Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions are up to 50 percent off right now
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve been contemplating signing up for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate so you can play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, you might want to head on over to Woot. Now until 1:59AM ET on December 13th, the retailer is offering a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $28.99 (about $31 off) with promo code GAMEPASS. Only customers making their first purchase on Woot are eligible, though; everyone else will have to pay $33.99 to redeem the digital code. Woot’s current promo is a terrific deal considering a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will normally run you $19.99. After you finish playing the new Indiana Jones game, you can play dozens of other downloadable titles for both Xbox and PC, including new releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and older titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield, Diablo IV, Halo Infinite, and Hi-Fi Rush. Subscribers...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeIf you’ve been contemplating signing up for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate so you can play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, you might want to head on over to Woot. Now until 1:59AM ET on December 13th, the retailer is offering a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $28.99 (about $31 off) with promo code GAMEPASS. Only customers making their first purchase on Woot are eligible, though; everyone else will have to pay $33.99 to redeem the digital code.Woot’s current promo is a terrific deal considering a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will normally run you $19.99. After you finish playing the new Indiana Jones game, you can play dozens of other downloadable t**les for both Xbox and PC, including new releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and older t**les like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield, Diablo IV, Halo Infinite, and Hi-Fi Rush. Subscribers can even stream select non-Game Pass t**les they own via their TV, smartphone, tablet, and PC through a web browser. This includes Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Balatro, and more.In addition to granting access to a wide range of games — including EA Play t**les — an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription lets you take advantage of exclusive deals, online multiplayer, and other perks, some of which aren’t available on the cheaper Game Pass tiers.
Other deals and discounts of note
Elgato’s Stream Deck Neo is on sale for an all-time low of $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. The excellent macro controller comes witheight LCD b***ons, which you can program to easily control your smart lights, pause Slack notifications, and perform a variety of other shortcuts with the press of a b***on. It also comes with some other handy conveniences, including a tiny info display that shows the time and a pair of capacitive b***ons that let you quickly cycle through multiple pages of macros.
The Onn Google TV 4K Prois selling for $39 (about $11 off) at Walmart right now. The streaming device is a higher-end version of the excellent Onn Google TV 4K Streaming Box. It delivers even more value in some ways, though, as it functions as a smart speaker that’s compatible with Google a**istant. The 4K streaming device also adds support for Dolby Vision and Atmos, as well as Wi-Fi 6, while retaining built-in Chromecast support.
Amazon is selling the Ring Wired Doorbell Pro (formerly known as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2) with a Chime Pro for $199.99 (about $90 off), which is $10 shy of the bundle’s best price to date. The wired Pro is one of our favorite video doorbells, one that works with Amazon Alexa and integrates well with Ring Alarm and other Ring cameras. It offers top-notch video quality and a square aspect ratio, though many features — including person alerts and the ability to save and share clips — require a premium Ring subscription plan. The Chime Pro, meanwhile, doubles as a speaker for notifications and a Wi-Fi extender, so the doorbell receives a strong signal.
Sony proves it’s not reversing its decision as warnings about physical discs appear on new PS5s
After Sony revealed that it would ramp down disc production in 2028, gamers began making their voices heard. The idea was that, if they showed enough support, Sony might rethink its strategy and roll back its decision. Unfortunately for fans of physical libraries, it seems that Sony has already doubled...
After Sony revealed that it would ramp down disc production in 2028, gamers began making their voices heard. The idea was that, if they showed enough support, Sony might rethink its strategy and roll back its decision. Unfortunately for fans of physical libraries, it seems that Sony has already doubled down on its plan, as new PS5s now show a warning about going digital-only.
Daniel Martinez Dallas
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Nintendo beats earnings thanks to US tariff refunds it won’t share with gamers
Nintendo has smashed its first-quarter earnings estimates for the fiscal year, bolstered by strong games sales and US tariff refunds, though its customers likely won't receive anything from the latter. In its latest financial results, Nintendo reports that operating profits soared to 142.5 billion yen (about $902 million) between April...
Nintendo has smashed its first-quarter earnings estimates for the fiscal year, bolstered by strong games sales and US tariff refunds, though its customers likely won't receive anything from the latter. In its latest financial results, Nintendo reports that operating profits soared to 142.5 billion yen (about $902 million) between April 1st and June 30th, compared to 56.9 billion yen (about $360 million) for the same quarter last year - an increase of 150.5 percent.This spike is partially attributed to a boom in game sales, with Switch 2 software sales increasing by 9.2 percent compared to the previous year, and software for the original Sw …Read the full story at The Verge.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Elon Musk’s attempt at an AI Wikipedia hasn’t been updated in months
xAI's Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia with AI-generated articles that Elon Musk once promised would be a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia, apparently hasn't been updated since April 24th, according to a report from Lawfare. "As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," Lawfare said....
xAI's Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia with AI-generated articles that Elon Musk once promised would be a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia, apparently hasn't been updated since April 24th, according to a report from Lawfare. "As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," Lawfare said.Grokipedia launched in v0.1 in October 2025 with an initial batch of 885,000 articles, and is now on v0.2 (released in November 2025) and has more than 6,000,000 total articles, according to grokipedia.com/live. But that live page also has a section titled "Recent changes to…" with a message under it that reads "No live edits av …Read the full story at The Verge.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
OpenAI says Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit is ‘rotten to its core’
OpenAI has asked a federal judge to toss out Apple's landmark lawsuit accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets, describing the allegations as "meritless." In a motion filed yesterday to dismiss the complaint, OpenAI says that Apple is mischaracterizing both the actions of the AI startup's employees as theft,...
