Sony’s first clip earbuds don’t quite hit the mark
Sony’s first clip earbuds don’t quite hit the mark

The Sony LinkBuds Clip are the company’s first clip earbuds. They follow the innovative donut-hole LinkBuds and LinkBuds Open and, like their predecessors, allow you to listen to music or podcasts, make phone calls, or be active outdoors while still maintaining awareness of your surroundings. The clip design has become more popular over the past […]

Microsoft handed the government encryption keys for customer data
Microsoft handed the government encryption keys for customer data

The FBI went to Microsoft last year with a warrant, asking them to hand over keys to unlock encrypted data stored on three laptops as part of an investigation into potential fraud involving the COVID unemployment assistance program in Guam – and Microsoft complied. Typically, companies resist handing over encryption keys to authorities. Most famously, […]

Gmail’s spam filter and automatic sorting are broken
Gmail’s spam filter and automatic sorting are broken

Some Gmail users may have noticed that promotional emails that normally go to their own siloed tab have started flooding their inbox. Reports hit the Google forums and Reddit that messages are bypassing the Updates and Promotional filters and went straight to Gmail inboxes. Some also reported seeing a banner at the top of some […]

Mews raises €255M to accelerate AI and automation in hospitality
Mews raises €255M to accelerate AI and automation in hospitality

Amsterdam-based hospitality tech platform Mews has raised €255 million (about $300 million) in a Series D funding round as it pushes deeper into automation and AI-powered workflows for hotels around the world.  The round was led by EQT Growth with new …

Get ready for the AI ad-pocalypse
Get ready for the AI ad-pocalypse

I’ll confess, with no shame whatsoever, that I really love ads. Artsy ones, funny ones, weird ones, emotional ones – TV commercials were my childhood TikTok before any of us were using terms like “short-form video.” But like most creative things in my life, AI is sucking the joy out of it. And it’s only […]

Get stuff done by yelling at your phone
Get stuff done by yelling at your phone

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 113, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, please send hot cocoa to my freezing-cold house, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about private garbage collectors and vintage […]

Gemini with Personal Intelligence is awfully familiar
Gemini with Personal Intelligence is awfully familiar

By lots of metrics, Gemini is winning. It has raced ahead of OpenAI, become scarily good at creating convincing imagery, and even won Apple’s business. So last week’s news that it was enabling something called Personal Intelligence felt like a victory lap. Personal Intelligence allows Gemini to reference past conversations and access your data in […]

ICYMI: the week’s 7 biggest tech stories from LG’s massive OLED TV news to glorious Whoop clones

Here’s the top news stories from Sony, LG, Spotify and more for January 24, 2026.

The Loch Capsule dishwasher is small, fast, and efficient — it even sanitizes gadgets
The Loch Capsule dishwasher is small, fast, and efficient — it even sanitizes gadgets

A dishwasher is a luxury item some people can’t live without. It’s one of the first major kitchen devices I bought just as soon as I could afford one, and the appliance I thought I’d miss most in my nomadic vanlife pursuits. Loch sent me its $459.99 / €459.99 countertop Capsule dishwasher to review in […]

Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests
Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests

Internal documents revealed as part of a child safety lawsuit hint at Google’s plan to “onboard kids” into its ecosystem by investing in schools. In this November 2020 presentation, Google writes that getting kids into its ecosystem “leads to brand trust and loyalty over their lifetime,” as reported earlier by NBC News. The heavily-redacted documents, […]