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You can save up to $160 off Bose headphones and earbuds right now. | Image: The Verge It’s almost November, and to celebrate, retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy are dropping early Black Friday deals on everything from Apple devices to smartphones and video games. We’re also seeing some great deals on Bose headphones and earbuds , with many of the discounts matching previous all-time lows. Take, for instance, the latest Bose QuietComfort Earbuds , which are currently down to $129 ($50 off) in multiple colors at Amazon , Walmart , and Best Buy . Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (second-gen) Where to Buy: $179 $129 at Amazon $179 $129 at Best Buy $179 $129 at Bose The wireless earbuds deliver excellent active noise cancellation, over eight hours of battery life with ANC enabled, and support for multipoint connectivity, making it possible to pair them with two devices simultaneously. While they don’t sound quite as good as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds , the QC Ea...

Project Frame Forward takes any change you make to the first frame of a video and applies it across the entire footage. Adobe demonstrated some of the experimental AI tools it’s working on at its Max conference that provide new ways to intuitively edit photos, videos, and audio. These experiments, called “sneaks,” include tools that instantly apply any changes you make to one frame across an entire video, easily manipulate light in images, and correct mispronunciations in audio recordings. Project Frame Forward is one of the more visually impressive sneaks, allowing video editors to add or remove anything from footage without using masks — a time-consuming process for selecting objects or people. Instead, Adobe’s demonstration shows Frame Forward identifying, selecting, and removing a woman in the first frame of a video, and then replacing her with a natural-looking background-similar to Photoshop tools like Context-aware Fill or Remove Background. This removal is automatically app...

Donkey Kong Bananza is $61.99 ($8 off) at Woot. There haven’t been a lot of opportunities to catch Switch 2 games on sale since the console launched in early June, but that’s changing thanks to Woot. The store is having a sale on new video games and game accessories that’s live now, and runs through November 8th at 11:59PM CT. Dozens of games for all three current-generation systems are on sale, but the Switch 2 titles caught our eye because of how new they are. Woot’s deals are especially enticing because first-party Nintendo games don’t go on sale very often. Woot’s sale also includes discounts on Switch 2 exclusives, including Donkey Kong Banaza and Mario Kart World, and Switch 2 Edition versions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Kirby and the Forgotten Land Plus Star-Crossed World . The latter are enhanced versions of games released for the original Switch that have new exclusive content, a boost in performance, or both. If you already own the original versions...

The Neo 2 is still designed to protect its props during a collision, but those should happen less frequently. | Image: DJI DJI has announced a follow-up to the Neo selfie drone it launched last September for $199. Although the original was priced for mass adoption, it lacked several useful features that the new DJI Neo 2 is adding , including gesture controls and the ability to actively avoid obstacles instead of just relying on a design that can survive impacts and crashes. The DJI Neo 2 is slightly larger than its predecessor, and at 151 grams, it’s 16 grams heavier, but that extra weight is a small tradeoff given the added functionality and a larger battery. The Neo 2’s new obstacle avoidance system uses forward-looking LIDAR and downward-looking infrared sensors to detect and avoid hazards while the drone follows you in forward and sideways flight modes. It still features integrated guards that fully protect its four propellers, but you won’t have to be as careful about where ...

Move over Andy Sachs, Pinterest is launching an AI-enabled shopping assistant that aims to suggest your next look. Beginning on Thursday, and over the coming weeks and months, Pinterest users will be able to talk to the visual platform about what they’re shopping or searching for. The Pinterest Assistant will come back with personalized recommendations based on the user’s saved collections and whatever pins are currently up on their screen, and briefly narrate the results.  The AI assistant is meant to encourage a more conversational experience, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told The Verge . This is why the assistant only accepts voice inputs from users — and why the assistant will talk back to users when it provides the suggested pins and products. (For now, you cannot turn off the audio narration.)  The AI assistant is an optional feature that is not a replacement for traditional text-based search, which remains unchanged on the platform. Pinterest already uses AI to curate i...

Let's just get this out of the way: Liam Hemsworth actually makes for a pretty solid Geralt of Rivia. Hemsworth assumes the mantle in the fourth season of Netflix's The Witcher , picking up from Henry Cavill. And while it can be distracting at first, especially since Cavill inhabited the role so well, it only took a few episodes before I was mostly on board with the new face under the blonde wig. He still knows how to wield a sword, and he still answers most questions with a cranky "fuck." The problem isn't that the show has a new lead actor; it's that it continues to be a bloated mess, and season 4 doesn't do anything to fix that. In case y … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/810151/the-witcher-season-4-review-netflix-liam-hemsworth

