The Verge

Walmart says it won't change product prices based on your personal information or the time of day, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. In a letter to customers, Walmart CEO John Furner writes that the company's switch to digital shelf labels is meant to save store associates time, rather than dynamically change prices. [...]

In a widely expected move, Volkswagen announced Monday that it will replace the recently retired ID.4 crossover with the upcoming ID.Tiguan. The decision is an acknowledgment by the German automaker that its more recognizable nameplates like Tiguan are likely an easier sell with consumers, especially when it comes to EVs. When it lands in Europe [...]

It's been a while since we've seen a big price cut on a capable robot vacuum and mop hybrid that can scale over short steps and threshold to hunt messes. Dreame's X50 Ultra is the model that my colleague Jen recommends for hard floors and carpets, and it's down to $899.99 at Amazon for Prime [...]

Everything old is new again as today Bose announced its first pair of wired earbuds since discontinuing the option in 2015. The new tethered earbuds, which are simply called the Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds, do away with battery anxiety and the need to remember to charge them every few days. Their functionality is limited, [...]

First announced in July with an expected limited launch later this year, the Philips Sonicare Next-Generation DiamondClean 9900 Prestige smart toothbrush is now available in Europe and the US, with a broader global rollout expected in 2027. While the previous iteration is still available and discounted from $429.99, the new "Next-Gen DiamondClean" version is debuting [...]

SpaceX is gearing up for a monumental flight today that's sure to be closely watched by Amazon. If successful, SpaceX will deploy its first Starlink V3 satellites, which tout meaningful upgrades to the ever-expanding Starlink constellation. The 26 satellites will be riding atop Starship, which SpaceX will also attempt to deploy into Earth orbit for [...]

Honor launches its new Magic 9 flagship phones in China today, and the 9 Pro Max features a design revamp, a capable camera, and a colossal battery. This is Honor's first flagship launch - Robot Phone aside - since it announced its collaboration with camera company Arri. The initial impact is twofold. The new camera [...]

If you were to ask me what game or game series I've sunk the most time into, the answer would be easy: Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). I have spent roughly 2,300 hours, according to Steam, playing various editions of the game. OOTP isn't like MLB The Show or Super Mega Baseball. It's not [...]

Music startup Thoughtful Things has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for its first instrument, Engram. It's a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to mangle incoming audio and even hallucinate completely new sounds. This isn't Suno in a box, though. This isn't a "push-button, get-song" device, aimed at creating something that sounds ready for top-40 [...]

Security researcher Rowan Howard-Jones says that OpenAI agents scanned the UN Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) statistics site over 16,000 times between April and June. While the incident doesn't quite rise to the level of the Hugging Face hack, or the recent attacks on US government sites, it's yet another concerning example of AI [...]

The idea was big, exciting, and inspiring: What if we could get every kid in the world access to a computer? For a bunch of thinkers and executives in Silicon Valley, it felt like the way to fix everything. But the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and the XO-1 laptop designed to be given away, [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 145, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I'm happy to be done traveling for a bit, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I flew to San Francisco to try out [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the fragile state of your connected devices, follow Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started A decade ago, a [...]

Haptics tech company Taction sued Apple in 2021, alleging it infringed two of its patents. Now a federal jury in San Diego has awarded Taction over $5.7 billion in damages. According to CNBC, "The lawsuit centered around U.S. Patent Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117, which both involve vibration-based, tactile transducer technology that helps users feel a [...]

I don't think I'm going to hurt anyone's feelings by pointing out that Decap doesn't have the name recognition of Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo, or Charli XCX. But his fingerprints are all over tracks from them, as well as many other artists, including Freddie Gibbs, Bad Bunny, Mac Miller, BTS, and even Ludwig Goransson's score [...]

Middle schoolers, likely blocked from other apps and social networks, apparently turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR's Wild Card into an impromptu group chat. In a new episode of This American Life, host Ira Glass digs into how the kids landed there and why. But it mostly boils down to kids [...]

As reports of OpenAI's models breaking containment, hacking sites, and generally getting out of control pile up, the company has made the decision to pause training of its most powerful models. The decision was made after a model being tested within a sandbox exploited a loophole to gain internet access. The incident happened on September [...]

Earlier this month, Pokemon card content creator Natalie Roush posted a video to her YouTube and Instagram pages that enraged the larger collection community. In the now-deleted video, Roush shows off two premium boxes of cards that had not yet been officially released, and implores viewers not to be mad. But they were; other creators [...]

