Nashville’s writing rooms will never be the same.
That’s the premise of a new platformer called Flipping is Hard coming to Steam in 2026. You play as a lost Nokia-inspired cellphone trying to make its way back to its owner by flipping through obstacle-filled levels without the benefit of arms or legs.
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Sony announced that it’ll be publishing the first title from Bad Robot Games, the gaming side of JJ Abrams’ production company. Not a lot of details yet, but it’ll be a four-player co-op shooter for the PS5 and PC led by Left 4 Dead designer Mike Booth.
Spoiler: the nine-person team works for Anthropic.
The fan-favorite Transformer uses 28 servo motors to convert from robot mode to a Walkman replica that functions as a Bluetooth speaker and voice recorder, while Frank Welker recorded new lines for the robot in the character’s iconic synthesized voice. Soundwave is now available for preorder for $1,399, temporarily discounted to $999.
Cool update to last week’s story on why language doesn’t equal intelligence: a Michigan judge cited it to justify imposing sanctions over a ChatGPT-assisted filing that mentioned real cases but misstated their facts. Congrats to author Benjamin Riley, and thanks to folks who pointed it out on X and Bluesky!
![LLMs are toolsthat “emulate the communicative function of language, not the separateand distinct cognitive process of thinking and reasoning.” BenjaminRiley, Large language mistake, The Verge http://www.theverge.com/aiartificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligenceneuroscience-problems [http://perma.cc/7EHD-PLLZ]. When an LLMoverstates a holding of a case, it is not because it made a mistake whenlogically working through how that case might represent a“nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existinglaw or for establishing new law;” it is just piecing together a plausiblelooking sentence – one whose content may or may not be true](http://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-04-at-8.35.16%E2%80%AFAM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100)
We’ve had year-end recaps from Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, and more so far, but real heads are waiting for the big one.
verge_user_m4f74353:
These are great, but I’m still holding out for my Microsoft Teams Reviewed this year🤞
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The latest Metroid nails the mood and action, but its new additions often feel out of place.
Alongside today’s Metroid Prime 4: Beyond release for the Switch and Switch 2 consoles, music from the game is also available on the Nintendo Music app. Judging by our review and AMA responses, you might need those tunes to keep you entertained while exploring the vast in-game desert.
UK regulator Ofcom announced it’s fined a porn provider £1 million (around $1.3 million) under the Online Safety Act because while it has age verification measures, they aren’t “highly effective.” That’s just a little more bite than the £20,000 ($27,000) fine it handed 4Chan earlier in the year.
As usual, Google is back with another set of the year’s top trending searches, as well as archived lists for previous years. Just don’t be too surprised when you see 2025 top spots taken up by Charlie Kirk, KPop Demon Hunters, or Arc Raiders.
These lists don’t present the most-searched terms; instead, Google is highlighting terms with the “highest spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2025 as compared to 2024.”
LateNighter points out that the OpenAI boss is scheduled to appear on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show next week, on December 8th, along with Mila Kunis and St. Paul & the Broken Bones.
He’ll probably be talking all about ChatGPT, and not this WSJ report about previously-explored plans for OpenAI to invest in a rocket company.
The company follows T-Mobile and Verizon in doing so. AT&T plans to buy just over $1 billion of wireless spectrum licenses from US Cellular but needs approval from the FCC, according to Reuters.
[Reuters]
A team of believers want the Vatican to take AI doomsday scenarios seriously.
$700 is a stupid amount of money to pay for a headphone and bag collaboration. Then I saw pics of the OnTrac headphones and color-matched shoulder bag from the Japanese brand. Tempting if you roll this deep, but only 380 units are available globally at Dyson and Porter retailers.
Horses, the indie narrative horror game that’s been banned not only on Steam, but on Epic Game Store as well, is back for sale on Humble after a brief delisting. Here’s a quote from Santa Ragione explaining the situation courtesy of IGN:
“In short, their team saw the press coverage and temporarily delisted Horses to reevaluate it. After a full review they determined that while the content is heavy, nothing in the game warrants removal from their store.”
The list is heavy on extensions that use AI like Monica and Sider that can summarize web pages and videos, Quillbot for proofing or generating text, and eJOY that can expand your vocabulary while surfing the web. But Google also gives a shoutout to the simple but powerful image editing tools in Adobe’s Photoshop extension.
The viral sliding gamepad designed by a 19-year-old is nearly here — with big differences from last year! Satisfying snap, nice controls, pairs with lots of devices including Switch 2. But it’s $150, and thick. I also had slightly peeling magnets, but Ohsnap says that’s fixed for mass production.
8
Verge Score
Never get locked out again with a smart lock you can control from your phone, with your face, or with a fingerprint.
Threads will test a feature where you can include “dear algo” in a post to add more or less content on whatever you’re writing to the algorithm about to your feed, according to Threads boss Connor Hayes.
How two Chinese tool brands are becoming household names.
Jaguar Land Rover caught a lot of flack for its new design language, including the polarizingly pastel Type 00 concept. And while most of the rage was pure culture war nonsense, the British automaker is still struggling with the fallout from a recent cyberattack that took down its manufacturing plant. Now JLR has reportedly canned its head of design Gerry McGovern. Not only that, but according to Autocar India, McGovern had to be escorted from the building. Ouch.
Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. AI companies are ignoring it.
It was bad enough that Amazon thought people would enjoy English / Spanish versions of Banana Fish and No Game, No Life Zero that were shoddily dubbed using generative AI. But Anime News Network reports that the streamer didn’t even bother to ask the original studios behind those series if that kind of dubbing was ok.
While browsing government auction websites, someone spotted a Dodge Grand Caravan that matched one used in 2020 to grab protesters off the streets. They successfully crowdfunded to purchase it. The new owner intends to use it for mutual aid activities.
“I would like to just take the night off from having festivities of my own and, like, change my Signal username to ‘Call-a-Cab’ and just be the designated driver and drive everyone home.” Or maybe “Call ACAB,” Riley added.
You can read more about what happened in 2020 in The Portland Van Abductions. The Verge published the feature three years ago, but the parallels to 2025 are uncanny.
[Left Coast Right Watch]
The company is selling Spry Fox, a studio it acquired in 2022 that’s known for cozy games like Cozy Grove and is developing an MMO, back to its original owners, Game File reports. It’s the latest shift in Netflix’s evolving gaming strategy.
Amazon’s continued focus on offering AI agents through AWS now includes Reinforcement Fine Tuning of AI models built on Amazon’s Nova 2 Lite in Bedrock. The company also announced new “serverless” model customization with SageMaker AI that can provide compute based on the model size with Amazon’s own Nova, OpenAI’s GPT-OSS, Meta’s Llama, and others.
