The Verge

It's one week into Elon Musk's new role as chief cost-cutter for the Trump administration, but today, his side hustle as CEO of Tesla takes center stage with the release of the company's latest earnings report. During the fourth quarter of 2024, Tesla said it earned $2.3 billion in net income on $25.7 billion in [...]

Scientists from NASA and other institutions who have been analyzing the Bennu asteroid sample that returned to Earth last September found molecules, including amino acids, which are essential ingredients of life as we know it. The sample also included evidence of an ancient environment well-suited to kickstart the chemistry of life," according to a NASA [...]

Microsoft is bringing Chinese AI company DeepSeek's R1 model to its Azure AI Foundry platform and GitHub today. The R1 model, which has rocked US financial markets this week because it can be trained at a fraction of the cost of leading models from OpenAI, is now part of a model catalog on Azure AI [...]

Garmin has shared new ways to fix its smartwatches that are stuck on the blue triangle of death," and says it has resolved the underlying issue causing a boot-up error that's been stopping owners from using their watches. The steps should get more watches working again -but some models will lose data in the process. [...]

Beyond: Two Souls, the Quantic Dream-made interactive thriller starring Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe, is being adapted for TV by Page's Pageboy Productions, Deadline reports. The series is in early development and it's expected to explore the game's non-linear narrative," according to Deadline. In the game, you play as Jodie (portrayed by Page), and sometimes [...]

Netflix users on iOS no longer need to download episodes of their favorite shows one by one. The streamer just introduced a way to download an entire season of a TV show with one click on iPhones and iPads. Netflix first let users download content to watch offline in 2016 and, over time, has added [...]

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is walking back the federal funding freeze memo that set off a day of chaos and confusion on Tuesday up until a judge paused the order right before it was set to take effect. In light of the injunction, OMB has rescinded the memo to end [...]

Amazon's Prime Video is about to get a lot more Lionsgate films as part of a multi-year deal that will put the studio's entire 2026 slate of films on the service. Under the agreement, Prime Video will exclusively stream Lionsgate's upcoming films in the US after they first appear on Starz. The lineup includes titles [...]

Google's malware scanning Play Protect service will now automatically turn off an Android app's permissions if it's potentially harmful. The feature is designed to prevent malicious apps from having access to your phone's storage, photos, camera, and more. Though you can still restore the permissions for these apps, Google will ask you to confirm your [...]

Sony announced Wednesday that it will change to occasionally" including PS4 games as a PlayStation Plus benefit starting in January 2026. You'll still have access to any of the monthly PS4 games you've already redeemed to your account after that date, however, and you can still play PS4 games that are available on the PlayStation [...]

Waymo is sending autonomous vehicles to 10 new cities in 2025, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego, the company shared exclusively with The Verge. The vehicles will be manually driven, and the testing operations are not necessarily a precursor to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service. (They're also not precluded from launching a [...]

Sony announced Wednesday that you won't need to log in to a PlayStation Network account to play four of its single-player games on PC: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (which comes out tomorrow), The Last of Us Part II Remastered (which launches on April 3rd), God of War Ragnarok, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. However, to incentivize [...]

MGM Resorts International has agreed to pay $45 million to settle a lawsuit over data breaches that collectively exposed the personal information of 37 million customers. The case consolidated 22 class-action lawsuits filed over two security incidents: a data breach in 2019, and a ransomware attack in 2023. Lawyers for the victims said in district [...]

When TikTok went off the air (to use a very old-fashioned phrase), there was a scramble to find an alternative to its shortform video feed a and a similar scramble by various social networks to provide that alternative. (In fact, while I was writing this, Tumblr launched its new Tumblr TV feature.) The question is: [...]

You can bet on seeing lots of AI ads during the Super Bowl LIX, according to Mark Evans, the executive VP of ad sales for Fox Sports. Evans told The Hollywood Reporter that AI will be coming like a freight train," and that some companies have paid over $8 million for 30-second spots during the [...]

Spirit Airlines has rejected yet another acquisition bid from Frontier, which would've merged the two companies to create the fifth-largest airline in the US, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spirit called Frontier's deal "woefully insufficient financially" compared to the $2.9 billion agreement tossed out in 2022. [...]

If you use Comcast Xfinity internet, your FaceTime calls might be about to get better. Instead of bumping up the amount of data that your internet connection can send or receive at one time (usually called bandwidth or throughput), a new upgrade is coming to reduce the amount of time it takes for each packet [...]

