The Verge

Switzerland launched an open-source model called Apertus on Monday as an alternative to proprietary models like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, reports SWI as spotted by Engadget. The model's source code, training data, model weights, and detailed development process are available on the AI model platform HuggingFace. Apertus, which is Latin for open," was designed [...]

IO Interactive, developers of the much-beloved Hitman series, showed off its latest title, 007 First Light during a special September State of Play. In it, instead of a bald Agent 47, you play a youthful and immaculately coiffed James Bond - and that's pretty much the biggest distinction between the two games. Watch the thirty [...]

Anker's Laptop Power Bank came to the rescue of my laptop and smartphone during a recent power outage. They were on the verge of dying, but its pair of built-in USB-C cables powered up my devices so I could keep working remotely. Since then, I carry it with me wherever I go, and it's bailed [...]

This month's Google Pixel drop includes a broader rollout of the company's splashy UI revamp. Starting today, Google will bring its Material 3 Expressive design language to Pixel 6 devices and newer, in addition to the Pixel Tablet. Google first revealed the youthful new design language in May before launching it with its Android 16-equipped [...]

Pixel phones will now be able to stream audio to multiple headphones at once thanks to expanded Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast support. If you have a Pixel 8 or newer, you'll now be able to pair two headphones at a time. That means you can make your friend listen to the new Nourished by [...]

It's been a tumultuous summer for Scale AI: Meta took a multibillion-dollar stake in the company, Mark Zuckerberg hired Scale CEO Alexandr Wang and other top staff, and Scale laid off 14 percent of its workforce. Now the latest development is a lawsuit over corporate espionage in the AI industry. The AI data labeling company, [...]

If you ever doubted the console wars" were over, here's a new piece of data to consider: Helldivers 2, formerly console exclusive to Sony's PS5, is currently the best-selling title on Xbox. In fact, it's the first and third best-selling game, if you count its more premium edition, and it's currently the ninth-most played game [...]

Pornhub has settled with the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Utah over claims it inflicted grave harm on children." As part of the proposed settlement, Pornhub and its parent company, Aylo, must pay $5 million to Utah and address the FTC's allegations, which included: Pornhub must also implement policies to combat CSAM and [...]

Mophie has announced a new wireless charger for Apple's AirPods Max called the Max Headphones Charging Stand. The AirPods Max don't support wireless charging, so Mophie's new stand relies on a small dongle that stays connected to the headphones' USB-C port at all times. When docked in the stand, the dongle magnetically aligns and connects [...]

Roblox is going to start showing ESRB ratings alongside experiences to help users in the US better understand if an experience is appropriate for a user of a certain age. The new ratings will appear thanks to Roblox's new partnership with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC), which was announced today. As part of the [...]

Streameast, one of the largest sports piracy platforms in the world, has been shut down according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an antipiracy group that counts NBC Universal, Netflix, and Disney among its members. ACE announced in a statement that it worked alongside Egyptian authorities to shut down the notorious" platform, and [...]

After years of requests from users, Instagram will finally have a dedicated app for iPad. Beginning Wednesday, September 3rd, users will be able to download the new app built specifically for Apple's tablet. But it will be slightly different than the mobile app users are accustomed to. Most significantly, the iPad app will open directly [...]

When NBC's adaptation of The Office first debuted in 2005, the series was panned for being a pale and uninspired imitation of its English predecessor. It took an entire season for showrunner Greg Daniels to figure out how to infuse his take on The Office with a quirky, satirical energy calibrated to appeal to American [...]

It's rare to find a gadget that can handle two totally separate tasks very well, but Google's TV Streamer 4K pulls it off. The 4K set top box allows you to stream your favorite TV shows and movies, and is also an impressive smart home hub, with support for Matter and a built-in Thread radio. [...]

Emma Roth is a news writer here at The Verge, and for me," she explains, that means every day is different. During the four years I've been here, I've covered breaking news and written about basically everything in the realm of tech, whether it's streaming price hikes, the latest in AI chatbots, privacy issues surrounding [...]

Garmin just announced its Fenix 8 Pro series of smartwatches, which adds both cellular and satellite connectivity via the company's InReach tech. The Fenix 8 Pro series also adds a MicroLED display version that gets a maximum brightness of 4,500 nits. The catch is the watches will start at $1,199.99, with the MicroLED version going [...]

