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The New York Times: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday in Sweden for showing that two properties of quantum mechanics, the physical laws that rule the subatomic realm, could be observed on a system large enough to see with the naked eye. They will share a prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, or around $1.17 million.
“There is no advanced technology today that does not rely on quantum mechanics,” Olle Eriksson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates’ discoveries, he added, paved the way for technologies like the cellphone, cameras and fiber optic cables.
It also helped lay the groundwork for current attempts to build a quantum computer, a device that could compute and process information at speeds that would not be possible with classical computer. Martinis worked at Google from 2014 to 2020 to build a quantum computer and led the quantum supremacy experiment in 2019. Devoret is cited in Google’s recent breakthrough where its Willow quantum chip solved a problem in five minutes that the world’s most advanced supercomputer could never solve.
The three laureates conducted experiments with electrical circuits that demonstrated quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in systems large enough to hold in the hand. Clarke is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Devoret joined his research group in the 1980s and is now at Yale University and UC Santa Barbara. Martinis also joined the group in the 1980s and is currently at UC Santa Barbara and co-founded Qolab, a startup developing utility-scale superconducting quantum computers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI has disclosed that a now-banned account originating in China was using ChatGPT to help design promotional materials and project plans for a social media listening tool. OpenAI says that this work was purportedly done for a government client. The tool was a “probe” that could crawl social media sites like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and YouTube for specific political, ethnic or religious content as defined by the operator. The company said it cannot independently verify if the tool was used by a Chinese government entity. OpenAI disrupted similar efforts earlier this year.
The company also says it banned an account that was using ChatGPT to develop a proposal for a tool described as a “High-Risk Uyghur-Related Inflow Warning Model” that would aid in tracking the movements of “Uyghur-related” individuals. China has long been accused of alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the country.
OpenAI began publishing threat reports in February 2024, raising awareness of state-affiliated actors using large language models to debug malicious code, develop phishing scams and more. The company’s latest blog post serves as a roundup of notable threats and banned accounts over the last quarter.
The company also caught Russian-, Korean- and Chinese-speaking developers using ChatGPT to refine malware, as well as entire networks in Cambodia, Myanmar and Nigeria using the chatbot to help create scams in an attempt to defraud people. According to OpenAI’s own estimates, ChatGPT is being used to detect scams three times as often as it is to create them. .
This summer, OpenAI disrupted operations in Iran, Russia and China that were using ChatGPT to create posts, comments and to drive engagement and division as part of online influence campaigns. The AI-generated content was used on various social media platforms in both the originating nations and internationally.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-has-disrupted-more-chinese-accounts-using-chatgpt-to-create-social-media-surveillance-tools-142538093.html?src=rss
It’s been nearly four years since Vampire Survivors debuted in early access and developer Poncle is still adding new features to the hit game. A fall update will introduce an online co-op mode to the PC and console versions. The studio brought couch co-op to the auto-shooting roguelike back in 2023, and soon you and your buddies will be able to lay waste to thousands of enemies together without needing to be in the same room.
Online co-op will use a system where you create a lobby and share a code with friends so they can join, or vice-versa. You can go monster hunting with up to three of your buds, or even let them take care of the dirty work while you roam the map in search of secrets.
Poncle says there are four more announcements to come over the next several weeks. The studio teased that, next week, it “might finally answer a burning question that has been asked thousands of times.” My money is on that being “will you ever add vampires?”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vampire-survivors-will-soon-offer-online-co-op-141430146.html?src=rss
Most of what Nintendo uploads to its Nintendo Today app is fairly predictable; think a screenshot or trailer for an upcoming game or the latest soundtrack being agonisingly drip-fed onto Nintendo Music. But today’s surprise drop is more mysterious than usual. If you opened up the app this morning, you’ll have been met with a decidedly Pixar-like animated short, with virtually no context.
Titled “Close to you,” the almost four-minute video focuses on a baby playing with what appears to be an enchanted pacifier. In the child’s attempt to catch the flying soother, they start to walk for what seems to be the first time, given the reaction of the mother when she walks into the room. The whole thing is accompanied by some typically pleasant piano music, but ends without Nintendo telling us what any of it means.
