The Verge

You may not know it, but minivans are making a comeback in the US. Look around, and you'll start to notice an uptick in these breadboxes on wheels. Sales were up 21 percent in 2025, suggesting that the humble minivan is shaking off its "uncool" stigma and finding new fans among an SUV-weary public. I'm [...]

If the high price tag of premium 3D printers have kept you from exploring the hobby, this deal is a great entry point. Elegoo has its Centauri Carbon 2 Combo on sale for $369, almost $100 off its usual price of $449. This capable 3D printer can handle four filament rolls at once, with a [...]

Whether you played it in the back of your classroom or on your computer at home, if you were a kid in the last 30 years you almost certainly grew up playing The Oregon Trail. On the season 5 premiere of Version History, our fearless wagon leader David Pierce is joined by gaming journalist Chris [...]

There are a lot of movies that have tried to seamlessly integrate modern tech - text messages, livestreams, etc. - into their storytelling. Some of the most novel attempts have been in the genre space, like the Twitch-style horror flick Deadstream. But the most chaotic to date might just be Vintage Violence, an absurd crime [...]

More than a decade after its Kickstarter proposed a "cell phone designed to be used as little as possible," Light is adding a direct connection to Uber and Lyft with a new Rideshare tool. For owners of either the Light Phone III or the upcoming Light Flip, they can use it to find pick up [...]

Shortly after launching its new do-everything AI assistant Muse, Meta's launching subscription bundles that pair its standalone app subscriptions with extra AI usage. Some of the new Meta One bundles were in testing earlier this year, but are now available globally starting today, with several tiers for individual users, creators, and businesses. Meta says the [...]

Fujifilm announced a follow-up to its tiny and quirky Instax Pal camera that debuted three years ago bundled with an instant printer. While the original Pal was a palm-sized camera with a round design that lacked a screen or viewfinder, the new Instax Pal 2 includes both in a design that looks like a miniaturized [...]

DIY home security company SimpliSafe is bringing its AI-powered proactive security feature to the front door. The new SimpliSafe Video Doorbell Series 2 launches today for $199.99 and works with the company's Active Guard Outdoor Protection (starting at $49.99 a month). This combines AI analysis with live agents to detect potential threats and respond proactively. [...]

Voicemod announced a new mobile device that expands the capabilities of the Voicemod Key dongle it launched in late 2024 as a way to bring the company's real-time voice changing tech to consoles. While the older Voicemod Key only used a smartphone as an interface between the company's mobile app and the Xbox, PlayStation, and [...]

It's almost a guarantee that the new version of a product will be, at best, the same price as the old one, and often (especially in the past couple years) more expensive. But that's not what Apple did with the AirPods 5. The $149 AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case are $30 cheaper than the [...]

General Motors is polishing up the software experience in its bestselling trucks in an effort to reduce the amount of dangerous tapping and swiping that's required to access the most-used controls. It's also giving Apple CarPlay and Android Auto spiffy new picture-in-picture displays - which is notable given GM's previously stated hostility to phone mirroring [...]

Microsoft has started rolling out an emergency out-of-band update to fix problems with its record-breaking September patch Tuesday update. The software giant patched nearly 1,000 flaws in its biggest update ever this month, but it also introduced some bugs that have affected businesses, developers, and gamers. The September patch Tuesday affected folder shares on Hyper-V-based [...]

Most plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) today get an average of around 30-50 miles of battery-only range: decent, but not mind-blowing. With hybrid sales dominating the market today, Volvo is out to prove that its PHEVs can push the limits of what's possible. Today, the Swedish automaker revealed the updated PHEV versions of its popular [...]

Now that Valve has finally launched its entire 2026 hardware lineup - the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and today's Steam Frame - are we any closer to a next-gen Steam Deck handheld? Valve isn't saying so yet. The company is figuring out "how and when we can deliver something like that," Valve designer Pierre-Loup [...]

When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX head Elon Musk loosely agreed over the weekend to slow down AI development, skeptics spotted an ulterior motive immediately. The AI titans had declared that their aim was to "pace the frontier," signing on at least partially to a [...]

