Oral-B bricking Alexa toothbrush is cautionary tale against buzzy tech
Enlarge / Oral-B released the Guide in 2020, making promises of Alexa-powered convenience, which it ended in 2022. P&G As we’re currently seeing with AI, when a new technology becomes buzzy, companies will do almost anything to cram that tech into their products. Trends fade, however, and corporate priorities shift—resulting in bricked gadgets and buyer's…
How I upgraded my water heater and discovered how bad smart...
Enlarge / This is essentially the kind of water heater the author has hooked up, minus the Wi-Fi module that led him down a rabbit hole. Also, not 140-degrees F—yikes.Getty Images The hot water took too long to come out of the tap. That is what I was trying to solve. I did not intend…
UK outlaws awful default passwords on connected devices
Getty Images If you build a gadget that connects to the Internet and sell it in the United Kingdom, you can no longer make the default password "password." In fact, you're not supposed to have default passwords at all. A new version of the 2022 Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act (PTSI) is now in…
Home Assistant has a new foundation and a goal to become...
Open Home Foundation Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project. The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it's also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It's entirely free, but it also receives funding…
The best Amazon Echo devices of 2024
When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more When it comes to welcoming Alexa into your home, you've got a lot of devices to choose from. Amazon's own selection of Echo products is a great place to start, and the lineup is versatile, catering to every kind of…
Airbnb bans creepy surveillance cameras inside rentals starting April 30
Airbnb, like hotels and rival vacation rental site Vrbo, will no longer allow hosts to record guests while they're inside the property. Airbnb previously allowed hosts to have disclosed cameras outside the property and in "common areas" inside, but Airbnb's enforcement of the policy and the rules' lack of specificity made camera use troubling for…
What is Dolby Atmos? The surround sound format, explained
When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more Dolby Atmos is a popular spatial audio format that aims to enhance your movie-watching, music-listening, and gaming experience with sound effects from all directions, including from above your head. What began as a premium surround sound format that only enthusiasts could…
Amazon Echo Show 5 (3rd gen) review: A compact smart display...
When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more When it comes to furnishing a smart home, Amazon's latest Echo Show 5 is a handy alternative to a typical smart speaker. It carries over many of the Alexa functions that you get on a regular Echo or Echo Dot…
“So violated”: Wyze cameras leak footage to strangers for 2nd time...
Enlarge / Wyze's Cam V3 Pro indoor/outdoor smart camera. Wyze cameras experienced a glitch on Friday that gave 13,000 customers access to images and, in some cases, video, from Wyze cameras that didn't belong to them. The company claims 99.75 percent of accounts weren't affected, but for some, that revelation doesn't eradicate feelings of "disgust"…
Wyze outage leaves customers without camera coverage overnight
Getty Images Wyze cameras have been unreliable for many users for more than nine hours today, with cameras disappearing from the Wyze app or simply reporting errors when owners try to view them. Users started reporting issues on Down Detector just before 4 am Eastern time, and the company issued a service advisory at 9:30…
