The Verge

Oracle is closing in on a deal that would have it vouch" for TikTok's security in exchange for a small stake in the company's US operations, according to Bloomberg. The plan, which was reportedly discussed among the Trump administration last week, would include guarantees that an updated US version of TikTok would not contain a [...]

After briefly going dark in the US to comply with the divest-or-ban law targeting ByteDance that went into effect on January 19th, TikTok quickly came back online, but it was still missing from app stores. That persisted even after Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to [...]

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr could get a Republican majority slightly sooner than expected after Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks announced Tuesday he plans to resign this spring. Starks announced his plans in a statement, but did not specify the date of his departure. President Donald Trump's Republican nominee to serve on the commission, Olivia [...]

Today at its annual Microsoft Ability Summit, the company announced that its Xbox Adaptive Joystick is now available exclusively through the company's online store for $29.99. The joystick was originally announced last August with a planned release in early 2025. It's designed to meet the unique needs of gamers with limited mobility through customizable buttons [...]

Universal Music Group has finally responded to Drake's claims that the label damaged his reputation with Kendrick Lamar's diss track Not Like Us," and there are some spicy tidbits in there. UMG, which represents both artists, broadly argues that the court should dismiss Drake's lawsuit because he's just the sore loser of an ugly rap [...]

At Nvidia's annual GTC conference in San Jose, Calif. today, the chipmaker announced it was teaming up with General Motors to develop next-generation cars, robots, and factories. GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with [...]

The White House is working to improve Wi-Fi connectivity," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement emailed to The Verge. According to The New York Times, it's using Starlink to address the issue, which White House officials blame on the property's spotty cell service and overtaxed" Wi-Fi infrastructure. Huh. Giving Leavitt the [...]

Assassinas Creed Shadows brings the franchise to the shores of Japan. After almost 20 years and 13 mainline games, Assassinas Creed a the series about using flashy gadgets and techniques to murder your enemies undetected a has finally been set in a place famous for assassins who use flashy gadgets and techniques to murder their [...]

HP is introducing a new entry into its PC gaming line with the Omen 16 Slim. As the name indicates, it's a 16-inch gaming laptop with a slim" profile - the thinnest portion being 20mm / 0.79 inches. What its product branding doesn't immediately tell you is that the Omen 16 Slim is aimed at [...]

HP is revving its line of consumer-focused OmniBook productivity laptops with a whopping 18 new models and refreshes. These fall across various sizes and form factors in its OmniBook 3, 5, 7, and top-end X lines - including some foldable two-in-ones with stylus support. Chip-wise, there's a smattering of models using various AMD and Intel [...]

HyperX is announcing a new flagship Cloud III S Wireless gaming headset that adds Bluetooth 5.3 and a second microphone for standard headphone use on calls. It's a follow-up to the Cloud III Wireless from 2023 that was HyperX's most popular model, and which our own Sean Hollister found very compelling. Like that model, the [...]

Eric Migicovsky, the original creator of the Pebble smartwatch, is getting ready to ship two new watches. Migicovsky's new company is called Core Devices, and these will be the first Core smartwatches to hit the market. But they are Pebbles in every important way: they'll run the newly open-sourced Pebble operating system, they'll have all [...]

Google just released two new features for its Gemini AI assistant: Canvas and Audio Overviews. Canvas introduces a dedicated workspace within Gemini where users can create and refine both documents and code in real-time. Users can spin up initial drafts and then work with Gemini to edit specific sections, adjust tone, or reformat content as [...]

A Google-backed mission to detect wildfires from space launched a prototype satellite last week, which is now communicating with its developers on Earth. It's the first of at least 50 planned for a constellation of satellites called FireSat. The initiative is led by the nonprofit coalition Earth Fire Alliance, along with startup Muon Space, which [...]

Lego has announced that another popular gaming franchise is getting the plastic brick treatment. On its website, the company has teased that Lego Pokemon sets are coming soon," but also says the sets won't arrive until 2026 - which isn't as soon as we'd hoped. There are no details yet on specific sets or which [...]

Terminated employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been brought back to work in response to a judge's order - sort of. Probationary employees (a class of government workers who are newer to an agency or role) received letters over the weekend notifying them that they were reinstated into their positions, following a [...]

Nanoleaf has announced that it will be offering one of the easiest ways to add an immersive lighting experience to your gaming PC. Its new PC Screen Mirror Lightstrip features 75 color-changing LEDs that can be attached to the back of your display to cast a colored glow on a wall that will then mirror [...]

