Reports earlier this week that Roku had apparently canceled its planned voice assistants may have called the code prematurely.

The Roku voice assistant was originally announced way back in January 2018, but in the time since then, Roku hasn’t said very much about it.

As it turns out, Roku hasn’t canned its voice assistant as originally reported, but when it does finally arrive, it might not be exactly what you’re expecting.

The news that Roku had cancelled its voice assistant came in a profile about the company from The Wall Street Journal.

Since then, Roku has reached out to confirm that its efforts in voice were, in fact, still ongoing.

“We are continuing to build more voice capabilities into our platform,” Roku vice president of communications Tricia Mifsud told SlashGear, noting that those voice capabilities are called “Roku Voice.”

It certainly feels like voice assistants are everywhere these days, with Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all offering their own.

At one point, even Roku said it was working on its own voice assistant, but that announcement came way back in January 2018.

If you’ve been wondering what’s up with Roku’s voice assistant, you definitely aren’t alone, but today we’re receiving some disappointing news on that front.

Roku has confirmed that it has canceled its planned voice assistant.

The news comes in a hefty profile on the company from The Wall Street Journal.

We don’t really learn why the voice assistant has been cancelled, with a spokesperson from the company simply confirming to WSJ that it’s no longer in the works.

Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena bought $42 million worth of property in the Hamptons, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The three properties in Montauk, New York combined are over six acres and include two houses and one guest house, the Journal reports.

Casalena's is reportedly the second-largest residential purchase in Montauk, behind the 2015 purchase of Andy Warhol's former estate for $50 million.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena purchased three waterfront properties totaling over 6 acres in the Hamptons worth $42 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The first property, purchased in 2018 for $22.8 million, includes a 5,000 square-foot, six-bedroom house, according to the report.

Facebook is keen to become a major news distributor again, after being lambasted for years over its role in aiding the spread of misinformation.

A report from the Wall Street Journal last night indicated that the social network is offering major publications multi-million dollar deals to bring them on board its upcoming news service.

The report noted the company’s offer as much as $3 million to some publications; it has already had some discussions with ABC News, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, and the Washington Post.

Hours later, the social network confirmed to CNBC that it’s launching a dedicated news tab this fall.

Earlier in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had mentioned the company wants to introduce this feature by the end of the year.

At the time, he said the company would take on advice from outside the organization to build it the right way.

Facebook has approached several prominent news organizations to license its content for a new news-oriented section of the Facebook site, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

It's a significant change in strategy for the social media giant, which previously explored an ad-sharing model under Facebook's Instant Articles program.

The Journal reports that Facebook has approached a number of news outlets, including ABC News, Dow Jones (parent of the WSJ), The Washington Post, and Bloomberg.

Deals would last for three years, according to sources who talked to the Journal.

The new initiative could launch as early as this year, though it's not clear if any news outlets have actually agreed to Facebook's terms.

Why Facebook might want to do this is easy to see.

Facebook is prepping the launch of a “news tab” that could see media outlets paid millions of dollars in exchange for their content.

News of the plan first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday and was later confirmed by Facebook to Digital Trends, though the social networking giant declined to offer any specific details about the initiative.

Sources claiming to have knowledge of the matter told the Journal that Facebook has so far approached the likes of ABC News, Dow Jones, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg to offer up to $3 million a year in exchange for their news content.

But it’s not currently clear if this figure is per media outlet or a payment to be shared across the companies.

Either way, it marks a move away from the payment model used by Facebook’s Instant Articles, which gives publishers a cut of the revenue generated by ads shown with the stories.

The new section will reportedly allow media outlets to decide how much of an article shows on the site.

Publishers would sign deals lasting as long as three years in some cases, and they would get control over how articles appear on Facebook and whether readers would receive only snippets, like a headline and some text, before being sent to the publisher’s website.

The result could be a revival of the massive amount of referral traffic Facebook used to drive to news publishers and media companies before it began downgrading pages and other, non-individualized forms of News Feed content a few years ago.

The push would be an evolution of Facebook’s ever-changing approach to news, which most recently has seen Facebook promote local content and ditch a plan to move publishers into a separate feed in its mobile app.

Previous efforts have included deals with publishers to make video for its Facebook Live platform, deals with media and entertainment companies to license content and create original content for its Watch platform, and the ill-fated Instant Articles platform that Facebook once hoped would become a dominant standard for news stories.

Last year, Facebook seemed to pull back on its relationship with publishers, with the company’s head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown, telling them to get off the platform if they did’t like it, and the company slashing Watch funding for news shows back in December.

As it began attracting astronomical daily usage, Facebook siphoned away eyeballs and ad dollars from news sites.

Nintendo is said to be using Sharp's "IGZO" screen technology for an upcoming new model of the Switch games console, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sharp's IGZO screen technology "delivers high-resolution, ultra-low power, and slim product profiles, plus exceptionally detailed touch panel capabilities," the company says.

All those things could be beneficial to the Nintendo Switch, a console with a built-in display that can become a hand-held gaming device.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A new upcoming version of the hugely popular Nintendo Switch console — which some are calling the Switch "Pro" — is said to come with a significantly better screen than the current model, according to The Wall Street Journal.

According to Sharp, IGZO screens "delivers high-resolution, ultra-low power, and slim product profiles, plus exceptionally detailed touch panel capabilities."

The FBI is looking for a partner to collect data from your social media profiles, which could pit it against new privacy policies Facebook agreed to as part of its $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

A request for proposal posted on Aug. 8 reveals that the FBI wants to hire a third party contractor to help it scrape to social media data “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The document was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“With increased use of social media platforms by subjects of current FBI investigations and individuals that pose a threat to the United States, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other Social media platforms in a timely fashion,” the FBI wrote in its request.

“Consequently, the FBI needs near real time access to a full range of social media exchanges in order to obtain the most current information available in furtherance of its law enforcement and intelligence missions.”

While the request is from last month, it’s even more relevant in light of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, and President Donald Trump’s call to better use social media to detect and stop mass shooters before they can go on a rampage .

The FBI’s request could, in theory, violate a ban against the use of Facebook data for surveillance services that Facebook agreed to as part of a $5 billion FTC settlement last month.