Amazon's Big Spring Sale is almost here, and deals on its Fire tablets are already trickling in. Take the new Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet, down to $95 from $140 — a 32 percent discount. This sale brings the 32GB device to only $15 more than its all-time low since launching last October. 

Amazon's new Fire HD 10 tablet is a solid boost from its predecessor, thanks, in part, to 25 percent faster performance and 3GB of RAM. It has a 10.1-inch HD touchscreen with 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, 5MP front and rear-facing cameras, and 13 hours of battery life. Plus, it offers a microSD slot that can be used to add another 1TB of storage. This model does feature lockscreen ads, and it currently costs $110 to buy the device without them. 

Then there's Amazon's 32GB Fire HD 8 tablet, down to $65 from $100 thanks to a 35 percent discount. The eight-inch HD, 1280 x 800 resolution screen also features lockscreen ads at this price. The Fire HD 8 tablet's processor works 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and it has 2GB of RAM. For $30 less than the Fire HD 10 tablet, it offers similar features, just with not as high-quality (or large) a screen. 

The Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet and Fire 7 Kids tablet are among the other models on sale, with 22 percent and 36 percent discounts, respectively. 

Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

Better weather is coming and that means more time outside using your phone — and making sure it doesn't die while capturing all the beautiful blooms. Fortunately, Amazon is running a sale on Anker, one of our favorite portable charger brands. A range of the company's products are currently on sale, including the Anker Prime Power Bank, down to $125 from $180. The 31 percent price cut makes one of our best power banks for 2024 picks much more accessible. 

Anker's Prime Power Bank is a great choice if you're sick of guessing how much juice your power bank has left. This premium portable charger digitally displays its battery percentage. The device can charge your iPhone to 75 percent in 47 minutes and to 100 percent in an hour and 48 minutes. An iPad clocks in at 54 percent after 47 minutes and 100 percent after two hours and 11 minutes. The charger has a sleek look for a high price point but the screen seems easily scratched. 

Notably, the Prime Power Bank's sale doesn't include the charging base (that will cost you $235 for both), but it's not necessary. You can fully recharge the power bank in 37 minutes with a USB-C cord at 140W — faster than the base's 100W charging capabilities.

Other notable power banks included in Amazon's sale are Anker's 622 Magnetic Battery and 737 Power Bank. The 622 touts the largest discount of the group with a 43 percent cut bringing it's price to $40 from $70. It snaps right onto the back of an iPhone and provides up to 17 hours of battery life. The device, which is available in blue, also comes with a PopSockets attachment. 

The Anker 737 Power Bank is a bit more expensive, with a 38 percent discount dropping its price to $80 from $130. However, it offers three charging ports (two USB and one USB-C) and works with laptops, iPhones and Androids. USB connections have 18W of power while the USB-C provides 60W. 

Your Spring Sales Shopping Guide: Spring sales are in the air, headlined by Amazon’s Big Spring sale event. Our expert editors are curating all the best spring sales right here. Follow Engadget to shop the best tech deals from Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, hear from Autoblog’s car experts on the best spring auto deals on Amazon, and find spring sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

Respawn, the EA-owned studio behind Apex Legends has postponed the North American Finals tournament after hackers broke into matches and equipped players with cheats. The developer posted to X, formerly Twitter, that the delay has been caused due to the "competitive integrity of the series being compromised." Footage of the hacks, available available on Twitch, gave players the ability to see their opponent's location while notable player ImperialHal was handed an aimbot which artificially improves their aim while playing.

Cheating has been a continual issue for EA — and one that players claim the company is doing little to mitigate. Frustrated posts on EA's general discussion page include statements like "If EA gonna ban all the cheaters it wouldn't be enough players to play the game," and "The real issue lies in the process of banning/suspending players." Other grievances include a focus on profits over experience, such as bumping up the price of skins.

Furthermore, EA laid off five percent of its workforce — about 650 people — at the end of February. Respawn's in-progress Star Wars first-person shooter game was canceled alongside the terminations. At the time CEO Andrew Wilson told employees that EA was "streamlining our company operations to deliver deeper, more connected experiences for fans everywhere."

