Canada Accuses Google of Creating Advertising Tech Monopoly

Canada Accuses Google of Creating Advertising Tech Monopoly The case largely echoes an antitrust action in the United States and seeks to force Google to sell off sections of its online ad business.

Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Mark Zuckerberg. | The Verge | Photo by Tom Williams via Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met President-elect Donald Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.

“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement shared with The Verge. “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming Administration.”

While it’s unclear what the two men discussed, the meeting suggests Trump may be softening his view of Zuckerberg. He has said the tech billionaire should be jailed for Facebook’s role in the 2020 presidential race and his personal donations to mail-in ballet initiatives.

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has intentionally distanced himself from politics this year, though he did say that Trump surviving an assassination attempt was “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He was also one of the many tech CEOs to congratulate Trump for winning the 2024 election, saying in a post on Threads that he’s “looking forward to working with you and your administration.”

F.T.C. Launches Antitrust Investigation Into Microsoft

F.T.C. Launches Antitrust Investigation Into Microsoft Regulators are demanding information from the company on its cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity products.

FTC changes its telemarketing rules to cover growing ‘tech support scam’ calls

FTC changes its telemarketing rules to cover growing ‘tech support scam’ calls

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finalized amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), making it easier to protect consumers who are tricked into paying scam tech support companies. The FTC could already go after these fraudster companies if they initiated calls to people — now, they can do the same thing if people call the scammers too.

Fake tech support fraud has been on the rise for many years. The “company” tricks people into thinking they have a virus or other problem by sending scam emails, popups, and other messages. This encourages them to call to a help desk, which then convinces them to pay up.

The FTC has long attempted to wrangle money back from these scammers. But as it explains in a published proposal, a 2021 Supreme Court ruling called AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC limited its authority to do so. Without a rewrite of the rules, that meant the FTC could only pursue companies when they’d made an outbound call, leaving many consumers who were tricked by the messages out of luck.

Now, the TSR has been changed to remove “technical support services” from a list of services that are exempt from its rules. The FTC has also been cracking down on scammy “tech support” pop-ups on sites.

The FTC says older consumers over the age of 60 were five times more likely to be victims of these scams, and they have collectively reported more than $175 million in losses. Earlier this year, the FTC reported fake “Geek Squad” calls topped the list of fraud, adding up to $15 million in losses.

Max, Hulu, and Paramount Plus are all heavily discounted for Black Friday

Max, Hulu, and Paramount Plus are all heavily discounted for Black Friday

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

If you’re looking to catch up on recent shows and movies — including Shogun, The Penguin, and Dune: Part Two — the upcoming holiday weekend is the perfect time to do so. Thankfully, multiple streaming services are slashing subscription prices ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, including Max, Hulu, and others. Right now, for example, you can sign up for a year of Hulu for less than $12. What’s more, you don’t have to be a new subscriber to take advantage of the ongoing promo, which is a rarity in the world of streaming.

Hulu is just one of many platforms currently offering a holiday discount, though. We’ve rounded up a selection of other streaming deals below, many of which will run through November 2nd.

Hulu and Disney Plus deals

As part of a Good Morning America promo that runs through December 2nd, new and existing subscribers who are returning to Hulu after a month’s absence can get a year of the ad-supported plan for $0.99 a month instead of $9.99, or $11.88 ($108 off) for a full year. You can also add Disney Plus (with ads) to the mix when you subscribe to Disney Bundle Duo Basic, which will run you $2.99 a month instead of $10.99. That means instead of paying $131.88 a year for the two streaming services, you’re just paying a total of $35.88.

The ad-free plans won’t let you download content for offline viewing, nor will they let you skip the commercials (obviously). If you’re okay with that, though, either deal will let you stream all of Hulu’s TV shows and films, including The Handmaid’s Tale, Sand Land, and Only Murders in the Building. You’ll also be able to access plenty of non-Hulu content, such as Shogun, The Bear, Futurama, and Say Nothing.

Adding Disney Plus means you also get to access the entire Disney Plus library, which encompasses Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and even National Geographic content. That means you’ll be able to stream Star Wars: Skeleton Crew once when it arrives on December 2nd, along with Deadpool & Wolverine, X-Men ‘97, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film, Ron Howard’s Jim Henson documentary, and everything else already available to stream.

Max deals

Right now, new and returning subscribers can subscribe to Max’s monthly, ad-supported plan for $2.99 instead of $9.99 for the first six months. That means instead of paying $60 for half a year, you’ll only be forking out $18, thus saving yourself $42.

Max grants access to a wide range of popular TV shows and movies, including House of the Dragon, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Dune Prophecy, The Last of Us, The Penguin, Hacks, and even content from Discovery Plus. The ad-supported plan lets you binge that entire library, but you won’t be able to download shows for offline viewing as you can on the ad-free plans. You’re also limited to streaming on two devices at once.

Paramount Plus with Showtime deals

New and returning subscribers can currently sign up for two months of the ad-free Paramount Plus with Showtime plan for just $2.99 a month. Paramount Plus with Showtime normally goes for $12.99 a month, so you’re potentially saving up to $22.99 over two months. Just bear in mind that this deal ends on Wednesday, December 4th.

In addition to letting you download movies and shows for offline viewing, the Paramount Plus and Showtime plan grants you access to the Paramount Plus library, including Yellowstone spinoffs 1883 and 1923, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Daily Show, and Landman. It also lets you watch live sports and 24/7 live news with CBS News, along with Showtime’s content, which includes originals like Dexter and Yellowjackets as well as older movies like Gladiator.

Peacock deals

Now until 3AM ET on December 2nd, new subscribers can sign up for six months of ad-supported Peacock Premium for $1.99 a month instead of $7.99 when they use promo code REALDEALMONTHLY at checkout. Alternatively, you can sign up for an ad-supported annual plan for $19.99 instead of $79.99 with offer code REALDEAL.

As NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock offers next-day programming from NBC and even Bravo. You can also watch live sports like Sunday Night Football and WWE, as well as movies and shows such as Twisters, Oppenheimer, Yellowstone, Teacup, and Saturday Night Live.

Google’s connecting Spotify to its Gemini AI assistant

Google’s connecting Spotify to its Gemini AI assistant

Cath Virginia / The Verge

Spotify is getting support for Google’s Gemini Extensions, which will allow users to search for and play music using the generative AI assistant with natural language requests. The extension was first spotted in the code of the Google app in June, and now it’s rolling out to compatible Android devices, as reported by 9to5Google.

Gemini can play music found by song titles, artist names, album names, playlist names, or for a particular activity, but at the moment, it won’t create playlists or radio stations on Spotify. One thing to be aware of is that if you’ve already linked another music service like YouTube Music, you’ll need to verbally say (or type in) which service you want Gemini to use as part of your initial request, and from there, it will default to whatever was used last.

Spotify is the second non-Google app to gain Gemini abilities following the rollout of WhatsApp support that started in October.

Google’s support page for the extension explains that it first requires linking your Spotify and Google accounts to enable it with Gemini Apps, and you have to enable Gemini Apps Activity, which can hold your AI queries for up to 72 hours. You won’t be able to use the Spotify extension inside Google Messages, the Gemini web app, or the Gemini app on iOS, and it only works while Gemini’s language is set to English to start.

