The CHI 2026 conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is happening this week, and Apple is all set to showcase its latest research on human-computer interaction (CHI) and how it has implemented in its products.

Apple will present three studies focused on using AI for product design and accessibility:

• Improving User Interface Generation Models from Designer Feedback talks about how Apple used feedback from designers through familiar interactions, such as commenting, sketching, and direct manipulation, to fine-tune AI models to generate higher-quality UIs.
• The Way We Notice, That’s What Really Matters: Instantiating UI Components with Distinguishing Variations discusses how developers can use AI tools to test the user interface components they build.
• SceneScout: Towards AI Agent-driven Access to Street View Imagery for Blind Users discusses a multimodal LLM designed to help blind and low-vision individuals better explore street-level imagery and descriptions.

"We are proud to again sponsor the conference, which brings together the scientific and industrial research communities focused on human-computer interaction," Apple said. Apart from the above research papers, the Cupertino's giant booth at CHI 2026 will have a hands-on demo of the AirPods Pro 3 to showcase the human-centered research behind its redesigned fit.

The design and fit on the latest AirPods Pro is said to be backed by analysis of over 10,000 3D ear scans and over 100,000 hours of user research across different factors, including biomechanics and acoustics. The demos will be at the following local times:

• April 13 (Monday): 18:00 - 19:30
• April 14 (Tuesday): 15:45 - 18:00
• April 15 (Wednesday): 12:45 - 14:15
• April 16 (Tursday): 12:45 - 14:15

That said, the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) CHI 2026 conference will be held in Spain, Barcelona from April 13 through April 17. Google is the hero sponsor of the event and the company will present 30 research papers and contribute to 10 workshops.

Image via DepositPhotos.com

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 11 April 2026 at 3:48 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

The first Snapdragon X2 PCs are here, or at least just around the corner. Reviewers have shared thoughts on the ASUS Zenbook A16 and the laptop is set to start shipping in the next few weeks.

The Zenbook A16 is powered by a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor and makes a strong case for the new generation of chips from Qualcomm.

Our Ben Wilson said the following about the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme:

"Comparing the scores of first-generation Snapdragon X Elite processors in Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 and, to a lesser extent, the Surface Pro 11, shows how much of an incredible jump the new X2 Elite Extreme provides. A Cinebench 2024 test even has the Zenbook A16 passing HP's "insanely powerful" ZBook Ultra 14 with AMD's Strix Halo chip, the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395. Impressive."

Other Snapdragon X2 chips are about to hit shelves as well, including the less powerful but arguably more important Snapdragon X2 Plus.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x with a Snapdragon X2 Plus is available for preorder and is expected to start shipping in mid-May.

If you already have a laptop powered by a Snapdragon X2 processor, it's important that you grab the most recent update.

The update to Snapdragon Control Panel 2026.1.1.0 brings a single change, but it's an important one:

• Fixed an issue that could cause incorrect graphics drivers to be downloaded for Snapdragon X2

The update was spotted and shared by Reddit user spinstartshere in the r/snapdragon subreddit.

Since Snapdragon X2 processors are so new, the issue likely affects a small number of users, but it's important to keep your system up to date. One user in that Reddit thread noted that the Zenbook A16 tried to install an old driver.

If you have a Snapdragon X2-powered laptop, please share in the comments if you've run into the issue that can cause incorrect graphics drivers to be downloaded.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 11 April 2026 at 5:00 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Meta’s Superintelligence Labs launched its first generative AI model, called Muse Spark, earlier this week. It is currently available through the Meta AI app, but the company plans to integrate Muse Spark across all of its platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—in the coming weeks.

Meta claims that Muse Spark was designed, in part, to be better at answering questions people have about their health. The company even worked with “over 1,000 physicians to curate training data that enables more factual and comprehensive responses,” according to Meta’s announcement blog.

As the new model rolls out to millions of users, I tested Muse Spark to see how it would respond to health-related questions. When I asked how it could help me, the bot listed off a few basic uses, like building a workout routine or generating questions to ask my doctor, but a direct request for my health data stood out:

“Paste your numbers from a fitness tracker, glucose monitor, or a lab report. I’ll calculate trends, flag patterns, and visualize them,” read the Meta AI output. “Example: ‘Here are my last 10 blood pressure readings—is there a pattern?’”

Nudging users to upload their health data is not unique to Meta. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude both have chatbot modes designed specifically for helping users understand their health and make decisions. For example, you can open Claude and connect it to your Apple or Android health data with just the flip of an in-app toggle. Then, Claude will use that information as part of its answers. Google also lets you upload medical data to Fitbit for its AI health coach to parse.

Courtesy of Meta

Handing over this kind of data to any AI tool is a risky decision, even if users are able to generate personalized advice. “Usage of these models can be really tricky,” says Monica Agrawal, an assistant professor at Duke University and cofounder of Layer Health, an AI platform for hospitals to examine medical charts. “The more information you give it, the more context it has about you and, potentially, it can provide better responses. But on the flip side, there are major privacy concerns to sharing your health data without protections.”

Agrawal is concerned about users uploading sensitive data to chatbots since these commonly used AI tools are not compliant with HIPAA protections, the landmark US law that guards patients from having their sensitive health information exposed. Layer Health is HIPAA compliant. It’s a high standard of privacy that people are used to experiencing during doctor visits. The information someone shares with a bot is much more loosely regulated, even if it's their clinical lab result.

Anything you share in a chat with Meta AI may be stored and used to train future AI models. “We keep training data for as long as we need it on a case-by-case basis to ensure an AI model is operating appropriately, safely, and efficiently,” reads Meta’s privacy policy about generative AI. Meta has also stated it may tailor advertisements for users based on their interactions with the AI features.

Medical experts I spoke with balked at the idea of uploading their own health data for an AI model, like Muse Spark, to analyze. “These chatbots now allow you to connect your own biometric data, put in your own lab information, and honestly, that makes me pretty nervous,” says Gauri Agarwal, a doctor of medicine and associate professor at the University of Miami. “I certainly wouldn't connect my own health information to a service that I'm not fully able to control, understand where that information is being stored, or how it's being utilized.” She recommends people stick to lower-stakes, more general interactions, like prepping questions for your doctor.

It can be tempting to rely on AI-assisted help for interpreting health, especially with the skyrocketing cost of medical treatments and overall inaccessibility of regular doctor visits for some people navigating the US health care system.

“You will be forgiven for going online and delegating what used to be a powerful, important personal relationship between a doctor and a patient—to a robot,” says Kenneth Goodman, founder of the University of Miami’s Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy. “I think running into that without due diligence is dangerous.” Before he considers using any of these tools, Goodman wants to see research proving that they are beneficial for your health, not just better at answering health questions than some competitor chatbot.

When I asked Meta AI for more information about how it would interpret my health information, if I provided any, the chatbot said it was not trying to replace my physician; the outputs were for educational purposes. “Think of me as a med school professor, not your doctor,” said Meta AI. That’s still a lofty claim.

The bot said the best way to get an interpretation of my health data was just to “dump the raw data,” like clinical lab reports, and tell it what my goals were. Meta AI would then create charts, summarize the info, and give a “referral nudge if needed.” In other chats I conducted with Meta AI, the bot prompted me to strip personal details before uploading lab results, but these caveats were not present in every test conversation.

“People have long used the internet to ask health questions,” a Meta spokesperson tells WIRED. “With Meta AI and Muse Spark, people are in control of what information to share, and our terms make clear they should only share what they’re comfortable with.”

In addition to privacy concerns, experts I spoke with expressed trepidation about how these AI tools can be sycophantic and influenced by how users ask questions. “A model might take the information that's provided more as a given without questioning the assumptions that the patient inherently made when asking the question,” says Agrawal.

When I asked how to lose weight and nudged the bot towards extreme answers, Meta AI helped in ways that could be catastrophic for someone with anorexia. As I asked about the benefits of intermittent fasting, I told Meta AI that I wanted to fast five days every week. Despite flagging that this was not for most people and putting me at risk for eating disorders, Meta AI crafted a meal plan for me where I would only eat around 500 calories most days, which would leave me malnourished.
 

Chatting with a bot can feel like an intimate, personal affair, even when it isn’t. Last year, Meta AI launched an in-app feed where users could discover conversations other people had with the bot. Some of the conversations available in that public feed included medical questions and embarrassing prompts that users likely did not intend to widely broadcast. Agarwal says people should avoid being lulled into a false sense of confidence about how their data is being collected and what will be done with their sensitive information.

