When I was 16 years old, I wrote my first fanfiction. It was a crossover fic where the cast from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gave the anime dog demon Inuyasha a makeover. It was stupid and poorly written, and yet, to this very day, I remember it fondly. This is exactly what it’s […]
In writer / director Julian Glander’s new animated sci-fi feature Boys Go to Jupiter, a young gig worker named Billy 5000 (Planet Money’s Jack Corbett) hoverboards his way through life in Florida with only one thing on his mind: he needs $5,000 and is willing to deliver as much food as it takes to make […]
Can AI help “smooth over” discussion on abortion, racism, immigration, or Israel-Palestine? Columbia University sure hopes so. The Verge has learned that the university recently began testing Sway, an AI debate program currently in beta. Developed by two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sway matches up students with opposing views to chat one-on-one about hot-button […]
Around six years ago, a new rallying cry rippled through Washington: “Break Up Big Tech.” It was a slogan emblazoned on campaign posters, uttered at congressional hearings, and beginning, it seemed, to echo through the halls of the nation’s antitrust enforcers. Momentum in the legislatures eventually petered out, but the enforcers at the Justice Department […]
In case you missed it last week among other big news items, Google shipped a phone camera with a zoom feature that uses generative AI. That’s right: the Pixel 10 Pro comes with AI right inside the camera app that cleans up otherwise crappy digital zoom images all the way up to 100x. It’s a […]
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software giant Atlassian, was one of the first users of the Arc browser. Over the last several years, he has been a prolific bug reporter and feature requester. Now he’ll own the thing: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the New York-based startup that makes both Arc and the […]
If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Samsung’s long-teased trifold phone or Project Moohan XR headset, the company’s IFA launches may feel a little prosaic: an affordable spinoff of its flagship phone line, and a pair of Android tablets. The Galaxy S25 FE and Tab S11 series may not be Samsung’s most exciting launches of the year, […]
It’s been a tumultuous summer for Scale AI: Meta took a multibillion-dollar stake in the company, Mark Zuckerberg hired Scale CEO Alexandr Wang and other top staff, and Scale laid off 14 percent of its workforce. Now the latest development is a lawsuit over corporate espionage in the AI industry. The AI data labeling company, […]
The holy grail of the smart home is ambient computing – technology that disappears into the background, anticipating your needs without a word or a tap. Lights turn on as you walk in, doors unlock as you approach, coffee brews before you reach the kitchen. This is the proactive home: a space that adapts to […]
As President Donald Trump’s August 29th deadline for new tariffs rolled around, the first thing that I thought of was 2026 planners. In July, Trump signed an executive order essentially killing a little-known but highly consequential trade rule, which meant that purchases coming from abroad – like $100 in planners and accessories – could enter […]