Costway has fired up its Black Friday sale, and we’re here to talk about one product in specific. The company is offering a number of gaming chairs, but the one we’re here to cover is indicated as ‘Reclining Swivel Massage Gaming Chair with Lumbar Support’.

As its name says, this gaming chair does come with lumbar support, but that’s not, not even close. There are a number of details that you should be aware of. So, if you’d like to save up a bit of cash while buying a new chair for work or gaming, read on.

Cosway’s compelling gaming chair is now discounted by 39%

This Cosway gaming chair now costs $139 now, which is a 39% discount compared to its regular price. You can check out the chair below this paragraph and do note that it comes in Blue, Red, Gray, and White colors. They all have the same price tag now, by the way.

Yes, this chair does come with lumbar support. The thing is, it’s not just a cushion for your lower back. This thing actually has a massage function too. You’ll need electricity for that, though, of course. There is also a power bank pocket on it, in case you want to stick one in there to power the massage function. You can work/game and get a massage at the same time.

It has a headrest, and a backrest has a number of angles it can be utilized in

As you can see in the provided images, a headrest is included too. The backrest on this chair also has a number of angles you can put it in. Cosway even indicates the best use cases for those angles.

The standard is a 90-degree angle, but it goes all the way down to a 180-degree setup. Depending on what you need. The 90-degree angle is indicated as best for work, while a 120-degree angle is great for reading. A 150-degree angle is nice for watching something or simply relaxing, while a full 180-degree angle is great for lying down, basically. That’s not the angle we’d recommend you use, though, this is a chair after all.

The chair itself weighs 18 kg, and can withstand weigth of up to 150 kg

The seat can be adjusted based on height, of course. The entire chair weighs 40 lbs, which is the equivalent of 18 kg. It measures 29 x 29 x 50 – 54 (length x weight x height), or 74 x 74 x 127 – 137 in centimeter. The chair can withstand a person weighing up to 330 lbs. That’s the equivalent of 150 kg, by the way,

Costway says that the chair has a soft cushion and that it’s very comfortable. Armrests are also rotatable, and you can also adjust their size for a perfect fit. The chair can also spin continuously with ease, there is no stop point or anything of the sort. It can rotate by 360 degrees in both directions.

On paper, this chair does tick all the boxes. It seems to be strong enough to withstand almost any weight, within reason, while it also has all the features you’d expect out of such a chair. This is also quite a considerable discount that Costway is offering, so it’s something worth considering.

The company is offering a 30-day return guarantee for this gaming chair, and bulk order discounts

This deal also comes with a 30-day return guarantee. You also get 8% cashback if you order over $300 worth of products, and 5% cashback for $0-300 worth of merchandise. That is Costway’s rule for Black Friday orders. By ordering at least one of these chairs, you will also enter the company’s draw to win a mysterious free gift. That goes for any purchase worth over $100, by the way.

Do note that this offer will be valid until December 8. Costway fired up its Black Friday sales on October 21, so a couple of days ago. This is a part of those sales, of course. Costway started this early, but that’s a good thing. It means that you have plenty of time to see what you’re interested in, and make your purchase.

Various other deals are available at Costway as part of the company’s Black Friday sales, which kicked off early

As is the case with any product, there are limited quantities, though, so the faster you make your purchase, the better. If you’re interested in checking out other products that Costway has to offer for Black Friday, you can click on this link.

Costway, for those of you who don’t know, is an e-commerce platform. You’ll find various different products on Costway, but it’s mainly focused on patio furniture, treadmills, baby and kids products, and home appliances. Plenty of cooling products can be found on the site, as part of the home appliance category. The company was founded back in 2015, next year it’ll be active for over a decade.

Buy the Costway gaming chair with lumbar support (Costway)

8BitDo, once known exclusively as a purveyor of Nintendo-infused nostalgia, has expanded in recent years into all sorts of gaming controllers and accessories. The company’s latest foray is into mobile gaming controllers. The 8Bitdo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller takes the highlights of its well-received Ultimate series — Hall effect included! — and brings them to an extendable accessory that latches onto your smartphone, a la Backbone and Razer Kishi.

First, the bad news (for some). The 8Bitdo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller is Android only, so no love here for iPhone owners. It’s also a Bluetooth accessory, rather than a plug-in one like Backbone’s, which means it has a 350mAh battery and weighs more than some rivals. (As The Verge notes, it tips the scales at 236g, making it 71 percent heavier than the BackBone One.) 8Bitdo says its battery lasts up to 15 hours from 1.5 hours of charging time.

But for Android device owners, it’s a versatile controller. 8Bitdo says it’s compatible with mobile devices that are 100mm to 170mm in length. That can even include some small tablets, although not many these days are that small. (Even Amazon’s relatively small Fire HD 8 is about 32mm too wide.) However, it should fit just about any Android phone.

The controller has Hall effect triggers and joysticks, so you shouldn’t have any drifting worries. It includes a standard four action buttons, a “clicky,” “smooth” and “tactile” D-Pad, a profile button and two paddle buttons on its back. The sticks have “wear-resistant metal joystick rings.”

It works with 8BitDo’s Ultimate Software, letting you remap buttons, adjust stick and trigger sensitivity and create or edit profiles. The software is available on Windows and Android. The iOS version is installable on Macs from the App Store.

