Amazon had plenty of new gadgets to share at its Echo hardware event this year, along with updates to the AI-powered Alexa Plus after it became available to everyone in the US in February. But the big news this year is screens: devices with big, beautiful ones, and those that lack them entirely. There’s the […]
Amazon has just taken the wraps off a bunch of new devices as part of a string of fall announcements. Today's news focuses largely on new Echo speakers, with a few new smart home gadgets sprinkled in. Here's a roundup of all of the updates Amazon revealed on Wednesday. Echo Show 16 adds a larger […]
Amazon's smart home map interface that shows you where all your connected devices are has been overhauled with new graphics, features, and dynamic effects. The new Alexa Home Map is now an interactive 3D view of not just everything that's inside your property, but outside of it too - using compatible Ring cameras to provide […]
Amazon just announced its newest smart alarm clock - the Echo Time. The baseball-sized smart speaker with a screen, the Time looks like an Echo Dot with Clock and an Echo Spot had a much bigger baby. It features a 3.2-inch touchscreen that prominently displays your choice of a huge selection of clockfaces and includes […]
Amazon's latest Echo Show smart display is big, gorgeous, and eye-wateringly expensive. Announced today, the Echo Show 16 costs $499.99 (wall mount included) and is available to preorder now. There's a Nanomatte display option for $569.99, plus a $100 preorder discount ahead of its release later this year. After spending time with the device at […]
Amazon is giving its premium smart speaker a camera. The new Echo Studio with Home Camera, announced today as part of Amazon's big blast of announcements, has a built-in camera for monitoring a room while you're away, showing things to Alexa, and, soon, to use with video calls on Fire TV devices. It's an iteration […]
Kroger's $1.65 billion proposed acquisition of Giant Eagle might not only consolidate the grocery market, but also a vast surveillance network that includes Flock cameras, a new report warns. Beyond standard concerns that a merger could decrease competition and increase prices, the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), which advocates for competition policy reforms, says that […]
Amazon's screen-equipped smart speakers have long been able to display your family's photos, but its new Alexa Photo Frame is purpose-built for that task. It's designed to compete with other digital picture frames from companies like Aura, and Amazon's incorporates a smart speaker with access to Alexa Plus' capabilities through voice commands. However, unlike the […]
Ask Texas NAACP president Gary Bledsoe what it's been like to see data center developers descend upon Austin and its surrounding suburbs and he can rattle off project after project facing opposition from locals. There's the fight in Taylor over plans to build a data center at a site that's supposed to be a park. […]
As Meta was feeling public pressure over teen mental health, and facing an impending onslaught of kids safety trials, the company considered a campaign to discredit a key critic: social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Newly filed court documents show that in March 2023, Meta discussed a "Whisper strategy" to "turn academics against Haidt," a thought leader […]
Meta has launched a "tamagotchi-style" pet game called Waddle World, with virtual creatures that chat with users and create doodles to illustrate conversations. According to its Apple and Play Store listings, the "16-bit pet care game" is not really a game, but "a daily journal disguised as a pet." Users should talk, not type, with […]
Within hours of the iPhone Duo launch last Friday, people reported that the inner screen on some brand new foldable phones was already broken. The issue was similar across many photos shared on social media: some kind of issue or crack would appear in the middle of the screen above the hinge, with lines appearing […]
