America’s favorite low poly electric truck is facing a new set of problems that don’t have anything to do with people spray painting swastikas or crude comments about Elon Musk on them. Deliveries of the Tesla Cybertruck are on hold while the company addresses issues with reports that the trim is becoming detached and flying off, Electrek reports.
Tesla service representatives are telling customers awaiting deliveries that there is a “containment hold” on their trucks, according to several posts in the Cybertruck Owners Forum, as noted by Electrek. The customers are not being told it has anything to do with the vehicle’s trim, though. A containment hold is a proactive measure taken by automakers to address a quality issue or defect with a vehicle before it reaches customers.
Electrek also shared a screenshot of direct messages between a customer and a Tesla service rep that mentioned an issue with the truck’s cantrail, or the decorative trim that covers the roof ledge above the door. The delay could take several weeks to address, depending on the severity of the loose trim.
The problem is likely related to a handful complaints filed with the federal government earlier this year, which noted that the trim above the truck’s windows appeared to be attached by glue.
A video on YouTube posted over a month ago goes into greater detail about the issues with the cantrail trim.
The Cybertruck has been recalled seven times since its official launch December 2023. Tesla sold an estimated 40,000 trucks in 2024, despite over 1 million reservations. There were anecdotal reports of Cybertrucks piling up on used car lots. Tesla Cybertruck factory workers in Austin were told to stay home for three days in December. And since Elon Musk’s elevation as a special advisor to the Trump administration, the Cybertruck has become a target of graffitti and vandalism from people opposed to Musk’s takeover of the federal government.
On Tuesday morning, some PC gamers woke up to discover their computers were seeminglyunder threat. A âHackToolâ called WinRing0 had suddenly started triggering a Windows Defender alert, as if their PCs were under attack. Some of those computers even began behaving oddly âââ like blasting their fans at high speed â once the HackTool had been quarantined. I know, because it happened to me.
But my computer wasn’t actually under attack â at least, not yet.
When I checked where Windows Defender had actually detected the threat, it was in the Fan Control app I use to intelligently cool my PC. Windows Defender had broken it, and that’s why my fans were running amok. For others, the threat was detected in Razer Synapse, SteelSeries Engine, OpenRGB, Libre Hardware Monitor, CapFrameX, MSI Afterburner, OmenMon, FanCtrl, ZenTimings, and Panorama9, among many others.
Thatâs because all these programs have something in common, eight of their developers tell The Verge. They do (or did) all contain a piece of kernel-level software that is …
NBC will continue airing the Olympics in the US for the foreseeable future. Its parent company, Comcast, just announced a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that will keep the games on NBC’s platforms, including Peacock, through 2036.
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, NBC’s previous agreement with the IOC gave it the rights to stream the Olympics through 2032. This new deal will take its place, with the extended media rights for the 2033 to 2036 Olympics cycle valued at $3 billion. The next Olympic games will take place in Italy next year.
Flatiron Books, the publisher of a new book by an ex-Meta staffer alleging misconduct and harassment at the company, says in a statement that a recent arbitration order demanding that the book no longer be published has “no impact” on Macmillan.
The ruling instructs Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, to stop making “disparaging” remarks against Meta and, where possible, cease promoting or publishing the book. Meta appears to have been able to bring the case to arbitration because of an agreement Wynn-Williams signed when she left the company in 2017.
“We are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement,” Flatiron says in the statement, which was also shared with The New York Times. “To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims within Careless People. The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this. We will absolutely continue to support and promote it.”
Meta didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Macmillan Publisher’s response to the arbitration order filed by Meta regarding our book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which released Tuesday.
The Mercedes CLA will be the debut of the company’s new MMA platform. | Image: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz’s electric vehicles aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes. The EQS, EQE, and EQB have largely flopped, forcing the company to make significant changes to its electrification plans.
While the automaker has scaled back its ambitions, it’s not abandoning them altogether. As Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius said during the company’s Tech Day in Stuttgart, Germany, last month, “The clock starts again” on the company’s EV plans. And that starts with a newly developed platform, called MMA, that will underpin both internal combustion, hybrid, and electric vehicles going forward.
“We’re in an era where we’re going towards electrification, but in the year 2025 obviously, we’re not 100 percent electrification. So for many years to come we will have a duality,” Källenius said.
An ‘electric-first’ platform
The MMA platform makes its debut on the company’s entry-level sedan, the CLA, which debuted as a sub $30,000 Mercedes in 2013. Typically, automakers introducing new platforms start with their priciest models, which would be the S- and G-Class models in Mercedes’ case. Since both of those vehicles were recently updated, it will be a while before they get the MMA treatment.
