This house is made for LAN gaming parties

Image: Richard Varda

If you’re nostalgic for the era of lugging your desktop to a friend’s house to play Unreal Tournament, software engineer Kenton Varda doesn’t have exactly the solution — but he thinks he has something better. The Cloudflare Workers tech lead has spent more than three years and at least a million dollars to transform his Austin house into the ultimate local PC gaming pad, complete with 22 machines and a dedicated hardware room. It’s dubbed the LAN Party House, and you’re probably not invited.

LAN (short for local area network, as many readers likely know) parties were the best option for “online” gaming in the era of dial-up internet. While some are large-scale events, Varda’s house is aimed at having groups of friends drop by, pull a...

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NBA settles with WBD as it prepares to stream games on Amazon in 2025

Photos by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

The NBA has reached an 11-year agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery that will continue the development of content like Inside the NBA, which will appear on ABC and ESPN. The settlement comes months after Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA for dropping TNT’s licensing package.

In July, the NBA chose licensing deals with Amazon’s Prime Video, Disney, and NBCUniversal over TNT. This resulted in a lawsuit from Warner Bros. Discovery that accused the NBA of breach of contract. During the 2025-2026 season, dozens of the NBA’s regular-season and playoff games will stream on Prime Video service, while some games will still appear on ESPN, ABC, and NBC.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s settlement includes the highlight rights to NBA games, which it can...

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Netflix adds Beyoncé to live entertainment juggernaut

Image: Netflix

Netflix is trying to carve a slice of the live entertainment market, and it’s enlisting help from Beyoncé to do so. The Houston-born singer will perform in her hometown on December 25th, headlining the halftime show for the Texans-Ravens NFL matchup as part of Netflix’s Christmas Gameday live show.

Beyoncé’s performance will take place in the second of two NFL games that Netflix is streaming on Christmas Day, the first being between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The star is set to perform songs from Cowboy Carter live for the first time, and “is expected to bring along some special guests” that featured on the album, according to Netflix’s announcement. The games mark Netflix’s NFL streaming debut, having secured a...

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Roblox will restrict kids under 13 from chatting outside of games

Illustration: The Verge

Roblox is starting to roll out some recently-announced child safety features, and the updates include some new limitations for how users under 13 can communicate on the platform. Beginning Monday, users younger than 13 won’t be able to DM players outside of games or experiences on Roblox. And they’ll need parental permission to be able to send in-game DMs — though this change won’t be fully implemented across the platform until the first quarter of 2025.

The changes follow recent reports highlighting instances of Roblox failing to protect children. A big article from Bloomberg described how predators on the platform use chat to communicate with kids. And a report from Hindenburg Research described Roblox as “an X-rated pedophile...

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LG’s first 480Hz OLED gaming monitor is $1,000

Image: LG

LG’s 27-inch OLED gaming monitor is one of the fastest models we’ve seen to date and it’s finally ready for preorder. The UltraGear 27GX790A (or GX7 for short) is priced at $999.99 and is built around a 480Hz panel from LG Display announced in early January with a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 0.03ms response time.

The base specs of the GX7 are on par with the $1,100 InZone M10S that Sony released in September. That makes the UltraGear GX7 a smidge cheaper, but it lacks some of the performance modes and variable refresh rate features available on Sony’s offering.

The UltraGear GX7 is listed as available for preorder on LG’s US website, but there’s no mention of a delivery date and it can’t yet be added to the basket for checkout. We’ve...

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Trump picks Brendan Carr to lead FCC

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that intends to name Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, a commissioner at the FCC since 2017, has made a name for himself by threatening to use the commission’s powers to regulate speech online and over the airwaves.

Carr authored Project 2025’s section on the FCC, using it to propose restrictions on social media platforms meant to bolster conservative speech. He proposed limiting the legal shield that gives websites wide latitude to host and moderate user-generated content. He also suggested putting regulations on tech companies that would limit their ability to block and prioritize that content as they choose.

In the lead up to the election, Carr...

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Apple’s Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone adapter may be going away

I haven’t been able to find mine for years. | Image: Apple

The Apple Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack Adapter may have bitten the dust, as it’s sold out at Apple’s online store in the US and much of the world, MacRumors reports. The accessory is reportedly still available from Apple in some countries, including France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

If it’s truly gone, then this feels like the end of an era. Apple introduced the Lightning headphone adapter in 2016 alongside the iPhone 7, when it first courageously ditched the headphone jack. The company even included it with new iPhones for a couple of generations before it stopped doing that for 2018’s iPhone XS, leaving customers to buy one themselves, pick up Lightning EarPods, or get on the AirPods train (which many of us had started...

