Technology

Disney plans to lay off around 32,000 employees, mainly in its theme parks business, in the first half of next year, the company has announced in a 10-K filing. The company says it’s making these redundancies “due to the current climate, including COVID-19 impacts.” It’s an increase of 4,000 compared to the 28,000 layoffs it initially announced back in September. The new figure includes the layoffs that were previously announced, Variety reports. Along with the layoffs, Disney said it’s considering additional measures like reducing its investments in film and TV content, halting capital spending, and furloughing more employees. Already, 37,000 of its employees were on furlough as of October 3rd, Variety notes. The announcement comes after a difficult year for Disney’s business. Its theme p...

Apple has asked Foxconn to move some iPad and MacBook manufacturing capacity to Vietnam, Reuters reports. The assembly lines are set to start production in the first half of next year at Foxconn’s Bac Giang province, according to Reuters’ source, who notes that Apple wants to diversify its supply chain due to the ongoing trade disputes between the US and China. Reuters’ report doesn’t state which iPad or Mac models will be assembled in Vietnam, nor what proportion of Apple’s total production will shift out of China. But these wouldn’t be the first Apple products to be assembled in Vietnam — Apple started producing AirPods Pro units there earlier this year. Apple has also used India for production of certain iPhone models for a while, although that mostly predates the US-China trade war and...

Netflix has settled a lawsuit over its interactive special Bandersnatch. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix announced the deal with Choose Your Own Adventure book publisher Chooseco on Monday. The settlement ends a bitter legal fight between Netflix and Chooseco, which claimed the streaming video platform had infringed its trademark. Chooseco sued Netflix in early 2019 after the release of Bandersnatch, a branching-path film about a game developer who’s obsessed with a “choose your own adventure” (but not necessarily Choose Your Own Adventure) book. Chooseco is known for aggressively defending its trademark against other companies and even small game developers, and it claimed Netflix was unlawfully using the name. Netflix responded with a counterattack, asking a court to invalid...

The EU has just taken a big step toward establishing stronger “right to repair” rules, with the the European Parliament voting overwhelmingly in support of a resolution on a “sustainable single market,” according to iFixit. The vote marks the latest major push toward the EU’s larger goals of making devices last longer and reducing e-waste. The EU Commission had announced plans earlier this year for new “right to repair” rules for phones, tablets, and laptops by 2021. With the European Parliament having now approved the EU Commission’s original proposal, the ball is back in the commission’s court to “develop and introduce mandatory labelling, to provide clear, immediately visible and easy-to-understand information to consumers on the estimated lifetime and reparability of a product at the t...

Let’s be honest: gaming is expensive, but the holiday season is a good time to take advantage of deals and sales and buy more than one game. Whether you are adding games to your personal library for your backlog, or you are planning to buy some games for a friend or family member, retailers like Amazon, GameStop, and Target have various discounts on titles. If you are planning to buy a PS5 or an Xbox Series X / S on Black Friday, please keep in mind that both are in high demand, limited supply, and are receiving irregular restocks at retailers. But if you are looking for games on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, there are many deals available right now. If you own a next-gen console, several of these games on PS4 and Xbox One are either backward compatible or include a free upgrade. If you are l...

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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be able to run at 60fps on all next-gen consoles thanks to an update that Ubisoft is set to release on Thursday. With the new 1.0.4 title update, Ubisoft is adding a performance mode, which will let the game adapt resolution and graphics settings to maintain 60fps while you’re playing, and a quality mode, which will max out resolution and graphics settings to maintain 30fps. Digital Foundry found that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla sometimes dips below 60fps on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (with the Series X doing so more often), and the game currently doesn’t run higher than 30fps on the Xbox Series S, so the update seems like it should be a welcome upgrade. The new update is also supposed to address screen tearing issues in the Xbox Series X / S versions ...

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, you can expect to find many of the best wireless earbuds on sale for their lowest prices yet. Apple’s AirPods Pro, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Plus, and other popular models from Jabra, Sony, 1More, and more companies have never been more affordable. If you haven’t yet treated yourself to a set of truly wireless earbuds that connect via Bluetooth, prepare to never look back to using wired earbuds. We have collected deals across multiple retailers below, and they’re all significantly lower than their usual asking price. As new deals become available or go out of stock, we’ll update this post. Apple AirPod deals Apple’s AirPods Pro, pictured above, are the star of Black Friday — and the best deal we’ve seen yet is happening right now at Walmart and A...

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. If you are looking to buy the AirPods Pro, but have been holding off to wait for a significant price drop, your time has come — Apple’s flagship wireless earbuds are just $169 at Walmart and Amazon right now. This is the lowest price we have seen on the AirPods Pro to date; normally, these wireless earbuds would set you back $249. This historically low price beats the previous best-ever price by $21. The AirPods Pro offers a more customizable fit that includes three different silicon tip sizes, makin...

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s internet infrastructure service that is the backbone of many websites and apps, is experiencing a major outage affecting a large portion of the internet. “Kinesis has been experiencing increased error rates this morning in our US-East-1 Region that’s impacted some other AWS services,” Amazon said in a statement to The Verge. “We are working toward resolution.” And, ironically, in a notice on the AWS Service Health Dashboard, Amazon said the issue has apparently “affected our ability to post updates” to that dashboard. “We continue to work towards recovery of the issue affecting the Kinesis Data Streams API in the US-EAST-1 Region,” Amazon said in a 1:47PM ET update posted to the dashboard. “For Kinesis Data Streams, the issue is affecting the subsystem t...