You can’t get the 8Bitdo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller quite yet, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon. It costs $50 (half the price of Backbone One!), comes in black and white options and will arrive on November 29, Black Friday.

Enterprises are beginning to deploy AI agents. However, if organizations plan to deploy agentic ecosystems at scale and improve employee acceptance, they might consider treating AI agents as tools working in the background to avoid intimidating employees who think they have to know how to use these tools. 

Dorit Zilbershot, vice president of AI and Innovation at ServiceNow, told VentureBeat that employees don’t have to know if teams of AI agents are working in the background.  

“There’s so much AI around us that we’re not even aware, and that’s how we are thinking about AI agents in ServiceNow,” Zilbershot said. “It should just work. As an employee, I shouldn’t care if AI agents are in the background.”

Zilbershot said employees become “managers” of AI agents in that they just need to do their regular work. The agents are automatically triggered to finish tasks. 

Enterprises have begun embracing AI agents and exploring how to deploy them at scale, even as generative AI deployment in enterprises has fallen slightly. Zilbershot said ServiceNow’s agent platform, Now Assist, is the company’s “fastest-growing product to date.” Now Assist launched a library of AI agents for customers in September. 

AI agents could ideally automate many workflows. This could include sales or product roadmaps, where one agent can encode customer information, another categorizes it and yet another informs an employee of a change in status. Zilbershot said agents don’t replace human employees, they take some busy work away, so the only time humans have to pay attention to an agent is if there’s an agent who’s supposed to interact with them.

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told VentureBeat in a separate interview that generative AI, particularly applications around agents, “has grown beyond our expectations.”

“We’ve mastered the flow of work and governance, and we’re building agents solving unique problems,” McDermott said. “AI will be in every product we have.”

As AI agents grow in popularity, Zilbershot said enterprises need to understand what makes agents work for their organization and employees. 

Agents and not assistants

Beyond AI agents quietly working in the background, Zilbershot said it’s essential for organizations to understand that agents are not assistants. If not, they risk setting an expectation to users that they will need to learn how to prompt agents instead of letting them work for them autonomously. 

“I think we’re doing a little bit of a disservice to our customers when agents function more as assistants, but we don’t change the name,” Zilbershot said. “It just creates a wrong perception in the market and how people approach working with agents.” 

Zilbershot added AI agents work best when there are other agents they can interact with, so to handle the expected sprawl of agents, orchestrator agents must be deployed to manage all the agents. ServiceNow ships an orchestrator agent with its Now Assist platform. 

Other companies have begun offering enterprises access to use orchestrator agents and build custom AI agents. Crew AI launched an agentic platform this month, while Asana released an agent creator specifically for workflows. 

Partnership with Nvidia

To expand on its agentic ecosystem, ServiceNow announced it will begin building off-the-shelf AI agents using Nvidia’s NIM Agent Blueprint. 

Zilbershot said using the NIM Agent Blueprint helps ServiceNow build more agents at the volume they feel is needed to make agents more efficient.

“We’re expanding our ecosystem since there can be a limit to how much we can build on our own; we want to have a strong partnership with companies like NVIDIA to build native AI agents within the ServiceNow platform,” she said. 

The first agent ServiceNow will build with Nvidia is a Vulnerability Analysis for Container Security AI Agent. The agent will automate vulnerability analysis and will be available on ServiceNow’s agent platform in 2025. 

Zilbershot said the work with Nvidia will be just the first of many possible partnerships ServiceNow will enter into to expand AI agents. 

It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an eye-popping $1.1 billion. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha and Devin Coldewey kicked off the show with their thoughts on the deal – mainly how surprising it is to see anyone spending over $1 billion on crypto in 2024.

But of course, there was so much more startup and venture news for the crew to get into this week. Listen to the full episode to hear about:

Equity will be recording live at Disrupt on Tuesday, so we hope to see you there! 

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.

Apple got a mixed victory in a patent infringement lawsuit against medical device maker Masimo. On Friday, a federal jury determined that Masimo had infringed on some Apple patents, and as part of the verdict, Apple was awarded $250 — yes, just $250 — as a statutory remedy for Masimo’s infringement.

$250 is the statutory minimum damages for the alleged infringement and Apple had sought that figure, Bloomberg Law reports. “We’re not here for the money,” Apple attorney John Desmarais said to jurors in closing arguments, according to the publication.

Masimo’s W1 smartwatch, Freedom smartwatch, and health module infringed on one patent, while Masimo’s charger infringed on another, per the verdict form. The jury also found that Masimo’s infringement was willful.

Pigs are noisy, but AI may be able to interpret their sounds and tell us what they are feeling based on them. A group of scientists has developed an AI algorithm that can decode pigs’ emotions based on their grunts, squeals, and snuffles. The research aims to help farmers understand the emotional and physical health as well as well-being of their animals. Learning that pigs are happy, sad, stressed, or something else can help those raising them work out any potential issues affecting the animals and maintain them in better conditions.

The researchers used thousands of recordings of pigs in all kinds of situations during their lives, right up until they went to the slaughterhouse in some cases. Every squeal and grunt was tagged and labeled depending on whether the pig was experiencing a positive or negative experience. Soon, the AI could determine the emotions that evoked different sounds. For instance, high-pitched squeals often mean fear or stress, while short grunts mean the pig is content.