The Verge

At least a dozen probationary staffers at the Federal Trade Commission were terminated last week, The Verge has learned. The terminations took place across the agency, according to two sources familiar with the matter, one of whom said that included both the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition. The sources did not definitively [...]

The Vision Pro is Apple's newest computing platform, and that means we're going to see a whole bunch of new apps. Apple pitches apps built for the Vision Pro as spatial" experiences, and even after our initial review experience, we'll have to see how those differ from or improve upon the virtual reality and mixed [...]

SwitchBot's inexpensive, adjustable smart roller shades are finally here. First announced in September, the SwitchBot Roller Shades are now available at switch-bot.com, claiming to be the world's first adjustable smart shades. This means you don't need to worry about getting your measurements right before ordering, as you can adjust the width of both the shade's [...]

Apple's latest iOS 18.4 developer beta adds the Visual Intelligence feature, the company's Google Lens-like tool, to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, as reported by 9to5Mac. Apple had told Daring Fireball that the feature would be coming to those iPhones in a future software update but didn't say which. Barring any [...]

At Microsoft's New York City event today, it's announcing an all-new Copilot experience. The new Copilot design includes a new card-based look across mobile, web, and Windows. Copilot is getting more personalized with features like Copilot Vision, which adds the ability to see what you're looking at, an OpenAI-like natural voice conversation mode, and a [...]

Update, March 3rd:AThe Google Pixel 7 Pro has sold out at Best Buy. It may be a few years old at this point, but the Google Pixel 7 Pro is still a good investment given it currently costs less than some of the best budget phones on the market. Right now, you can pick up [...]

EV maker BYD unveiled Lingyuan," a vehicle-mounted drone launching system developed in collaboration with DJI that is available for all of the company's vehicles, reports Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. The system is only available in China, like BYD's vehicles, and costs 16,000 yuan (or about $2,197). BYD's video below, reposted by YouTube channel ShanghaiEye, [...]

Apple CEO Tim Cook just teased the launch of a new device coming to its Air lineup this week. In a post on X, Cook posted a short video with the text, There's something in the air" alongside a caption saying this week." Though Cook doesn't specify which device Apple plans to launch, it's likely [...]

A little doom and dread always helps Doctor Who hit that much harder, and the show's new season 2 trailer makes it seem like it's going to come out swinging when it returns to Disney Plus in a few weeks. Though many of the Doctor's (Ncuti Gatwa) companions have been amazed by their adventures to [...]

Google is disabling the original uBlock Origin ad blocker for more Chrome browser users, alongside other extensions that are no longer supported as the browser migrates to its new extension specification, Manifest V3. According to Google, the new standard aims to improve privacy and security, but also removes a feature that some ad blocking extensions [...]

For the last couple years, it has been evident that Google cofounder Sergey Brin is back in the building. This week, he sent a clear message to hundreds of employees in Googleas DeepMind AI division, known as GDM: the pressure to win the AGI race is on. aIt has been 2 years of the Gemini [...]

The Blue Ghost spacecraft has landed on the moon, making history as the first private lander to successfully" achieve this feat according to its creator, Firefly Aerospace. The Texas-based commercial aerospace firm announced on Sunday that its lander had softly touched down on the Moon's surface in an upright, stable configuration." This is technically the [...]

Look out: there's a new fastest robot in the world. A Maserati MC20 Coupe with no one in the driver's seat set a new land speed record for autonomous vehicles, reaching 197.7mph (318km/h) during an automotive event at the Kennedy Space Center last week. The Maserati was running self-driving software developed by Politecnico di Milano, [...]

Chinese phone brand Infinix is known to show off a flashy concept, and at this year's MWC the company is looking skyward for inspiration. It's showing a phone with an integrated solar panel on the back, as well as a solar charging phone case. They're both in the concept phase, but the demo units I [...]

As Twitter continues to flail about under Elon Musk, all eyes are on the newly launched Instagram Threads as a potential replacement. Meta launched Threads on iOS, Android, and the web on July 5th - a little bit ahead of schedule. Two days in, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads has registered over 70 million accounts, and [...]

