Google announced end-of-life dates today for products relying on the Nest app that won’t carry over to the new Google Home. If you own any Nest Secure or Dropcam home-security products, you have a year to use them before they become paperweights. Phasing out old and incompatible hardware could signal that the arrival of Google’s more customizable new Home app is drawing near.

Nest Secure will continue to work until April 8th, 2024. To ease the blow, Google is offering some freebies to customers — as the company often does when its products head to the Google Graveyard. Nest Secure users will receive an offer for a free ADT Self Setup System (up to a $485 value); alternatively, they can opt for $200 in Google Store credit. Google says it will send an email with redemption instructions to eligible users.

Dropcam products will also cease to work after April 8th of next year. Google advises users to download and save their video history before this date to avoid losing it. As consolation for Dropcam customers, the company is offering a free Nest Cam (indoor, wired) for those with a Nest Aware subscription; those without a subscription can take 50 percent off the same camera.

Dropcam

Finally, Works With Nest, the API system allowing third-party integrations with otherwise incompatible smart home accessories, will stop working after September 29th. Google points customers to Assistant-based routines in the Google Home app as a replacement, and it plans to launch a script editor “in the coming months” to make up for other lost features. The company says it’s also “working closely” with partners to provide replacement integrations.

Google announced an updated Home app last October that could be the primary source for today’s hardware cutoff announcements. The updated Home app integrates Matter, including its Fast Pair feature. It’s available now in a public preview.

Nest Secure launched in 2017 as a fresh take on smart home security. Designed to compete with legacy brands like ADT (which Google later invested in), the system included a Guard base, motion-detecting sensors for windows and doors and tag keychains, which let you quickly enable or disable the system. Google announced in 2020 it had discontinued the platform but promised it would continue working for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Dropcam began as a pioneering smart home security brand, launching some of the first cloud-connected cameras. Google / Nest bought the startup in 2014 for $555 million, a move that founder Greg Duffy later described as a “mistake.”

Pop star Maggie Rogers isn’t going to let bots spoil her upcoming tour. The “Alaska” singer told fans in an email today that she’s getting a jump on automated scalpers by selling tickets the old-fashioned way: in-person sales.

Rogers says fans can physically walk up to box offices on Friday to get first dibs on pre-sale tickets for her US summer tour, running from July to August. “On Friday, for one day only, we’re running an in-person pre-sales, where you can go directly to your local box office to buy a ticket,” wrote the artist, who rose to fame after a video of Pharrell Williams reacting to her “Alaska” demo went viral in 2016. “There’s a two-ticket-per-person limit, but you can choose any ticket you want — all of the prices and tiers will be available, along with exclusive merch and a special playlist I cooked up just for box office day.”

Rogers says the in-person process will vary from city to city, and she advises fans to check her website for specifics. For fans in the NYC area, she adds that she will visit the Music Hall of Williamsburg box office in Brooklyn on Friday, greeting fans buying tickets for her Forest Hills show scheduled for July 27th.

If you can't make it to the box office on Friday, Rogers says her website will open registrations for traditional artist pre-sales on April 11th. In addition, Spotify will have its own pre-sales on April 12th with local promoters joining on the 12th and 13th. General availability opens on April 14th.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ticketmaster has been in hot water lately over its inability to prevent bots from scooping up pre-sale tickets and reselling them for egregiously inflated prices. After 1.5 million presale codes went out to Taylor Swift fans in November, 14 million buyers (including “a staggering” amount of bots) tried to purchase tickets. The company said it was hit with 3.5 billion system requests, leading to the site crashing and fans left without access.

That caught the attention of the US Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called for the breakup of Ticketmaster. Joe Berchtold, President and CFO of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, acknowledging the problem but punting a resolution to (the largely dysfunctional) Congress. Despite a reported DOJ investigation, Senate hearings and the usual political showboating, the government hasn’t yet produced any reforms.

A similar fiasco unfolded in December when thousands of Bad Bunny fans heading to see the reggaeton star in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca were denied entry at the door, with staff telling them their Ticketmaster-purchased tickets were fake. That incident led to Mexican antitrust scrutiny, but Ticketmaster avoided paying announced fines after it refunded buyers who were denied entry and provided additional compensation.

Although Rogers deserves credit for an analog solution to a modern-day problem, the story says more about our high-tech, modern-day ticket-purchasing catastrophe as it does the artist’s crafty workaround.

