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The DoorDash Problem: How AI browsers are a huge threat to Amazon
Play

Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity has blown the doors open on the great AI browser fight.

Nilay Patel
All the news on Qi2 wireless chargingAll the news on Qi2 wireless charging
News
News
Verge Staff
Google Gemini is getting better at identifying AI fakesGoogle Gemini is getting better at identifying AI fakes
News
Talking to Windows’ Copilot AI makes a computer feel incompetent

Copilot’s limitations are ever-present, and it can lead you astray on even the basics.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto
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Terrence O'Brien
Who could have guessed that giving kids a teddy bear with ChatGPT built in was a bad idea?

The answer is probably anyone. Or at least anyone who didn’t work for FoloToy, the makers of Kumma, a $99 AI-enabled plushie that’s now been pulled from shelves after researchers at the US PIRG Education Fund got the bear to discuss sexually explicit topics, offer advice on where to find knives, and give instructions on lighting matches. In the report, researchers said:

We were surprised to find how quickly Kumma would take a single sexual topic we introduced into the conversation and run with it, simultaneously escalating in graphic detail while introducing new sexual concepts of its own.

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Andrew J. Hawkins
Waymo cities, part 2.

Earlier this week, Waymo announced that it would soon be operating fully driverless vehicles in five new cities: Miami, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Orlando. Today, they’re adding three new cities to the mix: Minneapolis, Tampa, and New Orleans. The company plans to start by deploying manually driven vehicles, then fully autonomous ones, followed by select passenger trips, and finally, a public robotaxi service. The vehicles will be Waymo’s fifth-generation Jaguar SUVs, with the option to add sixth-gen Zeekr and Hyundai vehicles in the future if the company deems fit.

Photo of Waymo taxis with a green filter.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
Meet CoreWeave, the AI industry’s ticking time bomb

Tick… tick…

Elizabeth Lopatto
Verizon is laying off over 13,000 workersVerizon is laying off over 13,000 workers
News
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Dominic Preston
Uber’s British bots.

The company has announced a UK trial with autonomous delivery company Starship, starting in Sheffield and Leeds. It’s Uber’s first delivery bot trial in Europe, after tests in various US cities.

Starship’s robots aren’t new to the region though — one even delivered dinner to my colleague Tom way back in 2017.

Photo of an Uber Eats-branded Starship delivery robot in front of a British church.
Wet, gray, big old church — that sure looks like the UK.
Image: Uber
Steam Machine and Steam Frame: your questions answered

Valve’s big hardware push: you asked, we answered.

Sean Hollister and Jay Peters
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Jay Peters
Matter is getting camera support.

From my colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy’s story about Matter 1.5:

The Matter 1.5 spec, announced today, adds support for all types of video cameras — from video doorbells, indoor and outdoor, wired and battery-powered cameras, to baby monitors and pet cams. And, perhaps most importantly, Matter support can be added to existing cameras with an OTA update. The new spec also adds garage door controllers, bi-directional charging for EVs, soil sensors, and more advanced integration with utilities for energy management.

Read her whole piece for more, including an interview with the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

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Dominic Preston
This is our year.

Nathan is jumping to Linux, pushed to the brink by AI agents and Copilot, tempted by the promise of better gaming through Bazzite. This is it, guys.

captobie:

..., 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 will be the year of Linux!

Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.

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Tom Warren
Nvidia has a fix for Windows 11 performance issues.

If you’ve experienced performance issues in games after installing the latest Windows 11 October 2025 update (KB5066835) then Nvidia now has a hotfix driver to address the problems. It’s not clear what games have been impacted by Microsoft’s latest update, but you can grab the latest hotfix driver here or wait until the next non-beta release.

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Richard Lawler
Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann Lecun is leaving.

