The Verge

Elon Musk's xAI unveiled Grok-3 on Tuesday, announcing that the new artificial intelligence model has more than 10 times" the compute power of its predecessor. xAI said its latest flagship outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4o, Google's Gemini, and DeepSeek's V3 models in early testing, and now features advanced reasoning" capabilities. So-called reasoning models are trained to answer [...]

It's been nearly four years since Spotify announced a HiFi tier for its music streaming service that would support lossless audio. That wait could end this year, Bloomberg reports, as the company works to finalize details, including streaming rights. Spotify could charge as much as $5 or $6 extra per month for the new tier [...]

The Department of Government Efficiency has requested access to the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer data system - potentially giving it access to highly sensitive information, including Social Security Numbers and tax returns - according to a report from CNN. DOGE has also launched an IRS-specific account on X and is soliciting insights on finding and [...]

A team from Elon Musk's SpaceX is visiting the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Virginia Monday to help overhaul the system in the wake of last month's deadly air disaster in Washington, DC, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced. The news comes after CNN reported that the Federal Aviation Administration fired hundreds of [...]

Last November, I strapped into the rear passenger seat of an all-electric, four-door sedan with BMW test driver and 24-hour racer Jens Klingmann behind the wheel. It was a cold day at BMWas Performance Driving Center in Greer, SC, and beneath the five-point harnesses, roll cage, and heavily camouflaged body, Klingmann had an unexpected co-pilot: [...]

Violent metaphors abound for whatas happening in Washington: Elon Musk and his allies have taken a aslash-and-burna approach to the government and a asledgehammera to government institutions, doing away with supposed waste and excess while leaving the fundamental structure intact. All of this is being done with the stated goal of ridding the federal workforce [...]

X users are currently unable to post links to Signal.me, which are used to quickly and securely send direct messages to Signal users. A variety of failure notifications are being reported when X users attempt to post Signal links on the platform, some of which identify the blocked message as containing spam, harmful content, or [...]

The New York Times has reportedly approved artificial intelligence tools that newsroom staff can use for editing copy, summarizing information, coding, and writing. The publication announced in an internal email that product and editorial staff will receive AI training, according to Semafor, and introduced a new internal AI tool called Echo for summarizing articles, briefings, [...]

Days after YouTube published a blog post saying it could lose Paramount content soon, it updated the post to announce a deal to keep it. The company posted on X that, as a result, channels such as CBS, CBS Sports, and Nickelodeon and add-ons like Paramount Plus, Showtime, and BET Plus will stick around after [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 71, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youare new here, welcome, happy long weekend to all those allowed to celebrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, Iave been reading about Alan Turing and OnlyFans [...]

Today marked a second weekend of scattered protests at Tesla showrooms, following a TeslaTakeover" hashtag that has been trending on Twitter alternative Bluesky this week. Protestors' messages largely focused on the divisive efforts of Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency since the start of Donald Trump's Presidency. The [...]

The popular Nintendo DS emulator Drastic has disappeared from the Google Play store, reports Android Authority. It's not clear at the moment why the app is now gone, but it seems likely that it was the developer, not Nintendo, that prompted its removal. Developer Exophase made Drastic free-to-download last year and indicated that it planned [...]

It seems like Nintendo just revealed its mysterious device that recently crossed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - and it's not the Switch 2. On Wednesday, Nintendo announced, of all things, the Alarmo" alarm clock. But in classic Nintendo fashion, the clock has some playful tricks. The clock responds to your movements, which you can [...]

Elden Ring Nightreign's rocky network test might have left some fans disappointed this week, but I sincerely doubt a few breif server issues did much to diminish the growing anticipation for FromSoftware's next soulslike for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Thankfully, if you were still planning on picking up the Elden Ring spin-off when it launches [...]

The NBA has introduced a new AR feature for its Vision Pro app this week called Tabletop, which places a floating render of a basketball court in your space during select" live games, according to an NBA help page describing the feature. On the court, digital avatars mirror the game's actual players as they move, [...]

It can be surprisingly daunting to follow up on a great pair of earbuds. The objective is to make improvements wherever possible without sacrificing anything that people loved about the previous set. Thatas where Technics found itself with the $299.99 EAH-AZ100 earbuds, which it announced at CES 2025. I was rather taken with the companyas [...]

