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21.11.2022 15:32 While some thought Twitter would fall apart over the weekend, given the engineering constraints it's now under, it made it to Sunday. And it’s even got one of its most divisive users back. On Friday night, Musk tweeted a poll asking people to vote on whether Twitter should reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account. Trump recently announced he will run for the country's highest office again in 2024.The option to reinstate the former president won with 51.8 percent of the 15,085,458 votes. While the poll was ongoing, Musk said it was getting one million votes per hour, and also said "bot and troll armies" were responsible for some of the activity.Reinstating Trump’s account was one of Musk’s early promises for the platform, which some thought was a joke. It was not. Earlier in the week, Twitter reinstated the accounts of three other controversial users, including comedian Kathy Griffin, conservative satire site Babylon Bee and conservative author Jordan Peterson.– Mat SmithThe Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.The biggest stories you might have missedHitting the Books: How Dave Chappelle and curious cats made Roomba a household name Wickr’s consumer messaging app will shut down next yearElon Musk is reportedly considering cutting even more of Twitter’s workforceCOP27 conference approves historic climate damage fund for developing nations ‘Overwatch 2’ no longer blocks players with prepaid numbers Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison on fraud chargesThe Theranos founder is due to surrender in April.Getty imagesHolmes, the former CEO and founder of Theranos, has been sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding the investors of her blood-testing startup. The sentence comes almost a year after Holmes was found guilty on four counts of fraud. She will also be ordered to pay restitution, though Judge Ed Davila said that amount will be determined at a separate hearing. Judge Davila said restitution would be based on $121 million in losses to 10 investors, according to The New York Times.Holmes delivered a brief statement at her sentencing hearing: “I regret my failings with every cell of my body,” she said, according to Law360’s Dorothy Atkins. The tale of Theranos has been made into a Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried, while Apple is still reportedly working on a movie.Continue reading.Governments vote to retire the leap second by 2035Even if Russia isn’t on board.Government representatives at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris, France, voted nearly unanimously to retire the practice of occasionally adding one second to official clocks. Introduced in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time to even out discrepancies between atomic time and observed solar time, the leap second has been the bane of tech companies for decades. It’s taken Reddit offline and messed up Cloudflare services in recent years. Dignitaries from the US, Canada and France called for the leap-second practice to end before 2035. Russia voted against the proposal. GLONASS, its global positioning system, incorporates the leap second. This decision may force Russia to launch new satellites.Continue reading.Waymo’s fully driverless rides are coming to San FranciscoIt still needs to secure a deployment permit.The California Public Utilities Commission has granted Waymo a Driverless Pilot permit, which allows it to pick up passengers in a test vehicle without a driver behind the wheel. It's only the second participant in the CPUC's Driverless Permit program, with Cruise being the first.By securing the permit, Waymo now has the authority to offer driverless rides throughout San Francisco, portions of Daly City and parts of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. Its vehicles are allowed to go as fast as 65 miles per hour and can operate 24/7, but the company can't charge for the rides just yet – it needs another permit for that.Continue reading.All the 'fun' grown-up gifts we would like to receiveLEGO sets, jerky and, oh baby, smart water leak detectors.EngadgetWorking on Engadget’s holiday gift guides, we often can’t help but think about the things we’d like to receive as gifts – unusual stuff beyond headphones, laptops and games consoles. While scrambling to find gifts for the people we love, here are a few things we’d love to get this holiday season. Me? I’d appreciate some new noise-canceling headphones, please.Continue reading.

21.11.2022 15:32 NASA's Artemis I mission will hit a key milestone today as the Orion capsule makes its "outbound powered flyby" of the Moon, getting as close as 80 miles to the surface. The burn is the first of two maneuvers required to enter what's known as a "distant retrograde orbit" around the Moon. During the flyby, cameras inside and outside the spacecraft will document the view, with shots of the Moon, Earth and Orion itself. "It’s going to be spectacular," said lead flight director Rick LaBrode. The flyby is "the big burn that will actually move Orion and send it toward the planned distant retrograde orbit" that allows it to burn less fuel, LaBrode said earlier. "DRO allows Orion to spend more time in deep space for a rigorous mission to ensure spacecraft systems, like guidance, navigation, communication, power, thermal control and others are ready to keep astronauts safe on future crewed missions," said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin.The capsule's service module ICPS engine, developed by the European Space Agency , will fire for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. As Orion passes behind the Moon, engineers will lose contact for approximately 34 minutes starting at 7:26 AM. It will spend 6 to 19 days in DRO to collect data and allow mission controllers to assess spacecraft performance, according to the space agency. So far, the mission has gone mostly to plan. However, two "active anomaly resolution teams" are investigating faults in the star tracker system's random access memory and a malfunctioning power conditioning and distribution unit. "Both systems are currently functioning as required, and there are no mission impacts related to these efforts," NASA said.

