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The next version of the Mac Mini may be so much smaller than this. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s next Mac Mini won’t have USB-A ports, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in today’s Power On newsletter that the new desktops will start to hit Apple’s warehouses in September. The higher-end variant with an Apple M4 Pro chip will ship in October, he writes.
The version with an M4 Pro will still cram a lot of ports, including five USB-C ports (two in the front and three in the back), an ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack, according to Gurman’s sources. And the new Mac Mini will apparently have an internal power supply. That’s not too shabby for a computer that’s expected to be about the size of an Apple TV.

Is it time to say goodbye to USB-A? Maybe. Probably. But no matter how you feel about that, it’s absolutely time something new happened with the Mac Mini, the longest-in-the-tooth Apple computer design. As Chris Welch illustrated earlier this month, it looks the same in our 2012 and 2023 reviews. (He didn’t point out our review of the first version of the Mac Mini’s current design because there isn’t one — The Verge didn’t exist yet in 2010.)

The next version of the Mac Mini may be so much smaller than this. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s next Mac Mini won’t have USB-A ports, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in today’s Power On newsletter that the new desktops will start to hit Apple’s warehouses in September. The higher-end variant with an Apple M4 Pro chip will ship in October, he writes.

The version with an M4 Pro will still cram a lot of ports, including five USB-C ports (two in the front and three in the back), an ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack, according to Gurman’s sources. And the new Mac Mini will apparently have an internal power supply. That’s not too shabby for a computer that’s expected to be about the size of an Apple TV.

Is it time to say goodbye to USB-A? Maybe. Probably. But no matter how you feel about that, it’s absolutely time something new happened with the Mac Mini, the longest-in-the-tooth Apple computer design. As Chris Welch illustrated earlier this month, it looks the same in our 2012 and 2023 reviews. (He didn’t point out our review of the first version of the Mac Mini’s current design because there isn’t one — The Verge didn’t exist yet in 2010.)

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Image: Nintendo

Sure, it’s not straight-up horror as the early teasers suggested, but even still, Emio — The Smiling Man is among the darkest games Nintendo has ever made. It’s a murder mystery that doesn’t skimp on the murder and throws in an unsettling urban legend for good measure. More than that, though, it’s just a really great mystery on a platform that has steadily become an ideal home for them.
Emio is actually the continuation of a decades-old franchise from Nintendo called Famicom Detective Club. Created by Metroid designer Yoshio Sakamoto, the games originally never launched outside of Japan, until a pair of surprise remakes hit the Switch in 2021. Emio is the first entirely new entry in the franchise since the late ’80s — but even still, not a lot has changed.
As with its predecessors, Emio plays out like a visual novel, where your actions are determined by a series of verbs on a menu. This is how you “look” at a crime scene or “ask” a witness questions or “review” your notes. Sometimes, the actions are contextual — you can’t talk to someone if there’s no one there — but there are almost always a few things you can do at any given moment. If not, you can always “think.”

Image: Nintendo

It’s not the most elegant way to engage with the world, but it is functional. It also necessitates a lot of reading and repetition. You often have to press witnesses by asking the same questions over and over, and the only way to learn what happened is to listen to people. That combination is something of an acquired taste, and also one that only really works with the right narrative — which is where Emio shines.
The game tells the story of a series of murders involving a killer who both wears a paper bag with a creepy smiley face and also puts one on his victims. At the outset of the game, a recent killing appears to connect to a series of murders 18 years prior and also possibly ties into an urban legend about a person named Emio who kills with nearly identical methods. You play as a young assistant of a private investigator, working alongside the police to put the various pieces together.
Because there are so many moving parts and — at first — only loose theories holding them together, I had a lot of fun doing all of the asking, looking, and reviewing. It’s very satisfying when things click into place. There are plentiful threads to pull on, which shift the story into even darker and more disturbing directions as the scope becomes clear. Even without the horror element, there’s plenty to be creeped out about in Emio.
The game also joins a sizable lineup of similar mysteries on the Switch, which feel right at home due to its portable nature, like the video game equivalent of a good book. Outside of Famicom Detective Club, there’s Ace Attorney, Murder by Numbers, or Coffee Talk, to name a few. Emio’s gameplay might feel a touch dated in comparison, but its core mystery carries it through.
Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is available now on the Nintendo Switch.

Image: Nintendo

Sure, it’s not straight-up horror as the early teasers suggested, but even still, Emio — The Smiling Man is among the darkest games Nintendo has ever made. It’s a murder mystery that doesn’t skimp on the murder and throws in an unsettling urban legend for good measure. More than that, though, it’s just a really great mystery on a platform that has steadily become an ideal home for them.

Emio is actually the continuation of a decades-old franchise from Nintendo called Famicom Detective Club. Created by Metroid designer Yoshio Sakamoto, the games originally never launched outside of Japan, until a pair of surprise remakes hit the Switch in 2021. Emio is the first entirely new entry in the franchise since the late ’80s — but even still, not a lot has changed.

As with its predecessors, Emio plays out like a visual novel, where your actions are determined by a series of verbs on a menu. This is how you “look” at a crime scene or “ask” a witness questions or “review” your notes. Sometimes, the actions are contextual — you can’t talk to someone if there’s no one there — but there are almost always a few things you can do at any given moment. If not, you can always “think.”

Image: Nintendo

It’s not the most elegant way to engage with the world, but it is functional. It also necessitates a lot of reading and repetition. You often have to press witnesses by asking the same questions over and over, and the only way to learn what happened is to listen to people. That combination is something of an acquired taste, and also one that only really works with the right narrative — which is where Emio shines.

The game tells the story of a series of murders involving a killer who both wears a paper bag with a creepy smiley face and also puts one on his victims. At the outset of the game, a recent killing appears to connect to a series of murders 18 years prior and also possibly ties into an urban legend about a person named Emio who kills with nearly identical methods. You play as a young assistant of a private investigator, working alongside the police to put the various pieces together.

Because there are so many moving parts and — at first — only loose theories holding them together, I had a lot of fun doing all of the asking, looking, and reviewing. It’s very satisfying when things click into place. There are plentiful threads to pull on, which shift the story into even darker and more disturbing directions as the scope becomes clear. Even without the horror element, there’s plenty to be creeped out about in Emio.

The game also joins a sizable lineup of similar mysteries on the Switch, which feel right at home due to its portable nature, like the video game equivalent of a good book. Outside of Famicom Detective Club, there’s Ace Attorney, Murder by Numbers, or Coffee Talk, to name a few. Emio’s gameplay might feel a touch dated in comparison, but its core mystery carries it through.

Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is available now on the Nintendo Switch.

Read More 

The fediverse has the potential to help create enduring and interoperable social networks. But many creators and businesses rely on bigger, closed platforms because they offer direct ways to make money from their audiences, which is hard to do in the fediverse right now.
Sub.club is trying to solve that.
The idea is that this will let users on ActivityPub-based platforms like Mastodon easily offer paid subscriptions and premium content while taking a 6 percent cut in addition to payment processing fees. It could solve a big problem with the fediverse right now: it’s not easy to make a living on it unless you direct your followers back to existing platforms like Patreon that are closed off and require users to visit a particular site or app to get much of the content.
Bringing money into the fediverse ecosystem and having a way for creators to get paid could be an important building block, Bart Decrem, one of the founders of sub.club, tells The Verge. “So we think this work is super important for all of us that believe in the promise of the internet.”
That could be especially true if the fediverse is successful to the point where it creates what sub.club adviser Anuj Ahooja calls “one last network effect.” That would be the idea of everyone joining fediverse platforms built on an open protocol where it’s possible to interact online with the option to move from network to network and platform to platform at will. “From there, you can drive so much innovation around social media,” Ahooja says.
While X is still culturally relevant enough that it was the first place where Joe Biden’s campaign posted the news that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, many people got the news on other platforms as it splashed across Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and Whatsapp. I’m not sure everyone is going to coalesce in one place or that they even want to, and profiles you can take with you could be a part of that.

