Terrence O’Brien | The Verge

Lunacy Audio Nova is a place to build and sell your own AI-powered music plug-ins

2026-09-17T11:25:39-04:00

The interface of the Nova plug-in for browsing and loading Nova plug-ins inside your DAW. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

Lunacy, purveyor of fine VST plug-ins like Cube, a synth that you control by moving a ball around a 3D space, has just launched Nova, a platform where creators can build custom music tools using AI and sell them to others. At first, there will be a handful of instruments available, built either by Lunacy or a small selection of partner developers. But eventually, the company will launch Nova Builder, which will let anyone build their own plug-ins or remix existing ones.

There are 10 plug-ins available initially, covering everything from crunchy chiptunes to warbly vintage synths and evil ambient drones. None of them do anything particularly unique, but they all sound pretty solid. The lo-fi Drift Cassette synth and Silhouettes are my two favorites right off the bat. The former gets you nostalgic ’80s tones, while the latter is all about sci-fi soundscapes. They all have pretty simple interfaces reminiscent of Native Instruments’ Play series, with bright colors and a handful of controls.

What makes Nova different is that plug-ins aren’t built using code in a text editor. Instead, they’re assembled using premade effects blocks and AI prompts. It’s not unlike Polyend’s Endless, except instead of vibe-coding a guitar pedal, you’re creating music software anyone can use on their computer.

Nova instruments don’t require dedicated hardware. Heck, they don’t even require a digital audio workstation (DAW) and can run directly in a browser. That’s of limited use, though. So there’s also a Nova host plug-in that runs in your DAW of choice. It lets you browse and load any Nova plug-in from your library and swap between them quickly.

Lunacy envisions Nova as a tinkerers’ paradise. Cofounder and CEO Casey Kolb said in a press release that, “Say someone makes a step sequencer and shares it. You open it and wish you could add a custom shimmer reverb to the end of the signal chain. You can add that, then you can share your new version with a friend, and that friend expands it further. The tools are never fixed; they are always evolving.”

So far, though, the response from the music-making community to AI has been rather tepid. Tools like Endless have been met with, at best, cautious curiosity, and at worst, outright hostility. Lunacy is developing Nova out in the open, posting developer diaries and actively seeking customer input, in an attempt to avoid some of the same pitfalls and win over wary musicians.

Spotify’s Fresh Finds Forward gives artists free studio time and more

2026-09-17T09:49:24-04:00

Getting added to Spotify’s Fresh Finds playlists can be a huge break for artists trying to cut through the noise on streaming. Now Spotify is launching a program called Fresh Finds Forward, which aims to give artists the tools to capitalize on that exposure. Artists added to any Fresh Finds playlist after January 1st, 2026, can join the program and get 12 months of additional resources, the most extravagant of which is free studio time for US-based artists at Electric Lady Studios in NYC, The Lighthouse at Ocean Way Nashville, or Spotify Music Studios in LA.

Beyond that, artists will get early access to Spotify tools and features, priority access to tour and music video partnerships, as well as 12 months of Landr Studio Pro and Splice’s Creator Plan. Spotify is also offering artists six months of free therapy through BetterHelp, because we all know trying to make it as a musician is stressful and potentially soul-crushing, as scoring a Fresh Finds placement doesn’t guarantee there won’t be further rejections and failures.

Unlike with the so-called Discovery Mode, where artists were paid a “promotional royalty rate,” in exchange for higher algorithmic promotion, Spotify says the Fresh Finds Forward program doesn’t change royalty rates, and is provided completely free of charge to participating artists.

Apple might make servers again to cash in on the AI rush

2026-09-16T13:41:18-04:00

According to The Information, Apple is planning to get back into the server game and might just pair up with Nvidia to make it happen. Apple retired its Xserve line in 2011 and has largely left enterprise machines to other manufacturers since. But the growing demand for compute power as the AI industry continues to expand has apparently led the company to believe there is an opening for its powerful but efficient ARM-based M processors. Its Mac Mini and Mac Studio have proven popular with AI developers, which has led to shortages.

The server product, whether it’s called Xserve or something else, likely won’t debut until 2029. Word is that it will run on two or four (depending on the model) M8 Ultra chips. Apple only just announced the M6 in August, so the M8 line is a ways out.

