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Guests await the beginning of a news conference at the Department of Energy headquarters to announce a breakthrough in fusion research on December 13, 2022 in Washington, DC. The officials announced that experiments at the National Ignition Facility at the LLNL achieved ‘ignition.’ | Photo: Getty Images The Department of Energy (DOE) released a new roadmap for the US to realize the decades-long dream of harnessing fusion energy. It’s a commitment to support research and development efforts and pursue public-private partnerships to finally build the first generation of fusion power plants. And of course, the plan hypes up AI as…

Modern gadgets are all well and good, but sometimes things get more exciting when you enter the realm of fantasy. And the worlds of gaming, TV, and film often feature extremely cool gadgets that we just wish were real, whether it’s an impossible VR headset or a smartphone powered by a ghost. So, every so often, we decide to treat them as if they were real, and review science fiction gizmos the same way we would the latest iPhone or Switch. Keep up with them all right here. Pokémon Legends: Z-A Rotom Phone review: better camera, higher jumps Fallout Pip-Boy…

Though the Pokémon games' Rotom Phones haven't really changed all that much design-wise over the past few years, each generation has introduced new functionalities that made upgrading a no-brainer. Sword / Shield's Rotom Phone - the very first one - came with a bare-bones camera that made it easy to snap wide-angle (screen)shots out in the Galar region's Wild Area. The second-generation Rotom Phone's camera in Scarlet / Violet was a significant improvement, but the device's real standout feature was its ability to keep you from plummeting to your death if you fell from a great height. While neither of…

This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Around the middle of last year, Pim de Witte started reaching out to a handful of prominent AI labs to see if they'd be interested in using data from Medal, his popular video game clipping platform, to train their agents. Within weeks, it became clear that Medal's data was more valuable to the labs than he expected. "We received multiple acquisition offers very quickly," he told me. (He declined to name names, but it…

Apple just announced 14-inch MacBook Pro updates that add a new generation M5 processor, faster storage, and a promise of 24-hour battery life, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now reports next year’s refresh will be more thorough. For several years, Gurman has said that, according to his sources, the next major MacBook Pro revamp would add touchscreens, OLED displays, and a lighter, thinner frame. He reported last month that nothing has changed about that plan other than pushing it back from a late 2025 launch due to OLED supply issues, and today, he expanded on those rumors with details of codenames…

A rendering of the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility. | Image: X-energy via Amazon Amazon shared some new details about its plans to help deploy more nuclear energy across Washington State, where the company is headquartered. About a year ago, Amazon announced an agreement with Energy Northwest, a consortium of public utilities in Washington, to support the development of up to 12 advanced reactors by the early 2030s. Once complete, Amazon would have the right to purchase electricity from the first 320-megawatt phase of the project. The additional capacity would be open to Amazon and local utilities to use. What’s different about these reactors…

Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air is on sale for around $125 off. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you want a great laptop, you’re going to have to fork over a ton of money, right? Not necessarily. There are dozens of good laptops on the market at various price points. However, it can feel overwhelming to find the right one for your needs (some are better suited for, say, college students, whereas others are ideal for gamers). That’s why we’ve come up with this list of some of the best laptop deals available right now. In addition to…

It’s-a-me, Ally-o. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Hey! I'm Sean Hollister, and I've been The Verge's unofficial handheld gaming PC reviewer since 2022, when the Steam Deck and kin took over my life. (I also helped launch this website back in the day!) I also just spent the past week reviewing the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, Microsoft's very first "Xbox" handhelds that are built and co-developed by Asus. We're doing a neat new thing where we let paying subscribers ask us anything about the hottest new gadgets, stories, and events - and I wasn't about…

Google is making videos created with the AI filmmaking tool Flow even more realistic — and harder to identify as AI-generated at first glance. The company announced Wednesday that users can add in and change the shadows and lighting of their AI videos. The expanded editing features in Flow are tied to the Veo 3.1 update, also announced on Wednesday, which Google says does a better job of making a video based on the images submitted as a prompt.   Flow users will also be able to generate videos with audio using several of the tool’s new features. Users can make…

Don’t let pings spoil the dingers. When my household quit cable four years ago and I lost access to Seattle Mariners games on TV, I started streaming the radio broadcast on the Google Home speaker in my kitchen. Honestly? Baseball on the radio rules. You get to walk around and do stuff to the pleasant background sounds of the crowd. Sometimes you hear the crack of Cal Raleigh's bat hammering the ball into the stands one or 60 times. There's just one problem: spoilers. I use the MLB app for live scores, which is especially handy to complement an audio-only…