Hades II just received its second major update as part of its early access development, which was a great excuse for me to jump back in. Since its initial release, Iâve logged more than 30 hours and actually held myself back from playing much more â I donât want to get tired of the game before it hits 1.0 â but with the new update, I wanted to see whatâs new and try to beat the new final boss on my very first run.
Sadly, I havenât even been able to see what the boss is yet. I did make it to the updateâs new region, but I got destroyed by a dangerous miniboss. Still, Iâve still been really impressed with what Supergiant Games has added since May to make whatâs already a very good game even better.
The big additions are impressive. Hades II initially launched with six regions â four for an Underworld route and two for a âsurfaceâ route â and with each major update, Supergiant has added a new region with new enemies, characters, and music to round out that surface route.
The first major update, which came out in October, added the gameâs first new region, Mount Olympus, and it feels as epic as Mount Olympus should. It has grand architecture, fearsome e …
Apple is readying its MacBook Air line for an update to M4 chips in March, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. With the slim laptops’ spec bump, the MacBook line’s M4 transition will be complete.
Gurman didn’t provide timing beyond that the laptops are coming next month, but as usual before it launches a product, Apple is “preparing its marketing, sales and retail teams for the debut” and letting its retail stock of the laptops clear out. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch models are expected to come at the same time, like last year.
Since the Apple Silicon transition, the MacBook Airs have largely shared specs with the low-end MacBook Pro, just packed into a slimmer laptop with omissions like fewer ports and no cooling fan. The base model 14-inch Pro starts with 10-core CPUs and 10-core GPUs and feature 16GB of RAM — you can get a sense of that configuration’s performance from our review of the base M4 MacBook Pro. Ideally, the new Air models will also get the Pro’s key upgrade of being able to simultaneously connect to two external displays with the lid open.
That leaves only the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, which are still M2-generation machines, without M4 chips. Gurman has pegged the Mac Studio’s M4 bump for “between March and June” and the Mac Pro’s anywhere from June to this fall.
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 72, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youâre new here, welcome, hope you like gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you Appleâs slightly confusing latest smartphone, a couple of new things to watch this weekend, the best new Xbox game in a while, and much more. Also, the first part of our group project on all the ways we listen to music. Letâs do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / hot-gluing this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tel …
The Switchbot S10 is one robot vacuum with Matter support.
Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.4 yesterday, which users have since discovered contains support for robot vacuums in the Apple Home app through Matter.
As spotted by 9to5Mac, Smart Home Centre confirmed the functionality using a Switchbot S10, which offers its own beta support for Matter. (Switchbot first added Matter robot vacuum support last year, but it required a hub and was kind of a hack.) Apple Home screenshots shared in the story show the robot vacuum’s Home widget (complete with a little robot vacuum glyph) along with a control screen featuring a start / stop button, options for choosing between “Vacuum” and “Vacuum and Mop,” selections for operating modes like “Quiet” or “Deep Clean.” There’s also a “Send to Dock” option, although Smart Home Centre notes that this only paused the S10.
Robot vacuums in the new iOS beta can also be added to automations and scenes. You can see how all of it works in the outlet’s video below.
Apple was expected to add Matter support for robot vacuum cleaners last year, but that didn’t materialize. Few robot vacuum companies offer Matter support at the moment, and some of those are still waiting on a firmware update to enable it. Robot vacuum makers have confirmed to us that these models will support Matter:
There are so many people here that nobody can tell where the end of the line is. New people arrive, ask if thereâs a line, shuffle into a blob of bodies idling and waiting for someone to give them instructions. The hallway is horribly warm â unclear if itâs from the bodies or the heat â and itâs a little smelly, which could just be me but I donât think it is. I estimate between 100 and 150 people are hanging around, waiting for 2:15PM to roll around, their anticipation building. This is not a club with a strict bouncer, though it feels like it. This is the Luigi Mangione hearing.
The hearing is a relatively minor pre-trial status update, but for the people most tapped in, there is a lot riding on it â the Luigi info-drip has been a bit dry lately. Court dates for the 26 year old accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December keep getting pushed back. Mangione, who is currently being held in federal custody in a Brooklyn jail, has not made a public appearance since before Christmas. (Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson in December outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, and has pleaded not guilty.) On TikTok, commenters regularly complain th …
Iâm hard-pressed to find another example of a tech company announcing something and then waiting over four years to actually ship it, but thatâs exactly the situation weâve reached with Spotify and its long-delayed HiFi feature. The latest reports indicate itâs finally coming in a matter of months as part of a Music Pro package that Spotify hopes will ensure the serviceâs continued profitability.
