If you’re in the market for a laptop, you have no shortage of choices. But unless you need something with exceptionally powerful hardware or are operating on a very tight budget, I’m here to end your search right now: You should buy the M4 MacBook Air, especially while it’s on sale for $749 before Black Friday.

M4 MacBook Air

$749.00
at Best Buy

$999.00
Save $250.00

$749.00
at Best Buy

$999.00
Save $250.00

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is, without a doubt in my mind, the best laptop for most people—at least for people who don’t need to run Windows. This is an entry-level machine, but it doesn’t feel like it: The laptop comes with Apple’s M4 chip, which was until very recently the company’s newest hardware. (That being said, there is no M5 MacBook Air yet, so this is still the best Air on the market.) Apple’s M-series is excellent: In fact, the M1 MacBook Air is still a great machine five years after its release. You kind of can’t go wrong with any M-series MacBook at this time, though the newer the hardware, the better the performance—a perk to this M4 Air.

But M4 is almost an afterthought for me compared to this machine’s 16GB of RAM. For years, Apple only included 8GB of RAM with its base model machines. That was enough for smaller, simpler tasks, but once you started trying to do too much at once, you ran into problems. 8GB of RAM doesn’t go as far as it used to, so the fact that this machine doubles that memory without impacting the price is a major win. That said, this configuration does come with 256GB of storage, which could pose a problem for anyone who stores large files on their computers.

My favorite thing about the M4, however? The price. When Apple released this machine back in March, I was impressed by how much value one could get for $999. In fact, it convinced me to move on from recommending the M2 MacBook Air, even when the latter was on sale. But despite how new it is, the M4 MacBook Air has also seen discounts this year. Now, ahead of Black Friday, the machine is $250 cheaper at Amazon and Best Buy than at Apple. That’s simply a fantastic deal.

Should you buy an older MacBook for less?

Of course, there are other, cheaper MacBooks out there. You can save another $50 and opt for the M2 MacBook Air, which also has 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And if you don’t need your machine to be brand-new, you can find refurbished M1 MacBook Airs for under $500. Any of these laptops will work great in 2025, but there are drawbacks: The M1 only has 8GB of RAM and it retains Apple’s older MacBook Air design. The M2 MacBook Air looks identical to its M4 counterpart, but it is three years old. By spending the extra $50 on the newer Air, you may eke another two to three years of software updates out of your machine—not to mention the immediate performance gains from the new chip.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This year’s newest iPhones included one momentous change that marked a new phase in the evolution of Apple Silicon: the Apple N1, Apple’s first in-house chip made to handle local wireless connections. The N1 supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and the Thread smart home communication protocol, and it replaces the third-party wireless chips (mostly made by Broadcom) that Apple used in older iPhones. Apple claimed that the N1 would enable more reliable connectivity for local communication features like AirPlay and AirDrop but didn’t say anything about how users could expect it to perform. But Ookla, the folks behind the SpeedTest app and website, have analyzed about five weeks’ worth of users’ testing data to get an idea of how the iPhone 17 lineup stacks up to the iPhone 16, as well as Android phones with Wi-Fi chips from Qualcomm, MediaTek, and others.

While the N1 isn’t at the top of the charts, Ookla says Apple’s Wi-Fi chip “delivered higher download and upload speeds on Wi-Fi compared to the iPhone 16 across every studied percentile and virtually every region.” The median download speed for the iPhone 17 series was 329.56Mbps, compared to 236.46Mbps for the iPhone 16; the upload speed also jumped from 73.68Mbps to 103.26Mbps. Ookla noted that the N1’s best performance seemed to improve scores most of all in the bottom 10th percentile of performance tests, “implying Apple’s custom silicon lifts the floor more than the ceiling.” The iPhone 17 also didn’t top Ookla’s global performance charts — Ookla found that the Pixel 10 Pro series slightly edges out the iPhone 17 in download speed, while a Xiaomi 15T Pro with MediaTek Wi-Fi silicon featured better upload speeds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sling TV offers multiple ways to stream cable channels without having to commit to a month of service, and for Black Friday it’s offering its new $5 Day Passes for a healthy discount. You can get a Sling Orange Day Pass for just $1 through November 30, and get access to 34 channels, including ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPN 3.

