Microsoft’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence business helped deliver $70.1 billion in sales and boosted profits by 18% for the January-March quarter, a dose of relief for investors during a turbulent time for the tech sector and U.S. economy.The company reported quarterly net income of $25.8 billion, or $3.46 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $3.22 a share.The Redmond, Washington-based software maker posted revenue of $70.1 billion in the period, its third fiscal quarter, up 13% from the same period a year ago and also beating Wall Street expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $68.44 billion for the quarter.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella credited cloud growth for its strong quarter. The company’s cloud unit posted revenue of $26.8 billion, compared with expectations of $26.17 billion.“Cloud and AI are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth,” Nadella said in a statement.The company also saw a 6% increase in revenue in its personal computing unit, which includes its laptop business and Xbox services.Nadella noted on a call with investors that demand for cloud and artificial intelligence remained strong. He said Microsoft is constantly tweaking its investments based on efficiency improvements in computing systems and what kind of services customers want.“We just want to make sure we are accounting for the latest and greatest information,” he said.Microsoft is among a group of the tech industry’s bellwether companies that have been through a period of uncertainty and turmoil since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, with a see-sawing of stocks that has eviscerated trillions of dollars in shareholder wealth amid an onslaught of tariffs and other actions.Microsoft’s stock price has dropped nearly 8% since Trump’s inauguration in January, to about $395 at the close of markets Wednesday. But investors appeared pleased moments later after Microsoft released its earnings report, sending stocks up more than 6% in after-hours trading.Revenue from Microsoft’s cloud computing business segment grew 21%, to $26.8 billion, also beating Wall Street projections.The company felt more tariff uncertainty in its personal computing business, which is centered around its Windows operating system and the fees it collects from computer makers that put it on the hardware they sell. Revenue from that business was $13.4 billion for the quarter, up 6% from the first three months of last year. —Associated Press

This Lift & Slide cart is a clever bit of design. It combines a dolly with an undercarriage scissor lift that can be slid out from beneath the dolly. The arrangement allows you to wheel heavy items over to the bed of a truck, load them into the bed effortlessly, and then slide the cart in along with the goods:Unloading is similarly simple:The prototype shown here was developed by Oregon-based Pairon Solutions. They say a Kickstarter will be forthcoming.

No one does crazy DIY on wheels like James Bruton, who’s got a knack for putting together machines that have never existed on the face of the planet. The Star Wars Speeder Bike that moves sideways, the omnidirectional Screw Bike, and Ball-Wheeled Bike are testaments to the ingenious builder’s craft. Now, James is back again with yet another omnidirectional wheeled wonder that has you longing for more. The smart unicycle (well, that’s what I prefer calling it) is a single-wheeled robot that is unlike other options that you can buy. As obvious, it is completely hand-built and requires a lot of tinkering to achieve the balanced physics, since the ride is just a single wheel. The wheel is twice as big – in terms of scale – compared to his other projects, to make it easy for the whole balancing act. The reason: bigger objects are easier to balance compared to smaller ones as the center of gravity is lower. Designer: James Bruton Most of the DIY project is 3D printed, giving James a lot of freedom to create the custom parts required for the complex robot. The main wheel is made up of eight smaller wheels, each having 2 TPU tires, that toggle the inertia of the machine to drive smoothly. To create the main wheel, James 3D printed the two outer recesses of the wheel that comprise the complex gears and pulleys to put the whole mechanism in place. The main gear mechanism has intermediate pulleys that integrate with the central pulley, keeping the whole system together. All the hubs fit on the piece of plywood that has a bearing for the middle gear to spin and a retainer to hold it. All the gears mesh well together, and the two housings of the wheels secure them in place. There are eight pairs of idlers, each with two bearings on each of the assemblies. This makes the whole thing run smoothly without any friction, and even the transition to reverse motion is buttery smooth with this mechanism in place. The rest of the One-Wheel Robot is a big frame made out of Aluminium extrusion, which was a whole lot easier for James to figure out. The electronics are fitted at the top, and the two batteries, outputting 50 Volts are below that. Everything else is wired in and assembled into the unit. The balancing is actuated by the integrator which toggles the output power to the wheels based on the movement of the wheel. Pushing the thing brings back the self-balancing robotic wheel to its initial position, and later on, the DIYer added a remote-controlled mechanism to drive the wheel. The project is a lead-up to another DIY in the works, which will be a passive omni wheel facing perpendicular to the active omni wheel that can be commuted on. Now that James has got the motion and balance sorted out, that DIY project should be a whole lot easier to finalize. The post James Bruton creates omni-directional robotic wheel that self-balances even when pushed away first appeared on Yanko Design.