“We all say an oath at medical school, when we put on our white coats, that those conversations are sacrosanct,” she says. “These bots aren't taking those oaths.”

Source

Gabe Newell's a true rarity in the game industry, having found massive success both creatively and in business through Valve. But a drawback of such accomplishments is that it's hard for him to find people to honestly collaborate with in developing projects, resulting in his stepping back from actively making games.

That's according to Josh Weier, the project lead designer on Portal 2, who told Kiwi Talkz about how Newell realized he was surrounded by yes people. "He always wanted to be part of the team, but being Gabe and being in his position, that never really worked," he recalls.

"Because people would be like, 'Whatever you say', and he was more like, 'No no no, I want to be part of the team and come up with ideas,'" Weier states. "That was really hard for people, so I think there was a period where he stepped back and was like, 'Alright I guess I'm just not going to be able to interact with everyone that way.'"

This would've been in the late 2000s, when Valve was riding high on Half-Life 2 and Steam had become a dominant force in PC games distribution. Even if he was adamant about collaboration, I can imagine the reluctance to argue with Newell on just about anything, because he's a guy who led several industry-shaping releases.

The danger here is becoming like George Lucas on the Star Wars prequels, where nobody challenges Newell, and the result is something more divisive than intended. Part of the reason making things stops being fun is that people start idolizing you or placing particular weight on your perspective, when you want to be just another creative in the room trying to make the best thing.

Newell is credited as a producer on the second Portal, and for the most part, his participation on Valve releases afterward is reduced to thanks or generic credits as part of Valve as a whole. He seems to just oversee things now, and likely offers his insight on occasion, but from the sounds of Weier's comments, it's rare he'll really get his hands dirty. Anyway, he's too busy getting Half-Life 3 ready for the Steam Machine, right? I'm on to you, Gabe.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 10 April 2026 at 4:04 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Celebrating Anno Day, Ubisoft Mainz held a special nine-hour livestream where it unveiled what is coming next to its latest entry to the city-building and management series. Anno 117: Pax Romana's first gameplay DLC now has a release date, with Prophecies of Ash landing later this month involving an active volcano.

The DLC is introducing Cinis, which is being described as the largest island ever seen in the Anno franchise. There will be more than enough river slots and mines for players to explore and exploit as they settle this land. Meanwhile, Obsidian is coming in as a new resource as a part of the DLC, which can be harvested to create luxury goods like carved idols and board games to satisfy the population demands.

A new deity to worship is included too. Players that build a temple for Vulcan, the god of the forge, will see their mine productivity increasing while also improving fire safety in the region.

While all this sounds amazing for an island, the one problem is its looming volcano. This will introduce its own gameplay mechanics that have players dealing with its eruption, volcanic winter, bloom, and more phases. Check out the new trailer below.

Aside from the Prophecies of Ash DLC that's landing in April, Ubisoft also revealed that the Hippodrome DLC will arrive in August, while Dawn of Delta is planned for November, which would complete the Anno 117 Year 1 DLC plans.

Anno 117: Pax Romana's Prophecies of Ash DLC is launching on April 23. The DLC will be included in the Year 1 Pass, while also landing as a part of the Ubisoft+ subscription. Ubisoft revealed that another free weekend will soon be hitting the base game as well.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 10 April 2026 at 12:12 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

The use of generative AI in game development has been quite a hot topic ever since the AI boom began and publishers and studios have experimented with the technology.

A lot of discussion has been centered around how AI might streamline the development process, but speaking in a new interview with The Expansion Pass, former Microsoft gaming and Xbox VP Ed Fries says "there's even more potential" in how AI could affect gameplay and design.

"For the future, I think the big question mark is really AI ... there's kind of obvious advantages where AI's gonna make building games faster and cheaper, with smaller teams, and those are great things if they're done well. But I think there's even more potential with AI to change the experience itself," he said.

Fries went on to note that it's difficult to predict the impact new technologies like AI will have on game development, as well as the type of games that developers create. He cited Microsoft's Kinect — the infamous motion-tracking device that originally shipped with the Xbox One — as an example of a novel idea that ultimately didn't gain significant traction. But with AI, he says, devs are still figuring out how it could be used.

"With AI, it's like that," he continued. "What new possibilities is this gonna open up? Really, the game designers are gonna spend the next years wrestling with this new technology, and trying to meld that into what games are today, and what players expect from games, in ways that make them better, and don't just make them worse."

In the midst of that process, many in the wider gaming community are standing in fierce opposition to AI, with that resistance fueled by the appearance of jarring "AI slop" art in games like Crimson Desert as well as NVIDIA's extremely controversial DLSS 5 tech. Fries, though, believes that AI will become a permanent fixture of game development regardless of public opinion, and says it's already being used in tons of different ways.

"I would say virtually every game team is doing it already. And AI is being integrated in so many ways that it would be impossible not to use AI," he asserted. "So, like, it's built into Photoshop now. You've got an artist, they're drawing something, they want to take this character and move it to a different part of the scene. It's gonna fill in where that character was — guess what? That's generative AI filling in where that character was."

"Even Microsoft Paint has something called 'Generative Erase' now. It's like the simplest program on your machine, [and] it has AI erase built into it now," Fries added. "AI's gonna be built into everything. There won't be a line where it's 'AI' and 'not AI' anymore. It's just going to be smarter software that solves problems better for people."

Ultimately, despite ballooning costs that've driven up the price of just about everything, I do think Fries is right in saying that the genie is out of the bottle, and that AI is here to stay at least in some capacity moving forward.

My hope, though, is that the industry settles on ways to integrate AI ethically and responsibly, and uses it in ways that optimize workflows and support the people building games, rather than in ways that replace them, supersede human creativity, and steal the work of others to fuel generated outputs. Only time will tell.

Do you agree with Ed Fries?

The use of generative AI has undoubtedly become a huge topic in the gaming industry, with discussion ramping up in recent months as more and more games integrate it more directly.

I'd like to hear from you: do you agree with Ed Fries that AI will inevitably become a core part of game development, or do you believe that its projected importance is being overestimated? Let me know in the comments.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 10 April 2026 at 12:11 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

In a new survey released Thursday, a nonprofit AI research center found that half of American adults used AI in the past week, either for personal or work use, with 20% of full-time workers saying that AI has taken over parts of their job.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Epoch AI — a leading nonprofit focused on data-driven research about artificial intelligence’s development and impact — surveyed 2,000 American adults about how and when they use AI.

While the survey found that AI replaced some tasks at work, 15% of full-time workers said that they had started doing new tasks at work that they wouldn’t have done without AI services, with a plus or minus 2.5% margin of error.

Caroline Falkman Olsson, who helped lead the research for Epoch AI, said the results confirmed broad assumptions about AI’s growing impact in the workplace. “When we actually look at what people report for their AI usage, we do see augmentation and automation effects,” Olsson told NBC News, cautioning that more granular research is required to understand the exact tasks that are being impacted. “But we need to figure out how people’s actual workplaces and work tasks are changing.”

Epoch AI was founded in 2021 as a volunteer effort to gather and analyze data about trends in AI development. Since the research center gained attention in 2022 studying the amount of computation power leading AI companies used to train their models, Epoch AI has expanded to study the price of AI services, the construction of data centers around the world and the types of chips used to develop AI models.

The latest survey was conducted from March 3 to 5 via Ipsos’ online polling platform. Among adults who used AI in the past week, the research found that almost 50% used AI between two and five days per week. However, the survey also showed that most people (62.5%) only performed 1 to 2 quick tasks using AI on their most intense day of AI usage, in contrast to the roughly 6% of respondents who used AI heavily.

Nicholas Miailhe, an AI policy leader and expert at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, an international AI initiative comprising 46 countries and the European Union, said the results should be a wake-up call for workers and policymakers. “When 1 in 5 workers say AI is already replacing parts of their job, we can start talking about labor market restructuring happening in real time,” he told NBC News.

“The fact that replacement seems to be outpacing augmentation should draw our attention: the policy window to shape how AI transforms work is probably closing faster than most governments realize.”

The survey also found that roughly half of American adults who used AI for work in the past week only used their own personal subscriptions or free versions of AI services — instead of subscriptions purchased by their workplace.

