Lenovo Smart Assistant with Amazon Alexa Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Amazon’s Echo is the current standard for smart home assistants — with some new competition from Google Home, of course — thanks to its ease of use and surprisingly good voice-controlled personality, named Alexa.

But while the Echo (and the Echo Dot and Tap) are Amazon-made products, Alexa herself is slipping the bonds of corporate exclusivity and turning up in a handful of other products. We’ve already seen the Triby smart radio: Now Lenovo has the Smart Assistant.

Lenovo

It’s not a very catchy name, but one look will tell you this is clearly modeled on the Echo. It’s a tall cylindrical device, but with a warmer design than Amazon’s severe speaker. The top half is white, with a silver 360-degree microphone-speaker combo on top. The bottom half feels more like the Google Home device, with a gray, green or orange woven overlay for a splash of color. Inside is an Intel Celeron N3060 processor, and one 5-watt tweeter and one 10-watt woofer for audio.

Lenovo Smart Assistant
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It looks like an Echo, it uses Alexa, it uses the official Alexa phone app, and works with the same wide range of third-party smart home devices. So, design aside, what exactly is the difference between the Lenovo Smart Assistant and an Echo? Lenovo says it’s the one area the Echo is often criticized for coming up short — sound. There’s a standard model Smart Assistant, and for $50 more, there’s a special Harman Kardon edition with premium audio.

We’ll have to wait for a serious ears-on test to find out if it makes a real difference, but matching Alexa with a good quality built-in speaker could be a killer combo.

Also new in Lenovo’s smart home line is the Smart Storage box, a networked hard drive with 6TB of storage, dual-band wireless and built-in facial recognition software to help identify your photos.

The Lenovo Smart Storage unit.

Lenovo

The Lenovo Smart Assistant starts at $129 in the US (£105 or AU$179 converted) for the standard edition, which is less than the standard Echo. The Harmon Kardon edition will be $179 (£145 or AU$195), and both will be available in May. The Smart Storage box starts at $139 in the US (£115 or AU$250), and is also coming in May. UK and Australian availability are yet to be announced; Lenovo usually sells its products in both countries but of the two, Alexa products are currently only available in the UK.

Belkin WeMo Dimmer Switch Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Coming in 2017, the WeMo Dimmer is Belkin’s second-gen smart switch.

Belkin

Belkin’s app-enabled WeMo Light Switches have long been a relatively affordable way to smarten up the switches in your home, and the fact that they don’t need a hub makes them a pretty simple smart home starting point. Still, they suffer from a glaring flaw: They can’t dim your lights.

Now, at CES 2017, Belkin is finally fixing the problem. The answer is a brand new, dimmable version of the WeMo Light Switch that’ll hit retail later this year. Pricing is still yet to be determined, but right now, the WeMo Dimmer looks like a pretty promising step forward to me.

Here’s what I like best about it:

• You can calibrate it for the specific bulbs that you’re using. Dimming performance can vary greatly across different kinds of bulbs, and in some cases, you won’t be able to dim the lights without at least a little bit of flicker. Belkin hopes to solve that problem by letting you calibrate the dimmable range of the WeMo Dimmer for the specific kind of bulbs you’re using. Belkin claims that the switch will work with LEDs, CFLs, incandescents, you name it.
• You can set time-specific brightness levels. Imagine walking into your bathroom and flipping on the light in the middle of the day. Now imagine waking up in the middle of the night and flipping the same light on. Full brightness is fine for the first instance, but not so much for the second. With the WeMo Dimmer, you’ll be able to program how bright the light should be when you switch it on at different times of the day. Helpful, simple and smart.
• You can use it to make it look like you’re at home when you aren’t. More and more smart lighting products are offering features that will automatically cycle your lights on and off when you’re away to help make it look like you’re home. Belkin’s following suit with a new “Away Mode” feature that does exactly that.

If you like, you’ll be able to trigger that Away Mode feature by long-pressing on the switch for a couple of seconds. You can customize those long presses to do other things, too — turning all of the other WeMo-enabled lights in your home on or off, for instance.

The new switch uses capacitive touch controls, and features a multicolor contextual indicator light.

