The Verge

iRobot just launched its ninth new robot vacuum of the year. That's a record number for the company, which is struggling to dig itself out of the giant financial hole it was left in after Amazon's bid to buy it fell through. The new Roomba Max 705 has the same design and lidar navigation as [...]

I find something weirdly captivating about tech products that come with transparent cases that let you see the works inside. We all know that there are all sorts of chips and wires in there that make the product do what it does, but unless we plan to break the thing open (and void the warranty), [...]

WhatsApp is launching a new Advanced Chat Privacy" feature that aims to prevent people from taking conversations outside the app. When the setting is turned on, you can block others from exporting your chat history and automatically downloading photos and videos sent in the app. The feature will prevent people from using messages for Meta [...]

A Democrat has entered the manosphere. Pete Buttigieg, the former Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration and a presidential candidate in 2020, sat for a three-hour appearance on Andrew Schultz's Flagrant on Wednesday to discuss current events, the state of politics, and the culture wars - his latest foray into breaking outside of the [...]

Discord co-founder and CEO Jason Citron is stepping down and will be replaced by former Activision Blizzard and King exec Humam Sakhnini, according to a press release. Sakhnini takes over on April 28th. Citron will stay on the board of directors and serve as an advisor to the CEO. As we enter our next phase, [...]

Last month, Roku ensnared itself in controversy after customers quickly complained about a limited test where an advertisement for Moana 2 started playing as soon as the company's products were powered on. Across Reddit and other social media channels, people threatened to ditch their devices if Roku repeated such an experiment. The message, at least [...]

OpenAI's upgraded image generator in ChatGPT brought a surge of users to the AI service thanks to its ability to create Studio Ghibli-style images and really dull dolls, and now it's coming to other apps. The company says the same natively multimodal model" powering the image generator will be accessible in its API via gpt-image-1," [...]

It only took five years, but Netflix has finally locked in its plan to premiere The Old Guard's long awaited sequel. Today, Netflix announced that director Victoria Mahoney's (You, Lovecraft Country) The Old Guard 2 is slated to debut on July 2nd. Rather than dropping a trailer, Netflix released a handful of new stills from [...]

We're used to seeing Predators do the hunting - it's in the name, after all. But it looks like the roles will be reversed somewhat in Predator: Badlands, at least according to this new teaser trailer. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg - who also helmed the excellent Predator spinoff Prey - Badlands follows a young Predator [...]

Operation Rolling Thunder was meant to be an act of persuasion. The US believed that a drawn-out bombardment would pressure the North to cease its aggression on the South -or, at least, encourage it to ease up. I saw our bombs as my political resources for negotiating a peace," President Lyndon Johnson claimed. His framing [...]

Microsoft revealed earlier this year that LG TVs would get access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, and now the Xbox TV app is rolling out to select LG smart TV models starting today. The Xbox app will let LG TV owners stream Xbox games directly to their TVs, and use a wireless controller to play them. [...]

Last night, Elon Musk did what he does best: promise amillionsa of autonomous Tesla vehicles would be on the road by the end of next year. Itas become a familiar refrain. Every year since at least 2020, Musk has promised Tesla vehicles will finally achieve their full self-driving capabilities. And every year, those promises fail [...]

Intel continues to work on getting better results from its Arrow Lake CPUs, now with a free update that it says will boost gaming performance. The company announced that the update, an overclocking profile called Intel 200S Boost," is available for unlocked Intel Core Ultra 200S-series processors paired with compatible Intel Z890 motherboards and appropriate [...]

Nestled between the crowd-pleasing guns and gore of Xboxas 2024 summer showcase, was an eyebrow-raising, painterly role playing game. As its party of grimacing adults urgently sprints across a shimmering, surrealist landscape, a voiceover depicts a world terrorized by an omnipotent being called the Paintress. Each year, she daubs a new descending number on a [...]

Sony has brought back its classic PlayStation console themes to PS5 as part of a new update, the company announced on Wednesday. The classic themes, originally introduced to celebrate PlayStation's 30th anniversary, were supposed to be a limited time promotion. But shortly before the themes were set to go away, Sony promised that it would [...]

Meta announced new color lens combinations for its Ray-Ban smart glasses as well as wider availability for some features that were previously only accessible to members of Meta's Early Access Program. These include live translation, the ability to send messages and make calls through Instagram, and conversations with Meta AI based on what you're currently [...]

