Anker makes some of the best charging products out there, but the extra quality comes at a price. If you've been waiting for a sale, you can now grab a number of Anker chargers and other smartphone accessories at Amazon with discounts of up to 50 percent. Some of the key items include the Anker 621 MagGo magnetic charger ($30 or 50 percent off), the 511 Nano 3 PIQ 3 charger at $17 in all colors, the 313 Power Bank 10,000 mAh portable charger and the MacBook Pro 100W charger ($27 or 30 percent off). 

The Anker 621 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) snaps right on to your iPhone 12/13/14, adding 5,000mAh of range. It's relatively thin at 12.8mm, attaches using a super-strong magnet and charges either wirelessly or via the USB-C port and included cable. It also doubles as a kickstand, letting you prop up your phone for video chats, movie watching and more. It's normally priced at $60, but you can now grab one for $30 for a savings of $30 (50 percent).

The Anker 313 Power Bank, meanwhile, comes with a 10,000 mAh battery app and PowerIQ charging tech to triple the battery life of your iPhone or Android smartphone, all in a relatively slim and light size. Anker's 511 30W Nano 3 charger is one of our favorite accessories for Apple Watches and it's down to $17 instead of the usual $23. It's compact, foldable and has built-in safeguards to protect against overheating — and it's even powerful enough to juice up an iPhone.

Finally, the company's 100W MacBook Pro charger is on sale for $27, or 30 percent — a particularly good deal if you compare it to Apple's own MacBook Pro chargers. It can charge up a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro to 100 percent in just an hour and twenty minutes, while taking up a lot less space than the factory charger. The sale includes a number of other chargers, cables and other devices, but it's best to act soon before the sale ends. 

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A small number of Apple's iPhone 15 models manufactured in India could be available on launch day for the first time, according to a report from Bloomberg. Apple has built iPhones in India since 2017, but it has typically taken up to a year to ramp up production. This time, a small number built in India could go on sale immediately in that nation and some other regions. 

It's been known for a while now that Apple contractor Foxconn would manufacture more iPhone 15 models than before at a facility in Tamil Nadu, India. It's part of Apple's plan to diversify manufacturing in the face of supply chain risks due to tensions between the US and China. The number of units available on launch day from India will reportedly depend on the availability of components manufactured elsewhere and Foxconn's ability to ramp up production. 

Apple has only built a fraction of its iPhones in India, and production has typically lagged behind China by six to nine months. That changed with the iPhone 14, as Foxconn (and another manufacturer, Pegatron) were able to start manufacturing in India within the same month of the official release. Apple intends to eventually shift 25 percent of its production to the nation. 

Recent conflicts between the US and China haven't impacted Apple much, likely because Foxconn and other suppliers in the nation employee millions of people. It also has followed China's laws, removing thousands of illegal apps like VPNs. However, recent actions in the country to ban iPhones and other foreign devices for government officials have left the company more vulnerable than usual. Apple also sells a large number of phones in China, accounting for about 19 percent of its total revenue.

Apple is set to release the iPhone 15 today at its Cupertino HQ, reportedly with thinner bezels, a titanium frame, USB-C charging and more. We're also likely to see updated watches and Airpods, along with its latest iOS 17, watchOS 10 and iPadOS 17 operating systems. 

Sony has launched the "Aibo Foster Parent" program for its $2,900 robot dogs, allowing owners whose basic plans have been canceled to donate them. The company will then refurbish the Aibos as necessary and donate them to medical facilities, foster homes and other organizations. The aim is to "make Aibo more sustainable," the company said, by giving the units a second home where they can provide emotional support and more. 

The Aibo robot dogs in question are the newer 2019 ERS-1000 units still being sold, which are a reboot of its "entertainment" robotic dogs from the late 1990s. It's not exactly a fully charitable project, as Sony will charge "foster parents" an unnamed fee for service. It also notes that depending on condition, some donated units may serve strictly as parts for other Aibo robots. 

As we discussed in our review back in 2019, Aibo can do a number of tricks like standing on its hind legs and greeting its owner at the door, and has been engineered to "mature" over time like a real dog. It also offers a web-based interface that lets you program custom actions. The units have a suite of sensors and respond to voice and touch, and can even recognize specific people, so they're ideal as emotional support devices. That means they can sub in at facilities that don't allow real animals, so the program seems like a good use of older units — while also reducing e-waste. 

