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Alphabet earned $1.55 per share on revenue of $76.03 billion for the third quarter ended September 30th. Analysts surveyed by LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) were expecting $1.46 per share on revenue of $75.80 billion.

Advertising continues to be Google's core business and main profit driver. Ad revenue grew 13 percent to $59.65 billion, reversing a slowdown during the economic downturn. YouTube ads specifically rose 12 percent to $7.95 billion, beating analysts' estimates of $7.82 billion. The video platform helped offset inflation pressures in other areas of Google's ad business.

However, Alphabet's cloud division, Google Cloud, saw revenue of $8.41 billion for the quarter, missing StreetAccount projections of $8.64 billion. Still, cloud sales were up 22 percent year-over-year as the company aims to challenge market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Other Bets, Alphabet's portfolio of non-ad businesses such as Waymo, reported an increase in revenue to $297 million from $208 million a year earlier. However, the unit continued to lose money, with an operating loss of $1.19 billion versus $1.23 billion in the prior year.

Analysts say generative AI could significantly impact Google's search and advertising dominance if it reshapes how people search for information online. The company is racing to integrate such technology into more products following the rollout of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Earlier this year, Google announced a major layoff as part of its cost-cutting efforts. The company has made the decision to reduce its workforce by 12,000 people. This is roughly 6 percent of its total headcount.

In other news, Microsoft has just announced its latest financial figures. The company's total revenue was $56.5 billion, up 13 percent from last year.

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Microsoft's press release added that its net income for the last quarter was $22.3 billion, an increase of 26 percent compared to the $17.6 billion in net income it recorded a year ago. Earnings per share for the quarter was $2.99, which again was up 26 percent compared to the $2.35 earnings per share from a year ago. All of these results were also higher than what many financial analysts had predicted.

Stock traders liked the news from Microsoft, as its shares went up by over 13 percent in after-hours trading as of this writing.

Microsoft stated its Intelligent Cloud division brought in $24.3 billion for the quarter, up 19 percent from a year ago. It stated its server products and cloud services revenue went up by 21 percent and its other cloud services saw revenue increases of 28 percent.

The company's Productivity and Business Processes division had $18.6 billion in revenues for the quarter, up 12 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The More Personal Computing group had $13.7 billion in revenues for the quarter, up just 3 percent from a year ago. While the Xbox division's revenues were 13 percent higher, and the Windows revenues were also up by 5 percent, the devices division took a big hit with a 22 percent drop in revenues for the quarter.

Some of the other numbers in Microsoft's report included a note that Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions went up by 18 percent to 76.7 million. In its Xbox division, gaming revenues were up 9 percent, and Xbox content and services revenues were up by 13 percent. Microsoft said that increase was due to "growth in first-party content and Xbox Game Pass". However, Xbox hardware revenues were down by 7 percent.

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The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is a 4nm SoC with 12 high-performance cores with max speeds of up to 3.8GHz. However, one or two cores can get past that and reach up to 4.3GHz. The manufacturer claims its newest chip for PCs delivers up to two times faster CPU performance at max power while matching competitors (Intel's i7-1360P and i7-1355U) maximum capability at 68% less power.

Compared with Intel's high-performance mobile processors, the Snapdragon X Elite promises to match performance levels while consuming 65% less power. As for Apple's M2 chip, customers can expect about 50% faster "peak multi-threaded performance" in benchmarks like Geekbench.

Built-in GPU is another area where the Snapdragon X Elite flexes its muscles, boasting two times faster graphics with 74% less power at a matching performance level in Intel's Core i7-13800H processor. Display-wise, the Adreno GPU supports up to three external 4K 60Hz displays.

Other features in the Snapdragon X Elite SoC include a 5G modem with mmWave and sub-6 support, a built-in neural processing unit for up to 4.5 times faster AI tasks than competitors, up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, Wi-Fi 7, and USB 4.0 support.

Customers can expect the first computers powered by the Snapdragon X Elite platform to hit the market in mid-2024.

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The new audio chips will support Qualcomm's fourth generation Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation technology. The company stated:

For the user, this means our strongest ever ANC performance, offering even more responsive ANC in places like a busy office or café. The ANC also automatically and dynamically adapts to provide strong ANC performance based on different variables including variations in fit, whether the earbud becomes loose in the ear as you move, or whether the noise suddenly changes in your environment.

The new audio processors will also have a dedicated Micro NPU engine for high end AI features. Qualcomm stated:

For example, by using on-device AI learning, the ANC can transition virtually seamlessly and
intelligently between ANC modes based on immediate environment.

In addition, the Qualcomm S7 Pro audio platform is the first to add the company's micro-power Wi-Fi hardware, along with its Expanded Personal Area Network (XPAN) technology, Earbuds or headphones with the hardware will be able to stay connected and stream audio while you are in another room or even on another floor on your home wireless network.

With Snapdragon Sound and Qualcomm XPAN Technology, the Qualcomm S7 Pro Platform brings high bit-rate audiophile music streaming, delivered over Wi-Fi at power consumption levels suitable even for earbuds, so you can listen at ultra-low power and hear every detail of your music in stunning lossless quality (from 92 kHz scaling up to 192 kHz).

Audio devices with the Qualcomm S7 and S7 Pro sound platforms will also be able to get a superior audio experience when paired with devices that use the company's newly revealed Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile processor and the Snapdragon X Elite PC processor. There's no word on when the first audio devices will have Qualcomm's new sound hardware tech.

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In its announcement, Qualcomm cites a survey from Deloitte that says each US household has on average about 21 devices. However, many of them might not work together well. That might be especially true if those devices come from several different companies.

Qualcomm says that devices that use the Snapdragon Seamless platform will be able to work together in a number of different ways. Here are some examples cited by the company:

• Mice and keyboards can work seamlessly across PCs, phones and tablets.
• Files and windows can be dragged and dropped across different types of devices.
• Earbuds can switch intelligently based on the priority of an audio source.
• XR can extend the abilities of smartphones.

The platform will be incorporated into Qualcomm's upcoming processors, including the just-announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile chip and the Snapdragon X Elite processor made for Windows PCs. It will also help connect audio and wearable devices as well.

Qualcomm says that a number of different companies, including Microsoft, Xiaomi, ASUS, Honor, Lenovo, and OPPO, are working together to support Qualcomm Seamless in their upcoming products. The list of companies will also include Google with its Android OS.

Of course, the biggest company that is not mentioned on the Snapdragon Seamless list is Apple. It's very unlikely that the folks in Cupertino will be very interested in making its iOS and Mac products compatible with Qualcomm's plans.

Qualcomm claims that the first devices that will support Snapdragon Seamless will be available sometime before the end of 2023.

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The world’s first quantum computer to exceed 1000 qubits has more than double that of the previous record holder, IBM’s Osprey machine, which has 433 qubits. Though having more qubits doesn’t necessarily mean better performance, large numbers of them will be needed for future error-free quantum computers that are useful, unlike today’s noise-filled research machines.

The largest quantum computers, such as those from IBM and Google, use superconducting wires cooled to extremely low temperatures for their quantum bits, or qubits. But the record-breaking machine from California-based start-up Atom Computing, which has 1180 qubits, uses neutral atoms trapped by lasers in a 2-dimensional grid.

One advantage of this design is that it is easy to scale up the system and add many more qubits into the grid, says Rob Hays, CEO of Atom Computing. Any useful quantum computer in the future that is free of errors, a feature called fault tolerance, will need at least tens of thousands of dedicated error-correcting qubits working alongside the programmable qubits, he says.

“If we’re only going to scale by dozens of qubits, like most of the trapped ion and superconducting systems have been scaling up until now, it’s going to take a very long time to get to the fault tolerant era,” says Hays. “With the neutral atom approach and the speed of scaling that we have, we will be able to get there much more quickly.” Hays says the team aims to multiply the amount of qubits in the machine by around 10 every couple of years or so.

Unlike conventional computing bits, which can have a value of 1 or 0 and are largely interchangeable, qubits are more varied, having a range of different properties depending on how they are made.

Neutral atom qubits lend themselves better to quantum entanglement, a strange quantum effect where qubits are linked so that measuring a property of one qubit reveals that of the other. They are also more stable, with qubits in Atom Computing’s machine keeping their quantum state from collapsing – a feature called fault tolerance, which is essential for error correction – for almost a minute. IBM’s Osprey, for example, has coherence times of around 70 to 80 microseconds.

These long coherence times are due to the ytterbium atoms that Hays and his team use as qubits. Most neutral atom machines use an atom’s electron as the quantum element with which to do computing, but this can be easily affected by the powerful lasers used to hold it in place. With ytterbium, a quantum property of the atom’s nucleus called spin can be used, which is much less sensitive to disturbances. “The nucleus just doesn’t interact with the outside environment as strongly as the electron does,” says Ben Bloom at Atom Computing.

