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Amazon’s Send to Alexa Plus makes the Kindle Scribe feel more like a productivity device

Amazon's rolling out a new "Send to Alexa Plus" feature to the latest Kindle Scribe and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft owners starting February 12. The feature lets you send your notes or documents to Amazon's AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant, which can then summarize them, turn them into to-do lists, calendar events, or reminders, as well as help brainstorm, and offer project guidance. I spent about a day or so testing it primarily to help with caregiving tasks, and it was mostly helpful despite some limitations. It works best when asked to digest information into something actionable. It accurately summarized my handwritten notes and PDF document … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/r8YIV71
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This $7,999 robot will fold (some of) your laundry

Isaac 0 is a stationary robot with one job: folding laundry. | Image: Weave Robotics If you have a spare $7,999 (plus a $250 deposit), hate folding laundry, and happen to live in the Bay Area, one-and-a-half-year-old startup Weave has the robot for you: Isaac 0. It takes Isaac 0 around 30-90 minutes to fold a load of laundry, Weave says . That's all it does - it's stationary and needs a regular wall outlet - and it can't tackle large blankets, bed sheets, or inside-out garments. It's not fully autonomous either, with teleoperators on-hand to assist with trickier folds, though Weave says performance will improve over time. Today we're releasing Isaac 0: our first robot for the home. And we made a short video for our first … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/l6pdFgj

HP ZBook Ultra G1a review: a business-class workstation that’s got game

Sleeper laptop. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Business laptops are typically dull computers foisted on employees en masse. But higher-end enterprise workstation notebooks sometimes get an interesting enough blend of power and features to appeal to enthusiasts. HP's ZBook Ultra G1a is a nice example. It's easy to see it as another gray boring-book for spendy business types, until you notice a few key specs: an AMD Strix Halo APU, lots of RAM, an OLED display, and an adequate amount of speedy ports (Thunderbolt 4, even - a rarity on AMD laptops). I know from my time with the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and Framework Desktop that anything using AMD's high-end Ryzen AI Max chips should make for a co … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/uQlm1JS

ICE is pushing Minneapolis underground

Minneapolis was not the war zone I expected to find. Depending on who you are and where you live, things can seem, for a few fleeting moments, almost normal, like a few blocks or neighborhoods over people aren't being tear gassed or rounded up by ICE or, in two tragic cases, being gunned down by federal agents. Even now some people walk their dogs, run errands and buy groceries, meet friends for dinner and drinks. Daily life has become sinister in its banality, because Minneapolis remains a city under siege. ICE and CBP agents roam the streets, though their tactics have shifted as of late: No longer acting like an occupying army, the Departm … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/c96UVyw

T-Mobile will live translate regular phone calls without an app

Even an old flip phone should be able to use T-Mobile’s Live Translation. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is preparing to test a new AI feature that translates live phone calls into more than 50 languages. Live Translation is launching in beta "this Spring," according to a press release, with registration for eligible T-Mobile customers available starting today. "Some of the biggest barriers wireless customers face are the simplest ones - like being able to understand each other," said T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan. "By bringing real-time AI directly into our network, we're delivering more than connectivity - turning conversations into community, starting with Live Translation." Enabling it at the network level means users don't need spe … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/H1JtmLg

Uber Eats adds AI assistant to help with grocery shopping

Uber announced a new AI feature called "Cart Assistant" for grocery shopping in its Uber Eats app. The new feature works a couple different ways. You can use text prompts, as you would with any other AI chatbot, to ask it to build a grocery list for you. Or you can upload a picture of your shopping list and ask it to populate your cart with all your favorite items, based on your order history. You can be as generic as you - "milk, eggs, cereal" - and the bot will make a list with all your preferred brands. And that's just to start out. Uber says in the coming months, Cart Assistant will add more features, including "full recipe inspirati … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/dQu8lVh

‘Shut up and focus on the mission’: Tech workers are frustrated by their companies’ silence about ICE

Keep your head down. Compartmentalize. Don't make trouble. That's what many tech workers are taking their CEOs' strategic silence to mean, amid an immigration crackdown across the US by the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security. Widespread violence by federal agents has sparked protests in Minneapolis and across the country. One month after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, and two weeks after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, the majority of tech CEOs have remained tight-lipped. Internally, workers from several companies describe a culture of silence and fear - and trepidation over what kind … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Y1nWHiB