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Air fryers don't really fry — they're much more versatile and handle an impressive range of recipes. If you've been holding back because of price, this might be a good time to add one to your kitchen. The 10-quart Ninja DZ401 is our favorite dual-zone pick in our guide to air fryers and right now Amazon is selling it for $180, or 22 percent off its usual $230 price tag. That's the lowest price we've seen this year and essentially makes the 10-quart size the same price as the 6-quart version. The larger size is ideal for people who entertain or have bigger families. 

A dual-zone fryer, like the DZ401, has two chambers that can cook two different foods at the same time, using completely different modes. It can also cook the same thing on both sides or just use one side at a time, leaving the other side empty for smaller batches. We like that it heats up quickly, with virtually no heat-up time and runs quietly. It even includes a Smart Finish feature that will adjust the cooking temps of each side so that your two different recipes finish at the same time. 

The DZ401 has a wide temperature range, from 105 to 450 degrees and six available cooking modes including air fry, broil, roast, bake, reheat and dehydrate. The 10-quart size is large, however. While that's great for cooking up big batches of food, it's not a small unit. If you've got a smaller kitchen without a lot of storage space, this might be too big. 

If you're still on the fence about air fryers in general, our guide covers the pros and cons of these devices, as well as how to clean them and where to find recipes. If you decide to dive in, the $50 discount might make this a good day to grab one. 

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Amazon is running another sale on its own products and this time around it's on Fire Kids tablets. Those looking for a way to keep kids entertained in the back seat on a long car ride might want to take a look at the latest Fire 7 Kids tablet. The 16GB model has dropped from $110 to $60. That's just $5 more than the lowest price we've seen to date. Doubling the internal storage to 32GB will only cost an extra $5. A microSD slot allows you to add up to 1TB additional storage.

The tablet, which is designed for youngsters aged three to seven, comes with a rugged protective case with built-in stand and a two-year worry-free guarantee. Also included is a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+, which includes thousands of books, games, videos, apps and Alexa skills, all of which are ad-free. You'll be able to filter age-based content, set time limits and open access to apps such as Disney+ and Netflix via the parent dashboard.

Amazon says the latest version of the tablet delivers 30 percent faster performance than the previous generation and double the RAM at 2GB. The company says Fire 7 Kids will run for up to 10 hours on a single charge and it has a USB-C port rather than the micro-USB port of older models.

In case you feel a little more screen real estate is in order, the sale also includes a good deal on our pick for the best tablet for children, the Fire HD 10 Kids. That model is 30 percent off at $140. The Fire HD 10 Kids is just over 10 ounces heavier than the smaller model at 25.2 ounces (716 grams), so it's maybe better suited for resting on a surface than the back of a car.

The 10.1-inch Full HD device also comes with a case and a year of Amazon Kids+. Amazon says it'll run for up to 12 hours on a single charge. As with the Fire 7 Kids, this tablet has 2MP front-facing and 5MP rear-facing cameras with 720p video capture capabilities.

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

Law enforcement just took down an important hacker haven. TechCrunchreports the FBI has seized Genesis Market, a major marketplace for stolen logins, as part of an international campaign dubbed "Operation Cookie Monster." The UK's National Crime Agency adds that authorities arrested roughly 120 people worldwide as part of the bust, including 19 site users in that country.

We've asked the FBI and Justice Department for comment. In a release, the Justice Department says the seizure took down a "key enabler" of ransomware. Beyond the US and UK, the campaign included agencies from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and European countries like Germany and Poland. Europol and the EU's Eurojust were also involved.

Genesis Market was founded in March 2018 and sold logins, cookies and browser fingerprints taken from breached systems. Hackers could not only sign into accounts, but impersonate web browsers to access those accounts without needing a password or two-factor authentication token. So long as Genesis could still reach a victim's devices, it could offer up-to-the-minute data from that victim — a valuable resource for hackers that sometimes have to settle for old and sometimes useless data.