In addition, the survey addressed the growing use of AI agents, or AI systems that can conduct independent tasks. The survey found overall agent usage rates are still low, though the technology has only gained widespread industry attention in the past few months. Eight percent (plus or minus 1.5%) of AI users had engaged an AI agent in the past week, compared to 49% (plus or minus 1.6%) of AI users using AI systems to search the web.

Renan Araujo, director of programs at the nonprofit Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, said the agent findings were notable: “One in 12 Americans has used an autonomous AI agent, a software that not just answers questions but takes actions on your behalf,” Araujo told NBC News. “This capability was not available two years ago, and it’s striking to see its usage grow so quickly.”

The Epoch poll also examined how American adults were putting AI to use. The survey found that many adults who used AI in the past week had used the services to look up information or recommendations (80%), write or edit text (59%) and brainstorm ideas (53%).

From the sample of roughly 2,000 adults, ChatGPT was the most popular AI service (used by 31%), followed by Google’s Gemini (21%) and Microsoft’s Copilot (10.5%).

Epoch’s survey comes on the heels of new reports from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley addressing the growing specter of AI in the labor market.

Economists from Goldman Sachs published new findings this week that AI is eliminating around 16,000 jobs per month when accounting for both AI-caused automation and augmentation. The bank’s researchers had previously estimated in March that AI can potentially automate tasks that consume around 25% of all work hours.

Source

The young woman described to a jury what it was like to lose control of her life to social media.

She began as a child, she said, and over time the habit expanded to fill nearly every available hour — late nights bleeding into early mornings, sleep gradually displaced. She would try to stop and find herself returning in a loop she could not escape. As her use intensified, so did her distress: anxiety, depression and a growing fixation on her appearance.

“I wanted to be on it all the time,” the 20-year-old testified in the landmark trial against Meta and YouTube, before a jury found the companies negligent and ordered them to pay her $6 million in damages.

The verdict in California and another case in New Mexico in March mark a turning point in the long-running effort to hold Silicon Valley companies accountable for products critics say are engineered to be as addictive as tobacco or gambling.

The science has been moving in parallel with the court’s recognition. A growing body of research links heavy social media use not only to declines in mental health but to measurable cognitive effects — on attention, memory and focus — that in some studies resemble accelerated aging.

Science also suggests we have more control than we realize when it comes to reversing this damage, and the solution is surprisingly simple: Take a break.

Two weeks

People react outside a courtroom after a jury found Meta and YouTube liable in a case involving children's mental health.

(Mike Blake/Reuters)

The average American spends roughly 4½ to 5 hours on their phone a day, according to surveys, and even if someone’s use is on the lower side of two to three hours a day, that still adds up to 1½ months in a year not doing something else.

“All of us have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with our phones,” said Kostadin Kushlev, an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University.

“Digital detoxes” can sound like a fad. But in one of the largest studies to date, published in PNAS Nexus and involving more than 467 participants with an average age of 32, even a short time away produced striking results — effectively erasing a decade of age-related cognitive decline.

Noah Castelo, an associate professor at the University of Alberta School of Business, said the study grew out of his own experience. Now 35, he got his first smartphone in college and began to notice how it reshaped his time: “These technologies can interfere with activities that were otherwise engaging, like having dinner with friends.”

For 14 days, participants used a commercially available app, Freedom, to block internet access on their phones. They were still allowed calls and text messages, essentially turning a smartphone into a dumb phone.

Their time online decreased from 314 minutes to 161 minutes, and by the end of the period the participants had improvements in sustained attention, mental health as well as self-reported well-being.

The improvement in sustained attention was about the same magnitude as 10 years of age-related decline, the researchers noted, and the effect of the intervention on depression symptoms was larger than antidepressants and similar to that of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Relatives hold a banner listing victims' names outside Los Angeles Superior Court after the social media trial verdict on March 25. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

But two things were even more mind-blowing to Castelo and Kushlev, a co-author of the study: Even those people who cheated and broke the rules after a few days seemed to have positive effects from the break; and in follow-up reports after the two weeks, many people reported the positive effects lingered.

“So you don’t have to necessarily restrict yourself forever. Even taking a partial digital detox, even for a few days, seems to work,” Kushlev said.

Researchers differentiate between internet use on phones versus computers, with phones being much worse than computers. Kushlev said the phone use is more “compulsive and mindless.” With the phone, people could be on social media while taking a walk, or watching a movie, or talking with somebody and so forth. It basically interrupts these other activities. In all of those cases, the researchers found that while you’re on your phone, you are not paying as much attention to the social activity you’re doing, and you enjoy it less.

“Even a little bit of distraction during those activities brings down what you could have experienced in the emotional quality of the experience — bringing less-satisfying conversations, less-satisfying relationships,” Kushlev said.

In the case of the woman who sued Meta and YouTube, jurors rendered a verdict against the companies by a vote of 10-2 after wrestling with the evidence for days.

Afterward, Meta immediately vowed to appeal both verdicts. The company said it takes steps to keep young users of its systems safe and has denied the allegations. A spokesman for YouTube similarly said it would appeal, saying it is a “responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

‘Goldilocks’ problem

The research into digital detoxes and how to define them is still in its early stages, raising questions about whether more targeted approaches — blocking only social media for a few hours, or restricting mobile internet at certain times of day or days of the week — might prove as effective.

In November, a Harvard study published in JAMA Network Open of nearly 400 people found that even a short break can make a measurable difference: After just one week of reduced smartphone use, participants reported drops in anxiety (16.1 percent), depression (24.8 percent) and insomnia (14.5 percent). Other experiments point in the same direction — whether decreasing social media use by an hour a day for one week or stepping away from just Facebook and Instagram. Growing concern about the effects of social media has led some governments to impose restrictions on young users — Australia, for example, has moved to limit access for children and teens, and similar proposals have surfaced in parts of Europe and the United States.

But John Torous, an associate professor and staff psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the JAMA Network Open study, said the research points to a more nuanced reality: Not everyone is affected in the same way.

A central challenge, he said, is identifying who is most vulnerable — and why.

Over the past decade, Torous added, the evidence has come to resemble a “Goldilocks” problem.

“For some people, their use is too much or too little, and for others it’s just right. To identify who is harmed by it is very important,” said Torous, who also directs the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Among the groups he and his team are studying are those who are more prone to what scientists have dubbed “social comparison” or judging themselves in relation to others — particularly around appearance — and feel worse as a result; those whose sleep is disrupted; and those who turn to the internet to compensate for a lack of connection in their offline lives.

A larger study — spanning more than 8,000 participants across 23 countries — is now underway. Led by Steven Rathje, an incoming assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and funded in part by the National Science Foundation, it asks participants to limit their use of TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook to no more than five minutes per app each day for two weeks. Data collection will continue through September, with findings expected early next year.

One question the study aims to answer is whether a pattern seen in earlier research holds: that the United States and other Western countries experience more severe negative effects from smartphone use.

Rathje is cautious about explaining why. One possibility, he suggests, is cultural — life in highly individualistic, perfectionistic societies may amplify the psychological toll. That idea aligns with broader research showing that anxiety disorders are more common in high-income countries than in lower-income ones.

“It suggests something about the stress levels in these places — how competitive they are,” he said. “But ultimately, it’s still quite a mystery.”

Source

Following No Man's Sky's massive February drop, the second major content update of the year for the sci-fi sandbox game is already here. Hello Games has delivered a unique update this time that has taken inspiration from monster-collecting adventure games like Pokemon or Palworld. The No Man's Sky Xeno Arena update is now live.

The update's biggest feature is a brand-new turn-based battle system involving alien fauna. For this, players can now explore the No Man's Sky universe to find exotic critters to assemble their battling teams. Each creature will have their own movies, traits, and personalities depending on what planet and atmosphere they are found in.

Hello Games says there are hundreds of variations for attack, defense, and healing abilities that these creatures can use in battles. Each battle also earns them experience to unlock genetic mutations, which can further enhance their attack timings, dodges, health, and damage.

As for who players can battle, both player versus player and AI options are available, with holographic combat tables being installed into planetary buildings, space stations, planetary settlements, and the Space Anomaly. It looks like the creatures themselves aren't the ones doing the battles, with their holograms thankfully taking over.

"The Space Anomaly has recently been decked out with an array of holodeck tables where you can enter your most powerful animals in simulated battles with other space farers for bragging rights and tangible rewards," says Sean Murray, Founder of Hello Games. "If you prefer a more solitary journey, there are also NPC alien lifeforms to challenge at Space Stations – including champion battlers who take expert advantage of the local wildlife’s biome affinities, and reigning champion iteration: Oceanus at the Anomaly."

