The Verge

As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything from AI to social media to the right to repair. Many of these laws, alongside rules passed in past years, take effect in 2026 - either right now or in the coming months. [...]

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is closing out 2025 with a 20-images-deep dive into what a new era of "infinite synthetic content" means as it all becomes harder and harder to distinguish from reality, and the old, more personal Instagram feed that he says has been "dead" for years. Last year, The Verge's Sarah Jeong wrote [...]

The fight for net neutrality never seems to be truly won or lost. Federal net neutrality rules have been on and off for the past 15 years. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the Open Internet Order under President Barack Obama in 2010, prohibiting ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful internet traffic, the baseline rule [...]

New photos and video seem to confirm previous leaks hinting that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will sport a new camera bump. OnLeaks posted images of what look like dummy phones on X, following renders it leaked back in September. We've seen a similarly raised island on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which 9to5Google points [...]

With the year coming to a close, now's a good time to set yourself up for a cleaner, more organized start in 2026. The Dreame X40 Ultra - one of our favorite robot vacuum deals from Black Friday - can handle most of the heavy lifting for you, and it's once again on sale. You [...]

In a good and just society, it would have been possible to bury Charlie Kirk without either threatening mass violence toward his enemies or making light of his death with a furry sex meme. But America in 2025 did not remotely resemble a working society, let alone a civil one, and Kirk's killing came prepackaged [...]

2025 was a big year for gaming, and that includes gaming hardware. Nintendo launched its Switch 2 console in June, and since then, numerous Switch 2 titles and noteworthy updates for original Switch games have launched. These include brand-new Nintendo experiences like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, as well as some belated but [...]

Two former employees at cybersecurity firms - one of whom was a ransomware negotiator - have pleaded guilty to carrying out a series of ransomware attacks in 2023. The Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas on Tuesday, saying 40-year-old Ryan Goldberg and 36-year-old Kevin Martin extorted $1.2 million in Bitcoin from a medical device [...]

Folding OLED displays are still most commonly found on premium smartphones and laptops, but One-Netbook is bringing the tech to a new gaming device. Its new OneXSugar Wallet is reminiscent of the company's folding OneXSugar Sugar 1 handheld that launched earlier this year. But instead of two screens, the Wallet handheld unfolds to reveal just [...]

GameSir is no stranger to experimenting with unique controller features - its Tarantula Pro can automatically swap its face button labels to accommodate alternate layouts, and its Pocket 1 clamps Game Boy controls onto your phone. What sets its new Swift Drive controller apart is a small steering wheel located smack-dab in the middle of [...]

Winter storms across the country are bringing heavy snow, rain, and - in some cases, as this Californian who briefly lost power a few days ago can attest - outages. If you want to prepare, Anker's 521 PowerHouse can help keep your essential devices running and it's on sale for $129.99 ($120 off) at Amazon. [...]

The US Cyber Trust Mark Program, an Energy Star-style certification for smart home security, could be winding down less than a year after it launched. Safety testing company UL Solutions has announced that it is stepping down as the program's lead administrator, just a few months after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began investigating it [...]

I can't grow anything. Multiple attempts to create a cottage garden, first in Idaho and now in South Carolina, have brought disappointment. Both are challenging climates, but where others have succeeded, I've been left with little more than a pile of cherry tomatoes for my vast efforts (those things are bulletproof). I'd all but given [...]

Canon's new EOS R6 Mark III is an excellent camera. It's not a groundbreaking upgrade to the 3-year-old R6 Mark II, but it takes the same body with great ergonomics and adds more resolution, video that now goes up to 7K with open-gate filming, and improved autofocus performance. If you're in need of an impeccably [...]

In early December, Joshua Aaron, the developer behind the ICEBlock app - designed to let people alert others about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents - filed a federal lawsuit alleging his First Amendment rights were violated. The Department of Justice had urged Apple to remove Aaron's app from its App Store, [...]

In just the past couple years, the art TV category that's been dominated by Samsung's The Frame has seen growth, with additions from both TCL and Hisense. Now LG has announced its own entry, the LG Gallery TV. The TV will leverage the Gallery+ service that LG released earlier this year, which includes thousands of [...]

