Free Republic

Amazon barred a Baltimore, Maryland-based user from its smart home features for a week over an allegation that his doorbell intercom had made a "racist remark" towards a delivery driver. In an explanation of his experience on Medium, Brandon Jackson, an engineer at Microsoft, who is Black, said no one was home when the alleged slur was made and the incident had led him to question his use of Amazon products. The tech giant has since restored access to his account, and said in a statement that it was working to prevent similar incidents from happening in future. The occurrence...

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices.The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile.But Sidewalk has come...