Meta is opening up ads on Threads to all eligible advertisers globally" and plans to show them to users in select markets at launch," according to an update to the company's January blog post about ads on the platform. The company plans to test ads in more than 30 countries globally, including the US, spokesperson [...]

Roku today introduced refreshed versions of its Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus, with the company describing the devices as the most compact sticks on the market" and over 35 percent smaller than other brands." That's a curious point to focus on for a product that's often tucked away behind a TV and forgotten about [...]

Built with E Ink's color display technology, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition brings comics, magazines, children's books, and illustrated novels to life in a way a regular Kindle can't. And right now, you can buy the company's first color e-reader at Amazon at its all-time low of $224.99 ($55 off) as a part of its [...]

Looking back, the original idea behind YouTube seems almost quaint. The mythic founding story goes like this: in January of 2005, two PayPal employees, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, were at a party. People were taking photos and videos on their digital cameras. Sharing photos was easy, sharing video was anything but. aPeople have different [...]

Tech evangelists have been yammering about aworking smarter, not hardera for years. Now, two 21-year-old Columbia University dropouts are proposing a new $5.3 million twist on the concept: use their AI tool Cluely to acheat on everything.a Thatas what it literally says in Cluelyas online manifesto: aWe want to cheat on everything.a Unlike the AI [...]

Microsoft is launching a newly designed version of its Microsoft 365 Copilot app soon. The app, which is used by businesses as a hub for Office documents and nowMicrosoft's AI tools, is moving a little closer to the regular Copilot consumer features with updated AI-powered search, a new Create feature for generating images using OpenAI's [...]

Nvidia is updating its G-Assist AI assistant on Windows to take it beyond optimizing game and system settings. G-Assist originally launched last month as a chatbot primarily focused on improving PC gaming, but it's now getting plugin support so you can extend the AI assistant to control Spotify, check if a streamer is live on [...]

Elon Musk says he plans to step back from his work at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, starting in May. In a Tesla earnings call, Musk said next month he would continue to spend a day or two" each week on DOGE matters probably for the remainder of the president's term," but would [...]

Shortages of the Switch 2 look increasingly likely after Nintendo admitted today that it cannot fulfill" all of the preorder applications it has already received through its own Japanese store. In a statement on X via Nintendo's Japanese account, president Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that the company's storefront has received 2.2 million applications to preorder the [...]

Harlowe's new Sol 5 Spectra smartphone light will improve the quality of your photos and selfies or help you set a dramatic mood. It features a similar extending and swiveling design as Harlowe's original Sol 5 light, but instead of just basic brightness and color temperature adjustments, the new Spectra adds full-color LEDs so you [...]

Something is rotten in the Department of Justice. Three federal prosecutors told their supervisors theyad rather resign than admit to wrongdoing over their refusal to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. aWe will not confess wrongdoing where there was none,a Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in [...]

The European Commission has just issued its first Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines to Apple and Meta, and now it's telling Apple that it's not impressed with the company's approach to alternative app stores. The DMA originally forced Apple to begrudgingly allow alternative app stores on iOS in EU countries last year, but the fee [...]

Two decades ago, YouTube wasn't about the elaborate long-form content pumped out by creators like MrBeast. There wasn't any fancy lighting, sound effects, or jump cuts. The platform's first video, Me at the Zoo," was uploaded to YouTube on April 23rd, 2005. It's a mere 19 seconds long, featuring YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim standing in [...]

Apple and Meta are the first companies to be fined for violations under the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). The European Commission announced today that Apple has been served a 500 million (about $570 million) penalty after ruling that its App Store anti-steering" practices failed to comply with DMA antitrust rules. Meta has been [...]

Samsung is once again deploying its One UI 7 update to last year's flagship Galaxy phones, with users worldwide reporting availability. The Android 15 update had begun rolling out earlier this month, only to pause for a week while Samsung rushed to patch a critical bug. Android Authority reports that Galaxy S24 series, Z Fold [...]

Logitech is releasing a major software update for the MX Creative Console it launched last fall, expanding the control panel's compatibility to several new apps. Now available for download in the Logi Marketplace, the update adds powerful new integrations and expanded functionality for Final Cut Pro," while new plugins bring support for popular apps like [...]

When Instagram was acquired for $1 billion in 2012, co-founder Kevin Systrom believed that joining Facebook would help Instagramas askyrocketing growtha reach even greater heights. In some ways, it did. Instagram now has billions of users and has since agenerated many multiples of that price and then some,a Systrom said on Tuesday from a Washington, [...]

Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome is officially over. In an update on Tuesday, Google Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez says the company has decided to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome." For years, critics have argued that Google's Privacy Sandbox could harm advertisers and violate [...]

Tesla has shared new images of its first retro drive-in restaurant location in Los Angeles. The company's CEO Elon Musk dreamt up the idea of a 1950s-themed Tesla Diner" and Supercharger hub, complete with employees on rollerskates, as far back as 2018. More recently, Musk described it as a Grease meets Jetsons with Supercharging," as [...]

If Google is forced to sell off Chrome, ChatGPT's head of product told a judge today that OpenAI would be interested in buying the browser, Reuters reports. Google breaking off Chrome is a proposed remedy by the US Department of Justice in US v. Google, in which Judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that the [...]

Tesla released its first quarter financial earnings today, offering another peek into the crisis currently enveloping Elon Musk's company. Tesla said it earned $409 million in net income on $19.3 billion in revenue. That's below Wall Street expectations of $21.1 billion and represents a 9.4 percent decrease year over year compared to $21.3 billion in [...]

Nissan's next-generation GT-R is expected to launch by the end of the decade, and it's not going to be a pure EV. The new R36 GT-R that will succeed the aging R35 will have a plug-in hybrid powertrain and launch in three to five years, according to Nissan's chief planning officer, Ponz Pandikuthira, speaking to [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acknowledged the existence of generative AI yesterday in new rule changes for its annual Oscars awards ceremony. Rather than dictate its use or require disclosures, the Academy simply says using AI doesn't, on its own, hurt a movie's chances - but that how it's used could. Here's [...]

Solar cells from four Southeast Asian countries that have been major suppliers to the US are facing newly increased tariffs, hiked up as high as 3,521 percent. The tariffs affect Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, which together accounted for more than three quarters of total module imports last year, according to Bloomberg. The tariffs essentially [...]

Max has become the latest streaming service to clamp down on password sharing. Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that Max will charge an extra $7.99 per month to add someone to your account outside your household. The new Extra Member Add-On" allows subscribers across all tiers to invite a friend or family member to [...]

Google Fi is launching a new Unlimited Essentials plan, costing $35 per month for one line. It's now Google Fi's most affordable plan, offering unlimited calls, text, and data, along with access to 30GB of high-speed data. As part of the change, Google Fi is renaming its Simply Unlimited plan to Unlimited Standard, which still [...]

Instagram has launched Edits, a video editing app that's intended to rival the TikTok-linked equivalent CapCut. First announced in January, Edits is available for free from today on iOS and Android. Edits is described as a video creation app designed for creators," and includes tools for project management, tracking notes and ideas, and data on [...]

Elon Musk runs companies that make electric vehicles and solar panels, things that are supposed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. But over the years, Muskas companies have faced repeated accusations by regulators including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that theyave skirted the law, from allegations of Tesla mishandling hazardous waste to SpaceX polluting [...]

The Washington Post and OpenAI have announced a strategic partnership" that will make high-quality news more accessible in ChatGPT," according to a Washington Post press release. OpenAI has already made partnerships with over 20 other news publishers, including News Corp, Business Insider parent company The Associated Press, Axel Springer, Conde Nast, the Financial Times, Future, [...]

Bethesda is making The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered official just days after the game leaked. Oblivion Remastered is a remaster of the nearly 20-year-old game, developed by Virtuous. Oblivion Remastered is shadow dropping today, and it's available on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S right now for $49.99, or as part of [...]

Apple has stopped listing its Apple Intelligence features as available now" following an inquiry from the National Advertising Division (NAD). Based on an archived webpage, it looks like Apple removed the claim from the top of its Apple Intelligence page in late March. The NAD, which is part of the nonprofit BBB National Programs, reviews [...]

Over the wetlands of Senegal, researcher Alexandre Delplanque pilots a drone to count waterbirds: pelicans, flamingos, and terns. He flies the drone, but AI analyzes the images to count individuals in a flock, speeding up analysis by thousands of hours per survey, he estimates. And time is of the essence. Since 1970, wildlife populations have [...]

Antonio Di Benedetto started out working on The Verge's deals beat, where he searched out the best prices for the best tech purchases. However, since then, he's become our resident laptop reviewer. So, as you'll see," he says, I like staring at nice screens (preferably large ones) and I love getting a sweet deal." One [...]

While videoconferencing apps have been around for quite some time, they really came into their own starting in 2020 during the pandemic, when many companies had to do a quick switch to a system of remote working. Even now, five years later, a lot of employees are still working on a remote or a partially [...]