Besides ESPN, the Sling Orange Day Pass includes access to TNT and TBS, which makes it a solid option if you’re trying to watch the NBA, NFL or college sports. The pass also includes children’s channels like Disney Channel and Nick Jr., CNN for news and HGTV and Food Network for purer forms of lean back entertainment. Sling TV is Engadget’s pick for the best customizable live streaming service for a reason: You can add on extra premium channels when you buy a pass, and their price will be prorated for whatever length you choose. That way even if a dollar isn’t getting you all the channels you need, you don’t need to pay that much more to get them.

It’s worth noting, while this promotion runs during Thanksgiving in the US, a Sling Orange subscription won’t get you access to the football games scheduled for that Thursday. To watch those, you’ll need at least a Sling Blue subscription, which includes FS1 and NFL Network, but isn’t available as a day-long pass. A Sling Blue subscription currently starts at $46 a month.

Still, for your $1, around $4 off the price Sling TV normally charges, you’re getting a deal. Dozens of popular channels, access to Sling TV’s DVR feature, and the ability to use your subscription from a smartphone, tablet, the web or your TV. Plus, Sling TV’s interface is easy to navigate, which is what you want when you’re likely subscribing with one game or show in mind.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/sling-orange-day-passes-are-only-1-right-now-for-black-friday-231208163.html?src=rss

Many e-bike brands focus their marketing on being a sustainable and environmentally friendly consumer choice. Future Motion has gone the other direction and emphasized how its new product can pop infinite wheelies, which sounds like either loads of fun or a quick way to an injury, depending on your worldview. 

After developing a line of single-wheel skateboards called Onewheel, Future Motion has released a new transportation option with an e-bike dubbed Antic. (Though I am deeply disappointed it isn’t named Twowheel). The 70s-inspired design claims a top speed of 35 miles per hour, a range of 28 to 50 miles, and wide tires intended to handle many types of terrain. It also says that with its Wheelie Assist mode, the bike’s gyroscopes and accelerometers can hold an endless single-wheel ride. The base model Antic has a list price of $2,500 but is currently discounted a few hundred bucks for the launch; longer-range options with more capable tires will run up to $2,900.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/onewheel-teams-antic-e-bike-can-pop-eternal-wheelies-230602296.html?src=rss

There’s been a lot of talk of an AI bubble lately, especially with regards to circular funding involving companies like OpenAI and Anthropic—but Clem Delangue, CEO of machine learning resources hub Hugging Face, has made the case that the bubble is specific to large language models, which is just one application of AI.

“I think we’re in an LLM bubble, and I think the LLM bubble might be bursting next year,” he said at an Axios event this week, as quoted in a TechCrunch article. “But ‘LLM’ is just a subset of AI when it comes to applying AI to biology, chemistry, image, audio, [and] video. I think we’re at the beginning of it, and we’ll see much more in the next few years.”

At Ars, we’ve written at length in recent days about the fears around AI investment. But to Delangue’s point, almost all of those discussions are about companies whose chief product is large language models, or the data centers meant to drive those—specifically, those focused on general-purpose chatbots that are meant to be everything for everybody.

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Because you can never have enough cowbell bass, Philip Kaplan (previously seen reinventing portable music with CD player headphones) went and built a tactical subwoofer. At first I was skeptical, but after watching the video it’s managed to break into the top 10 of my Christmas list. I’m really hoping that much bass so close to my guts will help with digestion. Because I’ve been having digestion issues lately. “You have to stop eating grass.” Turtles do it and they live past 100!

pbahra writes: Saudi Arabia is betting that the future of Hollywood won’t be built in physical stages but in datacenters. In a push to anchor itself in next-generation film production, Riyadh-based Humain has led Luma AI’s latest Series C round, backing the shift towards cloud-based, AI-generated video rather than traditional studio infrastructure.. Humain’s announcement says the new investment will accelerate Luma’s development of world models capable of learning from video, audio and language to generate photorealistic scenes, environments and characters on demand. Supporters argue this could upend film-making by pushing much of Hollywood’s production pipeline into high-performance datacenters rather than physical sets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since early July, telescopes around the world have been tracking just our third confirmed interstellar visitor, the comet 3I/ATLAS—3I, for third interstellar, and ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) for the telescope network that first spotted it. But the object’s closest approach to the Sun came in late October during the US government shutdown. So, while enough people went to work to ensure that the hardware continued to do its job, nobody was available at NASA to make the images available to the public or discuss their implications.