The black market shop has sometimes been linked to high-profile cybercrime incidents. Motherboardnoted that the intruders behind the 2021 EA hack said they bought a $10 bot from Genesis to hijack a Slack account at the game publisher.

The seizure and arrests won't stop sites from peddling bootleg logins. It won't be surprising if many of Genesis Market's customers turn to smaller marketplaces. All the same, this is a significant action that could make it harder for attackers to simply buy the login data they need. It also comes as law enforcement is stepping up efforts to disrupt the ransomware networks themselves. In theory, digital extortion is a more difficult proposition than it was even a few months ago.

Bob Lee, the creator of Cash App and a former Square executive, was stabbed to death in San Francisco early Tuesday, according to reports. The San Francisco Police Department said a 43-year-old sustained "apparent stab wounds" and died after being taken to hospital. The perpetrator is still at large.

Lee most recently worked at crypto startup MobileCoin as chief product officer and his death was confirmed by the company's CEO Joshua Goldbard. “Bob was a force of nature. Helped to birth Android and CashApp into our world,” Goldbard told Bloomberg. “Moby was his dream: a privacy protecting wallet for the 21st century. I will miss him every day.”

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square parent Block, wrote on Nostr that Lee's death was "real. Getting calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App."

Lee worked on Android's core library development in the early years of the mobile operating system, as TechCrunch notes. He then moved to Square to work on the company's Android app before becoming chief technical officer and creating Cash App. Lee was also a startup investor and helped the World Health Organization with its mobile app after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

Amazon may not be known for making generative AI, but it's eager to help others get their technology up and running. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching a generative AI accelerator that will help the "most promising" startups flourish. The 10-week program provides credits for AWS use, access to mentors and other experts and networking events. At the end, startups pitch their work to potential investors and customers.

While the accelerator is open to all generative AI startups, AWS recommends that candidates have at least a basic product ready with some interest from customers. Sign-ups are available worldwide through April 17th, and Amazon makes clear that there are no limits on how the AI is being used — it can be used for everything from the legal world through to discovering new medicines.

The company hopes the accelerator will serve as a "catalyst" that advances innovation in generative AI. At the same time, it's not subtle about the potential for increased business at AWS. Runway used the cloud computing platform for an artist-oriented AI that contributed effects to Everything Everywhere All At Once. Firms that blossom as a result of the program may rely that much more on AWS as demand grows.

Amazon only has a limited amount of in-house generative AI at the moment. Its Create with Alexa tool lets you generate children's stories on an Echo Show smart display, for instance. However, it also faces less pressure to create its own products than tech rivals like Google and Microsoft. It still stands to profit as long as there's plenty of demand for AWS tools, and might see inspirations for its own AI work.

Ever found yourself with a killer podcast idea, only for it to fizzle out once you realize all the hoops you have to jump through just to make it? Learning an audio editing tool is a skill of its own and, while getting your audio masterpiece online has never been easier, today’s listeners are savvy and won’t tolerate subpar sound and editing for long. These are all problems that Adobe’s browser-based new Podcast tool aims to solve.

Adobe Podcast, formerly known as Project Shasta, is a cloud-based audio production tool. As the name suggests, it’s aimed primarily at podcast production, though it might interest anyone that works with narrative audio. The main thing to know is there’s no audio timeline here and no mixer view with channels. The first thing you’ll notice is how it doesn’t look like an audio editor at all. In fact, it almost never was.

“The goal was to come up with a broader voice strategy for Adobe,” Mark Webster, Director of Product told Engadget. “That could have been creating a creative cloud voice assistant or speaking to Photoshop. But we kind of took a step back [...] it was really about just building services and a platform to make it really easy to create spoken audio.’“

The result is Adobe Podcast which is still in beta. Anyone can apply for access, but currently you’ll need to be based in the US.

Unlike traditional audio editors, including Adobe’s own Audition, you won’t work left to right or even really work with audio files at all. Instead you’ll work on your podcasts like you would a text document. And not just because you work top down, but for the most part, you really are just editing a text document. Anything you record through Adobe Podcast will be automatically transcribed and you simply edit the text to make changes (which are then magically reflected in the audio). There are even some extra tools for creating artwork (as seen above).

