Category: Technology

Firefly aired for just one season in 2002 before Fox canceled it. In the 24 years since, the sci-fi show has skyrocketed in popularity and now fans are finally getting more. Nathan Fillion has announced that an animated Firefly series is currently in advanced development, Deadline first reported. 

Fillion shared the news at AwesomeCon during a live taping of his podcast Once We Were Spacemen with his Firefly co-stars Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Sean Maher, Jewel Staite and Alan Tudyk. Tudyk co-hosts the podcast, in which the duo look back at their careers and interview past coworkers. Each of the actors present at AwesomeCon are expected to voice the animated versions of their characters.

This isn’t one of those maybe one day it will happen announcements, with many steps already being taken. The animated reboot is under the direction of showrunners Tara Butters (Agent Carter, Reaper) and Marc Guggenheim (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow) — original creator Joss Whedon is not involved, but has given his blessing. It has early concept art from ShadowMachine, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning animation studio. Fillion is producing the show through Collision33, his production company, and with 20th Television Animation. There’s even already a script in place. 

According to Fillion, the one thing left is a home for the series. He and his co-stars took to Once We Were Spacemen‘s Instagram to provide more details and implore FireFly fans to show demand for the reboot.

Firefly took place in 2517, centuries after a universal civil war. It followed a group of people living aboard a transport ship, Serenity, flying through the galaxy. In 2005, the show got a sequel in the form of a movie, Serenity. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/firefly-is-getting-rebooted-as-an-animated-series-120604649.html?src=rss 

Ahead of its acquisition by Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. dominated the 2026 Oscars with 11 wins primarily for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Netflix also put in a strong showing with seven Academy Awards, including two for KPop Demon Hunters and three for Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. 

All told, dedicated streaming services chalked up eight awards, but were shut out of the major prizes. Frankenstein took the trophies for for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling, while KPop Demon Hunters took Best Animated Feature and Best original Song. Netflix also took prizes for All The Empty Rooms (Best Documentary Short Film) and The Singers (Best Live Action Short Film). Apple TV garnered the other streaming service Oscar for F1 (Best Sound). 

Warner Bros. dominated the more prestigious awards. The studio took its first Oscar for Best Picture (One Battle After Another) since Argo won in 2012, while also winning Anderson the prizes for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and giving Sean Penn the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Sinners, meanwhile, won for Best Cinematography, giving Autumn Durald Arkapaw the first ever win for a woman and woman of color in that category. Michael B. Jordan took the Best Actor prize for that film, while Director Ryan Coogler won for Best Original Screenplay.  

Other notable acting prizes were won by Jessie Buckley (Best Actress, Hamnet) and Amy Madigan (Best Support Actress, Weapons). 

Host Conan O’Brien joked that it was the “first time in a theater” for Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. It remains to be seen, however, whether Netflix losing out to Paramount Skydance on the Warner Bros. acquisition will be to the film industry’s benefit or detriment. One clear loser of late is broadcast television as the 2026 Oscars will be the third-to-last aired by Walt Disney’s ABC, with YouTube set to stream the ceremony exclusively starting in 2029. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/warner-bros-dominates-oscars-with-11-wins-ahead-of-its-acquisition-by-paramount-093916527.html?src=rss 

In an unexpected twist, humans have taken some jobs back from AI. Embark Studios’ CEO Patrick Söderlund recently told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio “re-recorded” some of the AI-generated voice lines in Arc Raiders with human voices, only after its successful launch in October.

“There is a quality difference,” Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz. “A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is.”

With Arc Raiders’ player count peaking at nearly half a million users on Steam, the game’s breakout success was still marred by its use of text-to-speech AI. While there was no generative AI used for the visuals of the extraction shooter, Embark Studios paid its actors for approval to license their voices for text-to-speech AI, according to Söderlund. Even though Söderlund said that the text-to-speech AI was reserved for lines “that aren’t as essential to the immersion of the experience,” many players weren’t happy with this creative decision.

Responding to the criticism, Embark Studios is seemingly reversing course and relying more on its voice actors. Söderlund said that the studio pays its voice actors for their time in the recording booth and will “continue to bring many of them back as we carry on updating the game.” However, it’s important to note that Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz that “some” of the AI-generated lines were replaced by voice actors, which could indicate that the studio isn’t looking to completely ditch its text-to-speech AI anytime soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/arc-raiders-replaced-some-of-its-ai-generated-voice-lines-with-professional-actors-184915627.html?src=rss 

To capitalize on Claude’s recent spike in popularity, Anthropic is offering a limited-time promotion that doubles usage limits for anyone using its AI chatbot during off-peak hours. From March 13 to March 27, users on Free, Pro, Max, and Team plans will get double the usage limits in a five-hour window when using Claude outside weekday hours between 8 AM and 2 PM ET. According to Anthropic, the promotion is automatic, and users don’t have to enable anything to get the benefits.

Anthropic said that this promotion applies to anyone using Claude on web, desktop or mobile, but also with Cowork, Claude Code, Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint. Previously, Anthropic offered a similar event from December 25 to December 31, doubling usage limits for Pro, Max 5x or Max 20x subscribers. However, Anthropic is targeting an even wider audience with its latest promotion since only Enterprise users are excluded this time around.

