All the news you need to keep up with the latest developments in the tech world, from product announcements and live events to tariffs, policies, and regulations. Tech touches every aspect of daily news, and our experts are here to keep you informed on what happens and how it all affects you.
Following the release of Anbernic’s RG34XX handheld last December, Ayaneo has revealed its own updated take on Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. The company didn’t share any specs for its upcoming Konkr Pocket Advance, but like Anbernic’s it will include four action buttons and potentially rely on emulation instead of a cartridge slot.
Around 40 employees received the letters, which ask for meetings with Apple’s lawyers and tell them to “preserve documents and communications,” according to a report from the Financial Times. Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last week and accused two of its former employees of helping the AI giant steal its trade secrets.
[Financial Times]
Not what anyone expected — or wanted — but a Tesla-branded balance bike is now available for the junior edgelord in your life.
Major League Baseball is cracking down on league-issued iPads provided to teams since 2016. Teams can no longer install custom apps that tap into generative AI to recommend “substitutions, pitch calling, and other in-game decisions traditionally made by players and coaches.” It seems up to “a third of the league used the dugout iPads for at least one of these purposes.”
SPCX sunk another three percent in extended trading after last night’s aborted Starship launch, falling further beneath its IPO price of $135. The record-setting IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first (paper) trillionaire. Today he’s worth $838.1 billion. Concerning.
A new report from Meta’s Oversight Board that tested popular AI models from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, and OpenAI found that each LLM is significantly less likely to criticize governments and leaders known for restricting free speech. The reasons for the refusals are varied and often confusing.
Google has been working on beefing up the model’s skills, “particularly in coding,” Bloomberg reports.
At I/O in May, Google said that 3.5 Pro was “already being used internally” and that “we look forward to rolling it out next month.”
Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, announced last year for a 2026 release, is now set to launch in early 2027.
“We remain unwavering in our mission to deliver a real-time strategy game set in the world of Westeros that meets the expectations of both RTS players and Game of Thrones fans,” says developer PlaySide. “This decision gives us the time needed to continue building towards that goal and ensure that the game reaches the high level of quality we are aiming for.”
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
The source code for Microsoft Comic Chat is now available, opening up the workings of a project released in 1996 that turned the walls of text from chats into comic strips, generating panels and illustrations that represent the chat and are still backward-compatible with text-only clients.
I wasn’t familiar with the app until now, although it apparently shipped as part of Internet Explorer 3.0, and used Microsoft typographer Vincent Connare’s then-new font for its speech bubbles.
Citing two unnamed sources familiar with the investigation, the Washington Post reported Thursday night that, based on reports from many of the people who fell ill, investigators “have identified shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell restaurants by Taylor Farms as a potential source of contamination.”
Otherwise, CDC officials have only said they have found a likely link among the more than 4,300 cases caused by the “explosive diarrhea parasite.”
The thirteenth, and first post-IPO, flight test of SpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle was supposed to occur Thursday night, but when the countdown hit zero just before 7PM ET, “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” writes Elon Musk.
PlayStation uploaded new trailers for Marvel’s Wolverine and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls today, but the comment sections are pretty much all about PlayStation’s plan to kill discs. And this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.
That’s what Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call when asked about potential plans to launch free, ad-supported streaming.
“A free offering could make sense in some markets,” Sarandos said, adding that the streamer has “no near-term plans to launch something.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a spate of new housing policies, including a provision requiring landlords to disclose when rental listings have been altered by AI or with other tools.
The new regulations may not stop brokers from using AI to gussy up mediocre listings, but disclosures may at least prevent prospective tenants from wasting their time touring apartments that look much better online than they do in person.
[The official website of the City of New York]
The petition, signed by more than 4,500 workers, calls for protections like guaranteed severance and offers of voluntary buyouts before the company does layoffs. You can read it on the Alphabet Workers Union website.
The petition will be delivered on Thursday to CEO Sundar Pichai and the heads of Google Cloud, platforms and devices, and Google Search.
[Alphabet Workers Union-CWA]
Can’t wait to see what people make using them. Hopefully some cool front plates?
With a selfie and a voice clip, you can generate what Google calls “personal avatars” — a digital representation of you that can speak a script you type out. Vids got AI-generated avatars last year, but they were initially pre-made options.
Vids is also getting support for generating and editing clips with natural language using its Gemini Omni model.
Aftermath wrote about a rally on Wednesday at ZeniMax’s office in Rockville, MD. ZeniMax, which oversees studios like Bethesda, was hit with 379 cuts in the state of Maryland as part of the broader Xbox layoffs.
ETA PRIME tries to answer that question (while we’re revisiting our initial rating) with some benchmarking courtesy of the Windows drivers Valve released earlier this month. As Videocardz points out, on this unit with 64GB of RAM, the results were pretty close across the three games tested, with SteamOS winning in 1080p across Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Horizon Zero Dawn, but Windows moving a couple of frames per second ahead at 4K rendering.
The notifications will show up for teens who spend “extended time” on ChatGPT, OpenAI says. The company will also notify parents if their teen’s account is banned for violating policies on “violent threats or acts of violence online.”
The idea to give their audience a central spot to see and discuss a creator’s newsletters, websites, and podcasts.
Communities are part of Beehiiv’s summer release, which also includes the launch of programmatic ads and an AI copilot to help creators better understand their business.
Starting this week in the US, you’ll be able to ask linked apps like Instacart, Canva, or YouTube Music to help you out right from AI Mode, Google says. Another step on Google’s path of becoming a search box that does everything.
Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode pose an “unacceptable risk,” with both features failing to properly and consistently respond to kids showing signs of crisis, “reinforcing signs of psychosis and mania,” as well as “validating disordered eating.”
Common Sense Media’s risk assessment (pdf) also found that AI Mode completed 100 percent of the homework assignments researchers fed it. A response from Google published by PBS called the tests “a narrow set of ambiguous and contrived queries that don’t reflect how people use Search.”
When teen Instagram users on accounts with parental controls have conversations about self harm or suicide with Meta AI, the platform will now proactively alert supervising guardians that the child’s safety could be at risk. This builds on a similar feature that Meta introduced for Instagram search in February.
If you or anyone you know is considering self-harm or needs to talk, contact the following people who want to help: In the US, text or call 988. Outside the US, contact https://www.iasp.info/.
