Zotac Zone official: this handheld has twin trackpads, jog wheels, adjustable triggers and OLED
The Zotac Zone. | Image: Zotac
It’s handheld season, and the Asus ROG Ally X and MSI Claw 8 AI Plus aren’t the only second-gen Windows gaming handhelds in town — GPU manufacturer Zotac has officially revealed its Zone at Computex, and it does a few things differently than the competition.
Zotac already teased that the Zone would have an OLED screen, something that only the Steam Deck OLED has managed in PC handhelds before — as well as two-stage adjustable triggers like an Xbox Elite gamepad and drift resistant Hall effect joysticks. But did you know it’ll also have symmetrical PlayStation-esque joysticks, programmable dials around each one, twin Steam Deck-like trackpads, a small built-in kickstand, a Windows Hello camera instead of a fingerprint reader, and both top and bottom USB4 ports?
J'ai pu approcher la Zone, la console de ZOTAC. Elle est encore en phase "beta" mais elle est super prometteuse. On est clairement sur un mélange entre un Steam Deck et une ROG Ally. Son argument fort ? L'écran OLED de 7 pouces. Hâte de jouer à The War Within dessus pic.twitter.com/6hqBRNggCq
The handheld’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U chip, and you shouldn’t necessarily expect a lot from it — it’s largely the same as the 7840U that powered prior handhelds, with the same Radeon 780M iGPU inside. But like the ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go, it does upgrade to LPDDR5X-7500 memory, which seemingly gave the Legion a slight performance bump over the original Ally — and at a more modest 1080p resolution.
Less pleasingly, Zotac appears to have outfitted it with a modest 48.5 watt-hour battery pack as well, smaller than that of the Steam Deck OLED and vastly smaller than the 80Wh packs that Asus and MSI just announced — and its 7-inch 120Hz OLED screen doesn’t support variable refresh rate any more than the Steam Deck’s one did. It does sound nice and bright at 800 nits, however, and I’m intrigued by the programmable jog dials.
Image: Zotac
Zotac’s Zone one-pager.
As you may know, Zotac was one of the first companies to try AirJet’s intriguing solid-state cooling tech in a mini-PC, and PCWorld’s Adam Murray took the opportunity to ask if Zotac was planning to use the tech in a handheld, too. But while AirJet maker Frore Systems seems to think it’d work, Zotac suggested the current AirJet isn’t yet designed to cool chips as high wattage as the 8840U — and that cost might also be a concern. For now, the Zone has a single traditional fan and a couple of smallish vents to help keep it cool.
According to Geeknetic, the Zone should cost around $800 in September of this year. That’s on the high end of consumer gaming handhelds, though the Ally X, with its dramatically bigger battery, is also launching at that price.
Zotac, if you’re reading this: we’re happy to get the details from you next time!
This is Lunar Lake — Intel’s utterly overhauled AI laptop chip that ditches memory sticks
Intel’s Lunar Lake held aloft by Intel client chip boss Michelle Johnston Holthaus. | Image: Intel
Facing the existential threat of Arm and the opportunity of AI PCs, Intel has apparently ditched its famous tick-tock cadence for a whole new system-on-chip design, one that not only triples the size and more than quadruples the performance of its AI accelerator, but promises up to 14 percent faster CPU performance at the same clockspeed, 50 percent more graphics performance, and up to 60 percent better battery life than last year’s model.
“It’s x86 power like you’ve never seen it before,” claims Intel technical marketer Rob Hallock, who says Intel tweaked every part of the chip to make it happen. He says it’ll “definitely” beat Qualcomm, too.
Image: Intel
Here’s an early glimpse at a real Lunar Lake chip, where you can clearly see its two chunks of onboard memory below the main silicon.
The biggest change? If you buy a Lunar Lake laptop, it won’t have separate memory sticks or chips! Lunar Lake now bakes 16 or 32GB of LPDDR5X memory into the package itself, with no ability to connect more RAM. It’s a change that reduces the power consumption of moving data through the system by approximately 40 percent, according to Intel. For those who need more memory, Hallock says a separate Arrow Lake architecture is coming to laptops later this year.
After hours of poring through slide decks and presentations, plus a quick chat with Hallock, here’s everything else I just learned.
8 cores, no hyperthreading
Last year’s Meteor Lake contained a wild new “3D performance hybrid architecture” with loads of Performance (P), Efficiency (E), and even a pair of brand-new Low Power Efficiency (LP-E) cores on a separate tile dubbed the “low power island.”
That island was built like a smartphone, a first for Intel, with its own Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, display controllers, memory, and those low-power CPU cores. The idea: you could theoretically save battery life by never heating up other tiles and bigger cores unless you’re doing bigger tasks.
But it didn’t work. Apps like Microsoft Teams wound up warming the entire chip. So Intel is axing the LP-E cores after only one year — in favor of a new 4 by 4 system. You get up to four new “Lion Cove” P-cores and four new “Skymont” E-Cores in a Lunar Lake chip. Those E-cores now run as fast as an LP-E core at one-third the power, or scale to 2x or 4x the performance (single-threaded vs. multi-threaded).
