The Verge

The California State Athletic Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter to a startup that hosted a match between a human and a robot last month, as reported by The New York Times. The fight, which took place on September 18th, pitted a human, Frankie LaPenna, against a humanoid robot owned by a tech startup, Rek, that [...]

Four men detained at an ICE detention center in rural Georgia used the facility's video conferencing software to expose both the conditions inside and President Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the immigration courts. In the five-minute video, the men describe an intentionally dysfunctional legal system designed to keep them trapped in federal custody for months [...]

Windows Search has been one of the most frustrating parts of Windows 11, and now Microsoft is addressing this with a significant overhaul. A new redesigned Windows Search is now in testing that is much faster, more capable, and a lot more modern. "This new Windows Search experience is built for speed," says Anshul Rawat, [...]

Cyberpunk 2077 is heading to the big screen. Deadline reports that CD Projekt Red's popular sci-fi video game franchise is being adapted into a live-action film by Paramount Pictures. There's no details just yet on when the film might premiere. But Deadline says that Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who is known for producing the Transformers films, [...]

Tim Cook stepped down as Apple CEO in September, handing over the top job to former hardware chief John Ternus and taking an executive chairman role. Cook's still a visible representative of the company, having been recently photographed attending a state dinner at the White House. But in an interview with The Independent, Cook says [...]

After covering Amazon's October sale for the last few days, only one item found its way into my shopping cart, and, lucky for you, it's still on sale after the event's conclusion. Pokemon Legends: Z-A for the Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 is $39.88 (usually $59.99 for Switch or $69.99 for Switch 2) at Amazon. [...]

Playground Games first revealed earlier this year that Forza Horizon 6 would be arriving on PS5 in 2026, but the launch is now being pushed back. I reported last month that there would be a delay to early next year, and Forza Horizon 6 is now officially debuting on January 26th, 2027. The delay means [...]

USA Today Co., along with the several local newspapers it owns, is suing OpenAI over claims that the company copied "hundreds of thousands" of articles to train its AI models, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a filing on Thursday, the publisher asks for damages of more than $250 million, alleging OpenAI's unauthorized use of [...]

If Elon Musk and SpaceXAI were going to back any Linux distro, it seems obvious they'd back Omarchy. Today it was announced that SpaceXAI would be joining the Omacom Foundation, which oversees Omarchy, as a Founding Corporate Patron and donating $1.5 million worth of Grok tokens to David Heinemeier Hansson's Linux project. According to Hansson's [...]

Google announced through a short community post today that the LTE versions of the Pixel Watch 2 and 3 are losing free access to Safety Signal that allowed features like Emergency SOS, Fall Detection, and Safety Check to work through cellular networks without the need for a carrier plan. The connectivity was included as part [...]

Anthropic is making changes to its usage policy for the first time in over a year to reflect new and high-risk cases of misuse - including election interference, weapons development, surveillance, and health and financial uses. But one of the most significant changes prohibits "sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior" toward Claude. Last August, [...]

The Trump administration is suspending some tech companies, including Microsoft, from an immigration program that lets an employer hire foreign workers that can reside permanently in the US, as reported by Reuters. In a press conference, Vice President JD Vance claimed the permanent labor certification program - intended for use when there aren't "sufficient" US [...]

New York is alleging that thousands of TikTok users, including kids and teens, were unknowingly given "ghost" versions of the platform's safety features rather than the working versions. Reuters reports the allegation is part of an "updated, sealed version" of New York's 2024 lawsuit against TikTok, which was "later ordered unsealed by a judge." According [...]

Since TikTok burst into mainstream consciousness, many things have been called a "TikTok clone": YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, Netflix's Clips, LinkedIn's vertical video feed, and countless other, less recognizable names like Triller, Zynn, and Byte. For years now, Facebook and Instagram have pumped users' feeds with video as Meta chases TikTok's runaway success. [...]

In an interview with Bloomberg, Amazon's head of consumer electronics, Panos Panay, confirmed the company would phase out the Fire brand in favor of Alexa Tablets. The new lineup runs proper Android, instead of the custom Fire OS, and has full access to the Play Store, which wasn't available on Fire tablets. To make matters [...]

Apple has just announced a new October event, taking place in New York on October 13th at 9AM ET. The event company is rumored to be launching smart home-focused products this month, and the event invite hints that'll be the case: Apple is using the tagline "Welcome home." At the event, Apple is rumored to [...]

