The Verge

In December, the Federal Communications Commission banned all future drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the United States, unless or until their maker gets an exemption. Now, the FCC has done the exact same for consumer networking gear, citing "an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to [...]

If you're trying to figure out how to keep your kids occupied this spring break, the Fitbit Ace LTE is an easy way to get them outdoors and off their phones. The kid-friendly smartwatch encourages movement with trackable games, and it's back to an all-time low price of $99.95 ($80 off) at Amazon ahead of [...]

The prediction market platform Kalshi says it's rolling out new guardrails to "preemptively block" political candidates and athletes from trading in their own markets, as reported earlier by Axios. In addition to blocking political candidates from trading on their own campaigns, Kalshi says its system will also prevent professional and college sports athletes, referees, and [...]

Ever watch a TV ad and wonder, "How did this get approved?" Today, Google has not one but two new ad spots for its six-month-old Pixel 10 phones, and... let's just say they may not come across as intended. First, there's "With 100x Zoom," an ad that appears to suggest that if a vacation rental [...]

Color isn't essential in an e-reader, but let's be honest, it's a nice perk that can bring digital books, magazines, comics, cookbooks, and other publications to life. The catch is that color ebook readers tend to be substantially pricier, which makes today's deals stand out. Right now, the Kindle Colorsoft (16GB) and Kobo Libra Colour [...]

Apple will soon bring advertisements to its Maps app on mobile and the web, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The ads, which Apple could reportedly announce this month before rolling them out in the summer, could allow businesses to pay for the highest spot in search results on Apple Maps. That means [...]

Donut Lab is on a mission to prove to the world its solid-state battery is real, one independent test at a time. We've seen speed charging tests, extreme heat tests, and not-a-supercapacitor tests. Today's test is to see how the battery holds up under damage. The results: While it could barely sustain a charge, it [...]

Apple has set a date for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), scheduling the keynote and Platforms State of the Union for June 8th through June 12th at Apple Park. As usual, we will be tuned in to find out what's new in the 2027-branded editions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. After last [...]

The early 2020s were kind of a dark time if you were a fan of Rock Band. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X owners didn't get an improved, more feature-packed guitar controller until early 2024 when PDP launched the Riffmaster. While it launched for $129.99 and later rose to $149.99, you can now grab it [...]

Andy Weir has done pretty well when it comes to adaptations. His first novel, The Martian, was turned into a movie in 2015, and the Ridley Scott-directed picture earned more than $600 million at the box office. And Project Hail Mary just had a huge opening weekend that puts it on track to be one [...]

Despite the fact that Apple released a new AirTag in January, the first-gen AirTag is still a top-notch tracker if you're embedded in Apple's ecosystem. And right now, it's on sale for $59.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, which marks a new low price. If you're an iPhone owner, the original AirTag [...]

In-wheel motors have been around since the very beginning of electric motoring. Ferdinand Porsche developed one way back in 1900, and the US sent them to the moon in our Lunar Roving Vehicles in the early '70s. But, outside of e-bikes, they've never really gone mainstream. It looked like Lordstown Motors would be their time [...]

Govee has announced a new set of outdoor string lights that allows for more color customization than competitors' products, as well as the company's existing color-changing set. Similar to its Outdoor UpDown Wall Light introduced in July 2025, Govee's new Outdoor Chromatic String Lights don't limit you to just one color per bulb. You can [...]

Samsung is bringing AirDrop support to the Quick Share feature on Galaxy devices, starting with the S26 series. The new AirDrop feature will begin rolling out in Korea starting today, according to Samsung, with US devices seeing the option sometime later this week. It will arrive in more regions and on more Galaxy devices "at [...]

First came the AI beauty pageant. Then the AI music contests. Now, there is an award for AI Personality of the Year - perhaps the inevitable next step for the AI influencer economy as it fights for legitimacy amid an onslaught of AI slop and grifters and transforms from quirky novelty into a serious and [...]

Last week's recommendation, Sotomayor's Wabi Sabi, has a very particular vibe that you don't find in a lot of records. One of the few things it called to mind was 2022's Topical Dancer from Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul, which I ended up revisiting this week a lot. The two records don't seem particularly alike [...]

