The Verge

GoPro is now shipping the new Anamorphic Lens Mod for its Hero 13 Black camera, which allows creators to record in a wider field of view without complex editing. The $129.99 anamorphic lens uses an optical squishing technique to shoot in a 21:9 aspect ratio and capture cinematic-style lens flares, with the Hero 13 Black [...]

DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to help the company sell itself after years of financial difficulties. Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's co-founder and CEO, announced on X that she has resigned with immediate effect to become an independent bidder for the company, with chief financial and accounting officer Joe Selsavage stepping [...]

Google has started rolling out new AI features to Gemini Live that let it see" your screen or through your smartphone camera and answer questions about either in real-time, Google spokesperson Alex Joseph has confirmed in an email to The Verge. The features come nearly a year after Google first demonstrated the Project Astra" work [...]

Google Maps users have recently been complaining on places like Reddit that their Timeline data - the app's historical record of where they've been - had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it accidentally deleted the data and that anyone who wasn't using Google's cloud backups is out of luck. Google spokesperson Genevieve Park provided [...]

Apple is working on adding cameras to the Apple Watch in order to enable AI features like Visual Intelligence within the next two years, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in today's Power On Newsletter. The cameras will be inside the display" for the standard Series Watch, while the Apple Watch Ultra would feature it on [...]

Balatro just won four Game Developers Choice Awards, including Game of the Year, but the person who made the game wasnat on stage to accept them. Instead, Playstack communications director Wout van Halderen spoke on behalf of Balatroas developer, who goes by the alias LocalThunk, each time the game won an award. aThe team does [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 76, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youare new here, welcome, sorry if your bracketas busted, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I have been shirking most of my responsibilities to watch March Madness. [...]

In recent weeks, airport Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have drawn public outcry for denying travelers US entry based on searches of their phones. A doctor on an H-1B visa was deported to Lebanon after CBP found asympathetic photos and videosa of Hezbollah leaders. A French scientist was turned away after a device search [...]

An update to the Philips Hue app this week appears to have leaked a new Hue Secure video doorbell, reports Hueblog. The unannounced product shows up in a section offering instructions for adding devices that you have no QR code for. From the screenshots below, taken in the iOS Hue app by my colleague Jennifer [...]

Cloudflare, one of the biggest network internet infrastructure companies in the world, has announced AI Labyrinth, a new tool to fight web-crawling bots that scrape sites for AI training data without permission. The company says in a blog post that when it detects inappropriate bot behavior," the free, opt-in tool lures crawlers down a path [...]

Infinity Nikki and Assassinas Creed Shadows have become my twin obsessions for their meticulously detailed environments, textures, and weather. With open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki, I continue to be agog at how clothing textures are rendered with such detail and fidelity that by mere sight, I know exactly what a piece of fabric will feel [...]

SwitchBot will integrate more than 45 of its products with Home Assistant during the first half of this year, the company said in an email to The Verge. That expansion includes The SwitchBot Hub 3 that was first revealed in a filing with the Connectivity Standards Alliance last week. Many of these integrations are coming [...]

The Game Developers Conference, an annual gathering that brings thousands of game developers to San Francisco, has just wrapped up. While most of the event is about networking and interesting talks about game design and technology, there were also a bunch of unreleased indie games that we got to check out. Yes, much of video [...]

When Apple introduced the iPhone 15 Pro, Greg Joswiak, the companyas senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said the deviceas three rear cameras would give consumers athe equivalent of seven camera lenses in their pocket.a We could spend multiple podcasts debating the technical validity of that statement, but what Joswiak was trying to imply was [...]

Someone has responded to YouTuber Mark Rober's Tesla fake wall test with a video that also tries to address the question of whether the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) features would detect a Wile E. Coyote-style road obstruction in the real world. Creator Kyle Paul posted his video Thursday and included two Teslas with FSD: a [...]

Aside from cutscenes, most of Mythic Quest takes place in the real world. But Apple's upcoming spinoff series Side Quest will give us a much better look at what the game looks like from within. While some of Side Quest's four episodes focus on people's lives outside of and away from Mythic Quest, the final [...]

Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said companies looking for regulatory approval should get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination," according to an interview with Bloomberg. Carr reportedly brought up Paramount's merger with Skydance, Verizon's purchase of Frontier Communications, and T-Mobile's plans to acquire most of US Cellular as potential [...]

Lyft will let users in Atlanta catch robotaxi rides starting this summer, as reported by NBC News. Atlanta riders will have the opportunity to be matched with a fleet of autonomous Toyota Sienna minivans equipped with May Mobility's autonomous technology, a deployment that Lyft and May Mobility aim to scale over time across multiple markets," [...]

Congress' least favorite law is once against facing an existential challenge by bipartisan opponents. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, are planning to reintroduce a bill to sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in two years. Repealing the bill, first reported by The Information, [...]

On March 18th, Chetan Nayak, a physicist leading Microsoftas quantum team, presented new data on the companyas quantum computing chip at the American Physical Societyas Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California. It was meant to calm a raging debate among physicists, but researchers remain skeptical of the results. aI never felt like there would be [...]

The world has a more detailed map of the seafloor than ever before thanks to observations taken from space. NASA published a video this week showing a remarkably clear picture of the bottom of the ocean made possible thanks to new satellite technology. The face of the moon has been more thoroughly mapped than the [...]

Google's Gemini app now lets you generate Audio Overviews based on Deep Research. That means you can turn the in-depth reports generated by Gemini into a conversational podcast featuring two AI hosts." Since launching Audio Overviews within its AI note-taking app NotebookLM last September, Google has been steadily adding to the feature by letting you [...]

Meta has aggressively pushed to discredit and silence Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People, her memoir about working at the company as a policy director. Now, sheas fighting back. Attorneys for Wynn-Williams this week filed an emergency motion seeking to dismiss the gag order that Meta won via an arbitrator. A copy of her [...]

After immigration agents detained Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil over his involvement in pro-Palestine protests on campus, President Donald Trump promised it was just the beginning. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has since arrested at least two more students who are in the country on visas a one of whom had recently sued [...]

Samsung has confirmed to The Verge that a software update error" is what broke certain 2024 soundbar devices," per a statement from Jim Kiczek, head of audio at Samsung Electronics America. Kiczek says that Samsung is offering free repairs for all affected units - regardless of warranty status." Last week, many owners of Samsung soundbars, [...]

The new souped-up Alexa voice assistant, Alexa Plus, is scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks in an early access preview. The good news is that as long as you have (or buy) an Echo Show 8, 10, 15, or 21 smart display, you'll be able to use the generative-AI powered Alexa across any [...]

The AI search startup Perplexity just proposed a bid for acquiring (and transforming) TikTok, per a company blog post published Friday. aPerplexity is singularly positioned to rebuild the TikTok algorithm without creating a monopoly, combining world-class technical capabilities with Little Tech independence,a the company wrote. They claim they're uniquely positioned to do this awithout creating [...]

TechCrunch has a new owner, again. Yahoo has sold the tech news site to the private equity firm Regent for an undisclosed sum, according to an announcement on Friday. Regent is the same company that snapped up Foundry, the firm behind outlets like PCWorld, Macworld, and TechAdvisor on Thursday.Founded in 2005, TechCrunch has experienced many [...]

Not satisfied with effectively buying a co-president role in Donald Trump's administration, Elon Musk has turned his attention - and money - towards a key race in the swing state of Wisconsin. The billionaire's America PAC is claiming to give $100 to registered voters who sign a petition against activist judges." It's not the first [...]

Alongside beefy wall chargers that can power up several devices simultaneously, Anker continues to refine the design and engineering of its basic single-port USB-C AC adapters making them smaller and smaller. Its new Nano 45W charger is now just 1.45 inches long and weighs 52 grams, which is about 17 grams lighter than the last [...]

At a surprise all-hands-on meeting Thursday night in Texas, Tesla CEO Elon Musk rallied up his company's employees as the brand's public reputation continues to plummet, Business Insider reports. At the livestreamed meeting, Musk told employees to hang on to your stock" - which declined in value by 50 percent since December - and promised [...]

In a true sign of a vibe shift in Washington, a DC bar beloved by Republican staffers announced that it was shuttering its doors a and will reportedly be replaced by a bar that famously accepts Bitcoin as payment. Local news site PoPville first reported on Thursday that a DC outpost of Pubkey, a bar [...]

Bigscreen has just revealed the Beyond 2, a custom-fit virtual-reality headset with a 116-degree field of view it claims is wider than the Meta Quest 3 and Valve Index. The wired headset weighs just 107 grams (~3.8 ounces) and starts at $1,019, but you'll have to pay extra if you want eye-tracking capabilities. The Bigscreen [...]

