The Verge·Thursday, January 1, 2026

The Verge - Thursday, January 1, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

LG’s new karaoke-ready party speaker uses AI to remove song vocals

LG is adding a karaoke-focused party speaker to its lineup of Xboom devices, which is built in collaboration with Will.i.am. Announced this week, LG says the Stage 501 speaker comes with an "AI Karaoke Master" that can remove or adjust vocals from "virtually any song," similar to the Soundcore Rave 3S. It can also adjust the pitch of the songs to make them more comfortable to sing, and it doesn't require karaoke-specific audio files to do so, according to LG. Like its predecessor, the Stage 501

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Public domain 2026: Betty Boop, Pluto, and Nancy Drew set free

Betty Boop made her debut as an anthropomorphic dog in Dizzy Dishes. | Image: Fleischer Studios Some years ago, I was writing a science fiction short story in which I wanted to incorporate verses from a 1928 song, "Button Up Your Overcoat." However, when I sold the story, my editor told me that since the song was still copyrighted, it was safer not to include the verses. If I had written the story today, I could have used them - because the song passed into public domain two years ago. If you

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Meet the new tech laws of 2026

As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything from AI to social media to the right to repair. Many of these laws, alongside rules passed in past years, take effect in 2026 - either right now or in the coming months. As of January 1st, Americans should have the right to crypto ATM refunds in Colorado, wide-ranging electronics repairs in Colorado and Washington, and AI system transparency in California, among

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You can’t trust your eyes to tell you what’s real anymore, says the head of Instagram

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is closing out 2025 with a 20-images-deep dive into what a new era of "infinite synthetic content" means as it all becomes harder and harder to distinguish from reality, and the old, more personal Instagram feed that he says has been "dead" for years. Last year, The Verge's Sarah Jeong wrote that "…the default assumption about a photo is about to become that it's faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do," and Mosseri eventually

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Net neutrality was back, until it wasn’t

The fight for net neutrality never seems to be truly won or lost. Federal net neutrality rules have been on and off for the past 15 years. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the Open Internet Order under President Barack Obama in 2010, prohibiting ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful internet traffic, the baseline rule of net neutrality. Then, at the request of those ISPs, a court blocked its rules. An updated framework was passed by the FCC in 2015, only to be overturned in 2

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Leaked video shows the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s new camera island

New photos and video seem to confirm previous leaks hinting that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will sport a new camera bump. OnLeaks posted images of what look like dummy phones on X, following renders it leaked back in September. #Samsung #GalaxyS26Ultra pic.twitter.com/0lzaFIxYev - Steve H.McFly (@OnLeaks) December 30, 2025 We've seen a similarly raised island on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which 9to5Google points out could lead to an annoying wobble when using the device on a table. #Samsung #G

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The Dreame X40 Ultra robovac is about $700 off, nearly matching its best price

The Dreame X40 Ultra used to be one of our robot vacuums on the market before its successor took its place. With the year coming to a close, now’s a good time to set yourself up for a cleaner, more organized start in 2026. The Dreame X40 Ultra — one of our favorite robot vacuum deals from Black Friday — can handle most of the heavy lifting for you, and it’s once again on sale. You can currently buy it for $503 ($697 off) at Amazon at checkout, which is just $4 more than its record low price se

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Killing in the name of… nothing

In a good and just society, it would have been possible to bury Charlie Kirk without either threatening mass violence toward his enemies or making light of his death with a furry sex meme. But America in 2025 did not remotely resemble a working society, let alone a civil one, and Kirk's killing came prepackaged with its own desecrating shitposts. There was, briefly, an attempt at a national mood of somberness. The president ordered flags across the nation to be lowered to half-staff. Politicians

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The 11 best Nintendo Switch 2 games we played in 2025

2025 was a big year for gaming, and that includes gaming hardware. Nintendo launched its Switch 2 console in June, and since then, numerous Switch 2 titles and noteworthy updates for original Switch games have launched. These include brand-new Nintendo experiences like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, as well as some belated but welcome third-party titles, including Cyberpunk 2077 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. Even classics like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild got some new life

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Two cybersecurity employees plead guilty to carrying out ransomware attacks

Two former employees at cybersecurity firms - one of whom was a ransomware negotiator - have pleaded guilty to carrying out a series of ransomware attacks in 2023. The Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas on Tuesday, saying 40-year-old Ryan Goldberg and 36-year-old Kevin Martin extorted $1.2 million in Bitcoin from a medical device company and targeted several others. Goldberg, Martin, and an unnamed co-conspirator were indicted for the attacks in October, which involved using ALPHV

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