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Anker’s Laptop Power Bank is one of the more useful gadgets I’ve bought in recent years. I know, it’s just a portable battery, but it’s packed with power and thoughtful features that are tough to find in other models. And right now, you can buy it for $95.99 ($24 off) — the best price of the year so far — at Amazon during its Big Spring Sale , from Walmart , and directly from Anker through the end of today.  Anker Laptop Power Bank Where to Buy: $119.99 $95.99 at Amazon $119.99 $95.99 at Anker $119.99 $95.99 at Walmart The 25,000mAh / 90Wh power bank features three USB-C ports and one USB-A port, and you can get up to 130W total output when using all four ports. If you’re only charging one USB-C device, this power bank can deliver up to 100W, which is enough to quickly charge the latest 14-inch M5-powered MacBook Pro . Plug in two USB-C devices, and it can go all the way up to a combined 165W.  As nice as the power is, Anker’s power bank really stands out th...

"I was hoping we were going to have a bigger crowd than this, especially with the nice weather and everything," Michael Maria told me. "I'm a little disappointed because the last march, I think there were about 10 times as many people at this time of day." At 11AM, the crowd at Portland's downtown waterfront appeared thinner than it had during the last No Kings protest in October. Some of this was to be expected. In the autumn of 2025, Portland had been at the center of the storm. President Donald Trump had called the city "war-ravaged." He had signed an executive order targeting " antifa ," and had attempted to send the National Guard into … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/xkUB9Ey

Starlink satellites being deployed. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX says it lost contact with a Starlink satellite after suffering an "anomaly." SpaceX isn't saying exactly what happened, but space-tracking company Leo Labs says it "immediately detected tens of objects in the vicinity" of Starlink 34343 after the event. "Latest analysis shows the event poses no new risk to the @Space_Station, its crew, or to the upcoming launch of NASA's Artemis II mission," says SpaceX in a message posted to X. "We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with @NASA and the @USSpaceForce." The satellite and fragments are expected to burn up in the atmosphere within a f … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/f3dhsR2

Rec Room, a Roblox-like social gaming platform that lets users create games and experiences for others to play, is shutting down on June 1st. Despite reaching more than 150 million players and creators and, at one point, being valued at $3.5 billion , the company says in a blog post that "we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business" and that "our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in." The company also notes that "with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we've made the difficult decision t … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/yIXjw1p

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is underway, so naturally, a lot of the deals are geared toward the season, including plenty of gadgets to help with spring cleaning. We’ve already rounded up a selection of great robot vacuum deals , but they’re just one part of a much broader swath of Verge -approved tools that can make tidying up a little easier. If you’ve been putting off small fixes around the house, now is as good a time as any to tackle them with an electric screwdriver like Hoto’s entry-level model . Meanwhile, if you’re looking to clean the dust that collects in your keyboard or along shelves, Fanttik’s electric air duster can clear it out in seconds. Then there’s Bissell’s Little Green Mini , which is great for cleaning up spills and pet stains on carpet. If you’re not interested in a high-end robot vacuum or an air purifier, rest assured that there are plenty of other useful items on sale through March 31st, from pet hair removers to reusable disclothes . Deebot X8 Pro Omni ...

There are so many great smart locks out there. But one of best models that iPhone owners should consider buying now is Aqara’s U400 , which offers hands-free unlocking when you get close enough. It has Apple’s U1 ultra-wideband chip integrated to authenticate you and unlock the door hands-free, so all that you have to do is open the door when you get home. This smart lock is discounted for the first time during the Big Spring Sale , costing $229.49 (originally $269.99) at Amazon . Aqara Smart Lock U400 Where to Buy: $269.99 at Aqara $269.99 $229.49 at Amazon As our reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy put it in her hands-on impressions with the U400 , hands-free unlocking isn’t new — but this is the most reliable implementation she’s tried yet. Apple’s Home Key relies on a mix of Bluetooth and UWB to connect and authenticate, and you don’t need an extra app. In addition to using Home Key, you can unlock the U400 with a code on its touchscreen keypad, through a registered fing...