More than 400 members of the entertainment industry have signed a letter pushing back on OpenAI and Google's proposal to allow AI models to train on copyrighted content, as reported earlier by Variety. The letter claims both companies are arguing for a special government exemption" that would allow them to freely exploit" creative industries. The [...]

The Nintendo Switch 2 is nigh. Nigh-ish, anyway. When it does launch later this year, it might start another revolution in portable gaming, as millions of people are able to play from their couch, their bed, the train, and anywhere else. That was also true of the first Switch, though, and as big a hit [...]

The failure of the Wii U has turned out to be a big win for the Switch. While Nintendoas previous console was its worst selling, it was still home to some of its most inventive games. Over the years, Nintendo has steadily brought many of them a ranging from Captain Toad puzzles to various Donkey [...]

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has announced its largest-ever acquisition, entering into a deal to buy New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz, making it a part of its Google Cloud division. This is the company's second attempt to buy Wiz after talks stalled last year at a lower $23 billion evaluation. Wiz is a fast-growing Israeli-founded startup [...]

The putative president of the United States, Donald Trump, stood on the White House lawn. In his hand, he held a sales pitch for Tesla cars. The most powerful man in America, Elon Musk, attired for a very casual funeral and looking miserable, stood next to Trump. As Trump spoke, promising to buy a Tesla, [...]

Bumble is rolling out optional ID verification, adding badges to the profiles of users who've confirmed their identity using government-issued ID cards. It arrives as part of a series of safety updates that include a new Share Date feature intended to let you quickly share your date plans with friends and family. ID verification is [...]

Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD has revealed new fast-charging tech that can add 400km (249 miles) of range from a five minute charge. With the announcement, BYD has also promised to make a major investment in charging infrastructure, building over 4,000 of the new fast chargers across China. The Super e-Platform" tech is capable of [...]

After decades of relying on Google's ten blue links to find everything from travel tips to jeans, consumers are quickly adapting to a completely new format: AI chatbots that do the searching for them. According to new research from Adobe, AI search has become a significant traffic channel for retailers. The company analyzed more than [...]

Over the weekend, a number of Roku device owners noticed an irksome new advertising method from the company: a trailer for Moana 2 began playing before they'd even made it to the Roku homescreen. Ars Technica reported on the situation, which has been called out in a few different Reddit threads. The reaction among customers, [...]

Amazon is suing the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) after the agency said it was responsible for recalling all of the dangerous products on its marketplace, including those sold by third parties. In a lawsuit filed last week, Amazon accuses the CPSC of stretching consumer safety law by treating the e-commerce giant as a [...]

Google started rolling out an update on Thursday to fix Chromecasts that suddenly lost the ability to cast. Now, it also has a fix to take care of the ones that were unexpectedly bricked after an attempted factory reset. Everything should now function normally," Google writes in an email to affected owners of second-generation Chromecast [...]

Over the weekend, former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober published a video that sought to demonstrate the difference between Teslaas camera-only Autopilot system and a vehicle equipped with lidar. He wanted to see whether the vehicles would stop automatically before hitting a Wile E. Coyote-style wall that was painted to look like a road.A [...]

The AI search engine Perplexity just debuted a new ad featuring Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae, who's trapped in a room and must answer a series of questions to escape. One question targets Google's AI gaffe last year, as Lee taps Perplexity to answer, How do I make cheese stick to a pizza?" The AI [...]

Accessory maker Elecom has announced what it's claiming to be the first consumer-ready power bank that uses a sodium-ion battery instead of a lithium-ion one, as spotted by Notebookcheck. In addition to being more environmentally friendly to manufacture, the 9,000mAh Na Plus can be used in extreme temperatures with less risk of overheating, and has [...]

I don't want to sound alarmist or anything (although I admit I'm naturally pessimistic), but the way things are going, it's a good idea to have an extra source of power for your home in case of storms and other outages. Luckily, EcoFlow is running a sale through March 26th, letting you save on several [...]

President Donald Trump's tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, Canada, and China are in effect, but Big Tech companies have remained mostly silent despite the potential impact tariffs could have on their businesses. I've written about this twice already: once shortly after Trump announced them in February, and again a week later after the initial [...]

