Author: News Room
Even with the ability to take excellent photos with our phones and instantly share them across the world, there’s something magical about the old-school instant camera. With just a click of a button, you can capture a moment in a photo that you can see and touch almost immediately. Images captured by an instant camera aren’t as pristine or perfect as those produced by modern digital cameras, but their soft images and imperfections are often a big part of the allure.Yet not all instant cameras are the same, and some of them are better suited for different needs and budgets.…
OpenAI has closed another round of funding, totalling $110 billion being newly committed to the maker of ChatGPT, which it says has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million consumer subscribers. Amazon is investing $50 billion and striking a deal that includes plans for custom models and more. Nvidia and SoftBank are each contributing $30 billion, as well, even as the Wall Street Journal notes that Nvidia’s previous $100 billion investment plan is “on ice.” This marks another massive influx of cash for the company that’s now valued at $730 billion, and previously closed a $40…
In many ways, Samsung’s new phones are fairly normal upgrades. The S26 lines come with some useful new things — particularly the Privacy Display on the S26 Ultra, which looks like an extremely cool bit of tech and a really useful new feature — and a lot of iterative year-over-year changes. The new camera features, on the other hand, are neither of those things. They’re something worse. Something scarier.On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David discuss the new phones, then dive into the ways in which the S26’s AI camera features seem to be clearly designed to change…
Amazon has slowly been teasing out casting details for its live-action adaptation of God of War, and now we have our first look at the show. It’s a single image but a notable one showing protagonist Kratos and his son Atreus. The characters are played by Ryan Hurst and Callum Vinson, respectively, and they look relatively close to their video game counterparts.There aren’t a lot of other details about the show just yet, but this is Amazon’s official description:The God of War series storyline follows father and son Kratos and Atreus as they embark on a journey to spread the…
When Amazon first showed off its redesigned Fire TV OS at CES, we were impressed. It’s faster, better organized, and feels similar to Google’s top-notch TV interface. The update is now finally rolling out to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, making it an even better buy now that it’s on sale for $29.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target — $5 shy of its best price to date. If you want something cheaper and don’t mind waiting for the update to arrive, the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select is also on sale at Amazon, Best…
On Thursday morning, I attended a Q&A panel with four top Samsung smartphone executives. Until 2025, Samsung was the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, and by association, the world’s largest maker of cameras. It’s still the second largest after Apple.Samsung handed me the microphone first. I asked:We see a divide in society between people who want AI to do impressive things with their photos and videos, and those who don’t want AI to do anything with photos and videos because it’s eroding our ability to believe that what we have seen is real, destroying the concept of photographic evidence.Metadata tools like…
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts, and have stopped getting a response. This week, thanks to a reader tip, we think we’ve found the original phone the T1 is based on.A long time ago, back when the Trump phone was but a single, inaccurate render and a contradictory spec sheet, we tried to figure out what other phone it might be based on. Now, eight months, two spec overhauls, and one redesign later, I have a good guess: the HTC U24…
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is getting a new acting director, as reported by ABC, less than a year after Madhu Gottumukkala took charge of the agency as deputy director and acting director in May 2025.CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, Nick Andersen, will become the agency’s new acting director while Gottumkkala will now be serving as director of strategic implementation at DHS. The leadership change comes just a month after reports that Gottumkkala uploaded sensitive documents to ChatGPT. Gottumkkala had requested special permission to use ChatGPT, despite…
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 29: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (C) speaks during a meeting of the Cabinet as U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (R) listen in the Cabinet Room of the White House on January 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is holding the meeting as the Senate plans to hold a vote on a spending package to avoid another government shutdown, however Democrats are holding out for a deal to consider funding for the Department of Homeland Security. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) | Getty Images Can AI firms set…
It’s the day of the Pentagon’s looming ultimatum for Anthropic: allow the US military unchecked access to its technology, including for mass surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons, or potentially be designated a “supply chain risk” and potentially lose hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts. Amid the intensifying public statements and threats, tech workers across the industry are looking at their own companies’ government and military contracts wondering what kind of future they’re helping to build.While the Department of Defense has spent weeks negotiating with Anthropic over removing its guardrails, including allowing the US military to use Anthropic’s AI…
The US military mistakenly shot down a drone belonging to Customs and Border Protection near the Mexican border in Fort Hancock, Texas, according to reports from Reuters and The New York Times. The Thursday incident reportedly led the Federal Aviation Administration to close the airspace where the military fired the anti-drone laser.This marks the second time this month that officials closed airspace near the US-Mexico border due to an incident involving an anti-drone laser. On February 11th, officials closed airspace around the El Paso International Airport for hours after the CBP fired an anti-drone laser without coordinating with the FAA,…
The tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails and files released on January 30th tie the infamous pedophile, sex trafficker, and influence peddler to elite figures across the tech industry. The world of cryptocurrency is no exception. Epstein’s connections are intriguing, disturbing — and worth mapping closely.With his interest first piqued as early as 2011, Epstein was ahead of the game on crypto. The financier understood it as a tool for clandestine payments and shady international finance, and found prominent community members more than willing to welcome him. Bitcoin wasn’t even invented until 2009, which means all of Epstein’s crypto connections formed…