The Verge

Black Friday has plenty of worthy deals that don’t cost a grip. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge With all the deals, discounts, and promotions running around, it can be awfully tempting to spend a mint over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But for those trying to stay thrifty and keep their spending in check, we’ve gathered some of the Best Black Friday deals you can currently find for less than $50. There are plenty of worthwhile deals on wireless earbuds, smart home devices, and Bluetooth speakers that fall below the $50 mark, many of which we’d normally recommend picking up at full price.If you’re planning to do some spending on bigger ticket items, we’ve also rounded up all the noteworthy discounts that are currently live at retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, as well as the best early Black Friday deals overall.... Continue reading…

Governor Kathy Hochul greets the crowd at Election Night Watch Party at Capitale in New York City on November 9th, 2022. | Photo by Lev Radin / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Efforts to crack down on crypto’s pollution notched a big win yesterday when New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill into law that presses pause on a particularly dirty form of crypto mining. The law imposes a two-year moratorium on any new permits for certain fossil fuel power plants seeking to mine crypto.In one high-profile case, a struggling gas plant in New York’s Finger Lakes region overcame economic headwinds by mining Bitcoin. Environmental advocates hoped the moratorium would prevent any other gas or coal plants, which might have otherwise shuttered, from turning into crypto mines.The moratorium is limited to crypto mining that uses the enormously energy-hungry process for validating transactions that Bitcoin employs,... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge There aren’t a ton of differences between the third-generation Apple TV 4K and last year’s model. The new one’s faster (but good luck telling the difference), supports HDR10 Plus, and has a smaller, lighter design. But unless you’ve got a recent Samsung TV, those aren’t good enough reasons to skip this great deal at Amazon that’s coming ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022.The company has slashed $100 off the price of both the 32GB and 64GB 2021 Apple TV 4K units. That brings them down to just $79.99 and $99.99, respectively. At that point, you’re barely paying more than the cost of the redesigned Siri Remote, which sells for $59.99. And even if you opt for 32GB — I’ve never managed to exceed any Apple TV’s storage — you’re... Continue reading…

The Elephant Card supports your iPhone for use as a full-featured Mac webcam. It costs less than $10 and folds up flat to easily fit into a pocket or wallet. Continue reading…

Aqara Cube T1 Pro | Image: Aqara The smart home still needs buttons. Or — in the case of the new $22.99 Aqara Cube T1 Pro — gestures. Voice control and sensors, while useful, aren’t always the best way to turn the lights on, open the shades, or kick off routines or scenes. Sometimes you just want a tactile remote control to do the job for you. The Cube T1 Pro is an updated version of Aqara’s wireless Cube controller that fills this niche with a host of new gestures for controlling smart home devices, while adding support for Apple Home and Amazon Alexa.The Cube T1 Pro lets you push, flip, twist, shake, or tap the cube to activate your gadget or scenes. It shows up as six wireless buttons in HomeKit and six motion sensors in Alexa. From here, you can tie each side to a... Continue reading…

Videos shared on social media appear to show workers being kicked by hazmat-suited officials during Foxconn protests in Zhengzhou, central China. | Image: @StephenMcDonell Protests have broken out at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, as footage circulating on social media shows workers clashing with baton-wielding riot police and hazmat-suited officials. The protests started after workers, who have been under strict covid lockdown for weeks, learned bonus payments would be delayed, reports The Wall Street Journal.Apple announced earlier this month that it expected lower shipments of premium iPhone 14 models due to disruptions created by the covid lockdowns at the same Foxconn facility. Zhengzhou, known locally as “iPhone city,” is home to an estimated 200,000 workers who are responsible for the vast majority of all iPhone production.

Did you ever buy Deus Ex Go, the excellent mobile puzzler from Square Enix Montreal that still ranks among the top 150 puzzle games on the App Store despite charging actual money to download? Then you’ll probably be frustrated to hear: Embracer Group, the massive conglomerate that’s gobbling up rights to franchises like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings and more, has decided you can’t play it anymore.Three weeks after shutting down the studio that produced it (which had incidentally just finished going through an expensive rebrand), Embracer has decided not only to remove their games from mobile app stores, it’s apparently taking the extra step of making them inaccessible even if you’ve already downloaded them — or in... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Echo Show 15 is $169.99 at various retailers, which is an $80 discount. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Don’t worry if you missed out on the steep Amazon device discounts we saw during July’s Amazon Prime Day and October’s Prime Early Access Sale: Black Friday is here, and the deals, in some cases, are even better. With the holiday season just around the corner, the timing’s perfect, too, as even popular presents like the Kindle Paperwhite are on sale at new all-time low prices. Even better, we’re seeing some of the first significant discounts on Amazon’s recently launched tech, like the fifth-gen Echo Dot, which just came out last month and is already half off.For your convenience, we’ve curated all the best deals you can currently get on Amazon devices in this post. If you want to save even more, though, be sure to check out our other... Continue reading…

