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BlizzCon is upon us, which means Blizzard had a ton of announcements for fans of its games duing the opening ceremony. The next Overwatch 2 hero was among the reveals and, as expected, the new tank is Baptiste’s old running buddy, Mauga. A leak on the Nintendo Switch eShop’s news tab gave the game away a few hours early.

Mauga wields a pair of chainguns and he has an unstoppable charge ability that can knock enemies off of maps. Another ability reduces damage sustained by nearby allies and allows them to heal when they attack enemies. Mauga’s ultimate ability looks fun, if terrifying for the other team. He traps nearby opponents into a cage match and has unlimited ammo for a short period of time. 

Best of all, you’ll have a chance to try Mauga before he officially joins the roster when Overwatch 2‘s eighth season goes live in December. He’ll be available in most game modes on all platforms this weekend. BlizzCon attendees are able to try out Mauga on site too.

Fans have been awaiting Mauga’s arrival in the game for several years. Blizzard had long intended to make him a playable character. The latest Overwatch 2 map, Samoa, included several references to the newcomer as well.

Meanwhile, game director Aaron Keller touched on some of the things that are coming to Overwatch 2 in 2024. The next competitive game mode is called Clash, which has five points lined up in a row. The first team to capture all five points or reach a maximum score wins. The first map will be a new take on Hanamura, an old favorite of many (including yours truly). 

Early next year, there will be a major rework of the competitive system with new rewards. Upcoming seasons will be themed around things like eldritch horror, Egyptian mythology and witches. Fans will also enter a mirror universe in which heroes and villains trade places. 

In addition, three more heroes will arrive in 2024. A damage hero named Venture will arrive in season 10 (which is likely to start in April) while a support codenamed Space Ranger will debut in season 12 i.e. around August. Some more details about what’s ahead will be revealed during a BlizzCon panel on Saturday.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-try-new-overwatch-2-hero-mauga-this-weekend-190042655.html?src=rss 

Apple’s extended return policy has kicked in, which means the holiday season is officially upon us. Apple typically offers a standard 14-day return window. But under the newly revised policy, products purchased between November 3, 2023 and December 25, 2023, will be returnable until January 8, 2024. Apple’s holiday grace period gives you more than enough time to return those AirPods from your grandmother because she didn’t know you were firmly planted in Samsung’s ecosystem.

You can return most products in Apple’s lineup, but there are a few exceptions. The return policy may not cover phones that are purchased with wireless carrier financing plans, so double-check that before you commit. Additionally, Apple doesn’t allow the return of digital software downloads, products from the Software Update Program like software upgrades and Apple Gift Cards.

The extended return policy is open for those in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Singapore and many other countries. However, some countries, including Italy, Spain, Mexico and Japan, have a slightly longer return window. Products purchased between November 3, 2023 and January 6, 2024, may be returned through January 20, 2024 in these countries.

It’s worth noting that this seasonal revision doesn’t negate the terms and conditions of the standard return policy. Apple says all other terms and conditions provided in the Apple Online Store Sales and Refunds Policy are still applicable — so make sure you keep things in like-new condition if you want to make an exchange. 

Of course, the holiday policy doesn’t just apply to gifts. You can totally use this time to buy one of those new colorful M3 iMacs and then exchange for a new color if you change your mind.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-extended-holiday-return-policy-is-now-in-effect-192054672.html?src=rss 

Can you smell it? Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and some companies have already begun the onslaught of sales. Solo Stove, for instance, has just cut the ribbon on its annual Black Friday sale, offering discounts on numerous fire pits and related items and accessories. The biggest discount here is for the Ranger Backyard Bundle 2.0, which now costs $320 instead of $465. That’s a savings of $145. The Yukon 2.0 bundle goes even further, with a discount of $245. 

These bundles include a next-gen fire pit, a marked improvement over the original, along with plenty of accessories, like the new base plate and ash pan. You also get a stand, a lid, a weather-resistant enclosure and even a carrying case for those BBQ-driven beach trips.

We praised the removable base plate and ash pan with the 2.0 series, as these tools eliminated the messy cleanup process involved with previous releases. We also enjoyed the proprietary 360-degree airflow technology, allowing for an efficient burn for long periods of time. As a matter of the fact, the only significant downside here is the normal price, and this sale helps to alleviate those concerns.

The fire pit bundles are not the only discount available via Solo Stove’s Black Friday sale, though they are the most significant. You can grab the well-regarded Pi Prime pizza oven for $300, a savings of $50. If you are filled to the brim with fire pit accessories, you can also buy the Ranger 2.0 by itself for $200 instead of $230.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/solo-stoves-black-friday-deals-include-up-to-245-off-fire-pit-bundles-184011930.html?src=rss 

Not too long ago, Marvel Studios seemed indestructible. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has faced some significant setbacks over the last few years. As laid out in a Variety report this week, Marvel has been contending with a number of issues such as box office disappointments, while Jonathan Majors (who portrays the MCU’s latest centerpiece villain) is awaiting trial for assault and harassment charges. Marvel also seemed to be stretching itself thin between its many movies and TV shows amid reports that visual effects staffers were overworked.

