We covered Amazon’s $99 AirPods 4 deal yesterday, and today AirPods Max 2 are $100 off, bringing the over-ear headphones down to $449.

AirPods Max 2, which were released in 2026, are $100 off at Amazon today, with all five color options eligible for the triple-digit markdown at press time.

Buy AirPods Max 2 for $449

This AirPods deal reflects the lowest price seen this month on the over-ear headphones. In our hands-on AirPods Max 2 review, we found the 2026 release delivers better active noise cancellation (ANC) and great call quality.

On the earbuds side, AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 3 are on sale as well, with prices as low as $99.

Today’s best AirPods deals

AirPods Max 2 highlights

• Powered by Apple’s H2 chip
• Up to 1.5x stronger Active Noise Cancellation than first-gen AirPods Max
• Transparency mode
• Adaptive EQ
• Lossless Audio and ultra-low latency audio via a wired USB-C connection (requires a supported service)

You can compare prices on both current and closeout models in our AirPods Max Price Guide.

OFFBEAT

Netscape still ruled the browser market, but Microsoft had Windows 95, WorldNet, and a very valuable foothold

It is 30 years since AT&T handed Microsoft a valuable foothold in the browser wars by making Internet Explorer 3 the default for its WorldNet service.

Windows 95 was barely a year old when AT&T set out to challenge CompuServe and America Online with its WorldNet service in 1996. The telecommunications giant needed a browser. Netscape Navigator dominated the market, but Microsoft was keen to make up lost ground.

A promotion and distribution agreement was announced on July 25, 1996, with a further announcement in October.

Under the deal, AT&T WorldNet software was included in versions of Windows 95 supplied to PC manufacturers, with Internet Explorer 3 designated as the service’s default browser. Netscape Navigator remained available, but Internet Explorer secured the valuable default slot.

Microsoft’s browser-bundling strategy would later draw antitrust action on both sides of the Atlantic, including the EU’s browser choice screen in 2010.

At the time, Tom Evslin, Vice President for the AT&T WorldNet Service, said: “Users now will find that everything they need to sign up for AT&T WorldNet Service is pre-loaded on their new computers, along with the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 browser.”

Thirty years on, Evslin told The Register the deal came down to price. AT&T had to pay per copy activated, and he reckoned Microsoft pretty much gave its browser away (but wasn’t completely sure – it was, after all, a long time ago). Netscape Navigator was, however, better known at the time, and so was offered as an option.

By January 1997, Microsoft claimed Internet Explorer’s corporate usage had more than tripled since August while Netscape’s share declined. WorldNet was also attracting users by offering straightforward internet access rather than another AOL-style walled garden.

It rapidly became the world’s largest ISP by one contemporary measure, although it eventually wheezed its last in 2010. Internet Explorer proved more influential, dominating the browser market for more than a decade before its grip began to loosen in the late 2000s.

AT&T’s choice was only one factor in Internet Explorer’s rise, but it put the browser before WorldNet’s growing audience just as users were moving beyond the walled gardens of AOL and CompuServe. Microsoft may have been late to the browser game, but it already controlled the operating system on millions of PCs.

Three decades later, the deal remains an early demonstration of the value of being the default. ®

OFF-PREM

Survey finds more workloads run off-site than at in-house corporate facilities for the first time 

IT is going remote while sucking up more power. 

Most corporate IT is now off-premises for the first time, according to Uptime Institute, while the average rack power density has crested above 11 kW for the first time as server fleets are gradually replaced with more powerful hardware.

Uptime’s Global Data Center Survey 2026 reveals how the industry is managing to adapt to challenging circumstances, with the usual evergreen concerns over rising costs plus staffing and skills shortages. The survey polls more than 800 datacenter owners and operators across multiple countries, with more than half (52 percent) in North America and Europe.

Off premise dominates: Every year, Uptime asks its enterprise respondents to estimate what percentage of their IT workloads are run in-house versus in third-party facilities.

