Month: March 2023

The Ring Alarm Pro base station. It's so big because it has a battery backup. (credit: Amazon)

Despite attracting criticism and controversy for its practice of sharing captured images and videos from its product with law enforcement officials without user consent, Ring continues to be one of the easiest solutions for managing and monitoring your home security. From smart video doorbells to lighting and cameras, the company can help make your home safer and smarter. Ring even has a security system, which is easy to set up and more cost-effective than traditional alarm systems.

The professional monitoring fee has been optional, at least up until now. Ring Protect alarm system users who did not subscribe to the company's professional monitoring program could still use the system on a DIY basis, receiving alerts and notifications on their phones, for instance, if a door has been opened. However, that's about to change. Effective March 29, 2023, Ring will start to paywall these features for new devices.

Fortunately, already-purchased Ring security devices will be grandfathered in, so you'll still be able to receive basic notifications on your phone without having to subscribe to professional monitoring, making today's Dealmaster a great way to jump into the smart home space if you don't want to deal with professional monitoring, recurring subscription costs, or time-consuming setups. Ring claims that existing Ring Protect devices will continue to have free access to features for the reasonable lifespan of the products.

The Ring Alarm Pro base station. It's so big because it has a battery backup. (credit: Amazon)

Despite attracting criticism and controversy for its practice of sharing captured images and videos from its product with law enforcement officials without user consent, Ring continues to be one of the easiest solutions for managing and monitoring your home security. From smart video doorbells to lighting and cameras, the company can help make your home safer and smarter. Ring even has a security system, which is easy to set up and more cost-effective than traditional alarm systems.

The professional monitoring fee has been optional, at least up until now. Ring Protect alarm system users who did not subscribe to the company's professional monitoring program could still use the system on a DIY basis, receiving alerts and notifications on their phones, for instance, if a door has been opened. However, that's about to change. Effective March 29, 2023, Ring will start to paywall these features for new devices.

Fortunately, already-purchased Ring security devices will be grandfathered in, so you'll still be able to receive basic notifications on your phone without having to subscribe to professional monitoring, making today's Dealmaster a great way to jump into the smart home space if you don't want to deal with professional monitoring, recurring subscription costs, or time-consuming setups. Ring claims that existing Ring Protect devices will continue to have free access to features for the reasonable lifespan of the products.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Reddit is fighting a film-industry attempt to identify users who discussed piracy, telling a federal court that the studios' request for users' real names should be rejected and that one of the studios' arguments is "nonsense."

"Courts have long recognized that the First Amendment protects online anonymity and have established a stringent standard to use in precisely this scenario, where a litigant seeks to unmask users for the purpose of providing evidence in litigation that does not involve those users... Plaintiffs are far from meeting that strict standard here," Reddit said Tuesday in a filing in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

We detailed the film studios' attempt to unmask Reddit users in a story last week. Reddit has no involvement in the lawsuit that triggered the request for users' identities—the studios behind films such as Hellboy, Rambo V: Last Blood, Tesla, and The Hitman's Bodyguard sued cable broadband provider RCN in a different court, alleging that RCN failed to terminate Internet subscribers who illegally downloaded copyrighted movies. (RCN is now known as Astound Broadband after being combined with several other cable ISPs in the same ownership group.)

Enlarge / A customized Waymo minivan being shown off at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. (credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)

When will the Alphabet layoffs end? Layoffs are always hard, but usually you want to do these things in one big cleave, letting employees know the cuts are over so they can stop worrying and get back to work. Google had its initial big set of layoffs in January, when it cut 12,000 jobs, and employees were supposed to be quickly told of the cuts once that announcement was made. It's March now, and more cuts are still trickling in. Last week, Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" subsidiary was shut down, and the entire staff was laid off. This week Waymo is going through a second round of layoffs.

Reuters reports the self-driving car company has cut another 137 staff members, bringing the total cuts at the Alphabet subsidiary to 8 percent this year, or 209 total employees. Waymo said the cuts would let it “focus on commercial success,” something that has escaped Waymo previously.

Waymo has been around for 14 years now, but it hasn't had much in the way of "commercial success." It is absolutely the leader in self-driving car technology, and reaching a point where it could be widely rolled out would make Waymo an incredible amount of money. It could revolutionize trucking, disrupt Uber and Lyft—which have to pay drivers—and could result in a ton of licensed technology deals with car manufacturers. Getting there is a long road with no end in sight, though.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

A few weeks ago, disgraced FTX founder Samuel Bankman-Fried was in danger of losing his bail package and potentially being jailed until October. The court was fed up with trying to monitor Bankman-Fried’s online activity, and United States district judge Lewis Kaplan decided that the only option left was for Bankman-Fried to recommend independent experts who could help the court set appropriate bail conditions to limit any suspicious online activity.

Kaplan gave Bankman-Fried until this Friday to find experts who could help the court determine precisely what tech privileges needed to be revoked to ensure that Bankman-Fried would be incapable of compromising the court’s investigation into the criminal fraud case, Bloomberg reported. Yesterday, Bankman-Fried officially submitted his recommendations, naming two tech consultants he believes are qualified to advise on his bail conditions: Edward Stroz and Michael McGowan.

Bankman-Fried supplied resumes for both candidates. Stroz was an FBI agent in the 1980s and 1990s, specializing in major international financial crimes. During that time, he created New York City’s Computer Crime Squad and investigated hundreds of cases alleging bank fraud. Since then, he has spent the past two decades managing an international consulting firm, Aon, where his duties include overseeing digital forensics investigations for corporate clients, trial counsel, and civil litigants.