The Ava Remote smart home controller | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Last week, I visited the world of the professionally installed smart home. This is the promised land. Everything just works, your voice assistant doesn’t try to sell you toilet paper, and you can control your whole home with just one app. Of course, you pay a hefty price and have to give up lots of control for the privilege.
The Ava smart remote could be the love child of an iPhone and a Logitech Harmony remote I was at CEDIA Expo 2022, the annual trade show of the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association (think CES, but less weird stuff and more stuff you — or someone with more money than you — can actually buy).
Here, I got to hold the almost perfect smart home controller: a sleek touchscreen, wrapped in a smooth…
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Disney’s networks are back for Dish satellite and Sling TV customers. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Dish and Disney have reached a “handshake deal” to immediately bring Disney’s collection of cable networks back to Dish satellite and Sling TV customers. The two companies confirmed the agreement late on Sunday night. “We are pleased to restore our portfolio of networks on a temporary basis while both parties work to finalize a new deal,” Disney said in a statement.
Dish and Sling TV subscribers have now regained access to ESPN (and its related networks), along with other channels such as The Disney Channel, FX, National Geographic, local ABC programming in select markets, and more. The blackout lasted two days, and although it included college football on Saturday, the two companies have resolved the situation in time for ESPN’s next…
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NASA called off last week’s Artemis I launch due to Hurricane Ian. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images The long-anticipated launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been pushed back to mid-November after NASA waved off its September 27th launch plans in the wake of Hurricane Ian (via Space.com). The space agency announced on Friday that it’s aiming to squeeze in the Artemis I launch between November 12th and November 27th.
While there was initially a slight chance that NASA’s next launch attempt could take place in October, that was ultimately scrapped after NASA decided to roll the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to shield it from the storm. NASA successfully secured the rocket on Tuesday after an hours-long trek to the VAB.
Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, but weakened…
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TeslaBot promo picture shared after the AI Day 2022 event | Image: Tesla Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed a prototype of a humanoid “Optimus” robot that shares some AI software and sensors with its cars' Autopilot driver assistance features. At the start of Tesla's 2022 AI Day presentation, Musk acknowledged that they had “a guy in a suit” last year but promised something much more impressive today.
According to Musk, this prototype can do more than what was shown live, but “the first time it operated without a tether was tonight on stage.” Musk predicted it could hit a price of “probably less than $20,000” and later, in a Q&A session, explained that Tesla is very good at building the AI and the actuators necessary for robotics based on the experience of producing drive units for electric cars. Musk said that…
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Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk’s deposition for the Twitter v. Musk suit may have been rescheduled for next week, but the public got some more inside dirt about his plans for Twitter, thanks to the release of two slideshow presentations and a slew of Musk texts.
The texts show Musk and a variety of contacts — including former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, and podcaster Joe Rogan — talking about everything from the blockchain to putting Oprah on Twitter’s board. (That part might be a joke, but with Musk, it’s difficult to tell.) But above all, they’re a chronicle of the deal’s slow implosion.
Twitter “never should have been a company.” The texts are light reading, and you can check them out here if you’re so inclined. They’re mostly…
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Automatic emergency braking (AEB) is pretty good at preventing low-speed rear-end crashes but kind of sucks when vehicles are traveling at more average speeds, according to new research from the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Starting September 2022, all new cars sold in the US are required to come standard with AEB, which uses forward-facing cameras and other sensors to automatically apply the brakes when a crash is imminent. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that AEB may help prevent 28,000 crashes and 12,000 injuries by 2025.
Using four common vehicles, AAA wanted to put AEB to the test to see how it’s progressed since first rolling out to production vehicles nearly 20 years ago. What they found was not that…
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Nick Barclay / The Verge It’s been a little while since we had a high-profile media feed hijacking, but tonight someone sent an Apple News notification from Fast Company containing a racial slur and invitation for a particular sexual act.
Apple has addressed the incident on its Apple News Twitter account, saying that it’s disabled Fast Company’s channel.
We are investigating the situation and have suspended the feed & shutdown https://t.co/U9iS8QOhkW until we are certain the situation has been resolved.
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) September 28, 2022 The publication confirmed the hack. “Fast Company’s Apple News account was hacked on Tuesday evening. Two obscene and racist push notifications were sent about a minute apart. The messages are vile and are not…
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The Roomba Combo j7 Plus is iRobot’s first combination robot vacuum and mop. | Image: iRobot Robot vacuums that can also mop have been around for a while, but most make you remove the mop before they can vacuum your carpets — unless you like slightly damp carpets. iRobot’s newest bot looks to solve this problem with a retractable robot mop arm that can lift itself up and under the vacuum to mop when it’s needed and stow itself up top when it’s not.
The Roomba Combo j7 Plus costs $1,099 and is available to preorder today. It will ship on October 4th, and is only being sold with the auto-emptying Clean Base at launch. The two-in-one vacuum mop uses a new combination of acoustic sensors to detect the different types of flooring in a home and “decide” when to lift its pad to avoid thread counts and when to lower it to clean hard…
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A new Prime Day is on the Horizon | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The rumors were true: Amazon’s holding a second Prime-exclusive sales event starting on Tuesday, October 11th at 3AM ET / 12AM PT and running through Wednesday, October 12th. We first heard about the possibility of another day of deals back in June, but now Amazon has made it official — the only difference is that it’s calling the event Prime Early Access Sale instead of Prime Day.
Besides the name, it doesn’t look like too much is changing between the two events. Just like Amazon Prime Day, the Prime Early Access Sale should still bring some of the best deals of the year out to play, as well as feature sales on Amazon devices in addition to a wealth of other cool tech. So, if you’ve waited this long to buy a new pair of noise-canceling…
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Darth Vader in Disney Plus’ Obi Wan. | Image: Lucasfilm James Earl Jones has been the iconic voice of Darth Vader since the beginning of Star Wars, but at 91 years old, it seems he’s ready to have the work done for him. According to a report from Vanity Fair (via Deadline), Jones signed over the rights to his archival voice work, allowing the Ukrainian startup Respeecher to leverage AI technology and recreate the sound of his voice in Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi.
To do this, Respeecher uses sound bites to “clone” an actor’s voice, allowing a studio to record new lines without having the actor present. Matthew Wood, Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor, told Vanity Fair that he presented Jones with the option once he “mentioned he was looking into winding down” the role of Darth Vader….
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