Thomas Ricker

The service agnostic company was first to market with a speaker featuring both Alexa and Google Assistant, but JBL is first to allow simultaneous use of the two most popular voice assistants. Sonos previously said it was Google’s fault for blocking “concurrency” — a feature Sonos had been working on since at least 2017 — presumably out of spite for losing that lawsuit. We’ve reached out to Sonos for a reaction and will hopefully have something to publish soon.

In its decision, the Australian federal government says “each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues,” and notes the ease at which restrictions can be circumvented.

Nearly a year after we first saw a prototype of the triple-RGB laser Cine 1 prototype in action, we now know it’ll cost $8,995 for the 100-inch model, and $9,495 for the 120-inch model when sales begin on September 6th. That’s not cheap, but it sure is pretty compared to the alternative of erecting a monolithic black slab in your fancy living room.

Asked by reporters if he was worried that the People’s Republic of China (which claims Taiwan as its territory) would retaliate against Foxconn’s extensive operations in China over his decision to run, the founder and former chairman and CEO of Apple’s favorite contract manufacture had this to say:

First, it was by the cool kids at a Dave Chapelle show, then Captain Hardcore got booed again over the weekend by a bunch of nerds while attending the world championship final of Valorant in Los Angeles with his son. Welcome to hell.

Some code sleuthing by Kevin C. Tofel suggests that the Chrome browser could soon be decoupled from ChromeOS V116 in favor of the Linux browser Lacros.

Micah Toll at Electrek, who knows more than anyone about e-bikes and the challenges US bicyclists face, had the same reaction I did to a pair of weekend NYT articles that mistakenly blame e-bikes for a rise in injuries and deaths among cyclists. Sure, some e-bikes go too fast, and young riders often lack experience with road rules, but make no mistake, the culprit is cars, and urban planners that design communities around them, not people.

Not so much if you’re reading The New York Times. Two very different takeaways on what was presented at Wednesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on UFOs, that rehashed much of what has been reported already over the last few years, like these three classified Pentagon videos released in 2020.

But not on iOS... yet.