Technology News

On Friday, Amazon customers received an email alerting them to an update to the site's terms and conditions. Most notably, it stated that disputes would now be resolved through arbitration and said users agree to a class action waiver. Amazon framed this as a "fast and efficient" way to resolve issues, but it notably would prevent customers from seeking the involvement of a judge or jury in most circumstances. Customers can still take Amazon to small claims court in certain circumstances, thoug

ChatGPT's desktop app on macOS has a new feature called Computer History that turns your actions into training data, learning how you work, suggesting automations, and even picking up tasks you left half done. It uses your activity to build a timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can reference when you make a request. The feature is opt-in, rather than opt-out, and you can exclude certain apps and websites from Computer History, and you can delete entries if you want finer-grained control. Ari Weinst

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI safety, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started It all started in July, when one of OpenAI's autonomous AI agents went rogue during a cybersecurity test. The agent escaped its isolated testing environment, accessed the internet, and hacked another company, Hugging Face. A few years ago, that might hav

The compact Polaroid Go is great for road trips and adventures. | Image: Polaroid Smartphone cameras are convenient, but they lack the charm of analog instant cameras. If you’re trying to relive the nostalgia of waiting for an instant photo to develop, Amazon is selling the second-generation Polaroid Go instant camera with a 16-photo film pack for $71.99 (usually $109.99). That’s the lowest price we’ve seen for the bundle, with a pack of film usually costing $21.99 on its own. Plus, it’s four

Doh! | Image: Activision / 20th Century Fox At D23, when asked about the potential for a sequel to the cult classic The Simpsons: Hit & Run game, Matt Groening replied, "I think the original game is coming back in some form," before current showrunner Matt Selman added, "or not." The tone in both of their voices and the body language suggests that Groening may have just revealed something he wasn't supposed to. The original title came out way back in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, an

If you squint you can just about make out the hat. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge Your AI Slop Bores Me is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two tabs: human and LARP as an AI. On one side you enter a request. On the other, you submit an answer. But the important thing is that there's a human on both sides of the equation. Prompts can request a response as text or image, and then whoever is roleplaying as the AI gets 150 seconds to respond. Just like a real LLM, Your AI Slop Bo

They’re far more powerful and fun than their bargain price suggests. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge When I'm asked what to buy if you want to get into making electronic music, I often recommend Elektron's budget-minded Model:Samples and Model:Cycles grooveboxes. They don't grab headlines the way Teenage Engineering's gear or the Telepathic Instruments Orchid do, and even compared to the company's higher-end and more niche musical offerings like the Digitakt, Octatrack, or Tonverk, they'

They’re the Lennon–McCartney of overanalyzing pop music. | Image: Daniel Randall As if you needed more reason to love Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" beyond its pop perfection, it is also, according to lore, the genesis for Switched on Pop, one of the best music podcasts out there. Cohosts Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding obsessively dissect pop songs, from the theory behind their musical choices to their production techniques. If you're a student of pop music, then this is a must-listen podc

Season two of Star Wars: Ahsoka is still months away, but Lucasfilm still took the opportunity to tease it a bit at D23. The company dropped the first trailer for the new season ahead of its January 20th, 2027 debut. The clip shows a darker, witchcraft-filled take on the Star Wars universe, with Grand Admiral Thrawn (blue skin, red eyes, and an unsettlingly calm demeanor) threatening to thrust the galaxy back into large-scale war after the fall of the Empire. Ryan Gosling also took the stage at

Shawn Levy, Ryan Gosling | Image: The Walt Disney Company/Image Group LA The annual Disney fan event showed off the cast of Marvel’s X-Men movie, plus a new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, and our first look at the VisionQuest TV show for Disney Plus. For Star Wars fans, there was a teaser trailer for season two of Ahsoka, plus a special look at Star Wars: Starfighter with an appearance from Ryan Gosling. Other new announcements included a few updates about Pixar, The Simpsons, Bluey, and othe

