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Spring is coming, and with it comes many opportunities to put your earbuds in and go on a sunny walk reminiscent of a movie montage. If you’re looking for an updated pair that won’t cost too much, there’s good news: The second-generation Apple AirPods Pro are currently on sale for $190, down from $249. The 24 percent discount brings these earbuds back to their record-low price. 

Apple released its second-gen AirPods Pro in late 2022, and while they’re certainly not a budget wireless earbud, they offer a lot for under $200. We gave them an 88 in our initial review thanks to several internal updates from their predecessor, such as the ability to swipe for volume control (handy if your device isn’t nearby). Apple also added Adaptive Transparency, Personalized Spatial Audio and an H2 chip that improves noise canceling. Externally, Apple shrunk the ear tip for a better fit.

Even the case got an upgrade, with a built-in speaker that will ping if you need to find it and a hook for a lanyard (of course, the string is available separately). Speaking of locating it, the second-gen AirPods Pro case also got a U1 chip that powers Precision Finding in Find My.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-airpods-pro-are-back-to-a-low-of-190-124757007.html?src=rss 

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X) in October 2022, he has thrown a lot of things at the wall and hoped they stuck (read: make money). Now, he’s taking a page from YouTube and launching a video streaming service on the platform, SamMobile reports. Musk announced that the feature was “Coming soon” in a quote tweet from the DogeDesigner’s account: “You can soon watch your favorite X long form videos directly on your SmartTVs.”

X will launch a dedicated app that allows users to watch these videos on Samsung TV and Amazon’s Fire TV. Musk recently said X would be a “video-first” platform moving forward, and this development shows that this will translate beyond the small content boxes typically available on feeds to a bigger screen. At the time, Musk also claims that eight out of ten times a person visits X, they’re watching videos.

The decision follows bad news for X, with a recent Edison Research report finding that 2024 has seen a 30 percent drop in the site’s usage compared to 2023. In X’s continued bid to change (and remain popular), it has been leaning into resources for creators and its dwindling advertisers. One such shift came in a February announcement that the platform would roll out tools so that “advertisers on X can run ads against a curated list of premium content creators” — including pre-roll video ads, Forbes reported. As for longer videos, we’ll have to wait until they roll out on Samsung and Fire TVs to see how effectively they grab users’ attention.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-will-launch-a-youtube-like-video-app-on-samsung-and-amazon-tvs-120004624.html?src=rss 

Despite combining for 32 nominations, Netflix and Apple TV+ were nearly shut out of of the 2024 Oscars, with Netflix winning a single award for Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Best Live Action Short Film). The big surprise was Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple TV+) not gaining a single statue, notably Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress prize to Poor Things‘ Emma Stone. 

Universal was the big winner with Oppenheimer (Best Picture, Best Director, editing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, original score, cinematography) while Poor Things (Disney’s Searchlight Pictures) garnered four prizes. The other half of “Barbenheimer,” (Barbie, ofc) took just a single prize for best song with What Was I Made For (and not I’m Just Ken, sung live at the ceremony by supporting actor nominee Ryan Gosling). 

The gala was a letdown for Netflix, which scored six prizes last year. Netflix has won 23 Oscars since 2017, but has yet to win in the Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress categories. That’s despite four nominations this year for Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Colman Domingo for Rustin and Annette Bening for Nyad. 

Lily Gladstone was perhaps slightly favored over Stone to win for Killers of the Flower Moon and she also would have been the first Indigenous American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress. The studio was also up for Best Supporting Actor with nominee Robert De Niro and Best Director for Scorsese. Apart from Gladstone’s loss, though, awards were distributed largely as anticipated. 

This year, it couldn’t be said that judges were swayed by a lack of theatrical presence from streamers. Killers of the Flower Moon had a fairly wide release in cinemas, while Maestro stayed in theaters for a month prior to its Netflix release. Both chalked up decent box office numbers. 

The ceremony itself appears to have been decent, with Deadline proclaiming that producers “finally made an Academy Awards ceremony for the 21st century” and The Hollywood Reporter calling it “busy and eclectic.” USA Today did describe it as “boring,” but every Oscars for the past 20 years has gotten the same knock.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oppenheimer-ruled-2024-oscars-as-apple-tv-and-netflix-were-nearly-shut-out-052543094.html?src=rss 

Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard who stepped down at the end of last year, is apparently interested in buying TikTok as a new bill in the US threatens to ban the app or force its sale. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Kotick mentioned the idea of partnering on such a purchase to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others seated with him at a conference dinner last week, and brought it up with ByteDance Executive Chair Zhang Yiming. If TikTok is sold, the WSJ notes, it would likely go for hundreds of billions of dollars.

Kotick led Activision for over 30 years but didn’t exactly leave on a good note. In a 2021 lawsuit that was settled last year, the company was accused of fostering sexual harassment and gender discrimination under his leadership, in what was described as a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture.” The Wall Street Journal soon after reported that Kotick was aware of misconduct and assault allegations over the years and did not properly disclose some of these instances to the board. He was also accused of harassment himself, The Verge noted at the time. Activision Blizzard called the report “misleading.”

After the information came to light, Activision Blizzard employees walked out and demanded Kotick resign, but that did not happen. Kotick ultimately stayed on as head of Activision Blizzard until the completion of Microsoft’s acquisition in 2023.

Kotick’s alleged interest in TikTok comes at a tumultuous moment for the immensely popular platform after lawmakers introduced the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” last week, which President Biden said he would sign, if it passes. Under the bill, which goes to the House floor on Wednesday for a vote, TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, would have to sell the app within six months. Otherwise, it’ll be banned from US app stores.

TikTok has been trying to get its millions of US users to rally behind it in wake of the bill’s sudden momentum, and sent out push notifications last week asking users to call their representatives. After the House vote, where it’s expected to be approved after clearing the Energy and Commerce Committee in a unanimous vote last week, the bill would move on to the Senate. While lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok center on fears of data privacy and its connection to China, WSJ notes that involving Altman in its purchase could open the app up to the possibility of being used by OpenAI to train its AI models, which doesn’t exactly sound ideal for users, either.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/activision-blizzards-ex-ceo-bobby-kotick-reportedly-wants-to-buy-tiktok-210826589.html?src=rss