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Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

You can now buy a USB-C charger that finally hits the promised power spec for beefy laptops at a max rate of 240W. You probably do not need this charger, and you may not have a device that even supports its peak power, but it’s here now if you want one to future-proof your office setup.
Delta Electronics’ ADP-240KB charger is an AC power supply that supports the maximum charge speeds possible on the USB-C Power Delivery (USB-PD) standard. It’s available from US component distributor Mouser Electronics for $126.37 plus shipping, or slightly less if you want at least 10. It’s advertised as a desktop AC adapter and comes as a dull black brick with a standardized three-prong AC in port (the AC cable is not included).

Image: Delta
Bring your own sticker.

Delta isn’t exactly a household name, but you may already own something made by the company. It’s an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) — which is a company that makes products purchased by an OEM for rebranding.
In Delta’s case, it makes power supplies, fans, and other components for computer makers like Dell or Lenovo. Your laptop charger may have the branding of the OEM; however, they’re likely made by an ODM.
Last year, the CEO of laptop maker Framework Nirav Patel told The Verge that top-spec USB-PD 3.1 adapters are on the way. The Framework Laptop 16 charger supports up to 180W, while Apple’s MacBook Pro maxes out at 140W using a MagSafe charging cable. It’s been a long wait, and we even got testers before we got 240W chargers.

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

You can now buy a USB-C charger that finally hits the promised power spec for beefy laptops at a max rate of 240W. You probably do not need this charger, and you may not have a device that even supports its peak power, but it’s here now if you want one to future-proof your office setup.

Delta Electronics’ ADP-240KB charger is an AC power supply that supports the maximum charge speeds possible on the USB-C Power Delivery (USB-PD) standard. It’s available from US component distributor Mouser Electronics for $126.37 plus shipping, or slightly less if you want at least 10. It’s advertised as a desktop AC adapter and comes as a dull black brick with a standardized three-prong AC in port (the AC cable is not included).

Image: Delta
Bring your own sticker.

Delta isn’t exactly a household name, but you may already own something made by the company. It’s an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) — which is a company that makes products purchased by an OEM for rebranding.

In Delta’s case, it makes power supplies, fans, and other components for computer makers like Dell or Lenovo. Your laptop charger may have the branding of the OEM; however, they’re likely made by an ODM.

Last year, the CEO of laptop maker Framework Nirav Patel told The Verge that top-spec USB-PD 3.1 adapters are on the way. The Framework Laptop 16 charger supports up to 180W, while Apple’s MacBook Pro maxes out at 140W using a MagSafe charging cable. It’s been a long wait, and we even got testers before we got 240W chargers.

Read More 

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images

Donald Trump clinched a presidential victory, ushering in another term of environmental rollbacks that’ll make it more difficult to safeguard our air, water, and climate.
“Environmental [regulation] is the biggest tool for stopping growth … it costs much more to do things environmentally clean,” Trump said in a rambling three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on October 25th, when he falsely claimed the US had “the cleanest air and cleanest water” under his watch.
The last time he was president, Trump slashed air and water protections, replacing them with weaker rules that, over time, were expected to lead to thousands more deaths from pollution. Now, his administration could take even more extreme action if it follows eye-popping proposals laid out in Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto written by many former Trump officials. Health and environmental groups are already gearing up for battle.
“It costs much more to do things environmentally clean”
“We really, really need to focus on building more power at the local, tribal, and state and regional levels — understanding that because things are going to be moving much faster this time around, we really need to ramp up,” says KD Chavez, executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance. “We’re just really going to have to lean into our collective power.”
They know what to expect after Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations when he was last in office. That included repealing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), a landmark rule that would have set limits to carbon pollution from power plants for the first time, had it been implemented. While it was designed to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it had the added benefit of cleaning up other kinds of pollution from power plants.
The opposite is also true — delaying action on climate change comes with health risks from the soot and smog that come from burning fossil fuels. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the Trump administration’s weaker alternative to the CPP could lead to 1,400 more premature deaths and 48,000 “exacerbated” asthma cases a year by 2030.
Since taking office, President Joe Biden has tried to clean up his predecessor’s mess. Air quality protections the EPA has issued since 2021 are projected to prevent 200,000 premature deaths and result in 100 million fewer asthma attacks in the US through 2050, according to a recent report by a group founded by hundreds of former EPA employees. Those gains are in peril now.
“One of the other things that we’re going to be looking out for is corporate capture”
“With the election of Donald Trump, we know that environmental justice policies that have been hard fought wins over decades are going to be in jeopardy,” Chavez says. “One of the other things that we’re going to be looking out for is corporate capture … We’re probably going to see appointments of industry operatives in key positions of his cabinet makeup and etc., and just giving polluting industries even greater access to our federal agencies.”
On the campaign trail, Trump said he’d create a new role for billionaire backer Elon Musk as “secretary of cost-cutting.” Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI — have faced a slew of accusations that they’ve violated environmental regulations when it comes to hazardous waste, water pollution, and air pollution.
The last time Trump was in the White House, he pushed seasoned scientists out of federal agencies and put fossil fuel lobbyists in charge of the EPA. Now, Project 2025 calls for a “major reorganization” of the EPA that would slash the number of full-time positions and eliminate entire departments and any programs deemed “duplicative, wasteful, or superfluous.” While Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, the lead author of the chapter dedicated to the EPA was written by the former chief of staff at the agency during the Trump administration, Mandy Gunasekara.
“Project 2025 is just full of recommendations that would essentially eviscerate EPA. They would turn it into a shell of what its true mission is,” Stan Meiburg, executive director of the Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University and former acting deputy administrator of the EPA during the Obama administration, previously told The Verge.

It’s difficult to imagine that the US will stay in the Paris climate accord, considering Trump abandoned the international agreement to stop global warming once before and has vowed to do so again. The Biden administration managed to pass the biggest spending package on climate and clean energy, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is supposed to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2030. Trump has also said, however, that he would “rescind all unspent funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act, stalling the nation’s transition to cleaner energy. When it comes to energy policy, the Republican platform says simply, “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”
“Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time,” Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. Sierra Club’s legal team filed more than 300 lawsuits against the Trump administration challenging its environmental rollbacks. “Trump has put profits over people time and again, prioritizing the bottom line of the Big Oil CEOs who bought and paid for his campaign above communities across the country who face the threat of pollution and the devastating impacts of the climate crisis.”

As gloomy as the forecast is come Inauguration Day, environmental advocates are undeterred. They’ve been through this before, after all. Many state and local leaders stepped up and formed a coalition to fill in the gaps in federal leadership on climate change after Trump was first elected in 2016. That kind of work will be crucial again moving forward.
On top of that, prominent environmental groups are already discussing potential legal actions they can take. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says it filed 163 cases against the Trump administration and won in close to 90 percent of cases that have been resolved so far.
“If he tries to roll back urgently needed climate gains, or follow his radical Project 2025 roadmap to environmental ruin, we’ll stand up for the environment and public health – in the court of public opinion and in our courts of law,” Manish Bapna, NRDC president, said in an emailed statement. “If Trump tries to turn our government against the people it serves, we’ll stand with the people. If he tries to purge the professional civil service we depend on for sound governance, we’ll stand by those who face political attack.”