Belkin

The WeMo Dimmer borrows that long press trick from the first-gen WeMo Light Switch, and it shares the same Android and iOS app, the same basic automation features, and the same third-party integrations, too. Most notable among them: the free online automation service IFTTT, the Nest Learning Thermostat, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Home smart speaker. You’ll be able to sync the WeMo Dimmer up with all of them.

Of course, something else it shares with the original model is a lack of compatibility with Apple HomeKit, the set of connected home protocols in the software that powers iPhones and iPads. The release of new hardware would have seemed to be a great time for Belkin to add in the necessary HomeKit chipset, but a WeMo spokesperson tells me that the company was concerned about selling HomeKit-compatible WeMo gear alongside older, non-HomeKit-compatible WeMo products. So, for now at least, HomeKit is a no-go.

The new switch does look a little different than the previous model, though. For starters, the dimming controls are capacitive, which is a break from the physical switch of gen one. There’s also a new multi-color indicator light at the bottom of the switch — it’ll offer contextual cues to help you keep track of your switch’s automated behavior. A green light indicates that it’s running one of your WeMo rules, for instance, while an aqua-colored light tells you that the light is responding to a third-party integration, like an Amazon Echo voice command. I’ll be curious to see if that’s more helpful or annoying in practice.

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The WeMo Dimmer is expected to arrive at retail this spring. Like Belkin’s other new gadget, the pint-sized WeMo Mini Smart Plug, the new dimmer switch will launch in the US and Canada only, but Belkin sells its existing WeMo products internationally, so I wouldn’t rule out global availability at some point down the line.

The real question is how much will this thing cost. Current-gen WeMo Light Switches sell for about fifty bucks each, but more fully-featured competitors from names like Lutron and iDevices can sell for as much as twice that. I’m guessing the new WeMo Dimmer lands somewhere in the middle, but we’ll know for sure when it arrives later this year. Expect an in-depth review from the CNET Smart Home at that time.

Belkin WeMo Mini Wi-Fi Smart Plug Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

For a few years now, Belkin’s WeMo line of smart home switches have been a reasonably affordable home automation starting point. Now, at CES 2017, Belkin figured it was time to refresh the lineup.

The new WeMo Mini won’t block off adjacent outlets like the original WeMo Switches would.

Ry Crist/CNET

The main attraction is the new WeMo Mini Wi-Fi Smart Plug, which goes up for pre-sale today at a price of $35 (‎converts to £30, AU$50). Just like the original WeMo Switch, it’ll let you automate anything you plug in behind it, but like the name suggests, it’s a lot smaller than before. That means it won’t block off adjacent outlets like the old switches will.

Aside from the smaller design, there’s really nothing new here. The WeMo Mini offers all of the same features as the original WeMo Switch, including its integrations with platforms and services like IFTTT, Nest, Google Home, and Amazon’s Alexa. It won’t track energy usage though — for that, you’ll still need to spend a few bucks extra on a WeMo Insight Switch.

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The WeMo app was still a little bit glitchy as I tested out the WeMo Mini.

Screenshots by Ry Crist/CNET

The WeMo Mini also uses the same Android and iOS app as existing WeMo devices. I’m holding out hope that Belkin overhauls that app sometime this year. It’s a good-looking app that’s pretty easy to navigate, but it suffers from laggy performance — a quibble that continued as I started testing out the new WeMo Mini.

Of course, if you’re programming the switch to turn something off automatically, or turning it on and off using a device like the Amazon Echo, then you’ll hardly ever need to open the app at all. Still, given that WeMo is angled at smart home newbies, Belkin would be smart to invest in a better app experience.

A competitive outlook

It shouldn’t be lost on anybody that the WeMo Mini looks a lot like two of its top competitors, the iHome Smart Plug and the iDevices Switch. Both of those Belkin challengers went with small-sized designs that don’t block adjacent outlets, making the bulky first-gen WeMo Switch look dated by comparison. Updating the design was a necessary concession for Belkin — and a clear sign that it’s keen on keeping the WeMo Switch competitive on retail shelves.

It’s hard to blame Belkin. After selling millions of units this year, Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers were both predictably hot sellers this holiday season, and that means huge numbers of new potential customers for Belkin’s Alexa-ready WeMo hardware. Throw in the debut of the Google Home smart speaker, with which WeMo was an early partner, and you’re looking at what’s shaping up to be a big year for voice-compatible smart home gadgets. No wonder Belkin wants the WeMo Switch ready for a fresh closeup.

