The Verge News

If you want an idea of what’s next in film, the Toronto International Film Festival is a good place to start. Every year TIFF features a huge range of features from around the world, and often some of them go on to be huge hits or awards contenders; the 2025 edition, for instance, included the likes of both Hamnet and Obsession. Covering a sprawling festival like TIFF solo is next to impossible, so I do my best to see as much as I can, and then write about everything with bite-sized reviews published each day. For 2026, that means exciting upcoming films like Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and a gigantic Elon Musk documentar…

Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gate on Monday, which brings the new Siri AI assistant, Liquid Glass improvements, improved performance, and more. The update is compatible with all Macs with Apple Silicon, but not Intel Macs - Apple released its final big update for Intel-based Macs last year with macOS Tahoe. Siri AI is arguably the biggest feature in macOS 27, and it allows you to ask questions, search through things involving your personal context like photos and emails, and take actions in apps such as Messages and Reminders. There's a new dedicated Siri app that keeps an archive of your chats for easier reference. However, Siri AI will … Read the full story at The …

Apple is now rolling out its iOS 27 update to compatible devices today, alongside the watchOS 27, iPadOS 27, and visionOS 27 updates. Siri AI is the headline feature across all four updates, the delayed AI-powered overhaul of the Siri assistant. Siri AI is available as a beta today for English-only devices, and Apple says support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish is coming in October. Siri AI isn't the only big feature in iOS 27, though. Apple is adding a new Liquid Glass opacity slider that lets you pick between a clearer UI or a more frosty one. A lot of built-in apps are also getting new icon designs, with subtle twea … Read the full story at The …

Valve is finally releasing its Steam Frame headset, which can run both flat and VR games locally and stream both kinds of games from your PC. The Steam Frame will start at $1,059. Valve will also offer a 1TB model that starts at $1,299. Every Steam Frame will come with a copy of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's made-for-VR entry in the Half-Life franchise, and Valve has ported the game to run natively on the headset as well as via streaming. Here are the prices for the Frame across several different currencies for the two configurations: Steam Frame 256GB: $1,059 / $1,529 CAD / €1,049 / £889 / $1,609 AUD / 4,539 zlotys Steam Frame 1TB: $1,29 … Read the full story at The Verg…

Hey! I'm Sean Hollister, you might have seen me around this place a few times, and I just spent three weeks beta-testing the Steam Frame, Valve's hotly anticipated new don't-call-it-a-VR-headset that might also be an early glimpse at the future of games that run everywhere. At 4PM ET today (that's 1PM PT for West Coasters like me!), I will answer as many of your questions as humanly possible about this headset, its controllers, its ergonomic accessories kit, and the Arcturus Vision Camera. If you want me to test something special for you, get your question in ASAP - I'll see if I can try it between now and then! While you wait, here are s … Read the full story at The …

For nearly three weeks, I've been testing the limits of Valve's Steam Frame, the company's new wearable PC. At first glance, it's easy to write it off as a pricey headset that missed the VR craze. At $1,059 with 256GB of storage or $1,299 for 1TB, it costs two to three times as much as similar-looking headsets from Meta. You should not write it off that way. The Steam Frame isn't just a VR headset. It's not even primarily a VR headset. And it's the most comfortable headset I've ever worn. It weighs just over 1 pound (469g) with its optional top head strap attached, and doesn't leave a mark on my face even after hours of use. The Steam Fram … Read the full story at The …

Dell's last XPS 13 was meant to be a farewell before the company sunset the entire XPS brand. But it was a bitter ending, and an overpriced one as well. Earlier this year, Dell resurrected the XPS name with the excellent (and very expensive) XPS 14 and 16. And now, it's reinvented the XPS 13 as a much more affordable thin-and-light to take on the MacBook Neo. Call it another comeback. The 2026 XPS 13 has the nicest hardware you'll find in a new $700 laptop outside of Apple's Neo. The core components - the screen, keyboard, trackpad, and speakers - are all great or excellent. It's an exquisite package in a sleek and very thin ultra-portable. … Read the full story at Th…