Netflix will now let you create and share highlight clips of your favorite shows and movies right from the Netflix app on your phone. Last year, Netflix launched a feature that let you bookmark spots from shows and movies and save them to your account to watch again later or share with others. Starting today, [...]

The UK's larger energy supplier, Octopus Energy, is launching its own EV charger. The Octopus Charge is designed to pair with the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, which offers up cheaper electricity rates overnight for EV charging. Octopus Energy has designed and built its own EV charger and is backing it with a three-year warranty. There's [...]

Have you ever wanted Windows 11 to automatically switch between light and dark modes based on a schedule, or help you find keyboard shortcut conflicts? Well, Microsoft is about to solve both of these missing Windows features with PowerToys. The latest 0.94 release of PowerToys, the useful addons for Windows power users, includes a new [...]

A year after Remarkable introduced its Paper Pro digital notebook with an 11.8-inch color E Ink screen, the company is following up with a smaller version that prioritizes portability. The new Remarkable Paper Pro Move feels like what you'd be left with if you were to snap last year's Paper Pro in half over your [...]

Samsung may be partly to blame for unleashing the party speaker upon the world - its Giga line launched over a decade ago - but in recent years its entrants to the field have been strangely restrained, with only small light strips along the sides. Not so with its two new Sound Towers, which add [...]

The holy grail of the smart home is ambient computing - technology that disappears into the background, anticipating your needs without a word or a tap. Lights turn on as you walk in, doors unlock as you approach, coffee brews before you reach the kitchen. This is the proactive home: a space that adapts to [...]

JBL has expanded its lineup of flashy Bluetooth speakers with three new models that let you blast tunes without being tied to a power source. The launch includes the new $1,099 PartyBox 720, which is JBL's largest battery-powered speaker to date, weighing 7 pounds (3kg) more than the visually similar PartyBox 710 that was released [...]

Did you know Acer acquired a Japanese design firm called Amadana late last year that makes classy coffee gear, retro calculators, air purifiers, and all manner of minimalist low-fi tech? Neither did I till today - but it goes a long way to explaining why a few of Acer's new monitors at IFA 2025 are [...]

Acer is announcing a new Swift Air 16 at IFA 2025, and it's an absolute featherweight of a 16-inch laptop. Weighing in at 2.18 pounds / 0.99kg with an IPS display or 2.43 pounds / 1.1kg with its optional OLED, the Swift Air is lighter than even a 13-inch MacBook Air. It also packs more [...]

Acer's new Chromebook Plus Spin 514, announced at IFA 2025 in Berlin, is the company's first laptop to use the Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processor. That chip was used in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 that launched earlier this summer, and it was key to delivering excellent performance and marathon battery life in that [...]

Google is overdue an update to its smart home setup, and now we know when it'll come: October 1st. The company has teased some sort of launch or announcement for that day, promising that Gemini is coming to Google Home." The company announced Gemini for Home at last month's Made by Google event, promising early [...]

Have you ever looked at your pizza oven and wished it was just a little bit smarter? Ooni has, and so its new Volt 2 comes loaded with Pizza Intelligence," an adaptive heating system designed to deliver a more even and consistent cooking temperature. The Volt 2 is an indoor oven, able to cook pizzas [...]

Disney has agreed to pay $10 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it violated federal law by misleadingly labeling cartoons on YouTube so it could illegally collect children's personal data. The FTC alleges that Disney failed to label some videos of its popular kids cartoons it uploaded to YouTube as Made [...]

The remedies ruling in the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google finally landed on Tuesday. Last year, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google was a monopolist in the search and advertising markets, but while today's ruling says that Google will have to share some search data with competitors, Google doesn't have to spin off [...]

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner fired by President Donald Trump without cause, can at least temporarily return to work while her legal case plays out. This happened once before when Slaughter briefly returned to her office months after Trump claimed to fire her, when US District Court Judge Loren AliKhanfound her dismissal [...]

On August 5th, 2024, Judge Amit Mehta ruled in the case of United States of America v. Google, saying, ...the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act." Nearly a year later, the judge has [...]

Google will be able to keep making search deals like its $20 billion agreement to be the default option in Apple's Safari browser, a federal district court judge ruled in the US v. Google antitrust case on Tuesday. Executives from both Apple and Firefox-made Mozilla have defended their search deals with Google, with Mozilla's CFO [...]

Amazon will now let you shop for products by pointing your camera at them. On Thursday, the company announced Lens Live, a new feature that uses your camera to scan things in the environment around you, while surfacing matching product listings. This feature, which is only rolling out to the Amazon Shopping app on iOS [...]

Google will not have to sell its Chrome browser in order to address its illegal monopoly in online search, DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Tuesday. Over a year ago, Judge Mehta found that the search giant had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act; his ruling now determines what Google must do in response. [...]

After years of development and pent-up anticipation from fans, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the full sequel to the indie classic Hollow Knight, will finally be released on September 4th. It will cost $19.99 and include new zones, more than 200 enemies, over 40 bosses, and an orchestral score from the composer of the first game. Silksong [...]

Hello and welcome to Regulator. Today, I will attempt to regulate my own apoplexy. Recently, Wired published an article revealing the existence of a secret Democrat influencer incubator that trained liberal and progressive content creators to push coordinated messaging across their shared social media platforms and paid them handsomely to do so. The fallout has [...]

President Donald Trump is moving US Space Command's headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, he announced during a press conference on Tuesday. The change reverses former President Joe Biden's 2023 decision to leave it in Colorado Springs, where its temporary headquarters have been established. During the press conference, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), chair of the House [...]

As President Donald Trump's August 29th deadline for new tariffs rolled around, the first thing that I thought of was 2026 planners. In July, Trump signed an executive order essentially killing a little-known but highly consequential trade rule, which meant that purchases coming from abroad - like $100 in planners and accessories - could enter [...]

In July, Microsoft's sweeping layoffs hit Xbox hard, and shuttered the entire game studio that was building Perfect Dark. Officially, the game was canceled. But unofficially, reports Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Microsoft gave Perfect Dark's other set of developers - Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics - a chance to revive the game. Here's where it gets [...]

OpenAI has started to build out its Applications team under Fidji Simo, its new CEO of Applications, who left her former position as Instacart's CEO to start in the executive role on August 18th. On Tuesday, the company confirmed it's shuffling executive roles, bringing on a new CTO of applications, and acquiring a product analytics [...]

Critics of Big Tech and President Donald Trump are on high alert as Google and Trump's legal teams are engaged in what look like potential settlement discussions. Lawyers for Trump and Google's YouTube recently told a federal judge they continue to engage in productive discussions regarding next steps" in a lawsuit Trump filed over YouTube's [...]

Tesla's latest "Master Plan" makes a few things clear right out of the gate: the company that was once known for accelerating the push toward a brighter future by popularizing electric vehicles and renewable energy is no longer interested in that quotidian stuff. Now, it's all about artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and the [...]

Uber Eats is teaming up with Best Buy to offer deliveries of the store's selection of tech products, like headphones, chargers, laptops, gaming gear and small appliances. Starting today, you can order a product at Best Buy through the Uber Eats app and have it delivered to your doorstep the same day, adding to store's [...]

Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude and one of OpenAI's chief competitors, emerged from the holiday weekend with big news: A completed funding round of $13 billion, awarding the company a $183 billion post-money valuation. The company said in a press release that between the start of 2025 and August -less than nine months - [...]

Call of Duty is being adapted into a live action film as part of a new deal signed by Activision and Paramount. Paramount, the film studio behind Top Gun: Maverick, will develop, produce, and distribute a live-action feature film" based on the franchise, and both companies are committed to honoring the brand's rich narrative and [...]

It's not an entirely new idea given Nomad's Universal Cable from earlier this year can charge an Apple Watch and an additional device at the same time, but Zens' new Pro 2 and Pro 3 USB-C cables offer additional functionality and some welcome future-proofing as chargers become more powerful. The cheaper of the two is [...]

Hooked on LinkedIn's Queens? Gotta extend your Wordle streak in the New York Times games app before you start your day? You're in good company on today's Vergecast episode. Allison Johnson is joined by Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, world-class puzzle champs and hosts of the delightful Cracking the Cryptic, a YouTube channel where they [...]

Labor Day weekend is over, which means the symbolic end of summer has passed. On a more positive note, dozens of the best Labor Day deals are still around, so you still have time to take advantage of them if you spent the long weekend offline. For a limited time, you can save on a [...]