Light switches are so last century. Geoffrey A. Fowler explains the right--and wrong--ways to improve your home lighting with connected bulbs, plugs and switches.

T-Mobile is now offering the LG G6 for pre-order, ahead of its April 7 release date. The smartphone will sell for $650 or $26 down and $26 per month for 24 months as per the T-Mobile's equipment installment plan. The carrier is also offering a free Google Home AI assistant to those who purchase the LG G6 before April 30. Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have already opened pre-order for the LG G6 and will release the device March 30. U.S. Cellular preorders begin March 24. All carriers have their own deals associated with the LG G6 release date.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. Our picks and opinions are independent from any business incentives. Alright, so you got yourself an Alexa-enabled device--an Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Tap. I'm sure you've already spent plenty of time fooling around and getting to know your new smart assistant, but there's a crazy amount of possibilities you might not have even known about. Keep reading to discover my list of the strangest, most useful, and all-around best things you can do with Alexa.

China has now overtaken Japan for having more robots than anywhere else in the world. The Chinese government is concerned about an ageing population and the rising cost of human labour making Chinese products less competitive. It is giving over $100 Billion in subsidies for companies to replace more human workers with robots. It's hoped that the workers that will no longer work in the factories will move to the growing service sector, in part to help look after the ageing population. Countries In the west have already lost large numbers of manufacturing jobs to china but we shouldn't get too smug about our white-collar jobs in high tech, administration, clerical and production being safe from A.I. systems in the future.

"It is because of them that my little boy smiles again," a mum's heartfelt thanks to the owners of a dog with skin condition vitiligo, and the Singaporean creator of a selective dating app comes to its defence. Two young kids with a long-term skin condition are making headlines after meeting a dog sharing the same rare autoimmune disease. Eight-year old Carter, from Arkansas, developed vitiligo in 2014, a condition characterised by areas of the skin losing their pigmentation. Ava, who is 10 and from Canada, also has vitiligo which she developed when she was four. But Carter and Ava have more than just that in common.

Nonetheless, arguing that First Amendment coverage may extend to strong A.I. speakers raises a number of legitimate concerns. If A.I. is protected, why not protect speech by cats or by parts of nature, like waves? Well, for one thing, unlike a meow or a crashing sound, A.I. speech uses words and is therefore more likely to be understood as conveying a message. A.I. is also more likely to be central to some human communications effort, supplanting human communication. In other words, we often construct A.I. to serve an essentially communicative function.

Hot on the heels of its addition to the Amazon app on the iPhone, Alexa is looking to make its presence known on Android, too. Huawei has announced that the virtual assistant is on its way to the Mate 9, making it the first Android phone to receive Amazon's AI aide. With Alexa on the Mate 9, you'll be able to do many of the things the Echo and Dot can do, including control your home automation devices while you're away. Huawei is touting its smart home capabilities as the flagship feature of Alexa on the Mate 9, but it can also handle many of the other skills Alexa has on Amazon's devices, including the ability to play games, shop at Amazon.com, get news updates, track your workouts, and play podcasts. Furthermore, you can use it to get information about people, places, and events, check your Google or Outlook calendar, find local businesses, and get weather and traffic updates.

The trend in computing towards more natural user interfaces is unmistakable. Graphical user interfaces have long been dominant, but machines driven by more intuitive inputs, like touch and voice, are now mainstream. Today, audio, motion, and even our thoughts, are the basis for the most innovative computer-user interaction models powered by advanced sensor technology. Each computing paradigm maps to one or more of the five human senses; exploring each sense gives us an indication of the direction in which technology is heading. The introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI) drove a step function change in computers as productivity tools, because users could rely heavily on sight, our dominant sense.

NEW HAVEN – The idea of a tax on robots was raised last May in a draft report to the European Parliament prepared by MEP Mady Delvaux from the Committee on Legal Affairs. Emphasizing how robots could boost inequality, the report proposed that there might be a "need to introduce corporate reporting requirements on the extent and proportion of the contribution of robotics and AI to the economic results of a company for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions." The public reaction to Delvaux's proposal has been overwhelmingly negative, with the notable exception of Bill Gates, who endorsed it. But we should not dismiss the idea out of hand. In just the past year, we have seen the proliferation of devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo Dot (Alexa), which replace some aspects of household help. Likewise, the Delphi and nuTonomy driverless taxi services in Singapore have started to replace taxi drivers.

Over the past several months, smartphone manufacturers have been hungering for a new hook -- a new way to make mobile devices seem fresh, exciting, and wallet-worthy at a point when last year's models still seem perfectly fine to most people. It's a cycle we've seen in AndroidLand plenty of times before. In the early days, each new iteration of a phone was faster than the last. Then came the display resolution phase. We saw a similar thing with camera quality for a while.