The Verge

China's Chang'e 6 ascender carrying lunar samples took off from the far side of the Moon on June 4th. | Image: China National Space Administration China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft lifted off from the lunar surface today, bringing with it the first samples taken from the far side of the Moon.Chang'e 6's ascender launched from the back of the Moon, the side facing away from Earth, at 7:38AM Beijing time. The spacecraft had landed there, at the South Pole-Aitken Basin, around two days earlier. Its lander carried cameras, a soil structure detector, and a mineral spectrometer for analyzing geologic samples. The probe used its robotic arm and drilling tools to take samples. Chang'e 6 also carried payloads from the European Space Agency, France, and Italy for scientific exploration."Governments want to know if they can use lunar minerals to set up bases on the Moon to facilitate long-term... Continue reading...

Image: Sudhanshu Ambhore via X It looks like Samsung is planning a cheaper, FE version of its Galaxy Watch. A set of leaked renders shared by @Sudhanshu1414 on X shows what appears to be the 40mm device in blue, black, and pink.Along with the renders, the post also includes some leaked specs, including a 1.2-inch OLED display and a 30-hour battery life. The watch is rumored to feature the same Exynos W920 chip as the Galaxy Watch 4, in addition to 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It's also expected to ship with Samsung's One UI Watch 5 system.

A rendering of Climeworks' Generation 3 direct air capture plant. | Image: Climeworks The next generation of industrial plants to filter CO2 out of the air is on the way, and it's getting closer to overcoming some of the biggest challenges of using this technology to fight climate change. Climeworks, one of the first startups to develop this tech, unveiled its Generation 3 plant today. It's supposed to use half as much energy as older designs and slash costs in half, too.It's supposed to use half as much energy as older designs and slash costs in halfIf Climeworks makes good on that promise, it could go a long way toward making this technology, called direct air capture (DAC), a viable way to reduce the amount of carbon pollution building up in the atmosphere. Right now, the technology is far too new and expensive to... Continue reading...

Photo: Cath Virginia / The Verge Max has announced a price increase on the streaming service's ad-free plans. The standard ad-free plan will cost $16.99 / month instead of $15.99, while the 4K ad-free plan will cost $20.99 / month instead of $19.99.The price increase will go into effect today for new subscribers. Existing subscribers can expect to see the increase from their next billing cycle on or after Thursday, July 4th. Max's price hike also affects the service's ad-free yearly plans, with the standard ad-free plan going up to $169.99 / year from $149.99 and the 4K ad-free plan going up to $209.99 / year from $199.99.The service's $9.99 / month (or $99.99 / year) ad-supported subscription will stay the same price. Warner Bros. Discovery raised the price of Max... Continue reading...

Photo: David Pierce / The Verge The M2 iPad Air doesn't come with the 10-core GPU that Apple originally advertised - it actually comes with a nine-core one. In a statement to 9to5Mac, an unnamed Apple spokesperson says it has updated its website to correct the core count for the M2 iPad Air" but that all performance claims for the M2 iPad Air are accurate and based on a 9-core GPU."The correction from Apple comes after a report from 9to5Mac revealed that the company had quietly changed the core count for its new M2 iPad Air from 10 cores to nine on the page outlining the product's specs. Apple has also changed the device's core count on its press release and support page. The Verge reached out to Apple with a request for comment but didn't immediately hear back.As... Continue reading...

Image: Joby Leading electric aviation company Joby Aviation said it has acquired the autonomy division from Xwing, an aviation startup that's been working on pilotless flight projects for several years. The terms of the deal, which involve an amount of Joby stock, were not disclosed.Joby's electric air taxis are still a couple years away from launch, but the company says it wants to position itself to take advantage of autonomous flight when the technology is ready for commercial application.Joby's electric air taxis are still a couple years away from launchXwing, which was founded in 2016, has conducted 250 autonomous test flights as well as 500 auto-landings. And, in April 2023, it was the first company to receive an official project... Continue reading...

Image: Andrew Marino / The Verge Say this for Sonos: the company is remarkably consistent. It has spent decades building audio products that look and sound great... and are almost always initially hampered by some kind of weird software and usability issue. When Sonos stuff works, there's nothing like it, but it doesn't always seem to work.The Sonos Ace headphones fit perfectly in that lineage. In The Verge's review, Chris Welch found them to be comfortable, attractive, well-made, great-sounding, and hampered by just a few too many bugs. Even still, the Ace is a strong first effort from Sonos.On this episode of The Vergecast, Chris joins to tell us all about his experiences with the Ace. He explains how he tests headphones, how these stack up to Bose, Sony, Apple,... Continue reading...