It’s also rumored that Apple’s servers could incorporate Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion tech, which connects multiple chips together so they can operate as one. While the two companies have historically had a frosty relationship behind the scenes, recently Apple turned to Nvidia chips to power its revamped Siri servers. Incorporating NVLink could lead to further collaboration between the two, but plans could still change.

Trump and Mike Johnson think the AI industry is overreacting

2026-09-13T15:41:48-04:00

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter saying it was time to “pace the frontier” and slow down AI development. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet’s Demis Hassabis offered tentative support for Amodei’s proposal.

Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, seem to think the AI executives are being overreactive and fear that a pause could lead to China outpacing the US in the AI race. According to the Financial Times, Trump said “Look, we’re leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.”

Johnson echoed those sentiments on CNN, telling Jake Tapper that rushing to place restrictions on AI development could be a “national security threat.” He urged people not to panic. “If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try and regulate AI, we will lose the race to China.”

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Apple is reportedly working on iPhone game controllers

2026-09-13T14:30:16-04:00

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple is developing two game controllers for the iPhone and will likely sell them under the Beats brand. Rumors that Apple might enter the game controller business have circulated for some time. But last week, MacRumors reported finding two references in macOS 26.7’s code to two game controllers identified as first-party devices.

Despite the code being found in macOS, not iOS, Gurman says the controllers are designed for iPhones. Additionally, he says that it is Beats executives leading the charge on this product. Apple sometimes uses its subsidiary brand to experiment with new product categories and compete at lower price points without sullying its more premium Apple lineup. As Gurman notes:

For example, Beats now sells a range of iPhone cases and USB-C cables that don’t necessarily fit Apple’s usual approach to design. A controller makes sense in that context. To reach a broad audience, it has to be relatively affordable, which means avoiding some of the more expensive materials and finishes typically associated with Apple products. The culture and lifestyle around gaming controllers also could fit naturally under the Beats umbrella.

The Units’ Digital Stimulation is synthpunk perfection

2026-09-13T13:36:10-04:00

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there’s no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things — punk rock and synthesizers. The site was down that day (it appears to be back up now), but I was able to access a version from July through the Wayback Machine. What greeted me was a bare-bones site with links for six bands, including The Screamers. But at the top was The Units, a band I’d never heard of and, after tracking down their 1980 record Digital Stimulation, I fell in love.

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The production, especially on the Devo-esque vocals, feels distinctly of its time. But the sound palette and arrangements are more aggressive, dancier, and generally just more modern-sounding. Ignoring the vocals, album opener “High Pressure” could pass as an MSPAINT song. The title track, with its sped-up disco stomp, could have been released by DFA in 2003. And many of the later tracks would be at home on a Single Frame record.

The Units weren’t the first punk band to dabble with synths. Nor were they the first act to largely replace guitars with keyboards and lean into technology as a core theme of their songwriting. The Talking Heads offered a cleaner, artier take on punk, incorporating keyboards, non-Western percussion, and even tape loops. Devo’s first single, “Mongoloid,” has a distinctly punk edge that would have been right at home alongside The Units. But the band still leaned heavily on traditional guitar and bass, and always felt more at home in the art-rock and new wave scenes.

Husband-and-wife duo Scott Ryser and Rachel Webber, the primary songwriters of The Units, had a sharper edge to their sound. They were firmly grounded in the West Coast punk scene that made its DIY ethos a core part of its identity. Their contemporaries were the Dead Kennedys, The Mutants, and The Avengers. You can hear it in the lean arrangements that prioritize raw energy over perfection. That’s not to say songs like “Cannibals” and “Bugboy” are simplistic. Their bleak, slightly humorous critiques of an uncaring world are models of efficiency — unfussy and infectious.

Like a lot of Bay Area punk bands, there’s a melodicism to The Units’ work that is hard to shake. “Warm Moving Bodies” feels like a dancefloor anthem waiting to happen, and “High Pressure” is an undeniable earworm.

The band did record a second album in 1981, Animals They Dream About, but it remained unreleased until 2016. It’s also an excellent document of the under-represented synthpunk scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Though, it is far more polished and leans into poppier new wave arrangements that are a step removed from their bootstrapped punk roots.

