Photo by IDA MARIE ODGAARD/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images GameStop, the used video game retailer that’s become increasingly associated with other kinds of speculative investments, wants to cash in on the resurgent card collecting craze — staffers have told Pokébeach, Polygon, and The Verge that stores will begin buying and selling rare Pokémon cards, and possibly other cards, as soon as next week. GameStop apparently doesn’t want just any cards, though: employees across multiple states say they’ll only be buying cards that have already been graded by Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile will pay a combined $10.22 million to a group of states to settle claims that the carriers lied to customers about their “unlimited” plans and “free” phone offers. The settlement, which follows an investigation from a coalition of 50 attorneys general, requires the three companies to make their advertisements more transparent. Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T can only advertise their plans as “unlimited” if there are no limits on how much data someone can use during a billing cycle. The ads ..read more

Matter Casting is now rolling out to all Fire TVs on FireOS 6 or higher.Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge If the Fire TV is your streaming stick of choice, I have good news. There’s now an easy way to cast content from your phone or tablet to your TV — as long as you’re watching Prime Video. Matter Casting, a new protocol for casting content from an app on your phone to an app on a TV or display, is rolling out now to compatible Fire TVs and could one day be available on more screens in our homes. Unlike Apple’s AirPlay or Google Cast, Matter Casting is an open standard with no requirement ..read more

Image: Bungie Before there was Halo and Destiny, there was Marathon — and now Steam users can check out the classic sci-fi shooter for themselves. Bungie just announced that the first game in the original trilogy has surprise-dropped on Steam, and it’s available on both Mac and PC. Even better, you can play it for free. The game is actually credited to Aleph One Developers, which is described as an “open source continuation of Bungie’s Marathon 2 game engine.” In fact, the group has already made the entire trilogy available to download right here with support for Mac, PC, and Linux. But the St ..read more

Photo by Zhang Dagang / VCG via Getty Images Who’s afraid of China’s electric vehicles? President Joe Biden. The president is preparing to announce higher tariffs on imported Chinese EVs, effectively closing out the possibility that the country will be able to afford to import its much cheaper and, in many cases, more desirable plug-in vehicles to the United States. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration will announce plans to roughly quadruple tariffs, to 100 percent from the current 25 percent, as well as tack on an additional 2.5 percent duty. Who’s afraid of China’s ..read more

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Electronic Arts has a long, storied history of trying to wring more money out of gamers after they’ve purchased a game — now, it appears, the company’s hard at work on its next generation of in-game ads. EA CEO Andrew Wilson admitted as much on the company’s Q4 earnings call: when an analyst asked about “the market opportunity for more dynamic ad insertion across more traditional AAA games,” he said the company’s already working on it. “We have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our g ..read more

The Kobo Elipsa 2E is a better value than Amazon’s less capable Kindle Scribe.Image: Kobo I’ll be honest: every model in Amazon’s discounted Kindle lineup is fantastic for those embedded in the Amazon ecosystem, but it’s Kobo that makes my absolute favorite e-readers. If you don’t mind buying ebooks outside of Amazon, Kobo’s e-readers offer fantastic value for the money, which is why I’m excited by today’s sale. The Kobo Sage and Kobo Clara 2E are up to $30 off at Target, but it’s the Kobo Elipsa 2E, which is matching its all-time low of $349.99 ($50 off) at Target and Rakuten Kobo, that stand ..read more

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shot down a Reuters report that claims OpenAI is launching a search product next Monday, the day before Google’s flagship conference, Google I/O. Altman posted on X that while there is an OpenAI announcement set for Monday morning, it’s “not gpt-5, not a search engine,” but whatever it is, he says it “feels like magic.” The only details provided by the official OpenAI post are that the launch will have updates on ChatGPT and its latest model, GPT-4. not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stu ..read more

A smartphone camera will provide better views than your own eyes if you’re lucky enough to witness the aurora this weekend.Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images Those of you looking to the skies this weekend may bear witness to a cosmic visual experience typically reserved for regions near the Arctic Circle. Various global weather agencies are reporting that the aurora borealis could be visible as far south as Alabama and Northern California over the coming days thanks to unusually strong solar flares. On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued ..read more

An aurora borealis glows a faint purple in the night sky in the district of Märkisch-Oderland in East Brandenburg.Photo: Getty Images The National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a rare “severe” geomagnetic storm watch for the US for Friday night. The Met Office weather service also issued a similar watch for the UK for Friday and Saturday. They’re worried about coronal mass ejections (CMEs), explosions of plasma and magnetized particles coming from the Sun, that could potentially impact critical infrastructure, including the power grid, internet cables, and sat ..read more