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But staying competitive with
iHome
and iDevices isn’t just about cosmetics. Both of those smart plugs work with Apple HomeKit, the set of smart home controls built into the software that powers iPhones and iPads. Like its predecessors, the WeMo Mini doesn’t, and a Belkin spokesperson tells me that it isn’t likely to anytime soon, since Belkin declined to add in the necessary HomeKit chipset. The goal, the company tells me, was to avoid a situation where some WeMo products worked with HomeKit while other WeMo products didn’t. That means no HomeKit compatibility for any of them for the foreseeable future.

The explosive growth of the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers could be a golden opportunity for the Alexa-friendly WeMo Switch.

Ry Crist/CNET

With HomeKit still working to establish itself as a market mover, that’ll either turn out to be a sagely bit of restraint or a big missed opportunity for Belkin. My guess is that we’ll know which by the end of this year.

Belkin does have one clear advantage, though, and that’s the $35 price tag. It’s a cheaper cost of entry than iHome or iDevices, and closer to what you’ll pay for bargain-priced competitors from names like Koogeek and TP-Link, where Belkin’s name recognition should serve it well.

You can pre-order the Belkin WeMo Mini Smart Plug starting today, with devices slated to ship out by the end of this month. Later this year, Belkin will follow it up with a new version of the WeMo Light Switch that’ll finally let you dim the lights. All of it will debut in the US and Canada to start, though Belkin sells its existing-gen WeMo hardware internationally.

Lenovo Miix 720 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Lenovo’s Miix 720 fills the tablet-shaped hole Microsoft left when it didn’t update the Surface Pro 4 last October alongside the Surface Book and Surface Studio.

Like the Surface Pro, Lenovo’s newest 12-inch Windows 10 tablet has a detachable keyboard cover with a touchpad and a fold-out kickstand that adjusts the viewing angle up to 150 degrees. Unlike the Surface, though, the keyboard is included with the Miix at its starting price of $999 (approximately AU$1,400 or £800).

Lenovo includes its detachable keyboard with the new Miix 720 Windows 10 tablet.

Lenovo

But you can’t really challenge the category leader with only a bundled keyboard. The Miix 720 has a 2,880×1,920-pixel resolution display (QHD+) and a Thunderbolt 3 port that’ll support up to two external displays. Also on board is an infrared camera for Windows Hello, so you can unlock your tablet with facial recognition.

Specs-wise you’ll be able to get it with up to a seventh-gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, a 1TB PCIe SSD for storage and integrated Intel HD Graphics 620. (I would expect maxing it out like that to at least double the starting price, though.)

Lenovo Miix 720 Windows tablet made for work…
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To top it off, the Miix 720 works with Lenovo’s new Active Pen 2 with Windows Ink support. More importantly, it has 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity — twice what the first Active Pen delivered and four times the Surface Pro 4’s 1,024 pressure levels.

There is one big question, though: Will it arrive in time to swipe sales from a Surface Pro 5? Currently, the Miix 720 isn’t slated to arrive until the beginning of April. The Active Pen 2, however, will be available in February for $60, or roughly AU$85 and £50 in Australia and the UK, respectively.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2017) Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 family is designed for the growing group of nomadic professionals who spend more and more time away from a desk. The computers are just as much for use in a conference room as they are in a coffee shop or out on a job site.

The family includes the X1 Yoga hybrid, the two-in-one X1 Tablet and the X1 Carbon laptop, but it’s that last one that received the biggest update in time for a CES 2017 announcement.

Like the consumer-focused Yoga 910, the Carbon has a 14-inch display but the body of a 13-inch laptop. Available in full HD and WQHD resolutions, the display doesn’t have the typical wide frame or bezel found on other laptops on the top and sides, so it spans nearly the entire lid. At 2.5 pounds (1.14 kilograms) and 0.6 inch (16 mm) thick, the carbon-fiber-reinforced body is the thinnest and lightest X1 Carbon made.

Available in silver or black, the 2017 ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the thinnest and lightest Carbon ever.

Lenovo

The slim, light body is great for travel, but you need good battery life and top-notch wireless to be truly mobile. Lenovo claims up to 15.5 hours of runtime with the 2017 X1 Carbon. Wireless options include Intel dual-band Wireless-AC 8265, WiGig support Intel Tri-Band Wireless-AC 18265 and Qualcomm LTE-A Wireless WAN.

