The Verge

Perplexity has just offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion - a bid that's far more than the AI search startup itself is valued at, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The startup sent the unsolicited bid on Tuesday, just months after Perplexity said it would buy Chrome if the [...]

Ever since the launch of ChatGPT, AI companies have been racing to gain a foothold in government in more ways than one. Most recently, that's meant luring government users with attractive low prices for their products. Within the last week, both OpenAI and Anthropic have introduced special prices for government versions of their generative AI [...]

Apple Cinemas, a theater chain not affiliated with Apple, has responded to Apple's recent lawsuit over alleged trademark infringement, as reported by MacRumors. In its lawsuit, Apple alleged that Apple Cinemas and owner Sand Media have tried to capitalize on the highly-regarded Apple brand" in connection with an aggressive nationwide expansion." We are committed to [...]

Unplugged, a company cofounded and backed by Erik Prince, who is also the founder of infamous private military contractor Blackwater, has just released a new version of its "privacy-first" UP Phone that will be made in the US - at some point. The original UP Phone was described by the company as "the ultimate privacy-focused [...]

Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud three years after his collapsed cryptocurrency firm wiped out $40 billion in funds, according to a report from Bloomberg. Kwon entered his plea in a New York court on Tuesday as part of a deal reached with prosecutors that reduced his charges. [...]

In July, Pebblebee announced a new safety feature for its Clip location tracker. Called Alert, it turns the Apple AirTag alternative into a panic alarm. Rapidly pressing the Clip's button activates a flashing light and loud 97-decibel siren while also triggering Pebblebee's mobile app to send a browser link of your current location to a [...]

Google is making it easier to see news from your favorite outlets. A new feature, called preferred sources," will let you choose the outlets you want to see featured the most in Search's top stories" section. Google's top stories hub appears when you search for something related to a current event, and displays a bunch [...]

The MacBook Pro 14 with M4 is one of our top laptop recommendations for students, and it's currently $1,299 ($300 off), an all-time low price at Amazon and Best Buy. In our tests, Apple's entry-level pro laptop was powerful enough to process high-resolution raw files in Adobe's Lightroom Classic without slowing down. It also easily [...]

First teased at CES 2025, Samsung has finally launched a TV featuring the company's new Micro RGB backlight technology. The 115-inch TV is first launching in South Korea for over $32,000, according to SamMobile, but Samsung says it's coming to the US next, followed by a wider global rollout with more size options. Samsung's Micro [...]

Sling TV has launched a new option that lets you watch live content without signing up for a streaming or cable subscription. Now, you can pay $4.99 for a day pass," offering 24 hours of live and on-demand access to several channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, TNT, A&E, Disney Channel, CNN, and others. Sling TV [...]

While the monsters in each of the nine Alien movies have been a little bit different, the nefarious corporate forces have remained the same. Ridley Scott's original Alien didn't need to mention Weyland-Yutani by name for it to be clear that a singular mega-company had cornered the market on space exploration. But subsequent Alien films [...]

The smart home can be scary. It seems like every other month, we hear about another smart home company going out of business, leaving you scrambling for a new way to turn on your lights. Why is it so hard for smart home manufacturers to keep the lights on? And what can they do to [...]

I'm annoyed, not for the first time, by something Sam Altman has said. But this time it's because I'm annoyed at how much I agree with what he's saying - even though I think his statement is kind of bullshit. In a recent interview, journalist Cleo Abram asked Altman how people will be able to [...]

Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar. The Microsoft 365 companion apps, as Microsoft calls them, are starting to roll out to business [...]

Taylor Swift leaned into her love for symbolism with the announcement of her dozenth album, titledThe Life of a Showgirl. TS12 was introduced ina teaser- already viewed over 65 million times - for the next episode of theNew Heightspodcast airing Wednesday, hosted by boyfriend Travis Kelce and his big brother Jason. Tay extracted the $29.99 [...]

On Monday, Ford introduced an innovative new manufacturing process that it says will help make its EVs more sustainable, more desirable, and more importantly, more affordable. The timing couldn't have been worse. EV tax credits were set to expire at the end of September. President Trump's trade war was tilting the balance in favor of [...]

Rockstar Games is adding Nvidia's DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation support to Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced today. Nvidia is also releasing a new Game Ready driver today that will improve Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced performance, as well as support the enhanced version of Senua's Saga: Hellblade II that's available today. The DLSS 4 [...]

