Technology

Another day, another sweet deal on the Apple AirPods Max. This time you can get them in select colorways at Amazon and Walmart for $450. We haven’t seen these headphones drop below this price yet, so this is a perfect time to get your hands on some if you missed out on any of our previous deals. Our reviewer Chris Welch was impressed by the “tremendous build quality and sound” but was a little put off by the price. This sale helps soften the blow of the initial sticker shock and brings them a little closer to competitors from Sony and Bose. These robust cans offer a luxurious fit and finish, pairing them with amazing spatial audio and noise cancellation. Apple AirPods Max $450 $550 19% off Apple’s AirPods Max feature exemplary build quality, sound phenomenal, and keep up with the best at n...

Restaurant delivery platform DoorDash has launched a restaurant disaster relief fund that will offer grants of up to $10,000 to US restaurants affected by natural disasters over the next year, the company said Wednesday. The $1 million fund will be open to eligible restaurant owners beginning November 1st and is a partnership with small business assistance platform Hello Alice. Restaurants affected by Hurricane Ida in August and the ongoing California wildfires are eligible to apply, the company said. To qualify, restaurants must be experiencing hardship due to a state or federally declared natural disaster; have a brick-and-mortar location in the US with three or fewer locations; and have fewer than 50 employees per location. The restaurants have to have revenue of $3 million or less at e...

Hello, Verge friends! It’s almost been 10 years since we launched (can you believe it?), and to celebrate we’re throwing a big party. It’s happening on October 22nd and 23rd in New York City — and we hope you’ll join us. We’re throwing this party at Spring Studios, which has a rich tradition of bringing creative people together to show off the future of tech, art, and culture. The Verge will completely transform the space for two days and fill it with special guests, live performances, interactive art and games, awesome food and drink, and an opening night party. Here’s some of what we’re excited about: A Verge exclusive premiere screening Everyone who attends On The Verge will see the debut of our biggest documentary to date, Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone. A...

Anker is joining in on the trend of glasses that pull double duty as music listening devices. Today the company’s Soundcore brand announced the $199.99 Soundcore Frames. That price gets you the glasses’ temples and a frame of your choosing. The frames can be swapped out for any of the 10 different designs, but the chunky side temples always stay the same polished black style. They’re due to start shipping in mid-November and will be available from Anker’s website, Amazon, and Best Buy among other retailers. The temples essentially act as true wireless earbuds, with two speakers in each one. This is a strategy we’ve seen from other companies like Razer. In Anker’s case, it makes it simple to switch the temples to a different frame; polarized, blue-light filtering, and prescription lens opti...

Fujifilm has announced a new mobile printer that uses its larger Instax Wide format film. The Instax Link Wide Smartphone Printer is a similar idea to the existing Instax Mini Link: hook up your phone over Bluetooth and use an app to edit and print your own Polaroid-style snapshots from your camera roll. Instax Wide film is much bigger than Instax Mini — it’s about the size of two credit cards side by side. That means your Link Wide printouts might not be as easy to carry in a wallet as Instax Mini photos, but they should be a lot more viewable and usable for other purposes. The Link Wide printer is also compatible with Fujifilm’s X-S10 mirrorless camera from last year, allowing you to print directly without a phone. Of course, you can print photos taken with other cameras by uploading the...

Bowers & Wilkins has announced a new Zeppelin speaker that updates the eye-catching design with modern connectivity and smarts. The new speaker supports wireless standards like Qualcomm’s AptX Adaptive and Apple’s AirPlay 2 and also has Alexa built-in for voice control of your music. The new Zeppelin is available to order in light or dark grey starting today and is priced at $799 / £699 / €799. The original Zeppelin was one of the most iconic iPod docks available when it launched in 2007, and it’s been updated several times over the years as the way we listen to music has changed. 2011’s Zeppelin Air added support for Apple’s AirPlay standard alongside its existing 30-pin dock, while the 2015 Zeppelin Wireless dropped the dock entirely to focus on wireless connectivity using standards ...

