The Verge

The opening hours of Hell Is Us are brilliantly confusing. The game tasks you with getting up to speed on a complicated civil war between the Palomists and Sabinians. A deluge of proper nouns is unleashed: Lymbic weaponry, Guardian Detectors, and more. But the clearest way the game communicates that you should feel utterly dumbfounded [...]

Generally, AI chatbots are not supposed to do things like call you names or tell you how to make controlled substances. But, just like a person, with the right psychological tactics, it seems like at least some LLMs can be convinced to break their own rules. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania deployed tactics described [...]

What do you gift somebody who loves books? The obvious answer is "a book," but since true bibliophiles are probably sitting on a stack already, it's worth getting a little more creative. Luckily for you, many of us at The Verge are big bookworms ourselves, which is why we rounded up a bunch of clever, [...]

Meta is changing some of the rules governing its chatbots two weeks after a Reuters investigation revealed disturbing ways in which they could, potentially, interact with minors. Now the company has told TechCrunch that its chatbots are being trained not to engage in conversations with minors around self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating, and to avoid [...]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started It all started with J.A.R.V.I.S. Yes, that J.A.R.V.I.S. The one from [...]

Verizon has confirmed to customers in stores and online that its network is having an issue on Saturday. Many people have been unable to connect and make or receive calls for hours, while DownDetector's tracker peaked in the afternoon at around 3:30PM ET with more than 20,000 reports. Some customers report their service has continued [...]

For the last week or two, reports have been circulating that recent Windows 11 updates (specifically KB5063878 and KB5062660) were causing some SSDs using Phison controllers to fail. Tech influencers on YouTube and TikTok were quick to jump on the reports of corrupted data and disappearing drives, laying the blame squarely at Microsoft's feet. We're [...]

There's a pleasing rhythm to cozy life sims. The virtual days pass, filled with chores of tending crops or running a business, punctuated by strange mysteries or evolving relationships. At their best, these games merge busywork with exploration and storytelling, in a way that makes them hard to step away from. Discounty, from developer Crinkle [...]

When a Waymo pulls up and parks in front of her home on a residential street in West Los Angeles, 10-year-old Morgan rushes to the window. "The Waymo is home!" she says, calling to her parents, Lisa Delgin and Zach Tucker. It is by no means the first time a Waymo has come "home" to [...]

As one of the cofounders behind Oculus Story Studio, Edward Saatchi knows how hard it can be to sell people on new tech that bills itself as revolutionary. Even though Story Studio snagged an Emmy for one of its three animated features, a general lack of public interest in VR movies led Meta to shutter [...]

Every platform wants to be the place you hang with friends - even Spotify as of this week - so it's apparently time for TikTok to shore up its direct messaging feature! It told TechCrunch that over the next few weeks, all users should see voice messages and image sharing options arrive in their DMs. [...]

The schedule of annual updates for Windows 11 that arrive in the second half of the year will hold steady for 2025, and today, Microsoft announced that the 25H2 package is available now for testing in the Release Preview Channel. So, will you see new UI features or more AI tweaks included on your desktop [...]

There's already been a number of leaks of upcoming Philips Hue products that are expected to be announced next week ahead of IFA. But one thing that hasn't been mentioned was support for Matter-over-Thread. While there's no confirmation that support is coming, there's compelling evidence to suggest it might be. First off, packaging for two [...]

On Tuesday, I told you how the modular computer company Framework was finally fulfilling its promise of the "holy grail for gamers" - a laptop with modular, swappable discrete graphics cards so easy to swap, practically anyone can do it at home. The first futureproof gaming laptop, perhaps? Today, I can confirm the system actually [...]

Lawyers for Tesla filed a motion in court Friday to throw out a jury verdict that found the company's Autopilot software had contributed to the death of a woman in a crash from 2019. Earlier this month, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides, who was killed by a [...]

I dream of a gadget that can do it all. Instead, when I leave for the office, I pack one or two phones, a portable battery bank, a laptop, a Kindle, a new product I'm testing, and at least one pair of earbuds. In my backpack, there's a pouch full of cords and adapters. On [...]

It's hard to realize that Labor Day weekend - signalling the end of summer - is already here. It would be a bit depressing, except that the weekend also brings with it some really good deal. For example, you can nab a Hisense S7N 55-inch TV at Best Buy and Amazon for $699.99, a solid [...]

When you watch KPop Demon Hunters, it is easy to see why it has become the most popular movie that Netflix has ever released. The animated musical's story about a trio of pop stars tasked with protecting humanity from monsters is familiar, but refreshingly different and infinitely more stylish than other narratives like it. The [...]

