The Verge·Saturday, January 17, 2026

The Verge - Saturday, January 17, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

The best deals on MacBooks right now

The 15-inch MacBook Air offers better speakers than its 13-inch sibling, but is otherwise similar. Apple currently sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series processors in a wide range of sizes and price points, all of which run the company’s newest operating system, macOS 26. Purchasing a new MacBook can be complicated if you’re trying to figure out what specs you need, but finding a deal on a relatively speedy model is surprisingly easy, especially since Apple increased the starting RAM o

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Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling

Google is appealing a federal court's decision ruling it an illegal online search monopolist. The company filed a notice to appeal on Friday, requesting a pause on the court-ordered remedies meant to restore competition to the online search market. "As we have long said, the Court's August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they're forced to," Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a blog post. "The decis

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Trump and Mid-Atlantic governors want tech companies to pay for new power plants

An Amazon Web Services data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they're "urging" PJM to hold an "emergency" auction for companies to procure electricity over 15-year contracts. The unusually long length of the contracts

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Fortnite blocks creators from selling prize wheel spins

A prize wheel in Steal The Brainrot. Epic Games is making a big change to the rules for Fortnite creators just days after allowing them to publish experiences with in-game transactions. Beginning January 20th, experiences - which Epic Games calls "islands" - will not be able to offer in-island transactions as "a 'spin' or 'increased luck' for a prize wheel," according to an Epic staffer on Reddit. Epic is adding the rule after Steal The Brainrot, one of the biggest non-Epic games available to

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Google brings its AI videomaker to Workspace users

An AI-generated scene created by Flow. Google is expanding access to its AI videomaking tool. Launched last May, Flow was initially only available to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but now, those with Business, Enterprise, and Education Workspace plans can access it, too. Flow uses Google's AI video generation model Veo 3.1 to generate eight-second clips based on a text prompt or images. You can stitch together the clips to create longer scenes, as well as access a bunch of other tool

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The two things AMD subtly revealed at CES that actually excite me

As we predicted, the world's biggest consumer electronics show was a bit of a bust for gamers this year! CES 2026 brought us several neat gamepads, but barely any handhelds and no new desktop GPUs - not from Nvidia, not from Intel, and not from AMD. But if you dig deep, AMD said two things at this year's show that are worthy of attention. Did you catch that the company's about to make socketed mobile chips again? Or that its answer to Intel is to lower the price of its monster Strix Halo silico

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Verizon-owned Visible is offering outage credits, too

Customers of Visible Wireless, which is owned by Verizon, may be getting a $5 credit toward their next bill in response to a Verizon cell service outage earlier this week. Verizon customers were offered a $20 credit after the outage. As spotted by 9to5Google, a message sent to Visible customers explains: "Yesterday we let you down and for that we are sorry. We are giving you a $5 credit towards your next month of service that can be redeemed after Jan 16 when paying with a credit card online."

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Ted Sarandos says Netflix will commit to 45-day theatrical releases

Though Netflix's plan to buy Warner Bros. Discovery has prompted concerns about how the deal might hurt the movie theater business, the streamer's co-CEO says that there is nothing to worry about. In a new interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that, should the WBD acquisition go through, the streamer will commit to 45-day theatrical release windows for the legacy studio's upcoming releases. Sarandos insisted that Netflix has no intentions of disrupting "a theatrical

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Ads are coming soon to ChatGPT, starting with shopping links

ChatGPT will soon start showing you sponsored products or services if they're related to your conversation. In an announcement on Friday, OpenAI says it will start testing ads in the coming weeks for logged-in users in the US who use the app for free or have a ChatGPT Go subscription. The "clearly labeled" ads will surface in a separate area at the bottom of your chat. OpenAI says it will "keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers," adding that it will "never sell your data"

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OpenAI releases a cheaper ChatGPT subscription

OpenAI is expanding a low-cost subscription tier called ChatGPT Go to the US and the rest of the world. Go was released in India in August and later became available in another 170 countries prior to Friday's global release. "In markets where Go has been available, we've seen strong adoption and regular everyday use for tasks like writing, learning, image creation, and problem-solving," the company's announcement stated. For $8 per month, Go subscribers get more messages, file uploads, and image

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