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Amazon has dropped the price of the Philips Keypad Front Door Lock Set to $89.98 from $142.99, taking $53 off and bringing it to its lowest price ever, according to price trackers. For that, you get an electronic deadbolt along with two matching lever handles in a matte black finish, so you can replace your existing front door hardware without having to find coordinating pieces separately. The set also makes a good case for itself if you’ve been considering keyless entry but don’t necessarily want another device connected to your home network, since this lock operates entirely offline. Being offline doesn’t limit your ways in, though; you can use a fingerprint, a PIN, or one of two backup keys.

Philips claims the fingerprint reader works in 0.3 seconds, which could be handy when you’re carrying groceries or don’t feel like digging around for your keys. You can also register multiple fingerprints for family members and generate unlimited one-time PINs for visitors—so your dog walker can get in without needing your personal code. There’s also an adjustable auto-lock timer that secures the door after 30 to 180 seconds, along with alerts for incorrect entries, low batteries, and a jammed lock. Privacy, away, and silent modes add further control.

Getting all of that onto your door is fairly simple and takes just a screwdriver, provided your door meets the requirements: 1⅜ to two inches thick, with a one-inch edge bore and a 2⅜- or 2¾-inch backset. The biggest limitation is its lack of connectivity—you can’t unlock the door remotely, check its status from your phone, or integrate it with other smart home devices. Anyone who needs those features will have to look elsewhere, but for straightforward keyless access without connectivity, this Philips set covers the essentials.

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If you’re willing to let AI book or buy things on your behalf, 1Password just made that easier.

Insta360 has a new wireless mic that combines some features of its existing ‘pro’ mics with a cheaper price.

In an ocean of boring microphones, Insta360’s Mic adds a (customizable) pop of color.

Roku has released its Pro Series LX OLED TVs, which are now available on Amazon in 55 and 65-inch variants.

It’s easy to criticize US automakers and their tepid approach to electric vehicles under the current administration and the expiration of the EV tax credit. It’s also easy to look at the rest of the world’s embrace of EVs and wonder if the US is entering a “Malaise 2.0” era. Which is why GM wants the world to know that it is still focused on its end goals of electrification, autonomy, and improving vehicle quality while reducing development time.

At this year’s GM Forward event, company executives announced that its hands-off, eyes-off Super Cruise technology will expand across the lineup and be available on nearly every vehicle. This will include the pickup trucks and the crossovers, and not just the Escalade IQ that it was announced for last year.

Sterling Anderson, GM’s head of product, said the company is testing this technology to the tune of 1 million miles (1.6 million km) a month in both the virtual and real world. The goal is that not only would the vehicle be able to take you places, but it could go and do things for you.

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Airbnb is banning hosts from requiring guests to perform time-consuming checkout chores, including washing dishes, stripping beds, doing laundry, and taking trash off-site. The updated policy applies to reservations booked on or after November 20. The Verge reports: Airbnb is displaying hosts’ requests more prominently now in a new “rules and requests” section on listings. You might see an “includes cleaning requests” warning if a host leaves chore requests in their listing after the new policy goes into effect. Hosts aren’t allowed to sneak in extra rules in messages to guests or on signs around their property, either.

Some hosts pushed back on the house rules restrictions on Airbnb’s forums, saying they pose health risks and arguing that guests can simply choose not to stay at listings with overly-strict rules. Airbnb says there can be exceptions to the limits on checkout chores, like asking guests to “dispose of trash in an animal-proof container in bear country.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unknown hackers hijacked more than 300 Tor exit nodes and reconfigured them to favor unencrypted email traffic and redirect SSH connections through servers they controlled, a researcher reported Tuesday.

The hijacking began in late August, when according to Tor volunteers, the attacker used a valid password that had been reused to gain access to a Tor management server. The attacker then installed Ebury, a backdoor written for Linux that was discovered 12 years ago.

Mysteries remain

Then the attacker connected from the management server to a second Tor server, called Switzerland2, through SSH, using an RSA key that, for unknown reasons, investigators couldn’t find among Switzerland2’s authorized keys. With administrative control of Switzerland2, the attackers installed Ebury there as well. Finally, the attacker reconfigured settings on two exit nodes that Switzerland2 hosted.

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In 2015, all but two countries agreed to make an effort to keep global temperatures from reaching 1.5° C above pre-industrial readings. Since then, most of the world has largely treated what they signed on to as aspirational, and one of the largest emitters (the US) has alternately withdrawn and recommitted to the agreement. Meanwhile, the planet has responded as expected to steadily rising carbon emissions and appears to be practically at the 1.5° limit.

On Wednesday, for the first time, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) acknowledged that reality, and conceded that the goal of keeping warming below 1.5° was no longer a viable one. Instead, its new goalposts focus on keeping both how long we exceed that limit and how much we exceed it by, at a minimum. Doing that will require both dramatic emissions cuts now and the removal of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the century is out.

Bowing to the inevitable

Depending on which baseline you use to establish pre-industrial temperatures, as well as which reconstruction of global temperatures you rely on, the world has either gotten very close to, or already exceeded the 1.5° milestone. The current El Niño event, which appears exceptionally strong, will almost certainly mean that we’ve gone over it no matter which records you choose.

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Tesla wants to sell Cybercabs to other transport companies before the year ends.