Could this be a teaser for the recently-announced The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Is the child in the short a young Rosalina, perhaps? They certainly seem to have a relationship with magic. There’s also already some speculation that Nintendo could be teasing a Pikmin film. Anyway, the short is now all over Nintendo’s various social media platforms too, so hopefully we’ll find out more soon. For now, it’s a perfectly nice (albeit unexpected) way to spend a few minutes.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/nintendo-just-released-a-mysterious-animated-short-140749774.html?src=rss
India’s electricity grid is struggling to accommodate the nation’s economic expansion and isn’t adequately equipped to handle future data center demand. Goldman Sachs estimates that power required from utilities needs roughly 7.2% annual growth between fiscal years 2025 and 2035, up from a prior 5.6%.
India’s data center base sits in the low single gigawatts today, but Bernstein forecasts reach 5 to 6 gigawatts by 2030. AI servers draw five to seven times the power of a legacy server rack, according to HSBC. Solar farms can be built in 12 to 24 months, but they flood the grid when daytime demand is comparatively low and then fade as households and commercial loads climb after 5 PM. On Goldman’s full-year models, the system runs a 1 to 4% energy deficit by fiscal years 2034 through 2035.
Assessments suggest India may need roughly 140 gigawatts of additional coal capacity by fiscal year 2035 versus 2023 levels. The government’s current target is roughly 87 gigawatts by fiscal year 2032. Coal plants can run around the clock and can ramp up production during the evening hours to meet surging demand. Some of this coal is bridge capacity to stabilize a faster greening grid, but the scale required exceeds what policymakers have publicly acknowledged or what most analysts expected even two years ago.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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With Halloween around the corner, let’s take a look at a spooky and supposedly true story going viral this week. Recently, a 911 call surfaced of a North Carolina man calling authorities because he thought he saw a bloody man by the side of a desolate country road. While he was speaking to the operator, something landed in the bed of his pickup truck, causing the 911 caller to start screaming “It’s not human! It’s not human!”
Check out the video:
My first reaction upon seeing this was the same as yours: It’s fake. Compelling, sure. but fake, like 100,000 other online “paranormal videos.” There’s no picture of the creature. We don’t know who the guy is. We don’t know the context. There’s no effort and no risk in making and posting a video online, so there’s no reason to think it’s real, so I swiped to the next video. But it turns out there’s enough evidence here that it at least deserves a deeper look.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of spooky videos posted online, a big part of this story is true. It’s a real recording of a 911 call placed at 11 p.m. on July 31, 2021 in Pender County, North Carolina. The verifiable details that the caller reported in the call are accurate too. Snopes listened to the entire 11-minute 911 call, and cross-checked the details to make sure the distance the caller said he’d driven check out, and they do.
The caller didn’t hang up, either. He waited around for Pender County Sheriff’s department officers to arrive, and he cooperated with the investigation. This means an actual person out there is willing to stand behind the story—that’s a much higher level of evidence than most paranormal claims online have. The cops didn’t find anything, but that was in keeping with the 911 call, too: Dude said he slammed on the brakes and the inhuman thing in his truck bed flew out, landed on the road, and took off into the woods.
“It’s some yahoo calling in a hoax report to 911,” you might be saying. Fair point, but that’s a crime, and the unnamed caller was apparently believable enough that he wasn’t arrested for filing a bogus police report. The sheriff took the incident seriously enough to open up a file about it, use state resources to look into it, and later do a media interview.
If the 911 caller had been reporting something else in this call, like a wounded deer in the highway or something, we wouldn’t question whether it actually happened. The recording and the police report would be overkill; we’d believe the guy just because he said it happened.
But I’m still 99.99% sure this guy either mistook something mundane for a monster or made up a tale entirely.
