The Verge’s favorite social networks

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Social networking has become more disconnected, to say the least. Two years ago, Elon Musk began transforming Twitter into what is now X, and the ensuing chaos drove a lot of former users elsewhere — elsewhere being several places, including Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and even Facebook or Instagram. We … Read more

Amazon’s new Alexa has reportedly slipped to 2025

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the week’s least surprising news, Amazon’s reinvention of its Alexa voice assistant has reportedly fallen even further behind. According to Bloomberg, the launch of a new Alexa — billed as a smarter, more capable AI-powered voice assistant — has been pushed back. Again. “A person familiar with … Read more

Tidal is laying off more staff

Image: The Verge The music streaming app Tidal is laying off more workers. In a statement to Fortune, an unnamed Tidal spokesperson confirmed “the elimination of some roles across our business and design teams.” On Wednesday, Fortune published a leaked memo from Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Tidal parent company Block Block Head, who said … Read more

Squid Game runs it back in season 2 trailer

Image: Netflix Netflix released a new teaser for Squid Game’s second season on Thursday. Gi-hun, again played by Lee Jung-jae, is participating in the games again, but based on the trailer, it appears that he will try to convince he other contestants to rebel against the competition — and that, at times, he may not … Read more

Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot now has a desktop app

Image: The Verge Claude, the AI chatbot made by Anthropic, now has a desktop app. You can download the Mac and Windows versions of the app from Anthropic’s website for free. Last week, Anthropic released its “computer use” feature in public beta, which allows the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model to control a computer by looking … Read more

Microsoft just delayed Recall again

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is once again delaying the roll out of its controversial Recall feature for Copilot Plus PCs. The software giant had planned to start testing Recall, which creates screenshots of mostly everything you see or do on a Copilot Plus PC, with Windows Insiders in October. Now, Microsoft says it needs more time … Read more

Chevy’s BrightDrop electric vans will be in Walmart’s fleet by the end of the year

A Walmart-branded BrightDrop 400 electric van. | Image: GM GM moved its electric van company BrightDrop into Chevy in August to save some money, and today, the newly branded version of the vehicle is reaching one of BrightDrop’s earliest customers: Walmart. After piloting BrightDrop 400 vehicles for customer deliveries, Walmart is officially adding them into … Read more

Trump is planning a crackdown on legal immigration, too

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Former President Donald Trump has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign: he’s promised mass deportations, a crackdown on asylum at the border, and a ban on mortgages for undocumented immigrants. But while Trump rails against illegal immigration, his allies and advisors are also preparing to sharply … Read more

Android 16 will ship early in 2025

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For the last decade or so, Google has released major Android updates in the fall after an extended developer and beta preview process, but for 2025, at least, that’s changing. Now, Google is planning its next major release for Q2 instead of Q3, confirming a recent report from … Read more

OpenAI’s search engine is now live in ChatGPT

Image: The Verge ChatGPT is officially an AI-powered web search engine. The company is enabling real-time information in conversations for paid subscribers today, with free, enterprise, and education users gaining access in the coming weeks. Rather than launching as a separate product, web search will be integrated into ChatGPT’s existing interface. The feature determines when … Read more

The newest Ring Battery Doorbell is $40 off and matching its lowest price

Ring’s latest Battery Doorbell has a wider field-of-view to see packages and people head-to-toe. | Ring It’s a little too late to spook trick-or-treaters with ghastly remote greetings, but there are plenty of other reasons to consider installing a video doorbell. For starters, it’s incredibly affordable and easy to do so when you have devices … Read more

Ford is offering its own Tesla Supercharger adapter to EV customers after rocky rollout

This adapter has a Ford logo, so it will probably work well. | Image: Ford Ford is making its own branded specialty adapter to enable Tesla Supercharger access for its EV customers. The automaker will offer its new adapter alongside the current Tesla-produced one for customers still awaiting a complementary adapter and will start shipping … Read more

Waze will soon let you report incidents with your voice

Image: Waze Waze is testing a handy-sounding update that will let you report traffic incidents while speaking naturally. With the new feature, you can tap the app’s reporting button and then say what you see, such as, “Looks like there’s a traffic jam up ahead.” The Google-owned driving app will then use the Gemini AI … Read more