Bookmarks (664)

Microsoft is bringing its storied real-time strategy series Age of Empires to the PlayStation 5, starting with Age of Mythology: Retold and its Immortal Pillars expansion pack, both launching on March 4th. Microsoft is continuing to evolve the Xbox platform with cloud gaming that works on almost any device, and bringing more of its biggest […]

If you’d like to catch up on Oscar-nominated films like The Wild Robot ahead of the awards show next month, you might want to check out Peacock’s latest promotion.   Through February 18th, new and lapsed subscribers can get one year of ad-supported Peacock Premium for $29.99 if you sign up now. That’s over half off […]

Two weeks ago, I showed you how the world’s fastest graphics card works in a small form factor PC. To my surprise, Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition delivered the vast majority of its performance even in a 12.7-liter desktop with a five-year-old CPU. It made me wonder: what if I plugged this card into a […]

In July 2021, Valve revealed the Steam Deck, a Switch-like handheld device packed with features including a huge variety of control options, a 7-inch touchscreen, the ability to connect to external displays, and a quick suspend / resume feature. The device began shipping in February 2022, starting at $399. With an unprecedented degree of support […]

Apple raised the cost of its monthly AppleCare subscription prices for iPhones by 50 cents, MacRumors reports. The 50 cent price hike applies to both standard AppleCare Plus and AppleCare Plus with Theft and Loss monthly plans for Apple’s current iPhone lineup. So, for example, the standard AppleCare Plus for the iPhone 16 will cost […]

As Twitter continues to flail about under Elon Musk, all eyes are on the newly launched Instagram Threads as a potential replacement. Meta launched Threads on iOS, Android, and the web on July 5th — a little bit ahead of schedule. Two days in, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads has registered over 70 million accounts, and […]

Threads will now let you share the custom feeds you’ve created, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday. This means other users can pin your custom feed to their homepage, giving them access to the same stream of curated content. Threads first rolled out custom feeds in November, which you can use to track your […]

Defunct robotaxi company Cruise has begun to lay off employees today, sources tell The Verge. The layoffs come two months after General Motors said it would no longer fund Cruise, and would instead shift its spending toward advanced driver assist and personally owned autonomous vehicles. Cruise held an all-hands meeting today, in which it announced […]

After the most tumultuous nine months in Sonos’ history, the brand is trying to find its footing again. Even as work continues to rehabilitate the company’s beleaguered mobile app, Sonos is planning to take a big swing in a new product category: it’s getting into video for the first time. In the coming months, Sonos […]

Nomad has announced a new USB-C cable designed to charge multiple devices simultaneously. Instead of copying Anker’s homework and releasing a charging cable with dual USB-C connectors on one end, Nomad’s new Universal Cable for Apple Watch features an inline charging puck for Apple’s smartwatch on one end. It seems ideal for travelers wanting to […]

President Donald Trump has announced that he’s imposing a tariff on goods from some of the US’s biggest trade partners: Canada, Mexico, and China. Under the executive orders signed on February 1st, Canada and Mexico will face a 25 percent tariff, while goods from China will be subject to a 10 percent tax. Energy resources […]

Your next car purchase is probably going to be more expensive, thanks to President Donald Trump. Around 5.3 million vehicles are built in Canada and Mexico, 70 percent of which are destined for the United States. Those vehicles will soon be subject to 25 percent tariffs, which were just announced by the Trump administration. And […]

Last month, Fortnite Festival, the game’s Rock Band-like music mode, rolled out local multiplayer on PlayStation and Xbox. It’s a great addition if you and up to three buddies want to relive the halcyon days of ‘07 on a single TV, particularly if you’re using a nostalgia-inducing peripheral like the PDP Riffmaster — which is now […]

Over the last couple years, it feels like we’ve heard news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from tech companies nearly every week, and since the beginning of 2024, there’s been a new wave of layoffs and firings. In the first few days of January 2024 alone: And all that adds to the tens of […]

Smart rings are in the middle of a renaissance. That’s great because we finally have way more options than just an Oura Ring. The downside is most of Oura’s would-be rivals are launching their first, maybe second-gen smart rings. Meaning, if you want an Oura Ring alternative, there’s a good chance you’ll have to put […]

Imagine walking up to your front door and it unlocks — even opens — automatically as you approach. It may sound like the stuff of smart home dreams, but it could soon be a reality, thanks to ultra-wideband (UWB) technology arriving on smart locks.  With its precise, real-time location capabilities, UWB enables a smart lock […]