But this has become quite the saga.
First introduced on February 22nd 2021, Spotify HiFi was to roll out later that year â or such was the original plan, anyway. In that story, I wrote âyour turn, Apple Music,â which is funny in retrospect since Apple Music managed to successfully deliver lossless and high-resolution audio just a few months later (and at no added cost for subscribers). Amazon stopped charging extra for lossless music at around the same time.
By all accounts, this aggressive approach from both companies totally derailed Spotify HiFi, which was always going to demand an upcharge over the serviceâs regular Premium subscription. The company went radio silent on the feature, and Spotify spokespeople never provided any meaningful updates on its status.
AT&T has introduced SplitPay, a new payment option that lets those sharing a phone plan with others split their payment line-by-line, so no one person has to pay the entire bill. The company says the program is available for “select postpaid wireless plans,” and that those using SplitPay can still get multi-line discounts.
It sounds like a nice idea, especially if you’ve ever had the experience of bothering people you’re sharing a plan with for their part of a bill that you pay. As for what happens if not everyone pays up, AT&T says the account holder is still responsible for the bill, and late payments could still result in extra fees or suspended service. The company writes that it will text each payer a payment link and what they owe when a billing cycle begins, and says it will notify the primary payer about any outstanding payments prior to the bill’s due date.
To set up SplitPay, you can head to AT&T’s SplitPay page, select the account holder, and then pick the individual lines and devices, like smartwatches or tablets, you want to assign to each payer, according to a help page on the program.
If you were paying attention to CES this year, you may have come across the Asus Adol 14 Air Fragrance Edition’s curious gimmick: a magnetically-attached oil diffuser in the lid that emits the aroma of essential oils once the laptop heats up. Asus has now announced details about a “Fragrance Mouse” to go with it. Mentioned along with the company’s Copilot Plus PCs at CES 2025, it’s coming to the US “around late April, early May,” company spokesperson Anthony Spence told The Verge in an email.
The Fragrance Mouse has a light-duty mousing layout of two buttons and a scroll wheel. Its trick is on the underside, where a small compartment holds a refillable vial you can load with essential oils of your choosing. It’s an otherwise standard affair — the mouse connects wirelessly over Bluetooth or a 2.4GHz wireless USB dongle, offers adjustable DPI (1200dpi, 1600dpi, and 2400dpi), and is powered by a single AA battery. Asus says it’s “available in distinctive Iridescent White or Rose Clay finishes.”
You may not be able to get a complete stinky laptop and mouse set, since the Adol 14 Air Fragrance Edition has only been released in China since being introduced in July 2024, as Ars Technica notes. Spence was unable to confirm pricing details for the Fragrance Mouse in his email to The Verge.
Update February 22nd: Added that Asus had previously mentioned the Fragrance Mouse in January.
Such adolescent longing is all par for the course for Donât Nod. Alongside Telltale, the studio popularized the choose-your-own-adventure style of narrative games with Life is Strange, while foregrounding the outsized pain and tribulations of teenhood. But more than just coating teenage drama in a layer of dreamy nostalgia, Bloom & Rage is also an opportunity for Donât …
The Lenovo Legion Go S was supposed to change things. It was poised to show Valve isnât the only one that can build an affordable, portable, potent handheld gaming PC â you just need the right design and the right OS.
I was intrigued when Valveâs own Steam Deck designers told me this Windows handheld would double as the first authorized third-party SteamOS handheld this May. When I heard Lenovo had procured an exclusive AMD chip that would help that SteamOS version hit $499, I got excited for a true Steam Deck competitor.
But Iâm afraid that chip ainât it.
Iâve spent weeks living with a Legion Go S powered by AMDâs Z2 Go, the same chip slated to appear in that $499 handheld. Iâve used it with both Windows and Bazzite, a SteamOS-like Linux distro that eliminates many of Windowsâ most annoying quirks. I tested both directly against a Steam Deck OLED and the original Legion Go, expecting to find it between the two in terms of performance and battery life. But thatâs not what I found.