And with a new thread director, Windows can now create “containment zones” that actually keep “most real workloads” on the Skymont E-cores, Microsoft and Intel claim.
Image: Intel
The LP-E cores “did not constrain all the workloads we had hoped or wanted the island to handle, so we were not getting the full entitlement of battery life and efficiency we had hoped for,” says Hallock.
“This is key to Lunar Lake battery life: we can run more workloads in a lower power environment on a lower power core with fewer things turned on, and still give you a great user experience,” says Intel fellow Stephen Robinson.
Microsoft Teams uses 35 percent less power on Lunar Lake thanks to those changes, Intel claims — though Intel says it can’t yet translate that to hours for me.
Similarly, Intel has finally axed Hyper-Threading because the SMT technology eats more power and real estate than it’s worth. “Adding more cores is slightly more die area” than the doubled portions of circuitry needed to make HT work, Hallock admits, but he says the E-cores are so compact and capable now that HT simply no longer makes sense.
More performance everywhere
Speaking of capable E-cores, Intel’s Skymont has another surprise: this year’s E-core is more powerful and efficient than last year’s P-core at typical laptop clockspeeds — with up to 20 percent more single-threaded performance. It just can’t scale up to nearly as many gigahertz:
Image: Intel
“Raptor Cove for peak performance, Skymont for more performance ISO power or ISO performance at lower power,” says Intel.
Image: Intel
Here we are zoomed into the blue box on the companion graph. Label your axes, Intel!
The four “Lion Cove” P-cores, meanwhile, offer a 14 percent performance increase clock for clock, though Intel wouldn’t provide clockspeed numbers so we can truly compare. But overall, says Hallock, performance is “generationally very significantly up” compared to last year.
Image: Intel
Intel’s new P-cores also have more performance at lower power.
In the GPU realm, Intel is even more sure of itself: the company says its Xe2 GPU offers 1.5x the graphics performance of Meteor Lake (in 3DMark Time Spy) which itself was 2x the performance of the previous generation. It’s still got the same number of Xe cores and other functional units, but with a variety of performance and efficiency improvements.
And while assuredly not all Lunar Lake chips will be equal, Intel says it didn’t have to split its Xe laptop GPU into two different flavors for lower and higher wattage: Xe2 can now scale across the spectrum of light and medium-weight laptops all by itself. Intel also says the GPU offers 67 TOPS of AI performance, in addition to the NPU.
Image: Intel
Xe2 replaces both Meteor Lake H and Meteor Lake U GPUs.
A tripled NPU
Meteor Lake didn’t truly kick off the AI laptop generation the way that Intel hoped. In fact, you could argue it left early adopters in the cold — with just 11.5 TOPS worth of AI acceleration, their NPU falls far shy of Microsoft’s 40 TOPS requirement for Copilot Plus PCs.
But Lunar Lake triples the amount of NPU hardware on the die, doubles the memory bandwidth, and boosts the clockspeed from 1.4GHz to 1.95GHz —offering up to 48 TOPS and an estimated 2x to 4x performance overall.
Image: Intel
Tripled AI hardware.
The tripled hardware does draw a little more power, but Intel says it’s substantially faster: just 5.8 seconds for 20 iterations of Stable Diffusion for Lunar Lake vs. 20.9 seconds for Meteor Lake, while pulling 11.2 watts instead of 9 watts previously.
Intel says its software partners are currently building 350 AI features for PCs due through 2025.
Everything else that caught my eye or ear
Lunar Lake now natively supports H.266 VVC video for an additional 10 percent filesize reduction over AV1 “at the same quality”.
You get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 baked into the chip — though it still requires a companion PCIe module for the physical radios and antenna connectors.
Intel claims it takes 55 percent less time to wake up wireless when waking up the machine.
eDP 1.5 with “panel replay” and other techniques can save up to (emphasis on “up to”) 351mW of power by not repeatedly drawing the same images on screen.
There’s a new dedicated Partner Security Engine on the chip that’s “effectively Microsoft Pluton,” Intel says, with its own processor, fuse, and crypto portion.
Lunar Lake’s onboard memory means motherboards can and will shrink — “there are some interesting design win decisions coming,” says Hallock.
Lunar Lake’s Compute Tile is indeed built on TSMC’s N3B processor, with the platform controller on TSMC’s N6, though Intel says it does all the design, assembly, and packaging.
Intel says it can dynamically adjust the speed of the RAM to reduce Wi-Fi interference.
Intel says it can dynamically adjust clockspeed in 16.67MHz intervals (down from 100MHz) to optimize performance.
Every Lunar Lake system gets two Thunderbolt 4 ports — “You are guaranteed a minimum of two Thunderbolt 4 ports on every Lunar Lake system that you touch,” says Hallock.
Intel, like Qualcomm, will sell a Mac Mini-like AI PC development kit later this year — one that Intel says will be upgradable to Panther Lake chips when they’re available.
Image: Intel
The Intel AI PC Development Kit, with 32GB of RAM, two USB-C, two USB-A, and HDMI.