So today, NASA held a press conference to discuss everything that we now know about 3I/ATLAS, and how NASA’s hardware contributed to that knowledge. And to say one more time that the object is a fairly typical comet and not some spaceship doing its best to appear like one.

Extrasolar comet

3I/ATLAS is an extrasolar comet and the third visitor from another star that we’ve detected. We know the comet part because it looks like one, forming a coma of gas and dust, as well as a tail, as the Sun heats up its materials. That hasn’t stopped the usual suspect (Avi Loeb) from speculating that it might be a spacecraft, as he had for the earlier visitors. NASA doesn’t want to hear it. “This object is a comet,” said Associate Administrator Amit Kshatrya. “It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet.”

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One of Meta’s top AI researchers, Yann LeCun, is leaving after 12 years with the company to found his own AI startup, he announced. LeCun, who is also a professor at New York University, joined the company in 2013 to lead Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and later took on the role of Chief AI Scientist. 

LeCun said his new startup would “continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence research program (AMI) I have been pursuing over the last several years with colleagues at FAIR, at NYU, and beyond” and that it would partner with Meta. “The goal of the startup is to bring about the next big revolution in AI: systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences,” he wrote in an update on Threads. “AMI will have far-ranging applications in many sectors of the economy, some of which overlap with Meta’s commercial interests, but many of which do not. Pursuing the goal of AMI in an independent entity is a way to maximize its broad impact.”

Speculation about LeCun’s future at Meta has been mounting in recent months. Earlier this year, the company invested nearly $15 billion into Scale AI and made the 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, its Chief AI Officer. Meta also recruited Shengjia Zhao, who helped create GPT-4, making him Chief AI Scientist of its newly created Meta Superintelligence Labs unit. 

LeCun, on the other hand, has been openly skeptical of LLMs. “We are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling LLMs,” he said during an appearance on the Big technology podcast earlier this year. And in a recent talk at a conference, he advised aspiring researchers to “absolutely not work on LLMs,” according to remarks reported by The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, Meta has been reshuffling its AI teams. The company cut “several hundred” jobs from its Superintelligence group, including from FAIR, last month. And LeCun has “had difficulty getting resources for his projects at Meta as the company focused more intently on building models to compete with immediate threats from rivals including OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Anthropic,” Bloomberg reported. 

LeCun said he will stay on at Meta until the end of the year. “I am extremely grateful to Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Bosworth (Boz), Chris Cox, and Mike Schroepfer for their support of FAIR, and for their support of the AMI program over the last few years,” he wrote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-chief-ai-scientist-is-leaving-the-company-after-12-years-224325268.html?src=rss

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Black Friday is nearly upon us. From the day after Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, you will be inundated with deals from stores and companies alike. But even before Black Friday officially begins, stores are putting up discounts. As Lifehacker’s tech editor, I’ve combed through the various tech deals across stores like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart to find the offers actually worth considering.

While there aren’t a huge number of excellent deals running at the moment, there are some good ones you can take advantage of right now. In fact, many of the deals are on last-gen devices—I’ve included those that are still worth picking up in 2025, especially at these discounts. Keep your eyes out over the next couple weeks, too: As we get closer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I imagine way more deals will start rolling out.

The best early Black Friday deals on laptops

M4 MacBook Air (13-inch)

$749.00
at Amazon

$999.00
Save $250.00

$749.00
at Amazon

$999.00
Save $250.00

• M4 MacBook Air (13-inch): $749 at Amazon (was $999): Without a doubt, my favorite early Black Friday laptop deal is this price cut on the M4 MacBook Air. For $750, you get the latest M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. It’s a fantastic package for anyone who needs a laptop for everyday tasks—though these chips can be pushed further than you’d think. If you need extra RAM or storage, Amazon is selling the 512GB model for $949, and the 512GB/24GB of RAM model for $1,149.

• M2 MacBook Air (13-inch): $699 at Best Buy (was $799): If your maximum budget is $700, the M2 MacBook Air is a great choice. This MacBook Air looks and feels the same as the M4 model, and also comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. However, you do get an M2 chip, which is two generations behind the M4. I personally think the future-proofing you get with the M4 is worth the extra $50, but the M2 MacBook Air is still a lot of computer for its current price.

• Dell 16 Plus Copilot+ PC (16-inch): $999.99 at Best Buy (was $1,599.99): Despite the Copilot+ PC name, this Dell 16 Plus laptop is a great value for the price. This laptop comes with a 16-inch 2.5K display with a 90Hz refresh rate, a 3.3GHz Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 2 chip with 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Best Buy is taking $600 off as part of its early Black Friday sale.

