The Verge

The Galaxy Watch 9 launches on August 7th, and not only does Costco have the best preorder incentives we've seen so far, the watch is also discounted. The deal includes the 40mm Watch 9 in cream or graphite, two wireless fast chargers for the watch, and a $50 Costco gift card, all for $339.99 - [...]

A lot of content on LinkedIn might seem like AI slop, and now, you'll be able to report those posts. As part of a series of updates to reduce the volume of AI slop on the platform, LinkedIn is introducing an actual button that lets you flag a post as something that "Seems like AI [...]

Buying multiple lamps for different rooms can get expensive. Govee's rechargeable Table Lamp Classic gives you one lamp you can use throughout your home instead of getting one for every room, and right now it's down to $59 ($21 off) at Amazon. That's just $4 shy of the all-time low set during Prime Day, and [...]

The latest discovery from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is a field of honeycomb-shaped polygons covering a Martian valley called Valle Grande. As Gizmodo reports, Curiosity has snapped pictures of the unusual terrain texture before, called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5 to 3 inches wide, but NASA says it's previously only found them in small patches, [...]

Google DeepMind says the latest version of its Gemini Robotics AI model can "control entire humanoid robots." While the previous model focused on controlling a humanoid robot's upper body, Gemini Robotics 2 now supports "whole-body motions" ranging from its feet to fingertips, according to an announcement on Thursday. The new model will allow humanoid robots [...]

ABC filed its formal opposition to the Federal Communications Commission's effort to force it to submit to an early renewal of its broadcast station licenses, calling it an effort to chill the speech of broadcasters across the country. In a new filing with the FCC, ABC charges that the agency's willingness to pursue the early [...]

Google is working on a way to apply Chrome updates without requiring you to restart your browser. In a post on Thursday, Google outlines its approach to bug fixes in the age of AI, while noting that it's trying to make updates less disruptive by "investing in 'dynamic patching' that will eliminate the need for [...]

Weeks ahead of Google's next Pixel hardware event, Leaker Evan Blass has shared what appear to be marketing renders of the unannounced Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold in a post on his Substack. The renders, if accurate, show that the new foldable will look fairly similar to last year's model - it has a tall [...]

Do you remember Friend? The Friend that launched an AI pendant, spent $1.8 million of its $2.5 million in funding to acquire friend.com, and plastered the NYC subway with ads promoting artificial companionship? Yeah well, if you didn't remember, Friend is back. And now, it's twice the price. This morning, Friend launched a new ad [...]

Best Buy has raised the price of the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC to $2,099 - the first time a major US retailer is directly selling an RTX 5080 for more than the $1,999 MSRP of the RTX 5090, VideoCardz reports. The ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC now costs 40 percent more than its [...]

The SkyNomad N90 Max is the latest electric SUV from Xiaomi and its first extended-range EV, with a claimed range of over 1,705 km (about 1,059 miles). It will come in both five- and seven-seat configurations, as well as an N90 Max Camping Edition. One of the big features of the N90 is its highly [...]

Zoox just got permission to charge for robotaxi rides in its boxy, steering-wheel-less vehicles. On Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it has granted the Amazon-owned Zoox a temporary exemption, allowing it to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles annually over the next two years, as reported earlier by Reuters. The NHTSA's decision exempts [...]

If you're keen on getting a laptop that looks fantastic, feels great to use, and doesn't cost too much, well, pickings are slim right due to RAMageddon. However, there's a good deal happening at Best Buy through Thursday, July 30th, on Microsoft's Arm-based, 13.8-inch Surface Laptop that has the 10-core Snapdragon X2 Plus chipset. Originally [...]

Spotify has introduced a new Running Mode feature that makes it easier to curate playlists around your workout goals, music tastes, and desired beats per minute (BPM). The aim is to help you "spend less time hunting for the right music and more time moving," according to Spotify's announcement, providing customizable running presets and optional [...]

Over the last few years, I've gradually shifted away from ebooks. It's been part of a general return to physical media, an attempt to create a deeper sense of ownership over the art I love and collect. A Kindle is obviously more convenient than a paperback: It's tiny, holds a huge library, and you can [...]

DJI's Osmo Pocket 4P is a pretty simple proposition: an Osmo Pocket 4 with a second camera lens slapped inside. But is that extra lens worth the added size, weight, and cost relative to the regular Pocket 4? And how does it compare to the only rival on the market, Insta360's dual-lens Luna Ultra? It [...]