Nvidiaas new RTX 5080 graphics card isnat as exciting as I was hoping it would be. While the sleek new Founders Edition redesign dramatically shrinks the size of the card compared to the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super, youare getting the same 16GB of VRAM and only small performance improvements over the previous generation [...]

NordVPN has announced a new NordWhisper protocol that makes it easier to bypass networks that typically block VPN connections. The protocol operates differently from traditional VPN traffic patterns that can sometimes be detected by network administrators, and should provide a smoother and more consistent browsing experience" in environments with restrictive internet security filters, such as [...]

Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek disrupted Silicon Valley with the release of cheaply developed AI models that compete with flagship offerings from OpenAI- but the ChatGPT maker suspects they were built upon OpenAI data. OpenAI and Microsoft are investigating whether the Chinese rival used OpenAI'sAPI to integrate OpenAI's AI models into DeepSeek's own models, according [...]

A survival horror classic is getting a new life on PC - and it might be the first of many. PC games shop GOG announced the release of Dino Crisis and its sequel, which are both available starting today. Alongside the launch, the service also announced a new tool called dreamlist," with the goal of [...]

Logitech sales boomed during the pandemic as people outfitted their home offices, and it's getting a piece of the hybrid workplace with teleconferencing gear too. But Logitech's also got a little-known corporate office management solution that could soon expand beyond conference rooms - using a pebble-shaped person detection device called the Logitech Spot. It's a [...]

The Trump administration sent a memo instructing federal agencies to pause grant, loan, and other financial assistance programs. It's a catch-all for a wide range of programs President Donald Trump has crusaded against and it's unclear what specifically is in the crosshairs with this move, but it seems to target Biden-era programs to deploy clean [...]

Spotify wants to see 1 billion people paying for streaming music, double the more than 500 million customers who currently subscribe to Spotify and its competitors. In Spotify's view, artists are lucky to have streaming services, each doing its part to normalize the behavior of paying for music." On Tuesday, the streaming giant announced that [...]

Climate change helped to set the stage for the devastating Los Angeles fires this month, a new study by 32 researchers shows. The Palisades and Eaton wildfires broke out in early January and soon killed at least 28 people, destroying 16,000 structures. Hot, dry conditions and extraordinarily powerful winds fanned the flames. Those conditions were [...]

Ten months after its long-delayed first subsonic flight took place last March, Boom Supersonic's prototype test plane, the XB-1, broke the sound barrier today three times during its 12th flight. The XB-1 is a smaller-scale demonstration version of the larger Overture airliner Boom wants to eventually build that will carry 64 passengers on supersonic international [...]

It initially seemed like Warner Bros. wanted to keep some of Ryan Coogler's new gothic horror Sinners shrouded in mystery, but the movie's latest trailer spells out exactly what's going on. Though nobody says vampire," in Sinners' new trailer, twin brothers Elijah and Elias (Michael B. Jordan) know that there's something demonic going on as [...]

Education software platform PowerSchool has started sending breach notifications to victims of a December 2024 cyberattack, but has yet to share how many people were affected or what exactly happened, reports BleepingComputer. PowerSchool, which has has more than 18,000 customers worldwide and serves over 60 million students, suffered a breach on December 28th that may [...]

Google Play will now display verification badges on approved VPNs as a way to highlight apps that prioritize user privacy and safety," the company announced on Tuesday. The new badge will appear on a VPN app's details page and within search results, proving that it meets specific standards outlined by Google. To qualify for the [...]

A security researcher who lives in San Francisco discovered an unreleased feature in Waymo's app that allows customers to tip for their robotaxi rides. Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who also successfully hacked the display dome on top of a Waymo vehicle to display her name, posted a screenshot of the new tipping feature [...]

It took about a month for the finance world to start freaking out about DeepSeek, but when it did, it took more than half a trillion dollars a or one entire Stargate a off Nvidiaas market cap. It wasnat just Nvidia, either: Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft tanked. DeepSeekas two AI models, released in quick [...]

X is one step closer to finally launching its payments platform. According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the X Money service will debut later this year" with Visa announced as its first partner. In her announcement, Yaccarino says the service will support secure + instant funding to your X Wallet via Visa Direct," allowing users [...]

