Tech Digest daily roundup: Alexa challenges 10yo to touch live plug with coin
Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug. The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”. “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” the smart speaker said. Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it. The girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter. She said: “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.” That’s when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had “found on the web”. BBC
LG is the maker of some of our favorite OLED TVs, so when the company says it’s improved on its basic panel technology, it’s worth paying attention. Today it did just that, with LG Display announcing its next-generation OLED technology — dubbed OLED EX — which the company says will increase brightness by up to 30 percent, boost picture accuracy, and allow for smaller bezels in finished products. These improvements are due to two key changes. The first is the use of an element known as deuterium in the chemical make-up of LG’s OLED panels, and the second is the incorporation of algorithmic image processing. The Verge
Elon Musk has faced a backlash from Chinese social media users after China complained its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision with the tech billionaire’s Starlink satellites. China submitted a document earlier this month to the UN’s space agency saying that satellites from the Starlink division of Mr Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company had two “close encounters” with the Chinese space station on 1 July and 21 October. As news of the filing spread, users of the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo piled on, with one user saying Starlink satellites were “just a pile of space junk” and another describing them as “American space warfare weapons”. Sky News
Last week a Sonic the Hedgehog Lego set was leaked online. Now, Lego has made it official – announcing the Green Hill Zone Act 1 set will be made available on 1st January 2022 for $69.99 / £59.99 / €69.99. This set was conceived through the Lego Ideas platform by the 24-year-old UK “superfan” Viv Grannell and adapted by Lego designer Sam Johnson after the submission reached 10,000 votes. All up, this set contains 1,125 pieces and includes five mini figures: Crabmeat, Moto Bug, Dr. Eggman and the Phantom Ruby as well as an updated version of Sonic. Along with this are 10 boxes of golden Rings, a Technic leaver to spring Sonic and company into the air, gem rewards, and a lot of other easter eggs to discover. Nintendo Life
It seems like Microsoft is hellbent on adding everything but the kitchen sink to its Edge browser, in an attempt to have it cater to every imaginable use-case. Over the past few months, we have seen the introduction of many new utilities in various channels of the browser, including shopping features, a Word-like Citations tool, Office integration, a Math Solver, and more. One could argue that none of these are core browser features so should be added as extensions, but clearly, Microsoft thinks differently. Now, it seems that the company is working on adding a Games panel to Edge. As discovered by reliable Redditor u/Leopeva64-2, Edge Canary now has an Appearance toggle through which you can add a Games button on the omnibar, next to your address bar. Neowin