Zoom 2.0 relaunches as an AI-first company without video in its name

Zoom 2.0 relaunches as an AI-first company without video in its name

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom is changing its name from Zoom Video Communications Inc. to just Zoom Communications Inc. In a post on the company blog, Zoom Communications CEO Eric Yuan writes that Zoom is now an “AI-first work platform for human connection” that delivers “modern, hybrid work solutions.” It’s a muddy, if vague, change compared to its 2020 rise when the classic Zoom Meetings product became synonymous with video conferencing and thrived as companies were forced to transition employees to work from home.

Now, it no longer wants to be known for video as workers have returned to offices, and bigger, better-resourced competition from Google, Microsoft, and Slack offers video as a feature of the office suites companies already pay for.

Allow us to reintroduce ourselves. Today, we are officially dropping “video” from our legal name and will be known simply as Zoom Communications, Inc. ➡️ https://t.co/CzFOwgXd0w

The context: Although you may know Zoom as "Zoom,” until today our official legal name was "Zoom… pic.twitter.com/IUrk1Ggbbj

— Zoom (@Zoom) November 25, 2024

By the end of 2020, Zoom’s year-over-year revenue had quadrupled, but by early 2022, the projections had changed, as Wedbush analyst Dan Ives predicted that “the work from home beneficiaries... Netflix, Facebook, Zoom, Peloton, they’ll see growth fall off a cliff.” For both Peloton and Zoom, the next few months and years have borne that out.

Zoom has fought back by launching more comprehensive communications tools, starting with Zoom Team Chat. Now, Zoom offers its own full-suite Zoom Workplace solution with Google- and Microsoft-style Office productivity apps, a business email client, and more.

Yuan said in an appearance over the summer on Decoder that:

...today we all spend a lot of time either making phone calls, joining meetings, sending emails, deleting some spam emails and replying to some text messages, still very busy. How [do we] leverage AI, how do we leverage Zoom Workplace, to fully automate that kind of work? That’s something that is very important for us.

Zoom’s AI companion 2.0 launched in October with improved summarizing and assistance tools, which he says “will translate into a fully customizable digital twin equipped with your institutional knowledge, freeing up a whole day’s worth of work and allowing you to work just four days per week.”

Google and the DOJ make their final arguments in the ad tech monopoly case

Google and the DOJ make their final arguments in the ad tech monopoly case

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Google and the Department of Justice met one final time in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom to debate the future of Google’s online ad tech juggernaut.

Over about three hours of closing arguments, attorneys for each side delivered their last arguments before US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema, who is expected to rule on it by the end of 2024. If she declares Google’s ad tech system a monopoly, the case will progress to a second trial for remedies — a process currently playing out in a separate DC District Court case over Google search.

Many of the arguments were familiar to any Google trial watcher. The DOJ argues Google used a suite of ad tech products, particularly Doubleclick For Publishers (DFP) and the AdX exchange, to strong-arm site owners and advertisers. Google counters that it faces competition from other sources and shouldn’t have to cut deals with competitors. But the final statements let Brinkema, who spent the trial’s early days asking witnesses to break down complex technical topics, push back on each side’s arguments — this time with a solid command of the facts.

One market, or three?

One of the trial’s biggest questions is how many markets Google actually works in. The government sees three separate ad markets that Google dominates: one for publisher ad servers, one for ad exchanges, and one for advertiser ad networks. Google says there’s a single, two-sided market of buyers and sellers for digital ads, putting Google in competition with social media companies like Meta and TikTok.

Google’s reference point is a 2018 Supreme Court precedent called Ohio v. American Express. The ruling considered whether a policy AmEx imposed on merchants unfairly suppressed price competition. The court decided that there was a single market comprised of merchants and credit card users, and it required the government to prove harm on both sides — a higher standard to meet.

The government in this case has argued this isn’t a reasonable comparison, and in closing arguments, Brinkema seemed to agree. “I’ve read that AmEx case more times that I probably should have,” Brinkema said during Google counsel Karen Dunn’s closing arguments. “We’re dealing with a completely different set-up, it seems to me.” Brinkema said that earlier in the case, she thought Google made “a very attractive argument” for its AmEx comparison, but the more she read it, the less it mapped onto this case.

Still, Brinkema asked why the government focused most of its attention during the trial on publishers and called ad agency witnesses rather than advertisers themselves. DOJ counsel Aaron Teitelbaum said publishers’ issues with Google (like frustrating ties between DFP and AdX) were particularly good at highlighting anticompetitive conduct, that stemmed from Google’s access to advertisers through its ad network, and that ad agencies — not their advertiser clients — were the ones typically navigating Google’s products.

She also asked how the DOJ would attempt to win if she finds a single, two-sided market. Teitelbaum said that even in that scenario, the court can find direct evidence of monopoly power where Google does something it knows customers won’t like — like Unified Pricing Rules (UPR) that prevented publishers from setting higher prices on Google’s AdX than on other servers. That’s something only a monopolist could do, he said.

Refusal to deal

Google’s second big legal weapon is a 2004 ruling known as Verizon v. Trinko — which said, very broadly, that Verizon wasn’t required to share its telecommunications network with AT&T. Trinko says under most circumstances, companies can refuse to deal with competitors. Google argues that its products are already interoperable with other ad tech services, and requiring more of that interoperability by law would make Google’s advertiser customer base into “community property.”

The DOJ has retorted that Trinko isn’t about dealing with your own customers. “Every single instance of conduct is Google versus its customers,” Teitelbaum said — pointing to instances where Google removed options for users in its ad tools. But Brinkema seemed unsure of that argument, saying AdX in particular seems to be in direct competition with other ad exchanges, and is not customer-facing in the way the DOJ tried to argue.

What about those deleted chats?

As Google makes its arguments, it’s being dogged by an accusation that’s followed it into courtroom after courtroom: a claim that it deliberately deleted chat messages that could have made it look bad. Google says most messages were simply casual water-cooler conversation, but it’s conceded some included substantive business discussions. The DOJ wants Brinkema to draw an adverse inference wherever she’s in doubt about what deleted messages said — in other words, assume the deleted messages would have looked bad for Google’s case.

Dunn, from Google, accused the government of cherry-picking ominous-sounding lines from Google executives in internal documents. When read with full context, Dunn argued, some simply show people riffing on topics where they acknowledge they have little expertise. They could even demonstrate that Google welcomed employees sharing thoughts over email.

But Brinkema said that Dunn was “getting close to the very significant argument plaintiffs have raised”: the fact that nobody actually knows what executives were thinking in some cases, because those chats are gone. “I think you’re in a little bit [of] dangerous territory,” she warned.

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft review: good color is a good start

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft review: good color is a good start

The Colorsoft is essentially a Paperwhite with a color screen. It might be worth waiting for a color Kindle Scribe instead.

Four years after the first color e-readers launched, Amazon has finally introduced a Kindle with a color screen.

The $279.99 Kindle Colorsoft features the same color E Ink technology used in e-readers like the Kobo Libra Colour but customized with a new display stack, brighter LEDs, and special coatings. Colors appear more saturated and a little more vibrant on the Colorsoft’s seven-inch screen than they do on the Libra Colour, while screen refreshes are faster and contrast is notably better, making black lines and borders in comics look darker than they do on other color e-readers. The upgrades also make browsing Amazon’s store more engaging, with book covers that better grab your attention.

Despite an issue with screen discoloration affecting some devices, the Kindle Colorsoft has the best color screen of any e-reader I’ve tested. But its price has me wishing for more upgrades, like a larger screen and stylus support. The color screen doesn’t add enough to the Kindle experience by itself to justify the extra cost.

