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Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has announced that he’s stepping down as CEO, two decades after founding the music streaming service. Ek will transition to an executive chairman role at the company on January 1st, 2026, with Spotify co-presidents Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström set to step in as co-CEOs. “As Executive Chairman, I will spend more of my time on the long arc: strategy, capital allocation, regulatory efforts, and the calls that will shape the next decade for Spotify,” Ek said in a statement . “Gustav and Alex will continue to report to me, and we will work closely together with our Board of Directors.” As co-presidents, Norström currently serves as Spotify’s chief business officer, while Söderström leads the company’s product and technology unit. Ek says his new executive chairman role reflects a European setup, and that he will retain a hands-on approach to shaping the future of the company. Spotify has been internally working towards these leadership changes for years, ac...

A 3-inch touchscreen for swiping and zooming on roads and trails. Garmin’s  $449.99 eTrex Touch  is a rugged GPS navigator with preloaded maps for outdoor adventures. It features a 3-inch touchscreen for swiping and zooming in on roads and trails, and comes preloaded with TopoActive maps and the option to add an Outdoor Maps Plus plan ( $4.99/month ) for premium content like highly detailed elevation contours and satellite imagery, land boundaries, and wildlife areas. Its beefy girth betrays a 130-hour battery within, that can extend to about 650 hours in expedition mode for almost a full month of use before needing a charge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/F3fgwlA

Electronic Arts has announced it is being acquired and taken private in a $55 billion deal involving Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Affinity Partners, which is founded and led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027 and is still subject to approval by regulators and EA stockholders. If approved, it will mark one of the biggest buyouts of a publicly traded company. The transaction was approved by EA’s Board of Directors, is expected to close in Q1 FY27 and is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of required regulatory approvals and approval by EA stockholders. Following the close of the transaction, EA’s common stock will no longer be listed on any public market. The transaction will be funded by a combination of cash from each of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF’s existing stake in EA, constituting an equity investment of approximately...

The CMF Headphone Pro can be customized by swapping their ear cushions with alternate colors. | Image: Nothing CMF, the budget-focused sub-brand that Nothing plans to spin off into a standalone subsidiary , has launched its first pair of over-ear wireless headphones. The CMF Headphone Pro borrows features like a multi-function roller control from Nothing’s Headphone 1 that debuted in July, but while Nothing’s over-ears feature a polarizing boxy design , CMF’s go hard on the soft curves with round earcups, cushions, and a well-padded headband. The CMF Headphone Pro are available starting today in the EU and UK, but US customers will have to wait until October 7th, 2025, to grab a pair. At $99 they’re much cheaper than Nothing’s $299 Headphone 1 and offer more customizability. The Headphone Pro come in subtle dark gray, light green, and light gray color options, but you can add some color contrast with replacement $25 ear cushions that come in bright orange or light green. Like No...

Less elegant but much more scratch resistant. As the nation's foremost FineWoven hater , I have some great news about Apple's follow-up: it doesn't suck. I've been using a TechWoven case on an iPhone 17 Pro for the past week and I have no complaints. I took it up a mountain; I stored it in the sweaty back pocket of my yoga pants on a bike ride. I carried it next to my keys, gave it to my toddler, and handled it while measuring out ingredients for banana bread. It's fine. Fine is good. Remember FineWoven? Apple introduced the material in 2023 when the company discontinued its leather cases and accessories - which it did for good reasons. FineWoven's "microtwill," as Apple described it, i … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/rJFbh82

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 99, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy pumpkin spice season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about Lizzo and Uniqlo and book thieves and Max Verstappen , obsessing over both Black Rabbit and The Lowdown , eating aggressively too many Pop'ums pretzels , listening to everything in the AirPods Pro 3s , updating my old Ray-Ban Metas to see if the AI is any good, meal planning with Crouton , and posting all my junk for free on Nextdoor . I also have for you an impressive new GoPro, an em … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ZhAOR31

On day three of the two-week remedies trial in the Justice Department's ad tech case against Google, Judge Leonie Brinkema boiled down the argument to one key issue: trust. Brinkema interrupted testimony from a DOJ expert with a hypothetical: should she issue a strict order modifying Google's behavior, could it resolve the issues at hand if "you had confidence that Google would actually act in complete good faith?" The question felt particularly pointed, given how the Google trial Brinkema presided over last year unfolded. Over three weeks, the DOJ repeatedly presented examples of Google employees allegedly using chat messages to avoid leav … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/18kic0d

