3 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Wonder Man won’t have a second season on Disney Plus.

A show almost canceled as a tax write-off before it ever aired is now canceled, according to Variety, despite Variety’s report that it was renewed in March.

Our S1 review mentioned that “by the end of the season, you get the sense that Simon and Slattery could go on to become one of Marvel’s more novel riffs on a superhero team,” and a source in today’s report says the show’s characters could pop up elsewhere in the currently-under-renovation-MCU.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Spotify’s User Notes turn playlists into mixtapes.

You’ll find the feature in the three-dot menu next to tracks on your playlists. Now you can remind yourself of how you discovered a song, or leave a message to someone you’re sharing the playlist with. Playlists have always felt impersonal compared to a mixtape or mix CD. This closes the gap slightly.

Series of screenshots showing where to find the new User Notes feature in Spotify.
Image: Spotify
Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Game Boy Camera, meet pocket camera.

This prototype is a fully functional Game Boy Pocket, with a removable Game Boy Camera module and interchangeable CS-mount lenses! It’s from 8-bit photog Crissa Graves, who previously made a Game Boy Camera that fully fits inside a cartridge. “You can still play Tetris and Pokemon one-handed,” she tells me — but no speaker.

<em>USB-C charging — and still has link port access for a Game Boy Printer!</em> <em>1800mAh battery for hours of photos.</em>
“<em>CS Mount lens, but I’ll likely share the design files so makers can customize it for whatever lens they’d like.</em>“
<em>“By the time I’m done, it should be 109 x 61.8 x 23.5 mm (18.5mm at the thinnest part). For reference, Ricoh GR III is 109 x 62 x 33mm, which was the size aim.“</em>
<em>“The smallest Game Boy Camera cartridge ever!</em>“
<em>“4 completely custom circuit boards: the main CPU, the shutter & power button board, a flexible PCB board to connect the screen to the CPU, and the cartridge.</em>”
1/5
USB-C charging — and still has link port access for a Game Boy Printer! 1800mAh battery for hours of photos.
Image: Crissa Graves
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
More Odyssey in IMAX.

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour movie has had additional 70mm IMAX showtimes added, which are now scheduled to run through September 16th.

After experiencing the movie in both standard widescreen and IMAX, our reviewer Charles Pulliam-Moore wrote that “By shooting The Odyssey completely in 70mm, Nolan crafted a film whose size and visual detail could make it feel immersive in ways that most modern features aren’t.” Might be worth getting a ticket, even if AI bots aren’t much help.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The Epic Games Store launches on iOS in Brazil.

Apple recently started allowing alternative app marketplaces in Brazil following a long legal dispute, during which Epic originally announced that the store would be launching in the country.

The store will have Fortnite and Rocket League Sideswipe, Epic says.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The Xbox app is now rolling out on Hisense TVs.

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s been rolling the app out “over the past month” to supported TVs running Hisense’s VIDAA OS. The company announced earlier this year that the app was on the way.

The Xbox app is also available on select Samsung TVs, Amazon Fire TV devices, and LG TVs.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
What is “Muskism”?

A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”

Space Oddity | Mark O’Connell

[The New York Review of Books]

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
What if your DJI Pocket camera could put on wings and fly?

The HoverAir Versa is the next entry from the flying selfie cam company. No date or price yet, but it should hit Indiegogo in August. I’d wait for retail: We liked X1, but X1 Pro had lots of early issues, and the company can’t legally ship its Aqua (or likely this Versa) to the US at all.

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
Those block rockin’ beats.

The musical puzzler Lumines is making a return to smartphones with a new version billed as a remaster. It follows the excellent Lumines Arise from last year, and is available now on both Android and iOS; it’s a free download but costs $7.99 to unlock the full version.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

TC Sottek
TC Sottek
I just want this little yellow ball to be real.

I’ve accepted that Samsung’s Ballie robot may never come out after disappearing from CES 2026. It was one of the cutest and most exciting robots ever… as of six years ago. SammyGuru has a look today at some “early UI design sketches” reminding us of what could have been.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snap is hosting a Specs launch event in September.

