Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft's Recall is meeting a lot of resistance from app developers, with Brave and AdGuard joining Signal in blocking the controversial Windows AI tool — Brave and AdGuard are both following Signal's lead in blocking Microsoft's AI tool. … Microsoft's controversial Recall feature …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Gamefound, a board game crowdfunding company, acquires Indiegogo, which has 38M members and will change its pricing to be in line with Gamefound's flat 5% fee — Both platforms will continue to exist separately. … Indiegogo is being acquired by the board game crowdfunding platform Gamefound …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Amazon updates its color screen Kindle Colorsoft with a cheaper 16GB model for $250 and a kids-focused bundle with one year of Kids Plus for $270, available now — The new Colorsoft costs $30 less and comes with half the storage than the model Amazon released last year.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Indie open gaming marketplace Itch.io abruptly deindexes NSFW content from its browse and search pages after payment processors raised concerns, following Steam — The gaming marketplace is bowing to pressure from payment providers, much like Valve and Tumblr before it.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Proton launches Lumo, an AI chatbot to summarize documents, generate code, and more and says it will protect users' information via “zero-access” encryption — Proton says it protects Lumo's chats with ‘zero-access’ encryption while storing them on users' devices.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Lenovo Legion Go S review: SteamOS is a huge improvement over Windows, but battery life falls behind Windows-based handhelds and its touchpad is nearly useless — Valve's Steam Deck has dominated the handheld gaming PC space since its 2022 debut. But even as more powerful Windows handhelds arrived …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Uber plans to make “multi-hundred-million dollar investments” in Nuro and Lucid and aims to deploy “20,000 or more” robotaxis in the US over the next six years — The companies plan to launch 20,000 robotaxis in the US over the next six years, starting with the first city in 2026.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Roblox taps Persona to estimate users' ages and verify they are 13+, renames Friends to Connections, and says only users over 13 can message Trusted Connections — Teens will have to prove they are older than 13 to make ‘Trusted Connections’ they can chat more freely with.
Mia Sato / The Verge: Nextdoor unveils new features like an interactive neighborhood map called Alerts, partners with 3,500+ local news outlets, and more, to revitalize its app — With new recommendation, discovery, and safety features, the hyperlocal platform is trying to be a place where users do something other than complain.
Hayden Field / The Verge: Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf's R&D employees to focus on agentic coding efforts at DeepMind — Key researchers from the AI coding startup are also heading to Google. … OpenAI's deal to buy Windsurf is off …
Adi Robertson / The Verge: Missouri AG Andrew Bailey is investigating Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, claiming the companies' AI chatbots are discriminating against President Trump — Missouri's AG is barely even trying to pretend this isn't censorship. … Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is threatening Google …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google adds new AI and gaming features to Android's Circle to Search, and Gemini Live support for foldables and third-party apps, starting with Samsung devices — Gemini Live is also being updated for foldables and third-party apps, starting with Samsung devices.
Allison Johnson / The Verge: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 hands-on: vastly thinner and lighter than the Fold 6, wider display format, no S Pen support, and feels like a normal phone when closed — Except for the price. We didn't ask for that. … Samsung just announced its seventh-generation folding phones …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: Ikea plans to relaunch its smart home line with 20+ new Matter-over-Thread devices, starting in January 2026, and releases a beta update for its Dirigera hub — Ikea is relaunching its smart home line in a move that will make its low-cost products work with other brands, with or without Ikea's own hub.
Andrew Liszewski / The Verge: Google rolls out a new Gmail feature for managing subscriptions that shows a list of emails delivered via active subscriptions, sorted by most frequent sender — The new Manage Subscriptions view in Gmail will help you reclaim an inbox overrun with emails you don't want.
Richard Lawler / The Verge: Bluesky rolls out Activity Notifications, letting users get push notifications about new posts and replies from specific accounts, as it doubles down on sports — A new update has also added much more control over which notifications users will see, and who can trigger them.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: OnePlus launches five products: the midrange €449 Nord 5 smartphone, the €349 Nord CE 5, a smaller €299 Watch 3, the €119 Buds 4, and the €229 Pad Lite tablet — The Nord 5 and Nord CE 5 phones, and the Pad Lite tablet, are all headed to Europe.
