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 Back in late 2022 and early 2023, Apple rolled out a new architecture for its Apple Home platform to deliver improved performance and compatibility, although the rollout came with some hiccups that forced Apple to pull and later re-release the upgrade.
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LG opened CES 2026 by outlining its vision to reduce the physical effort and mental burden of life. Buy enough of the devices it's presently working on and you'll exist in an environment of "ambient care," coddled by the machinery in your home. It sounds positively utopian: When the sensors in your bed know you've not slept well and are getting a cold, a robot will wake you with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. When you're in a rush to get to work, the robot will make you a sandwich for you to eat on the go, sparing you the effort of making it yourself. The more I roamed the halls of the show after that, the more I couldn't help feeling uneasy about what so many companies here were pitching. To me, the vision of the future on show here is equal parts solitary and infantilized.
There's obvious reasons for this: AI swallowed the tech industry's oxygen, sapping any chance of innovation in consumer hardware. The advent of Panther Lake is a win for Intel, but it's not going to enable dramatic changes in how people work with their PCs on a daily basis. The US policy shift away f
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 Clicks is an apologetically gadgety company, making gear that feels charmingly out-of-place in a world where almost every smartphone out there is an all-screen slab. That was obviously two years ago when the company first revealed its keyboard case that brought tactile typing to the iPhone and eventually other Android devices. Rather than that being a one-off curiosity, the company had two new announcements at CES 2026: a magnetic keyboard accessory that also doubles as a battery bank and small, squat mobile phone with a keyboard. And while there isn't a working prototype of the Clicks Communicator available for the press to see, I got to check out the new Power Keyboard talk with Clicks co-founder and former BlackBerry marketing director Jeff Gadway about where he thinks his products fit into the smartphone world.
At first glance, the $79 Power Keyboard feels like a big improvement over the original Clicks Keyboard case. It magnetically attaches to any phone with Qi2 and connects over Bluetooth. The keyboard itself is similar to the original Clicks keyboard, but there's a dedicated number row which is a nice improvement. But the thing that really caught my eye was its old-school slider form factor. When closed, the Power Keyboard sits on the back of your phone like a thick wireless battery pack — but it satisfyingly slides up to reveal the keyboard like the Palm Pre or BlackBerry Torch smartphones of old.
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Apple keeps most of its product pricing on a tight leash, but we do see the company's AirTags go on sale pretty frequently. Another cost cut has come around for this item just in time for the holidays. Amazon is currently selling a four-pack of AirTags for $65. At a third off the regular cost, that price is pretty close to the record low discount of $63 we've seen for these Bluetooth trackers.
AirTags can be useful for people who travel frequently, helping you to keep track of essentials like your passport as well as a way to keep tabs on luggage while you're on the go. If you do purchase some AirTags, we have some recommendations for useful accessories to go along with them, such as dif
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Probably my favorite thing about the Lego Smart Play system unveiled this week at CES is that it was designed for kids, first and foremost. In the past 10 years or so, Lego has increasingly courted an older audience with more expensive and elaborate sets. But when it was time to bring more advanced technology to Lego, the idea right from the beginning was more social and interactive play.
If you haven't heard about Smart Play yet, its a way for Lego to make its sets more interactive. A Smart Brick filled with sensors makes it so sets can respond to each other, know when they're moving, play sounds and know when the corresponding Smart Minifigures are near them. Tiny Smart Tags, meanwhile, help the Smart Brick know the context of how it's being used — whether it's in a helicopter, car or duck for example.
Tom Donaldson, senior VP and Head of Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group, told Engadget that the company worked on Smart Play for about eight years before introducing it this week, and that social play was the starting point. "We started really looking at consumer needs, and this idea that kids really like social play," said Donaldson "Kids really like the sort of things that change when they come back to them, and the kids really like agency. They want to be able to change things."
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There are no recruitment ads for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) running on Spotify at the moment, the streaming service has told Variety. A spokesperson has confirmed the news after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, but they also clarified that the ads stopped running in late 2025. "The advertisements mentioned were part of a US government recruitment campaign that ran across all major media and platforms," they explained.
Spotify caught flak back in October for playing ICE ads, asking people to "join the mission to protect America," in between songs for users on the ad-supported plan. The advertisements even promised $50,000 signing bonuses for new recruits. Campaigns were launched to urge users to cancel their subscriptions and to boycott the service, and even music labels called on the company to stop serving ICE advertisements. Spotify said back then that the ads don't violate its policies and that users can simply mark them with a thumbs up or down to let the platform know their preferences.
The company reportedly received $74,000 from Homeland Security for the ICE ads, but that's a tiny amount compared to what other companies received. According to a report by
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Jonathan Ross told a federal court in December about his professional background, including "hundreds" of encounters with drivers during enforcement actions, according to testimony obtained by WIRED.
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 Lumus got a major boost in brand recognition when one of its waveguides was selected for use in the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. But that already feels like old tech now because at CES 2026, the company brought some of its latest components to the show and based on what I saw, they seem poised to seriously elevate the optical quality of the next wave of high-end smartglasses.
When the Meta Ray-Ban Displays glasses came out, they wowed users as they were (and still are) one of a handful of smartglassess to feature a full-color in-lens display with at least a 20-degree field of view. But going by the specs on Lumus' newest waveguides, we're set for a major upgrade in terms of future capabilities.
If you look closely, you can see where light from the waveguide propagates into the one of the smartglasses' lenses.Sam Rutherford for EngadgetThe first model I tried featured Lumus' optimized Z-30 waveguides, which not only offer a much wider 30-degree FOV, they are also 30 percent lighter and 40 percent thinner than previous generations. On top of that, Lumus says they are also more power efficient with the waveguides capable of hitting more than 8,000 nits per watt. This is a big deal because smartglasses are currently quite limited by the size of batteries they can use, especially if you want to make them
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Gifted word learner dogs seem capable of eavesdropping about as well as 18-month-old toddlers, the study researchers say.
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 Image Credit: Onleaks
Details about Oppo's next flagship are starting to gather. Multiple leaks suggest it will be called the Find X5 Pro, with a similar design to last year's Find X3 Pro and specs broadly in line with the new OnePlus 10 Pro, now available in China. (OnePlus is now, of course, treated as an Oppo sub-brand.
The Find X3 Pro wasn't sold in the US, but it made its way to Europe and was one of the best phones of 2021. Renderings recently released by OnLeaks show a device with a camera hump that flows into the rest of the rear much like the Find X3 Pro, although the camera se
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