Amazon may have sold millions of Echoes and other devices equipped with its voice-controlled Alexa smart assistant partially in the hopes that it could nudge users into letting an upbeat voice convince them to buy more crap. But it doesn’t appear to be working, according to a report in the Information on Monday.
August 2018 rolled in with a bang, literally, as explosions rocked Caracas, Venezuela on Saturday during a speech by President Nicolas Maduro—and government officials later said bomb-carrying drones were to blame. If the accounts of an attempted assassination using unmanned aerial vehicles is confirmed, the New York…
Amazon was criticized earlier this year for a controversial patent application that detailed an “ultrasonic bracelet” that could be used to surveil workers. The company’s newly public application for augmented reality goggles made specifically for warehouse workers is far more alarming.
If that drawer full of neglected, outdated gadgets in your desk happens to include a Kindle, Jaap Meijers has come up with a clever way to put it back into service. His girlfriend, an avid reader and English literature teacher, wanted a clock for their living room, so Meijers hacked an older model Kindle to display…
Coinciding with a national “we won’t be complicit” day of action aimed against US Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE) approximately 100 protesters gathered in Midtown to pressure tech companies, which in recently months have drawn criticism for providing infrastructural support to the agency.
Amazon is ending its policy of letting viewers vote on which TV pilot episodes they would like to become full-length series, announcing at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Saturday that it was ending the crowdsourcing portion of its original content program.
Keeping multiple voice assistants in your home can lead to the occasional misfire, causing a far-flung device in the bedroom to react while you’re attempting to extract the weather forecast from the one in your living room. Amazon addressed this quirk with its own Echo devices in 2016, and now it’s bringing that…
There was a grim moment this spring when Syfy announced that The Expanse’s third season would be its last on the network—and the future of the beloved sci-fi series was in serious doubt. But with Amazon stepping in, The Expanse will be back, and last week at San Diego Comic-Con, we got a chance to talk to showrunner…
A Lexington, Kentucky man was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on Monday, the Department of Justice wrote in a press release, for a data heist in which he abused his status as an employee of online polling company IntelliSurvey Inc. to snatch up nearly half a million dollars in unclaimed Amazon gift cards.
An indigenous protection agency in Brazil has released footage of a man who has lived alone in the Amazon forest, in the state of RondĂ´nia, for at least 22 years.
For those who have remained blissfully off of Twitter, a site that remains uncomfortably popular with sociopaths and morons like me, the “ratio” is when a tweet is so bad that the number of retweets and favorites it accrues becomes greatly outnumbered by hostile replies. It is one of the few beautiful things about…
We’ve seen little bits here and there of Amazon and the BBC’s adaptation of the beloved Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and the dearly missed Terry Pratchett. But while Comic-Con didn’t give us a trailer, it did let us peek behind the curtain to see the novel’s fantastical mishmash of Angels and Demons come to life, plus a…
The second day of a three-day strike by Amazon warehouse workers near Madrid coinciding with the e-commerce giant’s Prime Day promotion escalated significantly on Tuesday, with trade unions telling Spanish newspaper Público that police in riot gear had charged the strikers multiple times on supposed grounds they were…
While the country is in the midst of Amazon’s mid-year discount fiesta and Jeff Bezos enjoys being crowned the richest man in modern history, rivals Walmart and Microsoft announced a new five-year partnership in hopes of knocking the online shipping giant down a peg or two.
Amazon’s malign power has grown to the point where for several years now, it has declared its own holiday, Prime Day, which is essentially centered around giving it huge amounts of money while ignoring that it is maybe evil. This year’s Prime Day is especially special, because the Bloomberg Billionaires Index has…
Amazon, as you may know, is experiencing some technical issues during Prime Day. It appears similar snags have crippled the platforms Amazon uses to coordinate its last-mile contractor workforce, known as Amazon Flex.
Deals! Deals! Deals! It’s the time of year when an even larger-than-average group of people choose to spend money on shit they don’t need to enrich the single richest man on the planet. Except this year, in addition to warehouse workers and consumers themselves, Amazon’s own website seems to be protesting the grueling…
I know what you’re thinking: Amazon’s got some hot deals for its made-up holiday, and even though you don’t exactly need an AmazonBasics portable air compressor, you would be foolish not to save $14 by buying it on Amazon Prime Day. Resist these thoughts, fellow consumer. Amazon Prime Day is bullshit.
Thousands of Amazon workers in Europe seeking better conditions and pay are engaged in a coordinated strike meant to coincide with Prime Day, the company’s invented shopping holiday.
BROOKLYN, NY—Imagine a place where all the offers are epic, the deals never end, and shipping is always free. A heavenly kingdom where you can click a button and—like magic—the shower head, butt plug, or off-brand iPhone cable of your dreams appears at your door. This is the sales pitch of the Church of Amazon, the…