Intel says a big wave of Lunar Lake laptops will arrive later this year, with 80 different designs across 20 hardware partners at launch, including all the biggest PC vendors — though not Microsoft, which chose to go with Qualcomm’s chips for its Surface Laptop and Surface Pro instead. Intel’s client chip boss Michelle Johnston Holthaus says all 80 designs should be available ahead of the holidays this year.
Microsoft layoffs hit HoloLens, Azure cloud teams
Image: The Verge
On Monday, Microsoft announced layoffs reportedly affecting around 1,000 employees. As reported previously by CNBC, the mixed reality department working on HoloLens 2 is one of the areas affected. Separately, Business Insider reported that Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering has also seen cuts of “hundreds” of employees.
Microsoft spokesperson Craig Cincotta said in a statement emailed to The Verge, “Earlier today, we announced a restructuring of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality organization. We remain fully committed to the Department of Defense’s IVAS program and will continue to deliver cutting-edge technology to support our soldiers. In addition, we will continue to invest in W365 to reach the broader Mixed Reality hardware ecosystem. We will continue to sell HoloLens 2 while supporting existing HoloLens 2 customers and partners.”
“Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business. We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners,” said Cincotta.
Microsoft formed the Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering department in 2021 to encompass “moonshots,” like the Azure Space unit seeking to work with companies like SpaceX and roll out a portable data center in a box. Other teams in the group work on projects like support for telecoms and work on quantum computing.
Can Artificial Intelligence Rethink Art? Should it? There is an increasing overlap between art and artificial intelligence. Some celebrate it, while others worry.
A joint statement to that effect made last night with CrowdStrike and Mandiant, two third-party security companies investigating the incident, lends additional credibility to the claim. Also, an earlier third-party report saying bad actors generated session tokens and may have compromised “hundreds” of Snowflake accounts has now been removed. Hudson Rock, the security firm behind that report, posted a statement of its own today on LinkedIn: “In accordance to a letter we received from Snowflake’s legal counsel, we have decided to take down all content related to our report.”
A post from Snowflake says, “To date, we do not believe this activity is caused by any vulnerability, misconfiguration, or malicious activity within the Snowflake product. Throughout the course of our ongoing investigation, we have promptly informed the limited number of customers who we believe may have been impacted.”
The joint statement says the attacks appear to be a “targeted campaign” focused on accounts without multifactor authentication. Snowflake has also released instructions for customers to review their accounts for unusual activity and ways to set up account and network policies to prevent similar attacks.
We have not identified evidence suggesting this activity was caused by a vulnerability, misconfiguration, or breach of Snowflake’s platform;
We have not identified evidence suggesting this activity was caused by compromised credentials of current or former Snowflake personnel;
This appears to be a targeted campaign directed at users with single-factor authentication;
As part of this campaign, threat actors have leveraged credentials previously purchased or obtained through infostealing malware; and
We did find evidence that a threat actor obtained personal credentials to and accessed demo accounts belonging to a former Snowflake employee. It did not contain sensitive data. Demo accounts are not connected to Snowflake’s production or corporate systems. The access was possible because the demo account was not behind Okta or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), unlike Snowflake’s corporate and production systems.
Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, which waited 11 days to confirm the data breach in a note to investors late Friday evening, has not provided any additional details about what information has been compromised or responded to inquiries.
AMD’s first Zen 5 CPU is the ‘monster’ Ryzen 9 9950X
Image: AMD
AMD is launching its first Zen 5 desktop processors in July, with the Ryzen 9 9950X flagship leading the pack as “the world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor.” Based on AMD’s existing AM5 platform, the new Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs include the Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X.
The flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is a 16-core, 32-thread CPU, with 80MB of L2+L3 cache and a 5.7GHz boost clock. AMD is promising around a 16 percent instructions per cycle (IPC) uplift in performance over the previous-generation Ryzen CPUs, with big promises of performance gains in productivity as well as gaming.
Image: AMD
The Ryzen 9000 series lineup.
“It’s a big leap, and we’re very very proud of it,” says Donny Woligroski, senior technical marketing manager for consumer processors at AMD, in a press briefing with The Verge. “It’s a monster. This processor does really well against the competition.”
AMD is promising gains of up to 56 percent in Blender against Intel’s Core i9-14900K with the new flagship 9950X, and even 21 percent in Cinebench 2024. On the gaming side, AMD’s benchmarks show a 4 percent frame rate bump over the 14900K in games like Borderlands 3, all the way up to 23 percent better performance in Horizon Zero Dawn.
At the heart of the 9950X is AMD’s new Zen 5 architecture. It’s still using the AM5 socket, with the usual PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 support, but there are some updates under the hood to deliver more performance that AMD argues make this not a trivial update. “Sometimes there are updates of Zen that are not as fundamental, but Zen 5 is a sweeping update with vastly improved branch prediction for both accuracy and latency,” says Woligroski. “It’s a really impressive difference, and this delivers up to twice the instruction bandwidth, up to twice the data bandwidth, and up to twice the AI performance of the last gen.”
Image: AMD
AMD’s IPC promise for the latest Zen 5 CPUs. Image: AMD
AMD’s benchmark claims against the 14900K.