“We don't think of Adobe Podcast as another audio tool. It really is a storytelling tool. When you think about it as a storytelling tool, suddenly all the things that are in traditional audio tools, like looking at the audio waveforms and decibel levels, they're actually not relevant.” Sam Anderson, Adobe Podcast’s Lead Designer told Engadget.

Apps like Descript have been doing it this way for a while. And it makes some sense. Podcasts are about what is being said, so it’s logical to work on the text first rather than the raw audio.

Not to mention, being able to see what’s being said without endlessly playing it back to find the right spot is also much easier on the ears, eyes and soul. But it’s not without some trade offs.

For one, there’s a certain amount of control you have to learn to relinquish. In an audio editor, you can choose exactly where you want to trim a segment of audio to. In Adobe Podcast, you can only highlight text and the finer details of the edit are taken care of by the backend. For the most part that’s fine, but if you wanted to add or trim some silence, for example, you can’t do that here, you’ll have to get creative.

Image by James Trew / Engadget

For example, removing a sentence is as easy as highlighting it in the transcription and smacking the delete key. Similarly, you can cut/paste to move things around as you see fit. But you might not quite get the smooth edit you would if you did this manually in an audio editing app. So, for now at least, you might still have to make some minor edits after you export from Podcast. In the future, the system might leverage AI to make these sorts of edits for you.

“I think we could use some really interesting technology to look at the space between words and when you make deletions and just find a way to just do it automatically.” Anderson said.

One of the major benefits for online tools like Podcast or similar services such as Riverside Fm and Zencastr is how easy it is to invite guests. In the past you might have had to have a pre-brief with a guest to figure out their audio setup, maybe guide them into recording it locally with Audacity and then deal with transferring large audio files around after the fact.

With Podcast, your guests simply accept an invite, much like they would for a Zoom meeting, and then you converse in real time while the local audio is uploaded in the background. The result is an incredibly frictionless way to get local audio, transcribed and ready to be edited in one fell swoop.

Perhaps Adobe’s secret weapon here is two-fold. First, unlike the rival products mentioned above, Podcast has a singular focus on audio, so there are no video editing, presentation or livestreaming tools you might not need. Second would be some proprietary tools - notably “Enhance Speech.” With one click, this magic button basically transforms garbage audio recorded in the worst of rooms into something that sounds more professional.

In testing this, I recorded a conversation between my colleague Mat Smith and myself. I was using a dedicated XLR podcasting mic (Focusrite’s DM14v) into an audio interface. Mat, on the other hand, was just speaking into his Macbook’s built-in microphone. Once we finished our recording, I tapped the “Enhance” toggle and suddenly it sounded like we were in the same room with the same equipment. You can hear the untreated and treated audio below.

Now audio purists might find the treated audio a little too dry or isolated (with no sense of space). Especially right now as there are no controls - the effect is either fully on or off. But Webster explained that in the future you’ll be able to adjust the amount of the effect if the default setting isn’t to your liking.

The effect was good enough though that I tried uploading the audio for a telephone interview I conducted for a story a few weeks ago. The result was good enough that I am considering cutting that down into an audio version of the article it was for.

Another feature in the works is the removal of filler words (uhms & ahhs etc). Again, this is something you can find on rival products, but right now there’s not even a way to edit them out as the transcription doesn’t show them so this is something you’d have to do in post.

Handily, Adobe Podcast includes lots of free music for you to use for intros/outros and transitions. Editing them to work with your speech isn’t as intuitive as it could be, but this is an example of why the service is still in beta. You can be creative. For example, if you want to talk over a bit of music and then have it fade up to full volume, you can splice it in two and set one to “background” and achieve the effect that way. Webster explained that they’re figuring out the best way for adding such tools that will guide novices without alienating more advanced users (and vice versa).