Web browsers are getting awfully chatty. They got even chattier last week after OpenAI and Microsoft kicked the AI browser race into high gear with ChatGPT Atlas and a " Copilot Mode " for Edge. They can answer questions, summarize pages, and even take actions on your behalf. The experience is far from seamless yet , but it hints at a more convenient, hands-off future where your browser does lots of your thinking for you. That future could also be a minefield of new vulnerabilities and data leaks, cybersecurity experts warn. The signs are already here, and researchers tell The Verge the chaos is only just getting started. Atlas and Copilot Mo … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/report/810083/ai-browser-cybersecurity-problems

Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing service, is experiencing an outage just one week after issues with AWS took out swaths of the internet . The issues appear to be impacting Microsoft’s services that run on Azure, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, and even Minecraft . Microsoft confirmed Azure Portal issues on the service’s status page, adding that the outage started around 12PM ET: Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing DNS issues resulting in availability degradation of some services. Customers may experience issues accessing the Azure Portal. We have taken action that is expected to address the portal access issues here shortly. We are actively investigating the underlying issue and additional mitigation actions. More information will be provided within 60 minutes or sooner.  At 12:25PM ET, Microsoft 365’s status account on X said the company is investigating reports of “issues accessing Microsoft 365 services and the Microsoft 365 admin cent...

A screenshot from Halo: Campaign Evolved. Halo coming to PlayStation is one of those events that, five years ago, would have been the tell that "something is not right here" in a show about time travel or alternate universes. Looking at the state of Xbox with its layoffs, game cancellations, price hikes, studio closures, and a soft release schedule light on attention-grabbing titles, it certainly seems like all is not well. But the company's focus on tearing down the walls of its garden by multi-platforming its biggest exclusives combined with a push to make Xbox games playable on just about anything, denotes a strategy that may be what keeps the green guys in the game for a while l … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/809053/halo-playstation-xbox-multiplatform-strategy

The high-end OLED TV is 41 percent off. | Image: LG If you want one of the best home theater experiences LG can provide, the 65-inch LG G5 OLED is down to a new record low price. Regularly $3,399.99, you can buy the TV for around $1,996.99 at Amazon and directly from LG . Other configurations are also on sale, with the 77-inch going for around $3,456.99 (about $1,000 off) at Amazon and LG . If you purchase the TVs from LG, you’ll also get free professional wall mounting or stand set up with a free matching TV stand through November 16th. LG G5 OLED TV Where to Buy: $3399.99 $1996.99 at Amazon (65-inches) $4499.99 $3496.99 at Amazon (77-inches) $6499.99 $4996.99 at Amazon (83-inches) While it didn’t win this year’s “TV Shootout” award for flawless picture quality, the LG G5 OLED still delivers an impressive viewing experience. It features the same stunning OLED picture quality as the popular C5 line — complete with support for Dolby Vision — but takes things a step...

You’re going to start seeing more warnings in Chrome when accessing insecure sites. Starting next October , Chrome will soon warn users when they visit a public website without an encrypted HTTPS connection. Chrome already issues a “Your connection is not private” message when you visit pages that have an HTTPS connection that’s misconfigured. But this will expand the warnings to websites that don’t use HTTPS at all. Google first offered insecure connections warnings for HTTP pages in 2021, but users had to opt in to see them. HTTPS — or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure — uses encryption to establish a secure connection with a website, preventing bad actors from snooping on the private information you enter. HTTPS connections now make up around 95 to 99 percent of connections, Google says. “This level of adoption is what makes it possible to consider stronger mitigations against the remaining insecure HTTP,” Google writes in its announcement. The company notes that “the large...

(L to R) Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, Jacob Romero as Usopp, Taz Skylar as Sanji. | Image: Netflix Attention, Straw Hats — Netflix’s surprisingly great One Piece adaptation finally has a season 2 premiere date. Netflix announced today that its take on One Piece is set to return on March 10th, 2026 with 8 new episodes that will follow Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) and the rest of his Straw Hat Pirates as they journey into the Nameless Country (a reference to the manga’s Drum Island arc ). During a livestream news event , Toei animation also revealed today that the One Piece anime is going through some production changes next year as it heads into the show’s Elbaph Arc . Going forward, seasons will be split into 2 parts and consist of 26 episodes — a change series producer Ryūta Koike said is meant to help the anime “incorporate more content, tempo, and pacing of the manga while continuing to leverage the unique storytelling that is only possible with animation.” sourc...

Upgrading Lego’s Game Boy using the BrickBoy kit will cost you a lot more than many handheld emulators that are far more capable. | Image: Kickstarter After being announced last week , the BrickBoy kit that turns Lego’s buildable Game Boy model into a functional handheld through emulation has finally launched on Kickstarter , but its pricing could be a serious deterrent. Three versions of the BrickBoy are being offered with the cheapest option being the Essential Kit that can only play Game Boy titles in grayscale and is limited to a mono speaker for sound. It’s priced at €129, or around $150, which is more than twice the price of Lego’s $60 Game Boy which the BrickBoy doesn’t include. Early backers can get it discounted to €99, or around $115, but that’s still far more expensive than many of Anbernic’s handheld emulators that are far more capable and ready to play right out of the box. The more capable BrickBoy Gamer Kit that adds support for Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advanc...