OpenAI has asked a federal judge to toss out Apple's landmark lawsuit accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets, describing the allegations as "meritless." In a motion filed yesterday to dismiss the complaint, OpenAI says that Apple is mischaracterizing both the actions of the AI startup's employees as theft, and "generic" product development information as "trade secrets," adding that Apple made no reasonable efforts to maintain such secrecy.The dismissal request is in response to a lawsuit filed by Apple in July, alleging that former Apple employees that went on to work for OpenAI stole confidential documents to further OpenAI …Read the full story at The Verge.
Daniel Martinez Dallas
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Someone made a system that loads their Steam games using floppy disks, and it’s pretty genius
As everyone debates Sony's recent decision to go digital-only, people have been finding fun ways to turn their Steam library into a physical form. We've already seen someone turn SSDs into Game Boy cartridges that load a game when plugged in, which was pretty wild by itself. Now, someone has...
As everyone debates Sony's recent decision to go digital-only, people have been finding fun ways to turn their Steam library into a physical form. We've already seen someone turn SSDs into Game Boy cartridges that load a game when plugged in, which was pretty wild by itself. Now, someone has devised a system where you can load a Steam game with its corresponding floppy disk, and as you may have guessed by now, it uses a bit of trickery to get everything working.
آنیتا حسینی Iran
Published by: aplhsindia.in
My decade with Synology is over — a networking company just proved there’s a better way to build a NAS
For years, Synology was the safe bet for home NAS enclosures. And like many of you, I went with the safe bet for the best part of a decade. But things change, and my home storage needs changed. It’s not even because Synology became actively hostile to users, although that’s...
For years, Synology was the safe bet for home NAS enclosures. And like many of you, I went with the safe bet for the best part of a decade. But things change, and my home storage needs changed. It’s not even because Synology became actively hostile to users, although that’s certainly been on my mind, but because the all-in-one NAS formula stopped making sense to me.
Michael Johnson Chicago
Published by: aplhsindia.in
A Windows 11 service you never asked for is making your laptop run warmer and die sooner
Have you ever wondered why your laptop is running warmer than you'd like? You might think it is just the hardware struggling to run the apps you are using. But it is also Windows itself that is causing it — even on high-performance systems.
Have you ever wondered why your laptop is running warmer than you'd like? You might think it is just the hardware struggling to run the apps you are using. But it is also Windows itself that is causing it — even on high-performance systems.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
After a week in Zed, I couldn’t go back to how slow Cursor had become
I prefer Cursor over VS Code because it is more agentic, and its $20 subscription gives me generous usage limits that let me get actual work done. I am comparing Cursor with VS Code because both are based on the Electron framework and are similar in speed and performance. They...
I prefer Cursor over VS Code because it is more agentic, and its $20 subscription gives me generous usage limits that let me get actual work done. I am comparing Cursor with VS Code because both are based on the Electron framework and are similar in speed and performance. They take longer to open files and folders once you have a significant number of extensions installed. They also consume a lot of RAM.
Olivia Miller Seattle
Published by: aplhsindia.in
The empty PCIe slots in your PC can do more than hold a graphics card
When I built my first PC, I figured the PCIe slot was useless outside of plugging a graphics card, and I went my merry way after tossing my pixel-pushing companion into the rig. Unfortunately, this trend continued for longer than I’d like to admit, until I ran into a situation...
When I built my first PC, I figured the PCIe slot was useless outside of plugging a graphics card, and I went my merry way after tossing my pixel-pushing companion into the rig. Unfortunately, this trend continued for longer than I’d like to admit, until I ran into a situation where I needed extra adapter cards after my motherboard’s I/O ports proved to be inadequate for my tinkering misadventures.
Anastasia Noori Norway
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Someone built a Steam Machine face plate that lets you stick your Steam Controller onto it
Valve has been pretty open about what people do with the faceplate of their Steam Machines. In fact, it made the designs for an e-ink front display open-source so you can make your own at home. Now, someone has made their own faceplate that can hold a Steam Controller in...
Valve has been pretty open about what people do with the faceplate of their Steam Machines. In fact, it made the designs for an e-ink front display open-source so you can make your own at home. Now, someone has made their own faceplate that can hold a Steam Controller in place while also charging it using the official puck.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
That old tablet in your drawer is the smart home dashboard you keep meaning to buy
Having smart devices in your home can make life a lot easier, but once you have a few, you may start wishing you had a dedicated device to control them. And there are some devices out there that sell themselves as just that — dashboards for your smart home.
Having smart devices in your home can make life a lot easier, but once you have a few, you may start wishing you had a dedicated device to control them. And there are some devices out there that sell themselves as just that — dashboards for your smart home.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
4 Android widgets I use every day on my Pixel that aren’t from Google
When you buy a new Pixel phone, you are likely — or even pushed — to install and/or use preinstalled Google apps and widgets. However, there are several widgets that I use nearly every day that are not created by Google. In many cases, they work better than the typical...
When you buy a new Pixel phone, you are likely — or even pushed — to install and/or use preinstalled Google apps and widgets. However, there are several widgets that I use nearly every day that are not created by Google. In many cases, they work better than the typical Google ones you are expected to use.
