From Engadget

  • Bose's SoundLink Max is its largest portable Bluetooth speaker with 20-hour battery life

    Bose may be best known for its noise-canceling headphones, but the company makes solid portable Bluetooth speakers too. In fact, the company's SoundLink Flex made our best Bluetooth speakers list as a great option among contenders in its price range. Today, the company is adding to the SoundLink lineup with its largest portable Bluetooth speaker yet: the SoundLink Max ($399). While the overall design is similar to previous Bose devices, this model packs bigger sound and longer battery life into...

  • Audible is testing book recommendations based on your Prime Video habits

    Audible is testing a new category of book recommendations based on what a user watched recently on Prime Video. Which, as the name suggests, will show you audiobooks based on what you watch on the Amazon-owned service, TechCrunch reports. The new carousel should appear on mobile and web apps for about half of users who have Amazon Prime Video and Audible subscriptions. You might see recommendations as straightforward as the book a movie you watched is based on or titles with storylines or...

  • The best smart home gadgets for your first apartment

    Your first apartment after graduation is probably not your forever home, but you can make it something you’re proud of with gadgets that do your bidding. You can automate your lights, keep an eye on your pets and clean up your floors more efficiently with relatively affordable devices that won’t eat up too much of your paycheck. We’ve tried out a lot of smart home tech over the years and here’s what we recommend for newbies and those with tight budgets This article originally appeared...

  • The Morning After: Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership was born from Google AI envy

    Emails from the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google revealed how Microsoft executives were alarmed by and even envious of Google’s AI lead. In an email thread, CTO Kevin Scott wrote he was “very, very worried” about Google’s rapidly growing AI capabilities. He said he initially dismissed the company’s “game-playing stunts,” likely referring to Google’s AlphaGo models. The emails reference Gmail’s autocomplete features, which execs called “scary good.” Microsoft struggled to...

  • Crunchyroll announces first price hike since Funimation purchase

    Crunchyroll, like many other streaming services recently, is raising its subscription prices. The anime streaming service has announced its first price hike since it was acquired by Funimation in 2020. Subscribers in Argentina, Colombia, France, Portugal, the United States and select additional countries will now have to pay $12 for the Mega Fan tier, up $2 from $10. Meanwhile, the Ultimate Fan tier will now be $1 more expensive at $16 a month.  Both options give subscribers access to offline...

  • The best budget wireless earbuds for 2024

    It used to be difficult to find cheap wireless earbuds that weren't trash. Today, though, it's much less of a struggle to get something good enough without spending triple digits. And with headphone jacks all but extinct on most new smartphones, that should be the case. Still, some models are better than others. If you’re looking to upgrade, we’ve researched and tested more than a dozen wireless earbuds that cost less than $100 and sorted out our top picks below. While none of them beat our...

  • T-Mobile finally owns Ryan Reynolds-backed Mint Mobile

    Over a year after announcing it would acquire Mint Mobile for up to $1.35 billion, T-Mobile has closed the deal. With the Un-Carrier's purchase of parent Ka'ena Corporation, it will not only get Mint, but internationally focused prepaid operator Ultra Mobile and wholesale wireless provider Plum. T-Mobile also promised to keep Mint Mobile's $15 per month/5GB offering that's among the least costly in the US. Mint Mobile is backed by Ryan Reynolds, who is believed to own 20 to 25 percent of the...

  • Anthropic now has a Claude chatbot app for iOS

    Anthropic is making its Claude AI easier to access on mobile. The company has released a Claude mobile app for iOS that any user can download for free. Similar to the mobile web version of the chatbot, the app syncs users' conversations with Claude across devices, allowing them to jump from a computer to the app (or vice versa) without losing their chat history. Users will also be able to upload files and images straight from their iPhone's gallery — or take a photo on the spot — if they need...

  • Take-Two is shutting down the studios behind Rollerdrome and Kerbal Space Program 2

    This one's a bummer. Mega-publisher Take-Two Interactive is shuttering Rollerdrome studio Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 team Intercept Games, according to paperwork seen by Bloomberg. Roll7 is based in London, and was founded in 2008 by lifelong friends Tom Hegarty and Simon Bennett. Roll7 is the studio behind OlliOlli, OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome, all fantastic games with wheel-based mechanics. OlliOlli was a Vita hit in 2014 and World landed in early 2022 — they're both great, and the...

  • Snapchat will finally let you edit your chats

    Snapchat will finally join most of its messaging app peers and allow users to edit their chats. The feature, which will be rolling out “soon,” will initially be limited to Snapchat+ subscribers, the company said. With the change, Snapchat users will have a five-minute window to rephrase their message, fix typos or otherwise edit their chats. Messages that have been edited will have a label indicating the text has been changed. The company didn’t say when the feature might be available to more of...

  • A researcher is suing Meta for the right to ‘turn off’ Facebook’s news feed

    Facebook’s News Feed algorithm has long been at the center of debates about some of Meta’s biggest problems. It’s also been a near constant source of complaints from users. But, if a newly filed lawsuit is successful, Facebook users may be able to use the social network with a vastly different feed. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is suing Meta on behalf of a researcher who wants to release a browser extension that would allow people to “effectively turn off” their...

  • Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership was born from Google envy

    It turns out the lay of today’s AI landscape can be traced back to — what do you know — fear, jealousy and intense capitalist ambition. Emails revealed in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, first reported by Business Insider, show Microsoft executives expressing alarm and envy over Google’s AI lead. That spurred an urgency that led to the Windows maker’s initial billion-dollar investment in its now-indispensable partner, OpenAI. In a heavily redacted 2019 email thread...