Have you ever wanted an electric bike that easily transitions from the drudgery of urban asphalt to adventures in gravel and dirt? That's what a subclass of so-called "electric SUV" (eSUV) e-bikes claims to do, with their wide, all-terrain tires and front and rear suspension, plus practical accessories like fenders and racks. So, that's what [...]

Roku recently launched its first-ever OLED TVs. The $999 starting price was already impressive for the 55-inch Pro Series model that has a 120Hz refresh rate OLED panel (with four HDMI 2.1 ports and support for Dolby Vision and HDR 10 Plus). The price is even lower right now at Amazon when you enter the [...]

Mark Zuckerberg has a new defense of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses: They're actually doing more to signal they're taking a photo than phones do. He's brought this up in at least two recent interviews, noting that the glasses have a light that comes on to signal when a photo is being taken, while phones do [...]

One of the questionable limitations of the iPhone 18 Pro's new main camera with a variable aperture is that you're limited to just four settings in the native iOS' camera app in manual mode: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4. Those same limitations are also in place when the app is adjusting the iris itself in [...]

Hitting its goal of making 20,000 Optimus robots per week is reportedly proving tricky for Tesla. The Information reports that Tesla produced "several hundred robots a week" last month, after it repurposed its Model S and Model X production lines for Optimus earlier this year. However, this strategy is reportedly creating manufacturing snags, like issues [...]

Yesterday, with a little prodding, it was discovered that Meta's Muse would expose its filesystem to curious users. The files offered a fascinating peek under the hood of an AI chatbot, and appeared to expose details we weren't meant to see, not least because Muse itself told people, including us, it wasn't supposed to reveal [...]

Apple is expected to announce more hardware before the end of the year following the debut of the iPhone 18 Pro and folding iPhone Duo earlier this month. The updated products will include a new version of the HomePod mini, the iPad mini 8, and the Apple TV 4K, according to details and images discovered [...]

Sony and Universal Music Group filed yet another suit against Suno. The labels claim its new v6 model still infringes on their copyrights because it's trained on user outputs from previous models, which were themselves trained on unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources. Sony and UMG are notable holdouts who did not sign [...]

In July, OpenAI revealed that its AI agents had attacked Hugging Face without permission, sparking widespread concerns about AI safety. Since then, a string of similar incidents involving agents from Meta, Anthropic, Google, and other companies has fueled further fears about rogue AI. As disclosures implicating numerous AI models trickled out over the past few [...]

Cricut announced its first crafting machines with printing capabilities that are primarily designed as all-in-one solutions for turning photos and other images into precut stickers. The Cricut StickerPix Print plus Cut and Cricut StickerPix Print are also two of the smallest machines in the company's current lineup and seem ideal for those whose crafting aspirations [...]

For the third year in a row, I've been scared out of my wits by a new Silent Hill game. First it was the modern remake of Silent Hill 2, then the Japan-set spinoff Silent Hill F. Now I find myself slowly crawling through a quaint Scottish town in Silent Hill: Townfall, trying my best [...]

A few years back, I was at a beachside Easter egg hunt, watching my kids dash through sand dunes searching for sweet treats. My phone buzzed in my pocket; I ignored it. A moment later, it buzzed again. I pulled it out, glanced down, and saw a "motion detected" notification from my security camera. "Just [...]

It's right there in the name: "Insta360" makes 360-degree cameras, ones that film every angle simultaneously so you can shoot first and frame later. It didn't invent the idea, but Insta360 has become so synonymous with 360 cameras that it dominates the category with 73 percent of worldwide marketshare. It's preparing to ship so many [...]

After teasing its new Copilot "super app" last month, Microsoft is officially unveiling it today. The redesigned Copilot app bundles three AI capabilities into a single interface of chat, coding, and agents. As part of the launch, Microsoft is also rebranding Scout, the AI personal assistant it unveiled at Build earlier this year, as Autopilot. [...]

Remember the Tesla Semi? The long-gestating, heavy-duty truck first introduced in concept form in 2017 is finally in volume production as of April 2026 - nearly a decade after its initial introduction. On Thursday evening, the company held yet another event for the Semi to demonstrate to customers and investors that the long wait was [...]