Reviews of Crimson Desert have been mixed, but the bigger issue for the game has been the discovery of what appeared to be AI-generated assets in the final release. Now the developer has acknowledged that AI art was indeed used during the game's creation, but says that it was intended to be replaced before release. [...]

Amazon's Prime Day sale may arrive earlier than usual this year, but there's a deal event happening much sooner: Amazon's annual Big Spring Sale, which is happening March 25th through the 31st. While it won't be as big as Prime Day or Black Friday, it does offer you a chance to save money at a [...]

Elon Musk announced plans to build a Terafab plant in Austin, Texas, that will be jointly run by Tesla and SpaceX. The goal is to eventually build chips at scale for robotics, artificial intelligence, and space-based data centers for Musk's various companies. Musk has expressed concern, as have other executives, about the chip industry's ability [...]

The vocoder was never supposed to be a revolution in music. It wasn't supposed to be anything in music, really. Its development began a century ago, when an engineer at Bell Labs was looking for a simpler way to send phone calls across copper telephone lines. The engineer, Homer Dudley, built some pretty neat technology [...]

Sonos is no stranger to the occasional sale. The iconic audio company routinely runs sales around Black Friday, Amazon Prime Day, and the Super Bowl, though it's rare to see substantial discounts on its portable speakers outside of tentpole shopping events. Fortunately, if you have no interest in the Sonos Move 2 or forthcoming Sonos [...]

AI was everywhere at the GDC Festival of Gaming this year. Vendors at the event pitched generative AI tools for things like making AI-driven NPCs and even entire games from a chat box. On the show floor, I spent 10 minutes playing a demo of a pixel-art fantasy world generated by Tencent's AI tools. In [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about online age verification and your privacy, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Virtual private networks, or VPNs, weren't always [...]

Lux Optics co-founder Sebastiaan de With made headlines when he joined Apple in late January. The company was behind Halide, one of the most popular photography apps for the iPhone, which gained a cult following for its robust pro-level controls. Apple was apparently a big enough fan that it tried to acquire the developer last [...]

Less than a week ago, Apple announced the forthcoming AirPods Max 2, a pair of over-ear headphones that leverage the company's H2 chip for AI-powered live translation, conversation awareness, and a host of newer features. However, if you're okay with a pair of earbuds, the AirPods Pro 3 offer access to all the same features [...]

REI's latest sale is in full swing. The outdoor retailer's exclusive shopping event runs through Monday, March 23rd, bringing with it a batch of discounts on Garmin watches, tents, portable stoves, and a slew of Verge-approved goodies. As expected, most deals are available only to REI members; however, you can still join the co-op for [...]

Like many people, director Valerie Veatch was intrigued when OpenAI first released its Sora text-to-video generative AI model to the public in 2024. Though she didn't fully understand the technology, she was curious about what it could do, and she saw that other artists were building online communities to share their new AI creations. The [...]

The funny shape of eggs is the curious lifeblood of Oeuf, the new physics platformer by prolific developer Increpare Games. In a gaming landscape saturated with complex systems dropped into simple games, that grapples with metaphor within straightforward narratives, and that is desperate to bring cinematic sensibilities into gaming, Oeuf only asks that you briefly [...]

Amazon's Big Spring Sale doesn't kick off until next week, but the retailer is already dropping a host of good deals, especially on robot vacuums. We recently saw Ecovacs' Deebot X8 and X9 Pro Omni drop to $599 ($501 off) and $679 ($621 off), respectively; however, if you're looking for a cheaper robot vacuum / [...]

Apple's flagship 16-inch MacBook Pro has reigned supreme in the world of creator-focused laptops since its M-series processor overhaul in 2021. Since then, we've mostly seen the same design with year-over-year chip bumps and small refinements. "If it ain't broke," right? If you want to know everything about this machine, you can read our review [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 120, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, get ready for Pen Opinions, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Banksy and music apps and influencer agents, watching [...]

I've been testing out Gemini's new task automation on the Pixel 10 Pro and the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which for the first time lets Gemini take the wheel and use apps for you. It's limited to a small subset right now - a handful of food delivery and rideshare services - and it's still in [...]

This year is shaping up to be a big one for self-driving trucks. In addition to Aurora's plan to deploy hundreds of autonomous big rigs and Waabi expanding into robotaxis, you've also got Kodiak AI aiming to launch its own fully driverless long-haul freight operation by the end of 2026. While robotaxis may still win [...]

