Watch Google’s Pixel Event here at 10AM ET

After months of teases and leaks, Google is finally ready to show off the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Watch. Those who are curious about what Google has in store can find out the full details as soon as the company announces them by watching the Pixel Event livestream. The festivities start at 10AM ET and you can watch via the video embedded below.

Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low and Senior Reporter Sam Rutherford will be breaking down the news as it happens on our liveblog. We’ll have full coverage of everything you need to know from the showcase on our Pixel 7 event page as well.

Google has already confirmed that the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will run on a next-gen Tensor chip and Android 13. The Pixel Watch, meanwhile, is the first smartwatch that Google has designed and built in-house. It will blend Google features with Fitbit’s health and fitness knowhow, and have an overhauled Wear OS experience.

It might be worth keeping close tabs on the event if you’re already interested in buying a Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel Watch or new Nest device (Google will have some announcements on that front too). All the devices that Google will show off during the event are going on sale today.

Follow all of the news from Google’s Pixel 7 event right here!

Amazon’s Eero Pro 6E WiFi bundle is $280 off for Prime members

Amazon has been slashing the prices of its own products over the past few days as we approach its second Prime Day event for the year. After holding a sale for its Fire tablets, Kindle Paperwhite and Fire TVs, the company is now also selling the Eero Pro 6E tri-band mesh WiFi devices at heavily discounted prices. Among all the options available, the three-pack bundle of Eero devices seems to be the standout deal — at $419, it’s even cheaper than the pack with two nodes that’s currently selling for $499. That’s also $280 or 40 percent lower than its usual price, and it’s the lowest we’ve seen the three-pack go for on the website. 

Buy Amazon eero Pro 6E tri-band mesh Wi-Fi 3 Pack at Amazon – $419

This is the first Eero model to support WiFi 6E, which allows eligible devices to access a new 6 GHz band. Amazon said 6E support results in lower latency across the network, so even devices that don’t support the extended standard will stand to benefit from the capability. The model supports network speeds of up to 2.3 Gbps, can cover up to 6,000 sq ft of space and can handle over 100 connected devices. Eero also uses TrueMesh technology to route traffic in order to reduce drop-offs and prevent dead spots. In addition to serving as a mesh router, Eero Pro 6E can be used as a smart home hub, allowing you to control compatible Thread and Zigbee devices with Alexa voice commands. 

While the three-pack bundle is obviously the best deal you can get, you can also purchase one node at a discount. A single Eero Pro 6E node will set you back $179, which is $120 less than its regular price. The single node option has been widely available at that price over the past few days, but the discounted three-pack deal is only available today exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Uber will offer rides in autonomous Ioniq 5 taxis powered by Motional

Uber has signed a 10-year agreement to use autonomous Ioniq 5 EVs from Hyundai’s Motional for ride-hailing and deliveries, the companies announced. The vehicles will be “strategically deployed” in cities around the US and start offering passenger rides later this year. 

“This agreement will be instrumental to the wide scale adoption of robotaxis,” said Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma. “Motional now has unparalleled access to millions of riders and a roadmap to scale significantly over the next ten years.” 

The companies are already working together. Late last year, Uber announced that it would test autonomous food delivery with Motional (a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv) sometime in 2022. Motional is also working with Lyft, having started public tests in Las Vegas with the ride-hailing firm. (Uber used to have its own autonomous vehicle division called Advanced Technologies Group, but sold it to Aurora Innovation back in 2020.)

Uber will provide Motional with data to help it best allocate and position vehicles. In turn, Motional said its autonomous vehicles will allow for “reduced vehicle downtime and unnecessary miles traveled.” It’ll also supposedly lead to a better customer experience, with lower wait times and fares.

We’ve heard similar promises before, but so far, only Alphabet division Waymo and GM’s Cruise are offering true driverless services at a reasonably large scale. The Waymo One service is operating in Phoenix and San Francisco, while Cruise rides are currently limited to San Francisco. Both operate only in specific areas of cities and some vehicles still use safety riders.