If you’re wondering if Adobe will add in an AI voice tool so you can not only the audio you have with text, but actually add words by typing them in (something you can do in Descript), don’t hold your breath. Webster pointed out that to make an effective voice model it needs to be trained on enough material so it only makes sense for your own voice. Given that AI voices can be clunky, they decided to just make it really really easy to re-record the line you wanted. After all, this isn't a video where patching over a misspeak is a lot more complicated.

Perhaps the best feature of all is the lack of friction between ideas and getting something down on the page. If you can use Google Docs, you can make something with Adobe Podcast. And with the bundled music and mic-enhancement tools there’s a solid chance it’ll sound pretty good, too.

For now, Podcast will remain in beta for the foreseeable future, and Webster confirmed that there will always be a free tier. And if you don’t even want to make a podcast, but you like the sound of the speech enhancing feature, you don’t even need to sign up for the beta, it’s available right here, right now.

I love to sleep. Then, after I wake up, I love to find out how well I slept. It might be because I’m highly competitive or that I like the validation of an app confirming whether I’ve had a good or bad night’s rest. Despite this, I’ve avoided most sleep trackers because they’re generally too intrusive or uncomfortable. So when Amazon unveiled the Halo Rise, I was excited by its premise. For $140 (on sale now for $100), the Rise promises to use motion sensing to track your breathing rate and use that information to calculate how long you’ve slept. It’s also a bedside lamp, clock and smart alarm, and looks pretty, to boot.

Design

It fits nicely into my life in many ways. First, physically. The Halo Rise is a gray CD-sized disc (remember those? And yes I know the D already stands for Disc) that’s flat on one side and convex on the other and rest on top of a metal stand. The even surface houses LEDs that show the time, as well as an arc of lights that can be set to simulate the gradual glow of sunrise and wake you up more gently.

I like the Rise’s clean, modern aesthetic that should blend in with most furnishings. Setup was also surprisingly painless. Like Google’s Nest Hub, which similarly uses motion detection to track your sleep, the Halo Rise needs to be next to your bed within arm’s reach. I was worried that my nightstand wasn’t tall enough for the device, but it was able to work even though it was set a few inches lower than Amazon recommended.

Placing the Rise close to your bed is also important because, unlike the Nest Hub, it doesn’t have an onboard mic, which means you’ll have to reach over and hit the snooze button when it goes off. This brings me to one of my small complaints: There are two buttons on the top of the Rise. A small, pinky-sized one for dismissing the alarm and a larger one on its left for snoozing. I know this is how most alarm clocks are designed and it makes sense – if you’re awake enough to accurately press the tinier button then you likely won’t need a follow up. But since there’s no way to vocally stop the Halo Rise, the fact that the buttons are so small and close to each other is pretty frustrating. I accidentally hit snooze so many times and had to run back to my bedroom while brushing my teeth when the device rang again ten minutes later.

That’s my main gripe with the Halo Rise’s hardware, and it honestly isn’t much. I also wish it were a bit bigger so the buttons could be easier to hit and the clock font easier to read. But those are the only times you have to physically interact with it, everything else happens in the app.

Sleep-tracking

Every morning, Amazon will show you a summary of the last night, including a score of and amount of time you’ve been asleep. Alongside that is a message either congratulating you on doing well or cautioning you to go easy that day if you hadn’t caught enough shut eye. I’ve definitely used the feedback from the Rise as an excuse to get out of working or working out in the last few weeks, when it told me to take it easy after getting just two hours of sleep.

Photo by: Cherlynn Low / Engadget

In general, I’ve found the Halo Rise pretty accurate at detecting when I’ve dozed off and woken up. It actually performed better than Google’s smart display, which would often mistake when I awoke. I don’t like how, unlike most other sleep trackers, Amazon also includes my “time taken to fall asleep” as part of my so-called performance each night. Typically, after I get in bed, I spend some time scrolling Reddit or playing games and I don’t consider that time spent trying to fall asleep. I wish the Rise were smart enough to use its onboard light sensor to determine when I put my phone away and turn off the light. That is when I’m actually trying to drift into la la land, but I guess not everyone sleeps in the dark so this might not be suitable for all.

