Author: News Room
In an eyewitness video analyzed frame by frame by The New York Times, Alex Pretti raises one hand and holds a phone in the other. Federal agents tackle him, and one appears to find and remove a gun holstered on his hip. Then, an agent shoots — and a second follows. They appear to fire nine more shots as Pretti lies on the ground.The Trump administration has claimed Pretti was shot because of his legally carried gun — that the agents, later identified in records viewed by ProPublica as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)…
My ongoing quest to turn my iPhone into one of my favorite consoles of all time has led me to a curiously named controller. GameSir’s Pocket Taco is only barely pocketable, and distinctly lacking in taco fillings, but for $35, it’s an excellent and easy way to turn your phone into a Game Boy-inspired handheld for playing retro games that don’t require a pair of thumbsticks.Unlike the Abxylute M4 mobile controller that attaches to phones using magnets, or the Backbone Pro that sandwiches your device between a split gamepad, the Pocket Taco uses a hinged mechanism that, for lack of…
Hopping over a pile of dirty snow, I arrived on a frigid February evening at a wine bar in midtown, a purple neon sign reading “EVA AI cafe.” Inside, several people were seated at tables and booths, staring at phones. Servers milled about, placing mini potato croquettes and nonalcoholic spritzers on each table. Like many New York City bars, the majority of the patrons were on a date.Unlike every other bar, half of the dates weren’t human.As I enter, I’m shown to a table tucked away in the corner with a phone stand, a phone preloaded with the EVA AI…
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 116, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy National Ferris Wheel Day to all those who celebrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about Letterboxd and Mike Vrabel and AI influencers and daytime talk show economics, taking copious notes on Ezra Klein’s terrific podcast on the state of the internet, buying just about every lamp in this excellent office tour, making Dot my main Mac calendar app, telling everyone I know how good…
The most striking thing about Ring’s statement that it had parted ways with Flock Safety is what the home security company didn’t say. There was no mention of the public backlash around ties to ICE, or any promise to address users’ concerns about the company’s relationships with law enforcement.In an increasingly authoritarian political climate, the threat of mass surveillance fueled by AI-powered cameras is what many people fear. Yet Ring’s statement made no attempt to address this. Instead, the company claims it canceled Flock’s integration with its Community Requests tool because it would “require significantly more time and resources than…
A new iPhone is imminent! How exciting! Except no, because it’s not September. The bit of the year before the sun disappears for six months in the UK is when eye-popping iPhones appear. But nowish is when Apple parps out its ‘whatever’ phones. These were once branded ‘SE’, which absolutely didn’t stand for ‘Stupendously Exhilarating’. We then saw a change with last year’s ‘cheap’ iPhone, which was called the iPhone 16e. Now Apple’s gearing up for the iPhone 17e. Which, if the rumour mill hasn’t accidentally copied and pasted most of what it predicted last year, is nonetheless going to look an awful…
It’s been eight years since I last reviewed a robot vacuum. Having spent the last two months with a new flagship, I’m shocked by how much they’ve advanced from early bump-and-run models.In October, DJI launched its very first robovacs in Europe. I’ve been testing the top-of-the-line Romo P model, which doesn’t yet have a US release date. It includes a self-cleaning base station, a mopping function, and enough high-end specs and charm that my colleague Jen Tuohy took notice.Jen is a true robovac expert. I, let’s be clear, am not. But I can share what it’s like to make the…
Stuff VerdictArguably the best smart ring for fitness enthusiasts, the Ultrahuman Ring Air delivers insights that rival the likes of Garmin, Fitbit and Whoop.ProsCompact and discreetManual workout trackingInsights that can’t be found elsewhereConsSome software plug-ins cost extraNot the best looking ring aroundUncomfortable when strength training Given their diminutive size and weight, there’s not very much separating the increasingly contested world of smart rings. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is, erm, ring-shaped, comes in various metallic finishes and is lined with the required sensors to track things like heart rate, movement and body temperature. All pretty standard. But the ring is arguably…
Sammy Azdoufal claims he wasn’t trying to hack every robot vacuum in the world. He just wanted to remote control his brand-new DJI Romo vacuum with a PS5 gamepad, he tells The Verge, because it sounded fun.But when his homegrown remote control app started talking to DJI’s servers, it wasn’t just one vacuum cleaner that replied. Roughly 7,000 of them, all around the world, began treating Azdoufal like their boss.He could remotely control them, and look and listen through their live camera feeds, he tells me, saying he tested that out with a friend. He could watch them map out…
You can watch Ring’s recent Super Bowl ad and see a cute story about dogs being reunited with their families. You can also watch the very same ad and see the seeds being planted for a massively connected, utterly ubiquitous surveillance system that will end the concept of privacy forever. Maybe you can even see both at the same time.On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David talk about the Super Bowl ad that worried so many people, why Ring would build a feature like this in the first place, and whether all this surveillance is a feature or…
“where are you? Are you ok , I loved the torture video,” reads one email, allegedly sent by Jeffrey Epstein in 2009. The reply, from a redacted address, states: “I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of may.”Her face hovering over a screenshot of the exchange, a TikTok creator claims the timing aligns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s schedule, before speculating that the word “torture” could refer to documented abuses of Palestinian detainees. The video has drawn close to 700,000 views.Another TikTok pushes back. Netanyahu met Chinese officials in Jerusalem — not Beijing —…
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. Last week, we spoke to executives from the company for the first time, and this week we’re back with more details on how it began.Trump Mobile may bear the US president’s name, but he didn’t come up with the idea, and neither did any Trump. In fact, it was the executives at MVNO Liberty Mobile that approached the Trumps with a pitch for the company, and it wasn’t their first rodeo; five years earlier, Liberty Mobile tested the same playbook with world champion boxer Canelo Álvarez.That’s according…