The Verge

An Optimus robot at the We, Robot event. | Screenshot: Tesla We, Robot livestream Tesla made sure its Optimus robots were a big part of its extravagant, in-person Cybercab reveal last week. The robots mingled with the crowd, served drinks to and played games with guests, and danced inside a gazebo. Seemingly most surprisingly, they could even talk. But it was mostly just a show.It's obvious when you watch the videos from the event, of course. If Optimus really was a fully autonomous machine that could immediately react to verbal and visual cues while talking, one-on-one, to human beings in a dimly lit crowd, that would be mind-blowing.

Screenshot: SpaceX livestream SpaceX's Starship spacecraft splashed down in the Indian Ocean a little over an hour after its 8:25AM ET launch from South Texas. Almost seven minutes following liftoff, the Super Heavy booster returned to its launchpad, where the launch tower caught it using arms that SpaceX has nicknamed the chopsticks."The remarkable catch was a first for SpaceX and an important step toward making the Super Heavy booster a fully reusable launch system just like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. The booster completed a similar set of maneuvers to today's during its previous flight test in June, when it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, instead. GIF: SpaceX Starship livestream. SpaceX's South Texas launch tower catches the Super... Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 56, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about Bill Lawrence's TV shows and the massively powerful crypto lobby and the wild world of plankton, listening to Ed Helms narrate the excellent Snafu podcast, playing an alarming amount of both Balatro and Retro Goal, trying to get back in the habit of making overnight oats, and taking every single one of my phone calls with the excellent mic on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.I also have for you the coolest alarm clock I can remember, a splashy new Bitcoin documentary, a new... Continue reading...

Starship preps for its fifth flight test. | Photo: SpaceX SpaceX plans to launch Starship for the fifth time tomorrow, October 13th, during a 30-minute launch window that opens at 8AM ET. That's after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared today that the company has met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight," reports Reuters.The company will livestream the launch, starting about 35 minutes before liftoff. You can catch that on SpaceX's website or its X account, as well as in the X TV app.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge WordPress.org has taken over a popular WP Engine plugin in order to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem," WordPress cofounder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced today. This minimal" update, which he labels a fork of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, is now called Secure Custom Fields."It's not clear what security problem Mullenweg is referring to in the post. He writes that he's invoking point 18 of the plugin directory guidelines," in which the WordPress team reserves several rights, including removing a plugin, or changing it without developer consent." Mullenweg explains that the move has to do with WP Engine's recently-filed lawsuit against him and Automattic.

The Deebot X2 Omni. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Someone gained access to Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni robotic vacuums across several US cities earlier this year and used them to chase pets and yell racist slurs at their owners, reported ABC News in Australia this week.The outlet spoke with multiple Deebot X2 owners who say their Deebot X2s had been hacked in May, including Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, who said he was watching TV with his family when a noise like a broken-up radio signal or something" started coming from the robot's speaker. He said after he reset his password and rebooted the robot, it began again, only this time the sound was clearly a voice - he guessed a teenager's - yelling slurs.ABC News lists other, similar accounts from owners in El Paso and Los Angeles, the... Continue reading...

Image: Atlus Atlus' game tackles tough subjects with refreshing nuance, catapulting it beyond simply being Persona with swords.' Continue reading...

Image: AMD Somebody goofed - and now AMD's unannounced Ryzen 9000X3D desktop processors have been partially revealed. But like Intel's new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, it doesn't look like they'll be a huge performance improvement on their predecessors. If so, that's a shame given how poorly received AMD's Ryzen 9000 was, to begin with.According to slides from an MSI presentation published by HardwareLuxx today (via VideoCardz), the new chips may have respectable multicore performance gen-over-gen, with an eight-core 9000X3D outperforming a Ryzen 7 7900X3D by up to 28 percent in Cinebench R23. But they can offer as little as 2 percent gains in Black Myth: Wukong and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, according to MSI's preliminary testing.And against the... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevin Carter / Getty Images Boeing will be laying off roughly" 10 percent of its workforce, president and CEO Kelly Ortberg announced in an email to staff on Friday. That number equates to 17,000 jobs, Reuters reports.The layoffs will take place over the coming months" and will include executives, managers and employees," Ortberg says. Leadership teams plan to share more information about how the layoffs will affect specific organizations in the company next week.The announcement of layoffs follows what's been an extremely difficult year for the company. In January, Boeing 737 Max planes were grounded after a hole blew in one mid-flight. In July, the company accepted a guilty plea deal over 737 Max crashes that happened in 2018 and 2019 and killed more than... Continue reading...

