Month: November 2019

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back again with a new round of discounts and price drops. We'll admit, though, that we're in the calm before the Black Friday storm. With more and more retailers detailing their holiday sales plans, the number of worthwhile deals available right now has understandably shrunk. Tons of games, gear, and gadgets are still on sale, but the Dealmaster is hesitant to recommend various items that'll drop further in a couple of weeks.

That said, the deals landscape isn't totally barren for those who would rather shop before the holiday rush. Today's roundup is highlighted by a $15 discount on Apple's new AirPods Pro earbuds (albeit with a fairly sizable shipping wait as of this writing), an offer for new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users to get three months of service for $1, and sales on a few well-regarded board games, including Catan, Pandemic, and 7 Wonders. Beyond that, we've also got deals on USB-C hubs and chargers, various discounts on Amazon services like Audible and Music Unlimited, a nice drop on Bose's wired SoundSport earphones, and more. Have a look at the full list for yourself below.

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Enlarge / US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland's phone conversation with President Trump in June was overheard by embassy staffers with Sondland at a Kiev restaurant (and probably by other countries' intelligence services). (credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

In testimony yesterday before the House Intelligence Committee, diplomat William Taylor said that he had recently learned of a phone call between George Sondland—the US ambassador to the European Union—and President Donald Trump. Taylor, the senior diplomat for the US in Ukraine, said that his staff overheard Trump during a call with Sondland while at dinner with the ambassador at a restaurant in Kiev.

The contents of that discussion—that Trump asked Sondland about "the investigations" Trump wanted Ukraine to conduct as an alleged condition of releasing military aid—may or may not be damaging to the president's case that he was not seeking foreign assistance for his 2020 presidential campaign. But as anyone in national or diplomatic security will attest to, an open phone call between the president and an ambassador regarding topics of diplomatic interest in a public place like a restaurant—a place where any foreign intelligence organization could be monitoring for collection purposes—would be a major breach of operational (and national) security.

This is not the first time that the administration has let issues of national security play out before a public audience. In February of 2017, President Trump consulted with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regarding a North Korean ballistic missile test and made phone calls from the restaurant of his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in plain view and within earshot of other diners—some of whom essentially live-streamed the situation from their cell phones. A few months later, Trump shared intelligence data with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador in an Oval Office meeting concerning an Islamic State plot to bring down passenger planes with laptops turned into bombs.

Enlarge / This new speaker button in Google Maps will verbally speak the location's name and address.

Traveling the world but don't speak the local language? Google Maps should be a bit more useful soon, thanks to some new integration with Google Translate.

Typically if you're in a foreign-language country, Google Maps will show the English place-name followed by the name in the local language below it. Sometime this month, Google Maps will get a new speaker button next to the local place-name, which will fire up Google Translate's text-to-speech engine. Until now, if you needed to communicate with a driver or ask for directions, you might have handed over your smartphone and let them read the screen. Now, though, you'll be able to have your phone shout out the pronunciation in a synthesized Google Translate voice, or you can practice pronouncing the name yourself beforehand.

This all happens in a new pop-up window, which lets your phone speak the place-name or address in the local language.There's also a handy "get more translations" button at the bottom, which will kick you out to the full Google Translate app. The language selection is all based on the locale chosen in your system settings, which is then compared to the local language of the place you're looking up.