Author: News Room

Disney just released the first trailer for Tron: Ares, the long-planned Tron: Legacy sequel. The minute-and-a-half trailer doesn’t say much about the story but shows plenty of the movie’s visuals, which look dark, moody, and filled with the series’ signature light trails.The trailer opens in the physical world at night, as Jared Leto’s Ares, a Program made physical, flees from police on a light cycle, slicing one in half using his light trail as a weapon. The shots that follow show a massive airship hovering over the real-world city, visible only by the red light strips on its outside. The…

There’s a famous two-decade-old Paris Review interview with Haruki Murakami in which he, one of the world’s most celebrated novelists, details his daily routine. He wakes up at 4AM, works for five hours, goes for a run, reads, goes to bed, and then repeats it all over again. The rigor and repetition are the point.I am not Haruki Murakami.In addition to my work at The Verge, I write novels — my second one is out today — and while I admire Murakami’s commitment to an immovable schedule, I’ve found that I produce my best work when I’m constantly rethinking routines,…

Today’s robot vacuums are becoming a bit like cars: with all the features, upgrades, and fancy trimmings available these days, it’s easy to forget that they can just be simple machines that get us from point A to point B. Yes, some bots blow hot air on their bums (mop pads), deftly navigate dog poop, and have arms to pick up your socks, but there are plenty of basic budget robot vacuums that just do a decent job of cleaning your floor autonomously — as long as you tidy up first.Fancier models have obstacle recognition, and some even use AI-powered…

Fitness trackers have come a long way from the simple bands that tracked steps and little else. Modern trackers can monitor everything from your heart health to how well you’ve recovered from a hard bout of training. Even flagship smartwatches, which used to be lackluster trackers, have become pretty adept workout companions. Whatever your fitness goals are, there’s probably a fitness tracker that can help you achieve them.Compared to some other gadgets, wearables are incredibly personal, which means there are a few extra considerations you’ll have to take into account before reaching for your wallet. It makes it hard to…

Views are the most visible metric on the internet. You can see, in more or less real time, how many views something got on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and most other video platforms. X tracks views for every single thing you post, as does Threads. A view is the universal currency of success — more views, more fun.But it’s all nonsense. Views are nothing. Views are lies.You may not need me to remind you of this We’ve known for years that view counts are meaningless, to the point that Facebook wound up getting sued for aggressively inflating view counts in…

Remember when you last bought a book, took it home, and found it was only a cover, with a slip of paper inside detailing where to download the missing pages? Or when you bought a CD, played it, and merely heard a brief recording explaining how to grab the tracks online? Of course you don’t. Because both those examples are akin to lunacy. Yet this is the kind of rubbish gamers increasingly have to put up with, due to physical media that sort of isn’t. The latest example: Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Cards. As outlined in a helpful Nintendo support article,…

Hi all,My name is Vaniya, and after 1.5 years as a software engineer at this company, I’ve decided to leave Microsoft. My last day is next Friday, April 11.You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary.Here’s why I decided to leave the company, and why I spoke up today.We are witnessing a genocideA year and a half ago, I joined Microsoft just as I started to witness the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel, which started in 1948. I’ve seen unspeakable suffering amidst Israel’s mass…

Earlier this week, when it seemed as though TikTok’s fate in the US would actually be decided by April 5th, everyone — from Amazon to the founder of OnlyFans — was coming out of the woodwork to buy it.As it turns out, none of them had a chance. And now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariff war, no one may get to buy TikTok. People familiar with the matter tell me that, despite all of the bids for the app, the White House was only seriously considering an Oracle-led consortium, which included many of ByteDance’s biggest investors who were set…

Meta’s US fact-checking program will come to an end by Monday afternoon. In a post on X, Meta’s global policy head Joel Kaplan said there will be “no new fact checks and no fact checkers” across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by that time as the company replaces it with Community Notes.Meta first announced its plans for an X-style Community Notes program in January, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying it would be “less prone to bias.” With Community Notes, contributors can write and rate notes that provide extra context for certain posts.The company started testing Community Notes on March 18th but…

Nice economy you have there, said President Donald Trump’s administration. It would be a shame if something happened to it.The something, announced earlier this week, is a set of globally applied tariffs that make no sense on their face. No sane economist would endorse this. Through a combination of stupidity, incompetence and sheer gangsterism, the Trump administration has decided to levy a series of taxes that encourage blatant corruption, entirely fail to encourage American manufacturing growth, and leave people and companies poorer. That is, assuming that the taxes come into play at all.“This is the craziest of the crazy things…

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff returned to Amazon this week, coming back to the company just about two years after he left, Bloomberg reports. He’s now a vice president at the company, and he will be heading up the Ring, Blink, Amazon Key, and Sidewalk teams. Siminoff is replacing Liz Hamren, who had taken over following Siminoff’s initial departure. Hamren and the team “have done an awesome job driving the business, delivering strong results, and bringing a lot of delightful experiences to neighbors,” Siminoff says in an Amazon Q&A. He adds that the “AI transformation happening right now” is a “once-in-a-generation…

Watches and Wonders 2025 was full of stories. With over 60 of the world’s best watch brands vying for wrist space and media attention, this year’s show delivered everything from ultra-complicated haute horlogerie to minimalist marvels. But one watch stole the limelight the moment it was unveiled: the Rolex Land-Dweller. With its integrated bracelet design that nods to the 1970s Oysterquartz, the Land-Dweller boasts no fewer than 32 patent applications – 18 exclusive to this model, and 16 relating to its new 5Hz movement. Everyone has an opinion on it. And fair enough – it’s Rolex doing quite unusual things…