The Verge

Welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about the technology and the tech bros upending American politics and the Trump administration. If you're not a subscriber yet, and you're interested in Silicon Valley's adventures in sausage-making, you should do so here! It's Q1! Surely the corporate budget will allow for it. Precisely one year [...]

Whether you're buying your first pair of AirPods or replacing a well-used older pair, it's easy to understand why so many iPhone owners prefer Apple's earbuds and headphones over other options. Apple has spent years gradually adding new features that work best - and sometimes only work at all - with the company's own devices. [...]

Netflix's advertising business more than doubled its advertising revenue to $1.5 billion from 2024 to 2025 - and it's on track to keep growing. "We expect that [advertising] business to roughly double again in '26 to about $3 billion," Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said during an earnings call on Tuesday, hours ahead of its live [...]

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers working at the Social Security Administration (SSA) broke protocols, had more access to sensitive data on Americans than previously disclosed, and were in touch with a political advocacy group hunting for election fraud, the Trump administration admitted in a recent court filing. Justice Department officials told a federal court [...]

Netflix is working on a new mobile UI set to roll out later this year that will "better serve the expansion of our business over the decade to come," co-CEO Greg Peters said in an earnings call on Tuesday. The new mobile UI follows last year's big TV revamp that put a new banner front [...]

The Federal Trade Commission will appeal its loss in a landmark antitrust case against Meta, the agency announced Tuesday. US District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled in November that the government failed to prove that Meta had an illegal monopoly over a subset of social networking services meant for connecting with friends and family online. [...]

Last year, Nova Launcher founder and sole developer Kevin Barry announced he had left Branch Metrics, Nova's parent company at the time - which followed an announcement from 2024 that nearly everyone working on the project had been laid off. But the launcher is getting new life: in a blog post on Tuesday, the Swedish [...]

Did you save your Google Stadia controller like I told you last month? It's still not too late. This week, Google has finally removed the tool that converts the now-useless controller into a decent Bluetooth gamepad. But there's another way. Christopher Klay, who previously developed the Stadia Enhanced browser extension, is one of many who [...]

If you buy digital games for the Nintendo Switch 2, Samsung's P9 microSD Express card offers an easier way to expand your storage without constantly deleting games to make room. It's cheaper than other microSD cards, and it's an even better value right now, with the 512GB version priced at $79.99 ($40 off) - just [...]

A little over a decade ago, Life is Strange burst onto the scene with a unique blend of teen drama and interactive storytelling. That first game told the story of Max Caulfield, who had the supernatural ability to reverse time, and her best friend Chloe Price. Now developer Deck Nine Games is finally bringing their [...]

While the best iPad deals usually land during major sale events like Black Friday,many great iPad deals are available outside of those times. The day-to-day discounts come and go like changing winds, so there's often some amount to be saved, particularly on Apple's most affordable iPad, the iPad Mini, and the latest iPad Air. Hell, [...]

Though Netflix's upcoming Star Search reboot will feature a panel of celebrity judges, viewers are going to have a hand in choosing which contestants win the competition. Ahead of Star Search's premiere tonight, Netflix has announced that it is launching a new real-time voting functionality that will give you the ability to tell the streamer [...]

Doug Bowser is joining Hasbro's board of directors just weeks after retiring as Nintendo of America's president, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Though Hasbro's press release doesn't provide any specifics about Bowser's role on the board of directors, the company has big plans for its future in video games. Hasbro already licenses its intellectual [...]

Hall effect switches are the most customizable and fastest you can currently get in a gaming keyboard. As such, they don't usually come cheap. However, they're fairly affordable to upgrade to today thanks to a deal on Corsair's Vanguard Pro 96, which is cheaper than ever at Amazon and Best Buy, selling for $159.99 (originally [...]

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says consumers are starting to see the impact of tariffs less than a year after President Donald Trump implemented sweeping fees on a range of imported goods. During an interview with CNBC, Jassy says the inventory Amazon and third-party sellers prebought in early 2025 to keep prices low has "run out," [...]

