Universal, having just completed its latest Nintendo- and Harry Potter-filled theme park in the US, is now planning to build a new theme park and resort in the United Kingdom. The multi-billion dollar project will be Universal’s first European theme park, with construction on the 476-acre complex expected to start next year in Bedford, England, located around 60 miles north of London.

Set to open in 2031, the UK government says the theme park will be “one of the largest and most advanced in Europe,” projected to generate nearly £50 billion ($64 billion) for the British economy by 2055 and attract 8.5 million visitors in its first year. Rumors about the project have been circling since Comcast NBC Universal acquired the sizable chunk of Bedford land in December 2023, with today’s announcement finally confirming that plans to build the park are going ahead — subject to securing planning approval.

“Today we closed the deal on a multi-billion-pound investment that will see Bedford home to one of the biggest entertainment parks in Europe, firmly putting the county on the global stage,” said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who added that the project is expected to create “28,000 new jobs across sectors such as construction, AI, and tourism.”

This announcement comes ahead of Universal opening its third Orlando park, Epic Universe, on May 22nd. The Orlando expansion contains new lands themed around Nintendo, Harry Potter, classic movie monsters, and the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, and showcases some of the entertainment giant’s most advanced ride and animatronics technology to date.

It’s too early to say exactly what the new park will entail, but proposals from Universal Destinations & Experiences include a theme park with “several themed lands featuring Universal’s distinct brand of immersive storytelling,” rides, attractions, and other forms of entertainment that utilize “sophisticated and advanced technology.” Plans for the resort include a 500-room hotel with on-site retail, dining, and entertainment options.

We will have to wait and see if Universal will be bringing any of its existing land themes or ride experiences to the UK project, or opt for something new entirely. I’d expect the Harry Potter branding to be involved in some way — Universal has already built six lands themed around the franchise across other global parks, and this is its opportunity to fully lean into its native British setting.

Framework has confirmed it will no longer be opening US preorders for the new Laptop 12 today, or announcing a price, as it evaluates the impact of Trump’s tariffs. The modular, convertible laptop will still be available later today for buyers elsewhere, including Canada and Europe.

The Laptop 12 is Framework’s smallest laptop yet, and its first convertible touchscreen model. It comes with a 13th Gen Intel Core i3 or i5 chip, a 1920×1200 touchscreen with stylus support, and up to 48GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. Like other Framework hardware, it’s modular and repairable. It also ships in a pastel pink and mint finish that we’re pretty fond of.

Although the company hasn’t announced pricing, it pitched the 12-inch laptop as an “entry-level” model at a “lower cost” than the Laptop 13. That model now starts at $899 for a DIY version, or $1,099 for a prebuilt one, after the company “paused” sales on some of the cheaper Laptop 13 models in the US to avoid selling them at a loss after factoring in the new tariffs.

Framework manufactures its products in Taiwan, which is subject to a 32 percent tariff as of today. The company explained on Bluesky that it’s beginning its tariff response with the “most reversible” changes, delisting and delaying products, and that it will avoid raising prices “until we have final confirmation that there is no alternative.”

Laptop 12 preorders open for buyers in Canada, Europe, Australia, and Taiwan today at 1pm ET, and pricing will be announced at the same time.

Microsoft has started testing a new update to its Copilot app on Windows that will let you share your screen or apps with the AI assistant. Copilot Vision was originally limited to Microsoft’s Edge browser, but it’s now extending to any app on your PC.

Copilot Vision will be able to do things like coach you through using Adobe Photoshop features, or analyze the photos and webpages you’re looking at. I got to see an early version of Copilot Vision on Windows at Microsoft’s 50th anniversary party last week, where the AI assistant guided me through a game of Minecraft and helped to optimize settings in Microsoft’s Clipchamp video editor.

I haven’t been able to fully test Copilot Vision on Windows through the Insider beta because Microsoft is limiting the experience to US testers only. Copilot will be able to highlight parts of your screen to guide you through apps, although this initial beta version won’t have the feature enabled just yet. Copilot Vision might sound similar to Microsoft’s Recall feature that automatically takes snapshots if you allow it, but it’s actually more like screen sharing an app or your entire desktop in a Microsoft Teams call.

