Notes on AI, tools, and tech.
Every smart home device has a hidden second question. Not whether it works with Alexa. Whether it still works when your internet drops. This is the smart home offline test, and it has a checkable answer. The answer is different for almost every product, and the marketing does not help. A device that advertises “works … Read more
The hardware inside a robot vacuum does not care which continent it sits on. The app does. Dreame says so on its own support pages, in plain language, and the admission covers both the connection and the warranty. The exact wording: devices that were not officially imported through authorized local distributors may be unable to … Read more
A Chinese charger plugged into a US outlet does one of two things, and the label on the brick tells you which. If it reads 100-240V and 50/60Hz, you need a small plug adapter and nothing else. If it reads 220V only, that adapter will do nothing useful. The distinction matters because adapters get sold … Read more
A design task that runs $1.61 on GPT-6 Astra costs about 2.3 cents on DeepSeek’s new model. Same brief, same output, one bill sixty times smaller. That single number is the whole pitch. DeepSeek widened that gap on purpose, and it did it three days after teaching its chatbot to talk out loud. Vision is … Read more
Google has now confirmed what most of us already suspected. The Google Assistant is officially leaving mobile devices, with the process starting on September 4. I received the email last week. The language was polite but firm. From September 4, Google begins removing Assistant access from Android phones and tablets. The rollout stretches over a … Read more