Amazon's Audible, an audiobook company, has announced a trial program to generate AI voice clones to read audiobooks. The program is currently available in the US and is inviting a small group of narrators to participate. The goal is to expand the company's catalog using new technologies.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

The sex tech industry has conditioned us to think of toys in terms of male and female, penis and vagina, but that's reductive and inaccurate. The vulva includes the labia majora, labia minora, the urethra, and the clitoris, with the clitoris having roughly 8,000 nerve endings.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Tribit's Stormbox 2 Bluetooth speaker offers great sound, a hearty and water-resistant design, and impressive battery life of up to 24 hours per charge. It's a killer portable sound machine at its price, rivaling brands like UE and JBL.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

More than 700,000 people have been affected by enormous floods in South Sudan, with hundreds of thousands already displaced from their homes. The floods, caused by record water levels in Lake Victoria, have raised concerns that these displaced communities may never be able to return to their lands. This could be the first permanent mass displacement due to climate change.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, discussed the company's new secure server environment, Private Cloud Compute, which aims to minimize data exposure for Apple Intelligence, the company's new AI platform. The feature, Image Playground, was showcased as part of the updates. No specific details on the launch event or the birthday of Federighi's dog Bailey were mentioned.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Wi-Fi 7 is the next generation of Wi-Fi, promising faster connections, lower latency, and the ability to manage more connections. The first wave of Wi-Fi 7 routers was expensive, but more affordable options are now available. Wi-Fi 7 is supported by the latest devices, including Apple's iPhone 16 range.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Shein, a fast-fashion giant, uses proprietary machine-learning applications to measure customer preferences in real-time and predict demand. The company's ultra-cheap clothing is shipped to tens of millions of customers in 150 countries. In 2023, Shein's trendy styles were advertised on social media, garnering billions of views. The fast-fashion industry is embracing emerging AI technologies to manage the vast amounts of data created, collected, and analyzed.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Iron Mountain, an enterprise storage and destruction company, has been noticing a significant issue with the hard disk drives from the 1990s, with roughly one-fifth being entirely unreadable. Robert Koszela, global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives at Iron Mountain, emphasized the importance of alerting the industry about the problem. The company handles the archiving of the media industry's vaults, providing insight into the complexity of archiving music in the modern era.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

The entertainment industry is struggling to recover from twin strikes that shut down production for six months, with domestic box-office revenue expected to be 30% lower this year compared to 2019. Cable TV subscriptions are estimated to decline by 10 million by 2028. Paramount Global is being acquired by Skydance Media, leaving the future of Hollywood uncertain.

Source: https://www.wired.com/

Apple announced significant updates to its AirPods family, with the AirPods 4 being the focus of the event. The AirPods 4, priced at $129, now feature noise cancellation for an additional $50. The updates were revealed by VP of hardware engineering Kate Bergeron at Apple's September event.

Source: https://www.wired.com/