Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year outside of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with this year’s autumnal incarnation (once again dubbed Prime Big Deal Days) running from October 8th through the 9th. The two-day shopping affair will likely grant Prime members access to some of the best prices of the year on Amazon devices, as well as products from Sony, Sonos, Peloton, Withings, and other well-known brands. This applies to items spanning a range of categories, including gaming peripherals, laptops, 4K TVs, phones, PC accessories, and more.
As always, you can count on us to publish only the best deals during Prime Big Deal Days — as well as any worthwhile ones featured at Walmart, Best Buy, and other competing retailers. That said, if you want to be sure you catch any and all deals that are most important to you — or be among the first to know of certain price drops — we’ve compiled some helpful tools and advice.
Below, we’ve spelled out a few of our biggest deal-hunting tips, from how to use automated price trackers to the different ways you can set up your own personalized deal alerts. All of these methods and tools are free to use, and once you put in just a little bit of work, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t need to take much action until it comes time to make a purchase.
Use a price-tracking tool or deal aggregator
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CamelCamelCamel’s extension helps you keep tabs on historical price trends with useful graphs like these.Screenshot: CamelCamelCamel
CamelCamelCamel tracks the price of every product sold on Amazon and can send you alerts when they reach the price that’s right for you. Once a product reaches the desired price you’ve set or lower, you’ll get an email about it. CamelCamelCamel only works for products on Amazon, however, so you’ll need to use a different one below if you want to track price movement at Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and other retailers.
To track prices and get alerts via email, you’ll need to create a free account. Also, we suggest installing the site’s browser extension, called The Camelizer, which lets you see pricing trends on a product-by-product basis and allows you to set your desired price without navigating away from Amazon. It’s fantastic and easy to use.
As soon as one of the products falls below the amount set on your price alert, you’ll instantly get an email. And if you already have a wishlist saved on Amazon, you can import it into CamelCamelCamel.
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Honey’s price-tracking feature can automatically find coupons on your behalf when viewing a product.Screenshot: Honey
Like CamelCamelCamel, the PayPal Honey browser extension can track the prices of items you’re interested in, and it will alert you via email when it finds a deal. However, unlike the price-tracking site above, Honey will also scour each site you visit for offer codes that can be applied to your checkout total to save you even more money.
Honey works with Amazon and many other retailers, and you can add items to your “Droplist,” which is basically just a wishlist. In most instances, the option to add an item to your list pops up on the right-hand side, and you can select the price watch duration as well as the percentage off you’re looking for. As an added convenience, Honey will also automatically add items you frequently browse to your Droplist thanks to its so-called “Smart Droplist” feature, which can be turned on and off at your discretion.
Slickdeals allows you to set up custom alerts for specific keywords, though finding the right parameters can be a trial and error process.Screenshot: Slickdeals
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Slickdealsaggregates some of the best deals around the internet, as discovered by its team and community of users. It’s a great place to find a curated set of deals on things you might be interested in. The site also allows you to create deal alerts based on keywords, but they work a little differently on Slickdealsthan they do on the above sites.
You can type in a product name, like “Sonos Era 100” or a retailer’s name, and once it’s added to your list, you’ll be notified of a deal alert if it meets your criteria. You can set it to alert you to any deal related to your keyword, or you can filter out deals so that you’ll be notified if, for example, the deal is popular enough to make it to Slickdeals’ front page or earned a high rating from the community. Setting these keywords a little too broadly may result in frequent notification pings and emails, though, so you’ll need to use some discretion and find the right balance of how aggressively you want Slickdeals to notify you.
Unlike the Honey extension and The Camelizer, Keepa integrates historical pricing data directly into the Amazon product listing.Screenshot: Keepa
Keepa is another handy tool you can use to track and compare Amazon prices over time. Like CamelCamelCamel, Keepa provides charts that track pricing trends and will alert you when it finds a deal. You can also import any wishlists you’ve previously saved on Amazon.
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Unlike CamelCamelCamel, however, you don’t necessarily need to create an account in order to track prices with Keepa. You just need to install the extension, and Keepa will automatically add a price history graph to supported product listings. The embedded extension features different tabs as well, one of which showcases pricing history and another that allows you to specify various pricing details. Once you’ve set your desired price, you’ll then receive price alerts via email, push notification, Telegram, or RSS.
