Tech

AI is doing the dirty work for insurance companies, and it’s getting worse

Published

3 weeks ago

3 April 2026

Insurance claims adjusters have never had a reputation for generosity. But at least they were human. That’s changing fast, and not in your favor. A report by Futurism details how AI automation is now a major trend in personal insurance, the health, home, and auto coverage most of us rely on.

Is your doctor’s opinion even part of the process anymore?

It doesn’t seem that your doctor’s opinion carries that much weight now. A Palm Beach Post investigation found that Iris Smith, an 80-year-old suffering from arthritis, may be a victim of AI-fueled preauthorization denials.

In another case, UnitedHealth is currently facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that AI-denied Medicare nursing care contributed to patient deaths. Meanwhile, a National Association of Insurance Commissioners survey found 84% of health insurers are using AI, with 68% deploying it for prior authorization approvals.

Most people give up and don’t even appeal these rejections because the process is too confusing or exhausting, which, if you’re an insurance company, is the outcome you want.

The worst part is that we know AI isn’t always accurate and has a tendency to hallucinate. It’s one thing if it makes a mistake while writing a report, but it’s a completely different ball game when it ends up denying medical aid to someone who truly needs it.

Is there anyone protecting your interests?

Florida Representative Lois Frankel isn’t having any of it. She told the Palm Beach Post she plans to fight any expansion into other states. “We believe Medicare was based on a promise that if your doctor says you need care, if you’re hurt and you need care, Medicare will be there for you, not AI.”

But if the past is any indication, her fight alone won’t be enough. Florida lawmakers tried to pass a bill in 2025, requiring human review for AI-generated denials. It passed the House, died in the Senate, and a Trump executive order discouraging state AI regulations didn’t help.

The silver lining, if you can call it that: nonprofits like Counterforce Health now offer free AI tools that analyze your denial letter and draft a customized appeal, making it easier to fight back. It’s AI versus AI at this point, and the world is growing gloomier by the day.

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Time Frog Color Is A Game Boy Color On Your Wrist

Published

24 minutes ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Handheld consoles are great for gaming on the go, but who wants to hold onto things all the time? Would it not be easier to strap the game to your wrist? Well, not in its current form factor, but [LeggoMyFroggo], aka [
Chris Hackmann] has you covered, because he turned the Gameboy Color into a (relatively smart) watch.

Why “relatively” smart? Well, we say that because he’s using the original Game Boy Color CPU, a Sharp SOC based on the Z80 that is far less powerful than modern smartwatch platforms. That SOC is helped out by an RP2040 that translates the chip’s parallel RGB output into something a modern watch-sized display can comprehend via its PIOs. [Chris] refers to it as a “poor man’s FPGA” which isn’t a bad way of thinking about it in this context. Yes, he could have just stuck an emulator on that chip, but what’s the fun in that?

The controls are squeezed into the sides of the watch — the four face buttons on one side, and a tiny D-pad on the other — but that’s easy enough because this thing is 15 mm thick. Since [LeggoMyFroggo] is a purist, he insists on loading the games via cartridge, which does not help thin it out. Game Boy carts are not not watch-friendly, so the cartridges are custom PCBs that plug into an M.2 slot, but with the original (or at least compatible) ROM.

If it wasn’t for the cartridge slot, maybe a battery would have fit. But it doesn’t, which leads to our favorite part of the hack: the battery is in the watch strap. This is both kind of crazy, but also brilliant. The band is cast in silicone, so he’s able to embed a flexi-PCB inside. As for the watch body, that’s CNC’d out of 6061 aluminum before being anodized to a very Nintendo-esque purple.

[Chris] evidently has a soft spot for the Game Boy Color — we featured his FrogBoy re-imagining of the handheld a few years back. The project is just up on YouTube as of this writing, but the watch will join the FrogBoy on [Chris]’s GitHub so we can all get in on the fun once he’s finished the documentation.

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Iridius, led by Microsoft and AWS vets, raises $8.6M to crack AI’s regulatory compliance bottleneck

Published

39 minutes ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Iridius CEO and co-founder Mike Kropp. (Iridius Photo)

Many companies in regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals are pouring money into AI. But a lot of that work ultimately doesn’t see the light of day, due to the compliance, validation, and audit requirements that govern every system they deploy.