Motional got off to a later start than both those companies, but has completed more than 100,000 autonomous rides in Las Vegas using previous versions of its vehicles on the Lyft network, it said in August. However, the companies plan to ramp that up soon. “The scope of this partnership shows the important role that shared autonomous vehicles will play in the future of transportation, and in Uber’s strategy to be the global platform to help you go anywhere and get anything,” said Uber’s autonomous driving chief Noah Zych.

Update, 10/6/22 10:15AM ET: This story originally stated that Motional and Lyft were publicly testing in Los Angeles; the company is only doing these public tests in Las Vegas currently.

‘Overwatch 2’ will no longer require legacy players to verify their phone number

Even Blizzard has admitted that Overwatch 2’s launch has not met anybody’s expectations. In a new post detailing the latest status updates for the game’s rollout, the company has apologized to its players and discussed the lengthy list of issues it’s had to face since the first-person shooter went live. One of the biggest updates it’s making to the game is removing the need for for legacy players to link their phone numbers to Battle.net to be able to play. So long as they have a connected Battle.net account, which covers all players who’ve accessed the first Overwatch since June 9th, 2021, they’re exempted from the requirement. 

Blizzard originally made SMS Protect, which requires players to link a phone number to their Battle.net accounts, a requirement to access Overwatch as a way to make it harder for people to cheat or to troll others. It doesn’t always work with numbers associated with prepaid plans, though, and therein lies the problem. While some Mint customers were able able to link their numbers to SMS Protect just fine, players on Cricket seem to be completely locked out of the game. As Kotaku reports, fans feel like they’re being punished or shamed for “being poor.”

The developer is removing the requirement in response, and it expects the change to go live on October 7th. Blizzard said, however, that it remains “committed to combating disruptive behavior,” which is why new accounts and old ones that had never been connected to Battle.net before will still have to meet SMS Protect requirements to be able to play. 

The company also made changes to simplify the queueing process, so players will no longer see their queue numbers jump from hundreds to tens of thousands and vice versa. Plus, it’s working on making logins more stable to prevent players from being dropped from queues or from being able to login at all. A server update that’s also in progress will reduce the chances of players being disconnected once they’re already in the game. As for people’s missing items, Blizzard explained that the issue is caused by incomplete account merging or by items simply taking longer to transfer over from the old game. 

These issues, Blizzard said in its announcement, were “exacerbated by DDoS attacks” upon the game’s launch. While the attacks didn’t directly cause any of them, they made “the environment in which [the team works] on these issues more challenging.” Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said the team was working through a second DDoS attack late on launch day, but it sounds like the attackers have backed off. Blizzard said it has “not suffered any further attacks,” which hopefully means it can now resolve issues more quickly.

The Morning After: Our verdict on the Apple Watch Ultra

Apple’s most expensive Watch yet (if we ignore the Hermes and ceramic distractions of yesteryear) has landed. The Apple Watch Ultra is surprisingly comfortable for its size, and costs less than expected. Not only does it offer many impressive specialized features for outdoor adventurers but it also lasts longer than other Apple Watches. People who don’t dive, hike, bike or run outside regularly might not need to spend the extra cash on the Ultra — the Series 8 is more than capable. 

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Engadget

Reviews Editor Cherlynn Low was frustrated by the new button layout but came away thinking that the Apple Watch Ultra may be the ultimate smartwatch. Check out the full review.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Intel Arc A750 and A770 GPU review

These may be the affordable midrange GPUs you’ve been waiting for.

The notion of Intel getting into the world of discrete graphics cards once seemed ludicrous. This is the company that killed its last major GPU project in 2009 and spent the 2010s focusing on weak integrated graphics. However, the Arc A750 offers plenty of power for under $300. It can best NVIDIA’s RTX 3060 Ti in some benchmarks and games, making it one of the best deals in the GPU market today. Meanwhile, the Arc 770 excels at 1440p performance and has a decent amount of ray tracing support for a $329 card. We have reservations about long-term support from Intel, however.

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The best wireless headphones for 2022

And not all of them will break the bank.

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Engadget

When it comes to wireless headphones, the best combine stellar audio with powerful active noise cancellation (ANC) and other handy tools. For this guide, we’ve focused primarily on the over-ear style and offer a range of prices, so you can decide how much you’re comfortable spending.