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge: Xbox says Arrowhead's Helldivers 2 will arrive on the Xbox Series X and S on August 26 for $40, the first PlayStation-published title to launch on Xbox — Sony is bringing its popular live-service third-person shooter to more players. … Arrowhead Game Studios' Helldivers 2 will make the jump …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Matt Mullenweg on licensing deals with AI companies, putting Tumblr's backend migration to WordPress “on hold”, fediverse, content moderation, and more — Today, I'm talking with Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com …
Nicole Froio / The Verge: AI-generated images of fake, otherworldly-looking houseplants are proliferating online and misleading consumers, as AI slop extends to plant care advice — 'It's disconnecting us further from reality, relationships with nature, and also our community.' — “Maybe you could organize …
Alex Heath / The Verge: At an all-hands, Andrew Bosworth says Sam Altman is not happy about Meta getting OpenAI talent and is “being dishonest” about Meta offering $100M bonuses — A Meta exec calls Sam Altman “dishonest,” my conversation with the startup CEO who is suing OpenAI, and AI is coming for games.
Decca Muldowney / The Verge: How online fandom communities are advocating against AI, including protesting companies scraping fanfic content for AI training and opposing AI-generated fanfic — ‘It is a gift. They stole it without my permission.’ … In the online world of fanfiction writers, who pen stories inspired …
Andrew Liszewski / The Verge: Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, 8GB of RAM, and enhanced modularity via 12 swappable parts — The repairable smartphone is now even more modular with new accessories that expand its functionality.
Arabelle Sicardi / The Verge: How AI is reshaping the perfume industry, as fragrance tech startup Osmo promises 48-hour sample turnarounds and incumbents like DSM-Firmenich embrace the tech — AI is rapidly changing how fragrance is created — and who gets credit. Some say it's innovation. Others call it erasure.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Amazon says it plans to bring same-day and next-day delivery to “tens of millions” of people who live in “more than 4,000” smaller US towns by the end of 2026 — The company is bringing faster delivery to thousands of small towns and rural communities.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Waymo launches robotaxis in Atlanta available exclusively in Uber's app, covering a 65-square-mile area excluding highways, after launching in Austin on March 4 — Atlanta is the second city to host Uber and Waymo's burgeoning partnership. … Uber customers in Atlanta now have the option …
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge: Google unveils new Gemini AI features, like select to search, for Chromebook Plus laptops like Lenovo's new $649+ 14" flagship with a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra — Features include select-to-search images and on-screen text, smart grouping of tabs and documents, and automated image editing.
Jack Buehrer / The Verge: The music industry is developing tools to detect AI-generated music across the music pipeline, focusing on proactive licensing and control rather than takedowns — With no way to stop the onslaught of AI music, the industry is taking a different approach: figuring out how to make money off of it.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Adobe Labs launches Project Indigo, a free computational photography app for iPhones that captures a burst of images and combines them into a high-quality photo — Marc Levoy, a former distinguished engineer at Google who helped put the Pixel camera on the map, helped build the app at Adobe.
Alex Heath / The Verge: Meta unveils $399+ Oakley smart glasses with all of the Ray-Ban glasses' features, plus 3K video recording, IPX4 water resistance, and double the battery life — The new lineup starts at $399 and captures 3K video. … Meta is announcing its next pair of smart glasses with Oakley.
Hayden Field / The Verge: The Midas Project and The Tech Oversight Project release The OpenAI Files, a 50+ page analysis of OpenAI's governance, leadership, and organizational culture — It has charts and data visualizations, including the authors' best guess at OpenAI's corporate structure.