Epic Games has announced that it's bringing Fortnite back to iOS in Australia, after the country's federal court ruled that Apple and Google's app marketplaces are anticompetitive. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X that Fortnite will be made available on iPhones via the Epic Games Store at a date to be determined," while the [...]

Did Tesla remotely deactivate a Cybertruck in the middle of a highway because the owner featured it in an unauthorized music video? The story already seemed highly unlikely, and on Monday afternoon, Tesla tweeted about the video, saying, This is fake - that's not our screen. Tesla does NOT disable vehicles remotely." On Sunday, Instagram [...]

On Monday, Anthropic released a hotly anticipated memory function for its Claude chatbot. In a YouTube video, the company demonstrated a user asking what they had been chatting about with Claude before their vacation. Claude searches past chats to read and summarize them for the user, then asks if they'd like to move on and [...]

Despite the convenience of cordless stick vacs, canister vacuums are still very much a thing for those with battery anxiety or those who want a lighter cleaner. Miele still offers over 20 different models of canister vacs in the US, but its latest is the company's first to introduce smart functionality making it yet another [...]

Have you heard of Natalie the Nerd? She's a pillar of the Nintendo Game Boy modding scene who taught herself to reverse engineer and design Game Boy circuit boards. Now, she's put her skills to work in probably the most beautiful build I've ever seen: a working see-through Game Boy Color where even the circuit [...]

Revel is shutting down its ridehail business, citing heightened competition from rideshare leaders like Uber and Lyft. The company, which began as an electric moped business before shifting to rideshare, plans to pivot to electric vehicle charging. At the end of the day, rideshare is a very competitive market and asset-heavy," Revel CEO Frank Reig [...]

OnePlus has kicked off its back-to-school sale, and the deals are pretty solid. There are discounts on the company's impressive tablets, but the highlights are the new low prices on its smartwatches. Right now, you can buy the 43mm OnePlus Watch 3 for $269.99 ($30 off), while the 46mm is $319.99 ($30 off). Even the [...]

iRobot, maker of the iconic Roomba robot vacuum, announced its second-quarter earnings late last week, and the numbers keep going down. Despite launching an entirely new product line, its revenue declined 23 percent to $127.6 million from the previous quarter, with the lucrative US and European markets being hit hardest. The company has struggled in [...]

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck will serve as an advisor at Meta to address ideological and political bias" within the company's AI chatbot, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The move comes as part of a settlement Meta reached with Starbuck, who filed a lawsuit claiming Meta AI wrongly stated he was involved [...]

Reddit says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, so it's going to start blocking the Internet Archive from indexing the vast majority of Reddit. The Wayback Machine will no longer be able to crawl post detail pages, comments, or profiles; instead, it will only be able [...]

Ford just announced its new universal EV platform that is expected to rein in costs for the company's money losing EV business. Chief among those cost savings will be a much, much smaller battery. Ford said the new battery will be 15 percent smaller than that of a BYD Atto electric crossover. BYD uses the [...]

ESPN and Fox both launch their live sports streaming services later this month, and now the two companies have announced that you can bundle them at a discount. Starting October 2nd, you can purchase a subscription to ESPN's standalone streaming service and Fox One for $39.99 per month, offering savings of about $10. Fox One, [...]

Microsoft is moving GitHub into its CoreAI team, following the resignation of GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke today. After nearly four years as CEO, Dohmke is leaving GitHub to become a startup founder again," and pursue opportunities outside of Microsoft and GitHub. GitHub has operated as a separate company ever since Microsoft acquired it in 2018 [...]

Apple still hasn't brought wireless charging to the iPad, but Kuxiu's new charger brings similar functionality and convenience to the iPad Pro and iPad Air. Like wireless chargers for the iPhone, the M30 magnetically attaches to the back of supported iPad models, but instead of transferring power through wire coils and induction, it uses the [...]

Let's be honest, Gigabyte. Your marketing for the Aero X16 is giving Razer Blade, from the colors and font of the spec slides to the thin design of the space gray laptop itself. While we haven't tested out this model to see how it stacks up to Razer's gaming machine, its price is certainly a [...]

The Trump administration has ordered Nvidia and AMD to pay the federal government a 15 percent cut of their AI chip sales revenue to China, according to reports from The New York Times and The Financial Times. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly reached an agreement with President Donald Trump just days before the Commerce Department [...]