Nvidia is launching its next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards tomorrow, and it looks like there will be low stocks of both cards. After rumors of the RTX 5090 being in short supply for retailers and card manufacturers, Nvidia has now admitted it believes stock-outs may happen." We expect significant demand for the [...]

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Gov, a version of its flagship chatbot that's tailored to government agencies. The company says the tool will let US government agencies securely access OpenAI's frontier models, like GPT-4o. As noted by OpenAI, government agencies can deploy ChatGPT Gov within their own Microsoft Azure cloud instance, making it easier to manage [...]

After spending three years in early access and releasing officially on August 3rd, Baldur's Gate 3 is on the short list for 2023's Game of the Year. It's a beefy Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG and the successor of the Baldur's Gate series developed by BioWare. The game features some of best, most memorable characters this [...]

Mythic Questas ability to spin some of the gaming industryas ugliest aspects into genuinely funny comedy was what made it such a surprising delight when it first hit Apple TV Plus back in 2020. Even when it was joking about chaotic streamers or Nazi server takeovers, you could feel the respect Mythic Questas creative team [...]

Amazon's first UK drone deliveries will take flight in Darlington, England, the company announced on Monday. The e-commerce giant is taking the initial steps to get Prime Air deliveries off the ground in the area, working with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for authorization to fly its drones in the airspace. Once Amazon has approval, [...]

Illustration: The Verge Google said today that it plans to update Google Maps to reflect President Trump's January 20th executive order to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively.The company noted on X the updated nomenclature will appear once the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated.We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources," the company posted on X. It added that when name changes vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too."Denali was named Mount McKinley until 2015.The US Department of the Interior said last week it plans to follow the executive order to implement the name changes.The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, under the purview of the Department of the Interior, is working expeditiously to update the official federal nomenclature in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect these changes, effective immediately for federal use," the Department of the Interior said on Friday.An Apple spokesperson wasn't immediately available to comment on its plans for Apple Maps.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Without going into detail about what might happen to the $52 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act under his administration, Donald Trump said tariffs on foreign computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals are coming in the near future." He also namechecked DeepSeek's AI releases, saying, ...coming up with a faster method of AI and less expensive, that's good. I view that as a positive if it is fact and it is true, and nobody knows, but I view that as a positive."In the speech at the House GOP Issues Conference held at the Trump National Doral Resort in Miami Monday afternoon, he said that to return the production of these goods to the US, we don't want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program Biden has." Instead the incentive for manufacturers will be they will not want to pay a tax."Bloomberg reports that later, in comments to reports, Trump said he wanted a tariff rate much bigger" than 2.5 percent.This is despite the outcome of the trade war with China during his first administration that expanded China's trade surplus with the US between 2018, when the tariffs began, and 2021. A CTA report from last year cited by TechCrunch said Trump's proposed tariffs could increase prices on laptops and tablets by 46 percent, game consoles by 40 percent, and smartphones by 26 percent.He also said that we will have more plants built in the next short period of time than ever before because the incentive will be there," however it's unclear how many of those will be like The Stargate Project's first datacenter in Texas, which was in the works well before the start of his administration. Last fall, the Commerce Department said that by then, it had announced over $30 billion in proposed CHIPS private sector investments spanning 23 projects in 15 states" with 16 new manufacturing facilities in the works.He also said of DeepSeek that instead of spending billions you will spend less and hopefully come up with the same solution," even as OpenAI, Softbank & co. say they're preparing to spend $500 billion on AI datacenters.Update, January 27th: Added details from Bloomberg.

Image: Sony Sony is upping the limited warranty on some InZone gaming monitors to three years and is tossing in OLED burn-in coverage for the 27-inch M10S. The company announced the additional coverage today after launching both the InZone M10S OLED and M9 II LED in September with only one-year limited warranties out of the box. Sony says other than that, the limited warranties remain as they were.Manufacturers have long been averse to talking about burn-in or have outright categorized the phenomenon as normal use," denying warranty claims to fix it on various panel types. However, OLEDs have historically been more susceptible to burn-in, especially when used with many static images like those from a PC. In recent years, OLED has improved to be less sensitive to burn-ins.Sony is the latest in a trend of manufacturers adding burn-in coverage. Alienware was one of the first to specifically include OLED burn-in within its three-year coverage on the QD-OLED monitor launched in 2022, and for its latest 27-inch 4K model coming this year. And in 2023, The Verge's Sean Hollister asked LG to explicitly warrant the company's OLED monitors against burn-in and they agreed and changed their verbiage. Screenshot: The Verge A Samsung representative on this Best Buy product listing says the three-year warranty on the 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8 covers burn-in. Since then, companies like MSI and Asus have also pledged to cover OLED burn-in on some models, including their latest ones (in some countries). It's important to research the warranty included in the model you're buying to determine whether burn-in coverage is included. For instance, Samsung's website shows a general policy for its warranty that excludes burn-ins, however, an online rep confirmed it does cover it on a 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8. However, the company still hasn't clarified if burn-ins are covered for its latest 27-inch Odyssey OLED G8 gaming monitor.

