Matthew S. Smith

Buried in the inner workings of your laptop is a secret blueprint, dictating the set of instructions the computer can execute and serving as the interface between hardware and software. The instructions are immutable and hidden behind proprietary technology. But starting in 2025, you could buy a new and improved laptop whose secrets are known to all. That laptop will be fully customizable, with both hardware and software you’ll be able to be modified to

2 min read Matthew S. Smith is a Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum and the former Lead Reviews Editor at Digital Trends. Inventors need to think about geopolitical tensions and climate when making business decisions, says Duncan Turner of Hax. Duncan Turner is the managing director at Hax, a startup accelerator that specializes in “hard tech”—innovations in physical science and engineering. Hax offers up to US $500,000 in funding alongside resources that include chemical, mechanical,

It’s hard to overstate Nvidia’s AI dominance. Founded in 1993, Nvidia first made its mark in the then-new field of graphics processing units (GPUs) for personal computers. But it’s the company’s AI chips, not PC graphics hardware, that vaulted Nvidia into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies. It turns out that Nvidia’s GPUs are also excellent for AI. As a result, its stock is more than 15 times as valuable as it was

4 min read Matthew S. Smith is a freelance consumer technology journalist and the former Lead Reviews Editor at Digital Trends. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 is one of over a dozen new PCs with Arm chips from Qualcomm. Matthew S. Smith For the first time in history, there’s a good chance your next Windows laptop won’t have an x86 chip inside. Microsoft launched a new generation of AI-focused Windows laptops, called Copilot Plus PCs, in

4 min read Matthew S. Smith is a freelance consumer technology journalist and the former Lead Reviews Editor at Digital Trends. Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have made headlines in recent months, though often for all the wrong reasons. Cruise, Waymo, and Tesla are all under U.S. federal investigation for a variety of accidents, some of which caused serious injury or death. A new paper published in Nature puts numbers to the problem. Its