According to the 911 caller, the thing in the back of his pickup truck had shallow sunken eyes, and no nose, like someone had “taken skin and put it on a human skull and stretched it thin.” It was not human. As Carl Sagan once said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and a mystery creature in South Carolina would certainly be extraordinary. If it was true, it would upend everything we know about biology, zoology, evolution, and North Carolina. I’m open to the possibility, but we need more than a 911 call to accept it. We’d need extraordinary evidence: video, photos, corroborating witnesses, and physical evidence wouldn’t even be enough. You’d have to catch one before it would make sense to rewrite the zoology textbooks.
Don’t lose hope, all you “I want to believe” people. It could still be real. Up until the mid-1800s, gorillas were basically Bigfoot, as far as Western science was concerned: A few people told tales of spotting them deep in the jungle, but there wasn’t a compelling reason to think they existed. Same with giant squids: Occasionally a sailor would swear he encountered one, but it wasn’t until the 1840s that there was physical evidence, and we didn’t have a photo of a giant squid until 2004.
Yeah, a previously undiscovered creature would have a harder time hiding out in modern North Carolina than gorillas had staying scarce in Cameroon in the 1840s, but it’s October, so I’m calling it a (barely, technically possible) mystery instead of an outright lie.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Amazon Big Deal Days is coming October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it’s over.
Follow our live blog to stay up to date on the best sales we find.
Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox.
New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change.
Apple’s open-ear earbuds are a more comfortable alternative to the AirPods Pro, and they’re much cheaper, too. And now, with the AirPods 4, Apple has even introduced an Active Noise Cancellation option, as well as premium audio features once limited to the AirPods Pro.
Right now, you can get both versions of AirPods 4 at their lowest prices, matching the prices they reached during Amazon’s Prime Day sale in July 2025. The base AirPods 4 are discounted to $89.00 (down from $129) and the AirPods 4 with ANC are $119 (from $179).
The AirPods 4 feature shorter stems than their predecessors and a smaller case, but with the same open-ear iconic design. The tips now feature a better in-ear fit, without the need for the silicone tip found in the AirPods Pro.
The AirPods 4 feature the same H2 chip found in the premium AirPods Pro 2, bringing the same level of audio processing, and features like Voice Isolation, Conversation Awareness, and Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking. The model with ANC gets a slightly less powerful version of noise cancellation, though (thanks to the absence of the silicone tips). AirPods 4 with ANC get Apple’s Transparency mode, which pumps in the sounds from the outside world, adjusting the intensity so it’s not too loud, while keeping you aware of your surroundings.
There’s USB-C charging in the case, and the AirPods 4 with ANC are also compatible with Qi and MagSafe charging, plus they have a built-in speaker for Find My tracking.
The AirPods 4 last for five hours on their own, and the case adds up to 30 hours of listening time. In ANC mode, they last for four hours. But a quick five-minute charge adds around one hour of listening time.
The AirPods 4 are a great choice for anyone looking for ANC on a budget, and for people who don’t like silicone ear tips. PCMag gave the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation four out of five stars, and an Editor’s Choice award. According to PCMag, “The AirPods 4 are capable of what no other open earbuds have yet to attempt: high-quality active noise cancellation. They also deliver excellent audio performance.”
And if you don’t want the ANC, you can save even more. The base AirPods 4 at $90 are one of the best deals in tech.
Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.
Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. ET through Oct. 12 and includes deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+.
Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.
Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.
One
The unfortunate reality of living in a world that’s largely abandoned headphone jacks is that you have to own a pair of wireless earbuds to listen to things on your phone. Accepting that, you might as well own a good pair of earbuds, and if you’re on Android, Google’s wireless earbuds are one of your best options. You can purchase a pair of Google’s Pixel Buds Pro 2 for $170 for Prime Day, $60 less than its normal $230 price. That’s a pretty great deal for a pair of wireless earbuds that rival Apple’s AirPods Pro 3.