AMD originally promised that the AM5 socket, which launched in 2022, would keep seeing new processor support until at least 2025, but it’s now extending that commitment at Computex to 2027 or beyond. The previous AM4 socket was introduced in 2016, and it’s still going strong today, almost a decade later. AMD is even launching new 5900XT and 5800XT processors for AM4 motherboards in July. The original 5900X was a 12-core processor, but the 5900XT is now a 16-core, 32-thread CPU, designed to take on Intel’s midrange 13th Gen desktop CPUs. The 5800XT has 8 cores, 16 threads, and a boost clock up to 4.8GHz.
AMD’s commitment to AM4 and now AM5 is seriously impressive, especially compared to Intel, which is about to launch its fourth desktop socket since 2015. The upcoming LGA 1851 socket replaces LGA 1700, which debuted in 2021, replacing 2020’s LGA 1200, which replaces the LGA 1151 Intel used from 2015 to 2019.
Image: AMD
AMD’s new Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 CPUs for the AM4 socket.
“This really speaks to the success of socket AM4 and previous-gen processors that are lasting so much longer than anyone thought a platform could,” says Woligroski. “It’s the real advantage of having a commitment from your CPU supplier that says we’re in this for the long haul — if you want to upgrade at some time, you don’t have to throw your system away and start from scratch.”
While AM5 is being extended, AMD is also launching new X870 and X870E motherboard chipsets for these new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. You don’t need these new boards for these new CPUs, but they do come with USB 4.0 as standard, and they all include PCIe 5 Gen 5 on the graphics and NVMe sides, even on the non-E X870 boards this time around. They also support higher EXPO memory overclock support, which is great for enthusiasts who want the best memory speeds possible.
The four new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs and 5900XT / 5800XT will all launch in July, but AMD isn’t providing pricing for any of the processors yet. The Ryzen 9 9900X will include 12 cores, 24 threads, and a 5.6GHz boost. Interestingly, it also has a 50-watt lower TDP than the 7900X. The Ryzen 7 9700X ships with eight cores, 16 threads, and a 5.5GHz boost clock. Finally, the Ryzen 5 9600X will have six cores and 12 threads, alongside a 5.4GHz max boost.
We’re only halfway through 2024, and there’s no sign of AI-related announcements slowing down — especially with Computex 2024 here. This year’s Taipei-based convention starts on June 4th and ends on June 7th, and you can expect to see big keynotes from AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, and Arm detailing their upcoming strategies for processors that better handle the AI workloads we’re increasingly foisting on computers.
PewDiePie ‘avenged’ as MrBeast becomes YouTube’s most-subscribed channel
MrBeast is now the most-subscribed YouTube channel. | Photo: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Bollywood music label T-Series had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for years after Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, conceded his protracted and problematic fight for the top spot to it. But now that honor belongs to YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, who posted yesterday that his MrBeast YouTube operation had ‘avenged’ PewDiePie by overtaking T-Series.
Donaldson made a big show of supporting Kjellberg’s campaign to stay on top back in 2019, having plastered every billboard in his town with ads promoting PewDiePie. He also showed up to the Super Bowl with several friends who wore shirts that together spelled out “SUB 2 PEW DIE PIE.” Given his 2-million-subscriber gain yesterday — a number it recently took T-Series a month to accumulate — it seems unlikely that T-Series will be able to catch up.
A better way to take video on your phone
Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 40, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, send me all your recommendations immediately, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a great new app for capturing video, a nifty new Chrome trick, a MoviePass documentary worth watching, a smartwatch for kids, and much more. It’s a short week, so we have a relatively light one but still plenty of good stuff to talk about. Let’s go.
(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, or making? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
Kino. The team at Lux doesn’t really miss. They made Halide for photos, the nifty Orion iPad monitor tool, and now Kino, a video app that is somehow both really simple and absurdly powerful. I love a good noir filter. (I got a lot of recommendations for this one this week — thanks to everyone who sent them in!)
The Fitbit Ace LTE. This smartwatch is for kids, but… I want one. It has some fun games designed to get you moving, a really charming bunch of colors and accessories, and a surprising amount of power inside. Don’t love the $230 price, but love just about everything else.
Jim Henson Idea Man. I don’t know if it’s just that I have a toddler who’s obsessed with Sesame Street and the Muppets, but even the trailer for this Disney Plus doc made me cry. It’s a story about creativity and wonder and is full of fun behind-the-scenes Muppets stuff.
Carrot 6.0. Some really fun updates to the most fun weather app! I like the new layouts and data viz stuff in particular, and the game-mechanic robot gardener feature is charming but not really my thing. Still: more silliness in weather apps, you love to see it.
Jon Bellion onThe George Janko Show. This episode has been all over my For You page on TikTok, with Bellion explaining how the Ticketmaster / Live Nation monopoly works and the overall business of being an artist in 2024. Really interesting listen.
Chrome’s Minimized Custom Tabs. A terrible name for a really clever product: basically, picture-in-picture for a browser tab that makes the whole in-app browser idea much more seamless. It’s only Chrome for Android for now, but Google says it’s hoping every browser supports the feature, and I hope so, too.
