The Verge

Mister Organ doesn't reach the level of societal horror of The Act of Killing or the creepypasta-meets-true-crime gruesomeness of Beware the Slenderman, but there's something deeply unsettling about Michael Organ and his intimate campaign of terror against everyone who enters his life. Mister Organ is a documentary by David Farrier, an Auckland, New Zealand journalist. [...]

Carolyn Marvin was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after blocking the path of an Uber delivery robot and refusing to get out of the way. Marvin told Philadelphia's ABC13 "I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front [...]

Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx introduced the Power To The Players Act this week. If passed, the bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations that guarantee consumers ownership of a game when they pay for it, rather than a licensing agreement. It's increasingly common for [...]

The Legion Go S with SteamOS is a pretty solid alternative to the $789 Steam Deck OLED. It runs identical software, but ships in a design with two-stage triggers, a bigger eight-inch IPS screen (1080p and up to 120Hz versus 800p and 90Hz in the Deck OLED), and it's got double the RAM and storage [...]

Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft nonanswers. That's not to say that Mascis [...]

During a rally on Saturday, October 17th, in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Donald Trump bragged about how much more powerful and influential he was during his second term. While listing off his accomplishments, he mentioned his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. "This is a much more powerful term. I can do [...]

Back in February, I went to Los Angeles to take in some art and stayed in Koreatown. Down the street from my hotel, there was this little coffee shop - Stagger - that is, I think, best known for its matcha, which is good. But the drink I unexpectedly found myself obsessed with was their [...]

It used to be so easy to get away with things in school. The teacher, after all, was always turned around writing at the chalkboard! But then came a bit of technology, previously mostly used for military purposes, called the overhead projector. It would change far more than just the disciplinary record of students everywhere. [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on autonomous vehicles, policy, and road rules, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started The first state to pass a law [...]

Just ahead of the wider release of Alex Gibney's Musk documentary, TikTok has banned the film's social media account from its platform. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's distributor, Bleecker Street, was informed Friday afternoon that a "permanent suspension" was imminent. Bleecker Street has [...]

Earlier this year, Mercedes' AMG performance brand grabbed our attention with the GT four-door coupe, a souped-up sports sedan with three axial flux motors delivering over 1,150 horsepower. Well, now meet its beefier cousin, the 2028 Mercedes-AMG GT SUV, an equally powerful, ultra-fast-charging electric people-hauler. The AMG GT SUV (say that five times fast) marks [...]

In 2024, Elon Musk promised to give away $1 million a day to a randomly selected registered voter in a swing state. That prompted legal challenges, raised questions about its legality, and drew lawsuits from two Arizona residents claiming the lottery was a fraud. Musk has now agreed to settle the two lawsuits filed in [...]

After backlash, Meta is updating its terms again to remove language that suggested it could scrape content from sites, including news sites, to train its AI. Specifically, the following language no longer appears on the commercial terms page: ... Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, [...]

If you're wondering what video game to play this weekend, my colleague Sheena Vasani spotted a discounted Nintendo Switch title with instant digital delivery. Walmart has the digital version of Pikmin 4 for Switch discounted to $39.88, just over $20 lower than its usual price. This version of the game follows the same puzzle formula [...]

It's hard to overstate Jad Abumrad's impact on the podcasting world. He created and hosted Dolly Parton's America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, two Peabody Award-winning shows that offered unprecedented looks at the lives of two of the most important music icons of the last century. Before that, though, he created Radiolab, an experimental [...]

Today, I'm talking with Walter Piecyk, a partner and analyst at LightShed Partners who covers tech, media, and telecom, about SpaceX's recently announced plan to become a major wireless carrier. Last week, SpaceX agreed to buy a big chunk of low-band spectrum to expand the Starlink network, spectrum that's been traded around the telecom business [...]

Autonomous agents are the hottest thing in AI. OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won't play nice? In recent weeks, [...]

After Apple courageously removed the headphone jack from the iPhone in 2016, most people switched to Bluetooth earbuds and never looked back. But their wired counterparts have stuck around, and their sales even went up this year after five years of decline. Part of the resurgence can be tied to the fact that they're cool [...]

