Technology | The Guardian

May has given Chinese telecoms firm limited role in supplying future 5G mobile networkSenior Tory MPs have expressed alarm about Theresa May’s readiness to give the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei a limited role in supplying the future 5G mobile phone network against the advice of some cabinet ministers, security chiefs and the US.Huawei will be banned from supplying core parts of the network but will get a role in non-core technology, according to leaks from a meeting of the national security council (NSC). Continue reading...

The UK must weigh its ties to the US and Australia against the value of Chinese friendshipIt may sound like an argument about technology, but in reality it is a battle of geopolitics. Should Brexit Britain yield to pressure from the US and ban Chinese hi-tech manufacturer Huawei from supplying kit to British mobile phone companies?Or should the UK keep the door open to China – and benefit not just from cheaper technology but across the economy in sectors such as nuclear power, where the world’s most populous country has shown it is willing to invest. Continue reading...

New smartphone with Leica quad camera has 5x optical zoom, super low-light performance and fun featuresHuawei’s latest top-end phone, the P30 Pro, has a genuinely groundbreaking new quad camera system on the back with amazing low-light performance and the first 5x optical zoom enabling a practically spycam-like 50x digital zoom.The new £900 phone, from the firm that continues to be at the centre of a political storm, has the familiar metal frame, curved glass and all-screen design of 2018-19. New for the P30 Pro are some stunning colour options, including the pearlescent oil slick-like “breathing crystal” and the eye-popping amber sunrise. If you want a phone that gloriously embraces colour, this is it. Continue reading...

Telecoms firm will still be able to supply some technology, but decision may anger BeijingTheresa May has ordered that Chinese telecoms supplier Huawei be banned from supplying core parts of the future 5G mobile phone network, following a meeting of ministers on the National Security Council (NSC).Huawei will be allowed to supply some “non-core” technology to UK phone companies, insiders said, but several ministers in the meeting on Tuesday raised concerns even about that concession, arguing instead for a total ban on the supplier. Continue reading...

Shares closed the day up 4% at $11.99 while revenue increased 39% to $320m in the first quarter of 2019Snapchat has seen user growth for the first time in a year, the company announced on Tuesday, after it improved its much-maligned Android app. The results beat Wall Street predictions and sent shares soaring after hours.The company has been slowly rolling out updates to the app after users complained about blurry images and low-quality videos. In a call with investors on Tuesday, the Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel, said a well-developed Android app was “the price of admission” to international markets and acknowledged that users turned off by previous Android iterations might not immediately jump on the new version. Continue reading...

Social media platform’s revenues up 18% as president criticises its treatment of himTwitter has reported better-than-expected financial results, sending its shares surging, as Donald Trump accused the social media platform of “playing political games”.Revenues for the first quarter climbed by 18% to $787m (£605m), beating Wall Street forecasts of $776m. Revenues were boosted by ad sales that also rose 18%, to $679m. Its shares jumped nearly 13% to $38.81. A year ago, they were changing hands at $31.22. Continue reading...

A letter on Github demanded companies comply with labor laws, limiting workers to 40 hours a week versus a 12-hour day standardMicrosoft employees have published a letter on the software development platform Github in solidarity with tech workers in China.Workers at tech companies in the country have used the Microsoft-owned platform to complain about grueling working conditions and the “996” standard in the industry, a philosophy endorsed by the tech billionaire Jack Ma. The name is based on the idea of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Continue reading...

Reviewers reported the screens on the $2,000 Galaxy Fold flickering, freezing and dying on test units within daysSamsung is pushing back this week’s planned public launch of its highly anticipated, $2,000 folding phone after reports that reviewers’ phones were breaking.The company had been planning to release the Galaxy Fold on Friday, with a 3 May release date in the UK, but instead it will now run more tests and announce a new launch date in the “coming weeks”. Continue reading...

Analysts predict first quarterly drop in earnings since 2015 on $3bn rise in turnoverFacebook is this week expected to report a rare decline in profits after a string of privacy breaches and fake news scandals.With its founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg under pressure to clean up the social network, analysts predict the company’s net profit will drop to $4.7bn (£3.6bn) in the first quarter, from nearly $5bn a year ago. Continue reading...