Hayden Field / The Verge: A look at California's 52-page California Report on Frontier Policy, which proposes an AI regulatory framework based on transparency, risk assessments, and more — A long-awaited report says companies are “simply inadequate at fully understanding” risks and harms.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Adobe releases iOS and Android apps for Firefly, letting users generate images and videos using text prompts and experiment with popular AI photo editing tools — The iPhone and Android Firefly app can sync AI image and video projects to desktops via Creative Cloud.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Google plans to shut down Android's Instant Apps, which let users launch apps without installing them, later this year citing low usage and engagement — The installation-free apps will join the Google graveyard in December. … Google has confirmed that it plans to shut …
Emma Roth / The Verge: Betting platform Kalshi aired a fully AI-generated 30-second ad during the NBA Finals, reportedly made in 2-3 days with 300-400 generations using Google's Veo 3 — It apparently took just days to make using Google's new text-to-video generator, Veo 3.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Garmin unveils the $799 Venu X1 smartwatch with a 2" square AMOLED screen, a titanium body, an eight-day battery, and a blood oxygen monitor, coming on June 18 — With a 2-inch, squared-off display, Garmin's $799.99 smartwatch looks like a direct competitor to the Apple Watch Ultra 2.
David Pierce / The Verge: The Browser Company launches Dia, a macOS browser in beta for Arc users based around an AI chat sidebar that can access tabs, history, and logged-in sites — Dia, the new browser from The Browser Company, is almost nothing like the company's last product. That app, Arc, was a total rethink …
Emma Roth / The Verge: HP unveils the HP Dimension, the first hardware built with Google's 3D video conferencing tech, featuring a 65" light field display, launching in 2025 for $25K — The HP Dimension is the first device using Google's 3D video conferencing technology.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge: macOS Tahoe 26 hands-on: Liquid Glass ranges from slick to slightly overwrought, and Spotlight's new search features are nifty and useful, but Raycast is better — Tahoe is all about power users and theme options borrowed from the iPhone. … At WWDC, Apple announced its new Liquid Glass design language …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: OpenAI says it is “working on implementing a mitigation” to a ChatGPT, Sora, and API issue causing “elevated error rates and latency”, starting at around 3am ET — The chatbot is slow to respond for some users, and down completely for others.
Andrew Webster / The Verge: Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on: after a few days, it is just a bigger, more powerful Switch, transferring games works smoothly, the new Joy-Cons are great, and more — Now that I've had a Nintendo Switch 2 in my hands for a few days, I can say pretty confidently that this feels a lot like a Switch.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: United Airlines partners with Spotify to provide passengers with free access to 450+ hours of curated playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts across 130K screens — Access over 450 hours of curated content for free on seat-back screens. … United Airlines is expanding its in-flight entertainment catalog …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Runway CEO Cris Valenzuela on making the movie-making process cheaper and faster, copyright cases, why using Runway is like using a camera, and more — Today, I'm talking with Runway CEO and cofounder Cris Valenzuela. This one's special: Cris and I were live at an event …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Walmart expands its partnership with Alphabet-owned Wing to bring drone delivery services to Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, adding 100 stores — Customers who shop at Walmart stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa will soon have the ability to request a drone deliver their online shopping orders.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Lime and Uber sign a new multiyear deal to let Uber feature Lime's shared bikes and scooters on its ridehail app; the deal was set to expire in 2025 — The micromobility company is renewing its deal with Uber that allows the ridehail company to feature its bikes and scooters in its app.
Hayden Field / The Verge: Google pauses the rollout of Google Photos' AI-powered Ask Photos feature due to issues with latency, quality, and UX, per a Google product manager's post on X — 'Ask Photos isn't where it needs to be,' says a product manager for Google Photos.
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on Airbnb Experiences, launching new services, OpenAI, AI agents, making decisions at Airbnb, cutting PMs, Jony Ive, and more — Today, I'm talking with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. This is Brian's fourth time on the show, and he's one of my favorite guests …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Twitch plans to start testing the ability to host a vertical livestream and rolls out an open beta of “2K streaming”, letting creators stream at 1440p — The platform is also launching an open beta of higher-quality streams. … Twitch is announcing a bunch of updates at TwitchCon Europe …
Mia Sato / The Verge: Two rival Amazon influencers seek to dismiss their 2024 copyright case, where one accused the other of posting similar promotional content for the same products — A high-profile lawsuit between two rival lifestyle and shopping influencers would have rewritten copyright law and changed the creator industry.
Wes Davis / The Verge: Discord unveils Discord Orbs, a new in-app currency in beta that users can earn by completing Quests, which reward participants who interact with ads — ‘Discord Orbs’ will let users earn free Nitro by playing with interactive ads. … Discord is beta testing “Discord Orbs,” …