Boredom is something of a dying concept. Our phones, filled with games and videos and social feeds, allow us to fill every moment with something, whether weare on a long flight or in line for 30 seconds waiting for coffee. But the silly and playful While Waiting is a good reminder that that can be [...]

Google has disabled its Android earthquake detection feature in Brazil after many smartphone users in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro received false emergency alerts on Friday morning, Android Police reports. The alerts of a nonexistent 5.5 magnitude earthquake were sent to devices around 2AM this morning, and pinpointed earthquakes in the country's Ubatuba and [...]

Nearly 400 videos that were posted on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's YouTube page have been removed, as the Trump administration continues to pare back the agency, including its team of skilled technologists. The CFPB YouTube page, which has 15,000 subscribers and was created in 2011, has had every one of its videos removed as [...]

OpenAI's board of directors has responded to Elon Musk's bid to buy the company. In a statement on X, OpenAI chair Bret Taylor said, OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition." Musk and a coalition of backers offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 [...]

Starting on February 26th, 2025, Amazon is removing a feature from its website allowing you to download purchased books to a computer and then copy them manually to a Kindle over USB. It's a feature that a lot of Kindle users are probably not aware of, given books can be more easily sent to devices [...]

President Donald Trump's administration has ordered federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add disclaimers railing against gender ideology" to pages restored by a recent court order, The Washington Post reported. The notice reads: Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website [...]

Mastodon is making a change that might have some users divided. In an update on Friday, the decentralized platform announced that it's working to add quote posts to help people to transition away from proprietary, billionaire-owned social media to the open social web," as spotted earlier by TechCrunch. Mastodon initially decided against implementing quote posts [...]

A grassroots environmental alliance that called for a free Palestine" has lost the more than $50 million it was supposed to receive under the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) became the target of conservativeattacksafter advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a group of offederal workers [...]

WhatsApp is turning up the customization features for chats by including new theme options, custom colors for chat bubbles, and a bunch of new wallpapers to choose from. A new blog post says the feature is rolling out now and will be available globally over the coming weeks." There are 30 new wallpaper options to [...]

Two weeks ago, we exclusively reported Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's remarks on how many pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses the company had recently sold and might theoretically sell - 1 million pairs in 2024, with the possibility of reaching 2 million or even 5 million by the end of 2025. But glasses giant EssilorLuxottica, [...]

Two bills were introduced in the Senate that, if enacted, would dramatically increase the price for most electric vehicles. The first bill, sponsored by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), would eliminate the $7,500 EV tax credit, while a second one from Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) would impose a $1,000 tax on the purchase of any new [...]

The electric vehicle tax credit, also known as the clean vehicle tax credit," or 30D, if you like IRS code, can offer up to $7,500 off the purchase of a new EV. Sounds nice, right? But of course, it's not that easy. This is the IRS we're talking about after all. Before you can collect [...]

Considering the trajectory of 2025 so far, perhaps we should've known that Netflix finally playing nice with the Apple TV app was too good to be true. And now the streaming giant has confirmed that's exactly the case. Netflix spokesperson MoMo Zhou has told The Verge that this morning's window where Netflix appeared as a [...]

Two government watchdogs will investigate the Department of Government Efficiency's access to sensitive Treasury payments systems, they confirmed in letters to Congress. In a letter to Senate Democrats, Treasury Deputy Inspector General Loren Sciurba said that the office opened an audit into the Bureau of Fiscal Service's payments systems on February 6th. The IG's office [...]

Looking for a robot vacuum or mop that won't set you back a few hundred dollars? Right now, Verge readers can pick up the Roomba Combo i5 - the upgrade to ourtop budget pick, the Roomba i3 Evo - from Wellbots for a new low of $189 ($160 off) with offer VERGE160. TheRoomba Combo j5, [...]

Meta is planning to design the hardware and software for humanoid robots, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the outlet that a newly formed team within Meta's Reality Labs division will start by working on humanoid robot hardware" capable of completing household chores. Bloomberg notes that Meta has broader goals of making the [...]

As the new Congress has already started working on legislation to protect kids from social media harms, Roblox is doubling down on its efforts to convince lawmakers it shouldnat be lumped in with products like Instagram and YouTube. Even though the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) failed to become law last year, despite passing handily [...]

