5 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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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.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Ken Kutaragi calls physical media just a ‘metaphor’ for owning games.

The so-called “Father of the PlayStation” told VGC that while he understands why users are upset about Sony phasing out game discs, he thinks it’s the right decision. But I’m also not sure he understands what a “metaphor” is.

“I understand that physical discs have become a metaphor for ‘owning’ games. I really understand that mentality… But nobody thinks [physical media] is necessary for a networked device like a smartphone, for example, because people feel that they will keep their content. So it’s a mentality.

“I really understand [why some people are upset], but I don’t think it’s economically reasonable. Maybe it’s a mentality issue.”

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
The official iPhone Duo repair manual is here.

Hopefully you don’t need it already. But just in case, here’s a link to the official iPhone Duo repair manual. But you know, maybe try not to break your new $2,000 foldable phone in the first place.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirms Starshield and Starlink are back to normal.

The Ukrainian president posted on X that the services have been “restored to the speeds we had before the restrictions.” Reuters reports that the defense ministry said the connection remained stable at over 400 kph, crucial for countering Russian drones.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
JerryRigEverything wrecks an iPhone Duo with a handful of dust.

Foldables are fragile beasts. And it turns out the iPhone Duo is no different. The matte internal screen scratches just like all the rest. But the real death knell for Apple’s device is a handful of dirt that works its way into the hinge and keeps the phone from closing ever again.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta is acquiring an AI analytics company.

Axios has the story. The company, Sundial, was founded by two former Meta employees, and they and others from Sundial will join Meta. One of the co-founders, Chandra Narayanan, will lead Meta’s “data analytics tooling and agents work,” according to Alex Shultz, Meta’s chief data officer.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Steam’s Personal Calendar feature is exiting beta.

About a year after Valve introduced the feature, which recommends new and upcoming games you might be interested in and even shows some on an actual calendar, it’s now considered a “full feature” of the Steam Store, Valve says.

My personal calendar page has me pretty dead to rights; among other games, it recommends Final Fantasy Resonance, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, both of which I reviewed and really liked, and some indie games I already had my eye on.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Netflix reportedly offered Microsoft $500 million to license Xbox games for adaptations.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and team countered by asking for $800 million, and Netflix has pulled its offer, Puck reports in an article discussing the new leadership at Netflix.

Xbox launched an “XP” division this month that will work on adaptations of its games, and Xbox is already working with Netflix on a Diablo animated series.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Sen. Marsha Blackburn isn’t happy about Meta’s revised business terms, either.

Blackburn (R-TN) said the updated terms “indicate Meta is attempting to exploit American creators and businesses by granting itself sweeping authority to scrape content from any website associated with Facebook ​and Instagram business accounts,” according to Reuters.

Following publisher pushback, Meta delayed the enforcement of these new policies until November 20th.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Texas becomes the latest state to sue OpenAI.

Similar to the lawsuits filed by Arizona, West Virginia, Iowa, and several others, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses OpenAI of misleading users about the safety of ChatGPT, allegedly exposing children and other users to a “litany of harms” that’s “driven by the company’s insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass
large fortunes.”

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Windows will soon let you perform an internet speed test without opening your browser.

A Windows 11 Insider Preview build rolling out to the Beta and Experimental channels will allow you to right-click the network icon in your system tray and hit “Perform speed test” to run it right in your Quick Settings menu. The feature previously opened a speed test in your browser.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Gotta scroll fast.

A new accelerated scrolling feature coming to Windows PCs with touchpads will allow you to scroll through long documents and webpages faster, Windows design head Marcus Ash announced on X. Microsoft is also adding the ability to continuously scroll through a page by swiping the edge of your touchpad, along with support for single-finger scrolling.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Amazon is planning more day-and-date Luna game releases for Prime subscribers.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer was available to stream on Luna at no extra cost to Prime subscribers the same day it launched on other platforms, and in a post celebrating the one-year anniversary of Luna’s relaunch, Amazon says it plans to bring more “major” day-and-date releases to Prime members.

Luna’s user base has also grown “fivefold” since the relaunch, Amazon’s gaming GM, Jeff Gattis, says in the post. I spoke to Gattis earlier this year about Amazon’s plan for games.

One Year of Amazon Luna

[Amazon Game Studios]

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Even this quadruped robot can solve a Rubik’s Cube faster than I can.

Researchers from ETH Zürich’s Robotic Systems Lab used reinforcement learning through simulations and “teacher-student distillation” to teach a quadruped robot how to independently solve an oversized Rubik’s Cube. The feat is even more impressive given the bot has to use its stubby legs and feet to reorient the cube and rotate its sides.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Proton is hosting a map of more than 300,000 Flock cams.

The map comes from security researcher Joshua Michael, who is facing a trademark complaint from Flock after he published an interactive map of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) using information from a data leak. Proton is now hosting the map, but notes that it’s a snapshot from December 2025, so “devices installed or removed since then won’t be reflected.”

