Andrew Webster / The Verge: Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on: larger than the Switch without being uncomfortable, flagship games play well, and the Joy-Con's mouse-like mode mostly works well — The value proposition of the Nintendo Switch 2 may seem pretty clear, but it's much more obvious when you use one.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Nintendo unveils Switch 2 details: a 7.9", 120fps, 1080p display, larger Joy-Con controllers, 256GB of storage, 4K games at 60fps when docked, launching June 5 — Finally, some specs. … Nintendo has finally shared many of the key specs about the Nintendo Switch 2 as part of its Switch 2-focused Direct.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Roblox rolls out new parental controls, including to let parents block and report people on their child's friends list, building on changes it made in 2024 — They'll be able to block specific experiences, too. … Roblox is introducing new parental controls that give parents more tools …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google rolls out a new Gmail encryption model in beta for enterprise that doesn't require senders or recipients to use custom software or exchange certificates — The beta feature for enterprise accounts allows Gmail users to simply toggle encryption for external emails.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Instacart rolls out Store View, paying shoppers to take videos of store shelves “one aisle at a time” to assess inventory, starting with select retailers — Store View is supposed to help Instacart determine which products are out of stock and when they may become available.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Xiaomi's Poco unveils the £649+ F7 Ultra, with a 6.67" display, Snapdragon 8 Elite, a triple rear camera, 120W wired charging, and IP68, and the £499+ F7 Pro — Its first ‘Ultra’ phone has a triple rear camera, fast charging, and IP68 protection.
Richard Lawler / The Verge: Microsoft unveils AI deep reasoning agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher, based on OpenAI's deep research model, and o3-mini-based Analyst, rolling out in April — Multi-step reasoning AI is coming to Microsoft Copilot. … After Google and OpenAI offered up AI news on Tuesday …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Waymo plans to launch its Waymo One ride-hailing service in Washington, DC in 2026; the city currently prohibits autonomous vehicles without safety drivers — But it will need to change the law prohibiting fully driverless vehicles first. … Waymo announced that Washington, DC will be its next robotaxi city.
Chris Welch / The Verge: Apple says the AirPods Max will get 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio, including Personalized Spatial Audio, and ultra‑low latency in April via a software update — A new firmware update coming in April will also include ultra low-latency for the $549 headphones.
Wes Davis / The Verge: Google rolls out real-time AI video Gemini Live features, including the ability to “see” phone screens and phone camera feeds, for Gemini Advanced subscribers — Gemini can ‘see’ screens and camera feeds in real-time for some Google One AI Premium subscribers now.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Discord plans to roll out third-party ads on its mobile apps, starting with a mobile pilot for Video Quests, which let users earning rewards, in June 2025 — Video Quests will start rolling out to mobile users in June. … Discord is bringing third-party ads to its mobile platform.
The Verge: Google acquires NYC-based cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32B in cash, its largest acquisition yet, pending approval; antitrust fears stalled a $23B deal in 2024 — The acquisition is Alphabet's biggest yet, after a $23 billion takeover attempt stalled last year.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Discord launches a Social SDK to let developers offer friends lists, cross-platform messaging, voice, and more, with console and mobile support “coming soon” — An easier way to connect with Discord friends. … Discord is launching a way for developers to directly integrate …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: The GSMA announces the new RCS standard supports interoperable E2EE between platforms; Apple says it will add support for the standard in a future update — 'We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.'
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Niantic Labs says it is selling its video game division, including Pokémon Go, to Saudi Arabia-owned developer Scopely for $3.5B, subject to regulatory approval — The $3.5 billion Scopely deal could bring Niantic's AR gaming catalog under Saudi ownership.
Emma Roth / The Verge: DuckDuckGo says AI answers are out of beta and now get info from across the web, not just Wikipedia; setting AI answers to “often” shows them ~20% of the time — You can still choose how often you see AI-assisted answers, which now incorporate results from the web.