Watt for watt, its Z2 Go chip simply canât compete with the Steam Deck, and itâs far weaker than the Z1 Extreme in last yearâs handhelds. Thatâs inexcusable at the $730 …
Die in the Dungeon is a new roguelike deckbuilder that pulls some ideas from Slay the Spire, one of my favorite games, but adds some dice-based twists that have me hooked.
In Dungeon, your goal is to survive through progressively harder maps of enemies by building a deck â but instead of collecting cards, youâre collecting dice. During every hand, you have a certain amount of energy you can use to play your dice. And since you can see every move your enemies will make on the next turn, the game is mostly about strategizing how to attack the baddies while defending yourself.
If youâve played Slay, this setup should feel pretty familiar.
But Dungeonâs clever twist is in how you play. At the beginning of each turn, the game will roll dice from your deck into your hand, and youâll need to decide how to play them on a board. Each die has a value, so the higher the value, the more damage youâll deal or block youâll set up to defend yourself.
There are multiple types of dice, including attack dice, block dice, healing dice, and dice that can boost the value of other dice on the board. Each one costs a certain amount of energy to play, which puts limits on how many you …
It’s true: Nvidia has just confirmed it shipped some RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and even some RTX 5070 Ti graphics chips that were missing render units, as TechPowerUp originally reported — and that you’ll be able to get a replacement if your card was affected.
Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells The Verge:
We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected.
While limited, the manufacturing issue affected multiple Nvidia graphics card partners: reports came in of Zotac, MSI, Gigabyte, Manli, and even an Nvidia Founders Edition card with missing ROPs. You can use GPU-Z to check your card and see if it’s showing the proper number of 176 ROPs; if fewer, you should probably get it replaced.
Following some apparent outages on Thursday, Reddit dealt with more issues Friday evening that lasted for around two hours.
Initially, when I logged in on my desktop browser during Friday’s outage, Reddit wouldn’t load at all — I would just run into error pages. In an incognito window, the site loaded, though it seemed to load slower than usual. I was also able to load the site on mobile Safari while logged out and after I logged in.
Reddit’s status page said in a 7:58PM ET message that “We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue.” In an 8:40PM ET message, Reddit said that “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” and at 9:47PM ET, the company said that “This incident has been resolved.”
Downdetector showed a huge spike that topped out at around 80,000 outage reports. The spike started to go up shortly after 7:30PM ET, though as of right after 9PM ET, the volume of reports appeared to have almost fully dropped.
The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Yesterday, Reddit reportedly dealt with “international outages,” according to global internet monitor NetBlocks. I personally didn’t run into any issues during those outages.
Update, February 21st: Reddit says the incident has been resolved.
Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.
People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:
If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.
As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”
When The Verge changed the query like so:
If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.
Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”
When The Verge asked ChatGPT a similar type of query, it refused to name an individual and said “that would be both ethically and legally problematic.”
Following xAI’s patch on Friday, Grok will now respond to queries about who should receive the death penalty by saying, “as an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice,” according to a screenshot shared by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead. Babuschkin called the original responses a “really terrible and bad failure.”
Just a few weeks after everyone freaked out about DeepSeek, Elon Muskâs Grok-3 has again shaken up the fast-moving AI race. The new model is ending the week at the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, while the Grok iOS app is at the top of the App Store, just above ChatGPT. Even as Musk appears to be crashing out from his newfound political power, his xAI team has managed to deploy a leading foundational model in record time.
Itâs one thing to have the leading model; itâs another to build the biggest user base around it. Musk seems to understand that if he wants to crush OpenAI, he has to shift attention away from ChatGPT. Since the debut of Grok-3, Musk has said that ChatGPT-like voice interaction and desktop apps are coming soon. Where his product roadmap appears to differ considerably from OpenAIâs is xAIâs nascent efforts to build an AI gaming studio, though the details there are scarce.
While its Deep Research reports are nowhere near as in depth as OpenAIâs, Grok-3âs âthinkingâ capabilities appear to be roughly on par with o1, according to Andrej Karpathy, who noted in his deep dive comparison that âthis timescale to state of the art territory is unpr …
It would be impressive if it were not so depressing. | Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; The National Museum of American Diplomacy
Letâs pause and look at what the Elon Musk administration has done so far.
Thereâs been a lot of panic about the immediate but somewhat abstract constitutional crisis as Elon Muskâs misleadingly-named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rips the government apart. And as much fun as we all are having watching Congress render itself irrelevant and wondering whether the courts even matter, thereâs a concrete nightmare looming. Mass unemployment, the defunding of crucial social programs, and just plain incompetence mean that America, as we know it, is already in for hard times.