PayPal announced today that you’ll be able to use its wallet to make purchases directly through ChatGPT beginning sometime in 2026 . The recently-added Instant Checkout feature in ChatGPT will have an option to pay with PayPal, using the same interface you already see when checking out with PayPal through other services. You’ll have access to all of your usual payment methods in your PayPal account and an overview of your shipping and contact info.  The partnership comes just a month after OpenAI added a “Buy Now” button in ChatGPT and rolled out its Instant Checkout feature, which was initially only available on Etsy and Shopify, but has since expanded to Walmart . Using OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol doesn’t just simplify things for buyers; it also automatically plugs products from businesses that support PayPal as an option into ChatGPT’s e-commerce setup without requiring them to sign up individually. Having more purchasing options in ChatGPT will make it easier for use...

GitHub is giving developers access to third-party AI coding agents with the launch of a new “Agent HQ.” Instead of just using GitHub Copilot , developers will get to try OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Jules, xAI, and Cognition’s Devin within GitHub in the coming months. Developers with a GitHub Copilot subscription will be able to access a new “mission control” dashboard, where they can control, manage, and track multiple AI coding agents. “With the new set of AI controls, we’re providing a control plane for all of the agent use on GitHub, whether you’re using the GitHub coding agent or one of our partners’ coding agents inside the platform,” GitHub COO Kyle Daigle tells The Verge . GitHub’s new Agent HQ will also allow developers to run multiple AI agents in parallel as they complete the same task. That way, developers can choose which agent’s work they like the best. Ahead of Agent HQ’s official launch, GitHub is making OpenAI Codex available to Copilot Pro Plus us...

Threads is launching a new feature called the “ghost post:” a post it will automatically archive after 24 hours. These posts will come in handy if you want to share a thought, but don’t want to keep it on your profile. It’s also a feature that users on X, formerly Twitter, have long requested, leading them to turn to third-party archiving tools. Threads first started testing the ghost post in April as one of many new features it’s been drip-feeding, including direct messages, 10,000-character posts , and group chats . It also added new communities where you can find posts related to specific topics. You can create a disappearing post by toggling the ghost icon in the post creation menu, and they’ll appear as a gray chat bubble in your feed. When someone replies to your post, Threads will send it directly to your inbox. Other users won’t be able to see the replies or likes. source https://www.theverge.com/news/806940/threads-disappearing-ghost-posts-launch

Earlier this month, Lyra Health announced a "clinical-grade" AI chatbot to help users with "challenges" like burnout, sleep disruptions, and stress. There are eighteen mentions of "clinical" in its press release, including "clinically designed," "clinically rigorous," and "clinical training." For most people, myself included, "clinical" suggests "medical." The problem is, it doesn't mean medical. In fact, "clinical-grade" doesn't mean anything at all. "Clinical-grade" is an example of marketing puffery designed to borrow authority from medicine without the strings of accountability or regulation. It sits alongside other buzzy marketing phra … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/report/806887/clinical-grade-ai-buzzword

The OnePlus 15 has a redesigned camera with a rounded square module. After a steady stream of spec teases, OnePlus has launched its new OnePlus 15 flagship in China today. Release plans elsewhere are still unconfirmed, but the company promises that the phone’s global launching will be “soon.” We’ve known what the 15 would look like since September , when OnePlus also confirmed it would be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and have a fast 165Hz refresh rate display — a jump from the 120Hz on last year’s OnePlus 13 , though there are still few games that support those speeds. The large 7,300mAh battery is the other big draw, the latest in a trend for 7,000mAh+ cells in Chinese flagships this year. Those big batteries are often exclusive to China though, and it’s not guaranteed that European and US models will get the same battery life. A triple 50-megapixel rear camera with an upgraded periscope lens, IP69K durability rating, and 120W wired charging round o...