Image: sub.club

Currently, sub.club is only available for Mastodon users, and depending on how you use Mastodon, you might run into the service in different ways. On Mastodon web clients, creators can point people to a subscription page.
In clients that include a rich experience for the subscriptions — right now, that’s Mammoth, which is made by the same developer team, and Ice Cubes — creators can add a subscribe button that appears at the top of their profile that takes users to a subscription webpage.
As a creator, making the post your subscribers will see takes an extra step: you have to DM your sub.club account. Then, people who subscribe to your posts will see that post in their following feeds.

Sub.club doesn’t just want to push creators to only use its services; instead, the team envisions building “a subscribe button that integrates with other paid subscription products,” Ahooja says. That’s why it’s launching as a developer preview; “if you’re going to build something, build it in a way that’s standard and portable across multiple services,” according to Ahooja.
It’s also created an API that can build premium bots, according to this FAQ, so you could, for example, set up a silly bot that adds animals to photos.

Sometime this fall, sub.club also plans to let Mastodon server admins use the tool to help fund maintenance instead of asking users for support through platforms like Patreon or Ko-Fi.
“There’s a lot of free labor that runs the fediverse right now,” Ahooja says. “So let’s make sure people are getting compensated.”

The fediverse has the potential to help create enduring and interoperable social networks. But many creators and businesses rely on bigger, closed platforms because they offer direct ways to make money from their audiences, which is hard to do in the fediverse right now.

Sub.club is trying to solve that.

The idea is that this will let users on ActivityPub-based platforms like Mastodon easily offer paid subscriptions and premium content while taking a 6 percent cut in addition to payment processing fees. It could solve a big problem with the fediverse right now: it’s not easy to make a living on it unless you direct your followers back to existing platforms like Patreon that are closed off and require users to visit a particular site or app to get much of the content.

Bringing money into the fediverse ecosystem and having a way for creators to get paid could be an important building block, Bart Decrem, one of the founders of sub.club, tells The Verge. “So we think this work is super important for all of us that believe in the promise of the internet.”

That could be especially true if the fediverse is successful to the point where it creates what sub.club adviser Anuj Ahooja calls “one last network effect.” That would be the idea of everyone joining fediverse platforms built on an open protocol where it’s possible to interact online with the option to move from network to network and platform to platform at will. “From there, you can drive so much innovation around social media,” Ahooja says.

While X is still culturally relevant enough that it was the first place where Joe Biden’s campaign posted the news that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, many people got the news on other platforms as it splashed across Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and Whatsapp. I’m not sure everyone is going to coalesce in one place or that they even want to, and profiles you can take with you could be a part of that.

Image: sub.club

Currently, sub.club is only available for Mastodon users, and depending on how you use Mastodon, you might run into the service in different ways. On Mastodon web clients, creators can point people to a subscription page.

In clients that include a rich experience for the subscriptions — right now, that’s Mammoth, which is made by the same developer team, and Ice Cubes — creators can add a subscribe button that appears at the top of their profile that takes users to a subscription webpage.

As a creator, making the post your subscribers will see takes an extra step: you have to DM your sub.club account. Then, people who subscribe to your posts will see that post in their following feeds.

Sub.club doesn’t just want to push creators to only use its services; instead, the team envisions building “a subscribe button that integrates with other paid subscription products,” Ahooja says. That’s why it’s launching as a developer preview; “if you’re going to build something, build it in a way that’s standard and portable across multiple services,” according to Ahooja.

It’s also created an API that can build premium bots, according to this FAQ, so you could, for example, set up a silly bot that adds animals to photos.

Sometime this fall, sub.club also plans to let Mastodon server admins use the tool to help fund maintenance instead of asking users for support through platforms like Patreon or Ko-Fi.

“There’s a lot of free labor that runs the fediverse right now,” Ahooja says. “So let’s make sure people are getting compensated.”

Read More 

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 50, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I promise it’s not always this many expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about crime rings and paleontology beefs and the strange language of TikTok, watching Kevin Can F**k Himself and Trap, re-upping my Yousician subscription to get back into the guitar, doing a lot of weird stretches after spraining my finger, and trying to make the famous Levain cookies.
I also have for you a bunch of new wearable gadgets, a new Star Wars game, the return of a fabulous YouTube series, and much more.
Also, I still want to know: who’s your favorite lesser-known creator? I’ve gotten so many great answers so far, but I want to do it REALLY big next week with lots of great people to check out. So keep your favorites coming!
All right, big gadget-y week this week. Let’s dig in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing, reading, watching, eating, downloading, buying, or making out of wood? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2. I’ve had these for a week and they’re easily one of my favorite gadget upgrades of the year so far. For day-to-day dog-walking and grocery-running and exercising headphones, I’ve been totally converted to bone conduction over the course of this year. These new ones have more bass, mercifully non-awful mics, longer battery, USB-C — I genuinely love them so far.

Star Wars Outlaws. I have been burned by so many Star Wars games before, but this one sounds… well, if not like the most innovative game in history, at least like a seriously good time. And as someone who doesn’t love an endless open-world game, the slightly more rigid structure sounds perfect for me to dive into.

BeRreal Roulette. Are people still using BeReal? I honestly don’t know. But I love this idea: it’s the daily BeReal experience, except it grabs a shot from your camera roll and lets you react to it as you share it. So clever, so very dangerous.

The Dyson Airwrap i.d. Look, I don’t have enough hair to say whether Bluetooth connectivity for “personalized curling routines” is anything, but I do know that every single person I know with an Airwrap loves the thing to bits and will probably like the new attachments.

“I feel as stupid as I look – Brilliant Labs Frame.” There’s actually a lot of cool stuff in these AR glasses, at least from a hardware perspective. But as Linus and the Short Circuit folks find, the AI just ain’t ready. I got way too many Rabbit and Humane vibes from this video.

The Garmin Fenix 8. Garmin’s ultrapremium smartwatches now come with OLED screens, a mic and a speaker, and some nifty messaging features. These are priced For Serious Outdoorspeople Only, but they’re pretty compelling — and a month-plus of battery life just straight-up rules.

Anthropic Artifacts. As chatbots go, this is the coolest UI anyone has built yet. You can use Claude to build something and actually see it work and change in real time next to the chat; it makes the process of making things much more collaborative and useful.

The Plaud NotePin. Another day, another AI voice recorder thing. I still have no idea if these will ever be actually useful to most people, but I’ve been testing this $169 one for a few days, and it’s pretty good at transcribing and summarizing whatever nonsense I say into it all day. (And speaking of AI notes: Cleft Notes, one of my favorites, officially launched on iOS this week.)

“The Sustained Two-Shot.” I mentioned my love for Every Frame a Painting a few weeks ago, and now they’re back! I get the sense this next series is going to be very meta since the EFAP duo is making their own film, and I’m extremely here for it.

Screen share
We made it to Installer 50! The first anniversary of Installer was two weeks ago, a fact I missed entirely. Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up, clicked links, sent me recommendations, yelled at me about typos and formatting, and made life in the Installerverse incredibly fun over the last year (and two weeks). I have big plans for year two and hopefully lots and lots of fun stuff to share.
My plan has always been to share my own setup in this space every 25 issues, which works out to about every six months. It’s a good chance to take stock of my own setup and systems, but also to share what I’m learning and discovering as Installer’s Downloader-in-Chief. (Here’s my previous setup, from Installer #25.)
So here’s my homescreen as it is right now, plus some info on the apps I’m using and why:

The phone: iPhone 15 Pro, with a screen increasingly scratched to bits and that will hopefully be replaced — either by an iPhone 16 or a Pixel 9, depending on how the next few weeks go — this fall.
The wallpaper: Still my wife and son on the lockscreen, but a new picture of the little dude on the homescreen. I’ve been running the iOS 18 beta all summer, which means I’m finally free from the stupid app grid, which made lots of new photos into plausible options. This one’s my fave.
The apps: Readwise Reader, Kindle, Maps, Day One, Spotify, Phone, Pocket Casts, Camera, Messages, Fantastical, Capacities, Arc.
I have become a custom icon convert, and there’s just no going back. This pack is the Vera Icon Pack from Vuk Andric, which I bought for $4 and like very much. Dark icons are the best icons.
My most-used apps haven’t really changed since last time, except I have fewer of them on the screen now.

I’m in the midst of my longest journaling streak of all time in Day One, and it’s entirely because I changed the daily prompt to “what did you do today?” which feels so much lower-stakes than most journaling that I find myself doing it much more happily.
I am desperately trying to quit Spotify, which has gotten bloated and expensive and just worse over time. I don’t know where to go yet… but I’m working on that.
The Calendar widget is from Apple Calendar because all the other calendar apps I tried required me to open them too often just to refresh the widget. This one’s not beautiful, but it’s at least up to date.
The “Comms” and “Content” folders are working really well for me. Any kind of communication: Comms! (Comms is also the only folder allowed to have badges or notifications.) All my news / games / endless scrolling apps go in Content. I use Spotlight search for everything else.
I’m like two weeks into testing Capacities for all my notes and projects, and so far, my review is “it’s Notion but uglier but way faster.” I’m into it so far.

I share every week what I’m into right now, but here are a few I don’t think I’ve mentioned here recently that I highly recommend:

I love Tom Wolfe’s writing but somehow had never read The Right Stuff before. Good lord is this book great. (It’s about astronauts and fighter pilots and what it takes to decide to risk your life for the skies.) Apparently, some of the details are, ahem, slightly overdone, but even if it’s pure fiction, it’s still a heck of a story.
I started watching Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE more or less by accident, walking into the room right after my wife started it. But this K-pop competition show, which turns out to actually be about fandom and fame and the internet and in places gets deeply bleak and hard to watch, hooked me immediately, and I’ve been thinking about it nonstop all week.
I used to play a lot of Retro Bowl — probably too much Retro Bowl — on my phone. Now I’m trying to do less of everything on my phone, so I dropped $5 on the Switch version of the game. Bigger screen, better controls, same absurdly fun game. No notes.

Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.
“As a fellow nerd who keeps dreaming of the ideal note-taking setup, I can’t believe I’ve never seen anyone recommend Emacs to you, and especially the built-in Org-mode. It’s endlessly customizable, it’s super flexible, and especially when you write anything for a living (articles, scripts, emails, code), it’s by far the best tool I have found out there. Beorg is a really good iOS app that supports it too (and a decent if plain note-taking app in general), and on Android, I use Orgzly instead.” — David
“Match Land. I’ve been looking for games to play mindlessly while listening to music, and this game has gotten me hooked. This game uses the match-3 mechanic as a way to stack up damage for an incredibly addictive RPG that’s all about combos. And it’s got cute 8-bit graphics to boot!” — Shani
“Been playing a lot of Deadlock! It’s Valve’s MOBA / third-person hero shooter hybrid that somehow just works. It’s in an early playtest state on Steam — and does have a lot of performance / gameplay rough edges, along with a schedule for when the game actually *lets* you play online. Doesn’t stop it from being fun, though, and I love Bebop now, so it’s worth it.” — Arthur
“Somehow Ryan George made the perfect comedy skit about Elon’s ownership of Twitter. I’ve watched this so many times this week.” — Jordan
“I recently accomplished something truly the Vergiest thing ever (and maybe a little crazy): merging the Mac and Samsung ecosystems! Here’s the breakdown. NearDrop is AirDrop, but for Android and Mac. It even works both ways (with a little trick to initiate transfers from Mac to Android by mimicking sharing a file from another Android phone to make it visible to the Mac). Parallels lets me run Windows on my Mac, and Phone Link provides seamless copy-paste between devices. I can even cast multiple apps from my phone / tablet to the Mac’s screen with drag-and-drop support! Mirrcast on Tab S9: Turns my tablet into a second display for the Mac AND routes audio through my Buds 3 Pro. The perfect seamless auto audio switching between the Mac and my Phone!” — Khalil
“I’m loving Terminus on my Steam Deck. Turn-based zombie survival game that just released out of Early Access.” – Justin
“I found this podcast’s perspective on generative AI from Australian musician Ben Lee to be refreshingly different to the usual concerns about licensing or quality.” — Andrew
“I’ve been listening to Darknet Diaries, by Jack Rhysider. This is a podcast about hackers, breaches, shadow government activity, hacktivism, cybercrime, and all the things that dwell on the hidden parts of the network. It also involves physical penetration testing, social engineering, and hardware hacking for fun.” — Sinan
“For people who have time and are wanting to tidy up their personal file organization, I would strongly recommend Johnny.Decimal. It’s a really intuitive (to me, at least) way of keeping files organized, and he’s just launched a quick start pack to help people get into the system. Also, his website is pretty cool.” — Nathan
“I cannot recommend the latest Waveform episode enough, one of the best explainers for the concept of the fediverse and its protocols.” — Filip

Signing off
First of all, thanks to everyone who said you’d be down for Installer Fantasy Football next year. I’m in! Let’s do it — it’ll be bonkers. Time to start prepping.
Second of all, a special shoutout to Jim, who sent me an email about their fantasy setup that absolutely filled me with joy. Here it is because this is how it’s done:
“It’s far from perfect, and I’m not sure it saves me any time. However, it’s well organized, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. All of the data is contained in Google Sheets. I use App Scripts to import all of the data:

I use APIs to import my various fantasy teams from Yahoo, Sleeper, and ESPN. This gives me access to rosters, transactions, standings and free agents/waivers
I scrape data from various websites (FantasyPros, Ourlads, Pro Football Reference) directly via Apps Scripts
Some site are a bit too complicated to navigate for Apps Scripts, so I use Python to scrape those and create a CSV which I import to Google Sheets
Lastly, I use various R libraries (nflreadr, nflfastr, ffanalytics, ffscrapr) to download and manipulate the ridiculous amount of data that they make available. I export those to CSV as well and import to Google Sheets

It’s a complicated process, but I use MacOS Automator and Google Apps Script Triggers to automate most of it. It only requires a couple of weekly mouse clicks to update all of the data.”
You are all my people. This rules.
See you next week!

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 50, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I promise it’s not always this many expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about crime rings and paleontology beefs and the strange language of TikTok, watching Kevin Can F**k Himself and Trap, re-upping my Yousician subscription to get back into the guitar, doing a lot of weird stretches after spraining my finger, and trying to make the famous Levain cookies.

I also have for you a bunch of new wearable gadgets, a new Star Wars game, the return of a fabulous YouTube series, and much more.

Also, I still want to know: who’s your favorite lesser-known creator? I’ve gotten so many great answers so far, but I want to do it REALLY big next week with lots of great people to check out. So keep your favorites coming!