The Units’ Digital Stimulation is available on Bandcamp and via streaming on Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer.

Waymo pulls over, calls cops on riders with a ghost gun

2026-09-13T10:28:12-04:00

Two people were arrested in San Fransico while riding around in a Waymo robotaxi after the cab pulled over and called the cops on them. The riders were juveniles in possession of a loaded AR-style ghost gun and were taken to a juvenile hall. While the police report did not specify who was operating the autonomous car, Waymo later confirmed it was one of its vehicles to the Los Angeles Times.

A spokesperson told the LA Times that a “violation of our terms of service involving a firearm” was detected. At which point the car pulled over and alerted the authorities.

Earlier this year, a Waymo faked having mechanical problems to pull over when two passengers were drinking alcohol and firing a toy gun out of the back of the car. In that instance, the riders Waymo snitched on were also juveniles. So let this be a lesson to teens: if you’re gonna do dumb stuff, don’t do it in the back of a robotaxi.

OpenAI’s rogue AI tried to hack another company in May

2026-09-13T16:54:00-04:00

In May, hundreds of malicious and spam packages were uploaded to RubyGems, causing a serious disruption for the host. Now independent researchers have said that a swarm of OpenAI agents were responsible for the attack. Not only that, but the AI tried to steal users’ API keys.

At the time, RubyGems described it as a “major malicious attack” and shut down signups for four days as it tried to mitigate the damage and collect data. Researchers said that the contents of the packages that brought RubyGems to its knees were clearly authored by an LLM, and that the agents submitting those packages self-identified as being from OpenAI. They said the behavior observed very closely mirrored that of the swarm that began editing a German wiki, which OpenAI has confirmed its agents were responsible for.

The agents in this instance managed to bypass RubyGems’ email verification system to create a large number of accounts, then overwhelmed it with submissions. It then used the site’s automatic build system to remotely execute code and tried to exploit a vulnerability to steal user API keys. Though, it’s unclear if it ever succeeded.

OpenAI disputed the findings. Spokesperson Kayla Wood told The Verge that, “Based on our review, our agents used the RubyGems platform to access the internet to carry out benign tasks and retrieve public information. We’ll continue to investigate as part of our broader review of agent activity during training and evaluation.”

Update September 13th: Added comment from OpenAI.

Sam Altman says OpenAI going public in 2026 would be ‘ill-advised’

2026-09-17T15:58:04-04:00

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that there would be no OpenAI IPO in 2026 during an interview with Fortune. Over the course of 45 minutes, Altman discussed a variety of subjects including the Hugging Face hacking incident, recursive self-improvement, and the possibility of building an AI that was beyond human control. On the latter, he said it was “absolutely” possible, but vowed to take actions to prevent that from happening, even if it meant pausing training, adding that “there are risks we should not be able to incur on behalf of humanity.”

“We’re not rushing into an IPO. I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, this would be, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public. And we don’t feel pressure on that. We’ve said for a long time, we’ll do it when we’re ready… I would say not 2026. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”

StarCraft returns in 2030 as an open-world shooter

2026-09-12T16:08:09-04:00

Blizzard originally tried to bring the StarCraft universe to the world of 3D shooters way back in 2002 with StarCraft: Ghost. It sat in development hell for years until Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that it had been canceled in 2014. Now Blizzard is giving it another go with the simply titled StarCraft. Dan Hay, a VP at Blizzard, took the stage at BlizzCon today to reveal that after more than a decade of lying dormant, StarCraft would be returning in 2030. But, rather than another top-down real-time strategy installment, the new title would be an open-world shooter.

He then showed off a cinematic trailer for the title that focused on the human United Earth Directorate faction as they prepare to face off against the Zerg. The Protoss are limited to passing mention. What’s obvious from the trailer is that the new take on the StarCraft franchise won’t be pulling many punches. After a rousing call to militarism, the propaganda-fueled human is faced with the brutal realities of battle, and the character we’ve been following for the last 3 minutes is revealed to be disposable fuel for the meat grinder of war.

While fans are definitely excited that Blizzard is defrosting the long-dormant series, I’m sure plenty are still holding their breath, hoping for a proper RTS follow-up to 2010’s StarCraft II.