The Verge - All Posts

Image: Richard Varda If you're nostalgic for the era of lugging your desktop to a friend's house to play Unreal Tournament, software engineer Kenton Varda doesn't have exactly the solution - but he thinks he has something better. The Cloudflare Workers tech lead has spent more than three years and at least a million dollars to transform his Austin house into the ultimate local PC gaming pad, complete with 22 machines and a dedicated hardware room. It's dubbed the LAN Party House, and you're probably not invited.LAN (short for local area network, as many readers likely know) parties were the best option for online" gaming in the era of dial-up internet. While some are large-scale events, Varda's house is aimed at having groups of friends drop by, pull a... Continue reading...

Photos by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images The NBA has reached an 11-year agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery that will continue the development of content like Inside the NBA, which will appear on ABC and ESPN. The settlement comes months after Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA for dropping TNT's licensing package.In July, the NBA chose licensing deals with Amazon's Prime Video, Disney, and NBCUniversal over TNT. This resulted in a lawsuit from Warner Bros. Discovery that accused the NBA of breach of contract. During the 2025-2026 season, dozens of the NBA's regular-season and playoff games will stream on Prime Video service, while some games will still appear on ESPN, ABC, and NBC.Warner Bros. Discovery's settlement includes the highlight rights to NBA games, which it can... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Roblox is starting to roll out some recently-announced child safety features, and the updates include some new limitations for how users under 13 can communicate on the platform. Beginning Monday, users younger than 13 won't be able to DM players outside of games or experiences on Roblox. And they'll need parental permission to be able to send in-game DMs - though this change won't be fully implemented across the platform until the first quarter of 2025.The changes follow recent reports highlighting instances of Roblox failing to protect children. A big article from Bloomberg described how predators on the platform use chat to communicate with kids. And a report from Hindenburg Research described Roblox as an X-rated pedophile... Continue reading...

Image: LG LG's 27-inch OLED gaming monitor is one of the fastest models we've seen to date and it's finally ready for preorder. The UltraGear 27GX790A (or GX7 for short) is priced at $999.99 and is built around a 480Hz panel from LG Display announced in early January with a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 0.03ms response time.The base specs of the GX7 are on par with the $1,100 InZone M10S that Sony released in September. That makes the UltraGear GX7 a smidge cheaper, but it lacks some of the performance modes and variable refresh rate features available on Sony's offering.The UltraGear GX7 is listed as available for preorder on LG's US website, but there's no mention of a delivery date and it can't yet be added to the basket for checkout. We've... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that intends to name Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, a commissioner at the FCC since 2017, has made a name for himself by threatening to use the commission's powers to regulate speech online and over the airwaves.Carr authored Project 2025's section on the FCC, using it to propose restrictions on social media platforms meant to bolster conservative speech. He proposed limiting the legal shield that gives websites wide latitude to host and moderate user-generated content. He also suggested putting regulations on tech companies that would limit their ability to block and prioritize that content as they choose.In the lead up to the election, Carr... Continue reading...

I haven't been able to find mine for years. | Image: Apple The Apple Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack Adapter may have bitten the dust, as it's sold out at Apple's online store in the US and much of the world, MacRumors reports. The accessory is reportedly still available from Apple in some countries, including France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.If it's truly gone, then this feels like the end of an era. Apple introduced the Lightning headphone adapter in 2016 alongside the iPhone 7, when it first courageously ditched the headphone jack. The company even included it with new iPhones for a couple of generations before it stopped doing that for 2018's iPhone XS, leaving customers to buy one themselves, pick up Lightning EarPods, or get on the AirPods train (which many of us had started... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge An Ohio man named Larry Dean Harmon will serve three years in prison and forfeit more than $400 million worth of cryptocurrency and other assets, the Department of Justice announced on Friday. Harmon was indicted in 2020 on money laundering conspiracy charges related to Helix, a darkweb cryptocurrency mixer" service he ran.Also known as crypto tumbling," services like Helix are designed to hide cryptocurrency transactions - often for illegal drugs - and the identity of people involved. From 2014 to 2017, Harmon processed more than 350,000 Bitcoin (about $311 million USD at the time) in such transactions, according to the DOJ's announcement.Harmon, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in August 2021, will be on... Continue reading...

Image: Square Enix We're in a pretty good moment for sprawling, complex role-playing games. New releases like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Age Absolution, along with older titles like Elden Ring (including this year's expansion), Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur's Gate 3 have sucked millions of people into their expansive worlds. They can be all-consuming experiences, offering players all kinds of freedom to explore their worlds and characters. But honestly? Sometimes I don't want to fuss with conversation wheels or make difficult, narrative-altering choices. I just want to go on a big adventure and slowly turn into an overpowered hero fighting monsters - and that's where the excellent new remake of Dragon Quest 3 comes in.The game originally came out way... Continue reading...

Netflix had a very big night. | Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images for Netflix Netflix peaked at 65 million concurrent streams" during the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul last night, according to Most Valuable Promotions, the promoter for the fight. Those streams went out to 60 million households globally, the group said in a press release shared with The Verge via email. That's more than twice the traffic Netflix could see for its Christmas Day NFL stream this year, if everyone who watched last year streamed it.The crush of people trying to watch Tyson vs. Paul seemed to be more than Netflix's servers could easily handle, as the social web was awash with complaints about the quality of the stream, which many found to be muddy, or plagued with buffering and dropped connections. Downdetector recorded... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From simple fitness bands and rugged sports watches to rings, these are the best trackers you can get. Continue reading...

The Freo X Ultra packs a lot of features for the price, including the ability to automatically remop your floors when necessary. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is fun and all, but the amount of cleaning you have to do afterward can be exhausting. The Narwal Freo X Ultra robot vacuum / mop hybrid can help speed things up, though, and it's currently down to an all-time low of $849.99 (about $690 off) at Best Buy and Amazon (when you apply the on-page coupon).The Narwal Freo X Ultra is one of our favorite robot vacuums for mopping. It features a commendable 8,200Pa of suction power and a host of welcome features, including a set of spinning triangular mops that allow it to clean hard surfaces exceptionally well. It can adjust the amount of pressure applied by its mop based on floor type, too, and can even make its own cleaning decisions," one of which will prompt it... Continue reading...

Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images for Netflix Netflix's livestream of the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match was a mess. I'm not talking about the bout itself - although people had their qualms with that, too - it's the livestream, which people across the internet complained was plagued by buffering, unstable, and unwatchable muddiness. That doesn't bode well for Netflix's live sports ambitions, especially its upcoming Christmas Day NFL games.I had the same experience, having tuned in a few minutes before Paul showed up in the back of a lowrider truck. For the vast majority of the 8-round match, I had to lean heavily on my brain's ability to construct a cohesive picture from very little information to have an idea of what was going on. The X post below was very much what the... Continue reading...

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge So, you've finally decided to give Bluesky a shot. The social network has come a long way since the early bare-bones days of invite-only signups and recently grew past the 15 million user mark. Along the way, it's gathered a lot of familiar posting platform features, like direct messages, pinned posts, and the ability to post videos up to 60 seconds in length.But there's a lot more to it than that, and I'm not only talking about lore. (Yes, Bluesky has lore, and that's probably the most classic Twitter thing about it.) It's also got a number of features and settings you won't find on X or Threads, like the ability to choose your own algorithm or moderation tools. These serve not just as a fast lane to getting the platform to feel... Continue reading...

In which various government bodies fight over permissionless" assets | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States" when it comes to crypto, according to a lawsuit from 18 states. These states want to halt the SEC's enforcement actions, so they can manage crypto regulation instead. Also named as a plaintiff on the suit is the DeFi Education Fund, a special interest lobbyist.Controversial SEC chair Gary Gensler is named in the suit, along with other SEC commissioners. Gensler's treatment of crypto during his time as chair has made him a punching bag for the industry - and for Republicans such as president-elect Donald Trump.There has been an ongoing turf war over crypto regulation. Until this point, the two major contenders were the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp dropped the most I can't believe this wasn't already there" feature this week: message drafts. Now, WhatsApp lets you know if you have unsent messages typed up in chats so you know to get back to them later.To let you know about a draft, messages you've started writing will show a green and bold Draft" word followed by what you've typed up. That way, you can ponder about finishing it when you open the app and not accidentally ignore your friends (though you still purposefully could, I guess.)Drafts also end up at the top of the chats list, so you don't have to scroll to search for lost ones. The feature is now available in the app worldwide, Engadget reports.WhatsApp announced in July that it had hit 100 million monthly... Continue reading...