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An Ohio man guilty of Bitcoin laundering must forfeit over $400 million in assets

Image: The Verge

An Ohio man named Larry Dean Harmon will serve three years in prison and forfeit more than $400 million worth of cryptocurrency and other assets, the Department of Justice announced on Friday. Harmon was indicted in 2020 on money laundering conspiracy charges related to Helix, a darkweb cryptocurrency “mixer” service he ran.

Also known as crypto “tumbling,” services like Helix are designed to hide cryptocurrency transactions — often for illegal drugs — and the identity of people involved. From 2014 to 2017, Harmon processed more than 350,000 Bitcoin (about $311 million USD at the time) in such transactions, according to the DOJ’s announcement.

Harmon, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in August 2021, will be on...

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A  study found that X’s algorithm now loves two things: Republicans and Elon Musk

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk’s X may have tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, along with those of other conservative-leaning users, starting around the time he announced his support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s according to a new study published by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which found that Musk’s posts in particular were suddenly much more popular.

The study’s authors — QUT associate professor in digital media Timothy Graham and Monash University communications and media studies professor Mark Andrejevic — first looked at Musk’s engagement before and after his July endorsement of Trump. They report that starting around July 13th, Musks’ posts received 138 percent more views and 238 percent more retweets than...

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Making human music in an AI world

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

Ge Wang doesn’t use computers to make music the way most people use computers make music. He uses computers to make... computer music. Wang works at Stanford, as an associate professor in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He also conducts the school’s famed Laptop Orchestra, was a co-founder of the music app maker Smule, and created a programming language called Chuck that turns code into sound. He understands how computers, music, and humans interact more deeply than most. He also has some ideas about where it’s all headed.

On this episode of The Vergecast, the third and last in our mini-series about the future of music, we chat with Wang about what’s next for computer music. He tells us about teaching his...

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Sometimes you just need a straightforward, old-school RPG

Image: Square Enix

We’re in a pretty good moment for sprawling, complex role-playing games. New releases like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Age Absolution, along with older titles like Elden Ring (including this year’s expansion), Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur’s Gate 3 have sucked millions of people into their expansive worlds. They can be all-consuming experiences, offering players all kinds of freedom to explore their worlds and characters. But honestly? Sometimes I don’t want to fuss with conversation wheels or make difficult, narrative-altering choices. I just want to go on a big adventure and slowly turn into an overpowered hero fighting monsters — and that’s where the excellent new remake of Dragon Quest 3 comes in.

The game originally came out way...

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Netflix served the Tyson vs. Paul fight to 60 million households

Netflix had a very big night. | Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images for Netflix

Netflix peaked at “65 million concurrent streams” during the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul last night, according to Most Valuable Promotions, the promoter for the fight. Those streams went out to 60 million households globally, the group said in a press release shared with The Verge via email. That’s more than twice the traffic Netflix could see for its Christmas Day NFL stream this year, if everyone who watched last year streamed it.

The crush of people trying to watch Tyson vs. Paul seemed to be more than Netflix’s servers could easily handle, as the social web was awash with complaints about the quality of the stream, which many found to be muddy, or plagued with buffering and dropped connections. Downdetector recorded...

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The FTC says spam call complaints are way down since 2021

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls have dropped for the third straight year, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. Reports of such calls have fallen by over 50 percent versus 2021, according to the FTC — a decline that could be thanks in no small part to stepped-up government efforts to fight irritating telemarketing and phone scams.

There were about 33,000 fewer unwanted call complaints during the 2024 fiscal year versus the year prior, writes the FTC. The drop affected all sorts of unwanted calls, although the agency writes that reports about debt reduction calls had jumped “more than 85 percent from last year.”

FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Sam Levine said that while illegal calls are still “a...

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The best fitness trackers to buy right now

Photo illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From simple fitness bands and rugged sports watches to rings, these are the best trackers you can get.

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The best MagSafe and Qi2 chargers for your iPhone

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Thanks to Qi2, there are way more great chargers for your MagSafe phone than ever before.

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Narwal’s Freo X Ultra, the best mopping robot available, is on sale for a new low price

The Freo X Ultra packs a lot of features for the price, including the ability to automatically remop your floors when necessary. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is fun and all, but the amount of cleaning you have to do afterward can be exhausting. The Narwal Freo X Ultra robot vacuum / mop hybrid can help speed things up, though, and it’s currently down to an all-time low of $849.99 (about $690 off) at Best Buy and Amazon (when you apply the on-page coupon).