Lenovo has announced a new concept laptop at Mobile World Congress that encourages you to work outside by reducing your dependence on power cables. The Yoga Solar PC is an early proof of concept device featuring a solar panel integrated into the laptop's lid. It can harness light from any source to boost its battery, [...]

Lenovo has another funky experiment it's announcing at Mobile World Congress: the ThinkBook codename Flip" AI PC Concept. It's a productivity / business laptop with a flexible display, allowing it to be used as a traditional 13.1-inch clamshell, a folded-up 12.9-inch tablet, or a laptop with an extra-tall 18.1-inch vertical screen. The ThinkBook Flip uses [...]

In a pair of social media posts today, President Donald Trump named some cryptocurrencies he says will be part of a Crypto Strategic Reserve being created by an executive order he signed in January. Those include Bitcoin and Ether, which he says will be the heart of the Reserve." Trump said in the first of [...]

Officials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal" to upgrade air traffic control communications, anonymous sources have told Rolling Stone. The story follows reports that Starlink may be taking the job from Verizon, which already has a multibillion-dollar contract with [...]

Just days after revealing the 15 Ultra in China, Xiaomi has announced a UK and European launch for its latest flagship phone, together with the base Xiaomi 15. There's no sign of the Pro model, but there is an array of tablets, earbuds, and fitness trackers appearing alongside the phones. The 15 and 15 Ultra [...]

Apple Intelligence was supposed to finally deliver a more natural version of Siri, but now, people who work in Apple's AI department believe the company won't release a "truemodernized, conversational version of Siri ... until iOS 20 at best in 2027, writes Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in today's Power On newsletter. Apple is expected to roll [...]

HMD announced a new set of earbuds today with a case that doubles as a backup phone battery. The aptly named wireless Amped Buds come in a Qi2 charging case that uses reverse wireless charging to boost your phone's charge. With a slim design and a 1,600mAh battery, it's a portable case that offers just [...]

After two years telling anyone whoad listen that Chinese manufacturer Vivo made the best cameras in any smartphone, last yearas Xiaomi 14 Ultra changed my tune. It became my favorite phone and camera, handling everything from holiday snaps to product review photoshoots. With the 15 Ultra, Xiaomi took the best and made it better with [...]

Xiaomi has given a European launch to its Buds 5 Pro, the first earbuds to use Qualcomm's S7 Pro chip to stream audio over Wi-Fi, in addition to Bluetooth, with no increase in power consumption. Qualcomm announced the technology in October 2023, and this is the first hardware to launch. The Buds 5 Pro were [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 73, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youare new here, welcome, belated happy PokA(C)mon Day, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, Iave been reading about the Zizians and fancy suits and Heavyweight, watching Suits [...]

Samsung is bringing even more AI to its line of budget-friendly phones. The new Galaxy A56, A36, and A26 now come with what the company calls awesome intelligence," enabling an array of new AI-powered image editing features already available with Samsung's pricier S25 lineup. One of these features is Best Face, an AI tool that [...]

Ikea has registered its first Thread device, a new Matter-supporting temperature and humidity sensor called the Timmerflotte," with the FCC, reports HomeKit News. A diagram from the filing, which was spotted by CybermodStudios, shows a circular device that's powered by two AAA batteries and features a QR code and 11-digit number for Matter setup. The [...]

Since its founding in 2007, the Mumbai-based collaborative studio CAMP has used surveillance, TV networks, and digital archives to examine how we move through and record the world. In addition to their film and video projects, the wildly prolific studio runs a rooftop cinema in Mumbai and maintains several online video archives, including the largest [...]

Federal workers started getting emails on Friday night, asking them to provide a list of accomplishments from the week," reports The New York Times. According to the outlet, the message told workers they'll now be expected to provide such a list every Monday by 11:59PM ET. This time around, the Times writes that employees who [...]

Planning on spending your Sunday watching the 97th annual Academy Awards or catching up on the latest episode of Severance? If you don't already own a smart TV, Amazon's latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max can make setup easy and inexpensive, especially now that it's down to just $39.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, [...]

Google Photos makes backing up photos and videos from your phone pretty seamless: set it to work in the background and all your precious memories are saved to the cloud without you having to do anything else.AA The smoothness of this process does tend to mean you can find yourself with a rather gigantic collection, [...]

