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Google is notifying parents using its Family Link parental controls via email that their kids will soon be able to access Gemini AI Apps on their monitored Android devices, The New York Times reports.

The company says kids will be able to use Gemini to do things like help them with homework or read them stories. Like its Workplace for Education accounts, Google says children’s data will not be used to train AI. Still, in the email, Google warns parents that “Gemini can make mistakes,” and kids “may encounter content you don’t want them to see.”

Besides sillie

Sam Altman and Elon Musk aren't just competing in the AI race; they both have ambitions to build Silicon Valley's holy grail: an "everything" super app encompassing finance, social media, gaming, and more.

Earlier this week, I got a peek at Altman's plan from a cavernous event space on the northern edge of San Francisco. He was not there as the CEO of OpenAI, but as the co-founder and chairman of Tools for Humanity, the parent company of a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin that's now available in the US. Worldcoin is distributed to people who scan their eyes at one of the startup's orbs, which are rolling out in retail stores across America. At the same tim

One of World’s orbs. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

On the evening of April 30th, the hottest ticket in San Francisco was a buzzy crypto startup's coming-out party at a warehouse-like complex on the northern edge of the city. It had all the makings of an event you'd only find near Silicon Valley: Anderson Paak, champagne, and a bunch of eye-scanning orbs.

Onstage, Sam Altman and co-founder Alex Blania announced that the cryptocurrency Worldcoin is coming to the US for the first time, along with a bevy of orbs. The idea is straight out of science fiction. It may be too far-fetched to work, but given Altman's involvement, it's something worth paying attention to.

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Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the Justice Department’s proposals to restrict Google’s search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. “It’s very frightening,” Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.

The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google’s own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that [Google has an illegal monopoly in search](https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us-doj-v-google-antitrust-s

Form and function.

Nothing cements your relationship status with a new hobby like buying a special bag for it.

Hiking? Cycling? Photography? You bet there's a special bag designed for just that. Getting into a new thing and accumulating gear for it is a joy. An important and underappreciated subcategory of that enjoyment is finding a special bag to hold all of those gadgets. Finding and using that perfect bag - with all the right compartments, hooks, and snaps - is its own particular delight. And it's high time we gave it the recognition it deserves.

There are some purchases that just can't hold up the hopes we have for them. Who among us hasn't stood in line to check out at Uniqlo thinking "These are the wide-leg jeans that are going to change everything fo

Apple and Anthropic are building an AI-powered coding tool that will work in Xcode, Apple’s code-writing tool, Bloomberg reports. A new version of Xcode will integrate Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model to “write, edit and test code on behalf of programmers,” Bloomberg says.

Apple is slowly rolling this new version out internally initially and apparently has not decided if it will release it to the public. Developers will be able to enter requests in a chat interface, test user interfaces, and help manage bug fixing, according to Bloomberg. Apple and Anthropic didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge.

Big tech CEOs have touted

A beta build of Android 16 contains an early version of Google’s new Android Desktop Mode that, in the future, could let users simply plug their smartphone into a monitor and use it like a laptop or desktop computer.

The new feature was shared by Android tinkerer Mishaal Rahman reporting for Android Authority. Rahman manually enabled Android Desktop Mode under developer options on his Google Pixel 8 Pro running the latest Android 16 beta. After plugging it into a USB-C compatible monitor, it immediately displays a PC-like interface on the external display, as you can see as in his video:

It looks similar

Microsoft increased the price of Xbox Series consoles by up to $100 earlier this week, but thankfully, not all retailers have raised the price (yet). Dell, for instance, is still offering the digital-only Xbox Series X (1TB) for $449.99, saving you $100 on the new MSRP. The smaller, 512GB Xbox Series S is also available at Walmart for just $273.99 ($106 off), while the 1TB model is going for $347 ($83 off) at [Walmart](https://www.w

The end-to-end encryption (E2EE) available on the WhatsApp messaging app gets you off to a good start when it comes to privacy and security. It means no one else - hackers, law enforcement, or Meta staff - can see your chats. Your stuff stays just between you and the person or persons you're chatting with.

On top of that, the app comes with a variety of other features for locking down your data as tightly as possible. Get all of these precautions in place, and you're as well protected as you can be when it comes to keeping your conversations private.

Stop others from exporting your chats

If you want to export your chat, it's easy to have it served up in a plain text file, complete with m

The 8BitDo Ultimate C Wired Controller for Xbox and PC is on sale at Amazon for $19.61 (44 percent off), its lowest price to date. But the sale is only for the dark green model. The dark gray and orange alternatives are only available for $31.49 (10 percent off) at checkout. Don’t get mad at me! I’m just trying to save you money while Microsoft is out here increasing the prices of everything, including its controllers.