All right, big gadget-y week this week. Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing, reading, watching, eating, downloading, buying, or making out of wood? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2. I’ve had these for a week and they’re easily one of my favorite gadget upgrades of the year so far. For day-to-day dog-walking and grocery-running and exercising headphones, I’ve been totally converted to bone conduction over the course of this year. These new ones have more bass, mercifully non-awful mics, longer battery, USB-C — I genuinely love them so far.

Star Wars Outlaws. I have been burned by so many Star Wars games before, but this one sounds… well, if not like the most innovative game in history, at least like a seriously good time. And as someone who doesn’t love an endless open-world game, the slightly more rigid structure sounds perfect for me to dive into.

BeRreal Roulette. Are people still using BeReal? I honestly don’t know. But I love this idea: it’s the daily BeReal experience, except it grabs a shot from your camera roll and lets you react to it as you share it. So clever, so very dangerous.

The Dyson Airwrap i.d. Look, I don’t have enough hair to say whether Bluetooth connectivity for “personalized curling routines” is anything, but I do know that every single person I know with an Airwrap loves the thing to bits and will probably like the new attachments.

“I feel as stupid as I look – Brilliant Labs Frame.” There’s actually a lot of cool stuff in these AR glasses, at least from a hardware perspective. But as Linus and the Short Circuit folks find, the AI just ain’t ready. I got way too many Rabbit and Humane vibes from this video.

The Garmin Fenix 8. Garmin’s ultrapremium smartwatches now come with OLED screens, a mic and a speaker, and some nifty messaging features. These are priced For Serious Outdoorspeople Only, but they’re pretty compelling — and a month-plus of battery life just straight-up rules.

Anthropic Artifacts. As chatbots go, this is the coolest UI anyone has built yet. You can use Claude to build something and actually see it work and change in real time next to the chat; it makes the process of making things much more collaborative and useful.

The Plaud NotePin. Another day, another AI voice recorder thing. I still have no idea if these will ever be actually useful to most people, but I’ve been testing this $169 one for a few days, and it’s pretty good at transcribing and summarizing whatever nonsense I say into it all day. (And speaking of AI notes: Cleft Notes, one of my favorites, officially launched on iOS this week.)

“The Sustained Two-Shot.” I mentioned my love for Every Frame a Painting a few weeks ago, and now they’re back! I get the sense this next series is going to be very meta since the EFAP duo is making their own film, and I’m extremely here for it.

Screen share

We made it to Installer 50! The first anniversary of Installer was two weeks ago, a fact I missed entirely. Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up, clicked links, sent me recommendations, yelled at me about typos and formatting, and made life in the Installerverse incredibly fun over the last year (and two weeks). I have big plans for year two and hopefully lots and lots of fun stuff to share.

My plan has always been to share my own setup in this space every 25 issues, which works out to about every six months. It’s a good chance to take stock of my own setup and systems, but also to share what I’m learning and discovering as Installer’s Downloader-in-Chief. (Here’s my previous setup, from Installer #25.)

So here’s my homescreen as it is right now, plus some info on the apps I’m using and why:

The phone: iPhone 15 Pro, with a screen increasingly scratched to bits and that will hopefully be replaced — either by an iPhone 16 or a Pixel 9, depending on how the next few weeks go — this fall.

The wallpaper: Still my wife and son on the lockscreen, but a new picture of the little dude on the homescreen. I’ve been running the iOS 18 beta all summer, which means I’m finally free from the stupid app grid, which made lots of new photos into plausible options. This one’s my fave.

The apps: Readwise Reader, Kindle, Maps, Day One, Spotify, Phone, Pocket Casts, Camera, Messages, Fantastical, Capacities, Arc.

I have become a custom icon convert, and there’s just no going back. This pack is the Vera Icon Pack from Vuk Andric, which I bought for $4 and like very much. Dark icons are the best icons.

My most-used apps haven’t really changed since last time, except I have fewer of them on the screen now.

I’m in the midst of my longest journaling streak of all time in Day One, and it’s entirely because I changed the daily prompt to “what did you do today?” which feels so much lower-stakes than most journaling that I find myself doing it much more happily.
I am desperately trying to quit Spotify, which has gotten bloated and expensive and just worse over time. I don’t know where to go yet… but I’m working on that.
The Calendar widget is from Apple Calendar because all the other calendar apps I tried required me to open them too often just to refresh the widget. This one’s not beautiful, but it’s at least up to date.
The “Comms” and “Content” folders are working really well for me. Any kind of communication: Comms! (Comms is also the only folder allowed to have badges or notifications.) All my news / games / endless scrolling apps go in Content. I use Spotlight search for everything else.
I’m like two weeks into testing Capacities for all my notes and projects, and so far, my review is “it’s Notion but uglier but way faster.” I’m into it so far.

I share every week what I’m into right now, but here are a few I don’t think I’ve mentioned here recently that I highly recommend:

I love Tom Wolfe’s writing but somehow had never read The Right Stuff before. Good lord is this book great. (It’s about astronauts and fighter pilots and what it takes to decide to risk your life for the skies.) Apparently, some of the details are, ahem, slightly overdone, but even if it’s pure fiction, it’s still a heck of a story.
I started watching Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE more or less by accident, walking into the room right after my wife started it. But this K-pop competition show, which turns out to actually be about fandom and fame and the internet and in places gets deeply bleak and hard to watch, hooked me immediately, and I’ve been thinking about it nonstop all week.
I used to play a lot of Retro Bowl — probably too much Retro Bowl — on my phone. Now I’m trying to do less of everything on my phone, so I dropped $5 on the Switch version of the game. Bigger screen, better controls, same absurdly fun game. No notes.

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“As a fellow nerd who keeps dreaming of the ideal note-taking setup, I can’t believe I’ve never seen anyone recommend Emacs to you, and especially the built-in Org-mode. It’s endlessly customizable, it’s super flexible, and especially when you write anything for a living (articles, scripts, emails, code), it’s by far the best tool I have found out there. Beorg is a really good iOS app that supports it too (and a decent if plain note-taking app in general), and on Android, I use Orgzly instead.” — David

“Match Land. I’ve been looking for games to play mindlessly while listening to music, and this game has gotten me hooked. This game uses the match-3 mechanic as a way to stack up damage for an incredibly addictive RPG that’s all about combos. And it’s got cute 8-bit graphics to boot!” — Shani

“Been playing a lot of Deadlock! It’s Valve’s MOBA / third-person hero shooter hybrid that somehow just works. It’s in an early playtest state on Steam — and does have a lot of performance / gameplay rough edges, along with a schedule for when the game actually *lets* you play online. Doesn’t stop it from being fun, though, and I love Bebop now, so it’s worth it.” — Arthur

“Somehow Ryan George made the perfect comedy skit about Elon’s ownership of Twitter. I’ve watched this so many times this week.” — Jordan

“I recently accomplished something truly the Vergiest thing ever (and maybe a little crazy): merging the Mac and Samsung ecosystems! Here’s the breakdown. NearDrop is AirDrop, but for Android and Mac. It even works both ways (with a little trick to initiate transfers from Mac to Android by mimicking sharing a file from another Android phone to make it visible to the Mac). Parallels lets me run Windows on my Mac, and Phone Link provides seamless copy-paste between devices. I can even cast multiple apps from my phone / tablet to the Mac’s screen with drag-and-drop support! Mirrcast on Tab S9: Turns my tablet into a second display for the Mac AND routes audio through my Buds 3 Pro. The perfect seamless auto audio switching between the Mac and my Phone!” — Khalil