GOG is splitting from CD Projekt, the game company that launched the preservation-focused PC gaming marketplace in 2008. In an update on Monday, GOG announced that its cofounder, Micha Kiciski, has acquired the digital storefront and its online gaming platform GOG Galaxy from CD Projekt - which he also cofounded - for $25.2 million. The [...]

After announcing and teasing its design well over a year ago, Epilogue's new SN Operator will finally be available for preorder starting tomorrow. Like the company's GB Operator that debuted in early 2021, the SN Operator is a standalone USB cartridge slot that lets you play and archive old Nintendo console games on PCs, Macs, [...]

Love them or hate them, more than half of the world's population interacts with algorithmic recommendations in some way every day. Algorithmic recommendations play an integral role in how users discover new content across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. It can be nice to be fed a stream of fresh posts, pictures, and [...]

It's almost the new year and time to treat yourself to a new pair of earbuds - especially if one of your resolutions for 2026 is to work out more. If you find yourself reading this and nodding, take a look at the Beats Powerbeats Fit, a recent upgrade of Beats' Fit Pro earbuds that [...]

A camera lens, historically, can only focus on one thing at a time, just like the human eye. That could be a thing of the past, though, thanks to a breakthrough lens technology developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that can bring every part of a scene into sharp focus, capturing finer details [...]

With all the drama surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery's plans to sell itself to another company, it's not currently clear how much longer HBO Max will continue to exist in its current form. But for the time being, the streamer is chock full of solid series you might want to consider watching if you find yourself [...]

Xiaomi used the Christmas period to launch its top flagship phone for the year, the 17 Ultra. It drops the extra rear display that's the key selling point of the 17 Pro, but instead adds in the option of a manual zoom ring, built directly into the phone's camera island. That rotating zoom is only [...]

In 2024, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips finally made Arm-based Windows laptops viable. Unlike previous Arm laptops that struggled to even run Windows well, this new class offered solid performance and the best battery life on Windows, and they impressed us in Microsoft's own Surface Laptop and Surface Pro offerings. But inconsistent app compatibility remained the [...]

Hello from the dead week of the year, when all sane people have logged off to spend time with their families. This is when I typically write at least one deeply weird post while I'm working over the holiday. One time I got left alone on New Year's Day and posted about cats all day [...]

Google Photos will finally be available on TVs next year, starting with an upcoming integration for Samsung TVs. Samsung announced that the planned integration will "seamlessly bring the photos people capture on their phones to Samsung TVs, where they can appear in a larger, cinematic format," and that it wants Google Photos to be "deeply [...]

LG unveiled a whole new line of gaming monitors ahead of CES on Friday. The UltraGear evo line are all high-end monitors covering a range of technologies, but united by 5K resolution and AI upscaling. The three flagships under the new branding are the 39GX950B, the 27GM950B, and the 52G930B. The first number in the [...]

Things that HP Lovecraft was good at: Creating a mythos. Building atmosphere. Things that HP Lovecraft was bad at: Writing dialog. Creating compelling characters. Not being a racist. As a fan of horror in general, I can't pretend that Lovecraft isn't an important touchstone. But the man's blatant racism is also impossible to ignore, especially [...]

The Nintendo Power Glove was not good. It's important that you know that. The Power Glove was ambitious, impressive, even important - one of the very first mainstream devices that let you control a game using your body instead of just your thumbs - but it was not good. In some ways, its not-good-ness is [...]

Yesterday, Ubisoft confirmed that Rainbow Six Siege had been compromised and that it had shut down the game's servers and marketplace while it resolved the issue. The hackers managed to gain control over a significant chunk of the game's systems, including the ability to ban and unban users, sending custom messages to ban ticker, unlocking [...]

In this new era of console... inclusivity? driven by Sony and mostly Microsoft bringing their exclusives to other platforms, it's getting harder to highlight games that make a singular console shine. Indeed, the top-performing games year after year on both PlayStation and Xbox are multiplatform releases, and often the best games of the year, like [...]

For years, Samsung has made products that try to camouflage what they are by displaying works of art. The Frame TV is the most famous example, but the company also released the Music Frame, a speaker disguised as a picture frame, at last year's CES. Now, instead of hiding a speaker with a piece of [...]

