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The eighth episode of Severance season two is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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Apple just casually announced the new M4 MacBook Air with sales beginning on March 12. While that may be exciting news for anyone looking to get the latest and greatest devices, it can also be a boon for anyone hunting for deals. After new products launch, there tend to be some great discounts on earlier models to help clear inventory. Apple unfortunately has a pretty controlled sales market, so finding new units of earlier models may be difficult. But if you’re familiar and comfortable with the wide world of refurbished products, you can find some excellent deals on slightly older MacBooks. To help you start your search, I’ve rounded up a few exciting options from the refurbished market.
This refurbished M1 Pro MacBook Pro comes in under the new $999 MacBook Air, but offers some upgrades. It has more storage than a base MacBook Air, matches its memory, features a large 16-inch display, and comes with extra ports. This model also runs an M1 Pro chip, which is a more powerful version of the M1 chip that dazzled so many in the tech community.
If you don’t need the latest processor, the M3 MacBook Air could serve you well. This discount from Amazon offers a new M3 MacBook Air for $200 less than the newer model. This one is thankfully upgraded to 16GB of memory, which improves both the device’s ability to run multiple tasks at once, as well as its overall longevity.
You can go yet another generation back and save even more on a Mac. This M2 MacBook Air from Amazon is still in new condition, and costs just $699. It’s not a base model either, shipping with the all-too-important 16GB memory upgrade for future-proofing.
For less than the price of a new M4 MacBook Air, you can grab this beefed up M1 Pro MacBook Pro. It, too, comes with 16GB of memory, ensuring better longevity, and it even includes 512GB of storage. This unit is in “Excellent – Refurbished” condition, so it should still look and work like new, and it gets a one-year Allstate warranty. The same configuration is also available from Amazon for $899.
This 16-inch MacBook Pro is a sizable discount next to the M4 Pro models Apple now offers. eBay is currently offering it for $1,679.95, down from $2,099.99. The 18GB of memory and powerful M3 Pro processor offer a big edge on heavy computing workloads, and comes with a fantastic display. This model is eBay Certified Refurbished, so you can expect a like-new machine and enjoy a two-year warranty backed by Allstate.
RoboCop: Rogue City is getting a standalone sequel, and that’s awesome. It is easily the best RoboCop game ever made. And we don’t have to wait long for the new installment, as RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is set to arrive later this year. Oh, and if you haven’t played the first game, it’s on sale right…
If your goal in Avowed is to go all-in on the wizard lifestyle, you may have settled on a wand as one of your weapons of choice. That’s a good call, as wands can deal solid damage at range with their rapid rate of fire. One in particular, Minoletta’s Conduit, ups the ante further with fantastic enchantments that…
“This keyboard could kill someone.” That’s the first thing I thought when I pulled the more-than-four pound aluminum-cased Lemokey L5 HE 8K out of its box. The first thing I thought after typing on it was: this feels amazing and I don’t want to stop using it.
This is a video of two ovesized Beyblade style battle tops (launched with an angle grinder!) pitted against each other in an arena that’s set on fire. That’s…something. Something I could watch all day! More of this please, I just searched Youtube and only found one other example, I NEED MORE. “You should just make your own.” You think I don’t already have a fire arena?! Life is my fire arena.
Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 earbuds are on sale for just $170 via Amazon. This essentially ties a previous record-low price for 2025, which was $169. This purchase comes with the earbuds, four pairs of silicone tips in different sizes, a charging case, a lanyard loop and a USB-C cable.
We heaped a fair amount of praise on these earbuds in our official review, calling them “a worthwhile update.” The sound is better-than-ever, thanks to new drivers, amplifiers, transducers and audio algorithms. The transparency mode is absolutely stellar, largely helped by the company’s proprietary H2 chip.
The ANC is solid, particularly for earbuds. This is also thanks to that H2 chip, which allows the AirPods Pro to cancel twice as much noise as the first-gen model. These earbuds are made for Apple devices, so there’s seamless switching between, say, iPhones, iPads and Macs.
The touch gesture controls are neat, but there’s a learning curve. Give it a few days before throwing in the towel. The battery life is just average, but the charging case helps keep the music going. The primary downside here is age. The AirPods 2 Pro earbuds came out in 2022, so a refresh is likely on the horizon.
Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/airpods-pro-2-are-back-on-sale-for-170-180055678.html?src=rss
“The DMA does not target U.S. companies,” Ribera and Virkkunnen wrote in a joint letter dated March 6 to Jordan and Fitzgerald seen by Reuters. “It applies to all companies which fulfil the clearly defined criteria for being designated as a gatekeeper in the European Union irrespective of where they are headquartered,” they said.
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‘Sweet Vitriol’ excellently illustrated that for every character with a backstory, there’s something tragic and weird lurking in the shadows.
The DoD has purged 26,000 images from its public database as part of a “digital content refresh.”
Google released its scheduled March Pixel Drop earlier this week, adding AI scam detection, multi-camera streaming, and—possibly—buggy haptics. Pixel owners have been grumbling about the feel of vibrations, which have been described as “springy” and “hollow.” Others say the haptics have gotten distractingly harsh in some places.
Android devices have long trailed Apple when it comes to haptic feedback—the latter’s Taptic Engine generally puts other phones to shame with its power and precision. However, Google has made great progress with Pixel phones. It occasionally gloats about how much Pixel haptics have improved. It would seem that this attention to detail is not born out in the latest update, though.
Some of this confusion may be down to the addition of notification cooldown, a feature that was previously only in the Android 16 beta. This opt-out feature aims to reduce the annoyance of receiving multiple notifications in quick succession. The first ping you get in a two-minute period will be normal, but if you get another within a few seconds, it will have lower volume and vibration intensity. It tapers off until notifications don’t make any additional fuss. You can still find all those notifications in their usual home in the drop-down shade.
Earlier this week, I proclaimed the brand new M4 MacBook Air the best MacBook for most people. In short, that’s because Apple packages everything that’s already great about modern MacBook Airs with its latest M4 chip, all for a fantastic MSRP of $999.
The thing is, the M4 chip itself isn’t brand new: Apple first rolled it out with the iPad Pro last May, before introducing the M4 MacBook Pro in October. Before this week, Apple had cemented the MacBook Air as the previous generation brand: If you want an entry-level Apple computer, you could buy the M2 MacBook Air for $999, or the M3 MacBook Air for a little more. If you wanted M4, well, that’s “Pro” territory.
No longer: Whether you buy a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, you’re getting the M4 chip. These chips are almost identical between Air and Pro, but with one caveat. The SoC (System on Chip) comes with a 10-core CPU (four performance cores and six efficiency cores) and a 16-core Neural Engine on all models, and a 10-core GPU on the Pro. You can get a 10-core GPU on the Air, but only if you pay extra. If you buy the entry-level $999 machine, you get an eight-core GPU. Those additional two GPU cores will cost you $100.
It’s a small difference, but a difference that, on paper, suggests better performance from the M4 MacBook Pro—especially for graphics-intensive tasks. If you work with animation or high-resolution video, or play AAA games, those two GPU cores on the Pro could come in handy. However, paper specs mean very little for real-world use: It’s when you see how these machines actually perform when put to the test do you know how big (or small) these differences really are.
We’ll need to wait for Apple to release the M4 MacBook Air before we see those real-world tests in action. But in the meantime, we do have some evidence that goes beyond the spec sheet. As reported by Wccftech, testers have uploaded Geekbench Metal benchmarks for the M4 MacBook Air to the internet—and the results are illuminating. This test examines a chip’s GPU performance via Apple’s Metal API. The eight-core M4 MacBook Air scored 54,864 on the test, while the 10-core M4 MacBook Pro scored 57,788. That’s a 5% gain for the MacBook Pro, which, while certainly nice to have, is not the huge jump you might expect from an additional two GPU cores—especially when you consider the Pro starts at $1,599.
Again, benchmarks don’t necessarily reflect real-world usage. Those two cores might push the Pro more than these results imply. Plus, the Pro has internal fans to keep the M4 chip cool under pressure. The Air doesn’t have fans, which means it may slow down performance if things get too hot sooner than the Pro would. We’ll simply need to see how these two machines stack up side-by-side when review units arrive.