Image: ESPN ESPN is testing an AI-generated avatar with the Saturday college football show SEC Nation. Dubbed FACTS, it's going to be ...promoting education and fun around sports analytics" with information drawn from ESPN Analytics, which includes data like the Football Power Index (FPI), player and team statistics, and game schedules. We haven't seen the avatar in action, but it sounds like a bot-ified version of stats encyclopedia Howie Schwab, who was ESPN's first statistician and eventually the star of a mid-2000s game show, Stump the Schwab.ESPN has already brought generative AI to its website with AI-written game recaps. FACTS is still in development, and there's no word on when it could make its first appearance on the network.FACTS... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google Workspace is rolling out a Gemini-powered AI image generator directly in Google Docs that lets you quickly whip up visuals for your writeups. Essentially, it's a clip art maker that follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's AI-generated art feature in its Office products.Google's image generator in Docs is available to paid Workspace accounts that include the Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium, or Google One AI Premium add-ons.Those with the new feature can find it under Insert > Image > Help me create an image, which results in a Create an image" sidebar where you can type in a description of what you'd like to make. It also provides a drop-down to select an art style with options such as Photography" or... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Social network Bluesky, in a post on Friday, says that it has no intention" of taking user content to train generative AI tools. It made the statement the same day X's new terms of service that spell out how it can analyze user text and other information to train its generative AI tools go into effect.A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data," Bluesky says in a post. We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so."

Image: The Verge US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hate, and other extremist ideologies" on the PC gaming platform.The letter features a high-level view of the kind of hateful content the ADL found on Steam. That includes 40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, with the most prominent being 1488,' shekel,' and white power'." Warner's letter highlights how the apparent preponderance of hateful content... Continue reading...

The new AirPods 4 deliver better sound and voice call quality than prior models. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple's ever-popular AirPods. Although we've yet to see major deals on the new AirPods 4 and the updated AirPods Max, both the second- and third-gen AirPods can still often be found at a steep discount. The same goes for the original Max headphones, which are nearly indistinguishable from the previous model aside from the switch to a USB-C connector.Here, we've rounded up the best deals currently available on each model, including the second-gen and third-gen AirPods, both iterations of the AirPods 4, the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C, and the last-gen AirPods Max.The best AirPods (second-gen) dealsBefore they were discontinued alongside the AirPods 4 announcement, the... Continue reading...

This could be so much better. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge We could argue all day about the merits of iOS versus Android, but there's one thing the Android ecosystem offers that you definitely won't find from Apple right now: a decent midrange phone.By decent," I mean something I can enthusiastically recommend. Not Eh, if it's literally your only option, then it's fine," which is how I've caveated my recommendations of the iPhone SE over the past couple of years. Remember the SE? Apple released the first version in 2016, putting a then-current A9 chip into an older body design for $399 compared to $649 for the iPhone 6S. I still have mine, and it rules.Two generations later, and the SE is still Apple's most affordable iPhone, now starting at $429. For that price, you get a well-built phone... Continue reading...

Casio's smart ring is a tiny digital watch. | Image: Casio Not to be outdone by its longtime rival, Casio has announced its own digital ring watch that brings more functionality than Timex's wearable that debuted last month. Created to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of Casio getting into the digital watch business, the CRW-001-1JR will be available in Japan starting in December for 19,800, or around $128.Although the tiny watch's case is just shy of being an inch in size, Casio has managed to squeeze in a retro six-segment LCD screen that can display hours, minutes, and seconds. The ring also includes three functional buttons that can control additional features like displaying the date or the time in a different time zone, and a stopwatch. Image: Casio Casio's new... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, meaning less work for you. We picked the best bots you can buy right now. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Threads is testing a way to create custom feeds for certain profiles or topics, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday. The upcoming feature should make it easier to keep tabs on different interests, such as your favorite sports team or even technology-related news.It sounds similar to the custom feeds feature Bluesky rolled out last year - but Threads' version seems a lot simpler. To create a custom feed, just search and tap into a topic. From there, select the three-dot icon beside the search term and choose create new feed." GIF: Meta You can create feeds that track soccer or men's fashion. You can also add profiles to your custom feed by selecting the three-dot icon above someone's profile photo and... Continue reading...

Photo: David Pierce / The Verge The Rabbit R1 can now use AI to redesign the device's entire interface based on a prompt. Some examples shared by Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu show a Legend of Zelda-inspired interface, another made in the style of Windows XP, and one using a dark green scanline background."Though this seems like a fun way to customize the R1, Rabbit says responses on the AI-generated interfaces are slower than the default UI on R1 and can take over 30 seconds to appear." It suggests disabling this feature if you want the fastest responses possible.