The Model S. The Mach-E. The Ioniq. The... Dolphin Surf? That's right, friends: There's a new biggest name in EVs, and it means you might soon be cruising down the highway in the Dolphin Surf. And you might love it. After years of Tesla dominance, a Chinese company called BYD has become the world's biggest [...]

Netflix has updated the acquisition terms for its Warner Bros. Discovery offer to an all-cash deal, replacing its initial $82.7 billion cash and stock agreement. The changes are designed to expedite the sale of WBD studios and streaming businesses, following repeated attempts by rival bidder Paramount to pressure shareholders into accepting its own $108 billion [...]

Spotify appears to be working on a novel feature that will allow audiobook listeners to pick up where they left off in the physical book. Android Authority reports that version 9.1.18.282 of the Spotify app includes code references to a Page Match beta feature that can quickly sync audiobooks on the platform with their paper [...]

Microsoft has been testing its ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming service over the past few months, as I exclusively revealed in October. Now, the software giant is getting close to testing the free streaming option with Xbox Insiders. Over the weekend, Microsoft updated its Xbox app with loading screens for Xbox Cloud Gaming that mention "1 [...]

Sony has announced plans to spin off its TV hardware business, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two companies have signed a nonbinding agreement for Sony's home entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in the new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. With this partnership, TCL [...]

After teasing 10,000mAh and 15,000mAh concept devices, Realme is ready to make those big batteries a reality with the P4 Power, which launches in India on January 29th with a 10,001mAh capacity. Realme says the P4 Power will last for three and a half days of light use, which I can believe - I got [...]

Roland now offers a more capable audio mixer for phones and tablets with the launch of the Go:Mixer Studio. The Go:Mixer audio interface lineup has always been a bit limited, better suited for scrappy livestreams and capturing quick demos on their phones than professional recording. The Go:Mixer Studio is an attempt to actually reach that [...]

OpenAI plans to focus on "practical adoption" of AI in 2026, according to a blog post from CFO Sarah Friar. As the company spends a huge amount of money on infrastructure, OpenAI is working on "closing the gap" on what AI can do and how people actually use it. "The opportunity is large and immediate, [...]

I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third [...]

Sphere Entertainment, the company behind the eye-catching interactive venue in Las Vegas, has announced its "intent to develop" another Sphere in Maryland that will be located 15 minutes south of Washington, DC. A timeline and exact location haven't been finalized, but the Maryland Sphere would be the company's second venue in the US, following plans [...]

Bungie is putting an official date on Marathon today, its delayed extraction shooter. The slick-looking shooter from the makers of Halo and Destiny was originally set to release in September, but will now launch on March 5th. Bungie will launch Marathon on Xbox Series S / X, PS5, and PC, priced at $39.99. Bungie initially [...]

After launching almost three years ago, Meta's Threads is now reportedly attracting more daily mobile users than rival platform X. According to Similarweb data shared by TechCrunch, Threads has 141.5 million daily active iOS and Android global app users as of January 7th, compared to 125 million users for Elon Musk's mobile platform. Similarweb reports [...]

It's relatively rare for a podcast to last 14 years, especially a fiction one. In fact, as far as I can tell, Welcome to Night Vale is the longest continually running fiction podcast out there. (Some will argue it's actually We're Alive, but that has taken a few significant breaks between seasons.) The story of [...]

Microsoft released its first security update of 2026 for Windows 11 on January 13th. Just four days later, it was forced to release an emergency out-of-band update to fix some pretty serious bugs, the first one introduced. The security patch was stopping some systems from shutting down or hibernating properly, and also preventing some users [...]

Good deals are often hard to come by at the beginning of the year - which is precisely what makes Best Buy's Winter Sale worth checking out. The ongoing sales event features discounts on everything from big-ticket OLED TVs to smaller electronics, including fitness trackers that can help you achieve your New Year's resolutions. There [...]

