America's Big Tech companies may soon learn that saddling up with Donald Trump doesn't tend to work out in the end. As the president sows chaos and distrust around the globe while taking aim at EU tech regulations, Europe is looking for ways to adopt its own alternatives. The latest example is Fr...
Consumer Tech
Google has announced that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Gmail on Android and iOS is now rolling out for its enterprise users. Emails that require E2EE in Workspace can be composed and read within the Gmail app, so eligible users won’t need additional apps or portals. The new feature expands Go...
Google News has begun showing Polymarket bets and odds alongside actual stories, according to a report by Futurism. These look to appear as large blocks that include links to numerous ways for people to lose their money. Bets tend to appear in the "For you" section of Google News, which is suppos...
A warrantless wiretapping authority that has facilitated surveillance for decades is up for renewal in Congress. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), last reauthorized in 2024, is set to expire on April 20th. A bipartisan coalition of progressive Democrats and members ...
Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. We're back to being ignored, but the company is showing signs of life. It's been nine months since Trump Mobile announced itself, seven months since t...
After its history-making trip around the Moon, NASA's Artemis II mission is set to return to Earth later today. The Orion spacecraft carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego at approximately 8:07PM ET....
Not everyone needs a $1,000 soundbar. It’s easy to argue the sonic superiority of those flagship models from Samsung, Sonos and Sony, but for some people a simple boost to their TV speakers can provide a world of difference. As part of its 2026 soundbar lineup, Sony debuted the Bravia Theater Bar...
Whoop is popular among congressional staffers. This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. Last week, our edi...
Cloudflare, the cloud provider that connects millions of sites to the internet, wants to "fix" another digital giant: WordPress. It announced a new open-source system, called EmDash, that's supposed to address the "core problems that WordPress cannot solve" - and they want to do it by allowing AI...
Another day, another subscription price hike, this time for YouTube Premium. Every plan for YouTube’s ad-free tier is going up, and depending on which one you have, you could be paying as much as $4 per month more. As reported by 9to5Google, YouTube has started emailing subscribers about the pric...
(April 6, 2026) – Before going to sleep on flight day 5, the Artemis II crew snapped one more photo of the Moon, as it drew close in the window of the Orion spacecraft. | Image: NASA As the Artemis II astronauts prepare for the most dramatic and potentially dangerous part of their mission - ree...
Sam Altman's tenure at OpenAI has been… messy. Messy to the point where Altman was briefly fired from his role as CEO, only to be reinstated days later, at which point he began reshaping the organization permanently. This week, The New Yorker published a deep look at Altman, his time at OpenAI, a...
Microsoft has rolled out a Notepad update for Windows Insiders that removes the Copilot branding and icon from within the app, Windows Central has reported. The old Copilot menu has been replaced with “writing tools,” but it’s worth noting that the tools are still powered by AI and are pretty muc...
Snap's upcoming consumer AR glasses are still set to launch sometime this year, and they'll be powered by a Snapdragon XR chip from Qualcomm, according to an announcement of a "multi-year strategic agreement" between the companies. Snap has been working on smart glasses for a decade, with the fir...
Gen Z is increasingly disillusioned with AI - just not enough to stop using it. A new Gallup report released this week, based on responses from nearly 1,600 people ages 14 to 29 across the US, suggests the hype is wearing off for the digital-native generation as AI becomes more embedded in schoo...
Amazon’s satellite-based internet service, Leo, will enter service by mid-2026, so says company CEO Andy Jassy. Writing in his annual letter, Jassy claimed Leo would offer download speeds of up to 1Gbps, far more than what Starlink presently offers. Sadly, Amazon declined to offer any more detail...
Microsoft is starting to remove "unnecessary" Copilot buttons from its Windows 11 apps. In the latest version of the Notepad app for Windows Insiders, Microsoft has removed the Copilot button in favor of a "writing tools" menu. The Copilot button in the Snipping Tool app also no longer appears wh...
Google has removed popular psychological horror game Doki Doki Literature Club! from the Play Store. According to Dan Salvato, who led its development team, and publisher Serenity Forge, Google told them the visual novel was removed because it violated its Terms of Service in its depiction of sen...
OpenAI has closed a yawning gap in its ChatGPT subscription pricing with a new $100 per month Pro plan that slots between the $20 per month Plus plan and $200 per month Pro plan. Offering five times more Codex than the $20 option, it appears designed to challenge Anthropic's $100 per month Claude...
Apple is closing three of its retail stores this summer, including its first location to unionize. The tech company said it plans to permanently close Apple Store in Trumbull, CT, Escondito, CA, and Towson, MD. The Apple Store location in Towson, was the first where unionized workers and Apple re...