The Verge

Vivo's flagship X300 and X300 Pro only launched in China two weeks ago, but they're getting an international release faster than we're used to from Vivo. Today, the company announced that both phones are going on sale outside China, including a handful of European countries, and bringing with them OriginOS -Vivo's previously China-only Android-based operating [...]

Microsoft has officially released its Windows 11 remote desktop feature across Meta's Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets. The feature can beam multiple high-resolution monitors to your Quest headset, while also allowing you to try an immersive ultrawide mode, similar to what you can do on Apple's Vision Pro. Microsoft first launched its virtual desktop [...]

Canva is introducing new digital marketing and video-editing tools, built around what the company is calling a world-first" design-focused AI model. These launches are part of an overhaul to the design platforms Visual Suite workplace products, which Canva describes as a Creative Operating System" for marketing teams. To be clear, this isn't an operating system [...]

You don't necessarily have to buy a bunch of pricey new smart devices to enjoy the convenience of a smart home. The SwitchBot Bot offers an easy, affordable way to bring smart control to many of the regular gadgets you already own, and right now it's available for just $23.99 ($6 off) from SwitchBot with [...]

This week, as part of its big layoffs, an Amazon exec said that the company is halting a significant" amount of its work on MMOs, and the changes appear to have led to the Lord of the Rings MMO the company was working on with Embracer being canceled. This morning I was part of the [...]

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching its Adobe-rivalling Affinity creative suite as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts. Unlike Affinity's previous Designer, Photo, and Publisher software, which were a one-time $70 purchase, Canva's announcement stresses that the new Affinity app is free forever" and won't require [...]

Google announced plans to revive a nuclear power plant that shut down in 2020, as it looks to secure enough electricity for its AI data centers. The company announced a 25-year agreement with NextEra Energy to eventually purchase electricity from the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a 615MW nuclear plant in Iowa, when it starts operating [...]

DJI has announced a follow-up to the Neo selfie drone it launched last September for $199. Although the original was priced for mass adoption, it lacked several useful features that the new DJI Neo 2 is adding, including gesture controls and the ability to actively avoid obstacles instead of just relying on a design that [...]

Move over Andy Sachs, Pinterest is launching an AI-enabled shopping assistant that aims to suggest your next look. Beginning on Thursday, and over the coming weeks and months, Pinterest users will be able to talk to the visual platform about what they're shopping or searching for. The Pinterest Assistant will come back with personalized recommendations [...]

Let's just get this out of the way: Liam Hemsworth actually makes for a pretty solid Geralt of Rivia. Hemsworth assumes the mantle in the fourth season of Netflix's The Witcher, picking up from Henry Cavill. And while it can be distracting at first, especially since Cavill inhabited the role so well, it only took [...]

Web browsers are getting awfully chatty. They got even chattier last week after OpenAI and Microsoft kicked the AI browser race into high gear with ChatGPT Atlas and a "Copilot Mode" for Edge. They can answer questions, summarize pages, and even take actions on your behalf. The experience is far from seamless yet, but it [...]

Threads is launching two new tools today designed to give users more control over replies on their posts so they can keep conversations civil, respectful, or on-topic. Reply approvals will require more legwork and attention, but it allows Threads users to monitor and individually select which replies will appear publicly on their posts before anyone [...]

When President Donald Trump revealed the physical model of the sprawling ballroom that will replace the now-demolished East Wing of the White House, something just seemed off. The model, small enough to fit on a table, is supposed to be a representation of the design that the Trump administration had previously teased in renderings. But [...]

If your wrist or forearm aches every time you use your computer, the chances are good that you'd benefit from using a vertical mouse, like the Logitech Lift wireless mouse. This ergonomically-friendly device has been marked down to its cheapest-ever price today at Amazon, where it's selling for $49.99 (originally $79.99) in black or white [...]

Nintendo is updating Animal Crossing: New Horizons with new features for the Switch 2. The upgraded game will arrive on January 15th, 2026, offering 4K visuals on TV, mouse controls, and an in-game megaphone that uses the Switch 2's built-in microphone. It will cost $64.99 but will also be available as an upgrade pack for [...]

Hello, and welcome to Decoder. This is Sarah Jeong, features editor at The Verge. I'm standing in for Nilay for one final Thursday episode here as he settles back into full-time hosting duties. Today, we've got a fun one. I'm talking to Cory Doctorow, prolific author, internet activist, and arguably one of the fiercest tech [...]

Figma has acquired Weavy, a creative platform that allows users to link AI models and editing tools together, and use them simultaneously in a single canvas. The platform will now live under its new parent company as Figma Weave," according to Figma's announcement, adding an image and video editing tool to Figma's growing design ecosystem. [...]