Unlike Sony's robotic dog, Aibo, Casio's Moflin can't run away on its own. | Image: Casio Casio has opened preorders for its robotic pet called Moflin that looks like a cross between a hamster and Star Trek's Tribbles. Unlike Sony's robot dog Aibo that can follow you around, Moflin is designed to be held and cuddled, and over time, Casio says it will learn who you are and attempt to develop a simulated bond expressed through unique sounds and movements.Originally developed through a collaboration with a Japanese startup called Vanguard Industries, Moflin is now being manufactured and distributed by Casio. It can be preordered for 59,400 (around $398 USD) and is expected to be available starting on November 7th. Casio is also offering an optional subscription service called Club Moflin for 6,600 (about $44 USD) per year,... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Internet Archive will come back within days" following a cyberattack that brought down the organization's vast digital library and the Wayback Machine, according to an update from founder Brewster Kahle. It's been struggling due to a data breach and DDoS attack earlier this week that revealed the email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, and other information associated with more than 31 million unique email addresses.Currently, if you try to access the Internet Archive's website, you'll see a notice that says it's temporarily" offline. Links to the Wayback Machine also won't load.

Image: The Verge Valve is now explicitly disclosing that you don't own the games you buy from its Steam online store. The company has added a note on the payment checkout screen stating that a purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam," as reported earlier by Engadget.We confirmed the message appears in the Steam desktop app, but we haven't seen it in the mobile app yet. Some Steam users noticed the disclosure go live earlier this week and posted their findings on Reddit. Image: Steam My colleague Sean is not actually buying this yet; he says he has to play Persona 3 first. Why? Probably, a new law. California has a law going into effect next year that'll require digital storefronts like Valve's... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is planning to support the streaming of Xbox game libraries next month. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the company is getting ready to test the ability to stream games that you own that aren't part of the existing Xbox Game Pass library.As part of a long-running project known as Project Lapland inside of Microsoft, the software giant has been readying its Xbox Cloud Gaming servers to be able to support streaming thousands of games. I'm told Microsoft will first test its new Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming capabilities with Xbox Insiders in November, before expanding them to more Xbox users and more games.The Xbox Cloud Gaming expansion comes in the same month Microsoft plans to enable game purchases... Continue reading...

Panic's Cabel Sasser at XOXO 2024. | Image: XOXO Fest I know there's a lot to do on the internet, but you really should stop what you're doing and watch this 19-minute talk about a bespoke mural that once lived inside a McDonald's.The talk, given by Cabel Sasser of Panic at XOXO Fest 2024, was filled with silliness and deep dives down unexpected rabbit holes. (I'd expect nothing less from the founder of Panic, the company behind whimsical things like the Playdate handheld and Untitled Goose Game.) Much of the presentation is about the little-known artist behind the mural, the late Wes Cook, who also made some incredible designs that exist in real theme parks. It's fascinating to learn so much about Cook, and the ending of Sasser's speech is just fantastic.Every minute of the speech is... Continue reading...

Image: Imgur Memes on the image-hosting service Imgur containing references to adult humor" will no longer be considered mature, the company announced in a post addressing changes to its content moderation policies.Imgur has been an important part of meme history, with its creator making the service in 2009 as a gift to Reddit." At that time, most platforms didn't host their own images, so you had to upload them instead on third-party platforms. I remember seeing Imgur a lot on the Something Awful forums back in the day, too, though following other policy changes last year that led to the removal of inactive content and pornography, users scrambled to save old images.The changes announced this week could mean that you see spicier memes on the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri is acknowledging recent mistakes in Meta's moderation processes on Threads and Instagram. For example, Meta unexpectedly deleted my account this week because it thought I was underage, the company locked my colleague's account because she joked about dying in a heatwave, and others have seen their posts disappear with no clear reason why. Threads Moderation Failures" has been trending this week - putting more pressure on Meta's moderation processes.Now Mosseri admits that Meta is having problems with those processes and has publicly posted that acknowledgment on Threads. He explains there's a tool" that broke, which apparently did not show human reviewers sufficient context" before they made posts and... Continue reading...