21.11.2022 15:32 Following its stretchy LCD panels, LG Display's latest gadget is a super-thin speaker designed to be installed in car interiors while remaining "invisible." The Thin Actuator Sound Solution was developed with a "global audio company" , as a replacement for traditional speakers in automobiles. The system eschews the usual voice coils, cones and magnets found in most speakers, instead employing so-called film-like exciter technology. That can vibrate off display panels and various materials inside the car body to enable a "rich, 3D immersive sound experience," according to the company. With the panels' small dimensions and 1.4 ounce weight, they can be hidden inside car interior parts like the dashboard, headliner, pillar, and headrests. That frees up spaces normally occupied by speakers "without compromising sound quality," according to LG. The concept isn't entirely new, as we've seen similar vibrating panels used in OLED TVs from Sony and LG itself. However, car interiors are a new application with appreciable benefits, if LG Display's claims about sound quality are accurate. We may find out for ourselves soon, as LG is due to show the technology off at CES 2023 . LG said the speakers will be commercialized in the first half of 2023.

21.11.2022 10:32 Samsung's 32-inch Smart Monitor M8 plays dual roles, acting not only as a monitor with a webcam, but also a smart TV with built in speakers and support for cloud gaming and streaming. Now, with Black Friday week upon us, it's dropped back to its all-time low price of $500 at Amazon and Samsung.Buy Smart Monitor M8 at Amazon - $500Buy Smart Monitor M8 at Samsung - $500As a computer display, the Smart Monitor M8 offers UHD resolution at up to 60Hz, along with HDR10+. With a VA panel, it's decently bright at 400 nits, offers a 4-millisecond response time and displays up to a billion colors, with 99 percent sRGB coverage. Input-wise, you get USB-C and Micro HDMI 2.0 inputs, along with a USB-C charging interface. Finally, it has a a detachable SlimFit Cam for video calls, making it a solid choice for work or light content creation.Other features include the ability to change the angle and position with the high-adjustable stand, along with a game bar that makes it easy to switch between cloud services. And with Samsung TV Plus and Alexa built in, you can watch streaming content, play games and even do work activities without the need to be plugged into a PC. Normally the white model sells for $700 and the color models for $730, so you get a 29 percent discount on former and 32 percent off the latter.Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

21.11.2022 10:32 Bob Iger is returning as Disney CEO in a shocking leadership shakeup, with current CEO Bob Chapek stepping down, the company announced in a press release. Iger is set to return temporarily for two years, with a mandate for "renewed growth" and to find and groom his successor. Iger said he's returning "with an incredible sensor of gratitude and humility — and, I must admit, a bit of amazement.""We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic," said Disney chairman Susan Arnold in a statement. "The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period."Iger handpicked Chapek to follow him as CEO, but a clash in their styles quickly became clear. Iger was known as a talent- and creative-friendly CEO, while Chapek focused on streaming, particularly as the pandemic decimated Disney's theme park and theatrical distribution businesses.Under Chapek, however, Disney initially failed to react to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill and criticized Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson over her lawsuit involving streaming vs. theatrical distribution. And during a Disney retreat, Iger reportedly urged the company not to rely excessively on data to make decisions — seen by some as a dig at Chapek, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Under Chapek, Disney+ has grown to 235 million subscribers , but the company lost $1.5 billion on streaming last quarter. Its market capitalization has also fallen from $257.6 billion in Iger's last full year to $163.5 billion. Much of that fall is pandemic related, though, as movie theaters and Disney's parks were forced to shut down.The move comes as a surprise considering that Disney had renewed Bob Chapek's contract for three years . Iger, meanwhile, has a near-mythical status at Disney CEO, having presided over the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. That legacy will be put to the test, though, as Disney faces challenging times — the company recently announced plans to freeze hiring and said that layoffs are likely to come soon.