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images

Donald Trump clinched a presidential victory, ushering in another term of environmental rollbacks that’ll make it more difficult to safeguard our air, water, and climate.

“Environmental [regulation] is the biggest tool for stopping growth … it costs much more to do things environmentally clean,” Trump said in a rambling three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on October 25th, when he falsely claimed the US had “the cleanest air and cleanest water” under his watch.

The last time he was president, Trump slashed air and water protections, replacing them with weaker rules that, over time, were expected to lead to thousands more deaths from pollution. Now, his administration could take even more extreme action if it follows eye-popping proposals laid out in Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto written by many former Trump officials. Health and environmental groups are already gearing up for battle.

“We really, really need to focus on building more power at the local, tribal, and state and regional levels — understanding that because things are going to be moving much faster this time around, we really need to ramp up,” says KD Chavez, executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance. “We’re just really going to have to lean into our collective power.”

They know what to expect after Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations when he was last in office. That included repealing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), a landmark rule that would have set limits to carbon pollution from power plants for the first time, had it been implemented. While it was designed to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it had the added benefit of cleaning up other kinds of pollution from power plants.

The opposite is also true — delaying action on climate change comes with health risks from the soot and smog that come from burning fossil fuels. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the Trump administration’s weaker alternative to the CPP could lead to 1,400 more premature deaths and 48,000 “exacerbated” asthma cases a year by 2030.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has tried to clean up his predecessor’s mess. Air quality protections the EPA has issued since 2021 are projected to prevent 200,000 premature deaths and result in 100 million fewer asthma attacks in the US through 2050, according to a recent report by a group founded by hundreds of former EPA employees. Those gains are in peril now.

“With the election of Donald Trump, we know that environmental justice policies that have been hard fought wins over decades are going to be in jeopardy,” Chavez says. “One of the other things that we’re going to be looking out for is corporate capture … We’re probably going to see appointments of industry operatives in key positions of his cabinet makeup and etc., and just giving polluting industries even greater access to our federal agencies.”

On the campaign trail, Trump said he’d create a new role for billionaire backer Elon Musk as “secretary of cost-cutting.” Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI — have faced a slew of accusations that they’ve violated environmental regulations when it comes to hazardous waste, water pollution, and air pollution.

The last time Trump was in the White House, he pushed seasoned scientists out of federal agencies and put fossil fuel lobbyists in charge of the EPA. Now, Project 2025 calls for a “major reorganization” of the EPA that would slash the number of full-time positions and eliminate entire departments and any programs deemed “duplicative, wasteful, or superfluous.” While Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, the lead author of the chapter dedicated to the EPA was written by the former chief of staff at the agency during the Trump administration, Mandy Gunasekara.

“Project 2025 is just full of recommendations that would essentially eviscerate EPA. They would turn it into a shell of what its true mission is,” Stan Meiburg, executive director of the Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University and former acting deputy administrator of the EPA during the Obama administration, previously told The Verge.

It’s difficult to imagine that the US will stay in the Paris climate accord, considering Trump abandoned the international agreement to stop global warming once before and has vowed to do so again. The Biden administration managed to pass the biggest spending package on climate and clean energy, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is supposed to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2030. Trump has also said, however, that he would “rescind all unspent funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act, stalling the nation’s transition to cleaner energy. When it comes to energy policy, the Republican platform says simply, “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

“Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time,” Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. Sierra Club’s legal team filed more than 300 lawsuits against the Trump administration challenging its environmental rollbacks. “Trump has put profits over people time and again, prioritizing the bottom line of the Big Oil CEOs who bought and paid for his campaign above communities across the country who face the threat of pollution and the devastating impacts of the climate crisis.”

As gloomy as the forecast is come Inauguration Day, environmental advocates are undeterred. They’ve been through this before, after all. Many state and local leaders stepped up and formed a coalition to fill in the gaps in federal leadership on climate change after Trump was first elected in 2016. That kind of work will be crucial again moving forward.

On top of that, prominent environmental groups are already discussing potential legal actions they can take. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says it filed 163 cases against the Trump administration and won in close to 90 percent of cases that have been resolved so far.

“If he tries to roll back urgently needed climate gains, or follow his radical Project 2025 roadmap to environmental ruin, we’ll stand up for the environment and public health – in the court of public opinion and in our courts of law,” Manish Bapna, NRDC president, said in an emailed statement. “If Trump tries to turn our government against the people it serves, we’ll stand with the people. If he tries to purge the professional civil service we depend on for sound governance, we’ll stand by those who face political attack.”

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

These days, Black Friday isn’t so much a single-day shopping holiday as it is an ever-expanding, monthslong event that often begins as early as October. The 24-hour deal blitz that once was the focus of newspaper headlines and mobs outside of stores is no more, which makes knowing when and where you should be spending your cash all the more confusing.
Luckily, we’re here to help. Over the next month or so, we’ll be poring through scores of presale spreadsheets and thousands upon thousands of deals to separate the real discounts from the unexciting, made-up bargains every retailer seems to hawk around the holidays. We’ll have tips on how to find the best deals and when to shop, and we’ll continue to flag the most compelling sales in the run-up to Black Friday proper on November 29th.
And if a month of sales is not enough, you’ll have another shot at tackling your holiday wish list come December 2nd. We’ll be rounding up the best deals on 4K TVs, laptops, phones, robot vacuums, noise-canceling headphones, and other Verge-approved gadgets throughout all of Cyber Week. So stay tuned!

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

These days, Black Friday isn’t so much a single-day shopping holiday as it is an ever-expanding, monthslong event that often begins as early as October. The 24-hour deal blitz that once was the focus of newspaper headlines and mobs outside of stores is no more, which makes knowing when and where you should be spending your cash all the more confusing.

Luckily, we’re here to help. Over the next month or so, we’ll be poring through scores of presale spreadsheets and thousands upon thousands of deals to separate the real discounts from the unexciting, made-up bargains every retailer seems to hawk around the holidays. We’ll have tips on how to find the best deals and when to shop, and we’ll continue to flag the most compelling sales in the run-up to Black Friday proper on November 29th.

And if a month of sales is not enough, you’ll have another shot at tackling your holiday wish list come December 2nd. We’ll be rounding up the best deals on 4K TVs, laptops, phones, robot vacuums, noise-canceling headphones, and other Verge-approved gadgets throughout all of Cyber Week. So stay tuned!

Read More 

Mac Mini power button got you down? Try a power schedule! | Screenshot: YouTube

Apple’s new Mac Mini looks like someone hit the Mac Studio with a shrink ray, and I love it. But there is at least one, uh, hot-button issue: you have to reach underneath it to power it on. If that bothers you (and you’re not into flipping it upside down so it looks like it’s wearing a little hat), you can automate when it starts up and shuts down by creating a power schedule. I’ll tell you how.
There are plenty of reasons you might want to do this. I did it on my MacBook Air because I don’t use it that often, and I got tired of opening its lid only to find a dead laptop. Someone else might want their computer to wake up in the middle of the night to perform scheduled backups. Others might need to shut down their Mac for business reasons.