“I’m loving Terminus on my Steam Deck. Turn-based zombie survival game that just released out of Early Access.” – Justin

“I found this podcast’s perspective on generative AI from Australian musician Ben Lee to be refreshingly different to the usual concerns about licensing or quality.” — Andrew

“I’ve been listening to Darknet Diaries, by Jack Rhysider. This is a podcast about hackers, breaches, shadow government activity, hacktivism, cybercrime, and all the things that dwell on the hidden parts of the network. It also involves physical penetration testing, social engineering, and hardware hacking for fun.” — Sinan

“For people who have time and are wanting to tidy up their personal file organization, I would strongly recommend Johnny.Decimal. It’s a really intuitive (to me, at least) way of keeping files organized, and he’s just launched a quick start pack to help people get into the system. Also, his website is pretty cool.” — Nathan

“I cannot recommend the latest Waveform episode enough, one of the best explainers for the concept of the fediverse and its protocols.” — Filip

Signing off

First of all, thanks to everyone who said you’d be down for Installer Fantasy Football next year. I’m in! Let’s do it — it’ll be bonkers. Time to start prepping.

Second of all, a special shoutout to Jim, who sent me an email about their fantasy setup that absolutely filled me with joy. Here it is because this is how it’s done:

“It’s far from perfect, and I’m not sure it saves me any time. However, it’s well organized, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. All of the data is contained in Google Sheets. I use App Scripts to import all of the data:

I use APIs to import my various fantasy teams from Yahoo, Sleeper, and ESPN. This gives me access to rosters, transactions, standings and free agents/waivers
I scrape data from various websites (FantasyPros, Ourlads, Pro Football Reference) directly via Apps Scripts
Some site are a bit too complicated to navigate for Apps Scripts, so I use Python to scrape those and create a CSV which I import to Google Sheets
Lastly, I use various R libraries (nflreadr, nflfastr, ffanalytics, ffscrapr) to download and manipulate the ridiculous amount of data that they make available. I export those to CSV as well and import to Google Sheets

It’s a complicated process, but I use MacOS Automator and Google Apps Script Triggers to automate most of it. It only requires a couple of weekly mouse clicks to update all of the data.”

You are all my people. This rules.

See you next week!

Read More 

This week brought a few noteworthy movie and TV trailers — the big one being Sonic the Hedgehog 3. And while I won’t include them here, you should check out some of the trailers included with our coverage of the most recent Nintendo Direct (shoutout to the Nintendo DS Castlevania games collection).
It’s clear that summer is winding down, and so are the big blockbusters. Things will liven up a bit with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice next week, but things are looking quiet for a little bit after that.
Sonic the Hedghehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 finally brings Sonic’s big nemesis, Shadow, into the mix, played by Keanu Reeves. The trailer only gave a bit of Reeves’ voice but makes up for it with lots of Jim Carrey’s disheveled and depressed Dr. Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik (also played by Carrey). The movie hits theaters on December 25th.
Agatha All Along

Marvel’s Agatha All Along, the Disney Plus series that follows Kathryn Hahn’s WandaVision villain, will begin streaming soon on September 18th. While the show is looking like it’ll have plenty of comedy, this week’s trailer makes it clear there will be plenty of drama, too.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

A new Wallace & Gromit movie means more stop-motion animation, which is something I’ll never get tired of. In this movie, which will hit Netflix in the US this winter, Wallace invents a smart home device (which is a garden gnome) named Norbot. Things go awry when Norbot is surreptitiously controlled by Feathers McGraw, a villain in the Wallace & Gromit world.
Napoleon: The Director’s Cut

Apple released a director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon this week on Apple TV Plus. With 48 minutes of extra footage, it sounds like there’s plenty more to watch if you don’t plan on spending Labor Day weekend standing by a barbecue grill.

This week brought a few noteworthy movie and TV trailers — the big one being Sonic the Hedgehog 3. And while I won’t include them here, you should check out some of the trailers included with our coverage of the most recent Nintendo Direct (shoutout to the Nintendo DS Castlevania games collection).

It’s clear that summer is winding down, and so are the big blockbusters. Things will liven up a bit with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice next week, but things are looking quiet for a little bit after that.

Sonic the Hedghehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 finally brings Sonic’s big nemesis, Shadow, into the mix, played by Keanu Reeves. The trailer only gave a bit of Reeves’ voice but makes up for it with lots of Jim Carrey’s disheveled and depressed Dr. Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik (also played by Carrey). The movie hits theaters on December 25th.

Agatha All Along

Marvel’s Agatha All Along, the Disney Plus series that follows Kathryn Hahn’s WandaVision villain, will begin streaming soon on September 18th. While the show is looking like it’ll have plenty of comedy, this week’s trailer makes it clear there will be plenty of drama, too.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

A new Wallace & Gromit movie means more stop-motion animation, which is something I’ll never get tired of. In this movie, which will hit Netflix in the US this winter, Wallace invents a smart home device (which is a garden gnome) named Norbot. Things go awry when Norbot is surreptitiously controlled by Feathers McGraw, a villain in the Wallace & Gromit world.

Napoleon: The Director’s Cut

Apple released a director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon this week on Apple TV Plus. With 48 minutes of extra footage, it sounds like there’s plenty more to watch if you don’t plan on spending Labor Day weekend standing by a barbecue grill.

Read More 

OSOM’s first phone, eventually renamed the Solana Saga. | Image: Osom

A lawsuit filed against Osom Products, Inc. by its former chief privacy officer, Mary Stone Ross, claims that the company’s CEO, Jason Keats, used business funds for extravagant purchases that include two Lamborghinis, reports Android Authority.
Keats, who founded Osom after Essential shut down and hired several of Essential’s former workers, is also accused of using company resources to pay for things ranging from his racing habit to his racing partner’s salary to his own mortgage, the outlet writes. Ross has apparently asked the court to make Osom give her access to company records that may prove the lawsuit’s claims.

The lawsuit also reportedly claims that Keats tried and failed to sell the company to HP and that, after that deal fell through, he tried to get Osom to pivot to making an “AI-powered camera.” The company’s “resources are allegedly depleted.”
An unnamed spokesperson denied the lawsuit’s claims when asked by Android Authority.

OSOM’s first phone, eventually renamed the Solana Saga. | Image: Osom

A lawsuit filed against Osom Products, Inc. by its former chief privacy officer, Mary Stone Ross, claims that the company’s CEO, Jason Keats, used business funds for extravagant purchases that include two Lamborghinis, reports Android Authority.

Keats, who founded Osom after Essential shut down and hired several of Essential’s former workers, is also accused of using company resources to pay for things ranging from his racing habit to his racing partner’s salary to his own mortgage, the outlet writes. Ross has apparently asked the court to make Osom give her access to company records that may prove the lawsuit’s claims.

The lawsuit also reportedly claims that Keats tried and failed to sell the company to HP and that, after that deal fell through, he tried to get Osom to pivot to making an “AI-powered camera.” The company’s “resources are allegedly depleted.”

An unnamed spokesperson denied the lawsuit’s claims when asked by Android Authority.

