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This is undeniably Motorola’s finest Moto G yet and a killer phone at $300. It’s a shame it’ll get only one software update.

All you need is an internet connection, a library card, and a good ebook reader to dive into your next page-turner.

Hoping to make life easier, I tested six AI-powered tools meant to help me write better and work smarter.

Physicists call the dark energy that drives the universe “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.

Whether you’re snoozing in a campground or schlepping up to an alpine valley, these are the best pads we’ve found for resting your weary bones.

Whether you’re up against pet hair or you want to splurge on a high-end laser-guided robot vacuum, we have the perfect pick for you.

These hearing aids are tiny and nearly invisible, but they aren’t terribly effective.

These are some of our favorite stands, cases, keyboards, and styli, no matter which Apple tablet you have.

New music from Maggie Rogers, Tyla, Brittany Howard, and SchoolBoy Q showcase distinct artistic evolutions.

Plus: Leaked details tell us more about the new Google Pixel 8A, Freitag’s environmentally conscious bag is entirely recyclable, and it’s time to unpack a whole bunch of tech acronyms.

Enlarge / Jürgen Trittin, member of the German Bundestag and former environment minister, stands next to an activist during an action of the environmental organization Greenpeace in front of the Brandenburg Gate in April 2023. The action is to celebrate the shutdown of the last three German nuclear power plants. (credit: Christoph Soeder/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

One year ago, Germany took its last three nuclear power stations offline. When it comes to energy, few events have baffled outsiders more.

In the face of climate change, calls to expedite the transition away from fossil fuels, and an energy crisis precipitated by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Berlin’s move to quit nuclear before carbon-intensive energy sources like coal has attracted significant criticism. (Greta Thunberg prominently labeled it “a mistake.”)

This decision can only be understood in the context of post-war socio-political developments in Germany, where anti-nuclearism predated the public climate discourse.

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Enlarge / More players have been emerging from this vault lately than have in years. (credit: Samuel Axon)

War never changes, but Fallout 76 sure has. The online game that launched to a negative reception with no NPCs but plenty of bugs has mutated in new directions since its 2018 debut. Now it’s finding new life thanks to the wildly popular Fallout TV series that debuted a couple of weeks ago.

In truth, it never died, though it has stayed in decidedly niche territory for the past six years. Developer Bethesda Game Studios has released regular updates fixing (many of) the bugs, adding new ways to play, softening the game’s rough edges, and yes, introducing Fallout 3- or Fallout 4-like, character-driven quest lines with fully voiced NPCs—something many players felt was missing in the early days.

It’s still not for everybody, but for a select few of us who’ve stuck with it, there’s nothing else quite like it.

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Climate change is increasing the number of days people are exposed to hazardous pollution, affecting already disadvantaged communities the most.

Plus: Google holds off on killing cookies, Samourai Wallet founders get arrested, and GM stops driver surveillance program.

A ban on weapons of mass destruction in orbit has stood since 1967. Russia apparently has other ideas.

Enlarge / NASA's Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, at the end of the Artemis I mission. (credit: NASA)

NASA officials declared the Artemis I mission successful in late 2021, and it's hard to argue with that assessment. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft performed nearly flawlessly on an unpiloted flight that took it around the Moon and back to Earth, setting the stage for the Artemis II, the program's first crew mission.

But one of the things engineers saw on Artemis I that didn't quite match expectations was an issue with the Orion spacecraft's heat shield. As the capsule streaked back into Earth's atmosphere at the end of the mission, the heat shield ablated, or burned off, in a different manner than predicted by computer models.

More of the charred material than expected came off the heat shield during the Artemis I reentry, and the way it came off was somewhat uneven, NASA officials said. Orion's heat shield is made of a material called Avcoat, which is designed to burn off as the spacecraft plunges into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 km per hour). Coming back from the Moon, Orion encountered temperatures up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius), hotter than a spacecraft sees when it reenters the atmosphere from low-Earth orbit.

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More like Robot Rock, am I right? (Sorry.) These are some of the best dust busters around, and they’re cheaper than usual.

Enlarge / Scale is important, especially when talking about relative console sales. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it made 31 percent less off Xbox hardware in the first quarter of 2024 (ending in March) than it had the year before, a decrease it says was "driven by lower volume of consoles sold." And that's not because the console sold particularly well a year ago, either; Xbox hardware revenue for the first calendar quarter of 2023 was already down 30 percent from the previous year.

Those two data points speak to a console that is struggling to substantially increase its player base during a period that should, historically, be its strongest sales period. But getting wider context on those numbers is a bit difficult because of how Microsoft reports its Xbox sales numbers (i.e., only in terms of quarterly changes in total console hardware revenue). Comparing those annual shifts to the unit sales numbers that Nintendo and Sony report every quarter is not exactly simple.

Context clues

Significant declines in Xbox hardware revenue for four of the last five quarters stand out relative to competitors' unit sales. (credit: Kyle Orland)

To attempt some direct contextual comparison, we took unit sales numbers for some recent successful Sony and Nintendo consoles and converted them to Microsoft-style year-over-year percentage changes (aligned with the launch date for each console). For this analysis, we skipped over each console's launch quarter, which contains less than three months of total sales (and often includes a lot of pent-up early adopter demand). We also skipped the first four quarters of a console's life cycle, which don't have a year-over-year comparison point from 12 months prior.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Creativeye99)

A federal appeals court today reversed a ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring Internet service providers to sell $15 broadband plans to low-income consumers. The ruling is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced.

New York's Affordable Broadband Act (ABA) was blocked in June 2021 by a US District Court judge who ruled that the state law is rate regulation and preempted by federal law. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the ruling and vacated the permanent injunction that barred enforcement of the state law.

For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.

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