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There’s a new M4 MacBook Air reportedly on the way soon, but if you can’t wait or don’t need the extra power of Apple’s M4 chip, you can get a M3 MacBook Air for $200 off on Amazon right now. That lowers the current MacBook Air’s price from $1,099 to $899 — not the $850 low we’ve seen before for the Air, but pretty close.

Engadget picked the M3 MacBook Air as the best MacBook overall because of its lightweight design, bright screen and the reliable performance of the M3 chip. Besides support for Wi-Fi 6E, Apple’s custom silicon allows the MacBook Air to power two external displays at once, something sorely missing from the previous generation Air.

The current deal only covers the Air model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in Apple’s “Midnight” blue finish, but that should be more than enough storage and memory for most people. If you’d still like a deal but with a few more colors to choose from, several other MacBooks are also on sale.

For example, you can get an M2 MacBook Air for $200 off when you use a coupon, lowering the price from an already discounted $950 to $800. That deal applies to the Air with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and covers multiple different colors. The M2 chip is technically less powerful than the M3, but for day-to-day computer tasks you’ll get more than enough performance and battery life from an M2 MacBook Air.

If you’re willing to pay more and you want one of the most capable laptops Apple currently sells, you can could instead opt for a new M4 MacBook Pro for $1,399, $200 off its usual $1,599 price. Apple introduced the M4 MacBook Pros near the end of 2024 with a focus on improving graphical performance. The new MacBook Pro is the closest Apple has gotten to a gaming laptop, and it includes other upgrades, like a brighter screen and an improved webcam. 

The model on sale includes 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, a healthy amount to start with if you plan on using the MacBook Pro for work. All of the MacBooks on sale on Amazon also support Apple Intelligence, if you’re interested in exploring Apple’s approach to AI features like summarization and text generation.

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/deals/the-m3-macbook-air-is-200-off-at-amazon-right-now-210927500.html?src=rss 

Warner Bros Discovery recently shut down a trio of game studios, including the well-regarded Monolith Productions. This has put one of the coolest game mechanics of the 2010s in limbo. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor’s excellent Nemesis system is locked behind a patent owned by Warner Bros all the way until 2036, according to reporting by Eurogamer.

The Nemesis system was featured in both 2014’s Shadow of Mordor and the follow-up Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Simply put, it’s a gameplay mechanic in which enemies remember previous encounters with the protagonist. These antagonists, typically orcs in the LOTR games, would use these humiliating memories to fuel their thirst for revenge as they rose through the ranks. This mechanic also worked both ways, so enemies would remember besting you in a previous encounter. 

It was the best part of those two titles and Monolith had planned on bringing back the mechanic for a now-cancelled Wonder Woman game. Now the system is lying unused, locked behind a patent vault in David Zaslav’s mega-yacht or whatever. Gigantic multinational corporations are awesome!

Warner Bros Discovery patented the system in 2016, which you can read right here. The patent is active until 2036, so long as the company keeps up with the associated fees. It’s worth noting that in the nine years since patenting the system, it’s only been used in a single game. That’s Shadow of War, which came out in 2017 and was already in development when Warner Bros went ahead with the patent.

It remains to be seen if Warner Bros Discovery will do anything with the Nemesis system. It had nine years of heavy game development to make use of it across its entire IP portfolio, but didn’t. In that time period, plenty of Batman games and Hogwarts Legacy all came out. Those would have surely benefited from the unique mechanic. Oh well.

WB will still focus some resources on game development, but the company’s efforts will be primarily spent on four franchises. These include Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, the DC universe and Game of Thrones. Three of those four seem like good fits for the Nemesis system to me.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/shadow-of-mordors-innovative-nemesis-system-is-locked-behind-a-patent-until-2036-195437208.html?src=rss 

Riot Games is hitting “undo” on its recent massively unpopular changes to League of Legends that essentially made everything in the game harder for players to unlock without spending money. After the company saw negative comments spammed across social media, widespread talk of a player boycott and over 32,000 signatures gathered on a petition to fire CEO Dylan Jadeja, the company acknowledged that the recent updates “didn’t hit the mark for everyone.” As a result, Riot is (among other changes) bringing back Hextech Chests and cutting in half the Blue Essence cost of all champions to win back disgruntled players.