Anthropic is marketing the promotion as a “small thank you to everyone using Claude,” but it’s likely tied to its ongoing battle with the Department of Defense. After refusing to remove certain AI safeguards for the Department of Defense, Anthropic was listed as a supply chain risk and lost its contract with the federal agency. In turn, OpenAI signed a deal with the Department of Defense, leading to many users deciding to boycott ChatGPT in favor of Claude and other AI chatbot options.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-is-doubling-claudes-usage-limits-during-off-peak-hours-for-the-next-two-weeks-163645928.html?src=rss 

A month after Seedance 2.0’s launch in China sparked cease-and-desist letters from Disney and Paramount Skydance over its use of copyrighted materials, its developer ByteDance has reportedly hit pause on the release of the AI video tool in other regions. According to The Information, which spoke to two anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter, ByteDance has suspended Seedance 2.0’s global rollout. Engadget has reached out to ByteDance for comment and will update this story if we hear back with more information. 

Seedance 2.0 caught heat from Hollywood studios almost immediately upon its release, after user-generated videos including a viral AI clip of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise sparked concerns that copyrighted works were used in training the model. In February, ByteDance told the BBC that it is “taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users.” It’s unclear when exactly ByteDance planned to release the tool more widely. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/bytedance-has-reportedly-suspended-the-global-rollout-of-its-new-ai-video-generator-212326112.html?src=rss 

You’re responsible for your own Spotify algorithm now. On stage at SXSW, Spotify’s co-CEO, Gustav Söderström, announced the Taste Profile feature, which allows users to personally customize exactly what they want to listen to, whether it’s music, audiobooks or podcasts. This AI-powered feature is still in beta, and it will be available to Premium users in New Zealand in the coming weeks.

From its short video demo, Spotify’s Taste Profile feature will show you a summary of your listening habits and offer a “Tell us more” prompt at the bottom. With the new prompt, users can inform the AI what they want to see more of or if they want to get rid of a genre that keeps popping up in their algorithm. Spotify said that the Taste Profile will take into consideration more ambiguous prompts, too, like if you’re training for a marathon and want upbeat music or want to listen to news podcasts during your commute to work. Spotify added that Taste Profile is an optional feature, and unwilling users can “leave it and enjoy Spotify as usual.”

With Taste Profile, Spotify is continuing its momentum of offering AI features, like the Prompted Playlist feature that was made available last month. Unlike the existing AI Playlist feature, Prompted Playlist lets you put in specific requests to generate a playlist, like only including songs from a specific TV show. Like Taste Profile, the Prompted Playlist feature saw beta testing in New Zealand first, before expanding to US and Canadian users a month later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotifys-new-taste-profile-feature-lets-users-fine-tune-their-algorithms-recommendations-191104626.html?src=rss 

There may have been some extra incentive for the Trump administration to get the TikTok US deal done. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is set to receive a total of $10 billion in the deal that allowed TikTok to remain in the US. The new investors who acquired stakes in the US entity of TikTok already paid a $2.5 billion fee to the administration when the deal closed in January, but WSJ‘s latest report noted that the group of investors would continue to make payments until the total hits $10 billion.

After a group of investors, which includes Oracle along with the Silver Lake and MGX investment firms, acquired stakes in the US-based TikTok entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture, the WSJ previously reported that the administration would receive a “multibillion-dollar fee” for its work on the deal. To better contextualize the recently-revealed $10 billion fee the Trump administration is receiving, the US entity of TikTok was valued at $14 billion by Vice President JD Vance.

The Trump administration has previously involved itself in major deals with other US corporations. Last year, the administration invested $8.9 billion into Intel and received a nearly 9 percent equity stake. In terms of unprecedented windfalls, the Trump administration also received a Boeing 747-8 as a gift from the Qatari government in May.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-administration-will-reportedly-get-10-billion-for-brokering-the-tiktok-deal-180954979.html?src=rss 

Digg has shut down, for now, just a few months after its open beta launched. Justin Mezzell, the company’s CEO, has explained on the home page that it noticed hours after the beta launched that it was already being targeted by SEO spammers. “The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts,” he wrote. Apparently, the Digg team wasn’t ready for the scale and the speed at which bots found and started flooding the website.

Mezzell said Digg banned thousands of accounts and deployed both internal tools and external solutions, but they weren’t enough. He admitted that the votes and the comments on the website couldn’t be trusted due to the amount of bot activity it got. While Digg has decided to significantly downsize its team, a small number of staff members has stayed to rebuild it completely. He said it wasn’t enough to present Digg as an alternative to current social networks and community-based websites. “What comes next needs to be genuinely different,” he added.

The CEO didn’t explain how Digg will reinvent itself, but he did announce that its founder, Kevin Rose, is joining the company full time. Rose bought back Digg last year in partnership with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Back then, they said they had “a fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be.” Based on what happened to Digg, that’s now harder to achieve with the state of the internet today.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/digg-shuts-down-for-a-hard-reset-because-it-was-flooded-with-bots-153848094.html?src=rss 

Meta could be preparing for one of the largest layoffs in its history, according to a Reuters report. The tech giant is planning to cut about 20 percent of its workforce, according to the outlet’s sources. According to the report, neither a date nor the exact number of layoffs has been finalized yet.

However, Reuters reported that Meta’s top executives have told “other senior leaders” to start “planning how to pare back.” In its latest financial report, the company’s employee headcount was 78,865 as of December 31, 2025, while revenue reached nearly $60 billion for the fourth quarter and more than $200 billion for the entire year. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that this was “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.”

Meta is no stranger to major layoffs. Earlier this year, Meta targeted about 1,000 employees in its layoffs with the Reality Labs division that’s responsible for the company’s virtual reality and metaverse efforts. Early last year, Meta laid off about five percent of its workforce, following a smaller round of firings that same month. Meanwhile, the company has been spending heavily to acquire AI startups, like Moltbook, a social network designed for AI agents, and Manus, a startup focused on AI agents for task automation.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-reportedly-planning-to-cut-up-to-20-percent-of-its-staff-in-upcoming-layoffs-160812304.html?src=rss