Microsoft has also started testing file search in Copilot on Windows, allowing you to ask the AI assistant about the contents of a file on your PC. File search supports .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .txt, .pdf, .json files, and you can use Copilot to easily find the documents you were working on recently.

Both of these Copilot features just require the Copilot app on Windows, and not a full Copilot Plus PC. You can also use Copilot Vision on iOS and Android. Microsoft has started testing these new Copilot features with Windows Insiders, ahead of a broader rollout to all Windows 11 users in the coming weeks or months.

President Donald Trump’s promised higher tariffs have gone into effect today, targeting many countries whose goods imported to the US were already subject to a 10 percent base tariff that started on April 5th. 

The White House announced the tariffs on April 2nd, dubiously claiming they were “reciprocal” based on a nonsensical formula that far exceeded conventionally calculated tariffs. At the same time it declared a national emergency and stated that the higher tariffs would stay until Trump “determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated.”

Countries targeted for higher tariffs included China at 34 percent, the EU at 20 percent, and Vietnam at 46 percent, but since the tariffs are additive, some of the real numbers are much higher — Trump had already slapped 20 percent tariffs on China, and added another 50 percent this week after China announced retaliatory measures, bringing it to a total 104 percent. That means the total tariff more than doubles import costs for everything shipped from China, including the majority of the world’s components and consumer electronics. The EU will vote on its own retaliatory tariffs today.

Some of the tariffs’ effects have already been felt, with Nintendo delaying its just-announced Switch 2 preorders, Jaguar Land Rover pausing its April car shipments to the United States, and both Framework and Razer pausing some laptop sales. US memory chip maker Micron announced it would be adding a surcharge to its products on April 9th if the higher tariffs happened, and other companies are likely to follow suit soon.

Curious what all the fuss over shows like Severance and The Studio is about? If you’re interested in streaming either, new and eligible returning subscribers can sign up for Apple TV Plus through April 24th for just $2.99 a month for the first three months. Apple TV Plus would normally cost you $9.99 a month, meaning you’re saving $21 over a three-month period.

In addition to Severance and The Studio, Apple TV Plus also grants you ad-free access to other originals — including Ted Lasso and For All Mankind — all of which you can stream in 4K HDR, download to watch offline, and share with up to five family members. The platform also features a wide variety of movies, including Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, The Gorge, Wolfs, and The Instigators. More into sports? Apple TV Plus is home to Friday Night Baseball and select Major League Soccer matches from MLS Season Pass.

Just make sure to set a reminder for yourself to cancel your subscription within the next three months. Otherwise, your plan will automatically renew at the going rate (currently $9.99 a month) once the limited-time promotion period ends. As for what defines an “eligible returning subscriber,” we’ve reached out to Apple for clarification, and we’ll update the post if we hear back.

Meta is developing a version of Instagram for iPad, according to The Information. Currently, running Instagram on an iPad is just a blown-up version of the iPhone app, so an official Instagram app from Meta would be a very welcome change.

Why would Meta do this now, after ignoring Apple’s tablet for over a decade? According to The Information, the uncertain legal status of TikTok amid the divest-or-ban law and Trump’s tariffs might be the push required.

The company has publicly resisted building an iPad Instagram app before. In February 2022 (more than three years ago!) Instagram boss Adam Mosseri replied to a post from Marques Brownlee about Meta still not having an Instagram app for iPad to explain why.

“We get this one a lot,” Mosseri said. “It’s still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority. Hoping to get to it at some point, but right now we’re very heads down on other things.”

In 2023, Mosseri said something similar. “Not working on it right now,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing to do at some point. But we have only so many people working at Instagram, so we’ve got to pick the most important things to do to improve Instagram at any given moment. And right now, it’s not quite making the cut.”

Using the Instagram app in Stage Manager on supported iPads is a decent experience, and the web app has improved in recent years. But a native version that takes full advantage of the large display is long overdue.

Meta didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Kevin Bates managed to quit his day job and move to China after his game-playing business card, the Arduboy, went viral in 2014. But a decade later, Trump’s staggering and inexplicable new US tariffs are driving him out of business.