The Thrustmaster T598 features a Direct Axial Drive powered by an axial flux electric motor. | Image: Thrustmaster Thrustmaster has announced a new steering wheel base that makes the company's direct drive technology available on consoles for the first time. It also introduces a new electric motor design - already in use on high-end hybrid sports cars like the Ferrari SF90 - to the world of sim racing, improving realism while also shrinking the hardware.The Thrustmaster T598 can be preordered today for $499.99 (including a set of racing pedals) and will be available starting on October 19th. Although it is compatible with both PCs and consoles, it's limited for use with only the PlayStation 4 and 5.Direct drive sim racing wheel bases are often preferred by enthusiasts because the steering wheel is connected directly to an electric motor, instead of... Continue reading...

Image: MKBHD Marques Brownlee published a video on Friday addressing the criticisms around Panels, his new wallpaper app, saying that he and the team failed on the price front" at launch. The app received an outpour of criticism from fans, both on the MKBHD YouTube channel and across social platforms. Discussing the app, Brownlee admitted it needed work. If I was reviewing this app, I would not have been very nice," he said.One of the primary criticisms of the app was that the premium Panels Plus" subscription cost $11.99 per month or $49.99 per year to remove ads and have full access to the available collections of wallpapers. To make things better, Brownlee and the team have been improving the free experience by getting rid of in-feed ads,... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge X is dropping claims against Unilever in its lawsuit that accuses advertisers and brands of participating in an illegal boycott" of the company. The claims against Unilever, which owns household names like Dove and Hellmann's, were dismissed today.Last fall, X also sued the nonprofit Media Matters for America in an effort to silence the group after it reported that ads for major brands like Apple and IBM were appearing alongside Nazi content. IBM paused advertising on X following the report.This is just one of the lawsuits Musk has filed against critics and former business partners, as he's also suing OpenAI and founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for the second time. (Musk previously filed and then dropped a similar suit earlier... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple's USB SuperDrive is showing up in Apple's online stores as sold out or unavailable in all countries," MacRumors reports, which could indicate that Apple has discontinued the CD / DVD player.It's not a huge surprise that Apple might be done with the SuperDrive. The product first launched with the original MacBook Air, which didn't have an optical drive, in 2008, so it's quite old. The SuperDrive was shown as sold out" online on Apple's US online store earlier this year. And physical media just isn't as widely used as it once was, even though there have been multiple recent reminders of why digital ownership sucks.Apple didn't immediately reply to a request for comment. The company's listing for the SuperDrive is still on... Continue reading...

Image: Tesla Elon Musk promised a brighter future, but believing him requires an enormous leap of faith. Continue reading...

Of course it looks like a pill. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We're well past the Prime Day Redux now, but several standout deals from the sale are still hanging on. In fact, some are even better than they were during the two-day sale - even if only a smidge. The Beats Pill portable Bluetooth speaker in red is down to $97.99 ($52 off) at Amazon, for example, which is $1 cheaper than the all-time low we saw it hit this past week. It's also still available for $99.99 ($50 off) in gold and black.The pill-shaped speaker represents a roaring comeback for the brand in the category. It's the first new Beats-branded portable speaker we've seen in years after the Pill Plus was discontinued in 2022. Apple refined the original's charming design and revamped its entire feature set with welcome modernities... Continue reading...