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Hallmark’s Halo special edition Xbox ornament glows green.

In 2024, Hallmark added a tiny version of the original Xbox to its holiday ornament collection and then followed up last year with a miniature Xbox 360. For 2026 it’s returning to Microsoft’s first console, but the translucent green Halo special edition version. It will be available at the end of the month for $27.99 and includes a glowing greed LED and sound effects.

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A miniature green Xbox console Hallmark ornament hanging from a tree branch.
Image: Hallmark
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
How Claude Fable 5.1 can encode — and decode —messages in images.

Research done as part of the Singapore AI Safety Fellowship shows how Anthropic’s AI model can embed hidden messages into images using Morse code, object rotations, colors, and heights. The researchers also found that separate sessions of Fable 5.1 could decipher about 78 percent of the hidden messages based on a screenshot.

1/3Image: Nikita Kezin, Bryan Chan, James Chua via LessWrong
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Is this the first cracked iPhone Duo screen?

According to a user on Reddit, “Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times. I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen. As I continued opening it, I heard an audible crack, and the screen broke right along the hinge.”

They also said the Apple Store already replaced it.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Amazon adds handwritten ebook notes to the Kindle Android app.

After adding the option to annotate Kindle ebooks with handwritten notes on its new Alexa Tablets, Amazon has brought the same functionality to the Kindle Android app, as some users in the Kindle subreddit have discovered. It currently appears limited to Android tablets and phones that support a stylus, and it hasn’t come to the iPadOS version of the app yet.

If you buy something from a link, The Verge may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

A screenshot of the Kindle Android app showing handwritten notes on an ebook.
Image: Reddit
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Quest Diagnostics confirms patient records were stolen in a data breach.

The scope of the attack and exactly what data was compromised isn’t clear, only that some “personal information and patient records were affected.” Quest says its investigation is ongoing and it will alert impacted customers “as required by applicable law.” Oddly, as TechCrunch notes, the FAQ about the breach contains “noindex” code, making it difficult for customers to find.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Shein reportedly agreed to pay $100 million to settle an FTC investigation.

According to Reuters’ sources, the FTC was investigating Shein over “delivery delays and other customer complaints,” adding that the settlement would be “equivalent to 44% of Shein’s second-quarter profit.” The European Union also opened an investigation into Shein earlier this year over concerns about “addictive design” features and illegal product listings.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
One man basically saved the internet from the PHPocalypse.

Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic interviewed Ondřej Surý, the man almost single-handedly responsible for packaging up the patch for this week’s vulnerabilities. It’s a fascinating conversation, from Surý‘s odd nonchalance about saving the web to his concern that for-profit companies are exploiting open-source. But he hopes that this AI-assisted discovery will lead to a change:

… Everything’s moving fast now, and it’s taking a toll on the people who are defending the stuff. At the same time, maybe this is the turning point where we actually start caring about this … I might be wrong, but I’m an optimist that people will finally realize that we can’t go like this forever. This has been a disaster waiting to happen for a really, really long time.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
OpenAI safety researchers say they were fired over disappearing Signal messages.

Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni, and Jasmine Wang tell The Wall Street Journal that OpenAI terminated them after finding disappearing messages on Signal in a chat with Ryan Greenblatt, the former chief scientist at AI safety evaluator Redwood Research. OpenAI reportedly accused Greenblatt of leaking details about its Astra AI model to The Information, which Greenblatt has denied.

OpenAI tells the WSJ that the researchers were fired for violating “clear policies for handling sensitive information,” and “not for raising safety concerns or speaking out.”

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
A Game Boy game coveted by collectors just landed on Nintendo Switch Online.

A quick peek at eBay reveals that just the manual for the US version of Jaleco’s Avenging Spirit currently sells for over $150. The game (with its coveted artwork) has just been added to Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy library along with the Shigeru Miyamoto-produced Mole Mania and Pinball: Revenge of the ‘Gator.

If you buy something from a link, The Verge may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
High heat killed 50,000 Europeans this summer.

Scientists are blaming climate breakdown for that record figure, which is almost double 2025’s, and only covers city areas — meaning the real number of deaths is likely higher. According to this new mortality report, Malta, Italy, and Hungary had the hightest rates of people succumbing to the heat.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Greece is banning kids from using social media.

The ban comes into force on January 1st, 2027, and applies to any child under the age of 15. Greece is the latest country to consider or pass such legislation, following Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, France, the UK, and more. Similar efforts are also being made in some US states, including Florida.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Strava makes it easier to start a hike or run offline.

A new update shows saved routes on your home screen so you can start and complete a route offline, uploading it when you’re next connected. It also improves the ability to search for interesting places to build into your next run. Other improvements are on the horizon, including hands-free navigation, browsing routes on the web, and expanded route details.