The Verge

Hollywood director Carl Erik Rinsch was convicted of scamming $11 million from Netflix to spend on luxury items, including five Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari, as reported earlier by Deadline. A New York jury found Rinsch guilty of several charges on Thursday, including fraud and money laundering. Rinsch, who's known for directing 47 Ronin, was charged [...]

Google Translate's latest update brings live speech translations, originally available only on the Pixel Buds, to any headphones you want, with support for over 70 languages. It's rolling out today in beta and just requires a compatible Android phone with the Translate app (unlike Apple's similar feature, which requires AirPods). It's one of a few [...]

Samsung's Frame TV is one of the coolest-looking TVs you can buy, doubling as wall art when you're not watching - but it's pricey. If you like the idea of a TV that displays art when not in use but is far more affordable, Hisense's S7N CanvasTV delivers a similar vibe for a lot less, [...]

When Bryan Fuller set out to make his first feature film, his goal was to make the kind of family-friendly scares that he loved as a kid. Think Gremlins or Ghostbusters. The creator of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies ended up crafting a story called Dust Bunny, about a young girl named Aurora who hires a [...]

HBO Max is launching curated channels, a new feature that will allow you to quickly jump into a continuous feed of a popular series or tune into a specific genre. When you select a channel on HBO Max, the streaming service will start you at the beginning of whatever's playing, while giving you the ability [...]

TCL has been a solid competitor in the midrange TV market for years, going head-to-head with Hisense. Not only are TVs from both manufacturers competitive on features, they even use similar nomenclature to categorize their TV lines - the TCL QM8 and Hisense U8, QM7 and U7, and QM6 and U6. But with TCL's new [...]

Amazon is continuing to celebrate The Game Awards, which took place on December 11th, with a big sale on titles that were nominated in their respective categories. The deals include a discount that brings the PC version of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which ended up taking home nine awards (including game of the year), back [...]

Every week at The Verge, we're tracking what's happening with Trump Mobile's promised and yet undelivered Android phone. Why? Because we cover phones. We also cover vaporware, which the T1 Phone 8002 (gold version) very well may be. The smartphone has now been delayed for months. Trump Mobile no longer claims that it will be [...]

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here. This time last year, I'd cut [...]

You may not even know it, but you've almost certainly encountered songs made mostly or even entirely with AI. If you've scrolled on TikTok the last few weeks, you've probably heard "I Run" a few times, but there are countless others making their way around social and music platforms. AI tools in general, and Suno [...]

Where's the Trump Phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone's whereabouts. As usual, we're still waiting for a response. In the meantime, we're publishing a little reminder of some wireless tech terms. You know, in case you forgot. 6G? 4K? 3D? [...]

The Tetris: My Play Watch may look like an Apple Watch, but it eschews most of the functionality you'll typically find on a smartwatch to focus on two things: playing Tetris and celebrating the game through a UI that's thoroughly Tetris-themed. It's very good at making you want to play Alexey Pajitnov's iconic tetromino-stacking puzzler, [...]

The YouTube watch screen has been given a new look on TVs. The redesign aims to provide a "more intuitive experience with easier navigation," according to YouTube's announcement, relocating the video title and several controls, and adding a new "Description" button to access creator information and other video features. I'm already seeing the update on [...]

The theme of this week is isolation. That's always been a part of what makes Pluribus so unsettling, of course; in the show there are only a handful of human survivors left on Earth, while the rest of the population has turned into an interconnected hive mind, some 7 billion people strong. But watching Carol [...]

Warning: I'm going to make an attempt to justify a $40 paperweight for cable management. I'm not sure how I ended up in this position, or who hurt me. All I can say is that I'm not proud of myself, so please, take pity. I've been using Native Union's 3-cable Weighter for about a week. [...]

While Geoff Keighley had already announced that Tomb Raider would be making a Game Awards appearance, the surprise was that instead of one game announcement there's two. Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Game Studios are releasing two Tomb Raider games back-to-back in 2026 and 2027. First up, coming in 2026 is Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. [...]

One of the easiest things to do during the holidays is spend too much money. It happens to many of us, even when we swear that things are going to be different this year. We want to help you stay true to your intentions to save money when possible, and we're doing that with a [...]

