The Verge

The close timing of Jeffrey Epstein coming into contact with 4chan founder Chris 'moot' Poole and the launch of the "politically incorrect" message board /pol/ that became a breeding ground for QAnon and the white supremacist alt-right movement was coincidental, says Poole. In a statement given to The Verge, Pool writes, "The decision to add [...]

Valentine's Day is often thought of as the quintessential Hallmark holiday - and why wouldn't it be? Most of the time, it's marketed to us with massive floral arrangements and heart-shaped chocolates, both of which can come off as borderline twee. But no one says you have to play by the rulebook when it comes [...]

If you like how well AirPods work with iPhones but want something more colorful and flexible, the Beats Studio Buds Plus are a nice middle ground. They're platform-agnostic and are on sale for $99.95 ($70 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart for Presidents Day. The deal includes the eye-catching translucent option and is [...]

User reviews on Steam may get more informative after a Steam Client Beta update released on Thursday, which adds an option for users to attach their hardware specs to game reviews. Steam users have always been able to share their specs in the text of their reviews, but the option to automatically include that data [...]

Deals have been admittedly pretty dry since the holidays, but now that February is in full swing, we're starting to see strong discounts return across a range of categories. In fact, thanks to Valentine's Day, the Super Bowl, and - as of this week - Presidents Day, retailers are once again offering a slew of [...]

The past few days have been a wild ride for xAI, which is racking up staff and cofounder departure announcements left and right. On Tuesday and Wednesday, cofounder Yuhuai (Tony) Wu announced his departure and that it was "time for [his] next chapter," with cofounder Jimmy Ba following with a similar post later that day, [...]

During the 2024 presidential election, @KamalaHQ was something of an alter ego for Vice President Kamala Harris - as Harris ran a buttoned-up campaign, the online accounts shared clips of her set to viral TikTok sounds, shitposted unflattering pictures of Donald Trump, and adopted a voice that was at times indistinguishable from the average 20-something [...]

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. Last week, we spoke to executives from the company for the first time, and this week we're back with more details on how it began. Trump Mobile may bear the US president's name, but he didn't come up with the idea, and [...]

As part of its acquisition by China-based Picea Robotics, iRobot is creating a new US-based subsidiary called iRobot Safe, which the company says will be "responsible for the protection of US consumer data," similar to the TikTok deal that was completed last month. iRobot customers in the US will be able to continue using their [...]

You can watch Ring's recent Super Bowl ad and see a cute story about dogs being reunited with their families. You can also watch the very same ad and see the seeds being planted for a massively connected, utterly ubiquitous surveillance system that will end the concept of privacy forever. Maybe you can even see [...]

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. Opt in for Optimizer here. For the past week, I've been thinking about the fact that Oura has gone to Washington. The Oura [...]

Valentine's Day often comes with more pressure than it needs to. At heart, though, February 14th is about showing appreciation for the people you care about in ways that feel thoughtful and sincere. And while big displays of romance can do that, it's often the quieter, more personal gestures - or a meaningful gift that [...]

Meta's VR strategy is in a bit of an uncertain place right now, with the company recently cutting many jobs at its Reality Labs, and discontinuing new content drops in beloved experiences like Supernatural. Even so, there's still a lot of fun to be had with its Meta Quest 3S if you've been curious about [...]

We sat in a parking lot and waited. We watched, knowing we were being watched in return. Two men, masked and presumably armed, idled in a gray SUV. "They're all on this fucking street now," Lety, a lifelong resident of the Minnesota suburbs, told me. ICE had been spotted at a gas station and a [...]

Meta aims to introduce facial recognition to its smart glasses while its biggest critics are distracted, according to a report from The New York Times. In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature "during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to [...]

Following the popularity of the Kodak Charmera, it was inevitable that other retro-inspired digital toy cameras would start popping up. While the Charmera's design was inspired by the '80s single-use Kodak Fling camera, the OPT100 Neo Film crams a basic digital camera into a 35mm film roll that comes inside a plastic canister and a [...]

When the Mewgenics team announced in 2024 that it had added autism to the list of disorders the game's cats could inherit, developer Edmund McMillen - best known as the co-creator of Super Meat Boy - was unprepared for the reaction. "It was like the most positive response I've ever had to anything I posted," [...]

