The Verge

Pinterest is using AI to try and help you find the fashion accessories you're looking for, even if you can't describe them in your own words. The company is using a Visual Language Model" to generate descriptive words of styles and the overall vibes" of image Pins on its site, and will let you click [...]

For the longest time, we considered the Beats Fit Pro to be the best gym earbuds around. However, with the arrival of the Powerbeats Pro 2 in February, Beats' last-gen earbuds have become somewhat dated and a lot harder to recommend at full price. That's especially true today, given the Powerbeats Pro 2 are now [...]

Literary journals might have a stuffy reputation. But since its conception in 1998 by author Dave Eggers, McSweeney's Quarterly has been anything but, opting instead to be an endlessly mutating delivery system for writing and art. It has been a hardcover book, a paperback, a newspaper. Once it was a bundle of mail; another time, [...]

Waymo said it recently received its last delivery of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs, which will be retrofitted with sensors and autonomous driving technology at its factory in Arizona, before joining its robotaxi fleet. In a blog post published today, the Alphabet company said it currently has 1,500 Jaguars operating across its four main markets: San Francisco, [...]

After announcing a new company called Core Devices and a pair of new smartwatches running the now open-source PebbleOS, the Pebble's creator, Eric Migicovsky, has launched a podcast. In the first episode of Tick Talk w/ Eric Migicovsky, he gives a brief demo of the Core 2 Duo that's still in development, talks about potential [...]

If you took Pinterest, mashed it together with everything annoying about Threads, and sprinkled generative AI prompts on top - that'd pretty much sum up the newly launched Meta AI site's social feed. So far, prompting AI chatbots - those are the questions or requests you make - has primarily been a private affair. You [...]

After a stinging rebuke in the lower courts over its legal battle with Epic, Apple filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit on Monday. The appeal will challenge last week's ruling that prevents the company from charging developers fees on purchases made outside the App Store. In 2021, the Epic v. Apple lawsuit [...]

Apple's rumored super-slim iPhone Air" isn't expected until this fall, but supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says development has already begun on a redesigned version with a bigger screen. According to Kuo, Apple's second iPhone Air / iPhone Slim" model is planned for launch in the fall of 2026 as part of the usual annual [...]

"When I knew it was over was when I downloaded Skype." All the way back in 2003, Michael Powell, then the chairman of the FCC and the United States' chief regulator of the telecom industry, told a roomful of academics and executives at the University of California at San Diego that he had seen the [...]

President Donald Trump says his administration will institute high tariffs on movies that fit the nebulous category of "produced in foreign lands," a definition that could include anything from anime to the latest Marvel films. In a Sunday evening Truth Social post, Trump claimed that "Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw [...]

Roku is investigating user reports of washed-out colors when streaming HDR content from Disney Plus, according to a thread on the Roku issue tracking board. However, the issue seems to go beyond that, affecting almost any app for Roku TVs, suggest user comments on the thread over the last week. The problem appears to be [...]

Earlier this year, accessory maker Genki showed off a 3D-printed mockup it said was based on the Nintendo Switch 2's official dimensions just days before the console's first official reveal. The company has since started offering Switch 2 accessories that it says will be compatible with the system at launch. Now, Nintendo is suing the [...]

South Texas voters mostly employed by Elon Musk's SpaceX have approved a measure to incorporate as Starbase, a new city in Texas' Cameron County near the company's Boca Chica Beach launch site on the Gulf of Mexico. The final tally was 212-6 in support of the measure, reports The Associated Press. The election took place [...]

You are a negro bunny bound for greatness in the New World, as if the old were simply a mistake. You can't stop thinking about Sylvia Wynter and something like New World natives; you stall, with everyone else, rather than negotiate a true critique of the present, rather than pause Final Fantasy XIV as ordered [...]

Shotgun Cop Man is a strange platformer. You play as a square man with a round, bald head who's chasing Satan to arrest him. At the beginning of each of the game's nine worlds, Satan gives you the middle finger. And you don't just use guns for fighting, but for traversal as well. You start [...]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 81, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy Finally Feels Like Summer Week to at least everyone who lives near me, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading [...]

