SAVE $80: As of Aug. 22, Apple AirPods Pro 2 are still down to $169 at Amazon. This is 32% off their list price of $249, saving you $80.
Who needs a big sale event to save on AirPods? Quite a few of Apple’s earbuds have been sitting at low prices lately, including AirPods Pro 2. If you’ve been looking to pick up these earbuds at a reduced rate, you can score them for $169 right now at Amazon.
This is a 32% discount on their list price of $249, saving you $80. This deal price on the AirPods Pro 2 is also only $20 away from the best price we saw for the AirPods Pro 2 over Prime Day, so it’s still a decent pickup at this price. And who knows how much longer this deal will stay live, so act fast to pick them up at this low price.
SEE ALSO:
The 5 best noise-cancelling earbuds include the most comfortable buds I’ve ever worn
AirPods Pro 2 offer great sound quality thanks to the H2 chip, alongside noise-canceling features to help you keep any outside noises from interrupting your listening. Active Noise Cancellation completely blocks out sounds, Transparency mode lets some sounds in, and Adaptive Audio works as a combination of the two to give you the best listening experience no matter the environment.
Mashable Deals
We consider the AirPods Pro 2 to be the best earbuds for Apple users in our roundup of the best earbuds to buy in 2025. So why wait to pick them up? Don’t miss out on the AirPods Pro 2 down to $169 at Amazon.
ABU DHABI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) — The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Friday condemned Israel’s newly-announced settlement plan in the occupied West Bank and its ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the measures were “serious violations of international law and relevant UN resolutions” and posed a grave threat to regional and international efforts to achieve peace and establish an independent Palestinian state.
It warned of “catastrophic consequences” from continued hostilities, saying they would worsen the humanitarian crisis and endanger regional security.
The UAE urged an immediate halt to settlement expansion and military operations and called on the international community to act to stop the violations and launch a credible political process leading to lasting peace.
Israel this week announced plans to build thousands of new settlement units in the West Bank, a move widely criticized by the international community as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. ■
Drake and Bobbi Althoff are spinning the block for round two. The 6 God and Althoff teased another upcoming interview on Friday (Aug. 22), which looks as if it will serve as the opening episode of Althoff’s new Not This Again podcast.
Drizzy and the podcast host are seen holding hands while heading into the interview, which appears to be inside a large ballroom.
Drake takes the controls, looking to nail a proper intro for the episode, but Althoff’s not feeling his humorous attempts.
“Welcome to a much more refined, poised and pleasant podcast,” he jokes. “I’m trying to get you brand deals. I was trying to pitch… Welcome to a much more scenic, serene and sexy.”
Althoff cuts him off and then delivers the ironic introduction herself: “Welcome to the first episode of my new podcast that no one asked for, Not This Again.”
Bobbi and Drake linked up back in 2023 for a viral interview, which was scrubbed from YouTube, leading fans to think there was an issue between the duo, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Althoff’s sarcastic deadpan humor, beguiling personality and awkward line of questioning led her to interviews with Drake, Tyga, Lil Yachty, Rubi Rose, Nick Cannon and Mark Cuban. Last month, she announced the end of The Really Good Podcast, but she won’t be gone for long.
“All right, guys, I don’t think there’s any really good way to say this, but this is the last episode of The Really Good Podcast,” she said in July. “I think I should take my glasses off to say it, too. So, today, we’re gonna put on a little funeral for it.”
Althoff continued: “She was a great podcast. She got me this house, got me the car I drive, she got me a lot of stuff. She was really great. I really did appreciate her for the time I had with her. She brought me a lot of memories and a lot of great guests. She got me a few interviews taken down… I’m going to miss her. And I will miss doing this podcast, and I will miss the money this podcast brought me.”
Scientists from the LASSIE project with their quadruped robot at White Sands National Park, New Mexico in August. The quadruped robot was able to scout and train autonomously. The work is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars project.
2025 Justin Durner Photography
Oregon State University researchers tested a quadruped robot at White Sands National Park, training it as a future field partner for astronauts on Mars.
NASA’s Moon to Mars program is building a roadmap for the long-term lunar exploration of Mars’ surface. Each contribution enables NASA to create the architecture that set the course for exploration under the Artemis campaign in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars.
Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) are an academic partner in that program, which is developing the tools for long-term lunar exploration and future crewed missions to Mars. Through their NASA-funded project a team of researchers have been working on a quadruped robot that will support that program.
