The Verge

OpenAI and Google are pushing the US government to allow their AI models to train on copyrighted material. Both companies outlined their stances in proposals published this week, with OpenAI arguing that applying fair use protections to AI is a matter of national security." The proposals come in response to a request from the White [...]

The new M4-powered MacBook Air only hit stores on March 12, but it's already on sale. You can pick up the 13-inch entry-level configuration with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $949 ($50 off) at Amazon (at checkout) and Best Buy if you're a My Best Buy Plus and My Best Buy Total [...]

Google is finally moving on from Google Assistant. The company will be upgrading more" users from Google Assistant to Gemini over the coming months," according to a blog post. The classic Google Assistant will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices or available for new downloads on mobile app stores" at some point later [...]

Google releases a lot of products, but it shuts down a lot of them, too. Some didn't deserve to be discontinued (we pine for the days of Reader and Inbox), and some probably weren't long for this world from the start. (What was Google Wave supposed to be, anyway?) The company actually used to shut [...]

Reddit is going rolling out a feature that lets you hide an ad from your feed for at least a year," the company says in a post spotted by Ars Technica. When the update is available to you, you'll be able to see the Hide" option for any ads that appear in feeds, such as [...]

A federal judge has once again blocked California's landmark online child safety law from taking effect. In a ruling on Thursday, US District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted a preliminary injunction in favor of NetChoice, saying the technology trade group's claims that the law violates the First Amendment would likely succeed. The law, called [...]

When I saw iRobotas latest robot vacuums announced this week, my first thought was, aThese donat look like Roombas; they look like midrange models from Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame.a Of course, as the original robot vacuum manufacturer, iRobotas products likely inspired the design of most of its competitors. But Roombas have always had a uniqueness [...]

Vampire Survivors isn't just a bullet hell survival game where you maneuver around simple 8-bit stages and kill thousands of monstrous enemies - it's also a juggernaut of an indie title that blew up in popularity enough to even get the green light on a TV show spinoff. First launched on Steam in December 2021 [...]

The Last of Us has caught our attention ever since the game's launch on the PlayStation 3 in 2013, but the cordyceps-infested franchise has only continued to grow since then. While The Last of Us Part II came out on the PlayStation 4 in 2020, the first game's remake launched on PlayStation 5 in 2021. [...]

Six to Start, the company behind Zombies, Run! and Marvel Move, has laid off all but two of its staff, The Verge has learned. The news was delivered last week to staffers in a Zoom call, in which they were told that parent company OliveX could no longer afford to keep Six to Start afloat [...]

Briefly, here's what's up with Tesla over the past few weeks: its stock is down more than 50 percent since December; Tesla sales in California are plummeting; Cybertruck deliveries are reportedly paused because the vehicles are falling apart; protesters are demonstrating outside Tesla showrooms across the country; and Tesla owners are selling their cars to [...]

Ford has hired a former Twitch, PlayStation, and Lululemon executive to lead the automaker's digital services business. Mike Aragon, who previously led as CEO of Lululemon's defunct Mirror home workout machine, is joining Ford as president of integrated services." The company says Aragon will lead a team responsible for building out and marketing a suite [...]

Newsmax agreed to pay $40 million to settle claims that it defamed the voting machine company Smartmatic. The two companies reached a confidential" settlement agreement last September, but a regulatory filing spotted by The Independent has revealed how much the conservative media outlet will pay. Newsmax has paid $20 million to Smartmatic so far, with [...]

After a season 3 finale that left open plenty of possibilities for a return, it's now confirmed: Ted Lasso is coming back. The Apple TV Plus sitcom is getting a fourth season, though it appears to be still fairly early in development. In an interview on the New Heights podcast, star Jason Sudeikis confirmed that [...]

There's a lot to explore in Google Maps, but you may not always know where to look. Itas great if you're trying to drive through a crowded city or find out which local coffee shop has the best-rated bagels, but there are also other, lesser-known features worth investigating. These include historical imagery on Google Street [...]

Apple Intelligence is technically lots of things, but thereas only one feature with the potential to actually meaningfully change the way you use your phone. That would be Siri, which Apple said last year it had turned from a quasi-helpful voice assistant into an AI-powered helper that could understand everything about you and accomplish things [...]

iPhone and Android users will be able to exchange end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messages in the near future thanks to newly updated RCS specifications. The GSM Association announced that the latest RCS standard includes E2EE based on the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, enabling interoperable encryption between different platform providers for the first time. The [...]

