An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. The case of mistaken identity prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to close additional airspace around Fort Hancock, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. The military is required to formally notify the FAA when it takes any counter-drone action inside U.S. airspace.

It was the second time in two weeks that a laser was fired in the area. The last time it was CBP that used the weapon and nothing was hit. That incident occurred near Fort Bliss and prompted the FAA to shut down air traffic at El Paso airport and the surrounding area. This time, the closure was smaller and commercial flights were not affected. The FAA, CBP and the Pentagon confirmed the incident in a joint statement, saying the military “employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.”

“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War, FAA, and Customs and Border Patrol are working together in an unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” the statement said. The report notes that 27,000 drones were detected within 1,600 feet of the southern border in the last six months of 2024.

Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the ranking member on the Senate’s Aviation Subcommittee, is calling for an independent investigation to look into the matter. “The Trump administration’s incompetence continues to cause chaos in our skies,” Duckworth said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My best friend messaged me on Facebook Messenger. It wasn’t urgent, so I swiped the notification away, making a mental note to reply later. Ten minutes later, Facebook sends another notification. “Reminder: [My friend] sent you a message.” This is clingy, even for Facebook. And it’s not the only app increasingly desperate for any crumb of attention.

In just the last couple months, I’ve personally gotten dozens of what I can only call desperation notifications. Push alerts from apps that don’t really need anything, but would really like it if I gave them some attention anyway. These include, but are not nearly limited to, the following:

• The Disney+ app let me know that because I watched The Simpsons, I might be interested in watching The Simpsons Movie (which I also recently watched).

• Discord informed me that someone in a server I’m also in updated their status, which is, I guess, a thing you can do in Discord.

• Venmo would like me to know I can fund my Kalshi account with my Venmo balance. (I do not and will never have a Kalshi account.)

• Reddit began sending push alerts for news stories from communities I wasn’t subscribed to and had never visited.

• Duet sent an aggressive half-dozen notifications within 15 minutes of closing the app, including multiple alerts that read “She just likes you.” Which is a surprisingly exasperated tone for a dating app.

• GrubHub asked me if I wanted to order food, precisely five minutes after I ordered food.

Some of these are obviously just advertisements disguised as alerts—its own annoying problem—but just as many seem to be little more than a reminder that an app exists. And if you could please open the app and boost its engagement numbers, that would be great.

Are app notifications really getting worse?

Wow, I hadn’t thought of that, thanks Disney+.
Credit: Lifehacker

While it’s always hard to quantify vibes-based annoyances, there’s at least some data to back up the idea that companies are getting increasingly desperate for your notification attention. According to a 2025 analysis from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, news publishers have increasingly relied on push notifications to reach their audiences, as a way to avoid relying too much on platforms like Google or social media apps.

However, this bid for direct attention comes at a cost—and in the midst of an arms race with platforms. According to the Reuters report, 79% of respondents don’t get any news alerts at all, and 43% of those are because users actively disabled the notifications. Worse yet, iOS and Android have both experimented with questionably reliable AI summaries of notifications, making them even more annoying to deal with.

This report only examines one small segment of the notifications you might sift through on any given day, but it’s instructive of a broader trend. We increasingly live in an attention economy, where seemingly unrelated industries are in competition for your eyeballs. Which is how you end up with companies like Netflix investing in video games, or the video game industry competing with gambling sites and porn.

In that context, your notifications become the frontline in the battle for your attention. No, it doesn’t take a genius to know that someone who watched The Simpsons might be interested in watching The Simpsons. But if a quick notification can remind me to watch more of the show today, rather than play more Pathologic 3, that’s a win for Disney.

And any win is going to be worth it to most companies right now. Broadly speaking, the economy isn’t doing so hot. So, if a company can do something to show that engagement in their app went up by even 5%, they likely will. And sending more notifications is generally one of the cheaper and easier ways to juice internal numbers.

How to decrease app notification spam

Credit: Lifehacker

There’s at least one silver lining to the whole notification arms race problem: There are a lot of tools available to help get your alerts under control. Some are baked right into your phone’s OS, but there are also third-party tools you can use to enforce some peace and quiet. Here are some of the best options available.