Longtime Verge readers might recall the unusual story of how the music video for a Janet Jackson song, Rhythm Nation," could cause certain Windows laptops to crash just by being around when it's playing. Now, in a blog post spotted by PCWorld, Microsoft employee Raymond Chen has revealed that a filter created to deal with [...]

Apple is planning to shuffle its iPhone release schedule next year as it releases the first foldable iPhone to make things more manageable, reports The Information. The plan is for the foldable to come out with the iPhone 18 Pro and Air" models, while the standard iPhone 18 gets shunted back to the spring of [...]

The Trump administration has released a proposal to cut about a quarter of NASA's 2026 budget, slashing both International Space Station crew sizes and the amount of research done there. At the same time, it sets up new funding that would likely benefit Elon Musk's SpaceX by prioritizing human missions to Mars, and refocuses on [...]

While we all wait to find out what effect the upcoming - well, maybe upcoming - tariffs will have on prices, many of us are making mental lists of some of the items we might need that, hopefully, won't demand a bank loan to be affordable. Last year, we asked the staff members here at [...]

Polygon, The Verge's former sister site dedicated to covering gaming and entertainment, is now owned by Valnet, a company that owns more than 27 different brands covering gaming, entertainment, sports, travel, and more. The transition is, let's say, ongoing: a day after the acquisition, the site still said it was a Vox Media property, and [...]

Google is notifying parents using its Family Link parental controls via email that their kids will soon be able to access Gemini AI Apps on their monitored Android devices, The New York Times reports. The company says kids will be able to use Gemini to do things like help them with homework or read them [...]

Sam Altman and Elon Musk aren't just competing in the AI race; they both have ambitions to build Silicon Valley's holy grail: an "everything" super app encompassing finance, social media, gaming, and more. Earlier this week, I got a peek at Altman's plan from a cavernous event space on the northern edge of San Francisco. [...]

On the evening of April 30th, the hottest ticket in San Francisco was a buzzy crypto startup's coming-out party at a warehouse-like complex on the northern edge of the city. It had all the makings of an event you'd only find near Silicon Valley: Anderson Paak, champagne, and a bunch of eye-scanning orbs. Onstage, Sam [...]

President Donald Trump proposed drastic budget cuts today that could stymie green energy projects, gut environmental protections, and further hobble health and climate research in the US. Topline budget proposals released today for the 2026 fiscal year would ax $15 billion in federal funding for renewable energy and new technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions. [...]

Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said. The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers [...]

Nothing cements your relationship status with a new hobby like buying a special bag for it. Hiking? Cycling? Photography? You bet there's a special bag designed for just that. Getting into a new thing and accumulating gear for it is a joy. An important and underappreciated subcategory of that enjoyment is finding a special bag [...]

Apple and Anthropic are building an AI-powered coding tool that will work in Xcode, Apple's code-writing tool, Bloomberg reports. A new version of Xcode will integrate Anthropic's Claude Sonnet model to write, edit and test code on behalf of programmers," Bloomberg says. Apple is slowly rolling this new version out internally initially and apparently has [...]

A beta build of Android 16 contains an early version of Google's new Android Desktop Mode that, in the future, could let users simply plug their smartphone into a monitor and use it like a laptop or desktop computer. The new feature was shared by Android tinkerer Mishaal Rahman reporting for Android Authority. Rahman manually [...]

Microsoft increased the price of Xbox Series consoles by up to $100 earlier this week, but thankfully, not all retailers have raised the price (yet). Dell, for instance, is still offering the digital-only Xbox Series X (1TB) for $449.99, saving you $100 on the new MSRP. The smaller, 512GB Xbox Series S is also available [...]

The end-to-end encryption (E2EE) available on the WhatsApp messaging app gets you off to a good start when it comes to privacy and security. It means no one else - hackers, law enforcement, or Meta staff - can see your chats. Your stuff stays just between you and the person or persons you're chatting with. [...]

With President Donald Trump's new tariff plan, your online shopping packages coming directly from China are about to get much more expensive. In February, the Trump administration moved to get rid of a little-known rule that allows US consumers to avoid tariffs on low-value packages. The de minimis exemption meant that packages valued under $800 [...]