Mercedes is also bucking the traditional method of introducing a new platform as an ICE vehicle and then wedging the design into an EV platform. Instead, the company is going “EV first,” launching the CLA as an EV first and then later as an internal combustion with a mild hybrid in 2026.
The new platform makes both the hybrid and EV vehicles larger than the previous generation. The wheelbase is 6.1 cm longer (2.4 inches) to accommodate the battery pack and taller by 2.8 cm (1.1 inches), giving rear passengers slightly more legroom and height. Källenius acknowledged the old CLA was a tight fit in the rear, but at 6-foot-4, he was able to slide into the new CLA with ease. As Källenius said, “You’re buying what feels like a sports car, but at the same time you have a fully functional three-box sedan.”
‘This is the EQXX on the road’
The new CLA owes its design and tech to the EQXX, a concept car introduced by Mercedes in 2022 with an emphasis on efficiency that could roll for more than 1,000 miles on a single charge. Mercedes engineers spent three years leveraging what they learned from the EQXX to develop the revamped CLA.
However, the biggest deal about the new CLA is its massive range. There will be two battery options for the global market, a 58.4 kWh version and a larger 85.5 kWh battery. The US will only get the larger of the two, giving the CLA an estimated range of 792 km (492 miles) based on the generous WLTP standards. If the EPA-estimated range comes in around 350 miles, the CLA will rank among other long-range EVs like Lucid, Rivian, and Tesla.
The new CLA also gets a unique brake-by-wire setup called OneBox that calculates the right amount of braking power and recuperation to maximize efficiency. Like the technology BMW developed for its VDX test vehicle, most braking will primarily be handled by the regeneration system in normal conditions. The new system claims to recuperate up to 200 kW of power.
The new CLA’s 800-volt architecture will enable ultra-fast charging, adding 300 km (186 miles) of range in 10 minutes. The EV will come in front-wheel and all-wheel drive trims, with a 268-hp drive unit on the rear axle and a 107-hp drive unit on the front in the all-wheel drive version. The front motor can be disengaged automatically when it is not needed to help increase efficiency. As Källenius noted, “This is the EQXX on the road.”
A new OS and smarter driving
With the CLA, Mercedes is launching a new software stack called MB.OS. The infotainment MBUX system will run on MB.OS and offers a new “AI-enhanced” user experience that can control everything from the sensors to various actuators. The new MB.OS system will be connected to the cloud to enable over-the-air updates for everything from driver assistance features to semi-autonomous driving.
Källenius said the CLA will feature “Level 2 ++” driving – nearing Level 3 autonomy where the driver is still kept in the loop to take over when needed. (Mercedes already offers a Level 3 system in a handful of states called Drive Pilot.) Consumers can purchase or “unlock” these ADAS features as an upgrade after purchase, which will be delivered via OTA update.
“It will age like a good French wine,” Källenius said of the new software stack. “It will get better with age, because we will add capabilities to it. Some things we will give you for free, some things we may charge you for, depending on what it is, and depending on what the market allows.”
The new CLA gets Mercedes’ Superscreen, which stretches from pillar to pillar in the front. Under that glass sits a 10.25-inch gauge cluster and a 14-inch center display, with an optional 14-inch screen for passengers. That passenger screen can play movies from platforms like YouTube and RideVu by Sony. And if you’re worried about distracted driving, the passenger screen is not viewable from the driver’s position.
Google and Microsoft systems help power the AI, which can be used to determine a driver’s mood (which it then uses to change the color of the lighting in the car) or help find parking. I got a demonstration of the new Mercedes voice assistant, which is powered by Google Gemini, and found it to be much more conversational than the previous generation, handling basic requests like navigation or finding a nice restaurant. For general knowledge, the system uses OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, Microsoft’s Azure, and Bing. The system will remember previous conversations and recall context. All the predictive learning is done on board the vehicle, not in the cloud.
“It will age like a good French wine.”
Mercedes will launch the electric CLA (the base version is awkwardly named the CLA 250+ with EQ Technology) first in China and Europe, with the US launch in the fall. For an upgrade, customers can get the even more awkwardly named CLA 350 4MATIC with EQ Technology, with all-wheel drive. The 1.5-liter four-cylinder hybrid ICE version, which Mercedes didn’t share many details about in Stuttgart, won’t make its debut until sometime in 2026.