Set up deal alert notifications through Alexa or the Amazon app
If you’re a Prime member who owns a fourth-gen Echo speaker or a newer model, you can also request that Amazon send you deal notifications up to 24 hours ahead of time on products you’re interested in. Amazon can alert you of price drops on eligible products in your shopping cart or wishlist, as well as anything you’ve marked as “saved for later.” To enable the feature, tap More > Settings > Notifications in the Alexa app, and then tap Amazon Shopping. Then, scroll down to Shopping Recommendations and enable Deal Recommendations. Once done, you’ll receive a notification on both your device and your Echo speaker (the latter in the form of a yellow ring) notifying you of the deal.
Alternatively, you can sign up to receive deal alerts regarding products you’ve recently viewed in the Amazon Shopping app, as well as those related to your recent search history. If you’re a Prime member, you just need to navigate to the Prime Big Deal Days event page in the mobile app between now and October 8th to create the alert. Once done, you’ll receive push notifications for any deal(s) you’ve subscribed to when the event begins on October 8th. You can also just open the Amazon Shopping app and tap Settings > Notifications > Deals and Recommendations before toggling “Savings” and / or “Recommendations.”
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Look for deals outside of Amazon
Prime Day and Prime Big Deal Days are events that show off Amazon’s huge retail presence, so, naturally, other retail chains take notice. Because of this, you can sometimes find better deals at retailers like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. At the very least, they may be able to match Amazon’s pricing if you ask.
We’re a discerning bunch here at The Verge, so don’t fret if you’re going into this without any prep. We’ll be corralling the best tech deals and keeping our coverage up to date in the run-up to the main event. So mark October 8th and 9th on your calendar, sign up for Amazon Prime and our new and improvedVerge Deals newsletter, and maybe start putting aside a little spending cash.
From Keith Rabois to Ethan Kurzweil, a lot of VCs have switched firms or spun out of storied VC institutions to launch their own funds this year. These employment changes are surprising because unlike in many other fields, venture capitalists don’t traditionally move around very much — especially those who reach the partner or general partner level.
VC funds have 10-year life cycles, and partners have good reason to stay that course. In some instances, there may be a “key man” on a firm’s fund, meaning that if they leave, the fund’s LPs have the right to pull their capital out if they choose. Many partners and GPs also have some of their own money invested in their firms’ funds, which gives them further reason to stick around.
So, while big-name investor moves in venture capital aren’t common, they seem to have become so in recent months. So far this year, there have been notable instances of investors returning to old firms, striking out on their own, or taking a pause from investing entirely.
Here’s who we know of so far:
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September
James da Costaannounced on September 17 that he was joining Andreessen Horowitz as a partner focused on B2B software and financial services. This marks da Costa’s first foray into venture investing; he was previously the co-founder of Fingo, an African neobank.
On September 11, Jacob Westphalannounced that he was leaving Andreessen Horowitz. Westphal was a partner at a16z for three and a half years. He left to become the portfolio lead at Will Ventures.
August
Freestyle VC announced on August 15 that Maria Palma had joined the firm as a general partner based in San Francisco. Palma was most recently a general partner at Kindred Capital, based in London. Palma has backed companies such as Moov, Novo, and Lottie.
July
After nearly seven years, Alex Cook is getting ready to leave Tiger Global, sources familiar with the matter tell TechCrunch. While at Tiger Global, Cook led deals including TradingView, Scalapay and TrueLayer, among others. Prior to Tiger Global, Cook worked at Apollo.
Bessemer Venture Partners announced it added Lauri Moore as a partner on July 22. Moore was previously a partner at Foundation Capital for two years and an operator at LinkedIn before that. Moore will be focused on early-stage investments in sectors including data, AI and developer tools.
On July 17, DCVC announced it had brought on Milo Werner as a general partner to lead the firm’s climate investing practice. The firm is currently raising its first dedicated climate fund. Werner was most recently a general partner at Engine Ventures for two and a half years. Werner was a partner at Ajax Strategies prior to that.