The latest WhatsApp beta contains a new screen called Third-party chats that may allow it to work with other messaging apps, WaBetaInfo has reported. While the page is blank, its presence could signal that WhatsApp is getting such a feature ready in order to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

In July, the EU announced that seven tech giant "gatekeepers" with over $7.5 billion in turnover — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung — must comply with all of the EU's new digital market rules. A key tenet of the DMA is that gatekeepers are prohibited from favoring their own services and must allow interoperability with third parties. Last week, the EU Commission designated key apps subject to the rules, including Meta's messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger. 

That means Meta must make WhatsApp work with other third-party messaging apps like Signal and Telegram starting in March 2024. That will allow users of those apps to contact people on WhatsApp, even if they don't have a WhatsApp account — though WhatsApp users will supposedly be able to opt out. There's no news yet about what kind of features will be available with cross-messaging, though end-to-end encryption will supposedly be preserved, according to WaBetaInfo. 

Apple's iMessage app isn't (yet) one of 22 key services mentioned under the DMA, so Google's dream of having Apple support RCS messaging may not happen soon. However, the App Store will be impacted. Apple is reportedly set to allow third-party app stores and sideloading in iOS 17, and both Microsoft and Epic Games are preparing their own stores for iOS mobile apps. We're likely to learn more about that tomorrow evening (September 12th) at Apple's iPhone 15 event, when it will take the wraps off of iOS 17.  

Apple has released a critical iOS 16 security update for iPhones and iPads to patch a particularly malicious bug that could allow a hacker to take over your device with no action on your part. The "zero-click, zero-day" exploit allows attackers to install NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, which could let them read a target's text messages, listen in on calls, pilfer and transmit images, track their location and more. 

The exploit (referred to as "Blastpass") was first discovered by Citizen Lab, which immediately disclosed it to Apple. It was reportedly used to install Pegasus onto the iPhone of an employee from a Washington DC-based organization. It's capable of compromising devices running the latest 16.6 version of iOS "without any interaction from the victim," the group wrote. 

Apple has released iOS 16.6.1 to counter the vulnerability, stating simply that "a maliciously crafted attachment may result in arbitrary code execution." In addition, Citizen Lab even advised "all at-risk users to consider enabling Lockdown Mode as we believe it blocks the attack." It's believed that the attack involved PassKit (an SDK that allows developers to put Apple Pay in their apps), hence the Blastpass name, along with malicious images sent by iMessage. For obvious reasons, Citizen Lab didn't release any other details. 

Lockdown mode is a recent iOS feature designed to severely restrict the functions of Apple devices and is aimed at a "very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats to their digital security," Apple has stated. The company has faced a number of threats of late, including a vulnerability from February 2023 that "may have been actively exploited," Apple said at the time. 

The exploit also brings Pegasus back into the news, following a ban by the Biden administration earlier this year. Developed by the Israel-based cyber-arms company NSO Group, it created a furor after it was used by multiple nations to spy on journalists, activists and others. In one notorious case, it was reportedly used by Saudi Arabia to spy on journalist Jamal Kashoggi, who was later murdered in Turkey. 

One of the consequences of Brexit was that the UK was forced out of several key European Union science programs, including the Galileo satnav project and Horizon, the EU's flagship science research scheme. Now, the UK is set to rejoin Horizon as an associate country under what UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called a "bespoke deal." 

The UK will also become an associate member of Copernicus, the EU's £8 billion (€9 billion) Earth observation satellite program. It won't be rejoining the Euratom nuclear research group, however, instead choosing to focus on its own nuclear fusion research. Under the terms of the deal, the UK will contribute almost €2.6 billion (£2.2 billion or $2.75 billion) per year on average for its participation in both Horizon and Copernicus.

"We have worked with our EU partners to make sure that this is the right deal for the UK, unlocking unparalleled research opportunities, and also the right deal for British taxpayers," said Sunak. "The EU and U.K. are key strategic partners and allies, and today’s agreement proves that point. We will continue to be at the forefront of global science and research," added von der Leyen.

