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Want a smarter Alexa, savvier Siri, brainier Google Now or a cleverer Cortana? So do Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft -- and each is working to make its voice assistant your personal Einstein of choice. Amazon recently enhanced its efforts by nabbing an AI expert from eBay, The Wall Street Joual reported Friday. Hassan Sawaf is now Amazon's director of artificial intelligence, focusing on "the user experience for users of Amazon's search capability across all products and businesses," according to Sawaf's LinkedIn page. The Joual was one of the first to spot Sawaf's updated responsibilities on LinkedIn. "eBay has wide and deep capabilities in AI across the technology organization, and ...

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.An intact Falcon 9. NASA/Getty Images It was just a routine rocket test.However, as the Space X Falcon 9 rocket stood on the launch pad with its Amos-6 satellite, there was an explosion.Video has now emerged of what that explosion looked like.Posted by nonprofit US Launch Report, the video shows a blast of considerable magnitude. A fire started immediately and the top part of the rocket fell to the ground.Then the fire continued the rage, as so many hopes were temporarily bued. As the video of the fire continues, small...

[embedded content] Hurricanes are scary enough at ground level. View them from space and they look almost unreal, like special effects created in a movie studio. NASA released a time-lapse video on Tuesday showing the Inteational Space Station orbiting over three separate hurricanes. They look both massive and frightening from the station's orbital vantage point.In order, the video shows twin hurricanes Lester and Madeline in the Pacific Ocean and then Gaston in the Atlantic Ocean. Both Lester and Madeline pose a potential threat to the Hawaiian Islands. Gaston is kicking across the Atlantic with wind speeds reaching 100 mph (about 160 kph). Les...

In mid-June, Dave Jackson bought a Frito-Lay variety pack through AmazonFresh for $10.44. When he retued to the Amazon mobile app soon after, it coaxed him to purchase more of the snacks through its "Buy It Again" feature. But the very same variety pack under the "Buy It Again" baer didn't cost $10.44. It was $22.94. The same thing happened after buying Snickers bars for 89 cents apiece on AmazonFresh, Amazon's grocery delivery service. Yet again, Amazon invited him to buy more, but for $4.95 each, more than five times the previous price. What was happening? Jackson, a web administrator in San Jose, Califoia, believes he found a handful of bugs on Amazon after it recently combined the ...

RoadshowNewsCar IndustryAmazon offers up car advice with Amazon VehiclesEnlarge ImageA screenshot of an Amazon Vehicles detail page. Amazon Amazon is gearing up its car knowledge.No, the e-commerce juggeaut still isn't selling cars -- not yet, anyway. Instead, the company on Thursday launched a new webpage called Amazon Vehicles that helps customers research new and classic cars.Amazon Vehicles could help solidify Amazon's place as the search engine for shopping. Bypassing Google's own Google Shopping search engine could train consumers to start thinking about a purchase at Amazon first, even in the rare case...

RoadshowNewsCar IndustrySchedule a test drive where you want with Hyundai and Amazon Close AutoComplete: Massachusetts will tax ridesharing and give that money to taxi companies Drag "Bring it to the mountains, please. I have some, uh, steering tests I'd like to perform." Jos...

[embedded content] If the US presidential race hasn't felt bizarre enough for you, the latest installment of the YouTube series "Bad Lip Reading" offers up unreal yet hilarious moments from the Democratic National Convention.In the video, published Friday, faux voice-overs of Hillary Clinton, Beie Sanders, President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and more rev up the crowd with statements that were never actually made (we don't think). As with all the clips in the series, the video dubs the words as closely as possible to the speaker's mouth movements. Highlights include Chelsea Clinton giving gal-pal shout-outs, Hillary talking about ...

Enlarge ImageThe Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat and the Amazon Echo smart speaker. Ecobee Last year, Amazon established the $100 million dollar "Alexa Fund" for developers and manufacturers both large and small. The idea was fairly straightforward -- support people with good ideas on how to put the voice-recognition technology in the Amazon Echo smart speaker to good use. Now, the online mega-retailer is ponying up for its biggest investment yet and joining in on a$35 million-dollar funding round for the makers of the Ecobee smart thermostat. The funding round brings Amazon in with Thomvest and Relay Ventures, an...

The '80s creature-feature sensibilities of horror-adventure series "Stranger Things" have struck a chord with fans who love everything from kids classics "Goonies" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" to terrifying movies like "Alien" and "Poltergeist." So it makes sense the Netflix show about kids searching for their friend lost in another, parallel world would become a perfect muse for fans wanting a retro-looking video game featuring characters from the show. Game artist Midio decided to do just that. On Monday, he tweeted an animated GIF of the the main characters Eleven, Mike, Lucas and Dustin looking for their friend Will where he disappeared into the creepy woods. ...

The Walt Disney Company is buying a big stake in Major League Baseball's ...

