TL;DR: If you're looking for a powerful productivity suite without paying any subscriptions, Office 2021 is now available for just $35. All the essential tools you need for work or personal projects at over 80% off the regular price.
Java 26 is here with fresh language features, faster performance, stronger security, and a wave of library and tooling upgrades. Early developer reaction has been upbeat, with many praising Java's steady pace of meaningful improvements.
A hot potato: It might be difficult for some people to believe, but not everyone owns a smartphone. Those who can't or won't use a handset often find today's digital society difficult to navigate. Just ask the 81-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers fan who can't get a season ticket because the team no longer prints paper versions.
AI workloads are competing with games for the same cloud infrastructure
Facepalm: Multiplayer servers for the real-time strategy game Stormgate will go offline at the end of the month after the infrastructure provider that hosts them was acquired by an AI company and began winding down its gaming services. The shutdown shows how AI infrastructure expansion is now affecting not just PC hardware supply, but also the backend services that many modern games rely on.
The big picture: Thanks to Microsoft's massive promotional campaigns around everything Copilot, most people are now aware that the product is integrated into Windows, Office, and virtually everywhere else. However, many are probably unaware of the full extent of that integration.
And Yet It Moves: Designing microrobots that combine complex motion with practical size has long forced a tradeoff: devices tend to be either small and rigid or large and flexible. Researchers at Leiden University are now exploring a different path, proposing a nature-inspired design that begins to blur that boundary.
The technology combines rapid deployment, live video feeds, and non-lethal force to intervene before police arrive
Forward-looking: When classes resume this fall at Deltona High School in Florida, students might find an unusual addition to their campus security system: ceiling-mounted drones designed to respond to active shooter threats. The machines – called Black Arrows and built by Austin-based startup Mithril Defense – can race through school corridors at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, emit piercing alarms, flash strobes, and even spray pepper gel at an attacker.
Highly anticipated: A team in Japan has developed a Wi-Fi receiver capable of operating in the extreme radiation inside nuclear reactors, an advance that could help robotics teams safely decommission aging power plants. The receiver, developed at the Institute of Science Tokyo, demonstrated resilience under radiation doses roughly 1,000 times higher than what typical electronics can withstand.
Users could input their hardware to see estimated frame rates before buying
The takeaway: Valve appears to be preparing a new feature that could make one of PC gaming's biggest uncertainties – performance – more transparent. Newly uncovered code in the Steam client suggests players may soon see estimated frame rate data for each game derived from real-world gameplay metrics shared by other users.