Several models of Beats headphones and earbuds are deeply discounted right now in a deal from Amazon, including the noise-canceling Studio Buds, which are nearly half off. The limited time deal also includes the option for two years of AppleCare+ coverage. The Beats Studio Buds with AppleCare+, which would normally cost $180, are only $100 right now. If you don’t want AppleCare+, you can get them for even cheaper, at a record-low $80 compared to the usual price of $150. The deal applies to five colors: Black, Moon Gray, Red, Sunset Pink and White.

The Beats Studio Buds are a good option for anyone looking for true-wireless, noise-canceling earbuds that perform well but won’t break the bank. They offer fast pairing for both iOS and Android devices, and will work with both operating systems’ Find My networks so you can track them down if ever misplaced. They also support Spatial Audio for tracks that come in that format. The Beats Studio Buds get about eight hours of battery life without active noise-cancellation enabled, and around five hours with it turned on.

If you’re looking for earbuds to use while you’re working out, the Beats Fit Pro, also on sale, may be a better option. These are among our top picks for true-wireless earbuds. The Beats Fit Pro earbuds (without AppleCare+) have dropped down to $160 in the current sale. This model is normally priced at $200, and comes in a slew of colors. The Fit Pro buds have a wingtip to help keep them securely in place while you’re exercising, and come with features like active noise-cancellation and adaptive EQ.

Also on sale right now are the wireless Powerbeats Pro earbuds, which hook onto the ear, and over-the-ear headphones including the Studio Pro, Solo3 and Solo4. These also come with the option to add AppleCare+.

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Another classic Tamagotchi is getting the reboot treatment. Bandai announced this week that it’s bringing back the Tamagotchi Connection to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the toy’s release. Tamagotchi Connection, which first came out in 2004, was a pivotal entry to the virtual pet family, introducing more modern capabilities like infrared pairing so two devices could link up. There were several versions over the course of the subsequent decade, but v3 brought the beloved shell design the Connection family has become known for: the recognizable Tamagotchi egg, but with a faux antenna attached. This is the style Bandai is resurrecting.

Pre-orders are now open for the English-language Tamagotchi Connection in six colors: Bubbles (light blue), Ice Cream (pink), Rainbow Sky, the multicolored Clear Retro, and Blue and Pink Graffiti. They’re $30 each, or you can get the two Graffiti shells as a pair for $58. As usual, some additional, even cuter shells appear to be coming out in Japan. 

Bandai

While the new Connection revives the v3 design, it looks like the gameplay will combine elements of a few models from the pre-color era rather than just the one, or even add some new touches. Per the materials that have been released so far, the toy will feature more than 50 characters and come with 150 in-game items to collect. Some items will be unlockable by finding passwords. And the devices will, of course, be able to connect to one another.

There are still a lot of questions about what else the new Connection will offer — especially when considering the original v3 was the first internationally released Tamagotchi to connect to a companion website, the now-defunct TamaTown. Bandai hasn’t said anything at this point about launching something similar (though eagle-eyed fans speculate it may be in the cards based on a recent trademark filing), but a girl can dream. The rerelease of Tamagotchi Connection is huge in and of itself, though; fans have been asking for exactly this for years, and now it’s actually happening.

It seems Apple’s recently added option for App Store developers to include links to external payment methods isn’t actually all that appealing. In a hearing on Friday as part of the ongoing legal battle with Epic, Apple said only 38 developers have applied to add such links — out of roughly 65,000 that could, according to Bloomberg. The new guidelines, introduced in January, require developers get Apple’s approval before they can add alternative payment options and stipulate that they’ll still have to pay a commission fee of up to 27 percent.

The changes were intended to satisfy an injunction ordered by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021, but, per Reuters, Epic in March called Apple’s attempt at compliance “a sham” and filed a complaint with the court. At this point, Rogers doesn’t really seem impressed either. “It sounds to me as if the goal was to then maintain the business model and revenue you had in the past,” Rogers said of Apple's solution during the latest hearing, according to Bloomberg.

