The Verge

Valentine's Day is coming up fast, and if you haven't started shopping yet, there are a lot of great gifts on sale that should still arrive in time if you order soon. Several Verge-approved gadgets are seeing some of their best discounts since the holidays, with options we think will appeal to a wide range [...]

CarPlay users could soon be able to use their chatbot of choice instead of Siri. As Bloomberg reports, Apple is working to add support for CarPlay voice control apps from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others. Previously, users who wanted to access third-party chatbots in the car would need to go through their iPhone, but soon [...]

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. This time, surprisingly, we received a response - and an interview. The Trump phone is real - maybe, sort of, soon? - and I've seen it. Not in the flesh, [...]

300 journalists have lost their jobs at The Washington Post. Over 300,000 readers have canceled their subscriptions. Owner Jeff Bezos, who purchased the legendary publication in 2013, has driven his reputation into the ground by using his vast empire to churn out content designed to make President Donald Trump happy: Amazon MGM Studios spent $40 [...]

If you know where to look, you can often score deals on Apple's ever-expanding AirPods lineup. Both the AirPods Max and AirPods 4 (with and without ANC) now consistently receive discounts, as do the newer AirPods Pro 3. And while recent shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday delivered some of the steepest discounts [...]

Spotify is launching About the Song in beta today, which offers context and facts about the song you're listening to. Premium users can scroll down to the new About the Song section for information while in the Now Playing view. At launch, it's only available for a limited number of tracks, but there are plans [...]

Aura's Aspen digital photo frame is a great Valentine's Day gift if you want something that's slick and sentimental, and right now it's on sale for $199 ($30 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Aura's online storefront. That's the lowest we've seen the frame sell for since the holidays. With its paper-textured, antiglare matte display [...]

I've used Alexa to manage my shopping list for years. There are plenty of great list apps out there, but the convenience of adding items by voice anywhere in my house, pulling up the list on an Echo Show in the kitchen, and having it on my phone via the Alexa app has worked well [...]

Analogue has announced another collection of limited-edition colors for its modern remake of the Nintendo 64. Last December it introduced several transparent versions of the Analogue 3D inspired by Nintendo's Funtastic N64 series, but this time the company says it drew inspiration from colored versions of the nearly 30-year-old console that Nintendo prototyped, but never [...]

An autonomous vehicle drives down a lonely stretch of highway. Suddenly, a massive tornado appears in the distance. What does the driverless vehicle do next? This is just one of the scenarios that Waymo can simulate in the "hyper realistic" virtual world that it has just created with help from Google's DeepMind. Waymo's World Model [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here. I'm willing to bet you've been served an ad [...]

There are bold-faced tech names all over the Epstein files. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Reid Hoffman, Steven Sinofsky, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, on and on and on. These men (and they're pretty much all men) had wildly varying degrees of interaction with Epstein, and the details matter [...]

Is the long freeze on Chinese automakers selling cars in the US finally starting to thaw? China is the largest auto market in the world and now the largest car exporter, too. But high tariffs and geopolitical tensions have kept Chinese automakers away from US customers. Many of those cars are ready for primetime and [...]

He might be dead, but it sure seems like Jeffrey Epstein won. Sure, Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. Sure, he died in jail. (I am not going to wade into the debate about how.) But he subscribed to a racist, misogynist ideology that meant rich white men like him could do [...]

A federal jury in Phoenix has found Uber to be liable for the sexual assault of one of its passengers, potentially setting a precedent for more than 3,000 similar cases consolidated in US federal court. As part of the verdict, Uber has been ordered to pay $8.5 million in damages to the victim, Jaylynn Dean, [...]

EU regulators have declared that TikTok's "addictive design" may put it in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), in the preliminary results of an ongoing investigation into the social media app. If those findings are confirmed, TikTok could face a major fine and be required to "change the basic design of its service" in [...]

After introducing AirDrop support to Pixel 10 devices last year, Google is now set to expand it to phones made by other Android partners. Eric Kay, vice president of engineering for Android, confirmed in a press briefing attended by Android Authority that "a lot more" Android devices will be able to use Quick Share to [...]

