The Verge

Epic Games v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers just ruled that, effective immediately, Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and blocks the company from restricting how developers can point users to where they can make purchases outside of apps. Apple says it will appeal the order. The ruling [...]

The Meta AI app could soon get a paid tier, similar to the ones offered by rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the plan during a Q1 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, saying there's an opportunity to offer a premium service for people who want to unlock more compute or [...]

Budget smart lighting brand WiZ has announced a new HDMI sync box that syncs with its line of Wi-Fi-based LED lights to match what's playing on your TV. WiZ's HDMI Sync Box with TV backlight will be available next month. It comes in two models: one with a TV backlight strip for screens 55 inches [...]

Alongside all the rumors lately about a big visual redesign for iOS and a more Mac-like iPadOS experience, there's one interesting one that's been bubbling up: the iPhone could get a desktop mode of sorts. Majin Bu, who has a mixed history with leaks, wrote last week that unnamed sources had said iPhones with USB-C [...]

BBC Studios is using AI to recreate the voice and likeness of late detective story author Agatha Christie for the purpose of featuring it in digital classes that teaches prospective writers how to craft the perfect crime novel." A real life actor, Vivien Keene, is standing in for Christie, with her appearance augmented by AI [...]

Amazon's annual Gaming Week celebration kicked off on Monday, April 28th, and will run through Sunday, May 4th. Whether you're looking for a new headset, an internal SSD, or other gaming essentials, there are plenty of deals to explore. That being said, not every discount is worth your time and money - in fact, most [...]

Microsoftjust postedthe third quarter of its 2025 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $70.1 billion in revenue and a net income of $25.8 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 13 percent, and net income has increased by 18 percent. Microsoft was expected to report $68.42 billion in revenue, so the results have beaten Wall [...]

TikTok is back in a Washington, DC courthouse discussing the US law that - at least on paper - effectively banned the app. But this time, it's serving as a witness for the government, not fighting against it. On Wednesday, TikTok's head of operations and trust and safety Adam Presser testified in the Federal Trade [...]

The Nintendo Switch just got a new update that adds Virtual Game Cards as a way to share digital games with other people. But the update also closes a loophole that would let you play shared games online at the same time as somebody you were sharing the game with, as reported by Eurogamer. Before [...]

YouTube has announced a new experimental feature that's aimed at providing safer search experiences for all users." The service will begin blurring the thumbnails in search results for some queries that frequently include sexual themes." According to a recent update in the Community section of YouTube's Help Center website, the feature is currently being rolled [...]

Duolingo is more than doubling" the number of courses it has available, a feat it says was only possible because it used generative AI to help create them in less than a year." The company said today that it's launching 148 new language courses. This launch makes Duolingo's seven most popular non-English languages - Spanish, [...]

Kia is opening up preorders in the UK for its PV5 Passenger electric van at a starting price of 32,995, or about $44,000 with a standard range battery. Kia says preorders will open up tomorrow, May 1st, with initial deliveries in the UK planned for late 2025." It will come in a five-seat configuration (seven [...]

The Google Play Store shed 1.8 million apps since the beginning of last year, according to an analysis from Appfigures and reported earlier by TechCrunch. That makes up around 47 percent of the 3.4 million apps it started 2024 with - a decline that Google spokesperson Dan Jackson says reflects the company's focus on delivering [...]

It started last week with Tesla, followed quickly by General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. Automakers across the spectrum are pulling their profit guidance for the year because they can't figure out how to accurately plan for the future thanks to President Donald Trump's ever-shifting tariffs. The auto industry is paralyzed by uncertainty. Stellantis, the parent [...]

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to know whether Amazon founder Jeff Bezos received any promises or favors" from President Donald Trump in exchange for his subservience" after dropping all plans to show customers the cost of tariffs. In a letter sent on Wednesday, Warren questions Bezos about the details of his conversation with Trump and [...]

OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update for ChatGPT that caused the chatbot's default personality to be overly flattering or agreeable - often described as sycophantic" and that sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress," the company says in a blog post. The company introduced a GPT-4o update last week that included adjustments aimed [...]

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, took the stand on Wednesday during the remedies phase of the company's search antitrust trial, and offered a simple message. The US government's plan to rectify Google's search monopoly, he said, would be so crushing to Google Search that it might be hard to justify continuing to build a search engine [...]