When you’re reading in black and white, page turns still feel instantaneous, like they do on my 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. They’re a little slower when displaying larger color images like comics, as the Colorsoft performs a full-screen refresh every time you turn the page to maximize image quality. (Amazon says a full refresh only happens with “images above a certain size,” but it happens even on pages with smaller color images.) The Colorsoft’s refresh feels a bit faster than other color e-readers, though, and isn’t really a distraction. It’s also much faster than the Remarkable Paper Pro, which uses a different color E Ink display technology.

The Colorsoft’s speed improvements are most apparent when it comes to zooming and panning a page, such as enlarging a panel or text in a comic. The e-reader temporarily switches to a lower-quality image while you’re moving around the page, before re-rendering everything at high quality when you’re done. It’s a trick all e-readers use, and the Colorsoft does it more responsively than other color options. It’s still a small step behind the performance of black-and-white e-readers and nowhere near as fast and fluid as a tablet with an LCD or OLED screen, but the Colorsoft never feels like it’s struggling to keep up.

Text can be highlighted and organized in four different colors.

Highlighting passages also benefits from the new color capabilities. The Colorsoft lets you choose between four different highlight colors — pink, yellow, blue, and orange — and filter them by color. But Amazon should have taken this feature a step further. There’s no way to label the highlighter colors, so it’s entirely up to you to remember that you use blue to save inspirational quotes, for example. The highlight colors are carried over to the Kindle mobile app, and while highlighted passages are organized by color when exported as a spreadsheet or PDF, you can’t limit the export to just a single color.

On an e-reader as expensive as the Colorsoft, I would have also liked the option to highlight with a stylus like you can on the Kindle Scribe, instead of having to tap on the screen, wait for on-screen controls to pop up, and then drag the highlight box over the text. The lack of stylus support makes the Colorsoft feel a step behind the more affordable Kobo Libra Colour.

One thing I didn’t expect to appreciate about the Colorsoft’s screen is the lack of customization. Competitors like Boox give you extensive control over refresh modes, brightness, vividness, and contrast. I find it overwhelming and much prefer Amazon already optimizing the Colorsoft’s screen for me.

Browsing titles on Amazon’s bookstore is more engaging with a color screen.

The only option available on the Colorsoft is switching between standard and vivid color modes — the latter of which boosts the intensity of colors in less-saturated imagery. The difference between the two is subtle enough that I tend to leave vivid mode on all the time, but I did notice the effect while reading the first volume of Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man: Married with Children. The red in Spider-Man’s suit had more visual impact in vivid mode, while the Green Goblin’s armor looked more gray than green in standard. I just wish Amazon hadn’t buried the options in a menu that blocks a large portion of the display, making it hard to do a quick before-and-after visual comparison.

Reading small text in some comics on the Colorsoft is difficult without zooming in.

Although Amazon’s upgrades genuinely improve the Colorsoft’s screen, they don’t solve all the problems with E Ink’s Kaleido technology. It’s still limited to 4,096 colors, which leaves color content looking desaturated and flat compared to devices with LCD and OLED screens, which can display millions of colors. If the iPad is like flipping through the glossy, vibrant photos in a print copy of National Geographic, the Colorsoft is more like the washed-out color photos on the front page of a newspaper.

Text and black-and-white imagery are displayed at 300ppi on the Colorsoft, but that resolution is halved in color mode. I had no issue reading Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, but the fine print in speech bubbles in Spider-Man and Marvel’s Fortnite x Marvel: Zero War crossover was difficult to read without constantly zooming in and panning around. Color E Ink screens in general also have slightly less contrast than black-and-white displays as a result of the extra RGB filter layer that Kaleido relies on to display color. With screen lighting turned off, the Colorsoft’s display looks a bit darker than a black-and-white e-reader like the Kobo Clara BW or the Paperwhite. The difference is subtle, though, and easy to compensate for by keeping the Colorsoft’s light on, even outdoors.

The 11th-gen Paperwhite’s black-and-white display (left) looks brighter than the Colorsoft’s (right) when screen lighting is turned off.

Shortly after the Kindle Colorsoft started shipping, some users reported seeing a yellow discolored strip across the bottom of the e-reader’s display. My review unit also exhibits the issue, but to a lesser degree than others are seeing, based on images shared on Reddit. The discoloration on the Colorsoft I tested is so subtle that I’m not sure I would have noticed it had others not mentioned it. My iPhone’s camera picks it up better than my eyes do.

It’s still not clear what is causing the problem — some speculate it’s an issue with an adhesive used to manufacture the screen — but Amazon has acknowledged it and says it’s working to fix the issue and to ensure that new devices won’t have the discoloration. The company is also offering refunds or replacements to those who have an affected Colorsoft, but Amazon’s product page shows an expected delay of three to five weeks. I recommend waiting until Amazon confirms it has fixed the issue before you buy one yourself.

Amazon claims the Kindle Colorsoft can be used for around eight weeks on a charge (four fewer than it claims for the 12th-gen Paperwhite), but that’s when reading for just 30 minutes a day with the screen brightness set to just above half and wireless features disabled. In reality, you’re going to be charging it more frequently than that. I find the colors on an e-reader’s display to be more pronounced with a brighter screen, so in my testing, I had the Colorsoft’s screen lighting set to 75 percent. After an hour of reading a comic requiring full-screen refreshes with every page turn, the battery lost 5 percent of its charge. I estimate I’d get about three weeks out of the Colorsoft’s battery between charges — longer with a mix of color and black-and-white content.

As with the latest Paperwhite Signature Edition, the Colorsoft includes wireless charging in addition to its USB-C port. But without magnets, properly aligning a wireless charging puck is frustrating and not worth the effort. You’ll only be charging it about once a month, so plugging it in for a few hours isn’t a big inconvenience.

The Colorsoft’s screen (left) looks cooler and more neutral than the Kobo Libra Colour (right), which skews slightly warm.

There are a lot of color e-readers now, but in terms of availability, user experience, and screen size, the Colorsoft’s primary competition is the Kobo Libra Colour.

Without lighting adjustments, the Colorsoft’s screen looks cooler and more neutral than the Libra Colour’s, which skews slightly warm. But the difference is negligible once you turn up the Colorsoft’s warmth slider and the Libra Colour’s natural light slider. The Colorsoft’s improved contrast also gives its screen a darker overall tone, with colors that look more natural and vivid. On the Libra Colour, imagery is warmer and brighter, which reveals more details in darker areas of an image. I prefer the Colorsoft’s vibrancy and focus on color accuracy, but I wouldn’t describe the Libra Colour’s approach as inferior. It’s a matter of preference.

The Kindle Colorsoft also feels slightly faster than the Libra Colour when turning pages, but the difference is mostly negligible unless you’re zooming and panning images. The Kindle feels more responsive to finger gestures and just a bit snappier when switching between the low- and high-quality versions of the images.

While sideloaded content looks as good on the Colorsoft as content purchased from Amazon, I had to rely on Amazon’s online Send to Kindle service to preserve the color content of PDFs. Copying them to the e-reader from a MacBook Pro over USB-C (through the Android File Transfer app or Amazon’s recently updated app) resulted in the PDFs showing up on the Colorsoft in black and white, and others have experienced the same. I didn’t have that issue when sideloading to the Kobo Libra Colour, so if you don’t source your ebooks from Amazon, you may have to learn to live with a few extra steps to get them on the e-reader properly.