Stellantis is slow to release EVs, and its car prices are skyrocketing. | Image: Stellantis Stellantis is shaking up its leadership. The company announced today that CEO Carlos Tavares will retire at the end of his contract in 2026, and a host of other executives are being shuffled around immediately. The changes come as Stellantis struggles to manage its US auto business, which includes Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. The company is actively looking for Tavares' successor.On his way out, the executive shakeup includes replacing the current CFO, Natalie Knight, and North American COO, Carlos Zarlenga, with the company's China COO, Doug Ostermann, and the Jeep brand CEO, Antonio Filosa, respectively. Knight is leaving the company, Filosa will keep his role at Jeep in addition to becoming North American COO, and Zarlenga's new... Continue reading...

Spruce Pine, North Carolina, was hit with major flooding and power outages. | Photo by Steve Exum / Getty Images Sibelco, one of the companies mining high-purity quartz in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, has resumed operations. In an update on Thursday, the company said that production and shipments of the quartz, which is crucial to the chipmaking process, are progressively ramping up to full capacity."After Hurricane Helene caused devastating floods, mudslides, and power outages in parts of North Carolina, Sibelco announced that it had paused its operations. Earlier this month, the company confirmed it only incurred minor" damage and that all of its employees were accounted for.Spruce Pine has the only naturally occurring quartz in the world that's pure enough to use as a crucible during the chip manufacturing process. In the past, some experts... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Lawsuits take a long time, and so there's no good reason to believe that Google as we know it will be gone anytime soon. But as the antitrust fight against the company continues, and Google's losses mount, it's also starting to seem like Google as we know also won't be around forever. In one case, the Play Store is being opened up; in another, the government says it might try to force Chrome and Android out of Google.On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Lauren Feiner takes us through all the latest movements in the many cases against Google, and what she's hearing about how the government and the company are preparing for the future.But before we get to that, we do some wild Tesla speculating. Because you've now seen the... Continue reading...

Contractors gone wild. | Photo by Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images It really has been something to watch Elon Musk turn SpaceX into the MyPillow of rocket companies, hasn't it?Christ, I guess I have to list off all the depressing stuff from the past few months: the Trump rally, the creepy assassination comments, the even creepier comments about impregnating Taylor Swift, spreading hurricane misinformation on X (and thus hindering relief efforts), claiming his own child was killed" by the woke mind virus," that kind of thing. I have seen a lot of people suggest this is political radicalization, and sure, maybe it is. But I can't help noticing a sick business logic, too.Musk has figured out he can leverage the culture wars to his advantageI have never accused Musk of being anything other than... Continue reading...

The Bluesky app will now let users pin posts to the top of their profiles. | Image: Bluesky Bluesky will now let you pin posts, apply language filters, and customize fonts and text sizes. The decentralized short posting platform announced these and other new features via the Threads account it created yesterday, seizing the chance to promote its superiority - we're not owned by a billionaire" - to increasingly frustrated users of its Meta rival.Complaints from Threads users have spiked in recent days following a flood of engagement bait posts being promoted to people's feeds and reports of overly sensitive or inaccurate moderation causing accounts to be deleted or restricted. Threads boss Adam Mosseri said these issues are being looked into, but the chaos has presented Bluesky with a ripe opportunity to persuade Threads users... Continue reading...

Image: Tesla Tesla CEO Elon Musk surprised attendees of the We, Robot" event by presenting a new, unexpected vehicle: a passenger van.Of course, it was far from a conventional van. The Tesla Robovan (Musk pronounces it ruh-BO-vehn) looked like something out of an Art Deco fever dream, with a sleek train engine-like shape and no visible wheels. Musk said that the vehicle could carry up to 20 people or be used to transport goods.The Robovan is what's gonna solve for high density," he said. So if you want to take a sports team somewhere, or you're looking to really get the cost of travel down to, I don't know, 5-10, cents a mile, then you can use the robovan."The Robovan is intended for the company's Tesla Network, an autonomous ridehailing... Continue reading...

