Scientists are often advised to explain their work in terms that a child can understand—a task that is particularly challenging when it comes to such complex topics as quantum mechanics. It's easier when the interviewer is an actual child, like 9-year-old Kai Moskvitch, aka the Quantum Kid. Kai and his mother, theoretical physicist and science communicator Katia Moskvitch, co-host The Quantum Kid podcast , which recently crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark and has been nominated for a Webby Award. (Public voting ends tomorrow; you can vote here .)

Katia Moskvitch got the idea for a podcast after her precocious son—who loved scrolling through YouTube science videos and has been programming in Python since he was six—kept peppering her with big questions about the origins of life and the universe. And, of course, quantum physics. Moskvitch found it challenging to answer all Kai's questions, despite her training, and when she asked if he wanted deeper answers via his own YouTube channel, Kai responded with an enthusiastic yes.

The duo started the podcast last summer, producing about one episode per month. It certainly helps that Moskvitch has plenty of contacts within the quantum physics community, both in academia and in industry. For instance, Kai interviewed Peter Shor about his seminal quantum algorithm, as well as University of Texas, Austin, physicist Scott Aaronson about time travel .

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Later this year, two spacecraft are scheduled for launch on missions to land somewhere near the rim of Shackleton Crater , an impact basin near the Moon's south pole harboring an immense reservoir of water ice.

The two landers will arguably be the most ambitious robotic missions ever sent to the Moon. The Endurance spacecraft, built by Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin, will become the largest lunar lander in history, exceeding the size of NASA's Apollo lunar module that ferried crews to and from the lunar surface more than 50 years ago. China's Chang'e 7 mission will feature a smaller lander, but the project also includes an orbiter, rover, and a hopper drone to scout for hidden ice deposits.

Blue Origin's Endurance lander departed NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday for a trip by barge back to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for final preparations to launch on the company's heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. The lander underwent a comprehensive test in Houston to ensure it can survive the extreme temperatures on the airless lunar surface. Two days earlier, Chang'e 7 arrived at a spaceport on Hainan Island in the South China Sea to be integrated with China's own heavy-lifter: the Long March 5 rocket.

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A Florida grand jury has indicted surgeon Thomas Shaknovsky on charges of second-degree manslaughter for the 2024 death of a patient whose surgical procedure was horrifyingly botched.

That patient was 70-year-old William Bryan of Alabama, who was scheduled in August to have his spleen removed in a minimally invasive (laparoscopic) procedure. But instead, Shaknovsky opened Bryan's abdominal cavity, severed his largest vein with a surgical stapling device—which led to his death—and cut his healthy liver from his body as he bled out, according to an investigation by the state health department . Bryan's spleen was left untouched.

The second-degree manslaughter charge stems from an investigation by the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, which coordinated with the Office of the State Attorney First Judicial Circuit and additional state and medical authorities.

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A federal jury ruled today that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary operate an illegal monopoly that overcharged fans for tickets, handing a win to US states that continued a trial even after the Trump administration dropped out.

The jury found that "Ticketmaster unlawfully maintains a monopoly in the market for ticketing services at major concert venues" and that "Live Nation has a monopoly in the market for large amphitheaters used by artists," said an announcement from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. The jury additionally determined "that Live Nation unlawfully requires artists who use the amphitheaters it owns to also use its event promotion services," and "that fans have been overcharged for concert tickets at major concert venues across the country," the New York AG's office said.

A five-week trial was held in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to CNN , jurors found that "Ticketmaster overcharged states by $1.72 per ticket, about what the states had estimated." Evidence at trial showed that a Live Nation regional director boasted of gouging ticket buyers and “robbing them blind” with fees for ancillary services such as slight parking upgrades.

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Two years ago, Microsoft launched its first wave of “Copilot+” Windows PCs with a handful of exclusive features that could take advantage of the neural processing unit (NPU) hardware being built into newer laptop processors. These NPUs could enable some AI and machine learning features that could be run locally rather than in someone’s cloud, theoretically enhancing security and privacy.