Once upon a time, you could create such a schedule using an easy settings menu in System Preferences. Sadly, that particular feature didn’t make the leap to macOS Ventura when Apple replaced System Preferences with the iOS-like System Settings app.
The good news is that, even after Apple got rid of its easy-to-use power schedule settings, you can still create the automations it enabled. The bad news is that you have to use Apple’s command line tool, Terminal, to do it. It’s a daunting task if you haven’t messed with command line interfaces, and Apple’s support instructions for setting up power scheduling this way aren’t very helpful. But don’t worry. I’ll describe how to do it below.
But first, a couple of notes.
Things to know
When using Terminal to set your Mac’s power schedule, you can’t enter the command for startup and shutdown separately — the Mac only honors one schedule, and it’s the last one you put in. So, if you try to set your startup time and then your shutdown time, it will only use the shutdown time. Instead, you’ll need to enter a single command.

Second, while it’s fun to use Terminal and pretend you’re a computer wizard, it can also be dangerous if you enter the wrong commands. The ones detailed below won’t do anything harmful, but you should never enter random commands if you don’t understand what they do. Here’s a website that explains much of the syntax you will use. (You can also type “man pmset” in Terminal to get a similar list.)
How to set up a macOS power schedule

Screenshot: Apple
The macOS Terminal app.

Open Terminal.app
Unless you’ve moved it, Terminal should be located in the Utilities folder inside your Mac’s Applications folder. If you can’t find it, try pressing ⌘ (command) + spacebar to summon Spotlight search, type “Terminal,” and hit enter.
Set up a startup schedule
Below is the first part of your command, which sets what time you want your computer to start up every day. Type this in, but don’t hit enter yet, because there’s more to come.
sudo pmset repeat poweron
Next, you’ll set which days you want the schedule to run. If you only want weekdays, the next word in your string is just “weekdays,” without punctuation. Otherwise, each day is represented by a single letter. These are all entered in one chunk, without spaces between the letters. Here are the letter codes:
Monday = MTuesday = TWednesday = WThursday = RFriday = FSaturday = SSunday = U
Next, you’ll enter the time, formatted as HH:MM:SS. For example, 7AM is 7:00:00 and 10AM is 10:00:00. Use 24-hour time. (If you’re not familiar with it, the easiest way to figure that out is to add 12 to the number, meaning that 1PM would be 13:00:00.)

Screenshot: Apple
What it might look like if you only want to set a startup schedule.

So, if you want your computer to boot up at, say, 7AM every weekday, the command would look like this:
sudo pmset repeat poweron weekdays 7:00:00
And for specific days — let’s say Wednesday through Sunday — this is what you’d enter:
sudo pmset repeat poweron WRFSU 7:00:00
If you don’t want to add a shutdown schedule, then you’re done and can hit enter now. (Terminal may require a password here — it’s the same one you use at your computer’s login screen.) Otherwise, continue to the next step.

Screenshot: Apple
An example of a startup / shutdown schedule in Terminal.

Add a shutdown schedule
To add a shutdown time, you’ll add the word “shutdown” to the end of that string, followed by the days and times you want that to happen. When you’re done, your schedule might look like this (notice you’re powering up Wednesday though Sunday at 7AM and shutting down daily at 1AM):
sudo pmset repeat poweron WRFSU 7:00:00 shutdown MTWRFSU 1:00:00
After you’ve set up the schedule the way you want it, you can finally hit enter.
A couple of useful hints
Clearing your power schedule
You might find that automating your computer’s startup and shutdown time doesn’t suit your needs, and you’d like to remove the instructions. You can easily clear your schedule by typing the following:
sudo pmset repeat cancel
Double-check your work
To double-check that you set up the schedule the way you wanted, type this command and press enter:
pmset -g sched
If it doesn’t shut down
One last thing: sometimes, one or more apps will prevent your shutdown from happening, such as if you have unsaved work, and your computer will simply remain in sleep mode, waiting for you to do something about the open apps. You can still schedule your computer to wake from sleep, using the phrase “wakeorpoweron” — like so:
sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 1:00:00 wakeorpoweron MTWRF 7:00:00
And that’s it! Now, your computer should shut down and power up all on its own, and you can reap the power-saving benefits of your fancy new automation!

Mac Mini power button got you down? Try a power schedule! | Screenshot: YouTube

Apple’s new Mac Mini looks like someone hit the Mac Studio with a shrink ray, and I love it. But there is at least one, uh, hot-button issue: you have to reach underneath it to power it on. If that bothers you (and you’re not into flipping it upside down so it looks like it’s wearing a little hat), you can automate when it starts up and shuts down by creating a power schedule. I’ll tell you how.

There are plenty of reasons you might want to do this. I did it on my MacBook Air because I don’t use it that often, and I got tired of opening its lid only to find a dead laptop. Someone else might want their computer to wake up in the middle of the night to perform scheduled backups. Others might need to shut down their Mac for business reasons.

Once upon a time, you could create such a schedule using an easy settings menu in System Preferences. Sadly, that particular feature didn’t make the leap to macOS Ventura when Apple replaced System Preferences with the iOS-like System Settings app.

The good news is that, even after Apple got rid of its easy-to-use power schedule settings, you can still create the automations it enabled. The bad news is that you have to use Apple’s command line tool, Terminal, to do it. It’s a daunting task if you haven’t messed with command line interfaces, and Apple’s support instructions for setting up power scheduling this way aren’t very helpful. But don’t worry. I’ll describe how to do it below.

But first, a couple of notes.

Things to know

When using Terminal to set your Mac’s power schedule, you can’t enter the command for startup and shutdown separately — the Mac only honors one schedule, and it’s the last one you put in. So, if you try to set your startup time and then your shutdown time, it will only use the shutdown time. Instead, you’ll need to enter a single command.

Second, while it’s fun to use Terminal and pretend you’re a computer wizard, it can also be dangerous if you enter the wrong commands. The ones detailed below won’t do anything harmful, but you should never enter random commands if you don’t understand what they do. Here’s a website that explains much of the syntax you will use. (You can also type “man pmset” in Terminal to get a similar list.)

How to set up a macOS power schedule

Screenshot: Apple
The macOS Terminal app.

Open Terminal.app

Unless you’ve moved it, Terminal should be located in the Utilities folder inside your Mac’s Applications folder. If you can’t find it, try pressing ⌘ (command) + spacebar to summon Spotlight search, type “Terminal,” and hit enter.

Set up a startup schedule

Below is the first part of your command, which sets what time you want your computer to start up every day. Type this in, but don’t hit enter yet, because there’s more to come.

sudo pmset repeat poweron

Next, you’ll set which days you want the schedule to run. If you only want weekdays, the next word in your string is just “weekdays,” without punctuation. Otherwise, each day is represented by a single letter. These are all entered in one chunk, without spaces between the letters. Here are the letter codes:

Monday = M
Tuesday = T
Wednesday = W
Thursday = R
Friday = F
Saturday = S
Sunday = U

Next, you’ll enter the time, formatted as HH:MM:SS. For example, 7AM is 7:00:00 and 10AM is 10:00:00. Use 24-hour time. (If you’re not familiar with it, the easiest way to figure that out is to add 12 to the number, meaning that 1PM would be 13:00:00.)