Just as he was about to turn a profit for the first time, just before he was about to bring a new product to retail, he tells The Verge that his company can no longer survive as-is. He says that despite lifetime Arduboy sales of over $1 million, much of it from recent growth in 2023 and 2024, Trump’s new 104 percent China tariffs will be the beginning of the end.

“I just like making circuit boards and helping people learn to code games. This is all too much,” he says.

Even if he wanted to — Bates admits he’s been looking to sunset Arduboy for a while — he says he wouldn’t be able to satisfy Trump’s stated goal of restarting manufacturing in the US.

“There are no manufacturers in the USA who would even answer an email to produce Arduboy, much less give a good price. I could build them myself and end up making about $10 an hour, still paying a crazy amount for components.”

Instead, he says, his options are to dramatically raise prices, find a way around the tariffs, or simply kill off Arduboy for good.

“The fact Arduboy could exist at all was kind of a miracle of global trade. An individual person, producing and distributing an international product with margins that would never work at a larger company. I didn’t need 80 percent markup to survive,” he says, adding that his actual margins ranged from 30 to 50 percent.

Trump’s US tariffs would entirely wipe out those margins, and he says China’s retaliatory tariffs would hurt too, as they would impose a 34 percent tariff on the Arduboy’s US-made processor, which Bates says is the most expensive component in the system.

While he’s hopeful that some larger organization might buy Arduboy and take up the torch, he admits that’s not terribly realistic in this economic climate, and he’s already declaring Arduboy “dead” on his LinkedIn and in the Arduboy forums. He’s already looking for a new day job once again.

But he says Arduboy isn’t quite dead yet. He wants to launch one last Kickstarter for a USB-C version of the Arduboy with “more features like real time clock, IR blaster, and link cable support,” assuming he can figure out how to ship them at a price people will pay. He says he already saw $99 Arduboy FX Special Edition as overpriced for what it is, and he isn’t looking forward to charging $200 for a new version or saddling buyers with customs fees should he choose to drop-ship them.

“The only realistic solution is to warehouse the inventory somewhere that doesn’t have Chinese import taxes, and drop ship everything. I visited my factory last year to talk about this, and they said all their customers are in the same situation so they said they would have a solution. But one has not materialized yet,” he says.

Speaking of drop-shipping and customs fees, that is probably what you should expect if you buy the new banana-shaped Arduboy or the last few remaining units of the Arduboy FX Special Edition. “I am planning to fulfill the orders but they may be drop shipped, so U.S. customers should be aware that import taxes may now apply,” he tells The Verge. But he also may just turn off Banana-Bit preorders, as he says he’s only sold about a dozen so far.

He also warns these packages could get held up at US customs for a time, because Trump has also gotten rid of the de minimis exemption that let low-value packages enter the US duty-free. “That’s going to impact everything from Shein to Temu to AliExpress, and honestly, it’s going to be chaos. U.S. customs isn’t ready for that volume,” he says.

Bates says Trump’s trade war is “an absolute unmitigated disaster for anyone without the ability to dramatically restructure.”

“I guess that’s the point,” he adds.

Samsung’s smart home platform SmartThings now works with Matter 1.4, the latest version of the interoperable smart home standard, adding compatibility with things like water heaters, heat pumps, and solar panels that use the spec. The company has also introduced new smart home automation triggers, as well as a broadcast feature for SmartThings-connected speakers.

Matter 1.4 makes it easier to use one device with multiple platforms at once, and also adds more granular control. While the 1.3 spec added support for controlling robot vacuums, with 1.4, your smart home platform can direct them to clean a specific room. However, support for much of the spec is optional. We’ll learn more about how Samsung is implementing it later, but for now, here’s what it mentions in its release: 

The latest version of the standard includes a wide range of energy management devices — such as water heater, heat pump, solar power device, battery storage device, mounted on/off control switch and mounted dimmable load control device. 

So far, Home Assistant is the only other platform with (not quite full) Matter 1.4 support, while Amazon, Apple Home, and Google still lag behind.

