Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon’s home surveillance company Ring appears to have more partnerships with law enforcement agencies in the country than previously believed. An email obtained through a public record request by Motherboard shows that the company has entered into partnerships with at least 200 law enforcement agencies.

Ring never made the exact number of these partnerships public but the email, which includes notes taken by a police officer during a Ring webinar in April which he emailed to himself, mentions that the company has teamed up with at least 200 law enforcement agencies in the country. There’s a possibility that the total number of partnerships may have changed since the email was sent in April.

Additional emails that were obtained by the scribe revealed that this webinar was to train officers on how to use the “Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal.” The portal allows the local police to see a map that has the approximate locations of all Ring cameras in a neighborhood. They can then request footage directly from the camera owners without requiring a warrant, though owners need to provide consent for the footage.

Earlier reports have suggested that Ring has partnerships with the police to get them to promote its home security products to their communities. The local police then earns credit toward free Ring cameras for each resident who downloads Ring’s app because of the partnership. Ring has not yet commented on the report.

Amazon’s Ring Has Partnerships With Over 200 Law Enforcement Agencies , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Sony has reached the impressive milestone of selling 100 million units of the PlayStation but it sees dark clouds ahead as it looks towards the future. The company has warned that the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China could result in the price of its consoles going up.

Sony’s financial boss Hiroki Totoki has said that if the United States expands tariffs on Chinese products, it would likely result in a price increase for PlayStation consoles. Totoki says that Sony is considering a number of options to deal with this eventuality and that passing that additional cost on to the customers is one such option.

A firm decision has not yet been made about the tariffs being expanded to other products. Sony wouldn’t have to worry about the prices rising if the negotiations between the two countries go well and the possibility of additional tariffs is averted.

This remains a matter of concern for Sony, though, since consoles are sold on thin margins as it is. The expectation is always that the company will be able to make its money back on service and game sales. That might not leave Sony with much room to either absorb the price hike because of the tariffs itself or simply move the production of the PlayStation consoles to another country. Sony would obviously prefer this was all sorted out before it launches the PlayStation 5 next year.

Sony Says PlayStation Could Get Expensive Due To Trade War , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

DirecTV subscribers take note. AT&T has announced today that it’s doing away with the branding. The DirecTV Now brand for this streaming service will be retired over the summer. It was first launched in December 2016. The company is now going to rebrand it to “AT&T TV Now.” AT&T has decided to make this change as it begins test pilots in select markets across the country of its new TV service called AT&T TV.

This may only cause confusion for users but in order to mitigate that, the company will make both AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now accessible via the same AT&T TV app on connected TVs and mobile devices.

As the rebranding is rolled out over the summer, existing DirecTV Now subscribers will see AT&T TV Now appear on their screen. The subscribers will also be required to re-accept the terms of service but they’ll log in using their same credentials.

The company is yet to provide any additional details about its new AT&T TV service. The new service will use a “thin client” internet set-top box, with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson saying during a recent earnings call that this will cut customer acquisition costs by 50 percent as compared to the legacy DirecTV satellite service.

AT&T Is Ditching The DirecTV Now Branding , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson,…

Read more…

DoorDash’s years-long scheme to use customer tips to subsidize its workers’ wages is finally catching up to the company. And hot on the heels of renewed outrage about its tip-shaving scheme, a new class-action lawsuit is taking aim at the company for misleading its customers about how their tips were used.

Read more…