Because qubits have so many different features, it can be difficult to compare across different machines, but Bloom says Atom Computing’s machine is comparable in processing ability to IBM’s, though the company has yet to release figures on this.

The team hopes to offer the machine to customers next year for cloud computing applications, similar to what companies like IBM do today. “Atom Computing’s machine can’t currently perform computing operations on all the qubits at the same time, which will be required for fully error corrected machines,” says Bloom.

“There’s multiple groups now building systems that will have 1000, and even several thousand, atomic qubits,” says Mark Saffman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This is really where the frontier of the field is now, with this 1000-plus scale that people are developing.”

However, more details of how the machine works will need to be released by Atom Computing before it can be properly assessed, says Saffman, such as how many of its qubits can be used and have logical operations performed on them.

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Many decades ago, in the later part of the 1970s, Intel made the x86 CPU architecture, which it later licensed to the likes of AMD and many others.

Later, AMD made AMD64 (also called x86-64), that can be said an addition to the original x86, which allowed 64-bit processors to be made. AMD later licensed this tech to Intel. Intel, however, wants to change that a bit by introducing a new 64-bit only architecture.

Basically, all processors used in computers these days are based on the same x86 / x86-64 architecture. For now, only two major players remain in the field of designing and making CPUs for computers.

However, in the same era when both Intel and AMD were reaching new heights in the world of computer using the x86 tech, another CPU architecture named ARM was making huge strides too.

Based on RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture, ARM is a proprietary CPU architecture design which ARM Holdings licenses to CPU makers like Qualcomm Snapdragon and many others.

Everyone who buys mobile phones these days would know, most processors found in smartphones are based on the ARM CPU architecture. This is because ARM CPUs consume less power, generate less heat and hence are ideal for mobile devices.

However, from years many are wondering. What if ARM architecture CPUs are made for computers. If not desktops, then at least notebooks and others. While yes, Qualcomm has tried from years. But now we might see a huge boost to it.

Nvidia And AMD To Make ARM based CPUs For Computers

Reuters reports that, as per its sources, Nvidia, known for its graphics card GPU chips, has quietly started designing CPUs that would run on PCs.

If that isn’t enough, Reuters says that even AMD is planning to do the same – use ARM architecture to make CPUs for computers.

The report claims that as per their sources, both Nvidia and AMD will have their chips prepared as soon as 2025. This move could directly challenge Intel’s dominance in the computer processor market.

The article mentions how Qualcomm has been exclusively designing CPUs for notebooks since several years. That exclusive license is going to reach its conclusion next year in 2024. Opening up the ARM architecture for PCs for many players.

However, we don’t think Qualcomm has made enough inroads themselves in the PC market. That could change too.

Qualcomm To Release Snapdragon X Elite For PCs

The Windows Report reports (via VideoCardz) that Qualcomm is working on a new CPU for PCs.

The said 64-bit processor, named Snapdragon X Elite, will come with 12 cores with up to 3.8GHz clock speed, topping up to 4.3GHz of single and dual-core boost.

It will support LPDDR5x RAM, with 8533 MT/s transfer speed, 136 GB/s bandwidth and a capacity up to 64GB.

The GPU inside it will be based on the Qualcomm Adreno, with up to 4.6 of TFLOPs. The CPU chip will also come with support for Wi-Fi 7, USB 4.0 and many other things.

It is expected that Qualcomm will release this CPU next year, in 2024. The whole specs are available on the Windows Report article, worth checking out.

In the leaked image, Qualcomm claims that this CPU is going to be up to 2x times faster than x86 CPUs. It also claims that when compared to others, it would match peak performance of rival CPUs while using just 1/3 of power.

While not specifically mentioned in the article, the chip is, in all likelihood, going to be based on the ARM architecture.

Conclusion

This move of more ARM CPUs coming to computers should be welcomed. For far too long, we have relied on one single architecture to power our CPUs inside the computers. However, there are many issues with this move.

First is, while ARM CPUs work fine within mobiles, they don’t perform that great when they are scaled up for computers. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm do to improve the performance of these larger ARM CPUs.

Second, don’t expect these CPUs to come on desktops that quickly. These processors, in all likelihood, are targeted for notebooks and other such mobile devices. AMD for that matter might not even make a complete ARM only CPU and would in fact could make a hybrid processor with x86 and ARM cores, that too for consoles.

Third, the Reuters article mentions the big software issue. Software designed for x86 processors don’t start working on an ARM CPU by itself. Developers either need to write a new software from ground up or port that software to make it work with them. This can prove to be a significant and the biggest hurdle for the adaption for the ARM processors.

Fourth, there’s another architecture which is going to rival ARM in the future. It’s called RISC-V. The RISC-V is an open source, royalty free CPU architecture which is in news from years now. It directly rivals ARM, which is a proprietary architecture and requires a license to manufacture CPUs.

Not to forget, ARM Holdings has been in the news these days for many reasons. From possibilities of increasing the licensing fees, to ownership, to financial issues. There’s a lot of happening in the company for us to ignore. How would they get through is to be seen.

But make no mistake. Nvidia and others don’t do anything for a sake of it. If Nvidia is doing something, it probably sees a long term prospect in it. Expect them to do this move towards ARM CPUs in such a way that almost all the above issues are taken care of.

So if Nvidia can manage to do well, this can be among the biggest change CPUs have seen on computers since decades of their introduction in the world of tech.

While specs or details about the new processors from both Nvidia and AMD isn’t available yet, we will be eagerly waiting for them.

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What you need to know

• Select games can see a dramatic increase in frames per second when utilizing Intel Application Optimization.
• Intel Application Optimization is a new tool that directs application resources in realtime to improve performance.
• Only 14th Gen Intel Core processors support Intel Application Optimization at this time.
• Metro: Exodus and Rainbow Six Siege are the only games that support the tool right now.
• One Reddit user saw a 208 FPS boost when playing Rainbow Six Siege.

Intel just launched its 14th Gen Core CPUs, and they promise high-end performance for gaming and creative work. Our Managing Editor Richard Devine saw one of the new chips deliver on that promise during his Intel Core i7-14700K review. Now, there's evidence that the new processors could deliver a dramatic boost in framerate when powering certain titles.

All of the new chips from Intel, the Core i9-14900K, Core i9 14900KF, Core i7-14700K, and Core i7-14700KF, support Intel Application Optimization. That tool, also known as Intel AO, directs application resources in real time to improve performance. Redditor LightMoisture tested Intel AO with both of the currently supported titles. The system used in that testing paired an Intel Core i9-14900K with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

In their testing, Metro Exodus bumped up by 66 FPS, increasing from 273 FPS to 339 FPS. Rainbow Six Siege saw a more dramatic increase, jumping from 659 FPS to 867 FPS when utilizing Intel AO. There's no need to run a game at over 800 FPS, or even 659 FPS, but the test demonstrates the power of Intel Application Optimization.

Unfortunately, we won't see many other tests of Intel AO, since the technology is rather limited at the moment. Only two games support it, and you need one of the latest Intel CPUs to use it.

What is Intel Application Optimization?

Intel Application Optimization is a tool that directs application resources to improve performance. It's an optional piece of software that works alongside Thread Director.

There's a good chance that you haven't heard of Intel AO before today. The tool only works with the new 14th Gen Intel Core CPUs, meaning only four processors support it. Additionally, Metro: Exodus and Rainbow Six Siege are the only games that work with Intel Application Optimization at this time.

Even using Intel AO takes a bit of extra work. First, your system needs to run Windows 11 and have Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology installed and enabled. Then you need to enable the BIOS Camarillo PCI device option. After that, you can install Intel AO through the Microsoft Store.

Intel has a support document with a full breakdown of how to use Intel Application Optimization.

A promising future for 14th Gen Intel CPUs

Raw hardware improvements are important when it comes to CPUs, but software and tools are becoming increasingly important. In other words, it's not just about thread and core count anymore when it comes to processors. Intel Application Optimization could help 14th Gen Intel CPUs stand out from competing AMD chips.

For that to happen, the tool will need to gain support from the best PC games. But if it does, Intel may have another way to compete with other chipmakers that are closing in. NVIDIA and AMD are reportedly working on ARM CPUs, so Intel will likely feel pressure from all sides over the next few years.

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It’s almost ready

Atom Computing is now using the system internally and plans to open it up for public use next year. The system has moved from a 10×10 grid to a 35×35 grid, bringing the potential sites for atoms up to 1,225. So far, testing has taken place with up to 1,180 atoms present, making it the largest machine that anyone has publicly acknowledged (at least in terms of qubit count).

 

The qubits are housed in a 12×5 foot box that contains the lasers and optics, along with the vacuum system and a bit of unused space—Atom CEO Rob Hayes quipped that "there's a lot of air inside that box." It does not, however, contain the computer hardware that controls the system and its operations. The grid of atoms it's used to create, by contrast, is only about 100 microns per side, so it won't strain the hardware to keep increasing the qubit count.

