With its newest Surface devices unveiled at its Surface event in New York Wednesday, Microsoft has returned to the Arm chip family for power-sipping laptops. And it’s not just any Arm chip, but Microsoft’s own SQ1 design that the company engineered in partnership with Qualcomm. The event also saw the launch of the Surface Neo …

If you’re a snowboarder, mountain biker, skateboarder, rock climber or trail runner looking to publicize your adventures, there’s a new eye in the sky to add a fresh angle to your videos. The second-generation Skydio 2 carries over the original model’s core ability, avoiding obstacles as it follows and records you. But now it’s got better navigation, controls, speed, range, …

If you’re an athlete, sponsor, journalist or volunteer at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, you’ll be using a facial recognition system from Japanese electronics giant NEC and chipmaker Intel to get where you need to be. Intel is collaborating with NEC to provide “a large-scale face recognition system for the Olympics,” said Ricardo Echevarria, general manager of Intel’s Olympics program. …

Good news if you’re into games or video editing: Intel is whacking the prices of its high-end i9 processors as it refreshes an aging design. For example, last year’s top-end Core i9-9980XE processor costing $1,990 at retail is replaced by the $979 Core i9-10980XE. The new chips are due to arrive in November. “People were stuck in the top part …

Solid state drives are way faster than traditional hard drives for storing data on laptops, but they still can’t match the old technology when it comes to cost and capacity. But Intel promises to help improve SSDs with new technology that squeezes more data into each memory cell. SSDs use flash memory, a type of chip that stores data in …

It’s been a busy time in quantum computing: IBM announced its biggest quantum computer so far, and Google reportedly has cracked a problem with its quantum computer faster than a conventional computer could. Now D-Wave, a rival with a different approach to the technology, has announced that nuclear weapons research site Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is the first customer for …

A single feature has dramatically improved my iPad: desktop Safari. By making the tablet’s web browser behave mostly like the one you’d use on personal computers running MacOS or Windows, desktop Safari upgraded my iPad into a much more productive mini laptop. How? In short, by leaving behind the constraints of stripped-down mobile apps in favor of fuller-featured web apps. …

Google’s Chrome gets a splash of color Thursday and some new ways to get a grip on the browser if you have an overabundance of website tabs open. You can now select the colors that’ll show on the tab strip, the background behind it and the new tab page. The colors are a nice touch if you want to personalize …

IBM’s 14th quantum computer is its most powerful so far, a model with 53 of the qubits that form the fundamental data-processing element at the heart of the system. The system, available online to quantum computing customers in October, is a big step up from the last IBM Q machine with 20 qubits and should help advance the marriage of …

Location technology company What3words has two new footholds in the automotive industry as China’s WM Motors and India’s Tata Motors announced they’ll use its three-word locations to help drivers navigate. That’s an expansion beyond German automaker Daimler, a What3words investor that’s using the company’s technology in some Mercedes Benz vehicles. London-based What3words announced the partnerships Tuesday. It’s not clear how …