The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are compact wireless earbuds with a touch-sensitive surface and a small circular ring in the back to help them stay in your ears. You can currently purchase the buds in bluish-gray “Moonstone,” off-white “Porcelain,” pink “Peony” or light black “Hazel” color options, but whichever you choose, you’ll get solid active noise cancellation and a collection of other helpful audio features. In terms of ANC, Engadget’s review of the Pixel Buds Pro 2 found that the earbuds do a good job of blocking out “low-to-mid-range noise” but still struggle to block out nearby voices. On the whole, though, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 sounds better than Google’s previous wireless earbuds, particularly when you’re listening bass-forward tracks.
The capabilities of the Pixel Buds Pro 2 extend beyond just listening to music, of course. Like its competitors, Google has turned its wireless earbuds into hearing protection, too. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 were recently updated to support what Google calls Loud Noise Protection, which can reduce incoming loud noises to protect your ears. That’s on top of features like Adaptive Audio, which can adjust noise cancellation and volume based on your surroundings, and Talk to Gemini Live, which gives you a hands-free way to have a free-flowing conversation with Google’s AI chatbot.
There might be other earbuds that offer better audio performance, but the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is the best option if you’re on Android and want a seamless experience. For $170 during Prime Day, that’s hard to pass up.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/googles-pixel-buds-pro-2-are-cheaper-than-ever-for-prime-day-130038433.html?src=rss
Greetings, Arsians! Welcome to the second Prime Day of 2025, because apparently we didn’t buy enough stuff last time and Amazon still has things to sell. Our e-commerce gnomes have scoured the retail giant’s listings from top to bottom for the best deals, and now we’re bringing those deals to you! We’ll be updating the list below throughout the day on October 7 and October 8 as this two-day retail extravaganza progresses, so if you don’t see something you like at the moment, check back again later and perhaps something will tickle your fancy then. Happy shopping!
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Amazon Big Deal Days is on October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools.
Follow our live blog to stay up to date on the best sales we find.
Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox.
New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change.
If you’re hoping to catch the future early, you should check out these XReal One AR smart glasses. They’re on sale for $449, down from $569.00. This is the lowest price they’ve ever been on sale on Amazon.
If you’re not familiar: XReal Ones are augmented-reality display glasses. They’re compatible with any device with USB-C video, and when you slip ’em on, it’s like looking at bright, clear 147″ high-def monitor. Plus, the built-in G1 chip gives you 3DOF augmented reality, so you can anchor your virtual screen into real space.
I have a pair of the XReal One Pro version of these glasses, and I highly recommend them, whether you want to have a second screen for productivity, play games in a new way, or just have the best entertainment experience possible on an airplane. I recently spent a day with them on, using them to replace every screen I look at, and it was like living in a science fiction movie.
XReal has also lowered the price of its Beam Pro device by 20%. This optional “spacial computing companion” powers XReal glasses, adds a 3D camera, gives you enhanced controls, and improves the augmented reality experience.
Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.
Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. ET through Oct. 12 and includes deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+.
Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.
Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: A Senate report released (PDF) Monday says AI and automation could replace nearly 100 million jobs across various industries over the next decade. The report, conducted by Democratic staffers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), outlines how AI and automation will impact the American economy and workforce. Sanders, the ranking member on the HELP Committee, has warned of the consequences widespread use of AI and automation can have for workers.
As part of their investigation, staffers asked ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot, to predict the impact of AI and automation on certain industries. Of the 20 workforces ChatGPT said would be most affected by the technological rush, 15 will see more than half of their workforces replaced by AI and automation over the next decade. The workforce most impacted will be fast food and counter employees. According to the report, more than 3 million fast food and counter workers will be replaced over the next 10 years, accounting for 89 percent of the workforce.
Other workforces that will be significantly affected include customer service representatives, laborers and freight, stock and material movers and secretaries and executive assistants — not including legal, medical and executive positions. The report said that 83 percent, 81 percent and 80 percent of those workforces, respectively, will be replaced in the next decade. […] Sanders, in a Fox News op-ed published Monday, doubled down on the report’s findings, saying increased technological capacity risks “dehumanizing” individuals. “We do not simply need a more ‘efficient’ society,” Sanders said. “We need a world where people live healthier, happier and more fulfilling lives.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Amazon Big Deal Days is coming October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it’s over.
Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox.
New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change.
