For the first time since 2017, The International, Dota 2's most prestigious tournament, will take place in Valve's hometown. The tournament will kick off with a group stage that begins on October 14th before moving to Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena on October 27th, the studio announced on Saturday. The Climate Pledge Arena, previously known as KeyArena, is the same venue where Valve held The International between 2014 and 2017. It's also the venue where Dota fans got to see one of the best plays in the tournament's history. 

In 2018, Valve moved The International to Vancouver's Rogers Arena due to the start of multi-year renovations at KeyArena. In subsequent years, the event made stops in China, Romania and Singapore. Valve had also planned to bring the tournament to Sweden, but the pandemic forced the studio to cancel The International in 2020. On Saturday, Valve said The International 2023 would host the event's largest audience to date. The studio promised to share more information about how fans can purchase tickets to The International 2023 closer to the date of the event.  

Back in April, users found a bug with Twitter’s Circle feature that saw the platform expose private tweets to strangers. Now, nearly a month later, the company has finally commented on the issue. In an email seen by The Guardian, Twitter told affected users the exposure was the result of “a security incident that occured earlier this year.”

The company claims the issue was “immediately fixed.” It also shared an apology. “Twitter is committed to protecting the privacy of the people who use our service, and we understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” the company said. When news of the exposure first started circulating online, some, including creator Theo Brown, speculated the issue was the result of Twitter failing to filter Circle tweets out of its recommendation algorithm. Twitter has not operated a communications department since Elon Musk's first round of layoffs, and the company did not initially acknowledge the issue.

More broadly, Twitter has dealt with a growing number of technical issues since Musk’s takeover of the company in October. The billionaire has reduced the company’s workforce by at least 60 percent, gutting many of its technical teams of senior leadership. Over that time, Twitter has suffered multiple outages and otherwise created confusion over feature rollouts and removals.

Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro are among the best Bluetooth earbuds you can pair with an iPhone – but at $250, they’re expensive. Thankfully, you can frequently find them on sale on Amazon and other retailers. Following a $50 price drop at the start of April, the 2022 AirPods Pro are once again on sale for $200.

Engadget awarded the second-generation AirPods Pro a score of 88 in 2022. They feature one of the best transparency modes of any wireless earbuds on the market, and improved active noise cancellation performance over the original AirPods Pro. They also sound better than their predecessor. Of course, the reason to buy a pair of AirPods Pro is for their hands-free Siri support and tight integration with iOS and the rest of Apple’s ecosystem. Pairing any set of AirPods with an iPhone is easy, as is switching between different Apple devices. About the only area where the 2022 AirPods Pro disappoint is when it comes to battery life. Engadget Senior Editor Billy Steele found the earbuds offer little over six hours of use on one charge, or less than many other premium wireless earbuds.

If the AirPods Pro are out of your budget, it’s worth noting Amazon has discounted other Apple audio products, including the third-generation AirPods. After an 11 percent discount, they’re $150, down from their usual $169 starting price.

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For the last few years, you’ve been able to say “Stop” to tell Google Assistant to end an alarm early without the need to preface your command with “Hey Google.” It’s a handy feature Google first debuted on Assistant-enabled smart displays and speakers before later rolling it out to Pixel smartphones. And for the most part, it works like a charm, though one person recently discovered a fun quirk of the feature that involves the Pixies classic “Where Is My Mind?”

In a Reddit post spotted by Android Police, Pixel user “asevarte” recounts how their morning alarm would go off and sometimes turn off moments later for seemingly no reason. “Maybe once every other week or so, I would wake up 30 minutes later on my backup alarm, with no indication as to why the first shut itself off,” they told the Google Pixel subreddit.

Earlier this week, asevarte decided to wake up early to get to the bottom of the issue. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find the culprit. Their alarm was set to play a Spotify playlist that features “Where Is My Mind?” If you’re a Pixies fan, you know exactly where this is going. The Surfer Rosa cut opens with bassist and vocalist Kim Deal singing “Ooh” before frontman Black Francis says, “Stop,” and the song, following a brief pause, then continues. The section caused Google Assistant to prematurely end asevarte’s alarm. They had the playlist set to shuffle, which is what made identifying the bug tricky.