Along with the Matter update, Samsung has made it possible to broadcast voice messages through SmartThings-connected speakers from the SmartThings app, whether you’re in or out of your home. It also updated SmartThings routines so that you can use recurring events to trigger something, such as a smart bulb changing colors on someone’s birthday. Samsung also says SmartThings can now automatically do things like turn off your lights or open your curtains based on your actual sleep and wake times — if you have a paired Galaxy Watch or Galaxy Ring.

As Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are set to take effect, Amazon is tweaking some of how it does business — specifically how it operates Amazon Haul, the company’s version of bargain bin Chinese sites like Temu and Shein.

The Information reported Tuesday that Amazon Haul offerings will now include products from well-known brands like Adidas, Levi’s, and Gap that are shipped from Amazon’s inventory held in warehouses in the US. This is pretty much the opposite of what Haul initially promised: very (very) cheap unbranded products coming directly from manufacturers in China. In exchange for waiting a week or two for packages to come from China, Amazon Haul shoppers got to load up their digital shopping carts with clothing, accessories, home goods, and more that were all priced under $20.

That baseline has gone out the window: scrolling through Haul, a new “Brand Faves” section features products from companies that American shoppers are more familiar with, like Under Armour, The Children’s Place, and Vera Bradley. The under $20 hook also seems irrelevant now: in a few seconds of browsing I found makeup pouches for $20.99, leggings for $27.20, and dresses for $34.82. Some of those products are the same price on Haul and they are on classic Amazon, which raises the question of why a shopper would buy it on Haul to begin with. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The change to how Haul operates is likely connected to tariffs imposed by Trump, which will tax all imports coming into the US. But as I’ve written previously, services like Haul are uniquely vulnerable because their super low prices are dependent on optimal trade policies that most shoppers never think of. Specifically, Haul (as well as Shein, Temu, AliExpress and drop shipping operations) relied on a carve out that allows packages valued under $800 to enter the US duty free. The so-called de minimis rule has been widely used — 1.4 billion packages claimed it in 2024 — but now Trump plans to kill the exemption beginning May 2nd. That puts Amazon Haul shoppers on the hook for duties they otherwise would be exempt from.

Amazon’s move towards stocking its Haul section with inventory already in the US avoids these new tariffs — at least temporarily. To be clear, it appears the majority of the products listed on Haul are still of the Temu variety, but beginning next month, shoppers will be responsible for tariffs if Trump’s plan proceeds as he’s threatened it will. But by fulfilling Haul orders using stock that’s already in US warehouses, Amazon is buying itself a little bit of time. But in just a few weeks, shoppers’ “hauls” of cheap things will likely be less affordable.

The next phase of director Dan Trachtenberg’s plan to reenergize the Predator franchise is another foray into the past.

Today, Hulu shared a new trailer for 20th Century Studios’ upcoming animated anthology movie, Predator: Killer of Killers. Similar to Prey, Killer of Killers will tell the story of how human warriors have to fight for their lives after unexpectedly crossing paths with members of the Yautja race who hunt for sport. But rather than focusing on a single alien attack in the past, the new animated feature will chronicle three encounters from different time periods. 

The trailer spotlights how the Predators will set their sights on a Viking raider, samurai from feudal Japan, and a WWII Allied pilot. All of the humans seem like skilled fighters, but it’s clear none of them are ready to die with the Predators’ advanced weaponry.

In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Trachtenberg said that, while Killer of Killers is firmly set in the same larger universe as Prey and his upcoming, live-action feature Predator: Badlands, the anthology was always meant to work as a standalone project.

We’re still a few months out from Predator: Badlands’ theatrical debut on November 7th. But Killer of Killers looks and sounds like it will make for solid appetizer when it hits Hulu on June 6th in the US (and Disney Plus’ Star hub in other territories.)

Nintendo has already shipped a supply of Switch 2 units to the US, months before the system goes on sale. That’s according to Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who said on CNBC Monday that Nintendo had time to build up an inventory of the next-gen portable gaming system “on a global basis,” and that many have already landed, including “some” in the United States.

