The Verge

Reports of Bill Gates' connections with Jeffrey Epstein grow more lurid with each dump of documents from the Department of Justice. The latest includes somewhat confusing emails that Epstein may have been drafting on behalf of someone named Boris, who worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The messages claim that Bill contracted an [...]

After protests broke out in early January, the Iranian regime shut down the internet, starting the longest blackout in Iranian history. Despite this attempt to stop the protests from spreading, they did not stop. Still, the internet shutdown slowed down the spread of information both inside and outside Iran. Behind the heavily policed borders and [...]

New York City got hit with a hell of a snowstorm last week. And, inevitably, when I'm watching the snow fall, wandering the oddly quiet streets after dark, people hiding inside and staying warm, I put on M83's sophomore record, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. Before Nicolas Fromageau left the band and Anthony [...]

I've used and reviewed dozens of e-readers over the years, but the 5-inch Kobo Mini remains my favorite for one simple reason: It was small. While it lacked useful features like screen lighting and page turn buttons, its size made it an e-reader I actually wanted to carry every day. The $69 Xteink X4 e-reader [...]

In Seattle, the only thing we love more than coffee is our coffee shops. On a six-block walk I pass at least a half dozen, each with their own vibe: one focused on chai, another inside a yoga studio, a Starbucks that's surprisingly busy for late afternoon downtown. I passed them all up to get [...]

Antigravity's ambitious A1 360-degree drone is 15 percent off through February 9th. The first-ever discount on this model is available across all bundles, with the most affordable option dropping from $1,599 to $1,359 at Amazon and Best Buy. Pricier bundles are also discounted and include accessories such as a carrying case, additional replaceable drone wings, [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on Android phones, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra wasn't the first phone to feature a periscopic [...]

It was too cold to take off my mittens and check Google Maps so I put my faith in the trickle of bundled-up people ahead of me. All of them were carrying signs and wearing whistles around their necks on top of layers and layers of winter clothing. At first there were dozens of us [...]

SpaceX filed a request with the FCC on Friday seeking approval to put a constellation of 1 million data center satellites into orbit. While the FCC is unlikely to approve a network that expansive, SpaceX's strategy has been to request approval for unrealistically large numbers of satellites as a starting point for negotiations. The filing [...]

Happy Saturday, folks! After a few weeks of middling deals, we're starting see things pick up. Some of our favorite deals of the holiday season have returned in some fashion, making now a great time to pick up deal stalwarts like the AirPods 4 with ANC or Google's TV Streamer (4K). We also stumbled upon [...]

It's no secret that Cassette Boy is inspired by the classics. It's a top-down adventure game in the vein of a retro Legend of Zelda, while your home base is a small town like in an older Pokemon game, complete with a mom who is constantly wishing you well. The game's blocky 3D graphics evoke [...]

ChatGPT is using Grokipedia as a source, and it's not the only AI tool to do so. Citations to Elon Musk's AI-generated encyclopedia are starting to appear in answers from Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, too. Data suggests that's on the rise, heightening concerns about accuracy and misinformation as Musk seeks to reshape [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 114, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send Arc Raiders tips, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about wind turbines and phishing scams and oboes, keeping organized [...]

FujiFilm's Instax Mini Link 3 printer is a much-loved $100 accessory in my travel journal kit. I often tape a printed image next to my handwritten thoughts to preserve a moment in time. The prints produced by the instant film can, however, be soft and muddy - something the new $169.95 Instax Mini Link+ promises [...]

The Senate voted on Friday evening to pass the federal budget, funding everything except for one entity: the Department of Homeland Security, which was given a two-week funding extension in order to negotiate new guardrails around Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If no agreement is reached, DHS funding will lapse and the department will face [...]

Would it surprise you to learn Microsoft booted Jeffrey Epstein from its online gaming platform? As spotted by XboxEra, the latest batch of Epstein's emails shows that in December 2013, he was "permanently suspended due to harassment, threats, and/or abuse of other players." But it appears the real reason may be simpler: A second email [...]

