Technology News

The new Sky Cipher Xbox controller comes in a packaging that is smaller, lighter, and has no single-use plastics.

Microsoft's newest gamepad design features transparent blue plastic like an old PS2 controller

Microsoft is also adding Discord buddies to the Friends list.

The Australian government this week announced it would spend A$18 million over four years on a new center aimed at keeping safe the undersea cables that power the nation's internet.

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become more embedded into our everyday lives and business operations, their high energy demands and environmental impacts call for a more sustainable approach to building algorithms—the sets of instructions used to inform this technology.

Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have enjoyed an astonishing rise into mainstream consciousness in recent years. Despite all the hype—perhaps partly because of it—investing in them can still expose us to serious risks.

Fish fins and insect wings are amazing pieces of natural engineering capable of efficiently moving their owners through water or air. People creating machines to swim or fly have long looked to animals as their models, designing airplanes with wings and boats with fin-shaped rudders. Over the past decades, researchers at Caltech and elsewhere have been exploring bioinspired engineering to see if other natural forms of motion might inform mechanical engineering.

Many people now work partly or permanently from home. This saves petrol because they no longer have to drive to the office—which is good for the energy transition. Or not. Because at home, they consume even more energy for heating and cooking, and video calls also consume extra energy in the data centers of Microsoft, Zoom and the like. Does digitalization now save energy or are we just blowing more CO2 into the atmosphere?

Haptic feedback stands as a cornerstone for the authenticity and depth of engagement in virtual reality and teleoperation systems. Yet, existing haptic devices have grappled with the fidelity of replicating tactile properties, hindered by the constraints on their degrees of freedom and expressive range. This limitation has ignited an urgent quest for innovative solutions that can augment the responsiveness and adaptability of haptic systems.

The future deployment of AIs and robots in our everyday work and life, from fully automated vehicles, to delivery robots, and AI assistants, could either be done by making increasingly capable agents that can do many tasks, or simpler more narrow agents that are designed for specific tasks.

A quick search on the internet will yield numerous videos showcasing the mishaps of driverless cars, often bringing a smile or laugh. But why do we find these behaviors amusing? It might be because they starkly contrast with how a human driver would handle similar situations.

Boeing named former Rockwell Collins chief Robert "Kelly" Ortberg its next CEO Wednesday, as the aviation giant reported a hefty loss on continued operational problems.

Taco Bell says technology improves order accuracy, cuts wait times and offers a "consistent, friendly experience."

Microsoft on Tuesday reported strong quarterly earnings but saw its shares slip on figures showing its crucial cloud computing unit did not grow as strongly as expected.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian says the airline is facing $500 million in costs related to a global tech outage last week that disrupted emergency services, communications and thousands of businesses.

Researchers from Leiden University have developed a method to predict which sellers will be successful in illegal online marketplaces. This could help the police track down big players on the dark web, the hidden part of the internet. Their results are published in Scientific Reports.

People use large language models for a huge array of tasks, from translating an article to identifying financial fraud. However, despite the incredible capabilities and versatility of these models, they sometimes generate inaccurate responses.

The effective integration of extremely thin insulating layers with two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors could enable the fabrication of 2D transistors with an electrical capacitance comparable to SiO2 with thicknesses below 1-nm. These transistors could, in turn, help to boost the performance and reduce the power consumption of electronic devices.

Modern software applications usually consist of numerous files and several million lines of code. Due to the sheer quantity, finding and correcting faults, known as debugging, is difficult.

Researchers at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with collaborators from leading international institutions, have introduced an innovative cathode homogenization strategy for all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASLBs).