The Verge

Google has waited until the day its new Googlebook laptops hit the market to admit that Intel-based models may have issues running some Android apps. Before now, Google has emphasized that the Android-based Googlebooks give owners access to the "entire Play Store library" of apps, along with some clever interactions with Android phones and tablets. [...]

Norbert Wiener, godfather of cybernetics, once said, "The thought of every age is reflected in its technique." For the past century, our thought has been reflected in our computers, including by those in the AI industry. Google's Demis Hassabis calls the brain "a biological approximation to a Turing machine." Elon Musk puts it more bluntly, [...]

We don't know a ton about the Fitbit Edge, but it appears to be a successor to the midrange Charge line. It had leaked previously, but we can clearly see in these images posted by Android Headlines, you can see that Google's rumored fitness tracker sort of splits the difference between the Pixel Watch and [...]

While deep in the recording process for The Downward Spiral, Trent Reznor lent some of his production talents to old friend Kevin McMahon, from the new wave band Lucky Pierre (which Reznor was briefly a member of). While Reznor is only credited as the producer on four tracks off Prick's self-titled debut record, his fingerprints [...]

It's not even October yet and Amazon is already offering some Prime Big Deal Day discounts on its own hardware, along with plenty of other popular products. It's all to hype up October Prime Day, which starts October 6th at 3AM ET and lasts through 3AM ET on the 8th if you're on the East [...]

New Jersey's lieutenant governor Dale Caldwell was forced to resign on September 25th after an investigation found he had sexually harassed a staffer and repeatedly violated ethics rules. The now-former Lt. governor has been making the media rounds trying to clear his name. But he took a particularly odd tactic during an interview on NJ [...]

StarSkirmish pits AI-made StarCraft-playing bots against one another, as well as against human-made bots. OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 were essentially tied as the best-performing AI-made bots, but they couldn't top Stardust, the top-rated human-made bot. On Friday, GPT was facing off against Claude and the human-created bot Pluto, but according to Kotaku, [...]

This toolless modular lever-action wallet is the coolest I've stuck to my phone. Remember when I tested the ultra-thin and convenient OhSnap Snap Grip Stand and liked it so much I bought my own? Now, OhSnap has a magnetic lever-action card wallet that can stack with that stand. It's the coolest wallet I've ever stuck [...]

It's been a while since we've seen a good discount on the Apple AirPods Pro 3, but like the latest iPad Mini and the M5 MacBook Airs, a great one is happening now for October Prime Day. You can snag a pair of the noise-canceling earbuds that include five ear tip sizes, live translation, and [...]

Apple bumped up prices on several of its devices in June, and we haven't seen a good discount on the iPad Mini since. Just ahead of Amazon's October Prime Big Deals Days, however, both Wi-Fi only and cellular-connected models are $100 off. The Wi-Fi version with 128GB of storage is currently $499, the 256GB model [...]

Google didn't even call the first Chromebook a "Chromebook." The Cr-48 had no interesting design and no bright logos - it wasn't even designed to be a product you could buy. Instead, it was a portal to a big new idea about computers. In this week's episode of Version History, The Verge's Nilay Patel and [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the collapse and the resurgence of the portable media player, follow Terrence O'Brien. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started We are [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 146, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, it's October already?, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I'm wishing I could do Walmart potato drone delivery in Portland, watching Mike Tomlin [...]

Capcom's Pragmata might be all about the horrors of AI, but in practice the studio doesn't seem so down on the tech. During the Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026 programmer Satoshi Ishida gave a presentation with the mouthful of a title: "The Outlook and Future of the REX Project, Further Evolving the RE Engine for [...]

Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, the sample platform countless producers rely on for one-shots and melodic loops. Samples pulled from the service have found their way into massive hits like Lisa's "Money" and "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter. (The original samples are here and here, for the curious.) Before that, Kakul held executive roles [...]

David Robinson used to write the safety reports that accompanied every major model release at OpenAI. This week, he resigned from his position and is now speaking out in an editorial in The Atlantic. It's understandable if you're feeling a bit cynical about everyone suddenly coming out of the woodwork to warn about how dangerous [...]

Why am I suddenly buying up every 3D Blu-ray I can find after 3D became one of the biggest tech flops of all time? The technology's finally ready for 3D movies to shine, more than 15 years since James Cameron's Avatar wowed me on the big screen and went on to become the highest-grossing film [...]

Meta now lets you make your own Muse gadgets that feature the company's new AI agent with code that the company open sourced. The company suggests projects like loading Muse on a color E Ink display to show reminders, adding it to an HDMI stick so you can display Muse on a big screen, or [...]

Many of Netflix's biggest critically acclaimed hits have been the products of its multiyear production deals with noted directors like David Fincher and Shawn Levy. In the past few weeks, though, the streamer has brought some of those partnerships to an end in a way that feels indicative of a larger strategic shift. With rival [...]

Apple will add new limits for "full disk access" on Mac in response to risks posed by AI agents, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. In an update on Friday, Apple says it's rolling out new controls to "ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do [...]

Dish-owned Sling TV will no longer be offering its Sling Pass feature that allowed people to buy a single day of cable TV programming at a time, as reported by The Desk. The feature was announced last year and offered a day pass, a weekend pass, and a week-long pass option to be able to [...]

It's a tale as old as last week: OpenAI's new agent platform, called Dots, is full of cute little guys who can do your bidding. But unlike the ultra-approachable Meta Muse, Dots feel very much like using workplace software that happens to be able to order you a burrito - emphasis on work. OpenAI announced [...]

In a throwback to MySpace-style internet drama, Shivon Zilis announced that she and the father of her four children, Elon Musk, had broken up on X. To do so, she quote-tweeted a post from "Big Tech Alert," an account that, among other things, monitors what accounts are following and unfollowing each other. That post noted [...]

Rivian had high hopes for its more affordable R2 vehicle - and so far, those hopes appear to be paying off. The company released its third-quarter production and delivery numbers today, reporting 19,751 vehicles produced and 19,248 delivered. That represents an 85 percent year-over-year increase in production and a 45 percent jump in deliveries. (For [...]

Beehiiv, a creator platform that has risen in popularity as an alternative to Substack, is increasing its prices - and many users aren't happy. In a post explaining the increase, Beehiiv cofounder and CEO Tyler Denk says it will allow the company to "continue investing in our core platform experience." As part of the change, [...]

Nacon announced what the company is claiming is the world's first officially licensed PlayStation 5 controller with a built-in screen for adjusting settings like joystick sensitivity or remapping buttons right on the gamepad. The Revolution 5 Unlimited's screen can also be used to mix audio from multiple sources so while using a pair of headphones [...]

OpenAI's answer to Muse arrived this week, and it looks a whole lot like Muse dressed up in a suit and tie. Dots is a business-first product - for now, at least - costing a minimum of $100 per month. And sure, you can make a cute little Dot character, just like you can make [...]

Tesla introduced a new feature to enable drivers to escape quickly while charging their vehicles in response to a mass shooting at a Supercharger location in Idaho in August that left seven people wounded and four dead. When a Tesla vehicle is charging, the plug is locked to the charging port and driving is disabled. [...]

Keurig's new single-serve coffee machine delivers the same convenience that helped popularize its appliances but without the use of recyclable pods made from plastic and aluminum. The company first showed off its Keurig Alta machine two years ago while introducing the puck-shaped pod replacements called AltaRounds that wrap pressed coffee grounds in a plant-based coating [...]

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has announced that the company will just be called Skydance when it completes its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery next week. In a post on X, Ellison writes that "we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and [...]

Tesla sold fewer vehicles in the third quarter than it did a year ago, when consumers rushed to cash in on expiring federal tax credits for electric vehicle purchases. But the company still beat estimates from Wall Street, suggesting that it's recovery was still on track. Tesla said that it produced a total of 464,391 [...]

The open-source smart home platform Home Assistant is kicking the cloud to the curb - in name at least. "We are renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Home Assistant Link, because we hate clouds," founder Paulus Schoutsen told The Verge in an interview ahead of today's announcement. "Big tech ruined the cloud, so we're out." The [...]

Although I count the original Game Boy as one of my first tech obsessions, I still consider Nintendo's Game Boy Advance to be my favorite console of all time thanks to its more comfortable horizontal design (for my big hands) and its expansive catalog of excellent 32-bit and 16-bit games. Ayaneo isn't the first company [...]