The Kaoss Pad has seen many different iterations, but the mainline effect unit and sampler hasn't received an update since the launch of the KP3+ in 2013. Korg has finally given it the attention it deserves with the release of the Kaoss Pad V. Rather than a dramatic reimagining of what a Kaoss Pad is, [...]

January was going to be a landmark month for the crypto industry. The Senate would start negotiating the finer details of the CLARITY Act, a major law that would finally enshrine the fundamental structure of how the crypto market could legally operate in the United States: what digital assets counted as a security versus a [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on dystopian developments in AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started You could say it all started with Elon Musk's AI [...]

"Share a Disney quote that sums up how you're feeling right now!" That's what Disney posted on Threads the other day, and people immediately replied with lines from Star Wars, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Mary Poppins. The throughline between all the quotes: they were pretty pointedly anti-fascist and clearly aimed at the [...]

Setapp Mobile seemed like one of the many alternative app markets with promise that launched in the wake of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). While the law may have forced Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices, it couldn't make users actually embrace them. MacPaw, the Ukrainian developer behind the subscription-based Setapp, [...]

Happy Saturday, folks! This week, Best Buy kicked off its so-called Winter Sale," introducing a whole host of price cuts that range from not-so-good to legitimately great, at least for this time of year. We'll be publishing many of the highlights in a dedicated news post tomorrow, though, per usual, not all of this week's [...]

While Hollywood has repeatedly tried adapting stories from Japanese manga, vanishingly few of them have been as good as Edge of Tomorrow - Warner Bros.' 2014 live-action film based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's sci-fi light novel All You Need Is Kill. Edge of Tomorrow wasn't a one-to-one translation of All You Need Is Kill's original story [...]

While playing Big Hops, a new 3D platformer starring an adorable frog, I kept feeling like I was breaking the game - and, like with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, breaking it is kind of the point. In Big Hops, you play as a frog named Hop. Early on, Hop is taken [...]

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would "create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans - not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution." [...]

At CES, I did what you're not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16. It's a 16-inch laptop that weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Air and comes with a high-end Snapdragon [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about WhatsApp and Gavin [...]

The best all-in-one portable projector is the one that makes all the right compromises. It needs to balance image and sound quality with battery life and responsiveness in a device that's not too expensive and small enough to take anywhere. TCL's fun little PlayCube delivers the right mix to justify paying $800 for a 1080p [...]

Apple currently sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series processors in a wide range of sizes and price points, all of which run the company's newest operating system, macOS 26. Purchasing a new MacBook can be complicated if you're trying to figure out what specs you need, but finding a deal on a relatively speedy [...]

The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they're "urging" PJM to hold an "emergency" auction for companies to procure electricity over 15-year contracts. The unusually [...]

Epic Games is making a big change to the rules for Fortnite creators just days after allowing them to publish experiences with in-game transactions. Beginning January 20th, experiences - which Epic Games calls "islands" - will not be able to offer in-island transactions as "a 'spin' or 'increased luck' for a prize wheel," according to [...]

Google is expanding access to its AI videomaking tool. Launched last May, Flow was initially only available to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but now, those with Business, Enterprise, and Education Workspace plans can access it, too. Flow uses Google's AI video generation model Veo 3.1 to generate eight-second clips based on a [...]

As we predicted, the world's biggest consumer electronics show was a bit of a bust for gamers this year! CES 2026 brought us several neat gamepads, but barely any handhelds and no new desktop GPUs - not from Nvidia, not from Intel, and not from AMD. But if you dig deep, AMD said two things [...]

Customers of Visible Wireless, which is owned by Verizon, may be getting a $5 credit toward their next bill in response to a Verizon cell service outage earlier this week. Verizon customers were offered a $20 credit after the outage. As spotted by 9to5Google, a message sent to Visible customers explains: "Yesterday we let you [...]

Though Netflix's plan to buy Warner Bros. Discovery has prompted concerns about how the deal might hurt the movie theater business, the streamer's co-CEO says that there is nothing to worry about. In a new interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that, should the WBD acquisition go through, the streamer [...]