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Someone made a NES operating system

It has a pointer!

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NES OS

Inkbox Software has released a graphical operating system, NESOS, for Nintendo’s first home console. The mid-’80s technology restricts the OS to two apps (a word processor and settings – as dull as many personal computers were back then) and eight 832-byte files. There is a pointer, movable icons and customizable interface colors. NESOS fits into just 48K, and the files sit inside the 2K of NVRAM.

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Amazon is killing its interactive Glow video device for kids

It’s no longer available for purchase.

It’s only been a year since Amazon launched Glow, its kid-focused video calling device that can also be used for interactive gaming. And the company has already discontinued it, most likely due to lackluster sales. As Bloomberg notes, Glow, while highly rated on Amazon, only has a bit over 500 reviews on the website. The device was launched during the peak of the recent pandemic. There’s likely less demand for a specialized video calling device for kids. And maybe they could just use a phone?

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Spotify’s latest acquisition is a company that detects harmful content in podcasts

It says Kinzen will help ‘identify emerging threats on the platform.’

Spotify has bought Kinzen, a company that uses machine learning to detect harmful content online. Spotify said that Kinzen will “help us more effectively deliver a safe, enjoyable experience on our platform around the world” and that the company’s tech is especially suited to podcasts and other audio formats. Looking for signs of harmful audio content is tricky, particularly since there may be nuances that certain systems and non-native speakers may not pick up on. As such, Spotify says Kinzen will help it to “better understand the abuse landscape and identify emerging threats on the platform.”

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Nanoleaf LED shapes and light bars now sync with Corsair gaming products

Nanoleaf, known for its modular wall lighting tiles, has teamed up with gaming company Corsair to make your setup more immersive and colorful. A new integration called Nanoleaf x CORSAIR lets you sync up Nanoleaf’s smart lights to in-game explosions, actions and sounds.

The integration works with Corsair’s portfolio of peripherals, including keyboards, gaming mice and headsets. Much as you can with your keyboard or PC peripheral lights, you’ll be able to program lighting effects on your wall using the Nanoleaf or Corsair iCue apps on your desktop. To give a flavor, they have names like “Rainbow Wave” and “Rain,” similar to what you may have seen for keyboard lighting effects.

Nanoleaf LED shapes and light bars now sync with Corsair gaming products
Nanoleaf

To set it up, you install the iCUE software, then switch on the Nanoleaf integration and add Nanoleaf to iCUE lighting. At that point, everything will work together and provide “synchronized lighting across your whole setup,” according to Nanoleaf. 

Nanoleaf offers kits for gamers, and already offers integration with Razer (using Synapse 3) and MSI via Mystic Light — so working with Corsair’s peripherals seems a natural extension of this. Aside from creating some extra vibes for game environments, they’ll let you get even more creative with your lighting setup.

Fast Company returns after attack that saw obscene Apple News alerts pushed to readers

Fast Company’s website finally came back online eight days after the publication took it down due to a cyberattack. The business publication was initially hacked on September 25th, but it wasn’t until the second security breach on September 27th that it had to take drastic measures to contain the situation. If you’ll recall, Apple News users who are subscribed to Fast Company received a couple of obscene push notifications with racial slurs in late September. The bad actors had also defaced the website with obscene and racist messages and posted details on how they were able to infiltrate the publication. 

They said that Fast Company used an easy-to-crack password for its WordPress CMS and had re-used it for its other accounts. From there, they were able to grab the company’s Apple News API keys, as well as authentication tokens that gave them access to employee names, email addresses and IPs. In a forum the hackers linked to on the defaced website, a user called “Thrax” posted a database dump with 6,737 employee records that include mails, password hashes for some of them and unpublished drafts, among other details.

No customer or advertiser information was exposed as a result of the hack, though, Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan wrote in a new post announcing that the publication is back. The main Fast Company website, its corporate site Mansueto.com and its sister site Inc.com remained offline for eight days while an investigation was being conducted. During that period, the publication posted content on other platforms, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Medium. Vaughan didn’t go into details with the result of the probe, other than saying that no customer or advertiser data was compromised and that the publication has “taken steps to safeguard against further attacks.”