Author: News Room
It looks like a smaller, cheaper Tesla is back on the menu.Today, Reuters is reporting that the electric automaker is calling around to suppliers about building an all-new — that is, not based on the Model 3 or the Model Y — electric SUV that would be more affordable than its current lineup. The report, which is based on four anonymous sources in the know, said the vehicle would be built first in China, before eventually being brought to the US and European markets.If true, this would represent a pretty major reversal for Tesla, and especially for Elon Musk, who…
Today on Decoder, let’s talk about the looming AI monetization cliff, and whether some of the biggest companies in the space can become real, profitable businesses before they careen right off it.My guest today is Hayden Field, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies in particular tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026.You’ve certainly heard a version of the monetization cliff story before. The biggest AI firms are built off the back of hundreds of billions in capital investment,…
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s space-internet service Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) will “launch in mid-2026.” I’m going to assume that means proper commercial availability since the company already announced the start of an “enterprise preview” at the end of 2025, when the service was supposed to originally launch.Unlike SpaceX’s Starlink service, Amazon doesn’t (yet) have its own fleet of rockets to regularly send Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. That’s meant hitching rides with a variety of launch partners, including SpaceX, until Jeff Bezos’s own reusable New Glenn rocket is fully operational.Amazon has FCC approval for 3,236…
YouTube Shorts is rolling out a new AI-powered feature giving creators an easy way to realistically clone themselves on camera. The launch, hinted at earlier this year, reflects the platform’s fraught relationship with AI-generated content, adding more generative features while struggling to contain AI slop, deepfake scams, and impersonations.YouTube says the new tool will let users create a digital version of themselves, called an avatar, that can be inserted into existing Shorts videos or used to generate entirely new ones. The company said avatars will “look and sound like you,” framing them as a safer and more secure way to…
When the MacBook Neo arrived last month, I knew Windows laptop makers were in trouble. For $599, the Neo offers fantastic build quality and solid performance in a sleek and ultra-portable package. Windows laptops in this price range tend to be ugly, cheap-feeling, and a little slow.Despite years of rumors, the MacBook Neo still seemed to take the Windows world by surprise. I expect proper competitors to pop up just as soon as the companies can manage, but I wanted to see what the competition in the PC space is like now.So I asked a bunch of laptop manufacturers to…
A brushless 65,000rpm DC motor produces a blast of air at speeds of up to 55mph, but that can be turned down to maximize the HushJet Mini Cool’s battery life and make it run quieter. Dyson says the fan’s 5,000mAh rechargeable battery is good for up to six hours of use, and at its lowest setting it produces 52dBA of noise, which is roughly equivalent to the sound of a floor fan or air conditioner. At its highest setting, in Boost Mode, that jumps to 72.5dBA.All of the HushJet’s Mini Cool’s components, including its motor and battery, are housed inside…
Google’s Gemini is getting a feature called “notebooks” to help you organize things about certain topics in a single place while using the AI chatbot, the company announced on Wednesday. You can pull in things like files, past conversations, and custom instructions into notebooks that Gemini can then use as context while you’re talking with it.Notebooks sound a lot like ChatGPT’s Projects feature, which launched in 2024 and similarly lets users store things about a certain topic in one spot. Google says to “think of notebooks as personal knowledge bases shared across Google products, starting in Gemini.” Gemini’s Notebooks also…
Unionized staff at ProPublica, one of the country’s leading nonprofit newsrooms, are walking off the job for 24 hours beginning Wednesday and asking the public to honor a digital picket line.The roughly 150 members of the ProPublica Guild are in the midst of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement after unionizing in 2023. The union says key issues are still in contention, including protections around the use of AI, “just cause” provisions around disciplining or firing an employee, layoff protections, and wages.“We’ve been working to resolve this quietly for over two years,” says Katie Campbell, a ProPublica Guild member. “This is…
I thought the WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD in my gaming PC was pricey when I bought it for $173 in 2024, but now that same SSD costs $649, more than what I paid for most of the parts in my PC combined. The price on my WD Black drive nearly quadrupled since November 2025, and consumer SSDs across the board are seeing similar increases, much like with RAM:According to price trends from PC Part Picker, NVMe SSD prices began ticking upward in December 2025, with prices on 256GB to 4TB SSDs now double or triple what they were just…
I saw a lot of weird phones at Mobile World Congress last month: robot phones, cameras disguised as phones, phones for dogs. But the one that caught me most off guard was the one my friend (and Verge alum) Sam Byford brought to dinner: an iPhone Air.“Ha!” I said. “You actually use that thing?”“Yeah,” he said. “It’s great.” That’s when he pulled out a second phone — the Xiaomi Leica Leitzphone, which he was using alongside it.Got it, I said. The trick to enjoying the iPhone Air is to simply have another, much better phone on your person at all…
With temperatures on the rise and Earth Day right around the corner, now’s a good time to invest in a smart thermostat if you haven’t already. A good one like Amazon’s Smart Thermostat can help reduce energy use and lower your bills without sacrificing comfort, and right now it’s just $61.99 ($18 off) at Amazon. Aside from a brief drop during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, it’s spent most of 2026 at full price, making this the best deal we’ve seen since it dropped to $51.99 on Black Friday.My colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy was impressed by how much the smart thermostat…
The MacBook Neo is disrupting the laptop space and putting Apple into the conversation as a value option like it’s never been before. With a price starting at $599 (or $499 for students and teachers), the colorful laptop’s A18 Pro chip may be stolen from older iPads and iPhones, but it offers more than enough performance for everyday tasks and web browsing.From the screen sharpness, trackpad/keyboard feel, and its aluminum build, everything else about it is in line with more expensive MacBooks.And that means PC makers have a hot new competitor to contend with and adapt to — one that…