Anne Lee Skatesannounced on July 11 that she had left Andreessen Horowitz where she had been a partner on the consumer team since 2019. She added that she’s off to do her “life’s work” and will post more about her future plans soon. At Andreessen, she backed companies including Whatnot, Kindred and Prisms, among others.
June
On June 17, Spencer Petersonannounced that he’d left Bedrock, where he served as partner for five years, to become a general partner at Coatue. Peterson is an investor in companies including OpenAI and Rippling, among others.
Amanda “Robby” Robson announced her departure from Cowboy Ventures in a LinkedIn post in early June. Robson had been at Cowboy Ventures since October 2019 and at Norwest Venture Partners for three years prior to that. Robson plans to launch a fund of her own.
May
Serena Ventures founding partner Alison Stillmanannounced she’d stepped back from the firm on May 14 after a nearly six-year run working with tennis star Serena Williams. Stillman did not announce her next step.
Terri Burnsannounced on May 13 that she was launching a new venture firm called Type Capital. Burns was previously the first Black woman partner at GV and left the firm back in 2022. Her new fund will focus on pre-seed and seed-stage startups.
Last week TechCrunch scooped that Fika Ventures co-founder Eva Ho was going to transition out of the firm after Fika finished deploying its current fund. Ho is stepping back for personal reasons. The move was confirmed by the firm in a blog post on May 9.
On May 9, Alison Lange Engelannounced she was taking on the role of CEO at Ceros, an AI-powered design company. Lange Engel left Greycroft in December, where she had been a partner since 2019, to take the role.
After 15 years, Vic Singhannounced on X that he was stepping down from Eniac Ventures on May 1. Singh helped launch the firm in 2009 and is planning to launch a new firm of his own.
April
On April 30, Ethan Kurzweil announced he was leaving his role as partner at Bessemer Venture Partners after 16 years. Kurzweil will be launching an early-stage-focused investment firm, according to reporting from Axios. Kurzweil will launch the firm with Kristina Shen, who left Andreessen Horowitz after four years on March 29, and Mark Goldberg, who left Index Ventures after eight years last fall.
On April 1, Christina Farr announced that she’d be leaving OMERS Ventures, where she has served as a principal investor and the lead of the firm’s health tech practice since December 2020. Farr announced on X that she’d be working on her health tech newsletter, writing a book focused on the power that storytelling can have on businesses, and consulting health tech founders.
March
After six years as a partner at Accel, Ethan Choi announced that he’d be leaving the firm to head to Khosla Ventures in March. Choi will be focused on growth-stage investing at his new firm and has backed such companies as Klaviyo, Pismo and 1Password.
While many of the recent VC moves have been by folks looking to start something new, or take on a different opportunity, not all of them have been. On March 13, Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital announced that it fired partners Jay Zaveri and Ravi Tanuku. Bloomberg reported that this was due to a matter involving raising money for AI startup Groq.
Rabois was not the only person looking to boomerang back to an old haunt in this recent rise of investor reshuffling. On March 5, Miles Grimshaw announced that he’d be returning to Thrive Capital as a general partner after serving the same position at Benchmark Capital for three years. Grimshaw originally started at Thrive Capital in 2013 and has backed such companies as Airtable, Lattice, and Monzo, among others.
While transitioning from operator to VC is a common career progression in the startup ecosystem, it isn’t for everybody. On March 4, Sam Blond announced he had come to that conclusion and would be leaving Founders Fund, where he had been a partner for about 18 months. Blond said he would return to operating and has held roles at companies such as Brex, Zenefits and EchoSign.
January
After 12 years at Andreessen Horowitz, Connie Chan announced she was leaving the firm on January 23. Chan had served as one of the firm’s general partners the last five years and has backed companies such as Cider, KoBold and Whatnot.
Famed venture investor Keith Raboisannounced on January 9 that he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures. Rabois had been a general partner at Founders Fund for nearly five years; he returned to Khosla as a managing director, his prior role.
TechCrunch is monitoring the recent venture moves and will continue to update this article as they happen. If you have any tips or callouts to bring to our attention, contact me here: rebecca.szkutak@techcrunch.com.