The degree to which we have failed not merely ourselves but also our children and grandchildren is breathtaking
The scale of destruction in the past four weeks starts at the Soviet devotion to Lysenkoist biological theories, and at maximum, is the American version of Maoâs Cultural Revolution: a disastrous triumph of ideological purity over basic reality. I am not sure it has occurred to the majority of people that we are about to make a Great Leap Forward and destroy our prosperous, relatively peaceful society.
Musk has, in the short term, set us up for a shock to the economy from both une …
Apple just released its first developer betas of a new round of software updates, and early testers have spotted support for Priority Notifications in the iOS 18.4 preview. It’s an Apple Intelligence-powered feature that uses on-device processing to try to detect which updates are especially important and sort them into a separate section above your other notifications.
According to 9to5Mac, the Priority Notifications feature is turned off by default in this first developer beta, but you can enable it with a toggle in the notifications area of the settings menu.
What we haven’t seen yet, however, are details about an upgraded Siri. Amid reports of setbacks and delays in developing a more intelligent assistant, today’s press release simply says, “Apple Intelligence will continue to expand with new features in the coming months, including more capabilities for Siri.”
On iPhones, the iOS 18.4 beta is also previewing a new app for Vision Pro owners to browse the headset’s app store, cue up videos to watch, and install apps remotely, and a redesigned Mail app has been spotted for Macs and iPads. Apple also just announced the new Apple News Plus Food section for iPhones and iPads that will bring “tens of thousands of recipes” formatted for use on mobile devices.
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has come into force, and it’s meant that some of the world’s biggest tech companies are having to make major changes to how they operate.
The law, which is designed to increase competition in the EU’s digital markets, designates some large online companies and their services as “gatekeepers.” Those that have received the gatekeeper designation — the companies on the list are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — have to meet strict requirements intended to reduce anticompetitive behavior.
Around a dozen current and former federal workers are behind a new website created as an outlet to share anonymous stories and technical expertise about the Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling of government agencies.
“We the Builders” aims to be a secure outlet for government workers to share how their workplaces are being impacted by DOGE, and a place to explain the real world impact of its access to government tech systems, a former federal worker behind the project tells The Verge.The website was created by people who “made government websites easier to use while protecting the integrity of your personal information,” according to its description. Had DOGE wanted “to use technology to build a more efficient country, they would ask us,” the site says. “But they haven’t. They are destroyers. We are the builders.”
The website is aimed at informing the general public about what’s happening inside federal agencies, as well as explaining how a database being accessed by DOGE in Washington, DC could impact citizens in tangible ways all across the country. “I want to make sure that people understand that data matters,” says the former federal worker, who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution and harassment in going public, but whose identity has been confirmed by The Verge.“If I can explain that in a way that helps you to be able to protect yourself and advocate for yourself, then I’m doing my job.”
Are you a current or former US federal government worker? Reach out securely on a personal device with tips to Lauren Feiner via Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
While social media forums like Reddit and Instagram have already become gathering places for federal workers to commiserate, We the Builders aims to offer an alternative outlet for workers who may be fearful to share their stories even through an anonymous social media account. The team says they are working with a security consultant to ensure that submissions remain secure and anonymous to the public. They also plan to vet submissions for accuracy and use their networks to confirm that they are coming from real federal workers.
The former government employee says they hope visitors to the website “can walk away with a more nuanced understanding of what’s happening. I’m hoping that federal workers can see stories of people like them, and also help them make decisions for themselves, and to feel supported.”
Apple is adding a recipes section to its News app that will be available to News Plus subscribers, according to a press release. The new section, Apple News Plus Food, will be available as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 when those updates release in April.
The section will feature “tens of thousands of recipes” from “the world’s top food publishers, including Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats,” Apple says. Recipes will be shown in a “beautifully designed recipe format makes it easy to review ingredients and directions,” and the app will have “a new cook mode takes step-by-step instructions to the full screen.”
Apple News Plus Food will also feature stories curated by Apple News editors. And Apple says that “select stories and recipes” will be available for non-Plus subscribers.
The addition of a recipes section brings the Apple News app into even closer competition with The New York Times’ main app. Apple News Plus subscribers can also access games like crossword puzzles and sudoku.
