Slashdot: SmartDry's Useful Laundry Sensor To Be Cloud-Bricked Next Month

SmartDry's Useful Laundry Sensor To Be Cloud-Bricked Next Month
Published on August 31, 2022 at 04:10AM
SmartDry, a small sensor that could be mounted inside a dryer to tell you when your clothes were dry, is losing access to the servers necessary for it to continue working. "In other words, SmartDry will become a tiny brick inside your dryer unless you're willing to procure a little ESP32 development board, load some code onto it, plug it in near your dryer, and set up your own alerts in your Home Assistant server," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The problem is that SmartDry alerted you to dry clothing by connecting to your home's Wi-Fi; the device sent a message to parent company Connected Life's servers and then relayed that message to your smartphone. But Connected Life Labs is closing, discontinuing SmartDry, and shutting down its servers on September 30. After that, "cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported." Smart home devices bricked by cloud closures aren't new, but SmartDry was a particularly useful, low-key device made by a firm that didn't seem to be expanding too fast. Connected Life was originally a three-person team prototyping units in New Jersey, and the device remained made in the US. A co-founder told Reviewed in late 2021 that a version for the washing machine was being tested and was expected to see release in summer 2022.

Comments

Slashdot: AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks

AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks Published on July 02, 2025 at 01:30AM AT&T has launched a new Account Lock feature designed to protect customers from SIM swapping attacks. The security tool, available through the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to customer accounts including phone number transfers, SIM card changes, billing information updates, device upgrades, and modifications to authorized users. SIM swapping attacks occur when criminals obtain a victim's phone number through social engineering techniques, then intercept messages and calls to access two-factor authentication codes for sensitive accounts. The attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year, joining T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, which already offer similar fraud prevention features. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Protecting 'Funko' Brand, AI-Powered 'BrandShield' Knocks Itch.io Offline After Questionable Registrar Communications

Protecting 'Funko' Brand, AI-Powered 'BrandShield' Knocks Itch.io Offline After Questionable Registrar Communications Published on December 16, 2024 at 01:04AM Launched in 2013, itch.io lets users host and sell indie video games online — now offering more than 200,000 — as well as other digital content like music and comics. But then someone uploaded a page based on a major videogame title, according to Game Rant. And somehow this provoked a series of overreactions and missteps that eventually knocked all of itch.io offline for several hours... The page was about the first release from game developer 10:10 — their game Funko Fusion, which features characters in the style of Funko's long-running pop-culture bobbleheads. As a major brand, Funko monitors the web with a "brand protection" partner (named BrandShield). Interestingly, BrandShield's SaaS product "leverages AI-driven online brand protection," according to their site, to "detect...

Slashdot: Wells Fargo CEO Says More Job Cuts Coming at the Bank as AI Prompts 'Efficiency'

Wells Fargo CEO Says More Job Cuts Coming at the Bank as AI Prompts 'Efficiency' Published on December 11, 2025 at 12:15AM Wells Fargo expects more job cuts and higher severance costs in this quarter that ends in three weeks, bank CEO and President Charlie Scharf said Tuesday at an investors conference in New York. He's also betting on AI to drive efficiency and, eventually, further workforce reduction.From a report: "As we've gone through the budgeting process, and even pre AI, we do expect to have less people as we go into next year," Scharf said at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference in New York City. "We'll likely have more severance in the fourth quarter." The fourth quarter runs Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 for the San Francisco-basaed bank. Wells Fargo already has shrunk from 275,000 employees to about 210,000 since Scharf joined the bank in 2019 -- about a 24% decrease. Its largest employee base remains in Charlotte, with about 27...

Shameless Plug

Search This Blog