When Apple revealed the HomeView to the world, it did so with an unusual ad for the company: Instead of pristine, polished tech in immaculate rooms, it's a three-minute look at the messy, frantic morning routine of a family of five. Apple's new smart display sits in the center of the chaos on the kitchen [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 148, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you're enjoying all your pumpkin-flavored everything, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Marc Andreessen and the future of [...]

Apple has finally announced its long-rumored foldable: the iPhone Duo. The new phone has a 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner display, a nanotexture" finish on the inner screen, and barely any visible crease. Instead of Face ID, it uses Touch ID on the power button. It has two cameras, a main lens and [...]

Apple's App Store rules now more explicitly ban so-called "nudify" apps that generate intimate images of people without their consent using AI tools. The rule changes follow significant criticism toward Apple after X users used Grok earlier this year to make nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes, including minors. Apple didn't pull X or Grok from the App [...]

Wu-Tang's Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album has, for the most part, been extremely difficult to listen to, but you can now hear two snippets of the album thanks to the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, which just published an episode all about the exclusive record. Once Upon A Time in Shaolin has a [...]

After this horrific crash involving a Tesla driver who said he was asleep and using the driver assist mode, the California Highway Patrol warns that "Despite its name, full self-driving is not fully autonomous. Technology does not relieve drivers of their responsibility to safely operate their vehicles." Video released by CHP shows the Tesla speeding [...]

For more than a decade, Apple has told other companies to build smart home devices for its platform. This week, Apple launched its own. The Apple Home Collection is a lineup of cameras, thermostats, sensors, a smart door lock, and a video doorbell, all codeveloped with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric. They arrive alongside HomeView, [...]

Earlier this week, Apple announced its new Apple TV 4K, which costs nearly twice as much as the 2022 model did at launch. Amazon is now offering the first discount on the forthcoming streaming box (coming out on November 13th), just days after discounting Apple's new smart display for the first time. Right now, you [...]

It's been a couple of days since Apple's big smart home announcement, and we have some more information - and a bunch of new questions - about the Apple HomeView. The device has plenty of computing oomph, is always connected to power, and looks like a perfect place to run a bunch of apps. And [...]

Analogue announced new versions of its Super Nt and Mega Sg retro consoles today with a "reworked industrial design" and built-in wireless connectivity for controllers and accessories. Like the original versions, the new Super Nt Plus and Mega Sg Plus are able to play Nintendo and Sega Genesis cartridges using an FPGA processor that perfectly [...]

After a Chrome clone was spotted on the Play Store earlier this week, a user on Reddit says they're seeing a fake version of WhatsApp in a "sponsored" slot above the real version. As reported earlier by Android Authority, the WhatsApp dupe has racked up over 500,000 downloads and, at the time of writing, its [...]

Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X processor is finally here, and we've been collectively testing a small fortune's worth of powerful laptops sporting this new "superchip." RTX Spark is designed to be a high-performing Arm-based SoC for laptops and small desktop computers, rivaling the best from Apple, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. It has loads of cores, Nvidia [...]

Last night, Elon Musk gave the people what they want: a car driving vertically up a multistory ramp, launching off the edge, executing a midair "kickflip" over a lineup of Teslas, and landing via cold-gas thrusters. That's what the people want, right? "We were promised flying cars," sure, but isn't the operative word in that [...]

Meta's new terms appear to give it permission to crawl and scrape websites "associated" with the businesses that use its platforms - including online publishers, according to a report from Nieman Lab. The new terms, which go into effect on October 30th, say Meta can use this outside content to "develop, improve, research," and "train" [...]

There's a new storage upgrade option for smartphones compatible with wireless chargers and other magnetic accessories, but it won't help if you've run out of room for apps, pics, and videos. The MagSafe Flex Pouch looks like a magnetic wallet for pairing a small stack of credit cards to your phone, but its storage capacity [...]

Delivery estimates for the iPhone Duo slipped into next year in less than an hour after Apple opened preorders for it at 8AM ET on Friday. At the time of writing we are seeing late January delivery dates for every configuration on Apple's website. The foldable is slated to launch in stores on October 23rd, [...]

When the midrange Sony Xperia 10 VI was announced over two years ago with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset and Android 14, Sony promised three major OS updates which would have included this year's Android 17 release. However, according to a notice posted to the company's UK support site, the Xperia 10 VI [...]