Next month, Samsung will start displaying ads for Samsung-related products and services on its Family Hub refrigerators in the US. Samsung warned us last month that ads were coming to the giant Android tablets embedded in its Family Hub smart fridges. I've been eyeing mine ever since - and the first ones are about to arrive. Starting November 3rd, the $2,000-plus connected fridges will get a new widget that serves up ads, Shane Higby, head of Home Appliance Business at Samsung Electronics America, confirmed to The Verge . The ads will be part of a new widget on some of the smart fridges' "Cover screen themes" (like a tablet or smartphone's home screen). The widget, which Samsung shared with me ahead of today's announcement , has four rotating screens. One showing news, o … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/report/806797/samsung-family-hub-smart-fridge-ads-opt-out

There are only a handful of albums that I think qualify as genuinely scary. You Won't Get What You Want by Daughters, and Swans To Be Kind both immediately come to mind. But those records come with… let's say , baggage . I've Seen All I Need to See lacks some of the atmospheric spookiness of To Be Kind and the flashes of pop-tinged menace of You Won't Get What You Want, but it makes up for that with unrelenting brutality. It's not the soundtrack to a slasher film, it's the most violent scene in the bleakest horror film, rendered as blown-out drums and detuned guitar. The album opens with a reading of Douglas Dunn's The Kaleidoscope , a poem ab … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/column/806767/you-need-to-listen-to-the-body-ive-seen-all-i-need-to-see

"Sharp Dressed Man," by ZZ Top. Hard on a good day, Medium when my friends were over, Expert once and then never ever again. That was my Guitar Hero sweet spot. And for years, it seemed like everybody had one. The plastic guitar controllers became a staple of living rooms everywhere, and the songs - from big bands, small bands, and bands that didn't even actually exist - became huge hits. Long before TikTok was the most important thing in music, getting your track on a Guitar Hero setlist could change your life forever. For this episode of Version History , we go through the whole history of Guitar Hero. The story begins in arcades in Japan, … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/podcast/806168/guitar-hero-game-version-history

This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the legal morass of AI, follow Adi Robertson . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started The song was called "Heart on My Sleeve," and if you didn't know better, you might guess you were hearing Drake. If you did know better, you were hearing the starting bell of a new legal and cultural battle: the fight over how AI services should be able to use people's faces and voices, and how platforms should respond. Back in 2023, the AI-generated faux-Drake track "Heart on My Sl … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/column/805821/the-next-legal-frontier-is-your-face-and-ai

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 103, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, sorry everything's so expensive this week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about gooning and Costco and protein bars and the Jonas Brothers , bingeing Nobody Wants This season two, trying to figure out how to save $4,500 for the new Rivian e-bike , telling anyone who will listen that T-Pain's still got it , learning everything I can about the Louvre heist , playing a surprising amount of Fortnite on my iPad, and shopping for Yoto Players after abou … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/806697/boox-palma-2-pro-chatgpt-atlas-galaxy-xr-installer

Robots will be flipping your burgers soon. Right now, there are robots stocking convenience store shelves in Japan. We haven't embraced that tech here in America yet, but it's hard to imagine 7-11 or Walmart won't at least experiment with it soon. Walmart gave up on its shelf-scanning robots in 2020, but machine vision and AI have improved a lot in the last five years, and it's only a matter of time before it's a machine refilling that row of family-sized Fruity Pebbles and not a kid earning some extra cash during senior year of high school. Truth is, there just aren't many jobs for teens out there anymore, and most of them have chosen to simply remove themselves from the job market … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/report/806728/tech-left-teens-fighting-over-scraps-robots-taking-jobs

When the Epomaker P75 launched last year, it impressed us with its build quality and laundry list of features, especially for a board that retails for less than $100. And while the mechanical keyboard has since been discontinued, it remains an excellent choice you can still pick up with either the linear or tactile switches at Amazon for $79.99 ($20 off), which nearly matches the board’s all-time low of $74.99. Epomaker P75 Where to Buy: $99.99 $79.99 at Amazon (Wisteria Tactile) $99.99 $79.99 at Amazon (Wisteria Linear) $99.99 $79.99 at Amazon (Zebra switch) If you’re in the market for an affordable mechanical keyboard, the P75 is one of the best available . Along with offering a well-built aluminum chassis and sleek silver finish, the 75-percent board features a volume knob and hot-swappable switches, letting you easily customize the typing feel. My colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto tested the Wisteria Tactile model, which, while on the louder side, offers a satisfy...

Netflix has shut down Boss Fight Entertainment, the studio behind the mobile game Squid Game: Unleashed , according to posts from staffers on LinkedIn. Netflix acquired Boss Fight in March 2022 , with an executive saying at the time that the studio’s “extensive experience building hit games across genres will help accelerate our ability to provide Netflix members with great games wherever they want to play them.” The company has frequently touted the success of Squid Game: Unleashed , highlighting how it was the “ #1 Free Action Game in 107 countries upon release” and co-CEO Greg Peters pointing to Unleashed during this week’s earnings call as an example of the types of narrative games based on its own franchises that it wants to do more of. But over three years after the acquisition and some changes to Netflix’s gaming strategy , Boss Fight has been closed. Netflix declined to comment. “Hi everyone – well, word has gotten around quickly about Boss Fight’s closure,” Boss Fight...