The smart home holds so much promise. It can make life more convenient with lights that turn on as you walk in a room, doors that unlock as you approach, and robots that clean your floors. It can also make your home safer, more energy efficient, and even a little more fun. (Have you tried […]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 69, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for some web-slingin’, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)  This week, I’ve been reading about Elon Musk’s gamer habits and spy satellites and […]

In 2016, Apple started including an auto power-on feature for its new MacBook models that activated when you opened the notebook lid or plugged in USB-C power when the lid was open. This is a cool little convenience if you don’t want the added step of pressing the power button — plus it could get […]

While Mark Zuckerberg and Meta press forward with augmented glasses projects buoyed by its million-selling set of smart Ray-Bans, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says that Apple just pulled the plug on an AR glasses project. Codenamed N107, they’re described as something that would’ve looked similar to regular glasses but with added displays in the lenses […]

In Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects from Joe Bennett (Scavengers Reign) and Steve Hely (American Dad!), the discovery of a strange mushroom that can heal any sickness or injury is either a miracle or a doomsday scenario, depending on who you ask. The plant is a godsend to people suffering from debilitating illnesses, but its […]

A popular Bloodborne framerate mod is no longer available thanks to a DMCA takedown request from Sony. Australia-based Twitch streamer Lance McDonald first developed the mod back in 2020 before making it available to download in 2021. Lance announced today in a post on X that Sony Interactive Entertainment asked them to remove download links […]

Nvidia is touting the performance of DeepSeek’s open source AI models on its just-launched RTX 50-series GPUs, claiming that they can “run the DeepSeek family of distilled models faster than anything on the PC market.” But this announcement from Nvidia might be somewhat missing the point. This week, Nvidia’s market cap suffered the single biggest […]

I would have preferred any other Super Bowl matchup than another showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, but the world doesn’t revolve around me. Regardless, I love a good championship football game, especially one enhanced by an immersive sound system. If you’re in need of a home theater audio upgrade yourself, […]

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased exactly two weeks ago that o3-mini would ship in “a couple of weeks,” and it’s arriving on time today. OpenAI is launching its latest o3-mini reasoning model inside ChatGPT and its API services and making a version with rate limits available to free users of ChatGPT for the first time. […]

MultiVersus will go offline at the end of its next season, Warner Bros. Games announced on Friday. The free-to-play brawler’s fifth and final season starts on February 4th and runs through May 30th, 2025, after which you’ll only be able to play against AI opponents or through local co-op. It will also no longer be […]

While Nvidia’s RTX 50-series graphics cards weren’t the zaniest devices at CES 2025, they stole the show with their promised groundbreaking performance breakthroughs. The RTX 5070, in particular, made headlines as a card that can supposedly rival an RTX 4090 for just $549. We later learned it uses DLSS 4’s AI-powered multi frame generation to […]

Amazon has raised the price of its Music Unlimited service in the US, Canada, and the UK, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. In an update on its website, Amazon says it’s raising the price for Prime members from $9.99 to $10.99 per month (or $99 to $109 / year), while the plan for non-Prime […]

Death. Taxes. All your streaming services getting a little more expensive all the time. These are the new certainties in life, it seems. In recent years, as the streaming TV and movie business has gotten more competitive and companies around Hollywood have thrown billions into building their own platforms and libraries in order to compete […]

Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr has ordered investigations into NPR and PBS with the goal of slashing the money given to the government-funded organizations, The New York Times reports.  The investigations are ostensibly about PBS and NPR’s member stations’ sponsorships, according to a letter from Carr obtained by the Times. “I am concerned that NPR […]

Missed out on all the terrific TV deals we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday? That’s okay, because the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl have historically been one of the better times of the year to snag a discounted set. In fact, Amazon, Best Buy, Woot, and a number of retailers are […]

On an earnings call last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent a lot of time talking up his company’s plans to “go ballistic” on artificial intelligence, and very little time on Tesla’s core business, which is making and selling electric cars. There was so little attention paid to Tesla’s automotive business, that even a bunch […]

In 2016, Tesla published a blog that said all EVs it produces have the hardware necessary to achieve “Full Self-Driving,” meaning owners of those Teslas could look forward to autonomous rides and could eventually send their cars out as money-making robotaxis when not in use. Tesla later deleted that post, and now we can see […]

A new year means a new Sundance Film Festival, and a fresh crop of promising original features that could go on to become awards season darlings in a few months. It might be hard to top last year’s festival where Dìdi, A Different Man, and I Saw the TV Glow all made strong showings. But […]

Nvidia mildly blew our minds in 2020 when its graphics cards gained the ability to delete practically all the background noise from our audio calls with a free app, and now the company’s doing it again. My colleague and Verge senior news editor Richard Lawler just fired up Nvidia’s just-announced “Studio Voice” feature on his […]

President Donald Trump kicked off the first day of his presidency by signing a flurry of executive actions, including halting enforcement of the TikTok ban and rolling back the Biden administration’s artificial intelligence order. Having already run the country once before, Trump entered the presidency with the goal of hitting the ground running, having already […]

Ten months after its long-delayed first subsonic flight took place last March, Boom Supersonic’s prototype test plane, the XB-1, broke the sound barrier today three times during its 12th flight. The XB-1 is a smaller-scale demonstration version of the larger Overture airliner Boom wants to eventually build that will carry 64 passengers on supersonic international […]

It initially seemed like Warner Bros. wanted to keep some of Ryan Coogler’s new gothic horror Sinners shrouded in mystery, but the movie’s latest trailer spells out exactly what’s going on. Though nobody says “vampire,” in Sinners’ new trailer, twin brothers Elijah and Elias (Michael B. Jordan) know that there’s something demonic going on as […]

Education software platform PowerSchool has started sending breach notifications to victims of a December 2024 cyberattack, but has yet to share how many people were affected or what exactly happened, reports BleepingComputer.  PowerSchool, which has has more than 18,000 customers worldwide and serves over 60 million students, suffered a breach on December 28th that may […]

Google Play will now display verification badges on approved VPNs as a way to “highlight apps that prioritize user privacy and safety,” the company announced on Tuesday. The new badge will appear on a VPN app’s details page and within search results, proving that it meets specific standards outlined by Google. To qualify for the […]

A security researcher who lives in San Francisco discovered an unreleased feature in Waymo’s app that allows customers to tip for their robotaxi rides. Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who also successfully hacked the display dome on top of a Waymo vehicle to display her name, posted a screenshot of the new tipping feature […]

DeepSeek is shaking up the AI industry with cost-efficient large language models it claims can perform just as well as rivals from giants like OpenAI and Meta. The Chinese startup says its flagship R1 reasoning model is capable of achieving “performance comparable” to OpenAI’s o1 equivalent, while the newly released Janus Pro multimodal AI model […]

It took about a month for the finance world to start freaking out about DeepSeek, but when it did, it took more than half a trillion dollars — or one entire Stargate — off Nvidia’s market cap. It wasn’t just Nvidia, either: Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft tanked. DeepSeek’s two AI models, released in quick […]

The state of electric vehicle charging in North America is shaping up like the smartphone charging wars — but focused on much more expensive hardware. Right now, like USB-C and Android phones, the Combined Charging System (CCS, Type 1) plug is on a greater variety of cars. Meanwhile, Tesla’s plug was long compared to Apple […]

Retro Remake’s Taki Udon announced last night that preorders had opened for the SuperStation One, a clone of the PS One variant of the original PlayStation. The $149.99 Founders Edition preorders are sold out already, but you can still preorder the standard $225 SuperStation One for $179.99 right now, with shipping ...

Whenever Netflix raises its prices — which seems to happen roughly as often as Ben Affleck falls in love with an A-list celebrity — the company always gives the same reason. It needs the extra money, you see, in order to keep investing in the kind of programming and product its 302 million subscribers demand. That’s...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 68, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you’re staying warm and sane, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Kieran Culkin and insomnia and the eBay for fa...

Here’s the scene: I’m wearing Meta’s latest Ray-Ban glasses with a new feature called Live AI, which can answer questions about the world around you. I’m preparing for a four-hour road trip to my in-laws for the Christmas holiday. I’m preplanning the next day’s breakfast because I’m 99.9 percent certain I will have ...

I stopped buying most games for my Nintendo Switch the day I bought a Steam Deck. My Switch has been a Mario and Zelda machine ever since. It’s simple: the Steam Deck took the Switch’s best trick — pick-up-and-play portability — while offering more games that run better. I can easily resume the ones I started on my ...

Oracle and a group of investors that includes Microsoft are in talks to take over TikTok’s global operations, reports NPR. The deal would reportedly see ByteDance keeping a minority stake in TikTok while “the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle.” The outlet reports the Wh...