This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Fitbit’s founders launch a new platform for monitoring your entire family’s health
3 Feb 2026, 2:28 pm by Andrew Liszewski
James Park and Eric Friedman, the co-founders of Fitbit who left Google two years ago, have announced a new venture called Luffu. Described as an “intelligent family care system,” Luffu collects and logs health and medical information from connected devices, other platforms like Apple Health and Fitbit, and details shared by family members through voice prompts, text, or photos. AI works in the background to automatically extract and organize important details, but it can also play a more active role.
Luffu users can ask the system questions and get personalized answers for individual family members, like how a change in diet could affect t …
Humans are infiltrating the social network for AI bots
3 Feb 2026, 2:15 pm by Hayden Field
Ordinary social networks face a constant onslaught of chatbots pretending to be human. A new social platform for AI agents may face the opposite problem: getting clogged up by humans pretending to post as bots.
Moltbook – a website meant for conversations between agents from the platform OpenClaw – went viral this weekend for its strange, striking array of ostensibly AI-generated posts. Bots apparently chatted about everything from AI “consciousness” to how to set up their own language. Andrej Karpathy, who was on the founding team at OpenAI, called the bots’ “self-organizing” behavior “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent …
Disney says Josh D’Amaro will replace Bob Iger as CEO
3 Feb 2026, 2:13 pm by Emma Roth
Disney has picked a successor for longtime CEO Bob Iger. On Tuesday, the entertainment giant announced that its theme parks head, Josh D’Amaro, will take over as CEO on March 18th, 2026.
Rumors about Iger’s replacement have been swirling for more than a year now. After a 15-year-long tenure as Disney’s CEO, Iger returned from retirement to helm the company from 2022 to 2026, replacing former CEO Bob Chapek. Since then, all eyes have been on Iger’s potential successor, with D’Amaro, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden reportedly emerging as potential candidates.
D’Amaro has spent 28 years at Disney and …
Call of Duty tries to block XIM and Cronus cheaters again
3 Feb 2026, 2:10 pm by Tom Warren
Activision is trying to crack down on third-party hardware cheating devices in Call of Duty again. Both Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 have been plagued by players using devices like XIM, Cronus Zen, and ReaSnow S1 to enable unfair advantages that exploit aim assist, and now Activision is introducing new detections to ban the devices.
“These devices are not permitted in Call of Duty,” says Activision’s Richochet team. “They are cheating tools, even if they masquerade as accessibility devices.” Activision originally cracked down on these devices in Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare I nearly three yea …
Fortnite is about to get a lot more gaming crossovers
3 Feb 2026, 2:00 pm by Jay Peters
Fortnite is going to be getting a lot more crossovers featuring characters from video games. As part of the Epic Games Store’s year in review for 2025, Epic shared details about its official program for developers that will give people who purchase their game on the Epic Games Store a related cosmetic they can use within Fortnite.
Eventually, the goal is to scale the program to “over 100 partnerships per year,” Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison said on X last month. In an interview with The Verge, Allison says that there will be “about 40” this year and “60-plus” so far set for 2027. The program starts with Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem, w …
Google Home finally adds support for buttons
3 Feb 2026, 1:50 pm by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Google Home users, your long nightmare is over. The platform has finally added support for buttons. The release notes for a February 2 update state that several new starter conditions for automations are now available, including “Switch or button pressed.”
Smart buttons are physical, programmable switches that you can press to trigger automations or control devices in your smart home, such as turning lights on or off, opening and closing shades, running a Good Night scene, or starting a robot vacuum.
A great alternative to voice and app control when you want to control multiple devices, smart buttons are often wireless and generally have s …
Aluminium: Why Google’s Android for PC launch may be messy and controversial
3 Feb 2026, 1:00 pm by Sean Hollister
“Finally.” That was my first reaction when I heard Google would combine Android and ChromeOS into a single operating system. Android has long struggled on tablets, and ChromeOS always felt like too much of a stripped-down alternative to tempt me away from Windows and Mac. So last week, it was exciting to see a leaked first glimpse at Google’s Aluminium OS, and hear it may already be slated for an Intel Panther Lake laptop dubbed “Ruby” and a “Sapphire” high-end tablet.
But the future may not be coming as fast as you’d think, and it might be messy when it gets here. According to previously unreported court documents in the Google search anti …
YouTube now blocking background playback on mobile browsers
3 Feb 2026, 12:53 pm by Tom Warren
YouTube has started to block third-party mobile browsers from using a background playback loophole. Background playback is supposed to be limited to YouTube Premium subscribers through the official iOS or Android app, but many people have been using browsers like Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge to get background playback without a subscription. Not anymore.
“Background playback is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members,” says an unnamed Google spokesperson in a statement to Android Authority. “While some non-Premium users may have previously been able to access this through mobile web browsers in certain scenarios, we have …
The Model S changed everything
3 Feb 2026, 12:30 pm by Tamara Warren
The Tesla Model S is at the end of its illustrious 14-year run – and what a dizzying ride it’s been.
In 2012, when Tesla made its first Model S deliveries to customers, Facebook acquired Instagram. Apple launched the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. Barack Obama sailed into his second term. Superstorm Sandy shredded New York City and highlighted the ominous threat of climate change. As the nation recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, cautious optimism flowed through the airwaves as medium-sized tech companies seemed positioned to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Early adopters were whimsical pioneers racing faster to the future, breakin …
A community organizer’s guide to Signal group chats
3 Feb 2026, 12:00 pm by Stevie Bonifield
With ICE and CBP roaming the streets, united community action is more important than ever right now – from local mutual aid groups to school safety patrols. Known for its privacy features and end-to-end encryption, the Signal messaging app has become a popular platform for organizing these community groups.
Signal can be a great tool for private messaging, but it’s at its best if you know how to use all the privacy options. Not all of these options are automatic or even immediately obvious; there are also some best practices that are helpful for participating in and leading group chats.
Signal and your First Amendment rights
As you’re as …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
