The Verge

Lawmakers have introduced a new bill aimed at countering foreign piracy sites," as reported earlier by TorrentFreak. The bill, called the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors (Block BEARD) Act, would allow copyright holders to ask a federal court to block piracy websites. The bipartisan legislation, led by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons [...]

Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella moved with haste to get engineers to test and deploy DeepSeek's R1 model on Azure AI Foundry. It was an unusually quick turnaround for a new model on Azure that also set a new bar for success. A few months later, Nadella then pushed to onboard xAI's Grok [...]

Last year, Google surprised online video publishers with some stunning news: the company, which now generates over a quarter trillion dollars with advertising every year, effectively admitted that it isn't very good at selling ads for its own smart TV platform, Google TV. The issue at heart: Google has long required publishers to share a [...]

Peloton has pivoted many times over the past few years in its quest to return to profitability. The latest, as announced in its Q4 2025 earnings call, is leaning into health and wellness instead of just" cardio fitness. With each passing year, we are coming to understand better the importance of strength, stress management, sleep, [...]

Framework has built a name for itself by taking the locked down world of laptops and making them modular, upgradable, and repairable. So it's surprising - and maybe even controversial - the way that Framework has approached its first desktop: it's made a PC that's actually less modular than most. Don't worry; this isn't a [...]

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a new wave of tariffs are taking effect today. Announced on July 31st, the latest set of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on foreign imports - possibly illegally - will set a floor of 15 percent for around 40 countries with a trade deficit with the [...]

Following the reveal of its first 360-degree action camera a week ago, DJI has announced its first robot vacuum cleaner. The DJI Romo is available in three versions that are mostly differentiated by their appearance - two use transparent shells to reveal their inner workings - but they all borrow technology from the company's drones [...]

HBO Max's password-sharing crackdown is about to get stricter. During an earnings call on Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery streaming head JB Perette said prompts surrounding account sharing will become more persistent starting next month, pushing people toward paying an extra $7.99 per month to add an extra member to their account. In September, you'll actually [...]

President Donald Trump has called for Lip-Bu Tan to immediately resign as Intel's CEO over his reported ties to Chinese tech firms. The demand follows Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton questioning Intel's board chairman whether Tan's alleged connections to China would conflict with security regulations. The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately," [...]

Eufy's FamiLock S3 Max ($399) is a multitasking workhorse. Launched earlier this year, it combines a smart lock and video doorbell in one, and it's one of the first locks with a digital peephole and a wave-to-unlock function. It also has a keyway, keypad, and Matter support, so it works with all the major smart [...]

Brazil opens with a bureaucratic error. A fly gets stuck in a typewriter, changing the surname of Archibald Tuttle to Archibald Buttle, a misprint on a form that dictates the government forcibly detain a suspected terrorist (Tuttle) but instead leads to the arrest of an entirely innocent man (Buttle). If the inciting events of our [...]

Nintendo's latest livestreamed event is highlighting the smattering of indie games coming to the Switch consoles later this year, and the Indie World Showcase is scheduled to start on Thursday, August 7th, at 9 AM ET. Hades 2 might make an appearance, and there's a slim chance the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong might show up [...]

A California jury has found that Meta illegally collected user health data from the Flo period-tracking app, violating the state's wiretap law. The verdict concludes a lawsuit filed against Flo, Google, Meta, and app analytics company Flurry in 2021, in which Flo app users accused the companies of collecting their private menstrual health data without [...]

The day after he won an unprecedented $243 million verdict in a wrongful death case against Tesla, attorney Brett Schreiber posted a reel on Instagram celebrating the victory. His song pick: 1992's "Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta" by the Geto Boys. "This is a verdict that will change the world," Schreiber wrote [...]

Apple is teaming up with Samsung to produce digital image sensors for future iPhone models, according to The Financial Times. This is tied to Apple's Wednesday announcement that it is working with Samsung's semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas, to launch an innovative new technology for making chips, which has never been used before anywhere in [...]

GitHub has accidentally announced OpenAI's new range of GPT-5 models. A now-deleted GitHub blog post reveals that GPT-5, which will be available in four different versions, offers major improvements in reasoning, code quality, and user experience." Reddit posters noticed a new GitHub blog post announcing that GPT-5 is generally available in GitHub models, before the [...]