The OhSnap Snap Grip Stand, in black and silver. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge I told myself I wouldn't buy an OhSnap accessory for my phone. Every one I'd tested was nice, but felt overpriced and slightly flawed. After I weighed in on the $40 Snap Grip 5 last year, I wound up sticking with my $25 Syncwire instead. But OhSnap's $50 Snap Grip Stand finally got me. To have a truly useful vertical stand and grip always attached to my phone, ready at a moment's notice? Heck yes. @verge

The new X-Men MCU cast on stage at D-23. | Image: Marvel Entertainment With Spider-Man: Brand New Day behind us, and its reveal of Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Marvel is finally ready to officially welcome the X-Men into the MCU. At the D23 event in Anaheim yesterday, the company revealed the cast for its upcoming, untitled X-Men film, which is scheduled to hit theaters on May 5th of 2028. Though, seeing as that's quite far into the future, we wouldn't be surprised if that date shifted slightly be

New plugin support for CrossPoint Reader lets Xteink’s devices access DRM-protected ebooks. One of the big tradeoffs with Xteink's pocket-friendly e-readers is a lack of easy access to ebooks. On a Kindle or Kobo you can download tens of thousands of titles through each device's respective online bookstores, but with Xteink's devices you have to source DRM-free ebooks on your own. That's about to change, as the developers of CrossPoint Reader, a free alternative firmware for the X3, X4, and X4

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 140, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, don't forget to hydrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Will Ferrell and Fabrizio Romano and Heather Cox Richardson, scrolling and scrolling through Ordinary Abundance, watching Avatar Aang (which is as good as you said it was), finally getting proficient in CapCut, obsessing over the latest

Maximum camera. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge It wasn't long ago that shooting with a super high-resolution camera meant making serious sacrifices for the sake of all those megapixels. Enter the A7R VI. Sony's latest flagship high-res camera is a 66.8-megapixel spec monster. In addition to its modest bump in resolution from the last-gen A7R V, it uses a new sensor and processor that unlock nearly any kind of shooting - from sports and action to usable 8K video. It's a huge depar

Strings of code in Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app hint at an upcoming pair of over-ear headphones that could compete with the AirPods Max, SamMobile reports. Samsung's reportedly referring to the headphones as the "Galaxy H1," and SamMobile says they could launch sometime in 2027. That would make these the company's first pair of over-ear headphones since the Level On in 2015, which was released well before Samsung acquired Harman and a number of other audio brands. Connection status icons in th

The MacBook Neo is an easy recommendation. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re a student looking for an affordable laptop, I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news is that computer prices are out of whack due to the ongoing RAM and storage crunch, making some a little pricier than they used to be and others wildly more expensive. The good news? Despite that, there are still many great options, including the selection we’ve tested and highlighted below. Before you

The version of The X-Files: I Want to Believe that premiered in 2008 was not exactly the movie co-writer / director Chris Carter intended to make. Carter wanted to bring agents Mulder and Scully back to the big screen with a grisly story about faith and the supernatural. But executives at 20th Century Fox felt that Carter's ideas were too dark, and he was pushed to turn the project into a PG-13 feature. Now, almost two decades after I Want to Believe's theatrical debut, Carter is back with a new

A lot of automakers talk about wanting to minimize or eliminate driver distractions so as to make the experience of driving more rewarding and safer overall. Lamborghini has a different strategy; it wants the driver to become one with their vehicle. This helps explain the storied super car maker's tagline for the new Revuelto SV: the quantum of driving. "For us, quantum of driving is the moment when you get into the car, you start driving the car, and the car and you become one piece," said Ales

Arguably the coolest new photo feature for the Pixel 11 lineup is Google's new Camera Looks, which process image data differently at the sensor level to produce photos that don't have that "smartphone" look. The result is new styles like "Digi," which mimics the style of photos taken by older digital cameras. But to use Camera Looks, at least initially, you'll need to have one of Google's Pixel 11 phones. "Our latest camera updates are only available on our latest devices," Google spokesperson A