Gaby Del Valle / The Verge: USCIS proposes to review social media accounts of people applying for US citizenship, green cards, and asylum or refugee status, to comply with Trump's EO — People applying for US citizenship or personal residency may soon have to disclose their social media handles to the government.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Uber launches Waymo rides in Austin, operating within a 37-square-mile area, including Hyde Park and Downtown; in August 2024, Waymo had ~700 vehicles total — Residents of the Texas capital can now hail a driverless Waymo vehicle — as long as they're within the 37-square-mile service area.
Allison Johnson / The Verge: Nothing unveils the $379 Phone 3A and $459 3A Pro, both with 6.77" displays, Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, and new AI tools to help organize files, shipping this month — Because of course there's AI. … The Nothing 3A phones were just announced with a new take on the company's “make tech more fun again” ethos.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Samsung announces Galaxy A56, A36, and A26 smartphones with new AI image editing features and support for up to six years of Android OS and security upgrades — The new line of A-series devices has slightly larger screens and a bigger emphasis on AI image editing tools.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Sesame, headed by Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, exits stealth with an undisclosed amount of funding, unveiling an AI speech model and plans for AI glasses — Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe's next act: AI glasses that carry a conversation. … I tell Amazon's Alexa to shut up on a near daily basis.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft releases Copilot for Mac, including a shortcut command to open the app, in the US, UK, and Canada, and adds a split screen mode to the iPad version — The Copilot app on iPhone and iPad is also being improved today. … Microsoft is releasing a native Copilot app for macOS today.
The Verge: A survey of 2,000 US adults finds 42% say that search engines like Google are becoming less useful, 60% view the state of social media negatively, and more — - Platform Shifts — Defining Connection — Content Matters (Especially in Communities) — Brands Matter.AI May Complicate
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google releases its free Gemini Code Assist globally in public preview for solo developers, with 180K code completions per month; GitHub Copilot offers 2,000 — And provides 90 times more monthly code completions than GitHub Copilot's free tier. … A free version of Gemini Code Assist …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer on going back to its roots as a YouTube rival, TikTok, algorithmic video platform incentives, AI video not taking off, and more — AI tools are here to stay, Moyer says, but Vimeo wants to build on ‘authenticity.’ — AI tools are here to stay, Moyer says …
Wes Davis / The Verge: xAI confirms Grok briefly had “Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation” as a public-facing instruction for its responses — The system prompt for Musk's chatbot was changed by an employee to block the results.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Nvidia confirms a “rare” manufacturing issue affecting under 0.5% of RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti GPUs, which are missing render units, the latest hitch since launch — Where did the ROPs go? … In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't sound like a lot of affected GPUs …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Oppo launches the Find N5, the world's thinnest foldable at 8.93mm closed and 4.21mm open, with IPX6, X8, and X9 ratings, in Europe and Asia for ~$1,870 — Oppo's Find N5 is the thinnest book-style foldable yet, and it's launching worldwide — but it's another foldable the US just won't get.
Wes Davis / The Verge: Rabbit R1 maker Rabbit demos its “generalist Android agent”, showing it controlling apps on a tablet, building on its LAM Playground, a “generalist web agent” — Watch Rabbit's AI agent, but not the Rabbit R1, do things in Android apps.
Victoria Song / The Verge: OnePlus unveils the $330 Watch 3, offering a rotating crown, five-day battery life, Wear OS 5, a new GPS antenna, and new health features, shipping February 25 — Plus five-day battery life, Wear OS 5, a new GPS antenna, and a host of new health features.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Google Calendar removes Pride month, Black History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and other events, saying it wasn't “scalable or sustainable” to keep them — Google says it switched to only showing default entries for public holidays and national observances last year.