For security, the X1 Carbon has both a fingerprint reader and infrared camera for facial recognition to log on with Windows Hello. The fingerprint sensor handles all fingerprint images inside the fingerprint processing unit which Lenovo says prevents malicious logon access. It’s also the first business-class notebook to support FIDO-enabled biometric authentication for PayPal.

Lenovo’s 2017 ThinkPad X1 family is all in…
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Despite all its increased mobility, you’ll probably still want to settle down at a desk from time to time. The X1 Carbon has two Thunderbolt 3 ports for data, video output and power, plus two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI output and Ethernet.

If you like your laptop with a side of touch and pen input, Lenovo updated the X1 Yoga with Thunderbolt 3, WiGig and LTE-A wireless WAN, too. The new X1 Yoga keeps the beautiful OLED display from last year’s model and gains seventh-generation Intel processors up to Core i7, an improved ThinkPad Pen Pro with a new soft elastomer tip for a more natural feel on glass as well as an improved rise-and-fall keyboard that fully retracts into the body when in tablet mode. It also gets an IR camera for logging on using Windows Hello facial recognition.

The modular design of the X1 Tablet lets you add on a battery, docks and even a projector.

Lenovo

The X1 Tablet doesn’t change much at all from last year’s model, but you do get new Intel processors (again up to Core i7) and WiGig and LTE-A Wireless WAN connectivity.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon will be available in February starting at $1,350 along with the X1 Yoga starting at $1,500. ThinkPad X1 Tablet, starting at $950, follows in March. Those prices roughly convert to £1,100 and AU$1,875 for the Carbon, £1,220 and AU$2,080 for the Yoga and £775 and AU$1,320 for the Tablet.

Lenovo’s Windows VR headset will do affordable room-scale virtual reality

Windows announced it would be venturing into virtual reality during its Creators Update event and gave a list of hardware partners. One of them was Lenovo and at CES 2017, the company has shown off its new VR headset, albeit in prototype and as yet unnamed form.

• Microsoft will release VR headsets with the Windows 10 Creators Update
• CES 2017: All the announcements to expect from the show

From the pictures, Lenovo’s headset looks similar to the PlayStation VR. It uses a design that puts the majority of weight on the forehead to suspend the viewing area in front of your eyes, rather than strap it to your face. Lenovo says the final model should weigh around 350g, which when compared to the HTC Vive, which weighs nearly 200g more, Lenovo’s headset could be incredibly comfortable.

Inside the headset there’s two 1440 x 1440 OLED screens, which should in theory give the headset a higher resolution than both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. And because the headset runs on the Windows Holographic platform, it can deliver room-scale VR, without the need for any external cameras or sensors. Instead, Lenovo’s headset has front-mounted cameras to pick up depth information.

Lenovo has said it won’t be making any motion controllers to use with the headset, but you’ll be able to use an Xbox controller or any third-party one that works with Windows Holographic, more of which should arrive during the year.

• Best VR headsets to buy in 2017, whatever your budget

We’re not sure exactly when to expect to see Lenovo’s VR headset on store shelves, but the company says it will be out “later this year” and should cost “less than $400” making it one headset to keep your eyes on.

Lenovo’s making a prettier Amazon Echo and a smarter home NAS

Alexa, show me Lenovo’s new stuff.

In addition to a slew of new PCs, Lenovo’s bring a slew of new connected home accessories to CES 2017. Chief among them are a new smart home network drive, their take on an Amazon Echo-style device, and a handheld keyboard that includes the most sensitive of keys.

Lenovo Smart Assistant

What if you could make a fancier-looking Amazon Echo? That must be the question that Lenovo’s engineers asked themselves when cooking up the “Lenovo Smart Assistant with Amazon Alexa”. This cylindrical connected smart speaker is an Echo clone if we’ve ever seen one; it’s the fruit of a Lenovo-Amazon partnership, and there’s anything wrong with that. It even bakes in the same Amazon Alexa software, includes eight far-field noise-cancelling microphones, and a pair of speakers — a 5W tweeter and a 10W woofer.

