“Kids can play with Alexa in their very own $300 pretend kitchen and grocery store,” CNET reports, “with the Amazon voice assistant dishing out cooking advice, shopping help and plenty of goofy toddler humor.”
The Alexa 2-in-1 Kitchen and Market, from toymaker KidKraft, is making its debut at this weekend’s New York Toy Fair… It uses a mix of RFID sensors and…
Tag: amazons
Police Say Amazon’s Ring Isn’t Much of a Crime Fighter
Ring’s promotional video includes the police chief of the small Florida suburb of Winter Park saying “we understand the value of those cameras in helping us solve crimes.” But over the last 22 months, their partnership with Ring hasn’t actually led to a single arrest, reports NBC News. The only crime it solved was a 13-year-old boy who opened two delivered…
Amazon’s Ring Doorbell Update Allows Opt Out of All Police Video Requests
Amazon’s Ring doorbell has rolled out a new update that lets users add and remove shared users on an account, restrict third-party access, view two-factor authentication settings, and (perhaps, most importantly) opt out of all video request notifications from law enforcement. Mashable reports: Uncovered in reporting by Motherboard and Gizmodo in 2019, the scale of Amazon’s Neighbor Portal program is much…
PopSockets CEO Calls Out Amazon’s ‘Bullying With a Smile’ Tactics
At a House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee on competition in the digital economy, PopSockets CEO and inventor David Barnett described how Amazon used shady tactics to pressure their smartphone accessory company. Mashable reports: “Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit product and was selling it alongside our own product,” he noted. Barnett, under oath, told the gathered members of…
Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Service Is Becoming More Popular Than Amazon’s AWS At Big Companies
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been focusing the company on cloud services — and CNBC reports on the results: A Goldman Sachs survey of technology executives at large companies last month showed that Microsoft remained the most popular supplier of public cloud services, even as Amazon leads the market overall in terms of revenue. Goldman Sachs based its latest findings on…
What if Amazon’s Sellers Decided They Didn’t Need Amazon?
“Companies are finally getting really good at selling directly to consumers, forcing them to question Amazon’s value to them,” writes a columnist at the Motley Fool: Rather than one single powerhouse, the threat to Amazon comes in the form of hundreds of smaller e-commerce venues that can each take a tiny, collective stab at online shopping’s 800-pound gorilla. Within the past…
SpaceX Is Lobbying Against Amazon’s Internet-Beaming Satellites
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: When Amazon confirmed it was planning to launch 3,236 broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit, much of the media reported it as if it were a done deal — the latest, inevitable step in the corporation’s quest to conquer commerce, the cloud, and beyond. Amazon officials said the massive satellite constellation, called Project…
Amazon’s Cloud Unit Has Designed a More Powerful Datacenter Chip
Amazon’s cloud computing unit has designed a second, more powerful generation of datacenter processor chip, Reuters reported Thursday, the latest sign that the e-commerce company is pouring money into custom silicon for its fastest-growing business. From a report: The new Amazon Web Services chip uses technology from SoftBank Group-owned Arm Holdings, the sources said. One of the sources familiar with the…
Amazon’s Ring Planned Neighborhood ‘Watch Lists’ Built On Facial Recognition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Ring, Amazon’s crimefighting surveillance camera division, has crafted plans to use facial recognition software and its ever-expanding network of home security cameras to create AI-enabled neighborhood “watch lists,” according to internal documents reviewed by The Intercept. The planning materials envision a seamless system whereby a Ring owner would be automatically alerted when…
Amazon’s Cloud Gaming Service Could Arrive Next Year With Twitch Integration
According to CNET, Amazon is planning to announce a cloud gaming service next year, and it may offer integration with Twitch and its other services. From the report: It’s begun recruiting people from large game companies like Microsoft to help with the launch, as well as hiring for jobs in a “new initiative” within its Amazon Web Services team, which sources…