Android Police recorded a video of the oversight in action, and sure enough, playing “Where Is My Mind?” ends an alarm early. Interestingly, other songs that feature a prominent “stop,” such as “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen, don’t appear to trigger Assistant’s Quick Phrases feature in the same way that “Where Is My Mind?” does. Android Police speculates the reason for that could be that in those other songs “stop” is backed by instrumentals. That lines up with complaints Assistant users have had over the years that the feature doesn’t work when they try to use it while their smart display, speaker or Pixel device is playing music.

If you’re curious about what the Pixies think of all this. The band’s official Twitter account caught the original Android Police story. “Sorry about that!” the account tweeted.

Earlier this week, a handful of retailers discounted Seagate’s Xbox Series X/S Expansion Cards to new all-time low prices. Now, Microsoft is making those price cuts permanent (via Polygon). As of Friday, pricing for the Expansion Cards starts at $90 for the 512GB model, while the 1TB and 2TB variants will set you back $150 and $280, respectively. That’s 32 percent and 30 percent off the $220 and $280 the 1TB and 2TB models started at previously.

While you could (accurately) argue Microsoft’s proprietary storage solution for the Xbox Series X and Series S is still too expensive, a permanent price cut is a step in the right direction for the company’s ninth-generation consoles. It means those Expansion Cards will cost less with subsequent sales, making them more competitive with the regular NVMe drives you can buy for Sony’s PlayStation 5. Moreover, further price relief could be on the way. In April, Best Buy briefly listed a 1TB expansion card from Western Digital. At the time, the listing suggested the NVMe would cost $180 (now more expensive than Seagate’s 1TB model), but more competition could push prices lower.

If you’ve been following the Apple rumor mill since last year, you may recall the iPhone 15 Pro has been widely expected to feature a set of touch-sensitive solid-state buttons. It now looks like Apple won’t replace the iPhone’s physical buttons for at least another year. In a shareholder letter spotted by MacRumors, Apple supplier Cirrus Logic said “a new product that we mentioned in previous shareholder letters as being scheduled for introduction this fall is no longer expected to come to market as planned.”

Cirrus is best known for producing a handful of components that go into the iPhone’s Taptic Engine. Apple is the firm’s largest customer, accounting for 79 percent of its revenue in 2022. In November, Cirrus told investors and analysts it was working on a new high-performance mixed-signal (HPMS) component (that’s the same category of part as the Tapic Engine), and that it would arrive in smartphones sometime in 2023. This week, Cirrus said it had “limited visibility” into the product’s future.

Reports suggesting the iPhone 15 Pro would feature a set of solid-state buttons originated from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said last fall the company was planning to replace the physical volume and power buttons on its next flagship phone with touch-sensitive buttons. Last month, Kuo revised his forecast, noting Apple had decided to change plans due to “unresolved technical issues before mass production.” If nothing else, the development is a reminder to treat smartphone leaks with skepticism, particularly those that circulate months and sometimes years in advance of a product’s announcement.

If you’re in the market for a smart scale, one of the most feature-rich models you can buy is on sale. After a 38 percent discount, the Eufy Smart Scale P2 Pro is currently priced at $50 on Amazon, down from $80. The P2 Pro is on Engadget’s list of the best smart scales and for good reason. It’s affordable, well-made and can track 16 different measurements. You can use the P2 Pro to measure your body fat percentage, bone mass, water weight and more. In other words, it offers all the stat tracking a person could use to improve their lifestyle. The P2 Pro would be among the smart scales you could buy if not for the fact Anker, Eufy’s parent company, recently misled the public about the safety of its security cameras.

The P2 Pro is part of a broader sale that also sees Eufy’s robot vacuums discounted. For instance, the RoboVac G30, one of the best budget models you can buy, is 45 percent off, making it $175.98 at the moment. It features built-in WiFi, a feature you won’t find on some of Eufy’s more affordable robot vacuums; the company’s Smart Dynamic Navigation 2.0 software; and boundary strips you can use set up no-go zones.