I was already a big fan of SwitchBot's big circulator fan I recently reviewed, and now we're getting the SwitchBot Battery Circulator Fan 2 Pro. Priced at $119.99, it ditches the height-adjustable stand but increases battery life, throw distance, and wind speed while adding native Matter-over-Wi-Fi, allowing it to join your smart home without needing [...]

Microsoft is working on an AI "super app" that combines Copilot's chat, coding, and agentic capabilities. During an earnings call on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the app will span "both consumer and commercial experiences" when it launches this year. "Copilot is evolving rapidly from chat to Cowork to Autopilots," Nadella said. "This quarter, [...]

Meta is all-in on AI, and sometime soon, the company is going to make a big push into personal AI agents that can do things on your behalf. On Wednesday's Q2 2026 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg previewed a high-level vision of how the company is thinking about personal agents and what it will do [...]

RAMageddon won't be the only reason your next phone costs more - Qualcomm is about to raise prices on all its processors, as well. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on Wednesday that "prices are going to go up" on the company's products starting on September 1st, CNBC reports. The price hikes were rumored last week [...]

xAI is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over a law passed back in May that broadly targets "nudification" apps, claiming that the statute's punitive provisions leave the company with "no practical choice but to restrict Grok Imagine's image-editing features in various ways." The law, the company argues, violates the First Amendment. Back in January, [...]

Over the last few years, CD Projekt Red put a ton of work into fixing Cyberpunk 2077, squashing bugs, polishing content, and even launching new DLC in 2023, Phantom Liberty. As a result, this game has gone from a source for funny, glitch-fueled videos to a world I've returned to a number of times to [...]

Xbox is having yet another tough quarter, as revenue from content and services like its Game Pass subscription dipped 10 percent over the past few months. At the same time, Xbox hardware sales declined 13 percent, according to Microsoft's fourth-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday. The news comes just weeks after Xbox head Asha Sharma [...]

Apple's new Upgrade program is here, allowing you to lease select models of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Watches with a relatively low monthly payment. The company promises you won't pay more than the full price of the device over the course of the one- to three-year lease, and in some cases, you'll pay hundreds of [...]

In an interview with our friend Joanna Stern on her YouTube channel, OpenAI president Greg Brockman said the company is working on a "family of devices" for interacting with its AI models. However, Brockman didn't confirm reports that one of those devices is a smart speaker OpenAI's rumored to be launching in 2027, or earlier [...]

When the Trump administration announced yesterday that it was banning "advanced robotic devices" from entering the United States, the headlines were all about humanoids. But spying doesn't require legs - and neither does the FCC's robot ban. The robot ban will sweep up robot vacuum cleaners too, FCC media relations director Katie Gorscak confirms to [...]

As schools across the country continue to implement cellphone bans, a new Pew Research Center survey shows they continue to gain support. Seventy-seven percent of US adults support banning cellphones in middle and high school classes, and 48 percent support banning them for the entire school day. That's the first time more Americans have supported, [...]

Just two months after a bumpy launch earlier this year, Ferrari has reportedly already hit its 2026 sales goal for its polarizing, Jony Ive-designed Luce EV. Ahead of Ferrari announcing its quarterly earnings on Thursday, the Financial Times reports that Ferrari was aiming to sell "just under 500" Luce units this year, and reached that [...]

A lot of us here at The Verge are fans of Remarkable's digital note-taking tablets, and right now one of its higher-end options is much cheaper than usual. The Remarkable Paper Pro normally sells for $629 on its own, but Woot is currently offering a refurbished bundle for $449.99 through July 31st. It includes the [...]

DoorDash is launching a new drone delivery program called DoorDash Air. The largest food delivery app in the US said that it has approval from the Federal Aviation Administration that clears the way for drone delivery in the near future. DoorDash said it has received a Part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA that [...]

Nothing has had a strong visual identity since the Ear 1 were released in 2021 for $99 and challenged the notion that a highly featured headset requires a high price. The Ear 3A have the same transparent look as Nothing's previous earbuds, with a clear case and stem design accented by a solid-colored body - [...]

Is this the future of foldable phones? Samsung clearly thinks so. The company has given its new wide foldable the "Z Fold 8" name, positioning the phone not as a widescreen oddity, but as the new normal, the default design for foldables going forward. Rumor has it that Apple feels the same way, with a [...]