With the public release of iOS 27 and tvOS 27, Apple Home is getting an injection of Apple Intelligence - but you'll have to pay more for it. Apple Intelligence for Home brings AI-powered video summaries to HomeKit Secure Video, so you can get short text descriptions of who and what compatible security cameras saw, [...]

Dario Amodei kicked off a flood of statements over the past few days about AI safety by publishing a long essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier" detailing why AI development should be slowed down. Other AI leaders and politicians are speaking out in favor of or opposing his points, and we've compiled some of [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced its plans today to kill any remaining standards on how much greenhouse gas pollution power plants are allowed to emit in the US. The move will only make electricity dirtier as AI, electric vehicles, and a revival of domestic manufacturing drive up power demand. The EPA's proposal today is a [...]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took a call from President Trump on Monday while onstage at the All-In Podcast's All-In Summit. It's not the first time Huang has taken a call from the president during work, but this time he put Trump on speakerphone before a big crowd. During the call, the president launched into his [...]

The Steam Frame headset is here, and it may not surprise you: it was supposed to cost less than $1,059. "We set out to come out with a device that would have been far more affordable, but the global RAM market, the global storage market have impacted us the same way they've impacted everybody," Valve [...]

As promised, Nintendo has marked down a wide variety of Switch games and accessories at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, as well as its own digital storefront. Its Customer Appreciation" sale is happening because of tariff-related refunds it received from the US government, and it ends on September 26th at 8:59 PM PT. Nintendo games [...]

If you want an idea of what's next in film, the Toronto International Film Festival is a good place to start. Every year TIFF features a huge range of features from around the world, and often some of them go on to be huge hits or awards contenders; the 2025 edition, for instance, included the [...]

Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gate on Monday, which brings the new Siri AI assistant, Liquid Glass improvements, improved performance, and more. The update is compatible with all Macs with Apple Silicon, but not Intel Macs - Apple released its final big update for Intel-based Macs last year with macOS Tahoe. Siri AI is arguably [...]

Apple is now rolling out its iOS 27 update to compatible devices today, alongside the watchOS 27, iPadOS 27, and visionOS 27 updates. Siri AI is the headline feature across all four updates, the delayed AI-powered overhaul of the Siri assistant. Siri AI is available as a beta today for English-only devices, and Apple says [...]

For nearly three weeks, I've been testing the limits of Valve's Steam Frame, the company's new wearable PC. At first glance, it's easy to write it off as a pricey headset that missed the VR craze. At $1,059 with 256GB of storage or $1,299 for 1TB, it costs two to three times as much as [...]

Valve is finally releasing its Steam Frame headset, which can run both flat and VR games locally and stream both kinds of games from your PC. The Steam Frame will start at $1,059. Valve will also offer a 1TB model that starts at $1,299. Every Steam Frame will come with a copy of Half-Life: Alyx, [...]

Today, Valve is launching its first headset since 2019 - the new Steam Frame - while dodging our questions about whether it'll ever make another VR game to go with it. But buyers of the $1,059 gadget will get one flagship VR game anyhow, and it's great. Every Steam Frame comes with a copy of [...]

Hey! I'm Sean Hollister, you might have seen me around this place a few times, and I just spent three weeks beta-testing the Steam Frame, Valve's hotly anticipated new don't-call-it-a-VR-headset that might also be an early glimpse at the future of games that run everywhere. At 4PM ET today (that's 1PM PT for West Coasters [...]

Dell's last XPS 13 was meant to be a farewell before the company sunset the entire XPS brand. But it was a bitter ending, and an overpriced one as well. Earlier this year, Dell resurrected the XPS name with the excellent (and very expensive) XPS 14 and 16. And now, it's reinvented the XPS 13 [...]

Netflix has announced three new adaptations of Sega games: a Crazy Taxi film, a Sonic animated series "built for kids who want to feel a little edge," and a live-action movie based on the upcoming Stranger Than Heaven from Yakuza developer RGG Studio. The Crazy Taxi movie will be the first project released, though it [...]

