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Just days before Apple’s September 7th event, Amazon has discounted the company’s Series 7 smartwatch. You can get the 41mm GPS model in “Starlight” for $299, down from $399. The $100 price drop represents the best discount on the 41mm model since it was on sale for $280 during Amazon Prime Day earlier this summer. Unfortunately, most other sizes and colors are either sold out or otherwise unavailable.

Engadget deputy reviews editor Cherlynn Low gave the Apple Watch Series 7 a score of 90 when she reviewed the wearable last fall. The Apple Watch was already one of the best fitness trackers you could buy going into 2021. The Series 7 merely made it better with a larger screen, faster charging and overnight respiratory tracking.

With Apple widely expected to announce the Series 8 at its event on Wednesday, you’re probably wondering whether it makes sense to buy a Series 7 at this point. For what it’s worth, most prerelease leaks have suggested the company doesn’t have many big upgrades planned for its next smartwatch. The Series 8 will reportedly include a new body temperature sensor capable of notifying you when you’re running a fever, but won’t ship with a faster processor or significantly better display. The company also reportedly plans to announce a new “Pro” variant of the Apple Watch, but that device is expected to cost more than the standard Series 8 models.

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For the first time ever, there are more iPhones in use in the US than any other type of smartphone. Citing data from analytics firm Counterpoint Research, the Financial Times reports the iPhone overtook the entire Android ecosystem in June to claim 50 percent of US market share. In doing so, Apple achieved its highest-ever share of the American smartphone market. Apple achieved the feat on the back of the iPhone’s “active installed base,” a metric that takes into account all the people who are using an iOS device after purchasing one used.

In the early days of the iPhone, iOS (then known as iPhone OS) never had anywhere near 50 percent market share. At that time, companies like Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola dominated the smartphone space. By 2010, two years after its debut, Android overtook iOS to claim the larger install base. Ever since then, Google’s mobile operating system has been the dominant force in the global smartphone market, claiming more than 70 percent market share as of 2022, according to Statcounter.

Google probably has nothing to worry about. After all, the iPhone has always had an outsized presence in the US compared to other markets. Still, the company is likely looking at the situation closely. “This is a big milestone that we could see replicated in other affluent countries across the globe,” Jeff Fieldhack, Counterpoint’s research director, told The Times. To that point, Apple dominated the premium smartphone market in Q2 2022, with the iPhone representing 57 percent of all sales in the segment and shows no signs of slowing down. 

On Thursday morning, Moscow’s busy Fili district became the site of a traffic jam unlike any before it. Motherboard (via The Verge) reports hackers used Russia’s Yandex Taxi ride-hailing app to order dozens of drivers to coverage on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The act caused traffic on part of the already congested street to come to a standstill for about 40 minutes while Yandex worked to address the situation.

“On the morning of September 1st, Yandex Taxi encountered an attempt by attackers to disrupt the service — several dozen drivers received bulk orders to the Fili district of Moscow,” a Yandex spokesperson told Motherboard. In a separate statement shared with Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency, Yandex said it reworked its routing algorithm following the attack to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. The event is one of the first known instances of hackers exploiting a ride-hailing app to create a traffic jam.

Several Twitter accounts claiming affiliation with Anonymous say the hacktivist collective is behind the incident. On Friday, one Anonymous account said the group worked with the IT Army of Ukraine, a volunteer organization formed at the start of the war, to carry out the attack.

Anonymous previously claimed responsibility for a cyberattack that took down multiple Russian government websites, including those belonging to the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defence. “Faced with this series of attacks that Ukraine has been suffering from the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, we could not help but support the Ukrainian people,” the group said at the time.

Amazon’s buyout of iRobot and One Medical may take longer than expected. According to Politico and The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing both acquisitions. Announced within a month of each other, the deals are valued at $1.7 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively, and have the potential to reshape two markets at the same time.

One Medical parent company 1Life Healthcare disclosed the FTC was investigating its proposed merger with Amazon on Friday, reports The Journal. That same day, Politico said the Commission had also begun a review of Amazon’s deal to buy iRobot. According to the outlet, a formal probe is likely given the detailed questions the FTC sent to the two companies. Amazon and iRobot are reportedly preparing for a “potentially lengthy [and] arduous investigation.” One source Politico spoke to told the outlet the review is “wide-ranging” and seeks to determine if the deal would give Amazon an unfair advantage in the connected devices and retail markets.

