The Verge

Memorial Day is nearly here, meaning the seasonal sales are in full swing. If your weekend plans involve pool parties or barbecues, now is a great time to pick up a portable speaker or set of solar lights, as many of our favorite models are currently on sale. You can also find deals on everything [...]

They say that Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. I have my doubts given the less-than-balmy weather in many parts of the US this weekend, though that doesn't mean it's not an appropriate time to pick up some summer essentials - including a portable speaker / smart lamp like Govee's Table Lamp 2 [...]

Google officially filed its appeal of the federal ruling deeming it an illegal search monopolist, arguing the decision "crashed" through legal guardrails. "Google just prevailed in the marketplace fair and square," it writes in its legal filing. Google had already said it would appeal the ruling, which includes both the August 2024 decision about its [...]

On Thursday, Waymo customers opened up the app and noticed something unusual: no more freeway service. Trips that would normally take a few minutes on the freeway were suddenly projected to last much longer via local roads. The company later confirmed that it had suspended freeway driving across all of its US markets over concerns [...]

Google's AI Overviews are running into an interesting problem right now. As of this writing, if you search for the term "disregard," instead of showing the usual AI-generated summary of search results, the AI Overview section instead includes a response like what you'd see from a more traditional AI chatbot, as called out by a [...]

Best Buy's Memorial Day sale includes a good deal on a massive OLED TV. The 77-inch LG B5 is down to $1,499.99 (originally $2,999.99), and the purchase includes a $200 Best Buy gift card. I'm a 55-inch TV kind of person, but if you've got the budget - and the wall space - this is [...]

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. It's now been more than a week since Trump Mobile announced that phones would "start shipping this week." Last week Trump Mobile announced that the T1 Phone was ready to [...]

Since 2012, the British literary magazine Granta has published the regional winners of the annual Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This year, however, there was something off about one of the selections for the prestigious award: It appears to have been written by AI. Jamir Nazir's "The Serpent in the Grove" has many of the hallmarks [...]

AI covers and remixes of songs are already a blight on the internet. Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are awash in flat reggae versions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," dinky country renditions of The Weeknd, and monotonous Motown reimaginings of AC/DC. Now, a new tool from Spotify will make them even easier to generate and [...]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a recall for 14,575 Model Y vehicles over an issue that Tesla can't fix with its usual software update: a missing label. According to the recall report, Model Ys made between November 17th, 2024 and April 21st, 2026 could be missing a weight certification sticker due [...]

Before Boots Riley became the writer / director / musician behind Sorry to Bother You and I'm a Virgo, he was a young community organizer fighting for social justice as part of the Progressive Labor Party. Riley has channeled his anti-establishment, pro-worker politics into every piece of art that he's made. But his belief that [...]

Google is many things, but most of the time it's a verb: It is what it is to search the internet for information. But what if it's an AI agent doing the searching? And it's doing it proactively? Without even telling you about it? In the world Google imagines, in which so much of the [...]

It's hard existing in a world seemingly designed for the undeservingly powerful and painfully boring few. They have been gifted what many of us only dream of: the ability to effectively do whatever they like, free from everyday concerns like money, housing, and health. But instead of living in quiet serenity, many choose to use [...]

I've loved the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 since it launched in 2020. I bought one for my wife after reading about how awesome it was on a little site called The Verge dot com. Since then, the G14 has gotten some facelifts, chip bumps, an occasional special edition, a full redesign, and a 16-inch sibling [...]

Details have emerged about a tentative deal struck between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The deal reportedly makes some workers eligible for average annual bonuses of $340,000. The proposed 18-day strike had hinged on Samsung's bonus cap for employees in the semiconductor division and followed a substantial rise in the possible [...]

Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, is leaving the company after 35 years. Mehdi announced his departure in an internal memo on Thursday, noting that he will leave Microsoft next year. He will remain focused on marketing for Windows, Copilot for consumers and the Microsoft 365 consumer business until [...]

Microsoft is rolling out Office app updates next week that allow users to disable a floating Copilot button. The button appeared in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in recent weeks, and floats above the bottom right-hand section of spreadsheets or documents. It has angered many Excel users in particular, because it obstructs cells and you can't [...]

Anker has announced a new version of its Soundcore Liberty Pro earbuds: the new Liberty 5 Pro. These are the company's first earbuds featuring the Thus AI audio chip Anker announced last month, here being used to bolster noise reduction capabilities and help ensure the user's voice can be clearly heard during calls, even in [...]

Soundcore, Anker's audio brand, has mostly lived in the budget-to-midrange world, but with its new Liberty 5 Pro earbuds, it's aiming at the big guys. The two new earbuds - the Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max - use Anker's new Thus chip, which has more processing power than previous Soundcore earbuds to [...]

A federal judge is officially being tasked with deciding whether to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. More than 30 states are asking Judge Arun Subramanian to order a sale of the ticketing giant, a "sufficient number" of large amphitheaters, and limit its ability to tie access to its remaining amps to the use of its promotions [...]

University graduates are booing and heckling corporate executives who praise AI during their commencement ceremonies, and the only people who seem to be genuinely surprised by this are the executives themselves. In a procession of viral videos, 2026 commencement speakers like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt face loud and sustained jeers from students after praising [...]

On Monday morning, a judge overseeing the New York state case on the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO ruled that some evidence collected by police could not be shown to a jury. It wasn't the only news coming out of the hearing. Outside the courthouse, Molly Crane-Newman, a New York Daily News reporter, captured on [...]

Its name might be dull and uninspired, but the Philips 24B2D5300 Business Monitor brings a novel feature I've never seen on a display before: screens on either side. The design will primarily benefit people who are constantly angling their computer screen so those on both sides of a desk can see it, like a car [...]

After back-to-back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens' mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky's Breathitt County School District. Google's YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover [...]

Bungie is moving on from Destiny 2. The studio announced Thursday that it's releasing the last major update for the game on June 9th as its focus "turns towards a new beginning for Bungie." After that final update, the game will remain playable, much like the first Destiny. "Many changes in this final update will [...]

If your summer plans involve spending any time outdoors, whether on the trail or at a pool party, a good portable Bluetooth speaker can go a long way. The latest Sonos Roam is built precisely for those moments, and right now, it's on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart for $134 ($45 off) for [...]

I'm not sure anyone was really asking for an AI guitar pedal. But it was inevitable that someone would build one. One of the first to take the plunge is Polyend, a well-respected music gear maker with a reputation for building niche, idiosyncratic devices. The company has built grooveboxes around old-school trackers and a multi-effect [...]

Uber is putting its own autonomous vehicles back on the road as part of its new AV Lab project to collect data for its dozens of robotaxi partners. The cars will be fitted with all the sensors typical of self-driving cars, like cameras, lidar, and radar. But notably the vehicles will not be operating as [...]

The original Birdie debuted in 2022 with a morbid-but-fun design - an air-quality monitor with a literal canary in a coal mine. When the CO2 in your home hit a certain level, a mechanical bird mounted on your wall would appear to drop dead, then prompt you to open a window to air things out. [...]

Selling the smart home has been hard. Even Amazon has lost money in the space, despite putting hundreds of millions of Echo devices in people's homes. Google has also reportedly struggled to turn a profit from its substantial investment in Nest. But now Google is seeing dollar signs in the prospect of selling AI-driven subscriptions [...]

Hundreds of thousands of workplaces use software to monitor employees. Now, a new study has found that many of these tools share data not just with employers, but with digital advertising platforms and data brokers as well. The review was led by Stephanie Nguyen, senior fellow at Columbia Law School's Center for Law and the [...]

When Microsoft announced it was acquiring GitHub in a $7.5 billion deal in 2018, developers were nervous. Some were concerned about Microsoft controlling GitHub, and others were taking a wait-and-see approach. Nearly eight years later, GitHub is now fighting for its survival, amid a surge of outages, security issues, and pressure from competitors. In the [...]

Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) just announced a licensing deal that will allow users to prompt the creation of AI-generated remixes and covers for streaming songs. The tool will be a paid add-on for Premium subscribers. Artists will be able to opt out of the program, but those who do participate will collect royalties [...]

As part of a new "Reserved" program, Spotify is going to start offering concert tickets for "real fans" of participating bands that are going on tour. The idea with the Reserved program is to give people an option to buy tickets without the hassle and stress that often comes with securing a spot for a [...]

Studio by Spotify Labs is a new standalone AI app that generates a daily briefing, podcasts, and playlists on your PC using chatbot prompts. The AI-generated content draws from your Spotify listening history, as well as info from apps you connect to it, like your email inbox, calendar, and notes. Spotify says its AI can [...]

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. Hollywood is cooked - or so a growing number of people on social media would like you to believe. Their purported proof: AI-generated clips of Daniel Craig riding a Vespa [...]

Price is a big barrier for most people who'd like to try out smart glasses for gaming, watching movies, or using their computers. Many models are at $400 and up, but you can snag a refurbished pair of Viture's Luma Pro USB-C smart glasses for about $271 with the code LONGWEEKEND at eBay. Each set [...]

Today I'm talking with Liz Lopatto, who spent the last month covering the Musk v. Altman trial in all its chaos. You'll hear her describe the courthouse as a zoo" and explain that there were protests of one kind or another happening outside every day. Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman are big personalities, and [...]

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 [...]

Earlier this month, SpaceX and Anthropic announced a new compute partnership that provides access to the rocket company's Colossus data centers in Memphis, TN. Now, with the release of SpaceX's IPO filing, we have more details about that deal, including how much Anthropic is paying to Elon Musk's company. In its S-1 filing, SpaceX said [...]

Four decades on, '80s-style science fiction adventures continue to exert their influence on modern film and TV. The idea of a group of kids teaming up to face an otherworldly threat has become a trope at this point, seen in everything from Super 8 to Stranger Things. So on one level, The Boroughs, a new [...]

It's been nearly six years since Flipper Devices introduced the Zero, its popular but controversial wireless hacking multi-tool. The company's latest creation (following a slight departure with a device that lets co-workers know when you're too busy to chat) is the new Flipper One. It's a similarly pocketable electronic multi-tool but also a tiny open [...]

Welcome! I'm The Verge's smart home reviewer, and I'm hosting an exclusive subscriber AMA today at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. I test a lot of connected gadgets for my job, but the dominant device in my home - by both number and square footage covered - is the robot vacuum. At any [...]

Yesterday, I built my first Android app. Then, I made two more - three in one afternoon. For one, I literally typed 148 words into my web browser and walked away. Ten minutes later, I had an entire new app on my actual Android phone. I did have to prep that phone by enabling a [...]

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is launching a streaming series on Twitch, in which he'll respond to questions the public have submitted via the chat, Polygon reports. The series is aptly titled "Talk with the People," and kicks off later today at 4PM ET. "With the launch of 'Talk with the People' we're bringing [...]

Bambu Lab makes the best, most accessible 3D printers yet, but that reputation is suddenly under siege. It all started when Pawe Jarczak received a private message from the company on Reddit asking him to delete his code. Now the 3D printing community is lining up behind Jarczak to fund a war against Bambu - [...]

Meta has reportedly notified thousands of employees that they've been laid off as the company attempts to compensate for its hefty AI investments. In an email from Meta management shared by Business Insider, impacted staffers were told that the planned headcount reduction was part of the company's "continued effort to run the company more efficiently [...]

The SpaceX IPO is here, and it's more than just an historic public offering that could make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. It also reveals more ways in which Elon Musk's companies interact and overlap with each other, shuffling money around in ways that are often difficult to keep track of. This is evident [...]

Elon Musk's final frontier is officially open for business now that SpaceX has formally filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC. That kicks off what could be the largest initial public offering ever when it lists on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the ticker SPCX. SpaceX generated $18.67 billion in revenue in 2025, driven largely [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. This week's issue is a special early edition tied to The Verge's Google I/O coverage. You can expect our next issue at its usual time [...]