Technology

The Verge Deals team is ready to lead you into the week with some excellent savings on a variety of awesome tech. Our inaugural deal of the week is the MSI GS66 Stealth gaming laptop, which is currently available at Best Buy for $1,299.99, the lowest price we’ve seen yet for this configuration that typically costs $1,499.99. The MSI GS66 Stealth is a slim yet powerful 15.6-inch laptop that weighs a little under five pounds. This laptop is powered by an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and an Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card, both of which should provide enough power to make good use of the 1080p display’s 240Hz refresh rate. 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD round out the list of specs for this powerful laptop (here are the rest, in case you’re curious). The GS66 also comes equipped with a pair of USB-A port...

More than half of all homes, 56 percent, in the contiguous 48 states face at least some wildfire risk in the next few decades, according to a first-of-its-kind report published today by the nonprofit research organization First Street Foundation. First Street gave each address in the continental US a rating between one to 10, with one representing close to no risk and 10 representing a 36 percent or more likelihood that a property could be caught up in a wildfire sometime during the next three decades. More than 20 million properties across the continental US are threatened by at least “moderate” wildfire risk. Those homes have up to a 6 percent chance of being in a blaze at some point over a 30-year timespan, the typical timeframe for a home mortgage. Even a 1 percent chance of being in a...

Doctor Who’s titular Time Lord will soon go through a regeneration that leaves them looking a lot more like Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa than Jodie Whittaker, but the forthcoming Doctor won’t be the only new face to look out for as the franchise celebrates its 60th anniversary. Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney has been cast as a mysterious character she and showrunner Russell T. Davies are only referring to as “Rose.” In a press release about Finney’s casting, Davies described life on Doctor Who as getting brighter and wilder and rhetorically pondered how there could ever be “another Rose,” referring presumably to Billie Piper’s character Rose Tyler. “You’ll find out in 2023, but it’s an absolute joy to welcome Yasmin to the Doctor Who set,” Davies said. “We all fell in love with her in Heartst...

The kaleidoscopic colors, murals, and graffiti of Los Angeles imbue the city and its inhabitants with a sense of infinitude, freedom juxtaposed with the bustling realities of city life. Californian weather, much like the Californian temperament, is expectantly pleasant, laidback and colorful, the main character for many of its natives. Throughout his career, artist Steven Harrington has tapped into the visual language of pop iconography, visual repetition and the uncanny mirroring of his native city through illustrative and sculptural mediums. Often described as psychedelic-Pop Art, Harrington’s acid-infused illustrations seem to grin in the face of chaos — bold, large-scale paintings and sculptures that personify familiar fixtures of LA. The palm tree, for instance, is a visual motif ofte...

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass offer a lot of value if you want to play all kinds of games via subscription. The service normally costs $14.99 per month for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (which covers both Xbox and PC) or $9.99 per month for PC Game Pass and includes AAA titles like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 as well as rotations of major third-party games and indies. If you want to try it out, there’s an introductory price that gives you one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1. But before you redeem it, you should know that it’s possible to use the trial as a way to save a lot of money on Game Pass Ultimate for up to three years. Activating the $1 trial can save you hundreds of dollars Microsoft allows Xbox players to order up to 36 months of prepaid Xbox Live G...

JetBlue launched a hostile takeover of Spirit Airlines after its earlier acquisition offer was rejected. The New York-based airline said in a release that its tender offer for $30-per-share was “all-cash” and “fully financed.” Earlier this month, Spirit’s board of directors rejected JetBlue’s $32-a-share bid to acquire the airline in favor of an existing merger agreement with Frontier, one of its ultra-low-cost competitors. The board cited antitrust issues and “an unacceptable level of closing risk” to its shareholders as its reasons for rejecting the JetBlue bid. But JetBlue is still intent on acquiring Spirit, whether it wants to go ahead with the deal or not. The airline has said that absorbing Spirit would allow it to better compete with the “Big Four” carriers by increasing the size o...

As Peloton gets its financial ducks in a row, it appears the company is easing up on its patent disputes. Today, Peloton and iFit — which owns rival NordicTrack — announced that they’ve settled all pending litigation and that “all pending actions between the companies will be dismissed.” The announcement itself was brief, offering little detail. As part of the settlement, iFit has agreed to remove some on-demand leaderboard tech from its devices, while Peloton will license “certain iFit patents relating to remote control technology.” This is somewhat a reversal in attitude from where Peloton was roughly six months ago. Back in November — just as Peloton’s stock woes were beginning to take hold — the company reportedly filed lawsuits against rivals Echelon and iFit. At the time, Peloton all...

Spotify is testing a way for artists to display their non-fungible token (NFT) collections, as first reported by Music Ally. The music streaming platform has rolled out the test for some users on Android in the US and currently includes NFT previews for artists like Steve Aoki and The Wombats. “Spotify is running a test in which it will help a small group of artists promote their existing third-party NFT offerings via their artist profiles,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement to Music Ally. “We routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve artist and fan experiences. Some of those tests end up paving the way for a broader experience and others serve only as an important learning.” Spotify didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. More companies ar...