21.11.2022 00:31 Following an Xbox Series X/S and PC release this past summer, Immortality, the latest project from Her Story creator Sam Barlow, is now available on Android and iOS via Netflix. Provided you subscribe to the streaming service, you can download the game at no additional charge and experience one of the most highly acclaimed titles of 2022.Like Barlow’s past projects, Immortality is a love letter to the full-motion video games of the ‘90s. The game tasks you with finding out the fate of fictional actress Marissa Marcel. You’ll need to piece together what happened to her by watching clips from three unreleased films and behind-the-scenes footage. Barlow recruited Allan Scott and Amelia Gray, best known for their work on Queen’s Gambit and Mr. Robot, to help write the story of Immortality. So if you’re a sucker for a good story, this one is worth checking out.

21.11.2022 00:31 Ahead of Black Friday, Amazon has discounted the Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 to $120. The 20 percent discount off the MK.2’s usual $150 price represents a new all-time low for the controller. Add to the fact that streaming hardware doesn’t frequently go on sale, and you have a promotion that budding content creators won’t want to miss.Buy Stream Deck MK.2 at Amazon - $120Engadget featured the Stream Deck Mini in a recent gift guide. The MK.2 has the same strengths as its more affordable sibling while adding a few tricks. The device features 15 programmable keys that you can use to easily launch apps, mute your mic, turn on lights, post to social media and more. The number of customization options can be intimidating at first, but Elgato’s software makes setup easy. The MK.2 model also comes with a customizable faceplate, making it adaptable to any setup.While the Stream Deck is primarily designed for streamers and content creators, anyone can take advantage of its programmable keys to make their workflow more efficient. With a bit of creativity, you can use the Stream Deck to open folders, control audio levels and launch your most used apps. It’s a great tool for those who frequently find themselves in video chats and presentations. As mentioned above, the Stream Deck MK.2 doesn't frequently go on sale, so act fast if you're interested. Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

21.11.2022 00:31 Tesla is recalling more than 321,000 vehicles over a software issue that causes the tail lights on some cars not to work properly. The automaker announced the action on Saturday in a National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration filing spotted by Reuters. The recall covers 2023 Model 3 and 2020 to 2023 Model Y vehicles manufactured for US customers.“In rare instances, taillamps on one or both sides of affected vehicles may intermittently illuminate due to a firmware anomaly that may cause false fault detections during the vehicle wake up process,” the NHTSA notice states. “Brake lamps, backup lamps and turn signal lamps are not affected by this condition and continue to operate as designed.”Tesla will release a software update to address the issue. The company hasn’t had reports of any crashes or injuries related to the bug. The automaker became aware of the problem in late October. In a separate announcement the day before, Tesla recalled about 30,000 due to an issue that can cause the front passenger airbag in Model X vehicles to deploy incorrectly in some situations.As of this year, Tesla has so far issued 19 recalls in the US. Earlier this month, the company recalled 40,186 Model S and Model X vehicles over a software issue that could cut power steering assistance to vehicles going over potholes. Before that, the company recalled more than a million vehicles over windows that weren't working properly.

21.11.2022 00:31 Twitter may cut more of its shrinking workforce as early as Monday. According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk is considering new layoffs that would target the company’s sales and partnerships teams. The scale of the potential cuts is unclear but come after a large number of employees rejected Musk’s Twitter 2.0 ultimatum. On Friday, Musk reportedly asked Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s head of ad sales, and Maggie Suniewick, the firm’s partnerships chief, to fire more employees. Both were terminated after pushing back.Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The company no longer has a communications team. If Twitter moves forward with the cuts, they would come after Musk already laid off 50 percent of the company’s previously 7,500-person strong workforce. With most of the website’s contract staff gone and “at least 1,200” employees departing in the wake of Musk’s ultimatum, there are concerns that the attrition will leave parts of Twitter inoperable.There are signs that’s already happening. On Saturday, some users noticed the platform’s automated copyright strike system wasn’t working. In one thread spotted by The Verge, someone posted the entirety of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift across nearly 50 tweets. The thread was up for about a whole day and widely shared before Twitter suspended the account responsible for posting the movie.