Screenshot: Apple
What it might look like if you only want to set a startup schedule.

So, if you want your computer to boot up at, say, 7AM every weekday, the command would look like this:

sudo pmset repeat poweron weekdays 7:00:00

And for specific days — let’s say Wednesday through Sunday — this is what you’d enter:

sudo pmset repeat poweron WRFSU 7:00:00

If you don’t want to add a shutdown schedule, then you’re done and can hit enter now. (Terminal may require a password here — it’s the same one you use at your computer’s login screen.) Otherwise, continue to the next step.

Screenshot: Apple
An example of a startup / shutdown schedule in Terminal.

Add a shutdown schedule

To add a shutdown time, you’ll add the word “shutdown” to the end of that string, followed by the days and times you want that to happen. When you’re done, your schedule might look like this (notice you’re powering up Wednesday though Sunday at 7AM and shutting down daily at 1AM):

sudo pmset repeat poweron WRFSU 7:00:00 shutdown MTWRFSU 1:00:00

After you’ve set up the schedule the way you want it, you can finally hit enter.

A couple of useful hints

Clearing your power schedule

You might find that automating your computer’s startup and shutdown time doesn’t suit your needs, and you’d like to remove the instructions. You can easily clear your schedule by typing the following:

sudo pmset repeat cancel

Double-check your work

To double-check that you set up the schedule the way you wanted, type this command and press enter:

pmset -g sched

If it doesn’t shut down

One last thing: sometimes, one or more apps will prevent your shutdown from happening, such as if you have unsaved work, and your computer will simply remain in sleep mode, waiting for you to do something about the open apps. You can still schedule your computer to wake from sleep, using the phrase “wakeorpoweron” — like so:

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 1:00:00 wakeorpoweron MTWRF 7:00:00

And that’s it! Now, your computer should shut down and power up all on its own, and you can reap the power-saving benefits of your fancy new automation!

Read More 

Image: Netflix

We still don’t have a firm premiere date, but Netflix has officially confirmed that the fifth — and final — season of Stranger Things will start streaming next year. Aside from that, the streamer also released the titles for all eight episodes in the new season, which might provide some hints as to what to expect:

Episode 1 – “The Crawl”
Episode 2 – “The Vanishing of …” (note: this one is intentionally left incomplete, presumably for spoiler reasons)
Episode 3 – “The Turnbow Trap”
Episode 4 – “Sorcerer”
Episode 5 – “Shock Jock”
Episode 6 – “Escape from Camazotz”
Episode 7 – “The Bridge”
Episode 8 – “The Rightside Up”

That’s not a lot of info, but then again we haven’t heard much since season 4 wrapped up in 2022. Sarah Connor has joined the cast, and production kicked off at the beginning of this year, but aside from that Netflix has been very quiet about the finale of its biggest property. Of course, there are some spinoffs, including an upcoming animated show and a stage show that doubles as a prequel, as the company looks to extend the franchise’s life beyond the main story.
Netflix is in an interesting period, with some of its most iconic shows coming to an end. In addition to Stranger Things, it’s been confirmed that Squid Game will have its third and final season in 2025, and that The Witcher will wrap up with season 5.

Image: Netflix

We still don’t have a firm premiere date, but Netflix has officially confirmed that the fifth — and final — season of Stranger Things will start streaming next year. Aside from that, the streamer also released the titles for all eight episodes in the new season, which might provide some hints as to what to expect:

Episode 1 – “The Crawl”
Episode 2 – “The Vanishing of …” (note: this one is intentionally left incomplete, presumably for spoiler reasons)
Episode 3 – “The Turnbow Trap”
Episode 4 – “Sorcerer”
Episode 5 – “Shock Jock”
Episode 6 – “Escape from Camazotz”
Episode 7 – “The Bridge”
Episode 8 – “The Rightside Up”

That’s not a lot of info, but then again we haven’t heard much since season 4 wrapped up in 2022. Sarah Connor has joined the cast, and production kicked off at the beginning of this year, but aside from that Netflix has been very quiet about the finale of its biggest property. Of course, there are some spinoffs, including an upcoming animated show and a stage show that doubles as a prequel, as the company looks to extend the franchise’s life beyond the main story.

Netflix is in an interesting period, with some of its most iconic shows coming to an end. In addition to Stranger Things, it’s been confirmed that Squid Game will have its third and final season in 2025, and that The Witcher will wrap up with season 5.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Lyft is teaming up with a trio of autonomous driving startups as it races to keep up with Uber, which has also struck a number of deals to put robotaxis on its platform.
Today, the ridehail company said it was teaming up with three different autonomous driving companies: Mobileye, May Mobility, and Nexar. Mobileye and May Mobility plan on deploying autonomous vehicles on Lyft’s network, while Nexar, which makes smart dash cams, will work with Lyft on using its “video telematics to create data-driven solutions that accelerate the deployment of AV technologies.”
Nexar said it has “over 45 petabytes of real-world footage, spanning 200 million miles driven monthly, with over 5 trillion images and over 59 million videos,” which it says creates “a comprehensive and robust dataset for AV technology development.”
Lyft says it’s pioneering what it calls its “Lyft ready” turnkey solution for AV operators in which the company serves as a one-stop shop for a variety of autonomous services, depending on the locale.
“Lyft’s aim is to connect AVs, drivers, riders and partners to create new opportunities for all,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a statement. “Our rideshare network will continue to evolve as millions of people will have the opportunity to earn billions of dollars whether they choose to drive, put their AVs into service, or both.”
The announcement was a little threadbare in terms of details. Mobileye, which is owned by Intel, will deploy vehicles equipped with its autonomous technology on Lyft’s platform. Meanwhile, May Mobility will directly deploy its autonomous Toyota Sienna minivans to the Lyft platform in Atlanta starting in 2025.
The ridehail company needs to keep up with the larger Uber in the race to collect AV partners. Uber has already struck deals with Waymo, Cruise, Aurora, Motional, and Avride. Lyft also has preexisting partnerships with Waymo (which has now ended) and Motional. The ridehail company sold off its AV research and development division to a subsidiary of Toyota back in 2021.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Lyft is teaming up with a trio of autonomous driving startups as it races to keep up with Uber, which has also struck a number of deals to put robotaxis on its platform.

Today, the ridehail company said it was teaming up with three different autonomous driving companies: Mobileye, May Mobility, and Nexar. Mobileye and May Mobility plan on deploying autonomous vehicles on Lyft’s network, while Nexar, which makes smart dash cams, will work with Lyft on using its “video telematics to create data-driven solutions that accelerate the deployment of AV technologies.”