We've seen plenty of leaked Pixel 9A renders and images over the past few months, but now we have full-on videos of what looks like Google's not-yet-announced phone. YouTubers Sahil Karoul and The Mobile Central posted reviews of the Pixel 9A, showing off its refreshed design and performance, as spotted earlier by Android Police. Just [...]

Six months after introducing its fifth-generation Spectacles and the second version featuring AR capabilities, Snap has announced new features and functionality. Lenses - what Snap calls the Spectacles' various AR effects - can now utilize GPS data for simple navigation, multiplayer gaming, and other experiences. There's also improved hand tracking, along with an AR keyboard [...]

In a post on Truth Social overnight, President Donald Trump claims that some pardons by President Joe Biden are VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT," saying an autopen was used to forge the former president's signature. Trump alluded specifically to Biden's pardons for members of the House January 6th Committee, claiming that [...]

Warner Bros. Discovery has removed the entire lineup of classic Looney Tunes shorts (1930-1969) from its streaming service, Max. The company confirmed the move to Deadline, saying the streamer will prioritize adult and family programming, rather than content for kids. This comes after Warner Bros. Discovery yanked hundreds of Looney Tunes episodes at the end [...]

Google is shipping the latest experimental" features of its Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model to more developers across all regions, and people are finding some concerning abilities that include editing out watermarks from photos. The company's lightweight localized on-device AI model is now equipped with native image generation that can not only produce pictures from [...]

Frida Baby is upgrading a popular tool designed to help relieve an infant's congestion with more power. The company says it sells over 4.7 million of its manual SnotSuckers every year, but for parents who are too grossed out at the thought of manually sucking snot out of a sick infant's nose, the new $79.97 [...]

Xbox 360 modders have discovered a new way to get homebrew apps and games running on the console. A new software-only exploit known as BadUpdate allows you to use a USB key to hack past Microsoft's Hypervisor protections and run unsigned code and games. Modern Vintage Gamer has tested BadUpdate and found that you don't [...]

Today's episode of Decoder is a little different, and I think it's one of the more illuminating conversations I've had in a while. I'm talking to Evan Smith, the cofounder and CEO of Altana, a company that makes software to track and manage the global supply chain. Smith started Altana in 2019 because he predicted [...]

Roblox is launching and open-sourcing Cube 3D, the first version of its foundational AI model for generating 3D objects. With Cube, we intend to make 3D creation more efficient," Roblox says in a press release. With 3D mesh generation, developers can quickly explore new creative directions and increase their productivity by deciding rapidly which to [...]

Roblox is a massive app - as of September 2023, Roblox says it has more than 65 million daily active users - and it's becoming an increasingly interesting platform to watch amid growing competition from social and metaverse platforms like Epic Games' Fortnite and Meta's Horizon Worlds. While Roblox has traditionally been associated as a [...]

Zoom's AI Companion is getting an agentic" upgrade at the end of this month, allowing it to identify and perform tasks on users' behalf. Workplace users will be able to access the feature within a new Tasks tab in Workplace, where they can have Zoom's AI schedule follow-up meetings, generate documents from meetings, and create [...]

Discord is launching a way for developers to directly integrate the platform's social features into their games. The new Social SDK, announced today, will let developers that use it offer friends lists, cross-platform messaging, voice and more for all players - with or without a Discord account," according to a press release. You'll also be [...]

The picture above does not contain two different gaming handhelds. Instead, this halo device for Qualcomm's just-announced Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 gaming chips - which I'll tell you about in a sec - is a single transforming device with swing out gamepads and screens. It's called the OneXPlayer OneXSugar, and it's one of the most [...]

People who are holding on to free G Suite legacy accounts will soon lose their individual storage allotment perks. In an email seen by The Verge, Google has started informing G Suite legacy free edition plan users that they will be switched to pooled storage that's shared across all users within your organization" starting May [...]

3D printer manufacturer Bambu Lab has launched a new toy system called CyberBrick under its MakerWorld brand, which pairs reusable and programmable electronics components with 3D-printable models to enable a range of possible toys based on both official and community designs. CyberBrick is initially only available through Kickstarter, but has already surpassed its funding goal, [...]

Microsoft's Copilot app for Windows is being unintentionally uninstalled" on some Windows 11 devices thanks to the latest monthly Windows update. The Patch Tuesday updates that started rolling out on March 11th have led to Copilot being unpinned from the taskbar and uninstalled. We're aware of an issue with the Microsoft Copilot app affecting some [...]