Technology news

Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge Arc creator The Browser Company has officially started a bug bounty program to keep its growing Chromium-based browser’s security in check. The company is also launching a new security bulletin to maintain “transparent and proactive communication” with users and researchers on bug fixes and reports.
These security revisions followed a devastating bug a researcher found and reported to the company that would’ve allowed bad actors cou

Photo by Jack Guez / AFP via Getty Images Here’s the thing about asking investors for money: they want to see returns.
OpenAI launched with a famously altruistic mission: to help humanity by developing artificial general intelligence. But along the way, it became one of the best-funded companies in Silicon Valley. Now, the tension between those two facts is coming to a head.Weeks after releasing a new model it claims can “reason,” OpenAI is barreling toward dropping its nonprof

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images The US Department of Justice has charged three Iranian nationals linked with a cyberattack against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to an indictment on Friday.
The three hackers, all of whom have ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, allegedly gained access to the accounts of campaign officials using social engineering and spear phishing, a tactic that attempts to trick victims into disclosin

Windows Recall was the talk of the town when it was announced alongside the launch of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 PCs in June. With Recall, you can retrace your digital footsteps with a timeline scrubber — or you can use natural-language search to find something specific. For example, if you were shopping for a orange couch, but forgot to bookmark it, you can search "orange couch," and theoretically, Recall will find it.Recall demo at Copilot+ PC launchCredit: Microsoft
Recall

Samsung hosted an event in NYC on Thursday, Sept. 26, revealing a handful of new devices, including new tablets, a phone, and a watch.As expected this time of year, Samsung revealed the Galaxy Tab S10+ and the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra. Interestingly, there isn't a base model this year, so you won't find an entry-level Galaxy Tab S10 in this lineup.We also got a glimpse of the new Galaxy S24 FE, a budget-friendly addition to the Galaxy S24 series line that was unveiled earlier this year. And finally,

A container truck burns outside the Port of Los Angeles. | Image: Pepe’s Towing A truck full of lithium-ion batteries is burning in Los Angeles, shutting down ports and a bridge. It’s not clear what the batteries were for — but LA’s Vincent Thomas Bridge, leading to the Port of Los Angeles and next-door Port of Long Beach, has been shut down for at least 15 hours now while local firefighters let the truck burn. State Route 47 was also closed in both directions as of a cou

Something strange happens when an artist blows up in the social media age. Their fans begin to think they own a piece of the artist's success or, more precariously, the fans start to believe the artist owes them for their ascent. And that situation becomes tenuous for the newly popular artist — not too long ago, their actions and statements belonged only to themselves. We live in parasocial times.That phenomenon has been unfolding online with Chappell Roan over the past week. As Mashable p

Illustration: The Verge Meta is rolling out the ability to tag your location on your Threads posts. If you have the feature, you’ll see a pin in the post composer that you can tap so you can include where you are.
Note that adding your location to a Threads post doesn’t share an exact pin on a map. Instead, the feature lets you give your users an approximate idea of your location by sharing things like a city name, a neighborhood, or a restaurant. And if you see a Threads post that i

Apple fans are still waiting for the release of M4 Macs later this year.However, one Apple analyst suggests that the company is already looking ahead to the next iteration of the Apple Vision Pro, which will be reportedly powered by the next-gen M5 chipset.According to a new report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is expected to start production for the new Apple Vision Pro in the second half of 2025.The new Apple Vision Pro will also likely incorporate Apple's AI, Apple Intelligence, with

This robotic arm’s articulated hand can detach and crawl around on its own. | Screenshot: YouTube Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed an articulated hand that can extend the reach of a robotic arm by detaching and crawling away on its own to grab things. The research was recently presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), and spotted by IEEE Spectrum.
Due to their strength

This robotic arm’s articulated hand can detach and crawl around on its own. | Screenshot: YouTube Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed an articulated hand that can extend the reach of a robotic arm by detaching and crawling away on its own to grab things. The research was recently presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and was spotted by IEEE Spectrum magazine.
Due to the

An illustration of DRACO getting destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere. | Image: ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit in 2027 to watch it get wrecked as it reenters the atmosphere. The project is intended to help understand how exactly satellites break apart so that scientists can learn how to prevent the creation of more space debris.
Space junk is becoming a bigger problem as we send more satellites into orbit, but there are efforts to try an

Can ChatGPT generate images? With all the various ChatGPT features and models OpenAI has announced in the past year, it's hard to keep track of what's actually live and accessible to the average user. But if you're wondering about one of the most popular features — image generation — we're here to tell you that it's available and free to all ChatGPT users. In August, OpenAI brought DALL-E 3, its AI image generator model, to all users with a free ChatGPT account. However, there are so

News of a sequel to Netflix's cult sci-fi/horror The Platform brought me mixed feelings.The original's nightmarishly simple concept was so compelling I wanted to see more from that world, but I also worried about what a sequel could say or show that the first movie hadn't.I'm happy to report my fears weren't necessary. The Platform 2 is a powerful continuation of the bad dream that began with Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's 2019 movie, building upon its brutalist universe while changing the rules just

