Gadgetory

GM is finally getting serious about self-driving cars i'm dan graziano fillion for Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update the big automakers have had some serious competition coming out of Silicon Valley and it's not just the googles and the Tesla's of the world it's smaller companies like Cruz automation a start-up that's been developing self driving technology for the past three years the company offers an aftermarket kit that allows owners of certain types of cars to add self-driving features for use on the highway it's similar to that of a Tesla Model S and you know what they say if you can't beat them well you might as well buy them GM on friday announced it has acquired cruise automation but it's not interested in selling those aftermarket kits rather GM is going to use the startups technology to jump starts own efforts to bring self-driving features to upcoming vehicles in other news Amazon's Alexa voice assistant has learned yet another skill banking that's right if you're an Amazon echo or fire TV user you can now sync your capital one account with the Alexa app you can then have Alexa your account balance tell you when your next credit card payment is due and even authorized her to go ahead and make a payment it's all done through voice command now there is an option to enable four-digit passcode which Alexa will ask you any time you try to access your account but if someone was to overhear this passcode well they too could access your account so it's not exactly foolproof but then again voice commands aren't perfect and earlier this month a few unlucky NPR listeners found that out firsthand the NPR show listen up rent a segment on the echo and accidentally activate devices in the homes of a few listeners by saying the trigger word Alexa one listener said that his echo resetted thermostat 270 degrees while another simply explained that his device start going crazy some voice assistants like Apple Siri and Google now let you train your device to only recognize your voice amazon has previously said that it is aware of the issue but we have yet to see a fix so until then you may just have to strategically place your echo away from the TV and the radio that's it for this tech news update for everything else head over to cnet com from our studios in New York I'm Dan Graziano