Consumer & Gadgets news

Consumer & Gadgets

Amazon ends little-used privacy feature that let Echo users opt out of sending recordings to company

Amazon is ending a little-used privacy feature that let some users of its Echo smart speaker prevent their voice commands from going to the company's cloud.

Consumer & Gadgets

Young Chinese women find virtual love in 'Deepspace'

Rafayel's girlfriends went all out to celebrate their lover's birthday, renting malls across China for parties, decorating high-speed trains with his photos, and even staging a dazzling drone show.

Consumer & Gadgets

Leap of faith for Ubisoft with 'Assassin's Creed' set in Japan

Packing familiar formulas into an all-new Japanese setting, "Assassin's Creed Shadows" is the latest big-budget game from developer Ubisoft that is staking its future on the title.

Consumer & Gadgets

Streaming, surveillance and the power of suggestion: The hidden cost of ten years of Netflix

This month marks a decade since Netflix—the world's most influential and widely subscribed streaming service—launched in Australia.

Consumer & Gadgets

YouTube influencers: Gaming's best friend or worst enemy?

YouTube influencers are shaping the gaming industry in unexpected ways, and a new study in the journal Marketing Science uncovers the surprising truth: Although influencers can drive massive engagement with video games, they ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Security is just a side quest: Insights from the video game industry

The video game industry is a constantly changing market worth billions. In a qualitative interview study with industry experts, CISPA researcher Philip Klostermeyer from the team of CISPA Faculty Prof. Dr. Sascha Fahl investigated ...

Consumer & Gadgets

What is the 'digital gender gap?'

Digital technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, have spread widely, and become integral to many parts of our lives. Yet women continue to lag behind men in digital access in many countries.

Consumer & Gadgets

The impact of app crashes on consumer engagement

High-profile mobile app crashes reveal how life can be upended when an app freezes abruptly or shuts down. The Sonos app crash in May of last year left users of the wireless multi-room sound systems unable to do things like ...

Consumer & Gadgets

AI-generated ad slogans may rival those made by experts

How do AI-generated ad slogans compare to those created by professionals? New University of Minnesota research suggests that the pros tend to connect better with consumers, but AI tools may perform just as well by adopting ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Scientists study the hidden cost of Netflix's autoplay

Autoplay, a feature that automatically begins the next episode or movie without user input, has become a staple of modern streaming platforms like Netflix. But how much is this convenience truly costing us in terms of control ...

Consumer & Gadgets

New earplug can protect hearing while preserving sound quality

Hearing loss is irreversible and the most common work-related injury worldwide. Prevention is the only way to tackle this issue. But who has not been annoyed by how foam earplugs make a rock concert sound muffled and bass-heavy? ...

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

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

Can you feel sorry for a robot? Research indicates you can

A pitiful sound from tinny speakers, sad virtual eyes, trembling robot arms: It doesn't take much to feel sorry for a robot. This is the conclusion of a study by Marieke Wieringa, who will be defending her Ph.D. thesis at ...

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.