Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images The Mojave Desert is not typically a place for a car race, but these were not your typical cars, and this was not your typical race. The course was 150 miles of rocks, loose dirt, and narrow switchbacks — harrowing terrain even for the most rugged vehicles. The obvious goal: be the first to cross the finish line without crashing, flipping over, or catching fire. The prize was $1 million.The participants looked straight out of Mad Max: military-grade Humvees, dune buggies, motorcycles, and a particularly gnarly-looking Acura SUV. No drivers with mohawks and shoulder pads, unfortunately. No drivers at all. This was the DARPA Grand Challenge — the world’s first robot car race. It was March 13th, 2004, a watershed moment in autonomous... Continue reading…

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge In fashion, it’s said that trends return every 20 years. But it seems technology has started to repeat itself at the same cadence, too. Can you identify what things happened in 2004, 2024, or in some cases, both?Microsoft loses its antitrust case in EuropeYear: 2004Two decades ago, the EU handed down a fine of over $600 million for not offering versions of Windows that did not come with Windows Media Player preinstalled. Microsoft still has antitrust problems in Europe at the moment, and last year, the EU attempted to block the company’s acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard. But Microsoft has paid no fines this year… so far.Motorola releases a new Razr phoneYear: BothThe very first Razr, called the Motorola Razr V3,... Continue reading…

Do you struggle to keep track of all your streaming services, online tools, and monthly memberships? You are not alone! In todays world, with dozens of digital subscriptions, its easy to lose sight of where your money is going. One minute you sign up for a free trial, and the next, you wonder why your credit card bill skyrocketed.

Generative AI is being shoved in our faces, and "AI" of the last two years differs greatly from "AI" of the time before it. Pre-OpenAI, AI was a buzzword for the most part that still carried meaning and still powered features we cared about. Your phone had AI that it could use for HDR photos, your laptop used basic AI to schedule tasks across processors, and your online algorithms like TikTok and YouTube used AI to determine what content to show you.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft has started selling a discless version of its Xbox Series X console today, in the same white paint job as the smaller Xbox Series S. The only change over the carbon black exterior of the original Xbox Series X is that this new white model doesn’t include a disc drive.There’s no option to add a disc drive to this white model either, so you’ll have to be confident you’re happy playing digital games or titles from Xbox Game Pass before purchasing this $449.99 variant. Microsoft hasn’t changed the rear ports either, so there’s two USB-A ports, a HDMI 2.1 port to connect to your TV or monitor, an Ethernet port, and the storage expansion slot at the rear of the console. At the front there’s a single USB-A port, alongside the pair... Continue reading…

Oura furthers its lead among smart rings with hardware and software refinements, but its subscription is still its biggest downside. Continue reading…

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge Flipping through your high school scrapbook is a humbling experience. There’s a lot to reckon with — including braces and bootcut jeans, in my case — and you get a sense of what kinds of moments you thought were worth preserving. Apparently, a great deal of funny things happened to my friends and me as we loafed around a suburban coffee shop avoiding homework. Looking through those pages, I can find plenty of documentation of life as we waited for our teammates to finish their tennis matches and turned the communal couch at Caribou Coffee into our own private rec room. But only a few pages later, the photos abruptly stop.This was all in 2003, my senior year of high school. (Please don’t do that math.) I carried around disposable cameras... Continue reading…

The DJI Air 3S. | Image: DJI The Air 3S is DJI’s new mid-range drone that builds upon the Air 3 in a few notable ways. These include better image quality, especially in low light, with nighttime obstacle avoidance to help ensure the drone returns home safely. That’s promising since the versatile (if boring) Air 3 already had great low-light performance when we reviewed it last year.“The DJI Air 3S takes our Air Series to new heights by offering professional features like dual primary cameras and omnidirectional obstacle sensing while retaining its light weight of just 724g for boundless freedom and flexibility,” said DJI Product Experience Director Ferdinand Wolf in a press release. “The Air 3S is the perfect all-rounder for travel photography — capturing all your... Continue reading…

Lenovo's lineup of ThinkPad laptops has largely stood the test of time. Laptops have changed a lot over the last few decades, but the ThinkPad brand has been a pinnacle of consistency for better or worse. From the famous (or infamous) trackpoint to the rugged and practical design language, it's easy to point out a Lenovo ThinkPad in the crowd. While I wouldn't recommend a great ThinkPad to everyone, the legacy of ThinkPads which were initially made by IBM but have been under Lenovo's stewardship for nearly two decades lives on in mainstream Lenovo laptops.

Before a podcast was a “podcast,” it was… well, it wasn’t really much of anything. A few of the early believers called them “audio blogs,” and the journalist often credited with coining the term “podcast” also offered “GuerillaMedia” as an alternative in the very same article. (And actually, there’s plenty of debate over exactly who coined the term and when. The history of the podcast is more contentious than you’d think.)It was in 2004, though, that many of the earliest names in on-demand audio began to smush “iPod” and “broadcast” into the word we’ve come to know as the way we all download and listen to shows now. In the 20 years since podcasts became a thing, they’ve changed dramatically — the earliest pods were mostly just dudes... Continue reading…

For a couple of years, there was nothing on the internet so simultaneously thrilling and terrifying as having your website hit the front page of Digg. Thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, would immediately come to your site — and there’s a good chance they’d crash it in the process. Hundreds of commenters would debate the merits of whatever you’d created or published, pick fights with you and each other about it, and make you feel like the internet’s main character. At least for a few minutes, until something bigger and newer and more controversial hit Digg.com and everyone moved on.In its early days, Digg was something like the homepage of the internet. Any user could submit a link, and then any other user could either promote... Continue reading…

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Is it possible for a phone to have “pretty privilege”? Mediocre features and functionality be damned, the original Motorola Razr V3 and its successors dominated the US cellphone market for four years following its 2004 release — up to and including the iPhone’s introduction in 2007 — seemingly on vibes and aesthetics alone. Not to glamorize consumerism or anything, but I miss it terribly.I was 11 years old when the Razr launched and probably among the first generation of kiddies that begged their parents to buy them a cellphone. We weren’t really the target demographic before that — cellphones had mostly been bulky, boring things primarily for working adults. SMS texting had just become something that everyone did day-to-day, and mobile... Continue reading…