Iridius, a Seattle startup founded by two Microsoft veterans working with alumni from companies such as Amazon and OpenAI, has raised $8.6 million in seed funding to go after this problem, with Accenture as both an investor and strategic partner.

The startup’s pitch: Its technology translates regulatory requirements and company policies into code so that compliance is enforced automatically as AI systems run, not just documented after the fact. Actions by agents, meanwhile, are automatically logged for audit.

The company’s initial focus is life sciences, including pharmaceutical companies, but it sees broader applications across regulated industries over time.

Chalfen Ventures led the seed round, with participation from Osage Venture Partners, Accenture Ventures, and Rock Yard Ventures. The consulting giant is also working with Iridius and prospective pharmaceutical customers to identify where compliance automation can deliver the biggest returns in the drug development life cycle.

How they got to pharma: Iridius CEO and co-founder Mike Kropp, who spent 21 years in engineering and product leadership roles at Microsoft before working at Amazon Web Services, said the startup’s founding team initially pitched some of their former Microsoft colleagues on the broader idea of compliance infrastructure for enterprise AI.

The initial response: no one cared about AI compliance.

But by July of last year, that had changed. Microsoft began introducing the startup to some of the tech giant’s largest pharmaceutical customers, whose AI pilots were getting all the way to the edge of production before compliance tripped them up.

“The degree of specificity and scope in the pharma space as it relates to compliance is massive,” Kropp said. He cited prospective customers that spend $1.5 billion a year on compliance, and need to maintain 70,000 internal standard operating procedures that must be reconciled against external regulations.

Deep roster: Kropp started Iridius in 2024 with co-founder Alistair Lowe-Norris, a 23-year Microsoft veteran who previously served as chief change officer under Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and is now Iridius’s chief product and responsible AI officer.

Other company leaders include:

Mark Turley, co-founder, CFO and COO, who previously led accounting and financial operations at Highspot.
Peter Larsen, the company’s chief technology officer, who joined from AWS, where he was a senior manager of solution architecture.
Spencer Bentley, the company’s AI technical fellow, who is based in the U.K. and has worked as an OpenAI contractor since 2021, running its developer forum.
Laura McFadden, VP of go-to-market and strategy, who previously held finance roles at Amazon spanning healthcare and consumer devices.

Clark Golestani, the former CIO and president of emerging businesses at Merck, joined the Iridius board last October after meeting Kropp at an industry event.

The company has also built a deep bench of advisors: George Llado, former CIO at Alexion; Sean Lennon, former CIO at Medtronic; Jeff Keisling, former CIO at Pfizer; Jeff Brittain, former CIO at Bayer; Uli Homann, a corporate vice president and distinguished architect at Microsoft; and Hal Stern, former CIO at Johnson & Johnson R&D.

Iridius has 11 employees, the majority in the Seattle area.

How it works: The Iridius platform has two main components:

A knowledge engine breaks regulations down, rule-by-rule, and stores them in a database AI agents can query in real time.
A solution factory uses those rules to help customers design, build, and connect AI workflows to existing enterprise systems.

Landscape: Iridius is entering a growing field. A wave of AI governance tools has emerged to monitor model behavior in enterprise environments, and other startups have begun applying AI agents to compliance work in supply chain, finance, and life sciences.

Kropp said the company is taking a different approach by embedding compliance into the execution of AI workflows rather than monitoring them from the outside.

It’s also treating existing tech platforms, such as Veeva Systems, the dominant software vendor in life sciences, as integration possibilities rather than competitors.

What’s next: Iridius has not yet launched its product commercially, but has signed a co-development agreement with one pharmaceutical customer, and is in discussions with others. The funding will go in part to hiring, including expanding its AI engineering team.

