Flappy Bird’s original creator says he has nothing to do with the new game

The new take on Flappy Bird will include alternate game modes. | Screenshot: The Flappy Bird Foundation Last week, The Flappy Bird Foundation announced a game called Flappy Bird. But while the group has been framing it as the triumphant return of a classic mobile game, Flappy Bird’s original developer, Dong Nguyen isn’t calling it a comeback — in fact, he says he’s not involved at all.
Nguyen posted as much on X (for the first time since 2017!) this morning, saying he did

Image: Microsoft Microsoft says it will no longer support Office apps, known as Microsoft 365 apps, on Windows 10 later this year. The support cutoff coincides with Windows 10’s end of support on October 14th, and will mean businesses and consumers that rely on Microsoft 365 apps will need to upgrade to Windows 11.
“Microsoft 365 Apps will no longer be supported after October 14, 2025, on Windows 10 devices,” says Microsoft in a blog post. “To use Microsoft 365 Applicatio

Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage Drake has withdrawn the petition he raised accusing Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) of illegally boosting Kendrick Lamar‘s diss track “Not Like Us.” According to documents filed with the New York Supreme Court on Tuesday, the pre-action case is being discontinued with no financial cost to any of the parties involved.
The petition, or “pre-action case,” isn’t a full lawsuit — it refers to a stage of litigation th

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft has quietly killed off its spoofed Google UI that it was using to trick Bing users into thinking they were using Google. Earlier this month you could search for “Google” on Bing and get a page that looked a lot like Google, complete with a special search bar, an image resembling a Google Doodle, and even some small text under the search bar just like Google search.
The misleading UI no longer appears on the Google search result of Bing this week, jus

Xiaomi was the fastest growing of the major manufacturers last year. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Worldwide smartphone sales grew in 2024 following two consecutive years of decline according to reports from Counterpoint, Canalys, and IDC. The bulk of the growth came from Chinese manufacturers including Xiaomi and Vivo, though Apple and Samsung are still holding strong as the undisputed market leaders.
Counterpoint reports a 4 percent growth in phone sales across 2024, with IDC and Cana

Ralf Groene inside Microsoft’s Surface hardware labs. | Image: Getty Microsoft’s former head of design for Windows and devices has started a new role at Amazon this week. Ralf Groene was responsible for the design of Microsoft’s Surface tablet, and worked closely with former Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay on a line of Surface devices over the past decade. The pair are now reunited at Amazon, working on devices again.
Groene — who left Microsoft in April 2024, less

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has resulted in a federal lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that he broke securities laws with a late disclosure, and saved $150 million in the process.Before Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, before he tried to back out of that deal, before he was forced to go through with it, and before he changed its name to X, he started by acquiring a substantial stake in the

Photo by Anna Barclay/Getty Images For over a decade, you couldn’t easily fly a DJI drone over restricted areas in the United States. DJI’s software would automatically stop you from flying over runways, power plants, public emergencies like wildfires, and the White House.
But confusingly, amidst the greatest US outpouring of drone distrust in years, and an incident of a DJI drone operator hindering LA wildfire fighting efforts, DJI is getting rid of its strong geofence. DJI will no

Laura Normand / The Verge Chinese officials are reportedly exploring a backup plan for TikTok after the Supreme Court appeared unlikely to save it from a US ban. With TikTok’s legal options nearly exhausted, multiple news outlets are reporting that China is considering an option it previously said it wouldn’t: letting ByteDance sell the app.
The kicker? China is reportedly mulling having President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, act either as broker o

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Instead of wallowing in misery about potentially losing access to their favorite short-form video app, many TikTokers are flocking to RedNote, a Chinese social media platform also called Xiaohongshu. I’ve decided to spend some time on the platform myself, and it looks like so-called “TikTok refugees” are excited about interacting with a community mainly comprised of Chinese-speaking users — and vice versa.
Launched in 2013 as a shopping pl

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Some YouTubers say Honey’s practices are stealing money from them. PayPal’s Honey browser extension has been lauded for years as an easy way to find coupons online. But some are calling it a “scam” after a deep dive from YouTuber MegaLag, who accused Honey of “stealing money from influencers.”
The video shines a light on Honey’s use of last-click attribution, an approach to online shopping referrals that gives credit for

