Technology

Amazon has always tried to push its Alexa-enabled smart speakers as a platform, boasting about the number of third-party “skills” available (more than 100,000 in the most recent count). In our experience, the majority of these skills are useless gimmicks; one-note jokes you install and forget about. But it turns out they might pose a privacy threat, too. The first large-scale study of privacy vulnerabilities in Alexa’s skill ecosystem was carried out by researchers at North Carolina State and Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. They found a number of worrying issues, particularly in the vetting processes Amazon uses to check the integrity of each skill. Here’s a quick summary of their findings: Activating the wrong skill. Since 2017, Alexa will automatically enable skills if users ask the r...

Eight weeks and nine episodes later, WandaVision has come to an end. It may not have delivered the bang some fans were expecting, but there is still plenty of story that WandaVision sets up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s fourth phase. Before we get into that, the biggest question is whether WandaVision nailed the ending. Like too many third acts within the MCU, big, splashy CGI fights in lieu of more nuanced storytelling can sometimes get in the way of providing a satisfying, emotional closure for fans. At the same time, WandaVision never lost sight of the story it wanted to tell, the show it wanted to be, and the finale does a mostly decent job of hitting those final notes. Sure, there are some rushed sequences and scenes compacted into a couple of minutes that could have stretched o...

Hogwarts Legacy developer Troy Leavitt has left the project following criticism of videos that defended the reactionary Gamergate harassment movement and dismissed sexual misconduct complaints against media executives. Leavitt tweeted the news last night, saying he had resigned from studio Avalanche Software despite feeling “absolutely secure in my position.” Leavitt was the lead designer on Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world roleplaying game set in the Harry Potter universe. Last month, Did You Know Gaming? contributor Liam Robertson highlighted a YouTube channel where Leavitt posted videos between 2016 and 2018. The videos attacked social justice activism and defended figures like Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and Pixar co-founder John Lasseter, both of whom have been accused of sexual har...

A potential animation for Twitter’s long-rumored “undo send” feature has been discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, giving us our best look yet at how it might work. The interface shows Twitter’s familiar “Your Tweet was sent” dialog above a new “Undo” button. The undo button doubles as a progress bar, which appears to show you how long you have to undo a tweet before it gets sent. Gmail offers a similar option for emails, where it provides a short window to stop messages from being sent after clicking the “Send” button. “Undo send” has been a rumored part of a paid Twitter subscription tier after it was first mentioned in a user survey last year. It might not be the “edit button” that Twitter users have been requesting forever (and which will probably never happen), but it would...

Google says it will speed up how it releases Chrome updates. Starting with Chrome 94 in Q3, 2021, Google will release milestones of its browser every four weeks, instead of every six weeks. This is the first time Google has sped up its Chrome release schedule for more than a decade. “As we have improved our testing and release processes for Chrome, and deployed bi-weekly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we could shorten our release cycle and deliver new features more quickly,” explains Alex Mineer, a technical program manager at Chrome. IT admins can stick to an eight-week version of Chrome While consumers will see a new version of Chrome every month, IT administrators will be able to opt for a new Extended Stable option that includes milestone releases every...

Satechi has released a new USB-C hub for your laptop to add all the ports that it arguably should have included in the first place. Although the port selection on the $99.99 USB-C On-the-Go Multiport Adapter is similar to other hubs, the high spec of each port makes Satechi’s device worthy of attention. As well as laptops, it also works with USB-C tablets like recent iPad Pro models. The hub’s got HDMI, which offers a maximum resolution of 4K and refresh rate of 60Hz, and there’s USB-C PD pass-through charging at up to 100W (though you have to provide your own power brick). The cable for attaching it to your device isn’t fixed like it is on some hubs, and Satechi supplies two USB-C to USB-C cables with the hub. One’s 1-m long, and there’s a second short cable that can be tucked into the hu...