Jay Peters / The Verge: PlayStation Network has been experiencing a multi-hour outage, affecting account management, gaming and social, and PlayStation Video, Store, and Direct website — PSN has been experiencing a multi-hour outage. You might have trouble loading purchased digital games or seeing which friends are online.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Google has edited Gemini's response in a Super Bowl commercial after it was found to contain false information about Gouda cheese — Gemini's response no longer says that Gouda makes up '50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption.' — Gemini's response no longer says that Gouda makes …
Emma Roth / The Verge: OpenAI opens ChatGPT search to users who are not logged in, after launching it to paying subscribers in October 2024 and logged-in users in December 2024 — OpenAI is making its AI search engine more accessible. — OpenAI is making its AI search engine more accessible.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft says Microsoft Build 2025 will run from May 19 to May 22 in Seattle, where AI, Copilot, and Surface updates are expected to be announced — Microsoft Build 2025 is being held in Seattle again this year. — Microsoft Build 2025 is being held in Seattle again this year.
Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge: Elon Musk's goal seems to amount to a coup over the US administrative state; Musk said he “deleted” the 18F Direct File tax group, but that may not be true — Elon Musk has an uncanny ability to sort out which of America's rules are real.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Vodafone makes “the world's first” satellite video call using a standard smartphone via SpaceMobile satellites; the service is set to launch in Europe in 2025 — It's partnered with Starlink rival AST SpaceMobile on a direct-to-smartphone satellite service it plans to launch in Europe later this year.
Victoria Song / The Verge: Hands-on with the live translation feature of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: adept at translating a basic conversation, but struggles with slang and faster speech — I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class. I remember enough for toddler talk — phrases like …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: The CMA says Google has agreed to curb UK businesses using fake reviews to boost ratings and must report to the CMA on its efforts for the next three years — Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant's reviews platform.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge: Google unveils classroom and accessibility ChromeOS features, including rolling out a tool to let users control a device with their head and facial expressions — Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge: Brendan Carr becomes FCC chair, and plans to focus on tech and media regulation, combating China, spectrum licenses, infrastructure, the space economy, and more — Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency's agenda …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance's Nuverse, is back online in the US; developer Second Dinner plans to find a new publisher to avoid future bans — Marvel Snap is back online in the US after access was cut off Saturday night due to the law that banned TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Google Play and Apple's App Store still aren't offering TikTok in the US; Senator Tom Cotton warns of “ruinous liability”, as Trump says there's “no liability” — TikTok announced on Sunday that it's “in the process of restoring service,” but the app is still unavailable in the App Store and Google Play.
Richard Lawler / The Verge: Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse, cuts off access for US gamers, as the TikTok divest-or-ban law impacts other ByteDance-linked apps — The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Adam Mosseri says Instagram profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out “over the weekend” — Instagram's profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out “over the weekend …
Mia Sato / The Verge: Instagram adds a new tab in the Reels feed that will show videos that a user's friends have liked or added commentary to — Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features, now reworked for the short-form video era. — A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Nintendo teases the Switch 2, featuring a new kickstand design and backward compatibility for physical and digital games, with more details on April 2, 2025 — The console looks a lot like the original, but it's bigger. In the video, the Joy-Con controllers are black with colored accents, and they attach to the console magnetically.
Abigail Bassett / The Verge: A look at Watch Duty, a free app that has become a crucial lifeline for LA during the wildfires by showing active fires, evacuation zones, and other vital info — ‘We view what we are doing as a public service,’ says the cofounder of the nonprofit that millions of people are relying on to stay safe.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge: Asus unveils the Zenbook A14, with a new base-model eight-core Snapdragon X processor, available mid-January starting at $1,100; a $900 variant debuts in March — Asus' new featherweight laptop is aiming to be the latest Windows rival to the Apple MacBook Air.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Nvidia updates its Autonomous Game Characters, says the NPCs can “perceive, plan, and act like human players” in games like PUBG, with “small language models” — Nvidia has spent the last two years showing off its digital “ACE” characters that can have in-game conversations with you using generative AI.