Amazon’s smart thermostat falls to a new all-time low of $42 ahead of Prime Day

Amazon has already started selling a bunch of its smart home devices at a discount, almost a week before Prime Day even begins. One of the most notable deals that’s already available is Amazon’s smart thermostat, which you can get for $42 — as long as you’re a Prime member. That’s 30 percent off its regular retail price of $60 and a new all-time low for the device. Amazon’s smart thermostat debuted in September 2021, giving you an affordable option to control your home temperature. 

Buy Amazon Smart Home Devices – up to 67 percent off

It’s not quite as feature-rich as its more expensive counterparts, like the Google Nest thermostat. But it’s Energy Star-certified and can save you an average of $50 on your electric bills every year. Plus, it’s Alexa-compatible and allows you to use the voice assistant to set custom routines for heating and cooling. The thermostat itself doesn’t have a speaker or a microphone, though, so you’ll need to use the Alexa app or another Alexa-enabled device like an Echo speaker to do so. 

That brings us to another deal you can get right now: Amazon’s smart thermostat bundled with an Echo Dot speaker. The bundle with a fourth-gen Echo Dot speaker will set you back $62, or $48 off its usual price, which is the lowest we’ve seen for it on the website. Meanwhile, the smart thermostat bundle with a second-gen Echo Show 5 smart display is also on sale for $77, or $68 lower than its retail price. That’s also a new all-time low for the duo.

In case you’re mainly looking to buy Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers, you can get a fourth-gen Echo Dot with an Amazon smart plug for $25. You’ll save $50 if you get the bundle, which typically sells for $75 and has never been discounted this deeply before. Amazon’s smart plug adds Alexa voice control to any outlet, allowing you to control any non-smart device plugged to it, such as lights, fans and other appliances. 

Finally, you can get the fourth-gen Echo Dot for Kids bundled with an Echo Glow multicolor smart lamp with Prime for $36. That’s 60 percent or $54 off its retail price and also includes a year-long Amazon Kids+ subscription. 

Get the latest Amazon Prime Day offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

Amazon is giving Prime subscribers a free year of Grubhub+ deliveries

Amazon has announced a handful of new perks for Prime members ahead of Prime Day this month, including free deliveries from nearby restaurants. All Prime members in the US will now get access to a one-year Grubhub+ membership, which typically costs $10 a month, for free. Amazon used to have a restaurant delivery service of its own in an attempt to create a homegrown UberEats rival, but the company ultimately shut it down in the UK and the US. This time, it’s teaming up with an established delivery service.

Grubhub+ members enjoy $0 food delivery fees, so long as their orders go over $12. They also get rewards that include free food and discounts on their orders. Prime subscribers can redeem their free Grubhub+ membership by going to the official perk page on Amazon, activating the offer and then sharing their Prime status with the delivery service. Even existing Grubhub+ users can claim the freebie, with their free year kicking in after their current billing cycle ends. People who cancel their Prime membership will also lose access to their free year of Grubhub+, while those who stick around will be charged $10 a month for the delivery service after 12 months.

This partnership is part of the commercial agreement Amazon has entered with Just Eat Takeaway.com, the Dutch parent company of Grubhub. Under the agreement, Amazon will receive stock warrants worth 2 percent of Grubhub’s fully-diluted common equity. It follows a similar deal where Amazon invested in UK food delivery service Deliveroo and also offered UK Prime subscribers a full year of deliveries.

Grubhub says it “continues to actively explore the partial or full sale” of the company, but whether Amazon will swoop in with an offer remains to be seen. 

Adam DeWitt, CEO of Grubhub, said in a statement:

“I am incredibly excited to announce this collaboration with Amazon that will help Grubhub continue to deliver on our long-standing mission to connect more diners with local restaurants. Amazon has redefined convenience with Prime and we’re confident this offering will expose many new diners to the value of Grubhub+ while driving more business to our restaurant partners and drivers.”

Netflix says ‘Stranger Things 4’ racked up over 1 billion hours viewed

Stranger Things 4 has become the most popular English-language series on Netflix with the premiere of its last two episodes. The streaming giant has revealed that the show has racked up 1.15 billion hours of viewing time within the first 28 days of each part’s release. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the first seven episodes had a viewing time of 930.32 million hours within 28 days of the show’s debut. Meanwhile, episodes 8 and 9 reached 221 million hours viewed in the week of June 27th to July 3rd. 

