The Verge

Texas is suing five of the biggest TV makers, accusing them of "secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes." In separate lawsuits filed on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims the TVs made by Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL are part of a "mass surveillance system" that uses Automatic Content Recognition [...]

I wanted to love Amazon's $630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. It has everything I covet. An E Ink display with front lighting and color. A pressure-sensitive stylus. The ability to take notes and annotate my existing library of ebooks. A distinct lack of distracting apps. And, for a certain type of person, this is the sweet [...]

In the almost 20 years since James Cameron first introduced us to the alien world of Pandora, 20th Century Studios has repeatedly tried to parlay the Avatar films' financial success into a sprawling multimedia franchise. Almost immediately after the first movie hit theaters, there was a video game, plans for a book series that never [...]

The most impressive thing about Fallout's first season was how well it nailed the tone. The games are a mix of grim and goofy, a postapocalyptic story in a bleak world that's also full of crude jokes and ridiculous characters. It's a tough balance to get right - too serious and it's a miserable place [...]

I never felt done with my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. Despite playing every day for two years, and racking up 1,700 hours of playtime, I somehow never finished decorating. I had plenty of ideas for my island, sure, but actually implementing them was another story: The decorating and terraforming systems that helped make New [...]

In the span of a decade and a half, from 2010 to the end of 2024, the number of data centers in the US quadrupled. The trend is similar worldwide: more data centers, bigger, now or soon. The number of the construction projects of centers over 100 megawatts announced over the last four years total [...]

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and [...]

Ed Murray has been in the solar business long enough to remember the bloodbath of 1985. That's when President Ronald Reagan ended Jimmy Carter-era solar tax credits meant to decrease US reliance on fossil fuels following the 1970s oil crisis. "It was a sad time," says Murray, who is president of the trade group California [...]

It's still hard to believe that Hollow Knight: Silksong actually came out this year, but now, we all have a new thing to wait for: the game is getting a free expansion in 2026, titled Sea of Sorrow. Team Cherry calls it the game's "first big expansion." "New areas, bosses, tools, and more!" Team Cherry [...]

In what is sure to be the beginning of a slew of announcements, LG has confirmed it is releasing its first flagship RGB TV in 2026. It wasn't a huge secret, considering "a premium LCD TV with Micro RGB technology" won a CES 2026 Innovation Award in November. But it's now certain that the LG [...]

If you have an iPhone, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch for you. But there was only one Apple Watch when the smartwatch launched in 2015. A decade later, you've got three flavors to choose from: the entry-level Watch SE, the standard Series, and the rugged Ultra. Each appeals to a different demographic and [...]

Whether you're buying your first pair of AirPods or replacing a well-used older pair, it's easy to understand why so many iPhone owners prefer Apple's earbuds and headphones over other options. Apple has spent years gradually adding new features that work best - and sometimes only work at all - with the company's own devices. [...]

On Monday, nearly two dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, filed an amended complaint in the FTC's lawsuit against Uber. According to the lawsuit, Uber charged consumers for the Uber One subscription without their consent, billed them before the end of a free trial, and shared misleading claims about how much consumers can save [...]

For many, iRobot's Roomba robot vacuum was their first experience with a home robot. When I got my Roomba in 2005, I felt like I was a step closer to my dream of living in a Jetsons-style home where a robot did my chores for me. It was expensive, around $300 for a small black [...]

Now it will be easier for Android users to watch Apple TV content on their TV with the addition of Google Cast support. However, even after this update, Google Cast is only an option on the Android version of Apple TV, not the iOS version. Likewise, the Android version still doesn't support AirPlay. The addition [...]

You might find it kind of sad to put your hard-earned Switch 2 into a protective case. To me, it's freeing. Sure, it can take away from the slick design. But using a case relieves me of the worry that the console will accumulate tons of little scratches, or worse. I've tested several types of [...]

Ford announced a series of changes to its gas- and electric-powered vehicle business aimed at dramatically increasing hybrid vehicle production in the face of slowing EV sales. The automaker also will introduce some new products as part of this plan, including an extended-range EV version of its F-series truck and battery storage systems to meet [...]