Amazon’s focus after discontinuing the Kindle Oasis may be “touch-forward,” but mine isn’t

Overall, I think the Colorsoft’s screen is better than Kobo’s, but there are some other aspects of the Libra Colour’s design that I prefer. Amazon’s focus after discontinuing the Kindle Oasis may be “touch-forward,” but mine isn’t. I’m still a big fan of physical page turn buttons, and I prefer the asymmetrical design of the Libra Colour, with its larger grip that makes it much easier to hold in one hand. On more than one occasion, I’ve accidentally triggered a page turn on the Kindle Colorsoft when adjusting my grip. I also find the Libra Colour’s sleep / power button, which is located on the back of the e-reader, harder to hit by mistake. The Colorsoft’s button is located on its bottom edge next to the USB-C port, and I’ve unintentionally woken it up a few times while trying to plug in a charging cable without looking.

The asymmetrical design and etched texture on the back of the Libra Colour make it easier to hold in one hand than the Colorsoft.

And while the back of the Colorsoft has a smooth, slightly rubbery finish, I feel like I have a better grip on the Libra Colour, thanks to the etched texture on its rear panel.

If you want a compact color e-reader with access to a robust ebook store that will make comic books and manga look good without requiring a deep dive into screen settings, the Kindle Colorsoft has the best color E Ink screen you can get. It’s also the ideal option if you’re firmly entrenched in Amazon’s ecosystem.

If you’re not as concerned with color accuracy or don’t want to be stuck in Amazon’s world, the Kobo Libra Colour is a cheaper alternative at $219.99 that still looks good and performs very well. It skips features like wireless charging but gives you the option of using a stylus ($69.99) for easier highlights and basic note-taking, and it has page turn buttons. Amazon’s bookstore is more comprehensive than Kobo’s, but I found it much easier to sideload content from other sources onto the Libra Colour, including ePUB files and color PDFs, which showed up with actual color when copied over using USB-C.

E Ink’s color screens are still nowhere near as vibrant as LCD or OLED displays.

As for whether this is the right Kindle to buy: the Colorsoft is basically the excellent Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition with a color screen, but for $80 more than the Signature Edition and $120 more than the standard Paperwhite. That’s a lot to spend on a color screen. Adding features like stylus support, basic note-taking capabilities, or even a slightly larger screen to better accommodate content like comic books — you know, like a Kindle Scribe — would have made the Colorsoft easier to justify.

While I’m glad to see that Amazon attempted to improve the current generation of color E Ink technology, it’s still a bit disappointing, with washed-out colors and lower resolutions. If you’re already a happy Kindle user, consider the 12th-gen Paperwhite instead. A color screen just isn’t a must-have upgrade.

Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge

Corning offers Gorilla Glass concessions to settle EU’s antitrust case

Corning offers Gorilla Glass concessions to settle EU’s antitrust case

Gorilla Glass is used in many of the most popular smartphone offerings, such as the Samsung Galaxy S23 (pictured). | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Gorilla Glass producer Corning has proposed several commitments in an attempt to settle an antitrust investigation initiated by the European Union. The bloc launched a probe into Corning on November 6th over concerns the New York-based company used exclusivity contracts to push out rival glass makers from the phone industry, allowing it to dominate the worldwide market for break-resistant Alkali-AS Glass.

According to the EU Commission’s press release, the remedies proposed by Corning include waiving all exclusivity clauses in its current agreements with phone companies and glass finishers, promising not to use such clauses again in future, and not forcing its customers to buy specific quantities of stock from Corning. Corning also committed to only enforce its patents related to break-resistant cover glass based on patent infringement and not breach of contract.

If accepted, the EU Commission says Corning’s changes will be applicable worldwide and remain in force for at least nine years. During that time, Corning will be monitored by the EU to ensure ongoing compliance.

Outside parties have six weeks to challenge the commitments, which could change before they’re officially accepted by the EU. If Corning fails to live up to its commitments, the company could face fines of up to 10 percent of its worldwide turnover, or about $1.25 billion based on its 2023 financial results. Apple reached a similar deal with the EU in July to settle an investigation into third-party contactless payments.

How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales

How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales Fewer people will be able to afford electric cars and trucks if President-elect Donald J. Trump and Republicans in Congress eliminate a $7,500 federal tax credit.

Sony’s making a handheld console to compete with Nintendo and Microsoft

Sony’s making a handheld console to compete with Nintendo and Microsoft

The new console will build on the Playstation Portal (pictured) which was reportedly originally intended to work as a standalone device. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Sony is currently making a new handheld gaming console that allows users to play PlayStation 5 games anywhere. According to Bloomberg, the console is being developed to compete against Nintendo and Microsoft in the portable gaming market, and is likely “years away from launch” — if Sony decides to release it at all.

Nintendo is a leading figure in the handheld gaming industry, with a next-generation successor to its popular Switch console expected to arrive next year. Microsoft is also developing its own handheld Xbox prototype, though Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has recently cautioned that the device is “a few years out.” The handheld gaming category has also benefitted from a PC-platform expansion in recent years thanks to new players like Valve’s Steam Deck and the ROG Ally lineup from Asus.

Sony’s efforts to not be left behind would build on the PlayStation Portal: the eight-inch gaming device it released last year that wirelessly streams PS5 games from the cloud — but, according to Bloomberg, was originally meant to function as a standalone device. The new device would allow games to be played natively rather than over Wi-Fi, potentially expanding Sony’s audience and making its games more accessible.

This isn’t completely new territory for Sony, having previously released portable gaming consoles like the PS Vita and PlayStation Portable — but these have long since been discontinued.

Boox Palma 2 review: ain’t broke, not fixed

Boox Palma 2 review: ain’t broke, not fixed

There are so many things about the Palma 2 that could be better. But it’s still great at what it does.

The Boox Palma 2 remains a Boox Palma. That is the best and worst thing about it. A little over a year after Onyx shipped its first $279.99 smartphone-sized e-reader — a device I love and use just about every day — the company has released its successor. And it is, in every meaningful way, the same exact thing.

On one level, this is fine. Good, even! The Palma’s whole appeal is based on its simplicity. By shipping a device roughly the size of a smartphone, with access to all the apps in the Play Store and an E Ink screen that’s easy to look at and takes days to drain the battery, Onyx found a winning combo. For anyone seeking a way to easily read books, documents, and stuff from the web, there’s really nothing quite like it. For me, it became not just a reader but also a way to play music and podcasts and even take quick notes, without having to wade into the chaotic morass of my phone.

My biggest worry with the original Palma was simply how long it would last. It ran on an old chip and Android 11, both of which were woefully outdated even when it launched. The Palma 2 has a newer chip and Android 13, which means you can probably expect it to work and get security updates for at least a couple of years. I wouldn’t count on anything past that, though — Onyx is much better at spitting out new devices than updating its existing ones.

About that new processor: Onyx calls it a “faster octa-core CPU,” and I absolutely positively cannot tell the difference. It out-benchmarks the previous model, particularly in graphics tasks, but in use, I didn’t notice the improvement anywhere. Apps still open a little slower than I’d like; page turns work fine but occasionally taps don’t register; God help you if you ever try to play a game or watch a video. I’m not especially bothered by the lack of performance upgrade, since “fast” is not the point of this thing. But just to put it in perspective: the original Palma benchmarks like a solid midrange phone from 2017, and the Palma 2 tests like a solid midrange phone from 2019. The latest Pixel phones from Google roughly triple the Palma 2’s scores. Boox upgraded the Palma, but only from a really, really old phone to just a really old phone.

Can you tell the difference between the Palma 2 and the Palma? Yeah, me neither.

