Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Google launches Ask Maps, a Gemini-powered conversational feature for iOS and Android in the US and India that lets users ask “complex, real-world questions” — 'Where's the closest public bathroom that's not completely disgusting' is going to get asked a lot in my household.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Intel unveils the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 250K Plus, shipping March 26 for $300 and $200, respectively, and says they are its fastest gaming desktop CPUs yet — Hopefully it's finally leaving the i9-14900K in the dust. … Intel hasn't made it easy to buy a flagship desktop chip.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus review: bigger battery and seven years of software updates, but basic cameras, few major updates, and no Qi2 charging magnets — While Samsung has treated its Flips and Folds to a few major hardware upgrades over recent years, the Galaxy S flagships have often felt …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Meta adds more scam detection tools: Facebook alerts for suspicious friend requests, WhatsApp device linking warnings, and advanced scam detection on Messenger — Users will be alerted about suspicious activities like unrecognized device linking and friend requests.
Josh Dzieza / The Verge: How AI training company Mercor, valued at $10B in 2025, uses AI interviewer Melvin and invasive monitoring software Insightful to manage its 30K+ workforce — ART BY SAMAR HADDAD — This article is a collaboration between The Verge and New York Magazine.
Allison Johnson / The Verge: iPhone 17e review: MagSafe, 256GB of base storage, and a capable camera system, but no always-on display, 60Hz refresh rate, and the iPhone 17 is just $200 more — The iPhone 17E is a better value than the 16E was when it arrived, but that should matter to basically nobody.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Google expands its AI-powered Canvas workspace to everyone in the US using AI Mode in Search, letting them get information, organize plans, draft docs, and more — Canvas in AI Mode now supports tasks related to creative writing and coding, too. … Google is bringing Canvas to everyone in the US using AI Mode in Search.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Google's Epic settlement term sheet prohibits Tim Sweeney from criticizing Google's app practices until at least September 2032 and mandates that he praise them — Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. … Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: X user TheGhostOfHope, one of top Call of Duty leakers, says Activision “legally demanded that I stop leaking and disseminating confidential information” — TheGhostOfHope is complying with legal demands to stop disseminating confidential information.
Thomas Ricker / The Verge: Google unveils Home updates to fix a long list of annoyances and idiosyncrasies, and debuts Live Search to let Gemini analyze and describe live camera feeds — 'Hey Google, is there a car in the driveway? … Google Home chief Anish Kattukaran announced several updates to the smart home platform …
Terrence O'Brien / The Verge: Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour says the company would void certain bets related to Iran's Ali Khamenei and claims it doesn't “list markets directly tied to death” — Users say rules barring ‘profiting from death’ are unclear. … In a statement on X, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Xiaomi launches the €999 Xiaomi 17, the €1,499 17 Ultra, and the €1,999 Leica-branded Leitzphone, all featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, in Europe — It's just launched in Europe, joined by the larger, more photography-focused Xiaomi 17 Ultra.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Instagram says it will alert parents if their teen repeatedly searches for terms related to self-harm or suicide in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia — Meta is planning something similar for its chatbots later this year. — Starting next week, Instagram will notify parents …
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma says she is committed to “the return of Xbox” and that the company won't “flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop” — She's promising “The return of Xbox.” … Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer has just announced he's leaving …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Samsung releases an ad for the Galaxy S26 series that briefly shows a “Zero-peeking privacy” toggle to black out on-screen content for onlookers at an angle — Leaker Ice Universe has shared a video of the tech in action. … Samsung has released a new advertisement …
Hayden Field / The Verge: Some former employees blame xAI's staff exodus on xAI's focus on NSFW Grok and disregard for safety, constantly playing catch up to OpenAI, infighting, and more — Former employees say the restructuring followed tensions over safety and being “stuck in the catch-up phase.”
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: Amazon's Ring cancels its partnership with Flock that would have let law enforcement agencies request footage from Ring doorbell users, following backlash — After weeks of mounting pressure and a questionable Super Bowl ad, the Amazon-owned company has walked back its plan to integrate with the controversial surveillance company.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: T-Mobile announces a network-level, AI-based Live Translation feature supporting 50+ languages, coming “this spring” in beta and available on 5G and 4G LTE — Live Translation will be available to beta testers ‘this Spring.’ — T-Mobile is preparing to test a new AI feature …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Trump Mobile execs showcase the T1 Phone's new design and specs, and say the phones go through “final assembly” in Miami and full assembly in the US is a “goal” — I spoke to two Trump Mobile executives for an exclusive first look at what they say is the T1 Phone.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge: Filing: Zuckerberg considered changing how Meta studies social issues after a WSJ story about Instagram and teen mental health, noting Apple faces less scrutiny — The Meta CEO said Apple seems to get away with less criticism by lying low. … One day after The Wall Street Journal published …
Janko Roettgers / The Verge: A look at the informal economy of rogue streaming box resellers, who sell hardware that offers free access to sports games, cable TV, and streaming services — Walk the rows of the farmers market in a small, nondescript Texas town about an hour away from Austin, and you might stumble across …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Docusign CEO Allan Thygesen on Docusign's workforce growing to 7,000 staffers, its Intelligent Agreement Management system, AI hallucinations, and more — Docusign's Allan Thygesen says 'not providing an AI service isn't really an option.' — Today, I'm talking with Allan Thygesen, who is the CEO of Docusign.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Nintendo says the Switch 1 sold 155.37M units as of December 31 since its 2017 launch, topping the DS' 154.02M units, becoming its best-selling console ever — The DS has been overthrown, 12 years after it was discontinued. … The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Nothing CEO Carl Pei says the company's flagship Phone 4 won't launch in 2026: “We're not just going to churn out a new flagship every year for the sake of it” — CEO Carl Pei says there's no new flaghip on the way, but teased improvements for the 4A series instead.
Mia Sato / The Verge: ADL study of Grok, ChatGPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek: Grok performed worst at identifying and countering antisemitic content, while Claude was best — In a study, the Anti-Defamation League fed Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and Llama antisemitic, anti-Zionist …
Mia Sato / The Verge: Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800+ creatives launch “Stealing Isn't Innovation” to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others — Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, George Saunders, and other creatives say that AI companies are …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Sony and TCL sign a non-binding agreement to spin off Sony's TV and home audio hardware business into a new joint venture, aiming to finalize the deal by March — The two companies are planning to form a new joint venture that will carry the ‘Sony’ and ‘Bravia’ branding.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Meta will discontinue Workrooms, its VR space for workers, on February 16; Quest headsets and Horizon services will not be sold to businesses as of February 20 — Meta continues to trickle out the bad news for VR. … Today, the company announced it's shutting that space down …
Emma Roth / The Verge: Wikimedia celebrates Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, marking its growth from 100 pages to 65M+ articles with nearly 15B monthly views, and releases a docuseries — The online encyclopedia is releasing a mini docuseries that puts faces to the editors behind an array of Wikipedia articles.
Emma Roth / The Verge: The Wikimedia Foundation says Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral joined Wikimedia Enterprise to get “tuned” API access; Google is already a member — The companies have joined Google as the latest members of the Wikimedia Enterprise program.
Tom Warren / The Verge: UK police say they banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a soccer match in 2025 after Copilot hallucinated a fake West Ham-Maccabi match in an intelligence report — Copilot invented a nonexistent football match that was included in an intelligence report.
Tom Warren / The Verge: IDC: in Q4 2025, global PC shipments rose nearly 10% YoY to 76.4M units, helped by Windows 10 end-of-support and OEMs pulling forward inventory amid tariffs — IDC expects the PC market to be volatile this year ahead of anticipated price increases. … The PC market is bracing …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail, showing users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US “trusted testers” — The new AI Inbox replaces the traditional list of emails with a personalized summary of what to do and what to catch up on.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Roblox expands mandatory age estimations for chat features to all regions using Persona's tech, after a rollout in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands — After a user's age has been verified, they'll be able to chat with others in similar age groups.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge: HP unveils the Eliteboard G1a, a compact desktop PC in the form of a keyboard, powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 300-series chip, set for March launch; pricing is TBC — The HP Eliteboard G1a packs an AMD chip into a keyboard with either an attached or detachable USB-C cable.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Nvidia announces native apps for its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service for select Linux distributions and Amazon Fire TV sticks, available in early 2026 — Nvidia is also adding joystick and yoke flight control support to GeForce Now. … Nvidia's RTX 5080 rollout for its GeForce …
Tom Warren / The Verge: Nvidia rolls out DLSS 4.5 with new 6x Multi Frame Generation for the RTX 50 series, and a second-generation Super Resolution transformer model for all RTX GPUs — All RTX owners will get DLSS 4.5 model and image quality improvements today. … Nvidia is announcing its next major update …
Sean Hollister / The Verge: AMD unveils the 12-core Ryzen AI Max+ 392, and the 8-core AI Max+ 388 processors, both with 40 graphics compute units and offering 60 TFLOPS of GPU performance — Will AI Max Plus chips make seriously powerful handhelds more affordable? … AMD's Strix Halo, aka “Ryzen AI Max,” …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: Samsung upgrades its Family Hub refrigerators with AI features, such as voice control to open and close the door and Gemini-powered AI Vision to track inventory — Voice control opening and closing comes to Samsung's Family Hub smart fridges. … Samsung's latest update …
The Verge: What to expect at CES 2026: laptops with new chips from Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD, more AI integrations, smart home robotics, smart glasses, and more — Expect plenty of laptops, smart home tech, and TVs — and lots of robots. — The biggest tech show of the year kicks off next week …
Adi Robertson / The Verge: A look at US tech laws coming in 2026, like California's SB 53 AI transparency law and Virginia's new social media limits for minors, effective from January 1 — As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything …
Emma Roth / The Verge: Framework says it is raising DDR5 RAM prices to charge $10 per GB, after a price hike earlier in December due to “substantially higher costs” amid the AI boom — The modular PC maker will now charge $10 per GB for its 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB DDR5 RAM modules.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Google plans to charge developers $2.85/app and $3.65/game if a US user follows a link that takes them outside of the Play Store to install it within 24 hours — Google says it's complying with the Epic injunction by erecting new programs and fees. … Today was the deadline for Google …
Emma Roth / The Verge: OpenAI rolls out an update to let users adjust ChatGPT's characteristics, including how warm or enthusiastic it is, and its use of headers, lists, and emojis — OpenAI is making it easier to edit emails with ChatGPT, too. … OpenAI will now give you the ability to dial up — or down — ChatGPT's warmth and enthusiasm.
Justine Calma / The Verge: Study: AI's 2025 power demand could hit 23GW, above 2024 Bitcoin mining levels, and AI carbon emissions could hit 32.6M to 79.7M tons, compared to NYC's 50M — A new study estimates the environmental impact of AI in 2025 and calls for more transparency from companies on their pollution and water consumption.
Allison Johnson / The Verge: AI image generators like Nano Banana have increased realism by mimicking phone camera traits in contrast, exposure, and sharpening to avoid the uncanny valley — Remember the early days of AI image generation? Oh how we laughed when our prompts resulted in people with too many fingers …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Tim Sweeney: the Ninth Circuit's decision on Epic v. Apple contempt ruling appeal “completely shuts down” App Store rules allowing Apple to collect “junk fees” — In an interview, Epic Games' CEO says that an appeals court ruling in its case against Apple is ‘really awesome for all developers.’
Hayden Field / The Verge: A look at the Model Context Protocol and how it went from a passion project made by Anthropic employees to an industry standard managed by the Linux Foundation — Over the past 18 months, the largest AI companies in the world have quietly settled on an approach to building the next generation …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Adobe launches free ChatGPT-integrated apps for Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express on desktop, the web, and iOS, after OpenAI added app integrations in October — Just describe your edits to ChatGPT, and the Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express apps will do it for you or surface the tool you need.
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Square product chief Willem Avé on Block's restructuring in 2024, AI automation, investing in crypto, the Lightning Network, and more — Today, I'm talking with Willem Avé, who's head of product at Square. You know Square — it was started by billionaire Jack Dorsey …