Of all of my favorite games, Sayonara Wild Hearts might be the hardest to describe. Itas a rhythm game, but also you ride on a motorcycle and a dragon, wield giant swords while dodging fireballs, and teleport to a retrofuturistic VR world. Itas structured like a pop album, telling a story of love and loss, [...]

The beefy Windows gaming tablet is back, and itas done two things I thought impossible. It made me respect integrated graphics, and it convinced me a Windows tablet can be fun. The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a 13-inch tablet with a detachable keyboard, a bright screen, and the guts of a gaming laptop. I [...]

The biggest surprise at Amazonas press conference last week was the lack of hardware announcements. Traditionally, Amazon announces dozens of new gadgets at its events, but this time, Amazon spent 70 minutes talking about software. Specifically, Alexa Plus, its new generative AI-powered Alexa voice assistant. And that was exactly the right move. Over the past [...]

Amazon has finally taken the wraps off its AI-enhanced version of Alexa, called Alexa Plus. The new version of Alexa is powered by a mixture of LLMs and integrations that reach across news partners and all kinds of apps and ordering services. You'll be able to use Alexa to add events to your calendar, buy [...]

Mozilla is revising its new Terms of Use for Firefox introduced on Wednesday following criticisms over language that seemed to give the company broad ownership over user data. With the change, we're updating the language to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data," the company says in a Friday [...]

Zapier informed customers on Friday that an aunauthorized usera accessed acertain Zapier code repositoriesa and may have gained access to customer information as a result. The customer data had been ainadvertently copied to the repositories for debugging purposes,a according to an email obtained by The Verge. The company says it became aware of the unauthorized [...]

It may be difficult to believe in this time of Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack, but at one point, Skype was one of the primary ways to make contact with friends, family, and colleagues. First released in 2003 and, after going through several owners, finally purchased by Microsoft in 2011, the app allowed you to [...]

The United Kingdom dealt a significant blow in its war on encryption last week that, aside from blemishing Appleas meticulously curated privacy commitments, could have worldwide ramifications for personal data protections. And while several days have passed since Apple pulled its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from UK customers, other end-to-end encryption providers like Meta, [...]

A Paris-based creative studio has announced a minimalist turntable with controls streamlined to just a play button and a volume knob. Waiting For Ideas' PP-1 - short for Plug and Play - doesn't even have a visible tonearm, and it's made from a solid block of anodized aluminum requiring about 12 weeks of production time [...]

Tesla is planning to install dozens of Supercharger sites at Steak n Shake locations across the country, according to an exchange between the companies on X. The companies have signed an agreement for over six sites, with over 20 more to come. And if Steak n Shake gets its way, possibly 100 restaurants will see [...]

Tina Nguyen is joining The Verge as a senior reporter, covering the Trump administration, Elon Muskas takeover of the federal government, and the tech industryas embrace of the MAGA movement. Nguyen joins The Verge from Puck, where she was a founding partner and national correspondent covering the evolution of the MAGA political ecosystem. Before that, [...]

Cold Wallet, Well Go USAas new darkly comedic home invasion thriller from director Cutter Hodierne, becomes increasingly more absurd as it unfolds. At every turn, the movieas heroes a a group of excitable retail investors a make unhinged choices that make them feel more like cartoons than people who have complex lives outside of Reddit. [...]

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is planning to fire the vast majority" of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), agency employees - some using pseudonyms for fear of retaliation - told a federal court in sworn declarations. Seven current and five former CFPB employees submitted the declarations as part of the National [...]

Steam Next Fest is going on until March 3rd, and Iave spent a considerable amount of time wading through a seemingly endless carousel of games, filling up my Steam Deckas internal and external memory looking for the Good Shita. Iave landed on four standout game demos that are worth your time now and whenever their [...]

Mozilla introduced its first Terms of Use for Firefox this week, but the company has already had to post an update to address criticisms of language that appeared to give Mozilla overly broad ownership over user data. Specifically, some users took issue with this line in the terms, as reported by TechCrunch: When you upload [...]