Author: Nick Gold

Amazon is bringing the new AI-powered Alexa Plus to a wide range of its existing Echo devices — but the upgrade will skip many of the earliest models. The majority of the company’s first-generation Echos won’t get support, according to the Alexa Plus FAQ page, though Amazon says they will continue to work with the standard Alexa.Alexa Plus won’t support “certain older generation Echo devices,” such as the first-generation Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Tap, Echo Spot, and Echo Show; the second-generation Echo Show won’t support it, either. Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt confirmed that is the full list of…

Posted Feb 26, 2025 at 9:30 PM UTCNvidia just made another $22 billion in pure profit in Q4.While I know it’s not all investors and businesses care about, I’ve always been fascinated by massive profits because of all they could be used for, whether it’s investing in moonshots, buying other companies, solving world hunger, or just making their pricy products more affordable.

Amazon has finally taken the wraps off its AI-enhanced version of Alexa, called Alexa Plus.The new version of Alexa is powered by a mixture of LLMs and integrations that reach across news partners and all kinds of apps and ordering services. You’ll be able to use Alexa to add events to your calendar, buy concert tickets, and ask questions about the news.Amazon is making some big promises here, but there’s still a lot we don’t know. The service won’t start rolling out until March, and it sounds like availability will be limited even then.You can find all of our coverage…

Google is making it easier to remove and update Search results that contain your personal information. The company’s “Results about you” tool for detecting personal information like addresses and phone numbers that appear in Search has been updated to make it “easier than ever” for users to sign up and for removals to be requested directly on the Search page.The Results about you tool can help people proactively monitor what sensitive information is appearing in Search results for anyone to find. You register by giving Google the name, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses that you want it to scan…

Razer is adding a fresh gaming laptop to the pile of new models up for preorder today: the Blade 18. Like its smaller (but far from small) Blade 16 cousin, the new Razer Blade 18 will come with Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs and Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. But one major way it differs is its large 18-inch display, which has dual modes allowing it to run at either 3840 x 2400 at 240Hz or 1920 x 1200 at 440Hz.The Blade 18 will start at $3,199.99 with an RTX 5070 Ti and climb to $4,499.99 with an RTX 5090. But if…

Two years ago, the last time Framework had an event in San Francisco, California, the highlight was the Framework Laptop 16 — a laptop promising the “holy grail” of upgradable graphics cards, and easily one of the most ambitious laptops ever made.But today, the Framework Laptop 16 got little mention at its new event, which focused on the new, similarly gamer-oriented Framework Desktop instead. While the Desktop and Framework’s original 13-inch laptop both got the latest AMD processors today, we don’t yet know if or when the Framework Laptop 16 might leap forward too.The only mention of Framework’s flagship laptop…

8BitDo is also bringing over the RGB Fire Ring lighting effects first introduced on its smaller-sized Ultimate C wired Xbox controller. As the branding implies, both joysticks feature a ring of color-changing LEDs around their base with several lighting modes that react to button presses (including the triggers) or the direction the joysticks are being pushed.The Ultimate 2’s triggers still use Hall effect sensors for improved accuracy and reliability, but 8BitDo has introduced a switch that lets you swap their behavior between longer draw triggers ideal for racing games and short pull tactile triggers for quicker responses while playing first-person…

It looks like Samsung may have an answer to Oppo’s Find N5 after all, as new leaks claim that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will only be fractionally thicker than the world’s thinnest foldable. That’s according to renders created by OnLeaks based on leaked information.OnLeaks, together with Android Headlines, reports that the Z Fold 7 will be just 4.5mm thick when open. The Find N5 — currently the world’s thinnest book-style foldable — is 4.2mm thick, and the previous record-holder, Honor’s Magic V3, is 4.4mm. That would put Samsung right up there with the global competition, and make this quite…

Amazon is holding a press event this week, where we expect it to finally launch its “new” Alexa. This could be the beginning of a major shift in how we use generative AI in our homes, or it could be a big disappointment. The latter seems likely, based on the delays and persistent rumors that the voice assistant is struggling with its revamp. But I’m hoping we’ll at least end up somewhere in the middle — with a smarter, more useful Alexa, if not the “superhuman assistant” Amazon has promised.The event, scheduled for 10AM on Wednesday, February 26th, in New…

Verizon and AT&T have each announced milestones in making cellphone-to-satellite video calls in partnership with satellite company AST SpaceMobile.Verizon has completed its first cellphone-to-satellite video call, while AT&T has completed its first using satellites that will be used as part of a commercial network. There’s lining up competition to T-Mobile’s arrangement with SpaceX and Starlink on satellite-to-cell service which launched a public beta for messaging via satellite earlier this month. AT&T and Verizon have said that T-Mobile and SpaceX’s offerings would harm their networks.Verizon pulled off “a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and…