The latest tech news about the world’s best (and sometimes worst) hardware, apps, and much more. From top companies like Google and Apple to tiny startups vying for your attention, Verge Tech has the latest in what matters in technology daily.
The web hosting platform is working with Cloudflare to integrate the company’s AI Crawl Control tool, which lets publishers choose how web crawlers can access their site. Publishers can use the tool to permit or block bots, or ask them to pay.
Cloudflare began blocking AI crawlers by default last year.
Google’s latest affordable phone launched in Japan today, more than a month after its release elsewhere. The wait might have been worth it though, since Japanese buyers can get the phone in an exclusive isai blue finish, designed in partnership with Heralbony, a creative company that works with artists with disabilities.
Android users can now watch videos as slowly as 0.25x or as fast as 2x, though Google hasn’t said when the option will roll out to iOS or the web. Tap the three dot menu on a video to find the new speed options.
[Google Photos Community]
Kozic will focus on infrastructure at the well-funded startup, which Bezos leads with former Google exec Vikram Bajaj, according to the FT. Project Prometheus is focused on using AI to improve manufacturing. Kozic’s defection is the latest in a broader wave of AI talent reshuffling.
Preliminary earnings suggest an eightfold increase in profit (57.2 trillion won estimated, or about $37.8 billion) from the same quarter in 2025, exceeding its entire profit for all of last year. The spike is likely due to strong demand for its memory chips, which have only increased in price as Big AI gobbles up all available inventory.
The “multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity” are expected to come online beginning in 2027 to “power our frontier Claude models.” The company also says that its run-rate revenue has surpassed $30 billion.
Google AI Edge Eloquent is a new live AI transcription app that requires no subscription and has no usage limits. When you finish speaking, it will also filter out filler words like “um.” It’s currently only on iOS, but Google plans to bring the app to Android and macOS.
The iPhone maker plans to ask the Supreme Court to review a December 2025 ruling that found Apple in contempt by imposing a 27 percent fee on external in-app payments, according to a new legal filing. Apple also is asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that ruling.
Outage reports have gone up and down on Downdetector today, and my feed occasionally hasn’t loaded. Bluesky says the issue, which it blamed on an upstream service provider, “appears” to have been fixed, but users have taken the problems as a chance to poke fun at unpopular comments from the Bluesky team about vibe coding.
Updates: Added Bluesky’s status updates.
According to the ruling, New Jersey regulators can’t ban Kalshi from allowing users in the state to bet on sporting events, as Reuters reports:
“A lower-court judge had sided with New York-based Kalshi and issued a preliminary injunction, prompting New Jersey to appeal. But a majority of the judges on the 3rd Circuit panel concluded the Commodity Exchange Act likely preempted state law.”
Meta will “eventually” offer open source versions of its new AI models Alexandr Wang is in charge of, but first, the company “wants to keep some pieces proprietary and to ensure they don’t add new levels of safety risk,” Axios reports.
The chip that was originally released 37 years ago in 1989 will no longer have kernel support on Linux 7.1, as Phoronix reports. Of course, anyone still hanging onto an i486 can always stick to a long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel version. Meanwhile, Microsoft no longer supports some CPUs from less than a decade ago.
The AI-powered compliance startup is no longer listed on YC’s directory after an anonymous report alleged Delve “fakes compliance” and leaked audit reports, as reported by TechCrunch. Delve responded by claiming a bad actor “maliciously exfiltrated data” as part of a “coordinated, targeted cyberattack.”
JerryRigEverything tore down LG’s unreleased rollable smartphone, and seeing the insides of this phone and how it works is just awesome. The teardown proper starts at about 4 minutes and 20 seconds.
A long, and at times funny, report in The New Yorker on Altman’s will to power, people-pleasing, and alleged pattern of deceit, compiled from notes, memos, and more than 100 interviews. Altman’s reputation has given rise to grimmer rumors – hiring sex workers, the sexual pursuit of minors, even involvement in murder – that The New Yorker found no evidence for. Increasingly, the question is not whether computers are intelligent but whether OpenAI’s leadership is.
[The New Yorker]
The head of the networking giant on energy, infrastructure, and why AI is writing Cisco code.
The channel, La7, reportedly used the DLSS 5 footage in a segment about the upscaling tech. It seemingly issued takedown requests for videos using the same clips, including the original trailer from Nvidia and videos from creators covering DLSS 5’s launch.
Steam’s hardware and software survey says Linux users more than doubled from 2.23 percent in February, jumping to a record high of 5.33 percent of Steam users. Linux has been steadily gaining popularity on Steam over the past several months, previously peaking at 3.58 percent in December.
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The app will no longer be available on devices with Android 12 or newer in July 2026, according to an update on Samsung’s website. Samsung is encouraging users to switch to Google Messages, which it began shipping as the default messaging app on flagship Galaxy devices in 2024.
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The explosion of AI search has created a gold rush for firms claiming they can change what gets cited.
It makes it easy to flood streaming with AI Beyoncé ripoffs.
It never once told me to walk into a river.
A two-seater electric pickup with no paint, no radio, no power windows, not even a dang cell connection — who is this for?
Enjoy this montage of 44 (by my count) Apple computers powering on, starting with a replica of the original Apple I from 1976 to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
After liftoff, there was an issue with Outlook running on the mission’s Surface Pro. That left some wondering why NASA was still using such old tech. Well, devices need to be tested and certified. To save money, they went with tech that was already approved. Then the launch date got pushed back… repeatedly. Check out this thread from NASA’s Jason Hutt for the full breakdown.
Human creators want an ‘AI-free’ label, but can’t agree which one.
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Meta has paused work with the company, Mercor (which The Verge has profiled), while OpenAI is investigating the security incident, Wired reports.
Did hell freeze over? Not quite: the driver belongs to Tiny Corp, not Nvidia, you’ll have to compile it with Docker rather than plug-and-play, and it’s designed for LLMs. But you no longer need to disable Apple’s System Integrity Protection (SIP), because Apple is letting that driver get signed, Tiny says.
Microsoft is testing a Windows 11 feature that would let users “feel haptic feedback effects on compatible input devices while performing certain actions, such as aligning objects in PowerPoint, window snapping, resizing, or hovering over the Close button,” according to the Windows Insider Blog. This could be really cool on a good trackpad.
[Windows Insider Blog]
The New York Times reports that Elon Musk is demanding that “banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers” working on the SpaceX IPO buy subscriptions to Grok, which is technically now under the SpaceX umbrella.
[The New York Times]
