Category: Technology

Apple finally dropped some long-awaited updates this week:  An M4 MacBook Air (now starting at $999!), M3 iPad Air, as well as a refreshed Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and M4 Max chips. In this episode, Cherlynn, Devindra and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham chat about all of Apple’s new hardware, as well as some interesting tidbits from Mobile World Congress 2025. Devindra also dives into his reviews of NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 and AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT. It turns out AMD has finally delivered some killer GPUs to counter NVIDIA’s dominance.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

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Topics

MacBook Air refresh announced with an M4 chip and a slight price drop – 2:04

What’s hot at Mobile World Congress 2025 – 23:10

Lenovo’s Solar PC – 35:20

Xiaomi 15 Ultra (with a fancy Leica camera) – 37:53

New releases from Nothing – 39:16

Samsung releases a trio of A series devices – 40:35

NVIDIA vs. AMD part ∞: AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT edge out the GeForce RTX 5070 – 46:20

Pop culture picks – 54:11

Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Guest: Nathan Ingraham
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/engadget-podcast-the-m4-macbook-air-and-mobile-world-congress-2025-123012794.html?src=rss 

The Disney+ Hulu Duo Basic plan usually costs $11 a month, but the companies are giving a big discount this spring. You can secure four months of the joint Disney+ and Hulu streaming subscription for just $3 a month. That comes out to just $12 in total and a savings of $32 for the whole offer period. The deal is for new and returning subscribers and is only for the basic tier, which includes advertisements on both Disney+ and Hulu content. You can sign up for the sale price from today through March 30.

At a time when it feels like every streaming service, audio and video, is pushing their subscription costs ever-higher, it’s a treat to get any amount of entertainment access for a discount. That’s why we’re big fans of the Disney+ Hulu Duo plans; even at the normal rate, it unites two of our favorite standalone content libraries in a single package that’s a solid deal at its normal rates. 

Snagging the basic tier for an even lower cost feels like a no-brainer, especially if you’re invested in any facet of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if you’re counting the days until the second season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives or if you just like to hum along with Encanto in the background while you work. 

Keep in mind that the ad-free Duo Premium plan isn’t covered in this promotion, nor is the option that also bundles ESPN into the package. Access to Duo Premium will still run you $20 a month, while the Trio bundles begin at $17 a month.

Check out our coverage of the best streaming deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/four-months-of-the-disney-hulu-duo-basic-streaming-plan-is-on-sale-for-only-12-right-now-123511911.html?src=rss 

It’s an exciting day if you’re a fan of the BBC and the Google TV Streamer. BBC iPlayer is finally available on the streaming platform almost six months after Google launched it, 9to5Google reports. Google certified its TV Streamer for use with BBC iPlayer back in November 2024. 

BBC One and BBC Two are now under the TV streamer’s Channels tab, while BBC iPlayer appears on the Google Play Store with a new download option. BBC iPlayer allows anyone to pays for a TV license in the UK to watch their favorite shows and movies live, on-demand or downloaded to their device. It has already been available for use on Google TV and Android TV.

Google launched its TV Streamer in September as a replacement for the Chromecast line. It retails for $100 and features a smart home panel that allows users to see and control devices like lights, thermostats and doorbell cameras. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/bbc-iplayer-is-now-available-on-googles-tv-streamer-110029855.html?src=rss 

It seems that Instagram is working on a “community chat” feature that allows people to organize groups of up to 250 people in the app. The so-far unreleased feature was spotted by developer Alessandro Paluzzi, who has a solid track record of uncovering new features within Meta’s apps.

According to screenshots shared by Paluzzi, it seems that community chats will function similarly to Discord. Individual users can form the chats around specific topics and control who can join, though there’s apparently a limit of 250 people per community.

Unlike Instagram’s broadcast channels, which allow creators to blast out messages to their followers, anyone who is in the community chat can participate in the conversation. There are also built-in moderation features. “Admins can remove messages and members to keep the channel safe,” the screenshot says. “We also review Community Chat against our Community Standards.”

It’s not clear when, or if, the feature may launch. An Instagram spokesperson described it as an internal prototype that’s not being tested outside the company. But Meta has previously released similar features in its other apps. WhatsApp began experimenting with a “Communities” feature in 2022, and brought “Community Chats” to Facebook and Messenger later that same year. Mark Zuckerberg said at the time it was meant to help people find “a new way to connect with people who share your interests.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-experimenting-with-a-discord-like-community-chat-feature-234832236.html?src=rss 

It’s the second anniversary of the Playdate’s Catalog game store and to celebrate, you can get a bunch of great Playdate games and apps at a healthy discount — in many cases for 50 percent off or more.

The sale starts today, March 6, and ends on March 10 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Over 150 Playdate games are on sale, but if you’re looking for a good place to start, 13 titles from our list of the best Playdate games are currently discounted:

Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll for $6, down from $8.

Angel Pop for $4, down from $6.

Mars After Midnight for $3, down from $6.

Summit for $4, down from $6.

Reel-istic Fishing for $5, down from $8.

Under the Castle for $6, down from $10.

Core Fault for $3, down from $6.

You’re Gonna Miss the Bus! for $3, down from $6.

The Keyper for $1, down from $3.

You Cannot Go Back! for $1, down from $3.

Penrose for $1, down from $2.

Four Corners for $3, down from $6.

The Botanist for $6, down from $9.

That’s on top of other great options you can buy, like the fast-paced puzzle game XTRIS for $3, historical RPG Quest for X for $1 or roguelite mining game SpaceRat Miner for $6. Panic, the creators of the Playdate, introduced Catalog as a supplement to the Playdate’s first “Season” of games when it was still uncertain if another one was going to happen. The tiny handheld supports sideloading games from third-party stores like Itch, but Catalog offers a more curated selection if you don’t want to spend time finding something good. 