That makes the series second only to Squid Game, which crossed 1.65 billion hours viewed within its first 28 days of release and which currently holds the title for the most-viewed show in Netflix history. It even has the potential to overtake the Korean hit, seeing as it has only been a few days since the last two episodes came out. 

Netflix, however, has yet to reveal whether Stranger Things 4’s popularity has had a significant impact on its subscriber numbers. In 2021, the company said it posted its best subscriber growth of the year during the third quarter, thanks in part to Squid Game. But in April this year, Netflix admitted that it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 due to several issues, such as stiffer competition and account sharing. The company said back then that it’s taking steps to turn things around, but we’ll have to wait for its next earnings report to find out whether Eleven and the rest of the Hawkins crew were of any help. 

Meta sues a site cloner who allegedly scraped over 350,000 Instagram profiles

Meta is taking legal action against two prolific data scrapers. On Tuesday, the company filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese…

NASA’s CAPSTONE satellite has gone dark

NASA has lost contact with CAPSTONE, a tiny satellite that left Earth’s orbit on July 4th. CAPSTONE is a cubesat weighing just 55 pounds, and it’s headed for the Moon as part of NASA’s plan to get humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. 

The small satellite stopped communicating with engineers on July 4th shortly after deploying from an Electron rocket bus and exiting Earth’s orbit. A NASA spokesperson told Space.com that the team has solid trajectory information for CAPSTONE and handlers are attempting to re-establish contact with the cubesat. 

“If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post-separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days,” the spokesperson told the site.

CAPSTONE spent six days building up speed in-orbit on a Rocket Lab Electron booster and finally deployed yesterday, on a path to the Moon. The plan is for CAPSTONE to enter a near rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon on November 13th, serving as a test for NASA’s Artemis mission. With Artemis, NASA plans to install a space station called the Lunar Gateway in the Moon’s orbit, serving as a permanent floating base for lunar visitors, complete with living quarters and a laboratory.

NASA plans to kick off its Artemis 1 mission between August 23rd and September 6th with the deployment of an unmanned Orion module, which will orbit the Moon and provide data about how the trip might affect the human body. After that, four astronauts will take off for the lunar satellite. Finally, some time after 2025, NASA plans to put humans on the Moon again.

Respawn finally patches an ‘Apex Legends’ input lag issue on Xbox Series X/S

Apex Legends players on Xbox Series X/S haven’t been too impressed with the game over the last two weeks. Since Respawn Entertainment rolled out a large update on June 22nd, players on those consoles have been complaining about an input lag issue that seemingly made the battle royale very slow to register button presses. Thankfully, the developer may have finally resolved the matter.

“We just pushed a small update to [Apex Legends] to help address issues with input lag on Xbox Series X and S consoles,” Respawn wrote on Twitter. “Thank you for your patience here, legends.”

It’s not clear why the issue only seemed to affect current Xbox consoles, but some folks claimed it made Apex Legends practically unplayable. A Twitch streamer named Reaiming shared a clip of them rapidly pressing the trigger but the game clearly wasn’t registering all their inputs.

Members of the community found workarounds to mitigate the problem until Respawn issued a fix, such as rolling back the firmware on certain controllers. Here’s hoping today’s update resolves the issue so Xbox Series X/S players have a better chance of becoming champions. Failing that, fingers crossed they can at least enjoy the game again.

The Kindle Kids e-reader hits new low of $50 before Prime Day

There’s no need to wait for Prime Day for a decent deal on a Kindle, especially if you’re looking to pick one up for a younger person in your life. Prime members can pick up the Kindle Kids edition for $50, which is $10 cheaper than the previous all-time-low price. The usual price of the e-reader is $85.

Buy Kindle Kids (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $50

It’s a 10th-gen Kindle that comes with a two-year worry-free guarantee. Amazon will replace the device if it breaks for any reason. It’s a proper e-reader, not a rugged toy, so that guarantee might come in handy. Kindle Kids does, however, come with a kid-friendly cover.

You’ll also get one year of access to Amazon Kids+, which includes access to thousands of kid-friendly books, including the Ramona Quimby and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Parents can view their kids’ reading progress and set educational goals. Amazon Kids+ usually costs $5 per month.

Meanwhile, you can also pick up the 2019 edition of the Fire 7 without breaking the bank, since that’s also down to a record low. The tablet is currently $30, which is 40 percent off the regular price. It’s another low-cost device that could be a solid option for a child, especially if you pick up a kid-friendly case for it.

Buy 2019 Fire 7 (Prime exclusive) at Amazon – $30

This model comes with 16GB of storage, which you can expand with a microSD card. Amazon says it will run for up to seven hours on a single charge, which could make it useful for watching movies in the back seat during a road trip. There are parental controls you can use to make sure little ones aren’t doing anything they’re not supposed to.

Get the latest Amazon Prime Day offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

Ubisoft will drop details on Assassin’s Creed and more games on Sept. 10th

Ubisoft will share updates and announcements about its roster of projects in a showcase on September 10th at 3PM ET. The event will be streamed on Ubisoft channels on YouTube, Twitch and the studio’s official website, and it’ll include news on “multiple games and projects from Ubisoft teams around the world,” according to spokesperson Youssef Maguid.

Back in June, Ubisoft confirmed plans to share information about the future of Assassin’s Creed during a special event in September, and this appears to be that. Ubisoft is currently working on two Assassin’s Creed projects: one is a live multiplayer experience spanning multiple time periods codenamed Infinity, and the other is a standalone series installment codenamed Rift. Early reports indicate Rift started out as an expansion to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and it stars Basim Ibn Ishaq from that title.

Alongside Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft is the caretaker of Far Cry, Rabbids, Beyond Good & Evil, Just Dance, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Rayman and Prince of Persia. A remake of the original Prince of Persia has been bouncing around Ubisoft’s studios for a few years and is now in development in Montreal, due out some time after April 2023.

Ubisoft is also hosting a broadcast for its open-world, online pirate simulator Skull and Bones on July 7th at 2PM ET. Skull and Bones has been kicking around since 2017 and it was even playable in 2018, but updates since then have been few and far between.

Games Done Quick bans speedrunning cheater from future events

Games Done Quick has banned a speedrunner from future events after they admitted to cheating during last week’s marathon. Russian player Mekarazium appeared to complete a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance expansion in a world record time. Instead of live gameplay, though, Mekarazium showed a pre-recorded video that was pieced together using parts of separate runs. They reacted to the footage in real-time to sell the ruse.

While Summer Games Done Quick took place as an in-person event for the first time since 2019, some speedrunners participated remotely. Mekazarium was one of those, which allowed them to cheat, as PCGamesN reports. The player initially sped through the main campaign of MGR: Revengeance in a seemingly legitimate run, before taking on the Blade Wolf DLC after a charity donation goal was met.

However, viewers noticed discrepancies in the Blade Wolf playthrough. Some noted there were barely any audible instances of Mekarazium pressing keys on the keyboard (which could be heard as he played the main game). At one point, Mekarazium lifts their right hand up while their character was looking around, though they claimed they controlled the mouse with their other hand.

Mekarazium also downplayed the record-breaking aspect of their run after the fact. You’d think a speedrunner would be delighted to beat their own world-best time by 25 seconds.

“The Blade Wolf DLC run incentive people paid for is a pre-recorded, segmented run,” Mekarazium told the GDQ enforcement team in a message obtained by PCGamesN. “It was supposed to be a real-time run, but I’ve changed my mind at the last second after switching the saves.”

Mekarazium said they wanted to show off the potential of the Blade Wolf run. However, they apologized and acknowledged they did “an actual bad thing.” They worried about the impact on other speedrunners too. “I acted selfishly and I haven’t put more time thinking about others,” they added.

“Yesterday, we were made aware that Mekazarium played a segmented video for his DLC run at Summer Games Done Quick 2022,” GDQ told Engadget in a statement. “Mekazarium has since admitted to this, both to some members of the community as well as directly to GDQ staff. He contacted our staff with a document detailing that he had planned this for over a month, demonstrating this was planned and intentional.

“This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support,” GDQ added. “The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community’s best interests to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have removed Mekazarium’s runs from our YouTube archive, and will not permit him to run in the future.”

The incident puts an unfortunate stain on another largely successful GDQ event. Speedrunners and viewers raised just over $3 million for Doctors Without Borders. There were some other hiccups, however. Some runs went longer than expected, which led to organizers cutting a couple of games from the schedule. However, they found room to add an extra Pokémon game on the final day in a bid to maximize donations.