The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds laterTesla has sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding, the latest in a string of fire incidents involving the company’s cars.The video, time stamped Sunday evening and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later. A video purportedly of the aftermath showed a line of three cars completely destroyed. Continue reading...

A Guardian report recently revealed a secret network of accounts operated by US Immigration and Customs EnforcementThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on Facebook to address the proliferation of undercover law enforcement accounts on the social networking site following a Guardian report that revealed a secret network of accounts operated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).EFF, a digital civil liberties not-for-profit, said law enforcement agencies are able to create fake accounts to spy on users, despite Facebook’s policy which prohibits all users, including government agencies, from making them. Continue reading...

Carmaker says man trespassed on factory in California and drove at security guardTesla has been granted a temporary restraining order to prevent an alleged harasser from approaching the carmaker’s California factory.The electric carmaker claimed in its application for the order that the man had repeatedly harassed its employees. He allegedly controls a Twitter account which frequently claimsthat Tesla engages in fraud and which claims to be betting that Tesla shares will fall. Continue reading...

GCHQ survey finds millions using most obvious passwords – including ‘password’, ‘qwerty’ and superhero namesCybercriminals are using increasingly devious scams to con internet users into revealing precious online information. Yet millions of people have saved fraudsters the bother of deploying trickery and temptation by picking bizarrely simple passwords that feature on a new hotlist of online security howlers.One of them, for example, is “password”. Continue reading...

We test and control drugs, so why do we freely allow the spread of potentially harmful products by unregulated entrepreneurs?The headline above an essay in a magazine published by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) caught my eye. “Facial recognition is the plutonium of AI”, it said. Since plutonium – a by-product of uranium-based nuclear power generation – is one of the most toxic materials known to humankind, this seemed like an alarmist metaphor, so I settled down to read.The article, by a Microsoft researcher, Luke Stark, argues that facial-recognition technology – one of the current obsessions of the tech industry – is potentially so toxic for the health of human society that it should be treated like plutonium and restricted accordingly. You could spend a lot of time in Silicon Valley before you heard sentiments like these about a technology that enables computers to recognise faces in a photograph or from a camera. There, it’s regarded as universally beneficial. If you’ve ever come across a suggestion on Facebook to tag a face with a suggested individual’s name, for example, then you’ve encountered the technology. And it’s come on in leaps and bounds as cameras, sensors and machine-learning software have improved and as the supply of training data (images from social media) has multiplied. We’ve now reached the point where it’s possible to capture images of people’s faces and identify them in real time. Which is the thing that really worries Stark. Continue reading...

Months after a Which? investigation into the manufacture of misleading reviews on Amazon, most are still activeConsumers continue to risk being ripped off as a result of fake review “factories” on Facebook that manufacture misleading Amazon product reviews, says Which? It told Guardian Money that “nearly all” of the Facebook groups it uncovered last autumn were still active this month.Earlier this week it claimed Amazon’s system was being undermined by a flood of fake five-star reviews for unfamiliar brands. Researchers analysed listings of hundreds of popular tech products and found top-rated items were dominated by brands with names such as Itshiny, Vogek and Aitalk, many with thousands of unverified reviews. Continue reading...

Hutchins says he regrets his actions and will continue ‘keeping people safe from malware attacks’A British computer security researcher once hailed as a “hero” for helping stem a ransomware outbreak and later accused of creating malware to attack the banking system said on Friday he had pleaded guilty to US criminal charges.Marcus Hutchins, whose arrest in 2017 stunned the computer security community, acknowledged in a statement pleading guilty to criminal charges linked to his activity in 2014 and 2015. Continue reading...

The long weekend is a rare chance for unmediated contact with the world and with our friends. Don’t miss itSpring has come to the UK. The weather invites us to feel it on the skin and not through a window or a screen. Get out there into it, and go there without a phone – unless you’re walking in the mountains and might need to contact the emergency services. For the rest of us, being without a phone is not in itself an emergency, even though it might feel like one at first. Phones do provide us with helpful information all the time. They keep us oriented in the physical world, and position us in the social world, albeit while sharing all this with advertisers. But life was possible without them even as recently as 10 years ago, and sometimes it is worth a visit to that lost age when maps were made of paper and video was something people watched together.There are two reasons at least for trying to make time away from screens this bank holiday. The first is that it is, and ought to be, a true break from work. Anyone who works in an office knows now that email, messaging and phone calls mean that both the office itself and the people who want to deal with it can follow you anywhere, at any time. There is never a moment when you can feel that you have actually accomplished everything that could reasonably be expected. Continue reading...

