Firefox now lets users keep cookies, logins, and browsing sessions apart through native Containers.

OpenAI has launched Health in ChatGPT, allowing U.S. users to connect Apple Health and supported medical records for more personalized health conversations.

We enjoyed [Beej’s] trip down memory lane looking at a BASIC game, The Wizard’s Castle, written for the Exidy Sorcerer. It appeared in a 1980 magazine that included the title graphic above. It reminded us how, back in those days, we did things with BASIC that you shouldn’t be able to do and it often looks, today, rather cryptic.

In particular, even if you know modern BASIC, these few lines might give you a pause:

10 REM"_(C2SLFF4
40 POKE 260,218: POKE 261,1: T = USR(0): T = PEEK(-2049)
80 Q = RND(-(2*T+1))

Line 10 is a comment, but a strange one. Certainly that doesn’t matter, right? Actually, it is a key part of the action. On line 40, you can see some pokes to write directly to memory and a peek to read some memory value back. The USR function calls some machine language program. You may realize the whole thing is to get some value T to seed the random number generator in line 80.

This leads to a few obvious questions. First, how does USR know what to call? Second, where is the machine language program? The details varied by system, of course, but in this case, the program knows that location 259 has a jump instruction that USR called. So poking an address into 260 and 261 was telling USR where it should go.

But what’s at that address? Keep in mind that an old computer like the Sorcerer didn’t have megabytes of memory being swapped about by an operating system. That means that things tended to be in known places and that BASIC had to be judicious about storing source code.

As was common at the time, a line like “10 PRINT 1+1” would get tokenized. In this case, each line would get a pointer to the next line, a two-byte line number, a single-byte token for “PRINT” and then more bytes to represent the rest of the line. In the case of text in a string or a remark, the bytes were just the text with a zero to terminate the string.

The first line entered would always be at address 469. So? If you consider the format of the REM statement, there will be a pointer at 469 and 470, the line number at 471 and 472, and the REM token at 473. That means the other bytes just get poured into address 474 and beyond.

That might seem like an odd number until you look at the pokes in line 40. Keep in mind that POKE works on bytes, not words. So poking 1 into 261 gives you an address of 256 + whatever is in the low byte, in this case 218. Add 256 and 218, and you get… 474! So USR is going to call that odd string in line 10!

There is more to the detective story, but if you want to know exactly what the REM did, you can read the original post.

Looking for a new mouse this Back-to-School season? These are the best options for gaming, productivity, creative work, and everyday use.

A sudden jump in LPCAMM2 pricing has forced Framework to revise some existing Laptop 13 Pro and Mainboard preorders, reducing later 64GB configurations to 32GB and some DIY Edition and Mainboard orders from 32GB to 16GB.

Amazon's rolling out new Alexa+ developer tools that let smart home brands plug in deeper features, plus Amazon Wallet for instant voice checkout on bookings.

Google now lets you use your face to log into your Google account. Here's how you can set up the new selfie video sign-in feature.

Framework previewed a new Framework Desktop packing 192GB of RAM and a beefy new chip, built to run large AI models at home. Here's what we know so far.

A study found leading AI chatbots can outperform people at easing anger and fear, raising uncomfortable questions about who we increasingly turn to during difficult moments.

Augmental has opened public US sales of its tongue-controlled MouthPad and released a beta of Vox, a new device built to handle hands-free dictation.

The first MacBook Neo refresh may address two of the original model’s biggest performance limitations through a faster chip and additional memory.

Apple is reportedly developing OLED versions of the MacBook Air and iMac, although both will arrive well after the first OLED MacBook Pro.

Apple is already preparing updates to the MacBook Neo, iMac, MacBook Air and more.

Nearly 20 years ago (!), in 2007, I published my first and only book: Microsoft 2.0. It focused on changes I expected at the company in the “Post-Gates” era. What would remain the same and what likely would be different once co-founder and CEO Bill Gates had left the building?

CEO Satya Nadella has not exited the company (yet). But there’s no question that Microsoft and its mission have morphed considerably in the past year or two. I’m not quite ready to christen this the Microsoft 3.0 era, even though Nadella handed the reins of Microsoft’s dominant commercial business to Judson Althoff nearly a year ago.

That decision resulted in Nadella moving into more of a “founder mode” role, allowing him to focus less on the day-to-day work of running the business. (Microsoft historians may recall that Gates made a somewhat similar move back in 2000 when he became Microsoft’s chief software architect.)

While it might not yet be time for Microsoft 3.0, we arguably could be in the “Microsoft 2.5” era. Windows and Office are still around and still play a big role. Microsoft still builds and sells developer tools and databases. But there’s no question that the cloud and all things AI are at the top of the pecking order now.

I’m embarking on a series here at GeekWire that will focus on what matters to Microsoft and, by extension, to its customers, partners, investors, and employees these days. Who are some of the people shaping and leading the company? What are their opportunities and challenges right now?

Over the next few weeks, I will be profiling various Microsoft execs working on plans for Microsoft’s ongoing evolution. Some are company veterans; some are newcomers. I’ll be talking with top execs from Microsoft’s Security, Copilot, Windows + Devices, Xbox, GitHub, and more.

I’m interested in their strategies for Microsoft’s key products and technologies and how they plan to try to turn Microsoft’s ambitious vision into reality. What are their teams building? What do they see as their biggest challenges and opportunities? And where do they see the technologies in their respective areas heading?

I feel like many of us who’ve been keeping track of the biggest tech companies (myself included) have fallen into the trap of blaming or attributing everything a company does to AI. Layoffs? AI is the culprit. Price increases? It’s all thanks to AI. Changing sales strategies? Chalk it up to AI …

But upon further reflection, I believe Microsoft’s strategy is more nuanced than “AI or bust.” There’s no question that Microsoft’s AI ambitions are shaping its goals and tactics. But Microsoft, as a heavily enterprise-focused entity, can’t simply stop supporting products that aren’t built from the ground up with AI (as much as it might like to do so). Nor can it just leave behind customers who aren’t 100% onboard with its AI moves.

Couple those enterprise hurdles with some not-so-popular consumer decisions, like axing 3,200 people in the gaming unit, and Microsoft’s approach to turning the ship looks a lot trickier.

Read the first installment in the series, profiling new Microsoft Security EVP Hayete Gallot, who’s revamping the group’s leadership as the company pushes into the agentic security.

Adobe Acrobat now lets WhatsApp Web and Windows users open and annotate PDFs inside a chat, removing the usual download-first routine while retaining password protection and end-to-end encryption.

Getting rid of old computers and printers responsibly is free, accessible and considerably simpler than most people assume.

Substack is rolling out a Pangram-powered scanner that lets readers check posts, notes, and replies for AI-written text. Writers get their own tools too, including a pre-publish scan and a "How I make this" disclosure.

China's AI companies are running short on engineers, so they're now scouting talent as young as 13 with camps, mentorships, and even guaranteed jobs straight out of high school.

GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased OpenAI model exploited zero-day vulnerabilities to escape a testing sandbox and access Hugging Face’s production infrastructure

Seattle-based Interlune says it has managed to produce 99% pure helium-3 from a standard supply of industrial-grade helium, marking a milestone for a technology that the company aims to use on the moon.

The process, known as Cold Capture, could be profitably used on Earth even before Interlune begins lunar mining operations.

Only 0.000137% of the world’s helium exists in the form of helium-3, as opposed to the much more common helium-4 isotope. But helium-3 is uniquely suited for use as a refrigerant for quantum computers. It can also be used in radiation detectors, medical scanners and eventually fusion reactors.

Because of its rarity and utility, the price of helium-3 can range as high as $20 million per kilogram ($9 million per pound). Interlune is betting on the proposition that helium-3 is more abundant and easier to access on the moon, due to the lunar surface’s exposure to the solar wind. If Interlune’s business model works out, the company will be able to turn a profit by delivering lunar helium-3 to Earth for industrial applications.

Interlune’s first objective was to show that Cold Capture could work as advertised. The process uses cryogenic distillation to separate helium-3 from ordinary helium at temperatures approaching absolute zero.

“Capturing helium-3 from existing helium sounds deceptively simple,” Gary Lai, Interlune’s chief technology officer, said in a news release. “But helium-3 and ordinary helium are almost chemically identical, making them extraordinarily difficult to separate. Cold Capture exploits subtle physical differences between the two isotopes at cryogenic temperatures to recover helium-3 in a process designed to scale.”

Interlune demonstrated Cold Capture at a small scale in early 2025, and received a $1.25 million small-business grant from the Department of the Air Force last November to scale up the technology for commercial production.

Based on the experiments conducted since then, Interlune projects that its technology could triple the current domestic production rate of helium-3.

“Every liter of helium produced in the world contains trace amounts of helium-3,” said Rob Meyerson, co-founder and CEO of Interlune. “Cold Capture plugs into existing helium liquefaction plant infrastructure to recover that helium-3 and turn it into a valuable product.”

Interlune has already struck deals with the U.S. Department of Energy and Maybell Quantum to deliver shipments of helium-3. The first shipments are likely to come from terrestrial sources of helium, courtesy of Cold Capture.

Meanwhile, the company is following a step-by-step plan for lunar prospecting and production. A camera designed to estimate lunar levels of helium-3 is due for delivery to the moon late this year aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander.

That mission, known as Crescent Moon, is expected to open the way for a NASA-supported experiment called Prospect Moon in 2028. The experiment will test methods to extract gases such as helium-3 and hydrogen from lunar soil and rocks.

Follow-up missions could focus on harvesting hydrogen for rocket fuel and other lunar power applications, while also collecting helium-3 for delivery to Earth.

Interlune was founded in 2020 and reported raising $18 million in seed capital in 2024. This January, the company announced an additional $5 million investment offering aimed at advancing key technical milestones.