The Narwal Freo X Ultra is one of our favorite robot vacuums for mopping. It features a commendable 8,200Pa of suction power and a host of welcome features, including a set of spinning triangular mops that allow it to clean hard surfaces exceptionally well. It can adjust the amount of pressure applied by its mop based on floor type, too, and can even make its own “cleaning decisions,” one of which will prompt it...

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Gabe Newell says Half-Life 2: Episode 3 didn’t happen because he was ‘stumped’

Concept art for Half-Life 2: Episode 3_, from the_ Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Documentary. | Screenshot: YouTube

Unsurprisingly, yesterday’s big Half-Life release wasn’t the sequel to Half-Life 2 or even the third Half-Life 2: Episode entry, but a 20th-anniversary update to Valve’s legendary 2004 game. And given what studio co-founder Gabe Newell has to say on the subject in a 2-hour documentary that the company released in tandem with the update, it seems less likely than ever that we’ll be seeing either follow-up anytime soon.

Newell explains what he calls his “personal failure” near the end of the video:

You can’t get lazy and say, “oh, we’re moving the story forward.” That’s copping out of your obligatiion to gamers, right? Yes, of course they love the story. They love many, many aspects of it. But sort of saying that your reason to do it is...

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NFL fans worry Netflix’s bad Tyson vs. Paul stream means it can’t handle football

Getty Images for Netflix © 2024

Netflix’s livestream of the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match was a mess. I’m not talking about the bout itself — although people had their qualms with that, too — it’s the livestream, which people across the internet complained was plagued by buffering, unstable, and unwatchable muddiness. That doesn’t bode well for Netflix’s live sports ambitions, especially its upcoming Christmas Day NFL games.

I had the same experience, having tuned in a few minutes before Paul showed up in the back of a lowrider truck. For the vast majority of the 8-round match, I had to lean heavily on my brain’s ability to construct a cohesive picture from very little information to have an idea of what was going on. The X post below was very much what the...

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Here’s some cool stuff you can do with Bluesky

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

So, you’ve finally decided to give Bluesky a shot. The social network has come a long way since the early bare-bones days of invite-only signups and recently grew past the 15 million user mark. Along the way, it’s gathered a lot of familiar posting platform features, like direct messages, pinned posts, and the ability to post videos up to 60 seconds in length.

But there’s a lot more to it than that, and I’m not only talking about lore. (Yes, Bluesky has lore, and that’s probably the most classic Twitter thing about it.) It’s also got a number of features and settings you won’t find on X or Threads, like the ability to choose your own algorithm or moderation tools. These serve not just as a fast lane to getting the platform to feel...

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The Rise of the Golden Idol makes a great puzzle game even better

Image: Playstack / Color Gray Games

The Case of the Golden Idol was a rewarding series of point-and-click murder mysteries that became one of my favorite games of 2022. And while I felt there was more story to explore about the titular golden idol, I wasn’t sure if a potential sequel could live up to its clever puzzles and fascinating, slowly unfolding story. Turns out, I had nothing to fear: The Rise of the Golden Idol, the newly launched sequel, easily surpasses the original by improving on just about everything.

At its core, Rise is a very similar game to Case. The new game takes place in the 1970s, around 200 years after the events of the original, and each of Rise’s cases drops you into a specific moment in time, typically during or shortly after a murder. You’re...

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18 states want the SEC to stop enforcing crypto regulation

In which various government bodies fight over “permissionless” assets | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to “unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States” when it comes to crypto, according to a lawsuit from 18 states. These states want to halt the SEC’s enforcement actions, so they can manage crypto regulation instead. Also named as a plaintiff on the suit is the DeFi Education Fund, a special interest lobbyist.

Controversial SEC chair Gary Gensler is named in the suit, along with other SEC commissioners. Gensler’s treatment of crypto during his time as chair has made him a punching bag for the industry — and for Republicans such as president-elect Donald Trump.

There has been an ongoing turf war over crypto regulation. Until this point, the two major contenders were the...

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WhatsApp now lets you save message drafts

Illustration: The Verge

WhatsApp dropped the most “I can’t believe this wasn’t already there” feature this week: message drafts. Now, WhatsApp lets you know if you have unsent messages typed up in chats so you know to get back to them later.

To let you know about a draft, messages you’ve started writing will show a green and bold “Draft” word followed by what you’ve typed up. That way, you can ponder about finishing it when you open the app and not accidentally ignore your friends (though you still purposefully could, I guess.)

Drafts also end up at the top of the chats list, so you don’t have to scroll to search for lost ones. The feature is now available in the app worldwide, Engadget reports.

WhatsApp announced in July that it had hit 100 million monthly...

