The Verge

Sunny days are on their way to Netflix. The streamer just announced that the next season of Sesame Street will be available on Netflix later this year." Season 56 of the show won't be fully exclusive to Netflix, as the company says that it has exclusive worldwide premiere rights and episodes will be available day-and-date [...]

Google's annual I/O developer conference is almost here, and all eyes will be on the company's opening keynote. But for the first time in years, we know there's little reason to hope for major Android OS announcements, since Google already did that last week. Instead, we're expecting I/O's keynote to be (almost) all about AI, [...]

Microsoft's annual developer conference kicks off today in Seattle, Washington, during the same week Google hosts its own I/O developer event in Mountain View, California. Build will be focused on Microsoft's latest platform changes for developers, including new AI announcements that are bound to go head-to-head with Google's own news. Microsoft is streaming Build online [...]

Apple Intelligence has been a wreck since its first features rolled out last year, and a big new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman details why - and how Apple is trying to piece things back together. And much of its effort hinges on rebuilding Siri from the ground up. Gurman has reported in the past [...]

China has launched the first 12 satellites of a planned 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer satellite network, reports Space News. The satellites, created by the company ADA Space, Zhijiang Laboratory, and Neijang High-Tech Zone, will be able to process the data they collect themselves, rather than relying on terrestrial stations to do it for them, according to [...]

For most of my life, I've relied on a paper map when I go outdoors. Then, in March, I joined my friend Rusty on the Appalachian Trail for two weeks. He told me to download FarOut. FarOut was my introduction to the world of app-based navigation. It's focused on thru-hikers, and has useful details, including [...]

There have been a lot of big games this year that have felt all-consuming, like Monster Hunter Wilds or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Maze Mice offers something different: a small, pick-up-and-play experience that takes a bunch of ideas from some classics and adds a clever twist. The game, from Luck Be a Landlord developer TrampolineTales, [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 83, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, please don't spoil Andor for me, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Mission: Impossible and Sam Altman's kitchen and [...]

Yesterday, Reuters ran a story with the headline Weeks after Amazon's Alexa+ AI launch, a mystery: where are the users?," in which it detailed its difficulty locating first-hand accounts of the AI-upgraded assistants' use online. The Verge asked Amazon about the story, and the company has responded to say that the idea that Alexa Plus [...]

A former DoorDash delivery driver pleaded guilty this week to a wire fraud conspiracy that scammed the company out of over $2.5 million, the US Attorney's Office in California's Northern District announced on Tuesday. He and others made it happen over a period of months using fake customer accounts, deliveries that never happened, driver accounts, [...]

Epic is asking District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to order Apple to review - and approve if compliant with Apple's guidelines - Epic's submission of Fortnite to the US App Store in a new court filing.The company argues in the document that Appleis once again in contempt of the judge's April order restricting it from [...]

Last fall, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber was roundly ridiculed after suggesting the company would like to produce a "Forever Mouse" - a mouse with a monthly subscription fee for software updates. It seemed to betray a lack of understanding: many people who buy mice don't want software at all, much less software they have to [...]

Let's get one thing out of the way immediately: you shouldn't buy Huawei's trifold phone, the Mate XT. And that's alright, because you probably couldn't if you wanted to - while it's no longer exclusive to China, it's only on sale in a handful of countries, and not in the US or Europe. Besides, I [...]

If you like games with parrying, there are two great new ways to get your fix: Doom: The Dark Ages and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. These very different games - one is a fast-paced first-person shooter, the other a turn-based fantasy RPG - approach the mechanic in very different ways. Let's start with Doom. One [...]

Android is getting its biggest visual update in years, and rather than unveiling it for the first time at its big annual developer conference, Google announced Material Three Expressive at a pre-show event broadcast on YouTube the week before. If a major design language shift for the world's most popular mobile OS doesn't qualify as [...]

Meta's building a new AI data center so massive in Louisiana that the local utility company has plans to construct three new gas-fired power plants to provide it with enough electricity. Now, advocates and lawmakers are pressing Meta for answers about how it'll clean up pollution stemming from the data center's energy consumption. Sen. Sheldon [...]

GameStop will have additional Switch 2 stock available in-store and online when the console launches next month, according to a post on X. In-store launch events will begin at 3PM local time on June 4th, according to the company. Pickups start on June 5th at 12AM EST / June 4th at 9PM PST. Online orders [...]

