This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Ikea’s Matter-compatible smart bulbs are now available in the US
5 Mar 2026, 2:17 pm by Andrew Liszewski
After being announced last November, Ikea’s Matter-compatible smart home collection has been slowly trickling into its stores around the world over the past few months. Despite some early connectivity issues, one of the most anticipated items in that collection is Ikea’s new Matter-over-Thread smart bulbs. The company originally said they’d hit the US sometime in April 2026, but they’re now available through Ikea’s online store, and many of its retail locations around the country.
Amongst the smart home products it’s been selling for years, smart bulbs have been one of Ikea’s most popular, offering a cheaper but similarly functional alterna …
Apple Music adds optional labels for AI songs and visuals
5 Mar 2026, 2:00 pm by Jess Weatherbed
Apple is asking artists and record labels on its music streaming platform to voluntarily label songs that were made using AI. The new “Transparency Tags” metadata system for Apple Music was announced in a newsletter to industry partners yesterday, according to Music Business Worldwide, and covers four categories, including track, composition, artwork, and music videos.
The track tag should be applied when “a material portion of a sound recording” has been generated by AI tools, while the composition tag covers other AI-generated compositional elements, such as song lyrics. The artwork tag applies to static or moving graphics, but only at th …
AI tools can unmask anonymous accounts
5 Mar 2026, 1:30 pm by Robert Hart
Do you have a Reddit alt, secret X, finsta, or Glassdoor account you trash your boss with? AI might have just made it a lot easier to unmask you. That’s the conclusion of a recently published study, which hints at some uncomfortable consequences for staying private online – even if it’s not quite time to hold a funeral for anonymity just yet.
The finding, which has not been peer reviewed, comes from researchers at ETH Zurich, Anthropic, and the Machine Learning Alignment and Theory Scholars program. They built an automated system of AI agents using unspecified models – capable of searching the web and interacting with information much like …
Anthropic makes last-ditch effort to salvage deal with Pentagon after blowup
5 Mar 2026, 11:46 am by Robert Hart
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is reportedly back at the negotiating table with the Department of Defense in an attempt to salvage the company’s relationship with the US military and prevent it from being iced out of defense work for being a “supply chain risk.” Talks between the two parties imploded on Friday after weeks of bitter public feuding over the startup’s refusal to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI, with rivals like OpenAI rushing to fill the void.
Amodei is in talks with under-secretary of defense for research and engineering Emil Michael about a new contract that would allow the US military to continue using Anthropi …
Nothing is finally covering up with the slim, metal Phone 4A Pro
5 Mar 2026, 11:15 am by Dominic Preston
Today Nothing has revealed the 4A and 4A Pro, its latest midrange phones. The two look startlingly different from one another, with varying designs and Glyph Light interfaces. The Pro is especially striking: it’s the first Nothing phone to almost entirely abandon the brand’s trademark transparent design.
The 4A Pro, which will go on sale in the US later this month, adopts a metal unibody design instead of the usual clear plastic. In a press release the company claims that the phone still features a “refined transparent design,” but you’ll only find it in the camera module, which also houses a larger version of the Glyph Matrix display intro …
Nothing’s Headphone A are something worth considering
5 Mar 2026, 11:15 am by John.Higgins
After the release of the Headphone 1 last year – Nothing’s first over-ear headphones – the company is back with the Headphone A. They’re a slimmed-down over-ear option that keep the Nothing design aesthetic and excellent controls while decreasing the weight and bumping battery life up to a maximum of 135 hours. There are some concessions – middling call quality and a carrying bag instead of a case – but they’re also cheaper at $199. The Headphone A makes more sense to me than the Headphone 1 ever did, and are a great second offering from Nothing.
The Headphone A’s design is incredibly similar to the Headphone 1’s. Each earpiece has the same …
Bill Gates’ nuclear company is the first to get approval to build next-gen reactor
5 Mar 2026, 10:16 am by Jess Weatherbed
Bill Gates-founded nuclear energy startup TerraPower has been granted approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a next-generation reactor in Wyoming. This is the first commercial-scale, advanced nuclear power plant to ever receive the federal permit, according to the press release, and will be the first commercial reactor constructed in the US in almost a decade.
Construction at the Wyoming plant is expected to be completed by 2030. TerraPower is one of several companies racing to build smaller, more efficient reactors to augment electrical grids under strain from AI data centers. In a 2024 interview with The Verge, Bill Gate …
Did Live Nation punish a venue by taking Billie Eilish away?
5 Mar 2026, 2:21 am by Lauren Feiner
John Abbamondi had orders to let the CEO of Ticketmaster down easy.
In April 2021, Abbamondi was the CEO of BSE Global, the company that ran Brooklyn arena the Barclays Center. BSE Global’s existing Ticketmaster contract would expire at the end of September, and Abbamondi and his team had evaluated proposals from SeatGeek, AXS, and Ticketmaster. The economics of Ticketmaster offer, according to Abbamondi, “was nowhere near as good as the other two.” SeatGeek’s technology was “superior” to Ticketmaster’s on balance, on top of better financial terms including an equity stake in the company, the arena decided. It clinched their decision to go …
A new video from the White House mixes Call of Duty footage with actual video of Iran strikes
5 Mar 2026, 1:09 am by Jay Peters
On Wednesday, the White House posted a video of actual military strikes on Iran in the style usually seen in Call of Duty highlight videos, and started the video with a clip from Call of Duty. The real-life footage of missiles and other munitions hitting targets in Iran shows clips seen in other Trump administration videos, like this one posted to the U.S. Central Command X account.
As noted by The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, the animation at the start appears to be from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III when a player activates a …
Seven tech giants signed Trump’s pledge to keep electricity costs from spiking around data centers
5 Mar 2026, 12:17 am by Justine Calma
Leaders from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI, Amazon, and xAI met with President Donald Trump today to sign a “rate payer protection pledge.” It’s one way they’re responding to growing bipartisan concerns about electricity rates rising as tech companies and the Trump administration rush to build out a new generation of AI data centers.
“[Tech companies] need some PR help because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up,” Trump said during the event. “Some centers were rejected by communities for that and now I think it’s going to be the opposite.”
Trump signed a proclamation formally …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