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Half-Life 2 is getting a huge 20th anniversary update

Image: Valve

Half-Life 2 is getting a major update in celebration of the classic title’s 20th anniversary. In addition to Steam Workshop support directly within the game, Valve has fixed bugs and restored some content, added new graphics settings, updated gamepad controls, and a whole lot more. You’ll also be able to get the game for free on Steam for free through November 18th at 1PM ET. After that, it will cost $9.99.

Valve is also now including the Episode One and Episode Two expansions with the base game. They’ll be accessible from the Half-Life 2 menu, and Valve says that “you will automatically advance to the next expansion after completing each one.” You’ll also be able to access the Steam Workshop within the Extras menu, which means you’ll no...

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ESPN is testing a generative AI avatar called ‘FACTS’

Image: ESPN

ESPN is testing an AI-generated avatar with the Saturday college football show SEC Nation. Dubbed FACTS, it’s going to be “...promoting education and fun around sports analytics” with information drawn from ESPN Analytics, which includes data like the Football Power Index (FPI), player and team statistics, and game schedules. We haven’t seen the avatar in action, but it sounds like a bot-ified version of stats encyclopedia Howie Schwab, who was ESPN’s first statistician and eventually the star of a mid-2000s game show, Stump the Schwab.

ESPN has already brought generative AI to its website with AI-written game recaps. FACTS is still in development, and there’s no word on when it could make its first appearance on the network.

FACTS...

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Google will let you make AI clip art for your documents

Illustration: The Verge

Google Workspace is rolling out a Gemini-powered AI image generator directly in Google Docs that lets you quickly whip up visuals for your writeups. Essentially, it's a clip art maker that follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s AI-generated art feature in its Office products.

Google’s image generator in Docs is available to paid Workspace accounts that include the Gemini Business,Enterprise, Education, Education Premium, or Google One AI Premium add-ons.

Those with the new feature can find it under Insert > Image > Help me create an image, which results in a “Create an image” sidebar where you can type in a description of what you’d like to make. It also provides a drop-down to select an art style with options such as “Photography” or...

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Disney has reportedly pulled a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur episode for telling a trans-inclusive story

Disney

Though the remainder of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s final season is set to hit the Disney Channel and Disney Plus some time next year, the studio is reportedly keeping one episode from airing because of its focus on a transgender character.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has often touched on ideas about race, class, and issues like gentrification as it followed the adventures of genius 13-year-old Lunella Lafatette (Diamond White) and her pet dinosaur, Devil (Fred Tatasciore). But according to now-deleted social media posts from animators who worked on “The Gatekeeper” — an episode about Lunella and other members of her school’s volleyball team being terrorized by a transphobic adult — Disney has chosen to keep the episode from...

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The M4 MacBook Pro features a quantum dot display

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

The new M4 MacBook Pros that launched last month have an unadvertised change with new quantum dot displays, according to display industry analyst Ross Young and reported by 9to5Mac.

Young posted on X that Apple is adopting quantum dot displays for the first time and that it's using a version of the film that is free of cadmium, which is toxic to humans. “In the past, Apple went with the KSF solution due to better efficiency and lack of cadmium (Cd),” writes Ross. TV manufacturers have been using a version of quantum dot displays with no cadmium traces for years.

The operator of the display motion blur testing website Blur Busters, which features flying UFO animations to help nitpick at display tech, also noted the M4 display’s...

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Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Social network Bluesky, in a post on Friday, says that it has “no intention” of taking user content to train generative AI tools. It made the statement shortly ahead of competitor X implementing its new terms of service that spell out how it can analyze user text and other information to train its generative AI tools.

“A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data,” Bluesky says in a post. “We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so.”

A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data. We do not use any of your...

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Senator to Valve: what’s with all the Nazis on Steam?

Image: The Verge

US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi**,** white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hate, and other extremist ideologies” on the PC gaming platform.

The letter features a high-level view of the kind of hateful content the ADL found on Steam. That includes “40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, with the most prominent being ‘1488,’ ‘shekel,’ and ‘white power’.” Warner’s letter highlights how the apparent preponderance of hateful content...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

The new AirPods 4 deliver better sound and voice call quality than prior models. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple’s ever-popular AirPods. Although we’ve yet to see major deals on the new AirPods 4 and the updated AirPods Max, both the second- and third-gen AirPods can still often be found at a steep discount. The same goes for the original Max headphones, which are nearly indistinguishable from the previous model aside from the switch to a USB-C connector.

Here, we’ve rounded up the best deals currently available on each model, including the second-gen and third-gen AirPods, both iterations of the AirPods 4, the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C, and the last-gen AirPods Max.

The best AirPods (second-gen) deals

Before they were discontinued alongside the AirPods 4 announcement, the...

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