The Verge

A month of Apple TV costs $12.99, which is a good value if you're into its blend of sci-fi, sports, kids content, and a staggering number of shows and movies that start with S." It's the only major streaming service that doesn't have ads, and it'll be the exclusive home to F1 starting in 2026. [...]

Editor's note:Black Friday doesn't officially take place until Friday, November 28th; however, if you want to shop ahead of time, we've rounded up thebest early Black Friday dealsyou can already get. If you choose to get an extra controller for your Nintendo Switch 2, you can spend a lot - and get a lot in [...]

Microsoft is previewing default game profiles on its ROG Xbox Ally gaming handheld. The new profiles will automatically optimize frame rates and power consumption for 40 games, including Fortnite, Gears of War: Reloaded, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Forza Horizon 5, Minecraft, and others, saving you from manually tweaking game settings. The ROG Xbox Ally will automatically [...]

When Stranger Things first premiered in 2016, Netflix was still courting new subscribers with splashy original projects that were meant to have broad audience appeal. The company had solidified itself as a major player in the streaming wars with massive hits like House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, and a collection of live-action [...]

Reto, a Hong Kong-based camera maker that licenses the Kodak brand, has announced a new 35mm film camera called the Snapic A1 that ships next week. Although its design, with either a rhino gray or ivory white plastic housing, gives off disposable camera vibes, for $99 the Snapic A1 should be a capable shooter with [...]

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. Some celebrate it as an American tradition. Others look at it as simply an excuse to get together with family to watch some football. And still others just enjoy getting an extra day off from work or try to ignore it altogether. But however you regard it, there are often [...]

One thing we talk a lot about on The Vergecast is how to engage with technology without losing your mind. One version of that discussion has to do with fitness, and the so-called quantified self: what does it take to make use of the tools and trackers available to you, without letting exercise take over [...]

If you're going to prove to your siblings that you're still the family's Mario Kart champion, you're going to need an extra controller to make sure it's a fair race. Fortunately, 8BitDo's Ultimate 2 Bluetooth Controller - which is compatible with the Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and Windows machines - is marked down to a [...]

Three movies in, Knives Out is really showing its range. After starting out with a mystery on a cozy New England estate, followed by a sequel set on a Greek island owned by an Elon Musk-style tech bro, the series gets much darker with Wake Up Dead Man. This time, director Rian Johnson crafted a [...]

We know a little more about Google's long-gestating plans to combine the best parts of Android and ChromeOS into a single OS thanks to a job listing for a product manager to work on Aluminium OS." The job ad describes it as a new operating system built with Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the core." Android [...]

The first Chinese-made car Omar Rana ever drove was a gas-powered SUV that he rented while on a trip overseas in 2015. To say it didn't leave much of an impression would be an understatement. "It sucked really bad," Rana, aka OmarDrives, tells me. "A horrible experience." Flash forward nearly a decade to last year, [...]

Huawei has just launched its Mate 80 series in China, and the top-spec 80 Pro Max stands out for a dual-layer OLED display that Huawei says can hit an unmatched 8,000 nits of peak brightness. The Mate 80 phones are joined by a new Mate X7 foldable with IP59 dustproofing. There are four Mate 80 [...]

Ikea is launching two new Bluetooth speakers next month as part of a larger collection announced earlier this year, following the end of the company's partnership with Sonos. Like the Blomprakt speaker lamp that launched in the US last month, both the new Solskydd and Kulglass speakers blend technology and design so they'll function as [...]

"Developing superintelligence is now in sight," says Mark Zuckerberg, heralding the "creation and discovery of new things that aren't imaginable today." Powerful AI "may come as soon as 2026 [and will be] smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields," says Dario Amodei, offering the doubling of human lifespans or even "escape velocity" [...]

Editor's note:Black Friday doesn't officially take place until Friday, November 28th; however, if you want to shop ahead of time, we've rounded up thebest early Black Friday dealsyou can already get. Whether you're wearing them for the morning commute, while traveling, or if you're simply trying to find some peace and quiet while working at [...]

Michael Crider's headline at PCWorld today perfectly captures how ridiculous the PC memory shortage has become: stores like the San Francisco Bay Area's Central Computers are beginning to sell RAM at market prices, like you'd pay for the catch-of-the-day at a seafood restaurant. Costs are fluctuating daily as manufacturers and distributors adjust to limited supply [...]