The X stands for extreme, indeed. | Image: Vivo Vivo announced a trio of new flagship phones today, and sitting at the top is the X90 Pro Plus, complete with the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset announced just last week. The 8 Gen 2 is expected to appear in plenty of Android flagships over the next year, including Samsung’s S23 series, but the X90 Pro Plus has the honor of being the very first to market. It also includes some serious camera hardware, putting it up there with the most ambitious smartphone cameras to date. Unfortunately for us, it’s only launching in the Chinese market for now.Vivo doesn’t outright name the X90 Pro Plus’ chipset as the 8 Gen 2, likely because of its partnership with MediaTek, but looking at the specs, you can connect the dots. The other two models... Continue reading…

Walmart is selling the first-gen AirPods Pro for just $159, which is a $90 discount. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Just like Best Buy and Target, Walmart has already dropped many of its Black Friday deals ahead of the main event. The retailer began rolling out discounts online as part of its Deals for Days event earlier this month, and has continued adding to the pile on a weekly basis.Although it’s possible we’ll see prices drop even further when Black Friday officially lands later this week, we’re already seeing some steep discounts on a range of popular products, including the first-gen AirPods Pro. For your convenience, we’ve curated some of the best tech deals at Walmart for you to check out here. If you’re looking for even more deals, be sure to check out our roundup of the best early Black Friday deals available at all retailers. We’ve also... Continue reading…

Image: Second Dinner The developers behind Marvel Snap keep giving the people what they want. In a blog post, the developers announced that in the next patch, they’re adding a slew of new cards and a way for players to get the cards they’ve been pining for.Right now, the way you earn cards in Marvel Snap is by making your way up the collection rank ladder. Every so often, you’ll be rewarded with a new card from a specific pool at random. Random is all fun and good as it forces players to get creative in how they construct their decks so everyone isn’t running the same high-powered cards. But it still kinda sucks when you could craft the perfect deck to drive your enemies from you wailing and screaming if only you had that one card. (Wong, I need Wong!)C... Continue reading…

Aerial view of the Diablo Canyon, the only operational nuclear plant left in California. | Photo by George Rose / Getty Images The Department of Energy extended a $1.1 billion lifeline to California’s embattled Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Diablo Canyon has become a major flashpoint over what kinds of energy are considered “clean” and what risks policymakers are willing to take to reach their climate goals.The $1.1 billion in funding, announced yesterday, comes from a $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Congress passed last year. Diablo Canyon is the first power plant to be awarded credits from the program, which aims to extend the lives of reactors in danger of closing down.Diablo Canyon is the first power plant to be awardedThe two nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon were slated to be decommissioned... Continue reading…

NASA’s Orion capsule snaps a selfie, with the far side of the Moon in the background. | Image: NASA NASA’s Orion spacecraft has made it past the Moon as part of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, firing its engines to pass within 81 miles of the lunar surface, and is operating with high accuracy.The spacecraft performed an outbound powered flyby burn yesterday, Monday, November 21st, completing its closest flyby. The engines “all worked perfectly,” said Judd Frieling, a flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in a press conference. With three trajectory correction burns performed, the spacecraft has now fired all three of its thruster types: its large orbital maneuvering system engine, small reaction control system thrusters, and medium-sized auxiliary engines.Now Orion is traveling onward to its next target, a distant... Continue reading…

LG This is it, Black Friday week. We’re just days away from the start of the biggest shopping holiday of 2022, but in a way, it already started at Best Buy. It came out swinging in early October with several good deals. It’ll add more price cuts once actual Black Friday comes around on the day after Thanksgiving in the US. Barring some items selling out, many of the deals you’ll find below should last through Black Friday.A few important things to note from Best Buy’s frequently asked questions page: it isn’t offering rain checks on Black Friday deals that sell out, though its great price-matching policy won’t be in effect from now through Cyber Monday, which is November 28th. For items purchased between now and the end of the year, you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge While Apple’s still the “front-runner” when it comes to securing the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket, negotiations are taking unexpectedly long. That’s according to a report from The Athletic (via 9to5Mac), which indicates things have slowed down because Apple may be looking to score the rights to more than just the football games.The rights to NFL Sunday Ticket — which DirecTV has held for nearly three decades — expire after this football season. Amazon, YouTube, and Disney are also said to have placed bids to secure the rights to the out-of-market games package, which the NFL reportedly wants $3.5 billion for.But The Athletic reports that Apple expected it would gain the rights to aspects not specifically mentioned in its contract... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Cryptocurrency traders love Lamborghinis. Hang out in the parking lot of any Bitcoin conference or lurk around on Instagram, and you’ll see plenty of evidence of this. So with crypto prices plummeting and high-profile exchanges like FTX collapsing, it stands to reason that the used car lots would be overflowing with six-figure Italian supercars, right?It’s a nice theory, and while there is some evidence that the exotic car market is seeing a slight uptick in appraisals and used models for sale, it may be too early to conclusively connect it to the collapse in crypto.Yeah, I know. Buzzkill. But that said, there is certainly some interesting data out there, so let’s dive into it.