Trip Tunes. Large language models turn out to be really, really good at making playlists. This app is only for iOS and only for Apple Music, boo, but I love the whole mixtape-y aesthetic and that you just tell it where you’re going and the mood you’re in, and it fills the ride with music.
The Nomad Tracking Card. I had an AirTag in my wallet for a while, but it was just a little too big. I’d much rather just slide this into the card slot since Nomad says it’s only as thick as two credit cards. The battery apparently lasts five months and charges via any MagSafe charger.
MoviePass, MovieCrash. I mentioned this last week, but figured I’d re-up now that it’s out. It’s really good! I covered MoviePass a lot, and I still learned a lot about how this company took off — and how it failed so spectacularly and so quickly. (Also, more on this coming on Tuesday’s Vergecast, so keep an eye out.)
Screen share
You know those people you hear on podcasts all the time and you’re, like, best friends even though you don’t know them and have never met them? For me, Sean Rameswaram was one of those people until very recently. He’s one of the co-hosts of Today, Explained, the wonderful daily news show from our friends over at Vox — and over the last couple of months, they’ve let me guest host a few times! (We did a really interesting episode this week about storm chasers and extreme weather if you want to take a listen.)
Anyway, Sean’s one of those people who seems to be interested in everything, always, all the time, so I wondered what his homescreen would reveal about what he truly cares about most. Here it is, along with some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: I had an iPhone SE (the original one) for six or seven years. Retiring it reminded me of an episode of Married… with Children — the one where Al Bundy had held onto his car so long that the manufacturer was going to hook him up with a new one on the house for hitting 1,000,000 miles. I wondered if I qualified for a similar deal for sticking with the original SE for a Senate term but never asked. I eventually replaced it with an iPhone 13 Mini. I don’t like the big phones. It looks like there’s an iPad in your pocket.
The wallpaper: It’s Leo hailing a cab in NYC with a no-hands whistle. He’s done it a few times in the movies, too — most recently in Killers of the Flower Moon. For more years than I care to remember, I’ve wanted to learn how to belt one. I think living in New York City for half a decade was the impetus. I’ve tried to sit down and master it a few times but almost passed out from shortness of breath. Recently, I found out it’s a months-long learning process. I keep Leo as my background to remind myself to figure it out before I die.
The apps: WNYC, Calendar, NYTimes, KCRW, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, YouTube, Calculator, Seek, Yelp, Chrome, Camera, Weather, Apple Music, Slack, Settings, Mail, Instagram, Photos, Clock, App Store, Podcasts, Google Maps, Spotify, Radio Garden, Phone, FaceTime, Messages, WhatsApp.
I promise I don’t organize my books by color, but I couldn’t help it with my apps. In the four corners, we’ve got my main squeeze: audio (née radio). Radio Garden is the most unbelievable (and admittedly underused) on the page. It enables you to spin around the globe and listen to thousands upon thousands of live radio streams. It’s the cheapest vacation you’ll ever take. Shouts to Breakmaster Cylinder for the intro.
The rest of this screen is pretty stock and self-explanatory, but I want to single out Seek and all apps like it for helping us identify bugs, birds, plants, and trees. This is the future we were promised.
Has anyone else used this weather app? It’s constantly wrong.
I also asked Sean to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
I was lucky to do a decent amount of traveling this past year, and I was constantly looking for restaurant recommendations online. Eater’s “38 Essential Restaurants” was consistently the best curator. Since the Eaters are colleagues of mine, I had the chance to ask their publisher, Amanda Kludt, why they always shoot for 38. She said, “It’s just a great number.” Fair!
I swear I like things that aren’t produced by Vox Media, but have you played Cinematrix? I hit the Vulture homepage every morning because I’m a geriatric millennial who still appreciates a homepage. When I first saw Cinematrix, I thought it was cute but didn’t make it a habit. Then one day, a dear old friend texted me and my brother his grid, and we were all immediately hooked because — duh — it’s a social game. It’s a daily conversation starter and a really fun ritual when you’re doing it with other people. My personal Cinematrix universe has since expanded with a few colleagues. We’re all feeling very Vulture blue-pilled.
Am I the first person to plug a strip show on Screen Share? No, because Magic Mike Live is not what you’d expect. Sure, there was a butt, but it was mostly a rapturous and liberating celebration of sexuality, consent, and some really impressive six-packs. Remember when you were watching the original movie, and all of a sudden, you were blown away by how good a dancer Channing Tatum was? This is that, on steroids. Maybe literally. Dare to skip the Sphere the next time you’re in Vegas and hit the Sahara for MML instead. Or at least try and do both.
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Emailinstaller@theverge.comor 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 recommendations than I could fit here, check out thereplies to this post on Threads.