Looks-wise, it’s like a fancier Echo, with a fabric speaker grill below a solid upper half, plus a raised control surface on the top ringed by a chrome volume ring. That fabric grill comes in multiple color options, though they aren’t removable (a la Google Home). You’ll have your choice of a white upper half with grills in light gray, green, or orange, or an all-black Harman Edition model that includes an additional 2-inch acoustic sound cavity for enhanced audio performance.

There’s one big difference between an Amazon Echo and the Lenovo Smart Assistant: price. The standard Smart Assistant starts at $129.99, while the Harman Edition version will run $179.99 (the retail price of Amazon’s Echo). Both versions are expect to be available in May 2017.

Lenovo Smart Storage

There are standard NAS devices, and then there’s this. You could call the Lenovo Smart Storage device the next generation of the Network Attached Storage unit, and that’s essentially what it is: a smart NAS. Packed inside the compact pinched white box you’ll find 2TB or 6TB of hard drive storage, a dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac antenna, and a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Celeron processor.

More than just a mere hard drive with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, the Lenovo Smart Storage is packed with software to make it, well, smart. Auto Sync will help to automatically back up your files, it includes DLNA so you can stream movies on it to your TV, and even facial recognition software to scan and organize your photo library by people. There’s also a USB port on the back — plug in your drive, press a button on the Smart Storage, and it’ll back up everything on the drive.

If that piques your interest, you’ll be able to grab one in May 2017, with the a starting price for the 2TB version of $139.99.

Lenovo 500 Multimedia Controller

There’s a user interface flaw in most smart TVs: if you want to search for anything, or log into any installed apps, you’re either clicking around an on-screen keyboard with a remote control or dictating into a microphone and hoping it understood you correctly. While plenty of TVs offer Bluetooth support so you can connect a keyboard, who wants to keep a big slab of a keyboard in the living room, let alone try and balance it on their laps? Enter the Lenovo 500 Multimedia Controller, a compact keyboard that fits into your hands and has a trick up its sleeve.

At first glance it looks like a standard, but compact, albeit it with an advertised 66-foot range to the 2.4GHz USB receiver (twice the range of a typical Bluetooth device). It’s designed to fit comfortably in both hands so you can type with your thumbs — it’s roughly the size as the on-screen keyboard of a 7-to-8-inch tablet in portrait orientation. But there’s more: the entire keyboard is also touch sensitive — swipe across them and they’re a trackpad to move the cursor on the screen along with left/right mouse buttons below the keys. Pair it with a Windows 10 PC (perhaps a Stick PC plugged into your TV) and it even supports multi-finger gestures.

The Lenovo 500 Multimedia Controller is expected to be available in March 2017 for a reasonable $54.99.

Smart Assistant is Lenovo’s new Alexa-powered speaker

Lenovo is taking CES by storm, as usual.

The company has announced a bunch of new products – including a new Alexa-powered Smart Assistant speaker – ahead of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it’ll be putting the goods on display and revealing all their details in full. Pocket-lint will also be there to bring you hands-on reviews and the latest.

Lenovo Smart Assistant

First up, Lenovo made a speaker loaded with its own digital personal assistant powered by Amazon Alexa cloud-based voice services. It can conduct web searches, play music, create lists, calendar reminders, and more. And because it uses Alexa’s smarts, it’s supposed to get better the more you use it. It can also control Lenovo smart home devices as well as third-party devices. The Lenovo Smart Assistant, which will be available in grey, green, or orange finishes, features eight 360-degree far-field microphones. You can also get a grey Harman Kardon edition for a more premium audio experience.

Lenovo

• Lenovo Smart Assistant will be available from May 2017 for $129.99
• Harman Kardon Edition will be available from May 2017 for $179.99

Here are the other products Lenovo is debuting at CES this year…

Legion Y720 and Y520 gaming laptops

Lenovo’s new Legion brand hopes to attract gamers with the new Legion Y720 laptop and Lenovo Legion Y520 laptop. They feature the latest Nvidia graphics, Dolby Atmos sound, seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processors, and 16 GB DDR4 memory. The Y720 laptop specifically uses GeForce GTX 1060 graphics to be VR-ready (just plug a VR headset into the HDMI port), and it has an UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS anti-glare display. It also comes with the option of an integrated Xbox One Wireless receiver in order to support four controllers simultaneously, as well as an optional RGB keyboard. The Y520 comes with an optional red backlit keyboard.

