If you clicked on this story because you don’t know what a fabric shaver is, you’re not alone. That was me not too long ago when I started searching for something that could get rid of the pilling on some of my most loved pieces of clothing. Blessedly, I stumbled upon the Philips Fabric Shaver, a type of device I didn’t even know existed, and decided to give it a shot. It’s now an essential piece of tech in my house, and you don’t have to pay as much as I did for it thanks to this Cyber Monday deal that knocks it down to $13.

Sure, it may not seem revolutionary — especially if you already knew of the wonders of such devices — but it was for me. I have a lot of T-shirts, joggers, sweaters and more that I’ve had for at least three years and wear regularly. We also have a bunch of throw blankets around the house, partially because I love a good throw, and partially because my cat demands soft spots on which to sleep. All of those well-worn, well-loved fabrics have pilled over time, and I was tired of picking at the pills myself.

This Philips Fabric Shaver makes it so I never have to do that anymore. It runs on two AA batteries, has a simple on-off switch and a shaving head with three sized holes that, as you glide it over your sweater or blanket, catches the pills and shaves them right off. It’s literally as simple as that; after I tried it the first time on a pair of joggers, I spent far too much time running around my house and through my closet de-pilling as many things as I could. All the little fabric bits collect in a removable chamber that you simply empty as often as you need into the trash. If you’re like me and try to make the most of the wardrobe you have and not buy new clothing all the time, this little gadget will keep the pieces in your closet looking fresh.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/you-need-a-fabric-shaver–my-favorite-is-on-sale-for-13-for-cyber-monday-160539332.html?src=rss

The previous generation of Sony’s wireless headphones, the excellent WH-1000XM5, are available for as low as $248 for Cyber Monday. That’s nearly equal to the record low the headphones hit on Prime Day, and $152 off their normal $400 price. Sony’s flagship noise-canceling headphones are now the WH-1000XM6, but if you’re on a budget, you’ll still get a fantastic audio experience from the older model, especially at this heavily discounted price.

We awarded the WH-1000XM5 a score of 95 in our 2022 review, praising the supremely comfortable redesign, sound quality and powerful ANC. Battery life is also very respectable at 30 hours. We found the punchy bass an improvement over their predecessors, and the overall sound deeper and more immersive than the M4 headphones. As for noise-canceling, Sony’s decision to double the number of microphones and processors used for ANC means an improvement in blocking higher frequency sounds, such as human voices. They aren’t entirely baby scream-proof, but then few headphones are.

Naturally, the WH-1000XM6 that this year replaced the M5 as Sony’s flagship model offers even better sound quality and noise cancellation, while remaining extremely comfortable throughout long listening sessions. But they’re also a lot more expensive at $450 — they’re on sale now for $398 for Cyber Monday, so you have the option to upgrade to the latest flagship if you’re willing to spend a bit more. However, we still think the XM5 deal is the best value for most people here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/cyber-monday-deals-include-sonys-wh-1000xm5-headphones-for-an-all-time-low-154524430.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shared this report from CBS News:

Artificial intelligence can do the work currently performed by nearly 12% of America’s workforce, according to a recentstudy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers, relying on a metric called the “Iceberg Index” that measures a job’s potential to be automated, conclude that AI already has the cognitive and technical capacity to handle a range of tasks in technology, finance, health care and professional services. The index simulated how more than 150 million U.S. workers across nearly 1,000 occupations interact and overlap with AI’s abilities…

AI is also already doingsome of the entry-level jobsthat have historically been reserved for recent college graduates or relatively inexperienced workers, the report notes. “AI systems now generate more than a billion lines of code each day, prompting companies to restructure hiring pipelines and reduce demand for entry-level programmers,” the researchers wrote. “These observable changes in technology occupations signal a broader reorganization of work that extends beyond software development.” “The study doesn’t seek to shed light on how many workers AI may already have displaced or could supplant in the future,” the article points out.

“To what extent such tools take over job functions performed by people depends on a number of factors, including individual businesses’ strategy, societal acceptance and possible policy interventions, the researchers note.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple’s MacBook Air M4 has dipped below its $999 starting price before, but the lightweight laptop is on sale for $749, the lowest price this model has been since it launched and one of the all-round best computer deals you’ll find during Cyber Monday. The model on sale is available in four different colors and includes 16GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, more than enough for most people. If you are interested in more storage, though, Apple’s 512GB model is also on sale for $949, another record low versus its $1,199 Apple Store price. 

The MacBook Air M4 continues Apple’s streak of refining what’s already its most popular laptop. It runs on the new M4 chip with a 10-core GPU, offering fast performance for everyday work, creative apps and light gaming. The upgrade from the M3 model is noticeable in both speed and efficiency, making it ideal for multitasking or editing photos and videos on the go.

