Amazon Alexa adds kid-friendly skills, lets your child play with SpongeBob and Elmo

We haven’t really seen kid-related skills because of strict child privacy protection laws but Amazon has found a way to comply with the laws and encourage a new set of users to keep using its smart assistant and home speakers. The new Alexa skills rolling out in the US first will let kids play a SpongeBob game and an Elmo-related skill are debuting alongside a new Verified Parental Consent feature, where parents will need to approve use of the features via the Alexa companion app the first time the “kid skill” is enabled. Parents or guardians will need to enter a one-time password via SMS or phone or verify by credit card. It’s a one-time approval process. This new feature is sure to entice more companies itching to reach out to a younger demographic. And making it easier for children to access this tech will make them more reliant on them in the future

The new skills include a SpongeBob SquarePants game where kids need to take and relay increasingly difficult food orders to the staff that include the likes of SpongeBob, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs. For the Sesame Street’s skill, you get to play hide-and-seek with Elmo using audio clues to find out where he’s hiding. You can also practice the alphabet. On top of that, Amazon is launching its own Storytime skills that can read bedtime stories to kids from ages 5 to 12. The collection features stories read by Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant and Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Source: TechCrunch

This animated short shows us what happens when BB-8 and BB-9E meet

The Mirror Match. #StarWarsBlips pic.twitter.com/Gi05f5gNBm

— Star Wars (@starwars) September 2, 2017

We’re still gushing over the appearance of BB-9E a.k.a. BB-H8 a.k.a. BB-8’s evil twin. So what happens when they meet up? A lot of curious spinning around and general adorableness. A new animated short the Star Wars team posted on social media has us wishing the two starred in their own show. You can see BB-8 turn on his curious meter to high and just bug the heck out of BB-9E, it’s cute. You can watch the short in the tweet below.

Source: io9

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Paul Bettany joins Han Solo movie to replace Michael K. Williams

Paul Bettany joins Han Solo movie to replace Michael K. Williams

After The Wire actor Michael K. Williams had to drop out of the Han Solo spinoff movie because of scheduling conflict, it looks like the role itself isn’t being cut but is instead being recast. A recent tweet from the film’s director Ron Howard suggests Paul Bettany might be taking over the role (it was later confirmed by the director in a follow-up tweet). Although, we know it’s not the exact same role. According to SlashFilm, while Bettany will play a character Williams was supposed to play, the character will now be human instead of a motion-capture alien. A Deadline story also claims it might be an entirely new character but will serve the same function as Williams’s character. At the moment we can only speculate what the character will be like. Howard and Bettany have previously worked together on A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code.

With the movie going through reshoots now after the original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller got fired, we’re hoping there isn’t any more controversy surrounding this rather beleaguered production. This might also not be the last time we see Williams in a Lucasfilm production. He expressed no bitterness over the changes and won’t say that this might be the final time we’d see him (or not see him, in this case). The untitled film is set to hit theatres in May 2018.