Sony's annual PlayStation sale has been going on for nearly a month now, offering discounts on everything from the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and PlayStation Portal to Sony's standard DualSense controller. However, the end of the sale is quickly approaching, with Sony's website showing that some deals are set to expire as soon as Friday, [...]

President Donald Trump will recruit workers from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other tech giants to form the US Tech Force, a new program that aims to "modernize the federal government," according to an announcement on Monday. Under the new program, Trump plans to hire around 1,000 technology specialists to work across federal agencies [...]

Bungie's Marathon, its upcoming extraction shooter that it delayed from a planned September release, will now launch in March 2026. The studio is "targeting" a price of $39.99, and "purchasing Marathon will give you full access to the game, including a roadmap of free gameplay updates as the year progresses," according to a blog post. [...]

Luminar, the lidar manufacturer that rode a wave of self-driving car hype to land deals with major automakers like Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, filed for bankruptcy Monday. The company has been mired in a legal fight with its founder and former CEO, Austin Russell, who was ousted earlier this year following an ethics inquiry. As part [...]

General Motors is adding native Apple Music to the infotainment systems of select 2025 model year Cadillac and Chevrolet vehicles, the company announced today. The news comes as the automaker is racing to add more native app experiences to some of its vehicles to make up for the absence of popular phone mirroring services like [...]

Google notified users in an email today that, beginning next month, it will stop sending its dark web reports, an opt-in feature that alerted users when Google detected their personal information on the dark web, as reported by 9to5Google. On January 15th, Google will stop scanning for that data, like contact info and home addresses, [...]

After years of false promises and missed deadlines, several Tesla vehicles have been spotted over the weekend driving autonomously without safety monitors on public roads in Austin. For months, Tesla's robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency - a fallback that Waymo [...]

The second season of Fallout is debuting one day earlier than previously announced: the new season will now launch on Tuesday, December 16th at 9PM ET / 6PM PT on Prime Video, Amazon says. The season will have eight episodes that will premiere weekly on Wednesdays (besides this first episode), with the season finale airing [...]

Earlier this month, the GNOME Shell Extensions store updated its review guidelines to include a new section specifically stating that "extensions must not be AI-generated," as reported by It's FOSS and Phoronix. Developers producing add-ons for the Linux desktop environment can still use AI as a tool, but if their extension's code contains signs of [...]

Merriam-Webster has settled on a word that represents 2025 - and that word is "slop." The dictionary-maker defines "slop" as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," something that many people have become familiar with as AI-generated content permeates the internet. This year, some of the [...]

If you're looking for a last-minute gift for a gamer, you're in luck. Both Best Buy and Target are offering the 128GB Meta Quest 3S VR headset for around $249 ($50 off) and include a $50 gift card on top of that. Best Buy has bundled the headset with a copy of The Walking Dead: [...]

Today, I'm talking with Prashanth Chandrasekar, who is the CEO of Stack Overflow. I last had Prashanth on the show in 2022, one month before ChatGPT launched. While the generative AI boom had tons of impact on all sorts of companies, it immediately upended everything about Stack Overflow in an existential way. Stack Overflow, if [...]

Most people know at least two things about 5K monitors: they look great, and they're usually expensive. The Apple Studio Display is the most popular model, and it costs $1,599. But I've been testing one that's similar in some important ways and costs just $355 (!?) at its cheapest-ever price. Unsurprisingly, at a fraction of [...]

"Not ideal." "Completely unacceptable." "Shameless." "Predatory." "Some bullshit." "Total bullshit." This is how musicians, producers, and others in the industry are describing the relentless spread of AI clones. Of course, AI fakes aren't new, but as the scammers have gotten more brazen, artists are responding with increasing furor. We got a taste back in 2023 [...]

Amazon has launched a new AI feature in the Kindle app that gives spoiler-free answers to questions about the book you're reading and confirmed that authors can't opt out from the feature. The company calls Ask this Book an "expert reading assistant" in its announcement and says that it's capable of answering questions about "plot [...]