If you’re looking for a smart alarm clock that will help you gently ease into the day (and wind down at night), the 2024 Amazon Echo Spot is currently 44% off for Prime Day, marking its lowest price ever, according to price-trackers. An update to the original Echo Spot, the new version is available in three colors and is built around Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. It also doubles as a speaker, integrating well with the rest of an Alexa-compatible smart home.
As this PCMag review notes, it resembles the Echo Pop in shape (also on sale) but is slightly larger, featuring a speaker grille on the bottom and a vivid color touch screen. It has dual-band wifi and Bluetooth, and can be easily set up via the Alexa app. While it stays visible from a few feet away regardless of the lighting in the room you’re in, visibility drops if it’s viewed from an off-angle, and the resolution of 320 by 240 pixels doesn’t make it a first choice for visual communication and content, especially since it doesn’t have a camera or support video playback—though for those with privacy concerns, no camera is a perk.
However, it does show more information than the Echo Dot with Clock and has basic touch controls, allowing you to easily see the time and weather, check what music is playing, and adjust other smart devices in your home. According to the PCMag review, the speaker itself offers “decent audio with little bass” for its size, making it suitable for everyday listening, but is not a full-fledged speaker.
If you don’t mind the information on the display screen being somewhat limited and want a touch alarm clock that offers basic smart home controls, responds reliably to Alexa, and offers good sound quality for its size, the 2024 Amazon Echo Spot is a modern version of a clock radio that doesn’t try to do too much. However, if you want a full smart display experience or more powerful audio, this may not be ideal. Still, at $45, this bedside companion checks a lot of boxes.
Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.
Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. ET through Oct. 12 and includes deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+.
Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.
Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.
The battle for overall wireless headphone supremacy is fiercely contested every year, but when it comes to banishing undesirable noise, Bose usually comes out on top. That was certainly the case when we pitted 2025’s contenders for your cash against each other, and Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra took away the title of best noise-canceling headphones. And right now, the very same headphones are $100 off for Prime Day at $329.
Note that this deal applies to the previous generation QuietComfort Ultra, rather than the refreshed second-gen model Bose has just announced. These offer improved battery life, ANC and audio performance, and they also support lossless audio over a wired USB-C connection for the first time. However, these headphones also cost $449 out of the gate, which is considerably more than the heavily slashed price of their predecessor.
If you don’t have to have the latest and greatest in every product line, the first-gen QuietComfort Ultra will be more than enough for the vast majority of people. They still offer exceptional noise-canceling, very good sound and a comfortable design. Bose’s “Immersive Audio” spatial sound feature can be a bit hit and miss, but with the right content it can be incredible. And while $329 is still a lot of money, $100 is a big saving on what were very recently the best Bose headphones you can buy.
Click here for our rolling coverage of the best Prime Day 2025 deals, which we’ll be updating as the event rolls on.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-bose-quietcomfort-ultra-headphones-are-100-off-for-prime-day-123043790.html?src=rss
Google has failed to convince the Supreme Court to block the injunction requiring the company to make major changes to the Play Store after it lost its case with Epic Games. The Verge and Reuters have reported that the Supreme Court has denied the company’s request for a partial stay on the injunction while it prepares to appeal. In a tweet, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that developers “will be legally entitled to steer US Google Play users to out-of-app payments without fees, scare screens and friction” starting on October 22.
The Supreme Court has thrown out Google’s stay request. Starting October 22, developers will be legally entitled to steer US Google Play users to out-of-app payments without fees, scare screens, and friction – same as Apple App Store users in the US! https://t.co/yO1g1NqXt3 pic.twitter.com/S64YvQLyYM
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 6, 2025
If you’ll recall, Epic accused Google of having an illegal monopoly on app distribution and in-app billing services for Android devices in its lawsuit. A federal jury sided with Epic Games in December 2023 and concluded that it had been negatively affected by Google’s policies. Google tried to get the court’s decision overturned, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided to uphold the court’s original ruling in July this year. The company intends to file an appeal to the Supreme Court on October 27 and had petitioned it for a partial stay of the permanent injunction.
