Newly discovered emails relating to Hillary Clinton case under review by FBI

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry exhibition review a sumptuous symphony in black

Review: Switchmate

My editor says the Switchmate is “100 percent ridiculous.” To be honest, he’s not wrong. In an era when humanity is rushing headlong into the smart home, the Switchmate says, “Whoa, hold up there fella. Let’s think about this. Maybe all you really need is a fancy light timer.”

And fundamentally, that’s what the Switchmate is: a ridiculous yet surprisingly compelling way to put some basic automation into your lighting without having to actually rewire anything. In fact, the Switchmate doesn’t even require you to plug anything into a wall socket.

The system couldn’t require much less brainpower to install. You load up an app on your smart phone and place the two-AA-battery powered Switchmate on top of an existing light switch. Literally this is a smooth hunk of white plastic that sticks to a light switch cover thanks to the magic of magnets. It doesn’t matter that the switch cover is plastic. There’s metal inside the wall, so it sticks. Inside the Switchmate, a small motor turns the light on or off. You can push the button on the front of the Switchmate to flip the switch—or (better yet) use your smartphone app to do it. Just pair the app to the switch, and your dumb old light switch is suddenly much smarter.

WIRED

So now you’ve got a smart light switch, and you didn’t have to remove a single screw. The Switchmate app is more than a remote control. It can do the usual tricks that more sophisticated lighting products can do, including setting up automatic light timers or turning the light on automatically when you come into range. It’s Bluetooth-based, so you can’t turn lights on manually when you’re not home, but any timer settings are persistent once they are set.

Why not install a true IoT switch that you can manage with much more granular detail? Switchmate is up front that its product is for tech novices, but I’m of the opinion that it makes sense in a variety of settings outside of grandma’s house. For me, the Switchmate is a perfect light timer for when I’m on vacation. No, not for lamps inside. I’m using it to manage the outdoor lights, which are controlled via a decorative switch in my foyer. This is my entry hall, where a utilitarian smart switch would be unseemly, but when I’m on vacation, I can pop the Switchmate on for a spell. There’s really nothing else on the market exactly like this.

TIRED

I recognize—and I would argue that Switchmate also recognizes—that this isn’t the most elegant solution, but it’s not a particularly compelling problem to solve in the first place. The drawbacks to Switchmate are myriad, of course. It’s not a permanent fix, it means dealing with AA batteries that have to be replaced, and while you can move the Switchmate around the house as the need arises, you have to by separate models for toggle-type and rocker-type switches. At $35 per unit, it’s significantly more expensive than a plug-in light timer—though it’s on par with a typical Bluetooth smart switch.

Is it ugly? Well, if I only break it out when I’m not around and it keeps the bad guys away, who cares?

RATING

7/10 – An easy and painless way to wade into the IoT abyss.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/review-switchmate/

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The Great Indoors review millennial-bashing sitcom is an unfunny fail

Obama doubles down on support of Clinton despite FBI review

Orlando, Florida (CNN)President Barack Obama doubled down Friday on his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, hours after the FBI announced it is reviewing newly discovered emails related to her personal server.

Obama, while speaking to a crowd of mostly students at the University of Central Florida, did not mention the FBI probe but instead made the case for why he believes Clinton is the only choice for president.

“She doesn’t just talk the talk she walks the walk. She’s got plans and she’s got details. And she’s read them through and she’s thought them through,” Obama told the crowd.

“Which is why when she’s in a debate with the other guy, she’s actually talking about stuff that she knows something about. And the other guy is just making stuff up.”

Obama acknowledged that Clinton may not always be “flashy,” but told the mostly young audience that was she lacks in “sound bites” she makes up for with the work she does.

Clinton calls on FBI to release ‘full and complete facts’ of email review

“She knows what she’s talking about. And by the way, when things don’t go her way you don’t see her whining, you don’t see her complaining, you don’t see her saying things were rigged. She just comes back and she gets up and she works harder and she works harder until she gets done what she’s supposed to get done,” Obama told the crowd.

This was Obama’s second time in about a week in the swing state. The President will return to the Sunshine State again next week in a final campaign blitz that has him campaigning also in North Carolina and Ohio.

While in Florida, Obama also spoke about the highly contested Senate race between incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, whom Obama has endorsed.

Obama slammed Rubio for sticking by Trump, saying, “If you run for office on family values, then you should’ve been walking away from a nominee months ago who was calling women pigs or dogs or slobs or grading them not on the content of their character, but on a scale of one to 10. You can’t, with a straight face, say you respect women and then support somebody who brags about assaulting women.”

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/obama-hillary-clinton-fbi/index.html

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Review: Jaybird X3

The floodwaters started rising earlier this year. Rumors about the imminent demise of theiPhone’s headphone jack had barely made it past the lips of the digerati before the world was waist-deep in wireless audio options.Jaybirdis no stranger to these waters,having introduced its first pair of Bluetooth headphones in 2007. We’ve always liked its stuff—I gave theFreedom Wireless sports earbuds a positive review, and we’ve always been quick to recommend the company’s more moderately priced option, the X2.

And now comes the $130 successor to those fine buds, the appropriately named X3. Like its older brother, the X3 is a wireless headset with a tether linkingthe right earpiece to the left. That tether sports athree-button remote. The batteries are in the earpieces, and everything is sealed to keep out sweat, rain, and the grime of the city.

WIRED

The fit is much improved. The X3’s featuresa skinnier shape than their bulky predecessor, and they slide into more ears more easily. If the cable is too long, a simple plastic clip mechanism takes the slack out of the line and keeps it from flapping against your neck. Snapping the removable fins onto the earpieces helps keep the tips in position. As long as you find a good seal with the tips, the sound from the 6mm drivers is not quite excellent and a little harsh at higher volumes. But that’s an acceptable trade-off considering the X3’s ability to withstand rivers of sweat.

Charging the X2requiredplugginga USB cable into one earpiece. Thankfully, that’s gone. The X3 charges through a small clip that snaps onto the in-line remote. It works a bit like Jaybird’s other new sports headset, the Freedom Wireless, but without the second battery. Jaybird says the X3 provides 8 hours of rockin’ per charge, but I saw 10. With normal use,you’ll charge them once every five or six days.

TIRED

While the smaller design is more comfortable, the X3’s earpieces still have some bulk, and it can be tough to find the right fit. In addition to just walking around with the X3, I took them on seven or eight runs of a few miles each. They did a decent job of staying put, though it gets harder to maintaina solidseal in your ear canal when things get sweaty. I’d recommend the foam tips, which stay more snug than the silicone tips. The fins help too, though installing them drops the comfort factor a notch.

Pairing is easy with an iOS device, but Android gave me headaches. Likewise with the connection, which was just fine on my iPad and tester iPhone, but a touch flaky on my Nexus phone—forgivable until I had to re-pair in the middle of Van Halen’s “Panama.” Granted, this could have been a problem with my handset, but I experiencedfewer problems with the Freedom Wireless on the same mobile devices. Still, let it bea reminder that you should test the Bluetooth performance of your phone before going cord-free.

Rating

7/10 – If you exercise often, it’s a solid headset for the money.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/

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Falsettos review radically intimate musical hits the high notes