SpaceX has revealed that its internet-from-space Starlink service now has 4 million customers globally.

“Starlink is connecting more than 4M people with high-speed internet across 100+ countries, territories, and many other markets,” the company revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

The Elon Musk-led internet endeavor is rapidly gaining new customers, adding 1 million new ones in the last four months alone. The first Starlink customers came online in October 2020 and the service reached its first 1 million subscribers in December 2022.

Starlink has come a long way since SpaceX deployed the first batch of 60 satellites in low-Earth orbit in 2019. The constellation is now believed to comprise 6,300 satellites and is still growing as SpaceX seeks to build out its service with faster, more reliable, and wider coverage.

Besides residential customers, Starlink also serves a growing number of enterprise customers such as cruise lines and airlines. News of this latest customer milestone came on the same day that Air France announced that starting  next summer, it will begin a gradual rollout of Starlink for its fleet of aircraft to bring ultra-high-speed internet to its passengers. The service will eventually be rolled out to Air France’s entire fleet, with users required to sign up for and log into the airline’s Flying Blue loyalty program to use the service.

“During the flight, customers will be able to easily stay in touch with friends and family, follow all the world’s news live, play video games online, and, of course, stream TV, films, and series,” Air France said in a release. “The service will be accessible from smartphones, digital tablets, and laptops, and each customer will be able to connect several devices simultaneously.”

But the Starlink initiative has run into some issues along the way, with astronomers, for example, long complaining that light trails from the satellites obscure their view of deep space. Making matters worse is electromagnetic radiation being emitted from Starlink’s new generation of satellites, which is interfering with Earth-based radio telescopes and causing further disruptions to astronomers’ work, the BBC reported.

Qualcomm has yet to announce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip, which reportedly offers a significant boost in performance compared to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. The OnePlus 13, Xiaomi 15 series, Oppo Find X8 Ultra, and the vivo X200 Ultra are some of the devices that will equip the upcoming flagship chipset from Qualcomm. A recent rumor also suggests that the name of Qualcomm’s next flagship mobile SoC will be Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 could offer a massive performance improvement to the Galaxy S26 Ultra

A rumor out of China has revealed some information about the performance gains of the company’s 2025 flagship smartphone chipset, reportedly named the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. It will be the first Snapdragon AP built using TSMC’s third-generation 3nm (N3P) process node technology.

According to rumors, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset will continue to use a 2 + 6 core architecture. Notably, this year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip also uses the same core architecture. The tipster claims that the performance cores can reach a clock speed as high as 5GHz. They add that the six efficiency cores will have a clock speed peaking at 4GHz. That being said the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset could offer a massive performance improvement to the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Rumors also claim that the phone could include an advanced facial scanning feature.

However, it’s important to mention that these speeds only represent the variant of the chipset built by TSMC. According to a previous report, Qualcomm has decided to dual source the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 from both TSMC and Samsung Foundry.

Not to mention, there are concerns about the yield rate of Samsung Foundry’s 3nm and 2nm process nodes. It is reported that Samsung Foundry will manufacture the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 using its SF2 2nm process node. Unfortunately, the clock speed of Samsung’s version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has not been revealed yet. Nonetheless, the company’s 4nm-based Exynos 2400 chipset suggests that they have made some progress lately.

Qualcomm has again decided to work with Samsung Foundry

To recall, the company partnered with Samsung in the past for the production of its Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips. Both the chips suffered from major heating issues. The production of both chips also suffered from lower-than-expected yield rates.

The lower yield rates and power efficiency issues were enough for Qualcomm to switch back to TSMC again. As a result, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 showed much improved power efficiency. It also enabled Samsung to offer a major performance improvement with the Galaxy Z Fold 4. Since then, the company has produced its chips from TSMC and has offered performance and power efficiency improvements in each generation.

X suspended journalist Ken Klippenstein’s account earlier this afternoon. X’s Safety account says they issued the temporary suspension “for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. [J.D.] Vance’s physical address and the majority of his social security number.”

Several news outlets that received the vetting dossier of the Republican vice presidential candidate leaked by hackers chose not to publish the sensitive document since it contained personal information. Klippenstein felt the dossier was newsworthy and decided to publish it on Substack and his social media channels and one of them took down his account.

Engadget has viewed the dossier and can confirm the details mentioned by X’s Safety team are present and unredacted in Klippenstein’s copy of the document except for the last four numbers of Vance’s social security number.

Klippenstein explained his decision to buck the media’s trend and release Sen. Vance’s dossier on his Substack. President Trump’s campaign has accused Iran’s government on more than one occasion of hacking into its files and releasing the dossier back in June. Other news outlets chose not to release the document but Klippenstein says he felt they declined “in fear of finding itself at odds with the [US} government’s campaign against ‘foreign malign influence’” referring to the National Counterterrorism Center’s organization of the same name that seeks to prevent interference in elections.

“I disagree,” Klippenstein added. “The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”

The suspension extends beyond Klippenstein’s account. X has flagged the link to the dossier and automatically prevents anyone who attempts to post it. Those who do receive a warning from X saying “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

X (then Twitter) updated its policy on “hacked materials” after it blocked stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020, saying it would allow stories about hacked materials but not links to the material if it was published by the hacker or someone working “in concert” with them.