Tom Conrad took over as CEO of Sonos in January as it continues to recover from last year's disastrous mobile app update, and now the company has issued its first quarterly earnings report after he dropped the interim tag from his title. Beyond the numbers, with $344.8 million in revenue and a net loss of [...]

In the very first week of his presidency, Donald Trump vowed to force silicon manufacturing back to the United States by making processors more expensive, a threat he's repeated since. Is he finally going through with that plan? Trump just announced he'll putting an enormous 100 percent tariff on chips and semiconductors - unless your [...]

At a White House press conference to discuss Apple's new US manufacturing plans, CEO Tim Cook presented a gift to President Donald Trump: a unique" piece of glass from iPhone glass manufacturer Corning that's set in a 24-karat gold base. The piece of glass is a large disc with the Apple logo cut into it. [...]

Google's Gemini AI now has a guided learning" mode that tries to help you actually understand the problems you're trying to learn about instead of just giving you the answer. Guided learning acts as a learning companion" that guides you with questions and step-by-step support," CEO Sundar Pichai says in a blog post. Answers from [...]

Apple is putting another $100 billion toward expanding manufacturing in the US as the company responds to pressure from President Donald Trump to manufacture more of its products in the US. The move builds upon the company's initial plan to invest $500 billion in the US over the next four years, and includes a new [...]

The future of Warner Bros. Games is unclear, as it shut down several studios and canceled anticipated games earlier this year. But there's no arguing that the company's back catalog of titles is full of gems, many of which are in Humble's great $12 bundle. Through August 27th, you can jump on this unbeatable deal [...]

Jurassic World: Archipelago is a new expansion pack for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 that lets aspiring pilots explore the five islands of the fictional Cinco Muertes Archipelago featured in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies. Created by Australian developer Orbx that's known for its flight sim add-ons, the expansion lets you visit many locations [...]

OpenAI is teasing a big announcement on Thursday, and based on a not-so-subtle clue, it seems like the news will be the reveal of its long-awaited GPT-5 AI model. In a post on X, OpenAI announced a LIVE5TREAM THURSDAY 10AM PT" - notice that the s" in the word livestream is swapped for a 5." [...]

It's Tuesday, August 5th, and I have awoken to the news that Valentine, Grok's latest spicy AI companion, has been released! As an OnlyFans content creator and someone who spends a lot of time being paid to sext humans, the idea of flipping the script and interacting with a brooding sex bot as the person [...]

Google says its AI search features aren't tanking website traffic despite recent reports suggesting otherwise. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Google Search head Liz Reid says click volume from the search engine has remained relatively stable" when compared to the same time last year - though some types of websites are getting more [...]

Audio quality is always going to be a speaker's most important feature, but it doesn't hurt if it looks nice too. In our tests, Bose's SoundLink Home is a solid sounding, aesthetically pleasing portable Bluetooth speaker that you can currently pick up for $199.99 ($20 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, and Bose. The SoundLink Home's [...]

To better protect against cheaters, Activision says that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 players on PC will need to use hardware with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and have Windows' Secure Boot feature turned on when the game is available later this year. Ahead of that, Activision is doing a phased rollout" of the [...]

Microsoft started testing its Xbox Copilot on iOS and Android earlier this year, and now it's bringing the chatbot to the Game Bar feature on Windows 11. Xbox Insiders can start testing a preview of the Gaming Copilot integration in the Game Bar today, and Microsoft is planning further optimizations" for this new feature on [...]

Today, I'm excited to announce three newsletter offerings, exclusive to Verge subscribers, that will continue to deliver must-read stories about tech and beyond. First, we're introducing Regulator by Tina Nguyen. Regulator is focused on the battles between Big Tech and Big Government - from the juicy palace intrigue to the devastating consequences of their political [...]

You'll often see tech policy reporting described as the intersection of technology and politics, and for years, that was a pretty accurate description: Silicon Valley existed independent of Washington politics, and every so often, they'd cross paths, discuss some regulatory concern, write a check, shake hands, and then go their separate ways. This is no [...]

I'm excited to announce The Stepback, a weekly subscriber-only newsletter that I'll be editing for The Verge. We'll be bringing you a new story each Sunday from a rotating cast of writers from every corner of the Verge extended universe. If you're a regular reader, you know we cover a broad range of topics across [...]