This post was originally published on May 1. It has since been updated on May 13, July 12, August 15 and September 23 to include additional moves within venture.
This post has been updated to better reflect Anne Lee Skates’ investments at Andreessen Horowitz.
An official OpenAI account on X was taken over to peddle a cryptocurrency scam on Monday evening.
On Monday at 6:24PM ET, the @OpenAINewsroom account, which shares news from OpenAI and has nearly 54,000 followers, made a now-deleted post advertising an “$OPENAI” token.
“We’re very happy to announce $OPEANAI: the token bridging the gap between Al and blockchain technology,” the post said. “All OpenAI users are eligible to claim a piece of $OPENAI’s initial supply. Holding $OPENAI will grant access to all of our future beta programs.” The post also included a link to a spoofed version of OpenAI’s website at a URL that wasn’t openai.com.
Two posts from the hijacked OpenAI Newsroom account.Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
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When I visited the site, there was a section for claiming the $OPENAI cryptocurrency. When I clicked the button, it asked me to connect a wallet, which I didn’t do.
If you find yourself on this website, do not connect your crypto wallet.Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
OpenAI and X didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. As of this writing, the OpenAI Newsroom account hasn’t posted anything to explain what might have happened. The account launched at the beginning of this month.
Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
Your Strands expert
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Your Strands expert
Marc McLaren
NYT Strands today (game #205) – hint #1 – today’s theme
What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… Spacing out
NYT Strands today (game #205) – hint #2 – clue words
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
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TRAM
RAIN
SNORE
BORE
BONE
CUMIN
NYT Strands today (game #205) – hint #3 – spangram
What is a hint for today’s spangram?
• Time and space
NYT Strands today (game #205) – hint #4 – spangram position
What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?
First: top, 4th column
Last: bottom, 6th column
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Strands today (game #205) – the answers
(Image credit: New York Times)
The answers to today’s Strands, game #205, are…
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MARTIAN
CYBORG
DROID
MUTANT
ROBOT
ALIEN
SPANGRAM: SCIENCEFICTION
My rating: Easy
My score: Perfect
I probably found this Strands game to be even easier than most given that I’ve been reading SCIENCEFICTION, as the spangram would have it, for about four decades. But even if I hadn’t I doubt I would have struggled too much here. Some of the words are slightly, well, basic for the topic – as I said, I read a lot of sci-fi and MUTANTS and MARTIANS really don’t crop up that much compared to plenty of other themes, such as time-travel, space flight, AI and the cyberverse. But as a child’s guide to the genre, it just about works.
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Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Monday 23 September, game #204)
HAMSTER
MUSKRAT
SQUIRREL
CHINCHILLA
PORCUPINE
SPANGRAM: RODENTS
What is NYT Strands?
Strands is the NYT’s new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
Adam Meyers – a senior manager at CrowdStrike – will testify at the US Congress on Tuesday to explain what happened and how the company is going to prevent another disaster.
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Dr David Wrigley, a GP for the past 22 years, tells the BBC that in the most serious cases, it resulted in possible delays for cancer treatments.
“It was a very difficult period of time with very little help and support,” he said.
Dr David Wrigley has called on NHS England and the UK government to provide GPs with much more support if this ever happened again
For many GPs, they were unable to use the EMIS system – a digital way of managing appointment bookings and patient records, as well as sending prescriptions to pharmacies.
The BMA said the CrowdStrike outage was “one of the toughest single days in recent times for GPs across England”, with doctors forced to return to pen and paper.
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At Dr Wrigley’s practice, computer problems continued between Friday and Monday.
He said this created a backlog that delayed urgent tasks such as writing referral letters for patients with suspected cancers.
In some cases, this would have been delayed by “three or four days”.
“You have to prioritise those and send them as soon as possible,” he said.
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“All the referrals we do are done electronically – that couldn’t happen.”
British Medical Association
In her 27 years as a GP, Dr Frances O’Hagan says the only disruption similar to the CrowdStrike outage was Covid and a bomb scare outside her practice in Armagh during the Troubles
Elsewhere, the BMA said there were also major problems in Northern Ireland.
Around 75% of GPs in Northern Ireland use the EMIS system according to Dr Frances O’Hagan, the chair of BMA’s Northern Ireland GP committee.