Cristina Wilson, a robotics researcher in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University said the Moon to Mars program is very focused on the path to mount a human mission to Mars.
She cites the LASSIE project (Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments) formed in 2022, in which OSU is specifically focused on the human-robot interaction component of LASSIE project. She says it an example of how quadruped robots can support safe astronaut operations on another planet that yield maximum science return.
“We are investigating using the quadruped to scout ahead of the human explorer and communicate back safe paths for the astronaut or other robots/assets to traverse, and also using the quadruped to help the astronaut identify areas of high science interest in periods of non-communication with scientists back at Mission Control on Earth,” said Wilson.
“On future lunar or Mars missions, the LASSIE team would like to see quadrupeds used as intelligent field companions, that complement the capabilities of other robot assets like rovers and drones,” she added.
Autonomous quadruped robot scounting on its own
At White Sands in 2025, the quadruped robot either made or contributed to every data collection decision. The field scientists acted only as supervisors, free to pursue their own science actions and check-in with the robot as needed.
2025 Justin Durner Photography
“Because we are studying robotics for field science, the best way to test our robots is to deploy them in real field science missions,” said Wilson.
To test the quadruped and learn how to adapt them for extraterrestrial environments, in August 2025, the research team took a second trip to White Sands National Park in New Mexico to test the quadruped in rugged terrrain most similiar to Mars.
The August trip to White Sands showed the quadruped could act autonomously.
“In this research trip, the robot either made or contributed to every data collection decision. The field scientists acting only as supervisors and were free to pursue their own science actions and check-in with the robot as needed,” said Wilson.
“We were able to measure the actual science output that is enabled by having an intelligent quadruped field assistant – that isn’t possible in the lab,” she said.
“The robot made decisions about where to collect data, based on what it understands about the scientist it is working for: their data collection objectives and preferences,” said Wilson. “In some cases, the robot just makes suggestions about where it thinks data should be collected and lets the scientist make the final call, in other cases the robot decides and the scientist has to intervene to change the robots decision.”
The team tested the decision algorithms in the field and simulation, with the hope that they will be able to create something that allows the robot to take on more responsibility for some collection decisions in future planetary missions.
Scientists with the quadruped at White Sands National Park in August 2025.
2025 Justin Durner Photography
The quadruped robot difference
“Quadrupeds have locomotion advantages, they are generally better at navigating difficult terrains than wheeled rovers. But quadrupeds can actually use their feet to understand the surface they are walking on in real-time – in a similar way to how we as humans can sense the ground and its relative stiffness or softness with our feet,” she said.
Wilson says that by adding a quadruped to the existing fleet of NASA rover and drone assets, they can take advantage of its unique ability to conduct science with every step, a new type of data to complement and inform how rovers and drones move over the planetary surface.
“Quadrupeds can move over surfaces wheeled rovers cannot, and we have demonstrated quadrupeds can collect data on surface strength that informs where other robots or humans can safely traverse,” said Wilson.
Wilson says that big implication of this is no more stuck rovers. “But the other implication is that we can learn more about areas where it might be otherwise unsafe to send a human or a rover.
“A legged robot and a drone are an excellent pair for gaining access to locations that were previously inaccessible – and they can provide different types of information at different scales,” she said. “This could allow for greater science output, and/or allow astronauts to focus on other tasks, improving mission efficiency and reducing astronaut cognitive load.”
Wilson says the LASSIE team is unique in leveraging the ability of the quadruped to sense through ground through walking.
“We have shown that this data from the robot legs can help improve the quadruped’s ability to locomote over difficult terrains by adapting its gait to what it is sensing from its feet as it moves over the surface,” she said. “We are also the only team to demonstrate that this data from the robot legs is scientifically valuable for understanding the physics of landscapes and the geological processes that form them on other worlds.”
LASSIE brings together engineers, scientists and NASA researchers in a multi-university consortium. The project includes Oregon State, the University of Southern California, Texas A&M University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and NASA Johnson Space Center.
The OSU research is funded by the NASA Planetary Science and Technology through Analog Research (PSTAR) program, and Mars Exploration Program.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is trying to squash rumors it’s easing up on artificial intelligence. Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who now runs Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, said Thursday the company is only ramping up spending.
