Technology

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Google’s Chief Scientist of Quantum Hardware the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside former Google employee John Martinis, and University of California, Berkeley professor John Clarke. This is the second year in a row that current or former Google employees have been awarded the prestigious prize: In 2024, … Read more

Mastodon, the federated social network built on ActivityPub, is taking cues from Bluesky and introducing its own version of the social platform’s “Starter Packs.” The hope is that Mastodon’s “Packs” will make it easier to find people to follow when you first join a server, a sometimes daunting task given the distributed nature of decentralized … Read more

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $825,000 this year for surveillance tech that can spy on nearby mobile phones. TechCrunch identified the contract, which “provides Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program,” in public records. This isn’t the first time ICE has used cell-site simulators, but the agency has … Read more

Our favorite wireless headphones are on sale for October Prime Day. The excellent Sony WH-1000XM6 wireless headphones are $22 off and down to $428 right now. It’s not a huge discount, but it matches the best price we’ve seen these cans drop to since they debuted earlier this year. The WH-1000XM6 takes a leap forward … Read more

Steam went down on Tuesday, but appears to be coming back to life. Steamstat.us indicated earlier that the Steam Store, Steam Community and Web API were all down. But it’s been all systems go for a few minutes now. Engadget staffers’ experience matches that. Earlier, when trying to access the Steam Store on Steam Deck … Read more

The sequel to 2022’s surprisingly engaging first-person clean-‘em-up, PowerWash Simulator, finally arrives on October 23.If you enjoyed the first game (along with the other 17 million people it got its hooks into), it looks like you’re in for even more shockingly dirty locations on which you can unleash your trusty power washer. A new release … Read more

California has passed a law to ban loud commercials on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu. This is great news for people who don’t want to wake the neighborhood up when a streaming show suddenly turns into an aggressively loud ad for migraine medication. Governor Gavin Newsom just signed the law and the ban goes … Read more

Most of what Nintendo uploads to its Nintendo Today app is fairly predictable; think a screenshot or trailer for an upcoming game or the latest soundtrack being agonisingly drip-fed onto Nintendo Music. But today’s surprise drop is more mysterious than usual. If you opened up the app this morning, you’ll have been met with a … Read more

OpenAI has disclosed that a now-banned account originating in China was using ChatGPT to help design promotional materials and project plans for a social media listening tool. OpenAI says that this work was purportedly done for a government client. The tool was a “probe” that could crawl social media sites like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, … Read more