Activision is starting to wind down Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile just over a year after its global launch. The game has not met our expectations with mobile-first players like it has with PC and console audiences," according to a post on X. The company will be pulling the game from the App Store and [...]

Nintendo announced last month that it would be updating a handful of Switch games to run better on the Switch 2, and now some details about the planned improvements are available on its website. The improvements vary per game, but they include things like optimizing visuals for the Switch 2's larger screen, better frame rates, [...]

It's a great time to catch up on some big games you might've missed out on recently. Epic Games is holding a Mega Sale that includes big discounts on a ton of PC games, including Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, which is on sale for $14.99 instead of $29.99, and The Last of Us Part [...]

Microsoft has quietly launched an updated Spotlight-like launcher app for Windows that provides quick access to commands, apps, and development tools. The software maker originally launched its PowerToys Run launcher for Windows 10 nearly five years ago, and the updated version - Command Palette - now includes search for apps, folders, and files, calculations, system [...]

Microsoft is going to allow Xbox owners to pin apps and games directly to the Home UI. The latest change to the homescreen section of the Xbox dashboard will be available to Xbox Insiders this week, alongside options to hide system apps, choose the number of apps and games listed, and modify the size of [...]

Fortnite maker Epic Games has announced that Apple has blocked the game's return to iOS. Following the rejection, Fortnite is no longer available on iPhones and iPads even in the European Union, where it had previously been available to download through the Epic Games Store. Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release [...]

Verizon's $20 billion deal to acquire the fiber internet provider Frontier is officially happening. On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission signed off on the merger, which will allow Verizon to upgrade and expand" Frontier's existing fiber networks. Verizon expects to bring fiber to 1 million homes each year following the acquisition. The deal went through [...]

After The Washington Post earlier this month revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had instructed the State Department to help Starlink expand in order to fend off Chinese technological influence, an extensive ProPublica article published Thursday dove deeper into what those campaigns looked like at the ground level. According to cables sent between the [...]

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has never been subtle with his commentary on the rich and powerful, but the new trailer for his HBO feature Mountainhead spells out exactly what makes its central characters people you shouldn't be rooting for. Set in a remote cabin at the top of a mountain, Mountainhead revolves around a quartet [...]

xAI has published the system prompts for its AI chatbot Grok after an unauthorized" change led to a slew of unprompted responses on X about white genocide. The company says it will publish its Grok system prompts on GitHub from now on, which provide some insight into the way xAI has instructed Grok to respond [...]

Spotify announced earlier this month that podcast creators and listeners would get a new data point: how many plays an episode has gotten. The idea, according to Spotify, was that listeners could discover new shows they hadn't heard of, enticed by this new public measure of fandom. Podcasters did not see it that way. Since [...]

Bungie has issued a statement on social media saying it is investigating how unauthorized artwork appeared in the closed alpha test of its PvPvE shooter Marathon. Earlier this week, Scottish artist Fern Hook posted on social media that her work had appeared in the Marathon alpha without her knowledge or permission. Its environments are covered [...]

OpenAI's next "low-key research preview" has arrived. This time, it's not ChatGPT, but a coding agent dubbed Codex that is being made available to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team subscribers starting Friday. By drumming up comparisons to how ChatGPT was first described, CEO Sam Altman and other company leaders are positioning Codex as the company's [...]

Four years after the company released its first wireless arcade-style controller, 8BitDo is debuting a new version that's almost one-third as thick as the original. Its new Arcade Controller managed to slim down by ditching the original's joystick and focusing on only buttons in a unique layout. Often referred to as a leverless controller, or [...]

The US Army is done relying on contractors to repair its equipment. Earlier this month, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll committed to including right-to-repair provisions in all existing and future contracts with manufacturers, a change Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told The Verge will put an end to our dependence on giant defense contractors who charge billions [...]

When Fortnite players meet Darth Vader in the game's ongoing Star Wars event, they will be able to speak with the Sith Lord directly, and he's going to respond with a voice that sounds exactly like James Earl Jones. Though Darth Vader has previously appeared as an NPC (and a battle pass skin) in Fortnite, [...]

Microsoft says it has found no evidence that the Israeli military has used its Azure and AI technology to harm Palestinian civilians or anyone else in Gaza. The software maker says it has conducted an internal review and engaged an external firm," to perform a review, after some Microsoft employees have repeatedly called on the [...]

At this point, there are more than enough ways to play Street Fighter II. But Project Justice and Plasma Sword? Well, those are something entirely different, and much harder to find. And Capcom has made the smart decision to continue to make some of its more obscure fighters the focal point of its growing library [...]

It's not TV, it's HBO. No, sorry, it's HBO Go. And also HBO Now. But now it's HBO Max, except wait, now it's not HBO at all? It's just Max? Actually, I'm being told it is once again HBO Max. Thank you for joining us on this wild and utterly nonsensical branding journey. Please keep [...]

Charter and Cox have announced plans to merge in a $34.5 billion deal that will create a cable and internet behemoth. The two telecom companies say the merger will allow them to aggressively compete" against larger broadband companies and mobile providers that have rolled out internet plans of their own. Charter, which currently has 31.5 [...]

One morning last month, I walked into my kitchen to get a glass of water, but my smart faucet was out of battery. I went to sit down in my front room, and the shade was still shut - it was out of battery. I walked down the hall and found a beached robot vacuum [...]

Acer is announcing a whole slew of new laptops at the Computex 2025 computer show in Taiwan, including the Swift Edge 14 AI that weighs half a pound less than the MacBook Air, and the Predator Triton 14 AI for a mix of both gaming and content creation. There are over a dozen new models [...]

Anthropic has responded to allegations that it used an AI-fabricated source in its legal battle against music publishers, saying its Claude chatbot made an honest citation mistake." An erroneous citation was included in a filing submitted by Anthropic data scientist Olivia Chen on April 30th, as part of the AI company's defense against claims that [...]

If you've spent any time on the internet, you may have seen the "what I expected vs. what I got" memes. If I could make one for Doom: The Dark Ages, in my expected column I'd reference the earlier Doom games - Eternal and the 2016 soft reboot of the franchise. But for the "what [...]

When it launches next summer, Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Greek epic The Odyssey will be historic in more ways than one: it will be the first feature film ever shot entirely on IMAX film. The Odyssey isn't the first film to be shot entirely using IMAX hardware - that honor belongs to Avengers: Infinity War [...]

Wooting set the standard for gaming keyboards with the original 60HE three years ago, and now it's ready to launch a successor with an upgraded design. The 60HE v2 will be available later this year with true 8K polling, a new closed-bottom switch, and an aluminum case that should all add up to a faster [...]

After xAI's chatbot Grok spent a few hours on Wednesday telling every X user that would listen that the claim of white genocide in South Africa is highly contentious, the company has blamed the behavior on an unauthorized modification" to Grok's code. Wednesday's hours-long outburst saw Grok insert discussion of alleged white genocide in South [...]

Meta has filed a motion for judgment on the antitrust case it's currently fighting in court. The motion argues that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has failed to produce any evidence that Meta unlawfully monopolized part of the social networking market, something the government argues it did through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The [...]

Epic Games has been waiting for Apple to approve Fortnite for the US iOS App Store for nearly a week, and now Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is using X to try and put pressure on Apple. On Thursday, he highlighted examples of Fortnite lookalikes that are currently on the App Store and made a direct [...]

TikTok will interrupt teens' feeds with guided meditation after 10PM. The platform has been testing the feature with a wind down" prompt, but now it'll show the notification with guided meditation by default to all users under 18. TikTok's wind-down prompt initially only played calming music to remind teens to take a break from the [...]

Watching the behavior of our tech overlords has answered questions I'd never thought to ask. How do you NDA an army of baby mamas? Is there anything more embarrassing than impersonating Benson Boone? (Also, who is Benson Boone?) And now, the latest: how long after a sovereign ruler of a repressive state murders one of [...]

Coinbase says cyber criminals bribed and recruited" support workers to help steal customer data and trick victims into sending money to attackers. As a result of the attack, bad actors obtained the names, addresses, phone numbers, government IDs images, account data, and partial social security numbers of a small subset of users," according to a [...]

After five years, I was still happy with my phone, even though its battery had started the inevitable process of slowing to a stop. But Donald Trump's tariff nonsense pushed me to make a decision: buy a new phone or fix the old one now, before the prices go up. The answer was clearer than [...]