Since the Supreme Court didn’t grant Google’s request, it now has to allow developers to use payment methods other than its own billing system without fees by the end of the month. The company has to allow developers to steer their customers to those payment systems and to link to ways on how to download their apps outside the Play Store. Google can no longer strike deals with carriers or manufacturers to ensure Google Play exclusivity and the preinstallation of the app store either. By July 2026, the company has to allow users to download other app stores within Google Play and to make Play’s catalog available to its competitors, as well.
“Android provides more choice for users and developers than any mobile OS, and the changes ordered by the US District Court will jeopardize users’ ability to safely download apps,” Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told The Verge. “While we’re disappointed the order isn’t stayed, we will continue our appeal.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/supreme-court-denies-googles-request-to-pause-play-store-changes-while-it-appeals-epic-case-121502132.html?src=rss
At its typical $499, the Google Pixel 9a is Engadget’s pick for the best mid-range phone. But when it’s $150 off, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better deal on any piece of tech. Right now, you can get Google’s budget-friendly phone for a record-low $349 thanks to Amazon Prime Day.
The Pixel 9a may lack the cutting-edge sizzle of ultra-premium phones that cost triple what you’ll pay here. But in return, you get strong performance, a sleek design, a robust battery that lasts over 28 hours and camera quality that rivals that of competitors costing $1,000 or more.
The phone has a simple design with an aluminum frame and a recycled polycarbonate back. It has an IP68 rating for solid protection against dust and water. On the front, you have a spacious 6.3-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The screen’s brightness can reach an impressive 2,700 nits, matching the standard Pixel 9. Its resolution is a crisp 1080 x 2424 (422 PPI).
In Engadget’s tests, the Pixel 9a’s camera “preserved more details and produced a generally better-looking image” than the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s. (If you aren’t familiar, that’s a $1,300 phone.) The Pixel 9a does lack a dedicated telephoto lens. But Google has included the Super Res Zoom AI upscaling feature to help compensate for the loss.
Amazon’s deal includes all four colors available for the phone: obsidian, porcelain, peony and iris. There’s no guarantee stock will last through all of October Prime Day, so you may want to consider pouncing soon if this deal is for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/prime-day-deals-include-the-google-pixel-9a-for-a-new-record-low-120044455.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is officially here and bringing all-new low prices on some of our favorite speakers. That includes the Beats Pill, one of our picks for best portable Bluetooth speakers.
Right now, you can get the Beats Pill for $80, down from $150. The 47 percent discount brings the speaker to $18 less than its July Prime Day price. Notably, like in July, only the Kim Kardashian branded version in light or dark grey is on sale. However, other than Kardashian holding the speaker in a product image, the devices are identical to other Beats Pills.
Beats released the Pill in late 2024 after nearly a decade without a new portable speaker, and two years since it had discontinued the Pill+. We gave the 1.5-pound speaker an 83 in our review thanks to a huge increase in sound quality and double the battery (24 hours) of previous Beats speakers. It also offers lossless audio over USB-C, a durable build and IP67-rated water and dust resistance.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/prime-day-deals-include-the-beats-pill-for-only-80-114554645.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is upon us and that always means some steep discounts, including on headphones, so if you’ve been thinking about upgrading your audio, now’s a good time to buy. Beats is running a sale on the high-end option from its line of wireless headphones. While the Beats Studio Pro normally retails for $250, it’s going for just $170 during Prime Day. That’s a hefty savings of $80, and close to a record-low price for the Beats Studio Pro, making this an attractive offer for the audiophiles.
Apple-owned Beats refreshed these headphones in 2023. That update introduced some serious upgrades that listeners have come to expect for pro-tier headsets. The Beats Studio Pro improved active noise cancellation and added the very useful transparency mode. It also introduced spatial audio with dynamic head tracking for even more immersion when you’re This model also supports USB-C wired audio and 3.5mm wired audio in addition to its wireless capabilities.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-beats-studio-pro-are-on-sale-for-170-this-prime-day-113043590.html?src=rss
