Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft and Qualcomm launch Windows updates to improve Arm gaming, including a refreshed Xbox app; Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Control Panel optimizes games — Microsoft and Qualcomm have made important improvements to compatibility and performance for games on Snapdragon CPUs.
The Verge: The EU unveils proposed updates to GDPR, including simplifying cookie permission pop-ups, and plans to water down the AI Act, after US and tech company pressure — The EU folds under Big Tech's pressure. … After years of staring down the world's biggest tech companies and setting the bar …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Epic Games partners with Unity to bring games made with Unity Engine to Fortnite in 2026, part of Epic's longterm vision to make Fortnite into an open metaverse — Epic Games is teaming up with arguably its biggest game development rival. … Epic Games is teaming up with arguably …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Roblox plans to require all users to undergo an age estimation process to access chat features, starting January 2026, in an effort to enhance child safety — After scrutiny over its ability to protect children on the platform, Roblox is making a big change.
Thomas Ricker / The Verge: Meta plans to launch WhatsApp third-party app integration in Europe “over the coming months” as required by the DMA, starting with BirdyChat and Haiket — Coming ‘soon’ with end-to-end encryption enabled. — Meta is on the cusp of launching third-party integration …
Thomas Ricker / The Verge: Leaker Evan Blass offers details on Samsung's upcoming trifold phone: named “Galaxy Z TriFold”, 6.5" cover display and 10" total display, and 200MP main camera — The Galaxy Z TriFold could launch on December 5th. … Reputable gadget leaker Evan Blass has taken to X with …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Valve says the company is “no longer manufacturing” its high-end, PC-tethered VR headset Valve Index, released in 2019 for $999, after unveiling the Steam Frame — While showing its new Frame VR headset to The Verge, Valve confirmed that it's moving on from its previous one.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Samsung rolls out its Vision AI Companion, a generative AI-powered upgrade to its Bixby assistant, across its 2025 TV lineup, with support for 10 languages — Vision AI Companion will let you ask questions about what's on screen in real time.
Dominic Preston / The Verge: Motorola Edge 70 review: the new £699 ultra-thin device has a silicone back and great battery life, but the OS is full of ads; the phone won't launch in the US — I've been as much of a thin phone skeptic as anyone. Why would I give up on camera specs and battery life just to shave …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Lyft CEO David Risher on the company's turnaround, AI, paying drivers more, Uber, partnership with Tensor for autonomous vehicle tech, and more — Today, I'm talking with David Risher, who is the CEO of Lyft. I'll just say from the jump: I think you'll like this one …
Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with LexisNexis CEO Sean Fitzpatrick on AI reshaping legal workflows, document drafting, attorneys losing their licenses over “sloppy use of AI”, and more — Today, I'm talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis, one of the most important companies in the entire legal system.
Janko Roettgers / The Verge: YouTube is revamping its TV app to mimic paid streamers like Netflix, organizing videos by seasons and episodes, blurring the lines between pro and user content — YouTube's TV app is starting to look a lot more like Netflix, further blurring the lines between traditional TV and creator shows.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: WhatsApp launches passkey-encrypted backups for iOS and Android, letting users encrypt their stored message history using their face, fingerprint, or a code — Chat backup encryption will no longer require you to memorize passwords or lengthy encryption keys.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: OpenAI's Sora app adds new features, including “character cameos” to create AI deepfakes of pets, illustrations, and more, clip stitching, and leaderboards — Users can now create character cameos and combine clips together to make longer multi-scene videos.
Stevie Bonifield / The Verge: Grammarly rebrands as Superhuman after its acquisitions of Superhuman Mail in June and Coda in December 2024; the standalone writing tool Grammarly still exists — ChatGPT changed the game on Grammarly, but now it's adding more AI to pull users back into its sidebar.
The Verge: Grokipedia hands-on: many articles clone Wikipedia, but deviate significantly on topics conflicting with Elon Musk's worldview; at times, it is overtly racist — xAI's Wikipedia-like website offers a generous take on Musk's worldview. … On Monday, a new online “encyclopedia” sputtered to life.