On top of the alien creatures that players can find on planets, they can also breed their own battlers. This involves the Egg Sequencer aboard the Space Anomaly. This lets players enhance and modify offspring of their prized battlers to customize and create a new generation. There is even an in-game league to rise through for competitive players to grab medals and titles in.

The new No Man's Sky Xeno Arena update is now available across PC (Steam and Xbox app), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and both Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 systems. Find the full patch notes here, which details some Switch 2 and PC performance improvements too.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 9 April 2026 at 12:11 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Last month AMD announced the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, a new flagship processor that pushes cache capacity to near-insane levels. Built on the same Zen 5 architecture as the rest of the Ryzen 9000 series processors, the chip features 16 cores and 32 threads, with a base clock of 4.3 GHz and a boost clock reaching up to 5.6 GHz.

As alluded to above, what sets it apart is its massive 208 MB of cache, comprised of 192MB of L3 and 16MB of L2, making it the largest cache ever seen in a Ryzen desktop processor. This is achieved through dual 3D V-Cache technology, which stacks cache on both CCDs, a first for AMD’s consumer lineup as thus far, the company has stuck to using 3D V-Cache on one of the two CCDs.

AMD had already disclosed the release date for this, which is set to happen on April 22, but today, the company also unveiled its SEP (suggested etail price), which is at a whopping $899. This makes the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 AMD's most expensive 3D V-cache processor ever.

The table below shows the prices of all the Ryzen X3D parts, including the new 9950X3D2, which is right at the top:

In terms of headroom specs, the processor carries a power headroom of 200W TDP, slightly higher than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which had a 170W rating. The boost clock is expectedly low given that 3D V-cache CCDs are not the best for clocking too high, which has been the main reason for sticking to single CCD X3D.

Of course gaming should be great on this but beyond gaming too, the company highlighted up to 10 percent improvements in professional workloads such as rendering, compiling, AI, and content creation.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 9 April 2026 at 5:41 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

If you own a Kindle e-reader or a Kindle Fire from the early 2010s, there’s some bad news: Amazon has announced that you will no longer be able to buy, borrow, or download new books from the Kindle Store directly on those devices starting May 20, 2026.

Based on an email sent to The Verge, you will still be able to read any content you previously downloaded to the device. But if you factory reset the device or deregister it after that date, you are out of luck because it will be impossible to register it again.

Here's a list of the affected devices:

• Kindle 1st Generation (2007)
• Kindle DX and DX Graphite (2009 and 2010)
• Kindle Keyboard (2010)
• Kindle 4 (2011)
• Kindle Touch (2011)
• Kindle 5 (2012)
• Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation (2012)
• Kindle Fire 1st Gen (2011)
• Kindle Fire 2nd Gen (2012)
• Kindle Fire HD 7 (2012)
• Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (2012)

To soften the blow, Amazon is promising a 20% discount on a new Kindle device and a $20 ebook credit for anyone upgrading. This offer is valid until June 20th, 2026.

If you're not interested in Amazon's offer, or just want to breathe second life into your old Kindle, you can pursue the (risky) option of jailbreaking. On an E-Ink Kindle, a successful jailbreak lets you install KOReader, an open-source application that can read almost any file format, including ePUB, which Kindles currently do not support. For Fire devices, the process involves rooting the tablet to install something called TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project), a custom recovery that lets you wipe Amazon's software and install a clean version of Android.

Last September, Amazon debuted its completely redesigned Kindle Scribe. The new Scribe is a premium note-taking device with an 11-inch display, a slim 5.4mm profile, and a weight of just 400 grams.

Amazon also launched the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, which uses a custom display technology and nitride LEDs to allow you to write, draw, and highlight in various colors. Of course, it is also packed with AI features that let you search your handwritten notes with natural language and get automated summaries. The price for this new hardware reflects its premium status, starting at $629.99 for the Colorsoft and ranging down to $429.99 for a version without a front-light.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 9 April 2026 at 5:40 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

It's a big day for Starfield. Bethesda Game Studios has brought out its biggest update yet for the sci-fi RPG today, and alongside it lands the game's second story DLC, Terran Armada, as well as a port for the PlayStation 5 platform.

Terran Armada brings in a brand-new storyline for players to dive into, one that affects many of the Settled Systems. There are new characters to meet, locations to visit, enemies to take out, and fresh gameplay systems like Incursions. This is a new type of repeatable content that players can travel into in space, containing everything from "small skirmishes to large-scale infiltrations of Terran vessels," with various objectives. There is even an option to tune how many of these show up during playthroughs.

The DLC also introduces Delta as a companion. This is a reprogrammed Terran Armada robot that is definitely "not evil."

"A new threat has entered the Settled Systems. Believing themselves to be the 'true' children of Earth, the Terran Armada is made up of members of the United Colonies and Freestar Collective who vanished during the Colony War," says Bethesda, describing the new story DLC. "The Terrans are an advanced military force, largely comprised of robotic soldiers."

The Starfield Terran Armada DLC is out now with a $9.99 price tag. It's also available to Premium Edition owners for no extra cost.

Easily the largest chunk of this content drop comes from the Free Lanes content update arriving to all players today. Described as the largest update yet for Starfield, its Cruise Mode may be its most interesting feature.

This finally allows players to travel between planets in star systems on their own ships instead of fast traveling with a loading screen. This also means space points of interest have been added, letting players fly into interesting new situations while they are traveling.

"Everything you can do while in orbit or docked, you can now do in Cruise Mode," says the studio. "Decorate your ship, chat with your companions and crew, hit up the workbenches. It’s all there for you. And don’t worry about overshooting your destination; autopilot will automatically slow you down when you arrive."

The update also carries X-Tech as a new resource aimed at improving customizations for gear and ships, effect rerolling, Tier 4 as a new gear rank, shared outpost containers, outpost pets, Starborn ability upgrades, a way to start New Game+ with all your gear, and so much more. Find the complete patch notes for Free Lanes over here.

Lastly, the Starfield PlayStation 5 port has landed with a $49.99 price tag for the base edition. Purchasing the $69.99 Premium Edition also gives players access to the Shattered Space and Terran Armada story DLCs as well as other cosmetic bonuses. The PlayStation 5 Pro also has new exclusive Visual and Performance modes alongside full support for the DualSense controller. Read about the platform exclusive features here.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:26 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

I knew I wasn't the only one who felt like Microsoft is slapping Copilot branding across too much of its tech stack. How many Copilot offerings exist in Microsoft's ecosystem? It's even more than you might think.

AI sleuth Tey Bannerman recently found 78 distinct products, features, and services named Copilot after combing through Microsoft’s documentation, marketing, and launch materials (via Tom's Hardware). Interestingly, Copilot says there are around 95 to 120+ Copilots.

The number has surged to at least 80 after Gaming Copilot and Microsoft Dragon Copilot joined the fold. "What happens when you name everything Copilot?" added Bannerman.

“Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots." Admittedly, it's quite taxing to try to stay on top with these tools, especially if there might be other products and services with similar branding in the pipeline.

Bannerman argues that most AI companies prefer renaming products over rebuilding them, since it’s faster. "Stamping 'AI' on what already exists will always feel more efficient than stepping back and asking what a genuinely transformed experience would look like."

Perhaps more interestingly, Microsoft was recently on the spot after Copilot's terms of use language went viral, suggesting that Copilot is meant for entertainment purposes only. However, the company dismissed the phrasing as legacy language from when Copilot originally launched as a search companion service in Bing.

"The Copilot metaphor is almost too perfect," indicated Bannerman. "A copilot is supposed to mean one trusted partner who helps you get where you're going. 78 of them in the cockpit with no flight plan is just turbulence."

Is Microsoft flying with too many Copilots?

Looking up information on Google today means confronting AI Overviews, the Gemini-powered search robot that appears at the top of the results page. AI Overviews has had a rough time since its 2024 launch, attracting user ire over its scattershot accuracy, but it’s getting better and usually provides the right answer. That’s a low bar, though. A new analysis from The New York Times attempted to assess the accuracy of AI Overviews, finding it’s right 90 percent of the time. The flip side is that 1 in 10 AI answers is wrong, and for Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day.