The podracing scene in The Phantom Menace is one of my favorite movie sequences ever. It's just so dang cool: The futuristic racers tear over treacherous Tatooine terrain while various Star Wars aliens bark at each other in incomprehensible sci-fi languages. Eventually a young Anakin Skywalker proves his mettle by clawing his way from the [...]

Madison, a server in New York City, greets every table by asking about each diner's allergies. Lately, there have been some close calls. "Sometimes people will tell me they have a shellfish allergy, and I'll come back, and they won't ask me any questions," says Madison, who asked that her last name be withheld to [...]

San Antonio City Councilmember Ric Galvan remembers when data centers first arrived in his city in the 2000s, looking like relatively unassuming office buildings. But that's changed in recent years, as data centers have grown into massive "hyperscale" facilities spanning millions of square feet and housing the physical infrastructure for AI. There are now more [...]

Amazon is calling for people to support AI data center projects, or risk irreparable harm to the US economy and national security. In a more than 3,000 word blog posted today, Amazon web services CEO Matt Garman pushed back on public concerns around the impact that data centers may have on jobs, power demands, and [...]

Suno is branching out from the world of AI music, launching a new feature that generates spoken voices based on scripts or prompted descriptions. Speech is now available in public beta across Suno's web and mobile platforms, and allows you to simultaneously generate voiceovers and background music to accompany them. "Music will always be at [...]

Apple's rumored push into smart home tech could include a smart home security camera that only gives users text event descriptions instead of video footage. Mark Gurman said in the first episode of the Power On podcast that the camera will be part of "a new Apple smart home ecosystem," alongside Apple's rumored smart home [...]

Guided Vision is launching in Gemini Live on compatible Android devices today to use AI to give real-time audio descriptions of anything you point your phone's camera at. By sharing your camera in Gemini Live, you can have Google's AI help with things like reading small text, describing your surroundings, finding or identifying objects around [...]

Android Central, a blog focused on the Android ecosystem, laid off its staff yesterday, but owner Future confirms to The Verge that the site will continue publishing. Yesterday, four of the six staffers on Android Central's staff page posted publicly about the layoffs, including Shruti Shekar, Derrek Lee, Harish Jonnalagadda, and Nicholas Sutrich, and former [...]

The Steam Deck is four and a half years old, and handheld gamers are eagerly awaiting a Steam Deck 2 - but Valve has consistently said it needs a new chip with a "generational leap" in performance and efficiency before building the sequel. There's some reason to believe that chip has now broken cover: AMD [...]

A federal judge has dismissed a pair of antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Rolling Stone parent company Penske Media Corporation, which accused Google of driving away web traffic with its AI-powered search features, as reported earlier by Reuters. US District Judge Amit Mehta takes Google's side in a ruling on Wednesday, writing that PMC [...]

Sony is launching a new AI upscaling technology specifically for the regular PS5. The new tech, called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), is a "new performance tier of AI upscaling" that's a result of Sony's Project Amethyst work with AMD, according to a blog post. Sony says that PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is [...]

I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the $1,299 Meta VR Glasses. That's too rich for my blood in today's economy, and my feelings about Meta are... conflicted. But I want you to understand that Meta just changed the game. We've had glasses, but we've never had glasses like this. The Meta VR Glasses are [...]

After nearly 18 years at LinkedIn and Microsoft, Ryan Roslansky is leaving the company. Roslansky, who until recently was the CEO of LinkedIn, was promoted to the head of Office last year and then took control of Microsoft Teams earlier this year. Roslansky's departure has triggered another leadership shuffle inside Microsoft. "Ryan leaves the organization [...]

Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hosted an intimate, invite-only event for leaders from some of its key enterprise customers. Instead of a flashy media event, Nadella outlined the future of Copilot directly to the customers Microsoft really cares about, pitching its latest rethink of the AI assistant as the "OS for work." Microsoft is [...]

New York City residents struggling to get out of recurring subscription fees can now submit complaints to the city government. As of Thursday, the city's click-to-cancel rule has taken effect, which requires businesses to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. That means a gym that lets you [...]

At OpenAI's annual DevDay conference, the company pulled out all the stops to compete with its rivals - primarily Meta, whose Muse AI agent platform has seen early runaway success. CEO Sam Altman walked onstage to cheers and announced Dots, a "real-deal AI" agent powered by GPT-6 Astra, "inspired by the cool agents that we [...]