TheVerge

Microsoft just kicked off Build 2026 with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders. As expected, it was filled with announcements, ranging from new Surface hardware to an always-on personal assistant and updates across Microsoft’s in-house AI models. If you didn’t watch the event live, you can catch up on all the … Read more

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday creating a “voluntary framework” for AI companies to share their frontier models with the federal government before they’re released “to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.” The order says the US AI industry has succeeded in part “because we refuse to stifle this … Read more

Microsoft’s new Majorana 2 quantum chip. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft claimed last year that it had made a key breakthrough in quantum computing with Majorana 1, the company’s first quantum processor. While physicists were immediately skeptical of Microsoft’s claims, the software giant is announcing Majorana 2 today, the next generation of its topological quantum chip. … Read more

Microsoft announced a bunch of new in-house AI models at Build 2026, including a new “flagship” model: MAI-Thinking-1. It’s an ambitious step into model development for Microsoft, which introduced its initial in-house models last year – before then, it had relied on OpenAI’s models. The two companies recently renegotiated their deal to loosen ties. According … Read more

I like the UE Wonderboom 4 Bluetooth speaker so much that I bought two of them, though I wish I could have paid less for them. Fortunately, you can stock up on the cheap, so long as you like the color blue. The Wonderboom 4 is available in blue at Amazon for $51.49, and at … Read more

Much like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant that integrates into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign a virtual assistant to employees to help with organizing calendars, expense reporting, email drafts, and much more. Unlike Copilot that lives inside … Read more

Microsoft just announced “Project Solara,” a new OS designed for gadgets that run AI agents, at Build 2026. The company is calling it “a new platform built from the ground up to power agent-driven experiences.” It’s built on Android, not Windows. Microsoft demonstrated two concept Project Solara devices at Build today: Desk concept and badge … Read more

Microsoft only just announced a new Surface Laptop Ultra at the weekend, and it’s now revealing a miniature Surface PC aimed at developers. The new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is powered by Nvidia’s new Arm-based RTX Spark chips, just like the Surface Laptop Ultra, and is optimized for sustained workloads and local AI tasks. … Read more

Microsoft is kicking off its Build developer conference today with a promise of making Windows a trusted platform for development. As the company continues to focus on performance and reliability fixes for Windows 11, it’s also creating a developer-optimized experience that bundles a lot of useful tools and apps and embraces Linux even further. “We … Read more

On the Friday before Memorial Day, on the eve of a long weekend, the Trump administration announced that it was further gutting legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t use this language. “This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” the agency said on X. “The … Read more

The new Camp Snap 2 is 15 percent slimmer than the original version. | Image: Camp Snap After expanding its offerings to video with the CS-8 inspired by Kodak and Canon’s retro Super 8mm film cameras, Camp Snap is returning to its roots. The Camp Snap 2 is a sequel to the company’s first screenless … Read more

Some of the sets’ props are drawn directly from the games, others are more… unexpected. When Lego announced its tech-packed Smart Bricks at CES, we were impressed by the potential – enough to give it our Best in Show award. But when the first Star Wars sets actually launched in March, we were less enamored. … Read more

Liv 2.0 is the next generation of Thermacell’s Wi-Fi-connected mosquito protection system. | Image: Thermacell Thermacell has launched Liv 2.0, the next generation of its Wi-Fi-connected smart mosquito protection system. It features new hardware and can cover a larger area, and Thermacell says its formula can now deter no-see-ums. But it’s also more expensive and … Read more

Amazon bucked its usual tradition of having Prime Day in July. Prime Day 2026 is happening in June, kicking off in just a few weeks. Prime members will get access to many deals starting June 23rd at 3:01AM ET through June 27th at 3:01AM ET. As with Amazon’s previous events, you don’t need to be … Read more

Spark is Google’s new agentic answer for everything. According to every product demo from the last four years, planning a trip is a killer use case for AI. Just tell it where you’re going, they all promise, and your chatbot / agent / other buzzword will exhaustively search travel options, read up on all the … Read more

A unicorn Beanie Baby. A 15-pound green bowling ball. A pair of dentures. These are just some of the items left behind in robotaxis in the past year, according to Uber’s annual Lost and Found Index. For the first time, the company is expanding its annual of accounting of things forgotten in Uber vehicles to … Read more

Build 2026 is looking to be another AI-heavy affair. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is kicking off its yearly Build developer conference in San Francisco today, sandwiched between the recent Google I/O and Apple’s upcoming WWDC event. While tickets to attend Build in person are sold out, the conference is being streamed for free online, with … Read more

If you’re planning to travel this summer, both a Bluetooth tracker and a personal safety device can come in handy, especially if you’ll be exploring on your own. The Pebblebee Halo combines those two gadgets into one, and it’s currently on sale for $49.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, which is the best price we’ve seen. … Read more

Nvidia’s announcement that it’s getting into the consumer laptop chip space with RTX Spark is huge. Apple has proved for years that Arm-based chips can perform incredibly well while also delivering great battery life – at least on the Mac. In the Windows world, performance hasn’t fully matched up under Qualcomm chips, mostly in the … Read more

Google’s new “24/7” AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I’m not sure it’s worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs. The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them … Read more

Meta’s AI support chatbot helped hackers hijack Instagram accounts, as reported earlier by 404 Media. In a video shared on Telegram, a hacker shows how they could take over an account by asking Meta’s chatbot to switch the email associated with someone else’s profile and then reset the password. The issue, which Meta says has … Read more

Some news: The Vergecast is now a daily podcast! Starting today, we’ll be posting every weekday, with even more gadgets and rankings and conversations and feelings and podcasts-within-podcasts. We’re excited for all the ways this new schedule lets us tell new kinds of stories, experiment with new tech and new formats, and involve you even … Read more

After months of speculation about whether OpenAI or Anthropic would be first in their race to IPO, Anthropic on Monday reached a key milestone: filing to kick off the process with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing sets the stage for what’s sure to be a massive IPO. As of its fundraise last … Read more

Sony is sharing new details about some of its upcoming gaming-focused hardware, including pricing and August launch dates for its FlexStrike fight stick and its 27-inch monitor. The FlexStrike fight stick will be available starting August 6th – the same day as the new PlayStation-published fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls – and will cost … Read more

Get ready for some gaming news. It’s officially June, which means splashy new events from PlayStation, Xbox, and gaming hype man Geoff Keighley. But this season doesn’t just feature the big tentpole shows; there will be a bunch of smaller events, too, and they might feature some promising games as well. But this year’s events … Read more

Gaze into the orb. | Image: The Verge There are many solid Bluetooth trackers for iPhones that tap into Apple’s expansive Find My network. Some are thin, some are a bit chunkier. And, evidently, some look like tiny soccer balls. Ugreen’s FineTrack 2 glows in the dark, and it has a loud 110-decibel alarm when … Read more

Though Gen Z has developed a reputation for being so disinterested in sex that they don’t even want to see it on TV, the popularity of series like Heated Rivalry and The Summer I Turned Pretty has made it very clear that more than a few young people do, in fact, like their entertainment a … Read more

Microsoft is heading to San Francisco this week in a bid to win back developers at its Build conference. I’ve been attending Build since the days when Microsoft called it the Professional Developers Conference, and I can’t remember a more pivotal moment. As Microsoft continues to reshuffle its entire business around AI, it’s moving Build … Read more

Computex 2026 is kicking off in Taipei, Taiwan this week, where Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, and other tech brands are announcing new laptops, handhelds, chips, and more.  Nvidia unveiled RTX Spark, its first family of consumer PC chips, arriving in laptops and mini PCs starting this fall. Intel is launching two new custom chips made … Read more