Author: News Room
The deadline to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is coming up a week from now on June 12th, and legislators seem no closer to reaching a deal. If this sounds like deja vu, it’s because we’ve been here before. Congress reauthorized Section 702 in late April — but only for 45 days, so lawmakers could negotiate reforms to the controversial wiretapping authority.“There were no reformers in any of the conversations that happened. Full stop,” Sean Vitka, the executive director of Demand Progress, said on a press call Friday afternoon, hours after the Senate voted 52 to…
Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s never a good idea to hand your phone to the cops. But international travelers at American airports often have no choice — even if they’re US citizens.When Minnesota labor organizer Janette Zahia Corcelius returned home from a three-week trip to Europe in late April, she was detained and questioned by customs agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Before they let her go, the agents searched her luggage twice, confiscated political literature she had purchased abroad, and seized her phone — which has yet to be returned, according to a complaint filed in federal…
If you’ve travelled by air recently, you’ve probably noticed the warnings about power bank use. Once an indispensable part experience, they are now frowned upon for use during the flight due to the associated risk of catching fire 40,000 feet above the ground. Not great/ You can still use them on the down low, but no-one wants to be that guy causing the plane to make an emergency landing, do they? And do you really trust that power bank you bought for twenty quid on Amazon? I get nervous whenever mine feels moderately warm to the touch. It’s can be…
We’re now deep into developer conference season, and one of the themes so far is the relentless conviction from Big Tech companies that AI is going to change everything about how we do everything. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang made that clearer than anyone this week, when he described a completely new way of using our laptops — and a completely new kind of laptop made to support it. It’s all very interesting, but it raises the same question we have around so many AI products: Does anyone actually want this?On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David run through a…
Valve has promised that its long-awaited Stream Machine PC gaming system and Steam Frame headset are on track to launch this summer, despite a myriad of delays up until this point. While we still don’t have release dates or, more pertinently, pricing for these models, Valve is preparing the documentation for game developers to get their games verified and optimised to run smoothly on the new additions to the hardware line-up. In a blog post published on June 4, Valve writes: “Today we are expanding the Verified program to include Steam Machine and Steam Frame, both of which are shipping…
Whether you’re considering starting a Sonos speaker setup, or adding to an existing group, the Sonos Era 100 is worth picking up. The compact, capable smart speaker is currently marked down to $189 ($30 off) at a variety of retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Sonos. If you want an even lower price, Sonos is selling refurbished Era 100 speakers for just $134. They come with fresh accessories and packaging, and sport the same one-year warranty as its new speakers.The wireless speaker has a rich, detailed sound profile, with room-filling audio despite its small size. You might be…
Apple is set to reveal iOS 27 for iPhone on Monday during WWDC 2026 and we’ve got a new leak of a potentially nifty design change and a UI change that almost made it to the keynote without being revealed. According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, iOS 27 will see notifications slide in from the left side of the screen rather than the top of the display. That sounds like it’d be a nice way to refresh the incoming notification animation. Furthermore, the way users access the Notification Centre is set to change too. The current method of swiping down from…
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. This week, I’m investigating where it might have been built — and why it definitely wasn’t the US.Almost a year after its announcement, the Trump phone has “launched.” A few journalists and YouTubers have received early samples of the phone, though there’s still little evidence that any regular buyers have gotten theirs. If and when anyone else gets it, they’ll discover an open secret: Just like Trump’s “God Bless the USA” bible, it’s not really…
In between beef tallow fries, raw milk, and vaccine denialism, Make America Healthy Again figureheads have set their sights on another slice of life: our clothing.“The MAHA movement doesn’t stop with what we EAT — It’s also about what we WEAR,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a post on X in late May. “For decades, America offshored textile jobs and allowed foreign synthetic, plastic-based materials to take over the clothing market.” Rollins went on Fox News to promote a new Department of Agriculture campaign dubbed “the Great American Cotton Plan,” an initiative that promises subsidies for American cotton…
Never underestimate the power that a cheap tablet holds over a kid under six.The Skylight Buddy is a device with one job: to be a cute little guy that helps your kid track routines and chores. It’s $139.99, plus an optional subscription. And to my surprise, even though it offers a pretty limited set of features without the $39-per-year “Plus” features, it actually worked.Skylight recommends the Buddy for kids aged four up to 10. An adult has to set it up, naturally, which you do inside of the Skylight app. From there, you make a profile for your kid and…
It’s been exactly one year since the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, the first time that the Japanese company has made a sequel console. Sure, it’s had similar naming conventions before like NES/SNES, Game Boy/Game Boy Advance, and Wii/Wii U, but it’s also the first to actually have a number on the end, though judging by launch figures, it could also be the first to outsell its predecessor. A year has also been helpful in gathering my thoughts on the console compared to the relatively intense review period when myself and other members of the press essentially received our…
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s cheapest laptop, its most colorful, and its easiest to repair in years. That means owners can buy replacement parts in all four of its available colors and swap them in on their own. So that got us thinking: What if we bought a Neo just to see how funky we could make it look with official parts?I ordered an indigo Neo to tinker with, and some spare parts from Apple’s self-service site.I opted for a replacement trackpad and bottom case in blush, and USB-C ports and keycaps in citrus. My goal was to make it…