Peloton said on Friday that it's cutting around 11 percent of its staff, mostly impacting "engineers working on technology and enterprise-related efforts," reports Bloomberg. Last August, Peloton laid off six percent of its workforce and told investors it would continue layoffs globally in 2026, in an attempt to cut at least $100 million of annual [...]

The stock prices of some major video game companies, including Take-Two Interactive, Roblox, and Unity, had notable declines on Friday, just a day after Google announced its Project Genie tool that lets users prompt AI to generate interactive experiences, Reuters reports. Take-Two's stock price closed at $220.30 (down 7.93 percent from yesterday), Roblox's closed at [...]

Sonos isn't exactly synonymous with the Super Bowl, although the brand discounts its gear every year around this time like clockwork. It's knocking 20 percent off many of its marquee products, including soundbars and standalone speakers - all of which can be paired together to improve sound quality and to put audio in more places [...]

Fitbit users who are holding out on moving their data over to a Google account now have until May 19th, 2026 to make the switch. The previous deadline was just days away on February 2nd, but that date has been updated on Google's help page for Fitbit account migration. The post also now specifies that, [...]

Yes, you read that right. "Moltbook" is a social network of sorts for AI agents, particularly ones offered by OpenClaw (a viral AI assistant project that was formerly known as Moltbot, and before that, known as Clawdbot - until a legal dispute with Anthropic). Moltbook, which is set up similarly to Reddit and was built [...]

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. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, I finally got a reply from a company exec. After months - months - of emailing various official Trump [...]

In case you missed it, we recently overhauled our guides to the best budget robot vacuums and the best mopping vacs, both of which feature a slate of new picks from Roborock, Narwal, Dreame, and others. Dyson's 360 Vis Nav Robot Vacuum didn't technically make the cut, though it was once one of our top [...]

What responsibility do you have to speak up about bad things happening in the world? Does that responsibility change when speaking up might affect your business? What about if you're a sports creator, or the moderator of a deeply NSFW subreddit? What about if you're just a little ol' phone website? Ultimately, everyone has to [...]

The Trump administration has flooded Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota with federal agents as part of its immigration crackdown, Operation Metro Surge -detaining children, intimidating protestors and community organizers, and killing multiple people. Minnesotans have responded with mass community-level resistance, including mutual aid and tracking ICE operations, despite threats and surveillance -including through systems [...]

The Analogue 3D finally launched late last year with four controller ports on the front supporting the N64's original wired gamepads. If you wanted to go wireless, your best option was the 8BitDo 64 which offered a similar button and joystick layout as the N64's original controllers, but with a modernized design. For a more [...]

For my money, you simply cannot get a better electrocapacitive keyboard than the Bauer Lite with a DynaCap kit. [Editor's note: Huh?] You can get a nicer EC keyboard, without having to build it yourself, by simply spending $3,600 on a Norbauer Seneca. Or you can get a Happy Hacking Keyboard or a Realforce for [...]

So, you're thinking of buying a smart ring. Well, some good news. Picking the best of the lot is incredibly easy right now. The bad" news is that, as far as trustworthiness and reliability, your choices are somewhat limited, as this is still a niche and emerging gadget category. Smart rings are in the middle [...]

As of Saturday, nearly all of Belkin's Wemo smart home devices will lose access to cloud services, including features like remote access and integrations with Google Home and Alexa. Belkin will also end app updates for the Wemo app beginning on January 31st. The shut down was first announced in July and impacts most Wemo [...]

Robot vacuums that can both mop and sweep your floors have improved significantly in recent years. While they are still not as effective as good ol' manual labor, if you run them regularly, they will help keep your floors cleaner with much less effort on your part. The difference is that newer combo" robot vacuum-and-mop [...]

Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor turned independent journalist, was arrested on Thursday night by federal agents in Los Angeles, who alleged that he had violated federal law while covering an anti-ICE protest in Minnesota. Notably, Lemon was not the only journalist targeted by law enforcement for their presence at the Minnesota protest. On Thursday [...]

As a result of cold weather and windy conditions moving through Florida, NASA is now targeting Monday, February 2nd for a wet dress rehearsal of the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Depending on how Monday's rehearsal goes, NASA will potentially set a launch date for Artemis II. But as a result of the [...]