When The Atlantic published a searchable dataset of works used to train AI, Kirk Wallace Johnson, like a lot of artists, looked for his name out of curiosity. And, like a lot of artists, he found it. Essentially, his books, like The Feather Thief and The Fishermen and the Dragon - nonfiction tomes that he [...]

The AI agent that escaped from OpenAI and hacked developer platform Hugging Face attacked other companies as well, OpenAI revealed on Tuesday. The update substantially widens the scope of an already concerning incident, which has alarmed industry insiders and fueled growing calls for stronger oversight on frontier AI systems. In an update to a blog [...]

Earlier this month, OpenAI gave several of its AI models a task: complete a test designed to measure their cybersecurity capabilities. It put the systems in a sandboxed environment without an internet connection and set them off to work. What happened next is almost laughably silly - but also, as Adam Gleave, cofounder and CEO [...]

After the recent Xbox outage even blocked people from playing offline disc-based console games, Microsoft is trying to soothe concerns that you don't truly own anything under Xbox's license system. In a statement to The Verge, Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet says that while physical game discs are subject to licensing inspections, that shouldn't [...]

The US government is targeting China with a new import ban on "advanced robotic devices" and power inverters made in foreign countries, as reported earlier by Reuters. In an announcement on Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission says the ban will include "mobile" robots, such as humanoid and quadruped models - but it is not limited [...]

Ariana Grande filed a lawsuit on Monday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court against the currently unidentified hackers who allegedly stole and leaked private content. It aims to "uncover the identities of these currently unknown and unscrupulous individuals," referred to as "John Doe 1 and John Does 2 through 100." The lawsuit also says [...]

eBay and three former executives will pay $55.7 million as part of a settlement with a Massachusetts couple targeted with a bizarre harassment and cyberstalking campaign in 2019, as reported earlier by CNBC. The settlement will resolve a lengthy legal saga that revealed how eBay's former executives sent live insects, a bloody pig mask, a [...]

In June, UK staff at the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia became the first to announce their intention to form a union. Now, US-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation are joining the union drive, but management at the nonprofit has declined to voluntarily recognize their union. "While the Wikimedia Foundation touts to the public that they [...]

Employees of OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Google, Meta, Thinking Machines, Microsoft, Mistral, and other leading AI labs, have written a statement to the US government supporting a potential slowdown of sorts for frontier AI development - or at least a speed-up of global coordinated governance efforts. "Al could help create a dramatically better [...]

A Georgia man was charged with a felony for allegedly wiping his phone while being questioned by Customs and Border Protection. Samuel Tunick had something in common with others who have had their devices searched at airports: He was an activist. Unlike others who have had their phones seized with no explanation, Tunick was told [...]

It's earnings season, and investors got an unpleasant surprise from Google: an increase on its spending estimate, to as much as $205 billion - from the last quarter's projection of up to $190 billion. Even the lower end of Google's new projected range - $195 billion - is much more than the company had previously [...]

While most gaming headsets have moved towards low-latency wireless connections, there's something to be said for a budget-friendly, capable wired headset. The EPOS H3 Hybrid is on sale for just $24.99 at Woot, a whopping 75 percent off its original price of $99.99. It has an unorthodox batch of features: USB-A and 3.5mm options for [...]

In June, Nintendo announced a new version of the Switch 2 that should let you easily replace its battery pack - but only for Europe. Logitech will do much the same. User-replaceable batteries will be the law in Europe in February 2027, but instead of bringing them to the rest of the world, Logitech plans [...]

Apple says it won't limit the capabilities of devices leased through its new Upgrade program if you miss a payment. In an emailed statement to The Verge, Apple spokesperson Brian Bumbery says, "There will be no restricted mode and/or there will be no limitations put on device functionality due to missed payments or default with [...]

New Yorkers who want to see their Instagram or TikTok feed curated by an algorithm, or receive notification after midnight, will soon have to verify their ages to access those features. New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) released a set of final rules on how to implement the SAFE for Kids Act, signed into [...]

Apple's latest AirTag may seem like the obvious choice if you own an iPhone and are shopping for a Bluetooth tracker, but it's not the most affordable option. For families that contain both Android and Apple devices, it might be better to pick up the latest Tile Pro instead. It works well across both platforms, [...]

While the summer months are great for putting in the miles on your favorite bike, it can be frustrating to have to hang it up when the weather turns. This smart bike trainer turns your road bike into an indoor exercise bike, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to connect to your PC, iOS, or Android device, [...]