Use your phone’s OS-level settings to manage notifications

Both major smartphone platforms have pretty robust tools to dictate what kind of alerts you can receive, and how disruptive they can be. We have full guides on tools for managing your Android and iOS notifications, but even if you don’t want to dive too deep into your phone’s settings, you can slowly whittle away the most annoying alerts as you receive them.

On Android, you can long-press a notification in your shade to find options to tweak or suppress the alerts. Most notifications can be sorted into either Priority, Default, or Silent, which behave differently depending on your default settings. You can also tap the Settings gear icon to dive into the app’s specific notification settings to disable categories of alerts. These will vary by app, but in many cases you can disable things like advertisements or news alerts without turning off messages you actually care about.

On iOS, you can find similar tools by swiping on a notification and tapping Options. Here, you’ll find quick shortcuts to do things like mute notifications from an app for a short period of time, or jump to more in-depth settings to disable categories of notifications. In my experience, it’s often easier to tweak these settings whenever I receive a particularly annoying alert, rather than audit all my notification settings at once.

Explore each app’s notification settings

Most apps have their own category of notification settings that can be adjusted individually. In some cases, these can overlap with the same settings you’ll find using the above method, but just as often, you’ll find a lot more toggles that don’t. Though, some apps are shadier than others in terms of how easy it is to find these settings.

For one instructive example, in the Reddit app, you can navigate to Settings > Account Settings > Manage notifications to find a lengthy list of possible alerts you can receive. That’s already pretty buried, but if you sign into the app with multiple accounts, you’ll need to go through this process for each account you’re signed into. Otherwise, notifications you turned off for one account might still pop up via another.

Most apps aren’t quite this chaotic, but it can still be annoying to dig through all the tedious menus. In some cases, this might be your only option, though. On Android, Reddit only has one notification category using the previous method, meaning you can only turn all notifications on or off at once. So, if you’re not finding the tools you need to selectively mute certain alerts in the OS-level settings, it might be worth digging through the app’s menus.

When all else fails, use third-party tools

It shouldn’t really be necessary to install an app just to get other apps to shut up, but if we must, then we must. BuzzKill, for Android, is a simple $4 app that gives you more robust tools to filter, manage, or suppress notifications than any of the built-in notification management settings.

What sets BuzzKill apart is that, on top of filtering notifications by which app is sending them, it can also filter alerts by things like words they contain, whether they have an image attached, or whether they’re part of a group chat. So, if you want to keep getting news alerts, but you’re just sick of hearing about that one guy who’s always in the headlines for some reason, you can selectively filter those out.

Unfortunately, this one’s likely to stay Android only, as iOS generally keeps apps in tighter sandboxes. BuzzKill needs to be able to read notifications from other apps in order to filter them, and that’s not something iOS generally allows apps to do. So, if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, you’ll have to stick with built-in tools for now.

More broadly, it also can’t hurt to let app developers know when you’re annoyed by their incessant pings. Companies might try to boost their engagement by testing how much they can poke your attention span before you turn them off (or uninstall the app) entirely. But turning off unnecessary alerts can send a signal that they’ve gone too far in the wrong direction. Sending feedback reports, where possible, can potentially send an even stronger signal.

Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery are officially merging. The studio paid Netflix the $2.8 billion termination fee it was owed for breaking its original deal to buy Warner Bros. earlier today, and the historic film studio has now formally accepted Paramount’s offer.

Along with the deal, which values Warner Bros. Discovery at $31 per share, Paramount is making several commitments to assuage the fears of regulators and the entertainment community. Those include a guarantee that the new company will produce 30 theatrical films annually, that theatrical releases will have a minimum 45-day window in theaters before they’re brought to video on demand (something Netflix ultimately also agreed to) and that deal itself will close by Q3 2026.

This turnaround in Paramount’s fortunes has happened quickly. Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Paramount’s offer was superior to Netflix’s on Thursday, and not long after the streaming service said that it wouldn’t provide a counter offer, effectively abandoning its previous agreement.