US firm received $1bn from consortium including Toyota and Saudi ArabiaUber’s self-driving car unit has been valued at $7.3bn (£5.6bn), after receiving $1bn of investment by a consortium including Toyota and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.With weeks to go until the loss-making San Francisco firm’s stock market float, expected to value the company at up to $100bn, Uber said it had secured new financial backing for its plans to develop autonomous vehicles. Continue reading...

To dispel US suspicions, Chinese telecom firm welcomed dozens of journalists into its labsA pillar box red electric train connects Paris, Verona and Grenada via Budapest’s Liberty Bridge and on to Heidelberg Castle in a 120-hectare fantasy business park dreamt up by the Chinese billionaire Ren Zhengfei.Ren, 74, a former Red Army engineer who founded the telecommunications company Huawei in 1987 and still owns a 1.14% stake, asked the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma to recreate some of Europe’s most historic cities. He hoped to inspire an army of 25,000 research and development staff to challenge Apple, Google and Samsung. Continue reading...

News that the company had insecurely stored passwords came on the same day as the release of Robert Mueller’s long-awaited reportFacebook chose one of the busiest news days in American politics this year to admit that millions more Instagram users were affected by a security lapse than it had previously disclosed.At 10 am ET on Thursday, as the attorney general, William Barr, wrapped up his news conference on the release of the report of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, Facebook updated a 21 March blogpost, which revealed it had mistakenly stored the passwords of hundreds of millions of users unencrypted, to include a sentence admitting that millions more Instagram accounts had been affected. Continue reading...

Drivers for both ridesharing companies say riders are paying more for price surges, but drivers aren’t receiving extra payRidesharing companies Uber and Lyft have taken more than 11 billion people for a ride in their relatively short life. And yet the two companies have yet to make a cent in profits. Now, as the companies go public, some drivers think they may have spotted one way the companies plan to close that gap: increasing prices while short-changing drivers.Related: Disgruntled drivers and 'cultural challenges': Uber admits to its biggest risk factors Continue reading...

Number of organisations and individuals permanently banned for being ‘dangerous’Years after the company first dismissed fears it was empowering extremists, Facebook has permanently banned a number of far-right organisations and individuals including the British National party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First .The ban, which came into effect at midday on Thursday, extends beyond the groups and individuals specifically cited as hate organisations: posts and other content that “expresses praise or support” for them will also be banned, as will users who coordinate support for the groups. Continue reading...

Flexible screen failed on several £1,800 tester devices in run-up to public releaseThe screen at the heart of Samsung’s new Galaxy Fold phone, which literally folds in half, has been failing in testers’ hands within days, prompting concerns about the durability of the £1,800 device.The company distributed the device to publications across the US on Monday before its release to the public on 26 April. But within two days testers were reporting that the all-important central flexible screen started to break under normal use. Continue reading...

Company says it has stopped using password verification feature that collected dataFacebook has admitted to “unintentionally” uploading the address books of 1.5 million users without consent, and says it will delete the collected data and notify those affected.The discovery follows criticism of Facebook by security experts for a feature that asked new users for their email password as part of the sign-up process. As well as exposing users to potential security breaches, those who provided passwords found that, immediately after their email was verified, the site began “importing” contacts without asking for permission. Continue reading...

Jason wants to protect his new high-end laptop from viruses but needs data on old SD cardsI’ve just bought a high-end Windows laptop for video editing while travelling around Europe. What steps can I take to prevent any possible infections from being passed on from previous machines on SD cards and external hard drives? Some of the external hard drives go back to machines from 2004 but I have never plugged any of them into any computers other than my own previous Macs and PCs. I work professionally with video, photography and coding, so all of this data is vital.I have a five-machine Bitdefender licence but I’d be prepared to use another protection system, and I’ve looked at Sophos Intercept X. JasonThere are at least three things to think about. First, there’s the threat level: how at risk are you? Second, there’s provenance: how much do you know about your devices? Third, how can you mitigate any risks revealed by the answers to the first two questions? Continue reading...