Mercedes hasn’t announced pricing yet, but in the current economic environment, it’s likely that the new CLA will be priced above that old $30,000 marker. With increased hostility toward EVs in the US and an administration that’s determined to roll back EV benefits, we’ll have to wait and see which version Mercedes customers choose for their future entry-level luxury sedan, and whether this new electric strategy will turn the company’s flagging sales around.
Auracast support for hearing aids is on the way to Android phones.
Android phones will soon support Auracast with Bluetooth LE hearing aids, letting people tune in to audio broadcasts in places where it’s otherwise hard to hear. Auracast is a Bluetooth Audio LE feature, and it allows one broadcaster to connect to a virtually unlimited number of Bluetooth LE devices. Among other things, the technology can help people who use hearing aids connect directly to audio streams like the public announcement system at an airport, or to an audio feed at a concert venue. At launch, Samsung Galaxy phones running One UI 7 and Google Pixel 9 phones with the Android 16 beta will support it.
Auracast has been around since the Bluetooth LE spec was completed in 2022. Samsung’s recent Galaxy phones already support sharing audio to other devices via Auracast, and it looks as though Google will add similar audio sharing capabilities in Android 16. Hearing aid support adds another layer of functionality, and on Pixel 9 phones connecting to a broadcast will be as simple as scanning a QR code. Otherwise, you can access a public broadcast through your settings menu in basically the same way you connect to a Wi-Fi network.
The first trailer for the next season of Black Mirror is full of the kinds of topics you’d expect from the anthology: AI, virtual worlds, video games, and lots of futuristic gadgets. All with a dark twist, of course.
Season 7 will feature six episodes — series creator Charlie Brooker says that two of them “are basically feature-length” — which includes a sequel to “USS Callister.” The appearance of Will Poulter also suggests the show is returning to the Bandersnatch universe.
We already knew the upcoming season had a stacked cast, with previous announcements including Paul Giamatti, Issa Rae, and Peter Capaldi. But Netflix announced even more notable stars who will be subjected to the dark terrors of the future this time around. They include not only Poulter, but Michele Austin, Ben Bailey Smith, Asim Chaudhry, Josh Finan, James Nelson-Joyce, Jay Simpson, and Michael Workéyè. Who they are playing, and what the other episodes are about, remains largely a secret right now.
Black Mirror season 7 starts streaming on April 10th, where it will join an incredibly busy period for news shows. April will also see new seasons of Doctor Who (the 12th), The Last of Us (April 13th), and Andor (22nd).
The Trump administration launched a massive deregulation spree that could gut environmental and health protections in the US, moves that are sure to face immediate legal and logistical challenges.
Wednesday was “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. The proposed changes include 31 actions to roll back pollution regulations for power plants, oil and gas refineries, chemical plants, cars and trucks, factories, and more.
“This is a cluster bomb”
Advocacy groups, unsurprisingly, are already promising a fight. Outside of court, the EPA — if it follows protocol — would have to go through extensive rulemaking processes. And it has to make this all happen with a shrunken and demoralized workforce.
“This is a cluster bomb of moves to demolish a broad swath of environmental regulations. We’ll see if it explodes in EPA’s face when the inevitable barrage of lawsuits hits the courts,” Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said in an email to The Verge.
The EPA says it will “reconsider” a broad swath of regulations on everything including mercury, toxic air pollutants, soot, wastewater, the chemicals used in the workplace, and the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
The EPA is also working to claw back $20 billion of Biden-era federal funding to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Zeldin’s language when it comes to the climate crisis is particularly vociferous. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” he said.
The EPA press release says, without sharing any numbers or analysis, that the proposed measures would make it more affordable to buy a car or run a business. The Trump administration’s tariff wars, however, are expected to raise the cost of a car by up to $12,000.
Federal standards for soot pollution alone, on the other hand, are estimated to lead to $46 billion in net health benefits, according to an EPA analysis last year. Stronger soot protections that were finalized last year were also expected to prevent 290,000 lost workdays and 4,500 premature deaths by 2032.
American Lung Association president and CEO Harold Wimmer said in an emailed statement that the organization “will use every tool in our toolbox to defend these lifesaving protections and protect the health of families.”
The Sierra Club also said in a statement that it would “fight these outrageous rollbacks tooth and nail.” And “should the EPA undo settled law and irrefutable facts, we expect to see this administration in court,” environmental law organization Earthjustice said in another statement.
“It is important to remember that currently, all these clean air protections are still in place. EPA’s leadership can’t undo them with this announcement. They have to follow the law and go through a process to reconsider or revoke them,” the American Lung Association’s Wimmer added.
