The Verge

If you've been saddled with some awful Gmail address you chose in high school (looking at you, LazySexyCool3030), help appears to be on the way. According to a Google account support page in Hindi the company is allowing some people to change their email address. According to the page (via Google Translate): If your Google [...]

Aside from free shipping, Prime Video is the second-best perk that comes with an Amazon Prime subscription. This year, the streaming service delivered several strong installments to some of its biggest series like Reacher, Fallout, and Invincible - but it also premiered some great new shows and spinoffs to keep things fresh. Here's a list [...]

LG is getting ready to take the wraps off a new robot it claims is capable of performing a "wide range" of household chores. The robot, called LG CLOiD, will make its debut at CES next month, featuring two articulated arms and five individually actuated fingers on each hand. Though we only have a description [...]

When your kid starts showing a preference for one of their stuffed animals, you're supposed to buy a backup in case it goes missing. I've heard this advice again and again, but never got around to buying a second plush deer once "Buddy" became my son's obvious favorite. Neither, apparently, did the parents in Google's [...]

AI isn't new to Hollywood - but this was the year when it really made its presence felt. For years now, the entertainment industry has used different kinds of generative AI products for a variety of post-production processes ranging from de-aging actors to removing green screen backgrounds. In many instances, the technology has been a [...]

As you might expect, things have been relatively quiet on the deals front since Black Friday, particularly when it comes to discounts on charging accessories. Thankfully, Anker's aptly titled Laptop Power Bank is once again on sale at Amazon and Walmart for $87.99 ($47 off), which matches the record-low price we last saw at the [...]

Sony's full suite of PlayStation 5 consoles jumped in price in August due to increased US tariffs, but now through Christmas, you can save $100 on several models. This discount is especially great if you planned to go big with Sony's PS5 Pro, the company's priciest, most powerful console yet. Normally $749.99, you can currently [...]

Netflix has had an interesting year. Its ad tier, introduced last year, has grown significantly, and its live TV initiative has expanded to include not only weird one-offs like hot-dog-eating grudge matches but also WWE programming. Taking KPop Demon Hunters off Sony's hands for the business equivalent of $200 in a potato chip bag also [...]

2025 was the year generative AI made its presence felt in the video game industry. Its use has been discovered in some of the most popular games of the year, and CEOs from some of the largest game studios claim it's being implemented everywhere in the industry including in their own development processes. Meanwhile, rank-and-file [...]

It's a good thing that we already know a second season of Pluribus is on the way. Because the season finale for the show - a sci-fi drama on Apple TV, helmed by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan - made it clear that things are just getting started. The episode brought together a number of [...]

On Tuesday, the Trump Administration followed through on a threat of retaliation targeting foreigners who are involved in content moderation. The State Department announced sanctions barring US access for former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, as well as four researchers, while issuing an intentionally chilling threat to others, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming, "The [...]

Apple is set to allow third-party app stores on iOS in Brazil next year after settling with the country's competition watchdog in a legal battle dating back to 2022, as reported by 9to5Mac. According to a machine translation of a press release from the Brazilian regulator CADE, it has approved a Term of Commitment to [...]

If you're in the market for a new Android smartphone - or on the hunt for a solid last-minute gift - Google's Pixel 10 is a great place to look. We consider it the best Android phone you can buy, and right now, you can grab it at Amazon starting at $449 ($350 off) when [...]

You don't need to deal with long mall lines or crowded parking lots just to wrap up your holiday shopping, but you probably already knew this. Some of the best deals are online, and even though Christmas is now a day or two away, a lot of Verge-approved gifts should still arrive on time if [...]

Samsung is breaking new ground with its 2026 lineup of gaming monitors, with the Odyssey 3D G90XH becoming the first to feature a 6K display with "glasses-free 3D." The new monitor comes with a 32-inch IPS panel, offering real-time eye-tracking that "adjusts depth and perspective" based on your position, along with a speedy 165Hz refresh [...]

IO Interactive has delayed the release of 007 First Light, its upcoming James Bond origin story game, by two months. 007 First Light will now be released on May 27th, 2026. According to an announcement about the delay: 007 First Light is our most ambitious project to date, and the team has been fully focused [...]

A federal judge blocked a Texas law requiring mobile app stores to verify users' ages from taking effect on January 1st. In an order granting a preliminary injunction on the Texas App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420), Judge Robert Pitman wrote that the statute "is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to [...]

