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.
Every smart home device that works with Matter
All the Matter-compatible devices you can buy, plus the latest on the Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung-backed smart home standard.
E-book borrowing is the new hot trend, and to use their local libraries, people are buying Kindles. Though paper books are still more popular than digital ones, “Kindle sales have grown in double-digit percentages for each of the past two years and are on track for similar gains this year.”
Amazon has a new 3D “Gaming Zone” online showroom, which feels like it was designed to fit a marketing executive’s idea of “gamer aesthetic.” Also, the showroom is a chore to navigate. And you can’t even play the arcade cabinets!
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This is Big Tech’s playbook for swallowing the AI industry
With Amazon’s hiring of the team behind a buzzy AI startup, a pattern is emerging: the reverse acquihire.
An Amazon engineer blogged about how they test the durability of Kindles. The process sounds like every toddler’s dream come true, complete with throwing food at prototypes, drowning them in baths, attempting to poke, prod, and crush them in half with heavy contraptions, and even chucking a few into dryer-like machines.
Amazon’s new Batman: Caped Crusader series from executive producers J. J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm sounds very much like yet another Batman origin story. But the show’s 1940’s, Golden Era of comics vibe makes it seem like it’ll make for a kitschy watch when it debuts on August 1st.
It’s reportedly developing a sequel to Spaceballs, Mel Brooks’ Star Wars parody, with Brooks and Josh Gad producing. The project is in “early stages,” per Variety.
The California Department of Industrial Relations says that Amazon didn’t provide employees written notice of quotas they have to follow — a requirement of the Warehouse Quotas law. “The employer argued they did not need a quota system because they use a peer-to-peer evaluation system,” according to a press release.
The regulator found more than 59,000 violations across two warehouses.
Lewis, the Post’s publisher and a former Murdoch henchman, forced out Sally Buzbee, the executive editor. As a result, a longstanding UK scandal around journalistic ethics resurfaced, as Lewis has allegedly attempted to suppress stories about it.
There’s now enough blood in the water that Bezos, WaPo’s owner, is involved. He’s supporting his British import.
Until now, patients with Medicare — a government-funded insurance program mostly for older adults — haven’t been eligible to enroll in the RxPass program Amazon debuted last year. The RxPass offers Medicare patients “unlimited access” to 60 different prescription medications for $5 a month and a prime membership. For now, patients with Medicaid — state-funded insurance for lower-income Americans — are still ineligible for the program.
The Amazon Labor Union voted to ink an affiliation agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Workers at a Staten Island warehouse became the first Amazon employees to vote to unionize in 2022. They still don’t have a contract, as the union struggles to get Amazon to the bargaining table. Joining forces with the Teamsters infuses their fight with fresh resources, The New York Times reports.
[The New York Times]
The much-needed reinvention of the voice assistant is almost here
Siri and Alexa could one day be totally amazing instead of vaguely annoying. But only if Big Tech can get it right.
While Amazon definitely wants fans of The Boys getting hyped up for the show’s season four premiere later this week on June 13th, showrunner Eric Kripke announced today that the show’s upcoming fifth season will be its last.
That’s on top of San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Zoox’s original Foster City test. Note, though:
We won’t be deploying our purpose-built robotaxi or offering public rides in Austin or Miami just yet. Our target cities for our first commercial markets remain Las Vegas and San Francisco. But we’re exploring several cities for future commercial offerings after our initial launch.
The latest preview puts Ryan in the middle of Homelander and Butcher, who doesn’t have much time left to live. The first three episodes of season four hit Prime Video on June 13th.
Prime Video has one hit with Fallout, plus a Tomb Raider adaptation on the way, so what’s next? Get ready for six episodes of Like a Dragon: Yakuza that will be released worldwide in 3-episode sets on October 25th and November 1st.
In 1995 and 2005, spanning across two time-periods, Like a Dragon: Yakuza, an original crime-suspense-action series, follows the life, childhood friends, and repercussions of the decisions of Kazuma Kiryu, a fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a strong sense of justice, duty, and humanity.
Alexa’s Fire TV search has a new AI, but it needs some work
Fire TV’s new search experience gives Alexa the ability to understand more conversational requests.