"I'm pleased to report to you that Apple's back on track." It was May of 1998, and Steve Jobs was about 10 months into his second stint leading the company he'd cofounded more than two decades earlier. (It was also a bit more than a decade after that company forced him out.) Jobs took the stage at the annual Macworld conference in a white shirt and dark jacket, and told the audience the Apple team had been working harder than ever to finish up a new computer, one designed with the internet in mind. It was called iMac. "We think iMac's going to be a really big deal," he told the audience. He was right. When Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, h … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/jpAf1cu

People don’t like that they can’t identify AI music. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge AI has touched every part of the music industry, from sample sourcing and demo recording , to serving up digital liner notes and building playlists . There are technical and legal challenges, fierce ethical debates, and fears that the slop will simply crush working musicians through sheer volume. Is it art or just an output? What exactly is “ really active “? Whether it’s a new model or a new lawsuit, we’re covering it all to make sure you don’t miss any major developments. So follow along as we dig into the latest in AI “music.” Suno leans into customization with v5.5 The music industry has embraced a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about AI. North Carolina man pleads guilty to AI music streaming fraud. Apple Music adds optional labels for AI songs and visuals Qobuz is automatically detecting and labeling AI music now, too. This Chainsmokers-approved AI music producer is joining Googl...

The latest app from the team behind Bluesky is Attie, an AI assistant that lets you build your own algorithm . At the Atmosphere conference, Bluesky's former CEO, Jay Graber, and CTO Paul Frazee, unveiled Attie, which is powered by Anthropic's Claude and built on top of Bluesky's underlying AT Protocol (atproto). Attie allows users to create custom feeds using natural language. For example, you could ask for "posts about folklore, mythology, and traditional music, especially Celtic traditions." To start these custom feeds will be confined to a standalone Attie app. But the plan is to make them available in Bluesky and other atproto apps. … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/HECnIc1

Juliette Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne is an uncomfortable mystery. | Image: Nemesis Films Productions It's rare for a movie to get technology right. And it's even rarer for that movie to be a thriller or horror, where realism takes a backseat to scares and tension. But Red Rooms mostly gets it. Nothing takes me out of a film quicker than a tech MacGuffin that might as well be literal magic. Yes, the phrase " dark web " will always sound a bit silly, but at no point during its 118 minutes does the tech become a distraction. It's not the tech that makes Red Rooms great, though. It's just something that could have easily tanked an otherwise excellent movie. What carries the film is the expert tension building by director Pascal Plante. The perf … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/IG0HBgX

Apple's most legendary computer has two legacies: there's the computer itself, and there's the commercial. That commercial. Only a couple of days before Steve Jobs debuted the computer that would both help cement his legacy and contribute to his unceremonious exile from Apple, the company dropped a Super Bowl ad that is still one of the most iconic commercials of all time. It raised both the hype and the stakes for the Macintosh in a big way. The Macintosh wasn't a great computer, at least at first. It didn't have enough memory; there wasn't enough software that supported it; it wasn't customizable in the ways PC users needed at the time. I … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ntwmFVM

This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the legal travails of Big Tech, follow Adi Robertson . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started The year was 1998, and reigning personal computer giant Microsoft was on trial for violating antitrust laws, including by targeting its smaller competitor Apple. Apple occupied only a fraction of the PC market, while Microsoft held north of 80 percent. But its cross-platform QuickTime multimedia player threatened Microsoft's own offerings, and a court determined that Microsoft … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/aNie6BQ

Slop yourself. | Image: Suno Suno just released one of its biggest updates yet with v5.5 of its AI music model. Where previous updates focused mostly on improving fidelity and creating more natural vocals , v5.5 is about giving users more control. It includes three new features: Voices, My Taste, and Custom Models. In the release notes, Suno says that Voices is its most requested feature. It lets users train the vocal model on their own voice. They can upload clean accapellas, finished tracks with backing music, or just sing directly into the mic on their phone or laptop. The cleaner and higher quality the recording, the less data is required. And to prevent someone fro … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Ke4XmfN

The Trumpometer is just beginning to shift. | Image: The Verge / Shutterstock Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week . We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This week I think I've found an FCC listing for the phone, showing it's received certification to launch in the US. Last week I issued a reminder that Trump Mobile's T1 Phone does not exist, and may never exist, despite the fact that the company showed me a phone in an effort to convince me otherwise. Today instead I bring cause for optimism for the Trump phone believers: it appears to have been certified by the FCC. FCC listings for a smartphone with the trade name "T1" show that it was tested … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/7zsW3GB