No, that's not a Tesla Cybercab. That's Volkswagen's Mission Efficiency, the world's slipperiest electric vehicle. The near-production 2+2 seat electric coupe prototype was built on VW's MEB+ platform, incorporating front-wheel drive components from the upcoming ID. Polo and ID. Cross models. True to its name, the mission of Mission Efficiency is to break records. With [...]

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro will release this Friday, September 18th, and it's tough to see it as just a coincidence that Google's latest Pixel phones are discounted. The Pixel 11 Pro carries the biggest discount, with its fog, olive, and obsidian color schemes selling for around $1,007 at Amazon, almost negating this year's $100 price [...]

Today, I'm joined by comedian, podcast host, and YouTuber Adam Conover. Adam is a familiar face to anyone who's spent time on the internet. He got his start, like so many successful comedy writers, at CollegeHumor back in the day. That was before transitioning into cable TV with Adam Ruins Everything, then onto Netflix, and [...]

It makes sense that Musk is a long film. The latest from Alex Gibney, who has previously directed documentaries about Theranos and Steve Jobs, is an impressively thorough retelling of the story of Elon Musk, from his early days as a dot-com millionaire to "taking a wood chipper" to vital US government departments. In order [...]

Microsoft is publishing a 37-page "humanist AI code of conduct" today, amid growing safety concerns over AI model progress. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a coordinated slow down of AI development over the weekend, after researchers warned recently that AI model progress could outpace our ability to safely deploy increasingly complex systems and verify [...]

From Florida to Washington state, local governments across the country are canceling their contracts with Flock, the company behind the controversial AI-enabled license plate readers, in response to public outcry. But ending the contracts doesn't necessarily mean the cameras will come down immediately - or that the information they've gathered will be deleted anytime soon. [...]

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter saying it was time to "pace the frontier" and slow down AI development. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet's Demis Hassabis offered tentative support for Amodei's proposal. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, [...]

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is developing two game controllers for the iPhone and will likely sell them under the Beats brand. Rumors that Apple might enter the game controller business have circulated for some time. But last week, MacRumors reported finding two references in macOS 26.7's code to two game controllers identified as first-party [...]

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there's no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things - punk rock [...]

Two people were arrested in San Fransico while riding around in a Waymo robotaxi after the cab pulled over and called the cops on them. The riders were juveniles in possession of a loaded AR-style ghost gun and were taken to a juvenile hall. While the police report did not specify who was operating the [...]

Marvel's mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio's biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on cars, data privacy, and autonomous vehicles, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 143, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, new tech season is here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been devouring every iPhone Duo video I can find, clicking on [...]

In May, hundreds of malicious and spam packages were uploaded to RubyGems, causing a serious disruption for the host. Now independent researchers have said that a swarm of OpenAI agents were responsible for the attack. Not only that, but the AI tried to steal users' API keys. At the time, RubyGems described it as a [...]

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that there would be no OpenAI IPO in 2026 during an interview with Fortune. Over the course of 45 minutes, Altman discussed a variety of subjects including the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improvement, and the possibility of building an AI that was beyond human control. On the latter, he [...]

Blizzard originally tried to bring the StarCraft universe to the world of 3D shooters way back in 2002 with StarCraft: Ghost. It sat in development hell for years until Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that it had been canceled in 2014. Now Blizzard is giving it another go with the simply titled StarCraft. Dan Hay, [...]

Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, better known as Sylvan Esso, have been bringing their low-key electro-pop to the masses since 2014, bursting onto the scene with their self-titled debut album and the single "Hey Mami." Over the years, they've put out a number of excellent records, dabbling in dustier, more fragile textures on Free Love, [...]

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the time has come to slow down AI development and will give third-party evaluators like METR access to its models to help ensure its "adherence to safety practices and commitments." In a winding essay, Amodei proposed a three-step plan to "pace the frontier" - jargon that simply means to slow [...]

Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG's TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that "Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work." LG released a [...]

President Donald Trump is weakening environmental regulations in the name of speeding up the construction of AI data centers, raising health risks for Americans, a cadre of former EPA officials said this week in a briefing and new report. They are urging - perhaps futilely - the president to adopt a "Data Center Health Protection [...]