The Verge

We're in the heart of summer fun, but it's already time for back-to-school planning, especially if that involves buying a new laptop. The dizzying number of different laptops and configurations can feel overwhelming, especially if you want something that doesn't cost too much but will still last a long time. My general guidelines are to [...]

When it comes to defending Donald Trump from the worst accusations, the MAGA influencer-industrial complex, whether out of loyalty or self-preservation, often defaults to whataboutism, arguing that the Democrats are just as guilty as Trump, or (ideally) worse. This principle has held true with the current Jeffrey Epstein saga, and as their audience's anger against [...]

Point-and-click adventure games often tell silly, lighthearted stories. For me, the mishaps of the pirate Guybrush Threepwood in the Monkey Island series come to mind. The nature of the genre - wandering around, talking to people, and trying to solve puzzles - lends itself well to humor, as every interaction with a person or object [...]

The OnePlus Nord 5 does exactly what the company's Nord phones have always done: deliver strong specs at a relatively low price. It's one of the more powerful phones at this price point and should easily outstrip Samsung and Google's more expensive alternatives. This is a function-over-form phone, one where the key selling points are [...]

When new employees start at Weta Workshop, they're herded into a meeting room with a long, unassuming conference table. On the walls, behind panes of glass and in between statues, swords, and masks, are five Oscars. Four of them were awarded to the studio for its efforts on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings [...]

Yesterday, I mentioned how GPD is teasing the most potent handheld yet made - a GPD Win 5 that will house the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip, with AMD's most powerful integrated graphics yet, inside a PlayStation Vita-shaped machine. If you've been wondering how that huge chip could even fit, handheld expert Cary The Phawx" [...]

DJI barely sells drones in the United States anymore. The shelves are bare; resellers are jacking up prices. It appears an unofficial ban at US customs is to blame. But on Amazon, you can now buy a drone that's a a dead ringer for the DJI Mini 4 Pro - the SkyRover X1 - for [...]

This week, I take a look at the surprisingly strong state of Google, Meta gets a new chief AI researcher, and more. If you haven't already, be sure to check out this week's Decoder episode about deepfakes and where they are headed. Also, do you use an AI coding tool like Cursor or GitHub Copilot? [...]

Streaming has become a tangled web of subscriptions, and now Comcast says it can help by putting all your services into one hub. Comcast is launching a new hub on its set-top boxes, called the StreamStore, where you can buy and manage subscriptions for more than 450 streaming apps and channels. The StreamStore lives within [...]

As promised, Apple has finally revealed Pluribus, a new show from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan that's coming to Apple TV Plus. In addition to a very brief teaser involving some gross donut behavior, the streamer also confirmed that the show will premiere on November 7th. The show has been in the works for a [...]

Activists around the world are calling attention to harassment they've faced on Meta's platforms. More than 90 percent of land and environmental defenders surveyed by Global Witness, a nonprofit organization that also tracks the murders of environmental advocates, reported experiencing some kind of online abuse or harassment connected to their work. Facebook was the most-cited [...]

In March, charging giant Anker announced it would spin out its 3D printer business into an "independent sub-brand," stating that the new EufyMake would "continue to provide comprehensive customer service and support" for its original 3D printers the AnkerMake M5 and M5C. Now, the 3D printing community is wondering whether that was all a euphemism [...]

Perhaps we've been thinking the same thing, you and I. That there won't be a long-standing drought of Nintendo Switch 2 availability after all. The console has been easy to buy online from several retailers this week, including Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. Amazon, which didn't sell the Switch 2 at launch, is currently selling [...]

James Gunn knows that most people are familiar with Superman's origin story, which is why DC Studios' new feature about the Man of Steel opens at a point when he has already become a world famous superhero. Instead of rehashing the tragic beats of Krypton's destruction, the movie is punctuated with moments that show you [...]

US national debt currently exceeds $36 trillion, but if you want to toss a few extra dollars of your own money to try and help bring that down, you can now do so from a Venmo account, as spotted by NPR's Jack Corbett. You can see the Venmo payment option on the Treasury Department's Gifts [...]

Good news for Pebble fans. Not only are the Pebble watches coming back, they'll also officially be called Pebble watches. Great news - we've been able to recover the trademark for Pebble! Honestly, I wasn't expecting this to work out so easily," Core Devices CEO Eric Migicovsky writes in an update blog. Core 2 Duo [...]