Google has released an experimental note-taking app that can transcribe meetings and audio files entirely offline, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. The app, called Google AI Edge Foresight, is free to use and runs on macOS using the company's on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model. Similar to AI note-taking apps like Granola and Wispr Flow, Foresight summarizes [...]

Music is always a major part of a Grand Theft Auto game, and Rockstar Games says GTA VI will have the series' "biggest and widest-ranging selection of in-game radio yet." There will be at least six radio stations players can listen to in vehicles or on foot, ranging from talk radio to classic rock: Cocoteo [...]

The Retro Song Bird may look similar to devices like Epilogue's GB Operator with a slot on top for Game Boy cartridges, but it's not designed for playing retro games. The featureless box is instead a media player designed to play through all the music and sound effect files on Game Boy cartridges using a [...]

It's always a little awkward when this many deals survive what was supposed to be the end" of a big Amazon sale. Nevertheless, I'm happy to say that most of the sale's heaviest-hitting deals are still around - Apple's discounts on its Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and AirPods Pro 3, plus all of Sony's current [...]

Google is launching a "universal" Gemini AI agent that can work across apps and devices in the background. The tool, announced as part of the Gemini at Work event on Thursday, will be available within the Gemini Enterprise app, allowing users to chat with the Gemini agent and assign it tasks from a single interface. [...]

After resurrecting iconic consoles like the 2600 and Mattel's Intellivision, Atari is relaunching one of the brand's personal computers that originally debuted 43 years ago. The 800XL is a faithful recreation of the all-in-one 8-bit PC that's being resurrected as part of a collaboration with game developer and publisher Plaion. While most retro enthusiasts will [...]

Of all the things Alexa Plus can do, I never expected it to make me cry. Since my son left for college, the Echo Show in my office has been making then-and-now photo montages: the toddler with his first tennis racket next to the captain of his varsity team; me hugging him as a tween [...]

My Decoder guest today is Hayden Field, The Verge's senior AI reporter, and we're discussing the new wave of consumer-friendly AI agents. If you've been paying attention to this space, you know AI enthusiasts have been using agents for a minute now - homebrew OpenClaw setups led to a surge in Mac Mini sales earlier [...]

At the New York Film Festival premiere of Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's satirical Sam Altman biopic, the director said onstage that "[when] someone wants to play God, that's very interesting to me." The idea of playing God, and power in general - who has it, who desperately wants it, and who will do anything to get [...]

Alongside its new collection of Alexa Tablets that run Android with full access to the Google Play store, Amazon is introducing kid versions with similar functionality but the ability for parents to limit what software and content they have access to. The Amazon Kids Tablets also come with two different styles of colorful cases featuring [...]

The GTA VI leaks keep coming - and the latest is almost as long as the game's official "extended look" on Netflix. Only instead of showing off all the various gameplay details, this one is more of an "extended look" at Jason running around Vice City naked. As Kotaku reports, GTA leaker Cyberleek, who cashed [...]

Xbox is launching a new division, called "XP," that's dedicated to Xbox experiences that aren't video games, including films and TV adaptations, consumer products, live events, and partnerships with creators and brands. Different teams at Xbox already do this work, but it will all now fall under the centralized XP division. XP formalizes four "investment [...]

Cupertino brings the tech backlash to the CBS procedural - an initially awkward combination, but with rewarding results. The show starts off just slightly unsure, but quickly figures out what to do with these strange times, creating fictionalized dupes of the Zizians, Polymarket, Jeff Bezos' looksmaxxing obsession, OpenAI stealing Scarlett Johansson's voice, and the fight [...]

While much of the automotive world sits dumbfounded as China gobbles up all its customers, BMW continues to roll out extremely well-crafted, technologically advanced electric vehicles that impress in both drive quality and price. The latest is the BMW iX4, a coupe-shaped SUV that puts a sportier spin on the automaker's iX3. The iX4 is [...]

Teenage Engineering founder and CEO Jesper Kouthoofd told Highsnobiety that it plans to stop making synths. And yes, that includes the iconic OP-1, which put the company on the map. TE isn't just a music gear maker; it's also a sought-after design firm. It's collaborated with Ikea, Nothing, and Playdate, among others. But almost everything [...]

A common misconception I've seen with Googlebooks is that the Quick Insert and Google logo keys are new. They're not, as they first debuted a couple of years ago on some Chromebooks. But there is something new for Googlebooks that's ripped straight from Android phones circa 2014. On every Googlebook keyboard, the F1, F2, and [...]

Getting in on the Prime Day action doesn't have to result in an empty wallet. Just as we found a couple handfuls of goodies that are under $25, there are plenty of deals during Amazon's October sale that are $50 or less, many of which offer a lot of practical value. Everything from chargers to [...]