Image: Nintendo Listen up, birdies and bogeys. Today, Nintendo announced that golf is finally coming to Nintendo Switch Sports. The free update launches on November 28th and will include 21 holes from the Wii Sports games. The update also includes a survival golf game mode, which sounds so much more fun than actual golf.The Nintendo Switch Sports golf update is right on time as quirky golf games seem to be all the rage, with Cursed to Golf, Golf Story, and What the Golf exploding in popularity.Golf was not included in the base Nintendo Switch Sports game and was sorely missed by Wii Sports golf fans (including a couple of my colleagues at The Verge). Since its spring launch, Nintendo Switch Sports got a free update that improved soccer’s motion... Continue reading…

An early render of the Xenon controller in the original Xbox 360 white. It will also come in black, pink, and red. | Image: Hyperkin Hyperkin is introducing an officially licensed remake of Microsoft’s original Xbox 360 controller, which looks poised to bring the 2005 nostalgia trip to modern Xbox consoles and Windows PCs. The Xenon controller, named after the Xbox 360’s first internal development codename, brings back the 17-year-old design and modernizes things with Menu, View, and Share buttons, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and detachable USB-C cable. In addition to the original white, it will come in black, pink, and red.Pricing and availability have not been announced yet, but if Hyperkin’s $70 Duke controller remake is any indication, this may be quite a faithful and somewhat pricey recreation. Perhaps even too faithful in some small aspects, as these... Continue reading…

Avatar: The Way of Water is out December 16th. | Screenshot: Avatar: The Way of Water There’s a new trailer out for Avatar: The Way of Water, the upcoming film from James Cameron that is also the sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time. It’s as visually spectacular as you’d expect while also diving a bit deeper into the family-first story at the heart of the film. Here it is — it’s fun!However you feel about Avatar as a story (if you even remember the story at all), there’s no denying the technical achievements Cameron and his crew pulled off to make these movies happen. And in an excellent new GQ profile, Cameron explains the AI, algorithms, entirely new cameras, and all sorts of other tech behind this one:

The latest Kindle Paperwhite starts at $94.99 instead of $139.99 at Amazon. | Image: Amazon Want to gift the bibliophile in your life something a little more creative than, well, a book? Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite makes for a great gift, one that may not stay in stock for long when Black Friday officially lands on Friday. Thankfully, the ad-supported version with 8GB of storage is available right now for $94.99 instead of $139.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, while the ad-free version is on sale at Amazon for just $10 more.Although we can’t be sure that Amazon’s terrific e-reader won’t drop further in price in the run-up to Black Friday or on the actual shopping holiday, the current sale price represents an all-time low on the 2021 Paperwhite. It's a terrific e-reader (even at full price), with months-long battery... Continue reading…

Wyze launches a new BR30 smart light bulb. | Image: Wyze Wyze’s new Wi-Fi BR30 color bulb fills a gap in the budget smart home company’s lighting lineup — recessed can lighting. BR30s generally fit into holes in your ceiling and, with their directional light, are great for larger rooms such as kitchens and living areas. The new bulbs cost $23.99 plus $5.99 shipping for a two-pack or as low as $12.50 per bulb in a four-pack (plus shipping), making the Wyze Bulb Color BR30 a well-priced, if not spectacular bargain.Comparatively, Philips Hue’s color BR30s go for $100 for two, but you can find good, budget Wi-Fi BR30 bulbs in two-packs from the likes of Wiz ($28) and Sengled ($35). Both of those have lower lumen outputs, though, making Wyze the brighter budget bulb.The Wyze bulbs work with... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games The third chapter of Fortnite is ending with a live event — and it kicks off very soon. Today, developer Epic Games provided some details on the event, which is called “Fracture” and starts at 4PM ET on December 3rd. As with past live events, you only have one chance to check it out. You’ll be able to log in 30 minutes before it kicks off, and Epic also says you should still be able to hop on while the event is in progress, which will apparently be until 4:40PM ET, and you can be solo or in a group with up to four friends.Of course, we don’t have many details about what the actual live experience will be like. The fun of these is experiencing them live in the moment. Epic does say that “Fracture” will be “an otherworldly and unexpected... Continue reading…