President Donald Trump managed to roll back around 100 environmental regulations during his first term in office. This time around, he’s moving much quicker to enact sweeping changes. But the wrecking ball that Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk have taken to federal agencies could also make it harder to implement their agenda at the EPA.
“In order to revoke or revise a regulation, you need a new regulation,” Columbia’s Gerrard notes. It takes skilled staff to write detailed explanations to justify such drastic changes in the EPA’s position, according to Gerrard. Courts could invalidate new rules without those explanations, and it’s unclear who would be left at the agency to do that work as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce, he says.
The announcements made yesterday mark “the most disastrous day in EPA history,” according to an emailed statement from former EPA administrator and White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy.
PowerWash Simulator 2 will feature a new campaign with new locations and jobs to expand your power washing empire. To further drive home the fact this game is wish fulfillment for aspiring home owners, PWS2 will also add a home base you can customize with furniture and other cosmetics. But more than anything, I’m excited by the prospect of the new split-screen co-op mode.
I played PowerWash Simulatorwaaay back in 2021 when there was just the demo. I found myself utterly delighted by how the simplistic idea of methodically cleaning grime off a surface with a destructive power tool lit up my brain. Since its release in 2022, the game has exploded in complexity and content with crossover content packs that approach Fortnite levels of wacky metaverse shenanigans. There’s a SpongeBob pack, a Tomb Raider pack, and even a Final Fantasy VII pack that lets you valiantly attempt to clean up the perpetually dirty streets of Midgar.
The developers at FuturLab tapped into something unique, and made PowerWash Simulator standout amidst a veritable ocean of simulator games and it seems like PowerWash Simulator 2 is primed to do the same. It launches this year on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
Lexus is updating its RZ electric vehicle lineup and introducing new versions that include a simulated manual gearbox and a steer-by-wire system. The top-of-the-line 550e F Sport includes a “Interactive Manual Drive” system that gives the driver the feeling of shifting like a manual gas car “by synchronizing acceleration and deceleration with immersive sound.” It also features the yoke steering wheel Lexus originally showed off for the RZ in 2022, which is available as an option for other versions with drive-by-wire.
Interactive Manual Drive features 8-speed virtual gears controlled by paddle shifters and a shift guide meter to give visual feedback on when to upshift and downshift. Lexus isn’t the only company trying fake shifting on EVs; manufacturers like Hyundai include it on the Ioniq 5 N.
When the RZ launched in 2023, it had a relatively short EPA-estimated 220 miles of range on a single charge, but the new one maxes out at about 357 miles (575km), although that range is based on Europe’s more lax WLTP system.
The higher range is thanks to an updated 77 kWh battery that has more and improved cells compared to the previous 71.5 kWh one. The battery can push up to 300 kW to the F Sport’s dual motor AWD system. The new battery can recharge faster too thanks to the addition of a new preconditioning feature.
Lexus plans to “gradually roll out” the RZ starting this fall “across various regions.”
Today Sony is announcing the development of a new type of TV display that uses individual RGB LEDs for its backlighting. While Sony currently sells high-end Mini LED TVs alongside OLED models, this new system could combine many of the best qualities of both, and I recently got to see it in action at the company’s Tokyo headquarters.
I’m not yet convinced that this tech, which for now Sony has given the somewhat unwieldy name of “General RGB LED Backlight Technology,” will be the best panel solution for everyone. But TVs are always going to come with tradeoffs, and this approach does represent a meaningfully different solution to what’s currently on the market. It looks like it’ll be a huge upgrade on existing Mini LED sets.
Mini LED TVs work by deploying an array of tiny blue LEDs behind the panel. These LEDs are larger than the actual pixels on the display, but they’re small enough that the TV can brighten or darken multiple areas of the screen with a high degree of precision. OLED TVs, meanwhile, are capable of even better contrast because they light up and switch off each pixel individually, but they generally can’t get as large or as bright as Mini LED displays.
With Sony’s new RGB LED method, each Mini LED backlight zone is made up of a red, green, and blue LED. The core advantage here is that Sony is able to achieve finer control over color without compromising on brightness, achieving a level of 4000 cd/m² — on par with the company’s professional reference monitors and resulting in a higher “color volume” than any commercial TV it’s released to date. The increased gradation control can also help deliver much wider viewing angles than Mini LED TVs, and Sony says the panels can be built at larger sizes than existing OLED sets.
So, how does it look in person? Unfortunately Sony didn’t allow its prototypes to be photographed, but I’ll do my best to describe them.
