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by Stevie Bonifield on (#75AW1)
Roblox's daily active users continued to slip last quarter due in part to its rollout of age checks on its platform. According to its latest earnings report, Roblox currently has 132 million daily active users globally, down from 144 million at the end of last year, which was a drop from 152 million in Q3 [...]
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The Verge
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
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| Updated | 2026-04-30 22:33 |
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by Gaby Del Valle on (#75AW2)
Congress has reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - but only for another 45 days. The extension is meant to give legislators more time to negotiate reforms to the controversial wiretapping bill. If the past few weeks are any indication of how future debates will go, however, we're in for a bumpy [...]
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by Emma Roth on (#75AW3)
Apple's iPhone revenue jumped 22 percent to $57 billion over the past few months, despite supply chain issues impacting the device's processor. In an interview with Reuters, Apple CEO Tim Cook said iPhone "demand was off the charts," but there's "a little less flexibility at the moment for getting more parts." Cook added during an [...]
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#75ASR)
Rivian reported its first quarter earnings of 2026, providing us a closer look at the company's financial health as it kicks off production for the crucial R2 electric vehicle. We've already got Rivian's production and delivery statement from the first three months of the year. The company sold 10,365 vehicles in Q1, representing 20 percent [...]
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#75ASQ)
Rivian announced some changes today with regard to the factory its building in the state of Georgia. The company was planning to build the facility in two phases, each resulting in 200,000 vehicles of annual production capacity, for a total of 400,000 units. Rivian held a ground breaking ceremony late last year. Now the company [...]
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by Sarah Jeong on (#75ASS)
Close watchers of the Supreme Court knew that the conservative supermajority was about to murder what was left of the Voting Rights Act. Wednesday's decision in Louisiana v. Callais took down Section 2 of the law, clearing the way for racist gerrymandering, because it is now racist to remedy racism. The decision is an affront [...]
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by Tom Warren on (#75AST)
Microsoft is now rolling out its Xbox mode to all Windows 11 PCs. The new Xbox mode adds a full-screen interface to the Xbox PC app, much like Steam's Big Picture Mode, and originally debuted as the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) with Asus' Xbox Ally devices. "Some players in select markets will be able [...]
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by Lauren Feiner on (#75AQ5)
Meta says it may be forced to pull Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico if the attorney general gets his way. The state is demanding a host of changes that the company says are impossible to achieve. After winning a $375 million jury award against Meta in a trial that argued the company misled [...]
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by Joshua Rivera on (#75AQ6)
It is generally frowned upon to care too much about appearances. We have a lot of little aphorisms discouraging this - books and their covers, beauty being skin deep, style over substance, that sort of thing. Vanity is a risk. Should one put a disproportionate effort into how a thing looks, then said work may [...]
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by Hayden Field on (#759VA)
The Musk v. Altman trial is underway, and that means exhibits, or the evidence to be presented in court, are being revealed piece by piece. So far, email exchanges, photos, and corporate documents are circulating from the earliest days of OpenAI - and from before the AI lab even had a name. Some high-level takeaways: [...]
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by Hayden Field on (#75AQ7)
In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI's models to improve its own. The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a "teacher" of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller [...]
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by Jay Peters on (#75AQ8)
Microsoft has released a new Xbox update that adds a bunch of new features, including the ability to disable Quick Resume for individual games. Quick Resume, which lets you swap between your games with minimal wait time, is one of the best features on the Xbox Series X / S consoles. But it can also [...]
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#7582G)
Sam Altman and Elon Musk are facing off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of OpenAI and its most well-known product, ChatGPT. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead. The trial began with [...]
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by Robert Hart on (#75AME)
Manus, an AI company Meta acquired for $2 billion last year is running ads promising quick, easy money with AI: Find local businesses without websites or with bad websites, have AI build them one, then call them up and sell it to them. As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build [...]
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by Sheena Vasani on (#75AMF)
If you've ever thought about making your own stickers for Etsy or just for fun but don't know where to begin, I'd recommend taking a look at the Cricut Joy 2. I've been testing one for a couple of weeks now, and as someone completely new to the Cricut ecosystem, I've found it to be [...]
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by Tom Warren on (#75AMJ)
Microsoft is starting to test its Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature with the Xbox Ally X. Auto SR first debuted on some Copilot Plus PCs nearly two years ago, improving visual quality and frame rates in select games. Now, Microsoft is testing it for docked play on the Xbox Ally X, allowing the 7-inch [...]
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#75AMH)
Google is preparing to update vehicles that have Google built-in with its Gemini AI assistant. This will be an upgrade from the current Google Assistant according to Google's announcement, and promises to provide an improved experience for natural conversations, fetching vehicle-specific information, settings adjustments, and more. "When cars with Google built-in first hit the road [...]
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by Tom Warren on (#75AMG)
Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI has always been complicated, so I expected the close partnership-turned-situationship to end in tears. After all, executive disagreements, rearranged contracts, and frustrations over AI infrastructure have all regularly been part of the partnership, creating plenty of tension along the way. But against all odds, Microsoft and OpenAI divorced this week in [...]