20.11.2022 19:52 Following two weeks of negotiations that felt doomed to go nowhere, the COP27 climate conference delivered a breakthrough deal to help developing nations cope with the often catastrophic effects of climate change. The Washington Post reports dignitaries agreed to create a “loss and damage fund” in the early hours of Sunday morning after two extra days of negotiations. The Alliance of Small Island States, an organization that includes countries whose very existence is threatened by climate change, called the agreement “historic.” However, as with the Glasgow Climate Pact that came out of last year’s COP26 conference, the consensus is that COP27 failed to deliver the action that is desperately needed to meet the demands of the current moment.For one, the conference failed to see nations agree to new and stronger commitments to reduce their carbon emissions. According to The Post, China and Saudi Arabia were strongly against language calling for a phaseout of all fossil fuels, as were many African nations. Alok Sharma, the chair of COP26, said a clause on energy was "weakened, in the final minutes.”The conference also left many of the most important details related to the loss and damage fund to be sorted out by a committee that will need to answer some difficult questions in the coming months. Among the issues that need to be decided on is how much the United States, historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse emissions globally, should pay out to vulnerable countries. The conference also ended without a clear commitment from China to pay into the fund.The committee now has a year to draft recommendations for next year’s climate meeting in Dubai. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said governments took “an important step towards justice,” but fell short in pushing for the commitments that would ultimately protect the world’s most vulnerable people from the worst effects of climate change. "Our planet is still in the emergency room," Guterres said. "We need to drastically reduce emissions now and this is an issue this COP did not address."

