Paramount+ will get a bit more expensive later this year as it folds in Showtime's streaming service. The Premium tier of Paramount+, which will be renamed to Paramount+ With Showtime, will soon cost $12 per month, up from the current $10, as Variety reports. The ad-supported tier, which will not include Showtime, is going up from $5 to $6 per month.

Paramount Global will increase the prices when it merges the two services, which is expected to happen early in the third quarter of this year (i.e., around July or August). The price hikes will be effective in the US and some other markets, according to The Verge. They'll be the first price increases since CBS All Access became Paramount+ two years ago.

There are now almost 56 million Paramount+ subscribers. The service added 9.9 million members in the last quarter of 2022, with the likes of NFL games, Yellowstone and Top Gun: Maverick drawing new users in. Revenue also increased by 81 percent compared with the same quarter in 2021 to around $800 million. As for the ad-supported Pluto TV service, the number of global monthly active users increased by 6.5 million to just under 79 million.

However, Paramount Global executives warned investors on an earnings call the company ran into significant "headwinds" in 2022 and that this won't be a "robust year" for profits. CEO Bob Bakish said that ,for Paramount+, "we are at peak investment in 2023."

Paramount Global expects to take a writedown of between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion as an impairment charge as it merges Paramount+ and Showtime in the US. The writedown, according to chief financial officer Naveen Chopra, is "all about content, driven by the fact that when we combine Showtime and Paramount+, we don’t need the kind of content you would need if they were operating on an independent basis." The company hopes that the move will save it as much as $700 million.

PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab will soon give players more stuff to clean up with their trusty pressure washers, as it's adding another free crossover expansion. Five levels set in Final Fantasy VII's Midgard are coming to the game on March 2nd.

You'll be able to team up with some friends and blast away muck from Cloud's Hardy Daytona motorcycle, the interior of Tifa Lockheart’s Seventh Heaven bar and even the Scorpion Sentinel and Airbuster bosses. You'll get jobs from both Avalanche and Shinra, and learn more about members of each through text messages. There are new types of grime to deal with as well, such as bio-residue.

The Midgar Special Pack follows on from five free levels set around Lara Croft's Croft Manor that FuturLab and publisher Square Enix rolled out last month as part of the Tomb Raider Special Pack. They're neat additions to a very enjoyable and relaxing first-person game that lets you clean up disgusting virtual vehicles and environments without having to do ridiculous things like buying a pressure washer or going outside.

FuturLab/Square Enix

Sony has revealed the games it's bringing to the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium tiers this month and the latest slate of additions is a doozy. The obvious headliner is Horizon Forbidden West, one of the few major first-party PS5 games to date. The terrific sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn debuted a year ago and it was one of the top 10 best-selling games of 2022 in the US, according to NPD data (not accounting for digital sales on Switch and Xbox). Both the PS4 and PS5 versions will be available for subscribers to snag.

It's a pretty long game — the main story alone clocks in at around 28 hours. Still, PS Plus Extra and Premium members will have plenty of time to play through Aloy's latest big adventure before the PS5-only Burning Shores expansion arrives on April 19th.

The rest of the February lineup is nothing to sniff at either. You'll soon be able to check out PS4 and PS5 versions of The Quarry, Outriders, Bandai Namco's action RPG Scarlet Nexus, The Forgotten City and Borderlands 3 at no extra cost if you have an Extra or Premium subscription. The PS4 versions of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Tekken 7, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Earth Defense Force 5, Oninaki, Lost Sphear and I am Setsuna will be available as well.

That's not all as Premium subscribers will gain access to PlayStation 1 titles The Legend of Dragoon, Wild Arms 2 and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature with extra features such as up-rendering, rewind, quick save, and custom video filters. The PS4 remake of Destroy All Humans! is on the way to that tier too. All of these games will be available to claim starting on February 21st.

