Along with the launch of a new season tomorrow, Overwatch is also getting an update for Nintendo’s latest console. It doesn’t sound like a huge change, but Blizzard says that the Switch 2 version will feature “better visuals, higher fidelity audio, and up to 60 FPS in both docked and handheld mode.”
An analysis from Originality AI, an AI detection company, found that 23 big news sites block the Internet Archive’s crawler, Wired reports. A USA Today spokesperson told the publication that the move “is not about specifically blocking the Internet Archive” but about attempting to block other scraping bots.
Reddit also limits what the Wayback Machine can archive, telling The Verge last year that it had learned that AI companies were scraping data from the Wayback Machine.
The civil rights organization and 75 other groups published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to “immediately halt and publicly disavow” plans for a reported facial recognition feature on its Ray-Ban smart glasses. It’s unsurprising that privacy advocates are wary, especially since documents show Meta originally planned to launch the feature during public unrest.
[ACLU of Massachusetts]
Prezzy T filed a $10 billion defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal after it published Trump’s birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, but the judge just dismissed the case, saying Trump had “not plausibly alleged that the Defendants published the Article with actual malice.” (“Actual malice” here is a specific legal term that means publishing something you know is false.)
Trump will have another chance to refile an amended complaint, so we’ll see if he tries again.
Okay: almost nobody wants a year-end “wrapped” for most things we do — food delivery, subscriptions, you name it. It’d be too embarrassing to look into that mirror. But this one seems legitimately useful to help Americans understand how their taxes are being spent. Enter Tax Wrapped, from Riley Walz. Find out how much of your money is going to health, war, and more.
[Riley Walz]
“The market is as competitive as I have ever seen it,” wrote Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s chief revenue officer.
Capcom’s new sci-fi game plays things too safe.
Since launching in 2024 with 48 Hyundai dealerships, we’ve seen Amazon Autos add used cars from Hertz and Ford, but now the Wall Street Journal says it’s active in over 130 cities with Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Chevrolet, and Jeep vehicles listed. According to the article, one benefit to Amazon, beyond the listing fee, is attracting carmakers and dealers as advertisers.
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[Wall Street Journal]
The new Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) antenna will enable air travelers bandwidth of up to 1 gigabit per second for downloads and 400 megabits per second for uploads on Delta, JetBlue, and any other commercial airlines Amazon signs up.
Still, Amazon isn’t close to meeting its deadline from the FCC to launch 1,600 satellites by July 2026, having recently requested a two year extension.
CEO Sarah Personette’s big bet on the place where influencers and reporters might meet
Ben Stiller, Joaquin Phoenix, Tiffany Haddish, Bryan Cranston, and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the over 1,000 Hollywood professionals pushing back on the $110 billion deal that they say will “further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape:”
We are deeply concerned by indications of support for this merger that prioritize the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good. The integrity, independence, and diversity of our industry would be grievously compromised.
If you’re missing Stranger Things, Netflix has a new series executive produced by the Duffer brothers, only this one skews slightly older. It follows some strange goings on at a retirement community, and if nothing else, it has an incredible cast with the likes of Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters, and Bill Pullman.
Another Hunger Games movie is on the way, and this one is possibly most notable for the cast: a whole bunch of stars are playing younger versions of characters from the original trilogy. The newcomers include the likes of Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, and Elle Fanning. The movie hits theaters November 20th.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is choking off the world’s supply of fertilizer feedstock, triggering concerns about rising food prices and shortages.
The Find X9 Ultra isn’t coming out for another week or so, but Oppo is ready to show off how it looks, and you can see why. Stay tuned for my full review, and let me know in the comments what you’d like me to test out — the 10x lens is a given.
I don’t make a habit of featuring Verge writers in the comment of the day, but since Nilay’s testosterone levels were the impetus for Victoria Song’s latest Optimizer column, on Whoop’s hunt for new health metrics, it only felt fair to air his response.
Nilay Patel:
Cmon everyone wants to see what I’m like jacked on literally 10x the testosterone
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The field of brain-computer interfaces is moving away from mind-controlled computer cursors to restoring speech.
After assailing Pope Leo XIV and calling him “WEAK on crime,” Donald Trump, a real US President, posted this AI-generated image of himself as some kind of Jesus, healing… Ethan Hawke?
It wants to make an AI model that can autonomously control machines and robots by 2030, Nikkei reports. The project, part of SoftBank’s robotics push, has buy-in from domestic giants including Sony, Honda, and Nippon Steel. It comes as countries increasingly encourage sovereign AI efforts to compete with US and Chinese firms.
Their morning routine, per an unapologetic New York Times profile, which delivers on the premise that “unabashed rich-person exuberance is back with a Blue Origin bang:”
They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table.
And because I know you’re gonna search for it: here’s the mug.
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Elon Musk has apparently made the jump from X to infect both TikTok and Instagram with new verified accounts. According to the New York Times:
Mr. Musk needs to build widespread public interest in SpaceX so it can raise billions of dollars from investors. The public offering could turn the 54-year-old tech mogul, who is already the world’s richest man, into the first trillionaire.
[nytimes.com]
The game garnered attention for its juxtaposition of Japanese dating sim vibes with psychological horror. It even warns players that it’s not “for children” or the “easily disturbed.” The mobile port landed in December of 2025, and now Google has removed it for violating its Terms of Service and “depiction of sensitive themes.”
[Bluesky Social]
The next big product category Apple is supposedly tackling is display-free smart glasses to rival Meta’s. But the design has yet to be locked in, according to Cupertino whisperer Mark Gurman. The company might launch some or all four of the designs under consideration:
A large rectangular frame, reminiscent of Ray-Ban Wayfarers
A slimmer rectangular design, similar to the glasses worn by Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook
Larger oval or circular frames
A smaller, more refined oval or circular option
It’s a jam-packed lineup to close out the three-day festival. The full schedule is available here. In addition to those mentioned above, I’m really looking forward to Oklou, Clipse, and The Rapture. Which means I’m gonna have to rewind a lot to catch it all. Let me know who you’re excited about most in the comments.