Nexar said it has “over 45 petabytes of real-world footage, spanning 200 million miles driven monthly, with over 5 trillion images and over 59 million videos,” which it says creates “a comprehensive and robust dataset for AV technology development.”

Lyft says it’s pioneering what it calls its “Lyft ready” turnkey solution for AV operators in which the company serves as a one-stop shop for a variety of autonomous services, depending on the locale.

“Lyft’s aim is to connect AVs, drivers, riders and partners to create new opportunities for all,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a statement. “Our rideshare network will continue to evolve as millions of people will have the opportunity to earn billions of dollars whether they choose to drive, put their AVs into service, or both.”

The announcement was a little threadbare in terms of details. Mobileye, which is owned by Intel, will deploy vehicles equipped with its autonomous technology on Lyft’s platform. Meanwhile, May Mobility will directly deploy its autonomous Toyota Sienna minivans to the Lyft platform in Atlanta starting in 2025.

The ridehail company needs to keep up with the larger Uber in the race to collect AV partners. Uber has already struck deals with Waymo, Cruise, Aurora, Motional, and Avride. Lyft also has preexisting partnerships with Waymo (which has now ended) and Motional. The ridehail company sold off its AV research and development division to a subsidiary of Toyota back in 2021.

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AMD’s 7800X3D successor is also better at non-gaming workloads this time around. AMD has dominated PC gaming CPU performance for more than two years. Its X3D chips have provided a boost that Intel has been unable to match, and its new $479 Ryzen 7 9800X3D goes a step further to not only improve gaming performance but also day-to-day tasks and creative workloads.
The first desktop Zen 5 CPUs were disappointing in gaming, but the 9800X3D, which arrives on November 7th, makes some big improvements over the already-great Ryzen 7 7800X3D. I’ve been testing it over the past week, and I’ve found big improvements to productivity workloads, alongside around an 8 percent jump in gaming performance.
Just like the $449 7800X3D, if you mostly play games on your PC, then the 9800X3D should be your next CPU.

AMD’s productivity improvements with the 9800X3D are largely thanks to a redesign of the processor. AMD is using a second generation of its 3D V-Cache technology that sees the cache now sit below the processor cores. It’s a big difference that means the processor cores have better access to cooling and the cache is now less sensitive to high temperatures. That’s the big reason AMD has been able to ramp up the base clock speed by 500MHz and add an additional 200MHz to the boost clock.
Both of these clock speed increases have helped boost productivity performance, alongside the Zen 5 architecture. For the first time on an X3D chip, AMD is even supporting overclocking, which should mean we’ll see some even more impressive results from this processor.

I’ve been testing AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D with a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard, 32GB of G.Skill DDR5-6000, and Nvidia’s RTX 4090. This is one of the latest AM5 motherboards, but the 9800X3D will work with existing AM5 boards thanks to BIOS updates.
I’ve tested a variety of workloads, synthetic benchmarks, and games across AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9800X3D, its existing 7800X3D, and Intel’s $589 Core i9-14900K and Core Ultra 9 285K. All the tests were run on Windows 11 (version 24H2) with virtualization-based security (VBS) and resizable BAR enabled.
All tests are performed at 1080p resolution to analyze raw CPU performance. Like most other CPU reviewers, we don’t test at 1440p or 4K in games to ensure we’re demonstrating the differences between CPUs. Most games demand more from the GPU at higher resolutions, instead of the CPU. But a better CPU can still help out at 4K, especially for upscaling technologies like DLSS or in CPU-heavy titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, and Microsoft Flight Simulator.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D blows the 7800X3D away in productivity and creator workloads. It’s not even close. In Geekbench 6, the 9800X3D is around 20 percent faster than the 7800X3D in both single-threaded and multithreaded performance. In Cinebench 2024, it’s nearly 16 percent faster for the single-thread test and a massive 27 percent faster on the multithreaded workload.
Even in Premiere Pro and Photoshop PugetBench tests, the 9800X3D leaves the 7800X3D behind, with an 18 percent increase in performance in PugetBench for Photoshop and just shy of 10 percent in the Premiere Pro test.
These scores demonstrate the big improvements AMD has made to the 9800X3D for day-to-day tasks and creator workloads. It’s still largely behind Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 285K in these workloads, but AMD has significantly closed the gap the 7800X3D had.

Over on the gaming side, AMD has extended its lead, especially against Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K. Like many other reviewers, when I tested Intel’s latest desktop CPU last month, I found that it was a step back in gaming performance compared to the Core i9-14900K.
The 7800X3D already comfortably beat the 14900K and Core Ultra 9 285K, and the 9800X3D leaves Intel’s gaming CPU efforts even further behind. During my tests, I’ve found that the 9800X3D is around 8 percent faster in games than the 7800X3D. That’s exactly what AMD promised when it announced the 9800X3D, and in some games, it’s even higher.
In Metro Exodus, I saw frame rates with the 9800X3D that were nearly 14 percent higher than the 7800X3D. Cyberpunk 2077 also improved by nearly 11 percent. To put that in perspective, the 9800X3D is 50 percent faster than Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 285K in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p. It’s an astonishing gap for Intel that suggests there must be some kind of bug with that particular combination of game and CPU. But the 9800X3D is still 38 percent faster than Intel’s previous 14900K, so AMD has an impressive advantage here either way.
If you want to squeeze even more performance out of the 9800X3D in games, Gigabyte offers an X3D turbo mode on the Aorus Master, which boosts single-thread performance by performing some bandwidth tuning, unifying CPU core distribution, and balancing some of the hardware power. The result is lower overall performance in workloads that rely on multithreaded performance but some increases in game performance, depending on the game.

I saw a 9 percent jump in performance in Metro Exodus with X3D turbo mode enabled, with just a 3 percent increase in Cyberpunk 2077. Other games saw a smaller increase, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider seeing a boost of nearly 2 percent. In 2023’s Forza Motorsport, the X3D turbo mode had no effect on performance. You definitely sacrifice multithreaded performance in creator workloads if you have this enabled in the BIOS, though.
This extra performance does come at a slight cost to power draw and thermals. During Cinebench 2024, I noticed the 9800X3D hit a CPU package temperature of 88 degrees Celsius, more than the 82C I saw on the 7800X3D during the same test. The 9800X3D also used 160 watts at its peak during this test, whereas the 7800X3D only hit 89 watts.
Both chips have a 120-watt TDP, but it’s clear that the 9800X3D is using this more often than not. During the Black Myth: Wukong benchmark, the 9800X3D was using 131 watts, more than double the 63 watts that the 7800X3D was using for the same test. The 9800X3D power draw is still far behind Intel’s power-hungry 14900K during creator workloads, which pulls more than 260 watts during Cinebench tests. Power draw will also vary depending on the types of games you’re playing.

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9800X3D has a new generation of its 3D V-Cache technology.