Still, I found the app surprisingly informative. Tapping into details brings up a chart of the sleep stages I was in the night before, as well as a timeline below it showing at which points during the night there were “Light Disruptions.” For me, the results were unsurprising – since I don’t use blackout curtains, my room got bright at sunrise every day. Otherwise, unless I had gotten up and turned on my lamp, there were no disruptions. This page also tells me the average brightness, humidity and temperature in my room overnight.

What was most helpful was understanding that my sleep environment was warmer than I thought. I was struggling to fall and stay asleep until the app suggested I adjust it to the recommended range of 60 to 70 degrees (Fahrenheit). As someone who avoids using the air conditioner out of guilt, having this information validated my desire and I started to turn it on more often right before bedtime. I slept much better after that, and the app congratulated me on keeping my room’s temperature within the ideal range.

To be clear, the Halo Rise isn’t the only sleep tracker that can do this. The Nest Hub also tracks your room’s temperature and light. But instead of humidity, Google uses its onboard mics to listen for sounds of snoring or coughing. As someone who doesn’t snore, but coughs a lot due to dry air, I found it more helpful to get insight on how humid my environment was. Depending on your concerns, your preferences here might differ.

Another key difference between the Halo Rise and the Nest Hub is that Google will track daytime naps while Amazon does not. If you go back to bed in the middle of the day, the Rise will not track your sleep. However, on one particular Saturday when I was recovering from a long, hard week, I stayed in bed for hours after waking up and passed out at 1:48pm. I finally got out of bed at about 4:43pm, and the Amazon app actually updated afterwards to add those three-ish hours to my record.

Wrap-up

Every morning in the past, I’d reach for my phone, check my notifications and the weather, as well as my horoscope. I know, it’s not scientific and I don’t put a lot of stock in it, but I think of it as a way to start my day off better prepared. Since setting up the Halo Rise, my first check-in has been replaced by looking at the Halo app. It’ll tell me whether I should take my daily workout easy, and how early I might need to get to bed that night.

The Halo Rise is also a small but significant piece of Amazon’s ongoing foray into the business of health and wellness. The device sits in the most intimate of our spaces and offers help on a specific area of wellbeing. Together with products like the Halo Band and app features like body composition scanning, mobility and posture assessment, as well as the controversial tone monitoring that monitors how you speak, the company is clearly investing in health management tools. Considering Amazon also recently finished acquiring One Medical and launched its pharmacy in 2020, its ambitions are obvious. The question is whether we’re willing to trade our personal data for the potential convenience that an all-Amazon healthcare infrastructure might bring.

Back in February, Hello Games rolled out an update for No Man's Sky that overhauled the game’s virtual reality experience on all platforms. Now the developer has released another update that doesn't only bring new VR features, but also expands the game's lore and introduces new experiences. In the latest free update called Interceptor, a new corruption has spread throughout the universe, infecting planets until they turn into purple-hazed worlds growing purple crystals, twisting sentinel machines into new forms and giving rise to new enemies. 

Players may find themselves facing off against big spider-like and small crab-like machines, as well as corrupted drones, on these worlds. Hello Games says they're its most lethal antagonists yet and come armed with stealth tech, flamethrower and explosives. Players might also come across huge Sentinel capital ships that can provide them a challenging bout of space combat. In addition, the update gives players access to a variety of new Starship they can collect, powered by new tech and equipped with new features, such as an ability called the Anti-Gravity Well.

On the technical side of things, Interceptor brings improved visuals and new features for virtual reality that include wrist interface controls. Finally, this update comes with Xbox-focused improvements and was designed to enable smooth and consistent frame rate for visually complex scenes while playing on the console. 

Interceptor will be available for download today on PC, the PS4 and the PS5, the Xbox One and Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and virtual reality. 