Instagram's wordmark is iconic. Well, was iconic. Apparently Instagram thought it looked old, so the company rolled out a new one this week. It doesn't look like the old Instagram wordmark. It doesn't even look like it spells Instagram anymore. And we cannot figure out why Instagram decided to do this. On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start by discussing the new logo, the executive urge to redesign everything all the time, and whether new is always better. After that, they get i

Google will now allow you to remove visible watermarks from the images, videos, and music made with AI tools. With the update, you can toggle off a new "Media watermark" setting in Gemini and Google's AI video generator, Flow. When toggled off, Google will remove the "sparkle" watermark that appears in the bottom-right corner of content generated with the company's Nano Banana and Omni models. Though visible watermarks are now optional, AI-generated content will have invisible SynthID watermarks

For RPG fans who dig Persona-style turn-based action and who are pursuing games with original stories and fantastic tunes, look no further than Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This praise might come off sounding weird, but I really like that Sandfall Interactive’s breakout hit isn’t overly long compared to RPGs it was inspired by. It’s worth buying while it’s $33.17 at Amazon (requires you to clip the coupon, originally $49.99). This is a rare opportunity to save quite a bit on one of 2025’s best

The Clip Pro are the first clip-style earbuds from CMF, Nothing’s budget sub-brand. Clip earbuds are an exercise in compromise. It's an inherent aspect of their design - and physics. They can be more comfortable for people that don't like something jammed in their ear, but sound response suffers. Ambient awareness is great because you can easily hear the sound around you, which means to hear your own music the buds need to be turned up and potentially leak sound out to your neighbors. For what

The Claw EX. I rather like the purple. 3D-printed stand not included. As The Verge's resident handheld reviewer, I have nearly every portable gaming PC on a shelf in my house. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus is now the first one I reach for. Thanks to a next-gen Intel chip and improved MSI design, the Claw EX is the most powerful handheld that truly feels portable. It's the handheld with the longest battery life, and the first Windows handheld I can trust to sleep and wake reliably. Like the Steam

The HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 converts for tablet or tented use. | Image: The Verge With memory prices still high and showing no signs of dropping, we’re always happy to find a good deal on a budget-friendly system with an adequate amount of RAM. Best Buy has the HP OmniBook X Flip discounted by $300, bringing the cost down to $699.99. This model is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 5 and 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, which should be great for both web browsing and homework, and a 512GB SSD for stor

Another OpenAI executive is departing. Denise Dresser, who joined OpenAI as its chief revenue officer in December after serving as CEO of Slack, will be leaving in the "coming weeks" to "pursue other opportunities," she said in a team note posted to LinkedIn. Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz, will be taking over the CRO role, OpenAI says. Dresser's departure is just the latest in a string of major exits. Earlier this week, special projects lead and former COO Brad Lightcap announced he would

The Trump administration is launching a new program that will allow private firms to perform cyberattacks against foreign criminals, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The private firms would operate "under the control and oversight" of the federal government, giving them permission to surveil and disrupt criminal networks, according to a presidential memorandum published on Wednesday. The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security will oversee the private firms, which must meet re

From left, Segway, Roborock, Dreame, Husqvarna, and Mammotion automowers lined up to do battle with my lawn. | Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Robot lawnmowers are finally good enough to take a lot of work out of maintaining a yard, but they’re still not set-it-and-forget-it machines. If you don’t want these autonomous cutting machines to tear up your lawn or go roaming in your neighbors’ yard, you’re still going to need to keep an eye on them. But with some oversight, they can take

The Matic robot vacuum now offers gesture controlled spot cleaning and a built-in voice assistant. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Matic, my current favorite robot vacuum, just got a big upgrade. The company has launched Matic Cues, which brings voice and gesture control to the robot. Now, you can talk directly to your vacuum to tell it what you want it to do, or just point at a mess to have it spot-clean. The feature launches today, August 13 at 2 pm ET, and will show as an op