Despite the power boost, it keeps the same slim profile that helped define the MacBook Air line. The unibody design is still one of the thinnest and lightest in its class, weighing just under three pounds, with a durable aluminum chassis available in four colors — midnight, starlight, silver and space gray. The fanless build keeps it completely silent during use, even when running intensive tasks.

The 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display supports the P3 wide color gamut and reaches up to 500 nits of brightness, making text and images look crisp and vibrant whether you’re working indoors or near a window. You also get a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a three-mic array for clear video calls and a four-speaker setup with Spatial Audio support.

Connectivity includes two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, a MagSafe 3 charging port and a headphone jack. Battery life remains one of its standout features, with Apple rating it at up to 18 hours on a single charge. That easily covers a full day of work or travel without reaching for the charger.

There are a few small limitations, like the lack of a high refresh rate display and the fact that both USB-C ports sit on the same side. Still, for most users, the MacBook Air M4 strikes the best balance between power, portability and price.

If you want a larger screen, Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air M4 offers the same specs with more workspace, but the 13-inch remains the best pick for portability. You can read more about how it compares to other Apple laptops in our guide to the best MacBooks. This MacBook Air M4 deal makes one of Apple’s best laptops an even smarter buy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-cyber-monday-sale-includes-the-macbook-air-m4-for-250-off-152818266.html?src=rss

Meta’s entry-level VR headset, the Quest 3S, is down to an even more budget-friendly price than usual in a deal on Amazon right now. The 128GB Meta Quest 3S is 17 percent off in a Cyber Monday deal, bringing it to a record-low price of $250. It normally goes for $300. With the purchase, you also get the game Gorilla Tag for free.

The Meta Quest 3S is an impressive VR headset for the price, and scored a 90 in Engadget’s review, landing it among our picks for the best VR headsets around right now. It’s comfortable to wear, gets over two hours of battery life before needing to be recharged and offers a 96-degree field of view. While its 1,830 by 1,920 pixel per eye screen doesn’t quite achieve the sharpness of the Quest 3, it does have the same chip — the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 — as the pricier model, making for fast performance. It also comes with 8GB of RAM.

The Quest 3S also comes with the Touch Plus controllers, which have button and joystick controls as well as motion controls. It can also connect to gaming PCs and stream gameplay to Chromecast and AirPlay devices. Despite being relatively inexpensive, the 3S offers a great experience. In his review, Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar said the 3S is “the best $300 standalone VR headset we’ve ever seen.”

Elsewhere in Meta Cyber Monady deals, the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 1 smart glasses are 20 percent off and down to $239.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-cyber-monday-2025-deal-drops-the-meta-quest-3s-vr-headset-to-a-record-low-price-151719747.html?src=rss

Cyber Monday is great if you want to purchase physical products at a discount, but you’ll also find plenty of subscriptions on sale, too. You could opt for a streaming service, but if you’re looking for a different kind of entertainment, Audible is offering three months of listening for just $3, along with a $20 Audible credit.

That’s $1 per month for your first three months of audiobooks. Just make sure you cancel before the 90 days are up, otherwise the subscription will auto-renew for its normal $15 per month price. That’s a solid deal if you want to sample Audible before you decide to commit.

Audible has a diverse catalog that goes beyond audiobooks. It also hosts podcasts and Audible Originals. Subscribers get to choose one audiobook each month to keep in their collection for free, including best-sellers or new releases. Users also get unlimited access to the Plus Catalog, which houses thousands of audiobooks. Finally, active members get discounts on many audiobooks when looking to purchase.

Winter is coming and this is a good way to make sure you have plenty to listen to throughout the next three months. This deal does have a time limit: it expires on December 1, at the end of Cyber Monday.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/three-months-of-audible-is-only-3-in-this-cyber-monday-deal-151010851.html?src=rss

Apple’s wireless earbuds offer a seamless audio experience on its laptops, tablets and smartphones, and you can get it’s newest model, the AirPods Pro 3 for $220 for Cyber Monday. That’s the best discount we’ve seen yet on the new earbuds, which pack better bass, improved active noise cancellation and new smart features, in a familiar design that can fit multiple sizes and shapes of ears. Considering how new the AirPods Pro 3 are, this might be the best deal you’ll see on the earbuds for a good while.

Apple didn’t reinvent its flagship earbuds with the AirPods Pro 3, but it made smart refinements that elevate nearly every part of the listening experience. We praised these earbuds in our AirPods Pro 3 review for delivering noticeably richer audio and more effective active noise cancellation while keeping the same pocketable form factor that made earlier models so popular.

