8
Verge Score
This is bigger than the Pocket 4, but definitely better.
Brendan Carr’s FCC keeps approving the very drones it was supposed to ban. How did it go so wrong?
The ban will have a major impact on robots made in China.
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Verge Score
At $99, Nothing can get away with some minor flaws, especially when the earbuds look this good.
This cheap and basic fan from JisuLife has helped my family endure the hottest days of summer.
The Framework Laptop 13 Pro has it all. But RAMageddon spiked its price.
Splatoon Raiders swaps competitive online play for a fresh take on looter shooters that you can play solo.
While everyone tries to make smart glasses, pins, and everything else happen, the most subtle device might be the best device.
This is a smart ring for new users. Everyone else should wait until their current ring dies.
For folks who want something other than a smartwatch.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring will purportedly follow standard US sizing, but smart ring fitting is a bit more complicated than smartwatches.
Chinese labs like Moonshot are forcing OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic to rethink what they lock away.
Moonshot and Alibaba unveiled frontier models they claim rival OpenAI and Anthropic.
It comes after Hugging Face used a Chinese open-weight AI to defend itself against rogue OpenAI agents.
Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 should come as no surprise.
The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.
[U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation]
The AI-powered feature provides preset playlists that you can curate around BPM, music taste, and workout duration.
Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image generation model to Google Earth, allowing you to generate AI images using the satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery in the web app. Some examples shared by Google show how you can give a building a makeover, visualize projects, or create an infographic about what you’re seeing.
The latest is a diverse slate of whodunits with a fantastical twist.
Maingear’s new Zero series of desktop PCs use 4mm-thick curved tempered glass for an airy, panoramic aesthetic. They come in Intel and AMD versions, starting at $2,699, with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 to RTX 5090.
Maingear and other manufacturers have done glass setups similar to this before, but the Zero series has no visible seams and it isn’t an ultra-limited edition run like last year’s Doom PC.
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The iconic media player of the Napster generation has partnered with Deezer to power Winamp’s own “premium music subscription service,” which is set to launch in the first half of 2027. The new Winamp Player will combine Deezer’s music catalogue with users’ local music libraries, internet radio stations, podcasts, and more. And yes — the interface will be “highly customizable.”
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Verge Score
The Battery Circulator Fan 2 Pro adds native Matter support, more power, and a 70-hour battery.
In Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram globally this quarter has increased by “double digits year-over-year,” largely driven by improvements to its AI-powered recommendations algorithm that keeps people hooked. The proclamation comes amid concerns (and legal battles) around Instagram’s “addictive” design.
[Business Insider]
Having surpassed the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the bloc, both services will be required to clamp down on illegal and harmful content per the EU’s strict DSA rules. ChatGPT and Roblox are expected to be labeled “very large online platforms” as soon as August, per Bloomberg’s sources.
Building the data centers needed to support the AI boom requires lots of skilled human tradespeople working 10-hour days, seven days a week, and earning healthy overtime wages. Bidding wars have broken out in markets with heavy data center construction, allowing workers to jump ship for bonuses and even higher pay in a modern-day gold rush, with companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft paying to help train new recruits.
Samsung Electronic’s memory chip business is killing it, hitting $49.64 billion for the quarter and driving over 99 percent of its operating profit. But the price gouging created by the AI hype caused its smartphone and home-appliance businesses to post modest operating losses due to the higher cost of chips and other components.
The orders will cover 18 Falcon 9 missions that are expected to be finished by the end of next year. SpaceX has already gotten more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026, according to Reuters.
Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.”
When we recently wrote about writers who are leaving Substack, they mentioned control, pricing, and the social feature creep among their reasons for choosing competitors like Ghost and Behiiv.
In the process of getting through his thoughts, he does a pretty good riff about the people who say they “make” stuff with AI. As for Musk’s version of The Odyssey, Johnson says, “I’m excited for the Cyclops to have two eyes.”