2K is launching a new AAA game development studio, Small Axe Studios, with an ambitious goal: to build the company's "next blockbuster sports franchise," according to a LinkedIn post. The post doesn't explicitly say what sport this new game will focus on. But an image included in the post features what appears to be a mockup soccer badge, indicating that Small Axe might be making a soccer game that goes head-to-head with EA Sports FC. The Small Axe website also lists senior staffers with experie

Ford said today that its next-generation electric vehicle - recently dubbed Fathom - will go into production at the automaker's recently overhauled Louisville Assembly Plant in the first quarter of 2027. The first Fathoms will be prototypes, with Ford's team in Louisville already in the production-level pre-tooling phase at the recently converted facility. Factory workers are working alongside team's at Ford's New Model Product Development Center in Dearborn, Michigan, hand-building the Fathom

Meta is launching an optional Scam Alert feature on WhatsApp that uses on-device machine learning to flag suspicious messages. Earlier this year, Meta also launched scam detection for device linking requests on WhatsApp. The new Scam Alert feature, which is rolling out in a limited beta, shows users a warning if a chat seems like a scam: If the model identifies a message as a likely scam attempt, the user sees a warning in the chat, which is not visible to the other person. From there, the user

My drive of the 2027 Corvette Grand Sport X began under oily black clouds, a torrential weather front releasing its grip on Manhattan - an inauspicious start for any mega-powered sports car. Rain pelted the waterlogged pavement, as I set course for the mountain-man roads of the Catskills, then on to Long Island and New England over three days. Fortunately, this Grand Sport, a name synonymous with value among Corvette fans, was the first of its kind: A 721-horsepower super-hybrid with a brainy, c

Suno is releasing Studio 2.0 with significant upgrades that push it closer to an actual digital audio workstation (DAW), rather than a bare-bones audio editor with generative AI features. The biggest addition is undoubtedly MIDI support. Suno says that MIDI was its most requested feature, and it's basically a prerequisite for any modern DAW. Unfortunately, Suno Studio doesn't appear to support third-party plugins or VSTs yet, so you're stuck using its proprietary built-in synth. That synth appea

Promotional artwork for Sam Barlow’s Precognition. Looks trippy. Kinetic Publishing, a new indie publisher from the development team behind the co-op horror game Phasmophobia, just hosted its first games showcase, and it includes five ambitious new titles set to release in 2027 and 2028. Perhaps the most significant announcement from Kinetic's show is that it's publishing the next game from Telling Lies and Immortality creator Sam Barlow, titled Precognition. (Barlow previously revealed the g

The iPhone 17’s successor might not arrive until 2027. | Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge According to an Economic Daily News report spotted by MacRumors, executives for Apple supplier Pegatron confirmed during an earnings call that the iPhone 18 Pro series phones will launch this fall, but the base iPhone 18 won't arrive until the first quarter of next year. The more affordable iPhone 18e and a new iPhone Air are also rumored to launch around the same time, in line with rumors that

The Pixel 11 Pro in matte obsidian. | Photo: David Imel / The Verge Looking to get your hands on the latest Pixel devices? After weeks of leaks and rumors, Google has officially announced its next generation of Pixel phones and watches. The base Pixel 11 starts at $899, the Pro and Pro XL are $1,099 and $1,299 respectively, and the Pro Fold starts at $1,899. The watch comes in two sizes, with the smaller 41mm model starting at $399, and the larger 45mm model starting at $429. The phones are av

Twitch users can now opt out of allowing their content to be used to train Amazon's generative AI models. Opting out means that "your streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel" won't be used in "future training" of an Amazon AI model "whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video," according to a Twitch support page. Other "AI-supported" features like captions and safety tools will still function if you opt-out of generative AI training.