Everything else about the Palma is the same, for better and for worse. The 6.3-inch E Ink Carta display still looks good, and the plastic body still feels pretty flimsy. It still has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, both of which are plenty for this gadget’s purposes. The 16-megapixel camera works okay for scanning documents and QR codes and still takes crappy pictures otherwise. The power button is a little bigger than before and now has a fingerprint reader for simpler security, which is nice, but it’s a little slow and a little finicky, and do you even need a passcode on a Palma? (I don’t have one. Maybe I should.) My Palma 2’s battery lasts four to five days on a charge, just like the old one.

I’m torn between the Palma 2 being exactly what I wanted and a bit of a missed opportunity. There’s so much more Onyx could do with this thing. It could have added a SIM slot and turned the Palma into a proper minimalist smartphone. It could have fixed the huge gap between the glass and the screen, upgraded the materials, and made an object worthy of that $280 price tag. It could have refined the Palma’s take on Android, cleaning up settings and removing unnecessary built-in apps to make it even simpler. Or skip all that, ditch the camera, downgrade the storage, and find a way to sell this thing for half the price.

Instead, the Palma is the Palma. If you have the last one, you definitely don’t need this one. If you don’t have either, get this one so it’ll last a little longer. Maybe this device will end up like the Kindle: year to year, there’s usually not much reason to upgrade, but when you break yours or leave it in a seat-back pocket somewhere, there’s a solidly better device waiting to replace it. And much like the Kindle, it seems the Palma’s users will always have bigger ambitions for the product than its makers.

Behold, the one hardware change: a larger power button with a fingerprint reader.

My real hope is that the Palma will get some competition. This combination — smartphone size, E Ink screen, Android apps — isn’t particularly sophisticated or proprietary, and there are plenty of ways other companies could do it better. There are some other options out there (here’s a good Reddit thread discussing some of them), but nobody, including Onyx, has done this type of product justice yet. I’d love to see someone get it right.

Until then, the Palma 2 will do just fine. It lets me read my books and articles, stores my podcasts and my music, and makes it damn near impossible to get distracted by TikTok. Still a winning combo in my book.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge

Two new tech documentaries you really need to see

Two new tech documentaries you really need to see

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 61, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy Hallmark season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

I missed you all last week — thanks to everyone who told me you missed Installer, too! Warms my heart, and also makes me feel terrible for not being there, but mostly warms my heart. Let’s get back at it. This week, I’ve been reading about venom and deadly car races and hockey phenoms, setting up the new Mac Mini I finally caved and bought, watching The Day of the Jackal (which is spectacular) and Wolfs (which is fine), devouring the Dark Matter and Say Nothing books before I watch the shows, seeing if Google’s Gemini app can replace my search engine, trying to restart my notebooking habit with MyMind, and listening to the Halt and Catch Fire soundtrack on repeat.

I also have for you a delightful new music-making gadget, a couple of interesting new documentaries, a humongous Alexa device, the next big thing in Dune, and much more.

And I have a question: what’s on your gift list this year? Stuff you want, stuff you’re giving, it’s all fair game. I’m putting together an Installer-y gift guide for next week and would love your ideas! (And fair warning, I’m going to be asking for lots of your recommendations the next few weeks — I have some fun year-end things planned.)

Okay, lots going on this week! Let’s get into it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be watching / reading / playing / listening to / air-frying this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

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The Drop

• Surveilled. First, read Ronan Farrow’s latest New Yorker article about how the US government could very easily hack your tech. Then watch this new doc about how this kind of thing is happening all over the world, and Farrow won’t seem so dramatic when he basically advocates hucking your phone out the window.
• Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy. This looks like it belongs in the legacy of The Great Hack and The Social Dilemma, which is to say, very alarming and somewhat overstated documentaries about how the world really works. But the tricks companies use to get you to keep spending money, even the obvious ones, are pretty alarming to see laid out like this.
• Teenage Engineering’s OP-XY. The OP-1 is still Teenage Engineering’s classic and most iconic synthesizer, but this new synthesizer / sampler / sequencer looks like an even more powerful portable music maker. TE is maybe the only company that makes me wish I were a musician, just so I’d have a reason to buy this.
• Dune: Prophecy. My obsession with all things Dune is not a secret if you’ve been reading Installer for a while. So far, this super-prequel isn’t exactly fizzing with action, but it’s dramatic and big and I’m into it.
• Year of the Ring. Our friends over at Polygon put together this epic tale about an epic tale: Lord of the Rings. Stories about the books, the movies, the characters, the fanfiction, and so much more. If you’re a Tolkien-head, you won’t want to miss this.
• Queue. A perfectly minimalist iPhone podcast app, this one. You add a show, it puts new episodes in a list, you play things from the list. The more I use it, the more I wonder why any podcast app does anything else.
• Tokyo Override. Intense commentary about capitalism, fascism, AI, and the surveillance state, dressed up in a stylishly animated story about hackers riding motorcycles in futuristic Tokyo? Extremely into it.
• The Amazon Echo Show 21. I’m sorry, but a 21-inch “smart display” is just a TV. But I think Amazon’s idea with these new, bigger Echo devices — which is basically to have one giant screen as the hub of your smart home — is the right one.
• One Billion Users. The folks at Techdirt have a surprisingly strong hit rate for fun games. I bought their CIA card game a while back and played the heck out of Startup Trail. This one’s a card game about starting a social network, and it’ll be a hit at my Thanksgiving one of these years.
• The JVC HA-NP1T “Nearphones”. Another cool-looking set of open-ear headphones, which let you hear your music and the world around you. And unlike so many others, these don’t cost a fortune! A hundred bucks, in that dark green color, sounds like my kind of thing.
• IMG_0001. A few weeks ago, Ben Wallace found a trove of videos on YouTube that had been uploaded directly from iPhones a dozen years ago or so. Riley Walz went and compiled 5 million of the videos, and they’re both incredibly mundane and often weirdly intimate? It’s just, like, people’s real lives, uploaded before anyone knew not to.

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Screen share

There aren’t many people who do as good a job explaining tech to regular humans as Rich DeMuro. You might know him as “Rich on Tech” from the teevee if you live in LA, where he’s a tech reporter for KTLA. You might also have heard his radio show / podcast or read his newsletter. I’ve been following his work forever, and we’ve crossed paths a few times at various events as we run to play with new iPhones or Pixel phones.

Like any good reporter, Rich is perpetually using a million gadgets. So I asked him to share his current homescreen and tell me a little about how it all works. I got even more than I bargained for.

The phone: I typically carry three phones with me... my primary SIM is in an iPhone, then I usually have the latest Samsung and Pixel for reference. I answer a lot of questions about these phones on a daily basis for my followers and talk about what you can do with them on my radio show (and podcast!), Rich On Tech. So it’s handy to have them standing by, since the way you do things is slightly different on each.

The wallpaper: My homescreen wallpaper is usually pretty boring. I don’t put a whole lot of thought into it. Sometimes I will have my kids pick something cool for me for the season, but otherwise, my wallpaper can linger for months. I always get it from the app Backdrops. I just head into the “Abstract” category and find it there.

Usually, the wallpapers on my phones will match, but sometimes I’ll change them independently.

The apps: On iPhone: YouTube Music, Notion, Apple News, ElevenReader, Settings, Google Photos, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Claude, Microsoft To Do, JustWatch, Techmeme, Gmail, Email Me, Instagram, X, Phone, Telegram, Messages, Chrome. On Android: mostly the same, plus Samsung Voice Recorder and Voicenotes.