Netflix seems to have finally settled on something resembling a strategy for its gaming efforts, and one of the key pillars is games tied to its shows and movies. That's how we got the likes of Squid Game: Unleashed and Black Mirror's Thronglets. Now, as Happy Gilmore 2 hits the streaming service, it's accompanied by [...]

Lyft is partnering with Benteler Mobility to launch a self-driving shuttle service. In late 2026, Lyft plans to deploy the company's all-electric Holon Urban shuttles in airports and cities around the US, allowing users to book trips from its ride-sharing app. Holon, a subsidiary of Benteler, says its rectangular bus has enough room to fit [...]

We're in the middle of prime camping season, when the days are longer and the temperatures are warmer. While it's the perfect time to unplug, you don't have to go completely off the grid, as Bluetti's AC2P Portable Power Station can power your essential gadgets when no traditional power sources are available. And right now, [...]

Back in 2024, we described how the then-new iOS 18 enabled you to tint your homescreen icons, allowing you to tweak the look of your iPhone's display. Now, with Apple's introduction of its Liquid Glass design for iOS 26, you can make your icons completely clear (assuming you're a fan of the new invisible look). [...]

Elden Ring Nightreign is finally getting a two-player mode. FromSoftware announced on Friday that it's adding Duo Expeditions" in a patch coming on July 30th, allowing you to take on enemies across Limveld with one other friend. Since Elden Ring Nightreign's launch in May, the title has only let you play by yourself or in [...]

I get a lot of odd pitches in my inbox, but 9V battery-flavored corn chips" still stopped me in my tracks. My mind was ringing with questions (What? Who? Why!?!), but most importantly: What are they going to taste like? This limited edition flavor comes from Rewind, a new brand launching in Europe, starting with [...]

President Donald Trump's plan to promote America's AI dominance involves discouraging "woke AI," slashing state and federal regulations, and laying the groundwork to rapidly expand AI development and adoption. Trump's proposal, released on July 23rd, is a sweeping endorsement of the technology, full of guidance that ranges from specific executive actions to directions for future [...]

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has long been a Verge-favorite gaming laptop, and we consider it to be the very best one that you can buy. This year, the lineup became even more powerful and spec-packed while still retaining the low-profile and portable 14-inch design that initially drew us to it. If you're looking to [...]

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI CEO, has a vision of Copilot that involves it being so highly personalized that it will age." Microsoft has been increasingly pushing Copilot to be a personalized AI assistant, with a big redesign last year that included a conversational voice mode. Now, Suleyman's Microsoft AI team is launching a new Copilot [...]

Platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, Discord, and Pornhub have been rolling out mandatory age verification requirements in the UK over the past few weeks to comply with new online safety rules. While the age-gating aims to keep children from accessing pornographic material and other "harmful content" outlined by the UK's communications regulator Ofcom, there's a glaring [...]

I'm just getting acquainted with Gemini on the Pixel Watch I'm wearing when it tells me that there's a kind of pastry called "nun's farts." This relationship is off to a good start. "Nun's farts" was a totally appropriate response, by the way. I'd asked it for a list of pastries with silly names, prompted [...]

Apple has had two months to refine Liquid Glass since introducing the design language at WWDC. It's dialed the effect back, then amped it back up. It's addressed some of the biggest complaints - the Control Center, for one - and left us to live with some of the others. So after all the tweaks, [...]

If I were to believe the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, I don't eat enough fruits and vegetables. Normally, smartwatches don't make judgments about your nutritional intake. But this year, Samsung introduced a new experimental feature called Antioxidant Index. Using blue, yellow, and infrared LEDs, the watch's sensor can pick up carotenoid levels in your skin. [...]

Microsoft's controversial Recall feature, that automatically screenshots nearly everything on a Copilot Plus PC, is meeting resistance from app developers. Signal kicked off a trend of blocking Recall earlier this year, with AdGuard and the Brave browser now also blocking the Windows AI feature. AdGuard calls Recall a privacy concern" in a blog post outlining [...]

A US district court judge has withdrawn his decision in a biopharma securities case after lawyers noted that his opinion referenced fake quotes and other erroneous case information - mistakes mirroring errors in other legal cases that have been attributed to artificial intelligence tools. In a letter sent to New Jersey Judge Julien Xavier Neals, [...]