For the first time, third-party sites have the larger share, accounting for 46 percent of IT workloads, compared with 44 percent residing in enterprise-owned corporate server farms.

Those figures don’t add up to 100 percent, as some respondents (10 percent) say they are using IT rooms and server cabinets rather than a dedicated facility.

Uptime’s experts estimate that, by 2028, the proportion of workloads in self-owned server halls will remain the same, while those running in third-party sites will expand to 48 percent, eating away at those currently based in IT rooms and server cabinets.  

More power: While the headlines have featured AI infrastructure pushing IT infrastructure power density to 120 kW per rack or even higher, the reality is that most datacenters and servers operate at a much lower level than that.

This year, the average of the most typical rack densities now surpasses 11 kW, as a gradual ongoing shift toward higher-powered hardware was compounded by a small number of new high-density facilities with racks above 30 kW.

Without those few high-density facilities skewing the average, it sits at 7.8 kW, just slightly up from 7.5 kW in 2025.

The majority of facilities still do not have any racks of 30 kW or above, Uptime finds, but more respondents (24 percent) now say they have some of these, compared with 19 percent last year. The increase was mostly in the 50-plus kW ultra-high-density range, including some respondents deploying AI and GPU servers into racks configured for above 100 kW.

The trend for rising rack density will continue as organizations upgrade their infrastructure with newer hardware. Updated servers boost both workload capacity and energy performance, but maximizing these benefits means a corresponding rise in overall system power, Uptime states.

Refresh shortened: Some operators are also pursuing more aggressive technology refresh timelines of less than 4 years, the report claims. If true, this would be the reverse of what some hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google and Meta have been doing in recent years, extending lifecycles out to 6 or 7 years to save on depreciation expenses.

Outages: When it comes to outages, this year’s report shows improvement for the sixth year in a row, with the number of respondents who experienced an outage in the past three years down by three percentage points.

But Uptime warns against complacency, noting that many of the factors behind outages, such as reduced or unstable power availability, local grid reliability, supply chain constraints, and extreme weather, are on the increase.

The flip side is that the costs of any outages that do occur continue to rise. This is because organizations have become more dependent on digital infrastructure, the report says, and so outages may have more financial impact than in the past.

Overall, 71 percent of survey respondents reported that their most damaging outage cost at least $100,000, compared with 57 percent a year ago.

Staffing shortage: Staffing has long been an issue for datacenter operators, and this year the greatest skills gaps reported were in electrical (38 percent of respondents), junior level operations (38 percent), operations management (35 percent) and mechanical roles (34 percent).

However, more than half (53 percent) of operators report difficulties finding qualified candidates for vacant roles, up from 46 percent a year ago.

Finally, Uptime found that financial pressure and resource constraints continue to grow among operators. In fact, the high prices of power, staff, and equipment, particularly for AI-related infrastructure, is the primary issue. Alongside that are escalating concerns over capacity forecasting, power availability and supply chain disruptions. ®

The decision comes just months after the company announced a $75m Galway expansion plan.

Global medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific is planning layoffs at its Irish operations, which employs more than 7,000 workers across facilities in Galway, Cork and Tipperary.

The Massachusetts-headquartered company informed the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment of the upcoming job cuts via a collective redundancy notification on 22 July, RTÉ reported on Wednesday (29 July).

Businesses in Ireland that employ more than 300 people must notify the Government if they plan to cut 30 or more jobs. Globally, the company employs more than 59,000.

The exact extent of the layoffs, however, is unclear. SiliconRepublic.com has requested details from Boston Scientific. The company is still hiring across all three of its locations in Ireland.

The layoffs come just months after the company announced a major $75m expansion of its Galway facilities and a plan to open new, purpose-built laboratories.

Last week, the Boston Scientific approved a global restructuring plan, which it said would lead to “some” headcount reductions. The plan is expected to cost the company between $700m and $800m.

It expects a “substantial portion” of the savings to be reinvested in strategic growth initiatives, according to a regulatory filing on 21 July.