Image: Samsung Samsung has added some additional features to the new OLED G8 gaming monitor it announced back in January, including safeguards against OLED burn-in and AI-powered resolution upscaling for content and games.Preorders for the display are already available in regions like Australia and Singapore, suggesting that a US launch isn't far behind. Best Buy lists the 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8 (model G80SD) for $1,299.99 - making it a smidge cheaper than the first $1,499.99 OLED gaming monitor Samsung released last year - and Samsung currently has a countdown timer teasing its new 2024 monitors," which expires today at 9:59AM ET. We've asked Samsung to clarify the release dates for the Odyssey OLED G8 but haven't yet heard back.Samsung says the... Continue reading...

The third-gen Apple TV 4K is one of the best streaming devices you can get, even if you're not an Apple user. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge From The Acolyte and House of the Dragon to the 2024 Paris Olympics, there's going to be plenty to stream this summer. Luckily, if you want to upgrade your setup in preparation for the busy entertainment slate, Verizon is currently selling the latest Apple TV 4K for $89.99 ($40 off), which is one of the lowest prices we've seen on the 64GB model.Despite having launched in 2022, the third-gen Apple TV 4K remains an exceptionally snappy streaming device that, unlike most of the competition, doesn't fully inundate you with ads. It offers a straightforward interface and an impressive feature set, too, with support for HDR10 Plus, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and Wi-Fi 6. It also comes with a Siri Remote that charges via USB-C as well as... Continue reading...

Image: Aptoide / The Verge Aptoide, the popular Google Play alternative for Android devices, is launching a third-party iOS app store in the European Union - the first focused entirely on gaming since the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules came into effect.Aptoide's iOS game store is being released via a closed launch on Thursday, with access initially restricted to users with invitation-only access codes. Aptoide says it has a waiting list of 20,000 signups and plans to issue between 500 to 1,000 codes per day, with the limited launch enabling the platform to monitor feedback from early adopters.The Aptoide iOS store will launch with seven games - a fairly standard ensemble of popular activities like Solitaire, Charades, and Mahjong - but the company says... Continue reading...

This is not the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus but, rather, a Fallout edition of the original. (I used generative expand around the edge because the image was cropping poorly.) | Image: MSI Just three months after releasing its first gaming handheld PC to damning reviews - here's mine - MSI is already announcing a likely replacement. The MSI Claw 8 AI Plus swaps its lackluster Intel Meteor Lake chip for the brand-new Lunar Lake ones, while replacing its seven-inch, 1080p 120Hz variable resolution rate screen for a larger eight-inch one.Perhaps even more importantly, it will boast up to an 80 watt-hour battery, MSI tells The Verge - tying it with the recently announced Asus ROG Ally X for biggest battery in a PC gaming handheld. Despite the larger screen, it'll still offer a smooth 120Hz refresh rate with VRR, writes MSI marketing specialist Anne Lee.The Claw will also offer a second USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4... Continue reading...