T-Mobile and Major League Baseball (MLB) are renewing their partnership. In addition to sponsoring various pro-baseball events, the carrier announced today that its subscribers would continue receiving free MLB.TV subscriptions through 2028.

MLB and T-Mobile have offered the deal for the past eight years as part of its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion, which gives subscribers access to weekly discounts and freebies. MLB.TV lets you stream home and away broadcast feeds around the league — live or on-demand. (However, it’s subject to dreaded regional blackouts, so you shouldn’t count on it to watch teams nearby.) In addition, for the first time this season, the service lets you stream minor-league games for your favorite major-league team’s affiliates in the MLB app.

Speaking of the minor leagues, the two corporations are partnering on an automated ball-strike (ABS) system, which lets Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players and officials “review, challenge and analyze calls.” This season, T-Mobile will power the system with a “5G Private Mobile Network” during some minor-league games. You may recall that MLB has been experimenting with robot umps in the independent Atlantic League since 2019. Last year, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the league aims to introduce the system to the big leagues by 2024. From a labor perspective, it’s hard not to see this as a first step toward automating umpires’ jobs, but at least fans can direct their vitriol over (perceived) bad calls to a machine instead of a human. 

T-Mobile says its baseball partnership will also include a little-league sponsorship, part of which consists of the carrier donating millions of dollars toward equipment and grants for aspiring young sluggers. It’s also continuing to sponsor the All-Star Week Home Run Derby and batting practice broadcast. Finally, T-Mobile plans to expand its 5G coverage in baseball stadiums across North America, envisioning eventual “immersive 5G-connected experiences for fans” and better in-stadium speeds and reception for its subscribers.

A Cornell University researcher has developed sonar glasses that “hear” you without speaking. The eyeglass attachment uses tiny microphones and speakers to read the words you mouth as you silently command it to pause or skip a music track, enter a passcode without touching your phone or work on CAD models without a keyboard.

Cornell Ph.D. student Ruidong Zhang developed the system, which builds off a similar project the team created using a wireless earbud — and models before that which relied on cameras. The glasses form factor removes the need to face a camera or put something in your ear. “Most technology in silent-speech recognition is limited to a select set of predetermined commands and requires the user to face or wear a camera, which is neither practical nor feasible,” said Cheng Zhang, Cornell assistant professor of information science. “We’re moving sonar onto the body.”

The researchers say the system only requires a few minutes of training data (for example, reading a series of numbers) to learn a user’s speech patterns. Then, once it’s ready to work, it sends and receives sound waves across your face, sensing mouth movements while using a deep learning algorithm to analyze echo profiles in real time “with about 95 percent accuracy.”

Ruidong Zhang / Cornell University

The system does this while offloading data processing (wirelessly) to your smartphone, allowing the accessory to remain small and unobtrusive. The current version offers around 10 hours of battery life for acoustic sensing. Additionally, no data leaves your phone, eliminating privacy concerns. “We’re very excited about this system because it really pushes the field forward on performance and privacy,” said Cheng Zhang. “It’s small, low-power and privacy-sensitive, which are all important features for deploying new, wearable technologies in the real world.”

Privacy also comes into play when looking at potential real-world uses. For example, Ruidong Zhang suggests using it to control music playback controls (hands- and eyes-free) in a quiet library or dictating a message at a loud concert where standard options would fail. Perhaps its most exciting prospect is people with some types of speech disabilities using it to silently feed dialogue into a voice synthesizer, which would then speak the words aloud.

If things go as planned, you can get your hands on one someday. The team at Cornell’s Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab is exploring commercializing the tech using a Cornell funding program. They’re also looking into smart-glasses applications to track facial, eye and upper body movements. “We think glass will be an important personal computing platform to understand human activities in everyday settings,” said Cheng Zhang.

If you’ve been waiting for Apple’s 2022 iPad to go on sale, you can get one now for $50 off its usual price. Amazon currently offers the tablet starting at $399, its lowest price yet.

The $50 discount applies to all colors, storage and networking variants of the 10.9-inch tablet. Color options include silver, pink, blue and yellow; you can order it in 64GB and 256GB tiers. In addition to the deal on the base model, you’ll pay $549 for either the WiFi / 256GB variant or the WiFi + cellular / 64GB option. The 256GB / WiFi + cellular model costs $699.

