Amazon has the Blink Mini for a mere $17.50 in an early Prime Day deal — half off the security camera’s $35 sticker price. The small plug-in device can give you extra peace of mind while you’re away from home, letting you check in remotely to ensure your space is free from intruders (or talk to your pets using its two-way audio). The lower price for Prime Day could make it easier to set up a fleet of them in your home without breaking the bank.

Unlike the more expensive Blink Indoor, the Blink Mini is a plug-in device, so make sure you have a nearby power outlet or can run an extension cord to the area where you’ll set it up. The Blink Mini offers 1080p capture, infrared night vision and optional phone alerts if it senses motion while armed. Setup is straightforward, only requiring a few minutes of following instructions in the Blink app to connect it to WiFi. However, the camera only works with Amazon Alexa, so you may want to look at competing products in Engadget’s Smart Home Guide if you rely on Siri or Google Assistant for voice control.

If you’re more interested in monitoring your yard or entrance, Amazon also has the Blink Outdoor for half off as part of the same early Prime Day deal. Usually $100, you can snag it today for $50. The “weather-resistant” wireless camera records in 1080p and can last up to an estimated two years on a pair of AA batteries. Remember that you’ll need a Blink Sync Module 2 and a Blink Subscription to save your recorded photos and videos to the cloud with this model.

Finally, this Blink Video Doorbell bundle — which includes the Sync Module 2 — is on sale for $47.49 (usually $95.) Like the other devices, it supports 1080p live video with nighttime infrared support and can run for up to two years on a couple of AA batteries. Amazon also describes it as weather-resistant, with a seal protecting it against water. Setup can vary, depending on whether you connect it wired or wirelessly, but either way, the Blink app will guide you through the steps. And if you opt for the simpler wireless setup, you can configure it to use a Blink Mini to play a chime indoors when someone visits.

Amazon has deals on several other Blink bundles as well. You can check out the entire sale for the full details.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

We've known for quite a while that Meta has been building a Twitter competitor, but now we have a more solid idea of when it will become available. A listing for the app called Threads has popped up in the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report came out saying that the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could be arriving at a time when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to try an alternative. 

Twitter recently put a cap on how many tweets an unverified account can read per day. In a post, Elon Musk announced that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts a day, while unverified/nonpaying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation." A regular user can easily hit 600 posts, so people who haven't been paying $8 to $11 a month for blue checkmark have been getting locked out of their feeds as a result. 

Meta describes Threads as "Instagram's text-based conversation app." Based on the screenshots posted in the listing, users can keep their Instagram handle and follow the same accounts they follow on the photo-sharing platform. That means users will have a pre-existing following and circles on the new app, giving it an edge over other Twitter rivals. Users will also be able to choose the privacy of their posts and make them visible to anyone, to the profiles they follow or only to the accounts they mention. They will be able to heart, send and share other people's posts, as well. 

Previous reports said Meta's Twitter competitor would be a decentralized service that's compatible with Mastodon, but it's unclear if that's still the case when it launches. We'll know for sure within a few days. 

If you've been having trouble using Twitter recently, you aren't alone — the service has been having issues ever since it started limiting the number of posts users could view each day. Although many of the platform's issues stabilized over the weekend, Tweetdeck remains broken unless users switch to the beta version of the list aggregator. Now, Twitter is gearing up to solve the issue by making that beta version of Tweetdeck the main version, announcing on Monday that it has "launched a new, improved version of Tweetdeck."

Despite officially launching, this "new" Tweetdeck still calls itself the "Tweetdeck Preview" while in app, and users still need to opt-in to using it in the menu of the original Tweetdeck interface. Even so, switching to the new interface does indeed restore basic Tweetdeck functionality for users that rely on its list aggregation features. Twitter says the process should be fairly straightforward as well, promising that saved searches, lists and columns should carry over instantly. Although Twitter says that the updated preview build should now support Twitter Spaces, polls and other features that were previously missing, it notes that Teams functionality is currently unavailable.

Twitter hasn't officially announced that it's retiring the old version of Tweetdeck, but in a thread discussing the issues a Twitter employee suggested the change would be permanent, stating that they were "migrating everyone to the preview version." 

Although switching to the new version of Tweetdeck potentially resolves the issue, many legacy users may still find themselves without access to the power-user tool in the near future. According to Twitter Support, the feature will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers in the near future, noting that "in 30 days, users must be Verified to access Tweetdeck." It's unclear if that change will be applied to all users in early August, or if all users will have a 30-day trial of the new Tweetdeck before being prompted to subscribe.

Tidal has followed Apple Music, Deezer and Amazon Music by increasing the price of its base HiFi subscription. Starting on August 1st, the cost of an individual membership is going up by $1 to $11 per month in the US, while the family plan will run you $17 per month, an increase of $2. According to Billboard, prices are going up in other markets too.

It's not yet clear whether the Tidal HiFi Plus tier is affected. This $20 per month plan includes Dolby Atmos Music, Sony 360 Audio and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) tracks. There appear to be no changes to the free tier, student plan and discounted military membership for now. Engadget has contacted Tidal for clarification.

