The Verge

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Valve for "illegally promoting gambling" through the loot box systems it has built for video games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2, according to a press release. The attorney general seeks to "permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games, disgorge all [...]

Samsung has just announced its new Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. While they aren't radical departures from last year's models, they bring a handful of notable upgrades. All three run on Qualcomm's Galaxy-centric Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which delivers improved performance and powers a slew of new [...]

The Drop store, which was acquired by gaming gear giant Corsair in 2023, was a haven for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and audiophiles to discover and buy hard-to-find gear - sometimes at surprisingly good prices. The company will cease sales after March 25th at 11:59PM PT, which is also the cut off to redeem Drop Rewards. [...]

For more than six decades, the Peace Corps has represented itself as an agency focused on helping underserved communities around the globe. But a new initiative, called the "Tech Corps," threatens to unravel the agency's original mission by recruiting de facto Silicon Valley salespeople to promote the biggest names in AI - many of which [...]

President Donald Trump tried to quell Americans' concerns about rising electricity costs during his State of the Union speech - and now we're learning that the deals he promised could land next week. Trump claimed that he's negotiated a "rate payer protection pledge" with major tech companies, which would see them build out or pay [...]

Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S26 lineup at its recent Unpacked event in San Francisco. As expected, the new series consists of the baseline S26, which starts at $899.99, and the bigger S26 Plus, which starts at $1,099.99. At the high end, there's also the $1,299.99 S26 Ultra, which is the largest in the lineup and [...]

Google just announced that Gemini will soon be able to take care of some multistep tasks on your phone, like ordering food or hailing a car, starting first with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S26 phones. It all sounds a bit like features Apple announced for Siri way back [...]

As expected, Samsung has taken the wraps off its flagship lineup for 2026. Introduced during the company's recent Unpacked event, the new Galaxy devices - which include the standard S26, the larger S26 Plus, and the high-end S26 Ultra - will be available on March 11th. Preorders are now open ahead of launch, with pricing [...]

Kalshi, the prediction betting market, has disclosed its first fines for insider trading, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. In addition to handing down a $20,000 fine to a MrBeast editor, Kalshi also charged a California gubernatorial candidate over $2,000 after a video on X "appeared to show him trading on his own [...]

Google's Gemini AI is getting one step closer to being more like an actual assistant. Starting with some Pixel 10 phones and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series, Gemini will be able to hail an Uber or put together a DoorDash order on its own. It's called task automation, and it starts with a prompt to [...]

There's a cool new hardware feature debuting at Samsung's annual Unpacked event - but you won't find it on the Galaxy S26 or S26 Plus. While the Ultra model gets a new Privacy Display and avoids a price hike, Samsung's base models are largely software updates that cost more than the outgoing models. Don't get [...]

Maybe it's a reflection of just how slow hardware innovation has been, but the Galaxy S26 Ultra's new Privacy Display, which limits the screen's viewing angle to keep any would-be peepers away, left me totally impressed. It's not a brand-new technology - we've seen it before in laptops - and it was leaked thoroughly before [...]

The next Galaxy Buds have been announced, and Samsung again mimics Apple in design, ecosystem functionality, and pricing. The Galaxy Buds 4 and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro keep the AirPods-esque design of the Buds 3, but now have a flat metal surface along the stem's exterior. The regular buds use a single 11mm dynamic speaker [...]

On Wednesday, February 25th, Samsung will hold an event in San Francisco where it's expected to reveal the Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra phones, among other things. Based on leaks and Samsung's own ads, we're expecting at least one of the phones to come with a display that can black out sensitive content [...]

We're here in San Francisco, where Samsung is set to unveil its new Galaxy S26 series phones and probably some accessories to go with them starting at 1PM ET. Keep in mind this isn't Samsung's foldy phone event, which usually occurs in the summer. One of the things we're most curious about is whether the [...]

Spotify's "Mix" feature now has an option called "Smart Reorder" that can automatically sort users' playlists based on beats per minute (BPM) and key, organizing songs for the best flow from one track to the next. It builds on the existing Mix feature in Spotify and, along with transitions between songs, which were introduced in [...]

We spend a lot of time at The Verge talking about robot vacuums - robovacs that can mop, robovacs that perfume your home, robovacs with arms, etc., etc. - but they're not good for everything. A reliable handheld vac is still a good option for cleaning everything from car seats to stairs, which is why [...]

