Technology

The Village Voice is dead — at least, as a functioning journalistic organization.

Starting today, the legendary alternative newspaper will no longer publish new stories. Gothamist reports that at a staff meeting, owner Peter Barbey said that about half the team would be laid off, while the other half would remain on-board for now to &wind things down& and work on creating a digital Voice archive.

Barbey acquired the Voice in 2015 and took the paper online-only last year. In a statement released today, he said:

In recent years, the Voice has been subject to the increasingly harsh economic realities facing those creating journalism and written media. Like many others in publishing, we were continually optimistic that relief was around the next corner. Where stability for our business is, we do not know yet. The only thing that is clear now is that we have not reached that destination.

The Village Voice was created to give speed to a cultural and social revolution, and its legacy and the voices that created that legacy are still relevant today. Perhaps more than ever. Its archives are an indispensable chronicle of history and social progress. Although the Voice will not continue publishing, we are dedicated to ensuring that its legacy will endure to inspire more generations of readers and writers to give even more speed to those same goals.

Some of that wording suggests that although The Voiceeditorial operations are ending, Barbey may still be working to salvage or sell parts of the company. In fact, Gothamist says that he told staff that hebeen talking to potential buyers, and that &for some of them this is something we&d have to do before they could talk to us any further.&

Italso worth noting that Gothamist itself had a recent brush with death, having shut down last year before being revived by public media organization WNYC.

The Google Pixel 3 XL has had a truly comical amount of leaks to date, but for the most part its younger, smaller brother has been a bit a more camera-shy. Well, today we finally have some purported photos of the real-life baby Pixel 3 via an anonymous Reddit user who leaked the shots that were discovered by 9to5Google.

The device seems to have a modest forehead and chin, certainly a bit larger than what we&ve seen on the screen-to-body ratio of the Pixel XL 3 photo leaks, but it seems to be a marked improvement over the smaller-bodied Pixel 2 and seems pretty similar to a miniature Pixel 2 XL in design.

We also have some screenshots of the phonespecs pointing to a 5.5 inch 2160 x 1080 display thatrocking 440 dpi. From this leak we also can see that the battery capacity of the phone will likely be 2,915 mAh. Previous leaks have suggested that this will be a Snapdragon 845 withAdreno 630 GPU and 4GB RAM.

At this point, what don&t we know about this phone Well, if history holds, Google likely will be unveiling the new devices at a hardware event in October, so we&ll find out soon whether the company has any tricks up its sleeves.

Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out a new feature that allowed Alexa device owners to create their own custom skills using preconfigured templates. Today, Amazon is expanding Alexa Blueprints, as the service is called, to include a handful of new templates designed for families and roommates.

These include a chore chart template, a house rules template for roommates, and others.

The Chore Chart template allows families to schedule and track childrenweekly chores, and even lets multiple kids (or anyone, really) compete to see who has done the most. Parents first configure the skill with a list of weekly chores and who those chores are assigned to.

Throughout the week, the kids can log their completed chores by asking Alexa. (&Alexa, ask Chore Chart to log a chore.&). Anyone can then check the progress by asking for the &Chore Score.&

Another blueprint is a variation on the existing &houseguest& and &babysitter& templates, which let you fill in useful information about the home, like where to find the TV remote or what the Wi-Fi password is, for example. The new &Roommate& blueprint, available now, lets you program in other information about the house, like the &house rules.&

You can have Alexa nag users to turn off the lights or run the dishwasher when they ask for the &house rules& for a given room.This passive aggressive roommate shaming system may not be the most useful & unless maybe used to poke fun & however, the template also lets you program in other important contacts, like the landlord or building manager.

The two other new blueprints are more lighthearted in nature.

One, &Whose Turn,& will have Alexa either randomly pick whose turn it is to take on a particular task & like walking the dog & or she can pick from the next name in the list, depending on how itconfigured.

Similarly, the &What To Do& skill will let Alexa make the decision when you&re stumped about what activity to do next. Alexa can pick what movie or TV show to watch from a list you configure, and can even suggest whatfor dinner, if you program in a list of favorite meals. This is also clearly intended more for parents with kids, who like to incorporate Alexa into family discussions and activities, as a third-party arbitrator of disputes, so to speak.

Many of the existing blueprints are already family-friends, like the family jokes, trivia, and stories. Amazon said in June that Alexa Skill Blueprints& adoption has been higher than expected, when it introduced a way for people to share their custom blueprints with others.

The new blueprints are live now, bringing the total number of customizable skills to 41.