At its Alexa event on Wednesday, Amazon announced a new low-bandwidth network called Amazon Sidewalk that could extend the range at which you can control your devices beyond what Bluetooth and Wi-Fi currently allow. Amazon Sidewalk taps the 900MHz band of the radio spectrum — typically used for amateur radio — to extend the distance at which …
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Huawei isn’t letting the US blacklisting slow down its 5G plans, it seems. Ren Zhengfei, the controversial Chinese telecom‘s founder and CEO, said the company is already producing next-generation wireless base stations without American parts, according to Reuters. After testing in August and September, Huawei will make 5,000 stations a month from October, Ren reportedly said. The company apparently intends …
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As anticipated, OnePlus is expanding beyond phones and into televisions, but don’t expect to replace your current living-room setup right away. In addition to announcing the new OnePlus 7T, on Thursday the Chinese smartphone maker introduced its first televisions, the OnePlus TV Q1 and Q1 Pro, but it’s keeping the initial launch limited to India. The new televisions are largely similar …
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The free-to-start Mario Kart Tour pulled up to the start line on iPhones and Android devices on Wednesday, bringing with it a pricey subscription option. The Gold Pass, which costs $4.99 a month, lets you access 200cc mode, extra in-game rewards for racing and exclusive bonus goals. It’s also the same monthly price as Apple Arcade, which gives you access to …
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Standing in a demo room that overlooked the Space Needle at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, Alexa hardware executive Miriam Daniel smiled as she encouraged me to stick a pair of Echo Buds in my ears. The space was noisy and chaotic, punctuated repeatedly by Alexa chiming in with different responses. I tapped the side of the earbuds twice, then suddenly there …
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The US Justice Department plans to investigate Facebook to determine whether it violated federal antitrust laws, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The investigation, reportedly begun at the urging of US Attorney General William Barr, comes as the Federal Trade Commission conducts its own investigation into whether the social media giant illegally harmed competition. While the FTC’s probe focuses on whether Facebook’s acquisitions …
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YouTube, Google‘s massive online video site, is about to embark on the biggest changes yet to kids videos. The company is reengineering how it treats clips directed at children, following this month’s record $170 million penalty for violating kids’ data privacy. YouTube pledged to disable comments, notifications and personalized ads on all videos directed at children, and its machine learning will police YouTube’s sprawling …
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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki rejected calls to spin off YouTube, Google’s massive online video service, from the search giant and its parent company, Alphabet. “We use technology from Google that’s really helpful, like all the machine learning … to find the violative content. Being able to do that at scale, we benefit from the Google technology,” she said Wednesday at the …
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Google released the Android 10 Go edition for budget-friendly phones on Wednesday. Not only will the mobile software help phones run faster than before, but it also adds more security, the company said. Android 10 Go edition is for phones with 1.5 GB of RAM or less. While it doesn’t have all the features of Android 10, the new version of …
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Apple’s App Store has some problems, but Google’s Play Store is a mess: a confusing wall of icons punctuated by ads disguised as suggestions and useless recommendations. Search results appear in no discernibly logical order, and in-app purchase information and other pertinent details can be buried in low-contrast gray text at the bottom of a page that’s already a wall …
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