Jeff Bezos is a huge Star Trek fan, no doubt about it. Amazon’s voice-activated assistant Alexa was actually inspired by the show. “Our vision was that, in the long term, it would become like the Star Trek computer,” Bezos told the Washington Post in an interview. “It would be easy to converse with in a very natural way.”
Star Trek: Discovery premieres this Sunday, and to celebrate the new show, which takes place about ten years before the events of the original Star Trek, there are a few new Alexa Star Trek Easter eggs for dedicated Trek fans to discover.
As outlined by Trek News, using your Echo, Tap, or Dot, you can issue various commands from the series to get some cool results. Try “Alexa, open Star Trek” to get a three-part Star Trek quiz, introduced by a star from the new series. “Alexa, damage report” will deliver the latest weather and news headlines. You can add some sound effects with “Beam me up,” “Fire photon torpedoes,” or even “Red alert!”
Geek Wire has uncovered a few more, and there are undoubtedly many others still waiting to be found:
Alexa has a ton of Easter eggs, funny responses that reference various films, television shows, video games, music, and lots more. Turbo Future recently compiled a list of more than 200 amusing questions and comments you can use with Alexa. Many have multiple responses, so be sure to try them several times.
Bezos is such a big Star Trek fan, that he even managed to score a cameo in the Star Trek Beyond movie. Bezos recounted how he got the role in an interview at the 2016 Pathfinder Awards at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
“For years I had been begging Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, to let me be in a Star Trek movie,” he said. “I was very persistent.” He’s easy to miss, decked out in full alien makeup, so if you have the Star Trek Beyond DVD, check out his eight-second scene at the 13:12 mark.
Star Trek: Discovery premiers Sunday, September 24 on CBS, and immediately afterward the next episode will be available on CBS All Access in the U.S. and Canada, and on Netflix for international audiences.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.