Consumer & Gadgets news

Consumer & Gadgets

Health monitoring devices at risk of being hacked, study shows

Billions of people around the world are using internet-connected medical devices to monitor their health, but could be putting themselves at risk of hackers using their data for unhealthy reasons, according to a new cybersecurity ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Study explores the impact of LLMs on human creativity

Large language models (LLMs), AI systems that can process human language and generate new texts in response to written prompts, are now widely used by people worldwide to complete various tasks. These systems can be used ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Storytelling study provides a window into the inner workings, ongoing limitations of generative AI tools like ChatGPT

Imagine you decide to write a short story about a protagonist who creates an artificial human and then falls in love with it. What gender is your protagonist? What about the artificial human? Would you write a moving love ...

Consumer & Gadgets

More user control may help ease negative reactions to ads on voice assistants

Voice assistants (VAs) like Alexa and Siri continue to gain popularity in households and on personal devices. According to digital trends research company Emarketer, the number of VA users will surpass 150 million in 2025. ...

Consumer & Gadgets

New tool can detect malware on Android phones

Screen readers, voice-to-text, and other accessibility features have enabled people with disabilities to use smartphones. Yet these same features make the phones more accessible to hackers, too.

Consumer & Gadgets

Exploring the hidden costs of free apps

Procrastination, sleep deprivation and reduced focus are part of the price we pay for free mobile apps. This is according to researchers at Linköping University and RISE, who have investigated the costs hidden behind the ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Q&A: Generative AI embraced faster than internet, PCs

ChatGPT's debut in November 2022 caused a near-instant sensation. It gave most users their first opportunity to try out a new type of artificial intelligence that uses existing data and published materials to create content ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Will Meta's Orion smart glasses be the next 'iPhone moment'?

Meta supremo Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion smart glasses, a new augmented reality (AR) prototype, at the annual Meta Connect developer conference. Ten years in the making, and still not expected on high streets until 2027, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Examining what happened to crypto

Recent high-profile financial meltdowns at Bitcoin, Celsius, and Terraform Labs, which together wiped out hundreds of billions in market value, helped trigger a flight from the cryptocurrency market, driving its value from ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Rolling privacy into collaborative tools for online working

The rise in online working and collaboration wrought by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020 continues apace. In parallel we see a rise in security issues surrounding the enabling technologies. A team from India ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Amazon handed Ring footage to police without user consent

Amazon has provided Ring doorbell footage to law enforcement 11 times this year without the user's permission, a revelation that's bound to raise more privacy and civil liberty concerns about its video-sharing agreements ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Disneyland car finder helps remember where you parked

A new smartphone app will help forgetful Disneyland visitors remember where they parked their car after a long day at the Anaheim, California theme park resort—as long as they don't forget to use the app when they first ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Social platforms failing to keep LGBTQ users safe, GLAAD says

A top LGBTQ advocacy organization, after seeing an escalation of hateful attacks on platforms such as TikTok and Twitter, came up with a score for the social media sites' safety for vulnerable users. All of the networks received ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Musk's dispute with Twitter over bots continues to dog deal

Elon Musk's proposed acquisition of Twitter Inc. may fall apart over his doubts that the company is accurately reporting the number of spam bots on the service, according to a report, even as company executives reiterated ...

Consumer & Gadgets

How daycare apps can spy on parents and children

Daycare apps are designed to make everyday life in daycare centers easier. Parents can use them, for example, to access reports on their children's development and to communicate with teachers. However, some of these applications ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Robochop makes garden trimming a snip

Automation and computer-aided designs are seeding the future of home gardens. With the onset of designer gardens as a service and rose-pruning robots, weekends spent toiling in the garden will be more productive and personalized.

Consumer & Gadgets

It's 2022. Why do we still not have waterproof phones?

While manufacturers have successfully increased the water-repelling nature of smartphones, they are still far from "waterproof." A water-resistant product can usually resist water penetration to some extent, but a waterproof ...