Image: Microsoft In response to security concerns, Microsoft is detailing how it has overhauled its controversial AI-powered Recall feature that creates screenshots of mostly everything you see or do on a computer. Recall was originally supposed to debut with Copilot Plus PCs in June, but Microsoft has spent the past few months reworking the security behind it to make it an opt-in experience that you can now fully remove from Windows if you want.
“I’m actually really excited about ho

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s been a rough couple of months for Disney Plus subscribers. First came news of yet another price hike — which will take effect on October 17th — followed by Disney’s announcement that it will begin charging $6.99 a month to add an “extra member” to an ad-supported plan (so long, password sharing). Fortunately, both new and returning subscribers can lock in three months of Disney’s ad-supported Basic plan for $1

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Prime Day is here again, and while it’s not quite as exciting as Blac

Genmoji, one of the most intriguing Apple Intelligence features, isn't available on iPhone 16 yet, but we just got a sneak peek at how it works.Spotted by TechRadar, Apple updated its iPadOS 18 info page with some tips about Apple Intelligence features that are coming to its device ecosystem starting later this year. Of particular interest is Genmoji, AI-generated emoji that users can create on the fly for use in text conversations and whatnot. Again, this feature isn't available as of this writ

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Prime Big Deal Days — aka October Prime Day — is almost upon us. Like, literally days away. But, as usual, the early deals are already in full swing. If you dislike doing chores as much as we do, there's no reason for you not to pick

CNN chairman Mark Thompson announced plans to introduce a digital subscription business in July. | Image: CNN CNN will put some of its digital content behind a subscription paywall starting next month,The New York Times reports. The experiment will test similar subscription models to those used by publications like The New Yorker, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal, with CNN reportedly hoping to bring in additional revenue amid a decline in cable TV viewership.
A “metered” paywall fe

Trains are cool, but aren’t always cheaper to ride. | Image: Amtrak Amtrak fares and trip suggestions are getting integrated into Google Search as part of Google’s efforts to offer greener ways of travel over flights. Now, when you search for airline fares on Google or Google Flights between destinations with Amtrak terminals, you’ll also get suggestions for train rides that you can click through to Amtrak’s site for purchase.
Google has been working on offering sustainab

Hurricane Helene spawned tempestuous seas.A collaboration between the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Saildrone, the company that builds innovative sailing drones, sent a robust robot into Hurricane Helene, the major hurricane that made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region on Thursday night. Before hitting land with catastrophic storm surge and extreme 140 winds, a drone captured footage in the storm's eyewall, home to some of its strongest winds.The 30-second vi

All talk, no action. This phrase perfectly sums up a number of men in my orbit.At parties, they encircle you, making you feel like the only person in the room. Online, they slide into your inbox. The chat is high-octane, compliments free-flowing, spicy undertones in abundance. And then... nothing. They flirt with you all evening, but don't shoot their shot, don't ask you out, don't make a move. The suspenseful storyline you've written together gets abandoned without an ending. You're left wonder

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What do the Rothschilds, big wave surfing, and cows have in common? A Portuguese man by the name of Francisco Roque de Pinho, of course. Francisco used to be a banker at Rothschild, the most famous of European banking dynasties. For the past eight years he’s been quietly operating an investment firm funding sustainable cattle grazing in South America. In his spare time, he’s out conquering the world’s biggest surfable waves in Nazare, Portugal.  Today, Francisco is unveil

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The countdown to October Prime Day is progressing. We're less than two weeks away from yet another epic deal shopping event. But if the anticipation is killing you, there are

Image: The Verge Steam just removed its forced arbitration policy, opening the door for lawsuits against its parent company, Valve. In an update on Thursday, Steam says its subscriber agreement “now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration.”
Many companies include a forced arbitration clause in their user agreement, waiving a person’s right to a trial in court. Arbitration involves settling a dispute outside a legal system before an impartial

Swedish prosecutors are set to serve Northvolt with a suspicion of gross manslaughter notice following the death of a worker at the EV battery-maker’s struggling gigafactory in the country’s icy North, the Financial Times reports.  Environmental prosecutor Christer B Jarlås told the paper that officials will deliver the formal notice in the coming weeks, which indicates Northvolt is under investigation for possible legal responsibility in the incident.  The notice pe

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge You can’t buy Meta’s most impressive new product, the smart glasses codenamed Orion. You might be able to buy something sort of like them, a few years from now, but most of us will never get to so much as wear them. That doesn’t necessarily make them less impressive, though, or less important. Orion is a statement of purpose from Meta: that AR glasses really are the future, and that we’re eventually going to get there.
On this episode of The

The new ULL-supported controller (seen right) was tested against an unspecified standard Bluetooth gamepad (left). | Image: LG LG has teamed up with Razer and MediaTek to develop a new Bluetooth gaming controller that could greatly reduce the input lag for cloud-based gaming. According to LG, it’s the first controller to utilize Ultra-Low Latency (ULL) Bluetooth technology — an in-development standard that aims to make wireless controllers as responsive as their wired counterparts.
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