“Noncitizens” lost after-hours access to a NIST lab last month. One of the US government’s top scientific research labs is taking steps that could drive away foreign scientists, a shift lawmakers and sources tell WIRED could cost the country valuable expertise and damage the agency’s credibility. The National Institute…
Microsoft CoreAI exec Asha Sharma will take over in surprise executive shake-up. Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Phil Spencer announced he will retire after 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading the company’s video game efforts. Asha Sharma, an executive currently in charge of Microsoft’s CoreAI division,…
The company asserts it will continue to make VR headsets, though. Meta announced today that it will divorce its Horizon Worlds social and gaming service—once promoted as the company’s first major step into the metaverse—from its Quest VR headset platform and digital store. The company says it is now…
Director says PC is the “foundation” when targeting “high-end environments first.” For a long time now, PC gamers have been used to the Final Fantasy series treating their platform as somewhat secondary to the game’s core console versions. There are some signs that may be starting to change, though,…
The revised age may help make sense of 2-million-year-old stone tools elsewhere in China. Two skulls from Yunxian, in northern China, aren’t ancestors of Denisovans after all; they’re actually the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in eastern Asia. A recent study has re-dated the skulls to about 1.77 million…
Games appear to be mostly unmodified ports of the well-regarded remakes. For my money, the 2004 Game Boy Advance re-releases of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are still the best versions of the original Pokémon games. They fixed most of the bugs and balance issues present in the originals—partly by also including the rosters…
The stainless steel pickup truck is Tesla’s first real flop. Last night, Tesla made some hefty cuts to Cybertruck pricing in an effort to stimulate some sales. The bombastic tri-motor “Cyberbeast” is $15,000 cheaper at $99,990, albeit by dropping some previously free features like supercharging and FSD. And there’s…
The company that attempted China’s first orbital-class rocket landing says it will soon try again. Welcome to Edition 8.30 of the Rocket Report! As I write this week’s edition, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the…
Technology is a double-edged sword in the $399 Rubik’s Cube-inspired toy. There’s something special about the gadget that “just works.” Technology can open opportunities for those devices but also complicate and weigh down products that have done just fine without things like sensors and software. So when a product…
New skill tree paths offer a fun twist on some generally familiar mechanics. Diablo II is one of those storied classic PC games that’s pretty much always fun to come back to—so much so that some players have put thousands of hours into the game over more than two…