“We really do hope we can meet that demand,” said Bowser. When asked if Nintendo can meet that demand, Bowser replied, “That remains to be seen. That certainly is our goal.” The original Switch remained hard to find for quite a while after it launched in the spring of 2017, selling more consoles by April 2018 (17.79 million) than its predecessor, the Wii U, sold in five years (13.56 million).

Bowser told The Verge that Nintendo is “actively assessing” the impact of the latest tariffs, but that was before Nintendo decided to delay Switch 2 preorders in the US and Canada from the original April 9th date. Nintendo says it’s still on track to launch the console on June 5th. On Tuesday, analyst DFC Intelligence cut its Switch 2 forecast for the year from 17 million units to 15 million, Bloomberg reports. That prediction would still make it the fastest-selling console ever, despite tariffs and the budget-stretching price of $449.99.

The new tariffs announced after the Switch 2 event could be hard on Nintendo since the company is building Switch 2 in Vietnam, which is in line for a 46 percent tariff.

With time continuing to tick down until President Trump’s higher tariffs take effect after midnight, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down on the idea that products like iPhones could realistically shift to US manufacturing, claiming that “if Apple didn’t think the United States could do it they probably wouldn’t have put up that big chunk of change,” citing its recently announced $500 billion US investment plan.

The only problems with this argument are that at least one analyst has described Apple’s planned investment as “in line with what one might expect the company to be spending anyway,” and that Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have been saying iPhone manufacturing isn’t possible in the United States for over a decade now.

After about US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s comments over the weekend that the tariffs would lead to things like “the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones” coming to the US, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman asked Leavitt directly if Trump thought iPhone manufacturing was the type of technology that could move to the US. Leavitt said “Absolutely. He believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it.”

Walter Isaacson’s biography, Steve Jobs, clearly describes meetings between Jobs and then-president Barack Obama in 2010 and 2011, where Jobs explained that the problem is that America lacks the 30,000 properly trained engineers needed to support a factory workforce rivaling the 700,000 workers employed in China:

Apple had 700,000 factory workers employed in China, he said, and that was because it needed 30,000 engineers on-site to support those workers. ‘You can’t find that many in America to hire,’ he said.

Tim Cook has been just as blunt, describing the issue in 2017 at Fortune Magazine’s Global Forum event.

…the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago and that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill and the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill. It is like the products we do require really advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state-of-the-art, and the tooling skill is very deep here. You know in, in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room — in China you could fill multiple football fields.

A Tesla Supercharger station was severely damaged in a possible explosion in Lacey, Washington. The local police department is investigating the incident, along with the FBI, which has been probing a number of acts of vandalism involving Tesla.

The Lacey Police Department said it received multiple calls of a “loud noise” at 1:34am PT, which could be a possible explosion. Officers arrived at a Target on Sleater Kinney Road to discover the damaged Tesla Supercharger station. Police said they are investigating the incident as “malicious mischief,” which describes the intentional damaging of someone’s property, and encourage anyone with information to reach out to the FBI.

Tesla’s Supercharger account on X said the company was “on site” with law enforcement, reviewing camera footage and coordinating with the local utility Puget Sound Energy. “Don’t mess with critical infrastructure,” the account added.

It’s the latest incident of Tesla-related vandalism, following CEO Elon Musk’s high-profile position in the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. For weeks, Musk and DOGE have run roughshod through the federal government, cancelling humanitarian aid programs, slashing scientific research spending, and firing federal workers. His actions have led to a nationwide protest movement called Tesla Takedown, which aims to boycott the company’s vehicles and hurt its stock price. Last month, tens of thousands of people protested the company’s retail locations across the country.

Unrelatedly, a number of vandalism incidents targeting Tesla has cropped up. Tesla vehicles have been set on fire or defaced, showrooms have been shot up, and charging stations have been destroyed. President Donald Trump has called the incidents “domestic terrorism,” and the FBI has created a task force to investigate the attacks.

The Trump administration is disbanding a Department of Justice unit dedicated to enforcing cryptocurrency fraud, ending what it calls “regulation by prosecution.” 

