The Mondo Robotics Beni. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge What if you had a drone that wasn't a buzzy, annoying fly people wanted to swat - but rather a cute dog that runs and jumps? What if it could do tricks on command and film your tricks as well? What if it could get right back up after a nasty-looking crash, dozens of times in a row?The first time I saw Beni on Instagram, I immediately thought it was AI video slop. Surely consumer robots aren't that smart and agile in 2026? Then I took the real robot for a spin. Truth is, Beni does need work. But my first two-hour demo was so much fun, I badly want one for myself. @verge Beni seemed too good to be true: a two-legged robot companion that …Read the full story at The Verge.

For more than a decade, one question has loomed over the race to build autonomous vehicles: Are cameras alone enough to safely replace human drivers, or do truly driverless cars need additional, overlapping sensors like lidar and radar to navigate the world reliably? Tesla has bet billions of dollars that artificial intelligence and cameras are sufficient. Nearly every other major autonomous vehicle developer has gone the opposite direction.Until now, that argument has largely been left to executives and engineers. New Jersey lawmakers are trying to settle it in state law.A bill expected to come up for a vote later this year would requir …Read the full story at The Verge.

A little robotic switch-flipper has become my sidekick in combating cockroaches. Before I got the SwitchBot Bot Rechargeable, I'd tiptoe through the dark every morning, hoping I wouldn't step on one of those terrible bugs scurrying around as I made my way to the light switch across the room. Now I'm ready for battle before I even enter the room because I can switch it on from afar, thanks to the $33.99 SwitchBot Bot Rechargeable. The small gadget attaches via adhesive near a switch or button and uses its tiny robotic arm to physically press or pull it for you. You can automate anything with physical power buttons, from coffee makers, light …Read the full story at The Verge.

For the last couple weeks, I've been in an extremely lucky position: I've been spending a lot of time playing games on Valve's Steam Machine. We gave the Steam Machine a 6, and I don't disagree with my colleague Sean Hollister's review. But even though I already own a PS5 and an Xbox Series X, and even though I've experienced the Steam Machine's drawbacks for myself, I would spend the $1,049 to buy one right now. My PS5 and Xbox Series X can't play the hundreds of games in my growing Steam library, don't support Steam's cloud saves that let me seamlessly carry progress between my Steam Deck and Steam Machine, don't support my beloved Ste …Read the full story at The Verge.

Every AI assistant wants to read your email now. Gemini can summarize your Gmail, Copilot can draft replies in Outlook, and Apple Intelligence can surface what it thinks is important. And almost universally, to do any of this, they have to have complete access to your entire inbox. And that means all of it. Even if you want to incorporate an external cloud-based LLM with your email, you likely need to give it OAuth access to your account, so it can access everything as well.

Smart filament loading is one of those features that sounds minor until you get used to it. When a printer or material system can recognize the spool, pull in the color, identify the material, and save you from poking through setup menus, it feels genuinely useful. I’m not going to pretend typing “PETG, black, generic” into a slicer is some terrible hardship. But once you’ve seen how convenient automatic filament recognition can be, going back to manual profile checks feels more annoying than it should. When I'm loading filament into the AMS 2 Pro for my Bambu X2D, it really shouldn't matter whether I'm using Bambu's, Elegoo's, or Creality's RFID-tagged filament.

The Google Pixel 10 lineup. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Google's upcoming Pixel lineup might cost more than last year's. A report from Dealabs spotted by 9to5Google suggests that Google could raise the starting price of its 41mm Pixel Watch 5 to $399, while adding LTE could bump the price to $499.That's a $50 jump from the base Pixel Watch 4, which starts at $349 for Wi-Fi and $449 for LTE. Meanwhile, the larger 45mm Pixel Watch 5 is rumored to cost $429 with Wi-Fi only, or $529 with LTE, marking a $30 increase from the previous generation.A separate report from Dealabs details the potential European pricing for the Pixel 11. The report suggests that Google could drop the lowest 128GB storage …Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI is overhauling ChatGPT's voice mode with a new model that it says is more like "talking to another person." The new GPT-Live-1 is designed to interrupt you less and will also wait for you to continue speaking if you pause mid-conversation.During a press briefing, OpenAI research lead Kundan Kumar called GPT-Live-1 the company's "smartest voice model" yet. It will automatically pass your queries to its best text models, like GPT-5.5, when it needs to reason or search the web, allowing it to more quickly transition from researching the topic you've asked about to talking about its findings. The upgraded model will also supplement conv …Read the full story at The Verge.

This week, Microsoft took a huge ax to its Xbox business. The company announced that it would be laying off 1,600 workers now, 1,600 more over the next fiscal year, and that it would be shedding four studios. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma hasn't been shy about why she's making such dramatic cuts, saying in a memo that the business is "not healthy." Speaking to Fortune, she said that "we simply spread ourselves too thin."Given the scale of the changes and Xbox's currently vague strategy of focusing only on big games, it's unclear just what the future of the platform is. As Microsoft invests much of its resources into everything AI, a struggling cons …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have tested enough coding agents to know they can usually build a decent demo when the scope is small. But with Google Antigravity 2.0, I wanted to try something more ambitious than a basic to-do app or another URL shortener.

Twelve South’s AirFly Pro is just $5 more than the SE model. | Image: Twelve South If you’ve got a summer trip coming up, the last-gen Twelve South AirFly Pro is one of those gadgets that can make a long flight feel a little shorter. It lets you use your wireless headphones with in-flight entertainment systems, and right now it’s on sale for $39.99 ($15 off) at Amazon. That’s the best price we’ve seen all year and just $7 shy of the all-time low we last saw in January 2025.Twelve South AirFly ProWhere to Buy: $54.99 $39.99 at AmazonFor just $5 more than the AirFly SE, the Pro adds a handful of useful extras, one of which is support for both Bluetooth transmitter and receiver modes. That means you can use your wireless headphones with an airplane’s entertainment system during a flight, then stream music from your phone to compatible wired speakers and sound systems once you’ve landed. Unlike the SE, it also supports two pairs of Bluetooth headphones at once, so you can share a movie or podcast with a travel companion. Plus, its 25 hour battery life should be enough to last through even the longest international flights.The AirFly Pro is useful in other ways, too. During your vacation, you can use it to connect your preferred music streaming service to an older rental car stereo, or your ear buds to a Nintendo Switch. Once you’re back home, it can also connect your wireless headphones to compatible gym equipment and other devices with a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

For years, a lot of my networking understanding came from my router's web app. It told me which devices were connected, how much bandwidth was used, and most importantly to me, if the internet was up, and I thought that was all there was to it, especially before my formal education. My network switch that I bought to do nothing but fill a hole managed to teach me a lot, and it costs about as much as takeout. It forced me to consider how the network was actually configured, and that's something no polished dashboard asked of me previously.