Tesla is offering a new performance version of its Model Y crossover for the European market. The new variant is aimed at boosting the company's sales on the continent, which have been in free fall for most of the year thanks to growing competition from China and brand damage from Elon Musk's fascist antics. The [...]

Valve has started to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, by rolling out a requirement for all Brits to verify their age with a credit card to access mature content" pages and games on Steam. UK users won't even be able to access the community hubs of mature content games unless a valid credit [...]

More than 450 game developers on Blizzard's Diablo team have formed a union, making them one of the largest and latest groups of Microsoft workers to do so. The new union includes game developers, artists, designers, engineers, and support staff across the Diablo franchise, according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) press release, which [...]

This seems to be the year that Google's AI features are actually starting to add up to something useful. After a week testing the Pixel 10 Pro, my colleagues Allison Johnson and Vee Song say some of the new features are legitimately useful - at least when they work, which isn't always as expected. Case [...]

Lenovo is gearing up to show off its latest products at Europe's IFA tech tradeshow next week, but leaks may have just given us a first look at what's being announced. The most notable gadget shared by reputable leaker Evan Blass shows an image of a concept laptop design with a display that rotates between [...]

In June, Mark Zuckerberg went for the ultimate Hail Mary in the ever-intensifying AI race: He spun up a brand-new Meta AI lab after making a $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI - and then spending billions more hiring some of the industry's preeminent researchers and engineers. Fast-forward a couple of months, and Zuckerberg may [...]

Dangbei is bringing its S7 Ultra Max all-in-one projector to Berlin next week for the big IFA tech show. That's a good indication that the China-only 4K projector with a ridiculously bright 6,200 ISO lumen output is preparing for a global launch. Here's the teaser Dangbei just sent to my inbox: Experience cinema-grade brilliance with [...]

Google's Phone app is adding Calling Cards" that let you customize the appearance of contact screens for incoming calls. They're similar to the Contact Poster feature that iPhone users have had since 2023, allowing Google Phone app users to replace the teeny contact photos that appear when someone is calling you with full-screen images and [...]

Microsoft has fired two more employees who participated in recent protests against the company's contracts with the Israeli military and government. The two employees, Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan, were fired in connection" with demonstrations that saw protesters set up encampments at Microsoft's headquarters, according to Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the No Azure for [...]

Microsoft's AI division announced its first homegrown AI models on Thursday: MAI-Voice-1 AI and MAI-1-preview. The company says its new MAI-Voice-1 speech model can generate a minute's worth of audio in under one second on just one GPU, while MAI-1-preview offers a glimpse of future offerings inside Copilot." Microsoft already uses MA1-Voice-1 to power a [...]

Google is phasing out its Preferred Care extended warranty plan for the Pixel Care Plus program. Pricing between the two is pretty similar. You'll still pay $8 per-month, or $159 for a two-year plan on a Pixel 9. For a Pixel 10 Pro Fold, that jumps up to $339 for two years, or $18 per-month, [...]

On Thursday, Xbox announced it's widely rolling out cross-device play history. With the new update, even if you're on a different Xbox console, Ally handheld, or PC, your recently played game list will remain the same, so you can jump right back in where you left off. The change, which first started testing with Insiders [...]

Look, I sympathize. When General Motors said it would adopt Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its electric vehicles back in 2023, we knew this meant adapters. But we never could have imagined how many adapters we would get. Today, GM announced three additional adapters to help EV owners charge at home or in [...]

Production on Star Wars: Starfighter officially began today, and Lucasfilm has finally confirmed the other actors who will be bringing the film to life alongside Ryan Gosling. Lucasfilm announced today that Star Wars: Starfighters has added Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams to its [...]

EA is promising Battlefield 6 will offer the best PC experience in the history of the franchise," including 4K resolution, 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide monitors, HDR, uncapped framerates, both PS5 and Xbox gamepad support on PC, the ability to create and browse servers, streamer and incognito modes, and more - but it won't require powerful [...]

Fubo is launching a new Sports plan on September 2nd that costs $55.99 per month and comes with over 20 live sports and news-focused channels, including the ESPN and Fox Sports channels, as well as local stations owned by ABC, CBS, and Fox. Where available, this package includes coverage for network TV-broadcast pro and college [...]