What’s clear to me with this 9800X3D is that AMD has now established an even more impressive gap over Intel in gaming performance, while shrinking the performance differences in productivity and creator workloads. I think this smaller gap on the non-gaming side will now tempt more creators who also play games over to AMD.
Intel sacrificed gaming performance in favor of efficiency with its Core Ultra 9 285K, but many PC gamers simply don’t care about power efficiency unless it results in significantly cooler temperatures and, therefore, better performance and less throttling. Intel’s sacrifices make the 9800X3D an obvious purchase if you want the best PC gaming performance, and the Core Ultra 9 285K is an obvious choice if you want the best in productivity and creator performance and play games very little or not at all.
If, like me, you’re someone who plays a lot of PC games but also renders 4K videos and needs great performance in productivity tasks, then it’s a tougher choice. Intel has always offered a good balance between creator workloads and gaming, but AMD beats it in gaming and is closing the gap on the productivity side. If I were mostly gaming, I would pick the 9800X3D or even wait to see what a rumored 16-core Ryzen 9000 X3D chip could deliver very soon.

AMD’s 7800X3D successor is also better at non-gaming workloads this time around.

AMD has dominated PC gaming CPU performance for more than two years. Its X3D chips have provided a boost that Intel has been unable to match, and its new $479 Ryzen 7 9800X3D goes a step further to not only improve gaming performance but also day-to-day tasks and creative workloads.

The first desktop Zen 5 CPUs were disappointing in gaming, but the 9800X3D, which arrives on November 7th, makes some big improvements over the already-great Ryzen 7 7800X3D. I’ve been testing it over the past week, and I’ve found big improvements to productivity workloads, alongside around an 8 percent jump in gaming performance.

Just like the $449 7800X3D, if you mostly play games on your PC, then the 9800X3D should be your next CPU.

AMD’s productivity improvements with the 9800X3D are largely thanks to a redesign of the processor. AMD is using a second generation of its 3D V-Cache technology that sees the cache now sit below the processor cores. It’s a big difference that means the processor cores have better access to cooling and the cache is now less sensitive to high temperatures. That’s the big reason AMD has been able to ramp up the base clock speed by 500MHz and add an additional 200MHz to the boost clock.

Both of these clock speed increases have helped boost productivity performance, alongside the Zen 5 architecture. For the first time on an X3D chip, AMD is even supporting overclocking, which should mean we’ll see some even more impressive results from this processor.

I’ve been testing AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D with a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard, 32GB of G.Skill DDR5-6000, and Nvidia’s RTX 4090. This is one of the latest AM5 motherboards, but the 9800X3D will work with existing AM5 boards thanks to BIOS updates.

I’ve tested a variety of workloads, synthetic benchmarks, and games across AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9800X3D, its existing 7800X3D, and Intel’s $589 Core i9-14900K and Core Ultra 9 285K. All the tests were run on Windows 11 (version 24H2) with virtualization-based security (VBS) and resizable BAR enabled.

All tests are performed at 1080p resolution to analyze raw CPU performance. Like most other CPU reviewers, we don’t test at 1440p or 4K in games to ensure we’re demonstrating the differences between CPUs. Most games demand more from the GPU at higher resolutions, instead of the CPU. But a better CPU can still help out at 4K, especially for upscaling technologies like DLSS or in CPU-heavy titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D blows the 7800X3D away in productivity and creator workloads. It’s not even close. In Geekbench 6, the 9800X3D is around 20 percent faster than the 7800X3D in both single-threaded and multithreaded performance. In Cinebench 2024, it’s nearly 16 percent faster for the single-thread test and a massive 27 percent faster on the multithreaded workload.

Even in Premiere Pro and Photoshop PugetBench tests, the 9800X3D leaves the 7800X3D behind, with an 18 percent increase in performance in PugetBench for Photoshop and just shy of 10 percent in the Premiere Pro test.

These scores demonstrate the big improvements AMD has made to the 9800X3D for day-to-day tasks and creator workloads. It’s still largely behind Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 285K in these workloads, but AMD has significantly closed the gap the 7800X3D had.

Over on the gaming side, AMD has extended its lead, especially against Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K. Like many other reviewers, when I tested Intel’s latest desktop CPU last month, I found that it was a step back in gaming performance compared to the Core i9-14900K.

The 7800X3D already comfortably beat the 14900K and Core Ultra 9 285K, and the 9800X3D leaves Intel’s gaming CPU efforts even further behind. During my tests, I’ve found that the 9800X3D is around 8 percent faster in games than the 7800X3D. That’s exactly what AMD promised when it announced the 9800X3D, and in some games, it’s even higher.

In Metro Exodus, I saw frame rates with the 9800X3D that were nearly 14 percent higher than the 7800X3D. Cyberpunk 2077 also improved by nearly 11 percent. To put that in perspective, the 9800X3D is 50 percent faster than Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 285K in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p. It’s an astonishing gap for Intel that suggests there must be some kind of bug with that particular combination of game and CPU. But the 9800X3D is still 38 percent faster than Intel’s previous 14900K, so AMD has an impressive advantage here either way.

If you want to squeeze even more performance out of the 9800X3D in games, Gigabyte offers an X3D turbo mode on the Aorus Master, which boosts single-thread performance by performing some bandwidth tuning, unifying CPU core distribution, and balancing some of the hardware power. The result is lower overall performance in workloads that rely on multithreaded performance but some increases in game performance, depending on the game.

I saw a 9 percent jump in performance in Metro Exodus with X3D turbo mode enabled, with just a 3 percent increase in Cyberpunk 2077. Other games saw a smaller increase, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider seeing a boost of nearly 2 percent. In 2023’s Forza Motorsport, the X3D turbo mode had no effect on performance. You definitely sacrifice multithreaded performance in creator workloads if you have this enabled in the BIOS, though.

This extra performance does come at a slight cost to power draw and thermals. During Cinebench 2024, I noticed the 9800X3D hit a CPU package temperature of 88 degrees Celsius, more than the 82C I saw on the 7800X3D during the same test. The 9800X3D also used 160 watts at its peak during this test, whereas the 7800X3D only hit 89 watts.

Both chips have a 120-watt TDP, but it’s clear that the 9800X3D is using this more often than not. During the Black Myth: Wukong benchmark, the 9800X3D was using 131 watts, more than double the 63 watts that the 7800X3D was using for the same test. The 9800X3D power draw is still far behind Intel’s power-hungry 14900K during creator workloads, which pulls more than 260 watts during Cinebench tests. Power draw will also vary depending on the types of games you’re playing.

What’s clear to me with this 9800X3D is that AMD has now established an even more impressive gap over Intel in gaming performance, while shrinking the performance differences in productivity and creator workloads. I think this smaller gap on the non-gaming side will now tempt more creators who also play games over to AMD.

Intel sacrificed gaming performance in favor of efficiency with its Core Ultra 9 285K, but many PC gamers simply don’t care about power efficiency unless it results in significantly cooler temperatures and, therefore, better performance and less throttling. Intel’s sacrifices make the 9800X3D an obvious purchase if you want the best PC gaming performance, and the Core Ultra 9 285K is an obvious choice if you want the best in productivity and creator performance and play games very little or not at all.