Google has released a new version of ChromeOS that allows you to sync desktops between devices, ideal for anyone who works across more than one Chromebook. It also significantly improves the AI wallpapers available on Chromebook Plus laptops with a completely freeform prompting field. Desk sync is designed to help you pick up where you [...]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved Skydance's $8 billion purchase of CBS-owner Paramount after the companies agreed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs but feature a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum." In light of the Trump administration's critiques of CBS's alleged anti-conservative bias - including collecting a [...]

Starlink users reported they couldn't connect to SpaceX's satellite internet service for a few hours on Thursday afternoon before service was eventually restored. Widespread Starlink outages, like the ones we reported on in 2022 and 2023, have been rare, and this appears to be the first one in 2025. The outage began around 3:15PM ET [...]

In a story published earlier this week, a site called NYC Journals" claimed to have a bombshell: that Instagram had suspended the account of New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for being too socialist." The story claimed that Mamdani's account was down for three hours; it also cited a leaked memo" from inside Instagram that [...]

In April, Intel attempted to announce layoffs without announcing layoffs. We have not set any headcount reduction target," Intel spokesperson Sophie Metzger toldThe Verge. But the company has laid off thousands of employees since - and today, in the company's Q2 2025 earnings, it has revealed that Intel will dramatically shrink as a result of [...]

VShojo, the VTuber agency that billed itself as talent first," is shutting down. VShojo CEO Justin Gunrun" Ignacio made the announcement today on X, writing, I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this point." Earlier this week, VShojo came under fire as Ironmouse, the agency's top-performing VTuber, announced she was leaving [...]

On Thursday, Google launched Web Guide, a new AI-powered search feature that groups links in helpful ways" for people who opt in to the test on Labs. Web Guide runs on a custom version of Google's Gemini AI model to process search queries, reorganizing the traditional 10 blue links" by sorting results and finding related [...]

Some of us take a kind of I eat to live" rather than an I live to eat" approach to gadgets. They're tools that help you get things done, not something you want to invest a lot of time or money in. If that's you - and there's no judgment here from a certifiable gadget [...]

After delivering a rambling celebration of tariffs and a routine about women's sports, President Donald Trump entertained a crowd, which was there to hear about his new AI Action Plan, with one his favorite topics: "wokeness." Trump complained that AI companies under former President Joe Biden "had to hire all woke people," adding that it [...]

People with Apple developer accounts have had all the fun with the iOS 26 beta so far (and yes, if you missed it, there's a new naming system now), but now that the public betas are out, anyone can try the new features. Setting up the public beta is slightly less involved than setting up [...]

In an earnings call Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk "let the cat out of the bag": The new, more affordable electric vehicle the company has been touting for over a year, and that has been singled out as the one thing that could pull Tesla out of its sales rut, wasn't new at all. It [...]

Apple recently announced iOS 26, the next major software update for iPhones, and it's packed with a whole bunch of new features. The biggest change is a new design, but there are lots of smaller improvements and additions as well that could make a difference in how you use your iPhone every day. If you [...]

Apple's macOS Tahoe 26 public beta is finally available, and with it the same Liquid Glass design language that's coming to the rest of Apple's operating systems. It's a simultaneously weird yet milquetoast update. I've been testing the developer beta on an M4 MacBook Air since WWDC in June, and after using it through to [...]

If you want to give Liquid Glass - Apple's new design language in iOS 26 - an uncharitable nickname, well, it's right there for the taking. The new look has its fair share of haters, and I fully expected to be one of them when I downloaded the beta. But while there are aspects of [...]

I've gone back and forth over the years on whether or not I can actually work from an iPad. The answer has always been: sort of. I can write on an iPad. I can edit on an iPad. So, I guess I've always been able to "work" from an iPad. But with a Magic Keyboard [...]

Apple just launched the watchOS 26 public beta, which means everyone can now try the latest software heading to the Apple Watch this fall. That includes new Apple Intelligence features, such as Workout Buddy, new messaging features, the Wrist Flick gesture, and more. I've been using the developer beta and have some thoughts to share. [...]

Apple has officially released the first public betas for its next major software updates. The list of new betas includes iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26. The biggest thing you'll notice about the software updates is that they have a new design language Apple is calling Liquid Glass." The [...]