 

Some of the changes in this system compared to Atom's first attempt were focused on managing the transition from a research system that was most useful for people learning to manage atom-based quantum computing, to one that has the stability needed for customers who are more interested in the algorithms that can be run there. "We've also added technology around uptime and availability to make this like a real product, a real cloud service," Hayes said.

 

That's an added challenge with atom-based systems because of the inevitability of collisions between the trapped atoms and stray gas molecules in the vacuum chamber. Ben Bloom, Atom's founder and CTO, said that an array of atoms can typically be maintained for over 100 seconds. That's enough for a lot of calculations but still means the system as a whole needs to be reset regularly.

 

As mentioned earlier, however, customers of this system won't be able to use all of these qubits for a single calculation—it becomes inevitable that an error will occur. So for now, the emphasis is on running algorithms that require fewer qubits and operations. This keeps things under the error threshold while allowing companies to develop algorithms that will become useful as quantum computers improve or possibly find individual cases where existing hardware is sufficient to provide useful results.

 

These sorts of calculations are often run multiple times in order to provide confidence in the results and get a sense of the error rate. And here, the high qubit count can also be useful. "We're actually just going to use all these qubits, because they're all identical to actually parallelize the computation," Bloom said. "So if someone hands us a 50-qubit algorithm, we will do that 50 qubit algorithm on all of our qubits, and we will then give you the results faster."

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At 9:30 am on a Wednesday in late September, a hacker who asked to be called Tom Smith sent me a nonsensical text message: “query voltage recurrence.”

Those three words were proof of a remarkable feat—and potentially an extremely valuable one. A few days earlier, I had randomly generated those terms, set them as the passphrase on a certain model of encrypted USB thumb drive known as an IronKey S200, and shipped the drive across the country to Smith and his teammates in the Seattle lab of a startup called Unciphered.

Smith had told me that guessing my passphrase might take several days. Guessing it at all, in fact, should have been impossible: IronKeys are designed to permanently erase their contents if someone tries just 10 incorrect password guesses. But Unciphered's hackers had developed a secret IronKey password-cracking technique—one that they've still declined to fully describe to me or anyone else outside their company—that gave them essentially infinite tries. My USB stick had reached Unciphered’s lab on Tuesday, and I was somewhat surprised to see my three-word passphrase texted back to me the very next morning. With the help of a high-performance computer, Smith told me, the process had taken only 200 trillion tries.

Smith’s demonstration was not merely a hacker party trick. He and Unciphered’s team have spent close to eight months developing a capability to crack this specific, decade-old model of IronKey for a very particular reason: They believe that in a vault in a Swiss bank 5,000 miles to the east of their Seattle lab, an IronKey that's just as vulnerable to this cracking technique holds the keys to 7,002 bitcoins, worth close to $235 million at current exchange rates.

For years, Unciphered's hackers and many others in the crypto community have followed the story of a Swiss crypto entrepreneur living in San Francisco named Stefan Thomas, who owns this 2011-era IronKey, and who has lost the password to unlock it and access the nine-figure fortune it contains. Thomas has said in interviews that he's already tried eight incorrect guesses, leaving only two more tries before the IronKey erases the keys stored on it and he loses access to his bitcoins forever.

Now, after months of work, Unciphered's hackers believe they can open Thomas' locked treasure chest, and they're ready to use their secret cracking technique to do it. “We were hesitant to reach out to him until we had a full, provable, reliable attack,” says Smith, who asked WIRED not to reveal his real name due to the sensitivities of working with secret hacking techniques and very large sums of cryptocurrency. “Now we’re in that place.”

The only problem: Thomas doesn't seem to want their help.

Earlier this month, not long after performing their USB-decrypting demonstration for me, Unciphered reached out to Thomas through a mutual associate who could vouch for the company’s new IronKey-unlocking abilities and offer assistance. The call didn't even get as far as discussing Unciphered's commission or fee before Thomas politely declined.

Thomas had already made a “handshake deal” with two other cracking teams a year earlier, he explained. In an effort to prevent the two teams from competing, he had offered each a portion of the proceeds if either one could unlock the drive. And he remains committed, even a year later, to giving those teams more time to work on the problem before he brings in anyone else—even though neither of the teams has shown any sign of pulling off the decryption trick that Unciphered has already accomplished.

That has left Unciphered in a strange situation: It holds what is potentially one of the most valuable lockpicking tools in the cryptocurrency world, but with no lock to pick. “We cracked the IronKey,” says Nick Fedoroff, Unciphered's director of operations. “Now we have to crack Stefan. This is turning out to be the hardest part.”

In an email to WIRED, Thomas confirmed that he had turned down Unciphered's offer to unlock his encrypted fortune. “I have already been working with a different set of experts on the recovery so I'm no longer free to negotiate with someone new,” Thomas wrote. “It's possible that the current team could decide to subcontract Unciphered if they feel that's the best option. We'll have to wait and see.” Thomas declined to be interviewed or to comment further.

A Very Valuable, Worthless USB Stick

In past interviews, Thomas has said that his 7,002 bitcoins were left over from a payment he received for making a video titled “What is Bitcoin?” that published on YouTube in early 2011, when a bitcoin was worth less than a dollar. Later that year, he told WIRED that he'd inadvertently erased two backup copies of the wallet that held those thousands of coins, and then lost the piece of paper with the password to decrypt the third copy, stored on the IronKey. By then, his lost coins were worth close to $140,000. “I spent a week trying to recover it,” he said at the time. “It was pretty painful.”

In the 12 years since, the value of the inaccessible coins on Thomas' IronKey has at times swelled to be worth nearly half a billion dollars, before settling to its current, still-staggering price. In January 2021, as Bitcoin began to approach its peak exchange rate, Thomas described to The New York Times the angst that his long-lost hoard had caused him over the years. “I would just lay in bed and think about it,” he said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

Around that same time in 2021, a team of cryptographers and white-hat hackers founded Unciphered with the goal of unlocking exactly the sort of vast, frozen funds that many unlucky crypto holders like Thomas have long since given up on. At the time of Unciphered’s official launch, the cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis estimated the total sum of those forgotten wallets across blockchains to be worth $140 billion. Unciphered says it has since successfully helped clients open locked wallets worth “many millions” of dollars—often through novel cryptographic vulnerabilities or software flaws it has discovered in cryptocurrency wallets—though nothing close to the size of Thomas' IronKey stash.

Only around the beginning of 2023 did Unciphered begin to hunt for potential avenues to unlock Thomas' IronKey prize. Smith says that they quickly started to see hints that the IronKey's manufacturer, which was sold to storage hardware firm iMation in 2011, had left them some potential openings. “We were seeing little bits and pieces,” Smith says. “Like, this looks a little sloppy, or this looks not quite like how someone should be doing things.” (Kingston Storage, which now owns IronKey, didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)

Even a decade-old IronKey is a daunting target for hackers. The USB stick, whose development was funded in part by the United States Department of Homeland Security, is FIPS-140-2 Level 3 certified, meaning it's tamper-resistant and its encryption is secure enough for use by military and intelligence agencies for classified information. But emboldened by the few hints of security flaws they'd found—and still with no participation from Thomas—Unciphered's founders decided to take on the project of cracking it. “If there is an Everest to attempt, this is it,” Fedoroff remembers telling the team. The company's founders would eventually pull together a group of around 10 staffers and outside consultants, several of whom had backgrounds at the National Security Agency or other three-letter government agencies. They called it Project Everest.

A $235 Million Treasure Hunt

One of their first moves was to determine the exact model of IronKey that Thomas must have used, based on timing and a process of elimination. Then they bought the entire supply of that decade-plus-old model that they could find available for sale online, eventually amassing hundreds of them in their lab.

To fully reverse engineer the device, Unciphered scanned an IronKey with a CT scanner, then began the elaborate surgery necessary to deconstruct it. Using a precise laser cutting tool, they carved out the Atmel chip that serves as the USB stick's “secure enclave” holding its cryptographic secrets. They bathed that chip in nitric acid to “decap” it, removing the layers of epoxy designed to prevent tampering. They then began to polish down the chip, layer by layer, with an abrasive silica solution and a tiny spinning felt pad, removing a fraction of a micron of material from its surface at a time, taking photos of each layer with either optical microscopes or scanning electron microscopes, and repeating the process until they could build a full 3D model of the processor.

Because the chip's read-only memory, or ROM, is built into the layout of its physical wiring for better efficiency, Unciphered's visual model gave it a head start toward deciphering much of the logic of the IronKey's cryptographic algorithm. But the team went much further, attaching tenth-of-a-millimeter gauge wires to the secure element’s connections to “wiretap” the communications going into and out of it. They even tracked down engineers who had worked on the Atmel chip and another microcontroller in the IronKey that dated back to the 1990s to quiz them for details about the hardware. “It felt very much like a treasure hunt," says Fedoroff. “You’re following a map that’s faded and coffee-stained, and you know there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but you have no idea where that rainbow’s leading.”