HBO is developing a Baldur's Gate TV show that will continue the story of Larian Studios' hit RPG Baldur's Gate 3, according to Deadline. The Last Of Us co-creator Craig Mazin will serve as the show's creator, writer, executive producer, and showrunner. While it's set to feature new protagonists, the plan is for existing characters [...]

After rolling out age verification last year, Roblox is aiming to grow the number of players over 18 on its platform. As noted in its 2025 year-end earnings report, 45 percent of Roblox's daily active users have completed an age check as of January 31st. Of those who have verified their age, 27 percent are [...]

When Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos entered the Senate office building on Tuesday, he got thrown a curveball. What started as a standard antitrust hearing relating to the Warner Bros. merger quickly devolved into a performative Republican attack about the spread of "woke" ideology on the streaming service. At the same time, arguably a much more [...]

As a movie, Iron Lung is occasionally thrilling but mostly forgettable. It's a small-budget horror flick that has some cool ideas and pulls them off in an extremely efficient way, creating a sense of tension that unfortunately never turns into outright scares. But the most important thing about it is what it represents. At a [...]

On Thursday, Bitcoin's value fell over 10 percent in a single day, dropping to around $64,000, the lowest it has been since the 2024 Presidential election, as CNBC reports. After crossing $100,000 in November 2024 and peaking at over $122,000 in October 2025, the cryptocurrency has been in a steady decline for the last several [...]

One day after The Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster story about Meta's own dismal findings about teen girls' mental health on Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wondered whether Meta should change how it studies its platforms' potential harms. "Recent events have made me consider whether we should change our approach to research and analytics around [...]

If you often travel with your gadgets, a fast, reliable portable battery like Anker's Laptop Power Bank is a worthwhile purchase. Right now, you can buy the silver model at its all-time low price of $87.99 ($47 off) from Anker via Newegg when you apply promo code ENCF232 at checkout. Alternatively, the black color scheme [...]

You might find it kind of sad to put your hard-earned Switch 2 into a protective case. To me, it's freeing. Sure, it can take away from the slick design. But using a case relieves me of the worry that the console will accumulate tons of little scratches, or worse. I've tested several types of [...]

Each TV company has its own distinct personality and direction. These change over the years, with new technological breakthroughs or at least new business deals. New aspirations shake up the natural order. This year, for example, nearly every company has decided to make and heavily promote RGB LED TVs. Some of them, like Hisense, seem [...]

Boris Cherny gets recognized in public relatively often. At the bar, at the airport, and in generally any public space, people want to take selfies with the creator and head of Claude Code. For the last couple of months, Anthropic's Claude and its coding platform have been having a moment - on social media, in [...]

Anthropic's "smartest model" is getting a major boost, the company said in a blog post announcing Claude Opus 4.6. It called the new model a "direct upgrade" from its predecessor in a release, noting that it can better take on complex, multi-step tasks and get "much closer to production-ready quality on the first try than [...]

Microsoft has a big year ahead for Xbox as it marks its 25-year milestone. After the tough decision to release more Xbox games on rival consoles two years ago, 2026 is a chance to refocus on the platform and celebrate some of Xbox's biggest franchises. It's also an opportunity for Microsoft to define its vision [...]

For years, Alphabet-owned Waymo has tried to set itself apart from other self-driving startups by emphasizing a culture of caution and safety. Now, just ahead of major planned rollouts across the country, it is facing a recurring failure in one of the most sensitive places imaginable: school zones. In December, the National Highway Traffic Safety [...]

The Super refresh to Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs was expected at CES 2026 in January, but it didn't make an appearance. The Information reports that in December, Nvidia managers decided not to release the new cards as scheduled, choosing to prioritize AI chips instead due to the limited supply of RAM currently available. On top [...]

Sony is expanding its Horizon universe again with Horizon Hunters Gathering, a "cooperative action game" in development by franchise creator Guerrilla for PS5 and PC. Horizon Hunters Gathering lets "up to three players team up as heroic Hunters to protect a world under threat from deadly machines," according to a blog post. "Combat is tactical, [...]