Just over a week ago, we covered a deal at Amazon that knocked around 30 percent off Roku's new (and first-ever) OLED TVs. The deal expired, but has returned for the final day of October Prime Day. The 55-inch Pro Series OLED is $699.99 at Amazon, which is 30 percent off its list price. The [...]

OpenAI is launching a new Intelligent UI feature in ChatGPT that allows the chatbot to answer your questions with interactive visuals. The update, which is rolling out to all users alongside GPT-6, gives ChatGPT the ability to combine a text response with diagrams, charts, forms, tappable buttons, and more. In a blog post explaining the [...]

The first array of laptops powered by Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip are designed to compete with high-end MacBook Pros - and they've got some high-end prices to match. The flagship Surface Laptop Ultra and RTX Spark laptops from Dell, Lenovo, MSI, HP, and Asus start as low as $2,599 for configurations with an 18-core [...]

For the first time in years, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - better known as ICANN - is accepting applications for new top-level domains. These are the suffixes at the end of all URLs, and you may know them as things like .com, .org, and .pizza. ICANN just announced the 1,615 applications [...]

Microsoft just wrapped up a big Windows and Surface-focused keynote in San Francisco. The biggest announcement was arguably the release details about the Surface Laptop Ultra, its new laptop that's powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark Arm-based chip. The machine will start at $2,599 for a configuration with an 8-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB [...]

At today's Windows and Surface event, Microsoft showed off an upgrade to its Copilot AI system that will give it access to local files on your PC and the ability to take actions across the OS. It's part of an idea Microsoft is calling "Hybrid Intelligence," where apps and tools rely on a mix of [...]

Before Microsoft releases a laptop to the public, it needs to put the device through its paces. That all happens inside a windowless, warehouse-like lab on the company's Redmond, Washington, campus, where the team developing Surface devices programs robots to press their buttons thousands of times, pelts devices with radio waves from giant antennas, and [...]

Until the end of Amazon's October sale later tonight, you can grab the 128GB Meta Quest 3S for just $297.49 (usually $349.99) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. While the lenses and displays aren't quite as sharp as the Quest 3, the underlying chipset is the same, and this is a much more reasonable price [...]

OpenAI is bringing new tools to ChatGPT for Teens, a mode for teens introduced in August with safeguards and break reminders, to help users with the college application process. "College Planner brings together application requirements, deadlines, tasks, and financial-aid steps for schools on a student's list in one plan," OpenAI says. "Students applying to several [...]

Xreal launched its xbx A01 Plus display glasses over the summer for $299, and they're a decent value. The design and fit are more or less on-par with the company's pricier 1S that are $399, though they don't have my favorite feature: built-in three degrees of freedom to let you lock the virtual screen in [...]

After launching nearly a month ago and spending several weeks as the top free app in Apple's App Store, the latest update to Meta's Muse iOS app introduces native support for the iPad. A Mac version of Meta's agentic AI tool (designed to compete with OpenClaw, ChatGPT's Dots, and Grok Bot) was released about a [...]

Google DeepMind, Meta, and AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million into Biohub, the nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as reported by Reuters. The funding is part of a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets that could allow researchers to "ask, predict, [...]

Following a report from Bloomberg yesterday that Apple is collaborating with LG for a new collection of smart home devices and accessories, a reliable leaker known as "pdfu" on X has revealed more details about several of the new products, including a thermostat with a "Far Sight Display" that sounds similar to what Nest offers. [...]

Amazon announced its first smart lock that eliminates the need for a physical backup key should its rechargeable battery die while you're away from home. While other smart locks lean on hidden USB ports or metal contacts for connecting a 9-volt battery to replenish a dead battery, the new Ring Smart Lock incorporates a more [...]

For a while, I swore by Bissell's Little Green carpet cleaner. I liked the sub-$100 price, the fact that it was small enough to fit on a closet shelf, and that it does a good job of cleaning up little messes. However, after you clean enough spots around the place, eventually the entire carpet needs [...]

Most people know that Amazon collects data about your shopping history to serve up personalized product recommendations. But what some of us didn't realize is that you can check exactly what Amazon knows - or thinks it knows - about you in your settings menu. One user's findings went viral on Threads after she discovered [...]

Microsoft is heading to San Francisco this morning to reveal what's coming next for Windows and Surface and a "conversation on how local AI will shape the next chapter of the PC." That conversation will include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri. I'm expecting to hear [...]