The first unit was designed to show off the backlight array itself. Behind the set was a wild combination of exposed silicon and cable spaghetti. Only half of the screen was covered by an actual LCD panel; the rest of the image was purely handled by the backlighting. Imagine watching a movie where the right half of the picture was run through a 16-bit pixel art filter, and you’re pretty much there, except this screen had much better color reproduction than a Super Nintendo.
This isn’t much use in practice, of course, but it does show exactly how precise Sony is able to get with the lighting. One scene showed a bus driving down a street on a sunny day, and it was possible to discern several distinct shades of red in its paint from the backlight alone. Sony says this translates to wider and more accurate color reproduction.
To demonstrate actual video content, Sony set up a full-screen version of the RGB backlight prototype flanked by two of its best TVs you can buy: last year’s extravagant Mini LED-powered Bravia 9, and the QD-OLED A95L that won the prestigious “King of TV” award at the most recent Value Electronics TV Shootout, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel served on the judging panel.
Conscious of the unflattering comparison, a Sony engineer conducting the demo repeatedly went out of his way to make the point that the Bravia 9 on the left really was a very good TV. Despite this, the RGB LED prototype clearly smoked it.
A scene from Frozen where blue crystals flew through the air looked almost monochrome in comparison, with the prototype revealing deep shades of purple that simply weren’t there on the Bravia. It was clear how the backlighting worked in tandem with the color grading to deliver a more vivid picture. Viewing angles were hugely improved, with near-non-existent color shift. Another sequence with bright red lights against a dark background exhibited the tell-tale blueish Mini LED blooming on the Bravia, whereas the RGB LED prototype lit up those areas solely in red.
That’s not to say the blooming wasn’t there. If you covered up only the red portion of the screen with a piece of paper, you’d still see hazy redness around it, unlike on an OLED panel. But watching the footage normally, the effect wasn’t all that different. While OLED screens don’t strictly leak color data into adjacent pixels, the effect of retinal straylight in your eyes means you do still perceive haziness around bright points. RGB LED’s ability to limit its blooming to scene-accurate colors makes for a major improvement on Mini LED in this regard, even if it’s still going to lose out to OLED when it comes to displaying starfields.
RGB LED backlighting isn’t a wholly new idea, even from Sony. The company launched a ridiculously expensive Qualia TV with an RGB backlight in 2004, and more recently showed off a “Crystal LED” prototype TV at CES 2012. Competitors are also on the case; Hisense showed off a “TriChroma RGB Backlight” Mini LED TV at CES this year, while TCL and Samsung had prototypes with their own spin on the idea.
“These developments were within our expectations,” says Daisuke Nezu, head of Sony’s home audio and video division. Sony remains confident that its experience in backlight technology and image signal processing gives it an edge over anything on the horizon.
“We believe that we can ensure not only good image quality, but also reliability and stability,” Sony representative Mara Redican tells The Verge, emphasizing the company’s expertise in signal processing. “The knowledge and experience gained over the years cannot be easily replicated.”
If Sony is right about this, its strongest competition could be coming from inside the house; the advantages were much less clear next to its own “King of TV.” The RGB LED prototype could definitely hang with the A95L, and quite literally outshone it in terms of brightness. But I would say the difference in color reproduction and viewing angles were a wash at best. I generally preferred the picture from the OLED in the most challenging comparisons, and I think a lot of OLED TV owners would probably agree.
But that’s fine by Sony, which isn’t giving any indication that it’s planning to exit the OLED TV market any time soon — no wonder, given the glowing reception to the A95L. I might be happy with my own OLED TVs right now, but the tech plainly isn’t right for every customer, whether they’re concerned about brightness, size, or longevity. If you’ve been waiting to put a 100-inch-plus panel in a large room with a lot of natural light, this could be your answer.
We’ll have to see how this all shakes out once RGB LED panels come to actual consumer TVs, of course. But Sony’s take on the concept does look to be a big step up over what we’ve come to expect from Mini LED, at least, and it could well be the best alternative to OLED if and when it’s commercialized.
With so many AI companies launching chatbots, Google is leveraging its biggest competitive advantage to make Gemini stand out: Search. With personalization enabled, Gemini can now automatically analyze your query to see if referring to your Search history can “enhance” its response.
The feature is powered by the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental model, and it will only reference your search results if its AI model finds it “helpful.” For instance, if you ask Gemini about restaurant or travel recommendations, the chatbot will refer to your recent food-related searches to provide a suggestion.
This is part of the broader personalization feature Google is rolling out, which will eventually connect Gemini to other apps like YouTube and Google Photos, allowing the chatbot to “provide more personalized insights, drawing from a broader understanding of your activities and preferences.”