In a memo obtained by The Washington Post, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche directed federal prosecutors to cease “litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.” Prosecutors were told to “no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and offline wallets for the acts of their end users or unwittingly violations of regulations.” Blanche ordered prosecutors to close ongoing investigations that are “inconsistent” with the new policy.

Trump, a former cryptocurrency skeptic, has reversed course in recent years, positioning himself as the crypto industry’s political champion and receiving donations from crypto billionaires in turn. He headlined the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, and launched his own “crypto platform” ahead of the presidential election. As president, he has helped enrich the crypto interests that helped him get elected — and now he’s effectively promising to deregulate the indus …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google is beginning to roll out its Loss of Pulse Detection feature to Pixel Watch 3 owners in the U.S.

Loss of Pulse Detection, the smartwatch’s marquee health feature, calls emergency services if the Pixel Watch 3 can’t pick up your heartbeat while wearing it. It was initially announced alongside the Pixel Watch 3 in August last year, and has been available for European users for months. However, because this is a high-stakes feature, it requires regulatory clearance — something Google didn’t get from the Food and Drug Administration until late February. Google says in a fact sheet that it tested the algorithm with over 100,000 hours of data to minimize false alerts, and has published a peer-reviewed study in Nature.

You’ll have to wait until you see a prompt on the watch to enable the opt-in feature. But don’t worry if you don’t see it just yet. While rollout starts today, Google spokesperson Bridget Starkey told The Verge in an email that users may see it over the next couple of weeks.

Amazon is showing off new AI technology this week, including its take on a more conversational voice model to better compete with things like Gemini Live and OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode and an update to its model that can generate video.

The new Nova Sonic voice model handles real-time speech processing and AI voice generation for conversational applications, Amazon says. Nova Sonic uses a “unified model architecture” that Amazon claims is better than other approaches that interconnect separate models to handle speech recognition, speech-to-text conversion, response generation, and then text-to-audio. Amazon says Nova Sonic can also better detect someone’s tone and deliver more natural responses.

Nova Sonic is available to try through Amazon’s Bedrock developer platform, and the company says it can be used to make things like customer service bots or build AI agents for travel, education, healthcare, and a variety of other industries. “Components” of Nova Sonic are already being used in Amazon’s new Alexa Plus assistant, Amazon’s Rohit Prasad, SVP and head scientist of AGI, told TechCrunch.

As for video, Amazon announced Nova Reel 1.1, which the company says provides quality and latency improvements over 1.0. It also can now keep consistent styles across multiple six-second scenes cut together to create a full video of up to two minutes in length.

The last installment of Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots anthology series was nothing short of fantastic, and we’re just a few weeks away from the show returning to Netflix with new episodes.

Today, Netflix announced that Love, Death, and Robots’ fourth volume is set to debut in May with 10 new animated stories about people living in worlds filled with all kinds of wildly futuristic technology. David Fincher and Tim Miller return as the series’ executive producers, and Kung Fu Panda 2’s Jennifer Yuh Nelson is once again the supervising director.

A teaser trailer for the new volume highlights how tonally distinct its episodes will be as they drop you into worlds overrun by gigantic robot babies and gladiator dinosaurs.

Some of this season’s stories will be lighthearted and comedic while others zoom in on people trying to survive through apocalypses, but they all seem like they’re going to be gorgeous when Love, Death, and Robots’s fourth volume debuts on May 15th.

Razer’s upcoming Blade 16 and other laptops are no longer available for preorder or purchase on its US site. The configurator for preordering its new Blade 16 laptop was available as recently as April 1st, according to the Internet Archive — one day before the Trump administration announced sweeping US tariffs on China, Taiwan, and others that make laptop components. When asked recently if tariffs might affect Razer’s prices or availability, its Public Relations Manager, Andy Johnston, told The Verge, “We do not have a comment at this stage regarding tariffs.”

Razer may not be openly talking about the impact of tariffs, but Framework halted sales of its entry-level Laptop 13 in the US on April 7th, and Micron reportedly confirmed surcharges for its memory chips will apply once the tariffs take effect after midnight tonight.