Amazon is hosting its 2025 fall hardware event on Tuesday, September 30th, and it could be a packed show. The company’s invite has a few not-so-subtle hints about new Echos and a new Kindle. It will also be Amazon’s next big product event for Panos Panay, who joined Amazon in 2023 to head up its devices and services teams after a long career at Microsoft helping launch products like the Surface lineup.  Amazon has taken some big swings under Panay’s leadership, launching a suite of new Kindle products last year — including the first color Kindle — and announcing its AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant . What’s coming up next, then? Here’s what we think you can expect. At least one new Echo product Amazon’s invitation appears to tease two products with the company’s iconic blue Echo ring, so it looks like we’ll get new Echo smart speakers of some kind during the show. Which ones, though? A new standard Echo seems like a safe bet, as the company hasn’t released one since 2020 . ...

The OnePlus 13R is just one of many recent OnePlus devices potentially at risk. The majority of OnePlus phones in use today may be vulnerable to a security flaw that leaves SMS and MMS data exposed, and it won’t be patched until mid-October. Only OnePlus phones still running 2020’s OxygenOS 11 or earlier are believed to be safe from the flaw. Security company Rapid7 was first to discover the vulnerability , which relates to changes OnePlus made to the Telephony service within Android. The long and short of it is that it would allow installed apps to access SMS data “without permission, user interaction, or consent.” The company found the flaw on devices running OxygenOS 12, 14, and 15, though reported that the older OxygenOS 11, based on Android 11, is not vulnerable. While Rapid7 only tested two types of hardware — the OnePlus 8T and 10 Pro 5G — it says the flaw “affects a core component of Android,” and so is unlikely to be hardware-specific. OnePlus has admitted to the issue, b...

The UK currently has no citizen ID or legal requirements to carry identification. The United Kingdom is introducing a national digital ID scheme in an effort to crack down on illegal migrant workers. A government press release on Friday announced that the digital ID will be stored on mobile devices through the GOV.UK wallet app currently in development, and will be a mandatory requirement for adults to work in Britain by July 2029. “Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK. It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in the press release. “And it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly — rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.” The digital ID scheme isn’t finalized, and will need to go through parliamentary approval before it can be enforced. A public consultation will be launched by the UK gove...

Meta is bringing its “pay or consent” ad model to the UK after months of wrangling with regulators over the controversial policy. The update will force Instagram and Facebook users to pick between being served up personalized ads or shelling out for monthly subscriptions to ad-free versions.  Subscriptions start at £2.99 a month, around $4, for users logging in over the web, Meta said. Android and iOS users face steeper charges of £3.99 a month, around $5.33. Meta blames this on “the fees that Apple and Google charge.”  It’s an all or nothing approach, with users forced to either subscribe on all accounts or none. Each additional account garners another fee of either £2 or £3 a month. Meta was forced to walk back a similar model in Europe after regulators there slammed the “binary choice” it offered users. Meta warned users they faced a “materially worse” experience as a result. The fees were significantly more expensive there than in the UK, starting at €9.99 pe...

Uber is launching a new discount program aimed at fighting against rising produce prices. The company is launching a new feature called “Fresh Days,” in which customers will receive discounts of up to 50 percent on “local fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy.” The exact day and discount amount will vary from market to market, but Uber plans on launching the new feature in the US, Canada, the UK, South Africa, France, Japan, Taiwan, and Spain — with more countries to follow. Grocery customers are experiencing sticker shock across the nation, with most of the price increases affecting fruits and vegetables. Apple prices are up 9.6 percent year-over-year, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. Overall, fresh fruits and vegetables are up 2.3 percent compared to August 2024. This “veggie-flation” comes as farmers and growers face increasing costs of their own, with the USDA estimating that farm production expenses will reach $467 billion in 2025, up 2.6 percent from the previou...

Apple says it’s having to delay bringing some product features to Europe because it’s struggling to make them compliant with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). In a statement published on Wednesday , Apple said that DMA rules have created “more complexity and more risks for our EU users,” blaming the obligation to open Apple features to third-party devices for the delays. Features impacted include AI-powered Live Translation for AirPods, iPhone Mirroring , and  Visited Places and Preferred Routes on Apple Maps. While interoperability requirements under the DMA specify that companies make proprietary apps and device features available on third-party hardware, Apple says it hasn’t found a way to make these features available on non-Apple devices without compromising users’ data security and privacy. DMA requirements to make it easier to pair, transfer data, and display notifications between iPhones and third-party devices are bearing some fruit, however. The latest iOS 26.1 be...

