Alienware has announced when you'll be able to get your hands on its first laptops with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards. Last month at CES, the brand unveiled a new 18-inch model, as well as more 16-inch laptops, and now the company has revealed some pricing and availability details.

The chunkiest system is called the Alienware m18. It will initially be available in the US on February 9th with a GeForce RTX 4080. That powerhouse system will start at $2,899. More configurations will be available at a later date, including an entry-level model that starts at $2,099 ($2,999 CAD in Canada).

Along with one of NVIDIA's most powerful laptop GPUs, the Alienware m18 boasts Intel's fastest 13th-gen HX mobile CPUs, up to 9TB of storage and either a 165Hz quad-HD or 480Hz 1080p display. It's as thick as the existing m17 but there's a promise of improved cooling, thanks to a vapor chamber covering the processor and graphics card, seven heat pipes and a quartet of fans. These are said to provide a 25 percent airflow improvement.

The m16 has a similar design and the same cooling boosts. Likewise, it will debut in the US with an RTX 4080 configuration on February 9th. That version of the m16 will start at $2,599. More variants are on the way, with the entry model slated to start at $1,899 ($2,699 CAD). 

As for the x16, that also has a 16-inch display, albeit in a slimmer, more portable and all-metal form factor. Alienware managed to cram six speakers into this laptop, including two upward-firing tweeters and dual woofers. You'll be able to snap one up with Intel's fastest non-HX 13th-gen CPUs. The x16 will debut in the US with an RTX 4080 on February 14th for $3,099. Other Intel and NVIDIA-powered variants, available later, will start at $2,199 ($2,999 CAD). 

Alienware plans to release AMD-powered versions of all of these laptops in Q2. It will reveal pricing closer to launch.

Meanwhile, Alienware has revealed that its first 500Hz monitor will arrive in the near future. The 24.5-inch display will debut in China on February 9th and it will make its way to North America "soon." Pricing for the US and Canada will be announced later.

You'll also need to wait a little longer to find out initial pricing and availability for the next Alienware x14, as well as Dell's G15 and G16. Alienware will announce those details on March 2nd. On the same day, the brand will host an event on Twitch, during which it will reveal more peripherals and other hardware.

Last summer, Netflix started using a spatial audio system that doesn't require dedicated equipment. After debuting the tech with season four of Stranger Things and a few other other titles, Netflix is now rolling it out more broadly. However, you'll need to be subscribed to the top-end Premium tier to check it out. The company says spatial audio is now available on more than 700 of its most-watched titles, including The Watcher, Wednesday and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

A spatial audio badge on shows and movies will make it clearer if a title supports that format. You can also search for "spatial audio" to see the full list of supported titles. In the coming months, you'll be able to check out more series and films with spatial audio enabled, including You, Your Place or Mine, Luther: The Fallen Sun and Tour de France.

Netflix teamed up with Sennheiser to use Ambeo 2-Channel Spatial Audio tech. It's designed for built-in stereo speakers, particularly laptops and tablets. Netflix says spatial audio should be effective on TVs that aren't too far away from the viewer and phones with stereo speakers. The company claims that its spatial audio will offer a more immersive experience to those wearing headphones too.

Premium subscribers are getting another boost starting today, which could come in especially handy for those who watch Netflix shows and movies on the go and across several devices. You'll now be able to download titles to six different devices, up from four. That's six more devices than users on the ad-supported plan can download TV series and films to.

Twitter has quietly killed off a feature that allowed users to publish co-authored tweets. The company enabled CoTweets on "select" accounts last July in the US, Canada and Korea, but the feature never made it beyond the experimental stage. As of today, you'll no longer be able to post CoTweets.

"We’re sad to say that the current experiment is coming to an end," Twitter wrote on an updated support page. "Already existing CoTweets will be viewable for one more month at which point they will revert to retweets." 

If you invited someone to CoTweet with you, that tweet will remain on your account, according to Mashable. For those who were invited to co-author a tweet, CoTweets will soon appear as retweets from the other person's account. All clear on that? Swell.

This may not completely be the end of CoTweets. "We’re still looking for ways to implement this feature moving forward," Twitter said. So, it could return at some point.

It's unlikely to be high on Twitter's list of priorities, however, particularly given that some 80 percent of employees have left the company since Elon Musk took over in late October. A recent report suggested Twitter now has fewer than 550 full-time engineers, who may have their hands full with other things.

Westworld fans who've been mourning the show's disappearance from HBO Max will soon have another way to watch it. Warner Bros. Discovery is bringing free, ad-supported streaming (aka FAST) channels to Roku and Tubi in the coming months. One of those channels, called WB TV Series, will feature premium shows such as Westworld, Raised by Wolves, The Nevers and The Time Traveler’s Wife. WBD yanked all of those shows from HBO Max in December.

