The Morning After: Tuesday December 27, 2016

Welcome back from the long festive weekend. In the midst of all that egg-nog, present opening and family router troubleshooting, you might have missed Apple's first published AI research, the worst gadgets of the year, and the latest Chinese luxury smartphone that goes all-in on battery life. Sidestepping the rest of the bad news that 2016 managed to deliver, there were some stinkers when it came to this year's new gadgets. Smoking (then exploding) phones, plain racist app photo filters, excessively overpriced smartwatches and those dongles. It's all about object recognition. When Apple said it would publish its artificial intelligence research, we had a few questions: Would the company keep potential trade secrets close to the vest?