Image: Tesla Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a new electric vehicle dedicated to self-driving, a possible milestone after years of false promises and blown deadlines.The robotaxi is a purpose-built autonomous vehicle, lacking a steering wheel or pedals, meaning it will need approval from regulators before going into production. The design was futuristic, with doors that open upward like butterfly wings and a small cabin with only enough space for two passengers. There was no steering wheel or pedals, nor was there a plug - Musk said the vehicle charges inductively to regain power wirelessly.Musk said that autonomous cars are expected to be 10-20 times safer than human-driven vehiclesMusk said that autonomous cars are expected to be 10-20 times... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Australians will finally be able to officially buy Valve's Steam Deck in their home country - two and a half years after the handheld gaming PC first went on sale, and a year after it arrived in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Australians have been asking for this for years - and Valve promised to make it happen way back in November 2021.It'll arrive this November in the same primary configurations Valve sells elsewhere: a 256GB configuration of the original LCD model, or 512GB and 1TB versions of the newer OLED model that also come with longer battery life, a better screen, and more. They'll cost AUD $649, $899, and $1,049 respectively.(While the OLED model does cost $250 AUD more than the original, it has so many important... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft is planning to update its Xbox mobile app on Android to allow US users to purchase and then play Xbox games on their mobile devices next month. Following a US court ruling earlier this week that forces Google to stop requiring Google Play Billing for apps in the Play Store on November 1st, Microsoft is ready to take advantage of the changes.The court's ruling to open up Google's mobile store in the US will allow more choice and flexibility," says Xbox president Sarah Bond in a post on X. Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices so we are thrilled to share that starting in November, players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android."

Illustration: The Verge Google is testing yet another feature aimed at keeping users on search results pages - this time targeting the popular recipe blog industry.The company is testing a new feature called Quick View that appears for some cooking recipes. A search for chocolate chip cookie recipe," for example, shows a quick view" button on a recipe from the blog Preppy Kitchen. Clicking it pulls up a full recipe with ingredients, photos, and step-by-step instructions - all without leaving Google Search. The new feature was previously reported on by industry blog Search Engine Roundtable.We're always experimenting with different ways to connect our users with high-quality and helpful information. We have partnered with a limited number of creators to... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The FBI created a cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets, the government revealed on Wednesday. The FBI's Ethereum-based token, NexFundAI, was created with the help of cooperating witnesses."As a result of the investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged three market makers" and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets. The Department of Justice charged 18 people and entities for widespread fraud and manipulation" in crypto markets.The defendants allegedly made false claims about their tokens and executed so-called wash trades" to create the impression of an active trading market, prosecutors claim. The three market... Continue reading...

Getty Images Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel rejected former President Donald Trump's call to revoke CBS's broadcast license on Thursday, calling it a familiar threat that should not be ignored."Trump called for the license to be revoked after the network shared two different edits of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump criticized the interview as a giant Fake News Scam" in a Truth Social post on Thursday and claimed the network replaced her answer on a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to save her or, at least, make her look better."Trump shared a compilation of two versions of Harris' answer to the question, with one labeled actual answer" and the... Continue reading...

Members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood-damaged area with a search canine in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene along the Swannanoa River on October 4th in Asheville, North Carolina. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images FEMA employees scrambling to respond to the devastation caused by hurricanes Milton and Helene are facing a new, unexpected challenge: violent threats on social media.TikTok posts either calling for violence or applauding unverified claims about physical attacks against FEMA personnel have garnered millions of views, according to a report yesterday from nonprofit Media Matters for America. X has also been fertile ground for threats of violence against FEMA, says another analysis published yesterday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).This content is reaching millions of people and, in some instances, poses a credible risk to public safety," ISD says.Social media misinformation has fed distrust in FEMA, which officials warn... Continue reading...

Image: Shutterstock Marriott agreed to pay a $52 million settlement to 49 states and Washington, DC, over a series of data breaches that occurred between 2014 and 2020, affecting more than 334 million customers. As part of a separate agreement, the Federal Trade Commission is also requiring Marriott and its subsidiary, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, to implement an information security program to settle charges over the data breaches.Marriott's poor security practices led to multiple breaches affecting hundreds of millions of customers," Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. The FTC's action today, in coordination with our state partners, will ensure that Marriott improves its data security... Continue reading...