Category: Technology

We’re in the midst of CES 2025 and Amazon has announced a series of new features and devices across its product lines. In the case of Ring, this means increasing the quality of its cameras, with Ring Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro getting 2K video resolution. This upgrade should improve the quality of each bit of video footage for increased clarity and safety. 

Ring will roll out 2K video resolution on January 8. Anyone with a Floodlight Cam Pro or Spotlight Cam Pro can use the Ring app to upgrade their device’s resolution for free. 

At the same time, Ring has teamed up with Kidde, a fire safety company, to create smoke and carbon monoxide alarms with Ring’s technology. Basically, the devices will send real-time alerts on the Ring app if they detect unsafe levels of either smoke or carbon monoxide. Critically, individuals don’t need to own a Ring Alarm or hub to use them. 

For $5 monthly, customers can get professional monitoring of their devices, which allows agents to contact emergency personnel and contacts. These devices will only be available for US customers at Home Depot starting this April. 

We’re reporting live from CES 2025 in Las Vegas from January 5-10. Follow our CES 2025 liveblog for the latest from the show floor.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/ring-brings-2k-video-resolution-to-its-cameras-151625629.html?src=rss 

Wellness brand Moonbird launched a kids’ version of its stress-relief breathwork device at CES 2025 and it is so cute. Moonbuddy is like a little calming companion — the roughly egg-shaped device is outfitted in a silicone animal costume and offers tactile guidance for breathing exercises. It’s designed to help kids slow things down for a few minutes so they can feel grounded and ultimately more relaxed.

Unlike the adult version, there’s no accompanying app, so the activity is entirely screen-free. Moonbuddy is activated by a button on the back, and there are four different breathing modes that range from 6 breaths per minute to 10.5 breaths per minute. Once you’ve selected an exercise, the device’s squishy belly will begin to expand and contract slowly to match the desired breathing rhythm.

Moonbuddy looks and feels like a toy that’s meant to be cradled in your hands. The company showed it off with bird and bear versions of the removable sleeve, and it’s hard to choose which is the cuter between the two. But you’ll have to, because only one sleeve comes with the $89 device and they aren’t currently sold as separate accessories. I’d love to see that option down the line, especially since the team says it’s working on other animal designs that could someday join the mix.

That aside, adults aren’t the only ones who experience stress and anxiety — kids go through it too, and breathwork can be really helpful for easing those feelings and their potential consequences, like troubled sleep. But getting a kid to sit down and focus on slow, controlled breathing isn’t always an easy thing to do. Moonbuddy could be a great, albeit pricey, tool to have on hand in that regard, making the exercises much more approachable. I may or may not be seriously considering buying one for myself.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/moonbuddy-is-an-adorable-guided-breathing-device-thatll-help-your-kid-wind-down-153038369.html?src=rss 

Razer brought a fancypants monitor stand to CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and this one features RGB lights. The Chroma stand is an ergonomic unit built from anodized aluminum, with a sleek black matte finish. It can support up to 44 pounds, which should easily accommodate most monitors.

The integrated RGB lighting supports up to 16.8 million colors and can run a series of lighting effects. Users create custom lighting profiles which can be cycled through via a remappable button. This button can also be used for other purposes, like launching applications or muting audio. Of course, it syncs up with other Chroma-capable devices to “create a cohesive, immersive aesthetic.” Yay, lighting!

Even if you hate custom lighting, there’s one thing we can all agree on. There are simply not enough ports in the world for all of our many gadgets. To that end, the Chroma Stand includes a built-in 4-port hub that connects via a single USB-C cable. The available ports include a pair of USB-A inputs, a single USB-C and an HDMI.

It doesn’t offer any adjustment capabilities, but the stand does include anti-slip rubber pads on the bottom for stability. There’s also an open space underneath, which is perfect for smartphones, laptops and other gadgets. The Razer Monitor Stand Chroma costs $200 and pre-orders are open right now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/razer-made-a-monitor-stand-with-rgb-lights-because-of-course-it-did-140029786.html?src=rss 

Withings is at CES yet again, this year showing off its updated blood pressure monitor and a new way for its users to keep their hearts healthy. The Withings BPM Vision, for that is what it is called, is a new tabletop blood pressure monitor designed for home use. It boasts a big, color display the company promises will help make it easier for you to understand what’s going on.

