Amazon’s October Prime Day event is just a few weeks away, but if you can’t wait until then, eBay’s taking 20 percent off select new and refurbished items as part of its fall sale when you apply code FALL20OFF at checkout. The promotion will last through 11:59PM PT on September 30th, offering you an excellent chance to save on a wide range of gadgets if you can’t wait until October.

The sale includes deals on a lot of products we’re fans of, including Eufy’s 11S Max robot vacuum, which you can buy refurbished for just $87.99 instead of $249.99 — about a third of the price it sells for new. Anker’s Soundcore Sleep A20 Earbuds are also down to just $95.99, saving you $54 over buying them new. And if you’re in the market for a pair of...

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Microsoft is launching a Windows app today for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, web browsers, Android devices, and even Windows PCs. The Windows app is essentially a hub for streaming a copy of Windows from a variety of sources, including Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop, and more.

This new unified app has been in testing for nearly a year and includes a customizable homescreen, multi-monitor support, and USB redirection so you can use local devices like webcams, storage devices, and printers as if they were plugged directly in to a cloud PC.

This Windows app is limited to Microsoft work and school accounts, as it’s primarily designed for existing users of Remote...

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Before Sony went all in with a pricey mid-cycle console refresh by announcing its upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, Microsoft laid out plans for a premium console with aesthetics at the forefront. The 2TB “Galaxy Black” special-edition Xbox Series X is mostly the same as the standard Series X, but it features a double-capacity SSD and a slick paint job. We’re inching toward its October 15th release, and interested parties willing to pony up the $599.99 asking price can already preorder one at Best Buy and directly from Microsoft.

Those who crave the pricier Xbox are primarily getting three unique things for their money:

• 2TB of built-in storage, which is twice the amount available on the standard $500 Xbox Series X (which can still be...

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Amazon has introduced a batch of new generative AI tools that aim to improve the retail experience for both customers and sellers on the platform. One of the more notable features announced at the Amazon Accelerate event on Thursday will use customers’ preferences, search, browsing, and purchase history to create personalized product recommendations on Amazon’s homepage.

Instead of the “more like this” feature that suggests similar, specific items, the new recommendations will be offered as larger categories based on a customer’s shopping habits — such as those catering to holiday events or sporting activities. The company says it’s leveraging a large language model to recommend products with specific features, but it’s not clear how...

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Implementing Project 2025, the conservative manifesto written by ex-Trump officials, could have serious repercussions on public health, former Environmental Protection Agency employees warn.

Air quality protections issued over the past four years are supposed to cut down pollution and associated health risks, preventing premature deaths and hospital visits for years to come. A group called the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), created by hundreds of former EPA employees during an exodus of scientists from the agency under the Trump administration, counted up the benefits in a recent report.

But that outcome isn’t guaranteed. Many of the policies recently enacted under the Biden administration could be in jeopardy if Donald Trump...

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Top policy executives from Meta, Microsoft, and Google testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about what they’re doing to protect US voters from foreign election threats in 2024. But the elephant in the room was the pressure campaign social media companies have faced from the right to take a more hands-off approach when it comes to labeling or demoting misinformation.

With 48 days until the US presidential election, Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) called in tech companies to discuss the threats they’re seeing so far and how they’re responding. Warner took pains to emphasize that his chief concern was with foreign malicious activity, not domestic — seemingly in an effort to find common ground with his...

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Google is improving passkey support in Chrome by making it easier to use the passwordless sign-in credentials across different devices. The search giant is introducing a Google Password Manager PIN that allows users to securely save and synchronize passkeys for use across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android devices. These updates are available in beta on ChromeOS as well, with iOS support “coming soon.”

Passkeys needed to be saved to Google Password Manager on Android prior to this update and required users to scan a QR code on their Android device to access them on other platforms. The new PIN replaces the need to scan the QR code while ensuring that your saved passkeys remain protected by end-to-end encryption, so not even Google can...

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Preorders are now open for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 through the Microsoft Store. The next installment of the franchise will launch on Xbox and PC on November 19th, with updates that include new aircraft like hot air balloons and a more realistic-looking simulated earth. But the most welcome upgrade could be a much smaller installation size.

The current version of Microsoft Flight Simulator needs over 130GB of storage, but that’s just for the base version of the game. Players can enhance their experience by downloading additional aircraft or installing world updates that bring more details to local scenery and airports, but that can gobble up even more storage. Those playing on the Xbox Series S, which only offers players 364GB of...

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A few months ago, I was driving my 2023 Volkswagen ID.4 when, seemingly out of nowhere, my driver-side door made several unusual clicking noises and then popped open.

“That’s not good,” I thought, as I quickly shut the door while also attempting to keep my hands on the wheel. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one experiencing this problem. Hundreds of other VW owners were also struggling to keep their doors closed while driving.

The issue culminated this week with VW halting production of the all-electric ID.4 at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as it scrambles to find a fix for the faulty electronic door mechanism. According to the recall, water was seeping into the door and shorting out the electronics, causing the circuitry...

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We still don’t know much about the seventh season of Black Mirror, but at least the show’s return will have a stacked cast. Netflix announced a big list of actors who will appear in the next installment of the anthology when it premieres in 2025, and it includes Doctor Who alum Peter Capaldi, Barbie star Issa Rae, Sunny’s Rashida Jones, and the always delightful Paul Giamatti.