20.11.2022 19:52 Autonomous vacuum maker iRobot is a lot like Tesla, not necessarily by reinventing an existing concept — vacuums, robots and electric cars all existed before these two companies came on the scene — but by imbuing their products with that intangible quirk that makes people sit up and take notice. Just as Tesla ignited the public's imagination as to what an electric car could be and do, iRobot has expanded our perception of how domestic robots can fit into our homes and lives. More than two dozen leading experts from across the technology sector have come together in ‘You Are Not Expected to Understand This’: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World to discuss how seemingly innocuous lines of code have fundamentally shaped and hemmed the modern world. In the excerpt below, Upshot Deputy Editor Lowen Liu, explores the development of iRobot's Roomba vacuum and its unlikely feline brand ambassadors.Hachette Book GroupExcerpted with permission from ‘You Are Not Expected to Understand This’: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World edited by Torie Bosch. Published by Princeton University Press. Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved.The Code That Launched a Million Cat Videos by Lowen LiuAccording to Colin Angle, the CEO and cofounder of iRobot, the Roomba faced some early difficulties before it was rescued by two events. The disc-shaped robot vacuum had gotten off to a hot start in late 2002, with good press and a sales partner in the novelty chain store Brookstone. Then sales started to slow, just as the company had spent heavily to stock up on inventory. The company found itself on the other side of Black Friday in 2003 with thousands upon thousands of Roombas sitting unsold in warehouses. Then around this time, Pepsi aired a commercial starring comedian Dave Chappelle. In the ad, Chappelle teases a circular robot vacuum with his soft drink while waiting for a date. The vacuum ends up eating the comedian’s pants—schlupp. Angle remembers that at a team meeting soon after, the head of e-commerce said something like: “Hey, why did sales triple yesterday?” The second transformative moment for the company was the rapid proliferation of cat videos on a new video-sharing platform that launched at the end of 2005. A very specific kind of cat video: felines pawing suspiciously at Roombas, leaping nervously out of Roombas’ paths, and, of course, riding on them. So many cats, riding on so many Roombas. It was the best kind of advertising a company could ask for: it not only popularized the company’s product but made it charming. The Roomba was a bona fide hit. By the end of 2020, iRobot had sold 35 million vacuums, leading the charge in a booming robot vacuum market.The Pepsi ad and the cat videos appear to be tales of early days serendipity, lessons on the power of good luck and free advertising. They also appear at first to be hardware stories— stories of cool new objects entering the consumer culture. But the role of the Roomba’s software can’t be underestimated. It’s the programming that elevates the round little suckers from being mere appliances to something more. Those pioneering vacuums not only moved, they decided in some mysterious way where to go. In the Pepsi commercial, the vacuum is given just enough personality to become a date-sabotaging sidekick. In the cat videos the Roomba isn’t just a pet conveyer, but a diligent worker, fulfilling its duties even while carrying a capricious passenger on its back. For the first truly successful household robot, the Roomba couldn’t just do its job well; it had to win over customers who had never seen anything like it. Like many inventions, the Roomba was bred of good fortune but also a kind of inevitability. It was the brainchild of iRobot’s first hire, former MIT roboticist Joe Jones, who began trying to make an autonomous vacuum in the late 1980s. He joined iRobot in 1992, and over the next decade, as it worked on other projects, the company developed crucial expertise in areas of robotics that had nothing to do with suction: it developed a small, efficient multithreaded operating system; it learned to miniaturize mechanics while building toys for Hasbro; it garnered cleaning know-how while building large floor sweepers for SC Johnson; it honed a spiral-based navigation system while creating mine-hunting robots for the US government. It was a little like learning to paint a fence and wax a car and only later realizing you’ve become a Karate Kid. The first Roombas needed to be cheap—both to make and to sell—to have any chance of success reaching a large number of American households. There was a seemingly endless list of constraints: a vacuum that required hardly any battery power, and navigation that couldn’t afford to use fancy lasers—only a single camera. The machine wasn’t going to have the ability to know where it was in a room or remember where it had been. Its methods had to be heuristic, a set of behaviors that combined trial and error with canned responses to various inputs. If the Roomba were “alive,” as the Pepsi commercial playfully suggested, then its existence would more accurately have been interpreted as a progression of instants—did I just run into something? Am I coming up to a ledge? And if so, what should I do next? All conditions prepared for in its programming. An insect, essentially, reacting rather than planning. And all this knowledge, limited as it was, had to be stuffed inside a tiny chip within a small plastic frame that also had to be able to suck up dirt. Vacuums, even handheld versions, were historically bulky and clumsy things, commensurate with the violence and noise of what they were designed to do. The first Roomba had to eschew a lot of the more complicated machinery, relying instead on suction that accelerated through a narrow opening created by two rubber strips, like a reverse whistle. But the lasting magic of those early Roombas remains the way they moved. Jones has said that the navigation of the original Roomba appears random but isn’t—every so often the robot should follow a wall rather than bounce away from it. In the words of the original patent filed by Jones and Roomba cocreator Mark Chiappetta, the system combines a deterministic component with random motion. That small bit of unpredictability was pretty good at covering the floor—and also made the thing mesmerizing to watch. As prototypes were developed, the code had to account for an increasing number of situations as the company uncovered new ways for the robot to get stuck, or new edge cases where the robot encountered two obstacles at once. All that added up until, just before launch, the robot’s software no longer fit on its allotted memory. Angle called up his cofounder, Rodney Brooks, who was about to board a transpacific flight. Brooks spent the flight rewriting the code compiler, packing the Roomba’s software into 30 percent less space. The Roomba was born.In 2006 Joe Jones moved on from iRobot, and in 2015 he founded a company that makes robots to weed your garden. The weeding robots have not, as yet, taken the gardening world by storm. And this brings us to perhaps the most interesting part of the Roomba’s legacy: how lonely it is. You’d be in good company if you once assumed that the arrival of the Roomba would open the door to an explosion of home robotics. Angle told me that if someone went back in time and let him know that iRobot would build a successful vacuum, he would have replied, “That’s nice, but what else did we really accomplish?” A simple glance around the home is evidence enough that a future filled with robots around the home has so far failed to come true. Why? Well for one, robotics, as any roboticist will tell you, is hard. The Roomba benefited from a set of very limited variables: a flat floor, a known range of obstacles, dirt that is more or less the same everywhere you go. And even that required dozens of programmed behaviors. As Angle describes it, what makes the Roomba’s success so hard to replicate is how well it satisfied the three biggest criteria for adoption: it performed a task that was unpleasant; it performed a task that had to be done relatively frequently; and it was affordable. Cleaning toilets is a pain but not done super frequently. Folding laundry is both, but mechanically arduous. Vacuuming a floor, though—well, now you’re talking. Yet for all the forces that led to the creation of the Roomba, its invention alone wasn’t a guarantee of success. What is it that made those cat videos so much fun? It’s a question that lies close to the heart of the Roomba’s original navigation system: part determinism, part randomness. My theory is that it wasn’t just the Roomba’s navigation that endeared it to fans—it was how halting and unpredictable that movement could be. The cats weren’t just along for an uneventful ride; they had to catch themselves as the robot turned unexpectedly or hit an object. According to this theory, it’s the imperfection that is anthropomorphic. We are still more likely to welcome into our homes robots that are better at slapstick than superhuman feats. It’s worth noting that the top-of-the-line Roomba today will map your rooms and store that map on an app, so that it can choose the most efficient lawnmower-like cleaning path. In these high-end models, the old spiral navigation system is no longer needed. Neither is bumping into walls. Watching one of these Roombas clean a room is a lot less fun than it used to be. And it makes me wonder what the fate of the Roomba may have been had the first ever robot vacuum launched after the age of smartphones, already armed with the capacity to roll through rooms with precise confidence, rather than stumble along. It’s not always easy, after all, to trust someone who seems to know exactly where they are going.