There's been some hullabaloo over HP's laptop subscription service, recently brought to light by a Linus Tech Tips video. And for good reason: it feels like everything is a subscription these days. But it's not just the dystopian feeling that companies are happy to sell you access to movies, music, games, phones, printers, and now [...]

Tenways just launched its new CGO Compact electric bike in Europe that's designed to fit into tight spaces like car trunks, apartment hallways, and train compartments. To achieve this, the CGO Compact is fitted with small 20-inch wheels, folding pedals, and a handlebar fitted with a twistable stem to create a slim, wall-hugging profile. The [...]

To close out its February 2026 State of Play presentation, Sony revealed God of War Sons of Sparta, a new prequel 2D side scroller in the God of War franchise, and announced that it's out right now on PlayStation 5. "God of War Sons of Sparta is a 2D action platformer with a canon story [...]

Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration. In a statement published on Ring's blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety [...]

Strap in, because the next PlayStation event is going to be a long one. Sony's latest State of Play - a showcase event for upcoming PS5 games - kicks off on February 12th at 5PM ET and it'll last more than an hour. We don't know what exactly will be shown. Sony says that the [...]

The Trump administration just eliminated the landmark finding that has underpinned federal regulations on planet-heating pollution since 2009. For nearly the past two decades, the "endangerment finding" has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to craft rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Rather than repealing those rules individually, the Trump administration [...]

Whether you're considering a 16-inch gaming laptop, or a more compact 14-inch model, there's a deal with your name on it happening right now at Best Buy. The 2025 models of Acer's Predator Helios Neo 16S and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 are hundreds off, although it's the model with the bigger screen that is [...]

Spring doesn't officially kick off until March 20th, but there's something to be said about getting a head start on your spring cleaning. Lucky for you, Eufy's X10 Pro Omni is currently on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and directly from Eufy (with promo code WS7DV2D5LF9F) for $449.99 ($450 off), matching its lowest price to date. [...]

On October 24th, 2011, Jeffrey Epstein was emailing back and forth with Boris Nikolic, a biotech venture capitalist who would later be named as a backup executor of Epstein's will. The two appeared to be discussing a meeting Nikolic had helped arrange between Epstein and "moot," the screen name for Christopher Poole, who created the [...]

We are all guilty of pulling out our phones and doomscrolling through stressful headlines or mindnumbing videos when we should be doing anything else. We know it's bad, but we still do it because it's hard to resist when much of our time is spent living and working on our devices. And even though we [...]

Gail Slater, the top antitrust enforcer at the Justice Department, announced Thursday that she has left her post, just weeks before the agency's next major tech monopoly trial against entertainment giant Live Nation is set to begin. "It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today," [...]

The hours-long closure of El Paso airspace stemmed from the use of an anti-drone laser deployed by Customs and Border Protection, according to reports from The New York Times and the Associated Press. Sources tell The Times that CBP officials didn't give the Federal Aviation Administration "enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft," [...]

In a style that feels nostalgic and nascent, Bree O'Donnell is crafting her singular vision of a 3D witch named Mary. Through the tiny window of short clips on Instagram and TikTok, Mary's world seems enchanting and vast. Bree's work exudes melancholic emotion and ethereal femininity, painting the surfaces of Mary's world in the vibrating [...]

The Apple Vision Pro is finally getting an official visionOS YouTube app on Thursday. With the visionOS YouTube app, you'll be able to watch all videos available on YouTube, including standard videos, Shorts, 3D, 360, and VR180 videos, Apple spokesperson Corey Nord tells The Verge. The Vision Pro launched more than two years ago, but [...]

Big Tech's race to leapfrog the latest AI models continues with the launch of ByteDance's next-gen video generator. In a blog post, ByteDance - the China-based company behind TikTok - says Seedance 2.0 supports prompts that combine text, images, video, and audio. The company claims it "delivers a substantial leap in generation quality," offering improvements [...]

Amazon's rolling out a new "Send to Alexa Plus" feature to the latest Kindle Scribe and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft owners starting February 12. The feature lets you send your notes or documents to Amazon's AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant, which can then summarize them, turn them into to-do lists, calendar events, or reminders, as well as [...]

