Google has just sent out media invites for its next hardware event. After teasing the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Watch earlier this year at I/O 2022, the company will provide additional details about those devices on October 6th, with a live broadcast from New York City starting at 10AM ET. 

We know from the company's May preview that Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will feature Google's second-generation Tensor chipset, upgraded cameras and Android 13. As for the Pixel Watch, the search giant previously said it would include Wear OS 3, deep integration with Fitbit and all the fitness tracking features people have come to expect in a modern smartwatch. On Tuesday, Google said it would also have new Nest devices to show off. 

One interesting detail in the invite is that all of the devices the company plans to show off on October 6th will go on sale that same day. Whatever the company has in store for us, you can expect comprehensive coverage from Engadget before, during and after the event.  

If you’re in the market for external storage, Amazon has discounted a handful of Samsung SSD products. Starting with the T7 Touch, the 1TB model in black is currently $125, down from its usual $160. With the $35 price cut, the T7 Touch is currently at the lowest price it has ever hit on Amazon. While there are faster external SSDs out on the market, Samsung’s portable drive hits the sweet spot between performance, features and affordability. Connected to a USB 3.2 Gen 2-compatible port, it offers sequential write speeds of up to 1,000MB/s. It’s also one of the more secure drives you can buy thanks to the inclusion of AES 256-bit encryption and a built-in fingerprint sensor. Another nice thing about the T7 Touch is that it ships with both USB-C and USB-A cables.

The T7 Touch is sturdy, but if you’re worried about how it will hold up on trips and your daily commute, Samsung also offers a ruggedized version. The T7 Shield is just as fast as its Touch counterpart, but it also comes with an elastomer layer that Samsung claims will protect the drive from 9.8-foot drops. It’s also IP65-certified against water and dust. At the moment, you can buy the 1TB model for $110, down from $160. That’s close to the lowest price we’ve seen on the T7 Shield. Amazon has also put the 2TB model on sale. After a 31 percent discount, it’s $200. You can buy the T7 Shield in three colors – blue, black or beige – and all three colorways are included in Amazon’s promotion.

Lastly, if all you need is a microSD card for your Nintendo Switch, action camera or Android phone, you’re in luck. Included in the sale are Samsung’s Evo Select microSD cards. The 512GB model is currently $47 after a 45 percent discount. You can also get the 256GB model for 50 percent off, making it $20 at the moment and just a few dollars more than the 128GB variant. I haven’t personally used an Evo Select memory card, but Samsung’s microSD has about all the features you would want in a mid-range memory card. It features a UHS-1 interface with Class 10-rated transfer speeds, meaning it can move data at up to 130MB/s.

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Over its long history, LG has never been shy about jumping on some unusual bandwagons. So it should come as no surprise that the South Korean electronics giant is getting into NFTs. Starting today, if you live in the US and own a webOS 5.0 or later TV, you’ll have access to the company’s new LG Art Lab platform. It’s a marketplace for buying and selling non-fungible tokens available directly through your TV’s home screen. It’s based on the Hedera network and uses LG’s new Wallypto mobile wallet for storing digital assets. There’s even a countdown feature that will remind you when NFT drops are about to occur.

The timing of the addition is curious, to say the least. Judging by daily trading volume on OpenSea, the public has lost interest in non-fungible tokens. On August 28th, the marketplace processed $5 million worth of NFT transactions, a 99 percent drop from the record high of $405.75 million it saw just a few months earlier on May 1st, 2022. Over that same timeframe, the floor price of some of the most highly sought-after NFT collections has also declined. At the start of May, a Bored Ape Yacht Club token would have set you back at least 153.7 Eth (or about $434,000 with the value of Ethereum at the time). By August 28th, you could buy one for as little as 73 Eth or a little over $105,000.

Of course, this is LG we’re talking about. It’s the same company that gave us phones like the Wing and V10 and stayed in the mobile market for far longer than any analyst would have said was a smart idea. How long it plans to pursue NFTs is hard to say, but there’s probably a C2 owner somewhere out there excited to show off their Bored Apes and fancy OLED TV at the same time.

DNS and internet security provider Cloudflare has blocked Kiwi Farms, an infamous forum known for its online and real-world harassment campaigns. CEO Matthew Prince announced the company’s decision on Saturday after it initially resisted calls to stop protecting the website.

“As Kiwi Farms has felt more threatened, they have reacted by being more threatening,” Prince told The Washington Post. “We think there is an imminent danger, and the pace at which law enforcement is able to respond to those threats we don’t think is fast enough to keep up.” On the company’s blog, Prince said that Cloudflare saw an increase in targeted threats “unlike we have previously seen from Kiwi Farms or any other customer before.”