Google is close to striking a deal with Apple to integrate Gemini into the iPhone. During the search monopoly trial on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the company expects to strike a Gemini deal with Apple by the middle of this year and suggested it would roll out by the end of 2025. The [...]

Meta announced a new WhatsApp feature it says is a private way to interact with Meta AI. Called Private Processing," the feature is totally optional, launches in the coming weeks," and neither Meta, WhatsApp, nor third-party companies will be able to see interactions that use it, according to the release. Meta says users can direct [...]

Within weeks of President Trump stepping into office, key health and environmental resources that doctors and farmers rely on started disappearing from federal websites. Trump was also quick to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), cutting off funding - as well as the flow of data that people around the world use to [...]

For several weeks, President Donald Trump and his administration have been grasping for evidence that a man his administration deported and imprisoned in error is a dangerous gang member, and the effort has now reached what may be an untoppable peak: the President repeatedly insisting in an in-person interview that an obvious text label that [...]

Boox is debuting its first desktop monitor featuring a color E Ink screen. The new version of the Boox Mira Pro carries over the same functionality as the black-and-white version that launched in 2023, but using the same E Ink color display technology found in devices like the Kindle Colorsoft. E Ink offers several advantages [...]

One of the best features of the now-discontinued Nest Secure security system was that if you also had the Nest X Yale Lock, you couldunlock your door and disarm your security systemjust by entering a single code. With both those products now discontinued, Yale and ADT have a solution you might find interesting. The new [...]

Meta is making a few notable adjustments to the privacy policy for its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. In an email sent out on April 29th to owners of the glasses, the company outlined two key changes. First, it's giving Meta AI a more frequent view of the world. Meta AI with camera use is always [...]

Nvidia launched a new tool that lets developers generate AI images by first creating them in 3D. The awkwardly named Nvidia AI Blueprint for 3D-guided generative AI is available to download today for computers equipped with an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU or higher, and works by bridging Blender's 3D modelling software with Black Forest Lab's [...]

I once wondered whether law enforcement might stop Elon Musk's power grab. About a month ago, I got my answer: no. On March 17th, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency broke into the nonprofit, congressionally funded US Institute for Peace, according to court documents filed by the USIP's board of directors. By allegedly threatening to [...]

Rad Power Bikes may be going through some turmoil in its upper ranks, but the e-bike company's product team is still working hard to churn out new bikes. Today, Rad Power revealed its refreshed RadRunner lineup, with a slew of cool new features, including a new Class 3 model. RadRunner is the company's bestselling utility [...]

Imagine this. You wake up, roll over, take your smart ring off its charger, and slip it onto your finger. After eating breakfast and getting ready for work, you kiss your lover goodbye and head out. Everything's hunky-dory - until you look down at your finger. The LED light on your smart ring is flashing [...]

Content moderators who comb through harmful material uploaded to online platforms have formed a global trade union alliance in a bid to improve working conditions. The Global Trade Union Alliance of Content Moderators (GTUACM) announced today in Nairobi, Kenya, says it aims to hold Big Tech responsible" for failing to address workers' issues like low [...]

Raycast users have been asking the app's developers for an iOS app for a long time. It took a while, though, for the developers to figure out exactly what that app was supposed to do. See, on a Mac (and soon a Windows PC), Raycast is a hugely powerful tool for navigating your computer. You [...]

Since Neuromancer took the sci-fi world by storm in 1984, computing nerds have pined for a "cyberdeck" - the ultimate in personal, portable PCs for surfing and hacking the world. Usually, they're DIY affairs. But the 10-inch GPD Win Max 2 is the closest I've seen to an off-the-shelf cyberdeck worth buying. It's far from [...]

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it's exploring the use of AI systems for predictive prevention" of crime and dangerous behavior on the city's subway platforms. MTA chief security officer Michael Kemper said that the agency is studying and piloting technology like AI to sense potential trouble or problematic behavior on our subway platforms." If [...]

With just over a month to go before the Nintendo Switch 2 release date on June 5th, Nintendo has released a Switch 1 update that will help prepare things for the new console's arrival. The V20.0.0 update for the original Switch adds a bunch of new features that go along with the Switch 2, like [...]

The Metals Company, which has been trying for years to exploit battery materials strewn across the ocean floor, announced today that it has applied for a permit from the Trump administration to start commercially mining in international waters. Together, the company and President Trump are circumventing a multilateral process to develop rules for deep sea [...]