From Chewi the Chewitsaurus to Ready Eddie, the animation studio has a long history of work in commercials.

Ring in their special milestone with useful gadgets, outdoor gear, subscriptions, and modern conveniences.

A landmark antitrust lawsuit about the past has turned into a fight about the future.

Macworld Password managers such as 1Password and LastPass are great and super important. We maintain a recommended list of Password managers for a reason—a good one makes it easy to use strong, unique passwords everywhere on the web, no matter what platform or browser you happen to use. But to get the most out of them, you need to pay a subscription fee. It only makes sense–there’s a cost to running these cloud services. But now that Apple is introducing a standalone Passwords app in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, I wondered if I could drop my 1Password subscription and save a few bucks a month. I also use Authy for two-factor authentication keys, and I love it, but since Apple’s Passwords app supports standard 2FA keys as well, I could effectively eliminate two apps from my iPhone. When the app arrived in iOS 18, took the plunge, and I learned that most users can replace their paid password manager with Apple’s free solution. There are a few wrinkles and annoyances, but it’s definitely “good enough” for most everyday users. Apple could stand to polish up its app in a few places, and it’s not going to get the job done for power users, but the biggest annoyance I ran into was actually making the switch, not using the Passwords app after getting it all transferred over. Making the switch is the worst part The worst part of moving from 1Password and Authy to Apple’s Passwords app has been literally making the switch. Getting passwords out of 1Password was easy enough. 1Password can quickly and easily export passwords to CSV format (comma-separated values), and the Passwords app quickly imports them. It dealt with duplicates well enough, and only a handful of passwords didn’t import. Dealing with those was more annoying–either reconciling the problem in 1Password and exporting again, or adding them manually. It’s not difficult, but it’s a tedoius process. Even worse was moving 2FA codes from Authy. I love Authy’s cloud sync and backup, but there’s no official export function. Without relying on third-party tools that I might not trust (and don’t want to set up), that means logging in to every account I have a 2FA code for and adding a new one. In many cases, the service only allows a single 2FA code and I had to disable 2FA and set it up again from within the Passwords app. That’s easy enough–it supports the standard manual code or “scan a QR code with your phone camera” methods. Again, it’s not a hard task, but it’s an hour of busy work I’d rather not have had to do. Then there are other apps. I use Chrome a lot, so I had to grab the iCloud Passwords extension for autofill to work there. I also had to install the iCloud app on my Windows machine to sync my passwords there (Apple provides no password management on Windows, but the passwords sync to the browser extensions through the Windows iCloud app).If you’re thinking of switching to save the fee for your password manager, expect it to take a little time. The whole process took most of an afternoon, and I spent the next few days cleaning up the occasional bad URL or duplicated password. Those who don’t already have a password manager won’t have to go through any of this, of course. Apple’s Passwords is a godsend for anyone who’s been reluctant to download and subscribe to a password manager—it’s free, it’s easy to start using, and it’s built into all of your devices. Foundry Good enough for most Apple’s Passwords app works well enough for the basic functions most of us rely on. It stores and fills login passwords, Wi-Fi passwords, 2FA codes, and passkeys. It warns you of easy-to-guess passwords, reused passwords, and passwords that appeared in major data breaches. It’s also relatively easy to securely share passwords with others. Apple also provides its own suggested passwords for new signups. It doesn’t give you much in the way of other features–stored credit card and identification info to autofill in forms, secure document storage or notes, and so on. Apple has other apps that do those things in encrypted ways, but if you use other platforms and browsers, they’re not easily available. I prefer the interface of some other apps to Apple’s rather pedestrian effort, too. After setting up the browser extension in Chrome, you’ll have to enter a six-digit passcode (generated by the iCloud Windows app) to sync the browser extension with your stored passwords. It won’t enter 2FA codes, so you’ll have to look at your iPhone for that. Good news, though: With macOS Sequoia and the Passwords app, the Chrome and Edge extensions—as well as Firefox as of last December—work on the Mac, too. Suffice it to say that for most users, Apple’s Passwords app gets the job done. It’s not a luxury experience, but most people don’t use a password manager at all…getting them in the door this way is a good thing. If you just love your current password manager and use it to connect to multiple platforms and browsers, it may well be worth continuing to pay its subscription fee. If you primarily use Apple products and Safari, you’re going to have a smoother ride, and it’s hard to recommend a paid password manager for all but the most picky of power users.