Scientists in the UK who feared research isolation expressed relief. "Thank you to the huge number of researchers in the U.K. and across Europe who, over many years, didn’t give up on stressing the importance of international collaboration for science," biomedical researcher Paul Nurse told the Associated Press. 

The UK was kept out of Horizon due to a dispute over the Northern Ireland Brexit trading agreement, despite positive negotiations in 2020. A deal was struck for a UK return in February 2023, but negotiations stalled over the UK's level of financial commitment.

A key tenet was that the UK would not pay for the years of absence, but the UK's opposition Labour Party also noted that Britain had missed out on a lot in that time. "Two years of global companies looking around the world for where to base their research centers and choosing other countries than Britain, because we are not part of Horizon," said Labour science spokesman Peter Kyle. "This is two years of wasted opportunity for us as a country."

Horizon Europe "tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boosts the EU’s competitiveness and growth," according to the European Commission. It includes all EU member states and 17 associate nations as of January 2023, and boasts a budget of €95.5 billion ($102 billion).

Samsung has unveiled a 4TB version of its 990 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs with an optional heatsink targeted at gamers and content creators. The new models promise the "fastest random read performance among PCIe 4.0 interface consumer SSDs on the market," Samsung claims, along with faster read/write speeds, improved power efficiency and longer life. 

The 4TB SSD 990 Pro is available with and without a heat sink, and features a slim design that can fit into an ultra-thin laptop or gaming console, according to Samsung. With the company's V-NAND chips, a PCIe 4.0 interface and an improved controller, it can hit read speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s and write speeds of 6,900 MB/s — best-in-class and the same as its 1TB and 2TB versions. 

Random speeds are also identical to the smaller versions at 1,600K and 1,550K IOPS read/write, respectively. However, endurance doubles from 1,200 TBW (terabytes written) to 2,400 TBW over the 2TB version, thanks to the higher capacity. It also has twice the cache size at 4GB.

Though not as fast as the latest PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs (which can hit 11,700 MB/s read and 9,500 MB/s write speeds), the 990 Pro is among the highest-speed PCIe 4.0 models out there. It's also 50 percent more power efficient than the previous 980 Pro, Samsung said. That makes it ideal not just for PC expansion, but also consoles like Sony's PlayStation 5 — and 4TB would be pretty sweet, given the ever-increasing size of AAA games. 

The 990 Pro 4TB will go on sale for $345/$355 for the regular and heatsink versions, starting in October at Samsung.com and "select retailers." That's over twice as much as the 2TB version, which is normally $190 but is currently discounted to $135 on Samsung.com. Once it starts to hit stores in force, though, we should see discounts on the 4TB model, too.

Ford has announced that it's building the Mustang Mach-E Rally, an off-road version of the Mach-E with extra power, a raised suspension, Ford's new RallySport Drive Mode and more. The new model follows Volkswagen's unveiling of the ID.GTI, showing that automakers are finally focusing on enthusiast versions of their electric vehicles. 

The Mach-E features Shelby-like racing stripes on the hood, along with a black painted steel roof, upper and lower body moldings, a rear spoiler, a protective shield for the front and rear motors, a front splitter and a front fascia housing "rally-inspired fog lights," Ford wrote. It's even got a a recovery point in the front end with an included hook, in case you need to get winched out of a tough spot. 

Charlie Magee for Ford

The powertrain seems like it will be no joke either, with at least 480HP and 650 lb.-ft. of torque targeted, Ford said — equal to or greater than the Mach-E GT. Meanwhile, the Rally will be raised by 20mm compared to the Mach-E GT and fitted with specialty-tuned springs and MagneRide shocks, along with 385mm front brake rotors with red Brembo-branded calipers. As for the battery and range, it's targeting an estimated 250 mile EPA range with a 91kWh battery that can be charged from 10 to 80 percent in 36 minutes on a DC fast charger. 