The 10th-generation iPad, launched in October, has an updated design reminiscent of the more expensive iPad Air and iPad Pro — losing the Home button and shifting Touch ID to the edge-facing power / sleep button. Its 10.9-inch display is also significantly larger than its predecessor, and it includes a faster A14 Bionic chip that’s plenty powerful for most iPad-related tasks. Additionally, Apple repositioned its front-facing camera to be centered in landscape mode, making your gaze appear more natural on video calls. It also supports the first-generation Apple Pencil (including its awkward charging setup) for jotting notes or sketching.

In Engadget’s review, the iPad’s battery life exceeded Apple’s 10-hour estimate, lasting 11 hours and 45 minutes while playing a movie from the iTunes Store. In addition, although it doesn’t support the Magic Keyboard that works with Apple’s premium tablets, you can add the Magic Keyboard Folio accessory for $229, a $20 discount. Despite a few tradeoffs, the iPad’s sale price addresses many of our reservations about it, which centered around its overall value.

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Stellantis says the upcoming Ram 1500 REV will offer up to a 500-mile range, longer than any electric pickup available. The automaker officially announced the electric truck at the New York International Auto Show today after teasing an ultra-sleek concept in January (which the version you can buy looks nothing like) and a production reveal in February.

The standard version of the Ram 1500 EV will include a 168 kWh battery that lasts 350 miles; you’ll need to opt for the premium 229 kWh battery option to reach the 500-mile estimate. By comparison, the Ford F-150 Lightning maxes out at a 320-mile range, while the Chevy Silverado EV can last an estimated 400 miles. Meanwhile, Tesla claims its long-delayed Cybertruck will match the new Ram with a 500-mile range.

The Ram 1500 EV also supports quick charging. Stellantis says it can add up to 110 miles of range with only 10 minutes of charging.

As far as performance, the truck can go from 0 to 60 mph in as little as 4.4 seconds and has 654 horsepower and 630 lb-ft of torque. Its other specs include a towing capacity of up to 14,000 lbs and a maximum payload of up to 2,700 lbs. In addition, it has a frunk with 15 cubic feet of storage and bidirectional charging (including powering another vehicle, charging a home during power outages and sending power back to the grid). Finally, it can handle up to two ft of water fording.

Stellantis hasn’t yet announced pricing, and deliveries aren't scheduled to start until the fourth quarter of 2024. After opening (and quickly closing) reservations in January, you can reserve one again with a (refundable) $100 down payment.

Best Buy announced today that it’s extending its gadget recycling program to include a new mail-in option. The retailer will now sell you a box for your used electronics that you can ship back for recycling, saving a trip to the store. Best Buy says it’s recycled 2.7 billion pounds of electronics and appliances through its existing programs, describing itself as the US’ “largest retail collector of e-waste.”

The program lets you order a box in one of two sizes: a $23 small (9 x 5 x 3 inches) one for e-waste weighing up to six lbs and a $30 medium (18 x 14 x 4 inches) one supporting up to 15 lbs. After receiving it, you can pack in as many (approved) devices as you can fit, as long as they stay under the weight limits. Then, you can either take them to a UPS drop-off point or schedule a UPS pickup.

The program is an extension of Best Buy’s free in-store recycling program, launched in 2009. The retailer also provides a home-pickup option, but it costs $200 and is ideal for unusually cumbersome items like home theater and heavy appliances. All of its recycling initiatives accept computers, tablets, TVs, smartphones, radios, appliances, cameras and other common gadgets. (You can read the complete list and exclusions here.)

The free in-store recycling program would be more practical unless you live far from a Best Buy location. Still, I can see some people willing to pay to avoid making the trip — especially during the holiday shopping season or if you have disposable income and live in a congested area. If nothing else, Earth Day (April 22nd) is an appropriate time to raise awareness of e-waste recycling to nudge people away from throwing these items in the trash, where they’ll get hauled off to landfills.

Rakuten-owned Kobo unveiled its newest e-reader today, a $400 alternative to the Kindle Scribe and reMarkable 2. The Kobo Elipsa 2E iterates on its 2021 predecessor with a better stylus, more versatile lighting / color-temperature adjustments and other improvements.