The 8BitDo Ultimate features Hall e

If you live in the US, congratulations - you are now a foot soldier in what has been called "the dumbest trade war in history." And if you live in one of the top three countries that trade most with the US (Canada, Mexico, and China), apologies: you are part of this as well.

Donald Trump loves tariffs despite regularly misrepresenting how they work, and after months of saying he would impose them on goods coming into the US, he made good on his promise this week: there is [a 10 percent tax](https:

Fubo is continuing its quest to cut a deal with sports broadcasters that can bring upon the holy grail of sports bundles later this year, just in time for football season.

As reported by Deadline, Fubo CEO David Gandler said on an earnings call on Friday that the company is working hard to line up content from other broadcasters outside of Disney’s umbrella of sports content. When one analyst asked about how progress is going with a deal, Gandler only said that the service is a key “growth opportunity.”

“It is critical for Fubo subscribers that we are able to negotiate content licensing agreements at fair rates and terms. Our goal remai

The delay of Grand Theft Auto VI into next year is a big deal. The game is the follow-up to arguably the biggest entertainment release of all time, one that originally debuted well over a decade ago. Even if GTAV is still going strong, now spanning multiple console generations and with a surprisingly enduring online component, the hype for its sequel has been steadily building since 2013. Adding to the sheer amount of time is the mystery — we still know very little about what GTAVI actually is. So it’s a good time to revisit what we do know; namely, [the single trailer re

We hit the 100-day mark in Donald Trump’s second presidential term this week and, well — a lot of things have happened in that time.

Verge policy editor Adi Robertson has been running a series of stories about the impact of these 100 days on the site all week. They’re great; we’ve linked them below and in the show notes. And so I wanted to have Adi on the show to talk about six big themes — six big stories we’ve been following — to see what has and hasn’t gone the way we might have expected.

Up front are a couple of the biggest. First, the tariff situation has thrown a wrench in basically the entire global economy. It’s [no

Leica has confirmed price increases for both the US and Canada starting this week. | Image: Leica

Price increases on electronics as a result of President Trump’s global tariffs are starting to be felt outside the US, as a Canadian camera shop recently discovered. As a result of how Leica imports its products into North America, a store in Calgary, Alberta, was recently notified by the camera maker that it would be increasing dealer pricing by seven percent starting on May 1st, 2025, in both the US and Canada, [according to PetaPixel](https://petapixel.com/2025/04/30/leica-

The executive order demands the CPB pull all direct and indirect funding for PBS and NPR.

President Trump issued an executive order on Thursday to end all federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” the order reads. It says the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is supposed to remain impartial and unbiased —

G1T4-M1N1’s large wheels allow it to traverse various terrains, not just pavement or corridors on the Death Star. | Image: Piaggio Fast Forward

If you’ve always wanted a droid but don’t have a need for an intergalactic translator or a starship mechanic, Piaggio Fast Forward is giving its Gitamini a makeover suitable for a galaxy far, far away. Adopting the alphanumeric naming convention of robots in the Star Wars universe, G1T4-M1N1 is a special edition of the company’s cargo-carrying bot with decals, lights, and sound effects making it look like a droid you’d see rolling a

Marvel's movies have yet to stop being box office juggernauts, but in recent years focused on multiversal storytelling, the studio's interconnected cinematic franchise has often felt adrift and unfocused. Rather than working as films that can stand on their own, the MCU's recent crossover features have generally resulted in dangling threads, like they're all just previews for the next big blockbuster.

Thunderbolts, Marvel's new moviefrom director Jake Schreier, is not a one-shot solution to all of the MCU's recent woes, but in it, you can very plainly see the studio trying to

Payment processing platform Stripe just added a way for iOS developers to accept payments by linking outside their apps, dodging Apple’s commission fees.

The move comes after a landmark ruling on Wednesday in the Epic v. Apple antitrust case. Apple can no longer charge developers 27 percent fees on purchases made outside apps, and it cannot dictate how developers point users to buy things elsewhere.

Stripe 🤝iOS developersBig news iOS app developers! You can now accept payments with @stripe outside of your app, with no iOS app store commissions.The Stripe team 🧑‍🍳cooked up a quick guide walking you through how. Go live now! Docs in the 🧵 [pic.twitter.com/gKguWwBa

Some users are encountering an error code when trying to boot up their Nintendo Switch after installing the latest firmware.

Following the release of the V20.0.0 firmware earlier this week that introduced features like Virtual Game Cards, some Switch users found their consoles unable to boot and displaying an error code after applying the update and restarting. Nintendo acknowledged the issue and released another update, V20.0.1, this morning, which fixes the problem. But those experiencing the error code will need to perform a few e