The 8BitDo Ultimate C Wired Controller for Xbox and PC is on sale at Amazon for $19.61 (44 percent off), its lowest price to date. But the sale is only for the dark green model. The dark gray and orange alternatives are only available for $31.49 (10 percent off) at checkout. Don't get mad at [...]

If you live in the US, congratulations - you are now a foot soldier in what has been called "the dumbest trade war in history." And if you live in one of the top three countries that trade most with the US (Canada, Mexico, and China), apologies: you are part of this as well. Donald [...]

Fubo is continuing its quest to cut a deal with sports broadcasters that can bring upon the holy grail of sports bundles later this year, just in time for football season. As reported by Deadline, Fubo CEO David Gandler said on an earnings call on Friday that the company is working hard to line up [...]

If you've always wanted a droid but don't have a need for an intergalactic translator or a starship mechanic, Piaggio Fast Forward is giving its Gitamini a makeover suitable for a galaxy far, far away. Adopting the alphanumeric naming convention of robots in the Star Wars universe, G1T4-M1N1 is a special edition of the company's [...]

The delay of Grand Theft Auto VI into next year is a big deal. The game is the follow-up to arguably the biggest entertainment release of all time, one that originally debuted well over a decade ago. Even if GTAV is still going strong, now spanning multiple console generations and with a surprisingly enduring online [...]

We hit the 100-day mark in Donald Trump's second presidential term this week and, well - a lot of things have happened in that time. Verge policy editor Adi Robertson has been running a series of stories about the impact of these 100 days on the site all week. They're great; we've linked them below [...]

Price increases on electronics as a result of President Trump's global tariffs are starting to be felt outside the US, as a Canadian camera shop recently discovered. As a result of how Leica imports its products into North America, a store in Calgary, Alberta, was recently notified by the camera maker that it would be [...]

President Trump issued an executive order on Thursday to end all federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence," the order reads. It says the Corporation for Public [...]

Marvel's movies have yet to stop being box office juggernauts, but in recent years focused on multiversal storytelling, the studio's interconnected cinematic franchise has often felt adrift and unfocused. Rather than working as films that can stand on their own, the MCU's recent crossover features have generally resulted in dangling threads, like they're all just [...]

Payment processing platform Stripe just added a way for iOS developers to accept payments by linking outside their apps, dodging Apple's commission fees. The move comes after a landmark ruling on Wednesday in the Epic v. Apple antitrust case. Apple can no longer charge developers 27 percent fees on purchases made outside apps, and it [...]

Following the release of the V20.0.0 firmware earlier this week that introduced features like Virtual Game Cards, some Switch users found their consoles unable to boot and displaying an error code after applying the update and restarting. Nintendo acknowledged the issue and released another update, V20.0.1, this morning, which fixes the problem. But those experiencing [...]

Part of a failed Soviet spacecraft that's been circling Earth for the last 53 years is about to come crashing down. The Kosmos 482 probe launched by the USSR in 1972 was intended to collect data from the surface of Venus, but was marooned in orbit following a malfunction in its upper-stage rocket booster. Kosmos [...]

"Cook chose poorly" is one of those phrases you'll someday read in a history book about the tech industry. That's just one of the memorable lines from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers' stinging rebuke of Apple this week, in which she ruled that Apple needed to change the way it handled external payments, buttons, and links [...]

Apple has approved an update to Spotify's iPhone app that makes it the first major app to support direct links for US users to pay for plans on an external site, without restrictions. Apple has been forced to change its rules on external payments following an order in its ongoing case against Epic Games. The [...]

Pinterest is having some weird moderation issues. Reports of sweeping pin removals and account suspensions have appeared across social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X, with many users saying they received no warning or explanation about the ban before being locked out of their accounts. The r/Pinterest subreddit is also currently dominated by posts [...]

Rockstar Games is delaying the highly anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI to May 26th, 2026. The game had originally been planned to release in fall 2025, but Rockstar Games now says the team needs extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve." In a message posted on the [...]

TikTok has been ordered to pay 530 million (around $600 million) for sending European users' data to servers in China, a breach of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). TikTok has six months to bring its data processing into compliance, pending any possible appeal. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) found that TikTok [...]