Download the May 2025 issue of the Enterprise Spotlight from the editors of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World.

China has once again beat everyone else to a clean energy milestone—its new nuclear reactor is reportedly one of the first to use thorium instead of uranium as a fuel and the first of its kind that can be refueled while it’s running. It’s an interesting (if decidedly experimental) development out of a country that’s edging toward becoming the world leader in nuclear energy. China has now surpassed France in terms of generation, though not capacity; it still lags behind the US in both categories. But one recurring theme in media coverage about the reactor struck me, because it’s so familiar: This technology was invented decades ago, and then abandoned. You can basically copy and paste that line into countless stories about today’s advanced reactor technology. Molten-salt cooling systems? Invented in the mid-20th century but never commercialized. Same for several alternative fuels, like TRISO. And, of course, there’s thorium. This one research reactor in China running with an alternative fuel says a lot about this moment for nuclear energy technology: Many groups are looking into the past for technologies, with a new appetite for building them. First, it’s important to note that China is the hot spot for nuclear energy right now. While the US still has the most operational reactors in the world, China is catching up quickly. The country is building reactors at a remarkable clip and currently has more reactors under construction than any other country by far. Just this week, China approved 10 new reactors, totaling over $27 billion in investment. China is also leading the way for some advanced reactor technologies (that category includes basically anything that deviates from the standard blueprint of what’s on the grid today: large reactors that use enriched uranium for fuel and high-pressure water to keep the reactor cool). High-temperature reactors that use gas as a coolant are one major area of focus for China—a few reactors that use this technology have recently started up, and more are in the planning stages or under construction. Now, Chinese state media is reporting that scientists in the country reached a milestone with a thorium-based reactor. The reactor came online in June 2024, but researchers say it recently went through refueling without shutting down. (Conventional reactors generally need to be stopped to replenish the fuel supply.) The project’s lead scientists shared the results during a closed meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I’ll emphasize here that this isn’t some massive power plant: This reactor is tiny. It generates just two megawatts of heat—less than the research reactor on MIT’s campus, which rings in at six megawatts. (To be fair, MIT’s is one of the largest university research reactors in the US, but still … it’s small.) Regardless, progress is progress for thorium reactors, as the world has been entirely focused on uranium for the last 50 years or so. Much of the original research on thorium came out of the US, which pumped resources into all sorts of different reactor technologies in the 1950s and ’60s. A reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that ran in the 1960s used Uranium-233 fuel (which can be generated when thorium is bombarded with radiation). Eventually, though, the world more or less settled on a blueprint for nuclear reactors, focusing on those that use Uranium-238 as fuel and are cooled by water at a high pressure. One reason for the focus on uranium for energy tech? The research could also be applied to nuclear weapons. But now there’s a renewed interest in alternative nuclear technologies, and the thorium-fueled reactor is just one of several examples. A prominent one we’ve covered before: Kairos Power is building reactors that use molten salt as a coolant for small nuclear reactors, also a technology invented and developed in the 1950s and ’60s before being abandoned.  Another old-but-new concept is using high-temperature gas to cool reactors, as X-energy is aiming to do in its proposed power station at a chemical plant in Texas. (That reactor will be able to be refueled while it’s running, like the new thorium reactor.)  Some problems from decades ago that contributed to technologies being abandoned will still need to be dealt with today. In the case of molten-salt reactors, for example, it can be tricky to find materials that can withstand the corrosive properties of super-hot salt. For thorium reactors, the process of transforming thorium into U-233 fuel has historically been one of the hurdles.  But as early progress shows, the archives could provide fodder for new commercial reactors, and revisiting these old ideas could give the nuclear industry a much-needed boost.  This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is once again accusing Apple of shutting out competition, framing open-source AI as the latest move in a long-running fight over who controls the future of mobile platforms.Meta CEO Mark ZuckerbergPolicies enacted by Apple for iPhone have long banned embedded app frameworks from third parties, affecting companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Apple says these restrictions are necessary to protect user privacy and system integrity.In a new interview with Stratechery, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed those iOS policies stifled Facebook's early platform vision. He said Apple blocked the company's mobile platform plans over a decade ago, killing a key part of its business. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums