Technology

Shopping for a new set of wireless headphones can be a difficult and expensive journey. That’s not the case for today, as Amazon is selling the Beats Solo Pro for $70 off their usual price. Normally $300, they’re $230 in a wide range of colors, covering people who want a vibrant look or a muted one. These are Beats’ latest on-ear model, and they are packed with features, like active noise cancellation to silence distractions, a transparency mode to let you quickly hear what’s around you, and Apple’s H1 wireless chip, which grants enhanced wireless range and hands-free controls with “Hey Siri” support. The “night black” model is seen on the left.Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge The Ultimate Ears Boom 3 is one of the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy, though it rarely drops in price b...

Last year, Analogue announced the Pocket, a sleek and modern handheld designed to play all your old Game Boy cartridges. It was originally slated to launch this year, but due to the current state of the world, it’s now expected to debut in May 2021. Analogue cites “the unfortunate global state of affairs and supply chain challenges outside of our control” as the reason for the delay. But there’s good news. Analogue is starting pre-orders for the handheld very soon; they’ll open up on August 3rd at 8AM PT / 11AM ET. The company also revealed some slight design changes to both the handheld itself (the start, select, and home buttons have been moved to the bottom of the device) and its optional dock (Analogue says that “the USB-C insertion point has been recessed for added stability”). Additi...

iPad deals are more common than you might think. Whether you’re after the most affordable iPad, the high-end iPad Pro, or something in between like the iPad Air or iPad mini, there’s usually some sort of price cut happening somewhere. Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly where you can find those deals unless you’re looking around at all of the major retailers. But that’s what we’re doing each day when we hunt for deals, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed each of the current iPads available for purchase. Sometimes, there just isn’t a deal happening. In that case, we’ve mentioned how much the most recent sale price was for, so you know when to take the plunge. But most of the time, there’s some sort of deal going on, be it on a new or refurbished model. When there is a deal we ...

One of the stranger applications of deepfakes — AI technology used to manipulate audiovisual content — is the audio deepfake scam. Hackers use machine learning to clone someone’s voice and then combine that voice clone with social engineering techniques to convince people to move money where it shouldn’t be. Such scams have been successful in the past, but how good are the voice clones being used in these attacks? We’ve never actually heard the audio from a deepfake scam — until now. Security consulting firm NISOS has released a report analyzing one such attempted fraud, and shared the audio with Motherboard. The clip below is part of a voicemail sent to an employee at an unnamed tech firm, in which a voice that sounds like the company’s CEO asks the employee for “immediate assistance to f...

Specs for Samsung’s unannounced Tab S7 and Tab S7 Plus have leaked online, giving us an almost complete impression of what to expect from the company’s upcoming tablets. WinFuture reports that the big difference between the Tab S7 and the Tab S7 Plus are the screens. The S7 Plus will reportedly have a 12.4-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2800 x 1752 and an in-display fingerprint sensor. The S7, meanwhile, is said to have a smaller 11-inch 2560 x 1600 LCD display and will have a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. Both screens will reportedly have a high refresh rate of 120Hz. Elsewhere, the specs of the two tablets are very similar. WinFuture says they’ll both be powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 865 Plus processor, and will feature dual rear cameras including a main 13-megapix...

Samsung’s upcoming smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 3, appears to have just leaked again, this time in an extensive hands-on video from YouTuber TechTalkTV, which we spotted via SamMobile. We already know a lot about the unannounced wearable thanks to a series of leaks over the past few months, but the video gives us our best look yet at the 41mm version of the watch. In line with previous rumors, including a series of photos TechTalkTV posted themselves last month, the Galaxy Watch 3 is shown with a physical rotating bezel (a popular feature that was missing from the Active models) and two buttons on the right of the watch face. As well as the 41mm version shown in the video which has a 1.2-inch display, there’s reportedly also going to be a 45mm model with a 1.4-inch screen. The 41mm model w...

