Valve was founded 30 years ago today — changed PC gaming forever with Half-Life, then Steam
Today marks Valve’s 30th birthday. The company was founded on August 24, 1996, by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, both Microsoft veterans.
Kyoto University builds transistor that survives 600C temperatures, compatible with standard fabs — Standard ion implantation and bottom-gate design fix leakage and voltage drift
A research team at Kyoto University has built a silicon carbide transistor that operates at 600°C (873 K) using ion implantation.
Forget Meta Ray-Bans. These Dorky-Looking Virtual Display Glasses Are Way More Useful
Tethered display glasses are truly practical face computers. They trade bulky spatial computing for simplicity: Plug in, recline, and get a massive screen right in front of your nose.
Security vets rally around $4 paper password books for sale in Australia
Once shunned by the IT crowd, pen-and-paper password vaults are getting the love they deserve in 2026
Huge $2,200 discount makes this RTX 5090 gaming PC cheaper than the GPU's standalone price — epic HP Omen Max 45L rig ships with 64GB DDR5 and a 2TB SSD for just $4,799
A massive discount means this $4,799 HP Omen Max 45L gaming PC is now cheaper than individually buying the RTX 5090 it uses, thanks to a $2,200 discount.
Bring your ideas to life with epic savings on Flashforge 3D printers — Flashforge joins the AliExpress 828 mega-sale
AliExpress 828 sale brings unbeatable savings on Flashforge 3D printers and premium accessories.
Taiwan reportedly indicted NVIDIA employees for exporting prohibited AI servers to China
Even though the US has relaxed its restrictions of AI chip exports to China, illegal exports are apparently still taking place.
Nintendo takes down over 400 GitHub repositories for Switch emulators in one go — Relentless DMCA strikes tied to piracy concerns over illegal cryptographic keys
Nintendo is doing Nintendo things again as it goes after 7 different master repos containing Switch emulators, which total out to 401 repos wiped in a single day. Most of these belonged to Yuzu forks, such as Suyu, but there was one exception.
The Best Multiuse Air Purifier for Home in 2026: BlueAir, Rabbit Air, Dreame
These WIRED-tested dual-purpose air purifiers also function as heaters, fans, art pieces, and more, offering the best of both worlds.
Microsoft shares temporary fix for Windows 11 gaming issues
Microsoft has shared a temporary fix for ongoing gaming issues caused by Windows 11 updates released during the August 2026 Patch Tuesday. [...]
They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started
The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.
Canonical backs quest to translate mountains of C into safe Rust with AI
Bungs banknotes at Bristol boffins to find out if mature code survives the machine
Humanoid robots smash Usain Bolt’s 100-meter record
Tiangong Ultra (left) also broke the 400 meter world record during this year’s World Humanoid Robot Games. | Image: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images The 9.58-second 100-meter dash record set by Usain Bolt in 2009 has been outpaced by Chinese robots participating at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Be...
Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why
People have been talking to each other for at least 100,000 years, as best we can tell. And in all that time, there has been only one thing in the world that could learn a human language to perfect fluency: a human child. Now there are two. Four short years after the release of ChatGPT,…
NASA’s New Space Telescope Is Poised to Discover Hidden Facets of the Universe
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to discover as many as 200,000 new planets and reveal details about the elusive nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Software should work, and talking about it needn't be boring
Bingeing the boxed set of binary bafflement
China calls off ambitious ice-hunting moonshot a day before flight
Chang'e 7 didn’t meet unspecified ‘launch requirements’
Batch file automated a clean-up job, then fouled itself by deleting the wrong directory
It survived testing and the boss signed off, so who was really to blame?
These are the best MacBook deals right now: August 2026 Buyer’s Guide
In recent years, Macs had been getting more and more affordable. Cheaper starting points, more memory and storage per dollar, and the introduction of MacBook Neo. For the first time, Apple had started to become one of the best values on the market. Unfortunately, Apple just drastically increased ...
AI-driven upgrade of communications energy storage empowers a new energy ecosystem for multiple industries
SPONSORED FEATURE: Embedding AI at communication sites to empower energy optimization, power grid stability control and low-carbon development