The Verge: Adobe unveils Project Moonlight, an AI agent on its Firefly platform designed to act as a creative director for social media campaigns via text prompts — Project Moonlight can draw inspiration from a user's social media presence and Adobe project history.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: At its Adobe Max event, Adobe unveils AI tools for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Lightroom, and says Firefly Image 5 can generate images in native 4MP resolution — Adobe's Creative Cloud and Firefly apps are adding new ways to do labor-intensive photo and video editing tasks for you.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: YouTube now lets mobile users set a customizable daily limit to restrict how long they can scroll Shorts feeds; the limit notifications are dismissible — Mobile users can automatically pause their Shorts feeds after watching for a set duration.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Sources: Microsoft is significantly increasing the price of its Xbox Development Kit from $1,500 to $2,000, after hiking Series X prices by $150 in September — Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox dev kits, just a month after tariffs hit Xbox console pricing.
David Pierce / The Verge: iPad Pro (M5, 2025) review: amazing performance, hardware remains unbeaten, and iPadOS is getting more Mac-like, but still too pricey for a secondary computer — What do you get the tablet that has everything? Last year, Apple debuted a massive overhaul to the iPad Pro, with a thin new design …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Oura launches a redesigned app with a new metric to show a weekly overview of stress management and says it is working with the US FDA on a blood pressure study — The company is launching a study that uses ring data to detect ‘early signs of hypertension.’
Thomas Ricker / The Verge: SpaceX launched 56 Starlink satellites on separate Falcon 9 rockets on October 19, surpassing 10,000 total satellites launched into low Earth orbit to date — About 1,400 have been decommissioned. … On Sunday, SpaceX launched 56 additional Starlink satellites on separate Falcon 9 rockets …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: AWS says “the underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated” and most “operations are succeeding normally now” after a major US-EAST-1 outage from 3:11AM ET — The cause of the AWS outage is currently unclear. … Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently experiencing …
Robert Hart / The Verge: Meta plans new Instagram teen safety tools in 2026, letting parents block teens from chatting with AI characters and sending them “insights” from teens' chats — From next year Instagram will let parents stop teens from chatting with AI characters entirely.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft launches new Windows features to help weave AI into regular Windows 11 PCs, including rolling out a “Hey, Copilot!” wake word and Copilot Vision — Microsoft is rewriting Windows to turn computers into AI PCs that you talk to. … As Microsoft bids farewell to Windows 10 …
Sean Hollister / The Verge: ROG Xbox Ally review: great grips, good speakers, and Windows is easier to control with joysticks, but worse performance than the Steam Deck and unintuitive UI — What does “Xbox” mean? Some might say it can only refer to a box-shaped Microsoft game machine.
David Pierce / The Verge: Apple updates the iPad Pro with an M5 chip, its new C1X cellular modem, and N1 chip, for $999+ for the 11-inch and $1,299+ for the 13-inch, shipping October 22 — The Pro is becoming a showcase for Apple's new chips — and seems poised to remain the company's best tablet.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Waymo plans to launch a fully driverless robotaxi service in London, starting in 2026, its first European launch; human-supervised cars will first collect data — It's good timing too. The UK is ready to start piloting fully driverless vehicles. … London's iconic black cabs could soon face a new rival: Waymo.
Emma Roth / The Verge: Slack is testing an AI-based version of Slackbot that acts as a personalized assistant, operating via AWS' virtual private cloud, rolling out at the end of 2025 — The revamped Slackbot acts more like an AI companion that can help you create plans, schedule meetings, find files, and more.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Intel unveils Panther Lake, or Intel Core Ultra Series 3, the first chip built on its 18A process, coming to laptops and handhelds in late 2025 and early 2026 — What we know about the next Intel Core Ultra. … Panther Lake is the most important chip Intel has made in years.
Robert Hart / The Verge: The Browser Company says AI browser Dia is “now open to everyone on macOS” without an invite, Dia's first time being widely available since its June launch — The waitlist is over for Mac users, though there's still no word on when the AI browser will come to Windows.
