There’s never been a better time to buy the Apple Watch SE, which has dipped to a record low price on Amazon in a Black Friday deal. The 40mm second-generation Apple Watch SE (GPS model), released in 2022, is $60 off from its usual price of $249 — making it just $189 right now. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen it hit yet, even cheaper than the former all time low of $200.

Despite being Apple’s more budget-friendly smartwatch, the Apple Watch SE (2nd gen) is an impressive device that has a lot to offer even when compared to the premium models. We gave it a review score of 89. It doesn’t come with an Always On Display or skin temperature sensor, but it excels in workout tracking, performing just as well as the more expensive Series 8. The only drawback is, you’ll have to lift your wrist with purpose to wake up the screen and check your progress.

It sports the same tried-and-true Apple Watch design with a rounded square face, and, being lighter than some other options at just 26.4 grams, it’s comfortable to wear. Where it does differ significantly from the pricier models is in battery life. The Apple Watch SE will get you through the day with normal activity, but don’t expect to wake up the next morning with anything left over. You’ll more than likely need to pop it onto the charger by the end of each night.

At just $250 normally, though, it’s already the best smartwatch you can get for its price. If you were on the fence before, now is the best time to grab an Apple Watch SE while it’s cheaper than ever.

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.

You can get a four-pack of Apple AirTags at nearly their lowest price ever right now in a Black Friday deal on Amazon. Thanks to a 19 percent discount, the multipack is just $80. That’s like getting four AirTags — normally $30 individually — for $20 apiece. A four-pack usually costs $100, so you don’t want to wait on this one. Amazon is also running a deal on single AirTags, which are currently priced at just $24.

Apple’s AirTags have become wildly popular due to the convenience they offer for keeping track of your belongings. Just pair one of the discs with your iPhone, give it a name, and attach it to whatever item you want to keep tabs on. Slip it in a purse, backpack or wallet, or add it to your keyring. For the latter, though, you’ll need to pick up a case that has a key loop.

AirTags work with Apple’s Find My app, which will guide you directly to the lost item if it’s within your vicinity. Or, if it was last spotted somewhere farther away, it’ll appear at that location on the Find My map. AirTags have a built-in speaker, too, so you can ping the device and let its sound guide you toward the lost object. The trackers are water resistant, which Apple says should withstand spills or even quick drops in a puddle, and the replaceable battery should last around a year.

Apple has sold tens of millions of AirTags since the product’s 2021 debut, and they remain a consistently popular product. If you’ve been eyeing the item trackers, now’s the time to pick them up at one of the best prices yet.

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.

If you’ve been holding out for a deal on the Echo Show 8, it doesn’t get any better than Amazon’s current Black Friday bundles for its smart displays. Amazon is selling the second-generation Echo Show 8 with a Kasa Smart multicolor lightbulb for just $55. Normally, these would cost over $150 together. The third-generation Echo Show 8, released this year, is also deeply discounted on Amazon in a bundle with the Kasa Smart Bulb, going for just $105 compared to the list price of $173.

The 2023 Echo Show 8 (3rd gen) brought a refreshed design to what was already one of the best smart displays out there. The latest version has a sleeker build and upgraded capabilities, with spatial audio, a 13MP camera and faster response times from Alexa. Still its predecessor, released in 2021, achieves solid performance for tasks like video calls and smart home control. It’s equipped with automatic face framing to keep you centered on calls, and has a privacy cover for the camera. Both models have a compact 8-inch touchscreen that’s big enough for viewing content without taking up too much counter space.

Amazon’s smart display deals don’t just stop at the Echo Show 8. The retailer is also offering discounts on the Echo Show 5 and the larger Echo Show 10. There are bundles to include additional accessories — including the Blink Mini camera and Kasa Smart bulbs — and deals on individual devices for 30 to 64 percent off.

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.

An internal memo sent to OpenAI staff on Saturday after former CEO Sam Altman’s abrupt firing reiterates that “a breakdown in communication” led to the decision, not “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,” according to Axios and The New York Times. The memo obtained by both publications was sent to employees by OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap.

Speculation has been nonstop since Altman was ousted unexpectedly as CEO on Friday and dropped from the company’s board of directors, with little concrete information from OpenAI itself to go on. In its announcement of the decision, the board said only that he was not “consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” The board named Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, as interim CEO.

In response, OpenAI’s now-former president, Greg Brockman, announced he was stepping down too, tweeting, “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.” Three senior researchers later resigned as well, according to The Information. Now, in another report, sources told The Information that Altman already has a “new venture” in the works, and he plans to bring Brockman and possibly others on with him. It’s as yet unclear if this venture is separate from Altman’s other known upcoming projects, including a purported collaboration with former Apple designer Jony Ive.

Numerous reports in the aftermath have attempted to provide an explanation for Altman’s firing, with some claiming there were concerns over the rapid development of the company’s AI products and, according to journalist Kara Swisher, its “profit driven direction.” In Saturday’s memo, per Axios, Lightcap wrote that the announcement “took us all by surprise,” and “we have had multiple conversations with the board to try to better understand the reasons and process behind their decision.”

The sudden shakeup could now have ramifications for the impending sale of OpenAI’s employee shares, valued at roughly $86 billion, The Information reported. In a cryptic tweet on Saturday, Altman quipped, “if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares (sic).”

The Xbox Series S is down to a record low price in a Black Friday deal from Microsoft. The starter bundle for the 512GB Series S — which also includes a wireless controller and three months of Game Pass Ultimate — is just $240, compared to its normal price of $300. You can also pick up extra controllers at an exceptionally low price from Amazon right now, with a choice from a slew of different colors. The Xbox Core Wireless Controller is 31 percent off, bringing it down to $45 from its usual price of $65 for a $20 savings.

