Category: Technology

If you’re looking to buy a fitness tracker for the new year, a sale on Fitbit devices that kicked off earlier this week may be of interest. Chief among the discounts is the Fitbit Inspire 3, the top budget pick in our fitness tracker buying guide, down to $70 in multiple colors. That matches the lowest price we’ve tracked. Fitbit normally sells the device for $100, though we’ve seen it fall $80 at several points in the past year. The sale is available at multiple retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Fitbit’s online store.

The Inspire 3 is an entry-level fitness band with a simple interface and no built-in GPS, so it’s not ideal for dedicated runners or cyclists. (Instead, you’ll need to bring your phone with you to map runs and bike rides.) For more casual users who just want a dedicated device to log their everyday activity, however, it should be enough. It’s slim, light and easy to wear, and navigating its color OLED display is straightforward. Its step, sleep and heart rate tracking is relatively accurate, and it can detect various workouts automatically. Fitbit rates its battery life at 10 days per charge — you may not always reach that, but it’ll last longer than most smartwatches either way. The design is also water-resistant up to 50 meters, so it’ll be safe in the pool. And while there’s no support for contactless payments or digital assistants, it can still display basic smartphone notifications. 

Fitbit’s app remains an uncomplicated way to view all your metrics after a recent makeover, though it did lose some longtime social features last year. New users will also need to log in with an account from Fitbit’s parent company Google. We wouldn’t be surprised to see more Google-related tweaks going forward, but for now, the Inspire 3 is still a good buy at this price for those who only need the essentials. 

If you do have a little bit more to spend and want a Fitbit smartwatch, however, the Fitbit Versa 4 is also worth a look at $150. That one is bigger and gets less battery life but has built-in GPS and more of the smart features the Inspire 3 lacks. We’ve seen this price for much of the last few months, but it’s only $10 above the best deal we’ve tracked.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fitbits-inspire-3-fitness-tracker-drops-back-to-an-all-time-low-of-70-162153884.html?src=rss 

Tesla has unveiled its EV delivery and production figures for 2023, and the company had another banner year — but it has Chinese rival BYD close behind. Elon Musk’s company produced 1.846 million EVs last year and delivered 1.809 million, besting 2022 deliveries by a wide 38 percent. Those figures include 494,989 EVs produced last quarter and 484,507 delivered.

Tesla’s originally projected it would sell 2 million vehicles in 2023, but revised that figure downward in its October 2023 earnings call. It did exceed analyst expectations for Q4 2023, though, according to CNBC. 

Tesla built 476,777 Model 3 and Model Y EVs last quarter and delivered 461,538 of them. Those include sales of the refreshed “Highland” Model 3. While Elon Musk predicted last quarter that the Model Y would become “the bestselling car on Earth,” the company didn’t break down sales between its two most popular models. The company sold 18,212 “other models” consisting of Model S and Model X EVs. There are no sales figures yet for the Cybertruck. 

Tesla has battled some negative press with its EV lineup, particularly around its Autopilot system, which has seen regulatory scrutiny in the US and other countries. EV sales no doubt received a boost from several price drops over the last year as well, with the Model 3 and Model Y most recently dropping to $38,990 and $45,990, respectively. Tesla chalked up the price drops to “economic uncertainty, higher interest rates, and shifting consumer sentiment” in its October earnings call. 

One of Tesla’s biggest markets is China, but the company is facing stiff competition there from another EV giant, BYD. That company announced sales of 3.02 million electrified vehicles in 2023, including 1.6 million were fully electric cars and 1.4 million hybrids. Most of BYD’s EVs sell at significantly lower price points that Tesla’s cars, however. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tesla-says-it-delivered-a-record-18-million-evs-in-2023-082906995.html?src=rss 

In the US, Montana and North Carolina have been leading the list of states with the highest number of searches for “VPN” over the past few days. That’s most likely because their new age verification laws have gone into effect on January 1, and adult websites are now either requiring a copy of visitors’ government IDs or have blocked access in the regions altogether. As 404Media reports, Pornhub has chosen to block people in both states from accessing its website instead of asking for verification. The other websites owned by its parent company Aylo (formerly MindGeek), including Brazzers, Redtube and YouPorn, are also no longer accessible. 

If anybody in Montana and North Carolina tries to access an Aylo website, they’ll see a video message from performer Cherie DeVille, explaining that giving a copy of their ID to adult platforms puts their children and their privacy at risk. “We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” DeVille added. 

That’s the same video message users from other states with similar age verification laws see when they visit Pornhub. Montana and North Carolina are but the latest states to require adult platforms to verify visitors’ ages: Louisiana started the trend in early 2023, and since then, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Virginia and Texas have passed their own versions. In North Carolina’s case, the rule was approved as part of legislation that requires high school students to take computer science classes. 

