Neuralink has delayed its upcoming “show & tell” event by a month. On Sunday morning, Elon Musk tweeted that the showcase would take place on November 30th, instead of October 31st as was originally announced back in August. Musk did not provide a reason for the delay.

The last time Neuralink held an event, it showed a monkey playing Pong with its mind. Since then, the company has seen most of its co-founders leave, and rumors circulate that Musk has been contemplating investing in a rival brain chip company. Moreover, the fact that Neuralink has yet to secure regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials suggests the company finds itself at an inflection point. Whatever it has to show next month may therefore be critical to its future, so it’s not surprising the company thinks it needs more time to prepare.

If you’re looking for a solid and affordable pair of wireless earbuds, look no further than the Beats Studio Buds. Normally priced at $149.95, they’re currently 40 percent off on Amazon, making them $89.95 at the moment. That’s a new all-time low price for one of the more compelling pair of earbuds you can buy right now. What’s more, the discount applies to all five color options, including the newer moon grey and ocean blue variants.

Engadget’s resident audio expert Billy Steele awarded the Beats Studio Buds a score of 84 in 2021, calling them the best Beats earbuds for most people. He found they were comfortable and offered solid sound quality and active noise cancellation. The inclusion of IPX4 water-resistant housing made them a good fit for gym use, as well.

Apple users will appreciate that the Beats Studio Buds come with the company’s H1 chipset inside. It makes pairing the earbuds with an iPhone and other Apple devices fast and easy. Switching between those devices is seamless, as well. Thankfully, the Beats Studio Buds also support Android’s Fast Pair and Find My Device features, making them a good purchase regardless of your preferred mobile operating system. In recent years, Beats has done a lot to tweak its signature audio profile. The Studio Buds produce well-tuned mids and highs with bass that doesn’t overwhelm everything else. Our main gripe with them is that their case doesn’t support wireless charging.

If you’ve had your eye on other Beats products, Amazon has discounted the brand’s entire lineup, including the Beats Fit Pro and Beats Studio3 headphones. The former are currently 20 percent off, matching their previous all-time low price. We like the Beats Fit Pro earbuds for their solid sound quality, strong active noise cancellation and comfortable design.

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After nearly three weeks of escalating rhetoric, The Wire is retracting its reporting on Meta. On Sunday, the nonprofit publication said it had discovered “certain discrepancies” with the material that had informed its reporting on the social media giant since October 6th. “The Wire believes it is appropriate to retract the stories,” the outlet said, pointing to the fact it could not authenticate two emails that were critical to its previous coverage of Meta. One of the emails The Wire said it could not verify includes a message the outlet had attributed to Meta spokesperson Andy Stone.

“Our investigation, which is ongoing, does not as yet allow us to take a conclusive view about the authenticity and bona fides of the sources with whom a member of our reporting team says he has been in touch over an extended period of time,” The Wire said. “We are still reviewing the entire matter, including the possibility that it was deliberately sought to misinform or deceive The Wire.”

Before Sunday’s retraction, The Wire claimed Meta gave Amit Malviya, an information technology official with India’s ruling BJP party, the power to remove posts from Instagram, an assertation Meta has consistently disputed. Rather than backing down after the company shared a comprehensive rebuttal on October 12th, The Wire kept publishing stories that claimed Meta was misleading the public, culminating in an October 15th article that featured a screen recording the outlet claimed showed proof of the original takedown request that kicked off the entire saga. One day later, Meta said an internal investigation found the video showed a Workspace account created on October 13th, suggesting someone made the account to back up The Wire’s reporting.

Meta did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. Amid all the back and forth, Instagram eventually reinstated the post that prompted The Wire’s investigation in the first place.

Facebook parent company Meta says it may stop Canadians from sharing news content in response to the country’s proposed Bill C-18 legislation. Introduced by the ruling Liberal government earlier this year, The Online News Act seeks to force platforms like Facebook into revenue-sharing partnerships with local news organizations. The legislation is modeled after Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, which the country successfully passed in early 2021 after considerable resistance from Google and Meta.

In a blog post published late Friday, Meta said it wanted to be “transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to consider whether we continue to allow the sharing of news content in Canada.” The threat came after the House of Commons Heritage Committee did not invite Meta to a meeting about the legislation earlier in the week. The panel did hear testimony from Google, though only after the company asked to be included in the proceedings.

“We have always approached our engagement with Canadian public authorities on this legislation in the spirit of honest and fair debate, and so were surprised not to receive an invitation to participate, particularly given public comments by lawmakers that this law is targeted at Facebook,” Meta said following the snub. The Canadian government and social media giant have had an acrimonious relationship ever since CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg ignored subpoenas from the parliament’s ethics committee in 2019.

The bill’s sponsor, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, accused Meta of using the same playbook the company employed in Australia. “All we’re asking the tech giants like Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” he told The National Post. Among other objections, Meta claims news content is not a significant source of revenue for the company. When Australia enacted its News Media Bargaining Code, Meta briefly cut access to all news content within the country. However, the company eventually signed agreements with organizations like News Crop to carry their coverage.

Microsoft and Discord plan to make joining a voice channel from an Xbox console easier. If you’re a frequent Discord user, you may recall the companies recently launched Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S integration. Following a beta test in July, Discord started rolling out the feature to all Xbox users in September. Unfortunately, in its current iteration, the integration isn’t as straightforward as one would hope; joining a voice chat involves a transfer process that requires the Xbox mobile app.

That’s about to change. In a blog post spotted by The Verge, Microsoft announced it was removing the need to use a phone to join Discord voice chats as part of a beta update Xbox Insiders can try out right now. The new software adds a server browser that allows you to join a voice channel directly from your console. You’ll still need your phone handy if you want to call a specific friend over Discord, but the update otherwise simplifies what was an overly complicated process previously. While the feature is currently in beta, Microsoft will likely roll it out to all Xbox users sometime over the next few weeks.

The Republican National Committee is suing Google. According to Axios (via The Verge), the organization filed a lawsuit with California’s Eastern District Court on Friday. The complaint accuses Google of sending “millions” of RNC campaign emails to Gmail spam folders in an extension of the company’s “discriminatory” filtering practices.

“At approximately the same time at the end of each month, Google sends to spam nearly all of the RNC’s emails,” the complaint claims. “Critically, and suspiciously, this end of the month period is historically when the RNC’s fundraising is most successful.”

The lawsuit comes after Google launched a controversial program to appease GOP lawmakers concerned about its filtering practices. In June, after a study found that Gmail was more likely than competing email clients to filter emails from Republican campaigns, the company said it would work with the Federal Election Commission to pilot a system designed to prevent political messages from ending up in spam folders. The concession came after Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that sought to ban email platforms from using algorithms to route campaign messages automatically.

According to a recent report from The Verge, the Republican National Committee is not taking advantage of the program Google built to address the party’s concerns. The organization’s complaint doesn’t explicitly mention the pilot. Instead, it points to a training session the RNC attended on August 11th, the same day the FEC approved Google’s program.

“This discrimination has been ongoing for about ten months — despite the RNC’s best efforts to work with Google,” the organization claims. Google did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. “As we have repeatedly said, we simply don't filter emails based on political affiliation," the company told Axios, adding that Gmail’s spam filters reflect user actions.

The next time you want to download an app on your iPhone, prepare to see more ads. Starting on October 25th, Apple will begin rolling out two additional ad categories to the App Store, according to an email seen by MacRumors. In all countries outside China, the company plans to begin selling ad space within the “Today” tab and at the bottom of individual app listings. Once they arrive, the ads will feature an icon with a blue background to distinguish them from other recommendations.

While Apple has sold search ads through the App Store since 2016, the Today tab was previously reserved for recommendations from the company’s editorial team. “With a Today tab ad, your app can appear prominently on the front page of the App Store — making it some of the first content users see when they begin their App Store visit,” the company states on a support page.

Apple first announced it was bringing ads to the Today tab in July. The expansion is part of a broader push by the company to expand its advertising business. According to a recent report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company hopes to nearly triple its advertising revenue to $10 billion annually over the next few years. In addition to more App Store ads, the company reportedly plans to introduce search ads to Maps in the near future.

Google has begun rolling out initial passkey support for Android and Chrome. In a blog post published Wednesday, the company said web admins can start integrating the technology into their websites through the WebAuthn API. Similarly, developers can download the latest Google Play Services beta to start testing the authentication standard within their apps.

Google expects to roll out stable support for passkeys later this year, with an API for native Android apps arriving in 2022 as well. The latter will allow you to choose between a passkey and a saved password when logging into a supported platform.

As more apps and websites add support for passkeys, Android and Chrome users will see their relationship with online credentials change. "Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors,” Google notes. “They cannot be reused, don't leak in server breaches and protect users from phishing attacks."

Creating a passkey on your Android phone will involve confirming you want to make one and then authenticating your identity with a fingerprint or face scan (you can also use a screen lock). Signing in is just as easy. You simply authenticate your identity and you’re good to go. You’ll manage your passkeys through Google Password Manager, where they’ll be automatically backed up to the cloud to prevent lockouts if you ever lose your device.

Since passkeys are part of an industry-wide initiative to do away with passwords, they work across different devices, platforms and browsers. For instance, as you can see in the screenshot above, you can use a passkey stored on an Android phone to log into a website you visit through Safari. With Apple and Microsoft making similar efforts, the web will hopefully become safer soon.

Back in the early aughts, Microsoft released the Presenter 3000, a wireless remote for PowerPoint presentations. Now, two decades later, the company has announced the Presenter+. Like its predecessor, it’s remote you can use for PowerPoint presentations, but it also reflects how work has changed since the start of the pandemic.

Microsoft

You can see that in the design of Presenter+. In addition to the usual slide forward and back buttons, there’s a Microsoft Teams button that allows you to quickly join meetings and raise your hand. If Teams isn’t your jam, Microsoft notes you can use Presenter+ with the majority of other meeting apps, including Zoom. There’s also a big button for muting and unmuting your microphone, and the remote will vibrate when everyone can hear you. Rounding out the package is a nifty charging stand and Bluetooth connectivity. On Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can also customize the buttons to your needs. 

Admittedly, it would have been nice if Microsoft had announced the Presenter+ back in 2020 or 2021. That said, there are still plenty of predominantly remote workers who will find the remote useful whether they’re at home or in the office. The Presenter+ will retail for $80. Interestingly, Microsoft notes it's the first presentation control to be certified for Teams, suggesting more on the way from other companies. 

New hardware isn’t the only thing Microsoft had to share at its Surface event. On Wednesday, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay announced Microsoft Designer, a new graphic design offering within the company’s 365 productivity suite. The app features DALL-E 2 integration, allowing you to use the well-known image generator to add supporting art to your social media posts, invitations and documents. In the future, Microsoft plans to bring DALL-E support to Bing and Edge “so you can use your words not just to search but to create.”

The announcement comes just two weeks after OpenAI removed the waiting list that had existed for DALL-E, making the tool more accessible. However, the public debut came with some unanswered questions, ones today’s announcement of Designer doesn’t answer. For instance, it’s unclear if AI-generated images are fair use or stolen. Services like Getty Images have banned the technology in response to copyright concerns. For its part, Microsoft has sometimes tried new AI technologies before backtracking on them as was the case with its Tay chat bot.