In July, Lucid, Uber, and Nuro announced a massive robotaxi deal that would see the deployment of 20,000 autonomous vehicles in the US over the next six years. But every journey begins with a single step, and today Lucid announced the delivery of the first Gravity SUV to Nuro for retrofitting. The vehicle was built at Lucid’s factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, and then transported to the automaker’s headquarters in Newark, California. There, a team from Nuro installed the sensors and other hardware for autonomous driving. But this process was unique to the engineering prototype; eventually, the retrofitting will take place on Lucid’s assembly line ahead of deployment. The prototype is now at Nuro’s Santa Clara facility, where the company’s engineers are integrating the Nuro Driver software and beginning testing and validation. The companies intend to deploy their first road-ready robotaxi on Uber’s ridehailing network sometime next year. Introducing our Robotaxi Engineering Fleet...

Users who dismiss the ads are taken to Pocket Casts’ subscription page. Pocket Casts is being flogged for showing advertisements to legacy users who were promised an ad-free experience. The first reports started to appear in early September in the Pocket Casts support forum and subreddit . The issue is a bug, according to Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Pocket Casts’ parent company Automattic, and will be corrected.  Pocket Casts launched as a purchase-only app in 2010, charging users a one-time download fee of up to $10, depending on the OS and platform. The service later switched to a subscription-based model and made the app available for free in 2019. After backlash from users, the company gave anyone who paid for the web or desktop apps before the pricing changes free lifetime access to Pocket Casts Plus, its ad-free premium subscription service.  The app was acquired by Automattic in 2021, and the Pocket Casts Lifetime memberships were rebranded to “Pocket Casts Champ...

Even when connected to its touchscreen dock the DJI Osmo Nano is lighter than the Osmo Action 5 Pro. | Image: DJI Following recent leaks , DJI has announced its new compact and lightweight Osmo Nano. It’s DJI’s smallest action camera to date but features the same 1 / 1.3-inch sensor with 13.5 stops of dynamic range and 4K / 120fps recording capabilities as the company’s flagship Osmo Action 5 Pro DJI, which launched a year ago . As with competitor products like the Insta360 Go Ultra , you’ll need to pair the Osmo Nano with its included modular accessory, called the Multifunctional Vision Dock, if you want a screen or want to boost its battery life. Like other products that DJI introduced this year, including the Mini 5 Pro drone and the wireless Mic 3 , the company isn’t planning to immediately release the Osmo Nano in the US. “The Osmo Nano will not be available officially in the U.S. market on official websites upon its global launch on September 23,” according to DJI spokespers...

Uber is still trying to chip away at the perception that its ridehailing service is too expensive by launching a new feature aimed at helping customers save money on frequently traveled routes. Today, the company is launching prepaid passes, in which customers can pay a discounted price in advance on frequently taken trips. Passes will be offered in bundles of 5, 10, 15, or 20 rides, with the bigger bundle earning the bigger discount. Discounts range from 5-20 percent off the average cost of the ride, depending on the number of prepaid passes that are being purchased in advance. Uber will market the passes to customers by comparing the single ride fare to a discounted fare when purchased in bulk. For example, a ride from Lower Manhattan to Midtown might cost around $19, but Uber will note that it can be as high as $30 with surge pricing. Customers who purchase passes in bulk won’t have to pay the inflated price, Uber says. When buying prepaid basses, customers select a 1-hour req...

On April 17th, 2025, Judge Brinkema ruled that Google did act illegally to acquire and maintain monopoly power in online advertising. Now, DOJ and Google lawyers are returning to the courtroom to argue over whether this should lead to a Google breakup by forcing the company to sell its AdX exchange. In the initial trial, the DOJ argued that Google unfairly locked up the market for ad tech tools that publishers and advertisers rely on to monetize their websites and market their goods. Google responded that it created efficient products that work well for customers and said it faced plenty of competition. Read on below for all of the updates and notes from the case. DOJ antitrust chief praises Google ad tech court’s efficiency. We’re at the courthouse where Google is fighting another break up attempt. The US government is taking a second stab at breaking up Google DOJ asks court to split up Google’s ad tech empire Google is in more danger than ever of being broken up Google l...

Your desk should feel truly yours. If you want a boxed copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for the Super Nintendo next to your high-end monitor for no reason other than it makes you happy, go for it. However, it's important to balance fun with function; your desk space needs to be equipped to help you get work done. Everyone's desk is going to look different, and it's clear from our " What's on your desk " series that every Verge writer's setup is unique. There are some common basics that we think every desk should have: a pair of noise-canceling headphones , a wireless charging stand , and perhaps a paper notebook and an anal … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/e5BFpZN

The Achilles heel of the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max appear to provide little resistance to scratches and scuffs around the sharp edges of the camera bump. Tech blogger Zack Nelson demonstrates this weakness in a durability test on his JerryRigEverything YouTube channel, explaining that the anodized aluminium layer on the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max “does not stick to corners very well” — creating a weak point in the coating. This is a known issue with the electrochemical anodizing process, so it was a design decision Apple knowingly made. “For some reason, Apple didn’t add a chamfer, fillet, or radius around the camera plateau, and I think it was intentional, so it looks cooler,” Nelson says in the video. “But that decision to look cool out of the box is going to plague everyone who owns this phone down the road.” The video shows that everyday objects, like a coin or house key carried in the same pocket as the iPhone 17 Pro , can chip away at the anodized coa...

Amazon is about to face a roughly month-long trial against the US Federal Trade Commission in Seattle to defend its Prime program from claims it tricked tens of millions of customers into signing up for the membership and made it hard to quit. It's one of several Big Tech trials the US government has initiated that's taking place this year, but the first major one in recent history against Amazon. Jury selection in the case will begin on Monday, which will be followed by opening arguments in the case. The FTC has separately sued Amazon for allegedly anticompetitive practices in a case that's set to begin in early 2027 . The case beginning … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ZOPTJ17

Donald Trump has never made his distaste for immigrants a secret. It's been a cornerstone of his political movement since he descended that escalator on June 16th, 2015 and started hurling racist vitriol in the general direction of Mexico and Mexican Americans. On the surface, his assault on the H-1B visa program seems like part of the White House's ongoing campaign to reduce the number of immigrants in the country. It might have that effect, but the biggest goal for Trump may not be forcing companies to hire more Americans or cutting down on the number of workers from India moving to the US. It's giving the government more leverage over his … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/DhULWJw

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 98, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, please tell me if you bought an orange iPhone, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I've been reading about competitive massage and space soda and how people really use AI , checking out Adolescence now that it won all those Emmys, playing The New York Times' new domino game , finally listening to The Lazarus Heist , doing a bunch of writing in Ulysses , using Remind Me Faster for all my task-writing needs, and taking copious notes on Federico Viticci's iOS 26 review . I … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/OaIglYx

Barely over a week after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's public killing at a Utah campus, speech attacks in the name of the self-proclaimed free speech advocate are piling up. Law enforcement officials have custody of suspected shooter Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah who prosecutors allege was in a relationship with a transgender woman and opposed Kirk's "hatred." Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said last week that officials believe Robinson acted alone and that they didn't anticipate further arrests. But to many of Kirk's friends and defenders, any past or present critic of him - or anyone on the left in general - is implicated in the ac … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/LAjqQ0d

In Henry Halfhead , you play through the life of a person named Henry. But there are a couple twists. Henry is only half of a head - just eyes, ears, nose, and the top of their head - meaning they move around by sliding on the floor and jumping up and down. Also, Henry can possess everyday objects. It's a strange concept, but the developers at Lululu Entertainment use the goofy ideas to tell a poignant story and have a lot of fun along the way. The game starts with Henry as a baby in their nursery, bouncing around the room to wreak havoc. As you play, you'll progress to different rooms and age up through different stages of Henry's life, and … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/X1q0SvV

A banner depicting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer masquerading as President Donald Trump is held up in a crowd as South Korean workers, detained in an ICE raid at Hyundai’s Georgia EV plant, are expected. | Image: Getty For years, foreign automakers have been sending their employees to the US to open advanced manufacturing and battery plants in states like South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. These plants eventually employ thousands of American workers who build vehicles for both the US market and overseas. And they pump billions of dollars into the state and federal economies, providing jobs for Americans in more rural areas. So it didn't raise any eyebrows when two South Korean companies, Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions, sent hundreds of their workers to Ellabell, Georgia, to oversee the construction of a $7.6 billion EV battery factory. … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Kt2jfid

