The Verge·Monday, December 22, 2025

The Verge - Monday, December 22, 2025

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Bitcoin does cultural diplomacy in a dive bar

Bitcoin culture, by nature, is anarchical and chaotic. It has to be, given the nature of Bitcoin itself and the people who adopted it: free-market libertarians who've gone all in on turning computer code into a form of money divorced from central banks, government intervention, and traceability. In short, it's the exact opposite culture of Washington, DC, home of the federal government, where everyone agrees that the American dollar exists and is worth X amount because the government says so. So

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Pirate library rips 86 million of the most popular songs on Spotify

Spotify says it has launched new protections against "anti-copyright attacks" after the open-source library / pirate activist group Anna's Archive announced it's ripped 86 million songs from the platform that it plans to make available in torrents, as reported earlier by Billboard. According to the group, "We have archived around 86 million songs from Spotify, ordering by popularity descending. While this only represents 37 percent of songs, it represents around 99.6 percent of listens." The fi

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Birdfy’s Hum Bloom captures 120fps slow motion footage of hummingbirds

Ahead of CES 2026 getting underway in early January, Birdfy has announced two new camera-equipped smart bird feeders that can identify and capture visitors in slow motion. The Birdfy Hum Bloom is specifically designed to attract and record hummingbirds using a nectar bulb that mimics flowers they're naturally attracted to, while the Feeder Vista introduces a 360-degree camera and a bottom-up feeding system that doesn't obstruct views. Both feeders are expected to be available in Q2 of 2026 but p

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Indie Game Awards retracts Expedition 33 prizes due to generative AI

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had earned another Game of the Year award by the Indie Game Awards last week, but the organization has since announced that the award would be retracted because developer Sandfall Interactive used generative AI during development. The Indie Game Awards also rescinded the Debut Game award given to Expedition 33. Here is the Indie Game Awards' explanation, from an FAQ: The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and du

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Netflix doesn’t stream its ‘Originals’ forever, here are some that may leave in 2026

Although Netflix Originals are shows the streamer produces itself or has exclusive licensing arrangements for, they aren't always available on the platform indefinitely. What's on Netflix has compiled a comprehensive list of 100 Netflix Originals movies and series set to be removed from the platform throughout 2026. The list includes several animated series like seasons one through three of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, leaving on January 9th, seasons one through five of She-Ra and the P

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The Beats Studio Pro headphones are $200 off today

Christmas Eve is in two days, and if you’ve got a problem with procrastination, it’s time to, well, stop procrastinating. There are still some really good deals to be gotten out there, some of which may arrive just in the nick. (Worse comes to worse, you can say it’s a New Year’s gift, right?) One of these is the Beats Studio Pro headphones, which are currently $200 off ($149.99 down from $349.99) at Best Buy through the end of today, December 22nd. Beats Studio Pro Where to Buy: $199.95 $179

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Instacart scraps AI pricing tests that made some products more expensive

Instacart is ending its AI-powered pricing tests, which led some users to see higher prices on certain products than others. "Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices - period," Instacart writes in a blog post on Monday. The change comes just weeks after a study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union found that Instacart offered multiple price points for the same gr

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Chipwrecked

The AI data center build-out, as it currently stands, is dependent on two things: Nvidia chips and borrowed money. Perhaps it was inevitable that people would begin using Nvidia chips to borrow money. As the craze has gone on, I have begun to worry about the weaknesses of the AI data center boom; looking deeper into the financial part of this world, I have not been reassured. Nvidia has plowed plenty of money into the AI space, with more than 70 investments in AI companies just this year, accord

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Samsung ‘Wide Fold’ rumored to rival Apple’s foldable next year

The upcoming “Wide Fold” will seemingly be shorter and wider when unfolded compared to Samsung’s Z Fold 7 (pictured). Apple's long-rumored foldable iPhone is set to arrive next year and already faces some preemptive competition from Samsung. Korea's ET News reports that Samsung's upcoming "Wide Fold" is also set to launch in 2026 and will closely mirror the display size and 4:3 aspect ratio of Apple's first foldable. The machine-translated report says the Wide Fold is expected to feature an O

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It’s finally time to retire the word ‘podcast’

According to YouTube's 2025 Recap feature, the podcast I consumed the most on its platform was Seth Meyers' recurring segment "A Closer Look" on his show Late Night. Last year, I would have argued that this is not a podcast. That it is, in fact, a clip of a TV show. But in 2025, with almost every major podcast now having a video component, the definition of the word "podcast" has become pretty meaningless. A decades-old TV show talk show format is now almost indistinguishable from podcasts like

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