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Consumer Reports Says This Simple Habit Can Save You Big On Gas

Published

53 minutes ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Rangsarit Chaiyakun/Shutterstock

Disruption caused by the continuing war in Iran has led to gas prices rising across the country, while tariffs have pushed up costs for many other consumer goods in 2025 and 2026. Drivers looking to offset these increased expenses will want to make sure that they’re not spending more at the gas station than they have to, and that means they’ll want to take advantage of as many fuel-saving tips and tricks as possible. A recent study by Consumer Reports found that one tip in particular can save drivers hundreds of dollars on gas per year, and it won’t take any effort to implement either.

The study found that driving 10 mph slower than usual on the highway can make a surprisingly big difference, with CR reporting that its test team recorded efficiency increases of up to 8 mpg. The average new car in 2024 achieved 27.2 mpg, but drivers of cars that get 35 mpg or more could save over $400 annually at the gas pump by cutting their speed. For habitual speeders, slowing down has the added benefit of reducing the chance of an encounter with local law enforcement.

Setting a slower cruising speed is far from the only way to avoid wasting fuel. Among other things, accelerating more slowly to reach your cruising speed and removing heavy, unnecessary clutter from your car can also help reduce fuel costs.

Modern cars are more efficient than their predecessors

Peeterv/Getty Images

While drivers can make a significant difference to their fuel costs by altering their driving style, modern cars feature several systems designed to reduce fuel usage without the driver doing anything at all. One of the most noticeable modern fuel-saving systems is auto start-stop. A 2022 study published in the Environmental Pollution journal found that start-stop systems can reduce fuel usage by more than 4%, with drivers in warmer climates seeing bigger efficiency increases than those in colder climates.

It’s sometimes claimed that using start-stop is bad for your engine, but modern engines are designed to accommodate the technology, so it won’t cause significant additional wear. However, drivers of cars without start-stop shouldn’t attempt to turn their cars off at junctions or intersections to save fuel. It usually won’t increase efficiency, and it might prematurely wear out the car’s starter motor, since the motor isn’t designed to be repeatedly used during a journey.

Other fuel-saving systems are less noticeable, such as variable valve timing (VVT) systems. The first engine with VVT was designed by Alfa Romeo in the ’80s, but it has since been adopted by many major automakers. Turbochargers and continuously variable transmissions can also help save fuel, along with many other hidden fuel efficiency technologies in modern cars. However, even the most technologically advanced, fuel-efficient car should see its efficiency increase when drivers reduce their speed by a few mph.

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Vampire Crawlers, Peter Molyneux’s return and other new indie games worth checking out

Published

1 hour ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. If you’re looking for something new to play this weekend, we’ve got a bunch of options for you. We’ve also got some interesting upcoming games to tell you about as well.

In a press release announcing that Playdate Season 3 is coming later this year, Panic included a line that I’ve been thinking about a lot this week. “Panic is currently relieved and happy that people can make amazing games for Playdate with just 16 megabytes of RAM,” it said, a nod toward the ongoing RAM crisis.

The Playdate doesn’t exactly have a lot of technical oomph, and I’m frequently delighted by what developers are able to do within its limitations. Restrictions foster creativity — many folks had to get pretty inventive on Twitter back when they only had 140 characters to play with. Here, Panic offered a welcome reminder that you don’t necessarily need an ultra-powerful rig or console to have access to more great games than you’ll ever actually be able to play.

For instance, my favorite game of the year so far, Titanium Court, works on Macs that are capable of running macOS 11 (the 2020 version of the operating system) or later. On PC, you’ll need a graphics card that’s compatible with OpenGL or DirectX 9, the latter of which was released in 2002. For what it’s worth, the game would also fit on a CD-ROM.

There are tons of other great indie games new and old that’ll run just fine on lower-powered machines. Bear that in mind the next time a current-gen console or other gaming system gets a price increase because of the RAM shortage. The DLSS 5 debacle aside, you probably don’t need a 50-series NVIDIA GPU either. Maybe just pick up a Playdate instead.

New releases

While many of the weapons, characters and enemies are the same, Vampire Crawlers is a fresh spin on Vampire Survivors. It’s a turn-based roguelite deckbuilder. Instead of automatically firing whatever weapons you have at nearby enemies, you’ll play cards to conquer the mob that you face in each fight. You can still modify and evolve your weapons and abilities.