Perhaps with all of that in mind, Marvel is trying something a bit different with its next streaming series in a bid to get fans back on board. Echo will be the first Marvel show to arrive on Disney+ and Hulu simultaneously. On top of that, for the first time since its former Netflix shows, Marvel will return to TV-MA-rated fare and drop all five episodes of the series simultaneously on January 10. However, Echo will only be available on Hulu until April 9.

Echo will be the first superhero series to have both a deaf and a Native American character in the central role, as Variety notes. Maya Lopez/Echo (Alaqua Cox) first appeared in Disney+ series Hawkeye in 2021, though she’s more of an anti-hero.

The show’s first trailer shows Echo squaring off against a returning Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). Based on this evidence, the series looks to have a darker, more adult-oriented tone that’s more aligned with the likes of Daredevil (that show’s titular character appears briefly in this trailer) and Jessica Jones than Ms. Marvel or Loki.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echo-will-be-the-first-marvel-show-to-hit-disney-and-hulu-simultaneously-172206411.html?src=rss 

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, first launched in 2021 to explore the Trojan asteroids trapped near Jupiter, has made an interesting discovery. The spacecraft found an asteroid, nicknamed Dinky, that actually has a smaller asteroid orbiting it, as originally reported by Scientific American. That’s right. It’s basically a moon with its own moon. It’s an ouroboros of cosmic curiosity.

The technical term here is a binary asteroid pair and Dinky, whose real name is Dinkinesh, was spotted by Lucy during a quick fly by. That’s when the spacecraft spotted the smaller “moon” orbiting it.

“A binary was certainly a possibility,” Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, told Scientific American. “But it was not expected, and it’s really cool.”

As a matter of fact, the fly by itself wasn’t supposed to find anything of note. It was simply a trial run for the team to hone its skills before investigating the aforementioned Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter. The team wanted to make sure Lucy’s probe would successfully latch onto a space rock, even when both objects were moving extremely fast. Guess what? It worked. Hal Levinson, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said that the test was “amazingly successful.”

As for Dinky and its, uh, even dinkier satellite, NASA scientists still have a long way to go with its investigation, as only about one third of the relevant data has been beamed down to Earth. NASA has released a series of images showing Dinky and its pseudo-moon, but not any actual data as of yet.

Even just from these images, however, you can tell a lot about these two celestial bodies. There’s a visible equatorial ridge on the main body of Dinky aka Dinkinesh and a secondary ridge-line branching off from it. The parent asteroid is covered in craters, likely the result of numerous hits by other asteroids. Levinson says that there are more images to come of the secondary satellite and that these pictures suggest that the junior asteroid has some “interesting” stuff going on. He goes on to say that the shape is “really bizarre.”

Binary asteroid pairs are not rare, as researchers have found that around 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids boast a cute lil orbital companion. NASA and affiliated researchers are still waiting for more data on the pair, including color images and spectroscopy that should shed some more light on the two asteroids. Levinson says “there’s a lot of cool stuff to come.”

In the meantime, Lucy will continue on its original mission, to investigate those mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. It’ll make contact with one in 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-discovered-that-an-asteroid-named-dinky-actually-has-its-own-moon-173028204.html?src=rss 

YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers is hurting the companies who make them. Multiple ad blocking companies say that thousands of people are uninstalling their products after YouTube started showing warnings to people trying to watch videos on its website with ad blockers enabled.

One of the companies, AdGuard, told Wired that more than 11,000 people have uninstalled its Chrome extension each day since October 9, compared to 6,000 uninstallations per day before YouTube implemented the change. On October 18, 52,000 people uninstalled AdGuard, the company’s CTO Andrey Meshkov told Wired. However, installations of AdGuard’s paid version, which YouTube’s crackdown doesn’t affect, went up.

Another ad blocking company, Ghostery, said that its usage was flat in October as it experienced three to five times the daily number of installs as well as uninstalls. Notably, the company said that more than 90 percent of its users who completed a survey about why they uninstalled the product said they did so because the tool no longer worked with YouTube.

Since YouTube’s crackdown only seems to affect people who access its website through Chrome on laptops and desktops, some users also tried to use other browsers as a workaround. Ghostery told Wired that its installations of Microsoft’s Edge browser went up by 30 percent in October compared to September.

YouTube ads are increasingly contributing more to Google’s overall revenue. The company sold more than $22 billion in ads on the platform from the beginning of this year through September. But the streaming platform is also trying to push more people to pay for YouTube Premium, which gets rid of ads, lets people download videos, stream videos in higher quality and access YouTube Music. Earlier this year, the company bumped up YouTube Premium’s pricing by $2 to $14 a month.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/thousands-of-people-are-uninstalling-ad-blockers-after-youtubes-big-crackdown-174009041.html?src=rss