In a statement to RTÉ, a Boston Scientific spokesperson said that the restructuring programme includes “includes enhancing operational and functional capabilities as well as global supply chain network optimisation.

“Ireland has been an important part of Boston Scientific’s global organisation for more than 30 years. We are committed to our long-term future in the country and recognise the significant contributions our employees in Ireland make across our global business.

“In general, we do not break out programme details by business, region or function.”

Net sales at the global medtech grew 7.5pc year-on-year to nearly $5.5bn during the second quarter of 2026.

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Dave, a New AI-Powered Tool for Sellers, Helps Resolve 54% of Their Cases and Efficiently Manages Demand Spikes During AAA Game Launches. Now available in 180 countries, it has reduced the number of tickets submitted to Seller’s Support teams by 30%.

G2A.COM, one of the world’s largest digital marketplaces, today announced the global launch of ‘Dave’, its proprietary autonomous customer support agent, which will be available to sellers operating on the platform, following a highly successful two-month trial period.

Although sellers ensure the high quality of their offerings, and remain autonomous in all their decisions, large-scale surges in customer support demand may occur during blockbuster video game releases such as GTA 6.

Despite their best efforts, sellers may not be able to handle all these support requests within a short period of time. Dave was built specifically to help sellers manage such spikes and now operates 24/7 across 180 countries.

The 💜 of EU tech

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Dave has streamlined seller’s operations and processes, managing roughly 10,000 conversations globally per week. Unlike traditional chatbots, Dave connects directly to the seller’s transaction history and enables instant verification of payment status and the seller’s policies, allowing issues to be resolved immediately. By relying on verified data rather than solely on generative text, the system avoids the risk of AI hallucinations and errors and effectively manages complex cases involving vouchers, game keys, software licenses, and refunds processed by sellers.

In its first 63 days of full deployment, Dave achieved several key operational milestones:

• Ticket Reduction: Dave streamlined the handling of approximately 15,000 tickets, helping to resolve them quickly on behalf of sellers and reducing the overall volume of tickets requiring human support by 27–30%.
• High-Precision Routing: Achieved 93.8% routing accuracy, instantly directing cases to the relevant third-party seller or, where they related specifically to the operation of the platform, to G2A.COM Support, in line with marketplace policies.
• Strong User Acceptance: Dave AI received a satisfaction score of 4.16 out of 5. Additionally, 74% of users rated the automated process as easy or very easy.
• Quality and Trust Metrics: Dave’s responses achieve an average quality score of 91.2%, with only 0.81% receiving negative in-chat feedback. Every response is automatically evaluated across 13 quality and safety dimensions.

“As G2A.COM continues to expand globally, ensuring that sellers can provide the highest possible standard of customer support remains a key priority. Activity across the gaming ecosystem, including major game launches, can trigger sudden spikes in user inquiries within hours, making it inefficient to scale support simply by hiring more agents. Dave was created to deliver immediate, high-quality, multilingual assistance at scale. If a case requires full manual intervention by the seller, the seller and their support team receive a comprehensive analysis and summary of the case so users never have to repeat themselves.

Dave is also another step in building an AI-native organization and environment. AI is no longer just a productivity tool or a competitive advantage. The real advantage comes from embedding AI into the core of how a company operates. Dave is a practical example of that approach, helping us and sellers using platform to scale globally while delivering faster and more trusted user experiences,” said Paweł Wróbel, CGO at G2A.COM.

About G2A.COM

G2A.COM is one of the world’s largest marketplaces for digital entertainment, serving over 35 million users from 180 countries with more than 200 million visits in 2025. As a true gateway to digital entertainment and a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem, G2A.COM gives access to over 125,000 digital offerings, including vouchers, games, DLCs, in-game items, and non-gaming items such as gift cards, subscriptions, software, or e-learning, sold by sellers from all over the world. A compliance-driven organization audited by Deloitte for over a decade, G2A.COM is a leader in online security, recognized by the prestigious American CNP Award alongside industry giants like Microsoft and PayPal. Today, the company is a key gateway for recognized global brands, leveraging its scalable infrastructure to drive the next phase of e-commerce through agentic AI and global M&A – continuously expanding its role as the Gate 2 Adventure in the digital world.