Getaround, the peer-to-peer car-sharing service, is launching a new program to help support people who want to rent out more than just a couple of cars. The program is called Power Host, and it’s designed to help customers manage small fleets of shared vehicles. Getaround, which operates in 800 cities globally and has over 6 million users, created the program in response to a growing number of its customers seeking to start a small car-sharing business for themselves. After an initial steep drop in bookings after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Getaround has since seen its demand bounce back. And now people are looking for ways to use the platform in a more professional capacity. “We just started seeing a significant increase in owners who had a few cars [and] who wanted to buy more,” ...

RedMagic, the gaming brand of ZTE subdivision Nubia, has launched a new smartphone in collaboration with Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent. The RedMagic 6 and 6 Pro are high-end devices available to order now in China, with a global launch coming later this month. The RedMagic 6 has an Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, active fan cooling, and a 6.8-inch 1080p OLED display with a refresh rate of 165Hz, making it the fastest phone screen on the market today. RedMagic is also claiming a single-finger touch sampling rate of up to 500Hz, or up to 360Hz with multitouch. The touch-sensitive capacitive “shoulder triggers” on the side, meanwhile, are sampled at up to 400Hz. The RedMagic 6 Pro is mostly identical, but it comes with up to 18GB of RAM and has a faster 120W charging system that Re...

Blizzard wasn’t kidding when it told Polygon that the new remastered Diablo II would be faithful to the original. You’ll even be able to pick up where you left off with your 20-year-old savegames, IGN Middle East reports. “Yes! Yes, keep those!” producer Matthew Cederquist told journalists, saying that the team called it “the best feature ever.” As a lapsed player myself, the very idea is giving me chills — dangerous ones, ones that I imagine are akin to what Gollum felt in The Lord of the Rings when he decided to pull The One Ring off his brother’s throttled corpse. I thought I could safely leave this game behind, but no. It seems I may need to track down an old friend soon. Staying the hell away from this. True story: I had to give my fairly valuable account and discs to a friend sworn t...

T-Mobile has been busy hawking its 5G network, recently spending many additional billions to expand it, which makes it kinda awkward that it’s also been caught telling users to turn off 5G to save battery life (via Sascha Segan). Didn’t Verizon just make this same gaff mere days ago? It sure did. But instead of learning from the example, T-Mobile appears to have pulled a hold-my-beer: where Verizon told users to switch to LTE, many of T-Mobile’s support documents tell users to go all the way back to 2G. In case you’re not aware, switching to 2G (which T-Mobile handily tells you how to do) will make your phone next to useless as a data device: the maximum theoretical speed you could get from a 2G connection would be around 1Mbps (though many top out at closer to 256Kbps). Even 1Mbps is 25 t...

Apple’s Find My app might get a new safety feature to help prevent someone from using the kinds of devices tracked in the app to stalk you instead. “Item Safety Alerts”, spotted in the iOS 14.5 beta, will notify you if an unknown device being tracked on Find My is “moving with you” so you can remove it or disable it, 9to5Mac reports. The feature seems designed to counteract a scenario where a Find My-compatible device is hidden in a pocket or bag and then used to track someone’s movements. The Item Safety Alerts setting was found in early versions of iOS 14.3, according to AppleInsider, but was removed until its reappearance in iOS 14.5. The setting is enabled by default in the beta and Apple seems to want it to stay on. If you turn off the setting off, the system will warn you that unknow...

Razer is tonight formally announcing its Anzu “smart” glasses, which follow Bose, Amazon, and other companies by integrating audio speakers directly into the glasses temples. The $199.99 Anzu glasses will be available in both rectangular and round frames, and each will come in two sizes: small and large. You can place an order beginning today. Two sets of lenses come in the retail package: a regular, clear pair that offers 35 percent blocking against blue light, and Razer also throws in sunglass lenses with 99 percent UV protection. Image: Razer But Razer has deviated from competitors with its approach to audio glasses: the company has used a true wireless design that completely splits the left and right speakers. Razer says this allows for improved comfort since the frames allow for more ...