WB TV Series, and two other channels focused on reality and family-friendly shows, will debut on Tubi as soon as February 1st, according to Variety. Eleven more FAST channels from WBD are coming to the platform soon, including ones centered around baking competition series, classic movies from the late 20th century and true crime shows. The channels will arrive on the Roku Channel this spring. All told, WBD is bringing more than 2,000 hours of shows and movies to both platforms.

Meanwhile, WBD is preparing to merge HBO Max and Discovery+, a move that's slated to start in the US this spring. The company hasn't announced the name for the combined service just yet, but at one point the frontrunner was reportedly just "Max."

Amid stern competition from other streaming platforms, Paramount Global is combining two of its services. It will fold Showtime into the Premium tier of Paramount+ later this year. The combined offering will be known as “Paramount+ With Showtime.”

Showtime's linear TV network will be rebranded with the same name in the US. As part of the move, some Paramount+ original programs will air on the cable network — so maybe more people will finally recognize the brilliance of The Good Fight.

“Now, with Showtime’s content integrated into our flagship streaming service, and select Paramount+ originals joining the linear offering, Paramount+ will become the definitive multiplatform brand in the streaming space — and the first of its kind to integrate streaming and linear content in this way,” Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish said in a memo to staff, as Variety reports. "This change will also drive stronger alignment across our domestic and international Paramount+ offerings, as international Paramount+ already includes Showtime content.”

Showtime debuted its own streaming service in 2015, a year after CBS All Access arrived. The latter was rebranded as Paramount+ in 2021. Last year, Paramount Global integrated Showtime content into its namesake streaming service as part of a bundle. Now, it's going a step further by unifying them.

While the move may come as a disappointment to those who are only interested in Showtime's content and aren't sold on Paramount+, the move makes sense from a business perspective. There's a wave of consolidation across the media industry, including in streaming, where HBO Max and Discovery+ will combine in the coming months.

Paramount will look to cut some costs and funnel extra resources into its more successful properties amid the transition. Just as news of the streaming merger broke, it emerged that Showtime has canceled American Gigolo and Let The Right One In (a series based on one of the best films of the last 20 years), while it's reportedly trying to offload a new show called Three Women.

“As a part of Paramount+, we can put more resources into building out the lanes that have made the Showtime brand famous, as well as turning our hit shows into global hit franchises," Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime and Paramount Media Networks, wrote in a staff memo. "To do this, we will divert investment away from areas that are underperforming and that account for less than 10 percent of our views.”

Vice President Kamala Harris will today award the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for the first time since 2006. The recipients are Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, who became the first astronauts to fly to space on a crewed SpaceX mission in 2020. The pair, who traveled to the International Space Station and stayed there for almost two months, will receive the honor for their bravery.

Hurley and Behnken were part of the first crewed spaceflight from US soil since the last Space Shuttle mission in 2011. They both also flew on the Space Shuttle, and Hurley was on the program's final flight.

Hurley and Behnken's Demo-2 mission was the first crewed flight under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Five other SpaceX crews have since flown to the ISS.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is typically given to mark a first in space travel, as The Washington Post notes. Previous recipients include Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepard (the first American to travel to space), John Glenn (the first American in orbit) and Frank Borman (commander of Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission). The award was also granted posthumously to the crew of Apollo 1 and those who died aboard the Challenger and Columbia shuttles.

Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23rd. Chow will discuss the app's privacy and data security measures, its impact on kids and ties to China (parent company ByteDance is headquartered in the country). This will be Chew's first appearance in front of a congressional panel, the committee said. TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas faced similar questions from lawmakers in September.

"ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data," committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in a statement. "Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms. We’ve made our concerns clear with TikTok. It is now time to continue the committee’s efforts to hold Big Tech accountable by bringing TikTok before the committee to provide complete and honest answers for people.”

Engadget has contacted TikTok for comment.

TikTok's security and relationship with Chinese authorities have drawn the attention of US officials over the last few years. However, as CNBC notes, discussions between the US and TikTok appear to have stalled, as officials remain concerned about the possibility of China forcing it to hand over user data.

The company has tried to placate concerns from regulators and elected officials by storing US user data on domestic Oracle servers and deleting such data from its own servers in the US and Singapore. Oracle has been reviewing TikTok's algorithms and content moderation models for signs of Chinese interference.

Last month, TikTok said it fired four employees (two each in China and the US) who accessed the data of several journalists. They were said to be looking for the sources of leaks to reporters.

