This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on dystopian developments in AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The…

The Kaoss Pad has seen many different iterations, but the mainline effect unit and sampler hasn’t received an update since the launch of the KP3+ in 2013. Korg has finally given it the attention it deserves with the release of…

Good deals are often hard to come by at the beginning of the year — which is precisely what makes Best Buy’s Winter Sale worth checking out. The ongoing sales event features discounts on everything from big-ticket OLED TVs to…

January was going to be a landmark month for the crypto industry. The Senate would start negotiating the finer details of the CLARITY Act, a major law that would finally enshrine the fundamental structure of how the crypto market could…

”Share a Disney quote that sums up how you’re feeling right now!”That’s what Disney posted on Threads the other day, and people immediately replied with lines from Star Wars, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Mary Poppins. The throughline…

Happy Saturday, folks! This week, Best Buy kicked off its so-called “Winter Sale,” introducing a whole host of price cuts that range from not-so-good to legitimately great, at least for this time of year. We’ll be publishing many of the…

At CES, I did what you’re not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16. It’s a 16-inch…

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the…

OpenAI has announced plans to begin testing advertisements on the free and Go tiers of ChatGPT in the coming weeks. The company disclosed this on Friday via a post on its official X handle, saying the move was guided by…

The best all-in-one portable projector is the one that makes all the right compromises. It needs to balance image and sound quality with battery life and responsiveness in a device that’s not too expensive and small enough to take anywhere.…

Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, some impressive alleged sales…

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…

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…

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…

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…