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. Unboxing Mirumi is like traveling back in time. It's [...]

The significant problems with the TikTok app last weekend were, according to the company, because of a technical issue stemming from a power outage at a "US data center partner." Users could not upload new videos and view counts were all out of whack, with few answers or explanations. For TikTok, the timing was unfortunate. [...]

Apple TV continues to flesh out its streaming lineup for 2026, this time by announcing that Sugar will be back in the summer. The show's second season will premiere on June 19th and run for eight episodes. Sugar first premiered in 2024. And while it's a noir detective story at its core, thanks to a [...]

Hello, friends. It's time for another exclusive AMA for Verge subscribers, and this time, I'll be your host. I cover everything from wearables to dystopian cursed tech like at-home urine labs and belligerent AI companions. At times, my job calls for flirting with Grok's AI girlfriend for 24 hours or coercing weird AI video apps [...]

The makers of Amazon's Melania documentary have defended its exorbitant cost following accusations of bribery to appease the Trump empire. Amazon paid $40 million to Melania Trump's production company for the film rights and another $35 million for marketing - making it one of the most expensive documentaries ever produced. "I think it's silly because [...]

Anna and Magnus built a life together. They had a home with three kids and a dog. Then they separated. This is where The Love That Remains begins, but as time passes and the reality of their divorce sets in, they're left to move through a future strained by their unraveling. Icelandic director Hlynur Palmason's [...]

Microsoft's PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more. Microsoft has provided [...]

Japan's anti-piracy coalition says that one of the world's largest manga piracy networks has been shut down following a coordinated investigation between Japanese publishers and Chinese authorities. The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) announced the arrest of an individual on suspicion of copyright infringement on November 19th, who "has admitted to operating" Bato.to and approximately [...]

The US is now leading a global surge in new gas power plants being built in large part to satisfy growing energy demand for data centers. And more gas means more planet-heating pollution. Gas-fired power generation in development globally rose by 31 percent in 2025. Almost a quarter of that added capacity is slated for [...]

Apple says the iPhone had its "best-ever" quarter, with revenue hitting more than $85.3 billion over the past few months. The company announced the news as part of its Q1 2026 earnings report, which also revealed record-breaking revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent when compared to the same time last year. "The demand for [...]

There's never a shortage of weird tech debuting at CES every year. A new company called Tomorrow Doesn't Matter, or TDM, announced a peculiar pair of headphones at the show earlier this month with a feature no one has tried before. The Neo headphones can be rolled up like a hedgehog, which turns them into [...]

A foldable phone isn't for the faint of heart. They're generally heavier, pricier, and have less capable cameras than a standard slab-style phone. They're also still not as durable as regular smartphones, though they're not nearly as fragile as they once were. In fact, thanks to Google, we finally have a foldable phone we can [...]

Elon Musk-led SpaceX may merge with another company helmed by Elon Musk. Reuters initially reported Thursday that SpaceX and xAI are "in discussions to merge" ahead of SpaceX's IPO that's planned for later this year. The merger would help with SpaceX's plans to launch data centers into space, according to the publication. Later on Thursday, [...]

Apple's biggest acquisition ever is still its $3 billion Beats buy in 2014, but now the second biggest deal is bringing in Q.ai, a four-year-old AI audio startup. Apple did not disclose the terms, but Financial Times reports that Apple is spending $2 billion on the company. It also mentioned Q.ai patents for optical sensor [...]

Webcam company Obsbot recently launched two new gimbal-equipped webcams, the $349 Tiny 3 and the $199 Tiny 3 Lite. It claims that the priciest model is the smallest pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) 4K webcam ever made, weighing 63 grams. Ironically, the Tiny 3 Lite is heavier and bigger. I've been testing the Tiny 3 for [...]

Prediction markets will let you bet on just about anything, from how many tweets Elon Musk will post this week to the next president of the United States, with predictions sometimes showing shockingly (or suspiciously) spot-on accuracy. Polymarket's CEO Shayne Copland has even claimed that prediction markets are the most accurate thing we have as [...]