Image: Amazon
Amazon's smart home wonderland

Good morning! This Wednesday, Amazon focuses on the smart home, Netflix bought a gaming studio, and Microsoft welcomes Epic Games to its app store.
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Amazon's annual fall hardware event used to be a rapid-fire unveiling of what always felt like thousands of new and vaguely interesting things. But during yesterday's virtual version of the event, executives struck a notably less hectic tone, and instead placed more emphasis on the big picture: Amazon's ambitions for the smart home.
Amazon is focused on ambient computing, and its devices and services SVP Dave Limp told journalists that his goal was for devices to fade into the background while AI works its magic.
The company has tested a lot of weird things to figure out what the future of ambient computing looks like. (Yesterday's surprise was Astro, a cute little home robot that beatboxed during the presentation.) However, one of the most interesting things announced yesterday was Amazon Glow, a new device for kids.
And all of this is powered by Amazon services, whether there's a screen or not. Yesterday's event was a good reminder that Amazon is operating a lot of services now, and it's increasingly asking people to pay for them, with prices ranging from $2.99 to $99 per month.
"Our goal has been to not build gadgets, but devices that are deeply integrated with services," Limp said yesterday. And just like the original Magic Kingdom, Amazon is betting that people are more than willing to fork over a whole lot of money if it gets ambient computing right.
— Janko Roettgers (email | twitter)Vaccine mandates were already gaining popularity among tech companies looking to bring their workers back to campus safely. Now, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to issue a new rule requiring companies with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccines or weekly testing.
What does this mean for tech employers, and how should they be preparing for this new mandate? Join Protocol's Allison Levitsky for a conversation on what the vaccine mandates means for you, your company and your employees with Engage Peo HR consultant Sadiqa Banks-Holsey, Nixon Peabody OSHA partner Rachel Conn and Gartner head of HR research Brian Kropp at 9 a.m PT / 12 p.m. ET tomorrow. RSVP here.
By scrutinizing facts and including all voices, we can achieve public consensus faster and take well-informed collective action against the many challenges our world is facing. Embracing facts, new technologies, and science is our shared responsibility and the least we can do to drive positive change for the world.
Adam Rosendorff, a former lab director at Theranos, said he was a source for John Carreyrou's reporting on the company:
More people are using Slack because they're sticking with remote work, Salesforce's Marc Benioff said:
In a bid to overturn the EU's antitrust fine, Google lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid argued that people want to use its search engine:
Crypto is cool but maybe a little overhyped, Elon Musk said:
Fluence Energy wants to go public. The energy storage tech company is backed by Siemens and AES.
Toyota's research arm bought Renovo, an automotive operating system software company, as the company pushes deeper into self-driving tech.
A Facebook whistleblower will testify next week in front of the Senate. It's related to the Facebook Files investigation, and will focus on child safety on the platform.
Alexei Burkov was deported to Russia. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2019 to face hacking charges, and has been in prison ever since.
Gaurav Kachhawa is heading to Gupshup as chief product officer. He most recently worked at Adobe's Creative Cloud as senior director of product management.
Rob Salvagno joined SentinelOne as SVP of corporate development. He's a former Cisco exec.
At this point, you have a few options when it comes to getting in touch with your co-workers, whether it's sending a message on Slack, joining a Zoom or (gasp) sending them an email. There's not a lot of time to have fun when you're on the clock, but Shopify is trying to change that with Shopify Party.
Shopify Party helps people let loose during work with a bunch of different browser-based games that focus on free play rather than rigid rules. People can play the games as icebreakers or even take meetings while playing. You might have to start wearing pants again, but that doesn't mean you can't have some casual fun during your 9 to 5.
By scrutinizing facts and including all voices, we can achieve public consensus faster and take well-informed collective action against the many challenges our world is facing. Embracing facts, new technologies, and science is our shared responsibility and the least we can do to drive positive change for the world.
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to sourcecode@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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