Target won’t move forward with Target Fetch, a service that would have used Bluetooth-connected household goods to monitor and reorder your toilet paper, paper towels and hand soap. The company announced the decision Aug. 31 in a message to people who pre-ordered the service through its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. Backers […]
In the waning months of 2018, two of the mightiest deep earthquakes ever recorded in human history rattled the Tonga-Fiji region of the South Pacific. In the first-ever study of these deep earthquakes — generally defined as any earthquake occurring 350 kilometers or more below the Earth’s surface — a […]
The thermoelectric effect is nothing new – it was discovered almost 200 years ago by Thomas J. Seebeck. If two different metals are brought together, then an electrical voltage can develop if one metal is warmer than the other. This effect allows residual heat to be partially converted into electrical […]
Google introduced a countertop display called the Home Hub at an event in October. The Home Hub is powered by Google Assistant, the company’s digital helper. A month earlier, Amazon unveiled roughly 70 new products and features at a similar presentation. Almost all of them revolved around its Alexa voice assistant. Apple […]
TP-Link has been enjoying a very good run on Amazon.com. Two of the company’s Alexa-enabled smart plugs have dominated Amazon’s electric plugs best-seller list for most of this year, helping the Chinese manufacturer sell thousands of plugs. Unfortunately for TP-Link, it’s about to get fresh competition — from Amazon itself. […]
Carbon released into the atmosphere by the increasing loss of Arctic permafrost, combined with higher solar absorption by the Earth’s surface due to the melting of sea ice and land snow, will accelerate climate change – and have a multi-trillion dollar impact on the world economy. A new paper in Nature […]
For some, mowing the lawn is intensely satisfying. For others, it’s a time-consuming chore. If the latter sounds like you, take heart. Help is on the way from iRobot, the company that gave us the Roomba robot vacuum. Its latest creation, the iRobot Terra, is a grass-cutting robot designed […]
Your smart home can do more than just make your daily routine more convenient. As strange as it may seem, the couple hundred dollars you spend on a fancy connected gadget might actually save you money in the long run. From better heating and cooling to more efficient watering, […]
Amazon executive Daniel Rausch stood onstage before a crowd of hundreds at Berlin’s IFA tech show Saturday to share a few big numbers about Alexa. ‘Just this year,’ he said, ‘Alexa has sung Happy Birthday millions of times to customers, and she’s told over 100 million jokes.’ Maybe Alexa, Amazon’s […]
When will cars powered by gas-guzzling internal combustion engines become obsolete? Not as soon as it seems, even with the latest automotive news out of Europe. First, Volvo announced it would begin to phase out the production of cars that run solely on gasoline or diesel by 2019 by only releasing […]