If, like me, you’re someone who plays a lot of PC games but also renders 4K videos and needs great performance in productivity tasks, then it’s a tougher choice. Intel has always offered a good balance between creator workloads and gaming, but AMD beats it in gaming and is closing the gap on the productivity side. If I were mostly gaming, I would pick the 9800X3D or even wait to see what a rumored 16-core Ryzen 9000 X3D chip could deliver very soon.

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The DJI Goggles N3 headset, DJI Neo drone, and RC Motion 3 controller. | Photo: The Verge

I’m hoping DJI’s affordable new FPV goggles will be the missing puzzle piece — a way to cheaply buy the “It feels like I’m flying!” experience I had with the DJI Avata for maybe $400 or $500 tops, rather than the current $800 to $1,000 you might have to pay.
See, the company announced its budget $199 Neo drone in September that works with goggles, and today it’s announcing the $229 DJI Goggles N3. Add a $99 RC Motion 3 controller and you get airplane-like flight, with first-person video that puts you in the virtual cockpit.
But I can’t quite confirm that it’s worth your money yet — because DJI says my unit likely shipped with a defect, and I’ll need a little more testing time. More on that below.
At $229, the Goggles N3 are definitely less expensive than previous pairs, saving you $120 over the company’s $349 Goggles Integra, its previous budget set, and they’re less than half the price of the premium $499 DJI Goggles 3. Yet they’ve got the same one-tap defogging (using an internal fan) and DJI O4 video transmission as the Goggles 3. I flew the Neo just as far with the DJI’s cheapest and most expensive goggles before the signal cut out and the drone found its way home. You still get headtracking so you can look up and down while you’re flying forward, too.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Left: $500 Goggles 3. Right: $229 Goggles N3.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Same comparison, now with the units upside down.

On paper, the N3 even seem better than the more premium models in a couple ways: a wider 54-degree field of view (compare to 44 degrees), an eyebox so big you can put your prescription glasses inside, with no need to twist knobs to make the lenses match your vision, the company claims.
But instead of the crisp, colorful, perfect micro-OLED screens included in all of DJI’s other modern FPV goggles, the N3 has a single, comparatively washed-out LCD screen inside. To aim that panel at your face, there’s a big diagonal optic inside (not unlike a periscope) to bounce the light at a right angle.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The single screen inside the DJI Goggles N3, captured through the lens.

In the case of my review unit, the center of my screen seems to be aimed at the center of my nosepiece. With no way to adjust the lenses, I’m stuck with an out-of-focus image all the time. Not being able to properly see anything has got to be a fluke, right? DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong tells me over the phone that I might have a defective unit.
If it is just a fluke, I’d be fine with most of the other corners DJI has cut. I could live with a slightly washed out image. I don’t miss the loss of the Goggles 3’s barely useful passthrough vision or silicone padding — fabric’s good enough for me. I don’t terribly mind that the Goggles N3 has a visible cable sticking out the side instead of weaving it into the headband like previous models.

While it’s heavier, it’s only 2.3 ounces (65g) heavier than the Goggles 3 according to my kitchen scale, and it’s still reasonably balanced out by the integrated battery at the back of the headset. Frankly, even the Goggles N3 has more wireless range and more fancy features than I typically need. But the core of the experience needs to be a crisp, clear look through the eye of the drone. I’ll let you know if that materializes in the next couple of weeks.
I should also note that the DJI Neo isn’t anywhere near as good as the Avata or Avata 2 at being an FPV drone, simply because of its weight and power ratios — it’s not as nimble as those more dedicated models, and the wind can more easily push it around.
Like them or not, DJI doesn’t have a lot of other affordable FPV options on the table. The company recently discontinued its $829 Avata Explorer Combo (though you can find some refurbished deals), and Kong says there are “no current plans” to let you use the $350 Goggles Integra with the DJI Neo, even though DJI now lets you use the Avata 2 and DJI Mini 4 Pro with the Integra. So if you don’t like the Goggles N3, the $500 Goggles 3 is the only other set that currently works with the Neo.
In the US, where DJI is facing some import difficulties, it’ll only sell the the Goggles N3 on its own, just as it only sells the DJI Neo on its own. In the UK and Europe, it’s a bundle to start: the new “DJI Neo Motion Fly More Combo” with drone, goggles, controller, three batteries, and a charging hub is available today for £449 or €529, with the standalone $229/£229/€269 Goggles N3 estimated to arrive in late November.

The DJI Goggles N3 headset, DJI Neo drone, and RC Motion 3 controller. | Photo: The Verge

I’m hoping DJI’s affordable new FPV goggles will be the missing puzzle piece — a way to cheaply buy the “It feels like I’m flying!” experience I had with the DJI Avata for maybe $400 or $500 tops, rather than the current $800 to $1,000 you might have to pay.

See, the company announced its budget $199 Neo drone in September that works with goggles, and today it’s announcing the $229 DJI Goggles N3. Add a $99 RC Motion 3 controller and you get airplane-like flight, with first-person video that puts you in the virtual cockpit.

But I can’t quite confirm that it’s worth your money yet — because DJI says my unit likely shipped with a defect, and I’ll need a little more testing time. More on that below.

At $229, the Goggles N3 are definitely less expensive than previous pairs, saving you $120 over the company’s $349 Goggles Integra, its previous budget set, and they’re less than half the price of the premium $499 DJI Goggles 3. Yet they’ve got the same one-tap defogging (using an internal fan) and DJI O4 video transmission as the Goggles 3. I flew the Neo just as far with the DJI’s cheapest and most expensive goggles before the signal cut out and the drone found its way home. You still get headtracking so you can look up and down while you’re flying forward, too.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Left: $500 Goggles 3. Right: $229 Goggles N3.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Same comparison, now with the units upside down.

On paper, the N3 even seem better than the more premium models in a couple ways: a wider 54-degree field of view (compare to 44 degrees), an eyebox so big you can put your prescription glasses inside, with no need to twist knobs to make the lenses match your vision, the company claims.

But instead of the crisp, colorful, perfect micro-OLED screens included in all of DJI’s other modern FPV goggles, the N3 has a single, comparatively washed-out LCD screen inside. To aim that panel at your face, there’s a big diagonal optic inside (not unlike a periscope) to bounce the light at a right angle.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The single screen inside the DJI Goggles N3, captured through the lens.

In the case of my review unit, the center of my screen seems to be aimed at the center of my nosepiece. With no way to adjust the lenses, I’m stuck with an out-of-focus image all the time. Not being able to properly see anything has got to be a fluke, right? DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong tells me over the phone that I might have a defective unit.

If it is just a fluke, I’d be fine with most of the other corners DJI has cut. I could live with a slightly washed out image. I don’t miss the loss of the Goggles 3’s barely useful passthrough vision or silicone padding — fabric’s good enough for me. I don’t terribly mind that the Goggles N3 has a visible cable sticking out the side instead of weaving it into the headband like previous models.

While it’s heavier, it’s only 2.3 ounces (65g) heavier than the Goggles 3 according to my kitchen scale, and it’s still reasonably balanced out by the integrated battery at the back of the headset. Frankly, even the Goggles N3 has more wireless range and more fancy features than I typically need. But the core of the experience needs to be a crisp, clear look through the eye of the drone. I’ll let you know if that materializes in the next couple of weeks.