Ninja's Swirl ups the ante for ice cream machines by also allowing you to make soft serve or frozen yogurt at home. It normally costs $349.99, but now you can pick one up for $299.99 at Amazon, its lowest price to date. It's the first time the ice cream maker has gone on sale since [...]

Ford says its finally cracked the code on cheap EVs. The automaker announced plans to build a family" of low-cost electric vehicles at its Kentucky assembly plant, starting with a four-door, midsized $30,000 pickup truck in 2027. Ford touted the announcement as its Model T moment" that will be more streamlined to help bring down [...]

A new website that lets you paint over a world map with other users in real-time has taken the digital illustration community by storm. Wplace is a collaborative pixel art platform that serves as a spiritual successor to Reddit's r/Place April Fools' Day experiments, placing time restrictions on drawing tools that motivate users to team [...]

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and cohost of the Hard Fork podcast. This is the second episode of my productivity-focused Decoder series that I'm doing while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I'm talking with Notion cofounder and CEO Ivan Zhao. I've followed Notion for [...]

Paramount has just snapped up the rights to the UFC, joining an industry-wide race to buy up remaining sports streaming rights. The $7.7 billion deal will bring 30 of the UFC's Fight Nights" and 13 marquee events to Paramount Plus subscribers for seven years starting in 2026 - no pay-per-view required. Paramount, which merged with [...]

Repairable phone manufacturer Fairphone has announced a new range of USB cables and chargers. While they're not user-repairable, the company says that they're more durable and sustainably manufactured than its previous peripherals. And even for people without a Fairphone device, they should make for a more affordable entry point to its more ethical take on [...]

Apple has little interest in merging iPadOS and macOS, or bringing its desktop operating system to its touchscreen tablet. So a Chinese modder took it upon themselves to create a hybrid laptop they're calling the iPadBook featuring both operating systems in a single device that lets you switch from macOS to iPadOS by simply detaching [...]

For Matter, this year was never going to be about flashy new features. Other than support for security cameras, which I hear should finally arrive this fall, 2025 is all about fixing problems. And with Matter 1.4.2, announced today, the smart home standard is taking an encouraging step forward. Back in January, Tobin Richardson, president [...]

Hyundai is now offering an optional" security upgrade for the Ioniq 5 in the UK that prevents the car being stolen with a Game Boy-like device. Hyundai wants some Ioniq 5 owners to pay 49 ($65) to upgrade hardware and software components to prevent thieves using handheld devices to unlock and start cars without needing [...]

AOL dial-up is ending on September 30th according to astatementposted on the company's website. It marks the end of the service that was synonymous with the internet for many since its launch in 1991. AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet," reads the statement by the Yahoo-owned company. [...]

Passwords still seem to be the most popular method of ensuring that the right person is using the right app or service, despite the slow adoption of passkeys, which are considered more secure. And because we should be using different ones for each device and/or app, the best way to track all of them is [...]

Tech companies keep telling everyone that this or that AI feature is going to change everything. But when you press them for examples, real, concrete examples of how those AI tools should be used, the answers tend to be lackluster. Sometimes AI tools feel so open-ended, it's hard to know where to start or what [...]

How it started When I was growing up in the Midwest, everyone I knew drove small cars. My dad had a light pink Volvo 240, my mom drove a Dodge Dart, and my grandmother had a 1988 Honda Accord - which would eventually become my first car. We lived in the suburbs, so almost no [...]

It's the lack of noise you notice first. There's no clatter of equipment, rumble of engines, or chatter of coworkers. Only the low hum of electronics. For an industrial space, this is eerily quiet, but it makes sense in a building where robots might outnumber people. I'm at a warehouse - or customer fulfilment center [...]

Leaving the house without my phone is the stuff of nightmares. Leaving the house without my phone on purpose? Are you kidding? What if I need to take a picture of something? What will I look at if I need to wait in line? What if disaster strikes or a War of the Worlds happens? [...]

In the fascinating new reality of the internet, teen girls can't learn about periods on Reddit and indie artists can't sell smutty games on Itch.io, but a military contractor will make you nonconsensual deepfakes of Taylor Swift taking her top off for $30 a month. Early Tuesday, Elon Musk's xAI launched a new image and [...]