This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
The best Switch 2 controller just got better (and a little worse)
8 Mar 2026, 2:00 pm by Cameron Faulkner
Crowning the EasySMX S10 the best Switch 2 controller last fall was easy. The $60 wireless gamepad, which is often well below $50, mimics or improves on many of the $90 Switch 2 Pro controller’s best features. The S10 has great-feeling rumble in games, TMR joysticks that will last longer than Nintendo’s, plus amiibo support, comfortable grips, and buttons and triggers that offer satisfying clicks. The new S10 Lite trims away some of those, but builds on EasySMX’s lead with one big, new feature that I expect other companies to copy.
The EasySMX S10 Lite is the first thi …
The cute and cursed story of Furby
8 Mar 2026, 12:17 pm by David Pierce
The hottest toy of 1998 was sort of adorable, and sort of annoying. It couldn’t do much – couldn’t do anything, really – but it could look at you, it could say some nonsense phrases, and it seemed uncannily aware of the world around it. That’s all Furby needed to pretty much take over the world.
The story of Furby is filled with technical achievement. The fact that the furry little guy worked at all, ever, was a bit of a surprise to a lot of people involved. But Furby also represents a different way of thinking about our relationships with technology, a different idea about human-computer interaction, and maybe even a path worth following f …
The uncomfortable truth about hybrid vehicles
8 Mar 2026, 12:00 pm by Andrew J. Hawkins
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the EV struggle, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
Apologies to the Toyota Prius, but the first hybrid vehicle of note was the Semper Vivus, developed by Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) way back in 1900. The Semper Vivus (Latin for “always alive”) used two combustion engines to power generators, which then fed electricity to motors inside the wheel hubs. The fact that it took modern engineers over a century to really appreciate th …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