A big draw of Kobo e-readers has always been Pocket integration. But, when Mozilla announced in late May that it was shutting down the read-it-later app in July, the Kobo community was left in a bit of a lurch. To the company's credit, in late July, it announced that it would be replacing Pocket with [...]

So I heard you want to play Kirby on hard mode: tough bosses, tricky platforming, complicated puzzles, hidden collectibles, and maybe even punishments for failing. The Star-Crossed World expansion in Kirby and the Forgotten Land's Switch 2 edition certainly introduces new challenges. There's pressure from time constraints and consecutive platforming sequences, multistep puzzles, and bosses [...]

Anthropic will start training its AI models on user data, including new chat transcripts and coding sessions, unless users choose to opt out. It's also extending its data retention policy to five years - again, for users that don't choose to opt out. All users will have to make a decision by September 28th. For [...]

Microsoft is making a big change to how Word for Windows saves documents. The word processing app will soon automatically save new documents to the cloud, instead of Word users having to enable AutoSave and cloud storage options. We are modernizing the way files are created and stored in Word for Windows," says Raul Munoz, [...]

This week, Netflix shared a few more details about its budding location business: The company will open its very first Netflix House in Philadelphia on November 11th, with a second location set to open in Dallas on December 11th. Both locations will span across 100,000 square feet, and offer ticketed experiences related to Netflix franchises [...]

If FromSoftware's multiplayer take on Elden Ring was just a little too easy for you, the developer has just the thing coming up. The studio announced Deep of Night," a new mode for Nightreign that is focused specifically on difficulty. Namely, it sounds like it'll make things much harder. From describes it as a high-difficulty [...]

If you're considering a gaming laptop, but you understandably don't want to spend anywhere near $2,000, MSI's Katana gaming laptop with the midrange RTX 5070 GPU is $1,099 (was $1,499.99) at Walmart. This machine has a lot to offer aside from a solid graphics chip for gaming. It includes a 15.6-inch QHD screen with a [...]

Honor's Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn't tell. It's just 0.1mm thinner - that's four-thousandths of an inch - than the Oppo Find N5 or Samsung's recent Galaxy Z Fold 7. If that's a difference you claim to perceive, then I'm afraid I simply don't believe you. [...]

Honor is bringing the Magic V5 - the world's thinnest foldable phone, though only just - to Europe, where it's available to order now following its Chinese launch last month. It's joined by a new MagicPad 3 tablet and MagicBook Art 14 laptop. I've just reviewed the Magic V5, which is a whole 0.1mm thinner [...]

Taco Bell's plan to outfit hundreds of drive-thrus with an AI voice assistant isn't going exactly as the chain expected. Dane Mathews, Taco Bell's chief digital and technology officer, admitted to The Wall Street Journal that the company is re-evaluating where to deploy the tech as customers air their frustrations on social media, and others [...]

One of the most devastating parts of grief is how it can strike out of nowhere. There you are, doing a perfectly normal, everyday thing, and then that perfectly normal, everyday thing reminds you of something or someone who is no longer there. And when that presence you lost was intimately connected with your life, [...]

ChargePoint is ramping up the power for its next-generation DC fast charging architecture to 600 kW for passenger vehicles, and up to 3.75 megawatts (3,750 kW) for heavy-duty trucks - enough to power an entire football stadium. Most EVs on the road aren't able to accept more than 350 kW of power while charging, but [...]

When this article was originally written in February 2022, the big Spotify controversy was that artists were abandoning the audio service in protest of the company's contract with podcaster Joe Rogan, and some subscribers were deciding to follow the musicians' example. More recently, some users have threatened to bail after CEO Daniel Ek invested in [...]

You can now add swappable magnetic PopSocket grips to Kindle e-readers without undertaking any DIY hacks. PopSocket has launched new PopCase Kindle cases that come with a built-in MagSafe ring, optimally positioned for hand placement and weight management when a MagSafe-compatible PopGrip is attached. The $40 cases are available for 11th and 12th-generation Kindles in [...]

DJI is making its latest wireless lavalier microphone system even smaller without scrimping on features or battery life. The DJI Mic 3 is half the size and weight of its Mic 2 predecessor and introduces new capabilities, including two adaptive gain control modes, three voice tone presets, and a sizable increase in storage capacity for [...]

Apple has removed the iPhone torrenting client, iTorrent, from AltStore PAL's alternative iOS marketplace in the EU, showing that it can still exert control over apps that aren't listed on the official App Store. iTorrent developer Daniil Vinogradov told TorrentFreak that Apple has revoked his distribution rights to publish apps in any alternative iOS stores, [...]