"It's a wrap ... Don't forget to buy an 'i survived Belem' shirt," reads the opening line of an email I got Saturday, the final day of highly anticipated United Nations climate negotiations in Belem, Brazil. The email was sent from Shravya Jain-Conti, the US climate diplomacy lead at the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC), [...]

The Department of Justice has announced a settlement with RealPage, the widely used rent-setting software that it accused of engaging in collusion to drive up rent prices by sharing previously private information from competing landlords. The settlement puts limits on RealPage's ability to collect and use that data, and blocks it from being used to [...]

OpenAI is making it easier to plan out holiday shopping with ChatGPT's latest feature, called shopping research." Any shopping question in ChatGPT will trigger this new feature, which is rolling out to all ChatGPT users on free and paid plans on mobile and web, with nearly unlimited usage" available during the holiday shopping season. Now, [...]

For the first time, Meta is offering trade-in discounts for its smart glasses with a pilot program that's only running through December 31st. According to a legal page on Meta's website, trade-in discounts can be applied to the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1, Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2, Oakley Meta HSTN, and Oakley Meta Vanguard. Notably, the [...]

Christ. Fine. So over the weekend, a strange Substack post from what appears to be a CEO of a pet relocation company went very viral. This post - which to be clear, is bullshit - alleges that Nvidia is engaged in what may become the largest accounting fraud in technology history." That's a load-bearing may," [...]

Microsoft is loving Crocs at the moment. After releasing Windows XP-themed Crocs earlier this year, the software maker is now putting an Xbox controller on your feet with a new limited edition pair of Crocs. Available on November 25th for $80, the Xbox Crocs mimic the Xbox One X's controller with fixed buttons and joysticks. [...]

Signal is launching secure backups on iOS, allowing you to save and restore your messages in case you lose or break your phone. With the free version of the feature, you can store up to 100MB of text messages, along with the past 45 days' worth of photos, videos, GIFs, and files. There's also a [...]

The US Consumer Protection Safety Commission issued a stark warning about Rad Power Bikes' e-bike batteries Monday, linking them to dozens of fires and saying they pose a risk of serious injury and death." The batteries can unexpectedly ignite and explode," especially when water or debris leaks in to cells or the harness, the agency [...]

The AI labs never sleep - especially the week before Thanksgiving, it seems. Days after Google's buzzworthy Gemini 3, and OpenAI's updated agentic coding model, Anthropic has announced Claude Opus 4.5, which it bills as the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use," claiming it has leapfrogged even Gemini 3 in [...]

Editor's note:Black Friday doesn't officially take place until Friday, November 28th; however, if you want to shop ahead of time, we've rounded up thebest early Black Friday dealsyou can already get. A glass screen protector is one of a few essential accessories that every Switch 2 owner should make, along with a select few others. [...]

What do you get the man who says he has everything? It's a tough question - and one you have a limited amount of time to answer, given the holidays are nearly upon us. You could try dropping subtle hints or asking friends and family for suggestions, but they might save their best ideas for [...]

Earlier this month, Junghun Lee - CEO of Nexon, the parent company behind current live-service shooter du jour Arc Raiders - made waves in the game development community with a straightforward statement. "It's important to assume that every game company is now using AI," he explained. Indie developers were quick to loudly and vociferously call [...]

If you're thinking of ways to spend time with (or avoid) your family during Thanksgiving or Christmas, you can currently sign up for a year of HBO Max with ads for $2.99 a month ($8 off). The ongoing Black Friday promo is available to both new and returning subscribers, runs until December 1st, and saves [...]

On Monday, Amazon announced Leo Ultra, the first antenna for its satellite internet service, which is launching in a private preview ahead of a commercial rollout sometime next year. Leo Ultra is made for business and government customers," unlike the other two, smaller Leo antenna options. No pricing or availability details have been announced, but [...]

Aqara's latest wireless smart lock features a sleek backlit keypad with support for Amazon Alexa and Google Home for the budget-friendly price of $99.99. With Wi-Fi built in, Aqara's B50 smart lock doesn't require a hub and offers a few different unlocking options, including the ability to enter a passcode, use voice commands, control it [...]

Holiday shopping on a budget can feel constricting, especially if you've been invited to a white elephant or need a last-minute stocking stuffer. The good news is that, with this guide, you can leave that stress behind. Whether you're aiming for something practical or fun, we've found plenty of great gifts for under $25 - [...]