That cracking process culminated in July, when Unciphered's team gathered at an Airbnb in San Francisco. They describe standing around a table covered with millions of dollars’ worth of lab equipment when a member of the team read out the contents of a decrypted IronKey for the first time. “What just happened?” Fedoroff asked the room. “We just summited Everest,” said Unciphered's CEO, Eric Michaud.

Unciphered still won't reveal its full research process, or any details of the technique it ultimately found for cracking the IronKey and defeating its “counter” that limits password guesses. The company argues that the vulnerabilities they discovered are still potentially too dangerous to be made public, given that the model of IronKeys it cracked are too old to be patched with a software update, and some may still store classified information. “If this were to leak somehow, there would be much bigger national security implications than a cryptocurrency wallet,” Fedoroff says.

The team notes that the final method they developed doesn't require any of the invasive or destructive tactics that they used in their initial research. They've now unlocked 2011-era IronKeys—without destroying them—more than a thousand times, they say, and unlocked three IronKeys in demonstrations for WIRED.

Cryptic Contracts

None of that, however, has gotten them any closer to persuading Stefan Thomas to let them crack his IronKey. Unciphered’s hackers say they learned from the intermediary who contacted Thomas on their behalf that Thomas has already been in touch with two other potential players in the crypto- and hardware-hacking world to help unlock his USB stick: the cybersecurity forensics and investigations firm Naxo, and the independent security researcher Chris Tarnovsky.

Naxo declined WIRED’s request to comment. But Chris Tarnovsky, a renowned chip reverse engineer, confirmed to WIRED that he had a “meet-and-greet” call with Thomas in May of last year. Tarnovsky says that, in the meeting, Thomas had told him that if he could successfully unlock the IronKey, he would be "generous," but didn't specify a fee or commission. Since then, Tarnovsky says that he has done very little work on the project, and that he has essentially been waiting for Thomas to start paying him on a monthly basis for initial research. "I want Stefan to cough up some money up front," says Tarnovsky. “It's a lot of work, and I need to worry about my mortgage and my bills.”

But Tarnovsky says he hasn't heard from Thomas since that first call. “Nothing came out of it,” he says. “It's weird.”

Unciphered's team remains skeptical about Naxo’s progress and whether it’s any further along than Tarnovsky. There are only a small number of hardware hackers capable of the reverse engineering necessary to crack the IronKey, they argue, and none appear to be working with Naxo. As for Thomas' suggestion that they could subcontract to Naxo or another team working on the project, Unciphered's Fedoroff says he won't rule it out, but argues it doesn't make sense when Unciphered alone can crack the IronKey. “Based on what we know, we don't see any benefit to anyone in going that route,” Fedoroff says.

Thomas, meanwhile, seems to display an unusual lack of urgency in unlocking his $235 million, and has offered only vague hints about why he has yet to reveal any progress toward that goal. “When you're dealing with so much money, everything takes forever,” he told the Thinking Crypto podcast in an interview over the summer. “The person you're working with, you need some contract with them, and that contract needs to be rock solid, because if there's some issue with the contract, there's suddenly hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.”

To potentially accelerate that cryptic contract process, Unciphered plans to publish an open letter to Thomas and a video in the coming days designed to persuade—or pressure—Thomas into working with them. But Fedoroff concedes that it's possible Thomas doesn't actually care about the money: In its piece about his locked coins in 2021, The New York Times wrote that Thomas already had “more riches than he knows what to do with,” thanks to other crypto ventures.

Fedoroff notes that it's impossible to know for certain what Thomas' IronKey holds. Maybe the keys to the 7,002 bitcoins are held elsewhere, or gone altogether.

He says Unciphered is still hopeful. But the team is also ready to move on if Thomas won't work with them. There are, after all, other locked wallets out there for the company to crack. And the decision of whether and how to unlock this particular USB drive's riches will ultimately fall to its owner alone. “It's incredibly frustrating,” says Fedoroff. “But when you're dealing with people, that's always the most complex part. Code doesn't change unless you tell it to. Circuitry doesn't either. But humans are incredibly unpredictable creatures.”

Updated 10:55 am ET, October 24, 2023, to correct a misspelling of Nick Fedoroff's surname.

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What you need to know

• Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, recently touched base with Mathias Dpfner at Axel Springer's Berlin headquarters to discuss his ascend to the company's top executive seat, shortcomings, wins, AI advances, and much more.
• Satya disclosed that the Activision Blizzard deal is important to the company since gaming is part of its identity and would help it impact the consumer market even more.
• Satya has sat at the company's top seat for nearly ten years but isn't set to retire as he is in the middle of multiple projects.
• While talking about AI, the CEO believes that elaborate measures can be put in place to mitigate the technology that will help prevent it from spiraling out of control.
• He added that AI currently holds the biggest potential for the company.
• While the CEO admits that he has made many mistakes, pulling the plug on mobile was the greatest strategic mistake.

In the past few years, many restructures have happened across Microsoft's ecosystem under the leadership of Satya Nadella. Generative AI has been a pressure point for the tech giant, which saw it make a multi-billion investment in the technology. Elsewhere, the company finally closed the $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal after spending a year and change in the corridors of justice. However, Xbox's Phil Spencer disclosed that the library of games from Activision Blizzard will come to Game Pass in 2024. 

More recently, Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, got together with Mathias Dpfner at Axel Springer's Berlin headquarters, where they talked about a wide range of topics, including Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, the CEO's career trajectory, AI, the Activision Blizzard deal, among other hot topics. 

Here's the breakdown of the entire interview, highlighting some of the key moments as spotted by Insider. 

Crickets impact on Nadella's leadership skills

It's very apparent that Microsoft's CEO is a huge fan of cricket, and unsurprisingly, in some shape and form, it has greatly impacted how he runs the company. In a separate interview, the CEO disclosed that empathy is the hardest skill to learn, yet crucial to running a successful business. Like cricket, the CEO cites that teamwork bundled up with inclusive decision-making are important components that greatly contribute to the success of any business, including Microsoft.

"If you're leading a team, you don't just want that team for one time, you need them for the duration. When I look back, there are lots of incidents that have given me a bunch of lessons to take away."

Satya Nadella's rise to Microsoft's top seat

(Image credit: Microsoft | Windows Central)

Satya recounts moments leading up to his promotion as Microsoft CEO, indicating that he had never pictured Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer ever leaving the company while working at the company. And when that day finally came, one of the board members reached out to him and asked, "Do you want to be the CEO?"

Nadella reveals that this thought never crossed his mind, and as a response to the question, he stated that he would only take up the position if the board member "really" wanted him to. However, the board member informed him that he "really needed to want to be CEO" to get the position. And the rest is history, Nadella says that "the board did what they had to do in the succession process."

According to the CEO, the recruitment for the job post was no easy feat. He spent practically the whole day with his head buried in code, but towards the end, one of the recruiters asked him what he'd do if he found a kid who had fallen down by the roadside crying. He quickly responded by saying that he'd call 911. He was being rational, but it was apparent this wasn't the answer the recruiters were looking for. The recruiters asked him to leave the interview room, and it was at this point he knew he had fumbled his chances of getting the job.

In hindsight, he believes the question was posed to gauge whether he is empathetic. He disclosed that he's learned to be more empathetic than rational with people and situations around him over the years. 

Microsoft adopting an open and understanding culture

As a determined and empathetic leader, the company greatly reflects these values. Satya focusing more on soft skills and the development of his employees rather than looking at performance KPIs is one of his "greatest successes and critical achievements as CEO." This has also contributed to the increase in the company's value from $400 billion when he assumed office to $2.5 trillion, with analysts indicating that the value could go even higher. 

The CEO added that there's great value and success when employees get to learn from their mistakes rather than fronting to know-it-all. This all trickles down to growth mentality, a theory he picked up from a book called "Mindset" by Carol Dweck.

Pulling the plug on Windows Phone was a strategic mistake

(Image credit: Windows Central)

While completely vague about it, Nadella admits that he's made many mistakes during his tenure at Microsoft, but the biggest ones involve people. Mathias followed this up with a question to understand whether he was not picking the right people to help run the business. He responded by saying:

"Yes. The curation of culture, and the holding of standards as a leader, becomes the most important thing. Because everybody can sense the difference between what you say and what you do. Over the years, I would sometimes say some stuff, but not really mean it. And then, well, that doesn't work. That's why getting what you think, what you say, and what you do aligned is a struggle. That's not easy. It might be easy to say, but it's not an easy thing to practice."

When asked to discuss a regretful strategic mistake, Nadella also mentions the company's unexpected exit from mobile phones, while further indicating that there might have been avenues available to avoid culling the whole division. 