Each card has a casting cost, so you’ll need to consider which ones to play in a given moment and the order in which you do so. As such, it’s a slower-paced, more strategic take on the original game, albeit with a similar level of visual chaos should you put together a particularly powerful build.

I’ve played a ton of Vampire Survivors and the Vampire Crawlers demo lured me in too. Its approach to turn-based battles is working for me. I’ve only played a little of the full game so far, but there’s every chance I could lose days of my life to it.

Vampire Crawlers — from Survivors creator Poncle and co-developer Nosebleed Interactive — is available now on Steam (for PC and Mac), Xbox for PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch for $10. It’s included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Fable creator Peter Molyneux and his studio 22cans are back with another god game. In Masters of Albion, you can construct and modify settlements as a literal hand of god. You’ll design buildings (which are immediately constructed and usable) and manage workers. You can also assume control of a human or animal in the world to take on quests and hunt for treasure.

There’s a tower defense element to this as well. You’ll need to prepare your towns from nighttime attacks from various creatures. You can fend off these foes as the god or battle them on the ground as a hero. There’s a lot going on here, but perhaps my favorite part is this apparent warning in the mature content description section of the Steam page: “Players are also able to use crude, adult hand gestures at will in the game.” Yes, that means you can flip the bird while playing as the god hand. Yes, I am very mature.

Masters of Albion is now available in early access on Steam. It typically costs $25, but there’s a 10 percent discount until April 29.

Snap & Grab caught our attention at last summer’s edition of the Day of the Devs showcase. This is a cartoonish heist game in which you’ll carry out your robberies in two parts. You play as Nifty, a famous fashion photographer. In the setup phase, you’ll take advantage of your position to take snaps of loot, threats and opportunities and then use those to construct a plan. With the help of some henchman, you’ll then try to execute the heist.

The game’s developer No Goblin is taking an episodic approach to Snap & Grab as it’s releasing the game in five parts over the course of this year. The first episode is available now on Steam (usually $8, though there’s a 10 percent discount until May 1).

Snow Day Software’s follow-up to Indoor Kickball is Indoor Baseball. It’s an arcade game in which you play baseball inside buildings, funnily enough. You’ll play 1v1 matches against the CPU or a friend in local multiplayer. You can also dive into a 14-game season or check out the story mode, in which you’ll try to play your way back onto your school’s baseball team (and maybe do some chores to make up for smashing too many things at home).

There are several different levels, each of which has a variety of ways for you to make a home run, from smashing a window to landing the ball in a toilet. It seems light and fun and as a burgeoning baseball guy, I dig the idea of this one.

Indoor Baseball is available now on Steam, Xbox for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. It costs $15.

Upcoming

I love Another Crab’s Treasure very much and so I’ll always be interested in whatever Aggro Crab is up to. Given that the studio also co-developed the smash hit Peak (alongside Landfall), I imagine many other folks feel the same way.

Crashout Crew is another multiplayer game from Aggro Crab. This one adopts the chaotic co-op formula of games like Overcooked. As a team of forklift drivers, you and your buds will work together to fill orders in warehouses while dealing with obstacles like blackouts, cacti, fire and bees.

It’s coming to Steam, Xbox on PC and Xbox Series X/S on May 28. It’ll be available on Game Pass on day one.

I’m very much here for slice-of-life games based around soccer (I still need to play Despelote!). Kick is another such title. This is a side-scrolling, anime-inspired game from solo developer nospacelost and publisher Shoreline Games, in which you dribble a ball as you make your way to school.

There are 23 levels with people to dodge and obstacles to overcome. You’ll need to avoid damaging anything as you try to pull off tricks by kicking the ball at the correct angle, all while making sure you get to class on time (you can switch off the timer for a more relaxed experience). It looks pretty, and it never hurts a game’s prospects to have a pup accompanying the main character.

No release date for Kick has been announced. It’s coming to Steam at some point.

Elfie: A Sand Plan is a cozy sandcastle building game from Pressed Elephant and Sol’s Atelier. There are more than 180 levels in which you’ll build sand sculptures to match what Elfie, a small elephant, has in mind. There are three difficulty levels too.