If you're looking for a way to entertain parents and kids this holiday season, look no further than a subscription to Hulu and Disney Plus. Now through December 1st, new and returning subscribers can snag an annual ad-supported subscription to both streaming services for just $4.99 a month ($8 off). The Black Friday deal saves [...]

Meta allegedly gave accounts engaged in the trafficking of humans for sex" 16 chances before suspending them, according to testimony from the company's former head of safety and well-being, Vaishnavi Jayakumar. The testimony - along with several other claims that Meta ignored problems if they increased engagement - surfaced in an unredacted court filing related [...]

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive have been keeping the finer details of the first mysterious OpenAI hardware under wraps, but it sounds like they've settled on a design. In an interview with Laurene Powell Jobs at Emerson Collective's 2025 Demo Day, they said they are currently prototyping the device, and [...]

Earlier this year, it looked like time was up for ZRX: Zombies, Run!, a popular fitness app that mixed couch-to-5K plans with postapocalyptic audio storytelling. Now, cocreator and author Naomi Alderman has announced that she's bought back the franchise from the brink. Zombies, Run! was first founded in 2012 with about 10 million users worldwide. [...]

When an AI model release immediately spawns memes and treatises declaring the rest of the industry cooked, you know you've got something worth dissecting. Google's Gemini 3 was released Tuesday to widespread fanfare. The company called the model a "new era of intelligence," integrating it into Google Search on day one for the first time. [...]

This month's OnePlus 15 arrived to much fanfare about its enormous battery life, but no sign of the cheaper 15R that was expected alongside it. Now we finally know that phone will be revealed on December 17th, alongside the OnePlus Pad Go 2 and Watch Lite. Both the phone and tablet will release in the [...]

Ankit Khanal gets his news from News Daddy. More than 20 times a day, Khanal, a sophomore at George Mason University, opens TikTok to have the biggest stories of the day delivered to him by a bleach-blonde 26-year-old named Dylan Page, one of the leading faces in a growing community of news influencers. Based in [...]

Microsoft is making some changes to the File Explorer in Windows 11 that will make it less cluttered and launch faster. The latest Dev preview builds of Windows 11 include File Explorer preloading to help improve File Explorer launch performance," and changes to the context menu to reduce the amount of space less commonly used [...]

In April, Elon Musk began backing away from his role as head of DOGE. By June, he was more or less fully gone from DC. In his wake, he left a power vacuum and significant ill will that has apparently led to the dissolution of DOGE eight months before its charter expires. To call Musk's [...]

It's long been known that X (and Twitter before it) is a major venue for foreign influence campaigns to meddle in American politics. Much of the focus has been on Russian troll farms, which the US government has targeted on several occasions. But the launch of X's About This Account feature may have revealed the [...]

Nintendo has made some of the most iconic video games of all time, but building a library of the standouts can quickly become expensive, especially given that many titles don't often go on sale at a significant discount. The good news is that Nintendo is already running a holiday sale in the run-up to Black [...]

Yesterday X started rolling out a new About This Account feature, which included what country the account was created from and what country the account is based" in (which is different from connected via"). Head of product at X Nikita Bier was quick to say that there were a few rough edges," but promised they'd [...]

More than five years after making their debut, Sony's WH-1000XM4 remain an excellent pair of noise-canceling headphones. And right now, Best Buy is offering a doorbuster deal that drops them to just $159.99 ($190 off) for a limited time, which is the lowest price we've seen this year. If you prefer the latest tech, you [...]

What are thooooose? Well, they're my Vines, the six-second videos that helped mint a generation of famous comedians and also kicked off the era of endlessly looping vertical video that has consumed us all ever since. If you weren't there at the time, most Vines might seem utterly nonsensical. But if you were on the [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on streaming competition, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started In 2022, Apple won an Oscar. The company behind the Mac and [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 106, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, Happy Thanksgiving Week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about prediction markets and Hilary Duff and Matt Belloni and yeast, [...]

NBC News's David Ingram analyzed a month's worth of Elon Musk's X posts (our condolences). While what he was able to glean wasn't too surprising, it was still interesting to see the numbers all laid out. Between September 17th and October 17th, he posted 1,716 times, averaging a little over 55 posts a day. 49 [...]

Black Friday isn't here quite yet, but that hasn't stopped Sony from kicking off an excellent holiday promo, which runs through December 18th. The ongoing sale spans everything from PlayStation 5 consoles to Sony's latest accessories - including Sony's standard DualSense Wireless Controller, which is now matching its all-time low of $54.99 ($20 off) in [...]