The Verge

Smart home company SwitchBot has announced a new version of its retrofit smart lock, and this one you can unlock with your face. The SwitchBot Lock Ultra ($159.99) works with the new SwitchBot Keypad Vision ($99.99), which uses 3D facial recognition technology to unlock your door. The company also launched the SwitchBot Hub 3, a [...]

Amazon is testing new AI-generated audio summaries that will let you listen to two AI hosts" chat about a product's features. Along with product details, the AI audio clips also draw information from user reviews and information from the web. The feature is currently available for select products on Amazon's mobile app, including the Ninja [...]

At last month's rapturously received Slate debut, it took an executive's quip that "Slate" and "Tesla" use the same five letters to shift my brain into high gear. I've covered the EV world for 15-plus years, and I virtually never spend time on counterfactuals. There's quite enough to cover in the real world. But ... [...]

After directing dozens of documentaries over his 60-year career, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese will now have his own life chronicled for Apple TV Plus. In its announcement, Apple says the five-part Mr. Scorsese documentary series will explore how themes like the place of good and evil in the fundamental nature of humankind" have shaped Scorsese's [...]

The mysterious device that OpenAI is cooking up with former Apple designer Jony Ive will be pocket-size, contextually aware, screen-free, and isn't eyewear. Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed details about the project in an internal staff call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, after announcing the $6.5 billion acquisition of Ive's AI hardware [...]

Fujifilm has a new pint-size addition to its X-series cameras coming in late June: the X Half. It's an 18-megapixel half-frame" camera with a portrait-oriented sensor and viewfinder and a fixed 32mm-equivalent f/2.8 lens. Despite being digital, the X Half is all about the vintage film aesthetic. The $849.99 camera is so dedicated to an [...]

Dyson has announced what it's claiming is the world's slimmest vacuum cleaner." At first glance, its new PencilVac looks like a broom rather than a vacuum because the battery, motor, and electronics are all integrated into a thin handle that's just 38mm in diameter - the same thickness as Dyson's Supersonic r hair dryer. It [...]

Microsoft employees have discovered that any emails they send with the terms "Palestine" or "Gaza" are getting temporarily blocked from being sent to recipients inside and outside the company. The No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) protest group reports that "dozens of Microsoft workers" have been unable to send emails with the words "Palestine," "Gaza," and [...]

A lawsuit against Google and companion chatbot service Character AI - which is accused of contributing to the death of a teenager - can move forward, ruled a Florida judge. In a decision filed today, Judge Anne Conway said that an attempted First Amendment defense wasn't enough to get the lawsuit thrown out. Conway determined [...]

Signal is taking proactive steps to ensure Microsoft's Recall feature can't screen capture your secured chats, by rolling out a new version of the Signal for Windows 11 client that enables screen security by default. This is the same DRM that blocks users from easily screenshotting a Netflix show on their computer or phone, and [...]

The trade association backing some of the biggest news publishers in the US slammed Google's newly expanded AI Mode, which trades traditional search results for an AI chatbot-like interface. In a statement on Wednesday, the News/Media Alliance said the new feature is depriving" publishers of both traffic and revenue. During Google I/O on Tuesday, the [...]

Microsoft has announced that a new Retro Classics" collection is now available to Game Pass subscribers. Reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch Online classic games library, the collection includes Pitfall, Grand Prix, and more than 50 other Activision titles from the 1980s and 1990s.It's not as many titles as the 1,300 retro games that Antstream, Microsoft's [...]

Artist and musician Brian Eno - who also composed the iconic Windows 95 operating system startup chime - called on Microsoft today to suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law," saying the company plays a role in surveillance, violence, and destruction in Palestine." It's the latest high-profile instance [...]

The 2026 Chevy Silverado EV is going off road -way off road - with the addition of the Trail Boss trim to the electric pickup's lineup. The electric version of the automaker's popular off-road trim, Trail Boss offers more capability and - insanely - even more range for the already class-leading Silverado EV. The upgraded [...]

Google announced a new SynthID Detector tool at Google I/O that lets you check if content has been made with the assistance of Google's AI tools. In a blog post, Google DeepMind's Pushmeet Kohli describes SynthID Detector as a verification portal" that can quickly and efficiently identify AI-generated content made with Google AI." It's also [...]