Lecun’s widely-rumored departure is official just weeks after significant layoffs affected Meta’s legacy Fundamental AI Research unit (FAIR) that he created. Lecun — the “odd man out” at Meta for believing LLMs are a “dead end” — called creating FAIR “my proudest non-technical accomplishment,” and says he will create a startup to continue his Advanced Machine Intelligence research, with Meta as a partner.

Meanwhile, Meta will presumably lean into its $14 billion bet on Scale AI in pursuit of AGI “superintelligence.”

How Jeffrey Epstein used SEO to bury news about his crimes

Documents released by the House Oversight Committee shed light on Epstein’s day-to-day, largely via email — including his preoccupation with his Google presence.

Mia Sato
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Hayden Field
OpenAI rolled out GPT-5.1 Pro to all Pro users.

The company said that in early testing, users rated it “especially highly for writing help, data science, and business questions.” Enterprise users should receive access next Monday, per OpenAI. GPT-5 Pro, the new model’s predecessor, will be available via the legacy model dropdown menu for 90 days before OpenAI retires it.

The best iPhonesThe best iPhones
Tech
Tech
Allison Johnson
How to find music you will love without the algorithm

Stop letting your streaming service take the reins and start listening with intention.

Terrence O'Brien
The Verge’s 2025 holiday gift guide

A curated mix of tech-y standouts, everyday favorites, and other delights for everyone on your list.

Verge Staff
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Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Home Assistant has a new Thread/Zigbee stick.

Hot on the heels of the launch of its big Z-Wave stick, Home Assistant is launching a slightly smaller stick to support Zigbee and Thread protocols.

The Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 USB adaptor launches today for $49 (€45) and is a plug-and-play option for connecting Zigbee, Thread, or Matter devices directly to the Home Assistant platform.

According to the organization, it replaces the Connect ZBT-1 and is more powerful, with four times the speed, and features an ESP32-S3 chip that supports experimental firmware.

I’m out of reasons to recommend Apple’s M1 MacBook Air, even at $600I’m out of reasons to recommend Apple’s M1 MacBook Air, even at $600
Gadgets
The Verge’s guide to Black Friday 2025
Cameron Faulkner
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Richard Lawler
Things are not right in the land of Pebble.

Rebble, which has kept the Pebble platform going, is at odds with Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, just as Pebble is making its comeback.

Rebble is accusing Migicovsky’s company, Core Devices, of stealing its work, while Migicovsky claims Rebble is trying to build a walled garden around data scraped from the original Pebble Appstore.

The best Bluetooth trackers for Apple and Android phonesThe best Bluetooth trackers for Apple and Android phones
Buying Guides
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Stevie Bonifield
Stargate returns from the wormhole again.

Amazon MGM Studios has greenlit a new Stargate series for Prime Video, with Martin Gero as writer and showrunner. Gero formerly wrote, produced, and directed episodes of all three of the original Stargate series. The Prime Video series is the second attempt to revive the franchise after the Stargate: Origins mini-series in 2018.

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Elissa Welle
Join me as I try out this viral AI cheating pen.

Videos on YouTube make it seem like one swipe of a scanning pen like this will give you all the answers. I tested it out on math, science, and history questions.

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Andrew J. Hawkins
Tesla gets green light to launch robotaxis in Arizona.

The company was awarded a ridehailing permit by the state’s Department of Transportation, which clears the way for Tesla to launch a robotaxi service — potentially without safety drivers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he wants to launch in 8-10 new markets before the end of 2025.

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Andrew Webster
The Letterboxd store opens soon.

The digital movie rental shop is slated to debut in early December. Letterboxd describes it as “curated shelves instead of just scrolling lists endlessly without being able to make up your mind on what to watch.”

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Terrence O'Brien
Suno valued at $2.45 billion in latest funding round as lawsuits loom.

The AI music company just announced that it raised $250 million in its latest funding round, and its valuation soared from about $500 million last year to nearly $2.5 billion. That money might be going right back out the door, though, as all three major labels — Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group — are currently suing Suno.

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