The Verge

Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees to discuss a possible merger, Elon Musk said during the latter's third quarter earnings call Tuesday. Musk, who serves as CEO of both companies, said the special committees were formed at the request of shareholders and consist of independent directors (though he did not name them). He also [...]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company would attempt to catch Starship and its booster next month, with the goal of recovering the entire orbital launch system for the first time. If successful, Musk said, the attempt would mark the first time in history an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered. "This is a [...]

Netflix is making monetization a top priority amid reports of falling viewing time. As part of its third-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, Netflix lists improvements to monetization as one of its main focuses going forward, alongside efforts to boost entertainment value and leverage new technology. The streaming giant doesn't say exactly how it plans to [...]

Snap has a new brand ambassador for its Specs AR glasses: Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. The company has brought on Downey as Specs' "Chief Customer Experience Officer" and has published several videos featuring Downey showcasing the capabilities of the new glasses, including as a tool to get help with a putt, practice art, [...]

SpaceX announced revenues of $14.6 billion in its Q3 earnings on Tuesday, which it says was a growth of 161 percent year-over-year "fueled by our Super Intelligence (SI) segment and accelerated growth in Connectivity." While its Space division posted a $7 million loss in income from operations, its Connectivity group posted income from operations $2.4 [...]

Oura is introducing two new cardiovascular-focused health tracking features to its smart rings designed to help users better understand the effect regular workouts and exercise are having on their long-term health, and whether they need to ramp it up or dial things down. Cardio Effort and automatic VO2 Max (previously known as Cardio Capacity) are [...]

Trying to pull up information for certain peptides on TikTok is now returning a "no results found" page when searching for terms like semaglutide, BPC-157, retratutide, and others. That hasn't entirely erased visibility on TikTok for peptides, which are combinations of amino acids that include substances like insulin and GLP-1. The problem is peptides also [...]

Looking for a way to try the haptics-equipped G Pro X2 Superstrike wireless gaming mouse without spending full price? You probably aren't alone. Logitech's now-last-gen right-handed mouse is a great PC gaming companion that mimics the feel of mechanical switches with nothing but haptics. You can grab it refurbished through Logitech's official eBay store for [...]

Meta says it paused a Muse feature that lets you share conversations with the AI assistant after researchers found the URLs publicly available on the web, as reported by Ars Technica. In a report published this week, researchers at the security firm Claroc say they found more than 6,800 Muse links through public DNS records. [...]

Tuesday Labs, a New York City-based robotics lab and design studio, has opened reservations for Voxel, its new bi-pedal robot designed to learn and take over routine tasks throughout your home. Similar to other robots like Weave Robotics' Issac 1 that are designed for household chores beyond mopping or vacuuming floors, Voxel features a pair [...]

Google is launching a new browser safety feature for Chrome that aims to keep you better informed about how malicious a website might be before you open it. The new suspicious site warnings, available when Chrome's Enhanced Protection is on, build on a similar two-stage system introduced for Chrome file downloads in 2024, which provides [...]

AMD has just revealed that it's bringing its latest upscaling technology, FSR 4.1, to the Xbox Series S and X consoles, as well as laptops, 6000-series GPUs, and handhelds like the Xbox Ally X devices. FSR 4.1 will start appearing for Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs today, as well as Ryzen AI Max 300 and 400 [...]

Arturia is adding to its Freak line of proudly weird digital synths with the MiniFreak 49. Under the hood, it's almost identical to the current MiniFreak, but it adds a number of more professional features and some interface improvements. The most noticeable change is that, rather than the MiniFreak's 37 minikeys or the MicroFreak's 25 [...]

It's a time of apocalyptic worldviews in Silicon Valley. The latest AI doom cycle is driven by effective altruism (EA), a philosophy that has lurked around the fringes for years but recently burst into the mainstream because its adherents are embedded across the AI industry, from Anthropic to newly appointed AI safety watchdog METR. EA [...]

Last week over 200 packages of graded trading cards being shipped back to their owners were stolen from a FedEx truck parked outside the headquarters of Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) in Santa Ana, California, according to a report by The Athletic. PSA is one of the largest third-party sports and hobby card grading companies in [...]

