If you own an Amazon Echo and have a Nest smart thermostat, you’ll be happy to know that they will begin to communicate with each other over the next couple of weeks.

This new integration will allow users to simply tell Alexa to change the thermostat temperature to a specific temperature. Alexa’s new Skills feature uses contextual information to learn about the user’s preferences such as telling Alexa that you are leaving your home and Alexa would know to turn the thermostat off. Or you could tell Alexa to “tell the thermostat that I’m too hot.”

Nest also states that if you use IFTTT, there are already more than 50 recipes that you can use in conjunction with your Nest thermostat and Amazon Echo.

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In light of all the Apple VS. FBI controversy, Amazon took it upon itself to push out an OTA to its own Fire OS devices that disables encryption. However, when asked about it, The Verge reports that Amazon claimed the decision was made several months ago when it was ‘removing features that customers were not using’.

Encrypting storage was first introduced with Android 5.0 Lollipop which first came with some performance issues that had to be addressed. The issue at hand is now all of Amazon’s products that run Fire OS will be updated to Fire OS 5, which disables encryption completely, rendering all customer’s internal storage data, no longer protected in the hands of thieves.

While Apple fights the good fight, @Amazon removes encryption as option from FireOS 5 | @csoghoian @normative @eff http://pic.twitter.com/nggBdtFG7j— David Scovetta (@davidscovetta) March 3, 2016

The update even tells customers that they need to back up their encrypted data before they can upgrade to the new Fire OS which lacks storage encryption.

Why did Amazon decide to go through with decrypting Fire OS’ internal storage? Especially at a time like this, speculation points to Amazon not wanting to become involved with the same issues that Apple faces with the FBI.

We hope that Amazon decides to change its mind in deprecating encryption in its next OTA update. The customer deserves to have its data protected and if the customer no longer has the option, then those customers who really depend on storage encryption will likely switch to another device or another platform that will protect its customers’ data, even as far as fighting through the court system.

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Ever felt like you wanted to message someone, but have no idea what to actually write? How about when you get the urge to send someone a picture, but simply can’t decide which one?

Well, there’s a new app in town that’s ready to tackle these exact use-cases. It’s called Rando, and it’s out for iOS already. You can grab it for free from the iTunes App Store.

Rando sends people random messages on your behalf. You can pick between a photo, a GIF, or a quote. Say you go with a pic. By default, Rando offers to randomly send an image from your Camera Roll, without even showing you which one. Thankfully, you do get the option to see it before it’s shared, but in order for that to happen you need to tap a blurry rectangle.

GIFs are sourced from Giphy. It’s unclear where quotes come from, so supposedly Rando has its own database for those. Like for pictures, you can either send the GIF or quote blindly, or opt to see it first. Sending is done via text, Facebook, Twitter, or any other app that you can share stuff to in…

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