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Nearly eight years after the start of Dieselgate, one of the highest-ranking executives implicated in the scandal is set to plead guilty. The New York Times reports former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler has agreed to accept a plea deal that will see him confess that he allowed Audi to continue selling diesel cars even after Volkswagen, the automaker’s parent company, admitted its vehicles had illegal software designed to cheat government emissions tests. Per The Times, a Munich state court said on Wednesday that Stadler would also pay a €1.1 million fine and serve a sentence of up to two years. The former executive is expected to make his confession in about two weeks.

Since the start of his trial in 2020, Stadler had maintained he was innocent of any wrongdoing. In court, Volkswagen has insisted that Dieselgate was the work of employees who hid the software they created from the company’s leadership. While at Audi, Stadler also served as a member of Volkswagen’s management board. Alongside Stadler, German prosecutors are set to convict two other former executives: Wolfgang Hatz and Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio. The former previously led engine development at Audi and Porsche, while the latter was involved in designing the software that allowed Volkswagen vehicles to cheat emissions tests.

In 2017, Volkswagen agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle fraud and other criminal and civil charges brought by the Department of Justice after the company admitted that nearly 600,000 diesel cars sold in the US were compromised by its “defeat device.” Those vehicles were programmed to detect when they were being tested on a set of rollers and would, as a result, produce fewer emissions than out on the road. According to court documents filed by German prosecutors, Audi engineers originally designed the software that Volkswagen would later deploy in its vehicles. Since Dieselgate came to light, the German automaker has agreed to pay more than $20 billion in fines and legal settlements.

Praise, Shaï-Hulud. Warner Bros. has shared the first trailer for Dune: Part Two, and if you were a fan of Denis Villeneuve's adaption of the first half of Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi novel, let's just say Part Two looks like it will be even better. The teaser opens with Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya) talking about the future of Arrakis. "Where you see sand here, imagine water. If you dive in, you can't reach the bottom," Paul tells an incredulous Chani. 

Following that exchange, the trailer offers us our first look at Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan. Her character didn't make an appearance in Dune: Part One, but judging from the clip, Irulan will at least narrate some of the story, a change that could bring the movie closer to Herbert's 1965 novel. Another critical character that wasn't in Part One but makes an appearance in the trailer is Feyd-Rautha, played here by Austin Butler. Dune: Part Two will arrive in theaters on November 3rd. Unlike the first film, Warner Bros does not plan to simultaneously release Part Two to the soon-to-be-renamed HBO Max.

For the third time in less than a year, Unity is laying off a part of its workforce. On Tuesday, the company shared it would let go of approximately 600 employees or about eight percent of its global workforce. The company previously laid off about 225 staffers last June, and another 284 employees at the start of the year. Prior to the first round of workforce reductions, the company employed more than 8,000 staff. It now has around 7,000 employees. Unity also plans to reduce the number of offices it operates globally.

Unity declined to comment. A spokesperson instead pointed Engadget to a filing the company made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a recent interview CEO John Riccitiello did with The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all about setting ourselves up for higher growth,” he told the outlet, adding the layoffs would affect some in middle management. “It was clear we had too many layers.” Riccitiello also said Unity would move to a hybrid work model starting in June, with employees expected to work from the office at least three days a week.

The layoffs come despite Unity recently posting its best fiscal quarter and year in company history. In February, the engine maker reported a Q4 revenue of $451 million, representing a 43 percent increase from the same period in 2021. It was also Unity’s first profitable quarter as a publicly traded company. Despite that performance, investors don’t appear to be impressed with the company. Per CNBC, Unity’s stock is down 11 percent since the start of the year. The company is expected to release its Q1 earnings next week. Unity’s latest layoffs come amid broader workforce reductions across much of the tech industry. Like Unity, a handful of companies, including Meta and Amazon, have announced multiple rounds of cuts.