If you’re constantly switching between working at home and on the go, Anker’s latest 160W Prime Charger can lighten your load by replacing multiple chargers with a single device. It’s normally $149.99, but right now you can buy it at both Amazon and Anker’s online storefront (with coupon code WS24MNV8G7 ) for $99.99 thanks to Amazon’s ongoing Big Spring Sale , which drops it to its lowest price to date. Anker Prime Charger (160W, 3 Ports, Smart Display) Where to Buy: $149.99 $99.99 at Amazon $149.99 $99.99 at Anker (with code WS24MNV8G7) Despite being roughly the size of an AirPods Pro 3 case, Anker’s newer charging gizmo is surprisingly powerful. It features a trio of USB-C ports, each capable of supplying up to 140W on its own, with a combined output of 160W across all three. Each port provides enough power to charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro to 50 percent in about 25 minutes, while simultaneously topping off two smaller devices, such as your phone or a pair of earbuds....

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale has delivered discounts on wearables like the latest Apple Watch SE 3 and Fitbit’s Charge 6 . But they’re not exactly cheap even though they’re on sale. If you want something under $100, the Fitbit Inspire 3 has returned to its all-time low price of $69.95 ($30 off) at Amazon , Best Buy , and Target . Fitbit Inspire 3 Where to Buy: $99.95 $69.95 at Amazon $99.95 $69.95 at Walmart $99.95 $69.95 at Best Buy The wearable nails the essentials, accurately tracking basic health and fitness metrics. It’s a fine choice if you only want to track steps, though it can go deeper,  offering features such as irregular heart rate alerts, sleep insights, and tools for managing stress. The tracker itself is lightweight and comfortable enough to wear while you sleep ( The Verge ’s Victoria Song sometimes forgot she was even wearing it). Details are easy to read on its bright OLED display, and the tracker can last up to ten days on a single charge. If you ...

Everything about video games is getting more expensive , and soon that will include a budget-friendly console. The Nex Playground - a Kinect-like device aimed at families that made headlines by outselling the Xbox over the holidays last year - will cost $299 starting on April 1st, a $50 bump. In a statement on the Nex Playground site , co-founder and CEO David Lee cited a number of familiar reasons for the higher price point: Over the past six months, the cost of key components - especially memory (DDR) and storage (eMMC) - has risen significantly across the industry. These increases are driven in part by the rapid expansion of AI infrastru … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/bm79vtJ

Less than a week into his tenure as Disney's newly-appointed CEO , Josh D'Amaro is already dealing with two separate crises that have cast a shadow over the company's future plans. OpenAI is shutting down its Sora image-generation program just months after Disney announced a $1 billion dollar collaboration to bake the tech into Disney Plus . And Fortnite maker Epic is laying off 1,000 employees at a time when we've heard basically nothing about the game studio's $1.5 billion investment deal with Disney to build a metaverse . Disney could still integrate generative AI into its streaming service, and we might end up seeing some version of the co … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/stIhOeS

Attendees wait in line outside the Situation Room by Polymarket pop-up bar in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 20, 2026. | Graeme Slona/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Hello and welcome to Regulator , a newsletter for Verge readers who are political junkies, and Washington insiders hooked on technology. If this email has been forwarded to you but you're not a subscriber, sign up here so you can get that pure, uncut Regulator every Wednesday, straight from the source (aka me). I was taking Friday off in Maine when two major pieces of tech news dropped: first, the White House released its framework for a comprehensive national AI bill with the intent of passing it through Congress. ( Hayden Field , our AI reporter, has a thorough analysis of it here .) Second (and clearly more important), Polymarket opened th … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/XuP3eHt