The “next-gen upgrade” for this year’s Quake remaster, which adds support for up to 4K / 120fps gameplay, is now available for the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. The upgrade is available for free, according to Bethesda, and there’s no time limit to redeem it. The PC version of the game isn’t getting the upgrade, since it already supports 4K / 120fps. As well as the framerate improvements, the upgrade also adds support for the PS5 Dualsense controller’s adaptive triggers and integrated speaker. Meanwhile, Xbox players get Play Anywhere support, a Microsoft technology that means ownership of the game and progress automatically carries over to its PC version. The upgrade process is a little different for the PlayStation and Xbox. Xbox owners should see the upgrade installed automatica...

Realme has launched its latest flagship phone for India, the GT Neo 2. It’s similar to the impressive Realme GT that came to Europe a few months ago — this one is better in some ways but worse in others. Depending on your taste, you’ll probably feel quite strongly about which bucket the neon green version pictured above falls into. (It also comes in black and blue.) While the GT has a Snapdragon 888 processor, the GT Neo 2 is built around an 870. This is basically Qualcomm’s speed-bumped version of the 865 Plus, which was itself a faster version of last year’s flagship chip — the main core now runs at 3.2GHz. Realme says the GT Neo 2’s new vapor cooling system is 30 percent larger and 20 percent more efficient, making use of stainless steel as well as copper. The phone does include 5G conn...

Coinbase announced Monday that it plans to sell, trade, and mint NFTs in an expansion from the marketplace’s cryptocurrency-based roots. Details on how “Coinbase NFT” will do all of that are slim, but the company sees an opportunity. “Just as Coinbase helped millions of people access bitcoin for the first time in an easy and trusted way — we want to do the same for the NFTs,” Coinbase vice president of product Sanchan Saxena writes. The big idea seems to be social engagement. Coinbase wants to “curate your personal feed” of NFTs and display the NFTs you own on your profile so you can make connections with like-minded fans of digital cats, punks, apes, and beyond. At launch, Coinbase NFT “will support Ethereum based ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards,” all NFTs will be on-chain, and there are p...

On Monday, I wrote about leaked details of an unannounced HTC Vive Flow VR headset that’s expected to be announced at an event on Thursday. Just one day later, we now know what it looks like thanks to images shared by prolific leaker Evan Blass, who has been actively posting new photos over the course of the evening. According to a slide in a more recent tweet, the device will cost $499 and start shipping in November. Here’s the first batch: Overall, the images in Blass’ first tweet match many of the details reported by Protocol on Monday, but they give a much better idea of what the final device may look like. (And I’m just going to say it: the leaked promo kind of makes the wearers look like bugs.) It’s hard to tell if the big yellowish spots on the front of the headset are see-through; ...

Netflix’s hugely popular series Squid Game has become its biggest title ever at launch, the company said Monday. The company’s Netflix Geeked account tweeted Monday that Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s survival thriller reached 111 million global accounts in its first 17 days on the service. Additionally, Squid Game is the first Netflix series to surpass 100 million in its first 28 days on the service, a spokesperson told The Verge. Netflix typically uses 28-day windows to measure the performance of a title on its platform. The spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the figures it shared are based on the number of accounts that watched the series for at least two minutes, its standard metric for ranking titles (though it has used additional measurements to track the success of titles in the past). It ...

Some customers of Verizon’s Visible service are using social media to say that hackers have accessed their accounts, changed their information to lock them out, and in some cases even ordered phones using their payment info (via XDA). If you’re not familiar, Visible is a cell service owned and operated by Verizon that pitches itself as a less expensive, “all-digital” network, meaning there aren’t any physical stores like you’d get with a traditional carrier. Starting on Monday, customers on both Twitter and Reddit reported en masse that they’d been getting emails from the company about changed passwords and addresses, and that they’ve had difficulties contacting the company’s chat support. Visible’s customer service account on Twitter seemingly hasn’t addressed the issue, besides directing...