Last year, I reviewed Ecovacs' Deebot (6/10, WIRED Review). It was an expensive and massive mopping robot vacuum that came with a ton of extra functions that, to be quite honest, didn't make much practical sense. My 8-year-old, for example, is used to her mother occasionally doing strange things around the house. She accepted when her mother was talking to her through that robot vacuum's walkie-talkie, but she didn't exactly like it. That's why, this year, it made more sense for me to try the Deebot T9, which at $800 is the midrange model in Deebot's 2023 line.

When someone cuts you off on the motorway, do you take a deep breath and turn up the radio, or put your foot down and get right up to their bumper? Road rage is all too easy to slip into, but it can become a real problem when it starts to impact how people drive. Scientists from the University of Warwick have identified some of the most common behaviours of aggressive drivers. They say these will help self-driving vehicles spot and react appropriately to road users who may have lost their cool. It comes after one study found that women are more likely to suffer from road rage than men.

For the last four weeks, I've been living in an Orwellian nightmare. One in which I have to watch every word I say because "they" are always listening. And by "they", I mean Alexa, Siri and Google. It seemed like a good idea - get seven smart speakers and test them in a real house to see how they affected our listening habits and daily routine. At times, they've been pretty helpful. If we're running low on biscuits, one of us can bark, "Hey Siri, add Hob Nobs to the shopping list" and a reminder appears on our phones.

The first time I met Alexa, the A.I. robot voice inside the wine-bottle-size speaker known as the Amazon Echo, I was at my friends' house, in rural New England. "Currently, it is seventy-five degrees," she told us, and assured us that it would not rain. This was a year ago, and I'd never encountered a talking speaker before. When I razzed my friend for his love of gadgetry, he showed me some of Alexa's other tricks: telling us the weather, keeping a shopping list, ordering products from Amazon. This summer, Alexa decided again and again who the tickle monster's next victim was, saying their children's adorable nicknames in her strange A.I. accent.