An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said this week on the TBPN podcast that one reason Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app. This so it can sell premium ads. "That's kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you," Srinivas said. "Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It's not like that's personal." And work-related queries won't help the AI company build an accurate-enough dossier. "On the other hand, what are the things you're buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you," he explained. Srinivas believes that Perplexity's browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them. "We plan to use all the context to build a better user profile and, maybe you know, through our discover feed we could show some ads there," he said. The browser, named Comet, suffered setbacks but is on track to be launched in May, Srinivas said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Turns out it’s pretty hard to do your job when the most powerful man in the country has a habit of throwing temper tantrum whenever you mention his name. In the face of Donald Trump’s escalating war against 60 Minutes, CBS, and parent company Paramount, Bill Owens, the show’s top producer, is ceding his position. “Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience,” Owens wrote in a memo to staff, per The New York Times. “So, having defended this show—and what we stand for—from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.”

Earlier this month, Trump and Paramount reportedly picked a mediator and will attempt to reach a settlement in Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against the company. Trump sued over an interview 60 Minutes ran with Kamala Harris in the lead-up to the election. Since then, he’s publicly criticized what he characterized as two “derogatory and defamatory” stories about him. “They are not a ‘News Show,’ but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as ‘News,’ and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing. They should lose their license!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

As such, many journalists at CBS News “believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment,” per NYT. In his memo, however, Owen promised that 60 Minutes wasn’t going anywhere. “60 Minutes will continue to cover the new administration, as we will report on future administrations,” he wrote. “The show is too important to the country. It has to continue, just not with me as the executive producer.”

In a separate note, Wendy McMahon, president of CBS News and Stations, took a similar stance. McMahon promised that she remained “committed to 60 Minutes and to ensuring that the mission and the work remain our priority.” She also lauded Owens, writing, “standing behind what he stood for was an easy decision for me, and I never took for granted that he did the same for me.” 

Logitech has quietly increased prices on several flagship products by as much as 25%, according to findings (video) by YouTuber Cameron Dougherty. The MX Master 3S mouse now costs $120, up 20% from its previous $100 price point, while the MX Keys S keyboard has jumped 18% to $130. The K400 Plus Wireless Touch keyboard saw the most dramatic percentage increase, rising from $28 to $35. These price adjustments, implemented without formal announcement, come amid ongoing tariff pressures from the Trump administration affecting PC hardware manufacturers. Chinese electronics maker Anker also recently implemented similar increases, suggesting a broader industry trend.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an update that shouldn’t be an update, the Academy has decided that “Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category to be eligible to vote in the final round for the Oscars.” Yes, that is a notable “procedural change” for the organization, as it announced in a press email this afternoon. Previously, voters were kindly asked not to vote if they hadn’t seen all the nominated films, but there was no real way to track it, leading to all those blood-boiling anonymous ballots declaring that certain films were too long or too boring or whatever other excuses people could come up with not to do their jobs fairly. 

Now, per The Hollywood Reporter, voting members must demonstrate that they’ve actually watched all the eligible films in any given category for the Academy’s e-voting system to give them access to the ballot. They can do this automatically by watching films on the members-only Academy Screening Room platform, or by submitting a form detailing the time and place they watched a film if it was viewed elsewhere. 

The organization also announced a few other updates to its rules, including codifying language stating that filmmakers with refugee or asylum status can submit in the International Feature Film category on behalf of the country in which they currently reside. The Best Cinematography category is also getting a shortlist for the first time, as is the brand new Achievement In Casting award.

As for the use of AI, which became a major talking point in this year’s race, the Academy added language but said a whole lot of nothing. “With regard to Generative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools used in the making of the film, the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination. The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award,” the new language, as recommended by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, reads.

We’ll see how it all shakes out now that voters can’t choose to abstain from watching certain movies in protest, or for any other reason. Preliminary voting officially begins December 8, 2025, for the ceremony on March 15, 2026.