Samsung’s next big hardware event, Galaxy Unpacked, is confirmed for August 5th, and a new trailer from the phone maker suggests we can expect to see five hardware devices unveiled on the day. The silhouettes of all five are shown at the beginning and end of the trailer below. And judging by the shapes and the leaks we’ve seen so far, this is what we’re expecting to see: the new Galaxy Note 20 (regular and Ultra versions); the foldable Galaxy Fold 2; the Galaxy Watch 3; the bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Plus; and the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus tablets. So not quite a universe of galaxies, but a healthy number all the same. [embedded content] Every device on that list has been leaked in one way or another, but, as always, such leaks are provisional, and we’ll be curious to see what actually gets a...

Apple has released a new high-end Thunderbolt 3 cable in its online store. The $129 Thunderbolt 3 Pro cable is 2 meters long, has a black braided design, and supports both DisplayPort output and USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps data transfer — though of course data speeds can be up to Thunderbolt 3’s standard 40Gbps between compatible devices. This is certainly not cheap for a cable, but there actually doesn’t seem to be a competing option that offers the same feature set for less. The cable appears to have quietly gone on sale last month after previously having been bundled with the Pro Display XDR, and this Reddit thread from yesterday includes some discussion on why exactly it costs so much. The $79.95 2-meter Belkin Thunderbolt 3 cable that Apple also sells, for example, doesn’t support DisplayPor...

There’s been a lot of talk about how OnePlus seems to be going back to its roots with its latest phone, the OnePlus Nord. This is a brand that first made a name for itself by offering similar specs to competing flagships at a much lower price. But over the years, its prices have crept up and up, and its current £599 / $699 OnePlus 8 and £799 / $899 8 Pro aren’t far off its more established competitors. So it’s easy for the OnePlus Nord, with its starting price of £379 (around $484), to make it seem like OnePlus is going back to its roots. But since its flagship phones aren’t going anywhere, the midrange Nord is instead the next step in OnePlus expanding its lineup. OnePlus is stepping into a new era, not returning to an old one. That means OnePlus has had to make some tough decisions about...

Many election officials across the US are using email systems that could make them more susceptible to phishing attempts, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Area 1 Security found less than 20 percent of 10,000 state and local election administrations had advanced anti-phishing controls in place, and about 666 of the election officials were relying on personal email addresses for election-related matters. Jurisdictions in several states were using a version of free Exim software that Russia’s GRU intelligence service had targeted for online attacks starting in 2019, according to the Journal. Security experts told the Journal it was unlikely that weak email security would lead to vote hacking, however, since the email systems aren’t connected to systems that count votes. B...

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, fashion designer Chelsea Klukas of Lumen Couture was planning to make some standard cloth face masks for friends. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing homemade face coverings to prevent the spread of the virus. Lumen Couture has an entire line of tech-enabled fashion, including dresses, hoodies, and costumes, and Klukas shifted to masks when in-person events were being canceled and sales for other products were slumping. She decided to add the tech to make the face masks a little more fun. “I had the components around, so I put together a quick DIY YouTube tutorial for how to make them,” Klukas said in an interview with The Verge. “That really blew up, to the point where people were asking me for a ready-to-wear mask.” ...

As part of an attempt to make Major League Baseball games in this weird, coronavirus-shortened season seem as close to normal as possible, Fox Sports decided to create virtual fans, digital versions of cheering people who would react to the games broadcast on Fox the way real fans do. Let’s just say they didn’t quite knock it out of the park. As Nick Schwartz noted in USA Today, the virtual fans popped in and out of view during the broadcasts, appearing when cameras pointed toward the outfield, but then weren’t visible behind home plate, making for an unsettling experience. Ryan Parker of The Hollywood Reporter agreed: To be sure, this is a new thing, and Brad Zager of Fox Sports told The Verge the network was still figuring it out, with plans to evolve the process from game to game and we...