Intel's Lunar Lake held aloft by Intel client chip boss Michelle Johnston Holthaus. | Image: Intel Last year, Intel boasted that its Meteor Lake processors, dubbed Core Ultra, represented the company's biggest architectural shift in 40 years. But Intel didn't settle down after that: today it's revealing how Lunar Lake, its next laptop chip coming this fall, will overhaul the formula yet again.Facing the existential threat of Arm and the opportunity of AI PCs, Intel has apparently ditched its famous tick-tock cadence for a whole new system-on-chip design, one that not only triples the size and more than quadruples the performance of its AI accelerator, but promises up to 14 percent faster CPU performance at the same clockspeed, 50 percent more graphics performance, and up to 60 percent better battery life than last year's model.... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge On Monday, Microsoft announced layoffs reportedly affecting around 1,000 employees. As reported previously by CNBC, the mixed reality department working on HoloLens 2 is one of the areas affected. Separately, Business Insider reported that Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering has also seen cuts of hundreds" of employees.Microsoft spokesperson Craig Cincotta said in a statement emailed to The Verge, Earlier today, we announced a restructuring of Microsoft's Mixed Reality organization. We remain fully committed to the Department of Defense's IVAS program and will continue to deliver cutting-edge technology to support our soldiers. In addition, we will continue to invest in W365 to reach the broader Mixed Reality hardware... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A Ticketmaster data breach that allegedly includes details for 560 million accounts and another one affecting Santander have been linked to their accounts at Snowflake, a cloud storage provider. However, Snowflake says there's no evidence its platform is at fault.A joint statement to that effect made last night with CrowdStrike and Mandiant, two third-party security companies investigating the incident, lends additional credibility to the claim. Also, an earlier third-party report saying bad actors generated session tokens and may have compromised hundreds" of Snowflake accounts has now been removed. Hudson Rock, the security firm behind that report, posted a statement of its own today on LinkedIn: In accordance to a letter we... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The leaked lineup for last week's PlayStation State of Play surfaced shortly after the event was scheduled on YouTube. This has added to concerns over the kind of access Google employees have to videos before they go live, an issue highlighted in recent reports from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson and 404 Media.One incident, as noted by Henderson, occurred in 2022 when KSI attempted to give away over $10,000 in Amazon gift cards. However, KSI later realized that all of the gift card codes had been redeemed before the video was posted, sparking an internal investigation at YouTube. The company reportedly started a similar investigation after the trailer for GTA VI leaked, but it's not clear whether it's related.All of this ties into what... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing ad breaks" that force you to stop and look at an ad for a period of time before you can continue scrolling. Several X and Reddit users reported seeing the feature, and Instagram spokesperson Matthew Tye confirmed to The Verge that ad breaks are being tested. Tye said Instagram would provide updates should this test result in any formal product changes."One Redditor spotted the feature when scrolling through stories and posts. After a certain amount of scrolling, Instagram prevented them from going further until they looked at an ad. As shown in the screenshot, Instagram displays an ad break" icon with a countdown timer that shows how long until you can start scrolling again.When the user tapped the icon for... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon's Project PI, or Private Investigator," setup combines generative AI and computer vision to see" damage on products or determine if they are the wrong color or size before the item gets sent to customers.The way it works is that products on their way to customers go through a tunnel that scans the items. The computer vision program - a type of AI that looks at images and understands what's in them - checks to see if there is damage. If it finds something, that item is isolated, while the system evaluates the defect and determines if there's an issue with similar items to track down the root cause. Image: Amazon An example of how Project PI works. According to Amazon, Project PI is active in several"... Continue reading...

Samsung isn't waiting for Oura to hit it with patent suits. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung isn't waiting around for Oura to file any patent claims over its forthcoming smart ring. Instead, it's preemptively filed its own suit against Oura, seeking a declaratory judgment" that states the Galaxy Ring doesn't infringe on five Oura patents.The suit alleges that Oura has a pattern of filing patent suits against competitors based on features common to virtually all smart rings." In particular, the suit references sensors, electronics, batteries, and scores based on metrics gathered from sensors. The case lists instances in which Oura sued rivals like Ultrahuman, Circular, and RingConn, sometimes before they even entered the US market.For those reasons, Samsung says in the suit that it anticipates being the target of... Continue reading...

The ModRetro Chromatic | Image: ModRetro Before he brought VR headsets out of the dark ages with Oculus, before he got fired by Facebook following his confusing and controversial political donations, before he went on to found a defense contractor named Anduril that builds lethal drones (!), Palmer Luckey was a Nintendo Game Boy modder.It's true. There's photo evidence - and today, he's revealing his own take on the ultimate cartridge-playing Nintendo Game Boy, one that you can actually buy for $199.Shipping this holiday, the ModRetro Chromatic sounds incredible: magnesium alloy case, sapphire crystal cover glass, PBT buttons, a pixel-perfect IPS screen at the same size, resolution, and pixel structure as the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, color-matched to the Game... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peacock may not be the biggest streaming service, but with deals like this, it definitely feels like one of the thirstiest (and to your benefit). That's because a one-year subscription to NBCUniversal's streamer is available to new subscribers for just $19.99 ($30 off) through June 30th when you use coupon code STREAMTHEDEAL.The current promo is for the ad-supported Peacock Premium tier, which includes all the 2024 Paris Olympics coverage, the 2024-2025 season of Sunday Night Football, WWE premium live events, and a wide variety of shows and movies. Really, that's quite a lot for just 20 bones, though if you're the type to churn through streaming services or hop from deal to deal, you should be sure to turn off auto-renew well before... Continue reading...

A Long March 5 carrier rocket launched the Chang e 6 probe into space on May 3rd. | Photo: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft successfully landed on the far side of the Moon - and it plans to bring back soil and rock samples to Earth for the first time.The probe touched down on the Moon's South Pole-Aitken Basin, which faces away from Earth, at 6:23AM Beijing time, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). It used laser 3D scanning and an autonomous avoidance system to detect obstacles before landing. You can see the probe make its careful descent to the lunar surface in the video embedded below.Video: China National Space AdministrationIt will take the Chang'e 6 about two days to take the samples from the Moon's surface using a scoop and drill. The probe is also carrying payloads from the European Space... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge As spotted by TechCrunch, X updated its guidelines to let users share consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior" as long as it's labeled and not in a prominent location, such as a profile picture or banner.After this article was published, the @Safety account tweeted saying, We have launched Adult Content and Violent Content policies to bring more clarity of our Rules and transparency into enforcement of these areas. These policies replace our former Sensitive Media and Violent Speech policies - but what we enforce against hasn't changed."In the past, X - formerly known as Twitter - didn't explicitly ban porn. It became a home for some NSFW creators following the launch of Twitter Blue (now X Premium), as... Continue reading...

