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The battle of the bloviating billionaires could be on hold for the foreseeable future. Elon Musk says he may need surgery, casting more doubt on his proposed cage match with Mark Zuckerberg.

Musk noted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday evening that he's receiving an MRI on his neck and upper back today. He'll find out later this week whether he'll need surgery before going toe-to-toe with Zuckerberg, which is definitely not an attempt to get a doctor's note to weasel out of the duel.

Not only would surgery postpone that fight indefinitely, it could impact Musk's work at his various companies. As CNBC notes, Tesla's share price dropped by over two percent on Monday morning. Along with running the automaker, Musk is also the owner and chief technical officer of X and CEO of SpaceX.

There wasn't a confirmed date for the planned fight. Zuckerberg said he proposed an August 26 fight night, but claimed Musk hadn't responded. "Not holding my breath," the Meta CEO wrote on Threads.

Both men have been training for the potential showdown and publicly needling each other in the meantime. If and when it happens, Musk said the fight will be streamed on X, with all proceeds going to a veterans' charity. Zuckerberg couldn't resist poking fun at Musk over that too. "Shouldn't we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?," he asked.

Google is taking aim at the likes of Grammarly with a feature it added to Search recently. The service now includes a grammar checker, which can analyze the construction of a phrase or sentence and offer suggestions if it something seems off.

Punching in a phrase like “grammar check,” “check grammar” or “grammar checker” will make sure the tool activates, as 9to5 Google points out. But Search might still offer grammar suggestions if you don’t include one of those phrases with your query.

If the tool notices an error, including a spelling mistake, Google will rewrite the sentence and indicate what’s different. You’ll easily be able to copy the corrected phrase or sentence by hovering over it. If your grammar is spot on, the tool will give you a dopamine-inducing green checkmark, but not, sadly, a gold star.

Unsurprisingly, the tool is powered by artificial intelligence. It might not always be accurate, especially if you ask it to review a phrase or fragment instead of an entire sentence. If you spot something wrong with a suggestion (or want to help the system understand that its correction was helpful), you can provide feedback.

The tool will only be available in English for the time being, but it's worth noting that it won't run if the phrase or sentence violates Search policies. It won't check the grammar for dangerous, harassing, medical, sexually explicit or terrorist content, or anything to do with violence and gore. You might have to look elsewhere to make sure that a phrase or sentence containing profanity or vulgar language is grammatically correct too.

Google has, of course, offered grammar tools in Gmail and Google Drive for a long time now. Bringing one to Search makes a lot of sense, given that it has a dictionary tool in its extensive bag of tricks. It'll save you having to open Google Docs or another app. You won't necessarily have to bust out a dusty copy of The Elements of Style either.

However, many people just focus on the keywords when they search for something on Google and don't write complete sentences or grammatically correct phrases (e.g. "hard boiled egg how long"). The AI will have to make an educated guess as to whether someone wants their grammar to be checked or not. Otherwise, Search could push the information they're looking for even further down the page.

After a ransomware attack in June, the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) notified students on Friday of a potential data leak. In June, "unauthorized actor(s)" not yet publicly identified accessed CDHE systems in a ransomware attack. While authorities continue to investigate the full extent of the damage, the department has disclosed that the attack breached personally identifiable information like names and social security numbers.

"The review of the impacted records is ongoing and once complete, CDHE will be notifying individuals who are potentially impacted by mail or email to the extent we have contact information," CDHE wrote in a Notice of Data Incident. But the department warns students that the impact of the breach reaches across programs, from public schools to adult education initiatives, over a 16 year time period.

In response, CDHE is offering free access to Experian credit monitoring and identity theft protection to protect their data. The department recommends impacted groups keep an eye on their account statements and credit reports for suspicious activity. 

Education systems are a popular target for ransomware attacks. In 2022, at least 44 colleges and 45 school districts reported ransomware attacks, compared to 88 total education departments in 2021, according to data from Emsisoft. The Government Accountability Office recommended that the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security coordinate to evaluate school cybersecurity efforts across the country. 

Amazon is running another sale on its Fire TV Stick media streamers, with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max available for $27. We've seen the 4K streaming stick fall as low as $25 in recent weeks, but this deal is still roughly $20 below the device's average street price. The standard Fire TV Stick is also on sale for $25, but since the Max brings a performance boost for only a couple dollars more, we recommend getting the higher-end model instead.

Though it's a couple years old, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is still relatively fast to load menus and switch between apps. Its remote has Alexa support baked in, so it can tie neatly into other Alexa-compatible smart home devices. It supports just about all the major streaming services and HDR standards, as well as Dolby Atmos audio. Unlike the base Fire TV Stick 4K, it also includes a WiFi 6 radio, though you'll need a compatible router and a particularly fast internet connection to see any advantage from that.

The main caveat, as with most Fire TV devices, is software. Compared to similarly-priced streamers from Roku and Google, Amazon's Fire OS is generally more aggressive about displaying ads on the home screen and nudging you toward the company's own services throughout the UI. You'll get the most out of it if you already use services like Prime Video on a regular basis. There's also no support for Google Cast (unlike Google's Chromecast) or Apple AirPlay (unlike various Roku streamers). 

We broadly recommend the Roku Streaming Stick 4K and Google Chromecast to most people in the market for an affordable streaming stick for those reasons. Right now, though, both of those devices cost about $20 more. If all you need is a cheap and quick way to get more streaming apps on your TV, the Fire TV Stick 4K is still a fine value at this price.

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It's early August and that means the back-to-school season is closing in on us fast. For those looking to invest in a new laptop for the upcoming semester, Amazon has a sale on the latest 15-inch MacBook Air that brings many models down to their lowest price yet. At the time of writing this, every color of the 256GB MacBook Air M2 is $200 off and down to $1,099, and the 512GB model in starlight is also $200 off and down to $1,299. Regardless of the size you get, the Air M2 is one of our favorite laptops at the moment, and it's even better when you can grab it on sale like this.

The 15-inch MacBook Air takes everything we loved about the 13-inch model and make it just a little bit bigger. Like it's smaller sibling, the 15-inch laptop has impressive performance thanks to Apple's M2 chipset, a comfortable keyboard and trackpad and a battery life that exceeded the 18 hours that the company promised in our video playback testing.

The bigger screen has a 2,880 x 1,864 resolution, but it shares the same pixels per inch (224) as that of the 13-inch version. Although it's not a mini LED display like you'll find on the MacBook Pros, it's still a lovely Liquid Retina panel with 500 nits of brightness and a 60Hz refresh rate. The extra screen space will definitely come in handy in a lot of different workflows, and since the 15-inch MacBook Air is nearly as thin and light as the 13-inch model, it's remains quite portable.

The biggest gripe with the 15-inch Air that we should call out, especially now, is that Apple's M2 chipset is one year old at this point and there's a possibility that we see new, M3-powered Macs debut this fall. This time of year, it's worth waiting to pick up a Mac if you absolutely must have the latest and greatest. However, it's likely that Apple will not retire the M2 MacBooks even if it launches M3 machines in the fall; the company currently sells the M1 MacBook Air alongside the M2 laptops, so we expect the M2 machines to stick around for a while even after the latest devices come out.

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Last year, WhatsApp released a series of new updates to make sending voice messages an overall better experience, and now it's bringing the whole group in on it. The messaging app has released a beta version of voice chats — a feature that creates an ongoing group audio conversation, reports WABetaInfo. The first sign of voice chats came earlier this year under the name audio chats but didn't provide much other info than its mere existence.

WABetaInfo

Though it sounds similar, this update isn't exactly the same as starting a group call, giving a much more Discord-like feel than when you typically give your friends a ring. Anyone with the update should see a waveform symbol in the upper right corner of their group chat. Pressing the icon starts a group voice chat and will say voice chat opened with a microphone to its left and a red X to its right. Everyone else in the group will receive a push notification, the same as any message, instead of their phone ringing. They will see a banner at the top of the chat box letting them know how many people are chatting now and giving them the option to connect.

Voice chats are protected by end-to-end encryption just like any other messages sent and also shut off if no one has been active in it for an hour. WhatsApp voice chat only appears to be available in beta for Android users right now but will allegedly appear for more people in the coming days.

It’s wild to me that a phone costing north of a grand is somehow midrange, but that’s the mad, mad world of foldables. The Morning After’s own Mat Smith reviewed Motorola’s new 2023 Razr, a lower-end device below the flagship Razr+, and found it wanting in so many ways. Performance isn’t great, the cameras are poor and the cover display is so small it’s unusable.

In the UK, this handset is retailing for around $1,025, and while currency conversions aren’t an exact science (well…) that figure is officially Too Much for Smith’s wallet. He says that, when the handset arrives in the US, if it isn’t priced under $800, then don’t even think about it. And, even if it is, is the joy of a folding display really worth the underwhelming package that surrounds it?

– Dan Cooper

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Call of Duty is publicly shaming cheaters in the kill feed

If you’re caught using exploits, you will be named and shamed.

I’m no fan of a culture too quick to name and shame – we’re all running the same race but carrying baggage of varying weights upon our backs. But Activision feels there’s an exception for those folks playing Call of Duty online with cheat software running in the background. The latest update to its Ricochet anti-cheat system will detect users playing less than fair, boot them from the game and let everyone know they’ve been dealing with a cheater.

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A $2,490 wireless podcasting kit is absurd, but at least Nomono's sounds great

It’s a beautifully packaged all-in-one studio but… you know.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Nomono’s all-in-one podcast studio has a list of features long enough to get Devindra Hardawar to spend time playing with it. For $2,490, you get an egg-shaped charging case with four wireless lavalier microphones and a space recorder for capturing room tone. Once you’re done bantering, the audio is instantly uploaded to a cloud server for easy editing, but that’s not ready to go right now. If you’re a budding podcaster with the better part of three grand to spare and are curious if you should pick one up, read all of Devindra’s review to find out more.

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Google's latest bid to push hybrid work is a $99 rate at its on-campus hotel

Fancy paying to skip the commute?

Google has always gone the extra mile to keep its employees on its campus for as long as possible. Now, as it tries to claw people back to the office, it’s offering cheap nights in its campus hotel to encourage people to ditch working from home. Because, you know, the thing great companies value is the quality of your presenteeism, not the quality of your work.

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Now's the time to snag a new Google phone without paying full price. The tech company's Pixel 7a smartphone is 11 percent off right now — down to $444 from $499 in all available colors. This deal is the best we've seen for the Google Pixel 7a 128GB since it first launched in May. 

Google's Pixel 7a is one of our favorite mid-range smartphones and scored a 90 in our review due to how much it works like a Pixel 7 but for a lower price. For starters, it lasted 17 hours and 41 minutes during our video rundown test, just 13 minutes short of its older sibling. It also has a 6.1-inch OLED screen, a 2400 x 1080 display and a 90Hz refresh rate. The Pixel 7a features a high-res 65-MP rear camera and a 13-MP selfie camera.

A few other devices in the Google Pixel family, such as the tablet, are also on sale. A 12 percent discount drops the Google Pixel Tablet (equipped with a charging speaker dock) down to $439 from $499. Plus, the Google Pixel Buds Pro and A-Series have sales running, with the Pro model dropping 30 percent to $139 from $200. If you want something even cheaper, the Google Pixel Buds A-Series are down to $60 from $100 — a 40 percent discount. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

If you've still been hemming and hawing about whether Sony's PlayStation 5 is worth dropping half a grand for, you're in luck. One of the best gaming consoles on the market is having a nice sale to start your week off right. Right now, Sony's PS5 disc model is down to $449 from $500 — a solid 10 percent discount. Sure, it's not a massive chunk of change, but $50 can buy you a game or two or even an extra controller.

Sony's PS5 was a solid choice when it first came out in 2020 (we gave it an 87 at the time) and has seen active improvements in the few years since. Most recently, a software beta update has added more accessibility options, like the ability to use a second controller for assistance in games. It also doubled M.2 SSD limits from 4TB to 8TB and added Dolby Atmos support to increase the number of devices you can play sound through.

Whether you go for the console or have one already, you can take advantage of some accessories also being on sale. The DualSense Wireless Controller is down to $49 in almost every color, from classic White to Galactic Purple. Sony's PlayStation Pulse 3D Wireless Headset is even at an all-time low price in its Gray Camouflage model, down to $70 from $100. All in all, this is a very good time to hop fully on the PS5 train.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

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