The Verge

Sphere Entertainment, the company behind the eye-catching interactive venue in Las Vegas, has announced its "intent to develop" another Sphere in Maryland that will be located 15 minutes south of Washington, DC. A timeline and exact location haven't been finalized, but the Maryland Sphere would be the company's second venue in the US, following plans [...]

Bungie is putting an official date on Marathon today, its delayed extraction shooter. The slick-looking shooter from the makers of Halo and Destiny was originally set to release in September, but will now launch on March 5th. Bungie will launch Marathon on Xbox Series S / X, PS5, and PC, priced at $39.99. Bungie initially [...]

After launching almost three years ago, Meta's Threads is now reportedly attracting more daily mobile users than rival platform X. According to Similarweb data shared by TechCrunch, Threads has 141.5 million daily active iOS and Android global app users as of January 7th, compared to 125 million users for Elon Musk's mobile platform. Similarweb reports [...]

It's relatively rare for a podcast to last 14 years, especially a fiction one. In fact, as far as I can tell, Welcome to Night Vale is the longest continually running fiction podcast out there. (Some will argue it's actually We're Alive, but that has taken a few significant breaks between seasons.) The story of [...]

Microsoft released its first security update of 2026 for Windows 11 on January 13th. Just four days later, it was forced to release an emergency out-of-band update to fix some pretty serious bugs, the first one introduced. The security patch was stopping some systems from shutting down or hibernating properly, and also preventing some users [...]

Good deals are often hard to come by at the beginning of the year - which is precisely what makes Best Buy's Winter Sale worth checking out. The ongoing sales event features discounts on everything from big-ticket OLED TVs to smaller electronics, including fitness trackers that can help you achieve your New Year's resolutions. There [...]

The Kaoss Pad has seen many different iterations, but the mainline effect unit and sampler hasn't received an update since the launch of the KP3+ in 2013. Korg has finally given it the attention it deserves with the release of the Kaoss Pad V. Rather than a dramatic reimagining of what a Kaoss Pad is, [...]

January was going to be a landmark month for the crypto industry. The Senate would start negotiating the finer details of the CLARITY Act, a major law that would finally enshrine the fundamental structure of how the crypto market could legally operate in the United States: what digital assets counted as a security versus a [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on dystopian developments in AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started You could say it all started with Elon Musk's AI [...]

"Share a Disney quote that sums up how you're feeling right now!" That's what Disney posted on Threads the other day, and people immediately replied with lines from Star Wars, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Mary Poppins. The throughline between all the quotes: they were pretty pointedly anti-fascist and clearly aimed at the [...]

Setapp Mobile seemed like one of the many alternative app markets with promise that launched in the wake of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). While the law may have forced Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices, it couldn't make users actually embrace them. MacPaw, the Ukrainian developer behind the subscription-based Setapp, [...]

Happy Saturday, folks! This week, Best Buy kicked off its so-called Winter Sale," introducing a whole host of price cuts that range from not-so-good to legitimately great, at least for this time of year. We'll be publishing many of the highlights in a dedicated news post tomorrow, though, per usual, not all of this week's [...]

While Hollywood has repeatedly tried adapting stories from Japanese manga, vanishingly few of them have been as good as Edge of Tomorrow - Warner Bros.' 2014 live-action film based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's sci-fi light novel All You Need Is Kill. Edge of Tomorrow wasn't a one-to-one translation of All You Need Is Kill's original story [...]

While playing Big Hops, a new 3D platformer starring an adorable frog, I kept feeling like I was breaking the game - and, like with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, breaking it is kind of the point. In Big Hops, you play as a frog named Hop. Early on, Hop is taken [...]

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would "create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans - not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution." [...]

At CES, I did what you're not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16. It's a 16-inch laptop that weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Air and comes with a high-end Snapdragon [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about WhatsApp and Gavin [...]

The best all-in-one portable projector is the one that makes all the right compromises. It needs to balance image and sound quality with battery life and responsiveness in a device that's not too expensive and small enough to take anywhere. TCL's fun little PlayCube delivers the right mix to justify paying $800 for a 1080p [...]

The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they're "urging" PJM to hold an "emergency" auction for companies to procure electricity over 15-year contracts. The unusually [...]

Epic Games is making a big change to the rules for Fortnite creators just days after allowing them to publish experiences with in-game transactions. Beginning January 20th, experiences - which Epic Games calls "islands" - will not be able to offer in-island transactions as "a 'spin' or 'increased luck' for a prize wheel," according to [...]

Google is expanding access to its AI videomaking tool. Launched last May, Flow was initially only available to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but now, those with Business, Enterprise, and Education Workspace plans can access it, too. Flow uses Google's AI video generation model Veo 3.1 to generate eight-second clips based on a [...]

As we predicted, the world's biggest consumer electronics show was a bit of a bust for gamers this year! CES 2026 brought us several neat gamepads, but barely any handhelds and no new desktop GPUs - not from Nvidia, not from Intel, and not from AMD. But if you dig deep, AMD said two things [...]

Customers of Visible Wireless, which is owned by Verizon, may be getting a $5 credit toward their next bill in response to a Verizon cell service outage earlier this week. Verizon customers were offered a $20 credit after the outage. As spotted by 9to5Google, a message sent to Visible customers explains: "Yesterday we let you [...]

Though Netflix's plan to buy Warner Bros. Discovery has prompted concerns about how the deal might hurt the movie theater business, the streamer's co-CEO says that there is nothing to worry about. In a new interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that, should the WBD acquisition go through, the streamer [...]

ChatGPT will soon start showing you sponsored products or services if they're related to your conversation. In an announcement on Friday, OpenAI says it will start testing ads in the coming weeks for logged-in users in the US who use the app for free or have a ChatGPT Go subscription. The "clearly labeled" ads will [...]

