Meta announced today that it will divorce its Horizon Worlds social and gaming service—once promoted as the company’s first major step into the metaverse—from its Quest VR headset platform and digital store. The company says it is now “shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile.” The announcement is also filled with statements like “we’re doubling down on the VR developer ecosystem” that are attempting to head off…

There’s something special about the gadget that “just works.” Technology can open opportunities for those devices but also complicate and weigh down products that have done just fine without things like sensors and software. So when a product like the beloved Rubik’s Cube gets stuffed with wires, processors, and rechargeable batteries, there’s demand for it to be not just on par with the original—but markedly better. The Cubios Rubik’s WOWCube…

This week, Apple released the first developer betas for iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, and its other operating systems. On Tuesday, it followed those up with public beta versions of the same updates. Usually released around the midpoint between one major iOS release and the next, the *.4 updates to its operating system usually include a significant batch of new features and other refinements, and if the first beta…

It’s that time of year—a new budget Pixel phone is about to hit virtual shelves. The Pixel 10a will be available on March 5, and pre-orders go live today. The 9a will still be on sale for a while, but the 10a will be headlining Google’s store. However, you might not notice unless you keep up with the Pixel numbering scheme. This year’s A-series Pixel is virtually identical to last…

Over the past 15 years, password managers have grown from a niche security tool used by the technology savvy into an indispensable security tool for the masses, with an estimated 94 million US adults—or roughly 36 percent of them—having adopted them. They store not only passwords for pension, financial, and email accounts, but also cryptocurrency credentials, payment card numbers, and other sensitive data. All eight of the top password managers…

More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company’s customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, “The Mass Exodus That Never Was: The Squeeze Is Just Beginning,” that provides insight into those struggles. CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud management platform provider that aims to identify VMware customers’ pain points so it can sell…

Earlier this month, Valve announced it was delaying the release of its new Steam Machine desktop and Steam Frame VR headset due to memory and storage shortages that have been cascading across the PC industry since late 2025. But those shortages are also coming for products that have already launched. Valve had added a note to its Steam Deck page noting that the device would be “out-of-stock intermittently in some…

You might have noticed some reporting a few days ago that Android 17 was rolling out in beta form, but that didn’t happen. For reasons Google still has not explained, the release was canceled. Two days later, Android 17 is here for real. If you’ve got a recent Pixel device, you can try the latest version today, but don’t expect big changes just yet—there’s still a long way to go…

On Thursday, OpenAI released its first production AI model to run on non-Nvidia hardware, deploying the new GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark coding model on chips from Cerebras. The model delivers code at more than 1,000 tokens (chunks of data) per second, which is reported to be roughly 15 times faster than its predecessor. To compare, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 in its new premium-priced fast mode reaches about 2.5 times its standard speed of…

AI-driven memory and storage price hikes have been the defining feature of the PC industry in 2026, and hobbyists have been hit the hardest—companies like Apple with lots of buying power have been able to limit the price increases for their PCs, phones, and other gadgets so far, but smaller outfits like Valve and Raspberry Pi haven’t been so lucky. Framework, the company behind repairable and upgradeable computer designs like…