Kiwi Farms was founded in 2013 by former 8chan administrator Joshua Moon. In the decade since it went online, at least three suicides have been linked to harassment campaigns that originated on the forum. In recent weeks, Kiwi Farms has gained widespread notoriety across both sides of the US political spectrum. After she was the target of multiple swatting attacks that originated on the website, trans Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti began a campaign to shut down Kiwi Farms. She used the hashtag DropKiwifarms to urge Cloudflare and other critical internet infrastructure providers to stop serving the website.

“There are countless people suffering because of this website,” Sorrenti told The Post on Saturday, moments after police arrived at her home in the wake of another swatting attempt. “Kiwi Farms isn’t about free speech, it’s about hate speech. The majority of the content on the site is threads used for targeted harassment against political targets.”

Separately, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called for the forum’s shutdown after a user claiming affiliation with Kiwi Farms sent police to her home. “That website needs to be taken down,” Greene told Newsmax during an interview. “There should be no business or any kind of service where you can target your enemy."

Earlier in the week, it appeared Cloudflare would not take action against Kiwi Farms. The company published a blog post on Wednesday detailing its policies on abusive content. Without directly mentioning the forum, Prince and another executive argued that withholding security services from websites the company and public find reprehensible would ultimately harm oppressed and marginalized voices.

On Saturday, Prince described Cloudflare’s decision to block Kiwi Farms as a “dangerous one that we are not comfortable with.” He told The Post he would have preferred to take action in response to a court order but added it was an easier call than when Cloudflare decided to drop the Daily Stormer and 8chan. As of the writing of this story, Kiwi Farms is still online after moving to DDoS-guard and a Russian domain.

NASA’s next-generation Space Launch System likely won’t fly in September. After a fuel leak forced the agency to scrub its second attempt to launch Artemis 1, there had been some hope the mission could get underway before its current launch window ended on September 6th. That won’t be the case.

"We will not be launching in this launch period," Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development, told a room full of journalists after the events of Saturday morning. “This was not a manageable leak,” Artemis Mission Manager Michael Sarafin added, referring to the “quick disconnect” fitting that gave NASA so much trouble yesterday. Ground crew at Kennedy Space Center attempted to troubleshoot the issue three times before recommending a “no go” for Saturday’s launch.

According to Sarafin, the leak began after one of the fuel lines to Artemis 1’s core booster went through a brief and “inadvertent” overpressurization. An “errant” manual command from Mission Control triggered the incident. As of Saturday, Sarafin said it was too early to know if that was the cause of the fuel leak, but there was enough flammable hydrogen gas near the rocket that it would not have been safe to launch. "We want to be deliberate and careful about drawing conclusions here, because correlation does not equal causation," he added.

Whatever caused the leak, NASA now needs to replace the non-metallic gasket that was supposed to prevent hydrogen from escaping at the quick disconnect. The agency has two options as to how to proceed. It could either replace the gasket at Launch Pad 39B or the KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Doing the work on the pad would allow NASA to test the system at cryogenic temperatures. That would give the agency a better idea of how the rocket will behave once it’s ready to launch again. However, NASA would need to build an enclosure around the SLS. At the VAB, meanwhile, the building would act as the enclosure but would limit testing to ambient temperatures only.

In the end, the SLS will likely end up at the VAB no matter what since NASA needs to test the batteries in the vehicle’s flight termination system every 20 days. The system allows the Space Force to destroy the rocket if it flies off course or something else goes awry during flight. NASA can only conduct that testing in the VAB, and the Space Force recently gave the agency a five-day extension on the usual deadline.

All told, Artemis 1’s next earliest launch window opens on September 16th and then closes on October 4th. That opening includes a potential conflict with another mission. Space X’s Crew-5 flight is scheduled to lift off on October 3rd from Kennedy Space Center. Therefore, NASA is more likely to aim for the subsequent window that opens on October 17th and runs until the end of the month. We’ll know more next week when NASA holds another press conference, but NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was adamant the agency wouldn’t attempt to launch Artemis 1 until it feels the SLS is ready to fly. “We do not launch until we think it’s right,” he said. "I look at this as part of our space program, of which safety is at the top of our list.”

Updated iPhone and Watch models won’t be the only new devices at Apple's forthcoming “Far Out” event. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company is also readying a set of second-generation AirPods Pro earbuds.

“The new AirPods Pro will update a model that first went on sale in October 2019,” Gurman writes in his latest Power On newsletter. “I reported last year that new AirPods Pro would arrive in 2022, and now I’m told that Wednesday will be their big unveiling.”

Rumors about the AirPods Pro 2 have been percolating for a few years. Back in 2020, Gurman wrote that Apple had tested a prototype with a more compact design that eliminated the stems so closely associated with the company’s earbuds. At one point, Apple was also reportedly considering adding more fitness-related features.

More recently, the consensus has been that the new AirPods Pro won’t have a dramatically different design. Instead, they will include the company’s next-generation H1 processor for improved audio quality and battery life. The earbuds are also expected to support the company’s lossless audio format and come with a redesigned charging case that features more robust Find My capabilities.

