The Verge·Monday, December 29, 2025

The Verge - Monday, December 29, 2025

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

GOG’s Steam-alternative PC game store is leaving CD Projekt, staying DRM-free

GOG is splitting from CD Projekt, the game company that launched the preservation-focused PC gaming marketplace in 2008. In an update on Monday, GOG announced that its co-founder, Michał Kiciński, has acquired the digital storefront and its online gaming platform GOG Galaxy from CD Projekt - which he also co-founded - for $25.2 million. The acquisition isn't changing anything about GOG's mission to keep games DRM-free, according to the announcement that says it's "more central to GOG than ever:"

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Turn your PC into a Super Nintendo with Epilogue’s new USB dock

After announcing and teasing its design well over a year ago, Epilogue's new SN Operator will finally be available for preorder starting tomorrow. Like the company's GB Operator that debuted in early 2021, the SN Operator is a standalone USB cartridge slot that lets you play and archive old Nintendo console games on PCs, Macs, or handhelds like the Steam Deck using their original carts. But where the GB Operator was built for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and GBA games, the SN Operator instead suppo

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How to tweak your online platform algorithms

Here’s how you can see more or less of certain content being pushed to you on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and more. Love them or hate them, more than half of the world's population interacts with algorithmic recommendations in some way every day. Algorithmic recommendations play an integral role in how users discover new content across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. It can be nice to be fed a stream of fresh posts, pictures, and videos that are already tailored to

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Beats’ new Powerbeats Fit earbuds are down to $180

It’s almost the new year and time to treat yourself to a new pair of earbuds — especially if one of your resolutions for 2026 is to work out more. If you find yourself reading this and nodding, take a look at the Beats Powerbeats Fit, a recent upgrade of Beats’ Fit Pro earbuds that feature a redesigned wing tip. They are now on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H for about $179.99, which is $20 off their usual $199.99 price and the lowest they’ve gone so far. According to the company, the new tips

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This experimental camera can focus on everything at once

Researchers have developed a system that brings multiple objects at different distances into sharp focus. | Image: The Verge via Yingsi Qin, Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan, Matthew O’Toole | Carnegie Mellon University A camera lens, historically, can only focus on one thing at a time, just like the human eye. That could be a thing of the past, though, thanks to a breakthrough lens technology developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that can bring every part of a scene into sharp

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The best shows to watch on HBO Max from 2025

With all the drama surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery's plans to sell itself to another company, it's not currently clear how much longer HBO Max will continue to exist in its current form. But for the time being, the streamer is chock full of solid series you might want to consider watching if you find yourself bored, chilly, and firmly planted on your couch this holiday season. Whether it's superhero madness, dark satire, or steamy romance, HBO Max has a little bit of everything. And the strea

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Xiaomi’s 17 Ultra Leica edition has a rotatable camera zoom

It’s also the first Xiaomi phone to include Leica’s little red dot logo. Xiaomi used the Christmas period to launch its top flagship phone for the year, the 17 Ultra. It drops the extra rear display that's the key selling point of the 17 Pro, but instead adds in the option of a manual zoom ring, built directly into the phone's camera island. That rotating zoom is only included in the new Leica edition of the phone, which also packs touches like the Leica red dot logo and a textured finish on t

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Windows on Arm had another good year

In 2024, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips finally made Arm-based Windows laptops viable. Unlike previous Arm laptops that struggled to even run Windows well, this new class offered solid performance and the best battery life on Windows, and they impressed us in Microsoft's own Surface Laptop and Surface Pro offerings. But inconsistent app compatibility remained the biggest hurdle to running Windows on Arm. (It forced me to use the watered-down Adobe Lightroom app instead of Lightroom Classic, and t

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I’m The Verge’s Senior Internet Typist, ask me anything while Nilay’s away!

Hello from the dead week of the year, when all sane people have logged off to spend time with their families. This is when I typically write at least one deeply weird post while I'm working over the holiday. One time I got left alone on New Year's Day and posted about cats all day and people got very mad! No one let me run the site alone anymore after that. I'm supposed to give you some inkling of what I am willing to talk about but even I don't know what my beat is anymore. I am somehow our bus

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Google Photos is coming to Samsung TVs in 2026

The Google Photos Memories feature will be exclusive to Samsung for six months. Google Photos will finally be available on TVs next year, starting with an upcoming integration for Samsung TVs. Samsung announced that the planned integration will "seamlessly bring the photos people capture on their phones to Samsung TVs, where they can appear in a larger, cinematic format," and that it wants Google Photos to be "deeply woven into the TV experience." There currently isn't a native TV app for Goog

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