Amazon

Now, instead of having to go to every platform individually to ensure their product works with each platform, manufacturers can submit their Matter-certified devices to the Connectivity Standards Alliance Interop Lab and get approved for all four smart home platforms in one go.

On March 28th, Amazon will disable an optional privacy setting that kept your voice recordings local on some Alexa-powered smart speakers.

Panos Panay told Bloomberg they’re re-engineering Alexa devices for Alexa Plus with new designs and materials, new silicon with edge processing, and better sound. There will also be a new “signature” tier, with the first devices arriving this fall.

Associate editor and columnist Ruth Marcus has left the Post after it refused to publish a column “respectfully dissenting” from owner Jeff Bezos’ new limits on opinion coverage, reports The New York Times’ Ben Mullin and Semafor’s Max Tani. Marcus writes that the new policy “threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable.” It’s also reportedly lost the Post at least 75,000 subscribers.

Season 1-7 of Donald Trump’s competition reality TV series will be available to stream starting today until April 27th via Amazon’s video platform, which is also paying $40 million to license Melania Trump’s documentary after Jeff Bezos started sucking up to the President.

If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can claim games like Saints Row: The Third Remastered, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and The Forgotten City this month as part of your subscription.

Business Insider reports that it’s “tentatively scheduled to launch by June” and would have Nova branding.

Wired reports that Amazon has reduced the number of drone flights under its Prime Air delivery service in College Station, Texas, and is looking to relocate its hub within the city following noise complaints from nearby residents.

In a statement to Reuters, Amazon spokesperson Alice Zou said the layoffs impact a “small number of roles” without offering any specifics. Amazon acquired Wondery in 2020, which has produced podcasts like New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce and Dr. Death.

I grabbed a few minutes with the new Alexa at Amazon’s event and was impressed. Gone is the need for “Alexa speak.” Instead, I created a morning wake-up routine just by talking about what I wanted, and controlled several smart home devices without knowing their names or locations.