The Kobo Elipsa 2E has a 10.3-inch e-ink touchscreen (like its predecessor), but the new model gets a resolution bump to 300ppi. Additionally, it adds ComfortLight Pro, which adjusts the front light’s color temperature and brightness to reduce eye strain. Kobo says its battery lasts longer, especially when using the stylus, although its description is only as specific as “weeks of battery life.”

Kobo says the new e-reader has a faster (dual-core 2GHz) processor, leading to lower latency and speedier zooming / page-turning. It also includes the Kobo Stylus 2, an improved (rechargeable and 25 percent lighter) digital pen for jotting notes. The stylus has an “eraser” on its back end and a separate highlighter button. In addition, the optional SleepCover includes a magnetic attachment for stashing away the stylus when you aren’t using it. Finally, the device has an improved design using recycled plastic and metals.

Kobo

The Rakuten-owned company announced the launch of Kobo Plus, its answer to Kindle Unlimited and Audible. The tier-based subscription service offers unlimited access to over 1.3 million e-books and 100,000 audiobooks. It starts at $8 per month for either e-books or audiobooks or $10 per month for both.

The Kobo Elipsa 2E will cost $400 when it launches in stores and online on April 19th. Pre-orders begin April 5th at Kobo’s website, and customers who reserve one before the launch date in the US, UK and Australia will get a $25 Kobo e-gift card for digital reading content. The e-reader will be available globally in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Turkey.

Microsoft announced a new sustainable Xbox controller today. Arriving as an Earth Day promotion, the Xbox Remix Special Edition wireless controller uses recycled materials from old gamepads, auto headlight covers and reclaimed CDs (among other sources) to give each accessory a unique look. Although it offers no special functionality, it allows gamers to vote with their wallets for environmentally friendly manufacturing.

One-third of each gamepad is made from post-consumer recycled resins and regrind materials. Microsoft says the resins are sourced from materials like “automotive headlight covers, plastic water jugs and CDs.” Meanwhile, the regrind comes from leftover Xbox One controller parts recycled into new material. The company says the regrind maintains the durability and performance you’d expect.

Microsoft describes the combination of recycled resins with regrind as creating “custom, earth-tone colors with subtle variations, swirling, markings, and texturing — giving each Remix Special Edition controller its own look and feel.” Unfortunately, the company’s marketing images don’t appear to reveal much of that, but you can expect each one to look at least slightly different from the rest. It also has “a topographic texture pattern” on its bumpers, triggers and side grip areas, which Microsoft describes as a “nod to the Earth’s dynamic landscape.” Finally, the green hues on its front case, D-pad and Xbox button were inspired by lichen, a composite organism found in the Pacific Northwest.

It wouldn’t make sense to buy an environmentally sound controller only to stuff it with disposable AA batteries that end up in landfills. So Microsoft bundles an Xbox Rechargeable Battery Pack with each special-edition gamepad. The accessory costs $25 on its own.

It’s easy to grow cynical about mega-corporations virtue-signaling around Earth Day products that most people won’t buy while their broader product portfolio falls short in environmental friendliness. But hey, it’s still something. Further, Microsoft does point us to its Xbox sustainability efforts — including goals of being carbon-negative, water-positive and zero-waste by 2030 and improving its consoles’ Energy Saver sleep mode.

The Xbox Remix Special Edition controller costs $85, the same price you’d pay for a $60 standard Xbox wireless gamepad with a rechargeable battery pack. It’s available for pre-order today before launching on April 18th, four days before Earth Day.

Peloton owners with a Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 (including the Watch 5 Pro) or Galaxy Watch 4 can now monitor their heart rate on their exercise equipment. The Peloton Wear OS app update that enables the feature begins rolling out today.

The pairing process is similar to that of the Apple Watch, which launched its Peloton app in 2019 and added direct heart rate support in March 2022. Once you’ve installed the Peloton app update on your Galaxy Watch, choose a workout on your exercise equipment, open the app on your wearable and follow the “Connect” prompt. You should see your heart rate synced in real-time on your exercise machine. Peloton launched its Wear OS app last October, but it only showed users’ heart rates on the watch, not the workout equipment.

The update arrives as Samsung and Peloton (the latter especially) could use the strategic partnership. After years of being one of the only big-name Android smartwatches, Samsung’s flagship wearable has new competition in the Pixel Watch, which launched last October. Meanwhile, Peloton has struggled financially after a lockdown-era boom, leading to four rounds of layoffs last year that cut over half its workforce.