After suspending freeway routes in May because of safety concerns in construction zones, Waymo announced that freeway routes coming back in Phoenix and “soon” in Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Waymo said it had implemented “designed to improve performance around freeway construction zones.”
I’ve heard Steam Remote Play is finally reaching parity with Moonlight when streaming games to your Steam Deck. Now, Steam Remote Play is getting AV1 for theoretically even better compression, and HDR for the Steam Deck OLED’s screen. I like streaming, but I’d also like more devs to embrace Dynamic Cloud Sync…
The app will merge Copilot’s chat, coding, and agentic features.
Meta will have more to share ‘soon.’
Qualcomm reported its lowest quarterly handset revenue since 2021.
The satellite radio company is rolling out a $5 / month (or $49 / year) Sports Pass that offers access to “every live game and event SiriusXM carries,” including all home and away NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL broadcasts. It will also include 24 local sports talk stations when the plan launches on September 1st.
Grok, is this statute constitutional?
It’s well worth the $20 price of admission to check out Night City’s updated world and story.
The wide foldable is here, and it’s glorious. The Verge’s Dominic Preston has been reviewing Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, and joins the show to explain what this shorter, wider device gets right, what it’s still missing, and why this looks like the right kind of foldable for most people. (Once the price comes down, anyway.) With a similar foldable iPhone likely coming soon, it’s shaping up to be a fun year of foldables.
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Cloud revenue soared to $59 billion, while Xbox services and hardware sales took a hit.
The fifth Today I’m Toying With giveaway, that is. Technically, I set them live each Wednesday at 9AM ET. I recently heard back from the second winner, who says he loves the mystery gadgets he received — if you want to join him, you can enter every week!
After adding widgets to the browser’s new tab page last month, Mozilla updated mine to add a mini crossword puzzle widget. There’s one puzzle per day.
We did the math on Apple’s new device leasing program so you don’t have to.
This time around, Jumanji’s avatars, played by Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, escape the game in “demo mode,” before a family jumps into their bodies to fix things. The trilogy’s final film is set to release in theaters on December 25th.
In addition to Reuters, WSJ, CNN, Fox News, and USA Today, Meta now has an AI content partnership to “…draw upon Newsmax’s significant current reporting as well as archived content across its platforms to support AI queries across Meta’s apps and devices.”
If access via Truth Plus just wasn’t enough, I guess.
Greg Brockman says he thinks we’ll start talking to our computers, rather than typing, for the ‘vast majority’ of tasks.
Kavinsky, aka Vincent Belorgey, was found in his home in Paris on Tuesday, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. He was most well known for the song Nightcall, which was produced with Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, and featured in the movie Drive as well as the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack.
In 2024, the BBC reports it broke the record for the most Shazamed track ever when he performed it with Belgian singer Angèle during the closing ceremony for the 2024 Olympic Games.
Using the in-car screens, you can access Gemini for things like changing the temperature in your Waymo or getting a recommendation for a good coffee shop, Waymo says. The feature is in beta, and Gemini operates “independently from the Waymo Driver.”
The Ojai cars are also getting an “all-new screen interface.” The three screens in the vehicle will all be able to show different things, though you can also set a minimal “Calm Mode” if you’d prefer.
Google is teasing its upcoming smartphone again ahead of the August 12th launch event. The company has already shown off the glowy orb in the camera bar that’s visible in this new ad, and while Google still hasn’t said what the light is for, it might be called Pixel Glow.
Most adults across age groups support an in-class ban.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
Elon Musk’s X Corp and the World Federation of Advertisers are ending their long-running legal fight. In 2024, Musk accused the industry group of illegally boycotting X through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, which set standards to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content. GARM has since been disbanded. A judge dismissed Musk’s lawsuit in March.
The EV, designed by Jony Ive, was reportedly particularly popular in China.
Plus, Twelve South’s high-end Bluetooth adapter and Anker’s 7-in-1 charging station are each under $60.