Stunning all-in-one PC that slides to become drawing tablet is held back by high price and old chipsThe Surface Studio 2 is Microsoft’s beautiful all-singing, all-dancing, all-in-one desktop computer that is quite unlike anything else on the market. But then it should be with prices starting at more than £3,500.Straight out of the box it’s obvious that the Surface Studio 2 is no ordinary computer. Its gorgeous, pixel-dense 28in screen appears to float, held effortlessly by two chrome articulated arms that are invisible when you’re sitting directly in front of it. The small grey pedestal below looks like a weighted stand, but contains the full workings of the PC. Continue reading...

The valuation is a sign of strength for the tech IPO market after ride-hailing startup Lyft’s strugglesPinterest Inc’s initial public offering set the online scrapbook company’s valuation at $12.7bn on Wednesday, above its expectations and a sign of strength for the tech IPO market after Lyft Inc’s struggles.Pinterest, where users save ideas for clothes, décor and recipes, is due to start trading on the New York stock exchange on Thursday. Its performance will be a key test of the tech IPO market after the Nasdaq debut of ride-hailing start-up Lyft at the end of last month. Continue reading...

Site co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has promoted misinformation and is known for pro-Trump contentFacebook’s controversial factchecking program is partnering with the Daily Caller, a rightwing website that has pushed misinformation and is known for pro-Trump content.The social network said Wednesday it had added CheckYourFact.com, which is part of the Daily Caller, as one of its US media partners in an initiative that has faced growing backlash from journalists and internal problems. The collaboration was first reported by Axios. Continue reading...

Lawmakers seek information from IRS, saying American taxpayers face ‘unacceptable’ ambiguity over cryptocurrencyUS lawmakers asked the the Internal Revenue Service how US residents should pay taxes on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in a remarkable letter that shows just how unregulated the cryptocurrency space remains.More than a decade after bitcoin was first introduced, the IRS has released just one public notice on how to pay taxes on digital holdings. That lack of guidance is leaving American taxpayers with “unacceptable” ambiguity on reporting requirements, the letter signed by 21 members of Congress on Monday said. Continue reading...

Problems signing in to Google products from the US, UK, India, Singapore, Europe to Australia resolved after two hoursGoogle experienced a global outage affecting users as they try to log in to the company’s many applications, including Gmail and Google Docs and any site that allows access via a Google account.The problem lasted nearly two hours, beginning around 11pm BST. The company said it was investigating “an issue with OAuth login” and “an issue with Admin console” on Wednesday evening. The problem was resolved just before 1am BST. Continue reading...

MPs vote to block access to Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s BattlegroundsIraq’s parliament has voted to ban popular online video games including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite, citing their “negative” influence, especially on the young, in a country long plagued by real-life bloodshed.Iraq held its first election in 2018 after years of devastating factional violence. Islamic State militants held wide swathes of the country for three years until they were driven out in heavy fighting with US-backed forces in 2017. Continue reading...

Former British MEP is sent stern letter accusing Facebook of ignoring how EU law worksThe EU has told Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, to rethink some of the company’s rules aimed at protecting elections from foreign interference.Věra Jourová, the European commissioner for justice, said the EU had a clear message for Facebook over its approach to ensuring greater transparency about who funds political adverts. Continue reading...

Ubisoft Montréal, which built a huge-scale virtual cathedral for its game Assassin’s Creed Unity, will donate to restoration effortsVideo game creators at Ubisoft Montréal – the development studio that rebuilt 18th-century Paris in its 2014 historical action game Assassin’s Creed Unity – have joined the global outpouring of grief in the wake of Monday’s devastating fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.Ubisoft will be donating €500,000 to help with restoration efforts, and is also making Assassin’s Creed Unity available free on PC for the next week, “giving everyone the chance to experience the majesty and beauty of Notre Dame the best way we know how”, said a studio spokesperson. “We hope, with this small gesture, we can provide everyone an opportunity to appreciate our virtual homage to this monumental piece of architecture.” Continue reading...