It looks cute and I adore elephants (oops, I just started fostering another one), so I’m interested in checking it out. Elfie: A Sand Plan is coming to Steam for PC and Mac on May 12. It’ll cost $7, and there’ll be a 10 percent launch discount.

It took the team at Realmsoft 14 years to bring Clockwork Ambrosia to fruition and if this latest trailer is any indication, that long development cycle could have well been worthwhile. This is a side-scrolling action platformer in which you can customize half a dozen weapons using more than 150 modifiers.

You play as an airship engineer who tries to survive on a steampunk island full of aggressive robots and creatures following a crash. I really dig the art direction here, which features lush hand-drawn pixel art and lovely animations. Realmsoft made the game using a custom engine the team built from scratch.

I’m looking forward to checking out Clockwork Ambrosia. It’s coming to Steam on May 12.

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FDA Gives Green Light To the First Gene Therapy For Deafness

Published

1 hour ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing for people who were born deaf. The decision, while only immediately affecting people born with a very rare form of genetic deafness, is being hailed as a milestone in the quest to treat hearing loss. “It’s the first time in history there’s a new drug for hearing loss,” says Zheng-Yi Chen, an associate scientist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston who was not involved in the development of the therapy approved by the FDA Thursday. But his research team reported very promising results with a similar approach Wednesday. “I think it’s an historical event, a landmark, a great development for the whole field,” he says of the approval. […] The FDA’s decision was based on the results from the treatment of 20 patients born with a defective version of a gene known as OTOF, which is necessary to transmit sound from the ears to the brain.

Doctors infused billions of adeno-associated viruses into the patients’ ears by making a small incision behind the ear to open a small hole in the skull. The viruses carried a healthy version of the OTOF gene that had been split in half to fit inside the virus. The gene provides instructions to make the otoferlin protein, which is necessary for hair cells in the inner ear to transmit sound to the brain. Most of the patients began to hear for the first time within weeks, with the quality of their hearing improving over the following months, according to [Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which developed the gene therapy and plans to offer it for free in the U.S. It should be available within weeks.]. The amount of hearing patients gained varied, but 80% achieved at least some significant hearing restoration and 42% ended up with normal hearing, which included the ability to hear whispers, Regeneron says. The hearing ability has lasted at least two years so far.

The treatment can only help patients with the very rare form of deafness that Smith was born with, which only affects about 50 children each year in the U.S. But similar gene therapies are showing promise for other forms of genetic deafness. And researchers hope someday gene therapy may help with common types of hearing loss, like from aging and loud noise.

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Belfast’s Cloudsmith eyes ‘massive growth’ with $72m raise

Published

1 hour ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

The company raised $23m last year to expand its workforce.

Belfast software company Cloudsmith has raised $72m in Series C funding led by the investment firm TCV.

The raise, Cloudsmith said, would position the company for “massive growth” as it eyes the AI-generated software market. The funds will help accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market capabilities. Insight Partners and other existing investors also supported the round.

The latest funding comes just a year after the company raised $23m in a Series B to expand its workforce across departments and invest in AI R&D. TVC also led this round.

Founded in 2016 by Lee Skillen and Alan Carson, Cloudsmith helps businesses manage software on the cloud, and is used by companies that need control, security and scalability in their software supply chain. The company made two Series A raises – $15m in 2021 and $11m in 2023.

The new investment follows a period of strong year-over-year growth, Cloudsmith said, as companies seek modern infrastructure to keep pace with the speed and scale of AI-generated software.

Businesses also rely on software companies such as Cloudsmith to provide guardrails and governance when adopting AI-coding agents.

The investment comes at a time when AI coding is seeing unprecedented uptake by enterprises, which brings with it an ever-expanding threat surface.

Enterprises need to manage an growing software supply chain, while facing regulatory pressures and their own security requirements to ensure their AI-generated software is secure by design.

“AI agents generate so much software, so fast, it’s nearly impossible for humans to carefully review it all,” said Glenn Weinstein, the CEO of Cloudsmith.