At the very least, the FTC could easily delay Amazon from finalizing the deals by up to a year. For Amazon, a worst-case scenario would involve lawsuits from the Commission. At the start of the year, NVIDIA abandoned its proposed $40 billion acquisition of ARM after the FTC sued to block the purchase over concerns it would stifle competition across a variety of markets. Whatever comes next, Amazon won’t have an easy road ahead. FTC Chair Lina Khan is a well-known company critic. She rose to prominence in legal circles on the back of an article titled “Amazon's Antitrust Paradox.”

Following a failed attempt earlier this week, NASA has once again delayed the start of its Artemis 1 Moon mission. The agency was forced to scrub Saturday’s launch after staff at Kennedy Space Center failed to fix a persistent leak in a liquid hydrogen connection point on the agency's next-generation Space Launch System super heavy-lift rocket. NASA detected the leak at 7:23AM ET and tried to troubleshoot the problem in a few different ways, but after three failed attempts ground crew recommended a "no go" for Saturday's launch attempt.  

"The Artemis I mission to the Moon has been postponed. Teams attempted to fix an issue related to a leak in the hardware transferring fuel into the rocket, but were unsuccessful," NASA said on Twitter. 

Developing...

Around 120,000 taxpayers who filed a Form 990-T will be hearing from the IRS in the coming weeks, telling them that the agency inadvertently exposed their information on its website. Exempted organizations, including charities and religious groups, with unrelated business income are required to file Form 990-T. As The Wall Street Journal notes, though, people with individual retirement accounts invested in assets that generate income, such as real estate, are also required to file the form. Filings by exempted organizations are supposed to be public, but those by private individuals aren't.

The agency said the issue stemmed from a human cording error last year when Form 990-T became available for electronic filing. As you can guess, the error led to the bundling of non-public data with public data, which were all made available for download. It wasn't until these past weeks that an employee discovered the issue and triggered an investigation that eventually led to the removal of the data that shouldn't have been public in the first place.

In its letter, the IRS said the leaked data included individual names and business contact information. Affected taxpayers' Social Security numbers, individual income details and other information that could impact their credit weren't made public. The Journal, which was able to download some of the data before it was removed, said it included people's income within their IRAs, as well.

Even though it has already removed the leaked data, the IRS is still reviewing the situation. The Treasury Department's Anna Canfield Roth also said that the agency "has instructed the IRS to conduct a prompt review of its practices to ensure necessary protections are in place to prevent unauthorized data disclosures."

Sci-fi arena shooter Splitgate exploded in popularity after it hit consoles last summer, two years after it debuted on PC. It racked up more than 10 million downloads in the space of a month thanks to its blend of Halo and Portal gameplay. The fact it's free-to-play didn't hurt. However, developer 1047 Games is now winding down feature development, effectively putting the game into maintenance mode. Although Splitgate will move out of beta with its next update, that will be the game's "last major iteration," the studio said.

Splitgate became much more successful than 1047 expected. The studio attempted to turn a "college dorm dream project into a AAA game" that could compete with the biggest titles around. "But this also meant that as we've brought on top-tier talent from across the industry, we've spent a lot of our time trying to rework old content and systems that were originally built by a handful of people," 1047 wrote in a statement. "We are, in a way, bailing water while also trying to keep everyone who bought a ticket to board our ship happy, while also trying to turn our boat into a rocket ship."

The studio is now focused on its next project. It will again be a free-to-play shooter with portals and it's set in the same universe. 1047 will build the upcoming game from scratch in Unreal Engine 5.

Meanwhile, Splitgate, which has now been downloaded more than 18 million times, will stay online for the foreseeable future. As a thank you to players, 1047 will add a free battle pass with an infinite number of levels and new skins and characters when the final season starts on September 15th. 1047 will continue to make fixes and roll out smaller updates for Splitgate, but the game won't get any new features after the next big patch.