One of the first Copilot+ features was Recall, a feature that promised to track all your PC usage via screenshot to help you remember your past activity. But as originally implemented, Recall was neither private nor secure ; the feature stored its screenshots plus a giant database of all user activity in totally unencrypted files on the user’s disk, making it trivial for anyone with remote or local access to grab days, weeks, or even months of sensitive data, depending on the age of the user’s Recall database.

After journalists and security researchers discovered and detailed these flaws, Microsoft delayed the Recall rollout by almost a year , substantially overhauling its security . All locally stored data would now be encrypted and viewable only with Windows Hello authentication; the feature now did a better job detecting and excluding sensitive information, including financial information, from its database; and Recall would be turned off by default, rather than enabled on every PC that supported it.

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Most people access Google's search and AI products through a browser, but you've got some new options today. Google has been testing a Windows search app for some months, and it's now officially available . Over on the Apple side of the fence, Google has focused its efforts on designing a native Gemini app. That one is also available widely today with the same features you get in the Gemini web interface.

The "Google app for desktop" first arrived on Windows in a beta form last September . It was pretty rough at first, and Google couldn't even update the app's early versions, forcing users to uninstall and reinstall new builds. That won't be a concern with the official release, which brings assorted search capabilities to your Windows PC.

The Google app can search the web or your PC. Credit: Google

You can open the Google app by pressing Alt + Space at any time. The compact search UI floats on top of whatever you're doing, allowing you to instantly search the web and (with authorization) your local files and apps. Web results look like what you'd get in a browser, right down to the inclusion of AI Overviews and AI Mode.

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Robots such as Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot can now accurately read analog thermometers and pressure gauges while roaming around factories and warehouses. Those improvements come courtesy of Google DeepMind’s newest robotic AI model that aims to enhance robotic capabilities for ‘embodied reasoning’ when interacting with physical environments.

The new Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 model announced on April 14 performs as a “high-level reasoning model for a robot” that can plan and execute tasks, according to Google DeepMind. This model also unlocks the capability of accurately reading instruments such as complex gauges and doing visual inspections using sight glasses that provide a transparent window to peek inside tanks and pipes—a performance upgrade that came about through Google DeepMind’s ongoing collaboration with robotics company Boston Dynamics.

Boston Dynamics has a keen interest in testing both quadruped and humanoid robotic workers in a wide range of industrial facilities, including the automotive factories of the robotic company’s corporate owner, Hyundai Motor Group. The company’s robot “dog,” Spot, is being trialled as a robotic inspector that roams throughout industrial facilities to check up on everything. Such inspection duties require “complex visual reasoning” to interpret the multiple needles, liquid levels, container boundaries and tick marks, along with text, in various instruments.

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NBA fans sat on the edges of their seats as last night’s game between the Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets went into overtime. That excitement quickly shifted to confusion, frustration, and outrage when Amazon Prime Video, the only place where the game was available to watch, subsequently cut out for almost two minutes.

As reported by ESPN , Prime Video started showing a message that read “technical difficulties” seconds after cutting off the game’s commentator in the middle of a sentence. Viewers missed a Hornets possession that included a score by LaMelo Ball. By the time the stream came back online, 22.1 seconds of playing time had passed, per ESPN, and viewers were dismayed.

“Tell me the game didn’t just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH,” LeBron James, a Los Angeles Lakers player who previously won two championships with the Heat, said , adding a face-planting emoji, on X.

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The Godzilla franchise is going strong in 2026, with Apple TV's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (part of Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse ) and the pending release of Toho's Godzilla Minus Zero , the hotly anticipated sequel to 2023's critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One . Toho unveiled the first short teaser at Cinemacon, and it has now been released online for our viewing pleasure.

(Spoilers for Godzilla Minus One below.)

Director Takashi Yamazaki wanted to return to Godzilla's filmic roots with Minus One , setting the events in postwar Japan and tapping into the monster's symbolic representation of the Japanese perspective on the 1940s nuclear holocaust—while also incorporating all-too-human themes of guilt and redemption. The film followed Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who was trying to flee from duty when Godzilla attacked the small garrison where he was hiding. Koichi's courage failed him, and he ended up one of only two survivors, wracked with guilt for failing to act.

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