The Pixel 11 Pro. | Photo: David Imel / The Verge Google just added four new phones to the Pixel family: the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. They're slightly more expensive than their predecessors, but they come with some notable upgrades, including improved cameras and a new Tensor G6 chip that should deliver faster performance. The phones also have new photography tools, like Magic Capture, along with improvements to Gemini Intelligence, expanded Live Tran

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aiming to spend up to $20 million on equipping officers and agents with specialized gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. These plans were outlined in a notice published by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, with an unspecified quantity of the devices set to be delivered by March 2027. The electrified handwear outlined in the contract is the CTG 5 GLOVE (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), which manufacturer Compliant Technologie

Amazon is fully stepping back from MMOs. After saying last year that it would be halting "a significant amount" of its work on first-party AAA games, "specifically around MMOs," Amazon will be handing over live operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark in the West to other companies, according to announcements on Wednesday. Throne and Liberty will be taken over by FirstSpark Games and NC in Q4 2026. Lost Ark will be run by Smilegate starting in early 2027. When Amazon announced the broader s

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold. | Photo: David Imel / The Verge Google wasn't first to make a foldable Android phone, but the company's Pixel Fold series is now an established player with unique traits compared to its competitors. For one, it popularized the passport-style design years ago, being more wide than tall - something that Samsung tried for the first time this year with its Z Fold 8, and that Apple is rumored to do with its foldable iPhone that may or may not arrive in 2026. It also delivered

Maybe don’t let the AI shred next time. | Image: D’Addario After weeks of controversy and speculation, music company D'Addario has admitted that AI, specifically Suno, was used as part of a recent promotional video. For nearly two weeks, the company has denied the allegations, even as evidence piled up against it. It offered various explanations, from low-quality exports, to combinations of plug-ins like Autotune introducing digital noise, and the use of AI-assisted mastering tools from LANDR

The settings page for the Pixel 11 series’ “Creator Suite.” Google knows creators are a big audience. The occupation is growing fast, and landing some influential names could be a major turning point for the Pixel's market share. This year, Google is building features directly into its new Pixel lineup that it says can help creators record, organize, edit, and publish content faster and more efficiently than they could on other devices. Creator Suite is a new mode built into the Pixel 11's cam

That’s a lot of people chatting with their AI friends all day. | Image: Google For the 14th time, a Google product has hit 1 billion users. Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X that a billion people are using Gemini every month, and that Gemini is Google's fastest-growing product ever. A billion users is a huge milestone, but Google isn't the first AI app to hit it. OpenAI's ChatGPT hit the mark a few weeks ago, though the company buried the announcement that "more than 1 billion people are pu

Meta has launched a Threads app for Meta Quest VR headsets, the company announced on Tuesday. The launch follows Meta bringing the app to its Ray-Ban Display AR glasses last month and the recent news that the platform has crossed 500 million monthly active users. It seems like a pretty full-featured app. Meta says that with the Threads VR app, you can do things like browse feeds, make posts, like and reply to posts, visit profiles, search, and watch videos - you know, Threads stuff. "We designed

Google TV Freeplay, the company's free, ad-supported streaming service, now supports video on demand. Instead of tuning into Google TV Freeplay's selection of always-on channels, you can now choose from over 10,000 shows and movies to watch whenever you want. The update introduces titles like Lady Bird, Seventeen Again, and Hell's Kitchen, according to Google's announcement. The company has also expanded its live TV lineup to include more than 300 channels dedicated to news, sports, reality TV,

Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's special projects lead and the company's former COO, announced his departure after an eight-year stint at the AI lab. In an internal memo he later posted to X, Lightcap told colleagues he'd be starting "something new." "Over the last few months, I've been focused on the next horizon and what would stand in the way of mission success," Lightcap wrote. "I believe there are a few important new things the world will need to get right as we enter this next period. I … am excite

The Google Pixel Buds 2a in hazel. | Image: The Verge Looking for great pair of earbuds that work particularly well with Android phones? The Google Pixel Buds 2a are currently discounted to $99 (usually $129) at various retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Google. These very capable Bluetooth earbuds come in four colors, with a lightweight fit that helps them disappear into your ears. With ANC and transparency mode support, and a close integration with Gemini, they’re a gre