Meanwhile, those on the PS Plus Essential tier can also add a solid batch of games to their library this month. OlliOlli World, Mafia: Definitive Edition, Evil Dead: The Game and Destiny 2: Beyond Light are available to claim until March 6th. On the downside, Sony will ditch the PS Plus Collection, which grants members who have a PS5 access to a whole bunch of PS4 games, on May 9th. Be sure to add those titles to your library before then.

Extrapolations, a drama series focusing on the near-future impacts of climate change, is coming to Apple TV+ next month. The streaming service has released the first trailer, which shows off a cast stuffed full of big names. Among the stars featured in the show are Meryl Streep, Sienna Miller, Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Edward Norton, Yara Shahidi, Matthew Rhys, Gemma Chan, David Schwimmer, Keri Russell, Marion Cotillard, Forest Whitaker, Tobey Maguire and Murray Bartlett (who was most recently seen in The Last of Us).

The eight-episode series showcases "interwoven stories about love, work, faith and family," Apple says. Extrapolations depicts how people from around the planet are adapting (or perhaps not) to the effects of climate change. It covers a several-decade span in the middle of the 21st century, by which time humans have landed on Mars.

Given the cast and the visual effects-packed trailer, it's clear Apple has spared little expense on this series. The clip shows a future version of Manhattan protected by sea walls and hints at technology that might allow humans to "thrive" in a world further wracked by climate change.

Contagion writer and An Inconvenient Truth producer Scott Z. Burns created the show. The first three episodes of Extrapolations will premiere on Apple TV+ on March 17th, with the remaining five arriving on a weekly basis.

Meta's Oversight Board says it will review more cases and fast-track some within as little as 48 hours. "Increasing the number of decisions we produce, and the speed at which we do so, will let us tackle more of the big challenges of content moderation, and respond more quickly in situations with urgent real-world consequences," the board wrote in a blog post.

Although previous versions of the Oversight Board's bylaws mentioned expedited reviews of Facebook and Instagram content moderation cases, it has not used this process so far. Under the board's revised charter and bylaws, Meta can now refer expedited cases to the board with relevant information and an explanation as to why it felt an urgent review was necessary. If the board's co-chairs decide to take on an expedited case, Meta "agrees to be bound by the board’s ultimate determination," the bylaws state.

A panel (instead of the board's entire 23-strong membership) will review expedited cases and come to a decision that's posted on the Oversight Board's website within as little as 48 hours. The board notes, however, that this process can take up to 30 days. The target timeframe for standard decisions that demand more in-depth reviews is 90 days.

The board won't take public comments into account for expedited cases due to time constraints. It might also choose to carry out expedited reviews of user appeals.

Meanwhile, the Oversight Board plans to publish its first summary decisions. It said that after a committee chooses a list of cases that the board may consider, Meta sometimes reverses its original decision. The company has done so around 80 times so far, mostly to restore content it originally yanked. The board notes that while it has published full decisions on some of these cases, they've largely been summarized in transparency reports.

Moving forward, a committee will choose some of these cases in which Meta changed its mind. A panel (not the full board) will review them and publish summary decisions. These will include details about the original decision that Meta walked back and they won't take public comments into account. "We believe that these cases hold important lessons and can help Meta avoid making the same mistakes in the future," the board said.

Since it formed just over two years ago, the board has published 35 case decisions relating to moves by Facebook and Instagram to remove content or allow it to remain on the platforms. Last quarter alone, Meta users submitted 193,137 cases for review.

While it's unlikely that the board's latest steps mean it will review anything close to the full number of cases it receives, the group should be able to address high-profile, urgent cases more quickly, such as Meta's decision to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump from its platforms due to his influence over the January 6th, 2021 insurrection. The company restored his accounts earlier this month, but Trump has yet to post on them again.

Meanwhile, the Oversight Board has published its latest quarterly transparency report (PDF). The body says it has now made 196 policy recommendations to Meta, "many of which are already improving people’s experiences of Facebook and Instagram." By the end of October, the company had fully implemented 24 of the recommendations and had made progress on enacting dozens of others (Meta did not provide its fourth quarter update to the board before the transparency report was published).