Now that Panic’s confirmed that a second season of Playdate games is on the way in 2025, this Catalog sale is a perfect opportunity to stock up on anything you might have missed before the new season launches.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-big-playdate-sale-discounts-13-of-our-favorite-games-000040558.html?src=rss 

It was a swing and a miss for the first private attempt at an asteroid mission, but the company is still chalking it up as a win. California startup AstroForge launched a spacecraft dubbed Odin on February 26, but the team lost communication with it shortly after its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

“The chance of talking with Odin is minimal, as at this point, the accuracy of its position is becoming an issue,” the company said in its extensive debrief of the mission. Technical issues occurred at its primary ground station in Australia, but AstroForge said that other problems also could have occurred on Odin to further prevent establishing contact.

Although the launch was a bust, AstroForge maintained optimism about the project as a valuable learning experience for its eventual goal of creating and operating an asteroid mining vehicle. The company is targeting the asteroid 2022 OB5, with the aim of eventually landing on its surface and extracting potentially valuable resources. Odin was built in 10 months for $3.5 million, a sliver of the money and time federal space projects have taken to complete.

AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich had several quotes in the debrief, all peppered with expletives, and he summed up the company ethos as, “At the end of the day, like, you got to fucking show up and take a shot, right? You have to try.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-first-private-asteroid-mission-probe-is-probably-lost-in-deep-space-224803775.html?src=rss 

Google is once again in the crosshairs of Republicans in Congress because of alleged censorship, Bloomberg writes. The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Google’s parent company Alphabet and CEO Sundar Pichai for evidence of communication between the tech company and the Biden administration.

The subpoena specifically asks for documents covering communications between Alphabet and the executive branch, along with discussions Alphabet might have had internally or with third-parties about those communications. The Committee hopes to snowball the discovery that the Biden administration made requests to Meta to remove COVID-19 misinformation into a case for “new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users,” the subpoena says. 

None of these concerns are particularly new. Pichai and other tech CEOs have been brought in front of Congress to explain things like content moderation, censorship and bias before. In the past, it’s mostly seemed like a way for members of Congress to get sound bites, but the aggressive, retaliatory nature of the Trump administration might give these new demands more teeth. Helping to pay for Trump’s inauguration and showing up for photos didn’t get Google protection in the end, assuming it doesn’t manage to wriggle out of the ongoing antitrust case against it.

Tech companies might be getting attention from Congress, but the idea that the current administration might want to make censorship demands doesn’t appear to be a concern. President Trump has expressed interest in using the Take It Down Act, a bill designed to hold websites liable for hosting and not removing Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII), to eliminate any kind of speech he dislikes. The disastrous potential misuses of the law have been outlined by activists before, but the bill passed in the Senate and is now waiting to be taken up by the House.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/house-republicans-subpoena-google-over-alleged-censorship-212115140.html?src=rss 

ChatGPT on macOS is about to become more useful for coding. With the latest update for the app (version 1.2025.057), ChatGPT can now edit code directly within an integrated development environment — no need to copy and paste. You can find the full list of supported IDEs on OpenAI’s website, but some of the more notable inclusions are Apple’s own Xcode, Visual Code Studio and offshoots of Jetbrains like Android Studio and PyCharm.       

According to OpenAI, IDE integration has been one of the most-requested features from macOS users since the company released its “works with app” framework back in November. If you’re a Plus, Pro or Team subscriber, you can start using the integration today. As for Enterprise, Edu and Free users, look for the updated app to arrive next week. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly this feature arrives just as “vibecoding” enters the popular lexicon. For the uninitiated, vibecoding is a form of coding that involves using AI tools like ChatGPT (and the power of vibes, of course) to program apps and games. While it might seem like a meme, vibecoding is very much a real thing. In a video titled “Vibe Coding is the Future,” Jared Friedman, a managing partner at Y Combinator, said a quarter of the startup accelerator’s W25 cohort have a code base that was 95 percent generated by AI. 

“This isn’t a fad. This isn’t going away. This is the dominant way to code. And if you are not doing it, you might just be left behind,” Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, added in the same video. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/chatgpt-for-macos-can-now-directly-edit-xcode-projects-201904659.html?src=rss 

The Nintendo DS is one of the toughest consoles to emulate, for an obvious reason. It’s the two screens. This is even an issue with ports. Some developers avoid the problem by mushing everything together onto a single traditional screen, like the recently-released Castlevania Dominus Collection. However, gamers may finally have an affordable emulation solution, thanks to the MagicX Zero 40 handheld console.

On its surface, it’s yet another handheld emulator, but this one features a four-inch vertically-oriented 800×480 touchscreen display. This should allow players to accurately recreate the experience of playing DS games. That’s great news, as replacement parts for any of the DS’s iterations are difficult to come by these days.

The MagicX Zero 40 runs on a 64-bit Android operating system and features 2GB of RAM and a battery that lasts for four to seven hours. As for storage, it supports flash cards up to 512GB. What about 3DS emulation? The specs sheet indicates there’s no support for Nintendo’s follow-up dual-screen handheld, but the Zero 40 will emulate games from all of the standard single-screen systems. These include the PSP, NES, SNES, Dreamcast and many more.

The Zero 40 is expected to be released this April, with an asking price of $75. Pre-orders were open, but are sold out for the time being. There’s another option for a dual-screen emulation, if you have deep pockets. The Ayaneo Flip DS will run Nintendo DS, 3DS and Wii U games, but starts at $739.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-magicx-zero-40-handheld-features-a-vertical-display-for-ds-emulation-175820385.html?src=rss