For a master class in the corporate art of selling opposing messages with equal gusto, watch Riot Games’ last two League Of Legends dev update videos back-to-back. Less than three weeks ago, studio head Andrei van Roon and executive producer Paul Bellezza put on their best Ward Cleaver faces to matter-of-factly explain why unpopular changes to the game were necessary for Riot’s long-term financial sustainability:

Fast-forward to Wednesday’s video, and the same pair can be seen hustling to backpedal as hard as possible, acknowledging that “some of you are frustrated, even questioning if Riot is still the company you’ve always known” while promising they “get it.” (I almost expected a crisis hotline number to flash across the screen.) “When our decisions don’t land the way we intended, it can damage your trust,” Bellezza somberly admits:

Setting aside the amusing nature of corporate attempts to personalize business decisions, today’s changes should help inspire more confidence from the fanbase.

Hextech Chests aren’t just returning — you’ll find more of them. Starting with next week’s patch (25.05), you’ll be able to earn up to 10 Chests and Keys per Act. Eight will be spread throughout the free Pass (in place of the Seasonal skin and Mystery Epic or Lower Skin); another two will be learnable through Honor (the game’s system to encourage good sportsmanship). Riot stressed that these will be identical to the Chests previously earned through Champ Mastery.

Other changes include a 50 percent reduction in Blue Essence cost for all champions. In addition, Riot is delaying the widely panned Sahn Uzal Mordekaiser Exalted skin “to take more time to make sure it better delivers on its core fantasy.” It also plans to take more time improving future Exalted skins, which means “you likely won’t see one in every Act this year as originally planned.” Finally, Clash is returning to a monthly schedule, Your Shop will be back in Patch 25.06 and the Blue Essence Emporium will reappear in 25.07.

The community is (understandably) pleased with itself in forcing the pivot. “Holy shit, bullying works,” u/DirtyChickenBones (an all-time handle if ever there was one) posted in the League subreddit. “NEVER STOP BULLYING CORPORATIONS,” u/HunniePopKing yelled triumphantly in the same thread.

Others retained a grounded realism about the reversal. “Don’t think for one second this changes their approach,” u/eBay_Riven_GG wrote. “They will keep limit-testing what they can get away with. Keep complaining if you want improvements.” Reacting to Bellezza’s comment about the changes not resonating with players, u/350 wrote, “‘Didn’t hit the mark for everyone,’ bruh, it didn’t hit the mark for anyone except the CEO.”

You can check out Riot’s dev blog post for more details on Riot’s reversal on all those changes that “didn’t hit the mark.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/riot-is-reversing-its-unpopular-league-of-legends-changes-203925763.html?src=rss 

Less than two weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation procedures, reportedly at the behest of Mark Zuckerberg and a small group of advisors. Among those caught off guard was the company’s own Oversight Board, the independent organization created by Meta to help shape its most sensitive policy decisions. The group is now looking to examine those changes, and in doing so, will test the enforceability of its own powers.

The changes Meta has enacted drastically reshape how the company polices content across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. It ended its fact-checking program in the US, and rolled back hate speech rules that protected immigrants and LGBTQ users on its apps. Unlike its previously proactive approach, it also reoriented its content moderation procedures so that many types of rule-breaking posts will only be removed if other users reported them.

The changes have raised questions about the role of the Oversight Board, which was created, Zuckerberg once said, because “Facebook should not make so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own.” If that’s what Meta is now doing, critics have asked, what exactly is the point of an ostensibly independent Oversight Board?

