But look on the bright side: the most onerous of President Trump's tariffs have yet to take effect, so there are plenty of reasonably priced alternatives to consider.
Belkin stopped selling some of these Wemo products several years ago, but the company continued to operate the servers they depended on. After January of next year, however, you won't be able to operate them at all using the Wemo app or with any third-party services.
These recommendations are based on my assumption that you'll want to replace your Wemo devices with something equally simple, so I won't get into every alternative, including some that might be more appealing to smart home power users. I will, however, help you minimize the brands you buy into, so you don't need to juggle lots of smart home apps.
There are some cases where that won't be possible, however, because I'm recommending Lutron products as my top picks in many categories, and Lutron doesn't make smart bulbs or indoor smart plugs that can handle small appliances. Lutron also doesn't currently support Matter, if that's important to you (it's not to me).
If you're using Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, or Google Home, using more than one app isn't all that onerous once you've set up a given product and perhaps set up some on/off schedules, because most of your interactions with it will involve using voice commands. You'll find you won't need to rely on those apps all that much.
Windows computers come with security software baked into the OS, but for some folks, an upgrade can help demystify and simplify security. To help you choose a good suite, we've identified products that offer excellent protection, worthwhile features, and minimal performance impact on your computer.
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Being able to condense days of growth into a short video that I could watch in just a minute seemed like magic to me. What's more, it opened my mind to something about plants that you just can't see every day — the fact that they're not just inanimate things. They can move just like us (albeit a lot more slowly).
The great thing about making a time lapse video these days is you don't need a studio or specialist equipment to pull it off. It can be done with a mobile phone and / or a free app in Windows.
So, if you're into a hobby that lends itself well to a time lapse (and that can be almost anything), why not make a time lapse video? Here are some ideas for inspiration:
A flower bud opening
An artist painting
Traffic moving on the street
Your own hair growing out after a snip
Tip: Slow moving things like snails and clouds make excellent subjects but require a little more time to shoot.
What to do:
One of the simplest ways to create a time lapse video is with an app called Time Lapse Creator. It gives you the option of either uploading images or videos, or shooting a video directly via the app itself.
For the purposes of this "how to," I've assumed that you've already shot your pictures, uploaded them to your PC, and stored them in a folder. Now you can do the following:
Download and install the free app Time Lapse Creator.
Select either Import Folder or Import Files to sel
There's big news out of Silicon Valley, as OpenAI unveils its ChatGPT Agent - an AI that can autonomously complete complex, multi-step tasks using its own virtual computer to browse the web, run code, use other terminals, manage files and even interact with your personal applications and files (if you let it). It marks a significant milestone toward AI that not only advises but does.
We've tested every laptop on this list ourselves, and we didn't just look at the specs. We also paid attention to frame rates, thermals, keyboard feel, screen quality, and more. No fluff or filler here. Just great gaming laptops that get the job done.
Ari Aster tells WIRED he wrote Eddington during the height of the pandemic and BLM protests. The Western depicts the explosive consequences of his characters' conspiracy-fueled social media diets.
Today is World Emoji Day, and Emojipedia's dedicated Emojitracker has a real-time list of the emoji that are most popular in the United States and other countries. Here are the top 10 most popular emoji in the U.S.:
The House this week took up a trio of bills that would establish a federal framework for regulating the cryptocurrency industry. One of the measures cleared Congress and is on its way to enactment.
One trick I've learned recently is how to send a YouTube video link at a specific timestamp. It's super useful when I want a colleague to see exactly where something happens in a video without them having to laboriously search through the video for that point.
There are two ways I can do this: One is I can simply right-click on a YouTube URL at the point in the video I want to highlight and select Copy video URL at current time, or else I can manually enter the timestamp at the end of the URL in the format &t=ymxxs where y is the minute value and xx is the seconds.
We've tested all the laptops on this list ourselves, so these aren't just specs pulled from a product page. They're real recommendations, based on hands-on experience.
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We've cut through the clutter to bring you the top picks across every category-from sleek, no-fuss Chromebooks to powerhouse gaming machines.
Using the computer's local AI capabilities, the Describe Image feature can generate detailed descriptions of images, charts, and graphs to quickly give you an overview of visual content.
NEW RESOURCES Google Blog: Weather Lab is an interactive website for sharing Google's AI weather models.. "Today Google DeepMind and Google Research are launching a public preview of Weather Lab, an interactive […]
Netflix is giving its TV user interface a major overhaul. Alongside a fresh, cleaner look, you'll see recommendations that adapt to your activity as Netflix tries to better gauge what you might be in the mood to watch. The company plans to roll out the update over the coming weeks and months.
It seems that the aim here, as has long been a goal for Netflix, is to help you find something you want to watch faster. That way, you won't spend an eternity scrolling through the various options while struggling to figure out what to start streaming.
Netflix originally designed its TV user interface for shows and movies, but it had to evolve to better handle new entertainment offerings, such as live events and cloud gaming. The company has been working on the new TV experience since last year, according to Eunice Kim, Netflix's chief product officer. "Our redesigned TV home page is simpler, more intuitive and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today," Kim said on a call with reporters.
The new tiles for each show, movie and so on are much larger. Rather than having information about a highlighted title appear at the top of the screen, the redesign brings everything together.
Each tile includes more at-a-glance contextual details as to why you might want to watch something. It might indicate that a show or movie was recently added, is in Netflix's top 10 list of the most-watched titles, has won awards or is leaving the service soon. Otherwise, Ne
A hacker has exploited a vulnerability in TeleMessage to breach the service and steal data, according to reporting by 404 Media. TeleMessage is an Israeli company that provides modded versions of encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram.
It was revealed last week that former US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz used TeleMessage's modified version of Signal to archive messages. Today's report indicated the presence of other high-ranking government officials in archived chats on the app, including Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance.
The unnamed hacker was able to access archived chats, but it doesn't look like they got into any of Waltz's conversations. The hack does, however, prove that the app's message archiving service is not end-to-end encrypted.
The hacker also accessed contact information of government officials, login credentials for TeleMessage and data pertaining to the US Customs and Border Protection agency. Some businesses who use the service, like Coinbase and Scotiabank, were also hacked. 404 Media spoke to the anonymous hacker, who said the whole thing only "took about 15-20 minutes" and that it "wasn't much effort at all." TeleMessage's parent company Smarsh has yet to comment on the matter.