Remember when Microsoft wanted everyone to know that "Copilot Plus PCs" were the ones to get, because those were the PCs that that'd have enough built-in AI muscle to get things done? Two and a half years later, Microsoft and Qualcomm seem to be admitting the brand is already dead. Windows Central's Zac Bowden reports [...]

Meta's lawyers have argued that certain evidence should be withheld from public view on the grounds of attorney-client privilege in the ongoing lawsuits over alleged harm to teens' safety and mental health. Lawyers suing the company said this week that the label has been applied far too broadly, while pointing to a recently unsealed document [...]

What if your wireless earbuds - or audio glasses - could stream high-quality lossless audio that doesn't cut out when you leave your phone on the bedside charger or buried in the couch? Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is its first to integrate "micro-power Wi-Fi 6E" right into the chip, so they can [...]

Microsoft is moving its communications group out of marketing and into its Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA) organization. The surprise change will see Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith oversee communications, while the company searches for a replacement for Frank Shaw, chief communications officer, who is departing later this year. Microsoft CEO Satya [...]

Google's new Gemini 3.8 Live update lets users have conversations with the model while watching an animated AI persona respond in real time. The "Live Avatar" will lip-sync and show different facial expressions during conversations, but it's currently only available to Gemini Enterprise customers. As noted by Google, Live Avatar can transition between the 97 [...]

While PC component prices remain high, you can save a good bit of money on a system by purchasing a prebuilt desktop. Walmart has a well-equipped CyberPowerPC gaming PC on sale for $1,549, almost $600 off its original price of $2,139. It's powered by an Intel Core i7-14700KF processor, and paired with 32GB of 6000MHz [...]

As Jensen Huang puts it, AI can help fight climate change - but only if it inflicts "an enormous amount of pain and suffering" first. The Nvidia CEO discussed the future of energy and AI's impact on our planet in the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show. But his comments boil down to the [...]

Meta has a new plan to get people to make games for its Horizon social platform. The company today announced two new development tools that will let you create games with AI prompts: Horizon Create, a mobile app, and Horizon Studio, a browser app that offers more granular controls. The apps will be available in [...]

A pair of developers say that with very little prompting, Meta's Muse will share its entire filesystem with you. Peter James and Jonny L. Saunders have said they both independently coaxed Muse into zipping up and sharing the entire contents of its root filesystem, Ubuntu system files, app templates, and internal documentation. Saunders posted on [...]

We seem to be entering into an AI agent renaissance. Meta's new consumer-facing AI agent, Muse, topped the App Store charts soon after its release and has 600,000 daily active users in the US, by an Apptopia estimate. And AI agent platform Instinct, whose eponymous creator is fundraising at a $2.5 billion valuation, has been [...]

Google is rolling out some new Chrome browser features that are designed to make it easier to research and study complicated topics. The cross-device tab switching feature is getting a memory upgrade, alongside new capabilities for Gemini in Chrome that can analyze more types of media and generate interactive study quizzes. Chrome has an existing [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. Last night, I asked Blorbo - what I named my Muse AI agent - to help me set some health [...]

A company called Inmo that makes several different variations of smart glasses has issued a recall for its Air3 because the left temple "can overheat during extended use, posing a risk of serious injury or death due to burn hazard." To date there have been 10 reports of users experiencing a "burning sensation to the [...]

Google's launching an "early experiment" feature on Pixel 11 that lets users delegate local business calls to Gemini, like making a reservation, checking if a product is in stock, or rescheduling an appointment. According to Google, you don't even need to start the call to have Gemini handle it for you: Instead of dialing yourself, [...]

It feels like Xbox has been in a permanent state of turmoil for at least two years now, and this week is no different. Microsoft cut 268 jobs across its gaming division this week, shuffled major studios and franchises around, and continued its Xbox "reset." Layoffs have become a way of life for Xbox employees, [...]

Nintendo won its $4.5 million lawsuit against James Williams, a Reddit moderator accused of distributing pirated Switch games, as reported earlier by Aftermath. In a default judgment issued on Wednesday, a Washington federal judge also ordered Williams to shut down the online stores allegedly housing libraries of pirated Switch games. Nintendo sued Williams, also known [...]

Nikon waited five years to update its full-frame Z5 camera to the Z5 II, but today it announced a new variant of last year's upgrade that removes features instead of introducing improvements in order to make it more affordable for novice photographers. While the Nikon Z5 II starts at $1,849.95, the new Nikon Z5 IIC [...]