Panay said that it's possible to recover and learn from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, when building products.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Amazon devices chief Panos Panay described a future where ambient AI devices work in the background, anticipating users' needs instead of waiting for commands.

We knew that a number of big tech firms were helping to fund the construction of Trump's ballroom, but we didn't know just how much they were giving to the cause. Now the Washington Post published a list of all the major donors to the White House ballroom project, along with how much each contributed. In total, Silicon Valley and the crypto industry have reportedly delivered over $150 million for the effort.

Some of that money has come from individuals, some from charitable organizations tied to major firms or industry players, and some directly from the companies themselves. In Google's case, the $22 million was part of a controversial se …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Last year, Amazon bought Bee, a relatively unknown startup with a $50 always-listening AI wearable that summarized every conversation you had. Today, the e-commerce giant is announcing two new Bee devices - and a new subscription to go with them. First is the $74.99 Bee Frontier, an updated version of the original Bee device. And coming soon is the $99.99 Bee Eclipse, a credit-card-shaped gadget that snaps magnetically onto the back of a smartphone.

Both devices are framed as gadgets to help you stay present in the moment. They listen to your daily conversations and then provide summaries, transcripts, insights, and to-dos based on what ha …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon-owned Bee has launched its first new AI devices since its acquisition, including an updated wearable and a credit-card-sized recorder that attaches to smartphones. The devices can summarize conversations, create to-do lists, and integrate with Alexa and Amazon shopping, with prices starting at $74.99.

On Equity, we debate the impact of data center moratoriums and whether the AI industry has a communication problem.

Some users are reporting that the new Kindles have a light leak issue that is especially apparent when using dark mode. The latest base-model Kindles have a flush bezel that gives them a sleek appearance and looks great… as long as you keep the lights on. But things can change once you turn down the lights and turn up the brightness on the e-reader.

In some cases, users see shadows around the edges of the screen, or even visible LED strips. The issue appears to affect both the plastic and aluminum models in all colors. Some minor glowing around the edges might be a byproduct of the combination of front lighting and a flush screen. But Reddi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access […]

It's gadget season, and a lot of companies are launching a lot of new products. But whether it's Microsoft dropping a high-end laptop, Amazon shipping a fancy Android tablet, or Apple diving headlong into the smart home, the actual strategy appears to be almost always the same. All these companies believe AI assistants and agents are the future of computing, and they're building devices that put them front and center.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay dig into all this new hardware to figure out whether any of it has the right take on AI. (Or if "the AI should run the computer" is even the right idea in the first place.) The …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Rebranding Artificial Intelligence as "Super" Intelligence will work about as well as rebranding data centers as "theme parks."

Following Donald Trump's lead, billionaire and phallic-shaped rocket enthusiast Jeff Bezos says he prefers calling AI "SI" because nobody likes artificial sweetener or artificial flavoring, and "artificial" sounds as fake as AI is. — Read the rest

The post Jeff Bezos explains AI by comparing it to other things people don't want appeared first on Boing Boing.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Amazon's head of consumer electronics, Panos Panay, confirmed the company would phase out the Fire brand in favor of Alexa Tablets.

The new lineup runs proper Android, instead of the custom Fire OS, and has full access to the Play Store, which wasn't available on Fire tablets. To make matters worse, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Drive, and other services were only available via the browser on Fire tablets; the official Google apps were not available in the Amazon Appstore.

The Fire tablet line "wasn't giving customers what they were asking for," Panay told Bloomberg, which appears to be access to …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The lineup includes three models: Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Amazon Alexa Tablet 11, and Amazon Alexa Tablet 8.

Amazon's Fire tablets are notable for being dirt cheap. While they're great for kids, they don't offer a premium Android tablet experience. The company's new $499 Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is an attempt to build a device someone might actually want to use. It's one of a few new Android tablets Amazon announced today, and it's the one you need to know about.

Unlike the Fire Tablet lineup, the Alexa Tablet doesn't run some hobbled version of Android stuck with Amazon's app store with ads for Amazon services at every turn. It has full access to the Google Play app store. It's powered by 8GB or 12GB of RAM with a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 8-core CPU. T …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon is launching a new lineup of tablets that bear almost no resemblance to any tablet Amazon has ever launched before. They're not even called Fire, the name Amazon has used for its tablets for the last 15 years. They're called Alexa Tablets, and they're designed to do two things: bring Alexa Plus to the center of your whole computing life, and be straight-up excellent tablets.

The most important thing about these new tablets' software? They run Android. Full, Google Play-supported, all-the-apps Android. There are plenty of preloaded Amazon apps, of course, and some built-in ways to quickly access Prime Video content or shop for basica …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon announced its first smart lock that eliminates the need for a physical backup key should its rechargeable battery die while you're away from home. While other smart locks lean on hidden USB ports or metal contacts for connecting a 9-volt battery to replenish a dead battery, the new Ring Smart Lock incorporates a more convenient charger right into its thumb-turn dial. Amazon doesn't specify how many turns are needed but claims just "a few times" can generate enough power to unlock the door so you can gain access to your home and fully recharge the lock's battery.

The Ring Smart Lock is expected to be available in the US sometime in ea …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon-owned Ring is entering the smart lock market with a device designed to tackle a common concern: getting locked out when the battery dies.

Most people know that Amazon collects data about your shopping history to serve up personalized product recommendations. But what some of us didn't realize is that you can check exactly what Amazon knows - or thinks it knows - about you in your settings menu. One user's findings went viral on Threads after she discovered that Amazon assumed she "has flat buttocks" based on her purchases, resulting in a flood of other posts with users sharing the oddly specific information Amazon uses to describe them.

In another post, a user found that Amazon says they don't "trust people easily," while someone else discovered that Amazon thinks she "finds …

Read the full story at The Verge.

"I stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made about me based on my purchases and I’m literally speechless," one shopper wrote on Threads.

Non-Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to watch the awards show on the platform.

The CEO of Amazon Web Services tried to push back against widespread suspicion of data centers.