Verge Archives

Those other states and cities that made outrageous bids for Amazon’s new headquarters? They may have dodged a boondoggle.

That and other deep thoughts on the state of the tech industry, this week on The Vergecast! We talked all about HBODiscoveryMaxPlus, Twitter’s fights with NPR and Substack, our many feelings about CarPlay, and the future of cloud gaming at Sony. And then more feelings about CarPlay.

There’s a reason why some parts of a city are literally hotter than others. We learn why that falls along racial and economic lines in Phoenix in Episode 2 of Hell or High Water, a new podcast I host from Vox Media and Audible.

Citing data from analytics firms, NYT says BeReal is facing a precipitous decline in downloads and users:

This Vanity Fair cover story on Rupert Murdoch and the heirs to his throne is a rich tale of power, scheming, and betrayal. You can easily imagine how all of the juicy drama could be wrapped into a compelling television show about thirsty children vying for control of a vast media empire.

The Atlantic has a fun little piece about “Martin:” a chess bot that’s designed to play poorly. Apparently it’s the most popular bot on Chess.com, powering “about 10 million games a week, the most of any bot on the site.”

As spotted by Slate, Twitter, Inc. has been folded into “X Corp.”

I’ve enjoyed a rare fortune of time and place in human history, which includes the distinctive growl of a flat-six performance engine. It was rad! It was also terrible.

I’m coming up on my 2-year anniversary of quitting Twitter, and, despite a (very) brief return during that period, I’ve been pretty successful in keeping it out of sight and mind.

The Vergecast is up for a Webby award this year, and I’ll be honest: I want to win it. We hope you think we’re the Best Technology Podcast, and if you do, head over to their website and vote for us!

I got got by a silly Aaron Rodgers-to-the-Jets April Fools’ joke by a local Wisconsin news website, but when I clicked the link there was just an explainer about why they expire their hoaxes at midnight. Clever!

Mozilla — creator of Firefox — is celebrating a quarter century of existence today. Check out their blog post noting the occasion for a walk down memory lane, all the way back to the days of Netscape.

The New York Times reports that TurboTax and other tax-filing companies are still trying to prevent the IRS from making its own free and easy electronic return system — a war TurboTax has been fighting for more than two decades.

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Remember Pebble? Exactly eight years ago, Pebble wrapped up its Pebble Time campaign on Kickstarter, raising just over $20 million for its latest smartwatch and setting a new crowdfunding record.

President Obama’s first FCC chief, Julius Genachowski, stepped down after a bruising years-long battle with ISPs over his 2010 net neutrality regulations. He then notably broke tradition by joining a private equity firm instead of immediately going to work for Comcast.

Here’s a screenshot of an email I got from Ticketmaster today, which refunds me $5 of fees per ticket for The Cure at Madison Square Garden. “This is all thanks to Robert Smith,” says the email. Read that in the tone that you’d like.

AP reports that Brazilian federal agents are fighting a new enemy: Starlink satellite internet service that is allegedly aiding illegal mining operations in the Amazon rainforest. Obviously illegal rainforest mining is bad, but this all smacks of the same aggro law enforcement angle against tech like encryption, which is a benefit to society and an incidental boon for some criminal activity.

Enter the Gungeon is my favorite roguelike of all time and this new cabinet version looks like such a clever take on the original game — one that evokes memories of playing Time Crisis at the movie theater growing up. The only downside? It’s about $5,643.94 more expensive than an Xbox. Who wants to pitch in?

Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab looks at Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country, which merged with the second-largest company in 2019. The two companies promised a lot, but in the end the deal resulted in a much smaller company with far fewer journalists:

AI and chatbots is the biggest trend in tech this year, but I’m starting to get déjà vu from when Facebook launched a bot platform for Messenger in 2016 and we thought we were going to start using chatbots for everything. Carrot Weather now has a ChatGPT-based chatbot, which reminds me of Poncho the “weathercat” bot I used back then. Here’s a throwback to our 2016 episode of What’s Tech all about the rise of bots that year.

The singer performed Wakanda Forever’s “Lift Me Up” which is nominated for Best Original Song tonight.

I’m trying out a new type of Quickpost today: a look back at the Verge archives for the given day in history. On March 10th, 2012, we were all talking about Turntable.fm with great hope, because the social music platform had signed a music deal. Turntable was one of our favorite platforms ever, and as you may know, it eventually shut down for good in 2014. It since relaunched with a couple competing versions, but it just isn’t the same anymore.

Tesla’s much-anticipated investor event this week didn’t wow much with new cars. Instead, Elon Musk got excited about heat pumps and talked about Tesla maybe making them one day. In case you’re wondering why, The Verge has an explainer on heat pumps and why they’re all the rage.

After many years, I’ve been rewatching the TNG-era Star Trek films recently, and something stood out to me in the first entry in the series: Star Trek: Generations.

Front Office Sports reports that Bezos is a finalist in talks to acquire the Washington Commanders: a sports team so frustrating that it made me personally quit NFL fandom and turn exclusively to ice hockey. Bezos’ ownership would probably be a marginal improvement on Dan Snyder’s tenure, who has been long-reviled by DC-area fans and who has plagued the region with his personal scandals.

We gathered this past Thursday at the gorgeous Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, NYC for our third Hot Pod event. I want to give a big thanks to everyone on the Verge team who made this happen, as well as our partners at Work x Work, which puts on Hot Pod Summit + On Air Fest each year. (I personally really loved the new experience at On Air Fest this year: The Podcast Experience.)

Technically, it can! You might already know how to use autopay for your bills, but you can also apply the same process to your savings and budgets. Plus, you can also set up alerts so you don’t have to worry so much about over drafting. Here’s how:

As we collectively emerge from the post-President’s Day haze, we’re expecting earnings results today from Coinbase.

Rarely has a US president made such a risky trek. The details of the journey are fascinating, and you can read more about it in this detailed report from The New York Times.

I’m glad that The Washington Post’s Editorial Board is recognizing the intimidation, harassment, and damage that has been done especially toward female journalists in our industry. But notably absent from this opinion is any institutional responsibility to defend colleagues and allies; instead, it blames Twitter for the abuses.

I love that Google Fiber is bringing 5-gig internet to... three cities. (I’m genuinely happy for the people of Kansas City, West Des Moines, and Salt Lake City.) Meanwhile, we can’t rely on the FCC, which has had an empty seat for more than a year because of a weird right-wing smear campaign against the extraordinarily qualified Biden nominee, Gigi Sohn.

AP reports that Comcast service is down in Philly — the cable company’s own backyard — during the most important night of the year for the Eagles. Go Birds?

The show, which joined our friends at the Vox Media Podcast Network last year, looks inside the process of how businesses get funding, speaking with entrepreneurs and investors to see how it’s really done. New episodes arrive every Wednesday.

Flappy Birdle is a sadistic experiment in word games. You will not survive. You will fail. Over and over again. It’s terrible. Good luck.

All eyes will be on Microsoft’s event at 1PM ET. We don’t have details on what to expect, but the stage is set for a 2023 battle of AI tech, with Microsoft vs. Google taking top billing, and this could just be the first round.

Elon Musk’s decision to use stainless steel for his long-delayed Cybertruck could push steel development forward, as one metallurgist told The New York Times. Or it could be a death trap for drivers and passengers alike.