Regardless, the M4 MacBook Air is shaping up to be a powerhouse of a machine—especially for the price. The M4 MacBook Pro, for example, costs $600 more, and while you gain additional perks like a brighter, higher-quality display, double the storage, an HDMI port, and SDXC card slot, you might find you prefer the extra $600 in your wallet. Ignoring these perks, if you’re someone who is buying a Mac with power in mind, you no longer need to count out the Air. In fact, it should probably be your first choice, only ruled out if the work you do requires the extra “oomph” the Pro can offer.
To be clear, this comparison is between the M4 chip, not the M4 Pro chip. You can only get the M4 Pro in the MacBook Pro, and that model starts at $1,999. At that point, it’s a very different discussion.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D is probably the best CPU you can buy if you’re trying to put together a fast gaming PC, thanks to its eight Zen 5 CPU cores and extra helping of 3D V-Cache. You don’t really need more CPU cores than this to play games, and most games benefit from the extra cache more than they do from a bit of extra clock speed.
AMD announced today that it’s following up the 9800X3D with two higher-end X3D processors next week. The 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D are both launching on March 12 for $599 and $699, respectively, the same as the launch pricing for the last-generation 7900X3D and 7950X3D but a couple hundred dollars more expensive than the current street pricing for the Ryzen 9900X and 9950X.
AMD recommends the 9900X3D and 9950X3D to people whose gaming PCs also do other heavy-duty non-gaming work or for streamers whose gaming PCs are simultaneously running other apps. But they might also appeal to people who would normally just buy a 9800X3D because that processor has been difficult to find at its $479 MSRP since launching last fall. If a 9800X3D already costs nearly $600, why not spring for a faster chip if you can get one?
The term “filler” as it refers to television has its roots in anime, designating those episodes that either embellished upon the original manga source material or deviated from it entirely before returning to the main plot. It’s a specific phenomenon that highlights the complications of developing an animated series…
The study, which examined 1.5 million scientists and 1.8 million mentorships across chemistry, physics and neuroscience, found that trainees from large research groups had 38-48% lower “survival rates” in academia between the 1980s and 1995 compared to their small-group counterparts.
However, researchers from larger labs who do stay in academia tend to achieve greater career success, publishing papers with higher citation rates and more frequently ranking among the most-cited scientists.
The research team, led by social-data scientist Roberta Sinatra from the University of Copenhagen, discovered that successful large-group scientists typically published more first-author papers with their mentors as last authors, suggesting they received substantial attention despite the group size.
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It’s hard to deny that spears are a cool weapon, as few things scream “deadly” quite so much as a stick with a pointy end. Avowed features a few solid Spears to choose for your melee weapon, but the poisonous Umpara’s Spear and its excellent critical damage bonus makes it one of the best choices for many builds.…
It’s been a busy week of Apple news with the company refreshing its Mac and iPad lineups. As a result, there are deals aplenty on older models as part of an apparent clear out. Take, for instance, the 10th-gen iPad. It’s $89 off at $260, bringing the tablet back down to its record-low price.
The biggest discount is on the blue and silver colorways. The pink one will run you an extra $9, while the yellow one is $279.
The 10th-gen iPad arrived in late 2022. At least until we put the new model through its paces, this is our current pick for the best budget iPad — a recommendation that automatically becomes a little stronger whenever it gets this kind of discount.
We gave this model a score of 85 in our review. We felt that the screen was somewhat lacking compared with those found in the likes of the iPad Air. However, we appreciated several updates such as the switch to a USB-C charging port and improved performance compared with the previous base iPad. Apple also moved the front-facing camera to the landscape edge, making video calls much more palatable when you’re using the tablet in that orientation.
If you just want an iPad to help you catch up on reading and email, control your smart home devices, watch videos and stream music, this is probably the one to go for. More resource-intensive tasks will require a more powerful tablet, but this one will handle the basics.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested in picking up the latest base iPad, you can pre-order one now. Our explainer details just how to do that. Apple has upgraded the chipset to an A16 and doubled the base storage to 128GB, but there’s no support for Apple Intelligence in the 11th-gen iPad.
Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-10th-gen-ipad-is-back-on-sale-for-an-all-time-low-price-of-260-171121705.html?src=rss