Like its predecessors, BPM Vision connects to Wi-Fi, instantly uploading your latest data to its cloud platform. But Withings has broken with tradition, using a tabletop design with a connected cuff, rather than the all-in-the-cuff design of the BPM Connect and BPM Core. Concerns around readability likely prompted the change, as it was hard to read the screen strapped to your arm.

Withings is also launching Cardio Check-Up, where users can get feedback on their heart health from a board-certified cardiologist. Withings+ subscribers in the US, France and Germany will be able to send readings to a physician once every 90 days. They’ll take a look at the data and check there’s nothing to be concerned about, and promise to respond within 24 hours.

BPM Vision is expected to be available in the US from April 2025, pending the usual blessing from the FDA. Cardio Check-Up starts today as part of the Withings+ subscription, and can be accessed if you have an annual or monthly payment plan.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/withings-updates-its-blood-pressure-monitor-and-launches-a-cardio-check-up-feature-140046862.html?src=rss 

German Bionic, the robot exoskeleton startup behind the lightweight Apogee exosuit, just revealed the Apogee Ultra at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. This powered exoskeleton is intended to help people complete jobs that require heavy lifting or advanced movement.

To that end, it offers dynamic lifting support of up to 80 pounds. This means that it can lift the entire thing or help a bit when people need it, sort of like how rider assist works with electric bikes. The company says “it makes physically demanding tasks feel effortless” and that lifting 70 pounds will feel like nine or ten pounds for the lower back.

The exoskeleton has also been designed to help with walking long distances, which is often required in large warehouses where this kind of technology would be most useful. German Bionic says this walking assist feature will make a trip of ten miles feel like eight. The Apollo Ultra will even offer a bit of assistance when completing tasks that require people to bend over for prolonged periods of time.

The device is filled with some advanced software, which helps with the whole “dynamic” thing mentioned above. The “highly adaptive” system adjusts to the needs of each individual user via machine learning algorithms. These algorithms have been trained on “vast amounts of high quality, relevant data collected from thousands of users.”

The exoskeleton integrates with a proprietary app, allowing people to view performance metrics like steps taken, usage time and weight lifted. The app has also been designed with feedback in mind, as there’s an easy way to contact the company to deliver insights. This should allow for continuous improvement as more people don the suit.

This exoskeleton is perfectly positioned for industrial work and for health care, as medical professionals often need a bit of help to lift patients. The Apogee Ultra is available for preorder right now, but it’ll likely empty out that bank account. We don’t have a specific price, but the lower-tech Apogee+ exoskeleton costs $9,900. The company does offer monthly payment plans for bulk purchases by commercial entities.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/german-bionics-new-apogee-ultra-exoskeleton-can-lift-up-to-80-pounds-and-help-with-walking-140031689.html?src=rss 

How are you ever going to improve your Elo if you can’t stop shivering or sweating in your gaming seat? Razer’s latest deskside innovation is Project Arielle, a mesh gaming chair with integrated temperature controls — and some pretty lights, of course.

Project Arielle is built on the foundation of the Fujin Pro, Razer’s breathable mesh chair, and it uses a bladeless fan system to warm up or cool down the entire frame. A touchscreen panel on the side of the seat offers three fan-speed settings, and lets you swap between cool and warm airflow. The edges of the seat and backrest are lined in a thin ribbon of RGB lights, and these dynamically shift between blue and red as the set temperature changes. The bladeless fan is housed in a cylinder dangling off the base of the backrest like a little stubby tail, and a cable runs from this same area, connected to a sizable power brick.

Razer says Project Arielle can reduce the perceived temperature by 2 to 5 degrees C in dry environments, and its self-regulating, energy-efficient heater delivers warm air of up to 30 degrees C (86 degrees F).

In action, Project Arielle is surprisingly effective and quiet. I had a chance to experience — not just sit in — the chair at CES 2025, and it functioned even better than expected. With the warm setting engaged, I felt a breeze of heated air swirl around my head, neck and upper back, and the temperature change was tangible even in a hot room. The cool setting provided instant relief, with the airflow particularly noticeable along my back, neck and under my arms. The fan was noiseless in the demo room, which contained about a dozen people and a handful of laptops and PCs. I strained to hear the fan running in this environment, and even then, it was barely noticeable as a soft hum.

As someone who’s always chilly, especially in sedentary situations, Project Arielle is an incredibly attractive chair. Instead of piling on sweatshirts and blankets to warm up my frozen bones, I’d be happy to just switch on the heating function and bask in the warm air. The cute lights certainly don’t hurt, either.