The startup, which sells everything from sneakers to sports cards over livestream, is raising again barely a year after an $11.5bn round, as live commerce catches on in the West.

Whatnot, the livestream-shopping platform where hosts sell sneakers, trading cards, and vinyl to a live audience, is in talks to raise money at a valuation of about $20 billion. The figure would nearly double the $11.5 billion the company was worth as recently as late 2024.

The pace of the markup is the story. A near-doubling in under a year puts Whatnot among the fastest-appreciating consumer startups around, at a time when venture money has flowed overwhelmingly toward artificial intelligence rather than shopping apps.

Whatnot runs live video auctions and sales across categories from fashion to collectables, taking a commission on each transaction, a model that turns online shopping into something closer to entertainment.

The mechanics are half the appeal. A host holds up an item, buyers bid or tap to purchase in real time, and the urgency of a live sale, the countdown, the banter, the scarcity, does work that a static product page never could.

The numbers behind it are real. The company says it handled about $8 billion in livestream sales over the past year across North America and Europe, the kind of volume that justifies, at least to its backers, a valuation usually reserved for software firms.

The investor roster reads like a who’s who. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Lightspeed, and Google’s CapitalG have all backed Whatnot, the same names that chase the biggest rounds in technology, now betting that live commerce is more than a novelty.

The idea is not new, just newly working in the West. Livestream shopping has been enormous in China for years, where platforms like Taobao turned hosts into salespeople for millions of viewers, and Western investors have long waited for the format to cross over.

Whatnot’s bet is that it finally has. The company has grown by leaning into niche communities, the collectors and resellers for whom a live auction is both a marketplace and a hangout, rather than trying to be a general store.

It has also started buying capability. This month Whatnot acquired Shaped, a startup that builds real-time recommendation systems, a purchase aimed at pointing viewers toward the streams and items most likely to make them spend.

That acquisition hints at where the money would go. A larger raise would fund the recommendation engine, expansion in Europe, and the fight for hosts and buyers against social platforms circling the same behaviour.

Because the competition is coming. TikTok, Instagram, and Amazon have all pushed into live and social shopping, and Whatnot’s independence is both its advantage, a platform built for this alone, and its vulnerability against far larger rivals.

The valuation, for now, is a talk rather than a term sheet. Business Insider frames it as a round under discussion, and startup valuations at this stage can move before they are signed, especially in a market as selective as this one.

Still, the direction is telling. That investors would price a shopping app at $20 billion, in a year when nearly every large cheque has gone to AI, suggests live commerce has graduated from experiment to category.

It also stands out for what it is not. In a funding market fixated on AI models and infrastructure, Whatnot is a reminder that a consumer business with real transactions can still command a software-sized valuation, provided the growth is there.

The risk is the one every marketplace faces. Whatnot’s value rests on keeping hosts and buyers on the same platform, and that loyalty can erode quickly if a bigger rival offers better terms or a larger audience.

For now, the momentum is with the company. A near-$20 billion valuation would confirm that livestream shopping has arrived in the West, and that Whatnot, for the moment, is the name investors are willing to pay up for.

The company said it expects total expenses for 2026 to come to between $165bn and $169bn.

Tech giant Meta’s income and operating margin for the second quarter of 2026 were down in comparison to the same time last year amid significant outgoings for the period.

Although revenues were up 28pc to $60.8bn for the period ending 30 June, the company saw a big jump in costs and expenses from around $27bn in Q2 2025 to more than $42bn this year.

Total income fell from $20.4bn to $18.8bn, with operating margin dropping from 43pc to 31pc. Net income fell year-on-year from $18.3bn to $15.8bn.

