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The Perfect Game

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Richard Lawler
Google’s April Pixel Watch update is back after several buggy software rollouts.

After the September Pixel Watch update to Wear OS 5 ran into issues, Google released a fix in November and said its wearables would have to wait until March for another update.

However, that March update and Google’s first attempt at an April update introduced some bugs of their own, and now it’s rolling out the April update again (version BP1A.250305.019.W8) to hopefully get Pixel Watch owners on Wear OS 5.1 without all of those problems.

American War

A special series from The Verge that confronts the legacy and mythmaking of the Vietnam War, 50 years after the fall of Saigon.

Verge Staff
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Richard Lawler
Another Sega gaming franchise is turning into a movie, directed by Michael Bay.

After the success of Sonic, Mario, and (most recently), Minecraft, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter say that Universal has found its next videogame-to-movie adaptation: OutRun.

Yes, the arcade racer with little more than a convertible driving down a road scrolling into infinity reportedly has Michael Bay attached to direct and produce, along with actress Sydney Sweeney as a producer, and Jayson Rothwell (Polar) writing the script.

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Richard Lawler
DOGE granted access to Justice Department case data on millions of immigrants.

On Friday, a Wired report and allegation by Rep. Gerald Connolly surfaced, saying that DOGE is creating a “cross-agency master database” of personal information for surveillance on immigrants. Today, the Washington Post reports that several staffers were granted access to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System (ECAS).

It’s a Justice Department system that one official said has “...every record of every interaction immigrants have had with the U.S. government in any way.”

The system...is used to store records of immigrants who have interacted with the U.S. immigration system, detailing their name, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony and any history of engagement with law enforcement, among other things.

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Andrew J. Hawkins
OK, but please tell me ‘Cry Share’ is a real company.

Slate Auto, the secretive EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, dropped a bunch of concept versions of its $25,000 electric truck in California over the weekend to emphasize the vehicle’s “transformative” powers, TechCrunch reports. The company is planning an official reveal later this week.

But as noticed by The Autopian’s David Tracy, the concept vehicles are sporting some, shall we say, unique camouflage. One was wrapped in pink and blue advertising for a fake company called “Cry Share” that offers to drive around your crying infant until they fall asleep. Sounds legit.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Sinners don’t need popcorn buckets.

Instead of selling Sinners-themed popcorn buckets, IMAX theaters are giving out commemorative film strips, which is feels like a stroke of genius.

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Richard Lawler
Now Amazon is reportedly pausing new datacenter commitments too.

On April 10th, a Microsoft executive stated that the company was “slowing or pausing some early-stage datacenter infrastructure projects.” Today, CNBC reports a note from Wells Fargo analysts stating that they have heard a similar story about Amazon.

The article cites industry sources saying AWS has paused some leasing discussions, holding off on new projects without canceling already signed deals.

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Sean Hollister
Windows for the Game Boy, with playable Minesweeper and Paint.

Tap the video to watch! It looks glorious, and I’m so sorry to say this batch is already sold out. Hat tip to Time Extension. P.S. there’s even a Blue Screen of Death!

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Emma Roth
WWE: Unreal.

Fresh off the heels of Wrestlemania 41, Netflix has revealed a teaser for its WWE docuseries coming this summer. Details about WWE: Unreal are still slim, but Netflix says it will let you “step into the WWE writer’s room and outside the ring with your favorite WWE Superstars, where the drama is just as intense offstage as it is under the spotlight.”

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Andrew Liszewski
Watch this detailed restoration of a Game Boy demo kiosk.

The internet has lots of videos walking you through the process of restoring and upgrading an original Game Boy. Elliot Coll, of YouTube’s The Retro Future channel, instead dives deep into the process of restoring an original Game Boy demo kiosk used to promote the handheld in stores.

The kiosks only work with a custom version of the Game Boy that are just as rare, but Coll already had one in their personal collection.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
In Weapons, the kids come out at night.

Warner Bros.’ unsettling new teaser for writer / director Zach Cregger’s latest film Weapons doesn’t reveal all that much. But the movie’s promotional website makes it seem like we might be in for an expansion of the Barbarian universe when it hits theaters on August 8th.

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Chris Welch
One of media’s best home theater experts is branching out on his own.

We tend to cover a select few of the year’s best TVs here at The Verge. But if you’re the kind of person who seeks out all the home theater news you can get, check out Caleb Denison’s new YouTube channel.

Caleb has been the expert behind Digital Trends’ thoughtful, detailed TV and audio reviews for years. He’s one of the voices I trust most in the category — and his excitement about the latest TVs is infectious.

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Justine Calma
$8 billion in US clean energy projects have been axed or downsized since January.

That’s more than triple the total clean energy investments canceled over the past 30 months, according to a report from nonpartisan think tank E2. Economic uncertainty and proposals to rollback tax credits for renewables under the Trump administration are already taking a toll.

Despite those headwinds, however, companies still managed to announce $1.6 billion in investments in new solar, EV, and power grid facilities this March.

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David Pierce
The Department of Justice really, really wants Google to sell Chrome.

My big question coming into this remedies trial was how serious the government was about making Google divest Chrome. It’s a swing, and seemed like maybe a negotiating tactic. But in opening arguments it became clear that getting Chrome out of Google is very much part of the goal. So far, judge Amit Mehta seems skeptical of the idea, but Jonathan Sallet, a lawyer representing the states, argued that something has to be done with maybe the most-used app on the planet:


“This kind of asset — 4 billion users — does not come up very often for potential companies to acquire.”

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The Verge
David Pierce
The future of Google Search is back in court.

I’m here in the DC District Court for the remedies phase of the US v. Google trial, which found Google to be a monopoly in search. David Dahlquist, the lawyer for the Department of Justice, just showed a slide of Google’s “vicious cycle” — Defaults, Searches, Data, Quality, Money — and said he intends to offer a plan to unwind the cycle piece by piece. It’s gonna be an intense next few weeks.

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Emma Roth
Pokémon’s developer just released a mobile game.

Game Freak teamed up with the Japanese mobile game developer WonderPlanet to launch Pandoland, an adventure RPG where you can explore a blocky open world, defeat dungeons, and collect treasures. It’s available for free on Android and iOS starting today.

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Andrew Liszewski
OnePlus’ “small” phone will launch with a big battery.

When it debuts in China later this week on April 24th, the OnePlus 13T will feature a 6,260mAh battery, as spotted by Notebookcheck. That’s a lot of capacity for a compact phone with a 6.32-inch screen. For comparison, the 6.3-inch Google Pixel 9A has a 5,100mAh battery, while the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro has an even smaller 3,582mAh battery.

The OnePlus 13T smartphone surrounded by text.
The compact OnePlus 13T will be announced later this week with a capacious 6,260mAh battery.
Image: OnePlus
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Wes Davis
Here’s Nothing’s next CMF phone.

The company has been sharing tidbits about the next version of its budget-friendly CMF phone, the CMF Phone 2 Pro, ahead of its April 28th launch, and today it showed the fullest look at the design yet.

It looks a lot like the first CMF phone, but with an extra camera and a two-tone design.

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Ash Parrish
Hell is empty, and all the devils are coming soon.

With just a few weeks left before its May 15th launch date, Bethesda has released a second trailer for Doom: The Dark Ages. The last two Doom games have slowly been building up the mythology of the Doom Slayer, the nigh godlike entity whose favorite hobby is ripping and tearing until it is done. With this The Dark Ages trailer, it seems like Bethesda is poised to give us the most story laden Doom game yet.