When it comes to my iPhone, I keep it pretty simple with just the apps that I use on a daily basis. I recently switched to YouTube Music from Spotify because it’s included in my YouTube Premium membership. I really like the supermixes that they generate. I still think Spotify is better, but YouTube Music works just fine.

I have tried every single note-taking app in the world, and Notion actually seems to do a majority of the stuff I like. Before that, it was Obsidian, and I liked how it was sort of self-hosted, but Notion is much easier across various devices, and it just works. I have also tried every single to-do list in the world, and once I put something on my to-do list, it’s almost guaranteed it’s not going to be done. There are two things I like about Microsoft To Do: you can start each day fresh with a fresh list just for that day, and you can attach a file to your to-do items.

I use my email inbox as sort of my to-do list, so all articles, random notes, and websites I want to check out later go there first, and I triage when I have time. That means I always have some sort of “email myself” app. On iPhone, I love Email Me, and on Android, I just found a new app to replace my old one, also called EmailMe, but not from the same developer. It basically opens up a Gmail or Outlook compose window with your email address already populated.

Any time I put an article in a read-later app, I never ever get to it. I’m really trying to find a better way for that system, but I love how ElevenReader can read articles to me while I’m at the gym if I want to brush up on things before my radio show.

My preferred AI is Claude. I love how it deals with more summarizations of things and the English language versus image generation and such.

A couple of other apps that I absolutely love: one is an iOS app called Whisper Memos. It will use AI to transcribe what I say with eerie accuracy, and it will email that information to me so I can deal with it later. It’s great for podcasts when you’re in the car and hear something you want to remember. Another is called Voicenotes: it’s more of a digital voice notebook. It’s on iOS and Android, and you can search your notes using AI, sort of like ChatGPT for your notes.

I keep going back and forth on Twitter / X. It’s definitely doomscrolling for me, but I haven’t really gotten used to Threads, nor do I like the idea of one company controlling all of my social media between Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. So I’m still there.

I also asked Rich to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

• Because of my wild work schedule (I work early mornings, so I don’t have the typical downtime at night to just watch some TV), I rarely watch TV shows or movies. I mostly watch when I’m traveling — right now, I’m bingeing That ‘90s Show, which I find easy to digest and silly. But I mostly stick to movies.
• Right now, I’m really into the author Teddy Wayne. I loved his book The Winner and have been reading his older stuff.
• I also like any sci-fi and have been reading the author T.J. Newman, who was a flight attendant and wrote her first book doing red-eye flights. Cool success story.
• As for podcasts, I always listen to Techmeme Ride Home each morning (ironically on my way to work) and check Techmeme in general about a gazillion times a day. Fun fact: I was an editor there for a year or so.

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Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky. That’s right, we’re doing Bluesky now, too. Come hang out!

“A new timed crossword puzzle game called SnowFall. Love how it takes the elements of a crossword puzzle and throws them at you one at a time. Builds a little anxiety to the unlimited time of a traditional crossword. Starts easy but gets hard fast. Helps fill the pockets of time when I cannot do a full crossword.” – Neal

“Deep in Apple TV Plus this past couple weeks. Silo is back, and the second season of Bad Sisters continues to be compelling TV. Small screen rules going into the holidays.” – Matthew

“Cooked has been a huge help turning my ever-growing collection of social media recipes into something actually usable.” – Dylan

“I switched to Thunderbird on my Pixel device, and it is better IMO than the Gmail app. My biggest complaint with the Gmail app was not being able to see if my other accounts have emails without fully switching over to them. When you open up the navigation pane, you can easily see what accounts have an unread email. (I don’t like unified inboxes, either.) Also, the split-pane view on the Pixel Fold’s inner display is very much welcome.” – Sean

“Trying to decide if I want to splurge on the new Razer Wolverine. It’s finally wireless for Xbox, but then the question becomes whether I can tolerate the software on PC. It’s been fascinating finally seeing wireless Xbox controllers from other brands.” – Luke

“Learning about the fascinating and morbid history of vampire burials with the hilarious Milo Rossi!” – Josh

“Sill, by Tyler Fisher, is a new tool that connects to your Bluesky and / or Mastodon accounts, collecting all links posted to your timeline and displaying the most popular ones in your network. It’s similar to Nuzzel for Twitter and free to use. I’ve been finding it incredibly useful to get a feeling for what’s trending.” – Paulo

“Lately, I’ve been really into KarmaZoo, a unique little multiplayer puzzle platformer that features you, as a cute little pixel animal, wordlessly teaming up with a bunch of other player-animals — each with their own special abilities — to navigate levels as a team. It’s giving and gracious and an absolute blast.” – Dan

“Vehicle Motion Cues on iOS to do two things: 1) Prevent motion sickness using the phone while riding in a car and 2) Remind myself that I should not use my phone while riding in a car.” – Johnson

“I bought a couple of these 3-in-1 chargers from Anker for traveling, and I love them so much. My fiance can never remember to bring both of his cords to charge his phone and his watch when we travel, so I’m very excited.” – Luke

“I’m excited that I scored tickets to see Interstellar in 70mm IMAX for its 10th anniversary. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, and I just happen to live by one of the few theaters that can play it in 70mm. I’m pumped!” – Tony

“I’ve been getting back into listening to music I actually own. It’s tough to find an aesthetic and useful FLAC-compatible music player on the Mac, but Doppler has been filling that role pretty well. A simple interface and Last.fm scrobbling are my favorite features.” – Russ

“Reeder just added Bluesky account integration! Now, it has Mastodon, Bluesky, YouTube, RSS, podcasts… It is slowly becoming my first and only app open!” – Kelly

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Signing off

It’s officially the most wonderful time of the year: Holiday Movie Season! I am almost embarrassed to explain how much I love crappy holiday movies and how excited I get when I both get to begin the rotation of the favorites (The Holiday, Love Actually, Elf, and Home Alone are probably my Mount Rushmore, but there are many others) and the seemingly infinite supply of new ones Hallmark and others crank out every year. I have Us Weekly’s full guide to the season bookmarked in my browser, and I am only slightly ashamed to admit that I just signed up for Hallmark Plus. I promise you this: I will be getting my money’s worth. Just please help me to remember to cancel before New Year’s Eve. And if you have a holiday favorite, send it my way! The worse the better.

See you next week!

Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?

Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World? Coding boot camps once looked like the golden ticket to an economically secure future. But as that promise fades, what should you do? Keep learning, until further notice.

Microsoft pauses Windows 11 updates for PCs with some Ubisoft games installed

Microsoft pauses Windows 11 updates for PCs with some Ubisoft games installed

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has stopped offering updates to Windows 11 version 24H2 on PCs that have certain Ubisoft games installed, Bleeping Computer reports. The company made the move after complaints that Star Wars Outlaws and games in the Assassin’s Creed series were crashing after installing the new Windows update.

Microsoft confirmed the “compatibility hold” in a status update yesterday evening, and says it’s working with Ubisoft to find a fix. In the meantime, the company recommends against installing the Windows 11 24H2 update manually.

Here is Microsoft’s description of the issue and games affected:

After installing Windows 11, version 24H2, you might encounter issues with some Ubisoft games. These games might become unresponsive while starting, loading or during active gameplay. In some cases, users might receive a black screen. The affected games are:

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

• Assassin’s Creed Origins

• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

• Star Wars Outlaws

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Microsoft writes that Ubisoft has released a temporary hotfix to address crashing issues in Star Wars Outlaws, but says that players “might still experience some performance issues.”