Researchers at UC Berkeley claim to have induced a previously unseen color by using lasers to stimulate only the M cones in the retina, creating a visual experience beyond the natural limits of human perception. Called olo, the color is described as a highly saturated blue-green but is only visible through direct retinal manipulation. The Guardian reports: "We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented color signal but we didn't know what the brain would do with it," said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It was jaw-dropping. It's incredibly saturated." The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the color, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina. "There is no way to convey that color in an article or on a monitor," said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team. "The whole point is that this is not the color we see, it's just not. The color we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo." The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We can’t imagine it takes much to make a movie studio executive nervous these days. The box office is still sluggish in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns; not even superhero movies can act as guaranteed slam dunks; and you know that smug bastard Seth Rogen is out there somewhere, just waiting to turn your latest public fiasco into a TV show. No wonder the Hollywood elite are so skittish that something as interesting as Ryan Coogler’s recent deal for his Southern vampires movie Sinners has some of them screaming “Hollywood apocalypse!”

This is per a recent deep dive from Vulture, which not only explored the terms of Coogler’s unorthodox deal, but also found some anonymous Hollywood types willing to call it “very dangerous,” as well as to say “It could be the end of the studio system,” which was certainly a real boon to the headline writers. (We kid, because it’s genuinely a good examination of the issue—but some of this panic definitely feels a little overblown.)

It’s like this: Coogler, who was fresh off a very serious run of hits—including Creed and two Black Panthers—when he was shopping the Michael B. Jordan project around, had a number of requirements when he looked to hammer out a deal for Sinners with studios. Some of these were big asks, but not outside the realm of possibility for a guy currently riding a series of major box office wins: Final cut of the movie, and first-dollar gross. (That is, Coogler starts getting a portion of the film’s profits from the moment it opens in theaters, rather than having to wait for the studio to make back its money.) The really biggie, though, was one that more than one studio reportedly balked at: Coogler wanted ownership of the film to revert to him after 25 years.

This is unorthodox, to say the least; Hollywood studios derive a ton of their value from the vast libraries of films they own, so losing even one—and all its attendant potentials for licensing, sequels, redistribution, etc.—is usually pretty unthinkable. (It usually only happens when a director takes huge risks like self-financing a movie: Mel Gibson owns The Passion Of The Christ, for instance, while Richard Linklater has partial ownership of Boyhood. Quentin Tarantino, meanwhile, will get ownership of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood back in a couple of decades, essentially as a continuation of old deals he used to have with Miramax from the days when the whole studio was basically resting on his back.) Coogler scoring a rights reversion on what’s only his fifth movie is an outlier—one that’s as much a reflection of how much Warner Bros. Pictures has been floundering in recent years as Coogler’s own rising star status.

Excepting a current Minecraft-shaped life raft—which has at least a chance, in its third week, of eclipsing Sinners when it premieres at the box office this weekend—the studio has been taking it in the teeth ever since at least the start of COVID. No studio weathered that storm in perfect condition, but WB wound up blowing up not just its finances but its reputation, alienating creators with its decision to put movies on VOD and streaming alongside their theatrical releases. The studio is still smarting from losing Christopher Nolan over this, so studio heads Pam Abdy and Michael de Luca were apparently willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to make Coogler happy on Sinners.

Coogler has said that he considers the ownership deal a one-off, rooted at least in part in Sinners‘ focus on themes of Black artists’ ownership of their own culture. Most of the hysteria surrounding it is, essentially, hand-wringing about what comes next: What happens if some other up-and-comer asks for “the Ryan Coogler deal”? (Seems like you could just say, “Sure, show us the Ryan Coogler money,” but we are not extremely skittish Hollywood execs.) For now, it’s mostly a look into the mindset of the Hollywood animal, where any film exists, not so much for its own sake, but for how it can be milked in perpetuity. Meanwhile, we get some absolutely killer quotes out of the anxiety, including one unnamed studio type saying “Look, here’s the problem in Hollywood, OK? There’s no rationale or logic behind absolutely anything.” We’d always wondered!