Here’s the full list:

• Awkwafina
• Milanka Brooks
• Peter Capaldi
• Emma Corrin
• Patsy Ferran
• Paul Giamatti
• Lewis Gribben
• Osy Ikhile
• Rashida Jones
• Siena Kelly
• Billy Magnussen
• Rosy McEwen
• Cristin Milioti
• Chris O’Dowd
• Issa Rae
• Paul G. Raymond
• Tracee Ellis Ross
• Jimmi Simpson
• Harriet Walter

Of course, how these actors will figure into the new season remains unclear. Netflix...

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PlayStation has deftly come up with a way to get more people on board with the PS5 Pro. The company has announced a special 30th anniversary collection for the suite of PS5 consoles and accessories that is unfortunately sick as hell.

“To celebrate this 30th anniversary milestone, we had to create something that honored the history and joy that PlayStation has brought us all,” said PlayStation platform business CEO Hideaki Nishino. All the consoles and accessories are cast in classic PlayStation gray and feature the old-school multicolored PlayStation logo creating a look designed to target every gaming 30-something’s nostalgia organ with surgical precision.

The 30th anniversary collection features a PS5 Pro bundle that includes the...

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Pocketpair has responded to the lawsuit filed against it by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. The studio that developed Palworld, the game at the heart of the suit, issued a statement early this morning saying it doesn’t know what patents it violated. “At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details,” the statement read.

According to Nintendo’s press release, the reason for the lawsuit has to do with Pocketpair allegedly infringing on multiple as yet undisclosed patents. The details of the lawsuit have not yet been made public, so we do not yet know which patents, and according to Pocketpair’s statement, it doesn’t know, either.

The news broke last...

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Today on Decoder, we’re talking about the big Google antitrust trial that’s currently taking place in a federal courthouse. No, not the one you’re thinking of — it’s the second Google antitrust case in just as many months. The company lost a landmark case in August in which a court ruled that it had an illegal monopoly in search.

This time around, the Department of Justice is claiming Google has another illegal monopoly in the online advertising market.

Unlike the search case, the ads case is both extremely complicated and somewhat harder to see. We all use search all day, and we’re surrounded by online ads all day, but while it’s easy to talk about search, no one really wants to think about how the ads get there or how much they really...

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Time really does fly, doesn’t it? It seems like only yesterday we were looking at Amazon’s July sales event, and now we are once again heading for the company’s fall Prime Day roundup of deals. Amazon has announced that its two-day sales event for Prime subscribers will take place starting at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 8th, and run through Wednesday, October 9th,

If you’re interested in the goodies being offered but haven’t signed up for Amazon Prime, don’t worry — Amazon makes it very easy.

Besides giving access to Prime Day bargains, Amazon includes a bunch of features to entice people to sign up for its Prime...

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Google employees liberally labeled their emails as “privileged and confidential” and spoke “off the record” over chat messages, even after being told to preserve their communications for investigators, lawyers for the Justice Department have told a Virginia court over the past couple of weeks.

That strategy could backfire if the judge in Google’s second antitrust trial believes the company intentionally destroyed evidence that would have looked bad for it. The judge could go as far as giving an adverse inference about Google’s missing documents, which would mean assuming they would have been bad for Google’s case.

Documents shown in court regularly display the words “privileged and confidential” as business executives discuss their...

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When Pokémon TCG Pocket was first teased a few months back, it looked like yet another mobile app meant to capitalize on the physical card game’s recent wave of unexpected popularity. With Pokémon TCG Live already on the market, it was hard to suss out how The Pokémon Company envisioned Pocket fitting into the larger franchise. And while titles like Marvel Snap and Hearthstone have proven to be big hits, it wasn’t clear that Pocket would be able to appeal to newcomers and hardcore Pokémon fans alike.

We’re still a few weeks out from Pokémon TCG Pocket’s general release. But during the hands-on time I recently spent testing the game out, it felt like a promising — if slightly daunting — attempt at reinventing the classic card collecting...

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DJI’s response to GoPro’s new Hero 13 lineup is the Osmo Action 5 Pro. It justifies that professional moniker with a new image sensor that promises to improve image quality and low-light performance. It also features a built-in pressure sensor, the ability to capture super slow motion at an unbelievable 1080p/960fps, and a new power-sipping 4nm chip that enables up to four hours of continuous recording off a single charge.

The camera is fitted with DJI’s next-gen 1/1.3-inch sensor that can capture 40-megapixel stills and an industry-first 13.5-stop dynamic range to capture high-dynamic, low-light video at 4K/60fps. And while 960fps slow-mo is impressive, DJI gets there by capturing 240fps and then making an intelligent guess as to how to...

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Anduril Industries, the military tech company started by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, is teaming up with Microsoft to improve the mixed-reality headsets used by the United States Army. The project announced by Anduril will embed the company’s Lattice software into the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), allowing the HoloLens-based goggles to update soldiers with live information pulled from drones, ground vehicles, and aerial defense systems.

The partnership marks a return to the VR headset space for Luckey, having sold Oculus to Meta for $2 billion in 2014. Luckey started Anduril in 2017 with support from venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

The Lattice integration with IVAS could alert wearers to incoming threats picked up by...

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BMW of North America struck a deal to recycle lithium-ion batteries from all of its electrified vehicles with Redwood Materials, the companies announced today.

The German automaker said it would instruct its dealers to send old batteries from all of its electrified models, including battery-electric, hybrid, mild hybrid, and plug-in hybrid vehicles from brands like BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce, to Redwood for recycling.

Redwood, which was founded by Tesla cofounder and ex-chief technology officer JB Straubel, will handle the end-of-life batteries at its two facilities. One facility is in Reno, Nevada, and the other, which is still under construction, will be in Charleston, South Carolina — somewhat near BMW’s Spartanburg and Woodruff...

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