“My go-to phone games are Flipflop Solitaire and Retro Bowl (both of which are available through Apple Arcade). Retro Bowl is a fun riff on Tecmo Bowl, and Flipflop Solitaire is a fun twist on solitaire, which I play a lot when I’m killing time and don’t want to get sucked into social media.” — Jared
“TV Launcher is an awesome utility that gives a full TV guide, which can deep link into most streaming apps and open the exact channel automatically. It basically turns my Apple TV into a full-blown replacement for a cable box.” — Bilaal
“After searching for years for the best open-ear earbuds that allow me to roam about outside without endangering myself by blocking out traffic or other noise or blocking out the voices of my family when I’m at home, I was pleased to discover that they exist and are sometimes on sale for even less than their list price of $50.” — Christopher
“This week’s The Jeff Gerstmann Show (hosted by this week’s surprise host: Jeff Gerstmann, joined by guest Arthur Gies) was full of insight on the upcoming summer gaming events.
Always recommend Jeff’s work during this time of year.” — Paul
“Watched The Fall Guy, which was honestly a treat for anyone who has worked with / around / or on movies in general just from the variety of stunts showcased. It hit streaming early due to fairly mediocre box office performance.” — Amanda
“I am addicted to Threes. I don’t know if anyone plays it anymore, but I love it so much. I played those ‘free versions’ for so many years I can’t even remember now.” — Kruti
“DaisyDisk. Like WizTree and SequoiaView but for Mac and a really nice-looking UI.” — Sinan
“Been playing three years’ worth of Destiny 2 campaigns after they were included in PS Plus. The game is hilariously lacking in onboarding for return players, but even just sticking to solo story missions, there’s a staggering amount of content from the (IMO) best FPS studio to ever do it.” — Jonathan
The Asus ROG Ally X is official — and I took a peek inside
$799 for twice the battery, twice the storage, and loads of small improvements.
When Valve introduced the Steam Deck OLED, I called it “everything the original should have been.” Asus is trying to do the exact same thing with the new ROG Ally X.
When it ships on July 22nd, it’ll come with double the battery, double the storage, double the USB-C ports with quadruple the USB bandwidth, 50 percent more (and faster) 7500MHz memory for up to a 15 percent performance boost, dramatically revised ergonomics, an overhauled internal layout, and an extensive list of other tweaks.
ROG Ally (top) vs. ROG Ally X (bottom).
There are so many changes, in fact, that I spent two hours on the phone with Asus technical marketing director Sascha Krohn to hear about them all. I also went to the company’s US headquarters to open up an ROG Ally X with my own screwdrivers and play with the new build. I took plenty of pics, because I want you to nerd out with me.
But first, let me remind you what the ROG Ally X is not. Here’s what I wrote last month:
Don’t call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.
The ROG Ally X is a revision, not a sequel, and it’s a pricier one. It still runs Windows, and I still firmly believe Windows drags gaming handhelds down. But the Ally X might be the best Windows handheld yet — because Asus has crammed a monster 80 watt-hour battery into a handheld that doesn’t feel heavy, one that fits my average-sized hands better than any Windows handheld I’ve tried.
At 1.49 pounds (678g), the ROG Ally X is only 0.15 pounds (70g) heavier than the original, and it’s only 0.18 inches (4.5mm) thicker at its thickest point. It’s almost exactly the same weight as the original Steam Deck, and almost half an inch thinner, but with twice as much battery capacity inside.
How? While the bigger battery added over 120 grams of weight, Asus was able to offset half of it by making other components lighter. Krohn says a stronger, thinner, lighter chassis offered the biggest savings — the weight of the talcum-filled ABS / polycarbonate composite went from 176 grams to 134 grams by the time Asus was done. (I did run into one side effect of the stiffer plastic blend: it’s harder to pop it open for repair.)
The Ally X has lighter circuit boards, too, shaving away lots of unnecessary board, and a lighter cooling module — including 23-percent smaller fans that are actually more powerful, because the company’s in-house design team created its own custom set of 77 ultra-thin blades that trump the 47 of the original. Krohn says you might see the Ally run a couple degrees cooler, and the thinner blades help reduce the audible noise bump at around 5,000Hz, too.
And, there’s a new series of vents that let the Ally X cool its touchscreen more effectively — up to 6°C cooler.
The joysticks are another place where they’re both better and lighter: completely revised modular boards now use the same high-grade potentiometer based ALPS sticks you’ll find in a PS5 or Xbox gamepad, with far tighter throw than the original Ally, delightfully tacky concave tops a la Steam Deck OLED, wider bases for better dust resistance, and low friction POM plastic stems for smoother action when they scrape against the joystick ring’s edge.
They’re rated to 5 million rotation cycles, up from 2 million, and if that’s not enough, they’re modular — ready for a drift-resistant Hall Effect magnetic joystick upgrade kit that Gulikit already has in development. (Krohn says not enough gamers prefer Hall Effect sticks for them to come standard, which... maybe?)
And, Asus has seemingly addressed almost all of the biggest complaints about I/O:
You get a full-length M.2 2280 PCIe 4 SSD slot now, one which supports double-sided drives too, opening up both the highest capacity and the most cost effective storage options on the market.
Asus has also ditched its proprietary XG Mobile eGPU port for a second USB-C port, one that offers all the benefits of Thunderbolt 4 too: 40Gbps speeds, 100W USB-C PD charging, DP 1.4 video output, and 4 lanes of PCIe for standard eGPUs. (No Oculink, sorry.)
Both ports are top-mounted, but Krohn says that lets even the weaker one offer 100W charging and 10Gbps data.