A new time for the North American Finals of Apex Legends hasn't been announced, but the X post stated that it would "share more information soon." In the meantime, EA and Respawn have to determine how to block the hacker's current access and how to reopen qualifications without risking further hacks.

CrowdTangle saw its team disbanded in 2021, new user registrations cut off in 2022 and now the site will officially shut down on August 14, the Wall Street Journal reports. Journalists and academics alike have used CrowdTangle to study the flow of content on Facebook and Instagram, including conspiracy theories and fake news. Meta, which bought the company in 2016, choosing to shutter the company is an entirely unsurprising move given it has been the source for many of the social media conglomerate's failings.

A tool called Meta Content Library will replace CrowdTangle, but only academics and nonprofit researchers can use it. That's right — for-profit news organizations can't apply for access to what sounds like a watered-down version of CrowdTangle. Meta claims that its Content Library — which is the company's answer for the European Union's Digital Markets Act — has new features like data on public comments and searching content based on views. However, early testers found it lacked geography-based activity data or the ability to download data from public posts.

Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg certainly benefit from limiting how much people — especially reporters — can view about their doings. We recently published a deep dive into Zuckerberg's dangerous decisions, including going against warnings from experts and personally intervening to block a ban on Instagram's plastic surgery filters. Other horrors under his watch include Instagram's recommendation algorithm promoting content featuring child sexual exploitation and regularly dismissing requests from top lieutenants to further prioritize safety. Then, in court, his lawyers have claimed he should hold no responsibility for the lawsuits involving harm caused by Meta's platforms.

In case you need another reason to shout "tax the rich" from the rooftops, it's here, and it's going to make you angry. A study found that 35 major US companies paid their top five executives more than they paid in federal income taxes between 2018 and 2022, the Guardian reports. The findings, which come from The Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness, are even less shocking when you learn the worst offender: Tesla.

Elon Musk's company earned $4.4 billion during those five years and gave its executives $2.5 billion. Despite that, Tesla not only didn't pay any federal taxes, but it received $1 million in refunds from the government. Musk himself is the second richest person in the world, with Forbes reporting he had a net worth of $207.9 billion at the start of March.

Tesla is one of 35 companies that paid less federal income tax than they paid their top five executives during that period. In total, the well-deserving and not-at-all greedy execs of these companies raked in $9.5 billion over these years, while cumulatively those same companies received $1.8 billion back from the government. Eighteen of these businesses reported net profits over the five years but didn't pay a cent of federal income tax. (All but one got refunds).

The study lists other notable companies like T-Mobile, Netflix, Ford Motor and Match Group alongside Tesla. T-Mobile made $17.9 billion, paid executives $675 million and received $80 million in refunds. The mobile provider has spent an incredible amount of money on lobbying Congress for tax breaks, spending $9 million in 2022 alone. Netflix actually did pay some taxes, but the $236 million was just 1.6 percent of its $15.1 billion in earnings — and just over a third of what it paid those top five executives. The statutory rate for federal income tax is 21 percent, so yeah, feel free to scream.

Spring is so close now that it's almost in our grasp. Say goodbye to wearing a huge coat to go to the gym and hello to outdoor activities. With that in mind, there many great GPS running watches out there to track your time in the sun, including the on sale Garmin's Forerunner 55. The smartwatch is down to $150 from $200 — a 25 percent discount that brings the device to its record-low price.

The Garmin Forerunner 55 is a slightly upgraded version of the company's 45S (which we rave about here). It comes with features such as a heart rate monitor, respiration rate, menstrual tracking, pacing strategies, and more. It also has a GPS that helps track distance, speed, and location and creates pacing strategies for a selected course.

While it's billed as a running watch, the Garmin Forerunner 55 also works for activities such as pilates, cycling, breathwork and swimming. As a smartwatch, the battery can last 20 days, while being in GPS mode gives the watch 20 hours — way more time than it takes to go for a run, stop for a snack and run back.

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Spotify is officially expanding its offerings beyond just audio with the introduction of music videos. The streamer is rolling out a beta program that offers premium subscribers access to music videos on mobile, desktop and TV for a select number of tracks by artists like Ed Sheeran and Ice Spice. 