“After careful consideration and much deliberation the 1047 team has determined that in order to build the game that fans deserve — and to build it in a way that isn’t trying to retrofit our existing game — we are turning our attention away from iterative, smaller updates and going all-in to focus on a new game in the Splitgate universe which will present revolutionary, not just evolutionary, changes to the gameplay,” 1047 Games CEO and Splitgate creator Ian Proulx said in a statement. “Splitgate will remain online and supported for our dedicated community who have been the backbone of our studio from our earliest playtests on PC. Our community means everything to us and we can’t wait to share what’s next with them.”

Meanwhile, in an FAQ, 1047 acknowledged that players put time, effort and money into acquiring skins and other items. While it suggests that fans won't be able to carry those over to the next game, "we want to reward your efforts and time in Splitgate and we take that seriously. How we will do that is not decided at this time, but know that it is something we are focused on as we discuss the next game." It's also not clear whether the Splitcoin virtual currency will transfer over.

Ableton makes one of the most popular digital workstations (DAWs) around and if you’ve been waiting for a decent discount to pick up the music production suite, now might be the right time. The company has slashed the price of its software, including Ableton Live 11, by 25 percent for Labor Day weekend. The sale runs until September 6th.

Ableton Live 11 Intro has dropped from $99 to $74. It’s a decent way to dip your toes into what Ableton has to offer, since it has all the essentials. You'll get more than 1,500 sounds, 21 audio effects and 11 MIDI effects.

If you’re ready to splurge a little more to unlock nearly all of the DAW’s features and gain access to some extras, you can opt for Live 11 Standard, which is down from $449 to $337. It offers a few hundred sounds more than the Intro bundle, and you'll be able to use unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, in addition to having as many scenes as you desire.

At the higher end is the Live 11 Suite, which is $187 off the regular price at $562. This is billed as the complete integrated studio. It includes access to more than 5,000 sounds, for instance. If you already have a Live package, it's worth noting that you can save 25 percent on upgrades as well. Ableton also offers the option to split the cost of Live over six months at the discounted rate.

Although students and educators can get Live for 40 percent off the regular price, it's not often that we see Ableton run sales on its products. This is likely the best deal you'll find on the DAW unless you're a teacher or in school. After all, Ableton typically sticks to the same 25 percent discount on Black Friday.

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Parler, the app that's largely associated with Donald Trump supporters, conservatives and far-right extremists, is once again available for download via the Google Play Store. Billing itself as a "free speech network", Parler was banned and removed from the Android app store in January [2021] after the US Capitol insurrection. A Google spokesperson said at the time that the removal was due to the app's lack of "moderation policies and enforcement that remove egregious content like posts that incite violence." 

A Google spokesperson said "As we've long stated, apps are able to appear on Google Play provided they comply with Play’s developer policies. All apps on Google Play that feature user generated content (UGC) are required to implement robust moderation practices that prohibit objectionable content, provide an in-app system for reporting objectionable UGC, take action against that UGC where appropriate, and remove or block abusive users who violate the app's terms of use and/or user policy."

Parler has made substantial modifications to its app to comply with Google's policies. Bloomberg and Axios have reported that the apps' developers have implemented policies to moderate content and remove posts that incite violence, which made it compliant with Google's requirements. Despite its suspension and delisting from the Android app store, people could still download Parler from the company's website and continue to use it.

Parler was reinstated to the iOS app store in May this year, after modifying its AI-based moderation tool to hide content it identifies as "hate." Donald Trump's "Truth Social" has been available on the iOS store since February, though it has yet to launch on Android. Google reportedly has yet to approve that app due to concerns over its violations of standards and inadequate moderation policies.

If you prefer to support independent artists by buying their music instead of streaming it, today might be a good day to pick up some albums because Bandcamp Fridays are back. Since March 2020, around the time the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Bandcamp has often run a day-long event on which it doesn't charge commission fees.

Bandcamp hasn't run the event every month and there were concerns that Bandcamp Fridays might no longer happen after Epic Games bought the marketplace earlier this year. But, at least for the next few months, Bandcamp Fridays will be a thing again. Bandcamp confirmed it will run the event on October 7th, November 4th and December 2nd, as well as today.

More than 800,000 music lovers have taken part in Bandcamp Fridays so far. As a result of the 21 events to date, the platform says it has paid out over $78 million to artists and labels. After payment processor fees, artists and labels get around 93 percent of a fan's money. Bandcamp says that on every other day, artists and labels get around 82 percent after it takes a cut.