Image: Larian Studios It's gonna get pretty funky in Faerun with official mod support coming to Baldur's Gate 3. Larian Studios announced that official mod support will roll out in phases, starting today with a closed alpha, before a closed beta test in July, culminating with the official release of Patch 7 in September. According to Larian, the staggered testing phases will give the community ample time to test the new mod tools before making them available across PC and consoles.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images The fight for Tesla CEO Elon Musk's enormous pay package is heating up.On June 13th, Tesla shareholders will decide the fate of Musk's compensation package, which is estimated to be worth as much as $56 billion. It will be the second time that shareholders will vote on the CEO's pay, after a Delaware judge voided the first one earlier this year on the grounds that the approval process was deeply flawed."And Musk doesn't want to leave anything to chance. He is lobbying shareholders on his social media platform X, offering private tours of Tesla's factory in Texas, and lashing out against those that suggest the proposed pay package is too high. The proposed pay package would make Musk the most highly compensated CEO in the world.... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Zoom Zoom founder Eric Yuan has big ambitions in enterprise software, including letting your AI-powered digital twins' attend meetings for you. Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is about to launch a new AI-powered Recall feature that screenshots everything you do on your PC. Recall is part of the new Copilot Plus PCs that are debuting on June 18th, but experts who have tested the feature are already warning that Recall could be a disaster" for cybersecurity.Recall is designed to use local AI models to screenshot everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve anything in seconds. There's even an explorable timeline you can scroll through. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft's AI models.Despite Microsoft's promises of a secure and encrypted Recall experience, cybersecurity expert... Continue reading...

The first headphones from Sonos deliver on comfort, sound, and more - with a unique TV Audio Swap feature that's very convenient (when it works). But the ongoing app fiasco casts a cloud over the company's big moment. Continue reading...

Image: Qualcomm Apple's former I'm a Mac" actor Justin Long defected to Intel a few years ago, and now he's looking to switch to a Qualcomm-powered Windows PC. During Qualcomm's Computex 2024 keynote today, Long appeared in a brief 30-second skit where he was bombarded by macOS notifications and nag screens causing him to start searching for a Snapdragon-powered PC instead.Justin Long used to star in Apple's Get a Mac" TV commercials nearly 20 years ago. Long took on the persona of a Mac guy, humorously mocking the PC guy (actor John Hodgman) for picking up viruses and spyware, or not having access to creative tools and being too focused on boring work stuff.Things change," jokes Long to camera, after searching for a Windows on Arm PC following... Continue reading...

World-famous photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams (pictured, 1983) is best known for his black-and-white landscape photographs. | Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images Adobe found itself in hot water this weekend after the Ansel Adams estate publicly scolded the company for selling generative AI imitations of the late photographer's work. On Friday, Adams' estate posted a screenshot to Threads showing AI-generated images available on Adobe Stock that were labeled as Ansel Adams-style," telling Adobe it was officially on our last nerve with this behavior."While Adobe permits AI-generated images to be hosted and sold on its stock image platform, users are required to hold the appropriate rights or ownership over the content they upload. Adobe Stock's Contributor Terms specifically prohibits content created using prompts containing other artist names, or created using prompts otherwise intended to... Continue reading...

Image: AMD AMD announced at Computex 2024 its next generation of Ryzen laptop processors for generative AI workloads: the Ryzen AI 300 Series. It's a re-brand of its top-tier Ryzen 9 chips. The new naming convention still includes the HX suffix AMD introduced in 2022, but it doesn't indicate how many watts of power the chip draws. Instead, HX will simply refer to top of stack" or the best and fastest Ryzen AI 300 chip.The new Ryzen AI chips are built on AMD's latest architectures for neural, integrated graphics, and general processing: XDNA2 for the NPU, RDNA 3.5 for the iGPU, which now has up to 16 compute units, and Zen 5 for the CPU. The first two processors in this series are the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365. Both have 50 TOPS NPU,... Continue reading...

