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ZDNET’s key takeaways Amazon sells the Echo Hub for $180. The Echo Hub gives Alexa the place it has earned in the smart home market: A control panel to easily access smart devices, no ads, and no unnecessary fluff. The smart display can be slow and buggy, especially while loading multiple camera views more buying choices Many smart home enthusiasts, myself included, are tired of juggling dozens of apps on their phones to control the smart…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is priced at $150. The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus offers a clear head-to-toe view of your front door, a removable rechargeable battery pack, reliable motion detection alerts, and seamless integration with Alexa. Ring continues to keep most features behind its Ring Home subscription; though the video quality is better than HD at 1536p, the video clips have a slight fisheye look and prominent vignetting. more buying choices…

Jason Hiner/ZDNET The hottest frontier in the wearables market is smart rings, health trackers worn discreetly on your finger. Although Samsung just unveiled the Galaxy Ring, its take on the trend, this past July, its successor may be announced soon.  A new report from DigiTimes reveals that the Galaxy Ring 2 will be launched at Samsung Unpacked 2025, the company’s annual hardware launch event. Building on its predecessor, the ring will feature an improved battery…

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET Fitness wearable company Whoop claims data from its screenless wristband has revealed a “novel biomarker” for tracking menstruation, which could make some health issues easier to catch earlier on.  Vital signs, including body temperature and heart rate, change through each phase of a person’s menstrual cycle. But Whoop’s research, published on Monday, indicates that the amplitude, or size, of those changes can tell us more than previously thought.  Also: The best fitness trackers you can buy The…

Vladimir_Timofeev/Getty Images The building of more powerful data centers for artificial intelligence, stuffed with more and more GPU chips, is driving data centers to enormous size, according to the chief executive of Ciena, which makes fiber-optic networking equipment purchased by cloud computing vendors to connect their data centers together.  “Some of these large data centers are just mind-blowingly large, they are enormous,” says Gary Smith, CEO of Hannover, Maryland-based Ciena. Also: OpenAI’s o3 isn’t AGI…

Maria Diaz/ZDNET What’s the deal? The Eufy Security Floodlight Cam E340 is on sale for $150, saving you 32%.  Why this deal is ZDNET-recommended The Floodlight Cam E340 from Eufy Security, which I’ve been testing over the past five months, is one of the four newest security cameras that the company recently launched. It’s equipped with an ultrawide and telephoto lens for capturing more distant subjects, and the camera works really hard. At times, too…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 has a reliable 1-inch CMOS sensor that captures stabilized 4K footage. It’s compact, has a built-in gimbal, and is very easy to use. The control pad can be wonky, and low-light performance takes a hit. more buying choices I didn’t expect a pocket camera to be one of my favorite tech gadgets of this year — not when smartphone cameras have gotten so good — but the…

Sam Altman and deputies at OpenAI discuss the performance of the new o3 model on the ARC-AGI test. OpenAI/ZDNET The latest large language model from OpenAI isn’t yet in the wild, but we already have some ways to tell what it can and cannot do. The “o3” release from OpenAI was unveiled on Dec. 20 in the form of a video infomercial, which means that most people outside the company have no idea what it really is capable…

ZDNET “See for yourself.” It’s not exactly clear what’s on the way, but Apple TV+ is teasing something coming Jan. 4 and 5. Save the date In an X post yesterday, the streaming service shared two words — “Stay tuned” — along with an image from an Apple TV+ show and the phrase “See for yourself.” The dates for next weekend appear at the bottom. A similar post shared on Christmas Day read “Save the date”…

ALFRED PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’t think AI is the next big thing. 😤 In fact, I’m betting the future of my company on it. I know what you’re thinking: “This guy’s lost it.” Also: 3 lucrative side hustles you can start right now with OpenAI’s Sora video generator But hear me out. I get that everyone’s hyped about AI, and breakthroughs are popping up constantly….