The announcement of the 2025 Oscar nominees marks the countdown to the biggest and most respected awards ceremony in entertainment, and although I had a strong idea of which new movies would be nominated (thanks to the 2025 Golden Globe awards) that’s not saying that I wasn’t left bewildered beyond comprehension when a certain Netflix movie scored big with nods. I’m of course talking about Emilia Pérez (2024), the crime-thriller musical hybrid that follows a cartel boss’ gender transition.

I won’t lie, I was expecting Jacques Audiard’s drama to get some recognition at the 2025 Oscars, but I wasn’t expecting Emilia Pérez to receive 13 nominations. 13 nominations?! This puts Emilia Pérez above fellow nominees The Brutalist, Conclave, and The Substance, which make up some of the best movies of 2024. If you were to ask me, Emilia Pérez doesn’t even come close and frankly, I’d rather put myself through Joker: Folie a Deux again.

Slowly but surely, we are making good on the gadgets we imagined, as kids, that the future would hold. Penny Brown’s video watch from Inspector Gadget? Check. The Starfleet tricoder from Star Trek? Almost there. But web-shooting? Web-slinging? That wasn’t one we really thought would make the crossover. And it wasn’t exactly in the plans for the scientist who has made the strong, sticky air-spun web a reality either, Marco Lo Presti, from Tufts University’s Silklab.

Back in 2020, Lo Presti, a research assistant professor in biomedical engineering, was working on the challenge of underwater adhesives. The first material he chose to work on was made up of silk and dopamine, a popular combination because it mimics the way that mussels stick firmly to rock surfaces in water—something that has been useful in other applications.

“While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance,” he says, “I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber. I showed the vials to Fio, and we immediately started thinking about how we could make a remote adhesive [a substance that sticks to an object from a distance] out of it.”

Fio is Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of engineering at Tufts and “puppeteer” of the Silklab. “We’d like to say that every experiment is painstakingly planned with equations and lots of forethought but it’s really about connection,” he says. “You explore and you play and you sort of connect the dots. Part of the play that is very underestimated is where you say “hey, wait a second, is this like a Spider-Man thing?” And you brush it off at first, but a material that mimics superpowers is always a very, very good thing.”

Before Lo Presti could turn his attention to these accidental webs, though, he had to complete his paper on underwater adhesives using biomolecules, which he did in 2021. A lot of the Silklab’s work is “bio-inspired” by spiders and silkworms, mussels and barnacles, velvet worm slime, even tropical orchids—so working out if this sticky web could become something useful might seem like an easy side-step for the team.

However, Lo Presti points out that while the new material does mimic spider threads, “there is no spider able to eject, to shoot a stream of solution, which turns into a fiber and does the remote capturing of a distant object”. This was something new, for the real world at least.

But as the research paper in Advanced Functional Materials notes—enter fictional characters. In Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original 1960s comic books, starting with Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter Parker builds a “little device”, one fastened to each wrist and triggered by finger pressure, to produce strands of ejectable ‘spider webs’. By the time of the mid-2000s Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, the web-shooting switched from a wrist-worn spinneret gadget to an organic part of his superhero transformation.

Microsoft says it’s shutting down its UK “experience center” in London next month, nearly six years after it first opened as a 21,000-square-foot Microsoft store. “To better align with its focus on digital growth, Microsoft has decided to exit the lease at the Microsoft Experience Centre in London early,” says an unnamed Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to Windows Central.

The store originally opened in July 2019, just months before the pandemic lockdowns began. Microsoft then quickly transitioned it to an “experience center” alongside closing its stores in the US in 2020.

I visited the London flagship store for its opening day, at a time when the company had more than 80 retail stores worldwide. The big, bold, and British store included Surface devices on every floor, HoloLens headsets, a big Xbox gaming lounge, and even a real-life McLaren Senna sports car that you could sit in and play Forza.

It was quite the venue, set in the heart of Oxford Circus and inside a historic building with windows and ceilings from the 1920s. Microsoft spent two years renovating the space, with giant 4K video walls and an opening party that included British celebrities like Peter Crouch.

After transitioning the UK Microsoft store to an experience center, the software giant regularly used the space for business meetings and partner events — turning it into a showcase for Microsoft products and services in recent years. A similar experience center still exists in New York City, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time until that meets a similar fate to the one across the pond.