Google notes that you can disconnect your search history from Gemini at any time. When you receive a response, you’ll see an outline of how Gemini got its answers, as well as whether it referenced your saved information, past conversations, or Search history. It will also display a “clear banner” with a link to disconnect your Search history.
Gemini and Gemini Advanced subscribers on the web can enable the feature by selecting “Personalization (experimental)” from the model drop-down menu. It’s gradually rolling out on mobile, and is available in more than 40 languages in a “majority” of countries.
Google is releasing some other updates as well, including a way for all Gemini users to create their own personal AI assistants — called Gems — for free. The company also announced that it’s bringing its Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental model to its Deep Research feature, which the company says improves the chatbot’s capabilities “across all research stages.”
Gemini’s integrations with Calendar, Notes, Tasks, and Photos are also getting an upgrade to the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental model, joining YouTube, Search, and Google Maps.
Fortnite is coming to Windows devices with Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon chips later this year. Epic Games announced today that it’s teaming up with Qualcomm to add Windows on Snapdragon support for Easy Anti-Cheat, which will let the game be compatible with those devices.
“Over the last year, the introduction of Windows 11 Arm-based laptops has transformed the PC landscape, and laptops with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series processors represent a rapidly growing segment of the PC gaming market,” Epic says in a blog post. “However, the majority of PC games today are compiled for x64, which doesn’t translate directly to the Windows on Snapdragon architecture. Due to the way anti-cheat software works with x64 features, additional tooling is required for compatibility with these devices.”
Epic says that “hundreds” of multiplayer games rely on Easy Anti-Cheat, including Fortnite, and that “battle-testing Windows on Snapdragon anti-cheat support with Fortnite will help ensure smooth implementations in other games.”
If you’re looking to catch up on Andor before the second season’s April 22nd debut on Disney Plus, there’s a solid deal on both Disney Plus and Hulu. Now through March 30th, you can get the ad-supported Disney Plus, Hulu Bundle Basic plan for $2.99 per month for the first four months. Usually this bundle goes for $10.99 per month, so altogether that equates to a savings of around $32. The discount is available to both new and qualifying returning Disney Plus, Hulu, and/or ESPN Plus subscribers.
If you don’t mind watching the occasional ad, the basic plan is nearly identical to the Premium tier. You can’t download content, but otherwise you still get to watch all the thousands of movies and shows available in both Hulu’s and Disney Plus’ library. That means not only can you stream Andor, you can also watch Disney’s new Daredevil series, Moana 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, X-Men ‘97, and other films and shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and even National Geographic. You also get to watch Hulu’s library — which encompasses everything from the forthcoming final season of The Handmaid’s Tale to The Kardashians, Shogun, and Futurama — on multiple devices.
Just remember to mark your calendars, though; after the four-month promotion period ends, the bundle with automatically renew at the normal price of $10.99.
More ways to save right now
Sony’s WH-CH520 are on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for around $38 ($22 off), which is only $2 more than their lowest price to date. The budget pair of on-ear headphones aren’t going to compete with the company’s noise-canceling WH-1000XM5 — nor should they, given the price — but they do support Fast Pair pair on Android and multipoint connectivity, allowing you to quickly switch between two devices. They also offer up to 50 hours of battery life, which is a rarity even on high-end headphones.
The Twelve South AirFly SE is down to its all-time low price of $28.99 ($6 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. The Bluetooth transmitter comes with an integrated 3.5mm cable, so you can listen to in-flight entertainment systems more comfortable using your own pair of wireless earbuds or noise-canceling headphones. It also works with other devices that offer a standard audio jack, including compatible treadmills and the Nintendo Switch.
The Garmin Forerunner 265 is on sale for $379.99 ($70 off) at Wellbots when you apply the code VERGEF265, which is just $20 shy of its all-time low price. It’s also available for $399.99 at Amazon and REI. The smartwatch is a good choice for runners, offering a wide number of running metrics that includes stride length and cadence. It also includes Garmin’s Race Predictor feature, which estimates the time it’d take for you to run different types of marathons based on your long-term running data. The wearable also sports multiband GPS for more precise tracking along with a vibrant OLED display with good battery life, lasting about a week on a single charge. Read our review.
Ahead of the Game Developers Conference next week, Google is announcing that all mobile Android games will be available by default on Google Play Games on PC unless a developer opts out. The change could significantly boost the number of games on the platform, as previously, developers had to opt in.
Google Play Games on PC was originally launched in beta in 2022 as a way for people to play Android games on their PC, and Google has been slowly expanding its availability and building on the program since then.
As part of its announcements on Thursday, Google is also introducing a new “playability badge” for mobile games that are available on PC to highlight how well they run. An “optimized” badge means a game “meets all of our quality standards for a great gaming experience” and a “playable” badge means a game “meets the minimum requirements to play well on a PC,” writes Aurash Mahbod, VP and GM of Games on Google Play. (The system sounds a bit like Steam’s badges for Steam Deck compatibility.)
However, if a game has an “untested” badge, that means a user will only see it if they specifically search for it, Google’s Nia Carter tells The Verge.
Google is investing more in bringing PC games to Google Play Games on PC as well. There are already more than 50 native PC titles on the platform, Carter says, and later this year, Google plans to open up its native PC program to all native PC developers so they can bring over their games, according to Mahbod.
Google is making Google Play Games on PC more widely available, too; the company has offered a limited catalog of games on AMD laptops and desktops, but Google will now offer the full catalog on AMD laptops and desktops. In addition, Google is “partnering with PC OEMs to make Google Play Games accessible right from the start menu on new devices starting this year,” Mahbod says. Google is also rolling out multi-account and multi-instance support for Google Play Games on PC this month.
Google will make Google Play Games on PC generally available this year, according to Mahbod.
Microsoft is preparing to launch an AI-powered Copilot for Gaming soon that will guide Xbox players through games and act as an assistant to download and launch games. Copilot for Gaming, as Microsoft is branding it, will be available through the Xbox mobile app initially and is designed to work on a second screen as a companion or assistant.
Microsoft is positioning Copilot for Gaming as a sidekick of sorts, one that will accompany you through games, offering up tips and guides and useful information about a game world. During a press briefing, Sonali Yadav, product manager for gaming AI, demonstrated several scenarios for what Copilot for Gaming could be used for. One involved a concept demo of Copilot assisting an Overwatch 2 player by coaching them on the mistakes they made when trying to push without teammates.
In the Overwatch 2 demo, Copilot could even recommend good hero picks to complement the rest of the team and tell you more about why you’d want to pair up particular characters, detailing their strengths and weaknesses. Another demo involved using Copilot with Minecraft, where you could ask Copilot questions about how to craft objects. Copilot can see your screen, so it can guide you and see exactly what you’re doing in a game. The demo also included the option to enable cheats in Minecraft, so Copilot could even tell you where certain crafting materials are located in the world.
Copilot for Gaming 🎮 Soon you’ll be able to turn to it for everything from game setup, to tips for finally beating a tough level, wherever you play on Xbox. There when you need it, out of the way when you don’t. Can’t wait to try it! https://t.co/cxZG7R6cxcpic.twitter.com/21Zg0yob4A
The demos felt very concept in nature, and they won’t be available during the initial launch of Copilot for Gaming next month. Instead, Microsoft will test early versions of Copilot with Xbox Insiders through the Xbox mobile app in April, before eventually bringing Copilot to multiple devices.
Microsoft also has a slick marketing video for its Copilot for Gaming effort, but none of it looks real world to me, so it’s difficult to understand exactly what the company will deliver to testers in April. It looks like Microsoft has the vision for where it wants Copilot on an Xbox to be in the future, and it says it will iterate based on feedback. But right now, I’ll be interested to see how this launches in a more limited fashion on mobile devices.
The Federal Trade Commission doesn’t have any staffing issues that will impact its ability to face Amazon in trial after all, an attorney for the government said in a filing to a federal court, hours after saying they needed a two-month delay.
The surprising letter appeared Wednesday in the docket for the FTC’s deceptive practices lawsuit accusing Amazon of misleading consumers with its Prime sign-up and cancellation flow. At a hearing earlier that day, FTC attorney Jonathan Cohen told Judge John Chun that they needed to push the trial start date back from September 22nd, since, “we have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team,” CNBC reported. Just hours later, Cohen filed a signed letter to “clarify” his statement.
“I was wrong,” Cohen writes. “The Commission does not have resource constraints and we are fully prepared to litigate this case. Please be assured that the FTC will meet whatever schedule and deadlines the court sets.”
It’s not clear what happened in the hours between Cohen’s statement to the court and the letter being filed. And while resource constraints for the enforcement agencies are not entirely out of the ordinary, Cohen’s initial comments came amidst the Department of Government Efficiency’s push to make workforce cuts across agencies. So far, the FTC has not seen some of the sweeping cuts experienced by the Department of Education or US Agency for International Development (USAID), but The Verge reported that more than a dozen probationary staffers across the FTC were cut in late February.