To aid in off-road handling, the Mustang Mach-E Rally has the first ever "RallySport Drive Mode" from Ford, allowing added yaw for bigger slides, linear throttle response and more aggressive damping when entering loose corners. It works in concert with the new tires, helping the Mach-E Rally "to perform in snow and other slick on-road conditions." Ford tested the vehicle at an all-new rally course at its Michigan proving ground, "then abused Mustang Mach-E Rally prototypes in 500-mile simulating rally-cross durability trials to make sure it lived up to their design intent," it said. 

Charlie Magee for Ford

Despite the rally trappings, the vehicle has a high-tech interior, offering Ford's latest BlueCruise hands-free driving tech (available by subscription), along with Lane Change Assist, In-Lane Repositioning and more. The interior has the same dashboard display and large control screen (with Android Auto and CarPlay support) as other Mach-Es, but adds performance seats, gloss white accents and other Rally-specific design touches. 

The Mach-E Rally makes more sense in some ways than the Mach-E GT, since the base vehicle is a crossover SUV and not a sports car. It also looks better raised up as a rally vehicle than a lowered GT, in my opinion. It's not going to tromp very lightly through nature, though, given that the curb weight is likely to be around 5,000 pounds. 

Charlie Magee for Ford

It won't be terribly cheap, either, as Ford is targeting a starting MSRP at around $65,000 in the US, with exact pricing to be revealed closer to launch. That would be the same price as as the base Mach-E GT Performance Edition — though we'll find out for sure once it goes on sale in early 2024.

China has widened a ban on the use of iPhones and other imported devices by government officials, according to The Wall Street Journal. State employees were reportedly told in chat groups and meetings not to bring foreign-branded device into the office or use them for work, according to "people familiar with the matter." The aim is reportedly to reduce reliance on foreign technology and improve cybersecurity.

If you're experiencing deja vu, it's because Beijing has previously blacklisted Apple and other foreign products for government departments, most recently in 2019. Back then, the government was planning to phase out western gear over a three year period in favor of local alternatives. The aim at the time was to keep data within its borders and ensure tech was "secure" and "controllable," all as part of the 2017 China Internet Security Law. 

Apple has managed to stay above the fray, likely because Foxconn and other suppliers in the nation employee millions of people. It also has followed China's laws, removing thousands of illegal apps like VPNs. However, it's also more vulnerable than other companies. On top of the manufacturing dependence, the country accounts for around 19 percent of Apple's total revenue. 

Following bans by the US against Huawei and other Chinese companies, Beijing followed suit with a similar embargo on chip-maker Micron. The story had a further plot twist earlier this week, when Chinese electronics company Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro smartphone using 7-nanometer homegrown chips found by a teardown to be more advanced than expected. China also unveiled a $40 billion fund for its chip industry, following continued trade sanctions with the US. 

Tesla is another US company vulnerable to changes in China's policies. The nation reportedly accounted for a large chunk of its sales in its first quarter, and it's the only foreign automaker to gain market share in the first half of 2023. China recently restricted the use of Tesla vehicle by military staff and employees of state-owned companies, according to an earlier WSJ report.

Apple is set to release the iPhone 15 in less than a week, reportedly with thinner bezels, a titanium frame, USB-C charging and more. Apple has not responded to this story, but Engadget has reached out to the company for comment. 

Duolingo is best known for its language learning app, but it recently branched into teaching math and will soon offer music learning, the company announced. Through a series of "hundreds of bite-sized lessons," users will be able to learn notes and how to play tunes from a library of over 200+ songs. Using the app's gamified learning experience, the Music course "teaches you to read and play music anytime, through interactive lessons," according to Duolingo. 

"We know math and music, much like language, transcend cultures and connect people," Duolingo cofounder and CTO Severin Hacker. "Soon you will be able to learn math and music in the same Duolingo app — all with the same fun, engaging, and effective experience you know from learning languages with us."

Duolingo

Several screenshots show musical notation paired with piano keys (above), along with games like "fill in the blanks" and "match the pairs." The app will appear alongside languages and math at the top of the main Duolingo screen. The math app is already available for iOS, with levels ranging from elementary to more advanced, all using interactive, gamified lessons. 

A job posting spotted earlier this year provided hints that the company was working on a music app. Duolingo didn't give many details other than a few screenshots, but did say that "the course is free, fun and effective. It plans to reveal the app fully at its Duocon conference on October 11th.