The 13 Best Hair Dryers (2024): Blow-Dryers, Brushes, and Diffusers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is doubling down on efforts to sell you streaming services. Starting May 30th, the company will offer a discounted $10 / subscription to YouTube Premium through its myPlan perks.
YouTube Premium typically costs $13.99, letting you watch videos on the platform ad-free, download content, and access YouTube Music Premium. You can get the perk if you have one of Verizon’s myPlan subscriptions, which lets subscribers tack on services like Disney P

It dons a familiar look, but you can expect many meaningful upgrades for the 2024 Beats Pill. | Image: 9to5Mac Leaked renders and celebrity sightings are clues for a likely summer launch of Apple’s upcoming Beats Pill speaker — its first since the Pill Plus, which we called “the best yet” when it launched in 2015 and was discontinued in 2022. A report from 9to5Mac, citing unnamed sources, gives more details about its modernization.Reported upgrades include up to 24 hours

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, pictured on its current owner’s website. | Image: PleasrDAO Very few people have heard the only copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan album that disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli bought at auction in 2015. Starting next month, though, you’ll be able to hear a curated, 30-minute excerpt of the album, provided you can get to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, between June 15th and June 24th, reports The

Get a load of this guy. | Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images Fine, Vivek Ramaswamy, you wanted my attention and now you have it. Before now, I knew you primarily as the guy who lied so hysterically my hometown police department had to come out and explain that you’d been parked illegally when you were accidentally rear-ended by a lady who was not very good at backing up.
In your quest to unseat Elon Musk as the thirstiest motherfucker alive, you have bought 8 percent of Buzzfeed and s

Image: The Verge Browser bloat has long been a problem, but now Microsoft is doing something about it, and not by reducing features but by speeding the browser up. The company is working to make Edge’s user interface more responsive, starting with its Browser Essentials menu.
This menu — which displays information about Edge’s performance — is now 42 percent faster, thanks to a WebUI 2.0 architecture migration. You can see how much faster the Browser Essentials menu loads

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has added an official Copilot bot within the messaging app Telegram, which lets users search, ask questions, and converse with the AI chatbot.Copilot for Telegram is currently in beta but is free for Telegram users on mobile or desktop. People can chat with Copilot for Telegram like a regular conversation on the messaging app. Copilot for Telegram is an official Microsoft bot (make sure it’s the one with the checkmark and the username @Copi

Illustration: The Verge Google’s search algorithm is perhaps the most consequential system on the internet, dictating what sites live and die and what content on the web looks like. But how exactly Google ranks websites has long been a mystery, pieced together by journalists, researchers, and people working in search engine optimization.
Now, an explosive leak that purports to show thousands of pages of internal documents appears to offer an unprecedented look under the hood of how Search

Illustration: The Verge Google’s search algorithm is perhaps the most consequential system on the internet, dictating what sites live and die and what content on the web looks like. But how exactly Google ranks websites has long been a mystery, pieced together by journalists, researchers, and people working in search engine optimization.
Now, an explosive leak that purports to show thousands of pages of internal documents appears to offer an unprecedented look under the hood of how Search

The NPU inside Copilot Plus PCs takes the stage at a Microsoft Surface and AI event. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge When you launch a game on a Snapdragon on a Windows laptop, you might get an AI frame rate boost from Microsoft’s mysterious Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature. But while Microsoft hasn’t fully explained how the feature works, The Verge can now confirm it’s not Qualcomm technology, not exclusive to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chips, and not excl

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge PayPal is launching an advertising platform built on a trove of customer transaction data. The company’s new advertising business will encompass purchase information and customer spending habits from PayPal and its sister app Venmo, according to The Wall Street Journal.
PayPal has brought on Mark Grether, the former vice president and general manager of Uber Advertising, to lead its advertising business. “If you’re someone who’s buying prod

Image: Lego If your little Lego town has grown big enough, it may be time to add an officially sanctioned Lego Apple Store, something that’s vaguely possible if a recently submitted fan build gets the requisite 10,000 votes for Lego to consider it. The immaculately detailed creation has what most people would expect from a modern Apple Store: floor-to-ceiling glass front, tables full of Macs and iPhones, and shelves resplendent with neatly arranged white boxes.
One of the project’s d

Illustration: The Verge Jan Leike, a key OpenAI researcher who resigned earlier this month citing “safety concerns,” has joined competitor Anthropic to “work on scalable oversight, weak-to-strong generalization, and automated alignment research,” according to Leike’s post on X.
Anthropic has positioned itself to be the antithesis of OpenAI: a public benefit corporation dedicated to cautious progress. It was founded by ex-OpenAI employees who departed, according to t