Apple announced on Thursday a new API called the Advanced Commerce API to support more in-app purchase formats, such as subscriptions and content add-ons. The company added that it is not changing the commission structure to support these use cases.

“The App Store facilitates billions of transactions annually to help developers grow their businesses and provide a world-class customer experience. To further support developers’ evolving business models — such as exceptionally large content catalogs, creator experiences, and subscriptions with optional add-ons — we’re introducing the Advanced Commerce API,” the company said in an announcement.

In an accompanying support document, Apple expanded on the use cases and the eligibility of apps and developers to apply for this program across three broad categories. Apple said the first use case is apps that have a big library of one-time purchases with frequent updates, such as audiobooks or courses; the second use case is apps adding creator-led content where users can purchase access to that content as a one-time or renewable subscription; and the third use case is users buying add-ons within a subscription service, such as additional channels, sports, or regional content, sold as renewable purchase.

Last year, Apple asked creator platform Patreon to switch to the App Store billing system for creator content or risk being booted out. In response, the company said it will start slowly migrating to Apple’s payment system for its iOS app and will complete the process by November 2025. Apple’s decision to debut a new API could be to support use cases like Patreon’s better.

After the EU forced Apple to allow alternative payment processing and third-party app stores on the platform, the company has been trying to create more value for developers to stay within Apple’s ecosystem. The company started allowing retro game emulators across the world. Plus, it launched a way for developers to offer discounts to customers with lapsed subscriptions.

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• The iPhone 16 and 15 both have Thread radios inside them
• An Apple director and Thread president has explained why they’re there
• Both of the main benefits are related to smart home future-proofing

Apple‘s kept pretty quiet about that the fact that its iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 series, alongside many recent iPads and MacBooks, have Thread radios inside them. But now one of its directors has explained why they’re there – and how they’ll soon be able to boost your smart home plans.

In an interview with The Verge (via 9to5Mac), Vividh Siddha – who is Director of software engineering at Apple, and also president of Thread Group – said that Apple’s inclusion of Thread radios is to “enable an early adopter” to build a Matter-based smart home, and then gave two clear examples of how the fledgling protocol can help.

All the tech we rely on, from cars to smartphones, was engineered using physics. You don’t need to know the science to use these things. But a well-rounded human should understand at least some of the key concepts—along with some music, art, history, and economics. Robert Heinlein said it all in Time Enough for Love:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

So, in the interest of not being insects, here’s my top-five physics equations you should know.

1. Newton’s Second Law

I’m sure you’ve seen this one before—it’s over 300 years old, and it’s popular for science memes and T-shirts. It says the net force on an object equals its mass (m) times acceleration (a). But what does that really mean? It’s all about interactions—like when you kick a soccer ball or drop a water bottle on the floor.

Newton’s second law says we can describe these interactions with the concept of “force.” And what do forces do? The net force on an object changes the object’s motion. But wait! There’s a bunch more cool stuff in this simple-looking equation.

See those arrows over F and a? That indicates variables that are vectors, meaning they contain more than one piece of information. For example, if someone asks you to “socially distance” yourself by 1 meter, where would you end up? Who knows? You could go 1 meter to the east or west or 39 degrees from north. The distance by itself isn’t the full story; you also need to specify a direction. This is true for both the forces and the acceleration. Other quantities (like mass or temperature) don’t have direction. We call those scalar values.

Newton’s second law is super useful, but weirdly, people don’t seem to believe it. The common misconception is that a constant force makes an object move at a constant speed. What this equation says, rather, is that if you push on an object with a steady force, it will keep accelerating.

Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant’s reviews platform. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on Friday that Google has agreed to improve its processes for detecting and removing fake reviews, and will take action against the businesses and reviewers that post them.

This includes deactivating the ability to add new reviews for businesses found to be using fake reviews, and deleting all existing reviews for at least six months if they repeatedly engage in suspicious review activity. Google will also place prominent “warning alerts” on the Google profiles of businesses using fake reviews to help consumers be more aware of potentially misleading feedback. Individuals who repeatedly post fake or misleading reviews on UK business pages will be banned and have their review history deleted, even if they’re located in another country.

Google is required to report to the CMA over the next three years to ensure it’s complying with the agreement.

