Earlier this month, startup Embodied announced that it is going out of business and taking its Moxie robot with it. The $800 robots, aimed at providing emotional support for kids ages 5 to 10, would soon be bricked, the company said, because they can’t perform their core features without the cloud. Following customer backlash, Embodied is trying to create a way for the robots to live an open sourced second life.

Embodied CEO Paolo Pirjanian shared a document via a LinkedIn blog post today saying that people who used to be part of Embodied’s technical team are developing a “potential” and open source way to keep Moxies running. The document reads:

This initiative involves developing a local server application (‘OpenMoxie’) that you can run on your own computer. Once available, this community-driven option will enable you (or technically inclined individuals) to maintain Moxie’s basic functionality, develop new features, and modify her capabilities to better suit your needs—without reliance on Embodied’s cloud servers.

The notice says that after releasing OpenMoxie, Embodied plans to release “all necessary code and documentation” for developers and users.

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If you want to watch the next two FIFA Women’s World Cups in the US, you’ll need a Netflix subscription.

FIFA confirmed the news today, marking an unexpected change for the sports event, which has historically played on free-to-air broadcast channels. The shift to a streaming platform inevitably makes it more costly and hurts viewer accessibility, while likely injecting FIFA with a lot of cash.

Netflix and FIFA haven’t said how much Netflix is paying for exclusive airing rights. But Netflix and other streaming services have been paying out hefty, sometimes record-setting sums to air live sporting events as the company seeks to earn more revenue from commercials and draw more viewers. Netflix, for example, paid $5 billion to swipe the World Wrestling Entertainment’s weekly RAW program from the USA cable network for 10 years, starting next month.

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Another company has publicly cut ties with Broadcom's VMware. This time, it's Ingram Micro, one of the world's biggest IT distributors. The announcement comes as Broadcom eyes services as a key part of maintaining VMware business in 2025. But even as some customers are reducing reliance on VMware, its trillion-dollar owner is laughing all the way to the bank.

IT distributor severs VMware ties

Ingram is reducing its Broadcom-related business to "limited engagement with VMware in select regions," a spokesperson told The Register this week.

"We were unable to reach an agreement with Broadcom that would help our customers deliver the best technology outcomes now and in the future while providing an appropriate shareholder return,” the spokesperson said.

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Amazon announced in September that it will require workers to be in the office five days a week starting in January. Employee backlash ensued, not just because return-to-office (RTO) mandates can be unpopular but also because Amazon is using some of the worst strategies for issuing RTO mandates.

Ahead of the mandate, Amazon had been letting many employees work remotely for two days a week, with a smaller number of workers being totally remote. But despite saying that employees would have to commute five days per week, the conglomerate doesn’t have enough office space to accommodate over 350,000 employees. Personnel in “at least seven cities,” including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have had their RTO dates delayed until after January, Bloomberg reported today, citing “people familiar with the situation." Employees in Dallas won’t have enough space until March or April, and an office in New York City won’t have sufficient space until May, per Bloomberg's sources.

RTO dates are also delayed in Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville, Tennessee, Business Insider reported this week, citing “internal Amazon notifications.”

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Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.

The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn. The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained:

To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level.

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level.

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If you're looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there's an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn't appear to be what the industry is focused on.

Today's TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking. In 2025, we expect competition in the TV industry to center around TV operating systems (OSes) and TVs' ability to deliver more relevant advertisements to viewers.

That yields a complicated question for shoppers: Are you willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV?

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Like with much of physical media, the onslaught against optical media is ongoing. In the latest hit against physical media fans, LG has discontinued its remaining Blu-ray players. However, this doesn't spell the end for Blu-rays, which, in at least some categories, are seeing growing interest.

LG has no plans to make more Blu-ray players, FlatpanelsHD reported on Wednesday. Its most recent players, the UBK90 and UBK80, came out in 2018 and are no longer available for purchase on LG’s website. You can still find them at third-party retailers, but when stock runs out, LG won’t be replenishing. Trying to access LG's "Blu-ray & DVD Players" webpage now results in a redirect to LG's 4K TVs. We can take a hint, LG.

FlatpanelsHD spoke with LG Korea, which reportedly didn’t commit to a permanent exit from Blu-ray players. But for the foreseeable future, the company won’t be selling a type of device that it hasn’t updated in almost seven years.

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Embodied says it will try to refund recent purchases of its Moxie robot but makes no promises.

Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.

With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to monetizing TV owners and to film and TV production that sees reduced costs through reliance on generative AI and targeted ads.

TCL's five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL's free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.

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Startup Embodied is closing down, and its product, an $800 robot for kids ages 5 to 10, will soon be bricked.

Embodied blamed its closure on a failed “critical funding round." On its website, it explained:

We had secured a lead investor who was prepared to close the round. However, at the last minute, they withdrew, leaving us with no viable options to continue operations. Despite our best efforts to secure alternative funding, we were unable to find a replacement in time to sustain operations.

The company didn’t provide further details about the pulled funding. Embodied’s previous backers have included Intel Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and Vulcan Capital, but we don't know who the lead investor mentioned above is.

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There's something liberating about traveling without your computer. Your load is lighter, your battery needs are fewer, and you don't have to risk damaging or losing one of your most important and expensive devices. Besides, most of us are already carrying around a pretty powerful and conveniently compact computer 24/7: our smartphones.