Since gun-rights activist and alt-right-friendly agitator Cody Wilson made the first 3D-printed firearm 13 years ago, he's helped usher in a chaotic era of untraceable ghost guns. Now he's claiming another first: "the first AI-made gun." It's called the WASP. I stood about 20 feet away as Wilson and his sidekick clamped the WASP to [...]

Few phones have been more anticipated than a foldable iPhone, but it's finally here. The iPhone Duo was unveiled during Apple's "Surprise and shine" event alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 models. Apple's first foldable has a 5.4-inch outer screen, and it unfolds to show off its [...]

After setting up Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra, I spent five minutes just staring at it. I wasn't surprised by its MacBook Pro-like design or blown away by its bright display. I was trying to work out what I'd actually do with a $5,900 laptop. This isn't just any regular Windows laptop. Microsoft has teamed up [...]

An important change will soon be made to global timekeeping that aims to prevent potential infrastructure failures akin to the Y2K bug scare. On Thursday, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) voted to scrap the leap second, an ad hoc time adjustment that's occasionally added so tracked time standards mirror the Earth's real [...]

Elon Musk promised a flying car. And the Tesla Roadster did exactly that. Tesla demonstrated its next-generation Roadster at an event in Waco, Texas, where the electric supercar drove upside down, briefly flew, and accelerated to 60mph in under a second. It was an impressive demonstration of a car that likely will come with some [...]

Valve is introducing a major new feature for Steam achievements called "achievement sets" that lets developers list different groups of achievements for a base game and DLCs. "In games that support sets, you still unlock achievements by playing the game as usual," Valve says. "But when you browse what you have unlocked afterward, Steam will [...]

OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas browser is gone, but now ChatGPT's Google Chrome extension is getting some upgrades that allow it to use the browser tabs you already have open. With the extension installed, OpenAI says ChatGPT can now view your browser tabs when you tag Chrome in ChatGPT's web or desktop app, posting a demo video [...]

Sega is removing Total War: Shogun 2 - Complete Edition from storefronts following a disastrous launch where users complained about issues like bugs and upscaling that appears to have been done by AI. Complete Edition, a remaster of the 2011 strategy game, launched on Tuesday, and it bundled the main game and all of its [...]

Though movies about disruptive tech founders are nothing new, 2026 has been unusually stacked with features that take a much more critical look at how Silicon Valley is reshaping our reality. Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning frames Mark Zuckerberg as a robotic villain whose ambitions are destabilizing society. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can [...]

President Donald Trump posted a series of photos on Truth Social showing off renovations to the White House - but one of them appears to be modified with AI. The picture, which compares an old White House column to a "restored" one, has several discrepancies and was flagged by Google's AI detector as "made or [...]

Bluesky's Attie AI tool, which initially launched earlier this year as a way to use AI to build your own feeds, now lets you make "small" social apps like games, polls, and dashboards that you can then share with others as their own websites. In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt, Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider said [...]

If you're a new user of Withings' fitness-tracking smartwatches or smart scales and want to sync and access your health data through third party apps like Apple Health or Google Health it's now going to cost you. According to a discussion on Withings' support forums spotted by MacRumors, new Withings accounts created from October 13th, [...]

Meta announced the Muse Spark Open AI model today, claiming that it's the "most capable US open-weight model to date." But the company also says that it's the "the first model in its class" that can "run on your desktop using two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with the latest MLX framework." Meta and Apple, [...]

Sony has announced a trio of new Walkman portable media players that start at an already absurd $1,899.99 for the NW-ZX900 and climb all the way up to $5,899 for the gold-plated NW-WM1ZM3. Sandwiched in between is the $2,999.99 Walkman NW-WM1AM3, which is nearly identical to the WM1ZM3, just minus the gaudy gold shell. All [...]

Volvo plans to launch hands-free, point-to-point driving by 2030, powered by Nvidia's latest AI technology. The Chinese-owned, Swedish-designed automaker said Thursday it would use Nvidia's autonomous driving stack to power a new partially automated driving system similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Volvo says the new point-to-point system will be Level 2++, meaning it can [...]