Category: Technology

An imposter has been using AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to a report by The Washington Post. The fraudster has been contacting various government officials, including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.

These officials received voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style. An official department memo says the imposter “left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals” and invited the others to join the platform.

We still don’t know who is behind this mimicry, but the memo from the Department of State says that the goal was to gain “access to information or accounts” of these government officials. It also suggests that diplomats throughout the world should “warn external partners that cyber threat actors are impersonating State officials and accounts.”

The unknown actor posing as Rubio reportedly created a Signal account in June with the display name “marco.rubio@state.gov.” We don’t know if the AI facsimile of Rubio managed to get any sensitive information.

The Department of State is also tracking a second campaign in which a bad actor impersonated a government official. This one started in April, according to CNN, and involves a “Russia-linked cyber actor” who “conducted a spear phishing campaign targeting personal Gmail accounts” by posing “as a fictitious Department official.” The person behind this effort reportedly attempted to convince officials to link a third-party application to their Gmail accounts that “would almost certainly grant the actor persistent access.”

This follows an FBI alert from May that warned of “malicious actors” impersonating “senior US officials to target individuals, many of whom are current or former senior US federal or state government officials and their contacts.” The message went on to tell anyone receiving “a message claiming to be from a senior US official” that it might not be authentic.

Of course, AI mimicry has been spreading like wildfire in recent months and years. Robocalls pretending to be Joe Biden were all over the place during last year’s presidential election and there was a law enforcement investigation into efforts to impersonate President Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/marco-rubios-ai-imposter-has-been-contacting-senior-government-officials-153436657.html?src=rss 

If you’ve been eyeing Ooni’s pizza ovens, but haven’t yet taken the leap, there are a few tasty Prime Day deals that will save you some cash. The biggest savings is on the company’s electric model, but there’s gas and wood-burning options as well. So, if you’re in the market for a new pizza oven to power your summer patio parties, read on for the best deals on Ooni wares you’ll find this week. And if you’re looking for other kitchen tech deals, we’ve got a detailed guide for that right here. 

Ooni Koda 12 gas-powered pizza oven for $319.20 (20 percent off): The Koda 12 is the best option for beginners in this bunch since the gas burner allows you to focus on making pizza instead of maintaining a fire. The max temperature of 950 Fahrenheit means you’ll be churning out pizzas in about a minute. 

Ooni Karu 2 Pro for $671 (21 percent off): If you prefer a wood-fired pizza oven, the robust Karu 2 Pro is down significantly from its usual $849 asking price. Here, you get a large front viewing window to monitor the cook as well as a digital temperature display so you know when the oven is ready for action. And the extra height allows you to cook more than just pizza.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/kitchen-tech/ooni-pizza-ovens-are-up-to-30-percent-off-during-prime-day-2025-140013882.html?src=rss 

Amazon has asked its white collar employees to help fulfill grocery deliveries for Prime Day, according to The Guardian. The company has reportedly sent out a Slack message to its corporate workers in New York City, asking for “volunteers to help [it] out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on [its] biggest days yet.” That message went out to everyone from engineers to marketers. Specifically, Amazon wants its officer workers to “volunteer” their time in two-hour shifts between 10AM and 6PM from Tuesday to Friday this week. 

The volunteers are “needed” to pick items for grocery orders from Amazon’s Fresh warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They’re expected to pack the groceries in bags and boxes and then place them on receiving carts. Since the volunteers can’t completely abandon their normal jobs, they will be able to take calls and meetings in a conference room. New York is one of Amazon’s busiest locations, and the company most likely expects an increase in grocery orders this week, since it offers Fresh discounts for Prime Day. Couple that with a free trial for its delivery services, and people are bound to put in orders during the event. 

Amazon is known to hire thousands of extra workers to help fulfill the surge in orders for Prime Day, which takes place from July 8 to July 11 this year. So why did it have to ask corporate employees to volunteer? Well, the manager who sent out the call said it would help “connect” Amazon’s warehouse and corporate teams. Griffin Buch, Amazon’s spokesperson, said this wasn’t the first time that Amazon’s corporate employees have been “invited to volunteer” for warehouse fulfillment. “This support is entirely optional, and it allows corporate employees to get closer to customers while enabling our store teams to focus on the work that’s most impactful,” Buch explained.

To note, Amazon doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to the working conditions in its warehouses. A previous report from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) showed that Amazon warehouse workers suffer more injuries that their counterparts outside of Amazon. The company has also been accused of union-busting several times in the past. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-asked-corporate-employees-to-help-fulfill-grocery-deliveries-for-prime-day-131022042.html?src=rss 

Samsung is making a bigger push into healthcare. It is buying Xealth, a platform focused on digital health tools and care programs. Terms of the deal, such as the purchase price, haven’t been disclosed. Samsung expects the acquisition to be wrapped up by the end of the calendar year, pending closing conditions (such as any necessary regulatory approvals).

