Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge BMW owners have been able to use Amazon’s Alexa as their in-car voice assistant since 2018. But the automaker announced that it will be taking things a step further, using Amazon’s Alexa core technology to build its own custom voice assistant. The voice assistant will be built using…
Monthly Archives: September 2022
Image: Amazon Amazon has announced the Halo Rise, a bedside device meant to track your sleep and wake you up in the morning using lights and a “small alarm speaker,” as a press release describes it. The company says the Rise uses “contactless” technology, meaning you don’t have to put on something like a fitness…
The Blink Mini camera attached to the new Pan Tilt mount. | Image: Amazon Blink’s giving its blocky Mini security camera a new robot body. The new Mini Pan Tilt is a very literally named mounting accessory that converts your existing Blink Mini camera from a stationary device into a controllable camera that lets you…
Ubisoft You’re not gonna believe this, but Skull and Bones is getting delayed again. The news was first reported by Kotaku and later confirmed by Ubisoft a little less than two months before the game’s November 8th release date. “Our team is hard at work polishing and balancing the experience ahead of the worldwide launch,”…
No wires on the battery version of the Cam Pro. | Image: Ring Ring’s got a new top-of-the-line “Pro” security camera that packs all of the company’s advanced features into a more versatile design, complete with wire-free options for the first time. The Spotlight Cam Pro adds radar-powered 3D motion detection, color pre-roll, and Bird’s…
Echo speakers will join the newest Echo Dot speakers as Eero Wi-Fi range extenders for an Eero. If you’ve been eyeing your Echo smart speaker for a while now and wondering if it could do something more than just play music or set a timer for your toast, I have good news. Amazon is turning…
Wires in the wall — what a concept. | Image: Eero When it comes to networking, Wi-Fi is great for convenience, but it can’t hold a candle to wires when it comes to performance and plain old reliability. Amazon seems to have taken this idea to heart because it’s introducing an ethernet jack-laden gateway, which…
The latest Fire TV Cube has a fabric finish. | Image: Amazon Amazon just announced its latest and most powerful Fire TV Cube to date. Like past models, the $139.99 streaming player has built-in microphones for voice controls and a speaker for playing back Alexa’s responses. It’s the most capable of the company’s streaming players…
The Fire TV Omni QLED TVs include full-array local dimming for better contrast and black levels. | Image: Amazon Amazon’s first self-branded TV sets were aimed squarely at budget shoppers and prioritized value and good software over sheer picture quality. The Fire TV Omni lineup runs the same software as the company’s popular streaming device…
An example of DALL-E’s “outpainting” ability — extending an image beyond its current borders. | Image: OpenAI OpenAI has scrapped the wait list for access to its text-to-image system DALL-E 2, meaning anyone can sign up to use the AI art generator immediately. The company unveiled the original DALL-E in January 2021, with the tool…