20.11.2022 19:52 Air fryers have been having a moment, and today, there's no shortage of machines to choose from. Earlier this year, we set out to find the best air fryers available now, and we came across a handful of models that impressed us. Our top pick of the bunch, the Instant Vortex Plus, is one of the best for most people — and now you can pick it up at its lowest price yet. Amazon has the six-quart Instant Vortex Plus for only $100, which is 41 percent off its regular rate.This air fryer comes from the makers of the Instant Pot, so you can safely assume this machine doesn't stop at air frying alone. It has six cooking modes — air fry, roast, broil, bake, reheat and dehydrate — and it has a temperature range of 95 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. That should let you cook all kinds of foods in it, and with the six-quart machine, you'll have enough room to cook quite a bit of food at once. In our testing, we found that the Vortex Plus took little to no time to preheat, and we liked its intuitive controls and easy-to-clean basket.The Vortex Plus has two additional features that help it stand out from other air fryers in this price range. It has a "ClearCook" window on the front of its basket, which essentially just lets you see inside the machine while it's cooking. Most other pod-shaped air fryers don't have this, and it could come in handy if you like to make sure your food is cooked precisely a certain way. There's also the brand's "odor ease" technology that uses built-in replaceable air filters to remove smells during cooking. We found that it didn't completely eliminate smells, but compared to other, bigger machines, the Vortex Plus' output seemed less smokey overall.The discounted Vortex Plus joins a number of other Instant Pot gadgets on sale for Black Friday. There's the previous-generation of that air fryer on sale for $80, which may be a better deal for you if you can forgo the ClearCook window and the smell-eliminating feature. There's also the Instant Vortex Plus XL that's 28 percent off and down to $130. It's an eight-quart machine with two cooking drawers, allowing you to prepare two different foods at the same time — and both drawers have their own ClearCook windows. If you like the idea of a dual-zone machine and our pick of the Ninja Foodi XL is a bit too expensive for you, Instant Pot's version could be a good alternative.Buy Instant Vortex Plus at Amazon - $80Buy Instant Vortex Plus XL at Amazon - $130Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

20.11.2022 19:52 Sonos has rolled out its Black Friday sale for the year, taking 20 percent off a range of its wireless soundbars, speakers, and subwoofers. It's still Sonos, so some of the discounted devices are still on the expensive side. But deals of any kind on Sonos speakers are uncommon, making this a good opportunity to save if you've been looking to expand an existing Sonos system or try out the company's connected audio gear for the first time.Shop Sonos Black Friday saleHere's a full list of the deals available in the sale, which runs through November 28th:The top-end Sonos Arc soundbar has dropped from its usual $899 to $719.The compact Sonos Beam soundbar has dropped from $449 to $359.The Sonos Sub subwoofer has dropped from $749 to $599.The Sonos One smart speaker has dropped from $219 to $175.The Sonos One SL, a variant of the One without built-in microphones, has dropped from $199 to $159.The Sonos Roam SL, a mic-less version of the Roam portable speaker, has dropped from $159 to $127.All of these devices deliver a relatively clean and balanced sound profile, but the main appeal of any Sonos speaker remains the ability to easily link it to other Sonos devices in one connected audio system. We gave the Arc a review score of 85 back in 2020: It's the company's largest soundbar and its most expansive, particularly with Dolby Atmos content. The Beam also supports Atmos, but since it's smaller and lacks the Arc's upward-firing drivers, it can't deliver quite as much detail or bass power. Like the Arc, it's also limited to one HDMI eARC port. It's easier to fit alongside a smaller TV, though. We gave it a score of 88 last year. Not included in the sale is the entry-level Ray soundbar; that one is more compact and a step down sonically, but it's priced at $279.The Sub, meanwhile, is a powerful wireless subwoofer that greatly improves any Sonos soundbar's bass performance, though it comes at a high cost, even at this deal price. Again, Sonos sells a more compact and affordable option in the $429 Sonos Sub Mini, but that model isn't included in the sale.We gave the Sonos One a score of 90 when it launched back in 2017; it remains a solid audio-focused alternative to smart speakers from Amazon and Google, albeit a bit less adept at voice control. Both the One and the One SL can be used as surrounds when paired with a Sonos soundbar, too. The Roam/Roam SL and Move, meanwhile, are the only truly wireless speakers Sonos makes, as well as the only Sonos devices to support Bluetooth audio. The Move sounds better, but the Roam is significantly more compact. We gave the Move a review score of 80 in 2019 and the Roam a score of 87 last year.There are plenty other soundbars, portable speakers, and smart speakers that cost less or perform just as well without locking you into one ecosystem, and it's worth remembering that Sonos hiked the prices of some of these devices last year. Still, this sale makes the company's lineup a little more approachable.Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