Chicago's WBEZ is among 13 NPR and PBS member radio stations being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission as the Trump administration looks to tighten its control over public news organizations. The probes launched by FCC Chair Brendan Carr in January focus on whether on-air sponsorships aired by NPR and PBS-affiliated broadcasters comply with regulations [...]

GM is shutting down a dealership service that offered the installation of a third-party Apple CarPlay upgrade kit for its EVs, citing concerns that the product could affect critical safety features" in its vehicles, The Drive reports. A spokesperson from GM told The Drive that Aftermarket services that introduce features not originally designed, thoroughly tested, [...]

Coca-Cola is installing what the company claims to be the world's first hydrogen-powered vending machines at the World Expo 2025, which will open to the public in Osaka, Japan, on April 13th, 2025. Co-developed by Fuji Electric, the machines don't need access to a power outlet and instead rely on replaceable hydrogen cartridges to fuel [...]

The popularity of Pokemon cards depicting shiny monsters is one of the reasons that physical packs have become so much harder to find in the wild these days. The Pokemon Company has been trying to figure out ways to solve the real world scarcity / scalping problem for a while now, but that shouldn't be [...]

Rest easy: we don't have another Lost on our hands. As beloved as that classic mystery box show was, it was equally frustrating for the way it teased big secrets with answers that either underwhelmed or never came. With the mysteries in Severance piling up since its first season, viewers have had every right to [...]

President Trump wanted to ban TikTok. Now he wants to save TikTok. There might even be a plan to save TikTok, though right now it feels more like a aconcepts of a plana situation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to press hard on regulating Big Tech, while also cozying up to their CEOs a and [...]

Severance's season 2 finale debuts on Apple TV Plus today - but don't worry, there's still more to come. In a reply to producer Ben Stiller, Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a video confirming the series renewal, saying Season 3 of Severance is available upon request." Even though there was a three-year gap between the [...]

Samsung's next Fan Edition" Tab S10 devices have been leaked, revealing specs and prices for the mid-range tablets. WinFuture.de acquired leaked marketing images and details for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE and Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus, which are value flagship" tablet options slotting under the Tab S10 Plus and Tab S10 Ultra. The [...]

A privacy complaint has been filed against OpenAI by a Norwegian man who claims that ChatGPT described him as a convicted murderer who killed two of his own children and attempted to kill a third. Arve Hjalmar Holmen says that he wanted to find out what ChatGPT would say about him, but was presented with [...]

London's Heathrow airport has shut down after having its power crippled by an immense fire at a nearby electrical substation, throwing thousands of global flights into chaos. Heathrow announced that it will remain closed until at least midnight on Friday to maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues," and that there will be no [...]

Nightdive Studios is making good on a six-year-old promise: a remastered version of the classic Looking Glass game System Shock 2. Nightdive and Sony revealed a trailer for System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster, as well as a release date of June 26th for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 4 and [...]

As reports of vandalism and even a supposed doxing website targeting Tesla locations and vehicles continue to appear, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a new warning about old crimes. In a Department of Justice press release, she announced charges against three individuals responsible for the violent destruction of Tesla properties." It didn't mention that all [...]

Google is taking down 10,000 fake business listings from Google Maps and suing a network of scammers who set them up, CBS News reports. The company's lawsuit alleges that a man connected to a broader scam network created fake business profiles on Google Maps and sold them for profit. Google was tipped off by a [...]

Apple TV Plus is losing more than $1 billion every year despite reaching 45 million subscribers in 2024, according to a report from The Information. It's reportedly the only Apple subscription that isn't generating a profit. As part of an effort to take a harder line on spending," Apple cut its initial $5 billion budget [...]

Segway has issued a recall for all of its Ninebot Max G30P and Max G30LP electric scooters due to a faulty mechanism that can cause the scooters' handlebars and stem to fold while it's in use, creating a fall hazard, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The company has received 68 reports of [...]

Comcast and Charter's mobile services now offer access to satellite-based emergency messaging. The launch comes just one day after their network provider, Verizon, rolled out satellite messaging for Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 9 devices. Just like with Verizon, customers on Comcast's Xfinity Mobile and Charter's Spectrum Mobile will need a Galaxy S25 or [...]