Back in June, reports came out that Amazon plans to launch a 10-a-month standalone music service similar to Spotify, Apple Music and other subscription-based options out there. According to Recode, though, the tech titan is also gearing up to introduce a second, cheaper offering that will only cost you 5 a month. It will only work with the company's Alexa-powered Echo speakers. Other than that, Recode says it's just like your typical paid music service: you can choose what to play, and you won't get interrupted by ads. Amazon's Echo speakers can already play music from various sources, including Spotify, Pandora and its very own Prime Music.

Amazon plans to launch a music streaming service for its Echo speaker, according to Recode. The new streaming service will be different from Spotify and Apple Music, as it will only be available for Echo owners, but at half the price -- in the 4 or 5 range. Recode reports Amazon plans to launch the new service in September. An Amazon representative didn't respond to request for comment. Amazon has found a hit with the Echo, a speaker turned voice assistant.

The winners of the Hugo Awards were announced at a gala ceremony in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, marking a good night for women and authors of color, and a very bad one for the "Puppies." Writers N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor, both of whom are African American women, won the novel and novella awards, respectively. It was a defeat for the groups the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, who for two years have semi-successfully gamed the nominations for the Hugos -- which along with the Nebula Awards are generally considered the preeminent awards in science fiction and fantasy -- in an attempt to advance their anti-diversity agendas. Jemisin, who won for her novel "The Fifth Season," referenced the Puppies in her acceptance speech, io9 reports. "Only a small number of ideologues have attempted to game the Hugo Awards," Jemisin said.

Part of being the training data arm of today's (and tomorrow's) biggest AI and machine learning initiatives means every day we're talking to people building the coolest dang stuff. Hearing about what our customers are up to and what's on their roadmaps is so interesting--these are the technologies of the future! Many of these peeps are just like our customers were before signing on: building mind-blowing things, but facing significant challenges, especially around acquiring and annotating training data. And okay, of course we're interested in their projects and problems--we aim to boost and solve them (respectively). We all like to have a peek into the experiences of our peers, to know what sort of developments they're cookin' up, where they're finding success, and what roadblocks they're hitting.

Silicon Valley, or the Greater Bay Area, is the 18th largest economy in the world, more than half the size of Canada's economy and bigger than Switzerland, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. This is because the region has become the world leader in research and development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, software and virtual reality. "Software is eating the world," said Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen famously in 2011. It was controversial but prescient. Five years later, software-driven machines and drones perform surgery, write news stories, compose music, translate, analyze, wage war, guard, listen, speak and entertain.

Amazon's Echo made controlling music with your voice easy-peasy, but its sound quality could be a lot better. Enter Whyd, an Apple-esque voice-controlled speaker that claims to offer better sound than the Echo, though it lacks all of the smart home functionality of Amazon's product. Its speaker promises louder, clearer omnidirectional sound through its four 40mm full-range drivers, 100mm subwoofer and ported high-pass enclosure for deep bass. Two Whyd speakers can be paired for stereo sound, and multiple speakers can be synced for multi-room audio. It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and AirPlay.

This article was posted by SmileJet on Dev Battles. She paints and writes poetry. She's also an artificial intelligence from the movie Her, which imagines how a juiced-up Siri will change our lives. Now, tech companies large and small are racing to make this a reality. You've heard the jargon: AI, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing.

In the 2013 film Her, Spike Jonze offered his take on a society in which our closest relationships are not with humans but with technology. The movie tells the story of a lonely man who purchases a voice-controlled A.I. that evolves to meet his needs. Samantha, as she's known, eventually becomes so in sync with him that they fall in love. Oddly enough, the technology in Her is not as far off as you might think. At her core, Samantha is an interface capable of interpreting needs through conversation and contextual cues.

Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies -- were, to an extent, successful in derailing the Hugo award ceremony, when an unprecedented number of "No Awards" were handed out. "The Hugos (and the Nebulas too) have lost cachet, because at the same time SFF [Science Fiction and Fantasy] has exploded popularly -- with larger-than-life, exciting, entertaining franchises and products -- the voting body of "fandom" have tended to go in the opposite direction: niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun," science fiction writer Brad Torgersen, who led last year's Sad Puppies campaign, previously wrote in a blog post. Given that the award finalists are determined by ballot by those who have purchased an attending or supporting membership to either current or previous Worldcon events, supporters of the two campaigns managed to overwhelm certain categories with their selections. Williams III (Vertigo) Best dramatic presentation (long form): "The Martian" screenplay by Drew Goddard, directed by Ridley Scott (Scott Free Productions; Kinberg Genre; TSG Entertainment; 20th Century Fox) Best dramatic presentation (short form): Jessica Jones: "AKA Smile" written by Scott Reynolds, Melissa Rosenberg, and Jamie King, directed by Michael Rymer (Marvel Television; ABC Studios; Tall Girls Productions; Netflix) The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo Award, but administered along with the Hugo Awards): Andy Weir

A tweak to Siri's pronunciation of Barbra Streisand's name will be heading to Apple products soon. The US singer complained the virtual assistant was pronouncing her surname wrong. "I called the head of Apple, Tim Cook, and he delightfully agreed to have Siri change the pronunciation of my name, finally," she said on Weekend Edition. Streisand said the second syllable of her name should be pronounced with "a soft S, like sand on the beach". "So let's see if that happens, because I will be thrilled," Streisand told the US show on Saturday.