Jaume Collet-Serra talks casting Pierce Brosnan for Black Adam. Filming has already begun on season four of The Mandalorian. The Witcher’s third season resumes filming after Henry Cavill’s covid-19 diagnosis. Plus, new looks at Resident Alien and Primal. Spoilers, away!
“I had been bleeding internally for five days before anyone figured it out.”
Apple’s MacBook Air M2 may not have completely reshaped the PC landscape like the M1 laptop did, but it’s arguably the best version of the notebook to date. It earned a score of 96 from us and it would make a solid daily driver for anyone, from college students to working professionals. One of the few downsides is that the M2 laptop is more expensive than its predecessor, but now you can grab one for $100 less than usual from Amazon. The online retailer has the 256GB MacBook Air M2 in starlight for $1,099, which is the best price we’ve seen since launch.
Buy MacBook Air M2 (256GB) at Amazon – $1,099
The latest MacBook Air actually has a slightly different design than previous models. Apple moved away from the wedge shape and made the new laptop uniformly thin, making looking more like the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Apple managed to increase the side of the Liquid Retina screen to 13.6 inches by shrinking the surrounding bezels, and while that’s only a third of an inch bigger than previous displays, it has a more expansive feel. It also has the relatively new top notch that holds the machine’s webcam. On top of that, you’re getting improved speakers and a handy MagSafe power adapter in the Air M2’s new design. Overall, it feels just updated enough to make a difference in daily use, but not so much that it will feel foreign to Apple diehards.
As for performance, the MacBook Air M2 handled everything we threw at it. The M2 chipset builds upon the stunningly fast foundation that the M1 processor provided last year, so you can expect a roughly 18 percent performance increase. If you spring for the faster GPU version, you’ll get a 35 percent faster graphics than in the M1 model.
We found the M2 to be just as fast as the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2, so if you’ve been looking for a powerful new laptop but would like to keep things as thin and light as possible, you won’t be sacrificing much by opting for the Air M2 over the Pro. The Air M2’s battery life is even pretty close to that of the 13-inch Pro — the Air lasted about 16.5 hours in our testing, while the Pro lasted just over 17 hours.
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The Fox News host actually cited a president who resigned in disgrace to support Trump’s questionable defense for keeping top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.
If you’re looking for a new streaming device for your home, or for your college-aged kid who’s heading back to campus soon, a bunch of Amazon’s Fire TV sticks are on sale right now. You’ll find the best deal on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, the company’s most powerful streaming dongle, which is $15 off and down to $40. That’s only $5 more than it was on Prime Day last month. Also $15 off is the Fire TV Stick, which is down to $25, and you can get $10 off the Fire TV Stick Lite and pick it up for only $20.
Buy Fire TV Stick 4K Max at Amazon – $40Buy Fire TV Stick at Amazon – $25Buy Fire TV Stick Lite at Amazon – $20
Aside from the Fire TV Cube set-top box, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the most capable of Amazon’s streaming devices. It supports 4K HDR content with Dolby Vision and Atmos, plus WiFi 6 and voice commands using the included Alexa remote. The remote also has a few preset buttons for Netflix, Prime Video and other services, making it easy to access the platforms you use the most. And for those that have compatible security cameras around their home, the Fire TV stick 4K Max also supports live picture-in-picture view, so you can see your video camera’s feed right on your TV without pausing what you’re watching.
Both the Fire TV Stick and the TV Stick Lite are more basic models that provide streaming essentials at low prices. The standard dongle supports HD content and Dolby Atmos audio, while the Lite version lacks Dolby Atmos capabilities. Also, the standard stick has buttons on its voice remote to control your TV’s power and volume, whereas the Lite model does not. We’d recommend springing for the Fire TV Stick since those few extra features go a long way in daily use, but the Fire TV Stick Lite will still be a good choice for those on tight budgets.
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PlayStation’s game-streaming scheme, at its top tier, is now competing directly with Xbox Game Pass, the service that proved the concept by earning 25 million-plus subscribers over the past five years. It’s now been over a month since PlayStation Plus Premium went live, offering similar cloud gaming services to Microsoft’s console.
However, there are some major differences in strategy, however. Sony doesn’t plan on adding big PlayStation-exclusive games like Forspoken or God of War Ragnarök to Plus on day one, meaning subscribers will have to buy these titles separately, at least at launch. On the Xbox side of things, Game Pass Ultimate includes big first-party games like Halo Infinite on release day. But as Engadget’s Jessica Conditt put it, this isn’t about one service being better than the others, but about adjusting to the new normal for video games.
For your monthly subscription dues, do you value Game Pass Ultimate over Netflix?
— Mat Smith
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Another service with a monthly tithe is adjusting its business. It’s been a brutal year for Peloton, and the company is enacting more major changes to get back on track. On the consumer front, Peloton is reversing price cuts to two pieces of fitness equipment. The Bike+ is going back up from $1,995 to $2,495 in the US. Peloton announced a huge loss of $757.1 million for the first three months of 2022 due to a decline in revenue and soaring costs.
When the checkered flag dropped yesterday in Seoul, Formula E finished its 100th race. Starting on the back of a napkin in 2011, the world’s first all-electric single-seater championship launched after three years of planning. Engadget’s Billy Steele talked to cofounder Alberto Longo and former champ Lucas di Grassi.
Apple announced back at WWDC 2020 that iOS would require apps to ask users to opt-in to cross-app advertising tracking. Facebook then spent much of the next few months speaking out against Apple and predicting revenue instability due to the upcoming changes. The feature was released in April 2021, and Meta, as it’s now called, did survive. Surprisingly, though, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that before this all went down, Facebook and Apple were working on a partnership and revenue-sharing agreement.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has once again delayed Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy, which at least now has a firm release date. It will hit PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on February 10th. The Switch release date will be announced sometime soon, indicating the version faces a further delay.
The smartwatches and fitness trackers that we strap to our wrists are intended to log our activity in minute detail—but there might also be times when you’d rather records weren’t collected. Whether you want a fresh start with your fitness regime, you’re apprehensive about about your watch having too much data on you,…
While Iran hasn’t focused on the writer in recent years, a decades-old fatwa demanding his killing still stands.
California’s contentious and highly anticipated legislation banning addictive social media sites is dead in the water…for now at least.
“A sitting president can’t just say ‘I declassify you’ while waving his hands over a file folder.”
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