Nintendo recently made the unexpected decision to increase the prices of its last-gen Switch hardware due to market conditions," adding $30 to the cost of the $199.99 Switch Lite, $40 to the standard $299.99 Switch, and $50 to the $349.99 Switch OLED. The price difference between the Switch OLED and the standalone Switch 2 now [...]

Disney is planning to fully integrate Hulu with Disney Plus, creating a unified" app experience that will launch next year, the company announced as part of its earnings results on Wednesday. The new app will put all of Hulu's content into Disney Plus, calling the future of Hulu's standalone app into question. With Disney's deal [...]

Since its launch in 2022, the capabilities of Sonos Voice Control have expanded to include setting timers and checking the weather. But by the end of this year, the smart assistant will introduce compatibility with the Philips Hue smart home platform allowing it to also control lights through voice commands, according to Hueblog. In late [...]

Instagram is getting several new features that pull from competitors, and it's updating a controversial feature that it added earlier this year. Starting today, users will have the ability to repost public Reels and grid posts from other accounts. And similar to TikTok, reposts will be collected in a designated tab on your profile and [...]

These days, Paducah, Kentucky - population 27,000 and home to the National Quilt Museum - prides itself as "Quilt City." But decades ago, it was also called the "Atomic City" - a moniker it could soon regain as AI's energy needs bring Paducah's nuclear past back to life. The Department of Energy (DOE) operated a [...]

Jeff Buckley captivated an audience of generations with his transcendent voice and soaring guitar. After his untimely passing in 1997 at age 30, he gained posthumous, cult-like status. Never one for the charts, his album Grace has stood the test of time and is listed on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. His [...]

Disney announced that it will no longer report on subscriber numbers for its streaming services in its quarterly financial reports, following in the footsteps of Netflix. The decision comes after a quarter in which it reported 2.6 million new Disney Plus and Hulu subscribers, bringing it to 183 million in total. The decision was announced [...]

The launch of ESPN's long-awaited standalone streaming service is just weeks away. Alongside its earnings results on Wednesday, Disney revealed that ESPN's streaming service and its enhanced" app will arrive on August 21st for $29.99 per month. ESPN's new streaming service, which remains separate from ESPN Plus, will offer access to the network's linear channels, [...]

Nvidia's chief security officer has published a blog post insisting that its GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors." It comes amid pressure from both sides of the Pacific, with some US lawmakers pushing Nvidia to grant the government backdoors to AI chips, while Chinese officials have alleged that they already [...]

OpenAI released a new free and open GPT model yesterday that can run on a PC, and now Microsoft is making that easy to do for Windows users. The lightweight gpt-oss-20b model is now available on Windows AI Foundry, and will be coming soon to macOS, too. You'll need a PC or laptop with at [...]

Researchers have already found a critical vulnerability in the new NLWeb protocol Microsoft made a big deal about just just a few months ago at Build. It's a protocol that's supposed to be HTML for the Agentic Web," offering ChatGPT-like search to any website or app. Discovery of the embarrassing security flaw comes in the [...]

Google's August Pixel update includes a fix for Android's three-button navigation and gesture navigation systems becoming unresponsive. The issues appear to have started popping up shortly after the official release of Android 16 in June. Ever since that update, the user said that navigation has been a complete mess" and that they ran into issues [...]

If you know where to look, it's surprisingly easy to save on an iPad - even outside of major sales events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. Here's an insider tip: Skip the Apple Store, where discounts are almost nonexistent. Instead, your best bet is to check third-party retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Best [...]

Apple is suing the owner of the Apple Cinemas theater chain, Sand Media, over alleged trademark infringement, as reported by Reuters. In the lawsuit, Apple alleges that Apple Cinemas and Sand Media have made efforts to capitalize on the highly-regarded Apple brand in connection with the aggressive nationwide expansion" and that they have refused to [...]

Connecting to free airport or hotel Wi-Fi can often be a time-consuming and frustrating task that doesn't seem worth the effort for a bag full of wireless devices. TP-Link has announced its first Wi-Fi 7 travel router, providing up to a total of 3.6 Gbps of bandwidth while also making it easier to get multiple [...]