Month: November 2022

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's the weekend, and that means it's time to round up the week's best deals. As we anticipate, each weekend (and every day, really) in November brings with it a new round of discounts on popular, big-ticket items, typically at their lowest prices of the year. Today that includes headphones from Sony, Beats, Jabra, and a deal on refurbished AirPods Max.

Sony has two great offers on its latest- and last-generation noise-canceling headphones. The frustratingly-named but high-quality WH-1000XM5 ($348, $400) and WH-1000XM4 ($228, $348) are discounted to match the lowest prices we've tracked for either. Since Sony released the latest WH-1000XM5, it continues to sell the previous generation WH-1000XM4 alongside it. When we tested the 5 versus the 4, we found it to improve slightly on just about every aspect of the previous gen headphones. They're better for phone calls, a bit lighter, and can charge more quickly. They also cant fold up for storage like the 4. These aren't what we'd call paradigm-shifting leaps, but rather moderate improvements, for the most part. Selling for over $100 less at its current price, the WH-1000XM4 remains a very well-reviewed, capable set of noise-canceling headphones that we couldn't fault you for picking up instead of the newer WH-1000XM5.

Apple's AirPods Max are our favorite noise-canceling headphones, though. And if you're comfortable buying refurbished, they're currently on discount for $355 ($475) from Woot, shaving off a couple of hundred dollars from the MSRP. Woot's website states that these headphones have no visual scratches or blemishes and come with a 90-day warranty from Woot.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's the weekend, and that means it's time to round up the week's best deals. As we anticipate, each weekend (and every day, really) in November brings with it a new round of discounts on popular, big-ticket items, typically at their lowest prices of the year. Today that includes headphones from Sony, Beats, Jabra, and a deal on refurbished AirPods Max.

Sony has two great offers on its latest- and last-generation noise-canceling headphones. The frustratingly-named but high-quality WH-1000XM5 ($348, $400) and WH-1000XM4 ($228, $348) are discounted to match the lowest prices we've tracked for either. Since Sony released the latest WH-1000XM5, it continues to sell the previous generation WH-1000XM4 alongside it. When we tested the 5 versus the 4, we found it to improve slightly on just about every aspect of the previous gen headphones. They're better for phone calls, a bit lighter, and can charge more quickly. They also cant fold up for storage like the 4. These aren't what we'd call paradigm-shifting leaps, but rather moderate improvements, for the most part. Selling for over $100 less at its current price, the WH-1000XM4 remains a very well-reviewed, capable set of noise-canceling headphones that we couldn't fault you for picking up instead of the newer WH-1000XM5.

Apple's AirPods Max are our favorite noise-canceling headphones, though. And if you're comfortable buying refurbished, they're currently on discount for $355 ($475) from Woot, shaving off a couple of hundred dollars from the MSRP. Woot's website states that these headphones have no visual scratches or blemishes and come with a 90-day warranty from Woot.

Enlarge / WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

Today, FTL: Faster than Light is recognized as one of the most influential games in the indie sector. Alongside The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky, it was part of a holy trinity of games that popularized the roguelite genre in the early '10s.

But before it was a hit, FTL was just a humble idea shared by Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, two developers working at 2K’s Shanghai office. The studio wasn’t a bad place to work, by their accounts, but they just weren’t making the kinds of games they were interested in. So Davis and Ma departed the big-budget firm and started a hobby project to keep them busy while they were looking for new jobs.

“The original intention, at least from my perspective, was that [FTL] was only intended as a hobby project or a prototype,” Davis tells Ars. “It was something in between jobs to build up a resume that we could use to get a job at a studio working on projects that we were more excited about. But we stumbled into something that became a lot bigger than what we set out to do.”

Enlarge / WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

Today, FTL: Faster than Light is recognized as one of the most influential games in the indie sector. Alongside The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky, it was part of a holy trinity of games that popularized the roguelite genre in the early '10s.

But before it was a hit, FTL was just a humble idea shared by Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, two developers working at 2K’s Shanghai office. The studio wasn’t a bad place to work, by their accounts, but they just weren’t making the kinds of games they were interested in. So Davis and Ma departed the big-budget firm and started a hobby project to keep them busy while they were looking for new jobs.

“The original intention, at least from my perspective, was that [FTL] was only intended as a hobby project or a prototype,” Davis tells Ars. “It was something in between jobs to build up a resume that we could use to get a job at a studio working on projects that we were more excited about. But we stumbled into something that became a lot bigger than what we set out to do.”