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Silicon Roundabout

Debian votes to let contributors code with AI

The Debian community has voted to allow members to use generative AI when creating their contributions, with the caveat that developers remain responsible for code quality. The Linux distro’s community recently decided to develop a policy on use of...

Professor Murder Rides the Subway is a forgotten slice of dance punk perfection

I recently dug out my CDs and started reripping them all. I've found a few forgotten gems in there, but few hit harder for me than the beautifully concise Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP. There was a period of time in the mid-aughts in NYC...

Enormous 12TB Steam leak includes abandoned Half-Life 2: Episode 3 assets

Over 12 terabytes of data, containing builds of every game uploaded to Steam between 2003 and 2013, has been leaked. We don't know everything in the archives yet because of its massive size. But people have already dug up assets related to the...

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches to study dark matter and dark energy

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope blasts off. | Photo: NASA / John Kraus After funding struggles and a name change, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been successfully launched. It will now make a three-month, one-million-mile journey...

Texas Governor Abbott blocks funding for more Flock cameras

As backlash grows over Flock's AI surveillance cameras, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has frozen state spending on them. The move came just ahead of the publication of a Texas Tribune investigation that revealed the state spent over $30 million on...

Turns out Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private

Brits have delivered a fairly unambiguous verdict on giving the government access to their encrypted messages: no, thanks. New polling commissioned by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) found that 93 percent of British adults believe they h...

Chess.com launched a poker site and is planning even more classic games

Chess.com has done one thing, and one thing very well, for almost 20 years, but now it's going beyond its domain name. The biggest name in online chess quietly launched its first companion site in beta back in May: Gambit, a free online poker w...

Two new small, powerful Macs

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 142, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, how is it almost September already, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This w...

China’s robots race ahead

Humanoid robot competes in the optional boxing routine event during the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at National Speed Skating Oval on August 26, 2026 in Beijing, China. | Image: Getty Images This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breakin...

Vicariously hike the Appalachian in the gorgeous A Trail Tale

Inspired by Oregon Trail, but minus the dysentery. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge I used to be an avid hiker and would try to go backpacking a few times a year. I always dreamed of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, but life kind o...

Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported

Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos was arrested by ICE on Thursday, and today the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Reuters and the Washington Post that he had been deported to the UK. Yiannopoulos came to the US legally in 2019, but...

AWS mumbles about its cost-busting networking tech when it should be shouting

Last month I sat in a networking lab with AWS VP of Global Network Engineering Matt Rehder and cracked a joke about cage nuts cutting your hands to ribbons. I wasn't prepared for the blank stare I got in response, but I really should have been. Mind...

Sony Music and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for "tens of thousands" copyrighted works. The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, p...

Startup bags $7M to build drone-interceptor-in-a-backpack systems

A defense startup has raised $7 million to develop its counter-drone system that uses small interceptors to defend against swarms of FPV (First-Person View) drone swarms, the kind causing heavy battlefield casualties in Ukraine. San Francisco-based...

Distraction-free writing gadget BYOK is adding custom extensions

BYOK is a no-frills, single-purpose gadget that 90 percent of people will find absolutely frivolous. But for those who spend a significant chunk of their lives putting words to virtual paper, there is an obvious allure. Personally, I think it's...

Welcome to Night Vale cocreator Joseph Fink learned storytelling from Grim Fandango 

10 out of 10 beard. | Photo: Ben Mekler Joseph Fink is the cocreator and cowriter of Welcome to Night Vale, arguably the most important fiction podcast ever. He's also the creator of the noir podcast Unlicensed and Alice Isn't Dead, which take...

This pocket AI voice recorder took me back to the good old days of dictation (and shorthand)

The Comulytic Note Pro AI voice recorder packs a lot of power into a credit card-sized device. But its usefulness is up to you.

Xbox respawns IKEA furniture with gaming range

Microsoft's latest Xbox merchandising deal means at least you can sit on an IKEA cushion while you wait for your PlayStation 5 to boot. IKEA has announced YXSTABY, a nine-piece collection of items aimed at the XBOX completist who has to have every p...

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 is at its best when there’s friction

The Z Flip 8 is designed to be used shut more than ever before. | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge What do you want from a flip phone when it's closed? A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for handling the basics? O...

Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters

As audio-focused generative tools and platforms have gotten more sophisticated, the internet has become increasingly filled with AI-generated music whose melodies and vocals are algorithmically derived from the work of human artists. While some...