Samsung says the deal will help to advance its “transformation into a connected care platform that bridges wellness and medical care bringing a seamless and holistic approach to preventative care to as many people as possible.” That involves creating “synergy” between its wearable tech and Xealth’s platform by bringing together health data measured on its devices and clinical records at hospitals. Samsung says the integration can “create a link between home health monitoring and clinical decision-making through enhancements to Xealth’s platform, with the provider-patient relationship at the center of that effort.”

Xealth enables doctors to monitor and schedule care for patients at scale. More than 500 hospitals in the US and 70-plus “digital health solution partners” use Xealth, which spun out of the Providence health system. All of those will be able to access Samsung’s platform.

News of the Xealth acquisition comes just a couple of weeks after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr spoke of his desire to have every American sporting a wearable within the next four years, a vision that led to raised eyebrows from critics. While Samsung may be sniffing an opportunity there, its acquisition of Xealth may have been in the works for some time. In any case, it’s clear that Samsung is looking to diversify beyond its core businesses.

What’s more, Samsung announced the Xealth deal on the same day it projected a 56 percent drop in operating profit for the second quarter (compared with the same April-June period in 2024). This is, in large part, because of poor sales of its AI chips.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/samsung-buys-xealth-to-integrate-its-wearables-into-the-healthcare-system-120502530.html?src=rss 

Now that the world is saturated with big screens, phone makers are turning again to thinness to stand out from the pack. Samsung introduced its take on an ultra-thin phone, the Galaxy S25 Edge, in May and for Prime Day, you can get it for $800, $300 off its usual $1,100 starting price.

The Galaxy S25 Edge includes the best of Samsung’s Galaxy S25+ in a thinner and sturdier package. The S25 Edge is just 0.23 inches (5..8mm) thick, with a titanium frame, IP68 water and dust resistance and a Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 panel covering its OLED screen. The phone is also fast and performant, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. Really, the main ways the S25 Edge is a compromise are in the omissions Samsung made to keep it slim and light.

For example, the S25 Edge doesn’t have a telephoto lens, so zoomed in photographs have to happen entirely digitally. The phone also has a noticeably smaller battery at 3,900 mAh, which in our tests meant the phone lasted for a little over 25 hours on a single charge, shorter than both the base S25 and the S25 Ultra. Samsung also cut corners with wireless charging. The S25 Edge is “Qi2 ready” but doesn’t actually include the magnetic coils necessary to take advantage of the charging standard’s main features. Instead, if you want to wirelessly charge the S25 Edge at Qi2 speeds, you need to put it in a case, taking away some of its thinness in the process.

For $300 off, those compromises could be very easy to set aside, though. In Engadget’s review of the Galaxy S25 Edge, the phone made the most sense as a way to make Samsung’s mid-tier phones interesting. It costs the same $1,100 as the Samsung Galaxy S25+ and features many of the same components, but looks and feels different to use. At $800, the Galaxy S25 Edge is now the same price as the base S25 was at launch, and an even more compelling purchase.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/you-can-get-300-off-the-samsung-galaxy-s25-edge-for-prime-day-104557419.html?src=rss 

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 is on sale for just $160 as part of the Amazon Prime Day celebration. This is a discount of 46 percent and represents a record-low price for the smartwatch.

This is the company’s latest watch and was released back in February, so it’s nice to see a massive discount this early in the release cycle. We appreciated the Galaxy Watch 7 in our official review, calling it a “capable companion for Samsung phones.” It features an old-school design that recalls classic timepieces and not modern smart devices.

The performance is zippy, thanks to an upgraded processor, and the storage has doubled when compared to its predecessor. There are also many more sensors when measured against the Galaxy Watch 6. For instance, there are now 13 heart rate sensor LEDs. This leads to the ability to assess more complex health metrics, like sleep apnea detection. All of this is data viewable via the fun and intuitive Samsung Health app.

We also appreciated that this watch will automatically track workouts when you start, without asking if you’re exercising like with the Apple Watch. There are even some AI-assisted tools here that offer light coaching as you workout or engage in physical activities.

