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The BBC’s Beeb voice assistant is ready for testing on PC

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Last year the BBC announced it was working on its own voice assistant, called “Beeb,” designed to help customers take advantage of voice assistant technology regardless of their accent. Existing assistants still have issues understanding accents, and nowhere is this truer than Britain, which has a broad range of accents despite its small geographic size. Now, Beeb is going into beta on PC.

The early version of the software will be available to UK-based members of Microsoft’s Windows Insider program (download the app from the Microsoft Store here). Microsoft is actually playing a pivotal role in the development of Beeb, with its Azure AI services being used by the BBC to build the infrastructure behind the platform. In the first version, users will be able to get live and on-demand radio, music mixes and podcasts, as well as news and weather updates. And it wouldn’t be a real voice assistant without a few Easter eggs thrown in. Ask Beeb for a joke, and you’ll get from BBC comedy writers. Ask Beeb for a QI fact, and you’ll get one from host Sandi Toksvig herself.

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Amazon reportedly preps June 22nd sale to counter the pandemic slump

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If the report is accurate, this wouldn’t be an all-encompassing sale that covers every category. However, it would be a direct response to the hardships sellers have gone through since the pandemic. In the US, Amazon has prioritized essential products like food, personal care and certain technology during the viral outbreak. While crucial, that has also left Amazon’s sellers frustrated as shipments extensive delays, to the point where it might take weeks to receive a product. Now that things are settling down, sellers are eager to make up for lost business — sals like this could theoretically reignite demand.

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Zoom usage peaked at 300 million daily participants in April

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As the response to the coronavirus pandemic pushed people out of offices and back into their homes, videoconferencing has taken center stage and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the switch is Zoom. Today the company reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2020 and revealed that compared to the same period last year, its number of customers who have more than 10 employees grew by 354 percent to 265,400.

Its revenue grew accordingly, up to $328.2, an increase of 169 percent from last year. In prepared comments (PDF), executives said “We peaked at over 300 million daily participants, free and paid, joining Zoom meetings in April 2020, up from 10 million in December 2019.” At the end of January it notched 100 billion meeting minutes, which suddenly grew to over two trillion by the end of April.

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Lawsuit claims Trump’s social media order violates free speech rights

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In a statement, CDT chief Alexandra Givens added that Trump’s move was a “direct attack” on free speech. “The government cannot and should not force online intermediaries into moderating speech according to the President’s whims,” she said.

Twitter unsurprisingly supports the lawsuit. It pointed Engadget to a statement calling the order a “reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law” that could “threaten the future of online speech.” You can read the full statement below.

It won’t be surprising if more legal battles follow, but CDT’s is a prominent example. It could also carry some weight in the tech industry beyond Twitter’s approval, as CDT’s board includes executives from Microsoft and Mozilla.



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France releases a voluntary contact tracing app

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The French government has released a contract tracing app, called StopCovid, to notify people when they’ve been in contact with someone who is later diagnosed with COVID-19, as reported by Bloomberg. Usage of the app is entirely voluntary in France, although the effectiveness of contact tracing depends on how many people are using it.

Buoyed by the release of the Apple-Google framework for contact tracing, many countries, including Italy and Switzerland, have released contact tracing apps in the last few weeks. But the French app has been in development since before Apple and Google released their APIs. StopCovid uses ROBERT, a contact tracing protocol developed by the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing project. It works by assigning each user a permanent, pseudonymous ID, which is then used to create several ephemeral IDs. The ephemeral IDs are communicated to other nearby devices via Bluetooth. If someone reports that they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19, the server flags all of the ephemeral IDs associated with their permanent ID. This triggers a notification for anyone who’s been in contact with one or more of those ephemeral IDs. 

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Leak offers an early look at Google’s rumored Android TV dongle

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Google’s rumored Android TV dongle just got a bit more tangible. XDA-Developers has obtained what it says are early renders of the media hub, codenamed “Sabrina.” Sure enough, the device (reportedly Nest-branded) is very much in keeping with Google’s modern aesthetic with a smooth, rounded look in a variety of colors. Think of it as a friendlier-looking alternative to Amazon’s Fire TV pendant. For some, though, the device itself may be less interesting than the rest of the setup.

The same leak (reportedly stemming from pre-release firmware) includes a months-old video that appears to be the device introduction you’d see at the end of your initial setup. The clip shows what looks to be an early version of the included remote, complete with a dedicated Google Assistant button, as well as an interface that’s more focused on individual shows than apps and services.

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Apple News+ will feature audio versions of stories, iOS update shows

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Apple’s News+ platform is getting an audio feature. As reported by 9to5Mac, today’s public release of iOS 13.5.1 has been accompanied by the first beta version of iOS 13.5.5, and hidden within is “Apple News+ Audio,” which will offer audio stories to News+ subscribers.

It looks like the existing News app will get a new “Audio” tab, which will give users access to recorded news stories via an interface similar to Apple News. Recorded stories will appear in a media player that takes the same form as the one in Podcast, enabling rewind, skipping and playback speed adjustment.

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AT&T exempts HBO Max from mobile data caps

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Streaming companies have to pay mobile carriers — such as AT&T — if they don’t want traffic from their services to affect users’ data caps. AT&T owns HBO, though, so the conglomerate would be paying itself if it didn’t want its new HBO Max service to do so. The company has confirmed to The Verge that data from HBO Max will be exempted from customers’ traditional data caps or the soft data caps that come with “unlimited” plans.

The Verge spoke to an AT&T executive who says that the aforementioned fee is an expense for HBO Max, but is revenue for AT&T Mobility, so the two cancel each other out. If another streaming service, such as Netflix, were to pay the fee, it would only count as a cost. No other streaming companies pay the fee, and therefore, all traffic from Netflix, Hulu and others counts against data caps. This could give AT&T and HBO Max an unfair advantage in the streaming wars.

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Peloton’s workout app is now on Apple TV

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The Peloton app is officially available on Apple TV, giving quarantined gym-goers more options for home exercise as coronavirus concerns linger. While the digital fitness company might be best known for its fitness equipment like bikes and treadmills, its app offers streamable classes for several activities, some of which don’t require equipment. For example, you can use the Peloton app to do yoga or strength training in your living room.

If you’re new to Peloton, you can download the app and try it free for 30 days. After that, a digital membership is $12.99 per month.

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‘Total War Saga: Troy’ will initially be free on the Epic Games Store

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The developer went on to say it doesn’t plan to make any of its future games Epic Games Store exclusives but noted it couldn’t have made Troy free without Epic’s help. “Making it available for free, for everyone to keep, during the first 24 hours – wouldn’t have been possible without this deal,” it said. 

Total War Saga: Troy takes place during the Trojan War. Like in past Total War games, you’ll be able to manage your faction on a strategic map and then fight real-time battles that feature hundreds and sometimes thousands of individual warriors. In line with the game’s mythological inspiration, Homeric heroes like Achilles, Ajax the Great and Hector of Troy will fight alongside your armies. Creative Assembly’s Saga games usually have a narrower focus than the studio’s mainline Total War games, which should make this one a good introduction for new fans.     



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