And just like that, Christmas is less than two days away, which is too soon for most items bought online to arrive in time. That said, you aren't alone if you waited too long to start buying gifts this year, and you definitely aren't alone in feeling guilty for considering digital gifts instead of something [...]

The Justice Department has blamed its delayed release of some so-called Epstein files on needing more time to redact sensitive information, like details identifying the victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But at least some of the redactions so far released appear to mistakenly disclose information meant to be obscured from the public. A [...]

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. Lowpass is taking a winter break and will be back on January 8, 2026. All I want for Christmas is to find that darn movie I've been meaning to watch. [...]

A group of tech companies and academic institutions spent tens of thousands of dollars in the past month - likely between $17,000 and $25,000 - on an ad campaign against New York's landmark AI safety bill, which may have reached more than two million people, according to Meta's Ad Library. The landmark bill is called [...]

The livestreams connected to more than 60 of Flock's AI-powered surveillance cameras were left available to view on the web, allowing someone to see live feeds of each location without needing a username or password, according to findings from tech YouTuber Benn Jordan and 404 Media. Flock is a technology company that works with thousands [...]

Belkin's Stage PowerGrip has shown me that I should be asking more from a wireless magnetic power bank than just boosting battery life while it hangs off the back of my phone. Its clever design adds layers of extra functionality, and the inclusion of a retractable two-way charging cable expands the number of devices you [...]

In case you've waited until the very last minute to buy Christmas gifts, and there's a Switch 2 on your shopping list, you've really lucked out here. Not only is Nintendo's powerful handheld readily available online and in stores, it's still $50 off for the best console bundle you can buy. The set that includes [...]

Last Samurai Standing begins with a familiar premise. Desperate samurai dispossessed by the restoration of the emperor enter into a deadly game for a life-changing cash prize - all for the entertainment of anonymous elites. Unlike its inspirations Battle Royale and Squid Game, however, Last Samurai Standing's violence is chaotic, fast-paced, and kinetic, though it [...]

Happy Holidays! As we like to do on The Vergecast, we take this time of year to see our families, relax and recharge, and go extremely deep into a specific technology that matters right now. This year, we picked the tiny chip in all your devices that is suddenly a precious and expensive commodity: RAM. [...]

This morning, I asked my Alexa-enabled Bosch coffee machine to make me a coffee. Instead of running my routine, it told me it couldn't do that. Ever since I upgraded to Alexa Plus, Amazon's generative-AI-powered voice assistant, it has failed to reliably run my coffee routine, coming up with a different excuse almost every time [...]

The first crack showed right before Inauguration Day. The year before, Congress had overwhelmingly passed a bill banning TikTok unless it broke ties with its Chinese parent company. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld it, and it was clear what needed to happen next: either the president could give TikTok another 90 days to complete a [...]

Apple has been fined more than 98 million (about $116 million) by Italy's antitrust regulator over the "excessively burdensome" privacy rules it imposes on third-party apps. The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) says that Apple abused its dominant app store market position by burdening developers with "disproportionate" terms around data collection that exceed privacy law requirements, [...]

As a reluctant doomsday prepper and eager vanlifer, Dometic's battery-powered Go Faucet has, for the last few years, played a central role in my bougie bug-out kit and my camping rig's water system. So it took me all of two minutes with Dometic's new Recon 360 Faucet to realize it's an upgrade in every single [...]

The Federal Communications Commission has banned new drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the US unless the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security recommends them. Monday's action added drones to the FCC's Covered List, qualifying foreign-made drones and drone parts, like those from DJI, as communications equipment representing "unacceptable [...]

Yesterday, Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, censored a segment of its newsmagazine 60 Minutes about men who had been deported to an El Salvador prison. Today, it's popping up online. 60 Minutes had already begun promoting the now-censored segment online. Because it was pulled so late, it seems that CBS missed at [...]

ChatGPT is joining the flood of apps offering yearly recaps for users. It's rolling out a "Year in Review" feature that will show you a bunch of stats - like how many messages you sent to the chatbot in 2025 - as well as give you an AI-generated pixel art-style image that encompasses some of [...]

Vince Zampella, who had a major hand in developing franchises like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and Battlefield, died in a car crash on Sunday, NBC Los Angeles reports. He was 55. NBC Los Angeles and CBS Los Angeles report California Highway Patrol responded to a single-car crash at around 12:45PM local time on [...]