There are a couple of little quirks here. First of all, this watch is primarily for those already tied into Samsung’s ecosystem. If you use an iPhone, this might not be the best match. Also, the always-on display is a notorious battery hog. Still, this is a lot of smartwatch for the money.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-samsung-galaxy-watch-7-drops-to-a-record-low-price-for-prime-day-110001063.html?src=rss 

The latest Amazon Kindle is on sale for $85 as part of a Prime Day promotion. This is a discount of $25 and represents a record-low price for the ereader. This is the model that was released in 2024 and the sale includes both colorways.

The iconic Kindle easily found a spot on our list of the best ereaders. The entry-level device is not filled with modern bells and whistles, but it gets the job done. It’s light and compact, which makes it easy to pack or stow away in a bag, and the battery lasts around six full weeks before requiring a recharge. The 16GB capacity is enough for thousands of books.

It also allows access to Kindle Unlimited, which is sort of like Netflix for books. This platform offers the widest selection of any subscription-based reading service, though results will vary depending on the genre.

The Kindle is also a good choice for people who like to switch between ebooks and audiobooks. The Whispersync feature keeps everything lined up, so readers can hop back and forth at will. This does require the purchase of both formats, but there’s typically a discount.

This model does include a backlight, but we found the light to be on the harsher side when compared to some rival ereaders. It’s still easier on the eyes than a phone or tablet screen. Like many entry-level Amazon devices, this Kindle shows ads on the lockscreen. However, these are fairly innocuous and mostly promote books.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-latest-amazon-kindle-drops-to-a-record-low-price-for-prime-day-111558197.html?src=rss 

Prime Day is basically Black Friday for Amazon’s own devices. For almost as long as the shopping event has taken place (it started in July 2015, if you forgot), it’s been one of the most reliable days of the year to snag Amazon gadgets like Kindles Echo speakers and Fire tablets at dirt-cheap prices. Amazon has regular sales all the time, but if you still shell out $139 annually for Prime, it’s in your best interest to wait until mid-July to grab gear that Amazon makes itself. That’s still accurate this year, too — for the most part.

But not for the Echo Dot. Yes, it’s on sale this year for $32. But that discounted price offends me personally — and it should offend you, too. The humble little orb of a smart speaker got the short end of the stick for Prime Day 2025. For reference, the latest edition of the Echo Dot was $23 last July Prime Day, and $23 again during the Black Friday period in 2024.

While a $9 difference may not seem like much, it’s a slap in the face for Prime subscribers who have come to expect the exclusive deals available to them during this arbitrary shopping event to be just as much of a perk of their membership as access to Prime Video, free two-day delivery and the like. It’s worse that Amazon devices are the usual suspects when it comes to Hella Good Deals on Prime Day. If the Prime Day deal on the Echo Dot sucks, that means we can’t reliably expect any of Amazon’s devices to be down to record-low prices during this event.

This, of course, matters not one bit to Amazon. Why the company decided to punish would-be Echo Dot purchasers this time around and not Kindle or Fire TV buyers will likely remain a mystery to us. But considering the uncertainty surrounding tariffs in the US and the steady flow of rising prices on tech as a direct result of that, one theory I have is that Amazon is testing its customers.

If Engadget’s historical Prime Day data is anything to go on, the Echo Dot is an extremely popular purchase — and Amazon likely knows that. If enough customers OK this objectively bad deal by purchasing the Echo Dot at $32 a pop, that signals to Amazon that it can continue to offer bad discounts on its devices without repercussions. I hesitate to say the days of a $23 Echo Dot are totally behind us, but they could be depending on how things go this summer.

That said, the best alternative to the Echo Dot this Prime Day is the Echo Spot for $45. Amazon revived that smart alarm clock last year and, while I don’t think it will boot the Echo Dot out of the speaker lineup any time soon, there’s an argument for such a replacement considering Amazon now also has the ultra-cheap Echo Pop. Regardless, if you were hoping to buy an Echo Dot on discount during Prime Day, I recommend skipping it and opting for the Spot or the Pop instead.

In addition, here are some Prime Day deals that are actually worth your time and money that all come in at $32 or less:

This $23 handheld fan that has already saved me from melting this year in the New York City summer heat.

The $18 Amazon Fire TV Stick HD that we recently named our favorite budget streaming device.

A $16 Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 2, a favorite Bluetooth tracker of ours if you’re a Samsung fan but also have a habit of losing things like your wallet or keys.

A $20 AirTag, if you’re also prone to losing things but identify as an iOS stan.

This $14 Anker wireless charging stand that’s super basic, gets the job done and lets you power up your phone in either portrait or landscape mode.

This $19 Soundcore speaker that’s a little larger than palm-sized and sounds pretty decent for its size.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/you-absolutely-should-not-buy-an-echo-dot-on-prime-day-113023843.html?src=rss