Sites that fail to verify users are over 18 face being blocked under controversial lawsThe UK’s age verification system for online pornography will become mandatory on 15 July, the government has confirmed.From that date, commercial providers of online pornography will be required to carry out “robust” age verification checks on users, in order to keep children from accessing adult content. Continue reading...

The creator of Assassin’s Creed is making apes of gamers – reconnecting us with prehistoric survival instincts in virtually untouched gaming territoryWhen a game, film or TV show takes on the idea of human evolution, it’s usually concerned with the future. What might humans become? How might technology change us? But Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey’s interpretation is literal. You play as a great ape, part of a small troop in a jungle, swinging through trees, picking up sticks and rocks and trying to figure out how to use them to advance the species. It is a fascinating concept, challenging the player to reconnect with the curiosity and ingenuity that helped our distant genetic ancestors to figure out how to progress.Ancestors opens 10 million years ago with a nature-documentary-style montage of cruel life in the jungle, featuring crocodiles, sabre-toothed cats and giant predatory birds – all eating each other. When an elder ape meets a grisly end in the treetops, the infant creature clinging to its back is thrown to the ground, and you begin the game as a baby desperately searching for somewhere to hide on the forest floor, calling for help. Switching into the body of an adult primate, you pursue the cries through the dense jungle, eventually picking up the infant and returning them to the safety of the tribe. Continue reading...

People had to get by without the search engine giant before it was launched in 1998. But is it possible to live your life – and do your job – without it these days?Halfway through my week without Google, my wife mentions that she would like to go out to see a film that evening, and I agree to deal with the logistics. In what I initially think is an inspired move, I drop by the local cinema on the way home and scribble down all the film times in my notebook. Then my wife insists on going to a different cinema.“Can I do this by phone?” I ask her. “Is 118 still a thing?” Continue reading...

Report says an overwhelmingly white and male field has reached ‘a moment of reckoning’ over discriminatory systemsLack of diversity in the artificial intelligence field has reached “a moment of reckoning”, according to new findings published by a New York University research center. A “diversity disaster” has contributed to flawed systems that perpetuate gender and racial biases found the survey, published by the AI Now Institute, of more than 150 studies and reports.The AI field, which is overwhelmingly white and male, is at risk of replicating or perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances, the report said. Examples cited include image recognition services making offensive classifications of minorities, chatbots adopting hate speech, and Amazon technology failing to recognize users with darker skin colors. The biases of systems built by the AI industry can be largely attributed to the lack of diversity within the field itself, the report said. Continue reading...

A new ‘digital native’-intended model of the Xbox One won’t play discs, but comes cheaper as a resultMicrosoft has announced a new model of its Xbox One console, a digital-only version that will not be able to play discs and costs less than its siblings.The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is functionally and visually identical to the existing Xbox One S console, apart from the absence of a disc drive. It’s aimed at “digital natives”, according to Microsoft’s Jeff Gattis – primarily teens who grew up without the discs and cartridges that older games relied upon. It is out on 7 May, and will cost £199 in the UK and $249 in the US, significantly cheaper than the other Xbox One models. It will come with Minecraft, Forza Horizon 3 and Sea of Thieves pre-installed on it s1TB hard drive, and a discounted subscription to Xbox Game Pass, which offers a library of more than 100 games for a monthly fee. Continue reading...

It mesmerised Proust, terrified Homer Simpson and gave us the Hunchback – Guardian critics celebrate Paris’s gothic masterpiece at the heart of the modern imaginationAs Notre Dame Cathedral’s majestic spire tumbled into the inferno on Monday night, live newsreaders around the world decried the tragic loss of this 12th-century marvel. The great timber roof – nicknamed “the forest” for the thousands of trees used in its beams – was gone, the rose windows feared melted, the heart of Paris destroyed forever. What few realised in the heat of the shocking footage was that much of what was ablaze was a 19th-century fantasy. Like most buildings of this age, Notre Dame is the sum of centuries of restorations and reinventions, a muddled patchwork of myth and speculation. Continue reading...