Shortly after appeals court judges ruled against Apple's contempt appeal in a years-long antitrust dispute against the makers of Fortnite, I got to talk to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in an interview. According to Sweeney, today's ruling "completely shuts down" Apple's App Store rules that allow it to collect "junk fees." The three-judge Ninth [...]

Remedy Entertainment is finally showing off the much-anticipated sequel to Control. The new game, dubbed Control Resonant, expands on the original with a new action-RPG framework. It takes place seven years later and shifts the setting from the unsettling Oldest House of the original to a more open Manhattan, while putting players in the role [...]

The next Star Wars game is coming from the director of Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was revealed during The Game Awards with a brief trailer that got Geoff Keighley so excited his voice started cracking. Like any announcement trailer, it was brief, featuring a [...]

On Thursday evening, with White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks looking over his shoulder, Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to grab unilateral power over regulating artificial intelligence for the federal government. The order can't by itself unilaterally override state AI laws, but it directs federal agencies to take steps to reduce [...]

The Game Awards are back once again to showcase a metric ton of commercials, provide the gaming public with their monthly dose of Muppets, and validate gamers' opinions on which title should be named the Game of the Year. I don't wanna say it's a foregone conclusion what this year's GOTY will be - Silksong [...]

Disney and OpenAI's new $1 billion partnership feels emblematic of the terrible times we're living through. In exchange for access to the generative AI firm's APIs and tools like ChatGPT, the studio plans to let users of OpenAI's Sora AI video generator create clips featuring hundreds of Disney-owned characters. Sora AI users will be able [...]

At a congressional meeting to vote on the future of kids online safety, the most spirited debate of the day was about a bill that wasn't even on the agenda and Apple CEO Tim Cook. 18 bills that aim to regulate the internet to protect children are now headed for a vote before the full [...]

Amazon Prime Video has pulled its AI-powered video recap of Fallout after viewers noticed that it got key parts of the story wrong. The streaming service began testing Video Recaps last month, and now they're missing from the shows included in the test, including Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, and Bosch. The [...]

Apple has lost its appeal of a massive district court ruling in its ongoing antitrust dispute with Epic Games. That April ruling from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that Apple "willingly" failed to comply with a 2021 order allowing mobile app developers to link to payment options outside of Apple's, and she barred Apple from [...]

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill Thursday that will require advertisers to identify if an ad includes AI-generated people. Hochul's announcement said the bill, S.8420-A/A.8887-B, was the first of its kind in the US, describing it as a "common sense" law that would bring increased transparency and protect consumers. A separate bill also [...]

Fortnite players on Android devices in the US can once again download the game directly from the Google Play Store, not long after it returned to Apple's App Store in May. Its return comes five years after it was removed from Google's app store as Epic Games pushed back against Apple and Google's app store [...]

December 31st, 2025 is the deadline to save the Google Stadia controller. That's less than three weeks from today - but there's never been a better time. Last month, I discovered the controller is finally a first-class citizen in Steam and SteamOS. The Stadia controller was originally designed to connect to your Wi-Fi network and [...]

You may not have heard of Hoto, but as my colleague Sean Hollister pointed out in his recent profile, the company is quickly becoming a household name thanks to its penchant for high-quality design. Hoto's new PixelDrive electric screwdriver is a great example of what the company is capable of, and right now it's on [...]

The Chrome team at Google recently built a new browser. It takes a query or prompt, opens a bunch of related tabs for you, and then builds you a custom app for whatever you're trying to do. Ask it for travel tips and it'll build you a planner app; ask it for study help and [...]

We've seen NSFW offerings from Grok and other chatbots, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been teasing adult content within ChatGPT for a while. Now, we have a timeline. Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, told reporters during a Thursday briefing about GPT-5.2 that she expects "adult mode" to debut within ChatGPT in the first [...]

GPT-5.2 is here, and with it, OpenAI wants "to unlock even more economic value for people," Fidji Simo, the company's CEO of Applications, told reporters in a Thursday briefing. She said it's been in the works for "many, many months." The company calls GPT-5.2 its "best model yet for everyday professional use" in a release, [...]

Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service is coming to cable boxes from Comcast and Rogers. The Luna app is already available via web browsers, Fire TV devices, Fire tablets, and many smart TVs from Samsung and LG, and this new expansion will bring the service to "millions" more devices, according to Amazon. Starting Thursday, Luna will [...]

Hamlet is having something of a renaissance in 2025. This year's edition of the Toronto International Film Festival featured three different takes on the idea, including Chloe Zhao's adaptation of the play's inspiration and Aneil Karia's rendition set in modern-day London. But the most out-there version came from Belle director Mamoru Hosoda, who transformed Shakespeare's [...]

Apple's latest gadgets have gotten some notable discounts lately - including the recently released Apple Watch Series 11, which is still on sale for $100 off at Amazon. Now, we're seeing the AirPods Pro 3 drop down to their lowest price to date, with the noise-canceling earbuds going for just $199 ($50 off) at Amazon [...]

The first trailer for DC Studios' Supergirl feature is finally here to give us a look at what the Woman of Tomorrow is made of. Though Superman's (technically) older cousin Kara Zor-El (Millie Alcock) was kind of a mess when we first met her, she's trying to pull it together in Supergirl's new trailer. The [...]

Disney has accused Google of engaging in copyright infringement on a "massive scale," claiming its AI models have generated images resembling characters from Frozen, Deadpool, Star Wars, and others, according to a report from Variety. In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google on Wednesday, Disney demands that the tech giant stop allegedly infringing on its [...]

WhatsApp says it's making "voicemails a thing of the past" by introducing a new feature that pretty much works like voicemail. Missed call messages are rolling out as part of WhatsApp's latest feature drop, which makes it easier for you to leave voice or video notes in chats after you've called someone who doesn't answer [...]

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. When news broke last week that Meta may cut the budget of its Meta Reality Labs unit by as much as 30 percent, followed by reports that the company is [...]

OpenAI is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a 56-year-old man killed his mother and took his own life after delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in a California court on Thursday, accuses ChatGPT of putting a "target" on the back of 83-year-old Suzanne Adams, who was killed at her Connecticut home in August. [...]

State attorneys general from across the US are demanding more accountability from AI companies, warning them that their chatbots may be violating state laws. As reported by Reuters, the AGs have given Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others a deadline of January 16th, 2026 to respond to demands for more safety measures for generative AI, saying [...]

The Nintendo Switch 2 comes with a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers, but it's always good to have a second set around in case more people come over for a few rounds of Mario Kart World. BJ's Wholesale Club is offering a set of Joy-Con 2 controllers for $79.99 ($20 off), a new all-time low. [...]

A company called INIU has issued a recall for its BI-B41 10,000mAh power banks because the lithium-ion batteries they use "can overheat and ignite, posing fire and burn hazards to consumers." The company has received 15 reports of the power banks overheating resulting in 11 fires causing over $380,000 in property damage and three minor [...]

AT&T is launching Connected Life, a new smart home security offering built around Google Home that keeps working during power or internet outages. Connected Life can be self-installed and features smart home cameras from Google Nest and security hardware from Abode, as well as professional monitoring. This follows Google launching APIs for its smart home [...]

The Nex Playground is a motion-controlled, cube-shaped console for ages five and up that's selling like hotcakes. It came in third for home console sales during Black Friday week, according to sales data shared on Bluesky from Mat Piscatella of Circana, falling behind only Nintendo's Switch 2 and Sony's PlayStation 5. That's an impressive feat [...]

A new three-year licensing agreement announced between Disney and ChatGPT operator OpenAI will allow the Sora video generator to create "user-prompted social videos" that feature more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. "The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI [...]

It's Game Awards season, y'all. That special time of the year when we gather together to celebrate video games and the people who make them... by watching expensive commercials briefly punctuated by the odd awards speech or musical performance. For better or worse, The Game Awards is the biggest night on the video game event [...]

Entrenching generative AI into Adobe's creative software ecosystem is paying off, according to the company's latest earnings. While its share price has fallen by more than 37 percent this year at the time of writing, Adobe is reporting a bump in annual profits driven by record revenue of $23.77 billion for 2025 - an 11 [...]