In an unprecedented display of diplomatic aggression, French authorities publicly accused Russia of sponsoring several high-profile cyber attacks on French entities for over a decade to gather intelligence and destabilize the country. The incidents include everything from a faked Islamic State takeover of a French television broadcast signal in 2015 to the leak of President [...]

Electronic Arts is reportedly eliminating between 300 and 400 positions" and scrapping a game set in the Titanfall universe, codenamed R7, that was in the works at Respawn Entertainment, according to Bloomberg. As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we've made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams [...]

Lyft has launched Earnings Assistant," an AI chatbot tool for drivers seeking to optimize their time on the road." With it, drivers can create plans based on information about things like airport arrivals or local events, announced Jeremy Bird, EVP of driver experience at Lyft in an email to The Verge. The Earnings Assistant feature [...]

It's always a good time to lock in for a marathon watch of Alfred Hitchcock films, and Netflix is getting ready to make a bunch of the legendary director's features a lot easier to watch in one place. Today, Netflix announced that it plans to stream a number of Hitchcock's films next month as part [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a new plan to address forever chemicals" once widely used in non-stick and water-proof products that have since been linked to cancer, reproductive health issues, and liver damage. The vague details the EPA has shared so far, however, have health and environmental advocates wondering whether the EPA's plan helps [...]

OpenAI is rolling back its latest GPT-4o update after CEO Sam Altman said the company would be making fixes to address the chatbot's sycophant-y and annoying" personality introduced with recent updates. The rollback, which started Monday night, is now 100%" rolled back for free ChatGPT users and will be rolled back for paid users hopefully [...]

Snap is backing away from plans to simplify the design of Snapchat as it reports losing 1 million users in North America. As part of its Q1 2025 earnings report on Tuesday, Snap revealed that it's instead going to start testing a refined" layout that keeps the app's five existing tabs. The company first started [...]

Apple has quietly launched a new website called Snapshot on Apple" that presents viewers with a carousel of celebrities and information on where you can find their work across the company's services. The website, spotted by 9to5Mac reports, presents two slowly moving rows of celebrity images, with no way to manually scroll or search them. [...]

Since Slate Auto came out of stealth mode last week, the internet has been abuzz with speculation about the finer details of the ultra-barebones electric Truck, which is set to cost just $20,000 when it enters production next year - assuming our federal EV incentives are still in place by then. One of those questions [...]

Poker Face's Natasha Lyonne has a new project in the works that seemed poised to become a case study in the debate about how and whether Hollywood should be using generative AI. Lyonne is teaming up with technologist and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier to produce a new sci-fi film that will feature elements generated [...]

Last week, the US Department of Transportation announced a major change to the Biden-era rule that requires automakers and tech companies to report crashes that involve fully or partially autonomous vehicles. Under the revised rules, companies will no longer have to report certain crashes, such as those involving a vehicle equipped with a Level 2 [...]

Amazon's annual Gaming Week sale might be the big focus this week as far as deals are concerned, but gaming peripherals and games aren't the only discounts we're seeing. Right now, for instance, Apple's latest AirPods Pro with USB-C are on sale for $169 ($80 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, which is just [...]

Isuzu has started mass production of an all-electric version of its midsized D-Max pickup truck in Thailand, featuring a dual-motor four-wheel-drive system with 140kW of power that can match the performance of existing diesel models," according to the automaker. As reported by Electrek, the new D-Max EV matches the towing capacity of Isuzu's current diesel [...]

If you were hoping to get your hands on the compact" phone OnePlus launched in China last week, you're going to have your work cut out for you. OnePlus spokespeople have confirmed to The Verge that the 13T will not be sold in Europe or North America. That leaves our OnePlus options limited to big [...]

Cybersecurity firm Oligo has detailed a set of vulnerabilities its researchers found in Apple's AirPlay protocol and software development kit that could serve as a point of entry to infect other devices on your network, Wired reports. Oligo's researchers refer to the vulnerabilities and attacks they enable as AirBorne." According to Oligo, two of the [...]

Commenters on the popular subreddit r/changemymind found out last weekend that they've been majorly duped for months. University of Zurich researchers set out to "investigate the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) in natural online environments" by unleashing bots pretending to be a trauma counselor, a "Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter," and a [...]