Image: AMD AMD is launching its first Zen 5 desktop processors in July, with the Ryzen 9 9950X flagship leading the pack as the world's most powerful desktop consumer processor." Based on AMD's existing AM5 platform, the new Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs include the Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X.The flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is a 16-core, 32-thread CPU, with 80MB of L2+L3 cache and a 5.7GHz boost clock. AMD is promising around a 16 percent instructions per cycle (IPC) uplift in performance over the previous-generation Ryzen CPUs, with big promises of performance gains in productivity as well as gaming. Image: AMD The Ryzen 9000 series lineup. It's a big leap, and we're very very proud of it,"... Continue reading...

Getty More chips, more AI. Continue reading...

MrBeast is now the most-subscribed YouTube channel. | Photo: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Bollywood music label T-Series had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for years after Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, conceded his protracted and problematic fight for the top spot to it. But now that honor belongs to YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, who posted yesterday that his MrBeast YouTube operation had avenged' PewDiePie by overtaking T-Series.The news apparently prompted a rush, as Donaldson published a screenshot showing he'd gained 2 million more yesterday, which he said is a one-day record for the channel. The online tracker Social Blade now puts him at 268 million subscribers.

Maezawa in 2022. | Photo: Yoshikazu Tsuno / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa had once planned to take eight artists on a flight around the Moon aboard SpaceX's Starship. But now, with Starship still in development the flight already indefinitely delayed, Maezawa says he has canceled the trip.The X account for the flight, called dearMoon, announced the news on Friday, followed by posts from the billionaire himself. In those, he said he had signed on in 2018 expecting to fly in 2023, but that it's still uncertain when Starship can launch."I can't plan my future in this situation," Maezawa added.

Image: Hyundai The Hyundai Ioniq 5 will reportedly be the first car rolling out of the company's new Georgia factory this fall. Moreover, company CEO Jose Munoz tells Automotive News he expects the US-made version will net buyers the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which the South Korea-made vehicle isn't otherwise eligible for (outside of a leasing loophole).Hyundai will start producing the Ioniq 5 at the Georgia plant in October, but the company won't be making batteries there for about a year," Automotive News writes. For now, the article says the company will source its batteries from a Hungarian factory operated by Hyundai's partner for its Georgia battery production, SK On.One important question, though, is whether or not the first... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge It sounds like Apple's WWDC plans go beyond sprinkling AI fairy dust on everything (though that's going to be a big part of it, too). Besides Siri gaining new AI-powered app control, the company also plans to overhaul things like the Settings apps for iOS and macOS, Control Center, Messages, Mail, and more.A new, cleaner" Settings app UI will mean better organization and improved search, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On Newsletter for Bloomberg today. He adds that a similar revamp is also coming to the macOS System Settings app.Apple will also update Control Center, the slide-down menu of quick settings in iOS, with a new music widget and improvements to how it operates smart home appliances." Gurman didn't specify what would... Continue reading...

Nvidia leans into RTX AI PCs. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to launch gaming laptops that include the AI Copilot Plus features that Microsoft just announced for Qualcomm-powered laptops. At Computex today, Nvidia briefly teased that RTX AI PC" laptops are on the way from Asus and MSI that will eventually include Copilot Plus PC features.Newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities," says Nvidia in a blog post. Nvidia confirmed to The Verge in a briefing that these laptops will come with AMD's latest Strix CPUs.AMD hasn't officially detailed its AMD Strix laptop CPUs yet, which it will undoubtedly announce during its own keynote later today. Nvidia... Continue reading...

G-Assist is a real tech demo from Nvidia. | Image: Nvidia When Nvidia first announced G-Assist it was an April Fools' prank in 2017 that joked about an AI assistant being able to help you play a game while you ran to the door for your pizza delivery. Now, seven years later, G-Assist is back as a real demo of a powerful GeForce AI assistant that Nvidia might eventually bring to life for game developers and RTX GPU owners.Project G-Assist is only a tech demonstration right now, but it's a brief look at how an AI assistant could guide you through PC games and even configure optimal settings for you based on chat inputs in the future.In a demo, Nvidia shows G-Assist responding to voice queries asking what's the next early game weapon and where do I find the crafting materials for it?" inside A... Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 40, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send me all your recommendations immediately, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about Shein and Reese Witherspoon and Hollywood Ponzi schemes, journaling in Papery, testing Lazy for all my link dumps and notes, drinking a lot of Poppi soda, developing a mac and cheese recipe my toddler will actually like, and pricing out plane tickets for the Wu-Tang Clan listening party in Australia.I also have for you a great new app for capturing video, a nifty new Chrome trick, a MoviePass documentary worth watching, a smartwatch for kids, and much more.... Continue reading...