Author: News Room

From Apple TV Plus to Peacock, a number of streaming services have recently increased their pricing — and Disney Plus is no exception. Starting on Tuesday, October 21st, the standalone plan with ads will jump from $9.99 to $11.99 a month, while the ad-free Premium tier will increase by $3 to $18.99 a month. The ad-free annual plan is also going up by $30, at which point it will cost $189.99 a year. Ouch.Fortunately, though, there’s still time to lock in the lower rates. If you subscribe to a year of Disney Plus Premium before October 21st, you’ll pay $159.99…

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 102, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy spooky season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about personal chefs and TikTok’s algorithm and deep sea divers, tearing through Cory Doctorow’s fabulous Enshittification book, helping curate the wonderful Sunday Long Read newsletter, becoming surprising emotional during the final WTF episode, trying to convince my kid to watch The Twits, finally learning how the NATO phonetic alphabet works, and eating a lot of dried mangos.I…

The trick to understanding Opera’s Neon browser is recognizing that it’s not just a browser with an AI bot added to it, but a browser with three AI bots all living side by side. This is both a strength and a weakness, because while you don’t have to leave to do all the AI things you want, knowing where to go for which AI tasks can be really confusing.Opera began taking people off the waitlist for its AI browser, Neon, last month. It’s entering an increasingly crowded market of AI-powered browsers including Google’s Gemini-infused Chrome, Perplexity’s Comet, and The Browser…

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI and the industry’s power dynamics and societal implications, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.Since ChatGPT became a household name, people have been trying to get sexy with it. Even before that, there was the chatbot Replika in 2017, which a lot of people started treating as a romantic partner.And people have been getting around Character.ai’s NSFW guardrails for years, coaxing its character- or celebrity-themed chatbots to sext…

In today’s world, smartphones are the go-to devices for remote music listening. But decades ago, the iconic Sony Walkman was the preferred choice for listening through headphones to music on walks, runs, or just lounging around. The Sony Walkman product line held immense cultural significance. Sony introduced it in 1979, and it lasted without interruption until 2010. Although the company has occasionally released new models since then, they aren’t targeting the masses like the halcyon days of cassette. Sony originally called their portable cassette player the Roundabout in the United States and the Freestyle in other countries like Australia and…

Introduction There are oodles of options in the crossover SUV arena right now and here’s another; the Leapmotor B10. It’s a Chinese brand part owned by Stellantis, which in itself has many of the rival options pitched directly at it, including the Peugeot e-2008, Vauxhall Mokka Electric, Alfa Romeo Junior and Jeep Avenger. Other obvious contenders for your mid-market custom are the Ford Puma Gen-E or Hyundai Kona Electric, not to mention the perennially popular MG S5.That’s why I approached my road test of the Leapmotor B10, seen here in the Design model variant destined for the UK market, with…

For the 2025 United States Grand Prix in Austin, Tudor has gone full Texan (that is to say, flashy). As sponsor of the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls team, the brand has made two very special watches for its drivers, Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar. And when I say special, I mean it… only two exist. These one-offs take the already impressive Black Bay Chrono Carbon 25 and give it a wild new twist – a tortoiseshell dial that ties in perfectly with the team’s US GP look. Because for this weekend, the Racing Bulls haven’t just rolled out a…

If you’ve been thinking about buying a foldable phone that truly stands out, few models can rival the 2025 Motorola Razr Ultra, which is currently on sale at Amazon and Best Buy with 16GB of RAM and 512GB starting at $999.99 ($300 off), its lowest price to date.If you can’t tell from the image below, Razr’s latest handset boasts a unique wood grain back panel, which makes it one of the best-looking phones you can buy. It’s not just about looks, though; the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset makes it incredibly fast, and it still manages to last a full day…

In the 2000s, TiVo reached heights few companies ever achieve. Like Google and Xerox, its name became a verb. People had to “TiVo” the new episode of Battlestar Galactica or game 4 of the Red Sox vs. Cardinals, not “record” it. While it didn’t invent the DVR, TiVo popularized it and many of the features we would eventually take for granted, like the ability to pause or rewind live TV, and watch one program while recording another.Those features were covered in the now infamous US Patent 6,233,389 — better known as the Time Warp patent. TiVo spent a good chunk…

The updates made to the N40 version of 8BitDo’s Ultimate 2 controller are mostly cosmetic, but it now features a black-and-gray design with bright red buttons and a charging dock that matches the aesthetics of the NES console. The controller will also include four swappable joystick caps while its grips are printed with dates that correlate to launches of notable Nintendo and 8BitDo products.Functionality is the same as the original version of the Ultimate 2, including the TMR joysticks, Hall effect triggers, a ring of color-changing LEDs around the base of each joystick, reprogrammable bumper buttons, an extra pair of…

If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple’s ever-expanding AirPods lineup. Both the newer AirPods Max and AirPods 4 (with and without ANC) now consistently receive discounts, as do the second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C. Events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday often bring the steepest discounts, though you can still find great deals throughout the year.Below, we’ve rounded up the best deals currently available on each model, including both iterations of the AirPods 4, the second- and third-gen AirPods Pro, and the AirPods Max.At the end of last year, Apple introduced the…

You’re here because you have a lot of smart home devices and want to buy the best smart lights to suit your needs. Maybe you want to ask Alexa to turn the lights out at night without leaving your cosy bed. Maybe you’d prefer Siri to turn on your lamp when you’re feeling lazy. Or perhaps you’d like Google Assistant to create a spontaneous disco. Minus the dry ice fog. Either way, there are countless tech-infused light bulbs out there to play nice with all of your other smart home devices. Instead of spending hours perusing all the options available,…