From The Verge: Samsung’s Bixby assistant had a rough time of it. Not only did no one want to use the assistant, but Samsung even recognized that it’d have to bribe users to do so. The company announced this week that it’s shutting down those gamification efforts — called My Bixby Level — on August...

From PC Mag: China's smartphone market is increasingly dominated by four big players: Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi.

According to a report from marketing and analytics firm Canalys, the Chinese smartphone market shrunk by more than 21 percent year over year, from 114 million shipments in Q1 2017...

From CNET: Google is moving ahead with Duplex, the stunningly human-sounding artificial intelligence software behind its new automated system that places phone calls on your behalf with a natural-sounding voice instead of a robotic one.

The search giant said Wednesday it's beginning public testing...

From The Verge: The Google Home finally has the ability to speak Spanish. Though Spanish was available as part of Google Assistant for some time now, for whatever reason it wasn’t available through the Home, Home Mini, or Home Max. Spanish support started to quietly roll out two weeks ago, and now...

From PC Mag: As we've seen with the 3DS, Nintendo is happy to offer many different case designs for its handheld hardware. But for the Switch, a highly-desirable custom paint job is set to be offered to just one person as part of a contest next month.

The Nintendo Labo Creators Contest starts on...

From CNET: Airbnb and HomeAway work with August Smart Locks to manage guest access for vacation rentals. Today, August announced in a blog post that property owners can now allow August to automatically generate access codes and deliver them to short-term rental guests.

Now, when someone makes a...

From The Verge: AT&T has announced today that it’s acquiring AppNexus, a digital advertising company that would help the telecom giant better build out its growing advertising business in hopes of competing with companies like Google, Facebook, and Verizon.

According to The Wall Street Journal, AT...

From PC Mag: The Chinese government goes to great lengths to control what is said and what is viewed on the internet. That's how we ended up with the so-called Great Firewall of China and why so many services, including Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are blocked. However, the...

From CNET: Amazon said Monday that its Prime membership discounts are coming to all Whole Foods across the US.

From Wednesday, Prime members can get a 10 percent discount on sale items at Whole Foods Market and Whole Foods Market 365 stores.

The discount program kicked off in Florida in May and...