Easy to set up and incredibly responsive, the Cielo Breez Plus is one of two Wi-Fi-connected air-conditioner controllers this company manufactures. Like many similar devices we’ve tested, the simpler (and less-expensive, at a street price of $68) Breez Eco relies entirely on the Cielo Home app. The pricier Breez Plus, reviewed here, has a street price of $109, but it features a display and onboard controls, so you can program a connected air conditioner without Read more…

from the mask-harder dept Nerd Harder gear is back, and face masks are availablein the Techdirt Gear store on Threadless » At the end of last month, we fulfilled two of the most popular requests (one long-standing, and one brand new) for Techdirt gear: we brought back the Nerd Harder line of gear, and introduced a series of face masks featuring some of our most popular designs! You can find all these offerings in our artist Read more…

from the gradually-narrowed-crafting dept Reverse warrants are being challenged in a criminal case involving a bank robbery in Virginia. These warrants (also called “geofence warrants”) work in reverse, hence the nickname. Rather than seeking to search property belonging to a known suspect, investigators approach Google with a demand for information on all cellphones in a certain location at a certain time and work backwards from this stash to determine who to pursue as a suspect. Read more…

from the come-back-and-take-your-beating,-you-cowards dept Clearview AI — the facial recognition service that gives all kinds of entities access to billions of face images scraped from the web — is suddenly scaling back on its aggressive expansion plans. Once the plaything of billionaires, the unproven AI has been sold to retailers, fitness centers, police departments, and a handful of human rights violators. Soon after its existence was exposed by the New York Times, Clearview AI proceeded Read more…

The cat’s out of the bag as far as Google’s latest smart speaker goes, with the company essentially confirming the rumored Home successor on Thursday with a coyly worded email containing a snapshot and a video of the unannounced device. Many key details about the new Google smart speaker are still shrouded in mystery, but we can tease out a few facts by studying the official photo and Google’s brief teaser video. What we know Read more…