Read More 

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power most of our laptops may be the most practical battery tech we have right now, but they naturally degrade over time as their ions flow back and forth — it’s an inevitable consequence of the way they’re built and the way they work. Eventually, the batteries can’t hold as much of a charge.
Most modern laptops now come with some kind of smart charging technology built in, to limit the number of full charges that happen. How this is implemented varies between laptops — I’ll talk about this, as well as other ways to ensure the battery on your MacBook or Windows laptop stays as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
General battery health
As with smartphones, because of the chemical reactions happening inside your laptop’s battery, fully charging it or fully discharging it puts more stress on the battery and shortens its life. According to Microsoft, keeping a laptop plugged in at a 100 percent charge isn’t recommended when it comes to long-term battery health, so it suggests that users try and avoid full charges and full discharges as much as possible.

Then there’s temperature: Heat and cold aren’t good for battery health. They affect the chemical reactions inside the battery and increase internal wear and tear, so make sure your laptop is kept out of boiling hot cars or off of freezing cold balconies as much as possible — and if you do let your laptop get too hot or cold, slowly bring it down to a more normal temperature. (This also goes for extended periods of intense use — if your device starts getting too hot, take a break.)
You also need to consider temperature and charging if you’re going to be stowing your laptop away for a while. Make sure it’s kept in a cool and moisture-free space, and charge the battery up to 50 percent before shutting down the laptop, which limits the chances of damage from a full discharge.
Even simple steps like keeping case fans clean and clear can help: the better the air circulation inside your laptop, the cooler the components will run and the less power they’ll draw.
You might also want to reduce the brightness of the screen, too, and make sure all of your software is up to date — newer versions of programs and operating systems are typically more efficient and less demanding.
Battery health advice for Macs

Screenshot: Apple
Modern MacBooks come with an Optimized Battery Charging feature.

Apple MacBooks use a built-in feature called Optimized Battery Charging, which will only charge the battery past 80 percent when it thinks it’s needed. According to Apple, temperatures and previous charging patterns are used to help make this decision.
Macs equipped with Apple Silicon (as opposed to an Intel processor) have Optimized Battery Charging turned on by default. If, for any reason, you want to turn it off:

From the Apple menu, select System Settings…,
On the Battery tab, click the small “i” next to Battery Health.
You’ll see the Optimized Battery Charging on / off toggle.

If you have a Mac with an Intel processor, the feature may still be on by default, depending on your OS. If you want to check that or turn it on / off:

From the Apple menu, select System Preferences > Battery

Go to Battery > Battery Health

Look for Manage battery longevity and turn it on or off.

You can reduce battery strain further in the Battery tab: click Options to set the screen to dim and to stream video at a lower quality (reducing system strain) when you’re on battery power, for example.
There’s also a special Low Power Mode, though Apple doesn’t say much about it, except that it reduces energy usage. Select the Low Power Mode drop-down menu, and you can set it to be on all the time, just when you’re relying on battery power, or just when you’re using a power adapter.

Screenshot: Apple
Apple’s Battery page offers a Low Power Mode and indicators of how your battery’s health is doing.

To reduce energy use even further:

Select the Lock Screen tab in System Settings.
Select when to turn off the display of an inactive laptop by using the Turn display off on battery when inactive drop-down menu.

Something else to think about is reducing the number of apps you’ve got running at any one time: the less power you use running apps you don’t need, the less often you’ll have to charge the battery. Cutting down on the number of programs launching with macOS can help here.
Battery health advice for Windows
Windows offers a feature called Smart charging as an equivalent to the Mac’s Optimized Battery Charging feature, though it’s up to individual laptop manufacturers as to whether or not it’s implemented and how exactly it works. You’ll have to check with your particular systems manufacturer if your laptop has it and if you can turn it on or off.

Screenshot: Microsoft
While some features might vary, depending on the manufacturer, there are several ways to optimize battery use on the “Power & battery” page.

There are other power management settings on your computer that can conserve energy use:

Launch Settings from the Start menu.
Select System > Power & battery.
Click Screen and sleep to set how long the system waits before turning off the screen.
Choose Power mode to tell Windows whether to prioritize performance or battery life.
Click Battery saver to have Windows’ low power mode turn on at a certain battery level, or to keep it on indefinitely.

Battery usage can let you know how well your battery is functioning, and how much power your apps are using.
You may also have a section called Energy recommendations at the top of the Power & battery page; it doesn’t hurt to click on that and check out some of those recommendations.

As on macOS, making sure you’re running only the apps you need to be running will further ease the strain on the battery — it’s a good idea to double-check the programs starting up with Windows to make sure there’s nothing running in the background that you’re not aware of.

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power most of our laptops may be the most practical battery tech we have right now, but they naturally degrade over time as their ions flow back and forth — it’s an inevitable consequence of the way they’re built and the way they work. Eventually, the batteries can’t hold as much of a charge.

Most modern laptops now come with some kind of smart charging technology built in, to limit the number of full charges that happen. How this is implemented varies between laptops — I’ll talk about this, as well as other ways to ensure the battery on your MacBook or Windows laptop stays as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

General battery health

As with smartphones, because of the chemical reactions happening inside your laptop’s battery, fully charging it or fully discharging it puts more stress on the battery and shortens its life. According to Microsoft, keeping a laptop plugged in at a 100 percent charge isn’t recommended when it comes to long-term battery health, so it suggests that users try and avoid full charges and full discharges as much as possible.

Then there’s temperature: Heat and cold aren’t good for battery health. They affect the chemical reactions inside the battery and increase internal wear and tear, so make sure your laptop is kept out of boiling hot cars or off of freezing cold balconies as much as possible — and if you do let your laptop get too hot or cold, slowly bring it down to a more normal temperature. (This also goes for extended periods of intense use — if your device starts getting too hot, take a break.)

You also need to consider temperature and charging if you’re going to be stowing your laptop away for a while. Make sure it’s kept in a cool and moisture-free space, and charge the battery up to 50 percent before shutting down the laptop, which limits the chances of damage from a full discharge.

Even simple steps like keeping case fans clean and clear can help: the better the air circulation inside your laptop, the cooler the components will run and the less power they’ll draw.

You might also want to reduce the brightness of the screen, too, and make sure all of your software is up to date — newer versions of programs and operating systems are typically more efficient and less demanding.

Battery health advice for Macs

Screenshot: Apple
Modern MacBooks come with an Optimized Battery Charging feature.

Apple MacBooks use a built-in feature called Optimized Battery Charging, which will only charge the battery past 80 percent when it thinks it’s needed. According to Apple, temperatures and previous charging patterns are used to help make this decision.

Macs equipped with Apple Silicon (as opposed to an Intel processor) have Optimized Battery Charging turned on by default. If, for any reason, you want to turn it off:

From the Apple menu, select System Settings…,
On the Battery tab, click the small “i” next to Battery Health.
You’ll see the Optimized Battery Charging on / off toggle.

If you have a Mac with an Intel processor, the feature may still be on by default, depending on your OS. If you want to check that or turn it on / off:

From the Apple menu, select System Preferences > Battery

Go to Battery > Battery Health

Look for Manage battery longevity and turn it on or off.

You can reduce battery strain further in the Battery tab: click Options to set the screen to dim and to stream video at a lower quality (reducing system strain) when you’re on battery power, for example.

There’s also a special Low Power Mode, though Apple doesn’t say much about it, except that it reduces energy usage. Select the Low Power Mode drop-down menu, and you can set it to be on all the time, just when you’re relying on battery power, or just when you’re using a power adapter.

Screenshot: Apple
Apple’s Battery page offers a Low Power Mode and indicators of how your battery’s health is doing.

To reduce energy use even further:

Select the Lock Screen tab in System Settings.
Select when to turn off the display of an inactive laptop by using the Turn display off on battery when inactive drop-down menu.

Something else to think about is reducing the number of apps you’ve got running at any one time: the less power you use running apps you don’t need, the less often you’ll have to charge the battery. Cutting down on the number of programs launching with macOS can help here.