“We couldn’t do anything for most people,” she said.
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“We just had to take it on the chin and get on with it.”
She said GPs in Northern Ireland faced similar backlogs to colleagues in England, including a delay to suspected cancer referrals.
The Department of Health told the BBC it is in discussion with “external suppliers” to strengthen “continuity arrangements” following the CrowdStrike outage.
It says GPs had access to “local copies” of patient data from EMIS during the outage, and all other systems worked.
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Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, told the BBC it was “crucial” that there should be “safeguards in place” in the future.
In Surrey, 50 patients who were due to receive radiotherapy treatment on the day of the outage were forced to reschedule.
A spokesperson from NHS Royal Surrey Trust said all urgent cases were seen within 24 hours.
NHS England did not comment.
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The UK government told BBC News contingency plans were quickly enacted, and said it is working with NHS England to help prevent similar incidents.
The ‘chaos’ at the airports
EPA
These passengers at Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands were among the many travellers disrupted by the CrowdStrike outage
Melanie Cree and her husband Alan, from Bangor in Northern Ireland, were due to fly home from Corfu Airport on the day of the outage.
Travel operators were forced to cancel thousands of flights across the world – and Melanie and Alan’s flight was axed.
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After being taken to and from the airport several times in the next few days, they managed to fly home on Monday.
Melanie Cree
Melanie and Alan had been on a two-week holiday on the Greek island with friends to enjoy their 40th wedding anniversary
Melanie said passengers were given no food, and some ran out of medication.
“It totally ruined what should have been our dream holiday,” she said.
“We have lovely memories, but we came back absolutely shattered. It was complete chaos.”
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Their provider Tui gave them a £400 voucher.
Laura Jones
Laura Jones, pictured with her family on their holiday in Rhodes, said the whole experience has put her off foreign travel for a while
As Melanie and Alan struggled in Corfu, another UK family were caught up in the delays just over 500 miles (804km) away.
Laura and Malcolm Jones were struggling to return home after a holiday in Rhodes with their children.
When they were on the tarmac, the flight was cancelled. Laura told the BBC there was no information, no return of bags, and no plan.
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They spent 16 hours at the airport before they were taken to a conference centre, where frustrated travellers used tablecloths as blankets.
The family paid £560 out of their own pockets to fly back to the UK a few days later.
Tui has given them a £600 voucher.
“I was looking forward to travelling abroad again after Covid, but I think I might just stick going to west Wales for a few years,” Laura joked.
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In a statement, Tui apologised to its customers.
Getty Images
The CrowdStrike outage had an impact at airports around the world, with these weary passengers pictured in Detroit, Michigan
The small business owners
Back in the UK, small business owner Dawn Watts was caught up in the outages in a different way – her website, which provides supplies to cleaning companies and hotels, was out of action.
She estimates to have lost about £600 in sales.
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“It is extremely worrying,” she said.
“I am a sole trader – I can’t have this happening again.”
Dawn Watts was particularly worried by the CrowdStrike outage, as she didn’t have the support of a big company behind her.
Hannah Al-Khaldi, who runs a boutique fitness studio in London, faced similar issues with a non-functional website.
She estimates the outage cost her £1,000.
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“It showed how many systems worldwide had put their eggs in one basket,” she said.
“When one link in the chain fails, everything else goes down.
“Is there enough choice out there for providers, or was CrowdStrike the only option?”
A spokesperson from CrowdStrike told BBC News: “As we have said previously, we fully understand the gravity of the incident and apologise to everyone who was affected.
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“We’re committed to using the lessons learned to better serve our customers and prevent anything like this from happening again.”
Alan Turing was many things: a wartime hero, a computer scientist who pre-dated computers, the father of artificial intelligence and a persecuted gay man. Now, 70 years after his death, he will also become a museum exhibit in chatbot form.
Bletchley Park, the site where he worked as a code breaker during the second world war, is working with a UK company called 1956 Individuals to create an AI model that can “converse naturally with visitors” as Turing himself. The idea is to tell his story in an interactive way that grabs audiences. But is such a project ethical,…
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British Medical Association
EPA
Melanie Cree
Laura Jones
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