Pressure builds on Europe's biggest port to be greener
A lawsuit demands that the Port of Rotterdam moves faster to cut its dependence on fossil fuel firms.
Vapes to have less enticing names and flavours to protect children
People are being consulted about plans to stop vape companies using enticing flavour descriptions that "attract" children into experimenting.
A decade later, Pokémon Go finally made good on its original promise
When Niantic dropped the first Pokémon Go trailer in 2015, it was hard to grasp how a bunch of players could work together to catch a pokémon like Mewtwo. But this week at the game's 10th anniversary event in New York City, Pokémon Go showed the world how it's done. Almost 2,000 players (many of [……
Apple sues OpenAI for allegedly stealing hardware secrets
Apple has sued OpenAI, alleging that engineers stole Apple secrets to advance the AI startup's hardware plans. In its complaint, Apple says it uncovered "a pattern of theft of Apple's trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple." In addition to OpenAI, the lawsuit also names IO Products - Jony Ive's h…
The FCC is cracking down on DJI tech that dodged the foreign drone ban
Last year, we told you about Xtra, the company that lets DJI sneak its popular cameras into the US, and Skyrover, a brand seemingly selling DJI drones in disguise. They're just two of the many firms DJI is suspected of starting to skirt the United States' foreign drone ban. But it appears the FCC is […]
Meta turns off the Instagram feature that let users make AI deepfakes of public accounts
Following significant backlash, Meta is turning off the feature it announced this week that let users generate AI images based on content from public Instagram accounts just by tagging them. The feature, as originally set up, meant that content from any public Instagram account could be used in AI creations without th…
No, Flock isn’t threatening people for debating surveillance
On Thursday, the Instagram account for a lecture series in Newport Beach, CA posted a photo of what appeared to be a cease and desist letter from the surveillance technology company Flock Safety. Flock has received significant backlash over its technology and work with law enforcement agencies, and this letter kicked…
Are you filthy enough for a $700 portable shower?
Hot showers, like electricity, are a luxury that's easy to take for granted. That all changes after a few nights camping at a music festival, a week toiling at a backcountry job site, or overlanding all summer in the great unknown. An itchy scalp and the vague smell of warm clams suddenly make the idea […]
The perfect kit for all your tiny repairs
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 135, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, crank the AC, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about cold plunges and Colson Whitehead and the food truck mafia, […]
A tasty RPG that will make you very hungry
Roleplaying games are often defined by excess. Storylines that span dozens of hours, side quests so big they could be their own game, massive worlds that require complex maps to explore, and casts so big you start forgetting character names. That's part of what makes these games feel like epic adventures, but it can a…
ICE are heavily armed killers. They’re also huge losers
Donald Trump's Homeland Security regime has been at the center of two critical stories in the past two weeks. In the first, federal agents shot and killed a man and quickly got to work justifying the use of force under the flimsiest of pretenses. In the other, it made house calls to people who said […]
White House taps the guy who keeps crying ‘aliens’ to run UFO group
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb will head the UAP Science Advisory Council established by the White House, the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and "the intelligence community." The Council will provide scientific reports and advice to the UAP Governing Board, in an effort to "re…
Don’t want to invest in Elon Musk? Two new ETFs explicitly exclude him
The new exchange-traded funds exclude companies that are founded, controlled, or led by Elon Musk. That means no SpaceX or Tesla.
OpenAI says GPT 5.6 is the ‘preferred model’ for Microsoft Copilot 365 amid breakup chatter
OpenAI's new family of models will continue to power Microsoft's suite of workplace and productivity apps.
After Apple, India’s smartphone manufacturing boom enters new phase with Vivo JV
Vivo's joint venture could become a template for Chinese smartphone makers in India.
Hugging Face’s CEO on why companies are done renting their AI
Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again…
Florida ransomware negotiator convicted for helping ransomware gang extort US companies
A third ransomware negotiator has been jailed for helping a notorious ransomware group extort American victim companies into paying the hackers.
EU threatens Meta with fines over addictive features on Facebook and Instagram
The tech giant is in breach of the Digital Services Act by focusing on features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the highly personalized recommendation algorithms, the European Commission said.