T-Mobile is letting some legacy plan customers know that a price increase is coming, 9to5Google reports. Many Reddit users on r/tmobile said the carrier sent them text messages that their plans will raise by $5 per month per line starting on April 2nd. In an internal memo obtained by CNET, T-Mobile consumer group president Jon [...]

Apple's AirPods 4 are down to the lowest price ever on Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, where you can pick them up starting at $99.99. That's about 22 percent off the $129 list price. These are the newest version of Apple's base AirPods, launched in September with the iPhone 16. They support spatial audio with [...]

Apple is planning to bring live translation to AirPods, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The feature, which will let users translate conversations in real time, will be tied" to the forthcoming iOS 19, Gurman says. Apple is a little behind others in adding live translation to the AirPods, as Google brought the [...]

Opus, A24as new horror-tinged thriller from writer / director Mark Anthony Green, has a lot to say about the symbiotic (and sometimes parasitic) relationship between entertainment journalists and celebrities. In the filmas story about reporters tripping over themselves just to be close to an eccentric music icon, you can feel Green reflecting on how the [...]

Google is rolling out a fix for Chromecast device issues that left many users with untrusted device" errors that disabled casting. The issue, which appeared over the weekend, seemed to widely affect Chromecast 2nd generation and Chromecast Audio devices. Google has not said what caused the errors, but a user on Reddit claimed it could [...]

Microsoft is testing AI-powered summaries in Notepad. In an update rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels, you'll be able to summarize information in Notepad by highlighting a chunk of text, right-clicking it, and selecting Summarize. Notepad will then generate a summary of the text, as well as provide an option [...]

America's favorite low poly electric truck is facing a new set of problems that don't have anything to do with people spray painting swastikas or crude comments about Elon Musk on them. Deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck are on hold while the company addresses issues with reports that the trim is becoming detached and flying [...]

It's been more than two years since Elon Musk officially took over as the owner of Twitter - now X - and while a lot of platforms rushed in to try and be the next big microblogging service, many haven't survived. Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky have all proven to be viable alternatives, but places like [...]

Flatiron Books, the publisher of a new book by an ex-Meta staffer alleging misconduct and harassment at the company, says in a statement that a recent arbitration order demanding that the book no longer be published has no impact" on Macmillan. The ruling instructs Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of [...]

On Tuesday morning, some PC gamers woke up to discover their computers were seemingly under threat. A aHackToola called WinRing0 had suddenly started triggering a Windows Defender alert, as if their PCs were under attack. Some of those computers even began behaving oddly aaa like blasting their fans at high speed a once the HackTool [...]

NBC will continue airing the Olympics in the US for the foreseeable future. Its parent company, Comcast, just announced a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that will keep the games on NBC's platforms, including Peacock, through 2036. As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, NBC's previous agreement with the IOC gave it the rights [...]

Mercedes-Benz's electric vehicles aren't exactly selling like hotcakes. The EQS, EQE, and EQB have largely flopped, forcing the company to make significant changes to its electrification plans. While the automaker has scaled back its ambitions, it's not abandoning them altogether. As Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Kallenius said during the company's Tech Day in Stuttgart, Germany, [...]

Android phones will soon support Auracast with Bluetooth LE hearing aids, letting people tune in to audio broadcasts in places where it's otherwise hard to hear. Auracast is a Bluetooth Audio LE feature, and it allows one broadcaster to connect to a virtually unlimited number of Bluetooth LE devices. Among other things, the technology can [...]

The first trailer for the next season of Black Mirror is full of the kinds of topics you'd expect from the anthology: AI, virtual worlds, video games, and lots of futuristic gadgets. All with a dark twist, of course. Season 7 will feature six episodes - series creator Charlie Brooker says that two of them [...]

For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promising an affordable electric vehicle, likely priced at $25,000, as a way to broaden the appeal of plug-in vehicles. He first mentioned it in a 2018 interview with YouTuber Marques Brownlee, saying a $25,000 car, that's something we can do." Then in 2020, at the company's first [...]

The Trump administration launched a massive deregulation spree that could gut environmental and health protections in the US, moves that are sure to face immediate legal and logistical challenges. Wednesday was the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen," Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. The proposed changes include [...]