Apple's efforts to rebuild its Apple Intelligence AI platform will make its debut at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8th. A new version of Siri that transforms the voice assistant into a "systemwide AI agent with deep integration across applications" will be announced at WWDC 2026, according to a new report from Bloomberg 's Mark Gurman. The updated version of Siri will be more capable of controlling other apps and features of iOS and macOS and completing user-requested tasks using their personal data gathered from emails, messages, and notes. It will also be better at summarizing daily news from Apple News and will be able to pr … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/yi1Jj0P

iOS 26.4 is here, and it comes with a bunch of small but notable updates. That includes a new Playlist Playground launching in beta in Apple Music, which uses AI to generate a song playlist - complete with a title, description, and tracklist - based on a text prompt. Apple Music is also adding a new concert discovery feature, allowing you to find nearby shows featuring artists from your library, as well as new ones recommended by the app. Other updates include full-screen backgrounds for album and playlist pages, along with a new Offline Music Recognition tool that "identifies songs without an internet connection and delivers results automa … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/3U4kCOx

The Lego Game Boy is a joy to assemble and display. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Deals on the Lego Game Boy are virtually nonexistent, save for the $10 discount that  Costco and Sam’s Club  offered their members when the set launched late last year. The deal is back — this time, at Kohl’s — and no membership is required to get $10 off. You can purchase the Lego Game Boy and have it shipped (or elect to pick it up in-store) for $49.99 when you use promo code TOYS10 at checkout. Lego Game Boy Where to Buy: $59.95 at Amazon $59.99 at Lego $59.99 $49.99 at Kohls (with code TOYS10) The Lego Game Boy is a 421-piece homage to Nintendo’s influential handheld from 1989. And, unlike most Lego sets, there are various ways to interact with the brick-based Game Boy that might evoke some strong memories if you ever owned this model. It features clickable buttons, a movable floating directional pad, and a set of Lego car tires that act as the Start and Select butt...

The Kobo Libra Colour features physical page turning buttons. | Image: Rakuten Kobo Color isn’t essential in an e-reader, but let’s be honest, it’s a nice perk that can bring digital books, magazines, comics, cookbooks, and other publications to life. The catch is that color ebook readers tend to be substantially pricier, which makes today’s deals stand out. Right now, the Kindle Colorsoft (16GB) and Kobo Libra Colour are matching their lowest prices to date, with the Amazon e-reader going for $169.99 ($80 off) at Amazon and Best Buy , and the Libra Colour going for $199.99 ($30 off) via Rakuten’s online storefront . Kindle Colorsoft (16GB) Where to Buy: $249.99 $169.99 at Amazon $249.99 $169.99 at Best Buy $249.99 $169.99 at Target Kobo Libra Colour Where to Buy: $229.99 $199.99 at Rakuten Kobo $229.99 $209.99 at Target $229.99 $209.99 at Amazon At their core, both are excellent e-readers with 7-inch, 300ppi E Ink displays, which drop to 150ppi when vi...

Apple will soon bring advertisements to its Maps app on mobile and the web, according to a report from Bloomberg 's Mark Gurman . The ads, which Apple could reportedly announce this month before rolling them out in the summer, could allow businesses to pay for the highest spot in search results on Apple Maps. That means if one restaurant secures the winning bid for the word "sushi" or "pizza," its location could receive priority in search results over other relevant businesses, as reported by Bloomberg . The setup is similar to how advertising works on Google Maps, which also allows businesses to pay for a higher rank on search results. The m … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/FxzkKHL

Govee has announced a new set of outdoor string lights that allows for more color customization than competitors' products , as well as the company's existing color-changing set . Similar to its Outdoor UpDown Wall Light introduced in July 2025 , Govee's new Outdoor Chromatic String Lights don't limit you to just one color per bulb. You can customize each individual one with multiple colors, gradients, and animated effects. Available starting today through Govee's online store and Amazon, the Outdoor Chromatic String Lights are available in two lengths: a 32-foot option with 10 bulbs for $169.99 and a 65-foot version with 20 bulbs for $299.99. … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/nQD7iZg

The Galaxy S26 series like these Ultra models pictured will be the first Samsung devices to support the AirDrop sharing feature. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung is bringing AirDrop support to the Quick Share feature on Galaxy devices, starting with the S26 series. The new AirDrop feature will begin rolling out in Korea starting today, according to Samsung , with US devices seeing the option sometime later this week. It will arrive in more regions and on more Galaxy devices "at a later date," including the rest of North America, Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. This update will allow Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra owners to effortlessly share files with Apple devices over a fast wireless connection. With this, Samsung is now the second Android smartph … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/E4aUR2u