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok told employees that its executives are “planning for various scenarios” ahead of the Supreme Court likely upholding a US ban of the app.
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, employees were told that the company is “continuing to plan the way forward” ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision, which is expected as soon as Wednesday, January 15th.“We know it’s unsettling to not know exactly what happens next

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s executives are “planning for various scenarios” ahead of the Supreme Court likely upholding a US ban of the app.
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, employees were told that the company is “continuing to plan the way forward” ahead of the court’s imminent decision, which is expected as soon as Wednesday, January 15th.“We know it’s unsettling to not know exactly what happens next,” reads

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge A major copyright lawsuit against Meta has revealed a trove of internal communications about the company’s plans to develop its open-source AI models, Llama, which include discussions about avoiding “media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated.”
The messages, which were part of a series of exhibits unsealed by a California court, suggest Meta used copyrighted data when training its AI systems and worked to concea

An important date is approaching: Sunday, Jan. 19, also known as Edgar Allan Poe's birthday.I'm just kidding. That heartbeat in the floorboards? It's TikTok's. The Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. If the court upholds the law, it will go into effect on Jan. 19.SEE ALSO:TikTok ban countdown: See the latest updates as time runs short
The app won't be automatically deleted from your phone, but, as NPR reports, it might not be as grea

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Parallels has added support for x86 emulation in Parallels Desktop 20.2, product manager Mikhail Ushakov wrote in a blog post last week. The “early technology preview” will let you emulate Intel-based hardware on an M1-or-greater Mac, a first for Parallels since Apple’s Arm transition in 2020 — but don’t expect stellar performance.
Parallels says users will be able to:Run existing x86_64 Windows 10, Windows 11*, Windows S

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge A day after Sonos announced a CEO transition, the company is making more moves. Chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin will also be leaving his position. Some employees have told me that Bouvat-Merlin shares a significant amount of blame for the brand damage that Sonos has endured over the last year after deciding to release an overhauled mobile app well before it was ready for customers. There have been reports that top executives at the company ignored warn

Netflix Though the fourth season of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series still doesn’t have a concrete release date, Netflix has finally announced when we’ll see yet another animated take on Geralt of Rivia.
Originally, Netflix intended for The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep to debut some time late last year, but the steamer revealed today that the movie is now set to premiere on February 11th. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story “A Little Sacrifice” from Sw

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hackers in North Korea stole a total of $659 million in crypto across several heists in 2024, according to a joint statement issued today by the US, Japan, and South Korea. The report specified five such incidents, like the $235 million theft from the Indian crypto exchange WazirX that is being newly attributed to the Lazarus Group. That organization is estimated to have stolen billions across previous attacks over the last decade, including $625 million s

In the early 2010s, Australian influencer Belle Gibson built a wellness empire off of a lie. She claimed that she had brain cancer, and that she had cured it through healthy eating, exercise, and natural medicine. Yet Belle had never been diagnosed with brain cancer, nor any of the many other cancers she later claimed to have.SEE ALSO:2025 TV preview: All the TV shows you need to know, and where to stream them
Now, Gibson's story gets the Netflix true crime treatment in Apple Cider Vinegar, a li

A new app has a seemingly odd goal for people — that they use apps less. But the people behind the iOS app Steppin accept the reality that many modern individuals need technology to wean themselves off technology.iOS app Steppin was created by Paul English, the cofounder of the travel site Kayak (purchased by Priceline in 2012 for $1.8 billion). Steppin, which dropped Tuesday on the app store and has the tagline "Escape the Scroll," allows users to block access to sites and apps — wi

Need a gift idea for your boyfriend but can't think of anything? Don't be too hard on yourself. Picking out the perfect gift takes practice. Between Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, and the gift-giving winter holidays, there are a lot of chances to choose the wrong gift. Ideally, you want to get him something that demonstrates your love (or affection), your appreciation, and the fact that you know exactly what he likes. But striking the perfect balance can be tricky. No matter what you