Universal Music Group says it has made industry-first strategic agreements" to settle copyright infringement litigation" with AI startup Udio and license music for a new AI-powered music platform. The move is one of several anticipated licensing deals expected to land in the next few weeks as the sector grapples with how to handle AI. The [...]

We live in an age where it has become infinitely easier for people to lead lives that are wholly divorced from any semblance of reality. Conspiracy theories run rampant, science denial is en vogue, and there is a vast media ecosystem filled with charlatans encouraging others to "do their own research" instead of believing well-educated [...]

WhatsApp is introducing a passwordless way to instantly secure your chat backups. The messaging platform is launching passkey-encrypted backups for iOS and Android, allowing users to quickly encrypt their stored message history using their face, fingerprint, or device screen lock code. The update is rolling out gradually over the coming weeks and months," according to [...]

OpenAI's Sora app will now let you turn almost anything into a reusable avatar for its AI-generated videos. These character cameos" are one of several new features that have been added to the Sora 2 video generator, alongside clip stitching and leaderboards that showcase the app's most popular videos and cameos. Character cameos were teased [...]

President Donald Trump says he has instructed the Pentagon to immediately start testing nuclear weapons, citing a need to match other countries [sic] testing programs." Trump's post on Truth Social included very few details on the nature of the tests, but says the process will begin immediately."It's not clear whether Trump is referring to explosive [...]

Your Happy Hacking Keyboard can finally get fresh caps. While regular keyboards have an embarrassment of keycap options, Topre boards like the HHKB or Realforce R3 don't. They've more or less been relegated to OEM-profile PBT keycaps with dye-sublimated legends, in light grey, charcoal, white, or (recently) a few more colorful options. Something as basic [...]

When you buy the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display, you aren't just getting a pair of smart glasses: you're also getting Meta's Neural Band, a small wristband that you use to control what's on the glasses' display. It's an essential part of the product. But, if by some unfortunate circumstance, you need to buy a replacement [...]

Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud computing service, has experienced an outage just one week after issues with AWS took out swaths of the internet. The issues impacted Microsoft's services that run on Azure, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, and even Minecraft. Other companies, like Capital One, Alaska Airlines, and Starbucks, also had outages that were linked [...]

Last November, Rode launched its Wireless Micro microphone system that paired two tiny lavalier mics with a small receiver that connected to your phone's charging port. Rode later gave that product a free upgrade, sending out another receiver that let the mics connect to digital cameras, too. Now, the company is launching an updated version [...]

At a Senate hearing Wednesday on government censorship of tech platforms, a Meta executive expressed regret to Republican lawmakers for failing to speak out more against the Biden administration's requests that it remove health and election misinformation, including satire. Google, meanwhile, held firm in its stance, saying that evaluating - and often rejecting - government [...]

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian American and Democratic candidate for Congress in the 9th District of Illinois, has been indicted by the Department of Justice on charges connected to protests outside an ICE facility. The indictment alleges that Abughazaleh and a handful of other protesters conspired on the morning of September 26th to prevent an [...]

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is getting ready to dump even more AI-generated posts into your social feeds. During an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company will add yet another huge corpus of content" to its recommendations system as AI makes it easier to create and remix" work that gets shared online. Social media [...]

Xbox sales have been tanking for a while now -and the story hasn't gotten any brighter. Microsoft just released its Q1 2026 earnings and Xbox hardware revenue was down 29 percent year-over-year. Last quarter, it was down 22 percent. Down 29 percent in the first two quarters of 2025, down 42 percent in Q4 of [...]

A popular ski resort town in Colorado is adopting a new AI Smart City Solution from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to help it better detect wildfires, as well as update a range of other city services. Vail is expanding its firefighting toolbox as hotter, more arid weather with climate change raises wildfire risk in the [...]

Tech products that are packaged and ready for sale aren't launching in the US as planned right now, thanks to the government shutdown. Earlier this month, Leica delayed its M EV1 camera due to holdups on approval from the partially shuttered Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The WiiM Sound audiophile speaker, currently shipping in international markets, [...]

AOL will soon have a new owner. Bending Spoons, the Italian software company that has bought up a range of other digital businesses like Evernote, MeetUp, WeTransfer, and soon Vimeo, announced plans to purchase AOL from Yahoo after securing a $2.8 billion debt financing package. Over the past couple of decades, AOL has been passed [...]