Spotify says it has removed more than 50 million songs considered AI-generated slop or spam from user recommendations over the past year. That's according to an announcement on Tuesday that says Spotify has also made changes to its recommendation system to highlight more music made by human artists. "Our editors hold the same standard and [...]

TikTok was repeatedly warned by its own staffers about risks its platform posed to child safety, according to court records obtained by NPR. The publication reports that employees were frustrated over TikTok executives failing to appropriately act on concerns they raised, including minors bypassing age-restricted content, and appearing in "transactional sexual content" the company could [...]

Adobe announced yesterday that the mobile version of Lightroom, available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android, can now open closed eyes in photos using generative AI with just a single tap. When the app detects a person, or a group of people, have their eyes closed in a photo it will automatically present users with a [...]

Wii Sports holds an important place in Nintendo's history. It's the best-selling piece of software the company has ever made, one that permeated culture in surprising ways, and its success helped rejuvenate Nintendo after a period of steady decline. It also kicked off one of the company's most important and unassuming franchises. While subsequent sports [...]

Last year's Antigravity A1 is the best beginner drone I've ever tried. I put a friend who'd never flown into its virtual cockpit and didn't worry one bit. The A1's also nice for people who'd prefer to think about flying rather than filming, because you can reframe its 360-degree footage after. But until today, that [...]

Spotify is enabling podcast creators to earn more money through the platform by providing their fans with a way to pay to access exclusive content. First announced in May, the new Memberships subscription feature is starting to roll out in 34 regions today, allowing podcasters to offer perks including additional content, early access, bonus episodes, [...]

Some Google Home Speaker owners are currently experiencing an issue in which hundreds of gigabytes of data are being continuously downloaded to their device in the background. The bug, reported by 9to5Google and several Reddit users over the last week, may be caused by the speakers failing to correctly download and install a firmware update, [...]

Baseus announced a new addition to its lineup of AI-assisted security cameras that's more proactive about discouraging unwanted visitors instead of just recording and alerting you to their presence. The Baseus Security PrimeSentinel U2 Pro Outdoor 3K Dual Camera introduces a motorized spotlight that shines directly on a moving target, even as they're running across [...]

President Donald Trump announced this afternoon that Elon Musk's SpaceX shares for children will be given through Trump Accounts. Musk said earlier today that he would give one of his SpaceX shares to "every kid in America" sometime next year. Musk had thanked Trump Account booster Brad Gerstner for "helping enable this," and Trump appeared [...]

The US is building more fossil fuel infrastructure than it has in a decade while renewable energy growth slows down, a new report shows. Electricity demand is also climbing faster than it has in more than a decade with more data centers, factories, and electric vehicles plugging into the grid. Despite those growing demands, the [...]

CoreWeave had a bad week last week. Its bonds slipped into distressed territory by a common definition - when investors demand 1,000 basis points more in yield than they'd get from government bonds. Last Tuesday Chamath "SPAC King" Palihapitiya noticed the distressed debt, and also asked whether the AI buildout was a private credit bubble. [...]

My 15-year-old daughter just got her learner's permit, so when I was pitched a new gadget tailored to teen drivers, I was intrigued. The Miles Plug is a small device that plugs into your car's OBD-II port and monitors location, driving habits, and vehicle health, along with emergency accident response and roadside assistance. The idea [...]

For a very limited time, Sony's latest high-end noise-canceling earbuds are actually cheaper than their last-gen counterpart, the WF-1000XM5. B&H Photo is selling Sony's latest WF-1000XM6 in black for an all-time low of $238 ($92 off) at checkout. Other retailers aren't currently offering a discount on the XM6. The XM6 are a solid upgrade over [...]

Apple has sent invites to a second product launch this month, and it's scheduled for October 28th at 1PM ET in Los Angeles. At the event, Apple is set to announce new Macs and a refreshed iPad Mini, according to Bloomberg. The big announcement is expected to be a new MacBook Pro with an OLED [...]

Amazon has signed an agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to fund the building of a new nuclear energy facility in Indiana. The proposed plant, which would replace the now defunct coal-fueled Breed Generating Station in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, aims to provide up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free energy for both the regional [...]

Best Buy has a great deal for the rest of the day on the M4 Mac Mini base model that has 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. Normally, it doesn't make a ton of sense to buy the M4 model for its usual $799 price given that the newer, faster M6 version has been available [...]