Image: YouTube Everybody’s getting into gaming these days. YouTube joins the slowly growing list of companies with gaming initiatives, rolling out its Playables program across mobile and desktop. To play, simply visit YouTube’s website or Android / iOS app and look for Playables in the sidebar. YouTube will let players save their progress and keep track of high scores. There are over 75 games to choose from, including chess and crossword games to more popular casual mobile titles lik

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge In 2020, Epic Games sued Apple for antitrust violations. It’s been years since the trial wrapped and judgment was rendered, but for the past few weeks, Apple and Epic Games have been back in front of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers once more. Gonzalez Rogers mostly ruled in favor of Apple last time. Things might not go so well for the company this time.
As a reminder, this whole case got started when Epic challenged Apple’s up to 30 percent fees to devel

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Opera browser users can get more up-to-date information and more conversational responses as it integrates Google’s Gemini AI models into its existing Aria AI extension.Aria, released last year, acts like an AI assistant to answer user queries, write code, and perform other tasks. According to Opera, Aria does not rely on one AI model to respond to users but chooses the AI model it feels will work best for the specific task. With this new integration

Image: Porsche Porsche has announced the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, its first hybrid electric model, a car that it says can go from zero to 60mph in 2.9 seconds and tops out at 194mph.There’s also some new tech in the dash, including an all-digital instrument cluster on a 12.6-inched curved display that now shows information from CarPlay, which it says is “integrated more deeply into the vehicle.”But Porsche’s “all-digital cockpit” doesn’t appear to b

At just $300, Apple’s entry-level iPad offers even better value if you’re looking for a powerful tablet for basic entertainment purposes and light productivity. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge I got a nice sunrise surprise this morning. Sure, trees and power lines in my little corner of Texas were being hewn to the ground by the storms ripping across the central South, and I’m still without power as of this writing — but I have just enough juice in my power bank to inf

At just $299.99, Apple’s entry-level iPad offers even better value if you’re looking for a powerful tablet for basic entertainment purposes and light productivity. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge I got a nice sunrise surprise this morning. Sure, trees and power lines in my little corner of Texas were being hewn to the ground by the storms ripping across the central South, and I’m still without power as of this writing — but I have just enough juice in my power bank to

Image: The Verge More than 77 percent of people who participated in a big Apple-sponsored study have experienced tinnitus at some point in their lives, according to preliminary data. Around 15 percent say they’re affected daily by tinnitus, perceiving ringing or other sounds that other people can’t hear.
In one of the largest surveys of its kind, researchers at the University of Michigan gathered data from more than 160,000 participants who responded to survey questions and completed

Lego’s Great Deku Tree set. | Image: Lego The rumors were true: Lego is finally making a Legend of Zelda set. The Great Deku Tree 2-in-1 includes 2,500 pieces, is available for preorder now for $299.99, and will start shipping out in September.The set covers two different Zelda games: Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild, letting you build the Great Deku Tree in green summer foliage or pink spring cherry blossoms. It features several versions of Link, including Link as a child and an adu

Image: Google Google announced Tuesday it’s adding Gemini and AI features from its other devices to Chromebook Plus laptops, including a few from Asus and HP already on the market and brand-new ones from Acer. These and future Chromebook Plus laptops will support new features like Google’s “Help me write” tool and the ability to make custom wallpaper with generative AI. Magic Editor on Google Photos is coming to Chromebook Plus, too, which has also started to appear on ol

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is forming a new safety team, and it’s led by CEO Sam Altman, along with board members Adam D’Angelo and Nicole Seligman. The committee will make recommendations on “critical safety and security decisions for OpenAI projects and operations” — a concern several key AI researchers shared when leaving the company this month.
For its first task, the new team will “evaluate and further develop OpenAI’s processes and safeguards.&

Image: Activision Microsoft is confirming today that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the next installment in the popular franchise, will be available day one on Xbox Game Pass. After a premature notification earlier today, an official Xbox Wire blog post has now revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Microsoft’s game subscription service later this year.
“We’re excited to confirm that Game Pass members will be able to jump into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on day

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Almost 12 years ago, Microsoft showed us the Surface for the first time. Back then, the company’s big bet was that the laptop market was ready for a shake-up, that it could radically change both the hardware and software of a Windows PC and make everything better. Windows 8 didn’t go so well, and neither did the early attempts at building Windows on top of Arm processors. The Surface, though, has turned into a pretty great device.
Now, Microsoft is maki

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has agreed to purchase parts of regional wireless carrier US Cellular in a $4.4 billion deal that includes US Cellular’s wireless customers, stores, and approximately 30 percent of spectrum assets. US Cellular will retain ownership of its towers and “approximately 70 percent of its spectrum portfolio across several spectrum bands,” with T-Mobile entering a long-term arrangement to lease space on more than 2,000 towers.According t