In an email seen by TechCrunch, Sten Garmark, Spotify vice president and global head of consumer experience said: "We're starting with a limited subset of the full catalog, which includes thousands of music videos. Within this subset, we aimed to prioritize a wide range of genres and artists across our launch markets." YouTube (of course) and Apple Music both already offer music videos, so this new feature helps Spotify match up to some of its biggest competitors. 

To watch a music video, Spotify users listening to a song can click "switch to video" right on the now-playing screen. The music video will always start the song back from the beginning, but users can touch switch back to audio at any point. Even if the music video plays through, Spotify will still queue the next song as audio only.

Currently, the beta option is only available in 11 countries, chosen for a "number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support," Garmark said. While the US didn't make the cut, the countries included represent quite a global audience: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden and the UK. Users from these nations must also have a premium account to watch music videos.

Rumors that Spotify might add music videos started last July following a number of layoffs (and more have come since). This announcement is the first time Spotify has announced the existence of music videos on its platform. However, a Reddit user posted three months back that they had the "switch to video" option on a single song: My Way, by Limp Bizkit.

There's still time to make 2024 the year you upgrade your streaming capabilities. Doing so is currently more affordable with Elgato's Stream Deck MK.2 down to $130 from $150. The 13 percent discount brings it to just $15 more than its record-low price — but we haven't seen that deal since July Prime Day 2023. 

The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 is one of our must-haves to game-stream like a pro this year. It comes with 15 customizable keys that can complete actions like muting a microphone, changing the lighting and controlling connected accessories. Plus, offers plugins for YouTube, Discord, Spotify, Twitch and more. 

There's also a sale on Elgato's Stream Deck +, with an 11 percent discount dropping its price to $178 from $200 — just $8 off its all-time low. The Stream Deck + has eight customizable LCD buttons for everything from changing scenes to going live. It also has four knobs to control settings such as audio and video, along with a touch bar. Like the Stream Deck MK.2, it has plugins for Twitch, Spotify and more. 

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April is just around the corner, so if you're not stressed about filing taxes yet, it's likely coming any day now. Thanks to the lovely (read: horrible) tax lobby and the politicians who take their money, the headache taxes bring is as American as apple pie. The IRS is attempting to simplify things a bit with a Direct File tool, a free digital program that provides step-by-step guidance for taxpayers submitting their returns, The Associated Press reports. The IRS first announced this tool was on its way back in October.

To clarify, yes, even this development still requires filing your taxes and determining how much you owe (why tell us when we can just guess?), but it should be a more straightforward process and save you some money. However, it's far from open for all. The IRS pilot program is available to residents of 12 states and only those with a simple tax situation — we're talking basic W-2s and standard deductions here. Other potentially eligible reporting includes SSA-1099 Social Security income, the Child Tax Credit and student loan interest. The IRS has a complete list of eligibility requirements and a tool to check if you qualify.

Direct File is available to residents of Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Washington, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and New York. The last four also require state tax returns, so their residents who use Direct File will be directed to tools for filing those once they are finished. Alaska was initially in the mix but has seemingly been dropped since last year's statement.

Have you ever wondered if your visit to an Airbnb included being on candid camera? Well, there's good news for you and your stress levels because you really shouldn't have to worry about it soon. Airbnb has announced new privacy policies that entirely ban the use of indoor cameras. 

Previously, the company allowed hosts to keep cameras in communal spaces but banned them in areas like bedrooms and bathrooms. Hosts were technically supposed to disclose any cameras in the rental location, but this shift removes any ambiguity (or issues for most of us who don't read the entire listing description).

In addition to banning indoor cameras, Airbnb has also limited the use of outdoor ones. Hosts have to disclose any outdoor cameras on the property and these cameras can't point indoors or be in areas with a "greater expectation of privacy," like outdoor showers or saunas. They can also use doorbell cameras and noise decibel monitors. However, the latter also requires disclosure and can only assess decibel levels, not record or send sounds. Airbnb hosts can only place these in common spaces. 

Any host found to violate these policies can have their listing or entire account removed by Airbnb. If you have spring travels planned, remember to read your listing thoroughly to find out about any cameras — the new rules don't go into effect until April 30.