There are a lot of simulator" games out there that gamify everything from driving your own big rig to running your own Japanese convenience store. Some of them hit, like the one about being a goat which is on its third iteration. And some of them hit like PowerWash Simulator which is getting a sequel [...]

Lexus is updating its RZ electric vehicle lineup and introducing new versions that include a simulated manual gearbox and a steer-by-wire system. The top-of-the-line 550e F Sport includes a Interactive Manual Drive" system that gives the driver the feeling of shifting like a manual gas car by synchronizing acceleration and deceleration with immersive sound." It [...]

Today Sony is announcing the development of a new type of TV display that uses individual RGB LEDs for its backlighting. While Sony currently sells high-end Mini LED TVs alongside OLED models, this new system could combine many of the best qualities of both, and I recently got to see it in action at the [...]

With so many AI companies launching chatbots, Google is leveraging its biggest competitive advantage to make Gemini stand out: Search. With personalization enabled, Gemini can now automatically analyze your query to see if referring to your Search history can enhance" its response. The feature is powered by the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental model, and [...]

Fortnite is coming to Windows devices with Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon chips later this year. Epic Games announced today that it's teaming up with Qualcomm to add Windows on Snapdragon support for Easy Anti-Cheat, which will let the game be compatible with those devices. Over the last year, the introduction of Windows 11 Arm-based laptops has [...]

If you're looking to catch up on Andor before the second season's April 22nd debut on Disney Plus, there's a solid deal on both Disney Plus and Hulu. Now through March 30th, you can get the ad-supported Disney Plus, Hulu Bundle Basic plan for $2.99 per month for the first four months. Usually this bundle [...]

Ahead of the Game Developers Conference next week, Google is announcing that all mobile Android games will be available by default on Google Play Games on PC unless a developer opts out. The change could significantly boost the number of games on the platform, as previously, developers had to opt in. Google Play Games on [...]

Sigmaas new $2,000 camera is missing so many features that you might not take the product seriously. The Sigma BF has no tilt or flip-out screen, hot shoe or cold shoe, any type of viewfinder, mechanical shutter, 4K 60, microphone port, or in-body stabilization. There isnat even a link to connect your shoulder strap. The [...]

On today's episode of Decoder, I'm talking to Verge policy editor Adi Robertson about the Take It Down Act, which is part of a long line of bills that would make it illegal to distribute non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. That's a broad term that encompasses what people used to call revenge porn, but which [...]

Meta will begin testing its X-style Community Notes starting March 18th. The feature will roll out on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US - but Meta won't publicly publish the notes to start as it tests the Community Notes writing and rating system. Meta first announced plans to replace its fact-checking program with Community [...]

A new third-party app store is launching for iPhone users in the European Union that describes itself as being built specifically for mobile gamers." Skich is the latest in a short list of alternative app marketplaces to take advantage of Apple's App Store restrictions being loosened by the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), including AltStore [...]

In a TikTok video from CNN that has been viewed more than 3 million times since late February, the voice of a voter in Roswell, Georgia, pierces through a town hall event held by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA). Tyranny is rising in the White House, and a man has declared himself our king," the woman [...]

WhatsApp is working on a feature that will group replies to specific messages into a thread, making it easier to keep track of conversations. Instead of scrolling through chats to see scattered individual replies, the feature will create a dedicated view showing every quoted message connecting back to the original message that started the thread, [...]

The United Kingdom's mobile browser market is not working well for consumers and businesses" according to a final report from Britain's competition watchdog, which says that Apple and Google are largely to blame. An independent inquiry group has concluded its mobile browsers investigation for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), identifying Apple's policies around iOS, [...]

Editoras note: Ahead of Microsoftas 50thas anniversary, weave fixed the layout on this story a which we originally published in 2012 when Windows 8 launched. Nowas a good time to revisit our look at an operating system that helped shape personal computing over the years. Two years ago today, when Windows 1.0 celebrated its 25th [...]

Spectre Divide, a Valorant-like free-to-play shooter where you control two bodies, is shutting down just months after its September launch. We were optimistic about the first week," developer Mountaintop Studios says in a post. We've had ~400,000 players play, with a peak concurrent player count of ~10,000 across all platforms. But as time has gone [...]

An arbitrator has decided in favor of Meta in a case the company brought against Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former Meta employee who wrote a memoir published this week detailing alleged claims of misconduct at the company. Macmillan Publishers and its imprint that published the memoir, Flatiron Books, were also named as respondents. The memoir, titled [...]