Other adult websites not owned by Aylo are using third-party providers to authenticate users’ ages in lieu of blocking whole regions altogether. Pornhub uses Louisiana’s digital driver’s license wallet app to verify local users’ identities, but not all states have ID apps that work with its system. The website told us that its traffic in Louisiana dropped by 80 percent when the state started enforcing its age verification law. That makes this new development another potential blow to Aylo after it was slapped with a $1.8 million fine in December for hosting and profiting from pornographic content that featured sex trafficking victims.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-blocks-montana-and-north-carolina-as-their-age-verification-laws-take-effect-033830719.html?src=rss 

Samsung’s Unpacked event is coming early this year, so set your calendar for January 17 at 1PM ET. Typically, these events drop the first week of February, so this is an interesting switch-up, given the proximity to CES 2024. This will be an in-person event, at the SAP Center in San Jose, but will also be live streamed across Samsung’s various channels, including YouTube.

This is Samsung, so it’s not advertising any details regarding this year’s Unpacked. We do, however, have some ideas. It’s highly likely the company will not only announce the arrival of the Galaxy S24 flagship smartphone series, but will open up pre-orders immediately following the event. To that end, the company has already started a “pre-reserve” program in which you plop down your name and email address to pre-order, well, something.

You won’t know what you’ve pre-ordered until January 17. Thankfully, there’s no commitment here and you even get a $50 credit toward whatever devices Samsung has got cooking up. The company made a similar offer last year, so it must have worked out.

Speaking of last year, we got the Galaxy S23 line in all of its glory. The Galaxy S23 and S23+ were minor refreshes, so perhaps the S24 will up the ante a bit. In 2022, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S22 smartphone line. Are you seeing a pattern? Just like Apple tends to use September for new iPhone announcements, Samsung drops new Galaxy smartphones at Unpacked.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the presentation will just be Galaxy S24 smartphones. Samsung tends to also announce new laptop iterations at the first Unpacked each year, so we could get the Galaxy Book4 or something similar.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-first-unpacked-event-of-2024-will-take-place-on-january-17-230040664.html?src=rss 

If you’ve got some gift card money to spend after the holidays and are looking to grab a new pair of wireless earphones, here’s a deal worth noting: Apple’s AirPods Pro are back on sale for $190 at Amazon, Target and Best Buy. We’ve seen the noise-canceling earphones fall to this price a few times over the last couple of months, but it still comes within a dollar of the best deal we’ve tracked. The offer applies to latest version of the earphones, which comes with a USB-C charging case as standard. For reference, Apple normally sells the pair for $249, though it’s almost always gone for less at third-party retailers since arriving last September.

The second-gen AirPods Pro are the “best for iOS” pick in our guide to the best wireless earbuds, and we gave the Lightning-based model a score of 88 in our review back in September 2022. This USB-C model adds slightly improved dust resistance and lossless audio support with Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro headset on top of the new charging port but is effectively identical otherwise. That means it still delivers pleasant and warm sound, effective active noise cancellation (ANC), a superb transparency mode, and a host of features that make life easier for Apple device owners, including faster pairing, hands-free Siri, virtual surround sound (which is personalized to your fit) and Find My tracking. 

A software update last fall added a few more helpful tricks, including an “Adaptive Audio” mode that automatically adjusts the ANC and transparency modes based on your surroundings and lower the volume when you start a conversation.

You really need to be an iPhone owner to get the most out of the this, though. Even then, the AirPods Pro’s call quality and six-hour battery life are just OK, and its sound isn’t as customizable as competing models. Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds offer better ANC, the Beats Fit Pro has a better fit for the gym and Sony’s WF-1000XM5 is more well-rounded on the whole. Apple may also add ANC to its lower-cost AirPods at some point in 2024, according to a recent Bloomberg report (though new Pros aren’t expected until 2025). And if you already own the Lightning-based Pros and just want the USB-C case, you can now buy the latter separately. All that said, at this price, the USB-C AirPods Pro remain a solid value for Apple diehards in search of a new pair of premium wireless earphones.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-airpods-pro-with-usb-c-are-back-down-to-190-right-now-153404826.html?src=rss 

Generative AI provoked a lot of discussion last year around images, text and video, but it may soon affect the gaming industry as well. Square Enix said it plans to be “aggressively applying” AI and other cutting-edge tech in 2024 to “create new forms of content,” according to president Takashi Kiryu’s New Year’s letter. 

“Artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential implications had for some time largely been subjects of academic debate,” he said. “However, the introduction of ChatGPT, which allows anyone to easily produce writing or translations or to engage in text-based dialogue, sparked the rapid spread of generative AIs. I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming.” 

The company will start by using it to improve productivity in development and assist in marketing. “In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities,” Kiryu added. Square Enix also plans to build more immersive AR and VR experiences, including “new forms of content that fuse the real world and virtual worlds.” 

Kiryu name-checked ChatGPT, despite the fact that its creator OpenAI was recently sued by The New York Times for copyright infringement. In the gaming industry directly, companies including Valve have said they may restrict games that use AI on their platforms over similar concerns. 

Square Enix didn’t specifically state that AI would be used to generate content in the form of characters, voices, environments or anything else, though. Rather, it appears to be more of a broad aspiration than anything specific. The company has made similar proclamations in the past about blockchain, NFTs and Web 3.0, but it only gave those scant mention in this year’s letter. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/square-enix-plans-aggressive-use-of-ai-to-create-new-forms-of-content-141602313.html?src=rss