Abxylute, a company known for its Android-based handhelds, has announced a new compact mobile controller for smartphones. Unlike controllers from companies like Backbone and 8BitDo that use an expanding mechanism to clamp onto phones, Abxylute's smaller and lighter M4 Snap-On controller uses a Q-shaped mount to magnetically attach to mobile devices that are compatible with [...]

Almost immediately in The Outer Worlds 2, the player receives news of a corporate shake-up: Auntie Cleo and Spacer's Choice, two of the in-game retail brands, have merged to form Auntie's Choice. Less a chain of stores and more a feudal power, Auntie's Choice manages its employees - serfs, really - with the cruelty of [...]

The thing about carrying multiple devices is you usually end up hauling a nest of cables along with them. Now imagine trimming your kit down to a single, versatile cord that can provide power to your smartphone and laptop simultaneously. That's where Anker's 140W 2-in-1 USB-C to USB-C Cable comes in, and right now you [...]

Halo coming to PlayStation is one of those events that, five years ago, would have been the tell that "something is not right here" in a show about time travel or alternate universes. Looking at the state of Xbox with its layoffs, game cancellations, price hikes, studio closures, and a soft release schedule light on [...]

If you want one of the best home theater experiences LG can provide, the 65-inch LG G5 OLED is down to a new record low price. Regularly $3,399.99, you can buy the TV for around $1,996.99 at Amazon and directly from LG. Other configurations are also on sale, with the 77-inch going for around $3,456.99 [...]

You're going to start seeing more warnings in Chrome when accessing insecure sites. Starting next October, Chrome will soon warn users when they visit a public website without an encrypted HTTPS connection. Chrome already issues a Your connection is not private" message when you visit pages that have an HTTPS connection that's misconfigured. But this [...]

Tesla's Cybercab isn't scheduled to go into production until 2026, but when it does, it may end up stuck with a vestige of the automotive past: a steering wheel. To be sure, we still use steering wheels. But the Tesla Cybercab was meant to be the first vehicle of the new future, and there's nothing [...]

Google introduced support for the ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless protocol with the Pixel 6 Pro in 2021. But if you've been struggling to get your Pixel phone to precisely locate one of the few Android-compatible trackers that support UWB, it's because that feature is only enabled on the Pro models of the Pixel 8 and above, [...]

Nvidia has become the world's first $5 trillion company. Shares soared by up to 5 percent to over $211 around 9:30AM ET on Wednesday morning, according to Bloomberg, marking the latest milestone for a company that only just hit the $4 trillion mark in July. Nvidia shares have been on the rise as the company [...]

Google smart home users in the US can now get an early taste of the new Gemini for Home assistant, which began rolling out in early access on Tuesday. It's slated to replace the current Google Assistant on Nest devices, marking one of the most significant updates yet to Google's smart home ecosystem. It runs [...]

After Nothing's recent flagship Phone 3 ditched its trademark Glyph Lights in favor of a dot matrix display, the new Phone 3A Lite brings them back - but only one of them. The affordable phone launches today in the UK and Europe, but won't get a release in the US. The 3A Lite features just [...]

The majority of Amazon smart speakers lean more into the "smart" than the "speaker," except for the Echo Studio. That device, which arrived in November 2019, was an imposing, sound-quality-first speaker that delivered Alexa functionality alongside impressive sound for a $200 device. But that was nearly six years ago - an eternity in tech product [...]

I love the Echo Dot Max. It's an excellent speaker, a good listener, and comes in purple - which is just fun. It's got new, easier-to-use controls and more smart home sensors and radios than earlier models. It's also one of the first devices designed for Alexa Plus. And while the AI-powered assistant isn't mandatory [...]

TikTok announced three new features at its US Creator Summit yesterday. They include an update to revenue sharing for creators that offer subscriptions plus tools that can help with both the early planning stages of a video, and the process of editing longer clips into multiple shorter ones. Smart Split is an AI-powered editing tool [...]

Apple is planning to incorporate OLED displays across more of its devices, including the MacBook Air, iPad Mini, and iPad Air, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The company added an OLED display to the iPad Pro last year and the upgraded M5 model released this month, offering improved brightness, better contrast, and [...]

OpenAI is ending October with a new for-profit structure, a new deal with Microsoft, and an entirely new level of pressure to achieve artificial general intelligence. The generally accepted definition of AGI is an artificial intelligence system that equals or surpasses human cognitive ability. But even as it's become a goalpost for the entire AI [...]

AI writing aid Grammarly is now part of Superhuman, alongside Coda, Superhuman Mail, and a new AI assistant called Superhuman Go. The new Superhuman suite, including all those tools, will be available starting today for everyone with a paid Grammarly Pro subscription. Superhuman Go will be available to subscribers for no extra cost through February [...]