The event, taking place on September 16th at 7PM ET, will be livestreamed.

Snap announced the design for the augmented reality glasses — and their eye-watering $2,195 price — in June, but it’s unclear if anyone can look cool wearing them. (They seem especially heavy on the ears.)

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“…And we call ourselves Situational Awareness.”

The hedge fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who had no previous hedge fund experience, “rapidly sold a large portion of its public equity holdings” as losses mounted. The fund employed only eight people, of whom four were investment professionals. Aschenbrenner named the fund after some essays he wrote.

Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Scale AI has a new CEO: the current COO of Google Cloud.

Francis deSouza will begin as CEO on August 10, taking over from the interim CEO who has been leading the company since Alexandr Wang, its founder and former CEO, joined Meta in June 2025. Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale AI, said the company’s new focus on building AI applications for enterprises and governments, rather than solely data labeling, has it projecting more than $1 billion in 2026 revenue.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
An innocent man spent 18 months in jail over a misread username.

Brandon Klayme was wrongly convicted for possession of child pornography after the investigation botched his Kik username, “fus_ro_dah,” in reference to Bethesda’s Skyrim videogame. The real suspect’s username — “fus__ro_dah” — included one additional underscore, a “subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Klayme said.

Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Lilian Weng, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, has returned to OpenAI.

Weng had left OpenAI along with a handful of other employees to co-found the competing AI startup, which was helmed by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO. Weng recently shared a note that after being “absent for a month” to focus on her health leading up to Thinking Machines Lab’s first model release, Inkling, she was making the decision to leave behind “consistent stress and workload” to pursue “a scoped role in a more predictable place.” She is reportedly already back at OpenAI.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
The Senate takes another crack at passing the Kids Online Safety Act.

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.

Senate Commerce Committee Kids Safety Markup

[U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation]

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google Earth now lets you reimagine locations with AI.

Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image generation model to Google Earth, allowing you to generate AI images using the satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery in the web app. Some examples shared by Google show how you can give a building a makeover, visualize projects, or create an infographic about what you’re seeing.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
I can’t stop staring through this PC with a curved glass front.

Maingear’s new Zero series of desktop PCs use 4mm-thick curved tempered glass for an airy, panoramic aesthetic. They come in Intel and AMD versions, starting at $2,699, with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 to RTX 5090.

Maingear and other manufacturers have done glass setups similar to this before, but the Zero series has no visible seams and it isn’t an ultra-limited edition run like last year’s Doom PC.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

1/6Image: Maingear
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Winamp enters the streaming era.

The iconic media player of the Napster generation has partnered with Deezer to power Winamp’s own “premium music subscription service,” which is set to launch in the first half of 2027. The new Winamp Player will combine Deezer’s music catalogue with users’ local music libraries, internet radio stations, podcasts, and more. And yes — the interface will be “highly customizable.”

A second lens makes DJI’s Osmo Pocket 4P my new favorite video camera

8

Verge Score

This is bigger than the Pocket 4, but definitely better.

Dominic Preston
SwitchBot makes a better fanSwitchBot makes a better fan
Thomas Ricker
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Meta’s AI algorithm is keeping us on Instagram.

In Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram globally this quarter has increased by “double digits year-over-year,” largely driven by improvements to its AI-powered recommendations algorithm that keeps people hooked. The proclamation comes amid concerns (and legal battles) around Instagram’s “addictive” design.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
ChatGPT and Roblox will be subjected to the EU’s content moderation rules.

Having surpassed the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the bloc, both services will be required to clamp down on illegal and harmful content per the EU’s strict DSA rules. Roblox and ChatGPT search will have to comply as soon as August, per Bloomberg’s sources.

Correction: Bloomberg corrected its story to say”ChatGPT search,“ not ChatGPT in general.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Jobs AI isn’t killing: electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.

Building the data centers needed to support the AI boom requires lots of skilled human tradespeople working 10-hour days, seven days a week, and earning healthy overtime wages. Bidding wars have broken out in markets with heavy data center construction, allowing workers to jump ship for bonuses and even higher pay in a modern-day gold rush, with companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft paying to help train new recruits.