amazon employees, who joined others to testify in support of the policy in multiple Seattle city council hearings.
Jeff Bezos’ Leo service had an FCC deadline of July 30th to launch half of its planned 3,232-satellite constellation. To date it’s only launched 331. The waiver comes with conditions meant to incentivize Amazon to move quickly, which would be a lot easier if Bezos’ semi-reusable New Glenn rocket hadn’t exploded and destroyed its only launchpad.
There are over 330 Leo satellites already in orbit, but the 36 planned for the next Arianespace mission is still smaller than the 48 satellites Amazon was planning to launch on a Blue Origin rocket that exploded during testing last week. This batch of satellites will launch from a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on June 17th.