The flip-flop raises questions about what the true impact of government cuts will mean for enforcement agencies like the FTC. At her nomination hearing to lead the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Gail Slater did not directly commit to a direction in ongoing tech antitrust litigation, noting she’d need to evaluate resources once confirmed. So far, DOGE’s impact has forced many agencies to attempt to do more with less.
All You Need Is Kill, Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 sci-fi novel that served as the inspiration for the surprisingly-excellent Edge of Tomorrow, is being developed into a gorgeous animated feature.
Today, Warner Bros. Japan announced that director Kenichiro Akimoto (Children of the Sea, Harmony) is working on a new take on All You Need Is Kill that will be produced by Studio 4°C. Like the original novel, its 2014 manga adaptation illustrated by Takeshi Obata, and WB’s live-action film starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, the latest incarnation of All You Need Is Kill revolves around Keiji Kiriya and Rita Vrataski, a pair of human soldiers who find themselves trapped in a time loop as the world wages war against an alien invasion.
A trailer for the new movie teases how this take on Keiji and Rita still die in combat only to wake up very much alive due to a time / space anomaly caused by the aliens’ advanced weapons. But whereas previous versions of this story were mainly focused on Keiji, the new All You Need Is Kill will be told from Rita’s perspective and delve deeper into her existential loneliness, according to the studio.
WB hasn’t announced any casting details or release window, but the trailer makes it abundantly clear that the new All You Need Is Kill is going to be visually stunning when it’s ultimately released into the wild.
Sigmaâs new $2,000 camera is missing so many features that you might not take the product seriously. The Sigma BF has no tilt or flip-out screen, hot shoe or cold shoe, any type of viewfinder, mechanical shutter, 4K 60, microphone port, or in-body stabilization. There isnât even a link to connect your shoulder strap. The list of missing features is long, and as someone who is used to professional âdo-it-allâ cameras, it was a lot to let go of.
But I think you should try. After a few weeks of using it, the Sigma BF won me over with its bold design, clever controls, clean software, and ability to create stunning photos. Itâs a lot to get used to, but the results are worth it.
The camera looks unlike anything else on the market. Its body is made from a single block of aluminum, and its controls have been pared down to just a few buttons. The result is a surprisingly easy-to-operate camera you can take almost anywhere â as long as anywhere doesnât include professional work. I canât see myself using this in a studio or as a video camera. But as a high-end point-and-shoot, the camera gets incredible results without overthinking it.
On today’s episode of Decoder, I’m talking to Verge policy editor Adi Robertson about the Take It Down Act, which is part of a long line of bills that would make it illegal to distribute non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. That’s a broad term that encompasses what people used to call revenge porn, but which now includes things like deepfaked nudes.
The bill was sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and it just passed the Senate. It would create criminal penalties for people who share NCII, including AI-generated imagery, and also force platforms to take it down within 48 hours of a report or face financial penalties.
NCII is a real and devastating problem on the internet — it ruins a lot of people’s lives, and AI is just making it worse. There are a lot of good reasons you’d want to pass a bill like this, but Adi just wrote a long piece arguing that giving the Trump administration new powers over speech in this way would be a mistake. Specifically, she wrote that it would be handing Trump a “weapon” with which to attack speech and speech platforms he doesn’t like.
At a high level, her argument is that Trump is much more likely to wield a law like this against his enemies — which means pretty much anyone he doesn’t personally like or agree with — and much more likely to shield the people and companies heconsiders friends from the consequences. And we know who his friends are: it’s Elon Musk, who now works as part of the Trump administration while at the same time running X, which is full of NCII.
Now, Adi and I have been covering online speech and how it’s regulated for about as long as The Verge has existed. We have gone back and forth on where the lines should be drawn and who should draw them as many times as two people can over the years. But that conversation has always presupposed a stable, rational system of policymaking that’s based on the equal application of law.
Here in 2025, Trump has made it clear that he can and will selectively enforce the law, and that changes everything. Once you break the equal application of law, you break a lot of things — and there’s just no evidence Trump is interested in the equal application of law. You’ll hear us really wrestle with this here. The problem doesn’t go away just because the solutions are getting worse, or that the people entrusted with enforcing the law are getting more chaotic.
So in this episode, Adi and I really get into the details of the Take It Down Act, how it might be weaponized, and why we ultimately can’t trust anything the Trump administration says about protecting the victims of this abuse.
The Take It Down Act isn’t a law, it’s a weapon | The Verge
A bill combatting the spread of AI deepfakes just passed the Senate | The Verge
Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation | The Verge