"The decision I think a lot of people talk about — and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO — was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones." 

Microsoft CEO recounts best decision at the organization

Satya Nadella disclosed that he realized he was assuming responsibility of a company from a founder, and that's when it dawned on him that he needed to change the approach of how he'd take up this new position.

"We needed to run the company as a team of senior leaders who are accountable to the entire company. And even the senior leaders cannot be isolated, they need to be grounded. So we found a way to be able to work together. There used to be this characterization, this caricature of Microsoft as a bunch of silos – which I thought was unfair. We were able to debunk that by showing that we are one team working together, flexible in our own ways but very fixed on our outcome goals. And that, I think, was probably the most important thing."

Why pay $69 billion for the Activision Blizzard deal?

(Image credit: Windows Central / Microsoft / FTC)

The CEO indicated that gaming has been part of the corporation's identity from the start and would only make sense if the company continued to explore this even more. Microsoft's Gaming department is quite visible in the consumer market; closing the Activision Blizzard deal only increases its visibility. 

"The way games are made, the way the games are delivered, is changing radically. Whether it's mobile, or consoles, or PCs, or even the cloud. So, we're looking forward to really doubling down both as a game producer and a publisher. Now we'll be one of the largest game publishers and also as a company that's building platforms for it."

Ai holds the biggest potential for Microsoft

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Unsurprisingly, when asked what holds the biggest potential for the company, the CEO disclosed that it was AI. In the past few months, the company has embraced AI and injected the technology into its products and services. Satya believes AI will have a transformational impact, similar to how the cloud impacted the software category. He disclosed that the launch of Windows Copilot is centered around boosting productivity and communication.

He also talked about people having reservations about the technology and how it lacks guardrails to prevent it from spiraling out of control. However, he indicated that the are measures that can be put in place to mitigate these risks, especially by having in-built control over the technology.

Is Microsoft too big for bankruptcy?

(Image credit: Future)

While responding to this question, the CEO stated that every company should run with a goal and focus on serving a social purpose. He added that longevity is not the goal. Rather, it's to ensure the company is doing something beneficial for the world.

Is retirement on Microsoft CEO's horizon?

Satya Nadella has sat on the top seat at Microsoft for close to ten years now, admittedly achieving great feats. However, when asked about retirement plans, he indicated that he is still in the middle of projects. He further added that his successes and failures will be realized once someone else takes over his spot.

Mathias also asked the CEO if he had any potential successors in mind. He responded positively citing there's a pool of great minds and individuals that would be perfect for the positions, highlighting his confidence in the board for when that time comes, and that they'll be able to make the right decision.

The interview continues covering topics revolving around the CEO's impact on society, competition with Google over market share, and AI chatbots. We only covered the key highlights, but you can head over to the Inside for the full scoop. 

What are your thoughts on Microsoft's direction under Satya's leadership? Let us know in the comments.

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This involves subjecting your face to blunt force trauma in the hopes of permanently improving the way you look. The suggestion is that by using a hammer, rolling pin, bottle—basically whatever hard object you can find—and repeatedly driving it into the bony architecture of your face, you'll alter your appearance.

It should go without saying, but just in case: don't do it. Bone smashing will not permanently change your facial structure—but it may lead to other permanent harms, including tooth loss and blindness.

The 'science' behind the trend

Bone is a living tissue and is constantly rejuvenating itself in a tightly regulated process known as "remodeling." In fact, your entire bone structure is completely replaced over the course of a decade. Remodeling ensures we only ever carry around as much bone as needed to support and protect our tissues, and adapts the architecture of our bones according to our movement requirements.

Certain stimuli can also change our bones. For example exercise—which places a "load" (external force) on our bones—ensures bone maintains its shape and strength. Without this stimulus, bone will begin breaking itself down to avoid carrying around anything we aren't using.

Many videos promoting the use of bone smashing misinterpret a theory called Wolff's law, which recognizes that bones adapt to the stresses placed on them—and that over time, when a load is placed repeatedly on a particular bone, it will change it. For example, college athletes participating in sports like basketball, tennis and track have stronger bones in their dominant arm, compared to their non-dominant one due to the repeated stresses placed upon it.

But the key here is understanding that these bones only change as a result of the muscles surrounding them. When muscles pull against the attached bone, it helps stimulate growth. So while the bones in the face would indeed conform to Wolff's law, it wouldn't happen as a result of hitting these bones repeatedly.

And, if this were possible, we'd see these changes in professional sports people who take repeated blows to their face and skull. But in reality, most of the physical changes seen in such athletes are because of scar tissue or incorrectly healed fractures.

There's no evidence that repeated blows to the face alter bone structure in humans. Although research shows it may lead to changes in rats, their bone structure and biomechanics are vastly different to humans. Not to mention, the animals in this study developed traumatic brain injuries as a result of these repeated blows.

Professional bone breaking

Repeated blows to the face can also cause fractures, since these bones are quite weak.

While it's true numerous cosmetic surgeries require bones to be broken, this is only done when absolutely necessary—and performed in a specific place on the body. The process of breaking or shaving a bone to alter its shape is called an osteotomy, and is sometimes done during a rhinoplasty (a nose job) or a genioplasty (jawline surgery).

Although an osteotomy may change a person's appearance and the alignment of certain bones, it can also change the way that bone functions.

And, even when these surgeries are done by professionals, the recovery is lengthy—and the outcome may not be exactly what a patient wants. Not to mention, osteotomies also come with risk of complications such as nerve damage.

The bone that's subsequently laid down to repair a fracture (known as "woven bone") is also inferior in terms of both quality and structure. So while a typical fracture may take 6-8 weeks to heal as the woven bone connects the broken ends, it takes anywhere from a few months to years to get back to the original structure and quality of what was there originally.

Severe health risks

Many who may have tried the bone smashing trend have done so in order to alter the bone structure of the cheek bones (known as the zygomatic bones) or the jawbone (the mandible).

The zygomatic bone in each cheek facilitates facial expressions and protects the eyes. The mandible helps us chew, speak and gives the bottom of the face its shape. These structures are optimized for these functions, so hitting either of them with something heavy will likely only damage the bones. And, since our skull isn't designed to take repeated heavy hits, bone smashing could lead to traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions.

Damage to the cheekbones will probably lead to bruising and swelling, which may in turn damage the eyes, as well as the nerves in the face—potentially leading to facial paralysis.

There are equal risks with damage to the mandible. A major blood vessel runs behind it, bringing blood to important parts of the face and head, including the teeth, parts of the ear and the brain linings. Significant damage to the mandible can tear this artery. Because of its position, it can be hard to see damage and stop bleeding into the surrounding tissues. This could lead to death—though it's more likely to cause tooth damage or loss and nerve damage, which may lead to loss of sensation or function.

Even if this trend were able to give you your desired facial changes, you'd have to continue "bone smashing" for the rest of your life—as once you stop, the bone will revert back to its most efficient structure.

If you do want to change your face's appearance, please consult a professional.

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Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who is usually quite accurate with Apple reporting, revealed in his Power On newsletter that iOS 18 will bring several AI and Generative AI features to compatible iPhones. Those AI-powered features include improved reply suggestions for messages and AI-generated playlists in Apple Music. Generative AI features could also come to Apple's document creation suite, which includes Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.

Apparently, Apple is also working on a smarter version of Siri to make it somewhat comparable to Google Assistant. The newsletter claims that bringing AI features is one of the primary objectives of Apple right now. The company is reportedly set to spend $1 billion every year on AI development. However, there appears to be some debate internally on whether to base these features on on-device AI or to offload them to Apple's servers.

Apart from user-facing features, Apple is reportedly planning to make the lives of developers easier through AI-enhanced features in Xcode. They could bring advanced code completion features similar to GitHub Copilot. Apple could also streamline some internal AppleCare tools using AI.

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The restrictions were supposed to come into play 30 days from Oct. 17 when the Biden administration unveiled measures to stop countries, including China, Iran and Russia, from receiving advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia and others.

Nvidia does not expect a near-term impact on its earnings from this move, it disclosed in a filing on Tuesday, but did not say why the U.S. government had accelerated the timing.

AMD, also impacted by the curbs, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment, while the U.S. Department of Commerce declined to comment.

The restrictions disallow exports of Nvidia's modified advanced AI chips A800 and H800 - both of which it had created for the Chinese market to comply with previous export rules.

The Nvidia A100, H100, and L40S chips are also impacted by the curbs.

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The spending is expected to increase Microsoft's cloud computing services capacity by 250% to meet rapidly growing demand. Cloud computing usage in Australia is expected to double between 2022 and 2026 as the adoption of AI increases.

Microsoft's vice president, Brad Smith, said the investment is "a testament to our commitment to the country's growth and prosperity in the AI era."

This is our largest investment in Microsoft's 40-year history in Australia and a testament to our commitment to the country's growth and prosperity in the AI era. We're coupling this A$5 billion in computing capacity and capabilities with AI and engineering to strengthen the nation's cyber defense, including a deeper collaboration with the Australian Signals Directorate.

In addition, Microsoft will support the training of 300,000 Australians in skills needed to "succeed in the digital economy." This appears to be an effort to develop a local workforce equipped to realize the potential of AI and automation technologies.

Specifically, the A$5 billion investment will be used to expand Microsoft's data center footprint in Australia from the current 20 locations to 29. In a similar move, the company previously announced plans to build a new data center in Denmark that will run entirely on renewable energy and create approximately 200,000 jobs.

The company will also expand its cyber threat information sharing agreement with Australia's cybersecurity agency, the Australian Signals Directorate. This is aimed at strengthening cybersecurity protections amid rapid technological change.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the investment, saying, "We must provide the skills that will enable Australians to succeed in the jobs of the future."

This is a major investment in the skills and workers of the future, which will help Australia to strengthen our position as a world-leading economy.

The announcement comes as Australia has launched a public consultation on the potential regulation of AI. This relates to concerns about bias, privacy breaches, and copyright infringement of this technology.

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The ideal smart home seamlessly anticipates your needs and instantly responds to commands. You shouldn’t have to open a specific app for each appliance or remember the precise voice command and voice assistant combination that starts the latest episode of your favorite podcast on the nearest speaker. Competing smart home standards make operating your devices needlessly complicated. It’s just not very … well, smart.

Tech giants try to straddle standards by offering their voice assistants as a controlling layer on top, but Alexa can’t talk to Google Assistant or Siri or control Google or Apple devices, and vice versa. (And so far, no single ecosystem has created all the best devices.) But these interoperability woes may soon be remedied. Formerly called Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP), the open source interoperability standard known as Matter arrived in 2022. With some of the biggest tech names, like Amazon, Apple, and Google, on board, seamless integration may finally be within reach.

Updated October 2023: Added news of the Matter 1.2 specification release, what you need to use Matter, and our impressions of Matter devices so far.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

Table of Contents

• What Is Matter?
• What Makes Matter Different?
• When Will Matter Arrive?
• What About Other Smart Home Standards?
• What Devices Does Matter Work With?
• How Do Smart Home Hubs Fit In?
• What Do I Need to Use Matter?
• What About Security and Privacy?
• Will Manufacturers and Platforms Limit Functionality?
• Will Matter Succeed?

Matter enables different devices and ecosystems to play nicely. Device manufacturers must comply with the Matter standard to ensure their devices are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others. For folks building a smart home, Matter theoretically lets you buy any device and use the voice assistant or platform you prefer to control it (yes, you can use different voice assistants to talk to the same product).

For example, you can buy a Matter-supported smart bulb and set it up with Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa—without having to worry about compatibility. Right now, some devices already support multiple platforms (like Alexa or Google Assistant), but Matter will expand that platform support and make setting up your new devices faster and easier.

The first protocol runs on Wi-Fi and Thread network layers and uses Bluetooth Low Energy for device setup. While it supports various platforms, you must choose the voice assistants and apps you want to use—there is no central Matter app or assistant. Because Matter works on your local network, you can expect your smart home devices to be more responsive to you, and they should continue to work even when your internet goes down.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (or CSA, formerly the Zigbee Alliance) maintains the Matter standard. What sets it apart is the breadth of its membership (more than 550 tech companies), the willingness to adopt and merge disparate technologies, and the fact that it is an open source project. Interested companies can use the software development kit (SDK) royalty-free to incorporate their devices into the Matter ecosystem. This is much simpler than certifying devices individually with each smart home platform.

Growing out of the Zigbee Alliance gives Matter a firm foundation. Bringing the main smart home platforms (Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings) to the same table is an achievement. It is optimistic to imagine a seamless adoption of Matter across the board, but it has enjoyed a rush of enthusiasm with many smart home brands jumping aboard, including August, Schlage, and Yale in smart locks; Belkin, Cync, GE Lighting, Sengled, Signify (Philips Hue), and Nanoleaf in smart lighting; and others like Arlo, Comcast, Eve, TP-Link, and LG.

Matter has been in the works for years. The first release was due in late 2020, but it was delayed to the following year, rebranded as Matter, and then touted for a summer release. After another delay, the Matter 1.0 specification and certification program opened in 2022. The SDK, tools, and test cases were made available, and eight authorized test labs opened for product certification.

The first wave of Matter-supported smart home gadgets went on sale in the fall of 2022, and we have seen a steady trickle since then. The first update to the specification, Matter 1.1, arrived in May 2023 and consisted largely of bug fixes. Announced in October 2023, Matter 1.2 added support for nine new device types, including refrigerators, robot vacuums, and air purifiers, alongside improvements to existing categories.

The road to smart home nirvana is paved with different standards, like Zigbee, Z-Wave, Samsung SmartThings, Wi-Fi HaLow, and Insteon, to name a few. These protocols and others will continue to exist and operate. Google has merged its Thread and Weave technologies into Matter. The standard also employs Wi-Fi and Ethernet standards and uses Bluetooth LE for device setup.

Matter is not a single technology and should evolve and improve over time. It won’t cover every possible use case for every device and scenario, so other standards will continue to develop. The more platforms and standards merge with Matter, the greater its potential to succeed, but the challenge of making it all work seamlessly also grows.

Some devices will work with Matter after a firmware update. Others won’t ever be compatible. There’s no simple answer here. Many devices that currently work with Thread, Z-Wave, or Zigbee should be able to work with Matter, but it’s not a given that they will get upgrades. It is best to check with manufacturers about specific devices and future support. According to the Alliance, 1,214 devices have passed certification as of October 2023, though not all are available to buy yet. Look for the Matter logo to find compatible devices.

The first specification, or Matter 1.0, only covered certain categories of devices, including:

• Light bulbs and switches
• Smart plugs
• Smart locks
• Safety and security sensors
• Media devices including TVs
• Smart blinds and shades
• Garage door controllers
• Thermostats
• HVAC controllers

With Matter 1.2, nine new categories were added to the list:

• Refrigerators
• Room air conditioners
• Dishwashers
• Laundry washers
• Robotic vacuums
• Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms
• Air quality sensors
• Air purifiers
• Fans

We expect home security cameras, energy management, and EV charging to come in 2024.

To achieve compatibility with Matter, some brands, like Philips Hue, Aqara, and SwitchBot, have updated their hubs or bridges. This is one way to sidestep the problem of incompatible older hardware. Updating hubs to work with the new Matter standard enables you to connect older systems, which will demonstrate that standards can coexist. But getting the full potential benefit of Matter will often require new hardware.

The underlying Thread technology in Matter allows devices, like smart speakers or lights, to act as Thread routers and create a mesh network that can pass data, increasing range and reliability. Unlike traditional smart home hubs, these Thread routers can’t see inside the packets of data they exchange. Data can be sent securely end-to-end by a network of devices from different manufacturers.

You need a Matter controller and a smart home platform app to use Matter. Any Matter controller can control any Matter device, and you can pick the smart home platform app that suits you best. You likely already have a Matter controller, since most of the smart speakers, displays, and hubs from major players like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung are also Matter controllers. The Matter standard is also built into Android and iOS, so you can use smartphones and tablets to control your Matter devices.

For the best experience with Matter, you need a Thread border router. Some devices are both Matter controllers and Thread border routers, including:

• Amazon Echo (4th Gen)
• Amazon Eero 6, 6 Plus, Pro 6, Pro 6E, PoE 6, and PoE Gateway
• Apple HomePod (2nd Gen)
• Apple HomePod Mini
• Apple TV 4K (2nd Gen and 3rd Gen with Wi-Fi + Ethernet)
• Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen)
• Google Nest Hub Max
• Google Nest Wifi and Nest Wifi Pro
• Samsung SmartThings Station, Hub v3, and Hub Dongle
• Samsung Smart TVs (CU8000, CU7000, MNA89MS1BA, NEO QLED 8K and 4K)

Fears about security and privacy have cropped up frequently on the smart home scene. Matter is designed to be secure. The CSA has published a set of security and privacy principles and plans to use distributed ledger technology and Public Key Infrastructure to validate devices. This should ensure folks are connecting authentic, certified, and up-to-date devices to their homes and networks. Data collection and sharing will still be between you and the device manufacturer or platform provider.

Where before you had a single hub to secure, Matter devices will mostly connect directly to the internet. That makes them potentially more susceptible to hackers and malware. But Matter also provides for local control, so the command from your phone or smart display doesn’t have to go through a cloud server. It can pass directly to the device on your home network.

While the big platform providers can see the benefit in a common standard, they are not going to open up full control of their devices to their competitors. There is a gap between the walled garden ecosystem experience and Matter functionality. So far, Matter functionality is limited, and manufacturers are keeping certain features proprietary.