OpenAI is expanding a low-cost subscription tier called ChatGPT Go to the US and the rest of the world. Go was released in India in August and later became available in another 170 countries prior to Friday's global release. "In markets where Go has been available, we've seen strong adoption and regular everyday use for [...]

On Friday morning, X and Grok went offline for users around the world on both the websites and apps. Outage reports began spiking on DownDetector around 10:00AM ET, while Cisco's ThousandEyes outage map noted over 600 X servers around the world that were having problems. Attempts to load the site with either the Twitter.com or [...]

Is the North American blockade on Chinese EVs softening? Today, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a deal with China to slash tariffs on electric vehicles in exchange for lowering duties on canola products. Canada will initially allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs at a 6.1 percent tariff, Carney said, though the exact timeline was [...]

Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, some impressive alleged sales figures have gone viral - but they might be too good to be true. This [...]

Several people are gathered around a bleach blond man in a bright pink suit suspended in a clear plastic tube. With a microphone in front of him and a giant sign reading TALK TO ME placed above, "Mike" waits, hands clasped patiently in front of his body, to take questions from his public. "Mike" is [...]

Like trading cards, Lego figures, and even the coveted Labubu, you don't know exactly what your Kodak Charmera camera is going to look like until you open the box. The anticipation and a $30 price tag helped the collectible camera sell out quickly and become nearly impossible to find over the holidays after its debut [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here. I take my feet seriously. Which [...]

We know how the next-generation Siri is supposed to work. Apple showed it off in 2024, made commercials about it, and generally promised that AI would change the way we used our gadgets forever. And then, well, none of that came to pass. So Apple made a deal: It tapped Google's Gemini technology to help [...]

Several Bluetooth audio devices from companies like Sony, Anker, and Nothing are susceptible to a new flaw that can allow attackers to listen in on conversations or track devices that use Google's Find Hub network, as reported by Wired. Researchers from KU Leuven University's Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group in Belgium discovered several vulnerabilities [...]

This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Elon Musk first sued OpenAI in February 2024. Despite OpenAI's repeated attempts to throw it out, the case is now headed to a jury trial on April 27th in [...]

The GPU market is turning into a mess again. Asus told Hardware Unboxed earlier this week that it was winding down production of its RTX 5070 Ti, but the PC maker is now walking back that claim and blaming "incomplete information" from its own Asus PR representatives. "The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX [...]

Down the street from the Los Angeles Angels' stadium in Anaheim, a crowd gathers to watch two homes burn. In less than 30 minutes, one structure is reduced to its smoldering, blackened wood frame, while the other, thanks to simple changes to its design, is remarkably unscathed. Of course, this was the point of the [...]

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Last month, Netflix made the surprising decision to kill off a key feature: With no prior warning, the company removed the ability to cast videos from its mobile apps to [...]

Two months before it changed its name to "Meta," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally introduced us to his metaverse for work: Horizon Workrooms, envisioned as a virtual space for workers to collaborate. Today, the company announced it's shutting that space down: "Meta has made the decision to discontinue Workrooms as a standalone app, effective February [...]

After the self-induced tumult Sonos went through last year, I can understand why some people are reluctant to spend money on the company's products. But newly appointed CEO Tom Conrad has shown that he's determined to get back on track and revitalize Sonos as the leading whole-home audio brand. The contentious mobile app is in [...]

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of X owner Elon Musk's children, is suing his company for enabling its AI to virtually strip her down into a bikini without her consent. St. Clair is one of the many people over the past couple weeks who have found themselves undressed without permission by X's AI [...]

There's a new name in charge of stewarding Star Wars at Lucasfilm. The studio just announced that Dave Filoni - best-known for his work on The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars - will be taking over as president. Former president Kathleen Kennedy, whose departure had been rumored for some time, will be stepping down and [...]

Natural Cycles, the company behind a controversial FDA-cleared birth control app, is replacing its thermometer with a wristband that measures skin temperature, heart rate, and movement during sleep. The newly launched wristband costs $129.99 and syncs with the Natural Cycles app, which uses an algorithm to determine a person's "daily fertility status." Users can already [...]

LG might have just revealed its new C6 OLED TVs at CES 2026, but we still don't know when they'll actually hit stores. If you don't want to wait - or spend a couple thousand dollars on a brand new model - the current-gen LG C5 OLED is a fantastic option now the 65-inch model [...]

Spotify is probably one of the most well-known music services available (if not the most popular) around - and it seems that the company it taking advantage of that. As of this month, Spotify announced that it was raising its prices, the third time since 2023. If that concerns you (especially if you're a current [...]

On Thursday, Hardware Unboxed reported that Asus is winding down production of its RTX 5070 Ti, saying, Asus "explicitly told us this model is currently facing a supply shortage and, as such, they have placed the model into end-of-life status." They added that the same applies to Asus's 16GB RTX 5060 Ti, and mentioned how [...]

The US just lowered Taiwan's tariffs in exchange for a massive domestic chipmaking promise, the Commerce Department announced on Thursday. Under the deal, tariffs on goods from Taiwan will decrease from 20 to 15 percent, while Taiwanese technology companies will invest $250 billion into building and expanding chipmaking facilities in the US, supported by at [...]

PUBG developer Krafton has 26 games in development, and in a recent town hall meeting, the company outlined a plan to "focus on its core gaming business while outlining a disciplined approach to building long-term Franchise IPs." "During the past year, KRAFTON has prepared for Franchise IP development by strengthening its creative leadership, as well [...]

Amazon has announced that the servers for New World: Aeternum, one of the company's MMOs, will be shut down on January 31st, 2027. The game will also be delisted and no longer available for purchase starting today, January 15th. Last year, Amazon announced that it would be pivoting away from MMOs to put more of [...]