Also in December, lawmakers passed a mammoth spending bill. The legislation bans TikTok from federal government-owned devices. More than half of all states have implemented similar bans on local government devices. Meanwhile, senators and members of Congress have renewed efforts to ban TikTok in the US entirely.

News of Chew's appearance before the panel comes on Data Privacy Day. In a blog post, TikTok laid out some of its efforts to bolster user privacy, including a plan to set up a data center in Dublin this year to store UK and European Economic Area data.

Ford has slashed prices of its Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle by up to eight percent (as much as $5,900), with the extended-range battery dropping in price by around 19 percent. The entry-level models are now around $600 to $900 less expensive, according to Reuters, which reported that people who are currently waiting for Ford to deliver a Mach-E will receive the price cut automatically.

At least one variant is again eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit, which applies to EVs that have an MSRP of $55,000 or less. SUVs, vans and pickup trucks are eligible for the credit if they have a maximum MSRP of $80,000, but the Internal Revenue Service does not class the Mach-E as an SUV.

In August, Ford increased the price of the Mach-E for new orders by between around $2,600 and $8,000 compared with the 2022 trims. The company attributed the price hikes to "significant material cost increases, continued strain on key supply chains and rapidly evolving market conditions." However, it seems those issues have abated somewhat.

"At Ford, we want to make EVs more accessible, so we’re increasing Mustang Mach-E production and reducing prices across the Mach-E lineup," Ford CEO Jim Farley wrote on Twitter. "Scaling will shorten customer wait times. And with higher production, we’re reducing costs, which allows us [to] share these savings with customers."

Ford built 78,000 Mach-E vehicles in 2022. It hopes to ramp up production to an annual run rate of 270,000 by the end of this year. The company is aiming to reach a total EV production rate of 600,000 by late 2023 with the help of new lithium iron phosphate battery packs.

The move comes after Tesla slashed the prices of its EVs by up to 20 percent earlier this month. The five-seat Model Y Long Range became eligible for the tax credit after the cut, meaning that it's now $20,500 (over 30 percent) less expensive.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has filed an unfair labor practice charge against eBay-owned TCGplayer on behalf of workers at the trading card marketplace. The organization says TCGplayer supervisors and managers, including founder and CEO Chedy Hampson, illegally surveilled union activity in recent weeks.

Workers at TCGplayer are trying to unionze and this week, a supermajority filed for a union representation election. If they're successful, they'll form TCG Union/CWA, which will be the first union within eBay.

The CWA claims that TCGplayer higher-ups have walked the floors of the company's authentication center in Syracuse, New York. It says the supervisors and managers were taking note of employees who wore clothing or badges that identified them as supporters of the union drive. "This conduct constitutes unlawful surveillance of union activity and further created an impression of surveillance designed to interfere with, restrain and coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the National Relations Labor Act," the CWA said in a statement.

The workers renewed their attempts to form a union after eBay bought TCGplayer late last year in a deal worth up to $295 million. They previously tried to organize in 2020, but withdrew their union election petition a few days before the vote. The CWA says that TCGplayer thwarted those efforts by bringing in a union-busting firm and running "an intense anti-union campaign where workers were regularly ordered to attend captive audience meetings and disparaged by management in company communications."

Engadget has contacted TCGplayer and eBay for comment.

Get ready for more clickers, quips from Ellie and perhaps a trip to a decaying Seattle: HBO has renewed The Last of Us for a second season. That's not exactly a surprise, as the adaptation of Naughty Dog's games is already a huge hit for the network. Some 22 million people have now watched the first episode, five times the number of people who tuned in on the premiere night 12 days ago. The show also saw the largest second-week jump in audience figures of any original HBO drama series.

If you haven't caught The Last of Us yet and are curious what all the hullabaloo is about, there's some good news. You can now watch the first episode for free on HBO Max.

The streaming service often offers free tasters of certain shows in the hopes of getting viewers hooked and prompting them to subscribe. The first episode of Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, another major success for the platform, is free to watch on both HBO Max and YouTube.

For the uninitiated, The Last of Us is based on a PlayStation 3 (and PS4 and PS5) game of the same name. It's often held up as one of the finest examples of storytelling in video games. It tales the tale of a smuggler who reluctantly escorts a teenage girl across the US after the world has been ravaged by a fungus that turns people into terrifying, mutated creatures.

So far, HBO's terrific adaptation has largely followed the same story with some smart deviations and changes. Critics have hailed the third episode, which airs this Sunday, as the best installment of the season. It focuses on a side story that's primarily told through a note players find in the game.