Author: News Room

Mark Zuckerberg created a personal super PAC to kneecap his AI rivalsIn late August, two pro-AI super PACs were announced on the same day, intent on shaping the upcoming midterm elections. One was a fairly traditional super PAC, announced via a splashy press release, with multiple major industry players planning to donate over $100 million to boost AI-friendly candidates across the country.The other was far more unusual. Meta had quietly filed to create the Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (Meta) California, a state-only super PAC that would allow Meta to spend its own money to run political ads on behalf of…

Aurzen has announced a new portable projector that will be the first to run the Roku TV OS already found on TVs from brands like TCL and Hisense. The new Aurzen D1R Cube will have access to popular streaming apps like Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime, plus Roku Originals and over 500 FAST live channels.The D1R Cube is available starting today for $169.99 through Amazon and Aurzen’s online store in gray, white, and green color options. Alongside the $299 tri-fold Zip, the Cube will be one of Aurzen’s most aggressively priced projectors. But its limited capabilities will potentially make…

AT&T is testing an AI-powered assistant designed to screen phone calls for you. The mobile carrier is bringing the feature to a select group of customers this year, and likens it to a “digital receptionist” that can identify and filter out robocallers based on the information from its network, like your call history.“This is only the foundation of what it can do,” Andy Markus, AT&T’s chief data officer, tells The Verge, adding that the AI assistant could eventually help you make reservations or schedule appointments in the future, similar to what you can do with Google’s AI assistant.When you receive…

No one is going to wax lyrical about the Apple Watch Series 11. Not because it’s a bad smartwatch — it’s a great smartwatch, actually. There’s just nothing that makes it feel special this year. Alas, the $399 Series 11 is the middle child of Apple Watches.It’s not the Series 11’s fault that the entry-level Apple Watch SE 3 got a major glow-up. It can’t help that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 gets everything the Series 11 has plus satellite connectivity. But there’s little to mask the fact that this watch doesn’t offer much more than the entry-level SE 3.…

When I walked into Apple Park last week, there was one thing that I did not have on my bingo card: the $249 Apple Watch SE 3 stealing the show from the Apple Watch Series 11 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3.But here we are. It’s 2025, and the entry-level Apple Watch is the one I’m most excited by.That’s because compared to the iterative updates of the Series 11 and Ultra 3, the third-gen SE has gotten a massive, wide-ranging glow-up. Unlike the other watches, there also weren’t any leaks suggesting this was even in the cards, making this jam-packed…

Microsoft is adding automatic AI model selection to its Visual Studio Code editor that will automatically pick the best model for “optimal performance.” This new auto model feature will select between Claude Sonnet 4, GPT-5, GPT-5 mini and other models for GitHub Copilot free users, but paid users will “primarily rely on Claude Sonnet 4.”It’s a tacit admission from Microsoft that the software maker is favoring Anthropic’s AI models over OpenAI’s latest GPT-5 models for coding and development. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s developer plans tell me that the company has been instructing its own developers to use Claude Sonnet 4…

Microsoft is rolling out a new aggregated gaming library inside its Xbox PC app today on Windows. The updated app will now list games from Steam, Battle.net, and other PC storefronts — making it a launcher for games you have installed on your PC.Microsoft has been testing this aggregated library in recent months with Xbox Insiders, but it’s now available to all Xbox PC app users. It’s designed primarily for the new fullscreen Xbox experience that will ship on the Xbox Ally devices, but it’s also part of Microsoft’s efforts to make the Xbox app on Windows the home of…

The all new, all-electric Nissan Micra, which is a very cute little thing, brings back memories of the first generation example I got given once. It was a free gift from a mate heading overseas, and was a bit of a wreck. Unlike the one that replaced it, which wasn’t. Both were great, though, for their simplicity and practical appeal. The new Micra is much the same, but there’s a bit of a back story.If you didn’t already know, the latest Micra incarnation is basically a cosmetically different version of the already hugely popular Renault 5. However, I don’t think…

Amazon has announced its fall Prime Big Deal Days event. It starts at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 7th, and runs through Wednesday, October 8th. Of course, we’ll bring you all the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets once they become available.Amazon’s latest Prime Big Deal Days sale is shorter than the extended four-day Prime Day in July. Even so, that should be plenty of time for Prime members to save ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The previous Prime Day delivered some of the lowest prices we’ve seen on popular devices like the iPad Air and…

Liquid Glass is a neat party trick. The new design system, which was built for nearly all of Apple’s products and is rolling out this week, is built on the idea that interfaces should be three-dimensional: in the world of Liquid Glass, buttons and menus sit on top of whatever you’re doing or looking at, changing color and refracting digital light like they’re physical objects. It’s meant to feel like glass does in the real world. It’s visually very impressive, and it all kind of works! You install it, you spend a minute fast-scrolling to see the buttons change, it’s…

Microsoft is adding the free Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and agents to Office apps for all Microsoft 365 business users today. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote are all being updated with a Copilot Chat sidebar that will help draft documents, analyze spreadsheets, and more without needing an additional Microsoft 365 Copilot license.“Copilot Chat is secure AI chat grounded in the web—and now, it’s available in the Microsoft 365 apps,” explains Seth Patton, general Manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot product marketing. “It’s content aware, meaning it quickly understands what you’re working on, tailoring answers to the file you have open.…

Apple’s iOS 26 software for the iPhone has now been released. But hang on a second, weren’t the latest Apple smartphones just on iOS 18? What happened to iOS 19 through to 25? A few months ago, Apple announced that it’s tweaking its iPhone software naming system going forwards. In fact, it’s part of a platform-wide update, meaning the same thing has happened with iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, and so on. But why exactly did this happen? Here’s everything you need to know. Why Apple went straight to iOS 26 If you’ve seen anything about iOS 26, you’ll…