The 55pc year-on-year jump in expenses includes a $2.4bn outlay on charges around various legal proceedings and $1.8bn in severance costs invoked from recent layoffs by the company. It said it expects total expenses for 2026 to come to between $165bn and $169bn.

Meta’s free cash flow for the most recent quarter was $784m, compared to more than $8bn a year earlier, following declared spending of more than $31bn on leases, property and equipment.

It said it expects capital expenditures for 2026 to amount to between $130bn and $145bn.

“As AI usage in our products and businesses continues to ramp, we continue to invest aggressively in infrastructure to meet the demand,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday.

“Overall, we expect that a significant portion of our compute is going to go towards training our models, growing our core business, and delivering personal agents and new products. But we also expect to grow a large business serving large customers as well.”

Meta shares were down last night following an announced projected revenue for Q3 of around $62.5bn – lower than analysts’ expectations of more than $63bn, according to media reports.

Commenting on the financial results, analyst Mike Proulx of Forrester said that “Meta believes AI infrastructure is now a strategic asset, but its bill is arriving faster than the payoff,” noting that “what it generated in cash this quarter almost all got eaten by AI infrastructure spending”.

He added: “Meta’s AI spend was easier to celebrate when margins were expanding. It’s harder to celebrate now that the costs are showing up in the numbers.

“There’s a bit of similarity to Meta’s metaverse missteps in that Meta is once again spending ahead of proven product demand. The difference is that AI adoption and value are real.

“Investors now have to decide whether Meta’s growing list of AI initiatives represents company diversification or distraction. What makes that question more complicated is that Meta’s legal and regulatory challenges are getting more expensive, too.”

The company’s reported headcount as of 30 June was put at 75,472, which still includes approximately 8,000 employees who have recently been or will soon be laid off.

CFO Susan Li told the earnings call that the company would “continue to monitor active legal and regulatory matters that could significantly impact our business and financial results”.

She added: “For example, we continue to see scrutiny on youth-related issues in several markets and have a number of youth-related trials scheduled for this year in the US, which may ultimately result in a material loss.”

Proulx noted: “Meta’s biggest regulatory battles typically centred on privacy and competition. Now the pressure is mounting around youth wellbeing, addiction and platform safety.

“That’s a different kind of risk because it impacts the future audience growth that powers Meta’s ad business that’s literally underwriting the company’s exorbitant AI costs.”

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Apple wants to use China-sourced chips for products sold in China during the AI-driven memory shortage, but a letter from US senators hopes to persuade Apple otherwise.

The hype cycle around what is basically a natural evolution of an advanced autocomplete engine has destabilized the global economy and supply chain. The ever-increasing demand for more components to build data centers has led to a global chip and component shortage.

Apple has looked to blacklisted Chinese companies to bolster its supply chain, but, according to a letter viewed by Bloomberg, US senators want to urge Apple away from this solution. They worry about various potential calamities like other companies following suit, potential national security issues, and yet another industrial exodus from the United States.

Apple has officially requested to buy from ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc. and has purchased chips, but not used them in products, from Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. The US senators have asked Apple to reconsider using chips from either company and commit to not using them by August 21.

The letter arrived only four days after Micron asked the White House to reject Apple’s plans.

Apple’s latest China problem

While Apple isn’t banned from buying chips from either company, it could face a few repercussions. First, the US Department of Defense could stop buying Apple products, even if the chips are only used in China-sold products, due to the Chinese Military Company Blacklist.

That’s only a drop in the bucket for Apple, but an important relationship that could be burned.

Apple could also face regulatory issues and increased pressure from the Trump administration. The company has already had to walk on eggshells to avoid the worst of the random and illegal global tariffs, and such a move could undo all of that overnight.

A possible Trump card

Alternatively, Apple could be attempting to play right into a developing situation where President Trump hopes to ease trade tensions with China. He is expected to meet with Xi Jinping in September, and offering Apple the blessing to build and sell using Chinese components could be quite the bargaining chip.