Hotz demonstrating his former company’s advanced driver assistance technology. | Photo by Michael Zelenko / The Verge George Hotz, the noted iPhone hacker who was reported to have once turned down a job at Tesla working on its driver-assistance technology, has embarked upon a 12-week “internship” at Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership. Hotz said his priority at the social media company is to fix its search feature, as well as to remove the prompt that prevents you from browsing the service on the web without logging in.The internship came about after Hotz expressed support for Musk’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter’s employees, which demanded that they work “long hours at high intensity” or else depart the company. Hotz said that “this is the attitude that builds incredible things” and that he’d be willing to do an internship at the company.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has been public about his desire to improve how the social network’s direct messages work. In a meeting with employees today, he spelled out exactly what that looks like.Framed by presentation slides titled “Twitter 2.0” at Twitter’s San Fransisco headquarters on Monday, Musk told employees that the company would encrypt DMs and work to add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge.“We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] without being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on... Continue reading…

Domino’s outfitted Chevy Bolts. | Image: Domino’s Domino’s is gearing up to put more than 800 all-electric pizza delivery vehicles into service in the coming months, starting with over 100 of them rolling out in November. The company went with the compact Chevy Bolt EV and is wrapping the vehicles with custom branding but no other bells and whistles — just combustion-free deliveries (via electrek).Domino will have a fleet of 855 new electric vehicles, to be exact, and while that’s not quite enough to reach all 6,135 of the pizza shops in the US, it's more than the Chevy Spark-based (gas version) ones it built with custom pizza warming oven doors in 2015. Those were called the Domino’s DXP, and only 155 of them were made. For the new Bolts, drivers will need to toss the HeatWave bags in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a sudden turn of events, Disney has reversed the CEO swap that surprised us in early 2020, with Bob Iger returning to his post, replacing his own successor, Bob Chapek. Iger, who is also the company’s largest shareholder, is now set to serve a new two-year term as CEO. Part of Iger’s job in those two years will be to pick and groom his long-term successor.Of course, Chapek was an Iger choice too. Chapek had been called the “Tim Cook to Iger’s Steve Jobs,” but during his tenure, their handover got off to a rocky start, while blowups like the Scarlett Johansson Black Widow lawsuit and Disney’s initial lack of reaction to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida scuffed its all-important reputation.During an episode of the Decoder podcast... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Black Friday discounts extend to more than just Amazon devices. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Black Friday is right around the corner, but Amazon is wasting no time by rolling out some excellent deals in the run-up to the main event on Friday. If you’re looking to knock out some of your holiday shopping early, we’ve rounded up a small collection of all the best discounts you can currently get on wireless headphones, 4K TVs, tablets, and more.If you’re looking for discounts at other retailers, we’ve also put together roundups of the best deals you can find ahead of Black Friday at Target, Best Buy, and Walmart. To stay up to speed with everything happening over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, make sure to bookmark our Black Friday hub and check back for regular updates.The best Amazon Black Friday deals on Echo... Continue reading…

You can save $300 right now on LG’s C2 OLED when you buy the 55-inch configuration. | Image: LG Want to get a head start on your holiday shopping before the Black Friday madness officially begins on Friday? Despite the fact the annual shopping holiday is still a few days away, many major retailers are already offering a number of early Black Friday sales, making the days leading up to the shopping event an ideal time to avoid the rush.While it’s possible prices will dip even lower once the big day arrives, the discounts we’re currently seeing are nothing to scoff at. Target, Best Buy, and Walmart are offering some seriously steep discounts on a number of popular tech and gadgets, ranging from Apple devices to TVs, tablets, smart displays, and more.To make your life a little easier, we’ve curated a list of some of the best... Continue reading…

Activists demand “Loss and Damage” reparations at the COP27 UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on November 12th, 2022. | Photo by Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto via Getty Images Trying to save the planet looks less like a Marvel movie and more like tense climate negotiations that just wrapped up in Egypt over the weekend.Tens of thousands of delegates and activists from around the world gathered for the United Nations climate summit called COP27. It’s become more urgent than ever to figure out how to live in a much more hazardous world. And the only way to stop things from getting worse is for every country to live up to pollution-cutting commitments they made in the landmark 2015 Paris agreement. But they’ll have to overcome their own drama and in-fighting to get there.They’ll have to overcome their own drama and in-fighting to get thereThere were a few major victories and some disappointing losses at the... Continue reading…