Weinstein said Cloudsmith has the capacity to protect enterprises against the new kinds of threats that AI-driven development introduces.

“TCV and Insight Partners both recognise this profound shift, and their backing is helping Cloudsmith scale up for the massive wave of adoption of AI agents across enterprise software teams.”

Thomas Krane, the managing director at Insight Partners added: “In an era increasingly defined by AI-driven development, securing the software supply chain is critical.

“As a cloud-native offering, Cloudsmith is well positioned to do this – providing the scale and reliability needed to help power enterprise and AI-driven builds and mitigate emerging risks.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

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This Is JD Power’s Most Reliable French Door Refrigerator Brand

Published

2 hours ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Appliances might be smarter than ever, but 2025 study data from J.D. Power suggests that they aren’t as reliable as they used to be. Senior managing director of retail practice at J.D. Power, Michael Taylor, explained that although “modern appliances are far more sophisticated and packed with more technologies than ever before,” the increased complexity of today’s appliances means that there are more systems to potentially go wrong. As a result, he said that reliability was now a “critical factor” in picking a new appliance.

According to the study, buyers looking for the most reliable French door refrigerator from a major refrigerator brand should look toward GE’s current lineup. The brand saw the lowest number of problems per 100 appliances (PP100), with owners reporting 65 PP100. GE’s score was slightly ahead of Whirlpool’s rival refrigerators, which saw 68 PP100 reported. The third most reliable brand in the segment was LG, with owners reporting 74 PP100.

French door refrigerators suffered from more problems on average than most other types of appliances. Across the category, owners reported 76 PP100 on average, while side-by-side refrigerators were subject to 68 PP100 on average. Two appliance categories shared top honors for being the most reliable on average: cooking appliances and clothes dryers. Both saw an average of 56 PP100 reported.

GE scored highly for reliability in other categories

Aaron of L.A. Photography/Shutterstock

Although it didn’t quite achieve a clean sweep, GE managed a first-place finish for reliability in almost all appliance categories in J.D. Power’s study. As well as being the most reliable French door refrigerator brand, GE also took top honors in the clothes dryer, front-load washer, and top-load washer categories, among others. However, not everyone agrees with J.D. Power’s verdict, with Consumer Reports crowning LG’s front-load washers the best on the market.

Even so, J.D. Power’s study unequivocally puts GE’s home appliance range at the top of the pile for reliability. As a bonus, when things do go wrong, the study claims that GE has the best service experience, too. The brand received 778 points for its appliance service out of a possible 1,000 points, while Samsung earned second place with a score of 768 points. Unfortunately, owners of Samsung appliances are more likely to end up testing out its appliance service than most, since the Korean brand’s appliances were subject to more problems than average in seven out of eight appliance categories.

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Cohere acquires, merges with Germany-based startup to create a ‘transatlantic AI powerhouse’

Published

2 hours ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Cohere, the Canada-based enterprise AI unicorn, announced Friday that it would merge with the Germany-based enterprise AI company Aleph Alpha.

The deal, which has yet to close, will value the newly formed company at $20 billion, the FT reported. Schwarz Group, one of Aleph Alpha’s top backers, will also invest $600 million in Cohere’s Series E round, which is expected to close later this year, CNBC reported.

A handful of Silicon Valley players continue to dominate the AI commercial landscape, which is busy with consolidation activity.

A press release announcing the Cohere-Aleph Alpha union said one goal of the merger was to give businesses and governments an alternative to these dominant tech players, one that offers greater independence and control over their data. It also hopes to combine the talent pool across Canada and Germany to create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse.”

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This Ring Doorbell deal is a cheap way to smarten up your front door

Published

2 hours ago

25 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Most video doorbells make you choose between a wide-angle view of your porch or a tight shot of whoever’s face is at the door, but the Ring Battery Doorbell doesn’t ask you to compromise.

Right on that premise, the Ring Battery Doorbell is currently down from $99.99 to $59.99 at Amazon, putting $40 back in your pocket for a camera that covers significantly more of your front door area.

Ring Battery Video Doorbell on a red and orange background