Verizon can keep phones locked to its network for longer after the Federal Communications Commission agreed to waive the carrier's 60-day unlocking requirement, as reported by Ars Technica. Following this decision, Verizon must follow a looser set of guidelines set by the CTIA wi … | Continue reading
Wireless phone chargers are now common in vehicles, but they're typically missing one very useful feature. Nissan announced last month that it will be the first automaker in the US to offer wireless chargers with a magnetic mount, ensuring charging coils remain aligned for faster … | Continue reading
Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an "eyes off" conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the e … | Continue reading
Google is making its Veo 3.1 AI video model pay closer attention to the reference images you want generated clips to be based on. The company is releasing new visual improvements for the "Ingredients to Video" tool that was introduced last year, alongside expanding native vertica … | Continue reading
Around 10 percent of Meta's Reality Labs division, which develops its XR products and services, will be laid off beginning on Tuesday, as reported by Bloomberg. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed the layoffs in a statement to The Verge: "We said last month that we were shi … | Continue reading
If you compare the value proposition of getting one of Remarkable’s Paper Pro E-Ink tablets vs. buying a laptop, the latter will win in most scenarios. Laptops are more capable, with more ports, apps, and versatility — but they’re much more distracting, too. Avoiding distractions … | Continue reading
Apple has announced Apple Creator Studio, a new software suite for Apple products that bundles popular creative apps into an all-in-one subscription service. Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store on January 28th, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, … | Continue reading
Former NYC Mayor Eric Adams has come under fire after his new cryptocurrency token crashed just hours following its launch on Monday. As reported by CoinDesk, Adams' "NYC Token" hit a $580 million market capitalization at its peak before plummeting to around $130 million at this … | Continue reading
Dreame, a Chinese company known for its unique robot vacuums and floor cleaners, expanded its offerings at CES 2026, such as a $700 floor lamp that doubled as a hair dryer. But more interesting is the debut of the company's first action camera. The Leaptic Cube features a design … | Continue reading
A little over a year ago, Marvel spent the better part of an entire day slowly revealing the massive cast for Avengers: Doomsday. More recently, the studio started dropping teaser trailers featuring some of the movie's more notable superhero team-ups and returning characters. The … | Continue reading
It looks like the wave of campaigns against data centers are getting under big tech companies' skin - and Microsoft is the latest giant to promise to address frustrations on the ground in communities around their data centers. The company announced a five-point plan today that it … | Continue reading
We spent last week running to meetings, demos, and the convention floors to see as much as we could at CES 2026. And now that we've (sort of) recovered, it's time to answer any questions you still have. Did we replace Dom with his clone? Did Jen survive a robot falling on her? Is … | Continue reading
For years, Apple and Google have had a will-they-won't-they type of relationship, as far as which AI company Apple would pick to underpin its Siri virtual assistant and give it new AI-fueled personalization and agentic capabilities. Apple has spent the last year or two playing th … | Continue reading
The most interesting story at this year's CES was just a little tiny bundle of technology. One way to look at Lego's new Smart Brick is as something like a Raspberry Pi, an endlessly remixable gizmo with infinite hacking potential - it can be anything, in the best possible way. A … | Continue reading
Insta360 has announced new Pro versions of its Link 2 and Link 2C webcams that first launched in September 2024. As with the previous versions, the new Link 2 Pro and 2C Pro can track the movements of onscreen subjects to ensure they're always in frame, making them ideal for thos … | Continue reading
The PC market is bracing for a turbulent year ahead, but shipments managed to exceed expectations in the recent holiday quarter. IDC reports that shipments grew nearly 10 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2025, reaching 76.4 million in total. Microsoft's end of Wind … | Continue reading
Microsoft is removing its Lens scanner app from iOS and Android in the coming months. Microsoft Lens, or Office Lens as it's known to most, will no longer be supported on February 9th and the app won't be functional after March 9th. The portable scanner features of Lens are avail … | Continue reading
A UK employment tribunal rejected a request from fired Rockstar Games employees to receive interim pay while waiting for a full hearing about their dismissal, according to Bloomberg and IGN. After Rockstar fired 34 employees last year - 31 from the UK and three from Canada - the … | Continue reading
Just weeks after raising the price of its RAM modules, Framework has announced that it's also increasing the price of its desktop PC in response to the global memory shortage. The Framework Desktop with 32GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 chip now starts at $1,139, instead of … | Continue reading
Meta's Reality Labs team is expected to lose around 10 percent of its staff, with layoffs concentrated on the division's metaverse employees, as reported by The New York Times. The layoffs are apparently a side effect of Meta's AI ambitions, which are pulling focus away from its … | Continue reading
If you’re planning on traveling at all this year, the Baseus EnerCore CG11 Universal Travel Adapter is worth a look. The adapter can power up to six devices at once, and now through the end of today, January 12th, it’s on sale for just $34.19 (about $36 off) at Amazon, matching t … | Continue reading
The UK is bringing a law into force that makes creating non-consensual intimate deepfake images, like the ones that have proliferated on X because of the Grok AI chatbot, a criminal offense, as reported by the BBC. "The Data Act, passed last year, made it a criminal offence to cr … | Continue reading
It's a weird time in the Stranger Things community. Following a monthslong lead-up to a finale that was so big it screened in theaters, the show's superfans have been spending their time dissecting the fifth season in order to prove that a hidden ninth episode is coming that repr … | Continue reading
Anthropic wants to expand Claude's AI agent capabilities and take advantage of the growing hype around Claude Code - and it's doing it with a brand-new feature released Monday, dubbed "Claude Cowork." "Cowork can take on many of the same tasks that Claude Code can handle, but in … | Continue reading
