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Spotify is rolling out more social features to keep people on the platform. It's adding a new tool to its messaging platform that lets users see what their friends and family members are listening to in real time. Once activated, a user's listening activity will be displayed at the top of the chat. The other person in the chat can tap the bar to play a particular track, save it or react with an emoji. People can also, of course, comment directly to either praise or rag on the song selection. There's another little addition to Spotify's messaging system. Users will now be able to invite chat participants to start a Jam, which is the app's collaborative listening feature. Premium users will find a "Jam" button in the top right corner, which sends an invite. This lets two people add tracks to a shared queue and listen together. Free users can join one of these sessions, but cannot initiate. It's worth noting that the messaging platform is currently just a one-on-one affair. There's no option for a group chat, so users won't be able to spy on multiple people simultaneously. These tools are rolling out gradually for iOS and Android right now, but won't be broadly available for a few weeks.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-now-lets-you-share-what-youre-listening-to-in-real-time-via-chat-173749120.html?src=rss
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I know IKEA is all about small, efficient spaces, but their meeting room inside the Venetian during the companys first-ever CES was the same size as my (not large) living room. Plenty of people were as excited as I was to see what the Swedish designers brought with them to the show and the room was thick with humans. A bowl full of BELÖNING bars helped ease my mounting claustrophobia and I was able to check out the new smart home lineup. Like most things IKEA, the 21 Matter-compatible smart home devices are simple, sleek and silly affordable. They include a $6 smart bulb, an $8 smart plug, a $6 smart remote and a slew of home sensors. A slightly pricier ($15) globe bulb is a direct answer to my longstanding wish for more attractive (but affordable) smart bulbs. One of my favorite of the new devices was the BILREA remote control. Its a smooth, riverstone-like object that either comes with two simple buttons or a button and a scroll wheel. It pairs up with and controls IKEAs smart devices and lamps but what I really love is the magnetic mount integrated into its body. You can either attach the remote to any ferrous surface or use the small metal chip and included adhesive to give the remote a home on a wall or elsewhere. Why have so few other companies come up with a way to neatly and simply organize these tiny yet crucial controllers? The whole suite is Matter-compatible and, as such, it needs a hub to function. IKEA has its own, DIRIGERA, but, true to the Matter principles of interoperability, you can also use a Matter hub you already own. The new line of smart home devices should start showing up in IKEA stores and on its website sometime in January. Lamps and speakers from the TEKLAN smart home collection.Amy Skorheim for EngadgetApart from the egalitarian and utilitarian items, the Swedish brand also brought a new collection of products, TEKLAN, designed in collaboration with designer and photographer Tekla Evelina Severin. These include circular Bluetooth speakers in color-saturated patterns and solids ranging from eight to 18 inches. There are also two new speaker lamps, called KULGLASS, that have glass lampshades inspired by soft serve ice cream. Those devices went on sale on January 1 this year.Finally, I made my way (three feet) over to the curious, donut-shaped lamps. This is the smart version of the stores popular VARMBLIXT lamp that debuted three years ago. Its controllable through the app or the remote I mentioned above and gently cycles through a rainbow of color patterns, shifting slowly from shade to shade. I got lost for a while watching it morph from white to pink to red and back again. For a moment I forgot I was wedged into a room too full of people. I figured those around me probably wanted a look at the lamp for themselves, so I took a longing glance back at the BELÖNING bowl and squeezed out of the room. The popular VARMBLIXT donut lamp is now smart. Amy Skorheim for EngadgetThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/ikeas-first-ces-appearance-included-a-6-matter-smart-bulb-172623474.html?src=rss
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Samsung says AI data center-fueled RAM scarcity could raise the company's prices. Wonjin Lee, Samsung's global marketing leader, sounded the alarm in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday at CES 2026. As recently as early December, Samsung told Reuters that it was monitoring the market but wouldn't comment on pricing. So, the change of tune can be seen as a deliberate signal to soften the ground ahead of an official announcement."There's going to be issues around semiconductor supplies, and it's going to affect everyone," Samsungs Lee said. "Prices are going up even as we speak. Obviously, we don't want to convey that burden to the consumers, but we're going to be at a point where we have to actually consider repricing our products."Samsung appears to be softening the ground ahead of an official announcement.SamsungThe global RAM shortage is the result of AI data centers gobbling up high-bandwidth memory. Memory manufacturers have shifted their output priorities to meet that demand, leading to a snowball effect where even the low-bandwidth RAM found in automobiles is affected."AI workloads are built around memory," Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research, told NPR in late December. "AI has changed the nature of demand itself. Training and inference systems require large, persistent memory footprints, extreme bandwidth, and tight proximity to compute. You cannot dial this down without breaking performance."It's been more than three years since ChatGPT launched and kicked off the AI craze. During that time, companies have hyped chatbots and other generative AI tools as a technology that will take us to the promised land, making life easier as machine learning automates our daily lives. It isn't yet clear if an AI bubble is set to burst, but some financial forecasters have sounded the alarm. Regardless, it's hard to see how consumers and workers are getting anything but the short end of the stick so far.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/samsung-says-ram-costs-will-likely-lead-to-price-hikes-soon-170653524.html?src=rss
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