We are truly only investing more and more into Meta Superintelligence Labs as a company, Wang wrote on X. Any reporting to the contrary of that is clearly mistaken. The post came as Meta shares drifted 1.2% lower in afternoon trade.
His pushback follows a string of headlines suggesting the opposite. The Wall Street Journal reported Meta has paused hiring in its AI unit after a spree that added more than 50 researchers and engineers, some lured with packages topping $100 million. The New York Times added that Meta is considering downsizing the group, which has grown into the thousands, while restructuring it into four teams amid internal tensions.
For investors, the mixed messaging underscores how expensive Meta’s AI ambitions have becomeand how quickly speculation over hiring and budgets can rattle sentiment in a space where the stakes are sky-high.
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.
Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The firing is the latest upheaval in the US military and intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Republican US president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated”, rejected the report.
In a news conference following the June strikes, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.
“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated – choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said then.
Kruse’s exit was reported earlier by the Washington Post.
Trump has a history of removing government officials whose data and analysis he disagrees with. Earlier in August, after a disappointing jobs report, he fired the official in charge of the data. His administration has also stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites.
The firing of the DIA chief culminates a week of broad Trump administration changes to the intelligence community and shakeups to the military leadership. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence – which is responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA – announced that it would slash its staff and budget.
The Pentagon announced this week that the air force’s top uniformed officer, Gen David Allvin, planned to retire two years early.
Hegseth and Trump have been aggressive in dismissing top military officials, often without formal explanation.
The administration has fired Air Force Gen CQ Brown Jr as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, as well as the navy’s top officer, the air force’s second highest-ranking officer, and the top lawyers for three military service branches.
In April, Hegseth fired Gen Tim Haugh as head of the National Security Agency and Vice Adm Shoshana Chatfield, who was a senior official at Nato.
No public explanations have been offered by the Pentagon for any of these firings, though some of the officers were believed by the administration to endorse diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
3D dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) has revealed new insights into the bone health of people with type 2 diabetes, a group in Mexico has reported.
The findings are from a study comparing 3D DEXA scans among 74 patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared with 51 nondiabetic subjects, noted lead author Griselda-Adriana Cruz-Priego, MD, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and colleagues.
“Our study highlights the potential of 3D [DEXA] as a valuable tool for analyzing bone quality parameters in patients with T2D, revealing differences in cortical and trabecular bone structure that conventional [bone mineral density] measurements may be unable to detect,” the group wrote. The study was published August 20 in Archives of Medical Research.
The pathophysiology of bone fragility in patients with type 2 diabetes is complex, and while advanced imaging techniques such as quantitative CT (QCT) enable in-depth analyses of bone structure, these techniques are largely limited to research centers, the authors explained.
Conversely, 3D DEXA uses statistical shape and density modeling software (3D-Shaper, 3D Shaper Medical) to reconstruct a 3D representation of the proximal femur from 2D DEXA images. The model estimates parameters such as trabecular bone density, cortical bone thickness, and cortical bone density, and has demonstrated a strong correlation with QCT measurements, the authors noted.
In this study, the group explored the use of 3D DEXA for providing additional insights into bone quality in patients using existing DXA systems without the need for additional imaging modalities.
The researchers recruited 125 participants, including 51 healthy controls and 74 patients with type 2 diabetes, with a predominance of women in both groups (70.3% female). The mean ages were similar (53.9 and 53.6 years old), and the diabetes group had an average disease duration of 11.4 years. The researchers used a Lunar iDXA densitometer (GE HealthCare, or GEHC) to measure bone mineral density (BMD) at the total hip, femoral neck, and lumbar. Then they analyzed the DEXA images with the 3D-Shaper software.
According to the results, standard BMD measurements did not reveal significant differences between the two groups at key sites. However, the 3D analysis revealed significantly lower volumetric BMD in patients with diabetes, particularly in the trochanteric and neck regions, as well as reduced cortical thickness. These differences persisted after adjusting for age, sex, and body mass index, the group noted.
“Although conventional DXA did not detect differences in BMD, the 3D analysis suggests that diabetes may negatively impact bone quality parameters, particularly in the trabecular and cortical compartments of the proximal femur,” the researchers wrote.
Ultimately, the findings could have implications for bone strength and fracture risk, highlighting the need for further research using advanced imaging techniques to better understand the skeletal impact of diabetes, the researchers concluded.