The Oversight Board has also added a new board member. Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and the Director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. The board noted that he specializes in constitutional law; antidiscrimination law; and law and literature.

Discord is expanding Stage Channels, its Clubhouse- and Twitter Spaces-style feature that puts a spotlight on a small group of speakers broadcasting a conversation to a larger audience. Stage Channels debuted almost two years ago as an audio-only feature, but that's all about to change as Discord is adding video feeds, screen sharing and text chat to the mix.

Up to five participants can share their video feed. Someone else can can share their screen at the same time. As ever, no audience members' audio or video will be broadcast unless they're invited to join the speakers.

Because video uses a lot more bandwidth than audio, Discord has imposed some limits. Any server with the free Community features switched on can enable video and screen sharing in Stages with up to 50 people, including the hosts. Still, Discord points out that's double the maximum viewer limit for video chat in regular voice channels. Boosted servers can have up to 150 people in a video Stage at Tier 2 and 300 at Tier 3.

Discord

Text chat, meanwhile, is the same as in voice channels. You can select "Show Chat" on the top right of the panel and ask questions or comment on what speakers are discussing. Additionally, moderators have the ability to only allow users with certain assigned roles to share video or their screen on a server.

Meanwhile, as you're waiting for a Stage to begin, Discord will now play waiting room music. If you'd rather not hear it, you can switch off the music by hitting the eighth note (♫) button.

Although Discord users won't be able to broadcast their video Stage chats to as many users as they can on the likes of Twitch, this will surely be a welcome update for users. Folks have used Stage Channels to run AMAs, fireside chats, live podcast recordings, beatboxing contests and other events. Now, creators can use the feature for premium gameplay streams if they want.

Adding video to the mix gives users more flexibility without moderators having to mute and unmute too many people. It's useful for audience members too, since it'll be harder to accidentally unmute yourself during a Discord video presentation. Make sure your mic muting hotkey isn't one you press often, folks!

Despite pumping the brakes on some growth plans and recently saying it would lay off more than 18,000 people, Amazon is still looking to expand its empire. The company intends to “go big” on its brick-and-mortar grocery store business, CEO Andy Jassy told the Financial Times.

Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, but the company is far from dominating the grocery market like it has so many other sectors. The company's physical store division accounts for 3.4 percent of overall business and has grown only around 10 percent since the Whole Foods acquisition.

“We’re just still in the early stages,” Jassy told the Financial Times. “We’re hopeful that in 2023, we have a format that we want to go big on, on the physical side. We have a history of doing a lot of experimentation and doing it quickly. And then, when we find something that we like, doubling down on it, which is what we intend to do.”

Many of the layoffs Amazon recently announced were in its grocery division. It has closed several of its Fresh supermarkets and put plans to open new ones on hold as it tries to find a format and formula that works. Jassy noted that many Fresh locations opened in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and as such Amazon hasn't "had a lot of normalcy."

The physical retail business has struggled on other fronts. Almost a year ago, Amazon said it was closing all of its bookstores, 4-star shops and pop-up locations across the US and UK. The aim at the time was to focus more on the grocery side of things as well as physical clothing stores. However, Amazon took a $720 million hit last quarter due to slowing down its grocery expansion plans.

An artificial intelligence agent recently flew the Lockheed Martin VISTA X-62A training aircraft for over 17 hours. VISTA (which stands for Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft) can use software to simulate the performance characteristics of other aircraft. On this occasion, it mimicked a human pilot instead.

The flight took place during a testing period in December. This is the first time that AI has been engaged in such a way on a tactical aircraft, Lockheed says. The aim is to use the platform to test aircraft designs that can be flown autonomously. 

"VISTA will allow us to parallelize the development and test of cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques with new uncrewed vehicle designs," US Air Force Test Pilot School (USAF TPS) director of research Dr. M. Christopher Cotting said in a statement. "This approach, combined with focused testing on new vehicle systems as they are produced, will rapidly mature autonomy for uncrewed platforms and allow us to deliver tactically relevant capability to our warfighter."