Netflix has announced three new adaptations of Sega games: a Crazy Taxi film, a Sonic animated series "built for kids who want to feel a little edge," and a live-action movie based on the upcoming Stranger Than Heaven from Yakuza developer RGG Studio. The Crazy Taxi movie will be the first project released, though it doesn't have a debut date yet. Netflix also already has three seasons of a Sonic show called Sonic Prime. Here's Netflix's descriptions of the upcoming adaptations: Crazy Taxi: Since its 1999 arcade debut, Crazy Taxi has put players behind the wheel of a fearless cabbie racing the clock through chaotic city streets - flying … Read the full story at The …

Today, Valve is launching its first headset since 2019 - the new Steam Frame - while dodging our questions about whether it'll ever make another VR game to go with it. But buyers of the $1,059 gadget will get one flagship VR game anyhow, and it's great. Every Steam Frame comes with a copy of 2020's Half-Life: Alyx, one of the best VR games yet made and a good game, period, and you won't even need a desktop PC - because Valve has ported the entire game to ARM64 so it can run natively on the Frame's Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 3 chip. That's no mean feat: This was a game that required a VR-ready Windows desktop or laptop with a midrange graphic … Read the full story at The …

No, that's not a Tesla Cybercab. That's Volkswagen's Mission Efficiency, the world's slipperiest electric vehicle. The near-production 2+2 seat electric coupe prototype was built on VW's MEB+ platform, incorporating front-wheel drive components from the upcoming ID. Polo and ID. Cross models. True to its name, the mission of Mission Efficiency is to break records. With a drag coefficient of a scant 0.158, the prototype claims to be the world's most aerodynamic road-approved vehicle. It also claims to have broken the record for energy efficiency, consuming 6.48kWh of energy per 100 kilometers during a constant-speed (68 km/h) test-drive on f … Read the full story at The …

Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro will release this Friday, September 18th, and it’s tough to see it as just a coincidence that Google’s latest Pixel phones are discounted. The Pixel 11 Pro carries the biggest discount, with its fog, olive, and obsidian color schemes selling for around $1,007 at Amazon, almost negating this year’s $100 price increase for the starter configuration despite having twice the storage (256GB). The standard Pixel 11 is cheaper, too, selling for about $840 at Amazon, $60 off its starting price. It’s nice to see the price come down, making it a little less pricey to get access to Google’s Pixel 11-exclusive features, including Camera Looks and Magic Capture…

Today, I’m joined by comedian, podcast host, and YouTuber Adam Conover. Adam is a familiar face to anyone who’s spent time on the internet. He got his start, like so many successful comedy writers, at CollegeHumor back in the day. That was before transitioning into cable TV with Adam Ruins Everything, then onto Netflix, and all the way back to YouTube again, where he posts videos and hosts a podcast called Factually! That is exactly the kind of career path that fascinates me, and it also happens to touch on basically every major Decoder theme there is. You’ll hear upfront that Adam does not in fact like the word “creator” — he’s got a unique perspective on it that spe…

It makes sense that Musk is a long film. The latest from Alex Gibney, who has previously directed documentaries about Theranos and Steve Jobs, is an impressively thorough retelling of the story of Elon Musk, from his early days as a dot-com millionaire to "taking a wood chipper" to vital US government departments. In order to understand Musk's rise to power, you need to know the whole story. Musk tells it compellingly and convincingly, but doesn't offer much in the way of revelations if you're aware of Musk's catastrophic influence on the world. For everyone else, a demanding runtime just shy of four hours might prove too much of a barrier t … Read the full story at The …

Microsoft is publishing a 37-page "humanist AI code of conduct" today, amid growing safety concerns over AI model progress. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a coordinated slow down of AI development over the weekend, after researchers warned recently that AI model progress could outpace our ability to safely deploy increasingly complex systems and verify and control the actions of AI agents. Microsoft's AI code of conduct makes it clear that "people matter more than AI," and that AI models are not conscious and "should not be designed to imitate consciousness." Microsoft also rejects "the pursuit of legal personhood, or the idea that m … Read the full story at The …

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter saying it was time to "pace the frontier" and slow down AI development. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet's Demis Hassabis offered tentative support for Amodei's proposal. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, seem to think the AI executives are being overreactive and fear that a pause could lead to China outpacing the US in the AI race. According to the Financial Times, Trump said "Look, we're leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins." Jo … Read the full story at The …