My problem, though, is that I prefer doing most things on a laptop rather than on a phone. Whether working, writing a detailed email, or shopping around for something online, I can complete my task quicker and more accurately if sitting at a table, typing on a physical keyboard, and navigating with a mouse.

So, in the interest of having my cake and eating it, I've gathered a collection of gadgets that help me get the most out of my iPhone when traveling. With these accessories, I can use my iPhone as if it were a desktop PC, peripherals and all. See you later, laptop.

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Broadcom will no longer take VMware's biggest 2,000 customers directly. Instead, it will work with VMware's 500 biggest customers, giving channel partners the opportunity to participate in deals and provide additional value for VMware customers. The reversal is being viewed as an effort from Broadcom to discourage migrations from VMware, but there's skepticism around how much impact it will truly have.

Various customers have lamented the changes that succeeded Broadcom buying VMware about a year ago. Controversial moves have included ending perpetual license sales, bundling VMware products into a smaller number of SKUs, and ending VMware's channel partner program. These changes have led some firms to consider reducing their business with VMware.

This week, for example, UK-headquartered cloud operator Beeks Group said that a 1,000 percent increase in VMware costs led to it moving most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines to OpenNebula. And numerous customers that Ars Technica has spoken with in the last year are seriously researching or planning total or partial VMware migrations.

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An app outage that locked numerous rental car customers out of their vehicles is a reminder of the perils of completely relying on apps for basic functionality—especially when those apps have seemingly limited support resources.

Zipcar is a car-sharing service that lets customers pay a membership fee to rent vehicles. Members use the Zipcar app to locate cars, unlock and lock them, share images of the vehicle (for proof that you didn't damage it), and report concerns. One typically goes through the entire Zipcar rental process without interacting with a human. Avoiding car rental lines and customer service representatives seems efficient until the app utterly fails you.

As reported by 404 Media today, Zipcar experienced an outage on Friday that prevented the app from functioning properly for numerous users. Without the app support, people could not unlock cars to start rentals, open cars that didn't come with keys, lock cars, and/or return cars before their rental period expired.

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Companies have been discussing migrating off of VMware since Broadcom’s takeover a year ago led to higher costs and other controversial changes. Now we have an inside look at one of the larger customers that recently made the move.

According to a report from The Register today, Beeks Group, a cloud operator headquartered in the United Kingdom, has moved most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines (VMs) off VMware and to OpenNebula, an open source cloud and edge computing platform. Beeks Group sells virtual private servers and bare metal servers to financial service providers. It still has some VMware VMs, but “the majority” of its machines are currently on OpenNebula, The Register reported.

Beeks’ head of production management, Matthew Cretney, said that one of the reasons for Beeks' migration was a VMware bill for “10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses,” per The Register.

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Makers of smart devices that fail to disclose how long they will support their products with software updates may be breaking the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned this week.

The FTC released its statement after examining 184 smart products across 64 product categories, including soundbars, video doorbells, breast pumps, smartphones, home appliances, and garage door opener controllers. Among devices researched, the majority—or 163 to be precise—"did not disclose the connected device support duration or end date" on their product webpage, per the FTC's report [PDF]. Contrastingly, 11.4 percent of devices examined shared a software support duration or end date on their product page.

Elusive information

In addition to manufacturers often neglecting to commit to software support for a specified amount of time, it seems that even when they share this information, it's elusive.

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After a couple of years without much happening, smart displays are in the news again. Aside from smart TVs, consumer screens that connect to the Internet have never reached a mainstream audience. However, there seems to be a resurgence in efforts to make smart displays more popular. The approaches that some companies are taking are better than those of others, revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the push.

Of note here, smart TVs are not smart displays. Unlike the majority of smart displays, smart TVs are mainstream tech. So, we will mostly focus on devices like the Google Nest Hub Max or Amazon Echo Show (as pictured above).

The good

When it comes to emerging technology, a great indication of innovation is the degree to which a product addresses a real user problem. Products seeking a problem to solve or that are glorified vehicles for ads and tracking don't qualify.

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An ad company’s foray into TV operating systems (OSes) illustrates a significant shift for TV hardware toward products that are increasingly focused on ad sales and tracking.

With more people using web-based streaming for TV, smart TV OSes have become the most lucrative part of the TV business. OS owners accumulate valuable data on how people use their smart TVs and streaming sticks, which is helpful for OS operators as well as third parties, like companies paying for ads distributed via TV OSes. Meanwhile, the smart TV ad business is growing rapidly, with GroupM, the world's biggest media investment firm, expecting ad revenue to reach $38.3 billion this year, a 20.1 percent year-over-year increase.

That trend has pushed TV OS operators, from Vizio and Roku to Samsung and LG, to seek new ways to incorporate ads and tracking into their TV software. Now, an ad tech giant is planning to become a TV OS provider itself.

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In the streaming world, Apple has a reputation for quality, thanks to its Apple TV hardware and Apple TV+ streaming service. The latter is best associated with original shows and movies surrounded by award buzz and critical acclaim. But despite that success, Apple's streaming service has hardly made a dent in the market at a time when interest in streaming services is bigger than ever.

Apple TV+ launched in 2019. Since then, the company has spent over $20 billion to build an impressive library of original content, Bloomberg reported earlier this year. Yet, despite a highly regarded library of shows and movies with big names in acting and directing, Apple TV+ only garnered 0.3 percent of US screen viewing time in June 2024, per Nielsen.

In July, Bloomberg aptly underscored how minimally competitive Apple TV+ is, writing: "Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day."

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