Apple has worked hard to keep Trump out of its business

However, the senators aren’t sure this would be a good idea:

“The limitation that CXMT memory would, for the moment, be confined to devices sold in China cannot be expected to hold, because once a part clears qualification for Apple production, extending it worldwide is a single procurement decision away,” they wrote in the letter to Apple. “The precedent Apple would set by addressing the memory shortage this way would shape the memory market and this country’s security for years after supply has returned to normal, and we urge you to weigh that carefully.”

Perhaps the senators could regulate the industry and attempt to stem the flood created by the far-fetched promises made by grifting billionaires. The memory shortage is tied to a bubble that is sure to deflate or pop at any time, which could be disastrous for the global economy.

When the AI boom ends, Apple sourcing chips for devices sold in China will be the least of our worries. We can only hope Senators Banks, Schumer, and the others will stop chasing distractions and target the root of the problem.

On a February evening in 1990, two presenters sat down with a stack of old reports and asked a simple question. What became of the cameras that were supposed to change photography forever? Peter Macann and Kate Bellingham pulled clips from the Tomorrow’s World archive and walked viewers through four ideas that had once looked like the next big thing. Some had already faded. One had quietly taken over. Another was still waiting for the rest of the technology to catch up.

Peter returns to work on a device he showed off to the world four years ago. When 1986 arrived, the still video camera appeared to be rather ordinary, until you discovered that it saved images on a floppy disk rather than film. Can you imagine? Anyway, you merely pointed the contraption at what you wanted to photograph, and the pictures appeared on the TV straight away; no need to rush off to the chemist to have them developed, and no waiting for hours. By 1990, amateur versions were available in stores, but they were still quite expensive at around £500, and the prints they created appeared soft and expensive when compared to a regular color print. The prototype on the desk that night was a bit weird. It had a cumbersome adapter that fastened onto the rear of a standard camera body, allowing photographers to select between film and electronic storage, as if they could have it both ways. The problem was that the supporting ideas weren’t nearly ready yet.

Next followed the Nimslo, a four-lens camera that debuted in 1981. Each of the lenses was capturing the same sight from a slightly different perspective. Special processing then merged all of the individual frames together to create a print with true depth, if viewed correctly. The American creators dubbed this the photography of the future, and British stores charged two hundred pounds for it. However, processing the film incurred an additional expense of three times the typical cost of film.

By the end of the year, the Nimslo had disappeared from store shelves. However, that innovative system of four lenses was eventually transferred to Japan to a business called Nishika. They were more practical in their approach, and the revised version they released later that year cut things down significantly. There was no more painfully difficult autofocus or automatic exposure; instead, you had fixed focus, manual film winding, and everything else. A far simpler, less expensive tool geared specifically at folks looking for that depth effect without spending a fortune.

Autofocus, on the other hand, was the complete polar opposite of an exciting story. In 1981, Michael Rodd invented one of the first interchangeable lenses capable of focusing on its own. Nine years later, that capability has simply become a normal feature of most cameras sold to the general public. You’d be hard pushed to detect a distinction between the actual process of shooting a photograph. The camera simply made it faster and more reliable, and that quiet, steady utility lasted far longer than many of the more absurd claims.

Then, returning on television, is Maggie Philbin from 1986, holding up a little plastic box containing a film cartridge, a rudimentary lens, a shutter, and a single hole that acts as a viewfinder. The concept back then was that the entire thing should be used once and then discarded. That initially seems dubious, if not wasteful. Four years later, however, disposable cameras flooded the market. People bought them for vacations, parties, and any other occasion when they didn’t want to risk throwing away a good camera. Soon, there were variants that worked underwater, captured panoramic images, and so on. Some manufacturers even anticipated the scenario by intending to collect plastic cases during processing and then return them to production. In the end, the old, old formulae won out: simplicity, low cost, and easy replacement; all of these proved to be considerably more powerful than all of the futuristic nonsense.