My Starlink Mini has radically changed the way I live. It's the biggest reason I can work remotely from my converted van, providing fast and reliable internet in places that traditional 4G and 5G data signals don't reach. Peakdo's latest LinkPower battery makes the smallest Starlink terminal even better by setting it free from power [...]

A California jury determined that Elon Musk misled Twitter investors before making a $44 billion deal to buy the company in 2022, reports CNBC. The New York Times reports that Musk had testified this month that he didn't believe his posts would spook markets, but he did say that "If this was a trial about [...]

Tumblr users were left scrambling on Wednesday after dozens of accounts were banned in the same afternoon by an automated system. Numerous users contacted The Verge about the incident, claiming that the wave of bans disproportionately seemed to impact accounts run by users who identify as trans women, many of whom were given no specific [...]

Nintendo plans to release a Switch 2 revision in the European Union that will let users replace their own batteries, Nikkei reports. The current version of the Switch 2 has a glued-in battery. But Nintendo apparently plans to make the change in order to comply with EU rules going into effect in February 2027 that [...]

Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro, told Digital Foundry that ML-based frame generation tech is coming to "PlayStation platforms" in the future, letting the game console use AI to imagine new frames between the ones it's actually rendering, which can create smoother perceived image quality while (typically) introducing some [...]

In 2015, Microsoft decided that you shouldn't be in control of updating your PC anymore. At first, it seemed like a good idea to keep malware at bay - but soon, users discovered their computers were automatically shutting down and erasing work in the middle of the day. Then, Microsoft abused its power to install [...]

It's taken almost five years, but Microsoft is finally bringing back the ability to move the Windows taskbar to the top or sides of your screen. The movable taskbar is part of some much bigger changes coming to Windows 11 this year in response to growing criticism of the operating system's performance, reliability, and user [...]

Microsoft has faced a breakdown of trust in Windows 11 and a backlash over AI additions to its operating system in recent months. After promising to rebuild trust in Windows earlier this year, Microsoft's Windows chief, Pavan Davuluri, is now revealing the company's plan to fix Windows 11 - and there are a lot of [...]

The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its new legislative blueprint for AI regulation, and the seven-point plan includes a clear message: The federal government should avoid many AI regulations beyond a set of child safety rules, and it should bar states from messing with the "national strategy to achieve global AI dominance." The plan advises [...]

E Ink displays have expanded beyond e-readers. They're now used in digital photo frames, smartphones, and even the price tags found on grocery store shelves. VidaBay's Classic Plus NFC E-Ink Fridge Magnet - which looks like a Polaroid photo - features the same low power color E Ink screens used in those electronic price tags, [...]

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. Once again, we're waiting for a response. It's been more than a month since two Trump Mobile executives showed me what they claimed was the T1 Phone, and in the [...]

Given how often most of us rely on our smartphones, it's a good idea to keep a power bank on hand in the event your phone dies while you're out and about. If you don't own one already, Anker's MagGo Power Bank (10K) is down to $71.99 (nearly $20 off) at Amazon in the lead-up [...]

Buying a video doorbell is worth it for several reasons. They're convenient if you get a lot of deliveries or visitors, as they let you glance at a phone alert to decide whether it's necessary to drop everything and go to the door. They can provide peace of mind, too, particularly if you're heading out [...]

XP-Pen has launched a new 27-inch display drawing tablet that competes with the visual performance of Wacom's beloved Cintiq Pro series, but for a fraction of the cost. The Artist Pro 27 is available starting today for $1,899.99, providing a 4K resolution display with a 120Hz refresh rate and extreme color accuracy, according to XP-Pen's [...]

Dieter Rams already showed the world that something as mundane as an alarm clock can be beautiful. Balmuda, a Japanese company best known for its steam-infused toasters, has released a travel-friendly alarm clock simply called The Clock. Its minimalist dial is reminiscent of Braun's iconic alarm clocks but goes one step further by replacing traditional [...]

Since roughly the turn of the millennium, Google Search has been the bedrock of the web. People loved Google's trustworthy "10 blue links" search experience and its unspoken promise: The website you click is the website you get. Now, Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. [...]