Bitcoin culture, by nature, is anarchical and chaotic. It has to be, given the nature of Bitcoin itself and the people who adopted it: free-market libertarians who've gone all in on turning computer code into a form of money divorced from central banks, government intervention, and traceability. In short, it's the exact opposite culture of [...]

Spotify says it has launched new protections against "anti-copyright attacks" after the open-source library / pirate activist group Anna's Archive announced it's ripped 86 million songs from the platform that it plans to make available in torrents, as reported earlier by Billboard. According to the group, "We have archived around 86 million songs from Spotify, [...]

Ahead of CES 2026 getting underway in early January, Birdfy has announced two new camera-equipped smart bird feeders that can identify and capture visitors in slow motion. The Birdfy Hum Bloom is specifically designed to attract and record hummingbirds using a nectar bulb that mimics flowers they're naturally attracted to, while the Feeder Vista introduces [...]

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had earned another Game of the Year award by the Indie Game Awards last week, but the organization has since announced that the award would be retracted because developer Sandfall Interactive used generative AI during development. The Indie Game Awards also rescinded the Debut Game award given to Expedition 33. Here [...]

Although Netflix Originals are shows the streamer produces itself or has exclusive licensing arrangements for, they aren't always available on the platform indefinitely. What's on Netflix has compiled a comprehensive list of 100 Netflix Originals movies and series set to be removed from the platform throughout 2026. The list includes several animated series like seasons [...]

Christmas Eve is in two days, and if you've got a problem with procrastination, it's time to, well, stop procrastinating. There are still some really good deals to be gotten out there, some of which may arrive just in the nick. (Worse comes to worse, you can say it's a New Year's gift, right?) One [...]

Instacart is ending its AI-powered pricing tests, which led some users to see higher prices on certain products than others. "Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices - period," Instacart writes in a blog post on [...]

The AI data center build-out, as it currently stands, is dependent on two things: Nvidia chips and borrowed money. Perhaps it was inevitable that people would begin using Nvidia chips to borrow money. As the craze has gone on, I have begun to worry about the weaknesses of the AI data center boom; looking deeper [...]

Apple's long-rumored foldable iPhone is set to arrive next year and already faces some preemptive competition from Samsung. Korea's ET News reports that Samsung's upcoming "Wide Fold" is also set to launch in 2026 and will closely mirror the display size and 4:3 aspect ratio of Apple's first foldable. The machine-translated report says the Wide [...]

According to YouTube's 2025 Recap feature, the podcast I consumed the most on its platform was Seth Meyers' recurring segment "A Closer Look" on his show Late Night. Last year, I would have argued that this is not a podcast. That it is, in fact, a clip of a TV show. But in 2025, with [...]

These days when you want to engage with some media, you can choose from podcasts, videos, games, live performances - or books, one of the oldest and most popular ways to learn something new or escape (at least temporarily) from today's troubled world. We polled the staff of The Verge to find out what books [...]

PayPal's Honey browser extension has been lauded for years as an easy way to find coupons online. But some are calling it a scam" after a deep dive from YouTuber MegaLag, who accused Honey of stealing money from influencers," and returned one year later with a second video that says Honey targeted minors, collected data [...]

A power outage struck San Francisco on Saturday that blacked out about 130,000 customers at its peak, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, but also caused another problem: stranded Waymo vehicles. Posts all over social media showed the company's autonomous SUVs sitting still in the streets and causing traffic jams. Some people posted videos [...]

Holiday shopping on a budget can feel constricting, especially if you've been invited to a white elephant or need a last-minute stocking stuffer. The good news is that, with this guide, you can leave that stress behind. Whether you're aiming for something practical or fun, we've found plenty of great gifts for under $25 - [...]

It's the holiday season, and Christmas music is utterly inescapable. Look, I love Mariah Carey and Wham! As much as the next guy. But at some point, you get really tired of hearing the same handful of Christmas songs over and over again. So here are 10 suggestions to add to your holiday playlist that [...]

Between keeping up with TikTok trends and whatever new gadget just dropped, it's tough to know exactly what teens are into these days. Luckily, we can help. We may be older than teenagers, but many of us here at The Verge are kids at heart. Plus, we've also got a few staffers with older kids. [...]