On top of Apple’s commission, developers also need to consider payment processing fees, which altogether could lead to them paying even more than they did before. “You’re telling me a thousand people were involved [in approving the new fee] and not one of them said maybe we should consider the cost [to developers]?” the judge reportedly said.

Space weather has been known to cause disruptions to GPS and communications systems, and perhaps no one is feeling those headaches more than farmers this weekend. 404 Media reports that the heightened solar activity over the last few days has led to outages in the GPS navigation systems that guide some modern tractors from John Deere and other brands. The technology has allowed farmers to plant more efficiently in ultra-tight, straight lines, but they’ve been advised to temporarily stop using it due to the potential for inaccuracies that could cause havoc down the line come harvesting time.

John Deere’s tractors connect to what are known as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems, 404 reports, which allow for precision planting down to the centimeter level. If farmers were to go ahead and plant without their usual accuracy, “we expect that the rows won't be where the AutoPath lines think they are” when it’s time to tend and harvest the crops, Landmark Implement, owner of some John Deere dealerships, told 404 Media.

The timing is terrible — it’s peak planting season for corn, and one Nebraska farmer, Kevin Kenney, told 404, “All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm.” Many farms have had to pause planting, while others are carrying on and just hoping for the best.

The geomagnetic storm we’re currently experiencing is the strongest observed in the last 20 years, and reached G5 levels on Friday and Saturday morning, which is considered to be “extreme.” It later died down some to G4/G3, but is expected to surge again on Sunday evening when some intense but slower-moving coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun reach Earth. That’s great if you want to see the northern lights, but not so much if your livelihood depends on the technology the storm is interfering with.

People who pre-ordered the PC port of Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut in countries that don’t have access to PlayStation Network (PSN) were reportedly notified this weekend that their purchases have been canceled and auto-refunded. Steam, Green Man Gaming and the Epic Games Store have all been canceling these orders, Eurogamer reports. Developer Sucker Punch previously said that a PSN account would only be needed for the game’s multiplayer mode, and the single-player campaign would be playable without it. But, here we are — and just days after the Helldivers 2 mess that transpired last week.

According to Eurogamer, people in affected areas were sent an email letting them know their orders were being refunded, saying, “The publisher of this game is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game — and this account cannot be created from your country.” Prior to this, Ghost of Tsushima was delisted from Steam in the over 170 countries without PSN, PCGamer and other outlets have reported. Sony hasn’t said anything publicly about the whole debacle yet. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is slated to be released for PC on Thursday.

The strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years made the colorful northern lights, or aurora borealis, visible Friday night in areas of the US that are normally too far south to see them. And the show may not be over. Tonight may offer another chance to catch the aurora if you have clear skies, according to the NOAA, and Sunday could bring yet more displays reaching as far as Alabama.

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Saturday that the sun has continued to produce powerful solar flares. That’s on top of previously observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or explosions of magnetized plasma, that won’t reach Earth until tomorrow. The agency has been monitoring a particularly active sunspot cluster since Wednesday, and confirmed yesterday that it had observed G5 conditions — the level designated “extreme” — which haven’t been seen since October 2003. In a press release on Friday, Clinton Wallace, Director, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said the current storm is “an unusual and potentially historic event.”

Geomagnetic storms happen when outbursts from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. While it all has kind of a scary ring to it, people on the ground don’t really have anything to worry about. As NASA explained on X, “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere” to physically affect us. These storms can mess with our technology, though, and have been known to disrupt communications, GPS, satellite operations and even the power grid.

Fans have been waiting a long, long time for another installment in the 28 Days Later franchise, and we now know when the next followup is coming out: June 20, 2025. Per Variety, Sony Pictures announced the release date for the upcoming film 28 Years Later on Friday. It would have been kind of cool if it were timed with the original film’s actual 28th anniversary in 2030, considering how close we are to that now (horrifying, I know), but I can't blame them for not keeping people hanging even longer.

28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy in what turned out to be his breakout role, came out in 2002, and was followed by a sequel with a different cast, 28 Weeks Later, in 2007. There were at one point murmurs of plans for 28 Months Later, but it looks like we’re skipping over that. The new film will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, who both helmed the first movie, The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this year. Murphy will be among its executive producers, according to Variety, but don’t get your hopes up for seeing him in a starring role. As of now, it doesn't seem like that’ll be the case.

