Category: Technology

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is out today, not counting the early access period. Kojima Productions and publisher Sony couldn’t resist putting out one last trailer. I wouldn’t be surprised if the filename for it was something like DS2_FINAL_TRAILER_V17_noactuallyitsthelastone.mp4 and yet it still has a runtime of six minutes. 

Although there are some fun moments in this trailer, it’s much too long. You probably shouldn’t watch it if you’d like to stay as spoiler-free as possible before playing the game, as the trailer includes some heavy-handed teases and perhaps gives away some of DS2‘s surprises.

The game’s director, Hideo Kojima, is a man with more ideas than he has time to execute. That’s evident in his games, which are packed full of complexity and cinematics. I found a YouTube video titled “Death Stranding 2 All Cutscenes Part 1″ that’s nearly two hours long. In other words, these games are a lot (though it is cute that there’s a special cutscene when it’s your birthday). Fittingly, the trailers are excessive as well.

By my count, we’ve now had over 30 minutes of DS2 trailers, including a 10-minute one. That’s not counting the 22-minute gameplay demo at Summer Game Fest. There will be more trailers when Death Stranding 2 inevitably migrates from the PS5 to other platforms, so I don’t believe for a second that this is the “final” one. Perhaps there will be a Director’s Cut edition with its own trailers.

Yes, studios, publishers and their marketing teams have a tough time on their hands trying to break through the noise and get their games on the radars of players who might want to check them out. But this is a Hideo Kojima game that Sony is publishing. A sequel to an acclaimed game that more than 20 million people have played. The vast majority of people who would be interested in Death Stranding 2 are likely already well aware of it. This probably didn’t need a final trailer, and certainly not one that’s six minutes long. (I am well aware of the irony that, by embedding it here, we’re bringing more eyeballs to this trailer. Don’t @ me.)

Kojima famously edits the trailers for his games himself, and he did so with this one. But they could probably do with another pass in someone else’s hands. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/who-is-this-final-six-minute-death-stranding-2-trailer-actually-for-161728737.html?src=rss 

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria has ruled in favor of Meta over the 13 book authors, including Sarah Silverman, who sued the company for training its large language model on their published work without obtaining consent. His court has granted summary judgment to Meta, which means the case didn’t reach full trial. Chhabria said that Meta didn’t violate copyright law after the plaintiffs had failed to show sufficient evidence that the company’s use of the authors’ work would hurt them financially. 

In his ruling (PDF), Chhabria admitted that in most cases, it is illegal to feed copyright-protected materials into their large language models without getting permission or paying the copyright owners for the right to use their creations. “…by training generative AI models with copyrighted works, companies are creating something that often will dramatically undermine the market for those works, and thus dramatically undermine the incentive for human beings to create things the old-fashioned way,” he wrote. 

However, the court “must decide cases based on the evidence presented by the parties,” he said. For this particular case, the plaintiffs argued that Meta’s actions cannot be considered “fair use.” They said that that their creations are affected by Meta’s use because the company’s LLM, Llama, is capable of reproducing small snippets of text from their books. They also said that by using their books for training without consent, Meta had diminished their ability to license their work for LLM training. The judge called both arguments “clear losers.” Llama isn’t capable of generating enough text straight from the books to matter, he said, and the authors aren’t entitled to the “market for licensing their works as AI training data.”

Chhabria wrote that the argument that Meta copied their books to create a product that has the capability to flood the market with similar works, thereby causing market dilution, could have given the plaintiffs the win. But the plaintiffs barely touched the argument and presented no evidence to show how output from Meta’s LLM could dilute the market. Despite his ruling, Chhabria clarified that his decision is limited: It only affects the 13 authors in the lawsuit and “does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.”

Another judge, William Alsup, also recently sided with Anthropic in a class action lawsuit also brought by a group of authors who accused the company of using their copyrighted work without permission. Alsup provided the writers recourse, though, and allowed them to take Anthropic to court for piracy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-wins-ai-copyright-case-filed-by-sarah-silverman-and-other-authors-120035768.html?src=rss 

Amazon MGM Studio’s James Bond movie, the first of what could be many in a series, will be directed by Denis Villeneuve. The company has revealed that he will be leading the production in an announcement, where it also named Villeneuve’s wife Tanya Lapointe as an executive producer. Villeneuve is perhaps best known for directing Dune and Dune: Part Two, the latest adaptations of Frank Herbert’s novel starring Timothée Chalamet. He also directed the sci-fi drama Arrival with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, as well as Blade Runner 2049 with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford. 

“Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007,” Villeneuve, who’d previously expressed many times in the past that he wanted to direct a Bond movie, said in a statement. “I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a massive responsibility, but also, incredibly exciting for me and a huge honor. Amy [Pascal], David [Heyman], and I are absolutely thrilled to bring him back to the screen. Thank you to Amazon MGM Studios for their trust.”

Amazon bought MGM back in 2021 for $8.5 billion, and with it came the rights to the James Bond franchise. However, Barbara Broccoli, the producer who inherited the rights to the franchise from her father, reportedly didn’t trust Amazon with the property, putting the development and production of the next Bond film on pause. Earlier this year, both parties have finally come to an agreement. It’s unclear if Amazon told Brocolli back then that Villeneuve was a potential director, but she and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson ultimately agreed to take a step back and give the company full creative control over the next Bond films. Amazon has yet to announce the franchise’s new star, but seeing as a lot of actors want to work with Villeneuve these days, the production won’t have a shortage of names to choose from. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/amazons-james-bond-film-will-be-directed-by-denis-villeneuve-123023234.html?src=rss 

Senators Marsha Blacburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have reintroduced a bill that would force app store owners like Apple and Google to allow third-party payment systems and sideloading apps, among a collection of other developer-friendly changes. The bill, called the Open App Markets App, was originally introduced in 2021, but it never came up for a vote after passing through the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2022.

The Open App Markets Act applies its changes to app stores with 50,000 monthly users or more, most obviously applicable to the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Like the original bill, the reintroduced Open App Markets Act wants covered companies to allow things like sideloading, third-party app stores and alternative payments systems, while protecting developers ability to “tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing.” It would also prevent app store operators from privileging their own apps and services in app store search results. 

While the aims of the new bill are largely the same as the original one, the legal environment is meaningfully different. Apple has been forced to allow third-party app stores and alternative payment systems in the European Union following the introduction of the Digital Markets Act in 2022. Thanks to its failure to make good on the small concession Epic won via its lawsuit, Apple has also been forced to allow developers to direct customers to pay for things outside of the App Store and its in-app payments system. The Open App Markets Act would make these kinds of changes the law in the US.

It seems possible the bill could pass, too. Regulatory pressure on tech companies has only increased since 2021. For example, Utah recently passed an age-verification law that would require app stores to only allow users 18 and up to make an account.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/us-senators-reintroduce-bill-to-open-apple-and-googles-app-stores-215037373.html?src=rss 

We’re getting yet another Hollywood sequel. Deadline reports that Aaron Sorkin will be directing The Social Network II, a follow-up to the film that chronicled the development of Facebook and the ensuing lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg. The next movie will take its inspiration from a 2021 investigation by The Wall Street Journal into the harms caused by Facebook and the company’s failure to address those problems.

Sorkin has a long career as a writer, including the screenplay for The Social Network, but only three credits as a director on his resume. There’s no production date for the movie at this time, and it’s unknown whether actors from the original will return to their roles, most notably Jesse Eisenberg as Zuck.

Facebook certainly provides no shortage of potential inspiration for a biopic. Just in the past six months, the platform dug a deeper hole for itself when it tried to quash a tell-all memoir with some pretty wild behind-the-scenes stories from a former employee. Facebook also eliminated its third-party fact checkers and gutted its own hate speech policy, which was unsurprisingly followed by an increase in violent content and harassment. But given all the negative hits for Facebook’s reputation, viewers may not be too excited about spending two hours or more stewing in all the crappy stuff the network has done.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/aaron-sorkin-is-making-a-second-social-network-movie-221555267.html?src=rss 

The Trump Organization announced a cellular brand earlier this summer, and its main selling point for Trump Mobile was that its T1 smartphone was “made in the USA.” It seemed highly unlikely that those claims about the phone were possible. Now, the website for the device has removed all language indicating that it was manufactured in the US. Instead, there is broader language such as “designed with American values in mind” and “Premium Performance. Proudly American.”

The Verge also noticed that some of the specs for the ostentatious gold smartphone have changed. The listed screen size has shrunk from 6.78 inches to 6.25 inches, and there’s no longer any information about RAM. The phone is also offering a more general “later this year” availability time frame rather than promising to arrive in September. Despite walking back the loud promises made about the device, it seems unlikely the changes will matter to anybody who wants to buy this thing.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/trump-mobile-drops-its-made-in-the-usa-claims-193917169.html?src=rss