After less than two years at Amazon, David Luan, the head of Amazon's San Francisco AI lab, is departing the company. Luan announced the update in a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, saying, "I'll be leaving Amazon at the end of this week to cook up something new." He added that, "There's incredible work to [...]

One of the first blockbuster games of the year is almost here - and it's a creepy one. Resident Evil Requiem launches on February 27th, and it's the first all-new RE game since Village in 2021. It's also a fascinating experience, one that combines the guns-blazing action of Resident Evil 4 with the first-person terror [...]

Resident Evil has always been a strange creature: Like many of its most notable monsters, it has shifted and evolved into various forms. From its blocky days of tank-controlled Z-list actors to first-person fright fests, the franchise's identity is not so much tied to genre as theme: zombies, viruses, very ugly monsters. Now, with Requiem, [...]

It took me a while to recover from the first big scare in Resident Evil Requiem. There I was, hunched over with a screen inches from my face and headphones in my ears, when a gigantic woman began chasing me through a dimly lit hallway intent on, well, eating me. It was a heart-racing sequence, [...]

It was originally teased to be announced at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, Spain, this weekend, but Xiaomi has already shared all the details for its new super slim wireless power bank on its Australian website. The Xiaomi UltraThin Magnetic Power Bank 5000 features a 5,000mAh battery, as the name implies, and is just [...]

Over the past several weeks, as more and more Anthropic executives do interviews on a publicity blitz for Claude, one thing has gotten increasingly clear: Anthropic sure seems to think Claude is alive in some way, shape, or form. "Alive" is obviously a loaded term; the more frequently used word is "conscious." If you ask [...]

Apple is bringing age verification to the UK, as the latest iOS 26.4 beta prompts users to verify that they're over 18 following installation. As shown in screenshots posted to Reddit, Apple says users who don't confirm their age "will not be able to download and purchase apps or make in-app purchases." In one of [...]

Amazon is giving you more control over how Alexa behaves during conversations and responses. Three "personality style" presets are launching today for Alexa Plus users in the US that allow you to make the AI-powered voice assistant more concise, cheerful, or relaxed, depending on your personal preferences. "Alexa's personality is one of the things customers [...]

Adobe is launching a new Firefly tool that helps video editors to focus on storytelling by creating a first cut to refine and build around. The Quick Cut feature is launching in beta today for Firefly's video editor, allowing users to automatically assemble clips together based on text prompts and simple creator inputs. "Quick Cut [...]

Honor has announced a new version of its already slim MagicPad tablet that's now even thinner. Last year's MagicPad 3 was just 5.8mm thick, but the new MagicPad 4 squeezes that down to 4.8mm. That's thinner than the 6.1mm thick iPad Air and 5.1mm iPad Pro, or the 5.1mm thick Samsung Galaxy Tab S11, and [...]

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers covering the broligarchs, the influencers, and the (potentially conscious) artificial intelligence models scrambling for power in Washington. If you're not a subscriber yet, assert your humanity against the will of the machines by signing up here. Very important news: Do you want to tell me [...]

Apple, like many others, has had to launch age verification features in response to new requirements for age checks in many regions, and on Tuesday, the company announced new details about its tools that developers can use to "meet their age assurance obligations under upcoming U.S. and regional laws, including in Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Utah, [...]

Apple's OLED touchscreen MacBook Pros set to launch this fall will get a Dynamic Island feature like what's available on iPhones, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple first debuted the Dynamic Island with the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max as a pill-shaped cutout that can show information and alerts, though the MacBook [...]

OpenAI won a victory Tuesday in one of its legal battles with xAI, which involved allegations of poaching and theft of trade secrets. The former company's motion to dismiss the lawsuit was granted on Tuesday with leave to amend, meaning xAI has the option to refile with modified claims. In the ruling, US District Judge [...]

Age verification is a reality on a growing number of social media platforms, requiring an ID or facial scan for full access to everything from YouTube to Roblox. The age-gating wave is coming along with calls for stronger child safety measures online, despite concerns about privacy, security, and censorship. In the US, lawmakers are pushing [...]

Discord won't roll out age verification globally on its platform next month as previously announced, and says in a blog post that it's delaying the launch until the second half of 2026. "The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we're requiring face scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord. [...]

1Password is increasing its prices on March 27th, 2026. In an email sent to users, the password manager says it will raise the price of its individual plan from $3.99 / month ($35.88 / year) to $4.99 / month ($47.88 / year), and that its family plan is going from $6.95 / month ($59.88 / [...]

When Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson began uploading a series of short clips created with Seedance 2.0 - TikTok developer ByteDance's newest video generation model - it was hard to deny that the footage was much more impressive than what we've seen from other gen AI outfits. The clips' star (a digital duplicate of Tom Cruise) [...]

Samsung is set to introduce its new Galaxy S26 lineup at its next Unpacked event on February 25th, potentially alongside a new pair of earbuds and other wearables. If you're thinking about picking up any of the new devices, it's worth claiming Samsung's $30 promotional credit before it expires, which you can do byregistering your [...]

Marvel's Wolverine, the next superhero game from Marvel's Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games, will be released on PS5 on September 15th. Insomniac announced that it would be making a Wolverine game way back in 2021, so it's been a long wait in the leadup to an official release date. Sony gave a vague fall 2026 release [...]

Look at the two air taxi designs above. Look similar? The company that designed the one on the left sure thinks so, which is why it's accusing the firm that designed the one on the right of patent infringement. On Monday, Archer Aviation filed a complaint in the US District Court Eastern District of Texas [...]

DJI wants a federal court to toss out the Federal Communications Commission's decision to ban imports of its China-made drones and components, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a petition filed in an appeals court this week, DJI claims the FCC "exceeded its statutory authority" last December when adding drones made in foreign countries to [...]

YouTube is adding background playback and offline downloads to YouTube Premium Lite, its $7.99-per-month subscription. With the change, you'll be able to keep YouTube videos going while you use another app on your phone or save videos to watch when you're offline. YouTube Premium Lite came to the US just about a year ago as [...]

On Tuesday, Anthropic announced updates to its Claude Cowork platform that allow the AI to help with a wider range of office tasks. Claude Cowork can now connect with several popular office apps, including Google Workspace, Docusign, and WordPress. New pre-built plug-ins can also automate tasks in a range of fields, including HR, design, engineering, [...]

Not everybody wants their living room to be dominated by a big, hulking TV screen. Luckily, Samsung's 2025 Frame TV, which is designed to fade into the background when idle, is discounted to its lowest price to date at Woot. Now through February 28th, the 43- and 55-inch panels are on sale for $587.99 ($312 [...]

ADT, the 150-year-old company best known for home security, has acquired Origin Wireless in a $170 million deal to expand the capabilities of its security and smart home offerings. Origin Wireless developed algorithms that analyze how wireless RF signals bounce around a space to detect the presence and movements of people and objects without the [...]

Claude Code is a developer tool for developers. And yet, over the last year and especially the last few months, the team at Anthropic has seen a huge number of people, across industries and disciplines, figure out how to access their terminal so that they could build new stuff too. Few AI products have found [...]

Another Unpacked is nearly upon us. On February 25th, Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S26 series of flagship phones - potentially including the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra - with another round of AI-based features. That will come as a surprise to nobody. But as more AI creeps in on Samsung's AI [...]

ProducerAI, an AI-powered music-making platform, is joining Google. As part of the deal, Google will fold ProducerAI under the Labs umbrella and power the tool with a preview version of its new Lyria 3 music-making AI model. ProducerAI is a music-making platform that allows users to work with an AI agent to generate sounds, workshop [...]

The Asus ROG Flow Z13 was already a unique beast. It's a chunky gaming tablet with impressive AMD Strix Halo integrated graphics. I was really into it when I reviewed it around this time last year. But just look at it now, clad in the stylings of Hideo Kojima's game studio and his longtime collaborator, [...]

Major League Baseball wants more of a footprint on TikTok. Just in time for spring training, the two companies announced Tuesday they were partnering to expand baseball content on TikTok, including creating an MLB hub in the app and, of course, bringing in more influencers. Baseball is coming back after a season that was especially [...]

Apple is preparing to move some of its Mac Mini production to the US as part of the company's ongoing efforts to appease the Trump administration's push for domestic investment. Manufacturing is set to begin later this year in north Houston, Texas, at a Foxconn facility that currently assembles Apple's AI servers. "Apple is deeply [...]

Anthropic's weekslong battle with the Department of Defense has played out over social media posts, admonishing public statements, and direct quotes from unnamed Pentagon officials to the news media. But the future of the $380 billion AI startup comes down to just three words: "any lawful use." The new terms, which OpenAI and xAI have [...]