I can’t wait for a review unit of this handheld, because battery is king in handheld gaming PC world, and the Ally X is about to be king of handheld battery packs. Just don’t necessarily expect it to dethrone the Steam Deck OLED, because there’s only so far Asus can go without a more efficient chip and screen — and because I’m still not sure how I feel about Asus’ deteriorating reputation for support.
Some small news today there too, though: Asus has just announced that all ROG Ally devices in North America now have a two-year warranty.
Minecraft is 15 years old, so it’s only natural that Lego should honor the anniversary with a set just for the game’s many adult fans. The company has started taking preorders for The Crafting Table, a 1,195-piece 18-and-up build, as Jay’s Brick Blog writes. The set will cost $89.99 in the US when it’s released on August 1st.
Lego says the set will include “familiar biomes, favorite mobs and hidden Easter eggs.” As the name suggests, the kit looks like an in-game crafting table. But inside of it is a Minecraft diorama featuring 12 biomes including Plains (with a village), Taiga (with a dripstone cave), and Cherry Grove (with an abandoned mineshaft).
Image: Lego
It also has eight microfigures; among them are Steve, Alex, a skeleton, a Creeper, and a pig. And it incorporates five mini-builds and stickers that feature phrases from the game. The whole kit, once built, will measure 5.5 inches x 6 inches x 6 inches.
The Crafting Table will also be available in Australia (AU $129.99), the UK (£79.99), the EU (€89.99), Canada (CAD $119.99), and Singapore (SGD $149.99), according to Jay’s Brick Blog. Lego insiders get 585 points for picking up The Crafting Table.
Live Nation took 11 days to confirm the massive Ticketmaster data breach
Illustration: Beatrice Sala
Someone going by the name “ShinyHunters” has been advertising a 1.3TB cache of data allegedly containing personal data (names, email/home addresses, and phone numbers), credit card details, and other information about 560 million Ticketmaster customers for $500,000 in hacking forums all week.
On May 20, 2024, Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (the “Company” or “we”) identified unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment containing Company data (primarily from its Ticketmaster L.L.C. subsidiary) and launched an investigation with industry-leading forensic investigators to understand what happened. On May 27, 2024, a criminal threat actor offered what it alleged to be Company user data for sale via the dark web. We are working to mitigate risk to our users and the Company, and have notified and are cooperating with law enforcement. As appropriate, we are also notifying regulatory authorities and users with respect to unauthorized access to personal information.
As of the date of this filing, the incident has not had, and we do not believe it is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on our overall business operations or on our financial condition or results of operations. We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing.
The only official statement we’ve seen until now has been from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, which confirmed it was working with the company to understand a cybersecurity incident. As noted above, it says it became aware of unauthorized activity on May 20th — it’s now May 31st. Live Nation has not responded to requests for comment from The Verge.
Live Nation didn’t provide specific details about the breach, how many people are affected, or what it’s doing, but a report by the security firm Hudson Rock claims bad actors breached their Snowflake cloud storage account, as well as those of other companies.
However, Live Nation investors can perhaps feel comforted by executives saying they don’t believe this breach will have a material impact on its overall business, which makes sense if you believe the Department of Justice’s monopoly allegations. With the Live Nation-Ticketmaster conglomerate controlling more than 60 of the top 100 US amphitheaters, where else are people going to go?
Netflix’s Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight is postponed
Mike Tyson, Nakisa Bidarian, and Jake Paul pose onstage during a press conference on May 16th, 2024 | Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images for Netflix
Netflix is increasingly getting into live events, with comedy specials, NFL games, and even the WWE, but live action means unpredictability, and today, the streamer announced that a planned July 20th boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson is being rescheduled. While Tyson recovers from an ulcer flare-up that required medical attention during a recent flight, he has been advised to do “minimal to light training” over the next few weeks.
Due to the interrupted training schedule for the officially sanctioned fight — Tyson’s first since 2005 —they’re now planning on a date later this year, which Netflix said will be announced by the end of next week.
“My body is in better overall shape than it has been since the 1990s and I will be back to my full training schedule soon. Jake Paul, this may have bought you some time, but in the end you will still be knocked out and out of boxing for good. I appreciate everyone’s patience and can’t wait to deliver an unforgettable performance later this year,” said Mike Tyson in a statement.
His rival, the YouTuber-turned-boxer, said, “My fans know I don’t want to face Iron Mike at anything but his best, but let there be no mistake — when he steps into the ring with me, I will be ready to claim my W with a sensational finish. Paul vs. Tyson will be one for the ages, and I promise to bring my best for this once-in-a-lifetime matchup.”
Scuf’s Nomad controller for iPhone has full-size drift-free sticks at a competitive price
The stick layout almost reminds me a bit of the Steam Deck. | Image: Scuf
The Nomad is a clamp-style iPhone controller akin to a Backbone or Razer Kishi, though it features full-size, drift-free Hall effect sticks (with swappable stick toppers) that are symmetrical on the top half of the pad. Around back are two customizable rear paddles amidst the controller’s contoured and rubberized grips. If you squint, it looks a bit like a thick-boy version of the Backbone One, though the Nomad is compatible with more phone cases since it relies on Bluetooth for connectivity instead of a protruding USB-C or Lightning plug.
