After five years of development, Pistol Shrimp Games has launched a free public demo of Free Stars: Children of Infinity, the sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters made by that game's original creators. The demo focuses solely on the melee combat mode, letting players choose from 38 ships—including nearly all classic Ur-Quan Masters vessels plus new additions—for head-to-head arcade battles. It's available now on Steam and GOG for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with console versions still to come.
Amazon is selling the XGIMI MoGo 4 Laser portable projector for $539, a $170 cut from its $709 list price. The 24% discount matches the lowest price the device has hit, previously only available during Prime Day.
Google has rolled out Chrome 153 on desktop, Android, and iOS, marking the switch from a four-week to a two-week release schedule. This follows an earlier announcement that Google would double the frequency of stable Chrome releases to speed delivery of features and fixes.
The OECD's latest PISA assessment found 15-year-olds scoring at their lowest levels since testing began in 2000, with reading falling from 501 in 2012 to 466, science from 506 to 486, and math from 502 to 469. The organization attributed the decline to increased screen time, less voluntary reading, and hasty reading habits, noting students who frequently used AI chatbots for schoolwork scored roughly 20 points lower in science.
An analysis breaks down why cheap and expensive smart TVs differ mainly in their system-on-a-chip, which handles video decoding, upscaling, and app performance. Budget TVs often lack AI-assisted upscaling, are capped at 60Hz refresh rates, and tend to run menus and apps more slowly, while pricier models handle 120Hz output and sharper image reconstruction.
Google has shifted Chrome's stable release schedule from a four-week cycle to a two-week cycle, beginning with Chrome 153 across desktop, Android, and iOS. This means new features, bug fixes, and security patches now reach users twice as fast as before. Chrome 154 is already in beta and slated for release on September 22.
Samsung executives Hee-Cheul Moon and Seungki Choi told WIRED they welcome Apple's entry into the foldable market ahead of its rumored iPhone Ultra launch. They noted that Samsung has cut 75 grams off its foldable design since 2017, with the new Galaxy Z Fold8 weighing 201 grams, lighter than Samsung's own single-screen Galaxy S26 Ultra. Apple's folding device is expected to weigh between 230 and 241 grams, heavier than Samsung's latest model.
A developer released Solid Objects, an open-source library that replicates the Durable Objects programming model—one identity, one state, one ordered mailbox per object—without requiring a dedicated vendor runtime or daemon. Instead, it runs directly on databases developers already operate, including SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. The release follows the creator's frustration with vendor lock-in and unpredictable metered billing tied to existing Durable Objects platforms.
Emily Oberg, founder of fashion brand Sporty & Rich, revealed she tested AI-generated imagery to cut costs on e-commerce photo shoots, which typically run upwards of $200,000 twice a year. She said the results looked flat, lifeless and overly perfect, with models appearing 'dead in the eyes,' prompting her to return to using a full human team for future shoots.
Multiple Waze users report that switching the app from split-screen to full-screen view on Android Auto causes the navigation information box—showing ETA, arrival time, next turn, and remaining distance—to vanish. Some say the data briefly reappears when an alert pops up, only to disappear again once the alert clears, while at least one user reports the map failing to center properly in either view. Android Authority has contacted Google, and it remains unclear whether the fault lies with a recent Android Auto or Waze update.
Archaeologists studying a 3,200-year-old inscription believe it may reveal clues to the whereabouts of Mesen, an ancient Egyptian settlement that has not been definitively located. Researchers say the site once held strategic importance for Egypt's military operations during that era.
A security researcher highlights how Docker's default client-server architecture runs its daemon as root, meaning any user with access to the Docker socket can escalate privileges to full root access without a password. The piece demonstrates this with a simple command that mounts the host filesystem inside a container and bypasses normal permission checks, tying the issue to a recent vulnerability disclosed in an unnamed Linux distribution whose installer enabled an insecure Docker configuration by default.
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