Several of Tidal's rivals have increased their prices in recent months. Deezer and Apple Music both bumped up the prices of their individual plans to $11 per month in late 2022. Amazon Music followed suit in February.

Spotify, meanwhile, hasn't changed the price of its $10 per month individual plan in the US since 2011. The company is expected to do so in the near future, following recent remarks by CEO Daniel Ek. Rumors also suggest that Spotify's long-awaited high-fidelity plan, which is said to include audiobooks, could arrive this year.

Remember the early days of the AI hype train, when everyone spent their time making stupid images using text prompts? If you want to recapture the nostalgic haze of, uh, late 2022, Picsart has got you covered. The popular image editor just launched an AI-powered animated GIF generator.

The major difference between earlier text-to-image platforms like DALL-E and Picsart’s new tool is animation. DALL-E is best known for making static images, whereas Picsart’s software creates animated GIFs, just like the ones you’ve been sending in group chats and social media platforms for years. Only, now you don’t have to search for your favorite It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia characters doing outlandish things. You can just make those outlandish things up. You can even make two cats arm wrestle.

Picsart

Picsart is calling the tool its “most unhinged” platform yet, and it works exactly how you expect. Type a bunch of nonsense into the chat box, wait a minute or so and marvel at your “chaotic and eccentric” creation. The platform’s integrated into the regular Picsart app and is available for iOS devices, Android devices and on the web. You can download the GIF directly to your device to share with your group chat or to send anywhere else.

The images created by this platform are on the cartoony side, so don’t expect photorealism. However, that just adds to the fun. Picsart’s AI GIF generator is available right now, so let the nonsense begin. Just don’t use these tools to make the opening credits for an uber-expensive TV show based on popular comic book characters.

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. There really is an HBO show on Netflix. All five seasons of Issa Rae's highly acclaimed comedy-drama series Insecure are now streaming on Netflix in the US. Not only that, more HBO shows are on the way to the service as Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) tries to wring more revenue out of its expansive library.

Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Six Feet Under and Ballers are also coming to Netflix as part of the deal, the company told Deadline. Meanwhile, Netflix users outside the US will be able to stream True Blood on the service. This is the first time that HBO content has appeared on Netflix in the US, though some has previously been available on Prime Video. The shows will still be available on Max.

This is part of an effort to boost WBD's revenue. Late last year, the company removed some notable titles from Max, including Westworld and The Nevers. Those shows, and many others from the WBD library, are available to watch on free, ad-supported channels on Roku, Tubi and Amazon's Freevee.

Zaslav and his team have employed other tactics to improve WBD's bottom line. Those include pulling many shows and movies from Max to reduce costs, cancelingMax-exclusive projects before they were done (reportedly in favor of tax writeoffs in some cases) and laying off employees.

Over the last few days, Twitter not only stopped showing tweets unless you're logged in, but also started capping the number of tweets users can ready each ("rate limiting") — ostensibly due to "data scraping," according to Elon Musk. Those actions are starting to have an impact elsewhere across Twitter's ecosystem, with many users reporting that Tweetdeck (a power-user version of Twitter) no longer works. In addition, Google Search is reportedly showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs due to the logged-in requirement, Search Engine Roundtable reported. 

For a lot of users (including Engadget), Tweetdeck effectively stopped functioning, just showing a spinning wheel above most columns. That may be because a bug in Twitter's web app is sending requests in an infinite loop, effectively creating a "self-DDOS" (distributed denial of service), Waxy reported. As researcher Molly White tweeted, that effect is multiplied in Tweetdeck for anything other than the "Home" column, as it keeps "repeatedly retrying 404s," she wrote. 

It's possible to at least get your columns to show up by using a new beta version of Tweetdeck, as Engadget's Matt Brian tweeted. However, those columns are still subject to the rate limits (800 tweets for non-Twitter Blue subscribers), and so most users will stop seeing new tweets shortly after Tweetdeck loads.

On top of that, Google Search may be showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs following Musk's move to block unregistered users. Using the site command, Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz found that Google now has about 52 percent fewer Twitter URLs in its index than it did on Friday. It's still showing recent tweets in the Search carousel, but normal indexing seems to be broken at the moment. "Not that a site command is the best measure, but... Twitter is down [around] 162 million indexed pages so far since this change," Schwartz tweeted. 

There's no confirmation that the "self-DDOS" theory is accurate, but a post from developer Sheldon Chang (on Mastodon) indicated that shutting off anonymous access to Twitter may be playing a role in the issues. Twitter has promised that the login requirement and rate limiting are "temporary," but has yet to give a date for eliminating those restrictions. 

The billionaire space race is continuing to expand across the globe. Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has announced plans to expand its operations to "Europe and beyond," the Financial Times reports. Part of this growth hinges on finding a site for an international launch facility — the company has already put down roots in Texas, Washington, Florida and Alabama — but the new location hasn't been chosen yet. It's also actively looking for fresh acquisitions and partnerships outside of the US in areas such as manufacturing and software.

"We're looking for anything we can do to acquire, to scale up to better serve our customers," Bob Smith, Blue Origin CEO, said. "It's not a function of size — rather how much it accelerates our road map of what we're trying to get done." Last year, Blue Origins bought New York-based Honeybee Robotics, a move that appears successful: The space-based robotics company was part of the Blue Origin team that recently received $3.4 billion to build the lunar lander for NASA's third Artemis mission. Blue Origin's biggest competitor, Elon Musk's SpaceX, is handling the first and second Artemis moon landings.

Though Blue Origin was the first to launch, land and reuse a rocket successfully, it has fallen behind its rival due to hold-ups with building its launchers. Blue Origin's plans for a more global footprint might help them catch up with SpaceX's progress. Amazon's Project Kuiper also plans to use Blue Origin's rocket New Glenn for at least 12 launches between 2024 and 2029 after a few years of delays.

In a baffling move over the weekend, Elon Musk said the company would restrict unverified accounts to reading 600 posts per day – and new accounts to only 300 tweets daily. Meanwhile, Twitter will allow verified accounts to read 6,000 posts each day. For most people, that means, short of paying for Twitter Blue, they can spend about a minute or two on Twitter before encountering a "rate limit exceeded" error. Less than two hours later, Musk said Twitter would "soon" ease the limits to 8,000 for verified accounts and 800 for those without Twitter Blue.

Musk claimed the "temporary" limits were in place to address "extreme levels of data scraping" and "system manipulation." The day before, Twitter began preventing people not logged into the site from viewing tweets. Musk did not say what "new" means in the context of an account, nor did he say how long Twitter plans to restrict users.

It’s a challenging change to Twitter when it’s courting advertisers and paid users. Fewer eyes for ads and fewer benefits for paying users.

– Mat Smith

You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

The biggest stories you might have missed

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton isn't convinced good AI will triumph over bad AI

Europe’s Euclid space telescope launches to map the dark universe

Hitting the Books: How SNAP's digital services became an online quagmire

Apple's next AirPods Pro could feature a built-in temperature sensor

The company is also reportedly working on new hearing-health features.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple is working on bringing new health features to its AirPods family. The first could be a hearing test. Already, AirPods support audiogram profiles, so iOS can tune earbuds to adjust for hearing loss. Some apps, like Mimi, already tap into this feature. Gurman added Apple is exploring how to market the AirPods Pro as a hearing aid since the FDA made it easier for Americans to buy over-the-counter options last year.

Apple is also working on an earbud feature to measure your body temperature. The company already introduced a built-in temperature sensor with the Watch Series 8 and Watch Ultra. But a sensor can get a more accurate temperature reading from the ear canal than the wrist. However, Gurman warns both features are “several months or even years away.”

Continue reading.

Cowboy Cruiser e-bike offers a more upright ride

The new model allows for a Dutch riding style and has a wider saddle.

Cowboy

When Cowboy introduced its Adaptive Power update earlier this year, I wondered when a new model would arrive. The answer is, well, today. The new variant encourages a more upright design for a relaxed Dutch riding position. It also has a wider saddle — a feature at the top of our wish list for the Belgian company’s latest iteration. The e-bike has a wireless charging phone mount, and, like all its models, its companion app integrates with Google Maps. The Cowboy Cruiser is available for an “introductory price” of £2,690 (roughly $3,400) in black or white.

Continue reading.

Gfycat is shutting down on September 1st

Nothing lasts forever on the internet.

Gfycat is shutting down. Snap, Gfycat’s parent company, said it plans to shut down the GIF database and delete all user content in a few short weeks. “The Gfycat service is being discontinued,” a notification at the top of the website reads. Gfycat’s impending demise won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has tried to use the site in recent months. In May, Motherboard reported Snap had allowed Gfycat’s security certificates to expire. The oversight meant the platform temporarily became inaccessible to most internet users.

Continue reading.

Amazon's Prime Day starts on July 11th, and based on the early access deals we've seen so far, you can expect some exceptional savings. Now, the retailer is adding a small additional Prime Day bonus with a $5 promo credit if you purchase a $50 Amazon eGift Card for someone special (yourself included).

You'll want to check the lengthy terms & conditions, but the basic idea is this: If you purchase a $50 (or higher) eGift card between today and July 10th at 11:59 PST, you'll get a $5 promotional code that must be cashed in by August 25th, 2023. The main things to note are that it can only be applied to products sold by Amazon.com (not third parties) or any e-books, and that you won't be refunded the $5 promo credit if you return or cancel that order. 

If you're good with all that, there are already a number of options to use it. For example, Amazon's Fire HD tablet is $75 or half off the regular price, and other Amazon products like its all new Echo Buds and Eero Pro mesh WiFi router carry significant savings. Other stellar deals include the 2023 Motorola Razr+ flip phone at $850 ($150) off and the Apple AirPods Pro (2nd generation) at $199 ($50 off). If you really want to max out that $5 promo in terms of percentage, you can get Samsung's Pro Plus 128GB microSD memory card for $9 ($14 - $5), making it exactly half off. 

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.