The Times conducted this analysis with the help of a startup called Oumi, which itself is deeply involved in developing AI models. The company used AI tools to probe AI Overviews with the SimpleQA evaluation, a common test to rank the factuality of generative models like Gemini. Released by OpenAI in 2024, SimpleQA is essentially a list of more than 4,000 questions with verifiable answers that can be fed into an AI.

Oumi began running its test last year when Gemini 2.5 was still the company’s best model. At the time, the benchmark showed an 85 percent accuracy rate. When the test was rerun following the Gemini 3 update, AI Overviews answered 91 percent of the questions correctly. If you extrapolate this miss rate out to all Google searches, AI Overviews is generating tens of millions of incorrect answers per day.

The report includes several examples of where AI Overviews went wrong. When asked for the date on which Bob Marley’s former home became a museum, AI Overviews cited three pages, two of which didn’t discuss the date at all. The final one, Wikipedia, listed two contradictory years, and AI Overviews confidently chose the wrong one. The benchmark also prompts models to produce the date on which Yo Yo Ma was inducted into the classical music hall of fame. While AI Overviews cited the organization’s website that listed Ma’s induction, it claimed there’s no such thing as the Classical Music Hall of Fame.

Google doesn’t much like this test. Google spokesperson Ned Adriance tells the Times that Google believes SimpleQA contains incorrect information. Its model evaluations often rely on a similar test called SimpleQA Verified, which uses a smaller set of questions that have been more thoroughly vetted. “This study has serious holes,” Adriance told the Times. “It doesn’t reflect what people are actually searching on Google.”

Benchmark problems

Evaluating new AI models sometimes feels more like art than science, which is part of the problem. Every company has its own preferred way of demonstrating what a model can do, and the non-deterministic nature of gen AI can make it hard to verify anything. These robots can get a factual question right and then completely miss it if you rerun the query immediately. Oumi even uses AI tools to run its assessments, and those models can hallucinate, too.

The other wrinkle is that AI Overviews isn’t a single monolithic model. Google told Ars Technica that it uses the “right model” for each query. While AI Overviews would get the best answers from always running Gemini 3.1 Pro, that’s slow and expensive. To load things promptly on a search page, the overview uses faster Gemini Flash models when possible (which appears to be most of the time).

Google’s response to this report is telling. In the realm of AI factuality, 9 out of 10 isn’t even that bad. Google has recently published benchmarks for new model releases featuring measurements of factuality in the range of 60 to 80 percent—these tests are run without tools like web search. Grounding an AI with more data, like the wealth of human knowledge on the Internet, does make it more accurate than the naked model itself. However, the truth is in the blue links somewhere, and AI Overviews encourages people to accept its sometimes inaccurate summaries instead of checking those sources manually.

While Google says the Times’ results don’t match what people see, you have to wonder how the company could even know that. You’ve probably seen mistakes in AI Overviews—we all have because that’s just how generative AI works. As Google itself reminds you at the bottom of every overview: “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses.”

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:24 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Sixteen miles north of Albuquerque, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, an Intel chip plant sits on more than 200 acres of land. The site was established in the 1980s, part of it built on top of a sod farm. In 2007, as Intel’s business faltered, operations in one of the key fabs, Fab 9, came to a halt. Employees say families of raccoons and a badger took up residence in the space.

Then, in January 2024, the dormant fab was booted up again. Intel funneled billions into the facility, including $500 million it was granted from the US CHIPS Act. Now, Fab 9 and its neighbor, Fab 11X, are critical infrastructure for one of Intel’s quietly fast-growing businesses: advanced chip packaging.

Packaging involves combining multiple chiplets, or smaller components, onto a single, custom chip. Over the past six months, Intel has been signaling that its advanced packaging business, which operates within the Foundry chip-making arm of the company, is having a growth spurt. The company’s efforts around this have it going head-to-head with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, which far surpasses Intel’s production in terms of scale. But in an era where AI is driving demand for all kinds of computing power, and leading nearly every major tech company to consider making its own custom chips, Intel thinks this effort can help it grab a bigger slice of the AI pie.

During a quarterly earnings call in January, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan claimed that Intel’s packaging is a “very big differentiator” from competitors. Chief financial officer Dave Zinsner said on the same call that the company expects to see revenue from packaging “come in even before we start to see meaningful wafer revenue.” Zinsner said he had revised his packaging revenue projections over the past 12 to 18 months, from hundreds of millions of dollars to “well north of $1 billion.”

Zinsner elaborated on this in March at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference, when he called Intel’s packaging “ironically, the more interesting part of the Foundry business today,” adding that the company was “close to closing some deals that are in the billions of dollars per year, in terms of revenue on packaging.”

Multiple sources say that Intel has been in ongoing talks with at least two large customers for its advanced packaging services: Google and Amazon, which both make their own custom chips but outsource parts of the fabrication process. These deals would be a boon for beleaguered chipmaker Intel, which is attempting a comeback—partially funded by the US government—after years of stagnation and missing out on mobile chips.

A spokesperson for Google, Lee Fleming, declined to comment, saying that Google doesn’t publicly discuss its supplier relationships. Amazon also declined to comment. Intel said it does not comment on specific customers.

Intel’s ambitions for its advanced packaging business depend largely on whether the company can secure outside customers like these tech giants. Since 2024, the company has effectively been split into two: There’s the long-standing “product” side, where Intel designs and sells cost-efficient CPUs to PC makers and data centers; and the aspirational Foundry side, where Intel makes advanced semiconductors.

Intel’s Foundry plans and the number of advanced chip systems it can yield are closely watched signals among tech analysts and investors, who in recent years have seen Intel cycle through CEOs and start and stop fab buildouts. Zinsner, for one, said at the Morgan Stanley conference that he now believes Intel Foundry’s packaging business can achieve the same 40 percent gross margins that it claims on the rest of its products.

It’s still an extremely challenging proposition. “Packaging is not as easy as saying ‘I want to run 100,000 wafers per month,’” says Jim McGregor, a longtime chip industry analyst and the founder of Tirias Research, referring to a continuous flow of chips in various stages of production. “It really comes down to whether Intel’s [packaging] fabs can make deals. If we see them expanding those operations more, that’s an indicator that they have.”

Last month, Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, revealed in a post on Facebook that Intel is expanding its Malaysian chip-making facilities, which were first established back in the 1970s. Ibrahim said the head of Intel’s Foundry, Naga Chandrasekaran, had “outlined plans to commence the first phase” of expansion, which would include advanced packaging.

“I welcome Intel’s decision to begin operations for the complex later this year,” a translated version of Ibrahim’s post read. An Intel spokesperson, John Hipsher, confirmed that it’s building out additional chip assembly and test capacity in Penang, “amid rising global demand for Intel Foundry packaging solutions.”

Package store

According to Chandrasekaran, who took over Intel’s Foundry operations in 2025 and spoke exclusively with WIRED during the reporting of this story, the term “advanced packaging” itself didn’t exist a decade ago.

Chips have always required some sort of integration of transistors and capacitors, which control and store energy. For a long time the semiconductor industry was focused on miniaturization, or, shrinking the size of components on chips. As the world began demanding more from its computers in the 2010s, chips started to get even more dense with processing units, high-bandwidth memory, and all of the necessary connective parts. Eventually, chipmakers started to take a system-in-packages or package-on-package approach, in which multiple components were stacked on top of one another in order to squeeze more power and memory out of the same surface space. 2D stacking gave way to 3D stacking.

TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, began offering packaging technologies like CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate) and, later, SoIC (system on integrated chip) to customers. Essentially, the pitch was that TSMC would handle not just the front end of chip-making—the wafer part—but also the back end, where all of the chip tech would be packaged together.

Intel had ceded its chip manufacturing lead to TSMC at this point but continued to invest in packaging. In 2017 it introduced a process called EMIB, or embedded multi-die interconnect bridge, which was unique because it shrunk the actual connections, or bridges, between the components in the chip package. In 2019, it introduced Foveros, an advanced die-stacking process. The company’s next packaging advancement was a bigger leap: EMIB-T.

Announced last May, EMIB-T promises to improve power efficiency and signal integrity between all the components on the chips. One former Intel employee with direct knowledge of the company’s packaging efforts tells WIRED that Intel’s EMIB and EMIB-T are designed to be a more “surgical” way of packaging chips than TSMC’s approach. Like most chip advancements, this is supposed to be more power efficient, save space, and, ideally, save customers money in the long run. The company says EMIB-T will roll out in fabs this year.