The direct link to the Blade 16 configurator now takes you to a 404 error page, and its product page only has a “notify me” button instead of anywhere to submit your preorder.

While shopping for other laptops on Razer’s site, only skins and accessories are available for purchase.

Even a new laptop stand Razer announced today, which a press release said would be “available now,” only has a “notify me” button with no price listed anywhere. Meanwhile, the same laptop stand has a price of $99.99 CA on the Razer Canada site, where the Blade 16 configurator is still available. It’s a similar story for Razer’s site in other countries as well. We’ve contacted Razer for further comment on tariffs and asked for confirmation that it has paused sales, but it did not respond by the time of publication.

The US will impose a cumulative 104 percent tariff on goods imported from China after midnight tonight, alongside a host of tariffs on other countries, the White House confirmed to CNBC.

It’s one of the most staggering figures from President Donald Trump’s worldwide trade war launched last week. The Trump administration calls the tariffs part of an effort to get the US on even footing with trade partners, bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, and replace the existing tax structure. But critics on Wall Street and elsewhere say that thinking is flawed, and American consumers and businesses will be the ones in pain amid uncertainty and rising costs.

Even in comparison with the previously announced taxes on goods from other US trading partners, this tariff will have huge implications for many US businesses that manufacture or assemble at least parts of their products in China, including Apple and Tesla. Many economists say that price hikes are likely to be passed on to consumers. 

Trump initially planned to impose 34 percent tariffs on goods from China, on top of ones that he put in place earlier this year. This escalation comes after China imposed its own 34 percent tariff on US goods crossing into its borders. Trump threatened raising tariffs by 50 percent unless China removed its own, but the Chinese government has said it would stand firm on its tariffs, CNBC reports.

If you’re struggling to get your kids off their phones and outside, the Fitbit Ace LTE is packed with a number of features that are designed to help kids get out and exercise while keeping unwanted distractions to a minimum. And right now, it’s matching its all-time low of around $149.95 ($30 off) at Amazon and Best Buy in both colorways.

With its Tamagotchi-like companion and fun, step-activated games, the Fitbit Ace is meant to make exercise more enjoyable for kids. The platform-agnostic, LTE-equipped watch — which doesn’t require a smartphone to operate once set up via Android or iOS — is an excellent alternative to a phone for younger kids, allowing them to call or text preselected contacts and share their location via Google Maps.

On the inside, it touts the same innards as the Google Pixel Watch 2 and supports Tap to Pay, meaning your child can use their smartwatch to buy things wherever Google Pay is accepted. Thankfully, however, there’s no third-party app store, ads, or internet access; Fitbit even provides parental controls for those who want to manage contacts, tweak settings, and limit the wearable’s use during school hours.

Just bear in mind that the LTE-based features like calling, texting, and real-time location sharing require you to pay $9.99 a month for an Ace Pass. That being said, the price might be worth it given that the wearable doesn’t require that your kid own a smartphone to set it up, and there’s no need to sign up with a carrier. 

Read our Fitbit Ace LTE hands-on impressions.

More ways to save today

• Amazon’s Echo Pop is back on sale for $29.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is $12 shy of its all-time low and one of its better prices in recent months. The colorful, semi-spherical speaker delivers good sound for its size, along with Alexa-enabled smarts that let you set alarms, control smart home devices, and perform a range of voice-activated tasks. Read our review.
• If you’re looking for a budget-friendly smartwatch suitable for adults, the second-gen Apple Watch SE is on sale at Amazon in the 40mm / GPS configuration starting at $169.97 ($79 off). The wearable tracks all the essentials, including heart rate and sleep quality, while offering support for fall/crash detection, emergency calling, and Apple Pay. That said, you’ll have to make do without some of the more advanced sensors found on Apple’s newer watches, along with the double-tap gesture. Read our review.
• Best Buy is selling the “N Edition” edition of 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard with its optional joystick for $69.99 ($30 off), an all-time low. Designed to look like the original NES controller, the tenkeyless mechanical board comes with two programmable “Super Buttons,” along with clicky hot-swappable switches and support for multiple connectivity modes — including USB-C, Bluetooth, and 2.4GHz wireless via a dongle.