Today, I'm talking with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has a lot of thoughts about AI, tech, and privacy. If you've been listening to the show, you know that one of my running theories is that those issues are driving a big and maybe kind of unexpected political realignment - and with the midterms coming [...]

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone signed a letter of intent saying they're considering a joint bid for spectrum that would support European direct-to-device satellite competition for SpaceX's Starlink. The four telecom companies say they would handle the ground infrastructure while a separate, unannounced satellite partner provides the satellite constellation: The joint initiative by Deutsche [...]

Elon Musk says he plans to give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the US starting next year. With around 72 million children in the US as of July 2025, Musk would be giving away about $10.5 billion worth of shares, according to a report from CNBC. Musk, who runs SpaceX and [...]

If you're on the hunt for lightweight wireless headphones but wearing earbuds or clip-ons never feels comfortable or secure, a relatively obscure Japanese headphone maker could have the solution. Final's new Porta headphones feature an on-ear design supported by a headband but with a structure made from a single piece of wire so they weigh [...]

A hacker broke into more than 100 websites using an army of AI agents that mostly operated on their own, according to findings from the AI security firm Norforge. Though Norforge doesn't name the targets, Reuters reports that the victims included companies like John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. Concerns over AI-powered cybersecurity breaches have grown [...]

Wyze announced a new version of its Ultra BodyScan smart scale that debuted nearly a year ago with additional electrodes on a retractable handle, allowing it to provide a breakdown of various health metrics across your arms, legs, and torso. With the new Ultra BodyScan Plus, Wyze is introducing a redesign that moves the scale's [...]

If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you've probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe coding tools. These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly [...]

Democrats could win back control of Congress this November, and if they do, they'll need to decide how to approach one of the country's newest and thorniest political issues: AI. Polls predict Democrats will flip at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, which would put committee leadership back in their hands. That [...]

There's a fast-growing category of two-wheeled electric vehicles splitting the difference between high-end scooters and entry-level motorcycles, fresh bikes with avant-garde style but approachable performance. I'm talking about offerings like the Infinite Machine P1 and BMW CE 02, similar concepts but with wildly different attitudes. Among this class, the Maeving RM2 stands out. It has [...]

Now, former Savannah police officer Amber Harpe was fired in August following a department investigation that found she had shared her Flock login information with her husband, Tyler Harpe, an ICE agent. SPD does not share its Flock data with ICE and said sharing access to the system violated the department's security protocols. While he [...]

Mister Organ doesn't reach the level of societal horror of The Act of Killing or the creepypasta-meets-true-crime gruesomeness of Beware the Slenderman, but there's something deeply unsettling about Michael Organ and his intimate campaign of terror against everyone who enters his life. Mister Organ is a documentary by David Farrier, an Auckland, New Zealand journalist. [...]

Carolyn Marvin was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after blocking the path of an Uber delivery robot and refusing to get out of the way. Marvin told Philadelphia's ABC13 "I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front [...]

Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx introduced the Power To The Players Act this week. If passed, the bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations that guarantee consumers ownership of a game when they pay for it, rather than a licensing agreement. It's increasingly common for [...]

The Legion Go S with SteamOS is a pretty solid alternative to the $789 Steam Deck OLED. It runs identical software, but ships in a design with two-stage triggers, a bigger eight-inch IPS screen (1080p and up to 120Hz versus 800p and 90Hz in the Deck OLED), and it's got double the RAM and storage [...]

Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft nonanswers. That's not to say that Mascis [...]

During a rally on Saturday, October 17th, in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Donald Trump bragged about how much more powerful and influential he was during his second term. While listing off his accomplishments, he mentioned his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. "This is a much more powerful term. I can do [...]

Back in February, I went to Los Angeles to take in some art and stayed in Koreatown. Down the street from my hotel, there was this little coffee shop - Stagger - that is, I think, best known for its matcha, which is good. But the drink I unexpectedly found myself obsessed with was their [...]

It used to be so easy to get away with things in school. The teacher, after all, was always turned around writing at the chalkboard! But then came a bit of technology, previously mostly used for military purposes, called the overhead projector. It would change far more than just the disciplinary record of students everywhere. [...]