Technology

This story is part of a group of stories called Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you’re looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be. The Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset is a great value at its regular $299.99 price. It comes with 128GB of onboard storage, and once you log in with your Facebook account, there’s little else standing in your way of finding some amazing virtual reality experiences and games. It’s even more of an appealing holiday gift idea right now because you can get one with a $50 gift card tossed in at no extra charge through Black Friday until Tuesday, November 27th. Several retailers are honoring this promo...

Nintendo’s early Black Friday deals kicked off on Sunday, November 21st, and they’ll last until November 27th. Like last year, the main attraction is the standard Nintendo Switch console that includes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and a three-month individual membership to Nintendo Switch Online. It all costs $299.99. Nintendo confirmed that the Switch console included here is the V2 model with improved battery life. Altogether, these items would cost around $370, so the $299 price point is stellar. Several games are seeing big discounts, including ones that don’t commonly see such a big price drop. GameStop is hosting the best deals of any retailer right now (plus, these are the lowest prices of all time for these titles) on new physical editions of games, and notably, their digital editions, too. ...

In recent years, Netflix has started to specialize in live-action adaptations of anime. So far, the streaming service has released film adaptations such as Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Rurouni Kenshin. The next anime to receive the live-action treatment is Cowboy Bebop, a show considered to be one of the greatest anime ever made. The original Cowboy Bebop anime ended in 2001, but it’s seeing a surge in popularity thanks to the new Netflix show. That popularity can be seen on Reddit in the r/cowboybebop subreddit. For nearly a decade, fans have flocked to this community to post their thoughts on Spike Spiegel and his past, funny memes, cosplay pics, and fantastic fan art. “I created the subreddit in 2012, so a little over nine years now,” said MarshallBanana_, head moderator and cre...

A leaked video suggests that Resident Evil 4 VR may be getting a free update that adds The Mercenaries mode in 2022, first spotted by UploadVR. According to the report, a trailer for the highly-requested Mercenaries mode briefly appeared on the Oculus YouTube channel before getting taken down. However, users still managed to save the trailer and repost it on YouTube. The leaked trailer says that The Mercenaries DLC is “arriving in 2022” as a “free update on Meta Quest 2.” Some fans of the series were disappointed to find out that Mercenaries wasn’t included in RE4VR, which challenges you to kill hordes of enemies and rack up as many points as possible before the timer runs out. As UploadVR notes, The Mercenaries mode has been present in all versions of RE4 — except for RE4VR. You could als...

Hoping to prevent a repeat of what wiped out the dinosaurs, NASA and SpaceX are now planning on crashing a satellite directly into an asteroid. Currently scheduled for November 23, the two space agencies will be launching SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket as part of their Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which involves “intentionally [crashing] the DART spacecraft into an asteroid to see if that is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future.” The targeted asteroid is a binary type with two bodies dubbed Didymos, or “twin” in Greek. Didymos A is roughly 780 meters wide and is orbited by Didymos B, which itself measures roughly 160 meters across. The two are scheduled to pass by our planet in 2022 and swing back around in 2024, and ...

The Samsung Odyssey G9 gaming monitor is on sale right now for $999 on Amazon, down $400 from its original $1399 price tag. The 49-inch 5120 x 1440 monitor comes with a fast 240Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and supports both G-Sync and FreeSync 2. As noted in our review of the Odyssey G9, the curved monitor offers an immersive gaming experience, stretching around your entire field of vision as you game. It produces incredibly vivid colors thanks to its QLED display and emits 1,000 nits of brightness. My colleague, Sean Hollister, pretty much sums up what it’s like to game on this behemoth of a screen in his review: I’m not kidding when I say I have to avert my eyes when I launch Destiny 2 in HDR, and I could swear I felt the flames the first few times my Star Wars: Squadrons’ TIE Bom...

Several retailers are getting started early with Black Friday deals in advance of the hectic, no-holds-barred weekend that kicks off right after Thanksgiving. Best Buy is one of a few — aside from Amazon, Walmart, and Target — that got things started particularly early this year. If you’ve been paying attention to our Black Friday coverage, you’ve likely noticed dozens of deals peppered in, but that’s just a sampling. There’s more where that came from. Before we get into it, we’ve included some resources below that should make your Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping experience a little better. And to make things more fun, you can also enter our sweepstakes for a chance to win a mystery bag filled with stuff from The Verge’s tech closet. Headphones and earbuds You currently can’t throw ...

DuckDuckGo’s new tool aims to prevent apps from tracking Android users, first reported by Wired. The tool, called App Tracking Protection, is essentially a watered-down version of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, which gives users the choice to opt-out of data tracking within apps. However, DuckDuckGo’s tool hasn’t been rolled out as part of an update to all Android phones, nor is it available as a separate download — it’s built into DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused browser app, but works across your device. In a post on its blog, the company says that the tool will block “trackers it identifies in other apps from third-party companies.” GIF by DuckDuckGo Once App Tracking Protection is enabled, it will run in the background as you use your phone. The tool recognizes when an app is a...

Astra is now on the list of privately-owned space companies that have successfully reached orbit. Its Launch Vehicle 0007 (LV0007), which was carrying a test payload for the US military, took off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak Island, Alaska on Saturday at 1:16AM ET. Following a smooth liftoff, the 43-foot rocket achieved orbit around nine minutes later at 500km above Earth. “The team’s worked so hard on this for so many years,” said Astra CEO Chris Kemp during a livestream after the launch. “We have rocket serial number eight, nine, 10 in production, so we’re just getting started.” The startup’s successful launch follows several failed attempts at reaching orbit The California-based startup’s successful launch follows several failed attempts at reaching orbit. Its first atte...

Rendered images of the Google Pixel 6A have been leaked by reliable leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer (@OnLeaks), and give us a glimpse at what the midrange device may look like, first reported by 91Mobiles. The leaked images show the Google Pixel 6A without a headphone jack. | Image: Steve Hemmerstoffer / 91Mobiles The rendered Pixel 6A, which belongs to the budget-friendly Pixel A-series lineup, looks almost identical to the standard Pixel 6. It seems to sport the same black camera strip on its rear that houses two cameras and a flash, along with a hole-punch selfie camera on the front. The bottom of the device appears to have a USB-C port, as well as a speaker and a microphone. As pointed out by 9to5Google, there appears to be no fingerprint sensor on the outside of the device — this might mea...

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, known in Japan by the much better name Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, was released in 2001 and takes place during the show’s final handful of episodes. Most anime movies don’t impact the overall arc of the show, featuring enemies, allies, and plot points that are rarely ever acknowledged outside the movie’s quarantine zone. However, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door transcends the trope of the inconsequential anime movie and is critical to the conversation surrounding the show’s cultural impact. In Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, the gang are unwittingly sucked into a bio-terrorism plot, forced to stop the evil Vincent Volaju before he unleashes a deadly storm of nanobots on Mars. The movie hits on all the little things that make a typical Cowboy Bebop episode great. ...

In case you weren’t aware, the biggest shopping holiday of the year is right around the corner. Yes, Black Friday is nearly upon us, kicking off promptly following Thanksgiving in the US, which happens on Thursday, November 25th. And while some of the best deals are yet to come (don’t worry, we’ll have you covered), we’ve collected some of the best early Black Friday deals you can cash in on right now from various brands and retailers. But for now, here’s what is especially alluring in the deals world. The Black Friday sale at the Ubisoft store is live, and there are massive savings to be had on its catalog of games. Even brand new releases like Far Cry 6 and Riders Republic are enjoying solid discounts during this sale that runs until the 28th of November. At Ubisoft’s online store, make ...