But the Oversight Board is already working to address Meta’s rewritten “hateful conduct” policy, according to board member Paolo Carozza, who spoke to Engadget. When Zuckerberg announced the changes in early January, the board already had four open cases involving Meta’s hate speech rules. The board now plans to use those cases to examine the new policies, which were rewritten to allow people to use dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and accuse LGBTQ people of being mentally ill.

“We deliberately delayed the decision of those cases after January 7, precisely so that we could go back to Meta again and ask a new round of questions,” Carozza, a law professor at Notre Dame who joined the Oversight Board in 2022, told Engadget. “We’re trying as much as possible to use the tools that we have to find out more information, bring more transparency and more certainty to how it’s going to play out in practice.”

The board, according to Carozza, has already had briefings with Meta as it pushes for more details about the new hate speech policies. But it could still be some time before its findings are made public. The open cases deal with several aspects of Meta’s hate speech rules, including immigration, gender identity, hateful symbols and incitement of violence.

In addition to the questions surrounding each case, Carozza said that the board is also grappling with how to prioritize the case decisions given the renewed importance of the underlying policies. “There are competing concerns about being quick and efficient versus being more thoughtful and deliberative,” he said.

But while the board may hope to provide more transparency about Meta’s decision-making, it’s unclear how much influence the board will ultimately end up having. Under its rules, Meta is only required to comply with the group’s decisions surrounding individual posts. The board’s policy recommendations are non-binding and Meta has a mixed track record at implementing its suggestions.

It’s also unclear how the board might be able to weigh in on Meta’s other changes, like the shuttering of fact-checking programs or shift away from proactive content moderation. “We were quite critical of the fact checking program in general, but our ordinary cases make it a little bit hard to get at that problem because it doesn’t come up through an appeals process within the scope of the kinds of cases that we get,” Carozza says. The board, he notes, could write a policy advisory opinion as it has with rules around COVID-19 misinformation and Meta’s cross-check rules for celebrities. But the board is only empowered to make those kinds of non-binding recommendations at Meta’s request.

That gets at one of the fundamental tensions of the Oversight Board: it may operate independently, but Meta ultimately dictates how much influence it can wield. “It would be unrealistic to expect that the standard for value and success of the board is that Meta, 100% of the time, does everything we ever tell them to do,” Carozza says, “We’re one piece of a complicated jigsaw puzzle of accountability and oversight.”

Still, the fact that the group wasn’t consulted on such major policy moves has raised some uncomfortable questions for the board. Dozens of civil society groups recently signed an open letter urging board members to resign in protest. In a letter to Zuckerberg, some members of Congress said the board “is rendered toothless” when Meta refuses to follow its own principles.

Carozzo acknowledges the Oversight Board’s limitations, but says that the billions of people on Meta’s apps are ultimately better off with the board intervening where it can. “If everybody were to resign en masse … the only people who would lose are Meta’s end users, especially those who are in especially vulnerable situations [and] communities around the world.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-oversight-board-will-weigh-in-on-metas-new-hate-speech-policies-174044682.html?src=rss 

In an utterly shocking, consumer-friendly move, Max won’t charge for something previously offered for free. Warner Bros. Discovery said on Wednesday that it’s shelving its previously announced plan to charge an extra $10 monthly for sports and news content. Instead, it’s cutting the content from the ad-supported tier next month, which sounds reasonable enough.

In 2023, Max said its Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add-On tier would only be free until February 2024, when it would become a $10 add-on for all tiers. But that date came and went (and then went some more) without news of the extra fees. Viewers waited silently like students who hoped their teacher would forget their homework assignment. Then, last September, Bloomberg reported that the $10 fee was still in the works — and could arrive as soon as that month. Uh oh.

But today’s news puts those concerns to rest, at least for paying subscribers. Ad-supported members will lose access to B/R Sports and CNN Max (the news network’s streaming redo) on March 30. Warner says those on that tier who want to retain access to sports and news can visit the Max Help Center for more info. So far, that page says nothing about it, so you’ll probably want to check back closer to the cutoff date.