Just days before Apple’s September 7th event, Amazon has discounted the company’s Series 7 smartwatch. You can get the 41mm GPS model in “Starlight” for $299, down from $399. The $100 price drop represents the best discount on the 41mm model since it was on sale for $280 during Amazon Prime Day earlier this summer. Unfortunately, most other sizes and colors are either sold out or otherwise unavailable.

Engadget deputy reviews editor Cherlynn Low gave the Apple Watch Series 7 a score of 90 when she reviewed the wearable last fall. The Apple Watch was already one of the best fitness trackers you could buy going into 2021. The Series 7 merely made it better with a larger screen, faster charging and overnight respiratory tracking.

With Apple widely expected to announce the Series 8 at its event on Wednesday, you’re probably wondering whether it makes sense to buy a Series 7 at this point. For what it’s worth, most prerelease leaks have suggested the company doesn’t have many big upgrades planned for its next smartwatch. The Series 8 will reportedly include a new body temperature sensor capable of notifying you when you’re running a fever, but won’t ship with a faster processor or significantly better display. The company also reportedly plans to announce a new “Pro” variant of the Apple Watch, but that device is expected to cost more than the standard Series 8 models.

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For the first time ever, there are more iPhones in use in the US than any other type of smartphone. Citing data from analytics firm Counterpoint Research, the Financial Times reports the iPhone overtook the entire Android ecosystem in June to claim 50 percent of US market share. In doing so, Apple achieved its highest-ever share of the American smartphone market. Apple achieved the feat on the back of the iPhone’s “active installed base,” a metric that takes into account all the people who are using an iOS device after purchasing one used.

In the early days of the iPhone, iOS (then known as iPhone OS) never had anywhere near 50 percent market share. At that time, companies like Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola dominated the smartphone space. By 2010, two years after its debut, Android overtook iOS to claim the larger install base. Ever since then, Google’s mobile operating system has been the dominant force in the global smartphone market, claiming more than 70 percent market share as of 2022, according to Statcounter.

Google probably has nothing to worry about. After all, the iPhone has always had an outsized presence in the US compared to other markets. Still, the company is likely looking at the situation closely. “This is a big milestone that we could see replicated in other affluent countries across the globe,” Jeff Fieldhack, Counterpoint’s research director, told The Times. To that point, Apple dominated the premium smartphone market in Q2 2022, with the iPhone representing 57 percent of all sales in the segment and shows no signs of slowing down. 

On Thursday morning, Moscow’s busy Fili district became the site of a traffic jam unlike any before it. Motherboard (via The Verge) reports hackers used Russia’s Yandex Taxi ride-hailing app to order dozens of drivers to coverage on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The act caused traffic on part of the already congested street to come to a standstill for about 40 minutes while Yandex worked to address the situation.

“On the morning of September 1st, Yandex Taxi encountered an attempt by attackers to disrupt the service — several dozen drivers received bulk orders to the Fili district of Moscow,” a Yandex spokesperson told Motherboard. In a separate statement shared with Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency, Yandex said it reworked its routing algorithm following the attack to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. The event is one of the first known instances of hackers exploiting a ride-hailing app to create a traffic jam.

Several Twitter accounts claiming affiliation with Anonymous say the hacktivist collective is behind the incident. On Friday, one Anonymous account said the group worked with the IT Army of Ukraine, a volunteer organization formed at the start of the war, to carry out the attack.

Anonymous previously claimed responsibility for a cyberattack that took down multiple Russian government websites, including those belonging to the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defence. “Faced with this series of attacks that Ukraine has been suffering from the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, we could not help but support the Ukrainian people,” the group said at the time.

Amazon’s buyout of iRobot and One Medical may take longer than expected. According to Politico and The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing both acquisitions. Announced within a month of each other, the deals are valued at $1.7 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively, and have the potential to reshape two markets at the same time.

One Medical parent company 1Life Healthcare disclosed the FTC was investigating its proposed merger with Amazon on Friday, reports The Journal. That same day, Politico said the Commission had also begun a review of Amazon’s deal to buy iRobot. According to the outlet, a formal probe is likely given the detailed questions the FTC sent to the two companies. Amazon and iRobot are reportedly preparing for a “potentially lengthy [and] arduous investigation.” One source Politico spoke to told the outlet the review is “wide-ranging” and seeks to determine if the deal would give Amazon an unfair advantage in the connected devices and retail markets.

At the very least, the FTC could easily delay Amazon from finalizing the deals by up to a year. For Amazon, a worst-case scenario would involve lawsuits from the Commission. At the start of the year, NVIDIA abandoned its proposed $40 billion acquisition of ARM after the FTC sued to block the purchase over concerns it would stifle competition across a variety of markets. Whatever comes next, Amazon won’t have an easy road ahead. FTC Chair Lina Khan is a well-known company critic. She rose to prominence in legal circles on the back of an article titled “Amazon's Antitrust Paradox.”