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Verge Score
If your iPad is still in good shape, you don’t need this one. Or any other new one. But if it’s upgrade time, start here.
We just published our new Decoder interview with Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro. I asked him directly about how he thinks about author J.K. Rowling’s politics and what it’s done to the Harry Potter fandom, following Hasbro’s major Harry Potter merchandising agreement announced just last month. Here’s what Chris had to say.
The open source tool poses plenty of risks, but for devotees, it’s an antidote to Big AI.
The third season of Version History kicked off this weekend, and I can confidently tell you it’s the first time that research has required me to spend several hours on Geocities. Such was the toy world in 1998! Furby is a story of technology, of toys, and of human-gadget philosophy. It’s a really fun episode — subscribe wherever you get podcasts, or watch the full episode on the new Version History YouTube channel.
At GDC 2026, the company announced plans to expand its support for “glasses-free 3D gameplay on the Samsung Odyssey 3D gaming monitor.” Samsung says over 60 titles are already supported through its Odyssey 3D Hub platform, but that will expand to over 120 by year’s end, including Rogue Factor’s Hell is Us releasing in March.
After acquiring Arduino last October Qualcomm has announced a new single-board computer called the Ventuno Q. Pricing and availability aren’t known, but it will be powered by a Dragonwing IQ8 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 40 TOPS NPU. It’s designed for building robots and machines that function autonomously in response to input from connected sensors.
As part of a broader conversation about Panic’s gaming business and its next title, co-founder Cabel Sasser acknowledged that adding a backlight is “by far the number one request” people have about its Playdate handheld. Hopefully it becomes a reality!
The Cowork integration was built in close collaboration with Anthropic and aims to help Copilot perform “long-running, multi-step tasks,” according to Microsoft’s announcement. The feature is in testing and will be available to preview later this month through Microsoft’s Frontier program.
The feature that allows women to adjust their settings to indicate a preference for a woman driver in all circumstances is coming to more cities, including New York, Philly, D.C., Atlanta, and Austin. Uber started piloting the feature in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Detroit in 2025 and is now expanding it after receiving positive feedback.
But not everyone is on board; one Uber driver called it “gender-based labor exploitation, not empowerment.”
The Amazon-owned company with the toaster-shaped robotaxis is now testing its vehicles in Phoenix and Dallas. Zoox will start manually mapping with its retro-fitted Toyota SUVs before leveling up to fully autonomous testing with its purpose-built vehicles.
The company is also actively testing with passengers in California, though it has yet to receive a permit for a fully public, paid commercial robotaxi service in the state.
The events giant is reportedly close to settling its federal antitrust lawsuit without having to sell Ticketmaster, though some state attorneys general may decide to push ahead with the case regardless. The settlement plan would require the Ticketmaster subsidiary to make concessions around exclusive venue contracts and amphitheater usage.
ChatGPT’s long-promised “adult mode” is still on the way, but will miss its planned Q1 launch. For some, that means the long, lonely wait continues.
pretendworld:
reading the news that your new girlfriend has been delayed must be just brutal
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Oppo says its latest flagship foldable will be getting a “global launch” on March 17th. A promo for the Find N6 was also posted by Oppo’s official X account, though specific regional availability hasn’t been confirmed. The Find N5’s “global” release never went beyond Asia, will this make it further afield?
Cookie’s Bustle is an extremely weird PC game released in 1999. And for reasons no one understands, a person by the name Brandon White, through their company Graceware, has been trying to erase all trace of it through non-stop copyright claims. But the VGHF got its lawyers involved and has finally put an end to Graceware’s shenanigans.
We are happy to report that after bringing these facts to Ukie’s attention, Ukie has suspended takedowns for Cookie’s Bustle on behalf of Graceware, SL. This is a big victory for the gaming community, hopefully bringing an end to a rights-squatting campaign that has dragged on for years.
[Video Game History Foundation]
MTV Rewind collects broadcast clips and music videos from YouTube and strings them together to recreate the experience of actually watching MTV in its heyday. There’s even a collection of 98 videos that attempts to piece together the first full day of broadcast, complete with classic bumpers.
[MTV Rewind]
We knew that DART changed the orbit of Dimorphos, but that was orbiting another larger asteroid called Didymos. Now, scientists have determined that the mission actually changed the heliocentric orbit of the entire binary system. Granted, it’s just 10 micrometers per-second, but it’s proof humanity could potentially change the trajectory of a world killer.
Elon Musk’s short-lived agency rolled into the NEH with the mandate to cancel grants that it deemed contrary to Donald Trump’s anti-DEI agenda. According to the New York Times, decisions about which grants to cancel weren’t made after careful analysis and deliberation. Instead, they were made with a ChatGPT prompt.
… instead of looking closely at funded projects, they pulled short summaries off the internet and fed them into the A.I. chatbot.
The prompt was simple: “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” The results were sweeping, and sometimes bizarre.
[New York Times]
Caitlin Kalinowski posted on X that she resigned from OpenAI, saying the company’s contract didn’t do enough to protect Americans from warrantless surveillance and that granting AI “lethal autonomy without human authorization” was a line that “deserved more deliberation.”
The Financial Times reports Palmer Luckey’s ModRetro is in talks to raise funds at a $1 billion valuation, which sounds like a lot for a retro gaming company.
The report also claims that Anduril, his other business selling drones and autonomous weapons to the military, happens to be at the same time in talks with investors for a new funding round valuing it at $60 billion. Interesting.
Fresh off another round of controversial bets, accusations of insider trading, and general profiting off human suffering, the two biggest prediction markets are seeking fresh funds. According to the Wall Street Journal, both companies are trying to lure investors at a valuation of $20 billion, nearly twice last year’s.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The BBC’s hottest take in 1986 about kids making music on computers is, let’s say, questionable. But watching kids create a composition in this recently dug up clip on what appears to be a Yamaha CX5M and seeing how far music software has come is fascinating.
Ratcheteer DX is a welcome re-release of one of the Playdate’s best games.
Chevy’s hybrid sports car is a sweet deal compared to its Chinese, Italian, and German competitors. And its performance specs underscore the inevitability of electric propulsion.