B/R Sports streams more than 1,700 live games and events annually across leagues like the NBA (although it loses those rights after this season), MLB, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR and more. Meanwhile, CNN Max is Warner CEO David Zaslav’s latest attempt to turn a CNN streaming service into a revenue stream — something the debt-ridden company direly needs. This month alone, it made sweeping cuts to its games division and began offering some of its movies on YouTube.

Although Max subscribers will welcome today’s announcement, there’s reason to question whether the free integration will be permanent. In its press release, where you have to assume words were chosen carefully and pored over by layers of management, Max only said it won’t pursue that path… “for now.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/max-reverses-course-wont-charge-extra-for-live-sports-and-news-175010512.html?src=rss 

The DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro Adventure Combo bundle is on sale via Amazon for $369. This is 18 percent off and represents a record low price, as the normal cost is $449. The bundle includes the well-regarded Action 5 Pro camera, a trio of rechargeable batteries, a protective frame, a lens cover, an extension rod and more.

We heaped praise on the Osmo Action 5 Pro camera in our official review, calling it “a worthy GoPro rival.” The battery life here is next-level, allowing for over two hours of use when shooting 4K 60p video and four hours when shooting in 1080p. Again, this bundle comes with three batteries, which means twelve full hours of continuous shooting in 1080p. That’s a whole lot of ski jumps or whatever.

There’s also 47GB of internal storage, in addition to a microSD slot. Most action cameras don’t even have internal storage, so this is a much-appreciated upgrade. The Action 5 Pro is lightweight and waterproof down to 66 feet. There’s a waterproof case that extends this limit to 200 feet, but that doesn’t ship with this particular bundle.

As for the actual footage, we found it to be serviceable, but thought the color was slightly oversaturated. The video is also a bit less sharp than what’s produced with rival cameras. Other than these minor nitpicks, however, this is a near-perfect action camera, and those accessories sure sound useful.

The Adventure Combo isn’t the only bundle on sale right now, though it is the best value. The Essential and Standard bundles are also on sale, at $319 and $329 respectively.

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/deals/this-dji-osmo-action-5-pro-bundle-is-cheaper-than-ever-175747696.html?src=rss 

A new month is almost upon us, which means Sony is about to refresh the lineup of games that all PlayStation Plus members can claim and keep in their collection as long as they maintain their subscription. Between March 4 and March 31, you’ll be able to snag Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Sonic Colors: Ultimate and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard (PS5) is the clear headliner this time around. Fans had to wait a decade between new installments in BioWare’s series, partly because the studio rebooted its work on the latest title several times. Veilguard, an action RPG, is a direct sequel to 2014’s Dragon Age Inquisition. It garnered generally positive reviews and we appreciated the visuals and BioWare’s attention to detail with the game’s characters.

However, Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to meet BioWare parent EA’s sales expectations. In its first two months, the game brought in 1.5 million players, which is about half of what EA expected in that timeframe. That player count includes those who checked out the game on the EA Play Pro subscription service, so it’s not clear how many copies of the game EA has actually sold so far. That disappointing sales performance is perhaps one reason why Dragon Age: The Veilguard is joining the PS Plus Monthly Games lineup a hair over four months after it was released.

Sonic Colors: Ultimate (PS4) is a remaster of a platformer that was originally released on the Wii back in 2010. As for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (PS4 and PS5), that includes 13 classic TMNT games Konami released between 1989 and 1994, such as the all-time great Turtles in Time. The collection has a number of quality of life features, including online and local multiplayer, a rewind option, the ability to save at any point and button remapping. There’s also concept art and “historic TMNT media content.”

Until this trio joins the PS Plus Essential lineup on March 4, you can still snag February’s games. Those are Payday 3, High on Life and Pac-Man World Re-Pac.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/the-ps-plus-monthly-games-for-march-include-dragon-age-the-veilguard-181028013.html?src=rss