• Galaxy Book4 (16-inch): $1,199.99 at Best Buy (was $1,899.99): This Galaxy Book4 comes with a 2,880 by 1,800 AMOLED panel, with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It runs a 3.8 GHz Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 1 chip with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Best Buy currently has it $700 off.

The best early Black Friday deals on tablets

iPad A16

$299.00
at Best Buy

$349.00
Save $50.00

$299.00
at Best Buy

$349.00
Save $50.00

• iPad A16: $299 at Amazon (was $349): Apple sells a lot of iPads, but its most affordable model might be enough for most people. The tablet comes with an 11-inch display, Apple’s A16 chip, and 128GB of storage. It won’t be as powerful as one of Apple’s M-series iPads, and the display can’t compete with the OLED iPad Pros, but for $300, this is a great tablet.

• iPad Pro (11-inch): $899 at Best Buy (was $999): If you want the most powerful and feature-filled iPad Apple makes, the 11-inch Pro is currently $100 off. This model comes with Apple’s M4 chip, 256GB of storage, and an OLED display.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite: $159.99 at Amazon (was $329): Samsung’s Tab S6 Lite is a good choice for anyone looking for a solid yet affordable Android tablet. This model comes with a 10.4-inch display, 64GB of storage, and Samsung’s S Pen. It’s currently $170 off at Amazon.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE: $359.99 at Amazon (was $499.99): Samsung’s S10 FE tablet is $130 off right now. It comes with a 10.9-inch 90Hz display, 128GB of storage, and Samsung’s S Pen. If you looking for alternatives, Samsung actually has a number of other tablets on sale at Amazon as part of its early Black Friday promotion.

The best early Black Friday deals on phones

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

$1,057.91
at Amazon

$1,419.99
Save $362.08

$1,057.91
at Amazon

$1,419.99
Save $362.08

• Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: $534.99 at Amazon (was $709.99): Samsung’s “budget” Galaxy S25 device is normally over $700, but is currently 25% off before Black Friday. The phone comes with 256GB of storage, an Exynos 2400 chip with 8GB of RAM, and a 6.7-inch 1080p display.

• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: $1,057.91 at Amazon (was $1,419.99): Samsung’s most expensive flagship smartphone is also 25% off, which takes more than $360 off the list price. The S25 Ultra comes with 512GB of storage, a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip with 12GB of RAM, and a 6.9-inch 1440p display.

The best early Black Friday deals on smartwatches

Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen)

$159.99
at Amazon

$249.00
Save $89.01

$159.99
at Amazon

$249.00
Save $89.01

• Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen): $169 at Walmart (was $249): While Apple currently sells the third-generation Apple Watch SE, the second-gen is still a great smartwatch. Walmart currently has it discounted by $80, whether you choose the 40mm GPS model or 44mm model. If you choose the latter, it’ll cost you $199, down from $279.

• Apple Watch Ultra 2: $699 at Best Buy (was $799): Similarly, you can save $100 off the second-gen Apple Watch Ultra 2, if you don’t mind that Apple currently sells an Apple Watch Ultra 3—but that will cost you at least $180 more at this time. The Ultra 2 gives you a large 49mm display with up to 3,000 nits of brightness. It also comes with “pro” features like 100m of water resistance and a 40m depth gauge made for scuba and snorkeling, and a battery life of up to 36 hours.

• Apple Watch Series 10: $249 at Best Buy (was $499): Apple’s latest Apple Watch Series 11 is nearly $50 off at Walmart. But you can save another $100 by going with the previous-gen Apple Watch Series 10.

• Garmin vívoactive 5: $199 at Best Buy (was $299): Garmin is in a similar boat to the Apple Watches above, as the vívoactive 5 is now a last-gen product. Still, it comes with a 42mm display, a host of workout features (like sleep tracking, respiration rate, activity vs. inactivity), and 264 hours of runtime.

The best early Black Friday deals on headphones and earbuds

AirPods Pro 2

$139.00
at Walmart

$184.79
Save $45.79

$139.00
at Walmart

$184.79
Save $45.79

• AirPods Pro 2: $139 at Walmart (was $239): If you don’t want to spend the $249 on Apple’s AirPods Pro 3, the second-gen Pros are kind of a steal at $139. They still offer great sound, noise cancellation, and Transparency, and you save $110 against Apple’s latest model.

• QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds: $249 at Amazon (was $299): Bose is known for both sound quality and noise cancellation, and while the QuietComfort Ultra earbuds are a bit pricey, they’re currently $50 off.

• JBL Tune Buds: $39.95 at Amazon (was $99.95): Wireless earbuds can get expensive, so it’s refreshing to have a discount like this on JBL’s Tune Buds. The buds are normally just under $100, but before Black Friday, they’re $60 off.

• Sony WH-1000XM5: $248 at Amazon (was $399.99): If I didn’t already have a pair of AirPods Max, these would be the headphones I’d pick up. Sony’s WH-1000XM series is one of the best, and while they aren’t as expensive as Apple’s over-the-ear headphones, they’re still pretty pricey. Amazon currently has them discounted by 38%.

Nvidia blew past earnings expectations with soaring revenue and profit, easing fears of an AI bubble and reinforcing its position as the engine of the global AI boom. From a report: Nvidia’s sales grew 62% year-over-year to $57 billion in the October quarter, ahead of the $54.9 billion Wall Street had projected, signaling that demand for AI chips remains strong even as more questions emerge about whether returns from the technology will keep up with the pace of AI infrastructure investments. It posted profits of $31.9 billion, up 65% from the year-ago quarter and also slightly above expectations.

“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement, a message that echoes his earlier arguments that fears of an AI bubble are overblown. The company also posted stronger-than-expected sales guidance of around $65 billion for the fourth quarter, another indicator that the AI spending spree isn’t slowing anytime soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Dutch government suspended its powers over chipmaker Nexperia, restoring control to its Chinese owner (paywalled; alternative source) and defusing a standoff with Beijing that had begun to hamper automotive production around the world. The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions at Nexperia was dropped as “a show of goodwill,” Economic Affairs Minister Vincent Karremans said Wednesday in a post on social media site X.

Bloomberg had reported earlier this month that the Netherlands was prepared to take the step if chip deliveries from the company’s site in China could be confirmed.
The move marks a significant de-escalation of a dispute that underscored the global nature of supply chains and highlighted Beijing’s growing leverage. Even though Nexperia’s chips aren’t advanced and the company only operates one facility in China, the spat disrupted automakers from Honda Motor Co. to Volkswagen AG.

The reversal by the Dutch government was set in motion after a breakthrough in talks earlier that involved Chinese and Dutch officials, with input from Germany, the European Union as well as the US. To help resolve the stalemate, Beijing agreed to loosen export restrictions from Nexperia’s Chinese plant, the largest of its kind in the world. The Dutch economic affairs ministry sent a delegation to Beijing this week to negotiate a “mutually agreeable solution,” according to a ministry statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Letterboxd’s foray into digital video rentals officially launches in December, the social film platform shared in a new blog post. Plans for a “Letterboxd Video Store” were first announced in March, but now Letterboxd has started to fill in some of the details of what kinds of movies its store will carry and where they’ll be available to watch.

The collection of films available through the Letterboxd Video Store will be curated around a few categories, according to the company. Those include films featured at film festivals that currently don’t have distribution, titles that continue to hang around in users’ watchlists, film restorations and “limited-time drops of sneak peeks and unreleased gems.” Letterboxd compared the process of narrowing down what films to try and offer like the “employee picks” shelf you might see at a local video store, only every Letterboxd user is an employee.

Films rented through Letterboxd will be available to watch on the web, iOS, Android, Apple TV and Android TV, and can be streamed to screens that support Chromecast and AirPlay. Letterboxd hasn’t shared what its rental terms or prices will be, but did note that rental availability and cost will vary depending on your location. The company also warns that some films will only be available for a limited amount of time.

As an expansion on its core competencies of tracking what films you and your friends have watched and letting you review them, video rentals seem like a natural addition for Letterboxd. It’s a bit like Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon acquired the book reviewing platform Goodreads in 2013, after establishing itself as a physical and digital bookseller. Letterboxd has defined itself as a trusted film reviewing platform, and now it’s branching out into selling films. In the same way Goodreads can funnel readers back towards Amazon, Letterboxd can use movie fans to surface the best films to rent and keep them from heading somewhere else to watch them.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/letterboxd-will-start-renting-movies-in-december-214900026.html?src=rss