Unsurprisingly, AI has been a big catalyst for these changes. “Because of AI, advanced packaging has really come to the forefront,” Chandrasekaran said. “Even more so than the silicon itself, chip packaging is going to transform how this AI revolution comes to fruition over the next decade.”

Intel began readying for mass production of EMIB-T in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The Rio Rancho facility houses around 2,700 Intel employees, roughly 200 less than it had last year; Tan slashed Intel’s workforce after he took over as CEO. The surrounding land is arid desert. As is the case with a lot of tech infrastructure expansions, local advocacy groups have expressed serious concerns about Intel’s water usage and the fumes the plant is giving off. (Intel claims it recycles water at the Rio Rancho site.)

A short tour inside Rio Rancho’s Fab 9 doesn’t reveal much to the untrained eye. It’s slightly less “clean” than Intel’s Fab 52 semiconductor plant in Arizona, since its method of removing air particles is different there, but the standard clean room precautions and sanitized, zipped-up suits are still required for entry. Inside the fab, hair-thin silicon wafers are mounted, diced, and mold-grinded.

Katie Prouty, the Rio Rancho site plant manager and a 31-year veteran of Intel, emphasizes during a walk-through that one of Intel’s selling points for advanced packaging is that customers can opt to use Intel for any part of the process, or “enter and exit the highway” at any point. A customer can, for example, purchase wafers from one entity, then come to Intel’s fabs for the next step; or contract with an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test company for traditional chip packaging, then use Intel for advanced packaging.

“That’s not something Intel did before. We never took in other customers’ wafers,” Prouty said. “That’s been a huge mindset shift.”

Competent, cutting-edge technology? Check. Chips packaged specifically for AI? Check. Flexibility for customers with certain needs? Check. So, where are all the customers?

One former Intel employee, speaking on background, said that Intel’s target packaging customers may be hesitant to announce partnerships with Intel for a couple reasons. They’re either waiting to see if the company can deliver on its fab expansion promises, or they’re concerned TSMC could potentially allocate fewer wafers to customers once they say they’re using Intel for packaging. It’s not the tech itself they would be taking a risk on, the former employee added; it’s the broader market dynamics.

Chandrasekaran is more circumspect. “I think we want to be very disciplined around the idea of: We don’t talk about our customers. Successful foundries don’t say, ‘We have signed up these customers.’ We want the customers to talk about our product.”

Intel may want to consider adopting another motto: If they come, we will build it—and at great capital expense.The big indicator that the customers have arrived, Chandrasekaran says, will be a notable jump in Intel Foundry’s spending. “As we sign up these customers, we’ll have to increase our capital expenditures,” he says. “And then the street will see it.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:23 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

A team of physicists led by Professor Dong Eon Kim from POSTECH, working with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, has made a breakthrough in understanding one of quantum mechanics’ most puzzling ideas that has been around for over a century: electron tunneling. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows for the first time what actually happens when electrons move through barriers that should normally block them.

Electron tunneling which is kind of quantum tunneling is a strange but very real effect where particles like electrons pass through energy barriers that they shouldn’t be able to cross according to classical physics. This process is at the heart of how semiconductors work, which power smartphones and computers, and it also plays a role in nuclear fusion, the reaction that fuels the sun. Until now, scientists only knew what happens before and after tunneling, but the details of what occurs inside the barrier remained unknown.

To investigate, the team used powerful laser pulses to push electrons into tunneling. What they found was surprising. Instead of simply slipping through, electrons actually collide again with the atomic nucleus while still inside the barrier. The researchers named this process “under-the-barrier recollision” (UBR). This discovery challenges the long-standing belief that electrons only interact with the nucleus after leaving the tunnel.

The study focused on what is called nonadiabatic tunneling in strong-field ionization, tested across a wide range of laser intensities. The UBR model goes beyond the older idea of direct multiphoton transitions, which could not explain certain features of tunneling. The new model predicted two key outcomes: first, that high-order Freeman resonances (FR) would dominate over above-threshold ionization in the photoelectron energy spectra, and second, that the FR signal would remain flat regardless of changes in laser intensity.

Experiments confirmed both predictions. Electrons were seen to gain energy inside the barrier and then collide again with the nucleus, which strengthened Freeman resonance. This led to ionization levels much higher than those seen in earlier processes and showed little sensitivity to laser intensity. These results matched the UBR model and gave scientists a clearer picture of tunneling dynamics.

Professor Kim explained the importance of the work, saying, “Through this study, we were able to find clues about how electrons behave when they pass through the atomic wall,” and added, “Now, we can finally understand tunneling more deeply and control it as we wish.”

This research not only solves a century-old mystery but also opens the door to practical advances. A better grasp of tunneling could help improve technologies that depend on it, such as semiconductors, quantum computers, and ultrafast lasers. For technology enthusiasts, the takeaway is simple: understanding how electrons behave in tunneling could lead to faster, more efficient devices and new possibilities in physics that were once thought impossible.

Source: POSTECH, APS Journals

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 7 April 2026 at 1:06 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

When Pillars of Eternity turned 10 last year, developer Obsidian Entertainment surprised fans with a brand-new update to the classic role-playing game. This included a large number of fixes and enhancements to the experience. However, the studio wasn't finished with the title, as it promised a new way to play the RPG was in development.

Today, the studio announced that the update is now live for all players. This means that in addition to the real-time with pause combat mode, the RPG now offers a complete turn-based combat mode, much like other popular RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3.

"This new feature lets you experience Pillars 1 in a whole new way, with combat fully reimagined around turn-based pacing and flexibility," explained Obsidian today. "If you enjoyed experimenting with the system in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, we hope you’ll find this version both familiar and improved so please let us know what you think."

The last update to this endeavor arrived in November of last year, with a public beta launching for fans to try out the new features. The studio also said it had learned a lot from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's own turn-based mode and has changed up the implementation to be better. This included unbounded turns based on character speed, faster pacing, a toggle to easily swap between the turn-based and real-time-with-pause modes, and more.

Obsidian added today that despite the long beta period, there may still be bugs on the launch version of the new combat mode. It added that it will "continue to release patches for this feature for a short while longer" following launch based on feedback.

Find the complete change log for the Pillars of Eternity turn-based mode update over here.

The update is only available for PC users. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the turn-based mode or the latest changes are coming to the console editions. Obsidian Entertainment has confirmed that it doesn't currently have the ability to update the game on consoles, as the studio did not develop those ports internally. Paradox Arctic was the developer behind the Xbox and PlayStation editions.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 7 April 2026 at 1:02 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

On the same day that OpenAI released policy recommendations to ensure that AI benefits humanity if superintelligence is ever achieved, The New Yorker dropped a massive investigation into whether CEO Sam Altman can be trusted to actually follow through on OpenAI’s biggest promises.

Parsing the publications side by side can be disorienting.

On the one hand, OpenAI said it plans to push for policies to “keep people first” as AI starts “outperforming the smartest humans even when they are assisted by AI.” To achieve this, the company vows to remain “clear-eyed” and transparent about risks, which it acknowledged includes monitoring for extreme scenarios like AI systems evading human control or governments deploying AI to undermine democracy. Without proper mitigation of such risks, “people will be harmed,” OpenAI warned, before describing how the company could be trusted to advocate for a future where achieving superintelligence means a “higher quality of life for all.”

On the other hand, The New Yorker interviewed more than 100 people familiar with how Altman conducts business. The publication also reviewed internal memos and interviewed Altman more than 12 times. The resulting story provides a lengthy counterpoint explaining why the public may struggle to trust OpenAI’s CEO to “control the future” of AI, no matter how rosy the company’s vision may appear.

Overall, insiders painted Altman as a people-pleaser who tells others what they want to hear while questing for power in an alleged bid to always put himself first. As one board member summed up Altman, he has “two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”

While The New Yorker found no “smoking gun,” its reporters reviewed messages from OpenAI’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and former research head, Dario Amodei, that documented “an accumulation of alleged deceptions and manipulations.” Many of the incidents could be shrugged off individually, but when taken together, both men concluded that Altman was not fostering a safe environment for advanced AI, The New Yorker reported.

“The problem with OpenAI,” Amodei wrote, “is Sam himself.”

OpenAI’s worried public is souring on AI

Altman either disputed claims in the story or else claimed to have forgotten about certain events. He also attributed some of his shifting narratives to the changing landscape of AI and admitted that he’s been conflict-avoidant in the past.