OpenAI is hiring a Head of Preparedness. Or, in other words, someone whose primary job is to think about all the ways AI could go horribly, horribly wrong. In a post on X, Sam Altman announced the position by acknowledging that the rapid improvement of AI models poses "some real challenges." The post goes on [...]

If you're taking it easy during the slow, in-between week between Christmas and New Year's, now's a good time to catch up on deals you might've missed. Many of our favorite discounts from the past week are still hanging around, making this an especially convenient moment to shop. Whether you're eyeing a new phone, gearing [...]

I played a lot of games on my Steam Deck this year. It seemed like there was a never-ending list of incredible indie games to try - The Verge wrote about a lot of them! - and many worked brilliantly on Valve's handheld gaming PC. Some bigger games made a splash on Steam Deck, too, [...]

Dominion Energy, an offshore wind developer and utility serving Virginia's "data center alley," filed suit against the Trump administration this week over its decision to pause federal leases for large offshore wind projects. The move puts a sudden stop to five wind farms already under construction, including Dominion's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. The complaint [...]

There are plenty of dating apps out there and apps that turn your chaos of work obligations into easily actionable lists. There is also a growing number of apps that help you make new friends. The pitch for Rodeo is a bit different in that it uses AI to help you schedule activities with your [...]

The modular PC company Framework is adjusting the price of its DDR5 RAM modules once again as the cost of memory continues to surge. In an update on Wednesday, Framework said it will charge $10 per GB for 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB, with "slightly higher" prices for the 48GB and up. Framework first announced a [...]

If you've been saddled with some awful Gmail address you chose in high school (looking at you, LazySexyCool3030), help appears to be on the way. According to a Google account support page in Hindi the company is allowing some people to change their email address. According to the page (via Google Translate): If your Google [...]

Aside from free shipping, Prime Video is the second-best perk that comes with an Amazon Prime subscription. This year, the streaming service delivered several strong installments to some of its biggest series like Reacher, Fallout, and Invincible - but it also premiered some great new shows and spinoffs to keep things fresh. Here's a list [...]

LG is getting ready to take the wraps off a new robot it claims is capable of performing a "wide range" of household chores. The robot, called LG CLOiD, will make its debut at CES next month, featuring two articulated arms and five individually actuated fingers on each hand. Though we only have a description [...]

When your kid starts showing a preference for one of their stuffed animals, you're supposed to buy a backup in case it goes missing. I've heard this advice again and again, but never got around to buying a second plush deer once "Buddy" became my son's obvious favorite. Neither, apparently, did the parents in Google's [...]

AI isn't new to Hollywood - but this was the year when it really made its presence felt. For years now, the entertainment industry has used different kinds of generative AI products for a variety of post-production processes ranging from de-aging actors to removing green screen backgrounds. In many instances, the technology has been a [...]

As you might expect, things have been relatively quiet on the deals front since Black Friday, particularly when it comes to discounts on charging accessories. Thankfully, Anker's aptly titled Laptop Power Bank is once again on sale at Amazon and Walmart for $87.99 ($47 off), which matches the record-low price we last saw at the [...]

Sony's full suite of PlayStation 5 consoles jumped in price in August due to increased US tariffs, but now through Christmas, you can save $100 on several models. This discount is especially great if you planned to go big with Sony's PS5 Pro, the company's priciest, most powerful console yet. Normally $749.99, you can currently [...]

Netflix has had an interesting year. Its ad tier, introduced last year, has grown significantly, and its live TV initiative has expanded to include not only weird one-offs like hot-dog-eating grudge matches but also WWE programming. Taking KPop Demon Hunters off Sony's hands for the business equivalent of $200 in a potato chip bag also [...]

2025 was the year generative AI made its presence felt in the video game industry. Its use has been discovered in some of the most popular games of the year, and CEOs from some of the largest game studios claim it's being implemented everywhere in the industry including in their own development processes. Meanwhile, rank-and-file [...]

It's a good thing that we already know a second season of Pluribus is on the way. Because the season finale for the show - a sci-fi drama on Apple TV, helmed by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan - made it clear that things are just getting started. The episode brought together a number of [...]

On Tuesday, the Trump Administration followed through on a threat of retaliation targeting foreigners who are involved in content moderation. The State Department announced sanctions barring US access for former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, as well as four researchers, while issuing an intentionally chilling threat to others, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming, "The [...]