Jay Peters / The Verge: Apple plans to update its Declared Age Range API and launch new APIs “later this year” to verify the ages of Apple Account users in Texas from January 1, 2026 — Starting next year in Texas, new rules will go into effect. … Starting next year, Texas will require companies …
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft delays last week's 50% price hike for existing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers in Germany, Ireland, South Korea, Poland, India, and other markets — Current subscribers in some European countries won't be affected by Microsoft's Game Pass price hikes just yet.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Disney says Hulu will replace the Star hub on Disney+ on October 8 in international markets as part of Disney's plan to expand Hulu globally — Starting on October 8th, Hulu will replace Star on Disney Plus in international markets. … Disney is expanding Hulu to worldwide streaming audiences …
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft makes Xbox Cloud Gaming generally available, removing its beta tag after over five years, adds 1440p support, and raises bitrate quality to 27Mbps — Microsoft is also upping the bitrate quality of Xbox Cloud Gaming streams for select games.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft raises the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription price from $19.99 to $29.99 per month, rebrands Xbox Game Pass Core and Standard plans, and more — Microsoft is also adding PC games and cloud access to its new Xbox Game Pass Essential and Premium plans.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: Google Home Speaker hands-on: the new $99 speaker is a similar size to the HomePod mini, comes in four colors, and Gemini is a vastly improved assistant — Google is finally launching a new smart speaker, and it's a complete redesign. The new Google Home Speaker features a new flattened sphere shape …
Jay Peters / The Verge: Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 review: an unobtrusive eye-level camera, improved battery, and lots of frames, but some may feel uncomfortable with a face-mounted camera — The second-generation Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses aren't too different from the first. The biggest change is that they have a better battery life …
Victoria Song / The Verge: Oura unveils colorful ceramic Oura Ring 4 versions for $499+ in four finishes with enhanced durability and a thicker 3.51mm design, and a $99 charging case — The company is also introducing health panels for blood work, a recycling program, and multi-ring device support.
The Verge: A live blog of Amazon's fall 2025 hardware event in New York City, where new Kindles, Echos, possibly a TV, and Alexa updates are expected — We're at Amazon's fall 2025 hardware event in New York City, where the company is set to announce a bunch of new gadgets ahead of the holidays.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google updates AI Mode to make searching through images using vague descriptions easier and says the tool will “provide a relevant set of shoppable options” — Users in the US can now shop for products using natural language descriptions and reference images.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft launches a Security Store with SaaS tools and AI agents from Darktrace and others, and now lets Security Copilot users build their own AI agents — Cybersecurity workers can also start creating their own Security Copilot AI agents. … Microsoft is launching a Security Store …
Robert Hart / The Verge: Nothing unveils its Essential branding for AI products, a new app store with user-designed, AI-generated apps based on Android called Playground, and more — Nothing is launching an app store for AI-built smartphone software. … Nothing says it has just taken “the first step towards an AI-native operating system.”
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft launches Agent Mode in Excel and Word, using GPT-5 to generate complex spreadsheets and documents, saying it is “bringing vibe working” to 365 Copilot — A new Agent Mode comes to Office apps today, alongside an Office Agent in Copilot chat.
Elissa Welle / The Verge: As the lyricist behind AI artist Xania Monet signs a $3M record deal, experts say current copyright law may only protect the human-made expressive elements — Two weeks ago, record company Hallwood Media signed a deal with Telisha “Nikki” Jones after negotiations that purportedly included an offer of $3 million, Billboard reported.
Sean Hollister / The Verge: Microsoft and Asus open preorders for the first Xbox handhelds, the ROG Xbox Ally for $599 and the ROG Xbox Ally X for $999 in the US, shipping October 16 — Xbox Ally X and Xbox Ally go on sale with PC-like prices, with preorders starting today. … Today, Microsoft and Asus …
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft Windows 10 users will receive free Extended Security Updates in the EEA without enabling Windows Backup, after pressure from the Euroconsumers group — You won't have to enable Windows Backup to get extended Windows 10 security updates in the European Economic Area.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google adds a new You tab to Google Play, featuring player account information, personalized content recommendations, rewards, and more — Curated content, rewards, subscriptions, stats, and updates will live under a new ‘You’ tab. … Google Play is adding a new centralized user hub …
Terrence O'Brien / The Verge: Google plans to start using StopNCII's hashes to proactively identify nonconsensual images in search results and remove them — The company has been slower to get onboard with StopNCII's hashes than much of the industry. … Hashes are algorithmically-generated unique identifiers …