To update the firmware on your AirPods, first put them in the case. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple updated its AirPods firmware support page today with a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to upgrade the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max with their latest firmware, according to MacRumors. While most Apple devices, like the iPhone or Apple Watch, can start updates in the settings, with the AirPods, you have to wait for the update process to happen on its own.The AirPods firmware support page still includes Apple's original summary of the conditions needed for the update process but has now added an expanded step-by-step guide to help ensure the process happens automatically.Although most of the steps have been previously known, there are some specific suggestions added, including charging with a USB cable and waiting at least 30 minutes for the update to happen. Those clarifications may help you if you've been struggling to get firmware updates to work.The following steps are specifically for the AirPods and AirPods Pro. The instructions for the AirPods Max are nearly identical, but with the charging case steps omitted.

The Pebble Time Round just got a new lease on life. | Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge Eric Migicovsky still wears his Pebble. Thirteen years after he founded the wearables company and found huge success on Kickstarter, and more than eight years after he sold the company to Fitbit, which was then acquired by Google, Migicovsky's watch still works. (In case you're wondering: when I saw him at CES a few weeks ago, he appeared to be wearing a white Pebble Time Round model. But he has a box full of them at home.) It hasn't gotten a software update since December 2016, though, and he's been worried for a while that it will eventually stop getting notifications, or connecting to his phone, or run into some other show-stopping problem.Rather than buy another smartwatch, Migicovsky decided to try and get Pebble going again. He sold his most recent startup, a messaging app called Beeper, to Automattic last year and left the company in the fall. Since then, he'd thought about starting a Pebble-like product from scratch, figuring it'd be easier to do the same thing again a second time. But then I was like, what if I just asked Google to open-source the operating system?" he says. It felt like a long shot, but he knew the code was just sitting dormant inside Mountain View somewhere. So he asked. A few times.To Migicovsky's surprise, Google agreed to release Pebble OS to the public. As of Monday, all the Pebble firmware is available on GitHub, and Migicovsky is starting a company to pick up where he left off.The company - which can't be named Pebble because Google still owns that - doesn't have a name yet. For now, Migicovsky is hosting a waitlist and news signup at a website called RePebble. Later this year, once the company has a name and access to all that Pebble software, the plan is to start shipping new wearables that look, feel, and work like the Pebbles of old. Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge Pebbles were always gadget-y gadgets, which is still part of their appeal. The reason, Migicovsky tells me, is simple. I've tried literally everything else," he says, and nothing else comes close." Sure, he may just have a very specific set of requirements - lots of people are clearly happy with what Apple, Garmin, Google, and others are making. But it's true that there's been nothing like Pebble since Pebble. For the things I want out of it, like a good e-paper screen, long battery life, good and simple user experience, hackable, there's just nothing."The core of Pebble, he says, is a few things. A Pebble should be quirky and fun and should feel like a gadget in an important way. It shows notifications, lets you control your music with buttons, lasts a long time, and doesn't try to do too much. It sounds like Migicovsky might have Pebble-y ambitions beyond smartwatches, but he appears to be starting with smartwatches.If that sounds like the old Pebble and not much else, that's precisely the point. Migicovsky tells me over and over that the plan is not to reinvent Pebble, or AI the bejesus out of the concept, or do whatever else you'd do starting a hardware company in 2025. The fact that the Pebble on his wrist still works, and still works for him, is evidence that maybe Pebble had already finished its job. We're building a spiritual, not successor, but clone of Pebble," he says, because there's not that much I actually want to change."A lot of other things have changed in eight years, though. Google, Apple, and Samsung all now have good smartwatches that are tied tightly to their other devices - Pebble always had trouble getting access to features on iOS, in particular, and that's not getting easier. Smartwatches are currently health and fitness devices above all else, and they're getting vastly more complex and powerful in pursuit of those features. Google obviously doesn't see any form of Pebble as a threat; its best chance is to chart another path entirely.The biggest difference this time will be how the company itself operates. Migicovsky wrote a long blog post in 2022 explaining what went wrong at Pebble the first time and ascribed its failure in part to taking a bunch of investment money and letting it change the company. Since then, Migicovsky has made plenty of money from Beeper and during a stint as an investor at Y Combinator; his new company is his alone. Right now, it's just Migicovsky and a few part-time employees - it'll grow, he says, but not too much. The core thing here is: sustainable."They could even use it in random other hardware. Who knows what people can do with it now?"Migicovsky also hopes to be part of a broader open-source community around Pebble OS. The Pebble diehards still exist: a group of developers at Rebble have worked to keep many of the platform's apps alive, for instance, along with the Cobble app for connecting to phones, and the Pebble subreddit is surprisingly active for a product that hasn't been updated since the Obama administration. Migicovsky says he plans to open-source whatever his new company builds and hopes lots of other folks will build stuff, too. There's going to be the ability for anyone who wants to, to take Pebble source code, compile it, run it on their Pebbles, build new Pebbles, build new watches," he says. They could even use it in random other hardware. Who knows what people can do with it now?"This whole project will take time, Migicovsky cautions. He only found out for sure that Google would open-source the software a few days ago, and he hasn't been able to use it at all yet. But he's already working on hardware prototypes, and he's crystal clear on what he wants the new Pebbles to be. He knows he can do it because he already did it once. The evidence is right there on his wrist. All he's trying to do is make sure it can stay there.