Amazon's latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max is a snappy streaming stick with impressive Alexa integration. | Image: Amazon If you missed out on Amazon's fall Prime Day event, the retailer's early Black Friday sale is offering everybody another chance to score steep discounts on Amazon devices. One of the best deals currently available is on the latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which has dropped to an all-time low of $32.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.Amazon's latest streaming device is nearly identical to the last-gen model - which was once one of our top recommendations - only it features a number of iterative upgrades, including Wi-Fi 6E support and twice the storage (16GB). It can also display widgets and artwork when idle, much like recent TV offers from Hisense and TCL, and you can use it to create your own backgrounds using voice prompts... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Bluesky hit 15 million users this week. And then 16 million. The vibes on Bluesky are immaculate, and it seems to have a real and renewed chance to be the place that replaces Twitter for a lot of people. But then there's Threads, which grew by approximately one Bluesky just this month. There's also Mastodon, which is still hanging around, and of course there's X. There are more options than ever, and it's more confusing than ever.On this episode of The Vergecast, we try and make sense of all this change. Will all this new growth and momentum help Bluesky grow not just as an app but as a decentralized protocol? Is it a real threat to ActivityPub and the notion of the fediverse? Do we know yet what kind of social network wants to be? And... Continue reading...

Image: HBO HBO's new Dune prequel series sharpens the Bene Gesserit's history into pointed drama that calls for some patience. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google has placed some new limitations on a Google Photos feature that allows users to automatically share images and videos in their library with a partner. The update to Partner Sharing now means that users can only share photos or videos that were taken using their device's default camera app, meaning partners are unable to see screenshots or images shared on services like WhatsApp.Some Reddit users who utilize Partner Sharing initially reported the issue as a bug, but several comments made by a presumed Google employee say the change was intentionally made to better align with most users' expectations." This is backed up by an updated Partner Sharing help article that says photos from other apps on Android aren't shared with your... Continue reading...

Image: Tesla Robin Zeng, the founder of the world's largest EV battery company, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk's big bet on 4680 cylindrical cell technology is going to fail and never be successful." Zeng, the chairman of China's Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), tells Reuters that when Musk visited China in April, We had a very big debate, and I showed him. He was silent. He doesn't know how to make a battery."Tesla's tabless" 4680 cells, which are used in some of its cars, including the Cybertruck, are supposed to have five times" more energy capacity, and the company announced in September it had produced 100 million of them. A recent report by The Information said Musk had given the team working on the batteries an end of the year deadline... Continue reading...

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge We found the best cameras for your budget and needs. Continue reading...

Image: NASA NASA is teaming up with Microsoft to create an AI chatbot designed to make it easier to access and understand scientific data about the Earth. The tool, called Earth Copilot, will be able to answer questions about our planet by condensing NASA's wide swath of geospatial information into easy-to-digest responses.To create the tool, NASA is integrating AI into its data repository, allowing Earth Copilot to refer to this information when answering questions, such as What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?" or How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the US?"NASA aims to democratize" access to scientific data with the launch of Earth Copilot, as obtaining and understanding the information within NASA's... Continue reading...

The Teenage Engineering OP-XY feels like an upgraded version of the company's six-year-old OP-Z. | Image: Teenage Engineering Teenage Engineering's new OP-XY is a portable synthesizer and sequencer that looks similar to the company's OP-1 Field. But functionally it's instead a more capable upgrade to the company's six-year-old OP-Z, with a stronger focus on layering sounds with various effects and a steeper $2,299 price tag.With an anodized, all-black finish," the OP-XY is yet another delightful example of Teenage Engineering's design chops. Its black and white motif accented with a grayscale gradient running across its 16 sequencer inputs is the antithesis of the bright yellow Playdate handheld that Teenage Engineering helped Panic design. Unlike the $429 OP-Z that relied on a mobile device like a smartphone for its screen, the OP-XY now has a black and... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge TikTok will let advertisers pull in content from Getty Images when using the platform's AI ad creation tool. With the integration, advertisers can use Getty's licensed images and videos to make ads containing AI-generated content, including AI avatars that look like real people.The integration will be available through TikTok's Symphony Creative Studio - an AI-powered video generation tool that rolled out today for all advertisers. This tool can generate a video based on a product description, add an AI avatar to speak" about it, and even incorporate AI-powered dubbing in different languages. Advertisers can also use the tool to generate multiple versions of an ad, as well as remix" an existing one. GIF: TikTok T... Continue reading...