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is developing two game controllers for the iPhone and will likely sell them under the Beats brand. Rumors that Apple might enter the game controller business have circulated for some time. But last week, MacRumors reported finding two references in macOS 26.7's code to two game controllers identified as first-party devices. Despite the code being found in macOS, not iOS, Gurman says the controllers are designed for iPhones. Additionally, he says that it is Beats executives leading the charge on this product. Apple sometimes uses its subsidiary brand to experiment with new product categories and compete at … Read the full story at The …

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there's no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things - punk rock and synthesizers. The site was down that day (it appears to be back up now), but I was able to access a version from July through the Wayback Machine. What greeted me was a bare-bones site with links for six bands, including The Screamers. But at the top was The Units, a band I'd never heard of and, after tracking down their 1980 record D … Read the full story at The …

From Florida to Washington state, local governments across the country are canceling their contracts with Flock, the company behind the controversial AI-enabled license plate readers, in response to public outcry. But ending the contracts doesn't necessarily mean the cameras will come down immediately - or that the information they've gathered will be deleted anytime soon. Even as state and local governments decide to rein in their surveillance capabilities, uncertainty remains about what Flock can and will do with data that has already been collected. Each jurisdiction's contract is different, but many of them let Flock retain data long af … Read the full story at The …

Two people were arrested in San Fransico while riding around in a Waymo robotaxi after the cab pulled over and called the cops on them. The riders were juveniles in possession of a loaded AR-style ghost gun and were taken to a juvenile hall. While the police report did not specify who was operating the autonomous car, Waymo later confirmed it was one of its vehicles to the Los Angeles Times. A spokesperson told the LA Times that a "violation of our terms of service involving a firearm" was detected. At which point the car pulled over and alerted the authorities. Earlier this year, a Waymo faked having mechanical problems to pull over when … Read the full story at The …

Marvel's mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio's biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous re … Read the full story at The …

In May, hundreds of malicious and spam packages were uploaded to RubyGems, causing a serious disruption for the host. Now independent researchers have said that a swarm of OpenAI agents were responsible for the attack. Not only that, but the AI tried to steal users' API keys. At the time, RubyGems described it as a "major malicious attack" and shut down signups for four days as it tried to mitigate the damage and collect data. Researchers said that the contents of the packages that brought RubyGems to its knees were clearly authored by an LLM, and that the agents submitting those packages self-identified as being from OpenAI. They said the … Read the full story at The …

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that there would be no OpenAI IPO in 2026 during an interview with Fortune. Over the course of 45 minutes, Altman discussed a variety of subjects including the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improvement, and the possibility of building an AI that was beyond human control. On the latter, he said it was "absolutely" possible, but vowed to take actions to prevent that from happening, even if it meant pausing training, adding that "there are risks we should not be able to incur on behalf of humanity." "We're not rushing into an IPO. I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, th … Read the full story at The …

Blizzard originally tried to bring the StarCraft universe to the world of 3D shooters way back in 2002 with StarCraft: Ghost. It sat in development hell for years until Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that it had been canceled in 2014. Now Blizzard is giving it another go with the simply titled StarCraft. Dan Hay, a VP at Blizzard, took the stage at BlizzCon today to reveal that after more than a decade of lying dormant, StarCraft would be returning in 2030. But, rather than another top-down real-time strategy installment, the new title would be an open-world shooter. He then showed off a cinematic trailer for the title that fo … Read the full story at The …

Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, better known as Sylvan Esso, have been bringing their low-key electro-pop to the masses since 2014, bursting onto the scene with their self-titled debut album and the single "Hey Mami." Over the years, they've put out a number of excellent records, dabbling in dustier, more fragile textures on Free Love, going dancier and glitchier on No Rules Sandy. The two are constantly pushing at the edges of their sound while retaining the core of what makes a Sylvan Esso record sound like a Sylvan Esso record. Their new album Ow ∞, released this past Friday, represents perhaps the boldest reinvention of their sound, how … Read the full story at The …

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the time has come to slow down AI development and will give third-party evaluators like METR access to its models to help ensure its "adherence to safety practices and commitments." In a winding essay, Amodei proposed a three-step plan to "pace the frontier" - jargon that simply means to slow the pace of training and development to give companies time to build safeguards and regulators to evaluate models. Amodei says that giving external evaluators wide-ranging access is just the first step, and one it is taking now unilaterally. Step two would involve the industry coming together as a whole, likely with gove … Read the full story at The …