Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 137, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy phone season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Google Zero and armored cars for rich p...
What Surrounds Us takes its title literally. You play as a circle surrounding a hole in its middle - it looks like a donut with frosting. You work together with other sentient moving circles, sometimes helping them joyfully meet with others. And you traverse a large map that's composed entirely o...
This “piercing pillow” also works great with earbuds you probably already own. Tech companies love to sell us expensive gadgets to solve all of life's little problems. Sleepbuds sold by the likes of Anker and Ozlo are a good example. These miniature marvels of engineering sit flush in the ear, ...
Remember when Meta was planning to charge a $20 monthly subscription fee for the smart glasses feature that lets people hear each other more clearly - even though that feature runs locally on your glasses and doesn't require the cloud? Meta has paused those plans, spokesperson Tyler Yee confirms ...
Meta's smart glasses have been a PR headache for the company. Public backlash has been swift, and fierce; people are concerned about the erosion of privacy and expansion of surveillance. Some especially bad actors are using the glasses to film themselves "pranking" random strangers. Women have be...
Qualcomm sent a letter to customers on Friday warning of plans to increase its prices by "a percentage in the double digits," Bloomberg reports. The price hikes will go into effect starting with products shipped after September 1st. Qualcomm claims it has "exhausted its ability to absorb higher ...
Midjourney, which has gone from generating AI cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, is getting into a new field: astrology. The AI startup announced on Thursday that it has acquired the personalized astrology app Co-Star, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Co-Star is a free app that offers dai...
The Xtra Muse 2 Pro. | Image; Xtra After selling a barely disguised version of the hit DJI Osmo Pocket 3 in the United States last year, Xtra Technology seemed ready to sneak in its version of the new dual-lens Osmo Pocket 4 Pro, too. But today, Xtra has abruptly removed the new Xtra Muse 2 Pro...
raw | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge In response to a report that Nothing is planning to "exit 12 markets as global shipments decline," Nothing cofounder Akis Evangelidis said the company is "reorganizing" and laying off some of its staff, but that "the reported numbers are way overblown." ...
The Roku Ultra. | Image: Roku Roku has increased prices across its streaming hardware, with the cheapest HD Streaming Stick now priced at $39.99 instead of $29.99, as first reported by The Desk. The price hike affects all of Roku's other devices as well, with some increasing by as much as $50. ...
After teasing the series with some first-look images yesterday, Amazon is finally properly unveiling its Blade Runner streaming series. Called Blade Runner 2099, the show hits Prime Video on November 25th with all eight episodes dropping at once. We also got the first trailer for the series, whic...
The web and Google once had a deal: Google collects data and indexes webpages and in exchange sends oceans of traffic to websites. The deal wasn't perfect and certainly made Google more money than it made the websites, but it worked for a long time. Now, however, the deal seems to be dead. And th...
Meta says its AI chatbot is going beyond just answering questions and generating images. | Image: Meta Meta is upgrading its AI chatbot with new productivity features in a bid to compete with rivals like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The update will allow Meta AI to tap into your calendar to hel...
Weeks after Anthropic's latest toe-to-toe with the US government, and days after an OpenAI security incident that dominated tech industry discussions, Anthropic on Thursday released its newest model, Claude Opus 5. The company said in a release that Opus 5 "comes close to the capabilities of Cla...
A door handle on a Tesla Model Y at a charging station in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. | David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Tesla's electronic door handles that have been linked to several deaths could lead to tougher safety rules for the entire auto indust...
The Spin 514 has a 16:10 aspect ratio IPS touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate — impressive specs for a sub-$600 Chromebook. | Image: The Verge Most Chromebooks ship with only 8GB of RAM, which is enough for some people, but certainly not enough for me. Multitaskers who want more memory in the...
Boox's new Tile lineup will take on Xteink's popular e-readers that are small enough to stick on the back of an iPhone with MagSafe. As spotted by Good E-Reader, the first one is the Picco, which will feature a 3.97-inch front-lit, black-and-white e-paper display and expandable storage with an SD...
Trump’s science adviser Michael Kratsios has no science background. | Image: Getty / The Verge The Trump administration unveiled the first "Genesis Mission" grants on Thursday, directing $5 billion toward hundreds of AI-driven science projects in an effort the White House has described as "comp...
It’s a lot of stuff, generally. | Photo: Victoria Song / The Verge This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer will be taking a two-week bre...
In Pasadena, California, there's a cute red brick courtyard where one storefront isn't like the rest. The glass doors open onto a sparse industrial hallway, which leads to a sunlit foyer with a large spiral staircase. Go up, and you'll see a typical coworking space: open tables, healthy snacks, a...