“The changes we’ve secured from Google ensure robust processes are in place, so people can have confidence in reviews and make the best possible choices,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “This is a matter of fairness – for both business and consumers – and we encourage the entire sector to take note.”

Google made similar changes to reviews in Maps last year, saying that contributions “should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business.” However, those changes apply globally while Google’s commitment to improving reviews across all its properties appears to just apply to the UK for now.

The changes to reviews follow a CMA investigation launched against Google and Amazon in 2021 over concerns the companies had violated consumer protection laws by not doing enough to tackle fake reviews on their platforms. The CMA says its probe into Amazon is still ongoing and that an update will be announced “in due course.”

LG Electronics is betting on robotics as its next big growth driver. The South Korean electronics company said on Friday that it has agreed to acquire an additional 30% stake in Bear Robotics, a California-based startup it previously backed that is building AI-powered server robots for restaurants. The deal gives LG a majority ownership of 51% in the startup, which will now become a subsidiary of the larger company. LG declined to comment on the value of its latest stake; a local outlet in Korea say it’s around $180 million. If accurate, that would give Bear an overall valuation of $600 million.

A company spokesperson added that the exact figure would be disclosed once the deal closes.

Bear is known for its expertise in AI technology that is capable of controlling multiple robots, specifically the management of fleets remotely, LG said in its statement. The tech giant intends to integrate Bear with its commercial robot unit, which has developed “LG CLOi Robots,” to reinforce its home robot and industrial robot divisions.

The tech behemoth says it is working on developing a comprehensive software platform for commercial, industrial, and home robots using Bear’s technology. With the robotics industry moving more towards AI-focused solutions, this investment and deal is expected to improve LG’s robotics software capabilities, LG said.

The news comes less than a year after the electronics company poured $60 million into Bear Robotics in March 2024. That deal already made LG into Bear’s largest shareholder. Bear’s previous funding in 2022 valued it at over $490 million, per PitchBook data.

CEO and founder John Ha and the Bear management team will remain and continue to help create synergies with LG’s robotics unit.

Ha, a former Google software engineer turned restaurateur, founded Bear in 2017 after witnessing the challenges of running a restaurant, which motivated him to develop serving robots. The SoftBank-backed startup operates indoor delivery robots in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Its robots are designed to help deliver food to restaurant customers.

“This additional investment underscores our dedication to positioning robots as a pivotal growth engine for the company, reflecting our belief in their inevitable role in the future,” Lee Sam-soo, chief strategy officer at LG Electronics, said in a statement. “We will persist in driving innovation across all sectors of robotics, encompassing commercial, industrial and home applications.”

Robots and robotics were a bit theme this year at CES 2025, and LG made itself a part of that story. with LG CEO William Cho emphasizing the potential for robots to broaden their applications beyond their current roles in sectors like hospitality and delivery logistics.

LG’s interest in the tech goes back well before this year and the recent vogue of AI in everything, with both Korea and Japan being early commercial adopters of some of the earliest iterations in the field. The Korean electronics company has been researching and developing robot software and hardware more than a decade. In 2017, LG deployed guide robots at South Korea’s largest airport, Incheon International Airport.

LG also has a substantial home robotics business by way of its LG Home Appliance Solution Division. Its home robots are designed to work with home appliances and other domestic scenarios. One example the self-driving AI home hub, a project named Q9, which is scheduled for release later this year. It has autonomous driving technology and can sense voices, sounds, and images. The Q9 has Microsoft’s voice recognition and synthesis technology, so users can have easy and natural conversations with it.

Its industrial robot, the “Autonomous Vertical Articulated Robot,” uses sensors to navigate, move, and carry out tasks with its robotic arm.

Samsung, LG’s rival in the electronics sector, said earlier this month that it will roll out its home robot in the first half of this year.

• Purported Nvidia RTX 5080 Geekbench results have been shared
• They suggest roughly a 20% gen-on-gen uplift compared to the RTX 4080
• However, the RTX 5080 appears to come up short compared to the older RTX 4090

With the RTX 5090 now reviewed and fully evaluated – as an undoubtedly powerful GPU, albeit to the point of overkill in many ways – the attention of the benchmark-spilling world has turned to the RTX 5080.

Reviews of this second Blackwell GeForce GPU are imminent, and thanks to Benchleaks (via Tom’s Hardware), we’ve caught a purported Geekbench result (be skeptical with it, as with any such spillage).