Lenovo

• Legion Y720 Laptop will be available from April 2017, starting at $1,399.99
• Legion Y520 Laptop will be available from February 2017, starting at $899.99

ThinkPad Carbon, Yoga, and Tablet

Next, we have the next generation of ThinkPad X1 products. The 2017 version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which is available in black or a new silver colour, is a 14-inch notebook with a 13-inch form factor and 2.5-pound weight. It features a 14-inch IPS display, 15 hours of battery life, Thunderbolt 3 ports, a Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint sensor with a dedicated chip. Lenovo also updated the ThinkPad X1 Yoga with a new metallic silver color. It’s a 14-inch notebook with an OLED screen. And finally, there’s the ThinkPad X1 Tablet, a 2-in-1 that offers modularity. You can extend battery life via a port expansion, for instance, or do proper integrated projection.

Lenovo

• ThinkPad X1 Carbon will be available from February 2017, starting at $1,349
• ThinkPad X1 Yoga will be available from February 2017, starting at $1,499.
• ThinkPad X1 Tablet will be available from March 2017, starting at $949

Miix 720 and Active Pen 2

Finally, Lenovo announced the Miix 720 Windows PC that features a 12-inch QHD+ display, touchpad-enabled keyboard, seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processor, and Thunderbolt 3 ports. All you have to do is remove the keyboard to transform the Miix 720, which will be available in gold or gray colours, into a touchscreen tablet. It comes with a 150-degree kickstand so you can easily adjust it to your preferred viewing. It also works with the new Active Pen 2 and uses an integrated infrared camera to enable Windows Hello facial recognition.

Lenovo

• Miix 720 (keyboard) will be available from April 2017, starting at $999.99
• Active Pen 2 will be available from February 2017 for $59.99

There’s no word yet on UK availability for any of the above products.

Dinosaur eggs reveal one possible reason why they went extinct

The eggs of some dinosaurs took much, much longer to hatch than the eggs of their avian relatives and descendants — and it could have contributed to their demise. A team of researchers from various institutions examined the embryonic tooth from a soccer-ball-sized egg. It was laid by a 30-foot-long duck-billed non-avian dinosaur called Hypacrosaurus that’s closely related to reptiles like crocodiles. By calculating the daily growth markers in the teeth, they discovered that the animal’s eggs take around six months to hatch. It’s also likely that the bigger the egg, the longer the incubation time. In comparison, ostrich chicks burst out of their shells after only 42 days, and smaller birds have even shorter incubation periods.

A longer incubation time means non-avian dinosaurs were definitely at a disadvantage when an asteroid or a comet slammed into our planet 65 million years ago. Since it took much longer for them to reproduce and to replace the population that perished in the impact, their incubation period could be one of the factors that led to their extinction. Meanwhile, the birds that already existed in that era that didn’t need the same amount of time to hatch thrived and led to the birds we know today.

That said, their long incubation period is only one of the factors why they died out. Lead researcher Gregory M. Erickson of Florida State University said:

“These animals were profligate wasters of energy. They were big and warmblooded and even the smallest dinosaurs took over a year to mature. The dinosaurs found themselves holding some bad cards. They had a dead man’s hand.”

Source: The New York Times

WeMo’s smart home upgrades include a dimmer switch

Belkin is continuing its quest to cover virtually every aspect of your smart home. Its WeMo brand is kicking off CES with two devices that promise to be handy even for those devices that don’t have any intelligence of their own. The centerpiece is the WeMo Dimmer, a light switch that promises more than just extra control over your brightness levels. You can calibrate it to work with any light bulb type, for instance — you’ll get the best possible range of light levels without worrying about flickering or noise. There’s also nighttime mode scheduling to avoid blinding yourself, long-presses to control other WeMo devices and an away mode to pretend you aren’t on vacation.

The dimmer switch doesn’t have a price as we write this, but it should work with Amazon Alexa-powered devices, Google Home, IFTTT and Nest thermostats when it arrives in the spring.

As for all your other devices? You’re set there, too. The WeMo Mini smart plug gives you remote control over the power to virtually any electricity-powered device, including scheduling and responses to the time of day. If you want to turn a lamp on at sunset or start a fan when you go to bed, you can make it happen. It supports the same ecosystems as the dimmer switch and should reach stores later this month for $35.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Source: WeMo