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Jaco Beukman, Getty Images/iStockphoto Are you suffering from slow internet speeds at home? After 2020, many of us found ourselves spending a substantial amount of time at home. Especially when multiple people are in the same property, the fight for capacity can lead to a host of connectivity issues. Connectivity drops, bottlenecks, lagged content streaming […] More
So voice control is a huge deal in home automation. You want to feel like a high baller when you walk in and have a robot assistant waiting on you 24/7, right? Well, 2022 isn’t there yet so the current smart assistants on the market are the next best thing. Having tried Google, Alexa, and Siri, I can tell you that for voice control fans, the right voice assistant can make or break your smart home. Personally, I find Alexa to be the most accurate in her responses and understanding my commands, Google is probably middle of the road, and Siri still plays Sweet Caroline when I ask her to turn on the downstairs lights.Now, Alexa isn’t perfect, we know that. But she is a favorite for smart homes and going the Amazon Alexa route ensures vast compatibility, as it’s the most popular voice assistant out there.Setting up the Amazon Alexa app is pretty easy, the platform is built around Alexa, and you can easily add devices and customize your home. And with Amazon’s Frustration-Free Setup, setting up new devices will become even easier with fewer steps. I do wish that some things like routines and your devices were more easily accessible on the Alexa App. Though they are both available on the app’s home, I find myself getting distracted by all of Alexa’s suggestions. And, to be honest, the app just isn’t the easiest to navigate in the beginning. You get used to it, however, and learn to easily make your way around it, but it shouldn’t have to take as long as it does to reach that point.Connectivity and automationsAlexa is available on multiple Amazon devices, like the Echo speakers and Fire TV devices. It works through Wifi, Bluetooth, Zigbee (on Echo 4th Gen, Echo Show except 1st Gen, and Echo Studio) and, more recently, Matter.The Alexa app has some pretty good automation power. Amazon is set on making America’s voice assistant out of Alexa, so they’ve put quite a lot of effort in making sure she helps optimize productivity, routines, shopping, your access to information and current events, and how you cook and enjoy your music. An Echo device, either a speaker or display, will give you access to thousands of skills and dozens of available routines to make the most of all your smart devices. You can set your Echo to detect a barking dog and have Alexa either play soothing music or let you drop in to soothe them. Alexa can even turn off a light when it hears snoring in the room, how creepy is that? Cool, I meant cool.There are countless ways to take advantage of Alexa’s automation power and, with popularity still pretty high, more are turning up every day. Pros:Alexa is responsive and smarter than othersEverything works with AlexaCons:App isn’t as user-friendly More
A man looking at his laptop with concern. Image: Getty/Deagreez A sneaky new phishing attack attempts to manipulate victims into entering their username and password by claiming their account will be deleted if they don’t – and it uses a countdown timer to pile on the pressure. Detailed by cybersecurity researchers at Cofense, this phishing […] More
Image: Getty/MoMo Productions So, your employer issued you a laptop for work, but they won’t let you do anything personal on it. They also insist that you are not allowed to do any work-related tasks on your personal PC, and switching between the two laptops is a pain. Is there an easier way? More how-tos […] More
Image: Getty There’s good and bad news about Microsoft’s recent crackdowns on untrusted Office macros. The good is that it has curtailed the use of Office macros in emailed attachments or links. The bad is that attackers have just changed tactics, ramping up their use of .LNK Windows shortcut links. According to security firm […] More
Google is once again delaying the phaseout of third-party cookies in Chrome. The browser will now fully support the tracking technology until the second half of 2024, Google said on Wednesday. In 2021, Google originally committed, to ending third-party cookie support within the Chrome browser in 2022. The commitment came two years after Google began working on its “privacy sandbox” for Chrome.
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The efforts were slow and met some setbacks along the way. In a blog post Wednesday, Google’s Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez said the company has taken a “deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies.” He added, “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.” Google has been working on this for years in response to growing consumer concerns about privacy. Typically, businesses have relied on third-party cookies and data aggregators to assess the behavior of their users across multiple domains. This, however, clearly came at the cost of customer privacy. Consequently, companies like Google and Apple began restricting the use of third-party cookies. Google’s first attempt to replace the third-party cookie with its own technology, called FLoC, was met with staunch opposition from some, a wary eye from others, and very little positive feedback. Given this poor reception, Google subsequently said Chrome would continue supporting third-party cookies until at least mid-2023. Then in January of this year, it rolled out the Topics API, which aims to track users anonymously while still giving advertisers enough data for interest-based ads. Beginning in early August, the Privacy Sandbox trials will expand to millions of users globally. Google will gradually increase the trial population throughout the rest of the year and into 2023. The company expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome by Q3 2023. Then it will begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome during the second half of 2024. More
Image: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock Attackers are becoming faster at exploiting previously undisclosed zero-day flaws, according to Palo Alto Networks. The company warns in its 2022 report covering 600 incident response (IR) cases that attackers typically start scanning for vulnerabilities within 15 minutes of one being announced. Among this group are 2021’s most significant flaws, including the […] More
Image: Getty A ransomware attack was prevented just because the intended victim was using multi-factor authentication (MFA) and the attackers decided it wasn’t worth the effort to attempt to bypass it. It’s often said that using MFA, also known as two-factor authentication (2FA), is one of the best things you can do to help protect your accounts […] More