We don’t know anything about the plot yet, but 28 Years Later will reportedly star Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. And it could be the first of three new movies in the franchise. According to THR, the plan is ultimately for a trilogy.

Jack Dorsey has apparently exited the Bluesky board. As spotted by TechCrunch, the former Twitter CEO who was previously Bluesky’s highest-profile proponent shared the life update this weekend on X, where he’s been posting a lot lately. In response to a user who asked “are you still on the bsky board,” Dorsey said only, “no.” That’s it, nothing more. Engadget has reached out to the company for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

The decentralized social network started as a project by a team at then-Twitter back in 2019, but it eventually split off on its own. It only opened to the public this March after being invite-only for almost a year. While Jack Dorsey sat on its board, Bluesky is led by Jay Graber, its CEO since 2021. Dorsey has said mixed things about X since Elon Musk’s takeover, but it seems he’s now swung back around. On Saturday, he posted on X, “don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one).”

The company has made no mention yet of Dorsey’s departure, and he’s still named as a board member on its website. Dorsey seemingly deleted his own Bluesky account months ago, TechCrunch notes. 

Threads is giving users more control over who can quote their posts (as in, reposting with commentary). If you don’t want just anyone to be able to quote your posts, you now have the option to allow only people you follow to do so. Or, you can make it so no one can quote your posts at all. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced the update this weekend, saying he hopes it will “help keep Threads a more positive place.” The platform tested the feature among a group of Threads users last month, but it’s now rolling out to everyone.

Threads, which now has over 150 million monthly users, has been slowly adding more features to improve safety and the overall user experience, borrowing some tools from Instagram. Last month, it introduced the Hidden Words feature, so users can designate certain terms that they want to be filtered out of their feeds. Threads also recently started testing options for archiving posts, either manually or automatically after a chosen expiration date.

Parrots are innately social creatures. In captivity, where they typically don’t have a flock to interact with, that can present some real challenges for keeping them happy and healthy. But recent research suggests technology may be able to help them meet more of their social needs. A new (very small) study led by researchers at the University of Glasgow and Northeastern University compared parrots’ responses when given the option to video chat with other birds via Meta's Messenger versus watching pre-recorded videos. And it seems they’ve got a preference for real-time conversations.

The research builds on findings from a series of small studies over the last few years, including one in which the team trained pet parrots to make video calls to each other (with human assistance) and another where they were taught to play tablet games. In the latest, nine parrot owners were given tablets to set up for their pets, who were then observed over a period of six months. During that time, the parrots — who’d been introduced to each other at the beginning over video chat — were able to engage in calls amongst themselves of up to three hours long over a total of 12 sessions. Half of these sessions featured pre-recorded videos, while the other half were live Messenger video chats.

Their caregivers, who recorded the sessions, reported that the birds seemed more engaged during the live interactions. They initiated more calls in those scenarios, and spent more time on average engaging with the birds on the other end. 

In each session, the parrots were allowed to make up to two calls, and the researchers found that those chatting over Messenger hit this limit 46 percent of the time, compared to almost half that when they were watching pre-recorded videos. Overall, they spent a combined 561 minutes video-chatting on Messenger compared to just 142 minutes watching the pre-recorded videos.

“The appearance of ‘liveness’ really did seem to make a difference to the parrots’ engagement with their screens,” said Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, though noting that further study would be needed before definite conclusions can be drawn. “Their behavior while interacting with another live bird often reflected behaviors they would engage in with other parrots in real life, which wasn’t the case in the pre-recorded sessions.” Still, the caregivers mostly reported that the live and pre-recorded calls both seemed to have a positive impact on the birds.

“The internet holds a great deal of potential for giving animals agency to interact with each other in new ways, but the systems we build to help them do that need to be designed around their specific needs and physical and mental abilities,” said Dr. Hirskyj-Douglas. “Studies like this could help to lay the foundations of a truly animal-centered internet.”