Toyota is redesigning and electrifying" its Rav4 lineup for 2026 with models that aren't quite EVs, but could masquerade as one. The mega popular SUV will come standard with hybrid powertrains, including a plug-in version with a feature you'd expect in only pure EVs: fast charging. That's right, the 2026 Rav4 PHEV can now plug [...]

While announcing a reportedly $6.5 billion team-up on AI hardware between his startup, io, and OpenAI, Jony Ive spoke to Bloomberg and commented on last year's attempts at making AI hardware happen, the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin: There have been public failures as well, such as the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit [...]

In its antitrust case against Meta, the US Federal Trade Commission is asking a judge to consider an alternate reality. In that world, the company never bought Instagram and WhatsApp. The two apps remained competitive with Facebook, developing features that competed for users' attention. And that competition created a thriving ecosystem of social media apps [...]

OpenAI is buying io, a hardware company founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and several other former engineers from his time there, including Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. Ive won't be joining OpenAI, and his design firm, LoveFrom, will continue to be independent, but they will take over design for all [...]

The Trump administration's attempts to gut 12 energy efficiency standards could cost Americans billions of dollars in higher electricity bills. The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it plans to rollback dozens of policies in what it called its largest deregulatory effort in history." While the DOE claims that getting rid of burdensome and [...]

Google didn't want to give publishers the choice to keep their content out of AI Search results because it's evolving into a space for monetisation." That's according to a newly disclosed internal document, spotted by Bloomberg, which reveals that Google had discussed offering publishers more granular control over how website data would be used in [...]

Luminar, a company that develops lidar systems for autonomous vehicles, started laying off workers just one day after its founder and CEO, Austin Russell, abruptly resigned. In a regulatory filing spotted by TechCrunch, the company said it began carrying out restructuring efforts on May 15th, which include a reduction in its workforce." Last year, Luminar [...]

Google's latest Android 16 beta adds a bunch of new wallpaper and lock screen options for Pixel phones, including live-updating weather animations and a feature that automatically frames subjects of photos within a variety of bubbly shapes. When you select an image to use as a wallpaper in the beta, you can tap the sparkly [...]

At a "crypto summit" on Tuesday held by Eric Adams - the controversial mayor of New York City who recently escaped several federal corruption charges - crypto CEOs and investors made an open plea: please get rid of state crypto regulations so we can write our own and turn the Big Apple into a "crypto [...]

Google's AI search results are about to get even more ads. On May 21st, the company announced that it's going to start testing ads in AI Mode, the new AI-powered search feature that just rolled out to everyone in the US. AI Mode is the new tab in Google Search that opens an AI chatbot-like [...]

A 19-year-old college student will plead guilty to carrying out a massive hack against PowerSchool, a popular student information system used by schools around the country. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice said Matthew Lane of Massachusetts agreed to plead guilty to four counts, including cyber extortion, unauthorized access to protected computers, and aggravated identity [...]

Sony is shutting down the current version" of the PlayStation Stars loyalty and rewards program that it launched in 2022, according to a blog post. The program let users obtain digital collectibles," which Sony described at the time as digital representations of things that PlayStation fans enjoy, including figurines of beloved and iconic characters from [...]

If you got a kick out of Baby Driver, there's a very good chance you're going to be into Darren Aronofsky's upcoming black comedy / thriller, Caught Stealing. Adapted from Charlie Huston's 2005 novel of the same name, Caught Stealing tells the wild take of Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), a former high school baseball prodigy [...]

Nintendo's latest entry in its ask the developer" interview series has some fun new details about the Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World. Among the many things discussed is an explanation for why the game isn't called Mario Kart 9, despite being a sequel to the best-selling Mario Kart 8 - and it has [...]

Metaphor ReFantazio - a game that combines innovative turn-based combat with a story timely for our current political moment - is coming to Xbox Game Pass later this month. In fact, the Game Pass line up for the rest of May is actually pretty sweet. Metaphor, Atlus' best RPG since Persona 5, arrives on Game [...]

If you ask me, there's always space in my games catalog for a fun third-person shooter that I can play with my buds online. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 delivers some of the best blood-gushing, bug-crushing action, filling a Gears of War void that I didn't know needed filling. You can jump into the fray [...]

Google is working with Samsung to bring a desktop mode to Android. During Google I/O's developer keynote, engineering manager Florina Muntenescu said the company is building on the foundation" of Samsung's DeX platform to bring enhanced windowing capabilities in Android 16," as spotted earlier by 9to5Google. Samsung first launched DeX in 2017, a feature that [...]

One of the more surprising moments in volume four of Love, Death, and Robots is an appearance from YouTube star MrBeast. He shows up in the episode "The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur," playing a sort of twisted game master presiding over a death race on one of the moons of Jupiter. Also, there are dinosaurs. [...]

Google's new Material 3 Expressive design language includes a welcome surprise for Pixel owners: the mandatory At a Glance home screen widget has shrunk, leaving space for an extra row of apps. The new look is included in the latest version of the Android 16 beta. Upon installation, Pixel owners are greeted with a pop-up [...]

TikTok users will now be able to save tracks they discover straight to their SoundCloud app. On Wednesday, the two companies announced they're partnering to expand an existing TikTok feature that was previously available to users of music streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. The add to music app" button appears when a TikTok [...]

Following the debut of the Oura Ring 4 last October, which featured improved accuracy for blood oxygen tracking and heart rate readings, the company has announced it's introducing additional algorithm improvements that will deliver more comprehensive and accurate movement tracking. First announced last month, the updates are now rolling out to members globally" and include [...]

Strava is making it easier to plan workouts and keep activity leaderboard rankings fair. The updates rolling out over the coming weeks focus on helping users optimize their workout routes to compete against other users and their own personal bests, building on some of the existing AI features that Strava announced last year. Anyone paying [...]

Google's AI models have a secret ingredient that's giving the company a leg up on competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. That ingredient is your data, and it's only just scratched the surface in terms of how it can use your information to "personalize" Gemini's responses. Google first started letting users opt in to its "Gemini [...]

In The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton wrote about killer alien space crystals that are (spoiler alert) ultimately stymied by Earth's breadth of pH values. In reality, crystals grown in space could be key to a new generation of cancer-fighting treatments that save lives, not threaten them. Colorado-based startup Sierra Space is nearly ready to launch [...]

AMD has announced its latest Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series of CPUs at Computex today. The 9000 Series and 9000 WX-Series are built for the demanding workstation market, and the top Threadripper Pro 9995WX will ship with 96 cores and 192 threads. This flagship Threadripper chip is designed for professionals who are working on [...]

Google I/O was, as predicted, an AI show. But now that the keynote is over, we can see that the company's vision is to use AI to eventually do a lot of Googling for you. A lot of that vision rests on AI Mode in Google Search, which Google is starting to roll out to [...]

Microsoft is working on a new Cross Device Resume" feature for Windows 11 that works similarly to Apple's Handoff feature in macOS. The feature was spotted in a Microsoft Build 2025 session, before Windows Central noticed Microsoft editing out the demo that showed a mobile Spotify session resuming on a PC. When you open the [...]

A year ago Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that Microsoft was planning to launch a new Xbox mobile web store in July 2024. That never happened. I've been wondering what the hold up has been over the past year, and it seems we might have an answer: Apple. Microsoft filed an amicus brief late on [...]

The original Wheel vertical turntable was a bust, the Wheel 2 redemption, and now the small mom and pop team at Miniot is back for a victory lap with the Wheel 3. It can play your record collection upright on its stand, laid flat on a table, or hung on a wall. Inside the handmade [...]

Amazon is issuing refunds to customers who'd returned products but never received their money back, in some cases from as long ago as 2018. Following a recent internal review, we identified a very small subset of returns where we issued a refund without the payment completing, or where we could not verify that the correct [...]

Microsoft's head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart's use of Microsoft's AI tools during a Build talk that was disrupted by protesters. The Build livestream was muted and the camera pointed down, but the session resumed moments later after the protesters were escorted out. In the aftermath, Haiby then [...]

At yesterday's I/O conference, Google announced plans to start putting its AI chatbot, Gemini, in a variety of different places, including cars. Today, Volvo said it was shoving its way to the front of the line to be the first to receive the new tech. Volvo said it was expanding its preexisting partnership with Google [...]

AMD is officially announcing its Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU at Computex today. Like the number implies, this graphics card will challenge Nvidia's recently released RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, with AMD offering models with 8GB or 16GB of VRAM. AMD is launching both models on June 5th, with the 8GB variant priced at [...]

Fortnite is once again available on the iOS App Store in the US, according to Epic Games. You can get it from the App Store here. Epic says it has returned to the Epic Games Store and AltStore as well. Apple kicked Fortnite off the App Store nearly five years ago after Epic Games added [...]