Writer, Future
The stories at the edge, where computing, money and play are being rebuilt. Takes the long view, distrusts anything called inevitable.
Fervo Energy's Cape Station in Utah is on track to send its first power to the grid in October, the first commercial-scale enhanced geothermal project to get there. The technology fracks hot dry rock to make geothermal work far beyond volcanic zones, and Google has just signed for 396 megawatts of it. Here is what is real, what is still a target, and why data centres are watching.
SpaceX has filed for Starship's first flight to attempt orbit, carrying about 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites; its CFO calls it the programme's first revenue flight. As of this writing it has not launched, the FAA licence is still outstanding, and the ship is still planned to splash down rather than be caught. Here is the honest picture of what Flight 14 is, and is not.
At its 9 September 'Surprise and Shine' keynote, the first under new chief executive John Ternus, Apple unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and its first foldable, the iPhone Duo. Here is what was actually announced, what it costs, when you can buy it, and the one big caveat: there is still no standard iPhone 18 this autumn.
Princeton's PACMAN system used AI to predict a plasma-destroying instability in a tokamak about 200 milliseconds before it struck and adjusted to avoid it, in live experiments. Here is how AI control of nuclear fusion works, why it matters, and why it does not mean fusion power is suddenly close.
Europe's giant tech show is in full swing, and the announcements are a mix of shipping products, sealed-case previews and pure concepts. Here is a clear-eyed guide to the headline reveals, from Samsung's Galaxy S26 FE to a full-leg exoskeleton, with each one tagged for what you can actually buy.
There is no single best electric car, there is a best one for your budget and your driving. We compare the ones that matter on real range, starting price and value, from the $29,990 Nissan Leaf to the 512-mile Lucid Air, so you can pick without overpaying.
Starcloud added a 250 million dollar extension to its round, valuing the orbital-data-centre startup at 2.3 billion, with Nvidia and Cisco Investments joining. The pitch: meet AI's power demand in space. It runs one Nvidia GPU in orbit so far, and the plan rides on cheaper Starship launches.
On 20 August, Nevada approved permits letting three companies charge for autonomous rides around Las Vegas: Tesla up to 5,000 vehicles, Waymo up to 1,000, and Uber's Aviari up to 1,000. Those 7,000 are among the highest permit ceilings any US state has written, but of the three, only Waymo runs with no safety driver.
On 18 August, Beijing's LandSpace landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on land, which it says is a first for a Chinese company. It joins a short list of firms that can recover an orbital-class booster, but a booster that lands is not yet one that has flown again.
Honor has launched a phone whose main camera sits on a motorised titanium arm that pops out, swivels to follow you and, in a demo, danced along like a pet. Underneath is a serious camera partnership with cinema-gear maker ARRI. Here is what the Robot Phone is, what the arm does, and the very large catch.
No dish, no bulky sat-phone, no special hardware: three well-funded companies are racing to connect the normal smartphone in your pocket straight to satellites in space. A launch on 5 August pushed the most ambitious of them further. Here is how 'direct-to-cell' works, who is winning, and what it can and cannot do.
The old joke is that fusion is always 30 years away. In 2026 the private leaders are trying to make it a dated bet: Commonwealth Fusion just raised its total to $4 billion and aims for net energy gain in 2027. Here is the caveat that separates a lab result from a power plant.
At Made by Google 2026, Google unveiled a full Pixel 11 line, a folding flagship, a new watch and its first Bluetooth tracker, with the phones on a new 3nm Tensor G6 chip. The hardware was the supporting act; the headline features are AI, and prices crept up about a hundred dollars.
In a few days in August, quantum computing companies posted triple-digit revenue growth, went live inside a big cloud platform, and landed government chip money. It is a genuine inflection, from lab curiosity to business. It is also not the same as quantum computers being broadly useful yet, and telling those two apart is the whole point.
On Flight 13, Starship opened its bay and released real satellites for the first time, then flew the softest landing the giant rocket has ever managed. It also lost its booster and, quietly, still has not reached orbit. A clear-eyed look at what genuinely changed on 24 July, and what the hype leaves out.
The US set a patriotic deadline: get new nuclear reactors running by 4 July 2026. Four made it, in some of the fastest builds in decades, and a fifth followed in August. A genuine milestone driven by AI's power hunger, but not what headlines imply: none is yet putting a watt onto the grid.
The air taxi finally exists, carries paying passengers, and is nothing like the flying car you were promised. The first rides are launching in Dubai and China, not America, they still need a human pilot, and two of Europe's biggest names went bankrupt getting here. The honest state of eVTOL.
Meta put a display and a mind-reading wristband on your face, and suddenly smart glasses feel like the future. They are genuinely useful now. They are also not the augmented reality you are picturing, and the gap between the two is the whole story.
They are real, they are on factory floors, and the money behind them is staggering. They also run out of battery in two hours and need a human babysitter. A grounded look at where humanoid robots actually stand, past the demo reels.
Empty cars now carry paying passengers across a dozen cities, and the safety numbers are better than most people expect. A clear-eyed look at where you can actually ride one, who is winning, and what the hype still skips over.