On the eve of the launch of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the pudgy plumber's days on smartphones may be dwindling. In an interview with Variety, celebrated Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that "mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games." Instead, he said, the company's strategy going forward is a "hardware and software integrated gaming experience." 

Miyamoto's remarks aren't too surprising, considering that the last Mario game on mobile, Dr. Mario World, was pulled from the market just two years after its release. 2016's Super Mario Run grossed $60 million in its first year, while Mario Kart Tour has taken in $300 million so far. That compares with Nintendo's $3 billion gross to date on Mario Kart 8 for Wii U and Switch. 

The designer said that since control intuitiveness is a key part of the gaming experience, smartphone development is problematic. "When we explored the opportunity of making Mario games for the mobile phone — which is a more common, generic device — it was challenging to determine what that game should be," he said. "That is why I played the role of director for Super Mario Run, to be able to translate that Nintendo hardware experience into the smart devices."

Miyamoto didn't address other mobile Nintendo mobile properties, including Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes. The latter is Nintendo's top earning mobile game by far, having crossed the $1 billion mark in June of last year, according to SensorTower. Miyamoto declined to say when the next Super Mario game would arrive, but The Super Mario Bros movie starring Chris Pratt is set to arrive today amid strong audience and tepid critic reviews. 

 Microsoft has announced a new, slightly more sustainable Xbox controller. Arriving as an Earth Day promotion, the Xbox Remix Special Edition wireless controller uses recycled materials from old gamepads, auto headlight covers and reclaimed CDs (among other sources) to give each accessory a unique look – but no special functionality. I’m totally OK with that.

Microsoft describes the combination of recycled resins with regrind as creating “custom, earth-tone colors with subtle variations, swirling, markings, and texturing – giving each Remix Special Edition controller its own look and feel.” While it’s hard to see that on the press images, it should result in a satisfying textured pattern on the bumpers and side grip. The company also bundles an Xbox Rechargeable Battery Pack with each gamepad, ensuring fewer AA batteries head to landfills.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Biden says it 'remains to be seen' if AI is dangerous

The president has met with advisors to discuss the 'risks and opportunities' of AI.

According to reports, President Joe Biden has met with his science and technology advisors, which include academics and executives from Google and Microsoft, to discuss the "risks and opportunities" of artificial intelligence. While the meeting is unlikely to lead to a ChatGPT ban like in Italy, the president doesn't seem to be convinced that AI is perfectly safe at this point in time. When asked if AI is dangerous, he responded: "It remains to be seen. Could be." He told the group: "Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public.”

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The best e-readers for 2023

Kindles are no longer your only options.

After staring at screens all day, you deserve a break. E-readers are the perfect way to unwind with a book. They're easy on your eyes, portable and have a huge selection of titles. Amazon still dominates in this market, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t worthy competitors. We tested out some of the best e-readers available – here are our picks.

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Virgin Orbit files for bankruptcy protection as it seeks a buyer

The company recently shut down its space launch operations.

Virgin Orbit has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few days after officially shutting down its space launch operations. The private space company has been burning money for a while now and reported a loss of $49.2 million in its last fiscal quarter. Its financial issues came to a head after its Start Me Up mission didn't quite go as expected. It was supposed to be a historic event as the first orbital launch from UK soil, but it failed to reach orbit due to a dislodged fuel filter.

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Nintendo offers unlimited free repairs for Joy-Con drift issue in Europe

The company will fix 'drifting' Joy-Cons at no cost even if they're no longer under warranty.

Nintendo has been repairing Switch players' Joy-Con "drift" issues for free, even if they're no longer under warranty, in North America since 2019. It then launched the same program in France and Latin America. Now, the gaming giant has expanded its free unlimited repair service for drifting Joy-Cons to the European Economic Area (EEA), UK and Switzerland "until further notice." On its UK website, the company said it's offering repairs in those areas "for responsiveness syndrome relating to control sticks." And, it will fix the known problem for users even if it's "caused by wear and tear."

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