20.11.2022 19:52 Microsoft’s Black Friday deals are in full swing, meaning you can save a ton on Surface devices, Xbox accessories and more right now. Surface fans will want to check out the bundles on sale for the holiday shopping season. Microsoft is one of your best bets if you want to get most things you’ll need to make a Surface device your own all in one shot, while retailers like Amazon tend to have good deals on devices only.Shop Surface bundles at MicrosoftOne of our favorite bundles is on the Surface Laptop Go 2, which made our list of best cheap Windows laptops. Depending on the configuration you choose, you can save more than $200 on a bundle that includes the notebook, a Surface Mobile Mouse and a three-year protection plan. The most affordable config will run you just over $655, and that gets you the Go 2 with a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. But we recommend springing for the next model up — that one has 8GB of RAM, along with the rest of the same specs, and the bundle will cost you just over $735. You’ll appreciate those extra 4GB of RAM when you’re doing any kind of multitasking, including having a plethora of Edge tabs open while running a couple of other apps at the same time.While most discounts are on slightly older Surface device bundles, there are a couple available for the new Surface Pro 9 and the Surface Laptop 5. For the Pro 9, you can save at minimum $80 on a bundle that includes the two-in-one, a Surface Pro Signature Keyboard, a Microsoft 365 subscription and a two-year protection plan. Arguably most importantly, you can choose from either the Intel- or ARM-powered Pro 9s for this Essential Bundle, and we recommend going with the former to get the best performance possible. As for the Essential Bundle for the Laptop 5, you’re getting the same things as in the Pro 9 bundles, albeit without the keyboard attachment.If you already have your computer of choice, Microsoft also has a number of good Xbox deals to consider. Not only can you get $50 off the Xbox Series S and get a headset along with it, but the company is also matching a lot of the Xbox controller deals we first spotted at Amazon. That's all on top Microsoft knocking up to 67 percent off certain Xbox titles, too.Shop Xbox deals at MicrosoftGet the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

20.11.2022 19:52 AirTags make great stocking stuffers for your loved ones who are constantly forgetting where they put their most important things. If you want to pick up a few, Amazon has the four-pack of AirTags for only $80 right now, which is the lowest price we've seen on that set. That also brings the price of each individual tracker down to $20, which is much cheaper than buying a single AirTag at its current $28 rate.Apple joined the Bluetooth tracker space in 2021 with AirTags, which can help you keep track of your keys, wallet and other belongings. They pair quickly and seamlessly with iPhones , and you can digitally label them with the name of the thing they're monitoring.After that quick setup process, you can see the last known location of your things from within the Find My app, and you'll even get alerts when, say, you've left your keys behind when you have moved to another location. From your phone, you can force AirTags to emit a chime to help you find your lost items more easily, and those with the latest iPhones can get on-screen directions to their missing things .Our biggest gripe with AirTags is a very Apple-y one: the trackers don't have a keyring hole, so you have to put them in a case, sleeve or another holder if you want to attach them to anything. Thankfully, most of our favorite AirTag cases are even cheaper than the tracker itself, so it may be a good idea to pick up a case for your loved one to whom your also gifting the AirTag.Also, it goes without saying that AirTags are only viable for people with iPhones, or those otherwise steeped in the Apple ecosystem. Thankfully, there are a number of other options out there for non-Apple users, including those from Tile, Chipolo and Samsung.Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.