Instagram is beginning to test a button that gives people a private way to signal that they don't feel good about that particular comment," Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says in a post on Threads. The button, based on a screenshot from a Threads user, is a downward-facing arrow next to the like button in comments. [...]

President Donald Trump's tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico are presented by the president and his boosters as a boon to American businesses. If products from China are more expensive, the argument goes, then people will instead buy from counterparts based in the US. But for small businesses manufacturing in the US, the tariffs are [...]

Robert Eggers' excellent Nosferatu remake will finally be available to stream very soon. Peacock announced today that Nosferatu - which stars Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgard - will make its streaming debut on February 21st. Along with the film's original theatrical cut, Peacock subscribers will also be able to watch the extended cut [...]

The third season of Yellowjackets is a bit like getting lured back to the high school reunion that was delightfully fun the first time but eventually becomes an exercise in diminishing returns. Maybe itas part of our soft human inability to let go of the past, especially coming-of-age drama that seems increasingly romantic and valid [...]

It looks like Xiaomi is soon launching a new flagship Ultra smartphone model that takes its Leica licensing beyond just the lens. Android Headlines has posted what appear to be official renders of a Xiaomi 15 Ultra, with Leica camera styling that includes duo-tone white and rough-finished black verticle strips down the rear of the [...]

The paid search engine Kagi has added an even more private way to search. The new feature, called Privacy Pass, lets you make searches without having them traced back to you. Privacy Pass is based on an authentication protocol standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force. It works by allowing users to authenticate themselves to [...]

Protestors are planning more demonstrations outside Tesla showrooms nationwide this weekend, as Elon Musk's polarizing behavior and political activities within the Trump administration continue to have negative side effects on his electric car business. The protests are being advertised on BlueSky under the tags Tesla Takeover" and Tesla Takedown," similar to demonstrations held last weekend. [...]

Itas hard to think of a time when a single figure has been so central to seemingly everything in the way that Elon Musk is right now. Musk is overseeing and overhauling the federal government, while bending it toward his own financial gain. Heas also ubiquitous in the artificial intelligence world, where this week he [...]

Some Apple TV 4K users in the US are being prompted to connect their Netflix accounts to the Apple TV app. This would appear to signal an end to the streaming service's longtime refusal to have its content aggregated into third-party platforms. Users who link their accounts are able to add certain Netflix originals like [...]

Around 20 technologists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were fired on Thursday evening, gutting a team that specialized in understanding Big Techas entrance into financial products, three sources familiar with the matter tell The Verge. It follows an earlier round of layoffs of mostly contractors and probationary employees on Tuesday, as reported by Wired, [...]

My first time playing Elden Ring Nightreign, I was stressed the hell out. My team and I were in an underground dungeon, trying to make our way past traps and dangerous blind corners, all while knowing there was an invisible clock ominously ticking down above our heads. If we were still underground when it hit [...]

The open-source code repository Codeberg has blamed the far right for a recent campaign of abuse and harassment across its systems. Projects advocating tolerance and equal rights" were subjected to spam campaigns using abusive messages, which escalated to spam emails sent to users via Codeberg's own automated systems. Codeberg says it stands strong against hate [...]

The DOGE website created to document how Elon Musk's team is eviscerating the US federal government is wide open for anyone to edit. This is the same DOGE organization that has gained unprecedented access to sensitive US financial systems with data on millions of Americans. Two web development experts reported the security flaw to 404Media [...]

Microsoft is adding a super useful button to Outlook mobile that will let you quickly minimize a draft email and task switch on the go. If you're like me and you send a lot of emails from your iPhone or Android device, it can be really annoying to have to switch out of a draft [...]

Nearly a month after it was banned in the US, TikTok has returned to the App Store for iPhones and other Apple devices as well as the Google Play store for Android phones and tablets. The return follows US Attorney General Pam Bondi sending a letter to Apple assuring that it won't be fined for [...]

Google's Gemini AI assistant can now recall past conversations to provide more relevant responses if you have a subscription to Gemini Advanced via Google One AI Premium. With the update, you'll no longer have to recap previous chats or search for a thread to pick up a conversation, as Gemini will already have the context [...]

As always, the most important Nvidia graphics card is the one you can actually buy, and Nvidia's talked a big game for its RTX 5070, making the dubious but nuanced claim it can deliver RTX 4090 performance for just $549. On February 28th, AMD will get its chance to intercept with the Radeon RX 9070 [...]