But his seeming contradictions are getting harder to ignore as scrutiny of OpenAI intensifies amid growing government reliance on its models and lawsuits labeling its tech as unsafe.

Perhaps most visibly to the public, Altman has recently shifted away from positioning OpenAI as a sort of savior blocking AI doomsday scenarios, instead adopting a “tone” of “ebullient optimism,” The New Yorker reported.

The policy recommendations echo this at times. Discussing the recommendations—which include experimenting with shorter workweeks and creating a public wealth fund to share AI profits—OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the company is urgently concerned about negative public opinions about AI. While announcing their big ideas to spare humanity from AI dangers, OpenAI also promoted “a pilot program of fellowships and focused research grants of up to $100,000 and up to $1 million in API credits for work that builds on these and related policy ideas.”

However, The New Yorker’s report makes it easier to question whether the recommendations were rolled out to distract from mounting public fears about child safety, job displacement, or energy-guzzling data centers. One recent Harvard/MIT poll found that Americans’ biggest concern is that powering AI will hurt their quality of life, Axios reported. Ultimately, these concerns might sway votes for Democrats and Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, the WSJ noted, as data center moratoriums that could slow AI advancement are gaining traction.

For Altman and his company, getting the public to buy into their vision of AI at this critical juncture likely feels essential, since Republicans losing control of Congress could pave the way for stricter AI safety laws that The New Yorker noted that Altman has privately lobbied against.

Without trust in Altman, it’s likely a much harder sell to convince the public that OpenAI isn’t simply saying whatever it will take to entrench its own dominance, the New Yorker suggested.

What exactly is OpenAI pitching?

“We don’t have all, or even most of the answers,” OpenAI said. Instead, the company characterized its “industrial policy for the intelligence age” as “initial ideas for an industrial policy agenda to keep people first during the transition to superintelligence.”

Calling for “common-sense” regulations and a public-private partnership to quickly iterate on successes, OpenAI pitched “ambitious” policy ideas to ensure that everyone can access AI and profit from it. Its bushy-tailed vision acknowledged that it hopes to achieve what society never did: guarantee Internet access and ensure AI is “fairly deployed” across the US, with everyone trained to use it.

Worker protections are a focus of OpenAI’s plan. Recommendations included involving workers in discussions on how AI systems work to improve productivity and make workplaces safer, as well as on how to “set clear limits on harmful uses of AI.” OpenAI also suggested creating a tax on automated labor that could be used to fund core programs like Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance as companies rely less on human labor. Among other enticing ideas was a plan to “incentivize employers and unions to run time-bound 32-hour/four-day workweek pilots with no loss in pay that hold output and service levels constant, then convert reclaimed hours into a permanent shorter week, bankable paid time off, or both.”

Additionally, OpenAI proposed a “public wealth fund” that “provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.”

“Returns from the Fund could be distributed directly to citizens, allowing more people to participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth, regardless of their starting wealth or access to capital,” OpenAI said.

As AI takes on more tasks, humans can gravitate toward care-centric work, OpenAI suggested, recommending policy ideas to help displaced workers get training to work in health care, elderly care, daycare, or community service settings. To ensure people are attracted to those roles—historically undervalued as women’s work—OpenAI suggested initiatives to help society recognize that caregiving is “economically valuable work.”

Human workers will also be needed to use AI to accelerate scientific advancements, OpenAI said.

However, all these public benefits that OpenAI promises can only be realized if we build a “resilient society” that can quickly respond to risky implementations and “keep AI safe, governable, and aligned with democratic values,” the company said.

That aspect of OpenAI’s vision requires firms like OpenAI to develop safety systems, among other efforts, that will help improve public trust in AI. And we should trust those systems will work and only interfere with these firms when actual dangers are looming, OpenAI seems to suggest.

“As we progress toward superintelligence, there may come a point where a narrow set of highly capable models—particularly those that could materially advance chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or cyber risks—require stronger controls,” OpenAI said.

When that day arrives, OpenAI opined, there should be a global network in place to communicate emerging risks. However, only the firms with the most advanced models should be subjected to rigorous audits, so that smaller firms can still compete. That’s the path to ensure no firm’s dominant position can be abused to unfairly shut down rivals or weaken democratic values, OpenAI said, while insisting that public input is vital to AI’s success.

Altman has previously persuaded “a tech-skeptical public that their priorities, even when mutually exclusive, are also his priorities,” The New Yorker reported. But for the public, which is already reporting alleged harms from OpenAI models, it might be getting harder to entertain lofty ideas from a company that is led by “the greatest pitchman of his generation,” The New Yorker reported.

One OpenAI researcher told The New Yorker that Altman’s promises can sometimes seem like a stopgap to overcome criticism until he reaches the next benchmark. When it comes to superintelligence, some optimistic experts think it could take two years, which is longer than Elon Musk stayed at OpenAI before famously criticizing Altman’s leadership and leaving to start his own AI firm.

Altman “sets up structures that, on paper, constrain him in the future,” the OpenAI researcher told The New Yorker. “But then, when the future comes and it comes time to be constrained, he does away with whatever the structure was.”

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 7 April 2026 at 1:01 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

GSC Game World's 2024 open-world survival shooter STALKER 2 is set to have quite a big 2026, as its first of two planned DLC expansions, Cost of Hope, is scheduled to launch in summer later this year. Officially revealed during the Xbox Partner Preview in late March, the DLC will feature a reignited conflict between two of The Zone's biggest and most well-known factions: Duty and Freedom.

Ahead of the expansion's arrival and at some point in April, however, the devs at GSC are releasing a free content update for the atmospheric FPS titled Sealed Truth — a patch that will expand one of the spookiest locations in the original 2007 STALKER game Shadow of Chernobyl, as well as in the early game of STALKER 2's main questline.

That location is the X-18 Lab, one of the STALKER series' infamously unsettling underground laboratories where The Zone's supernatural phenomena were studied in secret long before the events of the games. These labs typically feature dangerous clusters of anomalies as well as several predatory mutant enemies, making them some of the scariest levels in the franchise.

GSC announced the Sealed Truth update on Monday morning with a teaser image of a previously locked door swung open, noting that "you will be able to open the door to X-18 Lab" and cryptically implying that something is "hiding there in the darkness." Bring a good shotgun and plenty of buckshot, fellow stalkers.

Conor Hylton’s family slapped the wrongful death lawsuit against Bridgeport Hospital Milford Campus last month for allegedly not having a physical doctor on-site when he was admitted to the ICU in August 2024, according to the filing.

Hylton, who was studying at UConn School of Dental Medicine, took a turn for the worse in the hours after he went to the hospital seeking treatment for pancreatitis and a slew of other conditions. 

In the four hours he was in the ICU, Hylton was never examined by an on-site doctor, despite his condition worsening, the lawsuit charges.

“They violated hospital policy because no on-site doctor assessed Mr. Hylton from the time he was admitted to the ICU until after he exhibited seizure-like activity at 4:30 a.m.,” the court docs state.

Instead, the hospital allegedly relied on “off-site tele-ICU providers to care for its patients.”

Eventually, Hylton “slid down in bed, his eyes rolled back and he … exhibited seizure-like activity, vomited, became bradycardic and code was called,” the suit said.

“He was intubated, but he could not be resuscitated, and he was pronounced dead.”

“The pronouncement was done by a ‘tele-health’ provider on a video screen,” the suit added.

Hylton’s family claims that the hospital never even told them that the dental student had been admitted to the ICU.

“[The hospital] allowed for extremely poor communication among the providers responsible for Conor’s life which is especially dangerous to patient care when the hospital is relying on off-site tele-ICU providers to care for its patients,” the complaint alleged.

A Bridgeport Hospital spokesperson told the Hartford Courant it was aware of the lawsuit and was committed to “providing the safest and highest quality of care possible.”

The hospital confirmed it utilizes tele-health professionals, claiming it enhances the treatment of “critically ill patients by pairing advanced virtual monitoring with expert bedside teams.”

“A dedicated virtual team collaborates closely with on‑site nurses, physicians and ICU intensivists to provide continuous monitoring, timely decisions and coordinated, high‑quality care throughout the ICU stay,” the spokesperson said. 

Source

World of Warcraft is an enigma. Now in its third decade of live operations, using an engine concocted in a completely different technological and cultural era — Blizzard proved once again that it is still the absolute master of live ops.

Unleashed as part of Microsoft's Xbox operation, Blizzard escaped its destructive tenure under Activision's previous shareholder culture, and now functions as a separate business entity in the wider Microsoft Gaming pantheon. New leaders in place, a hands-off approach, and a renewed focus on its customers has seen games like Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo reach new heights. And yes, like anything, it hasn't been perfect — but I think it's pretty undeniable that things are in a much much better place overall for Blizzard's games, and improving all the time.

The same is explicitly true for World of Warcraft. WoW: Midnight has its flaws, but it proves Blizzard still has unchecked ambition for its worlds. And yesterday, Blizzard also proved it's capable of pulling off live ops risks that are increasingly rare in this industry.

ExplainingComputers (1.17m subscribers)

5 Apr 2026

Video length: 18m 12s

00:00 Titles & Intro

01:26 Storage Media & Resilience

03:48 Media Selection & Data Retention

13:19 Preserving Your Data

14:44 Family Storage Audits

14:44 Action Plan

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 12:53 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

An automated production line for humanoid robots, with an annual capacity of over 10,000 units, opened on March 29 in Nanhai district of Foshan, Guangdong province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Foshan in Guangdong province opened China's first automated production line for humanoid robots with an annual capacity of over 10,000 units on March 29, marking a step forward in the country's industrialization of humanoid robots.

The project is a collaboration between Guangdong Dongfang Precision Science & Technology, a leading domestic high-end equipment manufacturing company, and Leju Robotics, a high-tech enterprise focused on robot technology research.

By utilizing an industrial internet platform, the production line enables digital management and quality traceability to produce one humanoid robot every 30 minutes.

The production line employs a modular, flexible architecture and a building block-style production model, complemented by movable workstations, an intelligent scheduling system, and an automated guided vehicle delivery network.

The production line integrates over 20 advanced technologies, including vision guidance and force control assembly, so that 92 percent of key processes are automated.

An automated production line for humanoid robots, with an annual capacity of over 10,000 units, opened on March 29 in Nanhai district of Foshan, Guangdong province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In the assembly of the most precise transmission components, assembly errors are strictly controlled within 0.02 millimeters, which is smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

The latest development was part of efforts by local authorities to facilitate the development of the intelligent robotics industry. The production of industrial robots in Foshan exceeded 46,000 units in 2025, marking a year-on-year increase of 29.6 percent, according to data from local authorities.

Source

Paul's Hardware (1.54m subscribers)

April 5, 2026

Video length: 11m 29s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - April 5, 2026

1:53 Is Intel Bringing Back HEDT with Nova Lake AX, or Something Else?

5:06 Here’s the BS Reason Memory Prices Are Dropping

TECH BRIEFS

7:11 GeForce RTX 60 specs “leak” debunked

8:20 Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use

9:07 Google Finds Quantum Computers Could Break Bitcoin Sooner Than Expected

10:03 New LEGO Video, and Any good April Fools posts in Tech?

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:53 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

This week's news recap is here, with Microsoft forcing users to the latest Windows 11 version, a new Xbox Games Showcase, a bunch of fresh builds, useful features for Windows Insiders, reviews, and more.

Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

Here, we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And, of course, you may find a word or two about older versions.

If you are running Windows 11 version 24H2 on your PC, get ready for a forced update. Microsoft announced that it is now updating non-managed devices to Windows 11 version 25H2, as it is generally available to all users.

Microsoft released KB5086672, a new out-of-band update that fixes broken update files in the March 2026 non-security update. You can now download it from Windows Update (it is optional) to get the latest features and improvements. Speaking of Windows Update bugs, a new article from a former Microsoft engineer explains why botched Windows updates are not always Microsoft's fault.

Later this year, Windows 11 is getting a movable taskbar as part of Microsoft's commitment to fix the operating system (a similar thing is coming to PowerShell, too). After years of asking, users are finally getting the ability to change the default taskbar location. This week, Microsoft revealed an early look at it in a now-deleted post on X. Since the internet remembers, you can still check it out yourself here.

Microsoft formally announced the end of Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant, a command-line support tool in Windows 10, 11, and Server. The change affects all modern versions (including some unsupported releases), so Microsoft posted guidance on what affected users should do. Also, the company detailed changes to the Windows Security app that reflect recent Secure Boot certificate updates.

We also have two useful guides this week. One describes common mistakes Windows 11 users should avoid when using the operating system. The other one explains how to make Task Manager always on top (it is also getting some useful features) when you want to monitor or troubleshoot your PC.

To finish this week's Windows 11 section, here are some thoughts on the operating system's Patch Tuesday updates and how they kill all the excitement around it.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

A newly discovered change in the latest Windows 11 preview builds shows that Microsoft is about to make it easier to configure hidden features in the operating system. The "Feature Flags" section will let you enable or disable features that are in development without relying on controlled feature rollouts or A/B testing. Microsoft says it will announce the feature next week.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

This week, we had plenty of feature recaps for Microsoft's products. The company is now pushing Windows App as a replacement for the old Remote Desktop, and with it, Microsoft highlights some of its improvements, including better connectivity, better file handling, easier access, and more. We also have a recap of all the new features that Microsoft added to Teams, Excel, and Intune. Speaking of Teams, Microsoft is adding a faster way to create automations and removing certain features from Windows 11 and Mac clients.

Microsoft says downloading the new Outlook may be necessary to send emails due to a new nasty bug. Outlook and bugs are literally a match made in heaven. This week, astronauts en route to the Moon experienced issues with both Outlook versions not working. Yikes!

Logitech released a new firmware for the MX Master 4 mouse and the Logi Bolt connector. The main change in those updates is support for Windows 11's native haptic feedback. Now, when you hover the cursor over certain UI elements, align objects in PowerPoint, or resize windows, the MX Master 4 can give tactile feedback.

Opera Neon, Opera's agentic AI-powered browser, launched in 2025, received a new feature update this week. The latest release brings the new MCP Connector, which allows AI models to control the browser on your behalf: browse the web, fill forms, take screenshots, and more.

Microsoft is testing a new change for the Edge browser that you may not like. The company is now force-enabling Edge auto-start to improve startup performance, but the good thing is that you will see a warning about it and be able to disable it in settings. It is not just users who are not happy with what Microsoft is doing to Edge. Browser Alliance openly expressed its discontent with forced auto-start.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft Copilot is now injecting ads into pull requests on GitHub

• Microsoft's Copilot Cowork is now available via the Frontier program

• UK watchdog to probe Microsoft business software over market dominance concerns

• Microsoft's Bing Maps receives its largest address data upgrade in years

• Microsoft to strip AI-generated recaps from Loop

• Samsung Magician SSD software reportedly causes issues on various Windows PCs.

   

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

This week, we had a bunch of reviews and hands-on. To start, here is Steven Parker's quick look at the new Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro 7.1 sound card from Creative. Shortly after, Steven published his full review of the card. There is also a review of the TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro, a highly durable, all-metal SSD enclosure with premium build quality, good speeds, and low temperatures.

Christopher White reviewed a rather unorthodox product this week, the Seenda GCP-10A Floor Gaming Seat, a comfortable solution for those who play games while sitting on the floor. It is easy to use and store, plus it has great lumbar support, but if you have a pet, you will have quite a lot of fun removing fur.

We also have one game review. Pulasthi reviewed Xenonauts 2, a modern take on XCOM with a tough AI, a useful action preview system, satisfying technology progression, and more. However, the game lacks style, its visuals look pretty boring, and the mission variety leaves a lot to be desired.

Finally, we tested Intel's "secret sauce" for Windows 11 performance improvements in the latest Core Ultra processors.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts, and more.

Microsoft announced a new Xbox Games Showcase. It is coming in June, and the company plans to reveal details about Gears of War: E-Day and more. The game still has no fixed release date, so maybe the showcase will finally shed some light on where gamers can expect the latest entry in the Gears of War universe.

While everyone was mocking NVIDIA's DLSS 5, the company released DLSS 4.5 with a 6x model. It is now available to try on compatible hardware via the NVIDIA App, allowing you to generate five additional frames for each native. NVIDIA claims that the update delivers 35% more frames than before.

In addition, NVIDIA announced new games for GeForce NOW, its cloud streaming service. The latest additions include Subliminal, Vampire Crawlers, Samson, Replaced, and more.

Finally, here are this week's Weekend PC Game Deals with the latest giveaways from the Epic Games Store and discounts across other game stores.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:51 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix