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Samsung Ballie is a smart home robot with a built-in projector and voice controls

Tech companies have been trying to make robots part of a smart home setup for years. Asus introduced Zenbo in 2016, but it never really took off. Amazon’s Astro has been around since 2021, but it’s still an invite-only device. This year LG is demonstrating a (sort of) bipedal robot at CES, while Samsung is […]

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Lilbits: LG’s smart home robot, Microsoft’s next-gen Surface devices go big on AI (and ARM)

Smart speakers were supposed to usher in the era of ambient computing, where you’d be able to just speak a question or command from anywhere in your house. But that only works if you put enough speakers throughout your house to ensure that there’s always one nearby. Or you could get one that moves. Asus […]

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Lilbits: Signal drops SMS, Microsoft launches Surface Studio 2+, more Apple services coming to Windows, and Intel layoffs ahead?

Thanks to falling demand for PCs and increased competition from rival chip makers, it looks like Intel may be planning to layoff thousands of employees soon.  In addition to the introducing the new Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 today, Microsoft has unveiled a Surface Studio 2+ for creative professionals… but it’s a kind of […]

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Raspberry Pi-based Home Assistant Amber lets you build your own smart home hub (crowdfunding)

Home Assistant is free and open source home automation software that allows you to control and interact with smart home gadgets. You can install the software on a single-board computer or in a virtual machine on a Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. But soon there may be another option: the Home Assistant team is running […]

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Amazon teaches Alexa a bunch of new tricks, turns it into a security system (and more)

Amazon’s Alexa voice service already lets you get answers to questions, listen to music, news updates, or weather forecasts, play games, or control smart home gadgets with your voice. But in addition to launching a bunch of new hardware today, Amazon unveiled some upcoming Alexa features that could make the company’s voice assistant technology even […]

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Roku to launch voice assistant and whole home audio support

Roku makes some of the most popular media streaming devices for TVs, and for the past few years the company has also been licensing its software to TV makers so that you can buy a TV that has Roku functionality baked in. Now the company is getting ready to expand its licensing program with a […]