Jet.com has landed at Walmart. Jet.com Walmart is hoping its acquisition of startup Jet.com takes its own online presence to new heights. The retail giant said Monday it has acquired Jet.com in a stock and cash deal worth $3 billion. The deal underscores the competitive nature of the online retail business, where Amazon dominates and Walmart, the largest brick-and-mortar retail in the US, plays second fiddle. Walmart is apparently expecting that Jet.com, which saw early hype as a possible "Amazon-killer," can even the playing field. "Walmart.com will grow faster, the seamless shopping experience we're pursuin...

[embedded content] When beloved graphic novel "Watchmen" was reimagined as a movie directed by Zack Snyder, some irate fans, including "Watchmen" comics creator Alan Moore, criticized the movie's depiction of the troubled superheroes. Leave it to Honest Trailers -- a YouTube series from Screen Junkies that features a classic movie-trailer voice-over but with a narrator who makes fun of films -- to lay down some blunt opinions about the 2009 film. In a video posted Tuesday, Honest Trailers points out that the Watchmen may have looked pretty, but the movie tried way too hard to squeeze in every plotline from the comics. "Stare in awe as Snyder...

Sling Blake Krikorian, the co-founder of Sling Media and a longtime fixture in Silicon Valley, died Wednesday at age 48.His brother, Jason confirmed Krikorian's sudden passing on Facebook. According to Recode's Kara Swisher, he was "apparently struck by a heart attack while surfing in the San Francisco area." Krikorian had recently served as the corporate vice president for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, following the acquisition of his company, id8 Group R2 Studios, by Redmond in 2013. But he was best known (to me and many others) as one of the visionary founders of Sling Media, which he co...

Target and Amazon, together again. Target Four years ago, Target threw Amazon's gadgets out of its stores amid heightened competition between the retailers.Now, the big-box chain has reversed course, bringing back Amazon's Fire tablets, Fire TV devices and Kindle e-readers to its website, with plans to sell the gadgets in stores by October, according to a report from Bloomberg. The Amazon Echo smart speaker, though, doesn't appear on Target.com."Target continually evaluates our assortment to deliver quality products at a great value," a Target spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. "We know our guests lov...

There are plenty of things in my house that I yell at. Some of them answer back these days, though, and even do what I ask. My dog is still a work in progress as far as that goes, but my Amazon Echo has just about nailed it. The Echo is a device that uses speech recognition to perform an ever-growing range of tasks on command. Amazon calls the built-in brains of this device "Alexa," and she* is the thing that makes it work.Alexa is a smart cookie: if I say "Alexa, play some Pink Floyd", she will find some Floyd and start playing it over the built-in speaker of the Echo. If I say "Alexa, what's the weather?" she will calmly tell me that it is too damn hot in Boston. How does she do this? The ...

There are plenty of things in my house that I yell at. Some of them answer back these days, though, and even do what I ask. My dog is still a work in progress as far as that goes, but my Amazon Echo has just about nailed it. The Echo is a device that uses speech recognition to perform an ever-growing range of tasks on command. Amazon calls the built-in brains of this device "Alexa," and she* is the thing that makes it work.Alexa is a smart cookie: if I say "Alexa, play some Pink Floyd", she will find some Floyd and start playing it over the built-in speaker of the Echo. If I say "Alexa, what's the weather?" she will calmly tell me that it is too damn hot in Boston. How does she do this? The ...

[embedded content] When a video starts off with a bald Lex Luthor singing in jail, you know you're in for a treat. From the twisted and talented minds of remixers Craven Moorhaus and Zak Koonce, known as Auralnauts, comes the music video "Batman v Superman - Ding Ding (feat. The Flash)." The video, posted on YouTube Wednesday, shows not only a very aoying Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), but also the ever-so-angry Batman (Ben Affleck) and the equally upset Superman (Henry Cavill). DC Comics characters Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa, and Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, have cameos. But it's the dancing, bearded version of the Flash, rapping an...

RoadshowNewsHatchbacksToyota delays Prius Prime plug-in debut by an entire season Close AutoComplete: BMW gets the green light for 2017 diesel models Drag Enlarge ImageThe Prius Prime's styling isn't for everyone. Toyota Toyota's Prius Prime is t...

Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo showed off an interesting concept: a case that gives smartphones wheels and enables them to roll around on their own. Forget summoning your car; we want to summon our phones. We're also taking a closer look at SymGym, a machine made for working out while playing video games. It doubles as a game controller, so users end up pulling, pushing and otherwise getting resistance reps while they control a video game. Close ...

Enlarge ImageYou can soon expect to see new, interactive gaming experiences developed for Amazon's Alexa-powered smart speakers. Tyler Lizenby/CNET Amazon wants more gaming options for its voice-powered virtual assistant Alexa, and today, it's introducing a new set of tools that'll make it easier for developers to bring them to life. The gaming tools are the newest addition to the Alexa Skills Kit, a set of blueprints for creating Alexa's "skills" -- essentially the apps of the Amazon Echo and Amazon's other Alexa-enabled gadgets. Developers already had access to templates for crafting basic command-and...