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by Stevie Bonifield on (#75AMK)
Autonomous vehicles roving California's roads will no longer be immune to traffic tickets starting on July 1st. New regulations announced by the California DMV this week allow law enforcement to give AV manufacturers a "notice of AV noncompliance" when one of their cars commits a traffic violation, like running a red light or failing to [...]
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by Janko Roettgers on (#75AH2)
This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. When Mark Drummond was working on the Vision Pro at Apple, he had a bit of an epiphany that didn't really fit Cupertino's preferred narrative. Drummond was managing the Character [...]
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by Cameron Faulkner on (#75AH3)
Nintendo eShop gift cards can be used to buy games, apparel, and even hardware or accessories from its online storefront. No matter what you want to get, you can save a fairly substantial amount by purchasing a twin-pack of $50 eShop gift cards from Newegg. Originally $100, you can get them for $80.50, and there's [...]
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by Jay Peters on (#75AH4)
After some protracted legal drama, Subnautica 2 is finally about to launch. The game, which is currently Steam's most-wishlisted title and was caught up in a dispute between top executives at developer Unknown Worlds and its owner, Krafton, will be available in early access on PC and Xbox Series X / S starting May 14th. [...]
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by Andrew Liszewski on (#75AH5)
Following its sliding screen handheld that debuted last June with a design that some reviewers found to be too chunky and thick, Anbernic has shared more details about its new rotating screen handheld that looks more pocketable. The RG Rotate (Anbernic has never been known for its clever device naming) will be available for preorder [...]
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by Victoria Song on (#75AH6)
I'm currently wearing a pair of smart glasses called the Even Realities G2. Another two pairs, from Rokid, sit on my desk. A few feet away, I've got the Meta Ray-Ban Display charging alongside their Neural Wristband. In my closet are six pairs of $50 smart sunnies that an overzealous Walmart rep sent me. Those [...]
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by Andrew Webster on (#75AH7)
Adam Scott grew up watching horror movies at, as he describes it, "probably too young" an age. But he never set out to work specifically in the genre. Even still, horror seemed to follow him around from the very beginning. His first major film role was in Hellraiser IV in 1996. "It wasn't because I [...]
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by Nick Statt on (#75AH8)
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Hello and welcome to Decoder, Nilay's show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer, and I'm joined by host and very occasional guest, Nilay Patel. Nilay, welcome back to your own show. Hello. I hate being the guest. Now, you [...]
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by Stevie Bonifield on (#75AH9)
There may be a long wait before the end of the RAM shortage that's driving up prices on everything from phones to gaming handhelds. During an earnings call on Thursday, Samsung predicted that the severe memory shortage, driven by demand from AI data centers, will not only continue next year, but likely get worse, as [...]
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by Andrew Liszewski on (#75AEN)
Blaze Entertainment, the company behind the cartridge-based Evercade consoles, has announced two new handhelds that reimagine iconic '80s personal computers as portable gaming machines. The Spectrum Handheld and The C64 Handheld eschew the productivity aspects of the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum to focus on gaming, with each portable coming with its own collection of [...]
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by Emma Roth on (#75AEP)
OpenAI is opening up about its goblin problem. After a report from Wired revealed instructions to OpenAI's coding model to "never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures," the AI startup published an explanation on its website, calling references to the creatures a "strange habit" its models developed as [...]
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by Terrence O’Brien on (#75AEQ)
Spotify is launching a new verification program to combat spam, fakes, and AI. Some artists will now have a "Verified by Spotify" badge and a green checkmark on their profile, indicating that the company has confirmed a real person is behind the music and the profile. At least at launch, Spotify says that AI personas [...]
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by Jay Peters on (#75AER)
Netflix is starting to roll out a big revamp of its mobile app, and a central feature is a new vertical video feed called "Clips" where you can scroll through clips of shows, movies, and other Netflix content. The idea of the Clips feed is that it can help you discover new things to watch [...]
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by Mia Sato on (#75AC1)
The internet is full of copycat, stolen, reposted, and low-effort content - and Meta, at least publicly, has said it is working to cut off some of the reach. Beginning in 2024, the company has made incremental announcements saying it would begin limiting "unoriginal" content from being recommended on Instagram. It meant that if you [...]
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by Tom Hawking on (#75AC0)
Dallas-based genetics and biotech startup Colossal has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists, the CIA, and Peter Thiel, among others. Its buzzy "de-extinction" projects aim to "bring back" lost animals like the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dire wolf - although it isn't creating copies of extinct creatures from ancient [...]
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#75AC2)
Meta is planning to pump billions more into AI investments this year, despite noting that millions of users have seemingly started to abandon its platforms. In an earning call on Wednesday, Meta reported that figures for "Family daily active people" - the term Meta has coined for all collective users of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or [...]
