Hasta La Gadget!

Long before his TV show, books, and huge Twitter presence, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson met one of the world’s most popular science communicators.

Sonos isn’t exactly known for affordability, but the company has released a few more inexpensive products in recent years like the portable Roam speaker. Now, according to The Verge, Sonos is going to release its first budget soundbar in the first week of June. Apparently codenamed “Fury,” this product is expected to cost around $250, which makes it significantly cheaper than the $449 second-generation Beam (pictured above) and the $899 Arc.

As for what Sonos will leave out to hit this lower price point, the Fury won’t be able to output Dolby Atmos content like the Beam and Arc, and it may not even have an HDMI port; you’d hook it up to your TV with an optical audio cable. As such, it has fewer speaker drivers in it than other Sonos soundbars. It will be able to be part of a 5.1 surround sound setup using other compatible Sonos speakers — we presume that you can use speakers like the Sonos One as rear surrounds like you can with other Sonos soundbars. 

It sounds like Sonos will also skip including microphones for a voice assistant on this model to cut costs, like they did with the $159 Sonos Roam SL that was recently released.

One potentially intriguing feature is that Sonos will let the Fury work as rear surround speakers for a bigger soundbar like the Arc. As such, Sonos is apparently making vertical mounting stands for the Fury so that it can be used for Dolby Atmos content. 

There are plenty of budget soundbar options on the market from the likes of Vizio and Roku, while Sonos recently raised the prices on nearly all of its products. The original Beam sold for $399, but the new one costs $50 more, making for an even bigger gap between Sonos home theater options and those from more affordable competitors. As such, this is a pretty logical part of the market for Sonos to get into, and it’s not hard to imagine a $250 soundbar being a good product to get people into the company’s ecosystem. 

Sonos declined to comment on today’s leak.

Although Amazon’s main European business saw an increase in sales to around $55 billion last year, the company avoided paying income tax. It posted a loss of €1.16 billion euros ($1.26 billion) and it even received €1 billion in tax credits. According to filings obtained by Bloomberg, the credit was “mainly due to the use of net losses carried forward in accordance with the tax consolidation system.”

The Amazon EU Sarl unit is based in Luxembourg and reports revenue from its divisions in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Its sales increased by 17 percent in 2021.

“Across Europe, we pay corporate tax amounting to hundreds of millions of euros,” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg. They said revenue, profit and tax are reported to local authorities in each country. The company said it posted a loss after opening more than 50 new sites across the continent last year.

Amazon has been the subject of criticism for years for tax breaks it receives and how it reports income. In 2017, the European Union slapped Amazon with a €250 million ($280 million) tax bill over alleged illegal state aid practices dating back to the early 2000s. Amazon successfully appealed the bill last year. The European Commission has filed an appeal against that decision in the European Court of Justice.

Elina Svitolina said Russian and Belarusian players who denounce the war should be allowed at Wimbledon.

Twitter is turning to outside developers for help in preventing harassment on its platform. Under a new experiment, the company will recommend third-party moderation apps as an additional measure users can take on top of the app’s built-in tools,

With the update, which was first reported by TechCrunch, Twitter will surface recommendations for a series of third-party apps when a user blocks or mutes another person. For now, the apps include Block Party, a tool that allows people to automatically block accounts likely to be the source of harassment; Bodyguard, which can automatically moderate replies; and Moderate, which helps users manage their mentions.

These tools have already been available, but Twitter users previously had to seek out these services to get them set up. Now, the company will recommend them in its app and website alongside its own blocking and muting tools.

Twitter

As TechCrunch notes, the change is also the latest sign that Twitter is, once again, making inroads among third-party developers with whom it has sometimes had a tumultuous relationship. The moderation apps are just a handful of a broader set of third-party services Twitter is promoting as part of its revamped developer platform. Eventually, Twitter could recommend other specialized apps in various parts of its service, the company told TechCrunch, though it didn’t offer details.