The alerts will start rolling out to Teen accounts with parental supervision protections next week. | Image: Meta / The Verge
Starting next week, Instagram will notify parents to check on their teen searching for terms related to self-harm or suicide. Meta says a similar alert system for its AI chatbots is coming later this year.
The new Instagram feature sends parents an alert when their child "repeatedly tries to search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm within a short period of time." It's rolling out in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada starting next week, but it's only for parents and teens who opt in to supervision. It's expected to expand to other regions later this year.
"The vast majority of teens do not try to search for suicide and …
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Google is folding Alphabet's AI robotics "moonshot," Intrinsic, into the company after five years as an independent unit. The move marks a strategic shift as Google doubles down on physical AI and pulls experimental projects closer to its core business.
Intrinsic "graduated" into an independent company inside Alphabet's Other Bets division in 2021, a portfolio of high-risk, speculative ventures that also includes robotaxi firm Waymo and healthcare company Verily. It pitches itself as an Android-like layer for robotics, building software and tools that make it easier to create robot applications.
Details of the purchase are not clear but t …
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Gushwork has raised $9 million in a seed round led by SIG and Lightspeed. The startup has seen early customer traction from AI search tools like ChatGPT.
Seattle-based Vercept developed complex agentic tools, including a computer-use agent that could complete tasks inside applications like a person with a laptop would.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Valve for "illegally promoting gambling" through the loot box systems it has built for video games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2, according to a press release. The attorney general seeks to "permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games, disgorge all ill-gotten gains, and pay fines for violating New York's laws."
"This loot box model that Valve has developed - charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone - is quintessential gambling, prohibited under New York's Constitution and Penal Law," the lawsuit says. Valve …
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Samsung’s Galaxy S26 phones introduce a slate of new AI-powered features, including some new photography tools. | Image: Samsung
Samsung has just announced its new Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. While they aren't radical departures from last year's models, they bring a handful of notable upgrades. All three run on Qualcomm's Galaxy-centric Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which delivers improved performance and powers a slew of new AI-based features. This includes the ability to screen unknown calls and edit photos by typing what you want changed, along with an update to Google Gemini that can carry out certain tasks in supported third-party apps, like Uber and DoorDash, on your behalf.
Starting at $899.99, the S26 is the smallest and mo …
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The Drop Mythic Journey keyboard from 2022. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge
The Drop store, which was acquired by gaming gear giant Corsair in 2023, was a haven for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and audiophiles to discover and buy hard-to-find gear - sometimes at surprisingly good prices. The company will cease sales after March 25th at 11:59PM PT, which is also the cut off to redeem Drop Rewards. After March 31st, the site will be accessible for a limited time to view order history, but all retail functionality will shift to Corsair.
Corsair's marketing manager Andrew Williams confirmed to The Verge that several products featured on Drop will be integrated into Corsair's site for purchase. Select others will be …
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For more than six decades, the Peace Corps has represented itself as an agency focused on helping underserved communities around the globe. But a new initiative, called the "Tech Corps," threatens to unravel the agency's original mission by recruiting de facto Silicon Valley salespeople to promote the biggest names in AI - many of which have ties to President Donald Trump.
Established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Peace Corps recruited skilled Americans interested in assisting developing countries in industries like education, healthcare, and agriculture. As noted by the Brookings Institution, the agency was created to "win the …
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President Donald Trump tried to quell Americans' concerns about rising electricity costs during his State of the Union speech - and now we're learning that the deals he promised could land next week. Trump claimed that he's negotiated a "rate payer protection pledge" with major tech companies, which would see them build out or pay for new electricity generation for their data centers. Leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are expected to attend a March 4th event to sign the pledge, Fox News reported today.
There are very few details at this point on what the pledge entails, nor how companies would be held ac …
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Under the first year of the Trump administration, the U.S. cyber agency CISA has faced cuts, layoffs, and furloughs, as bipartisan lawmakers and cybersecurity industry sources say the agency is unprepared to handle a crisis.
Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETHDenver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins face scrutiny, players like Stripe re-enter the conversation, and startups either find traction or flame out. The hype cycle is over, or at least taking a break. So what comes next? On […]
Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S26 lineup at its recent Unpacked event in San Francisco. As expected, the new series consists of the baseline S26, which starts at $899.99, and the bigger S26 Plus, which starts at $1,099.99. At the high end, there's also the $1,299.99 S26 Ultra, which is the largest in the lineup and comes with a bigger battery, better cameras, S Pen support, and expanded options for both storage and RAM. The price difference between Samsung's cheapest and most expensive S26 phones is $400 (last year, it was $500).
While some of its updated Galaxy AI software features are new, it's another year of minor hardware updates for Sam …
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Google just announced that Gemini will soon be able to take care of some multistep tasks on your phone, like ordering food or hailing a car, starting first with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S26 phones. It all sounds a bit like features Apple announced for Siri way back at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference - before Apple delayed those planned features in March 2025 and which still aren't released.
Onstage, Sameer Samat, Google's president of Android, showed off a demo of how Gemini's new agentic features would work to help wrangle a pizza dinner order from his busy family group chat. Samat asks Gem …
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The former boss of a U.S. hacking tools maker was jailed for selling highly sensitive software exploits to a Russian broker. This is how we first learned of his arrest, reported the story, and some of the unanswered questions we still have.
As expected, Samsung has taken the wraps off its flagship lineup for 2026. Introduced during the company's recent Unpacked event, the new Galaxy devices - which include the standard S26, the larger S26 Plus, and the high-end S26 Ultra - will be available on March 11th. Preorders are now open ahead of launch, with pricing starting at $899.99 for the base-model S26, $1,099.99 for the Plus, and $1,299.99 for the Ultra.
Overall, the forthcoming S26 lineup looks largely similar to last year's S25 series, only with a handful of notable upgrades. The biggest changes this year are on the software side, with Samsung introducing a privacy display in …
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Waymo this week will begin mapping and collecting data in Chicago and Charlotte. The move comes as Waymo announces it is currently operating its robotaxis fully autonomously in 10 US cities.