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by Robert Hart on (#75AC3)
OpenAI is preparing to launch a new frontier cybersecurity model, GPT-5.5-Cyber. CEO Sam Altman said the model will not be available to the general public, but will be first rolled out to a select group of trusted "cyber defenders" in order for institutions to shore up their cyberdefenses. The limited rollout will take place "in [...]
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by Janus Rose on (#75AC5)
It's been almost three years since Silicon Valley started aggressively pushing large language model-based chatbots like ChatGPT as the supposedly inevitable future of everything, and there's no group that has felt the pressure quite like Gen Z. Like with many tech trends before it, it's no surprise that young people are among the biggest adopters [...]
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by Dominic Preston on (#75AC4)
First they came for the drones, and now the vlogging cameras. DJI's Osmo Pocket 4 is the first of its compact steadicams not to launch in the US, following a string of DJI drones also missing the US market. The good news for American buyers is that the Pocket 4 is mostly an evolutionary upgrade, [...]
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#75AA6)
Sony has finally stepped in to clear up the growing confusion around a new DRM (Digital Rights Management) system on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles. Users reported that the system's latest updates seemingly introduced a requirement to go online once every 30 days to validate game licenses, but Sony now says this is false. [...]
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#75A1Z)
About five hours into Elon Musk's testimony, I typed the following sentence into my notes: "I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life." Musk's direct testimony was an improvement over yesterday - even if his lawyer kept asking leading questions to cue him in how to answer. But that memory was [...]
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by Tina Nguyen on (#759ZT)
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about technology, politics, and technology learning how to politick. If you're not a subscriber but would like to support our work, please subscribe here. I promise that your money will not go toward paying for a drone-proof ballroom for The Verge staff, no matter how [...]
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by Cameron Faulkner on (#759ZV)
Nintendo recently announced a new pricing policy, which knocks $10 off the cost of digital versions of future first-party titles exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2. Splatoon Raiders, for instance, is available for preorder ahead of its July 23rd release for $49.99 digitally or $59.99 for the physical edition. However, Walmart is the exception in [...]
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by Emma Roth on (#759XQ)
Microsoft's Xbox hardware revenue continues to tumble, with the company revealing a 33 percent decline as part of its earnings report released on Wednesday. Even though the rest of Microsoft's consumer-focused division took a dip, the company's cloud and productivity businesses continue to soar, driving the company toward $82.9 billion in revenue. Along with declining [...]
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by Jay Peters on (#759XR)
Google Search queries hit an "all time high" in the first quarter of 2026, according to a statement from CEO Sundar Pichai published as part of Alphabet's earnings on Wednesday. "Our AI investments and full stack approach are lighting up every part of the business," Pichai says. "Search had a strong quarter with AI experiences [...]
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by Stevie Bonifield on (#759RV)
Canonical's plan to add AI features to Ubuntu has some users asking for "a version of Ubuntu that does not include these features," while others say they'll stick with older versions of the Linux distro or even switch to a different one. After Canonical's announcement earlier this week that it's bringing AI features to Ubuntu, [...]
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by Allison Johnson on (#759RZ)
2026 is shaping up to be a tough year to launch a high-end phone. The memory crisis has phone prices rising across the board, so an already expensive phone risks becoming a much too expensive phone. That might be what happened to the Razr Fold, which will cost $1,900 when it goes on sale in [...]
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by Allison Johnson on (#759RX)
The memory crisis claims another couple of victims. Motorola's midtier and entry-level flip phones cost $100 more than their predecessors, and have few upgrades to show for it. The 2026 Razr Plus costs $1,099, up from $999. It still comes with a Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chipset - two years old at this point - [...]
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by Emma Roth on (#759RW)
Google Photos is launching a new AI-powered feature you can use to virtually try on clothes you already have. Using the photos in your gallery, Google will create a virtual "wardrobe," allowing you to mix and match outfits, save the looks you like, and share them with friends. A video shared by Google shows how [...]
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by Allison Johnson on (#759RY)
Look, you're not going to find much new on the 2026 version of the Motorola Razr Ultra. There's a new main camera sensor, a slightly bigger battery, and a higher price: $1,499, up from $1,299. But one thing hasn't changed: this is a darn good looking phone. The wood-finish back panel returns, and is joined [...]
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by Tom Warren on (#759S0)
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wants everyone to know: "We are Xbox." Just last week, she scrapped Microsoft Gaming as the name of Microsoft's gaming division in favor of simply Xbox. Now, to reinforce that message, sources at Xbox tell me that all Xbox employees are getting an @xbox.com email address next month. The new Xbox [...]
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by Sheena Vasani on (#759NG)
Amazon's annual Gaming Week is bringing discounts on video games, accessories, and PC components through May 4th. This event is smaller than Amazon's other sales, but there are some genuinely good deals. This year, we've found deals on popular titles like Elden Ring Nightreign, plus rare discounts on the Nex Playground console and on top-notch [...]
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