The new PlayStation will feature custom hardware, a solid state drive, 3D sound support and backwards compatibility – but it won’t be out in 2019Sony has announced the first details of its next PlayStation console, but is yet to name it and has confirmed it will not be launched this year.In an interview with Wired magazine in the US, system architect Mark Cerny, who was instrumental in the design of the PlayStation 4, revealed that the machine will feature an eight-core CPU based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen processors, and a custom graphics processor based on the forthcoming AMD Navi family, which will be capable of real-time ray tracing, an effect that simulates the path of light through a scene, allowing for incredibly realistic and complex reflections, refraction and shadows. The effect is common in CGI movies, but real-time ray tracing is only just appearing in modern PC graphics cards. Continue reading...

Company executive Peter Zhou said he often had to ‘explain it to them like I do to my kids’Huawei bosses have accused the US government of being “ignorant of technology” and belittling national security concerns with unsubstantiated claims the company is an arm of the Chinese state and its mobile network can be used to spy on western governments.John Suffolk, Huawei’s chief security officer and the UK government’s former chief IT adviser, said US politicians had not produced any evidence to back up claims that Huawei’s forthcoming 5G mobile technology could be hacked by Chinese spies to eavesdrop on sensitive phone calls – or even kill targets by crashing driverless cars. Continue reading...

Site took no action to remove posts by Patrick Carlineo alluding to violence against Muslims and US officials, until Guardian reviewFacebook allowed a man charged with threatening to kill congresswoman Ilhan Omar to post violent and racist content for years, and took no action to remove his posts when he was arrested.Patrick Carlineo, of upstate New York, posted several entries to his Facebook page alluding to violence against Muslims and US officials including former president Barack Obama, a Guardian review found. Continue reading...

Unverified reviews may be being used to artificially boost products, says consumer groupAmazon’s customer review system is being undermined by a flood of “fake” five-star reviews for products from unfamiliar brands, a new investigation claims.The consumer group Which? analysed the listings of hundreds of popular tech products in 14 online categories including headphones, dashcams, fitness trackers and smartwatches, checking for telltale signs of suspicious reviews. Continue reading...

This week Jordan Erica Webber and Graihagh Jackson team up to examine the environmental price tag of the fast fashion phenomenon and explore how technology could hold the key to a more sustainable systemThe fashion industry has a problem. It’s producing vast amounts of inexpensive clothes very rapidly in response to the latest industry trends. Great for profits... not so great for the environment or the factory workers making those clothesIn this week’s Science with Everything, Graihagh speaks to Prof Tim Cooper from Nottingham Trent University about the issues surrounding taking your clothes to the charity shop and how some synthetic fibres are contributing to plastic pollution in our oceans. Jordan talks to Orsola de Castro of Fashion Revolution about apps that help map a company’s supply chain and manage your fashion footprint. Continue reading...

Starz criticised over Twitter takedown of users’ links to news story about pirated showsA US TV channel has forced Twitter to remove tweets linking to a news story about pirated content – including tweets from free speech campaigners complaining that the social network was removing other people’s tweets.Starz, the network that airs American Gods, The 100 and Knightfall in the US, sent the takedown requests after the copyright and privacy news site TorrentFreak reported on a leak of promotional copies of those TV shows and others. TorrentFreak’s story did not contain any links to the pirated material, although it did include four screenshots of the content in order to report the alleged source of the leak. Continue reading...

Proposed rules for child safety on social media include limits on data collection

Perpetrator was familiar with airport’s operations, according to BBC PanoramaThe drone attack that brought Gatwick airport to a standstill last December could have been an “inside job”, according to police, who said the perpetrator may have been operating the drone from within the airport.Sussex police told BBC Panorama that the fact an insider may have been behind the attack was “treated as a credible line of enquiry from the earliest stages of the police response”. Continue reading...

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Want to dip your toe in the voice-controlled world of Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant? Here are best, cheapest ways to startSales of smart speakers are soaring despite some people’s concerns over privacy, with Amazon’s Alexa leading the charge into homes in various Echo devices and Google’s Home and Assistant snapping at its heels.They come in various shapes, sizes and prices, but if you just want to dip your toe into the burgeoning voice-powered world, what’s the cheapest way to get Alexa or Google Assistant into your home? Continue reading...