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Weber SmokeFire review: An intriguing work-in-progress

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The SmokeFire grills run on Weber Connect, which is built on JuneOS — the same software that powers June’s smart ovens. It can monitor the grill and internal food temperatures to guide your cooks. Like the Smart Grilling Hub, Weber Connect will lead you through cooking a variety of meat and seafood, from prepping to final slicing, and every step in between. The app will tell you when to complete each step, estimate how long until the next one and offer video how-tos if you need a visual aid. 

You can also run Weber Connect in a more manual mode, with the target-temperature option. Here, you’re overseeing the process on your own without the step-by-step instructions. As you might expect, you can control everything on the grill itself — including setting and adjusting temperature, timers and more. However, if you want to employ the estimated-doneness times, you’ll need to select a meat or seafood preset and send it to the grill. 

Even though Weber Connect gives you a specific cooking temperature, picking a preset doesn’t send that info to the grill for you. You have to manually set it yourself before beginning the ignition process. This sounds like an inconvenience, but it’s not. No WiFi pellet grill will allow you to start it remotely, for safety reasons. Some grills, like Traeger’s, will send temperature info, but you still have to physically push the ignite button, so it’s not exactly a huge time saver.

Weber's first pellet grill has potential to be a backyard powerhouse, but the smart features need work.

Billy Steele/Engadget

When I reviewed the Smart Grilling Hub, I didn’t have any issues with the estimated cooking times. Almost always, the time frame the device provided once the grill recovered from me putting the meat on was accurate. There were fluctuations when I’d lift the lid to check, or if there was some other environmental trigger, but both short and long cooks were finished pretty close to the initial estimate. 

With the SmokeFire, that wasn’t always the case. Notifications to flip and remove quickly seared steaks were fine, but the time estimates on both of the smoking sessions that lasted eight hours or more were way off. Weber Connect said a brisket I was cooking still needed another two hours, even after it hit an internal temperature of 200 degrees. I had a similar outcome with a pork shoulder. The time estimate to wrap was also slightly off on the latter, showing an hour and a half about 20 minutes before pinging my phone that it was time to complete that step (of course I had left the house to run an errand). These time estimates can be handy for longer cooks, and they were a welcome feature on the Smart Grilling Hub. However, on the SmokeFire grill, there’s room for improvement. 

Weber has pledged to do just that. The company committed to adding more cook profiles to the app on a quarterly basis. Like I mentioned in the Hub review, there are some limitations and omissions right now (specific steak cuts and pork ribs, for example). Weber Connect is also missing key SmokeFire tools like the ability to adjust the grill temperature from your phone. That’s a basic feature that nearly every other WiFi-enabled pellet grill has onboard. Weber has already pushed software updates to improve how SmokeFire runs, so I hope it can move quickly to add the temperature adjustment as well. 

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UK watchdog ‘provisionally’ clears Amazon investment in Deliveroo

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The CMA launched a second, more through investigation into the deal last December. Since then, the coronavirus pandemic has swept across the globe and made it impossible for many cafes and restaurants to operate. That, in turn, has affected companies like Deliveroo, which needs local businesses to drive customer orders and, by extension, revenue. Today, the CMA revealed that the UK lockdown has caused “a significant decline in revenues” that Deliveroo is unable to offset with grocery services.

“As a result, Deliveroo recently informed the CMA that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business meant that it would fail financially and exit the market without the Amazon investment,” the CMA said in a statement today. The watchdog has re-assessed the deal, therefore, and concluded that Deliveroo will go under without outside funding. Alternative investment is “possible,” the organization said, but unlikely given how many companies are struggling financially at the moment.

“The CMA currently considers that the imminent exit of Deliveroo would be worse for competition than allowing the Amazon investment to proceed and has therefore provisionally found that the deal should be cleared,” it added. The CMA’s sudden about-turn is unexpected but somewhat understandable. Deliveroo isn’t immune to the coronavirus outbreak and at least some of its self-employed couriers will have stopped working in order to apply for the government’s furloughed payment scheme.

“Without additional investment, which we currently think is only realistically available from Amazon, it’s clear that Deliveroo would not be able to meet its financial commitments and would have to exit the market,” Stuart McIntosh, chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group said. “This could mean that some customers are cut off from online food delivery altogether, with others facing higher prices or a reduction in service quality. Faced with that stark outcome, we feel the best course of action is to provisionally clear Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo.”

The watchdog will now consult on its “provisional findings” and make a final decision before June 11th.

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Facebook introduces a ‘care’ reaction in difficult times

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced everyone to stay indoors and support loved ones that don’t live in the same household from afar. It’s a tough time, but Facebook is hoping a new reaction can make it a little easier to show how much you care about people. On the regular Facebook app and website, the new care reaction will take the form of a little round character holding a small heart. It joins the classic thumbs up, heart, laugher, shock, sadness and anger options that have been available since reactions launched in 2015. Messenger users, meanwhile, can activate a new pinky-purple heart by long-pressing the existing heart reaction.

“We know this is an uncertain time, and we wanted people to be able to show their support in ways that let their friends and family know they are thinking of them,” Alexandru Voica, Facebook’s EMEA Communications Manager for Engineering tweeted. A reaction alone won’t save lives, of course, or solve the planet’s increasing unemployment crisis. Still, it’s appreciated. Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly active users, and at least some will feel a little better after sharing or seeing this reaction on a post.



