Talking Tech

Thu Jun 1 2023

Brett Molina | Consumer Tech Reporter

@brettmolina23

Happy first day of June, Talking Tech readers! Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is right around the corner, and summer weather is approaching. It's Brett Molina keeping cool and dishing out more tech news.

If you own an Alexa or Ring device, you should definitely read this.

The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Amazon requiring the owners of Alexa and Ring to pay more than $30 million in consumer refunds and fines for violating customer privacy.

The FTC claims Amazon didn't delete the voice data of children at parents' request, and kept the recordings indefinitely to refine its algorithm. The agency also claims Ring - the maker of those doorbells you likely keep seeing pop up in your neighborhood - allowed employees to access customers' private videos and exposed them to hackers.

The settlements still need to be approved by a federal court. Once cleared, consumers who own specific Alexa or Ring devices could get some money back. Stay tuned.

What else happened in tech?

A dire warning Artificial intelligence could one day cause human extinction, center for AI safety warns

Nvidia enters new territory: The chipmaker just joined the trillion dollar market cap club

Photoshop is adding AI: Does this mean your photos will soon look better?

Slang pop quiz: Do you know what 'MBN' means?

Thursday tech tip

Now that seemingly every service is available in subscription form, it's become a nightmare trying to keep track of all the monthly fees we're racking up. Here's how to choose which subscriptions to keep or cancel.

One more thing

Frankly, every day should be National Donut Day. Officially, it's June 2. If you're looking for some free donuts or maybe a discount on breakfast, these are all the places with deals Friday. I, for one, look forward to my free Boston cream donut tomorrow.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.