The Xbox Series S is the more budget-friendly, compact version of the console. It can run games at 120 frames per second and at resolutions above 1080p, and supports ray tracing for some titles. While it’s not as powerful as the more expensive Series X, it’s still one of the best gaming consoles around today for its price range. We gave it a review score of 85 when it came out (and dubbed it “the cutest console of the next generation”). 

The current deal comes with three months of Game Pass Ultimate, which means buyers will get instant access to hundreds of popular games. There’s also a high-speed HDMI cable in the box alongside a wireless controller.

If the limitations of the Series S are too much, though, there are also Black Friday deals on Series X bundles. You can pick up the Series X with Diablo IV for just $440 at Walmart — a savings of over 20 percent, or $120 off. Or, if racing games are more your speed, Microsoft is selling the Xbox Series X bundled with Forza Horizon 5 for $450, shaving $50 off the usual price.

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.

Nothing has pulled the beta for its new messaging app, Nothing Chats, from the Play Store just a day after its release, and says it’s delaying the launch “until further notice” as it works through its many issues. The company touted the Sunbird-based Nothing Chats as the answer to the longstanding “Android versus Apple” texting woes, with support for both RCS and iMessage to bridge the gap. But since its announcement, a growing number of critics have voiced concerns over the risks that workarounds like this bring, arguing that Nothing Chats is an inherently less secure messaging option.

In a teardown of the app, 9to5google pointed out that Nothing Chats does not have end-to-end encryption, and found that attachments sent by other users could easily be accessed in plain text. The findings added support to concerns voiced by others on X that Sunbird uses HTTP instead of HTTPS. Kishan Bagaria, founder of Texts.com, called it out as “extremely insecure” and said further investigation from his team showed “all outgoing texts are being leaked to a sentry server in plaintext.”

SpaceX's second test flight of its Starship spacecraft — which it hopes will one day ferry humans to the moon and Mars — ended in an explosion Saturday morning minutes after taking off from the company's spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Discord is pulling the plug on its AI chatbot, Clyde, less than a year after it was first introduced. Clyde’s support page has been updated with a note alerting users that the bot will be deactivated at the end of this month. The platform announced Clyde back in March, describing it as an experimental feature. It’s powered by OpenAI technology.

“By December 1, 2023, users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats,” according to the note. Clyde was intended to act as an AI helper that could be accessed right within the server. Users could also converse with it for fun, and ask it to play games or spit jokes. It didn’t seem to roll out universally, though, and in the months after its release some users complained that their servers never got access to the bot. And, screenshots occasionally posted to the Discord subreddit showed it could easily be coaxed into spouting vile language.

Whatever the reason for its shutdown, Clyde will be no more come December. Discord integrated other AI features in the last year alongside the release of Clyde, including moderation tools, conversation summaries and avatar editing.

Epic has introduced a new tool for documenting toxic behavior in Fortnite. Players will now have access to voice reporting, which will continuously record voice chats in 5-minute segments for players to submit as evidence to moderators when reporting bullying and other forms of harassment. For anyone under the age of 18, this feature will automatically be turned on.

Fortnite players who are over 18 will have a bit more say over how voice reporting is applied. In the game’s main settings, they’ll have the option to set it as “Always On,” which would apply to every channel they’re in, or “Off When Possible,” which would disable it in Party Channels with friends as long as everyone’s preferences match.

In what’s likely an effort to quell privacy concerns, Epic says audio clips won’t be kept for long and they’ll only be stored locally on the user’s device unless submitted as evidence. And, in those cases, you’ll have to move fast. As each new recording comes in, the previous will be deleted. “This means only the immediate last five minutes of audio is reportable,” Epic said.

Epic Games

Under normal circumstances, audio clips will be auto-deleted either after 14 days or once action has been taken, the company added. If the accused player appeals the decision within that time, it may be extended for another 14 days. However, Epic says it will hold onto an audio clip as long as necessary if legally required to do so.

The move follows similar action taken by companies like Activision, Microsoft, Sony and others in the recent past as they attempt to clamp down on harmful online behavior. Earlier this year, Xbox introduced a system for submitting 60-second audio clips alongside reports of abuse in voice chats.

Amazon has begun notifying Comixology users that they’ll no longer be able to read comics on the app come December 4. Comixology is merging with the Kindle app, and users’ libraries will soon only be accessible via the latter. The move caps off the ruination of Comixology that began nearly two years ago, when Amazon started chipping away at the platform’s native features and general usability in order to force a fit with its own ecosystem.

The Comixology app will officially be dead as of December 4, according to Amazon. From that point on, all of the comics, manga and graphic novels a user has purchased or borrowed on Comixology will live exclusively in the Kindle app. While Amazon says things like reading progress will be synced, you’ll have to redownload everything in the Kindle app if you want to pick up where you left off, even on the same device. There are filters to see “Comics & Manga” or “Books” only, for anyone not thrilled about having it all jumbled together.

The writing was on the wall for Comixology for some time, and while the termination of the app may not entirely come as a surprise for longtime users, it’s surely a bummer. Amazon has owned Comixology since 2014, but only in recent years has it really started to impose its influence on the product in a noticeable way.

The browser version of Comixology shut down in early 2022, and the alternative — using the Kindle app or Amazon’s own browser-based reader — made a lot of comics more or less unreadable. Integration with the Amazon store made for a clunky search experience when looking for specific titles, especially at first. And at the start of 2023, Amazon laid off thousands of employees, including Comixology staff, signaling doom for the service’s future.

Moving forward, the process of purchasing comics through Amazon’s Comixology storefront will be the same. Comixology Unlimited subscriptions will also remain intact, according to Amazon.