Project Arielle is just a concept for now, but Razer has a pretty good track record when it comes to turning its experiments into actual products. Just look at the Project Esther haptic gaming cushion, which debuted at CES 2024 and then went on sale nine months later as the Razer Freyja.

Will Project Arielle help boost your rank or shave seconds off your speedrun? Maybe, maybe not. But it’ll definitely keep you cozy while you try.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/project-arielle-is-razers-first-temperature-controlled-gaming-chair-140053304.html?src=rss 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a major shift in the company’s approach to moderation and speech. Meta is ditching its fact-checking program and moving to an X-style Community Notes model on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Zuckerberg said in a video that Meta has “built a lot of complex systems to moderate content” in recent years. “But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor one percent of posts, that’s millions of people.” He added that we’re now at a point where there have been “too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

To that end, he said, “we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.” That’s going to start with a switch to “Community Notes, similar to X, starting in the US.”

Meta’s new Chief Global Affairs Officer (and Clegg’s replacement) Joel Kaplan wrote in a blog post that the company has seen the Community Notes “approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.”

The company plans to phase in Community Notes in the US over the next few months and iterate on them over this year, all the while removing its fact checkers and ending the demotion of fact-checked content. Meta will also make certain content warning labels less prominent.

Meta says it will be up to contributing users to write Community Notes and to decide which ones are applied to posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. “Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings,” Kaplan wrote. “We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information.”

The Community Notes model hasn’t entirely been without issue for X, however. Studies have shown that Community Notes have failed to prevent misinformation from spreading there. Elon Musk has championed the Community Notes approach but some have been applied to his own posts to correct falsehoods that he has posted. After one such incident, Musk accused “state actors” of manipulating the system. YouTube has also tested a Community Notes model.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg had some other announcements to make, including a simplification of certain content policies and ditching “a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far. I wanna make sure that people can share their experiences and their beliefs on our platforms.”

Engadget has contacted Meta for clarification on these policy changes. 

In addition, the filters that Meta had used to search for any policy violations across its platforms will be focused on “illegal and high-severity violations.” These include terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. For other, less-severe types of policy violations, Meta will rely more on users making manual reports, but the bar for removing content will be higher.

“We’re going to tune our systems to require a much higher degree of confidence before a piece of content is taken down,” Kaplan wrote. In some cases, that will mean multiple reviewers looking at a certain piece of content before reaching a decision on whether to take it down. Along with that, Meta is “working on ways to make recovering accounts more straightforward and testing facial recognition technology, and we’ve started using AI large language models (LLMs) to provide a second opinion on some content before we take enforcement actions.”

Last but not least, Meta says it’s taking a more personalized approach to political content across its platforms after muting much of that over the last few years. So, if you want to see more political stuff in your Facebook, Instagram and Threads feeds, you’ll have the choice to do so.

As with donating to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, replacing longtime policy chief Nick Clegg with a former George W. Bush aide and appointing Trump’s buddy (and UFC CEO) Dana White to its board, it’s very difficult to see these moves as anything other than Meta currying favor with the incoming administration.

Many Republicans have long railed against social media platforms, accusing them of censoring conservative voices. Meta itself blocked Trump from using his accounts on his platforms for years after he stoked the flames of the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. “His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” Meta removed its restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts last year.

Zuckerberg explicitly said that Trump’s election win is part of the reasoning behind Meta’s policy shift, calling it “a cultural tipping point” on free speech. He said that the company will work with Trump to push back against other governments, such as the Chinese government and some in Latin America, that are “pushing to censor more.”

He claimed that “Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.” Zuckerberg also took shots at the outgoing administration (over an alleged push for censorship) and third-party fact checkers, who he claimed were “too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created.”

These are all significant changes for Meta’s platforms. On one hand, allowing more types of speech could increase engagement without having to rely on, say, garbage AI bots. But the company may end up driving away many folks who don’t want to deal with the type of speech that could become more prevalent on Instagram, Facebook and Threads now that Meta is taking the shackles off.

“Now we have an opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it,” Zuckerberg said. While he noted that “it’ll take time to get this right and these are complex systems that are never gonna be perfect,” and that the company will still need to work hard to remove illegal content, “the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people voice.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-loosening-some-content-policies-and-moving-to-an-x-style-community-notes-system-142330500.html?src=rss