In May 2024, Sonos released a completely rebuilt and overhauled mobile app for Android and iOS. The new software was meant to improve performance, make the app feel more customizable, and allow for new features in the future. But customers immediately complained about countless bugs, degraded Sonos speaker system performance, and features that had gone missing.

The controversy effectively torpedoed Sonos’ reputation with many customers. In the months since, Sonos has worked to regain their trust, address issues with the redesigned app, and bring back features that were absent at launch. The company still hasn’t fully recovered from its enormous mistake. On January 13th, 2025, Sonos announced CEO Patrick Spence would step down after he was unable to turn things around.

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX’s Starship will head to Mars at the end of 2026. The ship will be carrying Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. The tech billionaire said that if all goes well, humans could be on the red planet by 2029, although he admitted that 2031 is more likely.

SPACEX LAUNCH SCRUBBED HOURS AFTER HEGSETH SHARES MESSAGE TO RESCUE MISSION CREW

The X account for Optimus replied to Musk’s announcement with just two words: “Hold on.”

“Starship is the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable,” SpaceX writes on its website. In US tons, that is up to 165 tons of fully reusable and up to 275 tons expendable.

Musk has long talked about his dream of sending men to Mars, and recently he was spotted in the White House wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt.

Billionaire Elon Musk spoke to podcaster Joe Rogan about the future of the X platform under either future President Kamala Harris or future President Donald Trump. (The Joe Rogan experience.)

FORMER ASTRONAUT CELEBRATES SPACEX’S ‘IMPRESSIVE TECHNOLOGICAL TOUR DE FORCE’

“I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars,” a quote from Musk reads on SpaceX’s webpage on its mission of “making humanity multiplanetary.”

Musk’s announcement of a mission to Mars comes during an exciting week for SpaceX. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (SpaceX/NASA)

On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a crew headed for the International Space Station (ISS) with astronauts who will replace Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck in space for nine months.

Test pilots Wilmore and Williams launched into space aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5, 2024, and were scheduled to return to Earth on June 13, 2024. However, thruster failures and helium leaks led NASA and Boeing to leave the astronauts aboard the ISS rather than have them make the risky journey home.
 

Samsung’s flagship soundbar, the HW-Q990D, is being rendered useless for some owners after a faulty firmware update that the company rolled out this week. The sheer number of reports on Samsung’s community forums, Reddit, and AVSForum confirm that something has gone very wrong with the premium Dolby Atmos system in recent days. The issue isn’t limited to any specific region, with customers in the United States, Austria, the Philippines, Malaysia, and other countries all sharing in the frustration.

Customers say the soundbar has gone unresponsive and that none of the usual factory reset methods are working; affected units are also inaccessible via Samsung’s SmartThings app. The device powers on, but appears to freeze on the TV eARC input — with no sound output to speak of.

The culprit seems to be the latest firmware release, which is version 1020.7. Many Q990Ds are set to automatically install new updates, which has led to widespread complaints about the bad software over the last several days. If you’ve got a Samsung soundbar, it might be wise to disable automatic updates for the time being until this situation has cleared up. There are scattered reports of the same bug impacting other Samsung models like the HW-Q800D and HW-S801D, but the bulk of complaints pertain to the Q990D. It’s one of the most well-reviewed soundbars on the market, so this is an unfortunate development.

The Verge has reached out to Samsung for comment. Apparently some customers have already been instructed to send in their Q990D hardware for repair. That seems like a worst case scenario, so hopefully Samsung will have an easier, at-home solution once it realizes the scope of this problem. Can the malfunction be resolved with another firmware update in the coming days? Stay tuned.

Thanks for the tip, Eric.