Why Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is the internet’s unlikely defender Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: CloudflareWhat free speech, war zones, and Aristotle have to do with internet infrastructure. Continue reading…

Welcome to the wasteland: all the news on Amazon’s Fallout TV series Image: AmazonEverything you need to know about the upcoming streaming show. Continue reading…

A farewell to Wii U and Nintendo 3DS online services Image: The VergeNintendo is officially closing the chapter on the Wii U and 3DS. Today is the final day to play online on either console, and it’s kind of making me want to dust off the Wii U just to play the original Splatoon online one last time. The Wii U was far from Nintendo’s most popular console, but I still have a lot of great memories w…

I can’t recommend this Animal Crossing Switch Lite bundle enough Image: NintendoThe release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons couldn’t have been better timed, very specifically for me. The Christmas before, my partner bought me a Switch, and for about a decade before that, the only console I’d owned was a modded Wii because I’d sold the roughly two dozen systems I’d collected in an effort to reset my relations…

Spotify’s latest AI feature builds playlists based on text descriptions Spotify says it will continue working on its generative playlist feature “over the coming months.” | Image: Spotify / VergeAfter experimenting with AI playlist generation in its DJ feature last year, Spotify is now launching a beta tool that allows users to create a curated tracklist based on text descriptions. Its new AI Playlist beta is initia…

Unlock Donghua Jinlong’s food grade glycine Donghua Jinlong’s factory. | Image: Donghua Jinlong Chemical Co.TikTok isn’t just useful for videos on robotic tape storage, Radiohead songs on step motors, and regretful congressmen. It’s also a place where businesses can go viral by marketing their industrial products. Because of that, I now know that a company called Donghua Jinlong Chemical…

Who is Apple’s rumored OLED iPad Pro for? Image: Wes Davis / The VergeEarlier this year, there were enough rumors about imminent new Apple products to make for a big spring event, but the company instead announced its new M3 MacBook Airs via press release — and new iPads haven’t shown up since. Today, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that the big spring iPad u…

AI is taking over your web browser Image: The VergeHi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 33, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been writing about the end of Google Podcasts and the rise of AI gadgets, watching Girls…

New Disney animatronics breathe convincing life into its 2D characters This massive, chonky Louis animatronic has almost as much range of movement as I do. | Image: DisneyNo matter your opinion on the current state of its animated movies, Disney is proving that it can still knock animatronics out of the park. This week, the entertainment giant gave us another early look at the new audio-animatronics being prepared …

Google is working on a ‘lookup’ button for unknown callers on Android Illustration: The VergeGoogle is working on a feature that is so simple and so useful that I’m shocked it hasn’t been part of our lives for a decade: a way to look up a phone number that just called you, right from your recent calls screen. X user AssembleDebug tipped off PiunikaWeb to a new “Lookup” button in the beta version of the Google Phon…

OpenAI transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4 Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty ImagesEarlier this week, The Wall Street journal reported that AI companies were running into a wall when it comes to gathering high-quality training data. Today, The New York Times detailed some of the ways companies have dealt with this. Unsurprisingly, it involves doing things that fall into the h…

iPhone emulators are allowed now so here are some great iOS controllers It’s time, friends. | Photo by Alix Diaconis / The VergeYesterday afternoon, I was playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong on my Vision Pro (using the visionOS testflight version of app developer Riley Testut’s GBA4iOS) with an official Nintendo NES controller for the Switch. All the while, I was thinking about what a shame it was that Apple doesn’t allow…

Google’s Pixel Buds Pro are $60 off in all colors — including the newest shades Google’s first pair of noise-canceling earbuds are currently down to $139.99 in blue, white, and four other attractive shades. | Image: GoogleHappy Saturday, folks! Ever since they arrived on the scene in mid-2022, we’ve considered Google’s noise-canceling Pixel Buds Pro to be the wireless earbuds for Pixel phone owners — partly because of their…

Rooms is a delightful escape C’mon, how cute is this? | Image: Things Inc.The similarities between Rooms — a simple, charming game for iOS and the web where you design rooms — and Minecraft are easy to spot. Both share a blocky visual style and a design-your-own-retreat objective. But describing Rooms as a scaled-down Minecraft for people over the age of 12 doesn’t give it …

The PlayStation Vita still rules Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeThe entire time I was playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth — the second part of a planned trilogy of FF7 remakes — I couldn’t stop thinking about replaying the first game from 1997. When the credits rolled on Rebirth, I had a difficult decision to make: how to play the original? There is no shortage of options. The …

Best Buy Geek Squad employees report mass layoffs Former employees of Best Buy’s in-house tech support and repair team Geek Squad say there were mass layoffs this week, 404 Media reports. A former Geek Squad agent tells the outlet that they received an email on Tuesday about a work from home event the following day regarding a “company change.” “Our leadership gave individual calls stating we …

Instagram makes more money from ads than YouTube does, and it has for years Image: Kristen Radtke / The VergeIn a motion Meta filed on Friday to try and get the FTC’s monopoly claims dismissed, it includes details of how much advertising revenue Instagram brought in over the last few years. At $32.4 billion for 2021 alone, that’s even more than YouTube, which pulled in $28.8 billion in the same year. Business Insider pr…

Here’s Apple’s 916-page appeal over the Apple Watch ban Apple’s not too happy that Masimo’s W1 watch didn’t exist when Masimo filed its complaint. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeThere was no question that Apple would appeal when the International Trade Commission banned Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales last year. Well, if you’ve got some time, you can now read all 916 pages of App…

Apple opens the App Store to retro game emulators Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeApple is loosening its App Store restrictions and opening the marketplace up to retro game emulators. In an update on Friday, Apple announced that game emulators can come to the App Store globally and offer downloadable games. Apple says those games must comply with “all applicable laws,” though — an indica…

Anker’s folding Qi2 charger and other power banks are up to 30 percent off Anker’s latest offering even doubles as a StandBy-ready stand. | Image: AnkerThe list of Qi2 smartphones expanded ever so slightly this week, with the iPhone 12 joining the ranks of Qi2-certified phones thanks to a recent update. That means we can safely say that all MagSafe-compatible iPhones — including the iPhone 13, 14, and 15 — are official…