The reboot of the early internet online community Digg, a one-time rival to Reddit, is moving forward. The company, which is today back under the ownership of its original founder, Kevin Rose, along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is launching its open beta to the public on Wednesday. Similar to Reddit, the new Digg offers a … Read more
With news that Discord is kicking the tires on going public soon, other tech companies are starting to take their chances. Liftoff Mobile filed its first S-1 document late Tuesday, the first step in the process. The company isn’t yet discussing how big this IPO will be: it has not yet filled in any data … Read more
Civilization VII launched to mixed reception in early 2025. We liked it when we reviewed it at Ars, despite some notable shortcomings in terms of polish and user interface, and it has a decent community of dedicated players. However, it makes enormous changes to the classic series’ formula, drawing ideas from competitors like Humankind. Many … Read more
The first big outage of 2026 is here, as Verizon customers across the US, including several of our phones, complain that service has been spotty or nonexistent starting at around noon ET, with phones switching to SOS Mode and being unable to connect. This cell service outage follows a “software issue” that cut off service … Read more
Google announced Wednesday the launch of a revamped Trends Explore page, now featuring Gemini-powered capabilities that automatically identify and compare trends related to your searches. The update is rolling out on desktop starting today. The Trends Explore page has long served as a valuable tool for content creators, journalists, and researchers, making it easy to … Read more
If you want to win in AI — and I mean win in the biggest, most lucrative, most shape-the-world-in-your-image kind of way — you have to do a bunch of hard things simultaneously. You need to have a model that is unquestionably one of the best on the market. You need the nearly infinite resources … Read more
On Tuesday, Bandcamp announced on Reddit that it will no longer permit AI-generated music on its platform. “Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp,” the company wrote in a post to the r/bandcamp subreddit. The new policy also prohibits “any use of AI tools … Read more
Elon Musk’s X is trying to stop people using its AI chatbot Grok to undress women amid intensifying outrage and legal scrutiny over the deluge of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes flooding the site. It’s not trying very hard: it took us less than a minute to get around its latest attempt to rein in the chatbot. … Read more
Lawsuits seeking damages from Google’s illegal ad tech monopoly are piling up following the Justice Department’s successful antitrust case. Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, is the latest in a wave of media companies that have filed suit against Google, seeking to be reimbursed for the monopoly profits the tech company allegedly made at publishers’ … Read more
The United Kingdom has walked back plans to make its upcoming digital ID scheme a mandatory requirement for working adults. While the UK government remains “committed to mandatory digital right-to-work checks,” an unspecified government spokesperson told The Times, digital ID will now be optional when the initiative is introduced sometime in 2029. The national digital … Read more