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Apple and Spotify bring podcasts to Amazon Echo devices (and other Alexa-enabled gadgets)

Amazon’s Echo line of products may have introduced the world to the idea of smart speakers that respond to your voice, answer questions, and play music among other things. But one thing Amazon’s Alexa voice service hasn’t been great at until now is playing podcasts. While you could ask Alexa to play a podcast, by default […]

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Pocket Casts is now free (with optional subscription-based features)

One of the most popular podcast apps for iOS and Android is now available for free. Previously the Pocket Casts app for Android cost $4, while the iPhone app was $4. Now you don’t have to pay a penny to use either one. But the company behind the app needs to make money somehow. Enter Pocket […]

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The Loving Project: a podcast celebrating 50th anniversary of Loving v Virginia

In 1967 the Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. At the time, there were 16 states with such laws on the books. The Court ruling came as a result of a case called Loving v Virginia, named for Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a black woman who lived in […]

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Fake news & real journalism: A conversation with Snopes editor Brook Binkowski (LPX Show)

Fake news has been in the news a lot recently. In the months leading up to the 2016 election Buzzfeed and others were pointing to the growing trend of “hyper partisan” fictional news stories spreading on social media. In the days after the election, Facebook and Google announced they’d be banning fake news sites from […]

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What’s next for the Superbook? (LPX Show podcast)

When the folks at Andromium launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Superbook project in July, they were hoping to raise $50,000. They did that… and then raised more than $2.9 million additional dollars. Apparently they weren’t the only ones interested in an affordable accessory that lets you use an Android smartphone as if it were a […]

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Funeral for an Atom: LPX Show mourns passing of Intel’s low-power chip

The first Intel Atom processor launched in 2008, at a time when small, inexpensive laptops were just starting to take off. Now it looks like the last Intel Atom chips may have been the Cherry Trail series processors that launched in 2015. Intel recently announced plans to scrap Cherry Trail’s replacement, formerly code-named Broxton, as well […]

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DragonBox Pyra: Crowdfunding an open source, modular handheld PC (LPX Show)

Before there was Kickstarter, before there were iPads, and before the smartphone market has really even taken off, there was the Pandora. It was designed to be a Linux-powered handheld computer which could be used for gaming and other tasks… but the crowd-funded project was plagued with shipping delays, which left a bitter taste in […]

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Chatting about chatbots on the LPX Show podcast

Facebook and Microsoft seem to believe that chatbots are the future… and that if you teach them well, you can let them lead the way. Or something like that. Microsoft recently released a set of developer tools called the Microsoft Bot Framework that helps developers create chatbots for news, retail, weather, or other services. And Facebook has […]

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On the LPX Show: A closer look at Remix OS

I’ve been covering Remix OS since Jide first introduced the operating system in early 2015. It’s an operating system that takes Google’s Android and turns it into a desktop operating system with a taskbar, desktop, and multi-window support and it’s come a long way in the year or so since it first launched. Originally available […]

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Intel Compute Stick with Atom x5 now available

Intel’s second-generation Compute Stick is now available for about $150. The tiny computer features a slightly faster processor, an extra USB port, and significantly better wireless performance the model I reviewed in 2015. First announced in January, the new Compute Stick features an Atom x5-Z8300 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth […]