Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047) today. In his veto message, Governor Newsom cited multiple factors in his decision, including the burden the bill would have placed on AI companies, California’s … Read more
Photo: John Carl D’Annibale / Albany Times Union via Getty Images You know how Marvel and DC have held joint ownership over trademarks for “Super Hero” for decades? That time is apparently mostly over, as the US Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the companies’ claim to several of their trademarks, reports Reuters. The cancellation … Read more
The Razer Freyja can turn most computer chairs into haptic gaming accessories. | Image: Razer Razer has released the Freyja gaming cushion, a haptic cushion that you can attach to your gaming chair, the company announced. The cushion is $299.99, and it’s available to buy now. The Freyja is an extension of the vibration you … Read more
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Spotify appears to be down at the moment, with users across social media having started reporting that the app and website aren’t working over the last hour or so. It’s not working for those of us at The Verge who have tried, either. Downdetector shows a spike in the … Read more
The StandBy feature of iPhones offers a hint of how an Apple smart home display could work. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge Apple is preparing to take a fresh run at the smart home that starts with a rumored smart display that it may release next year. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, … Read more
The Verge Roughly a month ago, Michael Sayman realized he could finally build the app he’d been thinking about for years: a social network where everyone but you is an AI bot. Large language models are finally good enough and cheap enough that the experience might actually feel social and useful, and not like a … Read more
Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 54, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about AI slop … Read more
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Some of the most watched and listened to music on YouTube and YouTube Music disappeared on Saturday, replaced by a short message: Video unavailable This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country. That is probably not what people expected when they tried to stream … Read more
Brian Williams during a Meet the Press taping in 2008. | Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images for Meet the Press Former news anchor Brian Williams is in talks to host an Amazon Prime election night special, reports Variety. The show would apparently be a “non-partisan discussion” as election night news comes in and could … Read more
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta is restricting links on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook that lead to Ken Klippenstein’s newsletter containing a JD Vance dossier that was allegedly nabbed in an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. The company has apparently removed posts containing the link and is seemingly blocking links to … Read more
“So full. So filled.” | Image: Disney This week, I’ve been slowly catching up on Dark Matter; I’m about 20 hours into Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the Switch; and I’m still trying to work a trip to the movie theater into my schedule to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I’m behind, in other words! And … Read more
Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Edge offer a vibrant OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. | Photo: Joanna Nelius / The Verge The portability of a laptop is nice and all, but oftentimes, the tradeoff is a smaller screen that can feel cramped if you’ve got a lot of tabs open. Thankfully, there are laptops like … Read more
Playstack Now that Balatro is out on mobile, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And while it’s a great game, its tutorial doesn’t do the best job of setting you up for the kind of success necessary to hook you. In my first few hours, though I was completing the objectives … Read more
See that little circle? That’s a camera. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge All around Meta’s Menlo Park campus, cameras stared at me. I’m not talking about security cameras or my fellow reporters’ DSLRs. I’m not even talking about smartphones. I mean Ray-Ban and Meta’s smart glasses, which Meta hopes we’ll all — … Read more
Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp 2024 in Europe. | Screenshot: WordCamp WordPress is essentially internet infrastructure. It’s widely used, generally stable, and doesn’t tend to generate many splashy headlines as a result. But over the last week, the WordPress community has swept up into a battle over the ethos of the platform. Last week, WordPress cofounder … Read more
Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge Arc creator The Browser Company has officially started a bug bounty program to keep its growing Chromium-based browser’s security in check. The company is also launching a new security bulletin to maintain “transparent and proactive communication” with users and researchers on bug fixes and reports. These security revisions followed … Read more
Photo by Jack Guez / AFP via Getty Images Here’s the thing about asking investors for money: they want to see returns. OpenAI launched with a famously altruistic mission: to help humanity by developing artificial general intelligence. But along the way, it became one of the best-funded companies in Silicon Valley. Now, the tension between … Read more
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images The US Department of Justice has charged three Iranian nationals linked with a cyberattack against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to an indictment on Friday. The three hackers, all of whom have ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, allegedly gained access to … Read more
A container truck burns outside the Port of Los Angeles. | Image: Pepe’s Towing A truck full of lithium-ion batteries is burning in Los Angeles, shutting down ports and a bridge. It’s not clear what the batteries were for — but LA’s Vincent Thomas Bridge, leading to the Port of Los Angeles and the nearby … Read more
Illustration: The Verge Meta is rolling out the ability to tag your location on your Threads posts. If you have the feature, you’ll see a pin in the post composer that you can tap so you can include where you are. Note that adding your location to a Threads post doesn’t share an exact pin … Read more
This robotic arm’s articulated hand can detach and crawl around on its own. | Screenshot: YouTube Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed an articulated hand that can extend the reach of a robotic arm by detaching and crawling away on its own to grab things. The research was … Read more
An illustration of DRACO getting destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere. | Image: ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit in 2027 to watch it get wrecked as it reenters the atmosphere. The project is intended to help understand how exactly satellites break apart so that scientists can learn how … Read more
Image: Nintendo The Nintendo Museum in Kyoto is a slick and playful trek through the company’s century-long history. But it’s lacking much in the way of revelations. Continue reading…
Image: Microsoft In response to security concerns, Microsoft is detailing how it has overhauled its controversial AI-powered Recall feature that creates screenshots of mostly everything you see or do on a computer. Recall was originally supposed to debut with Copilot Plus PCs in June, but Microsoft has spent the past few months reworking the security … Read more
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s been a rough couple of months for Disney Plus subscribers. First came news of yet another price hike — which will take effect on October 17th — followed by Disney’s announcement that it will begin charging $6.99 a month to add an “extra member” to an ad-supported … Read more
CNN chairman Mark Thompson announced plans to introduce a digital subscription business in July. | Image: CNN CNN will put some of its digital content behind a subscription paywall starting next month, The New York Times reports. The experiment will test similar subscription models to those used by publications like The New Yorker, Wired, and … Read more
Trains are cool but aren’t always cheaper to ride. | Image: Amtrak Amtrak fares and trip suggestions are getting integrated into Google Search as part of Google’s efforts to offer greener ways of travel over flights. Now, when you search for airline fares on Google or Google Flights between destinations with Amtrak terminals, you’ll also … Read more
Image: The Verge Steam just removed its forced arbitration policy, opening the door for lawsuits against its parent company, Valve. In an update on Thursday, Steam says its subscriber agreement “now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration.” Many companies include a forced arbitration clause in their user agreement, … Read more
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge You can’t buy Meta’s most impressive new product, the smart glasses codenamed Orion. You might be able to buy something sort of like them a few years from now, but most of us will never get to so much as wear them. That doesn’t necessarily make them less impressive, … Read more
The new ULL-supported controller (seen right) was tested against an unspecified standard Bluetooth gamepad (left). | Image: LG LG has teamed up with Razer and MediaTek to develop a new Bluetooth gaming controller that could greatly reduce the input lag for cloud-based gaming. According to LG, it’s the first controller to utilize Ultra-Low Latency (ULL) … Read more