Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Decades before we got married and started a family, my partner and I connected over a little Boxer pup named Charlie. We tossed a ball around, scrubbed him down when he got dirty, and took him for daily walks. It was a bonding experience — mediated entirely through the original Nintendo DS’s touchscreen. The tactile experience turned an otherwise simple game like Nintendogs, where the goal is to take care of virtual pets, into something that created a deep emotional connection. And years before smartphones were in everyone’s pockets, it helped show a generation of gamers just what’s possible with a touchscreen.Now, we mostly take them for granted, but prior to the arrival of the first DS in 2004, the idea of a touchscreen was, for many... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia. / The Verge Between the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra 2, and the second-gen SE, there are more options than ever. We’ll help you sort through them. Continue reading…

Project Know How builds on Adobe’s work with Content Credentials. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of Adobe’s most notable experiments this year could help combat misinformation and ensure artists are credited for their work, no matter where it appears online or offline. Announced during the Sneaks segment at Adobe Max, Project “Know How’ is an in-development tool that can link ownership of an image or video across any online platform, and a multitude of real-world surfaces like posters, tumblers, and textiles.Project Know How builds on Adobe’s Content Credentials tech, which applies a digital tag to track where a piece of content has been posted, who owns it, and if/how it’s been manipulated. Providing an image or video has Content Credentials applied, the tool can help creators establish ownership over their content even if... Continue reading…

The Mac menu bar serves as the command center for managing my digital life. The default menu bar items leave a lot to be desired, though. And here is where third-party apps come into play. Over time, I have curated a collection of tools that quietly work in the background to keep me organized and efficient. From seamless file syncing and secure password management, to monitoring system performance, here are the nine marvels that have earned a permanent spot on my Mac menu bar.

DJI tells The Verge that it currently cannot freely import all of its drones into the United States — and that its latest consumer drone, the Air 3S, won’t currently be sold at retail as a result. “A customs-related issue is hindering DJI’s ability to import select drones into the United States.”That’s not because the United States has suddenly banned DJI drones — rather, DJI believes the import restrictions are “part of a broader initiative by the Department of Homeland Security to scrutinize the origins of products, particularly in the case of Chinese-made drones,” according to DJI.DJI recently sent a letter to distributors with one possible reason why DHS is stopping some of its drones: the company says US Customs and Border... Continue reading…

The keyboard is an important component of the PC or laptop; without it, using Windows is impractical. But do you know this essential tool can infiltrate your privacy and can potentially lead to hacking and other cyber threats? The possibility of a keyboard spying on you seems like a sci-fi concept, but in reality, there is spyware known as a keylogger that, if used with ill intent, can track your keystrokes and take note of everything you type, including passwords, banking information, private messages, and other sensitive information.

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images Google has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the imminent changes required from Judge James Donato’s recent ruling in Epic v. Google. The company already asked Judge Donato to do the same, but it’s not waiting till Friday to find out if the judge who vowed to “tear the barriers down” will let Google press pause on his ruling.The ruling, which Google has appealed, would force Google to distribute third-party app stores within Google Play, no longer require Google Play Billing for apps distributed via Google Play, and more, with many of those changes ordered to begin on November 1st — just over two weeks from today. But echoing many of Google’s arguments during the district court case, which Judge Donato rejected as... Continue reading…

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge In February 2004, a 19-year-old, flip-flop-wearing Mark Zuckerberg released an online directory of Harvard students. In those days, the internet still felt small. It was mostly about finding webpages, not people.It turned out that the internet was very good for connecting people. More than 1,000 Harvard students signed up for TheFacebook.com in the first 24 hours. The site started spreading quickly by word of mouth around campus. By the end of 2004, dozens of other colleges were on Facebook. The site had 1 million monthly users. Myspace’s user base was about five times larger, though not for long.Social media predated Facebook, but nothing had captured the magic of what Zuckerberg and his classmates hacked together. The 2004 version of... Continue reading…

Powerline adapters have long been seen as a solution to increasing your network range at home, and to an extent, it does work. It especially works when your only alternative is to trail Ethernet cables everywhere, which can be a problem for renters. However, mesh networks and Wi-Fi networks are much more capable than they used to be, which in turn makes it so that there are even fewer use cases for powerline adapters than there once were. However, using them might actually be detrimental to your connection, and there are a few things you should know about them before you consider them for your home.

With its powerful suite of features, Adobe Photoshop has been the industry standard for a long time. That said, its not the only player in the game. There is no shortage of Photoshop alternatives out there. Among them, GIMP, the free and open-source alternative, has been steadily gaining ground among creatives, offering a compelling set of flexibilities and features that even Photoshop can't match.

Illustration by The Verge | Photo by Tom Williams via Getty Images Meta has begun laying off employees across various departments, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, according to people familiar with the matter. Rather than a mass, companywide layoff, these smaller cuts seem to coincide with reorganizations of specific teams.Some Meta employees have started posting that they’ve been laid off. Among them is Jane Manchun Wong, who gained notoriety for reporting on unannounced features coming to apps before joining the Threads team in 2023.The Verge asked Meta to confirm the layoffs and will update this story if we receive a statement. This new round of layoffs follows a small series of job cuts in the company’s Reality Labs division earlier this year. Meta first laid off 11,000... Continue reading…

Virtual machines and containers are perfect for those who enjoy experimenting with different operating systems and self-hosting services on local hardware. While you could run VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Pro/Fusion Pro on your daily driver, bare metal hypervisors are better for advanced virtualization workloads.