I should also note that the DJI Neo isn’t anywhere near as good as the Avata or Avata 2 at being an FPV drone, simply because of its weight and power ratios — it’s not as nimble as those more dedicated models, and the wind can more easily push it around.

Like them or not, DJI doesn’t have a lot of other affordable FPV options on the table. The company recently discontinued its $829 Avata Explorer Combo (though you can find some refurbished deals), and Kong says there are “no current plans” to let you use the $350 Goggles Integra with the DJI Neo, even though DJI now lets you use the Avata 2 and DJI Mini 4 Pro with the Integra. So if you don’t like the Goggles N3, the $500 Goggles 3 is the only other set that currently works with the Neo.

In the US, where DJI is facing some import difficulties, it’ll only sell the the Goggles N3 on its own, just as it only sells the DJI Neo on its own. In the UK and Europe, it’s a bundle to start: the new “DJI Neo Motion Fly More Combo” with drone, goggles, controller, three batteries, and a charging hub is available today for £449 or €529, with the standalone $229/£229/€269 Goggles N3 estimated to arrive in late November.

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Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Corning to determine whether it has broken antitrust rules with its dominant Gorilla Glass product. Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass is used to protect most of the top phones and tablets, with both Samsung and Apple using it extensively across their range of devices. The EU is concerned that Corning has used a variety of exclusivity contracts to exclude rival glass makers from the phone market.
“It is very frustrating and costly experience to break a mobile phone screen. Therefore, strong competition in the production of the cover glass used to protect such devices is crucial to ensure low prices and high-quality glass,” says outgoing EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager. “We are investigating if Corning, a major producer of this special glass, may have tried to exclude rival glass producers, thereby depriving consumers from cheaper and more break-resistant glass.”
The Commission’s concerns are centered on the agreements with mobile device makers and companies that produce raw glass. The EU is looking into exclusive sourcing obligations that have required device makers to source “all of nearly all” of their glass from Corning, enabled rebates for exclusivity deals, and forced device makers to report on competitive offers and only accept them if Corning failed to price match.
If Corning is found guilty of breaching EU competition rules then it could face a fine, but the glass maker will also have the opportunity to address the Commission’s concerns with a set of commitments that can bring the antitrust investigation to an end.
Corning’s Gorilla Glass offers additional damage resistance for phone and tablet displays against scratches, bumps, and drops. It was once a major selling point for Apple’s iPhone devices, before Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass became a dominant feature in modern smartphones.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Corning to determine whether it has broken antitrust rules with its dominant Gorilla Glass product. Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass is used to protect most of the top phones and tablets, with both Samsung and Apple using it extensively across their range of devices. The EU is concerned that Corning has used a variety of exclusivity contracts to exclude rival glass makers from the phone market.

“It is very frustrating and costly experience to break a mobile phone screen. Therefore, strong competition in the production of the cover glass used to protect such devices is crucial to ensure low prices and high-quality glass,” says outgoing EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager. “We are investigating if Corning, a major producer of this special glass, may have tried to exclude rival glass producers, thereby depriving consumers from cheaper and more break-resistant glass.”

The Commission’s concerns are centered on the agreements with mobile device makers and companies that produce raw glass. The EU is looking into exclusive sourcing obligations that have required device makers to source “all of nearly all” of their glass from Corning, enabled rebates for exclusivity deals, and forced device makers to report on competitive offers and only accept them if Corning failed to price match.

If Corning is found guilty of breaching EU competition rules then it could face a fine, but the glass maker will also have the opportunity to address the Commission’s concerns with a set of commitments that can bring the antitrust investigation to an end.

Corning’s Gorilla Glass offers additional damage resistance for phone and tablet displays against scratches, bumps, and drops. It was once a major selling point for Apple’s iPhone devices, before Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass became a dominant feature in modern smartphones.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Trump, who announced his reelection campaign in 2022, is the second president in US history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Trump declared victory early on Wednesday, followed by the AP, The New York Times, and other outlets.
Trump has made immigration, the border, and the economy hallmarks of his reelection campaign. As the Republican nominee, he promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, suggested that he’d sign a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and pledged to embrace Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. His allies at the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute have drafted hundreds of executive orders ahead of Trump’s second term. Their plans include a dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and a crackdown on legal immigration.
Trump — who challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election and whose supporters stormed the Capitol amid efforts to certify the election — repeatedly refused to say he’d accept the results of the 2024 election unless he won. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, has also refused to say whether he believes Trump lost the 2020 election.
Among Trump’s challengers in the Republican primary, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was the most vocal critic of his response to the January 6th riots. Others, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, were far less critical of Trump. In the end, most of Trump’s critics within his own party fell in line, and Harris’s efforts to court Trump-skeptical Republicans weren’t enough to push her over the edge. Trump flipped crucial swing states including Pennsylvania and Georgia, giving him the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
This was a tumultuous campaign for Trump, whose favorability with voters rose after he was shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and dipped after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Biden’s decision to step down and endorse vice president Kamala Harris proved to be a hurdle for Trump, whose campaign had until that point had largely focused on Biden’s age and fitness for office.
Trump also received a significant financial boost from the tech elite, who collectively contributed hundreds of millions of dollars towards Trump’s campaign. Through his America PAC, which he created to help reelect the former president, Elon Musk held get-out-the-vote events in battleground states and gave away millions of dollars to registered swing state voters.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Trump, who announced his reelection campaign in 2022, is the second president in US history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Trump declared victory early on Wednesday, followed by the AP, The New York Times, and other outlets.

Trump has made immigration, the border, and the economy hallmarks of his reelection campaign. As the Republican nominee, he promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, suggested that he’d sign a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and pledged to embrace Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. His allies at the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute have drafted hundreds of executive orders ahead of Trump’s second term. Their plans include a dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and a crackdown on legal immigration.

Trump — who challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election and whose supporters stormed the Capitol amid efforts to certify the election — repeatedly refused to say he’d accept the results of the 2024 election unless he won. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, has also refused to say whether he believes Trump lost the 2020 election.

Among Trump’s challengers in the Republican primary, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was the most vocal critic of his response to the January 6th riots. Others, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, were far less critical of Trump. In the end, most of Trump’s critics within his own party fell in line, and Harris’s efforts to court Trump-skeptical Republicans weren’t enough to push her over the edge. Trump flipped crucial swing states including Pennsylvania and Georgia, giving him the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

This was a tumultuous campaign for Trump, whose favorability with voters rose after he was shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and dipped after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Biden’s decision to step down and endorse vice president Kamala Harris proved to be a hurdle for Trump, whose campaign had until that point had largely focused on Biden’s age and fitness for office.

Trump also received a significant financial boost from the tech elite, who collectively contributed hundreds of millions of dollars towards Trump’s campaign. Through his America PAC, which he created to help reelect the former president, Elon Musk held get-out-the-vote events in battleground states and gave away millions of dollars to registered swing state voters.

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