When he was 19 years old, Brendan Foody started Mercor with two of his high school friends as a way for his other friends, who also had startups, to hire software engineers overseas. It launched in 2023 as essentially a staffing agency, albeit a highly automated one. Language models reviewed resumes and did the interviewing. [...]

A collision in space was narrowly avoided last week when a newly deployed Chinese satellite came within a few hundred meters of one of the roughly 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit. SpaceX is laying the blame on the satellite operator for not sharing location data. "When satellite operators do not share [...]

iRobot, the owner of the Roomba robot vacuum, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that it will be acquired by its contract manufacturer, Picea Robotics. The Chinese-based company assumed iRobot's $190 million loan earlier this month and, under the terms of iRobot's restructuring, will waive that debt, along with the $161.5 million iRobot owes [...]

After 35 years, the maker of the Roomba robot vacuum filed for bankruptcy protection late Sunday night. Following warnings issued earlier this year that it was fast running out of options, iRobot says it is entering Chapter 11 protection and will be acquired by its contract manufacturer, China-based Picea Robotics. The company says it will [...]

My introduction to Sudan Archives was the song "Nont for Sale" from her first EP Sink in 2018. I've been a diehard fan ever since. With each album, she finds new ways to sculpt the sound of her violin, contorting it in defiance of expectations. Athena found her in conversation with it, leaving its timbre [...]

Grok's track record is spotty at best. But even by the very low standards of xAI, its failure in the aftermath of the tragic mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia is shocking. The AI chatbot has repeatedly misidentified 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who heroically disarmed one of the shooters and claimed the [...]

Absynth is something of a cult classic in the soft synth world. It was originally released in 2000, and quickly found an audience among the growing cadre of people making music on computers. But its last major update, Absynth 5, was released in 2009, and Native Instruments officially discontinued the instrument in 2022, citing a [...]

By 2010, the iPhone era was in full swing. Smartphones were still a new and unfinished idea - the iPhone had only just gotten copy and paste! - but it was clear that these big slabs of glass were going to change the way we did pretty much everything. Apple was also already on an [...]

Here's a thought: what if the next-generation Siri is awesome? Not just awesome for setting timers and dictating text messages (though that would be nice), but so awesome and fun to talk to that people actually start falling in love with their iPhones. We may not be prepared for what happens next. On this episode [...]

I still wouldn't buy an Xbox Ally, and I still don't think the tweaked version of Windows that shipped with it is ready for primetime. The Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) needs work. But two months after I panned the cheaper $600 white Xbox Ally and wasn't quite sold on the $1,000 black one, one [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on smartphones and digital imagery - real or otherwise - follow Allison Johnson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Remember the early days of [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 109, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you're staying warm, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Google Maps and shopaganda and life as a pop [...]

It's a small sample size, likely driven by Black Friday discounts and temporary virality, but the Nex Playground has gone from little-known console curiosity to best-seller. It's now on track to quadruple its sales from last year. According to research firm Circana, the Playground was the second best-selling console in the US for the week [...]

Native Instruments and Ableton have had incredible success with their custom MIDI controllers that integrate with their DAWs (digital audio workstations), Maschine and Live, respectively. Native Instruments' Maschine (yes, it's the name of the hardware and the software) and Ableton's Push are pretty much the gold standard for integration between music-making software and hardware. Serato [...]

As I'm sitting in my office writing this review, delicious, cheesy, garlicky scents are wafting up the stairs. I can hear whizzing and whirring, and the occasional clunk, as a robot chef in my kitchen is making macaroni and cheese. Its app tells me there are three minutes left in the process, and based on [...]

The Nex Playground is apparently one of the hottest consoles this holiday season thanks to its kid-friendly games and fun, motion-controlled gameplay. And now through December 14th, the cube-shaped console is on sale for its Black Friday low of around $199 ($50 off) at Amazon. There are some other great deals still available you might [...]

As a writer, I take the tools of my trade relatively seriously. I'm not crazy enough to drop $3,600 on a keyboard, but I also find typing on a MacBook for extended periods of time deeply unsatisfying - and distracting. So this spring, I started looking into distraction-free writing setups, which included an e-reader / [...]