Fall Upgrade Week feels like an odd time to celebrate my move to a 50-year-old film camera, but there's logic to it: not because film photos are timeless, or because I want to wax lyrical about warmth and grain and analog appeal, but because I don't think there's any better way to teach yourself about photography. That's how I got into film. At some point over the last decade, reviewing phones morphed more or less into reviewing cameras with touchscreens on the back. For a writer with no photography experience, that started to become a problem, and I realized that I needed to learn enough about cameras to hold my own. I was having to take … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/s5e63SK

Well that was awkward. Meta ran into some spectacularly embarrassing technical issues during the live demos of its new smart glasses this week, and now we know why. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, explained in an Instagram AMA why two notable demos — an influencer asking the AI assistant for cooking instructions, and Mark Zuckerberg attempting to pick up a WhatsApp call — failed.  “When the chef said ‘hey Meta, start Live AI,’ it started every single Meta Ray-Ban’s Live AI in the building,” said Bosworth. “We had routed Live AI traffic to our dev server, in theory, to isolate it, but we had done it for everyone in that building on those access points. We DDoS’d ourselves, basically.” So yeah, it wasn’t the Wi-Fi, as Zuck claimed on stage. @verge Some of the most impressive smart glasses in the industry were presented at Meta Connect 2025, but presenters had some of the biggest demo failures we’ve seen live in a while. In addition, part of the keynote i...

Nvidia is throwing Intel a $5 billion life raft, just weeks after similar stakes from the US government and SoftBank. Nvidia is investing $5 billion in Intel common stock in a collaboration that will see the pair “jointly develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC products.” Nvidia says Intel will help build “x86 system-on-chips (SoCs) that integrate Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets.” These chips will power a “wide range” of PCs, by closely integrating Intel’s CPUs with Nvidia’s GPUs. Intel and Nvidia already have a close partnership on many gaming laptops, but combining both on a single SoC is a big step further. It will help Intel and Nvidia better compete with AMD, which has been gaining ground on Intel with its impressive gaming desktop CPUs and a wide variety of AI laptop processors . It also raises further questions about the future of Intel’s Arc graphics card business , especially if the company is now relying on Nvidia’s GPU expertise. Nvidia’s investment in Intel ...

Reddit wants more users and more money from Google in exchange for an even bigger mountain of data feeding its AI machine, according to Bloomberg . The negotiation shows a new front in the struggle between Big AI and content providers as they try to harvest new revenue streams without bleeding out the very traffic and engagement that keep them alive. A year and a half after cutting its first data-sharing deal with Google, reportedly worth $60 million a year , unnamed executives say Reddit is back at the negotiating table eyeing an even bigger role inside the company’s AI ecosystem. The platform is reportedly eager for Google to help entice users – who get an answer farmed from Reddit and leave – into posting in Reddit’s forums, which would generate more of the very content tech giants need to train their data-hungry AI models.  Reddit also wants more money for its data. The platform is reportedly considering a dynamic pricing-style arrangement for future licensing deals with com...

What a lovely canvas for ads. | Image: Samsung A software update rolling out to Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerators in the US is putting ads on the fridges for the first time. The “promotions and curated advertisements” are coming despite Samsung insisting to The Verge in April that it had “no plans” to do so. Samsung is calling it a pilot program for now, which — I kid you not — is meant to “strengthen the value” of owning a Samsung smart fridge. Here’s the full statement Samsung sent to Android Authority : Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing every day value for our home appliance customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market. As a part of this pilot program, Family Hub refrigerators in the U.S. will receive an over-the-network (OTN) software update with Terms of Service (T&C) and Privacy N...

The Bounce 2 introduces a new round design with an upgraded AMOLED screen. | Image: Garmin Garmin announced a new version of its Bounce smartwatch for kids that first debuted in 2022 with tracking and communication features powered by an LTE connection. The Bounce 2 introduces a new design and upgrades that include two-way talking instead of just voice messaging. It looks less like a kids watch now, but the limited upgrades may not be enough to justify a price jump from $149.99 to $299.99 for the new model which is now available through Garmin . The original Bounce featured a square design (which potentially appealed to some kids with Apple Watch envy) and an LCD screen, while the new Bounce 2 is round with a more vivid 1.2-inch AMOLED display. Text messaging is still an option but the Bounce 2 has improved voice messages with a new feature that will transcribe them so they can be read or listened to. The Bounce 2 carries forward real-time location tracking through the Garmin Jr...