Hundreds More Nazca Lines Emerge in Peru’s Desert

Hundreds More Nazca Lines Emerge in Peru’s Desert With drones and A.I., researchers managed to double the number of mysterious geoglyphs in a matter of months.

DirecTV and Dish’s on-and-off merger saga switches back to off

DirecTV and Dish’s on-and-off merger saga switches back to off

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DirecTV has dropped its plans to acquire Dish, the company announced Thursday. The deal would’ve created a TV service megamerger, but it fell through after Dish bondholders rejected the takeover.

In September, DirecTV reached an agreement to acquire Dish, Sling TV, and EchoStar’s TV business for just one dollar, while also taking on Dish’s $9.75 billion in debt. However, Dish bondholders — or the investors who lend money to a company (and expect to be paid back) — weren’t happy about the decision, as the transaction would’ve cut the value of their holdings by $1.5 billion.

“While we believed a combination of DIRECTV and DISH would have benefitted all stakeholders, we have terminated the transaction because the proposed Exchange Terms were necessary to protect DIRECTV’s balance sheet and our operational flexibility,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said in the press release.

This isn’t the first time a deal between DirecTV and Dish has soured. The Federal Communications Commission blocked a merger between both companies in 2002. The two companies have flirted with the idea of a merger ever since — and they might’ve had a better chance at success this time under the Trump administration.

Here are the best Black Friday deals you can already get

Here are the best Black Friday deals you can already get

Image: Elen Winata for The Verge

From noise-canceling earbuds to robot vacuums and 4K OLED TVs, there is already plenty on offer.

Can’t wait until Black Friday to start your holiday shop or score a killer deal on a gadget you’ve been eyeing? You may not have to. Although Black Friday isn’t until November 29th, Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have begun rolling out their holiday discounts, many of which are available elsewhere. Brand-specific Black Friday sales like one from Google have started up, too. Some retailers will even refund you the difference if an item drops further in price later this year, meaning you don’t necessarily have to worry about shopping ahead of time.

New deals are popping up daily, so we’ve rounded up the cream of the crop below to make sorting through them easier. Current promos include steep discounts on a range of our favorite tech, too, from the Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Apple’s AirTags to some of our favorite holiday string lights. We’ll continue updating this roundup as more deals drop, so bookmark this page and keep checking back.

The best Apple deals

• The GPS-enabled Apple Watch Series 10 is down to its best price of $349 ($50 off) in the 42mm configuration at Amazon and Walmart. Apple’s latest flagship wearable features the company’s new S10 SiP chip and an added depth and water temperature sensor. It also offers faster charging than the prior model, as well as a larger wide-angle display. Read our review.
• You can buy the last-gen iPad with Wi-Fi and 64GB of storage for its all-time low of $199.99 ($129 off) at Best Buy and Target. The 2021 tablet features a smaller 10.2-inch screen than the newer model, a slower A13 Bionic chip, and a Lightning charging port. However, it’s still snappy enough for streaming, browsing the web, sending emails, and performing other typical tablet tasks, making it great for kids or anybody looking for an affordable tablet. It even features a 3.5mm headphone jack — a welcome rarity.

The best speaker and headphone deals

• Jabra may have stopped selling consumer earbuds, but that doesn’t there aren’t discounts available on the existing models. Right now, for instance, you can purchase the Jabra Elite 10 Gen 2 for an all-time low of $199.99 ($80 off) at Best Buy. In addition to noise cancellation, the semi-open Elite 10 come with an LE Audio charging case, which lets you wirelessly transmit audio from an external device. They also feature physical buttons and support other essentials, including multipoint Bluetooth connectivity.
• You can also pick up Jabra’s Elite 8 Active Gen 2 for $169.99 ($60 off) at Best Buy, which is one of the better prices we’ve seen. The fitness-focused earbuds offer a robust IP68 rating water resistance rating that can withstand sweaty workouts, along with a secure fit and adaptive ANC. They also support multipoint pairing and wireless charging, and like the Elite 10, come with an LE Audio charging case.

• The WH-1000XM4, Sony’s last-gen flagships, are on sale starting at $198 ($151 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That’s not the shockingly low $130 they dropped to earlier this year, but it’s still a great price for a pair of cans that offer some of the best sound quality and noise cancellation performance around. They offer 30 hours of battery life, a foldable design, and flexible ambient audio modes, including a speak-to-chat feature that reduces volume while you’re talking. Read our review.

• The Sonos Roam 2 is available for $139 ($40 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, and Sonos. The compact smart speaker is far easier to set up than the prior model thanks to a dedicated Bluetooth button, meaning you can start listening to tunes without first setting it up in the Sonos app. It also lasts 10 hours per charge and features support for both AirPlay 2 and Amazon Alexa, not to mention an IP67 rating for dust and water protection. You can even sync it with other Sonos speakers like most other Sonos products.
• If you want a portable Sonos speaker with bigger sound and substantially longer battery life, the Sonos Move 2 is on sale for $59 ($90 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Sonos’ online storefront. It packs multiple speakers for stereo sound, and it supports USB-C line-in in addition to the usual wireless streaming options. It’s not exactly small or light (it’s chunky at 6.61 pounds), but the Move 2 can be ideal if you want a single Sonos device to enjoy outdoors or move from room to room in your home Read our review.

The best smart home deals

• The iRobot Roomba Combo j7 Plus is on sale for around $899 ($120 off) at Best Buy and Target, which is one of its better prices to date. The j7 Plus is similar to the Roomba Combo j9 Plus, as it offers AI obstacle avoidance and a mop that automatically lifts to keep your carpets dry. The main difference is that the Combo j9 Plus offers longer batter life and can refill its own mop tank; it also features a new dirt detection feature. Read our review.

• You can buy Philips Hue’s 26.2-feet Festavia string lights with 100 color-changing LEDs for $83.99 ($36 off) directly from Philips Hue (the 65-feet variant is also on sale for $153.99). The Festavia lights can display a range of colors and a wide selection of premade, festive effects and scenes. They also offer Matter support for use with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and other smart home platforms when paired with a Philips Hue Bridge, along with IP54 weatherproofing that allows you to hang them up outside for up to 90 days.
• Eero’s Pro 6E mesh router is available for an all-time low of $159.99 ($90 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, or as part of a two-pack for $259.99 (Amazon, Best Buy) or a three-pack for $349.99 (Amazon, Best Buy). It doesn’t support Wi-Fi 7 like the newer Eero Max, but it does support the 6GHz Wi-Fi band with speeds of up to 1.3Gbps. It also can cover up to 2,000 square feet per unit and conveniently features a pair of ethernet ports. Read our review.

The best smart security deals

• Ring’s Stick Up Cam Battery is on sale for an all-time low of $54.99 ($45 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. The battery-powered 1080p camera offers weatherproofing, so you can mount and use it outside and inside, but you’ll have to pay for a Ring Protect plan to record video. Thankfully, basics like two-way audio, night video, and motion alerts are available for free.
• The second-gen Ring Indoor Cam is available at Amazon and Best Buy for $29.99 ($30 off), which matches its best price to date. Unlike its predecessor, the indoor security camera features color night vision and a physical privacy cover, allowing you to turn off video and audio recording. The wired camera is similar to its predecessor otherwise, though, and features sharp 1080p HD resolution, a built-in siren, and two-way audio.

• You can buy Google’s wired Nest Cam for $69.99 ($30 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which matches its all-time low. The indoor 1080p camera offers snappy performance and free smart alerts for people and pets. It also comes with 24/7 recording and other useful features, including a Familiar Faces tool that lets you know who is in a room. However, you’ll have to pay for Google’s Nest Aware plan to enable those features. Read our review.
• Our favorite video doorbell, the wired Nest Doorbell, is around $98 ($81 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store, which is by far the lowest price we’ve seen. It may not offer 1080p resolution like other video doorbells in its range (it’s limited to 960 x 1280), but it still produces a clear picture and is one of the few options that can manage 24/7 recording. It also supports facial recognition with smart alerts. Read our review.

The best fitness tracker and smartwatch deals

• The Fitbit Inspire 3 is available from Amazon, Best Buy, and Google’s store for $69.95 ($30 off), matching its all-time low. The minimalist band lacks built-in GPS and doesn’t offer as many health and fitness features as the Charge 6, but it packs a bright OLED display and does a good job with the basics. It supports both irregular heart rate notifications and advanced sleep tracking, along with several stress management features. Read our hands-on impressions.
• The Fitbit Ace LTE is matching its all-time low of $179.95 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Google’s online storefront. Designed for kids, its bubbly design is a bit more playful than most Fitbits. You can play games on it and even take care of a Tamagotchi-like pet, and the tracker periodically pauses the fun until your child has gotten more steps in. Parents can also use it to exchange messages with their children and monitor their real-time location, assuming they opt for the $9.99-a-month Ace Pass data plan.

• If you’re looking for a terrific Fitbit alternative, the Garmin Venu Sq 2 is a great pick that’s down to an all-time low of $149.99 ($100 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Garmin’s online storefront. It’s a shame it lacks built-in GPS, but it does offer a lot of health features not found on rivals like the Fitbit Sense 2 and Versa 4, including hydration tracking and access to Garmin Coach, which provides marathon training plans. These features aren’t locked behind a paywall, either, making the wearable an even better deal. Read our review.

• The Garmin Fenix 7S Pro, one of the best fitness trackers you can buy, is on sale exclusively for Verge readers. Now through Cyber Monday, you can get the multi-sport fitness watch for just $529.99 ($270 off) at Wellbots with promo code VERGEBF270. In addition to a smorgasbord of health sensors and workout tracking, it has reliable multiband GPS, solar charging, military-grade durability, and weekslong battery life. Read our review.

The best TV and streaming device deals

• Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Game Pass bundle is back. Right now, you can pick up the newest Fire TV Stick 4K, an Xbox Wireless Controller, and a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at Amazon for just $74.99 (about $62 off), or the same package with a Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $79.99 ($66.98 off). Both bundles include everything you need to start streaming hundreds of Game Pass titles — no expensive console required.
• LG’s G4 OLED TV is on sale in the 55-inch configuration starting at $1,796.99 (about $803 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is its best price yet. The 4K TV sports many of the C4’s standout features — including a 144Hz refresh rate — but it offers brighter picture quality and more accurate colors.

• The LG B4 OLED is another solid gaming TV, and you can get a 48-inch model for $599.99 ($200 off) at Best Buy or a 55-inch model for $999.99 ($400 off). It has an older processor and a dimmer screen than the costlier “Evo” models, but it’s a fine option if you’re looking for a relatively affordable way to experience 4K 120Hz gaming on an OLED panel.

• The Sonos Ray is available for just $169 ($110 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, and the Sonos storefront. The compact soundbar isn’t as powerful as other models in the brand’s lineup, but it should easily best your TV’s built-in speakers. It’s not our first choice for a soundbar — it lacks HDMI (and thus doesn’t support the helpful eARC tech) — but it’s an affordable way to add a Sonos piece to your home theater setup if you don’t mind using optical. Read our review.

The best gaming deals

• One of Best Buy’s early doorbusters is the Asus ROG Ally, which is matching its all-time low of $499.99 ($150 off) with a Z1 Extreme processor and 512GB of storage (My Best Buy Plus and Total members can save another $50). The handheld lets you play PC games on the go thanks to its seven-inch 1080p display, and while there are faster alternatives, it’s still serviceable for esports shooters, indie gems, and other lightweight titles. Read our review.
• The Hori Split Pad Pro, our favorite Nintendo Switch controller for handheld mode, is on sale for $38.99 ($11 off) at Walmart. The comfortable Joy-Con alternative is outfitted with large triggers, analog sticks, and a set of easy-to-reach buttons, along with more than enough grip that it shouldn’t pose any problems over long gaming sessions.

• If you have a wireless mouse that supports it, Logitech’s G PowerPlay Wireless Charging System is on sale at Amazon for $91.18 (about $21 off), which is only $2 more than its lowest price to date. Mice like the G502 X Lightspeed support the wireless charging pad, as does the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2, both of which will grant you infinite playtime without a single second of tethering.

Other miscellaneous deals

• The Google Pixel 8A is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store starting at $399 ($100 off), which is $20 more than its lowest price to date. You’ll get a pure Android experience that’s guaranteed to receive updates over the next seven years, and the device should last you well into that timeline thanks to its IP67 rating for water and dust resistance. It also has wireless charging, a speedy Tensor G3 chip, a 120Hz OLED display, and a dual-camera array that works pretty well. Read our review.
• You can get Amazon’s newest Kindle with lockscreen ads for $84.99 ($25 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, or without lockscreen ads at Amazon for $104.99 ($25 off). The 2024 ebook reader is more of an iterative update compared to previous models, with a backlight that’s 25 percent brighter. It’s also a touch lighter, a bit faster, and lasts a bit longer (up to eight weeks).

• The EcoFlow Wave 2 is a heat pump that is uniquely powered by both a battery and solar power, and it’s currently available for $799 ($200 off) from both Ecoflow and Amazon (with a coupon). The highly portable device combines an air conditioner and heater, and while it struggles with more extreme climates, it does a particularly good job of cooling and heating small spaces in temperate ones. Read our review.

• A number of other Ember smart mugs are also on sale right now — including the 10-ounce Ember Mug 2, which you can buy at Amazon starting at $79.49 (about $50 off). The 12-ounce Travel Mug 2 Plus is also available for $149.96 ($50 off) directly from Ember through December 1st when you apply promo code BLACKFRIDAY24. Unlike the Mug 2, the Travel Mug 2 Plus supports Apple’s Find My network, so you can keep tabs on it using an iPhone or Mac. It also comes with onboard controls and LED status lights.

• Now through November 29th, Moft is taking up to $60 off a variety of cases, stands, and other accessories. The ongoing promo includes Moft’s Invisible Phone Stand and Wallet, which is capable of holding up to three cards and was our favorite adhesive phone grip in 2022. To get the $60 discount, you’ll have to order over $200 and apply the code BF60. However, you can also spend much less and still save, with Moft offering $10 off if you spend over $50 (with code BF10); $20 off if you spend more than $100 (using code BF20); and $37 off if you spend over $150 (with code BF37).

• Amazon Prime members can buy the Glocusent book light for $17.99 ($4 off) at Amazon, which is an all-time low. The light hangs around your neck to illuminate whatever you’re reading, while offering adjustable brightness and warmth settings.
• As part of its early Black Friday promo, Oaky is taking up to 25 percent off several desks, chargers, docks, and other wooden accessories. Right now, for instance, you can buy its attractive Laptop Stand for $120 ($30 off) or an 80 x 19-inch Floating Shelf for $195.50 ($35 off), both of which are available with either oak or walnut construction.

Update, November 21st: Updated to include a selection of new deals, including those for Star Wars Outlaws, the Sonos Ace headphones, and the latest Kindle Paperwhite.