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is making kids' online safety a cornerstone of her administration, and she's eyeing a platform that has often flown under the radar: Roblox. As progress in Congress has stagnated, states have become the primary drivers of internet reforms meant to prote … | Continue reading
The path forward for the Democratic party after its 2024 defeat includes less tech influence and more populist policies, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Warren delivered this message in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Monday, where she charted … | Continue reading
Homeowners in search of grid independence have another option today with the launch of Anker's Solix E10 big-ass battery system. It joins companies like Tesla and EcoFlow in offering whole-home backup solutions in the US market meant to counter blackouts and reduce monthly energy … | Continue reading
Hytale, the highly anticipated Minecraft-like adventure game that's been in development for a decade, is nearly here. After developer Hypixel Studios was acquired by Riot Games in 2020, shut down by Riot in June 2025, and went independent a few months later, the team is launching … | Continue reading
Paramount is turning up the pressure on Warner Bros. Discovery in the wake of its merger with Netflix, as it's now suing the David Zaslav-helmed company in an attempt to get more details surrounding the agreement. In addition to the lawsuit, Paramount CEO David Ellison revealed t … | Continue reading
If you’ve got a recent smartphone, chances are it’s got a really good camera — and don’t you want to take the best photos you can? One way to do that is via the DJI Osmo Mobile 7P Gimbal Stabilizer, a selfie stick that includes a tripod, a telescoping arm, and (perhaps best of al … | Continue reading
Over the past couple of weeks, users on the r/alexa subreddit have reported getting automatically upgraded to Alexa Plus as a perk for their Prime memberships. The update doesn't appear to be opt-in, but there's an option to roll it back. Screenshots of a message from Amazon sent … | Continue reading
After teasing its first collaboration with the Pokémon franchise last March but sharing very few details, Lego's first Pokémon sets are now available for preorder through the company's online store. The cheapest of the three is an articulated version of Eevee, but there's also a … | Continue reading
Palworld, the monster-hunting action / adventure game known for its originality, is getting into the trading card business. Pocketpair announced today that it has partnered with Bushiroad - the company behind the Weiss Schwarz and Shadowverse: Evolve trading card games - to produ … | Continue reading
Apple will use Google's Gemini AI model to power a more personalized Siri coming this year. "After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we're excited about the innovative new experiences it … | Continue reading
Google turned up the heat in the AI shopping wars this weekend, announcing plans to turn Gemini into a merchant and launching an open-source standard built together with major retailers including Shopify, Walmart, and Target. The move comes as companies like OpenAI, Amazon, and P … | Continue reading
The Trump administration approached Microsoft for its donation to fund the White House's $300 million ballroom, documents released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-MA) office reveal. In response to a Democrat-led letter questioning Big Tech's involvement in the ballroom's constructi … | Continue reading
Billy Woods has one of the highest batting averages in the game. Between his solo records like Hiding Places and Maps, and his collaborative albums with Elucid as Armand Hammer, the man has multiple stone-cold classics under his belt. And, while no one would ever claim that Woods … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, The Guardian published an investigation that showed Google was serving up misleading and outright false information via its AI overviews in response to certain medical inquiries. Now those results appear to have been removed. According to the original report: … | Continue reading
It happens every year: we set ambitious New Year's resolutions - work out more, spend less, keep the house cleaner - full of optimism and motivation. Then life happens, and suddenly it's June and you can't recall what your resolutions even were. But it doesn't have to be that way … | Continue reading
If you're one of the many, many people who received a password reset email from Instagram the other day, the company says it fixed the issue. What was the issue? Unclear. We reached out to Meta for clarification and have yet to receive a response. All we know is that an "external … | Continue reading
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is in line to potentially earn $35 billion in stock options, so long as the company hits a $100 billion market cap. One way to hit that target is by cutting costs, and one way of cutting costs is to close down a bunch of stores. The company closed 590 stor … | Continue reading
This week, Google announced a new AI Inbox view for Gmail that replaces the traditional list of emails with an AI-generated list of to-dos and topics to track based on what's in your inbox. It's not widely available yet, but I have access, and in the few hours I've spent messing … | Continue reading
Wing is bringing drone delivery to even more Walmart stores in 2026. The Alphabet-owned company announced today that its drones will be flying above 150 more locations this year, including in four new cities: Los Angeles, St. Louis, Miami, and Cincinnati. In June 2025, the compan … | Continue reading
For a while, it seemed like everyone had a TiVo. It was a plot point on major TV shows; it had A-list Hollywood fans; it became a verb as ubiquitous as Google or Xerox. The love was well-earned, since TiVo had created a product that felt genuinely like magic. You could pause live … | Continue reading
It's January, which means there's a whole year of rectangular glass slabs ahead of us. But before that happens, I managed to find phones of a different shape lurking around the corners of the CES convention center halls. They weren't center stage, of course. That was reserved for … | Continue reading
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the action (and inaction) of lawmakers seeking to rein in tech platforms, follow Lauren Feiner. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The … | Continue reading
In 2023, what was then still called Twitter, open-sourced at least portions of the code that decided what it served up in your feed. But that GitHub repository is hopelessly out of date, with the vast majority of the files appearing to be from the initial upload three years ago. … | Continue reading
I picked Aqara's Smart Lock U400 and Roborock's Saros Rover robot vacuum as the overall best smart home gadgets from CES 2026, but there were gazillions of other great gadgets on the show floor. It was a banner year for smart home products, but the big trends I saw weren't about … | Continue reading