Lockheed's skunk works division worked with Calspan to build VISTA for the USAF TPS at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Among other things, the VISTA program has been used to develop the virtual heads-up display and voice command input system for the F-35 Lightning II.

The USAF recently upgraded the VISTA X-62A with Lockheed's Model Following Algorithm (MFA) and System for Autonomous Control of the Simulation (SACS). When integrated, these systems help VISTA carry out advanced flight tests that harness autonomy and AI.

A viral video trend in Japan has got sushi conveyor-belt restaurants racing to prevent food tampering. One chain, Kura Sushi, said it will use artificial intelligence to look for "suspicious opening and closing of sushi plate covers," Nikkei Asia reported this week.

Kura Sushi plans to start upgrading existing cameras, which are used to track the dishes customers take from conveyor belts to determine their bill, by early March. If the system detects suspicious behavior, it will alert employees.

"We want to deploy our AI-operated cameras to monitor if customers put the sushi they picked up with their hands back on the plates,” a spokesman told CNN. “We are confident we will be able to upgrade the systems we already have in place to deal with these kind of behaviors.”

Many folks in Japan have been outraged by a trend dubbed "sushi terrorism." Videos have shown people carrying out unhygienic acts, such as licking the spoon for a container of green tea powder. Other videos have shown patrons dumping wasabi onto sushi as it passes by on the conveyor belt.

Another video, which apparently has more than 98 million views on Twitter, showed a person licking the top of a soy sauce bottle and the rim of a teacup before putting them back at a branch of the Sushiro chain. They also licked a finger and touched a piece of passing sushi. The clip and the response to it caused the stock of Sushiro's parent company to drop almost five percent.

Sushiro said it replaced all the soy sauce bottles and cleaned every cup at the affected restaurant. Like other conveyor-belt sushi chains, it's enacted other policies like only making food to order to deter tampering and assure hygiene-conscious customers that restaurants are clean.

Kura Sushi has used AI in other ways. In 2020, it emerged that the company was using an app that can grade tuna. At least at the time, Kura Sushi was buying most of its tuna from outside of Japan. The app was said to help it evaluate the quality of the cuts without having to travel in the midst of a pandemic.

Amazon has put many of its Ring video doorbells and cameras on sale for up to 35 percent off. One of the most notable price drops is for the Video Doorbell 4, which has returned to a record low of $170. That's 23 percent off the regular price of $220.

It offers 1080p video and improved battery life over previous models, Amazon claims. You can run the Video Doorbell 4 wirelessly or hook it up to existing doorbell wiring. It can connect to 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi networks and it has interchangeable face plates. There are color video previews for all detected motion events. Moreover, a quick replies function allows you to set common responses that trigger when someone comes to your door. For instance, it might ask a delivery person to place a package in a certain spot and invite them to leave a voice message for you.

Several other Ring devices have dropped to record low prices as part of this sale, including the battery-powered Spotlight Cam Plus. It's currently available for $130, or 35 percent off the usual price of $200. The 1080p camera offers color night vision and a way to access a live feed at any time. You can set up customizable motion zones, so you'll only be notified about activity that's, say, close to your door or windows. There are two motion-activated LED spotlights, a built-in security siren and a two-way talk function.

The battery-powered Stick Up Cam is on sale as well, as it's down from $100 to $70. This can be perched on a flat indoor surface or mounted outside. It offers 1080p video, two-way talk and real-time notifications. As with the Video Doorbell 4 and Spotlight Cam Plus, the battery pack has a quick-release function.

You can also save on the more compact Ring Indoor Cam, which has dropped by $10 to $50. This has similar functions to the Stick Up Cam, but it's designed for indoor use and has to be plugged into a power outlet. Like the other products, it works with Alexa, and you can use an Echo Show, Echo Spot or the Ring app to see what the camera is capturing.