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AT&T has reportedly backed off from a proposal to sell Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei’s devices in the U.S. at the last minute, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear why AT&T bounced on its deal with the Shenzen, China-based manufacturer just one day before it was expected to announce the U.S.…
New Jersey state legislators approved a ban on operating drones while inebriated on Monday, approving legislation that would punish drunk or high pilots with up to six months in prison or a $1,000 fine 39-0 in the State Senate and 65-0 in the State Assembly. The bill is all but set to become law, though…
All your gadgets rely on batteries, and all batteries suck. Trying to keep all of your toys perpetually charged is the biggest downside of a gadget addiction, but there are ways to cope, like using Incase’s new Connected Power Sleeve to protect and power your MacBook Pro. As gadgets go, the Connected Power Sleeve initially…
If you’ve reached the stage of life where you’re a responsible homeowner, you know there’s an endless list of maintenance projects you need to stay on top of. But remembering to check the air filters on your home’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system is no longer one of them, because 3M’s new filters will…
First Sony killed Aibo, the little dumb robot dog. Then, like a phoenix, Aibo rose from the ashes, new and improved, with LED eyes and a soft little back. This good boy, who went on pre-order in Japan last year for 198,000 Yen (~$1,750), will go on sale on Thursday, January 11. In Japan. Which…
President Donald Trump bragged to the American Farm Bureau Association convention in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday that two new executive orders he’s signed will help solve the lingering problem of terrible rural broadband speeds. According to the Reuters account, the orders make it “easier for the private sector to locate broadband infrastructure on federal land…
There’s a question I get way too often from a coworker. “When are we getting Snapdragon Surface devices?” The answer continues to be “I have no idea.” But today Lenovo’s announced the next best thing—a detachable two-in-one Windows 10 device with Snapdragon inside. Yeah, it’s basically a Snapdragon Surface. HP previously announced the Envy X2,…
Take a moment and step back to January 2017. That’s when Sony announced the A1E OLED, a cool new TV that used the display itself as part of the speaker. The big problem with the TV was how weird it looked. So Sony fixed that, and the new A8F series is decidedly more traditional. I…
The slap fight between Google and Amazon, in which the two corporations fought over whether the Amazon Show could display YouTube videos, just started to make a whole lot more sense. Google is pushing a whole range of Show-like devices out through Lenovo, Sony, LG, and JBL. They’ll all have YouTube baked right in. I’ve…
There are currently two major annoyances with wireless headphones: the Bluetooth can cut out in areas with a lot of signal noise, and battery life is mostly terrible. Qualcomm thinks it’s packed a better solution to both of those issues into a new chip. “It’s a big step forward in the hearable category,” Anthony Murray,…
This past Saturday, a tanker transporting oil from Iran to South Korea collided with a freighter about 160 miles off the coast of Shanghai. The tanker, filled with 130 tons of highly volatile condensate crude, has been burning for the past three days, raising fears of an environmental catastrophe. As Reuters reports, the tanker, named…
It would have been fair to call digital voice assistants the hot new game in town a few years ago. Now, that space consists of incremental advances by titanic companies pressing ever harder to make consumers reliant on AIs you already know: Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google’s unnamed, data-mining Assistant. The likeliness that a new…
Back in the 90s, companies tried making virtual reality a thing, most notably Nintendo, whose Virtual Boy was so distasteful that it caused people to abandon the entire category for the next 20 years. But then in 2016, headsets from Oculus and HTC/Vive showed that the VR experiences people had been writing about in scifi…
Security professionals had an “oh shit” moment last week when two gaping vulnerabilities were discovered in the bulk of modern microprocessors. The first issue, dubbed Meltdown, was more or less taken care of in a previous Apple update. But now, Apple has released a fix for the second issue, Spectre. According to Google’s Project Zero…
If the term “smart sound bar” seems unusual, that’s because it’s brand new. TCL just announced the first in a new class of gadgets that act a little bit like a smart speaker and a little bit like a remote control that’s powered by your voice. As the name implies, the new TCL Roku Smart…
LaCie’s rugged portable drives, distinguished by their bright orange padding, are popular with photographers and videographers who need to backup footage and photos while away from the safety of their desks. Taking that idea one step further, LaCie’s new DJI Copilot drive can ingest and back up your media all by itself, letting you leave…
Before the show floor opens to throngs of tech enthusiasts, and before big companies like Sony, Samsung, and LG reveal their latest and greatest to the world, we get a sneak peek at the trends shaping CES 2018 at an event called CES: Unveiled. And millennials be damned, because this year, the best gadgets could…
James Damore, the former Google engineer who wrote a lengthy memo outlining what he perceived as innate gender differences that made women less equipped to work in tech than men, is suing the company for discrimination. In a class action lawsuit filed today, Damore and another former Google employee, David Gudeman, claim that Google discriminated…
In recent years, a number of toy makers have come under fire for developing children’s smart devices that turn out to be privacy nightmares, and a company called VTech Electronics has just settled the Federal Trade Commission’s first case involving an internet-connected toy. VTech will pay the FTC $650,000 over charges it violated the Children’s…
And it just keeps getting worse for GoPro. To recap, the floundering action cam company has been in poor financial health for years. Hundreds of staffers packed up their desks and skateboards in a round of layoffs affecting between 200 and 300 staffers Friday afternoon. Many of those let go were attached to the company’s…
