An Amazon Alexa feature can mimic the voice of your dead relatives

Here's one Amazon Alexa feature I don't think I'll ever want to try. Amazon is experimenting with its AI assistant to let it mimic the voices of users' dead relatives. The company demoed it recently during its MARS conference, where they showed a video of a child asking Alexa to read a bedtime story in the voice of his dead grandmother.

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Amazon finally adds epub support to the Kindle

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It's taken so long (like 15 years), but Amazon's Kindle will finally support the widely-used epub format on its e-reader by the end of the year. It will allow the Send to Kindle function to convert epub files into a file format that can be opened on the Kindle. This news will be widely welcomed by Kindle users who have had to grapple with manually converting their ebook library just so it can work on a Kindle device.

This update means that Kindle will lose support for the MOBI format. This older French file format served as Amazon's proprietary ebook format, which it got when it acquired Mobipocket in 2005. The company then rebranded that to AZW. Those old files will still be accessible on your Kindle, but there won't be any new ebooks in that format.

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Amazon Prime will cost a bit more in Canada

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We've managed to escape Amazon Prime price hikes since it became available in 2013. But that isn't the case anymore. The $8 per month rate will now cost $10, and the $79 per year will now cost $99. Existing users will see the price jump next month after May 13, while new subscribers will pay this higher fee immediately. 

According to the company, the price hike is because it "continues to invest heavily in Prime," including a more comprehensive product selection and the introduction earlier this year of free one-day shipping on items in most Canadian cities without a minimum purchase requirement. The subscription also includes access to its video streaming service, music, e-books, and gaming options. Amazon has been aggressively spending on its movies and TV shows, so it's unsurprising it's starting to ask customers to pay up.

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Amazon casts Walton Goggins for its 'Fallout' show

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Amazon Studios has a show based on Bethesda's Fallout coming out in the future. The studio said it planned to kick off production later this year. We get a casting update for the video game adaptation. Actor Walton Goggins joins the cast in one of its lead roles. Amazon hasn't revealed what role he'll play, but reports claim he could play a ghoul. In Fallout parlance, this refers to someone who mutated due to radiation exposure from the nuclear war. 

The series was announced back in 2020, and it looks like things are finally picking up. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy of Westworld fame are behind the production, with Nolan directing the pilot. Executive producers of the show include Bethesda's Todd Howard, the game director of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.

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