Technology

After upgrading its Prestige Series with the company’s new fourth-generation X Drivers back in June, Brooklyn-based audio expert Grado has now turned its attention over to its premium Reference Series, updating the lineup with its latest tech. Now carrying two new models, the Reference Series update offers the RS1x and RS2x headphones, both built with Grado’s signature use of wood and carrying its innovative X Driver. The RS1x’s housing is constructed by a maple sleeve encased by a cocobolo outer ring and wrapping around a hemp core, all materials chosen to produce exceptional tones. Powering your sound will be a 50mm X Driver that combines a hefty magnetic circuit and a newly-designed voice coil with a revamped diaphragm that ensures highly-accurate sound reproduction. As for the RS2x, th...

Space tourism venture Virgin Galactic says that 100 people purchased more expensive tickets to fly on the company’s suborbital spaceplane after it reopened ticket sales this August. That means that the company has roughly 700 ticket holders now for quick tourist trips to space, about 300 less than the 1,000 tickets Virgin Galactic is hoping to sell ahead of starting commercial flights of its vehicles. The company announced the news during its third-quarter earnings release out on Monday. Though Virgin Galactic still has more tickets it aims to sell, the company says the additional sales from this quarter were better than expected. “We’re selling tickets ahead of the pace we planned,” Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s CEO, said during a presentation on the company’s third-quarter earnin...

If you want to buy anything on Amazon.com, you’ll generally need a credit or debit card — but in 2022, the online retailer will begin accepting Venmo as well. Venmo parent company PayPal announced the news (via GeekWire) during its Q3 earnings call on Monday. We’re pretty sure that’s the first third-party payments platform Amazon has embraced in recent memory. You can’t use PayPal itself to buy things on Amazon! (Here’s a list of the payment methods Amazon does accept as of today). You might cite Amazon’s recent buy-now, pay-later partnership with Affirm, but that still requires credit. Venmo, by comparison, acts more like a bank account for some mobile users, complete with a (sometimes expensive) check-cashing feature. Details on the Amazon partnership are scarce right now, but if you’ve ...

Hackers may have just made some big strides towards possibly jailbreaking the PlayStation 5 over the weekend, with the hacking group Fail0verflow claiming to have managed to obtain PS5 root keys allowing them to decrypt the console’s firmware. Additionally, Andy Nguyen (a security engineer at Google who’s better known under his handle, theflow0) managed to access the PS5’s debug settings menu on a retail PS5 over the weekend, too. Both exploits were spotted by Wololo.net. The two exploits are particularly notable due to the level of access they theoretically give to the PS5’s software. Decrypted firmware — which is possible through Fail0verflow’s keys — would potentially allow for hackers to further reverse engineer the PS5 software and potentially develop the sorts of hacks that allowed f...

The Justice Department has announced the arrest and indictment of an alleged member of the REvil hacking group, linked to ransomware attacks on IT firm Kaseya, an Apple supplier, and more. According to the department, Ukrainian national Yaroslav Vasinskyi is facing extradition to the US after Polish authorities detained him in October and after the US indicted him for cybercrimes in August, as revealed by a now-unsealed court document. The arrest, along with the government seizing assets it says are linked to REvil’s operations, is another step in the fight against ransomware, which has been a growing issue for US-based companies. The DOJ also says it has seized $6.1 million in assets from the FTX crypto trading exchange, allegedly linked to REvil ransomware. The money belonged to Russian ...

Days after Ford started selling its first-ever electric crate motor, it already sold out (via Ford Authority). Ford just isn’t saying how many were sold. Ford caught the attention of EV and Ford enthusiasts alike when it showcased the Eluminator in an all-electric 1978 F-100. The $3,900 crate motor is the same one that powers the Mustang Mach-E GT, sporting 480 horsepower with 634 pound-feet of torque. Batteries and other components aren’t included with the motor, although Ford plans on making those parts available individually. “Demand has exceeded expectations,” a Ford spokesperson told The Verge. At this point, it remains unclear how e-crate motors were sold or if those numbers surpassed the typical sales for Ford’s gasoline-powered crate motors. If you were hoping to get your hands on ...

The “Out West” emote, which features audio of the Travis Scott song “Out West,” has been removed from the Fortnite Item Shop. In fact, the entire section of Fortnite’s Item Shop that housed the dance emote is gone. According to a report from Eurogamer, the “Daily” section of the Item Shop has disappeared with no explanation, and Epic declined to comment to The Verge. It’s known that the “Daily” section of the Item Shop has been disabled. This is intentional and the “Daily” section will return with the next Item Shop refresh. pic.twitter.com/rc6Kqh7qoW — Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) November 8, 2021 The emote was apparently on sale to coincide with Scott’s music festival Astroworld, which ended prematurely when eight people died after being crushed in what witne...

Rivian says it will start taking orders for its electric delivery vans in 2022 and will deliver them to fleet customers in “early 2023,” calling into question the status of Amazon’s exclusive rights to the vehicle. The buzzy EV startup — which is slated to go public this week at a valuation of $50 billion or higher — quietly announced the details about its fleet sales plans in a new section of its website that went live Friday afternoon. It also said it will sell fleet versions of its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV, meaning it will compete with Ford’s commercial version of the F-150 Lightning, as well as a fleet management platform called FleetOS and a charging infrastructure solution. Electric vans, plus fleet versions of the R1T and R1S, will be available Selling electric...

Peloton has announced that it’s finally added a pause button for its on-demand classes for its Bike and Bike Plus devices, allowing users to temporarily pause workouts in the middle of a class and then resume them. It’s a feature that bewilderingly hasn’t been available until today — and, technically, still isn’t even available on all of Peloton’s products, as the pause button is only rolling out to its cycling bikes for now. The Tread treadmill is set to get a similar update sometime “in the future” — but for now, you’ll have to do your runs all at once. While it’s easy to joke at Peloton’s expense for the outsized deal the company is making over adding so small a feature, it is worth noting that adding a pause button to Peloton classes does involve a bit more thought behind it than simpl...

ZipCharge has just released power on the go with the ZipCharge Go. Made as a portable battery charging station for electric vehicles, the ZipCharge Go is the answer for households who do not have access to off-street parking or public charging. The size of a compact suitcase, the ZipCharge Go gives your vehicle 20-40 miles in 30-60 minutes, depending on capacity and temperature. Similar to a gas can for combustion vehicles, the ZipCharge Go can be stored in the trunk as a safety measure for long trips or emergency situations. Weighing 50 pounds, the portable battery can be wheeled around using its top handle and monitored using an intuitive “Go” app. Check out the introductory video above and expect it to release in the fourth quarter of 2022 for a $68 USD monthly subscription fee. In othe...

If you’re an arcade racing game purist, Burnout Paradise has a lot to answer for. By taking the classic series open-world, Criterion essentially obsoleted the concept of traditional racers — here are your cars, here are your tracks, learn to drive the former to perfect the latter — at least in the eyes of major publishers. Ever since, virtually all big-budget arcade racing games have been made in the shadow of Paradise, with most tracks consisting of lines drawn across vast, explorable maps. As someone who is personally not very happy about this turn of events, I have to admit that Microsoft’s Forza Horizon series has been a pretty spectacular product of it all. With each entry in the series, developer Playground Games has delivered relentlessly entertaining open-world racing in vividly re...