For example, you may be able to turn an Apple device on or off with a Google Assistant voice command, but you will have to use Siri or an Apple app to tweak some settings or access advanced features. Manufacturers signing up to Matter are under no obligation to implement the entire specification, so the extent of support is likely to be mixed.

Matter is presented as a smart home panacea, but only time will tell. Few, if any, innovations get everything right out of the gate. But there is potential value in seeing a Matter logo on a device and knowing it will work with your existing smart home setup, particularly in households with iPhones, Android phones, and Alexa devices. The freedom to be able to mix and match your devices and voice assistants is enticing.

The reality is sadly falling somewhat short of the promise so far. Setup of Matter devices is easy, but there are issues with multiple Thread networks, and we have experienced glitches when trying to use more than one platform simultaneously to control devices. No one wants to have to select devices based on compatibility. We want to choose devices with the best feature set, the highest quality, and the most desirable designs. Matter is slowly making that easier, but it still has a way to go.

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Researchers are sounding the alarm on excessive noise that kids and teens are exposed to, and how it might have permanent consequences.

The number one culprits are those phones and tablets.

The world is a loud place. We are constantly exposed to excessive noise levels. Some of it is unavoidable. Others, not so much.

Most parents have given in, at some point, to those devices, like phones or tablets.

"When you needed to do something, do dishes, take a call, you gave the kid a phone, just to occupy them for a few minutes. And now it's hard to get these things away from them," Montclair resident Christina Cattell said.

"My daughter has earbuds in her ears at all times, unless she has lost them," Candi Carter added.

Experts say those earbuds are usually too loud. A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that many kids are exposed to potentially harmful noise from infancy -- and the effects can last a lifetime.

"Once hearing is lost due to noise, that is generally permanent," said Dr. Sophie Balk, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital at Montefiore.

Balk is the lead author of the new study on noise.

"It could be like immediately after a loud blast, like an explosion, but more likely it's due to repeated exposures over time to less loud noises, but noises that are still too loud," Balk said.

Like, those headphones.

The study also noted concerns about infants' exposure to sleep machines or sound machines.

Some studies do show potential benefits in using white noise to help kids sleep, but it, too, might be too loud.

"If you are going to use a sleep machine, we want you to set it at the lowest volume possible, for the shortest time possible, and set it as far away from the baby as possible," Balk said.

In addition to turning down the volume, experts say it's a good idea for kids and teens to take listening breaks, and to use earbuds with caution.

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Called Airbender, the wearable upper limb prosthetic is designed to be affordable, comfortable and intuitive for young users. A unique turbine and gearbox optimise torque and revolutions per minute (RPM).

“Body-powered prosthetics only considers the musculoskeletal system,” observed Jeroen Bergmann, an associate professor of engineering sciences who leads the project at the University of Oxford. “I came up with the idea for a breath-powered system after patients and clinicians expressed a need for new devices that are easy to use, especially for children.”

Currently, the most prevalent prosthetic hands rely on technology that hasn’t changed much in more than 200 years. These cable and harness systems require muscular strength to operate.

To develop a breath-powered system, Bergmann recruited postdoctoral biomedical engineering researcher Dr Vikranth Nagaraja for the project in February 2019. A year later, postdoctoral engineer Dr Jhonatan Da Ponte Lopes joined them.

To produce an operational device, Bergmann also partnered with the non-profit organisations Mobility India and St. John’s Medical College Hospital in Bengaluru, UK-based charity LimbBo Foundation and 3D LifePrints (now Insight Surgery). The team received invaluable manufacturing support from the departmental workshops, particularly 3D-printing support from Dr Peter Walters.

“The clinical and patient communities helped us tremendously,” Bergmann said. “Now we are optimising the hand functionality and manufacturability and will be exploring new funding opportunities to move our work into the clinical testing phase.”

Shrugging off the past

Worldwide, 40 million people have limb differences, an inclusive term for body parts missing congenitally or lost (eg, from trauma). Upper limb differences can range from missing part of a finger to both arms. Nagaraja noted that according to estimates from published literature, only about 3% to 5% of patients with limb differences receive prosthetic care.

“There’s evidence showing that children who lose limbs and are fitted with prosthetics have a higher level of development than those who don’t get a prosthetic at all,” Da Ponte Lopes pointed out.

In 1818, a German dentist named Peter Baliff introduced the first upper limb system that enabled the wearer to flex the fingers on a prosthetic hand through trunk and shoulder movement. World Wars I and II prompted advancements such as sockets and tool attachments.

By the late 1940s, a unique cable mechanism began replacing the straps. Originally patented by Irish inventor Ernest Monnington Bowden in 1898 for bicycles, the cable consists of a thin wire enclosed in a larger outer sheath. Shoulder shrugging pulls and releases a gripper attached to the Bowden cable, opening and closing the prosthetic hand or hook in proportion to that tension.

“But these systems have been reported to be very inefficient,” Nagaraja said. “The wearer ends up exerting almost twice the amount of force to get a good grip. It’s tiring.”

Additionally, children with a congenital upper limb deficiency have been found to have lower strength in both their deficient and intact arms compared to non-disabled children. These children often lack adequate muscular strength to operate these devices comfortably.

Hot and humid conditions make it even more challenging to use a harness-based system. Children must also be refitted two or three times a year to accommodate for their constant growth, which insurance companies often will not cover. The prosthetic alone can cost $3600 to $12,000 or more, making it unaffordable to low-resource communities that often rely on out-of-pocket expenditures for health.

While weighing alternatives, Bergmann reasoned that humans intuitively use breathing to coordinate and control functions such as speech, singing and even playing woodwind and brass musical instruments. He sought to harness respiration to both power and guide assistive technology.

Building a prototype

Bergmann’s first breath-powered device helped him formulate key questions, but admittedly didn’t resemble a real prosthesis. The cable and pulley system on a frame with four 3D-printed fingers weighed half a kilogram, and the fingers took nearly a minute to close fully.

Extracting power from air entering a device calls for a turbine, but the high humidity and food and other debris in our breath can easily damage a turbine’s blades. Bergmann realised that wouldn’t be a problem with a Tesla turbine.

In 1913, famed inventor Nikola Tesla patented a bladeless turbine that uses disks mounted on a shaft. Fluid goes between the slightly spaced-out disks, making the rotor spin. However, when Tesla scaled up the turbine, high speeds damaged the disk material at the time, lowering the overall mechanical efficiency.

Tesla’s invention couldn’t replace the piston combustion engine, but his concept suited the Airbender project. “It is bidirectional in nature so you can use two tubes for different movements instead of two turbines or for introducing a complex mechanism to reverse opening and closing,” Da Ponte Lopes explained. He added that the components’ simple geometries enabled them to be 3D-printed, keeping costs low.

He found extensive scientific literature on the airflow’s behaviour between Tesla turbine disks, including the torque generated. One paper in the series presented a set of ordinary differential equations. Da Ponte Lopes reproduced those results with MATLAB.

Components of the breath-powered prosthetic. Image credit: University of Oxford.

Modelling and simulating the virtual prototype

Virtual prototyping and modelling with MATLAB and Simulink were essential to iterating through potential solutions for the prosthesis turbine. Bergmann’s team set up a virtual prototype using a system of ODEs (ordinary differential equations) that describe the fluid behaviour inside the rotor.

“The libraries are one of the main advantages of MATLAB. For differential equations, you don’t have to spend time wondering whether the code is right,” said Da Ponte Lopes. “Another is visualisation. I could make changes to the code very easily.”

Bergmann agreed. “MATLAB and Simulink have well-developed functions and packages, which allow for rapid, high-quality design and testing of models,” he said.

What’s more, the pandemic forced the engineers to work remotely from various places. For a long time, they plugged away at virtual prototyping and computational fluid dynamics. Finally, with restrictions easing, Da Ponte Lopes returned to campus to build a testbench for characterising and optimising the Tesla turbine system.

“That’s not something you can buy, even if you have a million pounds to spend,” he said. “We needed to start from scratch.” Controlling the airflow amount and RPM in the testbench was crucial. Although the team had a specially designed mass flow controller that provided exact air amounts, RPM still posed a challenge.

A brushless DC motor could act like a brake or generator, depending on how the turbine functioned, similar to the brakes in Formula 1 cars. But Da Ponte Lopes wanted to ensure this expensive equipment would work before purchasing it, so he modelled the motor and control setup using Simulink first.

Optimising the prototype

The Airbender team wanted to ensure that users, especially children, could easily operate their prosthetic devices through variations in their natural breathing, rather than through bigger and harder breaths. To achieve this, they connected the Tesla turbine to a gearbox that converts airflow from each breath into a low speed with high torque. They opted for a gearbox with a worm gear that can change directions while staying locked in place through friction. This gearbox actuates the fingers.

“We had to be efficient and optimal in our designs to extract the most power from a child’s breathing,” Nagaraja remembered. “Any friction or losses would not have allowed us to achieve the needed functionality. That was weighing on our minds.”

With the testbench ready in July 2021, the engineers found that individual components worked separately, but not as an integrated whole. Fingers jammed, the gearbox wouldn’t spin and other issues stemming from misalignments cropped up.

“Finally, after many iterations and fine-tuning, we had a breakthrough. At one point, I blew directly into the motor, and the fingers closed very quickly,” Nagaraja said. “We had a couple of children try this, and they were able to control the device the same way.” The international peer-reviewed journal Prosthesis published an overview of the Airbender system on 29 July 2022.

Lightening the load

Every year in India, there are more than 40,000 new upper extremity amputations, mainly due to electrical burns, industrial accidents or trauma, according to Mobility India. The options for amputees in the country are usually ineffective or too expensive.

A child with an upper limb difference who doesn’t receive prosthetic care has asymmetrical loading on the trunk, which can affect gait, cause overuse injuries and lead to scoliosis. Thwarted developmental growth hampers the child’s quality of life and the ensuing problems ripple throughout the larger community.

Since Mobility India began in 1994, the organisation has worked at the grassroots level to provide services for people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. “Upper extremity assistive products remain limited locally to one type that only comes in two sizes,” said Ritu Ghosh, academics director and principal of Mobility India’s Rehabilitation, Research & Training Centre in Bengaluru.

“When we discussed the concept of the Airbender project, we felt this could be another design choice offered in the country,” she said. “The simplicity of the technology makes it appropriate not only for urban populations but for rural populations as well.”

Now the terminal device looks much more like a prosthetic hand. It fits a small wrist adapter on a socket that clinicians produce for patients, forming a naturalistic interface. The engineering team anticipates that it could be manufactured at a cost comparable to traditional body-powered devices.

In 2022, the project team collaborated with Mobility India to recruit 15 children and teens with upper limb differences in Bengaluru for a clinical usability study of the latest Airbender prototype.

“It’s a collaborative and user-centred approach where we involve patients, clinical teams and parents,” Nagaraja said. “We received favourable feedback. Some of the children were adventurous and playful with the device. Several teenagers seemed shy about breathing into the device in public settings, but said they liked the technology.”

Afterward, the team published another peer-reviewed journal article that details the user testing. They plan to carry out further product development prior to entering clinical trials. Based on feedback, they intend to make improvements to the breath-powered device’s weight, sound and appearance before bringing it to market.

Clinical usability study results. Image credit: University of Oxford.

“Our hope is to create solutions for those who previously did not have any available,” Bergmann said. “Apart from providing function, these devices empower children to interact with the external world and realise their full potential.”

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The FLAMINGO simulations calculate the evolution of all components of the universe—ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy—according to the laws of physics. As the simulation progresses, virtual galaxies and clusters of galaxies emerge. Three papers have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: one describing the methods, another presenting the simulations and the third examining how well the simulations reproduce the large-scale structure of the universe.

Facilities such as the Euclid Space Telescope recently launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA's JWST collect impressive amounts of data on galaxies, quasars, and stars. Simulations such as FLAMINGO play a key role in the scientific interpretation of the data by connecting predictions from theories of our universe to the observed data.

According to the theory, the properties of our entire universe are set by a few numbers called 'cosmological parameters' (six of them in the simplest version of the theory). The values of these parameters can be measured very precisely in various ways.

One of these methods relies on the properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a faint background glow left over from the early universe. However, these values do not match those measured by other techniques that rely on the way in which the gravitational force of galaxies bends light (lensing). These 'tensions' could signal the demise of the standard model of cosmology—the cold dark matter model.

The computer simulations may be able to reveal the cause of these tensions because they can inform scientists about possible biases (systematic errors) in the measurements. If none of these prove sufficient to explain away the tensions, the theory will be in real trouble.

So far, the computer simulations used to compare to the observations only track cold dark matter. "Although the dark matter dominates gravity, the contribution of ordinary matter can no longer be neglected," says research leader Joop Schaye (Leiden University), "since that contribution could be similar to the deviations between the models and the observations."

The first results show that both neutrinos and ordinary matter are essential for making accurate predictions, but do not eliminate the tensions between the different cosmological observations.

Simulations that also track ordinary, baryonic matter (also known as baryonic matter) are much more challenging and require much more computing power. This is because ordinary matter—which makes up only sixteen percent of all matter in the universe—feels not only gravity but also gas pressure, which can cause matter to be blown out of galaxies by active black holes and supernovae far into intergalactic space.

The strength of these intergalactic winds depends on explosions in the interstellar medium and is very difficult to predict. On top of this, the contribution of neutrinos, subatomic particles of very small but not precisely known mass, is also important but their motion has not been simulated so far.

The astronomers have completed a series of computer simulations tracking structure formation in dark matter, ordinary matter, and neutrinos. Ph.D. student Roi Kugel (Leiden University) explains, "The effect of galactic winds was calibrated using machine learning, by comparing the predictions of lots of different simulations of relatively small volumes with the observed masses of galaxies and the distribution of gas in clusters of galaxies."

The researchers simulated the model that best describes the calibration observations with a supercomputer in different cosmic volumes and at different resolutions. In addition, they varied the parameters of the model, including the strength of galactic winds, the mass of neutrinos, and the cosmological parameters in simulations of slightly smaller but still large volumes.

The largest simulation uses 300 billion resolution elements (particles with the mass of a small galaxy) in a cubic volume with edges of ten billion light years. This is believed to be the largest cosmological computer simulation with ordinary matter ever completed. Matthieu Schaller, of Leiden University, said, "To make this simulation possible, we developed a new code, SWIFT, which efficiently distributes the computational work over 30 thousand CPUs."

The FLAMINGO simulations open a new virtual window on the universe that will help make the most of cosmological observations. In addition, the large amount of (virtual) data creates opportunities to make new theoretical discoveries and to test new data analysis techniques, including machine learning.

Using machine learning, astronomers can then make predictions for random virtual universes. By comparing these with large-scale structure observations, they can measure the values of cosmological parameters. Moreover, they can measure the corresponding uncertainties by comparing with observations that constrain the effect of galactic winds.

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This month has been filled with conflicting rumors of an Apple product launch that either will or won’t happen, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now says the October event is on, and that it could bring a long-overdue iMac upgrade. In the Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that sources close to Apple said a 24-inch iMac is on track to launch this month. Based on current retail supplies and shipping dates for certain models, Gurman suggests we could also see some new MacBook Pros.

“Apple retail stores are in short supply of the iMac, as well as the 13-inch MacBook Pro and high-end MacBook Pro — two other models that may be due for a refresh,” Gurman wrote, noting that current shipping estimates for these models show delays until November. That, plus the timing of the company’s earnings call — in November this year, instead of October — suggests Apple has something planned. Gurman speculates the launch event may take place on October 30 or 31.

The 24-inch M1 iMac came out in April 2021 and hasn’t been updated since, making it a good candidate for a refresh. The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro, which was released in June 2022, is also due for an upgrade. Mac news was also absent from Apple's iPhone-centric keynote last month, where it also revealed two Apple Watch reveals, along with final release details for the latest versions of iOS, macOS and watchOS. Indeed, Apple has a tendency to break out Mac news into separate announcements, and often chooses October specifically.

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AMD has designed the Ryzen XDNA AI engine for less demanding AI inference tasks like audio, photo, and video processing. Its goal is to provide quicker response times compared to online services, and it is also more energy-efficient compared to solutions based on CPUs or GPUs. The engine has the capacity to manage up to four simultaneous AI streams, and it can process INT8 and bfloat16 instructions. 

According to AMD, the performance of this engine surpasses that of the neural engine in Apple's M2 processor. AMD's Xilinx-based AI engine is compatible with popular frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and ONNX, but the problem is that the company's Ryzen AI Software Platform version 0.8 only supports Windows. By contrast, Intel has already integrated open-source AI processor support in Linux.

This limitation has sparked a discussion within the tech community, particularly among Linux users who desire the same advanced capabilities on their systems. AMD has been receptive to these discussions, enabling a platform on GitHub for users to express their interest and thoughts on Linux compatibility.

Taking user feedback seriously, AMD has demonstrated flexibility and openness to expanding Ryzen AI’s compatibility based on customer demand to Linux. A GitHub ticket that allows users to voice their need for Linux support has been reopened by an AMD staff member, signifying the company's willingness to listen and potentially act based on the community's needs and interests.

The only question is when will AMD be able to bring proper support for Ryzen AI to Linux. The company yet has to release final version 1.0 of its Ryzen AI Software Platform for Windows, which is dominant in the realm of PCs. As a result, the it's almost certain that the majority of the company's effort will be dedicated to Windows, not Linux, in the coming months.

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