If you have a spare $7,999 (plus a $250 deposit), hate folding laundry, and happen to live in the Bay Area, one-and-a-half-year-old startup Weave has the robot for you: Isaac 0. It takes Isaac 0 around 30-90 minutes to fold a load of laundry, Weave says. That's all it does - it's stationary and needs [...]

Business laptops are typically dull computers foisted on employees en masse. But higher-end enterprise workstation notebooks sometimes get an interesting enough blend of power and features to appeal to enthusiasts. HP's ZBook Ultra G1a is a nice example. It's easy to see it as another gray boring-book for spendy business types, until you notice a [...]

Minneapolis was not the war zone I expected to find. Depending on who you are and where you live, things can seem, for a few fleeting moments, almost normal, like a few blocks or neighborhoods over people aren't being tear gassed or rounded up by ICE or, in two tragic cases, being gunned down by [...]

Highguard, a new multiplayer shooter from developers who worked on games like Apex Legends and Call of Duty, launched just over two weeks ago, but developer Wildlight Entertainment is already cutting jobs at the company, according to posts from affected staffers on LinkedIn. Former Wildlight level designer Alex Graner says that "most of the team [...]

Since the xAI-SpaceX merger announced last week, which combined the two companies (as well as social media platform X) for a reported $1.25 trillion valuation - the biggest merger of all time - a handful of xAI employees and two of its co-founders have abruptly exited the company, penning long departure announcements online. Some also [...]

On Wednesday, Apple released its latest iOS 26 update, which includes a new process for switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, as previously reported by 9to5Mac. The updated transferring tool can move over data like apps, photos, messages, and even a user's phone number by sitting the two phones side by side. Previously, [...]

Anthropic is the latest AI company promising to limit the impact its data centers have on nearby residents' electricity bills. The company said it would pay higher monthly electricity charges in order to cover 100 percent of the upgrades needed to connect its data centers to power grids. "This includes the shares of these costs [...]

In June 2024, in a dusty TV shop empty of customers save myself, my wife, and my kids, I stared deep into the LG C3 and Samsung S90C. I went back and forth between the two OLED screens for easily 20 minutes, happily paralyzed by the choice in front of me. The Video Only salesperson [...]

Aurora, the driverless truck firm founded by former members of Google's pioneering self-driving car team, is branching out. In advance of its quarterly earnings report today, the company announced that a new software update would enable it to triple its driverless network to a total of 10 routes across the Southern US. Currently, Aurora has [...]

Apple had been reportedly pushing to introduce some big changes to Siri with iOS 26.4, but now the company is planning to introduce them in later versions of iOS, including iOS 26.5 and iOS 27, Bloomberg reports. Nearly a year ago, Apple delayed planned features for Siri that would let it understand your personal context [...]

Samsung's next Unpacked event is happening on February 25th, and we anticipate the company will announce the Galaxy S26 lineup of phones. There may be some new wearables and earbuds announced, too. In addition to the showing off the new hardware, Galaxy AI software is likely to be a big part of the show, since [...]

Microsoft has fixed a serious security vulnerability affecting Markdown files in Notepad. In the company's Tuesday patch notes, Microsoft says a bad actor could carry out a remote code execution attack by tricking users "into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad," as reported earlier by The Register. Clicking the link [...]

FBI Director Kash Patel said yesterday that investigators recovered footage from Savannah Guthrie's mother's doorbell camera using "residual data located in backend systems." This claim has many home security camera users asking an uncomfortable question: Is your data really gone when you hit delete? When Nancy Guthrie went missing, officials said she had a doorbell [...]

Threads now lets users in the US adjust what is recommended in their feed by writing "Dear Algo" in a post and explaining what they're looking for. The feature is part of a bigger push across Meta's platforms to give users more control over the types of posts that are recommended to them. Dear Algo [...]

Ableton is rolling out the Live 12.4 Beta with a number of new features, but the headliner is Link Audio, which enables real-time collaboration between devices on a local network. Having to be on the same network is a serious limitation and, as the name implies, Link Audio only supports streaming audio. That means your [...]