Battery health advice for Windows

Windows offers a feature called Smart charging as an equivalent to the Mac’s Optimized Battery Charging feature, though it’s up to individual laptop manufacturers as to whether or not it’s implemented and how exactly it works. You’ll have to check with your particular systems manufacturer if your laptop has it and if you can turn it on or off.

Screenshot: Microsoft
While some features might vary, depending on the manufacturer, there are several ways to optimize battery use on the “Power & battery” page.

There are other power management settings on your computer that can conserve energy use:

Launch Settings from the Start menu.
Select System > Power & battery.
Click Screen and sleep to set how long the system waits before turning off the screen.
Choose Power mode to tell Windows whether to prioritize performance or battery life.
Click Battery saver to have Windows’ low power mode turn on at a certain battery level, or to keep it on indefinitely.

Battery usage can let you know how well your battery is functioning, and how much power your apps are using.
You may also have a section called Energy recommendations at the top of the Power & battery page; it doesn’t hurt to click on that and check out some of those recommendations.

As on macOS, making sure you’re running only the apps you need to be running will further ease the strain on the battery — it’s a good idea to double-check the programs starting up with Windows to make sure there’s nothing running in the background that you’re not aware of.

Read More 

Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket for flight on Friday after temporarily grounding it following a failed landing earlier this week. The company has already pulled off two launches since the FAA’s decision, putting 42 more Starlink satellites into orbit, it announced in a post on X today.
The agency said that while the investigation of the landing incident remains open, flights can continue, “provided all other license requirements are met,” according to CNN. SpaceX had requested a return to flight on Thursday, the same day the FAA initially grounded the rocket, reports Reuters.

Falcon 9 delivers 42 @Starlink satellites, including 26 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit in back-to-back launches from Florida and California pic.twitter.com/1eaiEn64f7— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 31, 2024

Aside from regular Starlink flights, SpaceX is also preparing to launch Polaris Dawn, a private mission to send billionaire Jared Isaacman and three others through the Van Allen radiation belts to perform the first private astronaut spacewalk.
SpaceX is also expected to send two astronauts to the International Space Station on NASA’s Crew-9 mission as soon as September 24th. The US space agency just bumped two astronauts from that mission in order to make room for astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who NASA plans to bring back to earth in February after their Boeing spacecraft was found to be unfit for a crewed return flight.

Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket for flight on Friday after temporarily grounding it following a failed landing earlier this week. The company has already pulled off two launches since the FAA’s decision, putting 42 more Starlink satellites into orbit, it announced in a post on X today.

The agency said that while the investigation of the landing incident remains open, flights can continue, “provided all other license requirements are met,” according to CNN. SpaceX had requested a return to flight on Thursday, the same day the FAA initially grounded the rocket, reports Reuters.

Aside from regular Starlink flights, SpaceX is also preparing to launch Polaris Dawn, a private mission to send billionaire Jared Isaacman and three others through the Van Allen radiation belts to perform the first private astronaut spacewalk.

SpaceX is also expected to send two astronauts to the International Space Station on NASA’s Crew-9 mission as soon as September 24th. The US space agency just bumped two astronauts from that mission in order to make room for astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who NASA plans to bring back to earth in February after their Boeing spacecraft was found to be unfit for a crewed return flight.

Read More 

Roborock’s Q5 Pro is a powerful cleaning machine that does exceptionally well with pet hair. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

We highlighted some great deals on Dreame robot vacuums in our roundup of the best Labor Day deals, but if you don’t want to spend a grand on a vacuum, you might want to check out Roborock’s ongoing anniversary sale. Now through September 4th, Roborock is taking more than 40 percent off many of our favorite models, including the Q Revo (now $599.99) and the S8 MaxV Ultra (now $1,099.99). If you’re on a tighter budget, though, the best deal available is on the Roborock Q5 Pro, which is down to an all-time low of $179.99 ($250 off).

In many ways, Roborock’s big-wheeled robot vacuum / mop hybrid is made to tackle pet hair. The midrange vacuum features dual rubber brushes and 5,500Pa of suction power, which allows it to suck up pet hair and dirt from carpets impressively well. It also features a huge 770ml bin — preventing you from having to empty it every day — and a removable mopping pad that can clean up whatever dust the Q5 Pro doesn’t catch on its initial pass. It offers the same software features as the Q Revo and S8 MaxV Ultra, too, meaning you can still set digital keep-out zones and take advantage of features like lidar mapping and voice controls via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
That being said, the Q5 Pro is Roborock’s entry-level model, so there are trade-offs. It lacks an auto-empty dock (unless you opt for the more expensive Plus model), and it won’t actually scrub your floors like a high-end robovac might. It also lacks AI-powered obstacle avoidance, though, thankfully for anyone with kids or a cluttered household, it can still dodge shoes and larger objects well enough.

A few additional ways to save

The Stagg EKG Electric Kettle is available from Amazon, Sur La Table, and Fellow starting at around $132 ($33 off), matching its lowest price to date. The beautiful pour-over kettle lets you set your desired water temperature with the twist of a knob, giving you a quick means for consuming your favorite beverage at the optimal temp. It also features a built-in stopwatch, which allows you to ditch your smartphone timer while brewing coffee or steeping tea.
You can grab Amazon’s Smart Plug at Amazon and Best Buy for $19.99 ($5 off), which is one of its better prices to date. If you want to control traditional gadgets like fans or lamps with a smartphone app or your voice, the hub-less plug will allow you to do just that. However, just be aware you can only use it on indoor gadgets, and the plug only integrates with Amazon Alexa.

ChomChom’s reusable pet hair remover is down to just $19.99 ($11 off) at Amazon right now, nearly matching its all-time low of $17 or so. The super-handy contraption picks up unwanted cat and dog hair from furniture with ease, often better than adhesive-laden lint rollers, which is why we’re big fans of it here at The Verge.

Roborock’s Q5 Pro is a powerful cleaning machine that does exceptionally well with pet hair. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

We highlighted some great deals on Dreame robot vacuums in our roundup of the best Labor Day deals, but if you don’t want to spend a grand on a vacuum, you might want to check out Roborock’s ongoing anniversary sale. Now through September 4th, Roborock is taking more than 40 percent off many of our favorite models, including the Q Revo (now $599.99) and the S8 MaxV Ultra (now $1,099.99). If you’re on a tighter budget, though, the best deal available is on the Roborock Q5 Pro, which is down to an all-time low of $179.99 ($250 off).

In many ways, Roborock’s big-wheeled robot vacuum / mop hybrid is made to tackle pet hair. The midrange vacuum features dual rubber brushes and 5,500Pa of suction power, which allows it to suck up pet hair and dirt from carpets impressively well. It also features a huge 770ml bin — preventing you from having to empty it every day — and a removable mopping pad that can clean up whatever dust the Q5 Pro doesn’t catch on its initial pass. It offers the same software features as the Q Revo and S8 MaxV Ultra, too, meaning you can still set digital keep-out zones and take advantage of features like lidar mapping and voice controls via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.

That being said, the Q5 Pro is Roborock’s entry-level model, so there are trade-offs. It lacks an auto-empty dock (unless you opt for the more expensive Plus model), and it won’t actually scrub your floors like a high-end robovac might. It also lacks AI-powered obstacle avoidance, though, thankfully for anyone with kids or a cluttered household, it can still dodge shoes and larger objects well enough.

