Amazon has cut paid perks for Alexa developers. With a bigger focus on generative AI, the voice assistant’s third-party apps (skills) aren’t a priority. An Amazon spokesperson told Engadget that the “older programs have simply run their course, so we decided to sunset them.” Launched in 2017, when Alexa was all the rage, the program paid developers bonuses for skills that resonated with users. It was part of Amazon’s quest to turn Alexa Skills into a booming app store. (Did that happen?) At the...
Amazon has decided to cut off paid perks for Alexa developers. The company confirmed to Engadget on Wednesday that it will end the Alexa Developer Rewards Program at the end of June. A second program that rewards developers for using Amazon Web Services as the backend for their Alexa apps will wrap up at the same time. With the emergence of generative AI, the pioneering voice assistant’s third-party apps (“skills”) no longer appear to be a central focus for the company. The news was first...
MARYLAND – Local county health departments have teamed up with schools in an effort to raise awareness with their ‘Take Down Tobacco’ initiative. But it’s not just high schools that have seen increased use of nicotine products. Salisbury University student Cristina Drecchio said that these days, vapes and tobacco products can be hard to get away from on campus: “It’s
Opponents planned to appeal to the Searsport Select Board on Tuesday night, but that might not get them very far.
Federal aviation authorities are investigating claims by a Boeing engineer that the 787 Dreamliner suffers from assembly defects that threaten safety, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Attorneys for the whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, accuse the company of putting profit over safety -- and retaliating against him after he raised concerns by "involuntarily"
Last month, Epic Games filed a motion asking a California judge to hold Apple in contempt for what it claims are violations of a 2021 injunction relating to the company’s App Store practices. Now, Apple is asking the judge to reject Epic’s request, alleging in a new filing spotted by Reuters that the motion is an attempt to “micromanage Apple’s business operations in a way that would increase Epic’s profitability.” The original injunction by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers required...
The Wonderskin Wonder Blading Lip Color is the best-selling lip treatment on Amazon U.S., and now it's here in the UK. Here's my honest review.
A teacher accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student in Nebraska is married to a government official in the Department of Defense.
A man who oversaw staff training and investigations at New Hampshire’s youth detention center testified Monday that top-level administrators sided with staff against residents, while lower-level workers wanted to punish kids for speaking up. Virgil Bossom returned to the witness stand Monday, the fourth day of a trial seeking to hold the state accountable for child abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly called the Youth Development Center, in Manchester. David Meehan, the plaintiff,...
A lawyer was busted at an airport in Brazil while attempting to ship out 12 live stingrays that had been extracted from the Amazon basin.
Russian authorities on Friday again tried to link the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall to Ukraine, saying one of the detained suspects had photos on his phone depicting troops in camouflage uniforms with the Ukrainian flag. Ever since the March 22 mass shooting and fire at the Crocus
Anthropic AI has finally made Claude 3 Opus, the most powerful model available in the market, available on Amazon Bedrock.