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. It's been a rough couple of days for gamers who also love to binge their favorite TV shows with their consoles: At the beginning of the week, Netflix began informing [...]

Last fall, new Peloton CEO Peter Stern made a bet. The company announced a complete refresh of its entire hardware lineup, complete with swivel screens and AI-powered features. Today, the initial results of Stern's bet are in. In its Q2 2026 earnings call, Stern noted that the hardware refresh hasn't landed with existing Peloton users, [...]

Kamala Harris' social media strategy in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election was filled with Gen Z dog whistles: viral branding based on pop music, memes, camo hats that were a double entendre. It was an effective way to get attention and news coverage, as well as a mountain of user generated content online. [...]

After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a blow against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. Another part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on the judge himself. "The deck was always stacked against us with [...]

JLab, a brand best known for its budget-friendly but well-featured wireless earbuds, has announced a new pair of headphones that are far less discreet. The oversized Blue XL Speaker Headphones look like an ill-timed April Fools' Day prank but are actually a pair of Bluetooth speakers cosplaying as wireless headphones. They're wearable, but for the [...]

Today, we're going to talk about reality, and whether we can label photos and videos to protect our shared understanding of the world around us. No really, we're gonna go there. It's a deep one. To do this, I'm going to bring on Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed, who covers creative tools for us - a [...]

We just got through the Switch 2's first holiday season, which means that Nintendo has slowly started to reveal what 2026 will look like for the console. And while we already know about a bunch of upcoming first-party titles - including the Pokemon spinoff Pokopia, Mario Tennis Fever, and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book - [...]

I knew as soon as I laid eyes on Vappeby that I had to have it. Sure, it would be right at home on my desk, given that everything in and around my workstation is from Ikea, from the Skadis on the wall right down to the Spand desk legs. But there was something else [...]

A group of senators has written a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking why his company delayed launching key protections for users under 18. The letter, signed by Brian Schatz (D-HI), Katie Britt (R-AL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), James Lankford (R-OK), and Christopher Coons (D-DE), cites court documents unsealed late last year that revealed claims [...]

Managing humans is hard. Managing AI agents is... also hard. That's why OpenAI is launching a new platform called OpenAI Frontier, which it says will help businesses "build, deploy, and manage" AI agents, even those not made by OpenAI itself. OpenAI's description of Frontier sounds something like HR for AI. "Frontier gives agents the same [...]

The mother of 20-year-old man who died after becoming trapped in his burning Tesla Model Y is suing the company over its electronic door handles. It's the latest wrongful death case centering on Tesla's door handles, which have triggered numerous customer complaints over the years and is now under investigation by the federal safety regulators. [...]

Spotify has launched a new feature called Page Match that lets you quickly sync your spot in a physical or ebook with an audiobook. Point your camera at a page, and the Spotify app uses computer vision to match text with audio. If you have to jump behind the wheel for a long drive, but [...]

Spotify is going all in on books in 2026 and partnering with Bookshop.org to let you buy physical copies of audiobooks and support local retailers starting in the Spring. The announcement dovetails with the launch of Page Match, a new feature that lets you sync physical books and ebooks with audiobooks in the Spotify app [...]

Substack is notifying some users that the email addresses and phone numbers linked to their accounts were exposed in a "security incident" last year. In an email to account holders, Substack CEO Chris Best said that a hacker had accessed internal data without authorization in October 2025, but that passwords, credit card numbers, and other [...]

When Valve first announced its impressive-looking Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller hardware in November, the company said the products would begin shipping in early 2026. Some journalists were told "Q1 2026" specifically. But because of the ongoing memory and storage crunch, that launch has been delayed to sometime in the first half of [...]

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has earned more than $400 billion in annual revenue for the first time. The company announced the milestone as part of its Q4 2025 earnings report released on Wednesday, which highlights the 15 percent year-over-year increase as its cloud business and YouTube continue to grow. As noted in the earnings report, [...]