Author: News Room

Morrow County, Oregon is home to mega farms and food processing plants. But it’s also home to several Amazon data centers. And now, some experts believe, that combination is leading to an alarmingly high concentration of nitrates in the drinking water that is driving up cancer and miscarriage rates in the area.Rolling Stone’s exposé details how Amazon, despite not using any dangerous nitrates to cool its data centers, is accelerating the contamination of the Lower Umatilla Basin aquifer, which residents rely on for drinking water. It’s a combination of poor wastewater management, sandy soil, and good old physics that has…

The last thing I need is a new Amazon Echo smart speaker. As The Verge’s smart home reviewer, I currently have a dozen scattered around my home for testing. But when Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses went on sale for $115 for Cyber Monday, down from $300, it was an offer my husband couldn’t refuse.He chose the prescription-ready model (over the blue-light-filtering option), which meant he also got the Echo Spot, Amazon’s handy $80 smart speaker/smart alarm clock, thrown in for free. That’s a total savings of $265 and a total tally of about 13 smart speakers for me.The Echo…

I have a tendency to space out. A lot. Whether it’s staring out the window on Amtrak or pausing at work to fixate on a blank spot on the wall instead of my screen, I often let my mind wander. When I was younger, I would often be derisively called a daydreamer, a space cadet, or just plain distracted. Obviously, one can be too absent-minded, but Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi convincingly makes the case that letting your mind wander is not only essential, but a luxury we shouldn’t take for granted in our hyper-connected age.Zomorodi is the current…

If all you want is a way to talk to ChatGPT, you’re practically spoiled for choice — there are countless ways to chat with the bots, and seemingly countless new ones every single day. But that’s not the whole story of how we’ll interact with large language models. It better not be.Thomas Paul Mann, CEO and cofounder of the app Raycast, has a much bigger vision for what an AI app might do. Raycast is many things: it’s an app launcher, it’s a way to search and interact with the files on your computer, it’s a note-taking app, and, yes,…

Brad Smith said his decision to hook up a webcam to the computer he controls with his mind did not make sense to people at Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company.“Neuralink was really confused with the idea,” Smith told The Verge.The decision came just six months after Smith’s brain was implanted with a BCI in November 2024, making him the third person to receive a Neuralink device. Smith was the first Neuralink patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which has weakened his muscles for the past seven years. While the BCI successfully replaced his eye-tracking software as his primary way…

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 107, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you’re having a lovely and long weekend, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about Faker and Chinese EVs and art thieves, shopping for cool acoustic tiles for my new home office, using a night-light app to surprisingly useful effect, testing the Pebble 2 Duo, devouring the Colossus series from Search Engine, finally starting to watch Pluribus, wrestling with the dumb app for my dumb new…

Earlier this year, I decided to level up my travel game and invest in a charger to bring on trips, rather than raiding my desk outlets every time I packed. I needed a multitasker, something that could power my MacBook Air, charge my phone, and accommodate the random USB-A cord I always seem to need for some reason (I’m looking at you, electric toothbrush). That multitasker turned out to be Anker’s Prime 67W charger, and I haven’t looked back since.It’s impressively small considering the power it delivers and the number of ports it offers — two USB-C ports and that…

Editor’s note: Black Friday deals are still happening, so check out the latest and greatest discounts that today has to offer.You might find it kind of sad to put your hard-earned Switch 2 into a protective case. To me, it’s freeing. Using a case relieves me of the worry that it will accumulate tons of little scratches, or worse. I’ve tested several types of cases on the Nintendo Switch 2 since its June 2025 debut, including flimsy shells that snap or slide onto the Switch 2 to provide a simple, aesthetically pleasing barrier from scratches to the console and its…

Not to generalize, but the Google Pixel 9A is a classic dad phone. It’s not fussy. It’s durable and scheduled to get software updates for the better part of a decade. It’s a solid deal at its full $499 MSRP, but the Black Friday price of $349 is even sweeter. It’s the lowest we’ve seen the 9A on sale for, matching its Prime Day price. If Dad missed out on it back in October, he can strike now while the iron is hot again.Of course, you don’t have to be a dad, a dude, or anyone in particular to appreciate…

I am not The Verge’s foremost smart home expert, but I sure do love my fourth-gen Nest Learning Thermostat. (As does our actual senior smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy — she gave it a 9 in her review.) It’s sleek, looks gorgeous on my wall, is easy to use (and install), and most importantly, it helps me save on my utility bills. It also comes with a temperature sensor, which is handy if you live in a multifloor house, or if one room tends to fluctuate a couple degrees more often than others.Amazon and Best Buy both have the…

As I sat down at the bookstore cafe with a cortado and an oat bar, I panicked just a little bit when I turned on my phone’s hotspot. What if my hotspot network gave me away? Would it say ALLISON’S TRUMP PHONE? Would someone smart sitting next to me, sipping matcha, catch sight of it? What would they think of me?That’s not what happened, of course. The default network name was “Allison’s S25,” reflecting the Samsung Galaxy phone I was using, not the network. But the experience sums up a weird feeling I can only describe as “icky” as I…

Now that we’ve already gathered with friends and family to dine on our favorite foods, the real feast has begun. I’m talking, of course, about Black Friday and the full weekend of shopping that leads into Cyber Monday on December 1st.Many of the gadgets we recommend to readers have received steep discounts that’ll likely last throughout both events, allowing you to save on laptops, OLED TVs, noise-crushing headphones, and everything in between. If you didn’t get what you wanted during Amazon Prime Day or the retailer’s most recent sales event, now’s your chance.However, this holiday season could be a more…