The standout upgrade here is Apple’s Live Translation feature, which was an unexpected but welcome surprise, announced at the iPhone 17 event. Leveraging Apple’s H2 chip, the AirPods Pro 3 combines Voice Isolation, ANC and beamforming mics to kick Live Translation into action. Siri’s translation filters seamlessly through the earbuds, but if environmental noise gets too intrusive, you can view a real-time transcription in the iOS Translate app, which is a useful feature for international travel and business calls.

Battery life has improved, too. You get up to eight hours on a single charge with ANC on, and the case adds another 24 hours of playback. The MagSafe charging case, with its new U2 chip, now supports an increased distance for Precision Find My, so it’s easier to locate if misplaced.

Since we’re talking about earbuds, audio quality plays a key role in deciding whether to purchase the AirPods Pro 3 or upgrade from a previous model. Although improvements have been made to sound quality through new drivers and transducers, Apple’s decision to increase air flow inside the earbuds has been the most noticeable update. You can expect the AirPods Pro 3 to deliver deeper bass, crisper highs, and an expanded soundstage that makes everything from podcasts to orchestral tracks feel more dynamic.

There’s not much to fault here beyond the familiar Apple premium price, but that’s why this AirPods Pro 3 deal is such good news. The AirPods Pro 3 remain the best wireless earbuds for iPhone users who want seamless connectivity, top-tier ANC and reliable comfort.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/cyber-monday-apple-deals-start-now-airpods-pro-3-are-30-off-and-down-to-a-record-low-144509574.html?src=rss

“There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on,” writes PC Gamer.

This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch’s way, making him the game’s newest “Holiday Ambassador” and the star of an absolutely bizarre Christmas advert. The story has very little to do with Christmas and, frankly, not much connection to tanks either, featuring Cumberbatch as a sort of chaotic, supernatural therapist trying to bring a meek nerd out of his shell with the help of a chaotic crowd of his other patients. It’s a good watch, shedding the usual hard man action star vibe of past celebrity trailers in favour of something that feels more like a mischievous one act play.

Cumberbatch also portrayed Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit films (2012-2014), Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Dr. Strange in six Marvel movies. And now Amazon has also hired Cumberbatch for what its calls its “Cannes-winning ‘5-Star Theater’ campaign… performing real Amazon customer reviews as theatrical monologues.”
Cumberbatch performed over 15 reviews, including popular holiday gifts like the Bissell portable carpet cleaner, Toto bidet, and SharkNinja blender — showing that Amazon truly does have something for everyone on your list.

Last year Amazon produced a similar campaign starring Adam Driver (“Kylo Ren” from the final trilogy of Star Wars sequels). “The humor comes from the juxtaposition between Cumberbatch’s gravitas and the text itself,” reports Adweek, adding that the reviews were curated “using internal AI tools, to find the most oddly specific reviews on the platform.”
Amazon will stream Cumberbatch’s bizarre ads on major platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Lyft, Uber, Disney/Hulu, Paramount, and Roku, and on several NFL football games.

I remember when Amazon just chose the best funny fake reviews from customers, and then posted them on the front page of Amazon…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boy, was 1992 a different time for computer games. Epic MegaGames’ Jill of the Jungle illustrates that as well as any other title from the era. Designed and programmed by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the game was meant to prove that console-style games of the original Nintendo era could work just as well on PCs. (Later, the onus of proof would often be in the reverse direction.)

Also, it had a female protagonist, which Sweeney saw as a notable differentiator at the time. That’s pretty wild to think about in an era of Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft, Horizon Forbidden West‘s Aloy, Life is Strange‘s Max Caulfield, Returnal‘s Selene Vassos, Control‘s Jesse Faden, The Last of Us‘ Ellie Williams, and a seemingly endless list of others—to say nothing of the fact that many players of all genders who played the games Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077 seem to agree that the female protagonist options in those are more compelling than their male alternatives.

As wacky as it is to remember that the idea of a female character was seen as exceptional at any point (and with the acknowledgement that this game was nonetheless not the first to do that), it’s still neat to see how forward-thinking Sweeney was in many respects—and not just in terms of cultural norms in gaming.

Read full article

Comments

“The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video,” argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google’s search API “to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022” — the day ChatGPT launched — “so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human hand.”

404 Media calls it “a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.”

Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry’s unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called “generative AI” — despite widespread criticism and the wider public’s distaste for it. “This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we’re in,” Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. “I’ve been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022….”

Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won’t be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists.

Of course, the tool’s limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo’s search indexing instead of Google’s. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley’s AI-pushers have forced on us… With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)… But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.