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Engadget The Morning After | Engadget

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Coronavirus canceled MWC, but new phones have continued to appear all the same. That’s why I really needed Cherlynn Low’s breakdown just to keep up with all the new mobile devices we’ve seen this spring, from the Reno Ace 2 to the just-unveiled iPhone SE (pre-orders open today at 8 AM ET) and OnePlus 8 and devices that have yet to appear, like Motorola’s new flagship and the mysterious LG Velvet.

— Richard

You can now set up Google Fi on your iPhone using an eSIM

Could it be any easier?

TMA

Engadget

So long as you’re a new customer, you only need the Fi app and a nearby computer (displaying a QR code) to get started.
Continue reading.

ACLU outlines privacy concerns for contact tracing tech

One of its main concerns is ‘mission creep.’

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Google

With contact tracing tech under development to fight the spread of COVID-19, watchdogs at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are urging the government and tech companies to take a tougher stance on privacy. Apple and Google’s proposal would use Bluetooth data to detect phone owners’ potential exposure to people who have tested positive for COVID-19. The companies say they will take a “privacy-preserving” approach to data collection.

“While some of these systems could offer public health benefits, they may also cause significant risks to privacy, civil rights and civil liberties,” the ACLU’s Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel Jennifer Stisa Granick wrote in a blog post.
Continue reading.

Facebook’s global currency plans were always doomed

Of course governments were against it.

After almost a full year of criticism, the Libra Association has climbed down from its original goal of creating a single “stablecoin” for the world. Rather than make what could be described as a global currency, Libra will now be a little bit more, uh, like PayPal. Dan Cooper explains how we got here.
Continue reading.

Sponsored Content by StackCommerce

TMA newsletter 4/18/20

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Clearview AI’s source code was exposed by a security lapse

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The leak also revealed Clearview’s prototype “Insight” camera that has since been discontinued. As TechCrunch showed in a video, SpiderSilk reportedly found 70,000 videos in one storage bucket that were taken from an Insight camera installed in a residential building in Manhattan. The company said it “collected some raw video strictly for debugging purposes, with the permission of the building management.”

Clearview’s facial recognition AI that can identify a person using data from Facebook, Instagram and other public-facing internet services. It obtains this data by “scraping” billions of photos from social media sites and elsewhere. The company markets its service to law-enforcement agencies and other businesses, which can use it to identify a person simply by uploading their photo. Clearview was breached earlier when a list of businesses using its services was leaked.

Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That has defended the company’s practices, saying that it should be allowed to store any publicly-available information, just as Google and others do. However, the company has shown that it not only exposes the public to privacy violations, it can’t even protect its own data.

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Google Meet video calls are getting a Zoom-like layout

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Google Meet will undergo huge changes over the next few weeks as the tech giant rushes to make it a more viable alternative to Zoom, according to Reuters. To start with, the video conferencing tool is now directly accessible from within Gmail for business and education users. Those who prefer Zoom for its gallery-like layout that can show up to 25 participants at once would probably be more excited to get another feature coming later this month, though: Google will roll out a new layout option that can display up to 16 participants.

There’s already a Chrome extension that can mimic the Zoom feature for Meet, but its official release means there’s no need for a workaround anymore. The company will also enhance Meet’s video quality in dim lighting and its ability to filter out background noise in the coming weeks. In addition, an upcoming feature will allow users to display a specific tab open on their Chrome browser during a call.



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Google Stadia now supports surround sound on the web

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Google has rolled out some key new features for Stadia on the web to compliment the 4K it introduced last month. You’ll now get 5.1 surround sound when playing on Chrome or other browsers, which should deliver better audio quality and the ability to better hear where your enemies are coming from.

Stadia for web also gained an on-screen keyboard that works when you have a gamepad connected, which should make it less of a hassle to input your name and other data. And if you prefer to game on mobile, you’ll receive notifications about your connection quality to see if any lag or other problems are data related.

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Disney+ will start streaming ‘Artemis Fowl’ on June 12th

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Disney’s Artemis Fowl will be available for viewing exclusively through the company’s streaming platform starting on June 12th. The entertainment giant surprised fans in early April when it announced that the much-awaited adaptation of Eoin Colfer’s series will no longer be shown in theaters. Artemis Fowl was supposed to be shown in cinemas back in August 2019, but its release was pushed back to May 29th this year.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Disney adjusted the premiere dates for its movies, including Black Widow and Mulan. However, it decided not to show Artemis Fowl in theaters altogether. The company didn’t explain the reason behind its decision, but it could very well be a strategy to attract new subscribers to its streaming service with a big-budget flick.

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Developers can use Alexa’s ‘long-form’ speaking style to read the news

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Developers building apps that deliver content spoken aloud by AI assistants have a new trick to implement with Amazon’s Alexa voice now. A new “long-form” speaking style (you can hear a sample of it here, compared to the neutral setting here) uses an updated text-to-speech model that’s optimized to read content like this blog post.

Converting content for people who prefer to listen to podcasts when they’re in the kitchen or driving can be done easily, with the new style that’s programmed to insert natural-sounding pauses between paragraphs or if it’s reading dialogue that belongs to different characters.

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‘Animal Crossing’ players can easily import art from the Getty Museum

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Players can use the artwork they download not just to create virtual paintings on canvases, but also as designs for shirts, walls and floors. The virtual versions aren’t quite as clear as the originals, though, so some pieces like abstract art may not look that recognizable.

It’s worth noting that those looking to import pieces from other museums could use Getty’s Art Generator, as well, so long as the piece they’re eyeing supports the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIFF). They simply need to get the piece’s IIIFF URL and paste it into the tool to get a QR code they can scan.



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