The Apple Sports app has been updated with broadcast information for users in the US. | Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge Apple updated its iOS Sports app today with several new features, including a faster way to navigate the app, support for a handful of additional soccer tournaments, and information about where you can watch games that are being nationally broadcast in the US.According to the release notes for the update, you can now quickly swipe left or right to browse all of the leagues and teams you follow." When on a page for a specific game, below each team's name and record for the season you'll now find an additional line listing broadcast information such as Live on NHL Network," or Live on TNT, Max, truTV," if there are several ways to watch it. Screenshot: Richard Lawler / The Verge The Apple Sports app now provides brief details on where to watch nationally-televised games in the US. The update also expands the Sports app's soccer coverage with the addition of the UK's FA Cup, EFL Championship, and League Cup tournaments.Apple Sports launched in February, giving fans of several different major sports leagues - including the NBA, NHL, and MLS - a one-stop solution for keeping tabs on scores, stats, upcoming games, and even betting odds. In August, the app added live scores and play-by-play info for NFL and college football games and expanded its Live Activities support for all teams and leagues available in the app," making it easier to track games on an iPhone's lock screen and the Apple Watch.In December, it also introduced summaries of scoring plays and big moments in a game called Key Plays, plus league standings that made it easier to track which teams qualified for the postseason.

The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite isn't significantly different than its successor, rendering this an excellent deal if you want a waterproof Amazon e-reader. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge If you're feeling bored because it's too cold to go outside, here's an e-reader deal that might help: Woot is selling a refurbished 2021 Kindle Paperwhite with 16GB of storage and ads for just $89.99 with a 90-day warranty, saving you about $60 off the latest model. New Woot customers can also score an additional $10 off when they use code FIRETENOFF at checkout until February 1st at 1AM ET, lowering the price further to $79.99.It may no longer be Amazon's newest Kindle Paperwhite, but the 2021 version is still one of my favorite Amazon e-readers. Unlike the entry-level Kindle, which starts at $109.99, it boasts IPX8 waterproofing so it's perfect if you read in the bath. Its 300ppi display is sharp with adjustable color temperature, so you can read just as easily at night as you can during the day. The 6.8-inch e-reader also offers exceptional battery life, allowing you to read for months on a single charge. You can quickly charge it thanks to USB-C support.There are trade-offs you'll make buying the 2021 Paperwhite over the 2024 version, which starts at $159.99. The latest Paperwhite, for instance, is noticeably faster with a slightly larger 7-inch screen and richer contrast levels.Read our 2021 Kindle Paperwhite review.