Scuf’s first foray into the world of phone controllers is compatible with competitive mobile games like Call of Duty: Mobile, Warzone Mobile, and cloud / remote play streaming services like the PlayStation Remote Play app. The accompanying Scuf app for launching games, capturing and sharing gameplay recordings, and tweaking controls does not require paid subscriptions.
To me, as an original Backbone One owner, the Nomad and its larger Hall effect sticks, contoured grips, and Xbox-like D-pad seem intriguing, though Bluetooth has higher latency than the Backbone’s direct connection. And it’s yet another device to keep charged, albeit one with a claimed 16 hours of battery life.
The Nomad is available to preorder now in black or white and estimated to arrive July 8th.
Elon Musk’s X to Host Election Town Hall With Donald Trump The social media platform will produce video town halls with Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., extending its push into politics.
Instagram’s ‘limits’ adds a mute button for everyone other than close friends
Image: Instagram
Instagram is expanding “limits,” a safety control you can use to hide DMs and comments from accounts who may be harassing you. Now, instead of just hiding content from recent followers or people who don’t follow you, Instagram will mute incoming messages from everyone except the users on your close friends list.
Even though Instagram first rolled out limits to help creators deal with harassment campaigns, anyone can use the feature if they’re facing unwanted messages and comments from bullies and other bad actors. It could give a way to shut down incoming noise without disconnecting people from a supportive community.
Image: Instagram
When limiting interactions from everyone but close friends, you’ll only see DMs, tags, and mentions from the people on your list. Users not on your close friends list can still interact with your posts, but you won’t see these updates. These accounts also won’t know that you’ve hidden their content. You can also choose to view or ignore the limited comments and DMs.
Instagram lets you limit accounts for up to four weeks at a time, but you can extend it. You can enable limits by tapping your profile, selecting the hamburger menu in the top-right corner of the screen, and choosing Limited interactions. From there, you can toggle on limits for Accounts that aren’t following you, Recent followers, or Everyone but your Close Friends.
Instagram is also building on its restrict feature, which now lets you prevent a user from tagging or mentioning you in addition to hiding their comments. These expanded features come as Instagram faces increased scrutiny from the US government over the safety of its young users. Earlier this year, Meta rolled out a new feature that prevents adults from messaging minors on Instagram and Facebook by default. The company also moved to hide suicide and eating disorder content from teens on both of its platforms.
The Very Slow Restart of G.M.’s Cruise Driverless Car Business An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise to take all of its cars off the road. The question now is when they will return.
Amazon Prime now comes with free Grubhub food delivery
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Amazon now offers restaurant food delivery. And if you pay for Amazon Prime, the delivery part is free.
Amazon is now embedding Grubhub into Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app, and Amazon Prime customers paying $139 per year for Amazon Prime will now pay $0 for food delivery fees on orders of $12 or more, among other benefits.
Amazon had previously offered Prime customers a free one-year subscription to GrubHub Plus, but that one auto-renewed at $129 per year. Now, it’s a permanent part of the Amazon Prime subscription.
Amazon says the ordering experience is “identical” to ordering from Grubhub’s website or app and is accessible to all customers, even without Prime.
Amazon and Grubhub say they’ll continue collaborating on other promotions, including food pairings and promotions like the limited Nuka Burger for the Fallout series premiere.
Amazon’s Prime membership comes along with other services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, plus premium add-ons like Amazon’s pharmacy service RxPass ($5 a month for many common medications) or $10 a month for unlimited grocery delivery from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh.
Prime members can also get $5 off their Grubhub meal of $25 or more, made through Amazon with code PRIME5 (valid through June 2nd).
Netflix’s next game show is Million Dollar Secret
Peter Serafinowicz will host Million Dollar Secret. | Photo: Kate Green / Getty Images for Paramount Pictures UK
Netflix has a new game show on the way called Million Dollar Secret. Netflix says that the eight-episode series will set 11 contestants on the hunt for a 12th one who’s been given a $1 million prize in an effort to be the last person standing (and win that prize).
The show seems to be aimed at the same audience that made the similarly dystopian-in-tone Squid Game: The Challenge the 15th-most watched TV show on Netflix in the second half of 2023 with over 33 million views (enough to slightly edge out CoComelon S1, Suits S1, and The Crown S6 but still well short of CoComelon S8).
Once the $1 million prize holder is found and eliminated by another contestant, the money goes to them, Netflix wrote. But it involves some strategy: players who find that prize early will become everyone else’s target, but if they wait, they stand less of a chance of finding the person who has the cash. Netflix apparently calls it “a game of strategy and alliances.”
British actor Peter Serafinowicz will host Million Dollar Secret. If you don’t know Serafinowicz’s name, you may know his face. He starred as Shaun’s grumpy, responsible roommate (and, later, shower zombie) in Shaun of the Dead, for instance, and as the titular blue hero of Amazon’s canceled-too-soon The Tick. Netflix hasn’t said when the show will premiere yet.
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