The best early Amazon Prime Day deals so far
Amazon’s earlier-than-usual Prime Day doesn’t begin until June 23rd, but there are several even earlier deals on must-have products that you can check out right now. To name some examples, Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 are selling at their cheapest-ever price. Also, you can grab Ring’s latest battery-powered doorbell for $60 off and it includes a […]
Trump’s Anthropic shutdown just made the case for non-American AI
At Washington's request, Anthropic suddenly took its newest and most powerful AI models offline over the weekend. The American company said it had little choice after the White House demanded it block access for all foreign nationals, including its own employees. Abroad, the incident offered a sobering reminder that the US not only dominates frontier […]
Google Chrome is closing the loopholes that let old ad blockers keep working
Google Chrome version 150 and 151, expected in late June and July, respectively, will cut off support for the last remaining workarounds for running older ad blockers, 9to5Google reports. Google phased out support for ad-blocking extensions built for Manifest V2, like uBlock Origin, in 2024. At that point, most Chrome users either switched to newer […]
Big Tech’s desperate last push at AI regulation
For months, Big Tech's Washington lobbyists have chased after the holy grail of pro-AI legislation: preemption. This would be a comprehensive federal law, passed in Congress and signed by the president, applying one set of AI rules across the entire country and overriding the legally messy state-by-state approach to regulation. For months, lobbyists have run […]
Xbox turmoil continues with a studio closure and executive departures
Last week, Xbox boss Asha Sharma sent a memo warning of an Xbox "reset" ahead of expected layoffs, and today, Kotaku reported that Xbox plans to shut down Compulsion Games, the studio behind South of Midnight. Since taking over in February, Sharma has made some big decisions, including cutting the price of Xbox Game Pass […]
Roblox exec says ticking a box for age verification is ‘not enough anymore’
Roblox's vice president of safety product policy, Eliza Jacobs, told NBC News that Roblox is "optimistic" that its new facial age estimation tech will "continue to get better," saying, "Ticking a box to say you're 13 or older, it's not enough anymore." NBC invited a group of kids to try out Roblox's new video selfie […]
My favorite Qi2 power bank is cheaper than ever for Verge readers
I recently published a buying guide on the best Qi2 power banks. Out of seven feature-packed batteries, I really dug the Baseus AM52 10,000mAh power bank that has a built-in USB-C cable. It’s fast at Qi2.2 wireless charging for iPhones, and it’s quick with wired charging, too. And now, it’s an unbeatable value thanks to […]
Happy birthday to the Trump phone
From the day it was announced, on June 16th, 2025, the Trump phone sounded ridiculous. The T1 Phone 8002 (gold version), as it was officially called, was a combination of contradictory specs, product images that were clearly not photographs of a real phone, and the worrying requirement of a $100 deposit to secure a preorder […]
Skydio CEO Adam Bry on why Silicon Valley shouldn’t draw red lines for drone use
Today, I’m talking with Adam Bry, who is CEO of Skydio, the leading US maker of autonomous drones. Before we recorded this episode, I actually got to remotely operate one of Skydio’s drones in the Bay Area from Adam’s laptop in our podcast studio in New York and fly an indoor drone around our office. […]
Google Earth’s flight simulator is now available in your browser
On Friday Google announced it was making a relatively unknown feature of Google Earth available to a wider audience. The desktop version of Google Earth has had a hidden flight simulator mode since 2007, but it's now easily accessible through a web browser without having to download or install any apps. To take to the […]