A few additional ways to save

The Stagg EKG Electric Kettle is available from Amazon, Sur La Table, and Fellow starting at around $132 ($33 off), matching its lowest price to date. The beautiful pour-over kettle lets you set your desired water temperature with the twist of a knob, giving you a quick means for consuming your favorite beverage at the optimal temp. It also features a built-in stopwatch, which allows you to ditch your smartphone timer while brewing coffee or steeping tea.
You can grab Amazon’s Smart Plug at Amazon and Best Buy for $19.99 ($5 off), which is one of its better prices to date. If you want to control traditional gadgets like fans or lamps with a smartphone app or your voice, the hub-less plug will allow you to do just that. However, just be aware you can only use it on indoor gadgets, and the plug only integrates with Amazon Alexa.

ChomChom’s reusable pet hair remover is down to just $19.99 ($11 off) at Amazon right now, nearly matching its all-time low of $17 or so. The super-handy contraption picks up unwanted cat and dog hair from furniture with ease, often better than adhesive-laden lint rollers, which is why we’re big fans of it here at The Verge.

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Image: Ubisoft

There was a moment in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws when I was scouring the depths of a creepy cave, just after finishing a dogfight in space and winning a card game in a boozy cantina, that the game clicked for me. The usual Ubisoft drudgery, where icons on maps become weights on the brain, was gone. Instead, there was an organic, self-determined flow as to why I chose to leave the frozen wastes of one planet to dig beneath the surface of another.
Here was a game reacting to my actions: it was an open-world experience I’d never encountered before.
I felt elated at this realization, with things happening as a result of the consequences of my own gameplay decisions. The game was organically adjusting to my moment-to-moment play. It works because of two clever systems: Outlaws’ faction system where you either grow or destroy your reputation with various criminal syndicates, and Outlaws’ unique approach to ability upgrades.

Kay Vess, the protagonist, forms relationships with all sorts of shady syndicates, all with their own constantly conflicting agendas. As a freelancer, Kay can do missions for any and all of them, but sometimes stealing documents for one faction means undermining an ongoing scheme for another. This raises Kay’s reputation for one and lowers it for the other.
Higher reputation nets you discounts, access to syndicate-controlled areas, special gifts, and so on. Lower results in the opposite, primarily restricted access to areas and antagonistic reactions from members of the syndicate.

Image: Ubisoft

As an example, the result of a recent mission for the Hutt syndicate meant that if I wanted access to the Pyke syndicate area, I’d have to sneak in. Or, I could find ways to raise my reputation with the Pykes. A new mission centered around stealing or buying an item in the currently restricted Pyke area on the jungle planet of Akiva. Before embarking on the Akiva mission, I decided to improve my reputation with the Pykes. This took me to the underground caves on a distant moon of Toshara because the Pykes wanted an item there.
The reason I wanted access to the Pykes in the first place was related to Kay’s abilities. Outlaws ties ability upgrades to collecting specific rare gear and performing certain actions; there is no XP to speak of. I was trying to upgrade Kay’s silent takedown, allowing her to stealthily take out harder enemies instantly. Upgrading that skill required stealing or purchasing that item in Pyke territory. And since my reputation was so bad, I was now on a moon doing a mission for the Pykes to improve things.
This push-and-pull meant that I was traveling to distant planets and choosing missions based on what would improve my moment-to-moment play. I wasn’t following a preordained path, or filling out a checklist, but approaching the world on my own terms.

Image: Ubisoft

The game is structured like this: open-ended but with clear trajectories depending on your goals, cleanly doing away with the usual Ubisoft open-world bloat. Whereas so many of the developer’s other big games, like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed, often felt like ticking boxes, Outlaws provides a slicker but meatier canvas of play due to this depth and variety while allowing player choice to dictate action.
The game seems to speak directly to so many players’ frustration at the size and drudgery in Ubisoft games, as seen in, most recently, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Outlaws really does feel as if my experience and choices not only matter but are part of the system. The world reacts, alignments shift, my choice of task changes. While there are legitimate complaints about its stealth system feeling underbaked and missions effectively repeating themselves, my own experience was one of constant joy, due precisely to the ebb and flow of the systems I could play with.
I didn’t realize how badly I wanted an open world that was actually this reactive until I played Outlaws. Yes, there’s some jank and instability, but by Picard’s beard, it is a blast to play with these systems, with the freedom ripe for manipulation of a gunslinging outlaw like Kay.

Image: Ubisoft

There was a moment in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws when I was scouring the depths of a creepy cave, just after finishing a dogfight in space and winning a card game in a boozy cantina, that the game clicked for me. The usual Ubisoft drudgery, where icons on maps become weights on the brain, was gone. Instead, there was an organic, self-determined flow as to why I chose to leave the frozen wastes of one planet to dig beneath the surface of another.

Here was a game reacting to my actions: it was an open-world experience I’d never encountered before.

I felt elated at this realization, with things happening as a result of the consequences of my own gameplay decisions. The game was organically adjusting to my moment-to-moment play. It works because of two clever systems: Outlaws’ faction system where you either grow or destroy your reputation with various criminal syndicates, and Outlaws’ unique approach to ability upgrades.

Kay Vess, the protagonist, forms relationships with all sorts of shady syndicates, all with their own constantly conflicting agendas. As a freelancer, Kay can do missions for any and all of them, but sometimes stealing documents for one faction means undermining an ongoing scheme for another. This raises Kay’s reputation for one and lowers it for the other.

Higher reputation nets you discounts, access to syndicate-controlled areas, special gifts, and so on. Lower results in the opposite, primarily restricted access to areas and antagonistic reactions from members of the syndicate.

As an example, the result of a recent mission for the Hutt syndicate meant that if I wanted access to the Pyke syndicate area, I’d have to sneak in. Or, I could find ways to raise my reputation with the Pykes. A new mission centered around stealing or buying an item in the currently restricted Pyke area on the jungle planet of Akiva. Before embarking on the Akiva mission, I decided to improve my reputation with the Pykes. This took me to the underground caves on a distant moon of Toshara because the Pykes wanted an item there.

The reason I wanted access to the Pykes in the first place was related to Kay’s abilities. Outlaws ties ability upgrades to collecting specific rare gear and performing certain actions; there is no XP to speak of. I was trying to upgrade Kay’s silent takedown, allowing her to stealthily take out harder enemies instantly. Upgrading that skill required stealing or purchasing that item in Pyke territory. And since my reputation was so bad, I was now on a moon doing a mission for the Pykes to improve things.

This push-and-pull meant that I was traveling to distant planets and choosing missions based on what would improve my moment-to-moment play. I wasn’t following a preordained path, or filling out a checklist, but approaching the world on my own terms.

The game is structured like this: open-ended but with clear trajectories depending on your goals, cleanly doing away with the usual Ubisoft open-world bloat. Whereas so many of the developer’s other big games, like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed, often felt like ticking boxes, Outlaws provides a slicker but meatier canvas of play due to this depth and variety while allowing player choice to dictate action.

The game seems to speak directly to so many players’ frustration at the size and drudgery in Ubisoft games, as seen in, most recently, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Outlaws really does feel as if my experience and choices not only matter but are part of the system. The world reacts, alignments shift, my choice of task changes. While there are legitimate complaints about its stealth system feeling underbaked and missions effectively repeating themselves, my own experience was one of constant joy, due precisely to the ebb and flow of the systems I could play with.

I didn’t realize how badly I wanted an open world that was actually this reactive until I played Outlaws. Yes, there’s some jank and instability, but by Picard’s beard, it is a blast to play with these systems, with the freedom ripe for manipulation of a gunslinging outlaw like Kay.

Read More