Ultimately, Netflix and Paramount were vying for different parts of Warner Bros. Disocvery. Netflix was primarily interested in Warner Bros. proper, while Paramount Skydance wanted the whole company, cable networks and all. Either deal would need to be approved by regulators, which is the hurdle Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery face now. The general assumption has been that the close relationship Paramount CEO David Ellison and his billionaire father Larry Ellison have with the Trump administration would smooth over any issues, but the deal will receive scrutiny abroad and likely also at the state level, based on a recent post from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Paramount Skydance has proven its willingness to comply with President Donald Trump, but delays in closing the deal could be costly. The company is on the hook to pay Warner Bros. Discovery “a daily ticking fee equal to $0.25 per share per quarter beginning after September 30, 2026.” The company also has to pay $7 billion to Warner Bros. Discovery if the deal is terminated for regulatory reasons. Netflix lost the battle for Warner Bros. Discovery, but getting a competitor to potentially overpay for the studio might be its own reward.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/paramount-agrees-to-buy-warner-bros-discovery-pays-netflix-28-billion-for-breakup-215936514.html?src=rss

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Ultrahuman just launched its newest ring, the Ultrahuman Ring Pro. While it’s not yet available in the U.S., I’m excited for this to come to the market. The real game changer here isn’t what’s on the ring, but what Ultrahuman has managed to do with the charging case—that is, a lot more than just charging. 

Specs of the Ultrahuman Ring Pro

According to Ultrahuman, the new ring retails for $429 and has: 

• 15-day battery life—that’s more than RingConn’s battery life and about double Oura’s

• Storage for 250 days of data

• Whole sizes 5 to 14

• A faster processor that Ultrahuman says allows for more accurate data processing

• Break points allowing the ring to be cut apart easily in emergencies

Physically, the ring looks similar to the Ultrahuman Ring Air, which I’ve previously reviewed. It has a smooth internal surface (no sensor bumps) with a small flat area at the base of the finger. 

The charging case is the real innovation here

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

What really intrigues me about this ring is not the ring itself, or even the fact that it has a charging case, but the fact that Ultrahuman is now using the charging case as a device in its own right. I haven’t seen anything like this from other smart ring manufacturers, and it’s a brilliant idea. 

For example, smart rings can’t easily act as an alarm, because then they would need components that can vibrate or make noise—thus adding to the bulk of the ring and reducing battery life. But a charging case can easily act as an alarm clock, especially since you’re likely to have it on your nightstand already. (Ultrahuman’s app has an alarm feature, but it didn’t play well with my iPhone’s silent mode and I didn’t find it reliable.) 

The charging case for the Ultrahuman Ring Pro also has LED indicators, can charge wirelessly, and has a USB-C port. The case has features for diagnostics and troubleshooting, including a button to hard reset the ring if needed. The case can also store up to a year’s worth of ring data and sync it to your phone later.

And you know what else I love about the new case? It isn’t sized to the ring. The ring attaches magnetically to the pins on the post, leaving empty space around it if the ring is a large size, and less empty space if it’s a smaller size. If you ever needed to replace the case, you wouldn’t need to find one in your specific size.

Why we can’t get this ring in the U.S. (yet?)

Legal action behind the scenes has been messing with the U.S. market for smart rings. About a year ago, there were plenty of options, but then Oura made the case to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that it believes its smart ring patent covers the design of nearly every smart ring out there. The ITC agreed, and Ultrahuman was one of the companies that needed to pull its rings from the U.S. market. 

Ultrahuman said almost immediately that it was working on a new ring design anyway, one that is so differently constructed that it can’t possibly run afoul of the ITC ruling. The Ring Pro appears to be the design it was referring to, with Ultrahuman conspicuously referring to its “unibody architecture” rather than using a design with a transparent lining (that transparent lining is one of the features of the patent at issue). 

It seems there is still a possibility that this approach may pay off. A spokesperson told me by email today: “We are working through the necessary steps to bring Ring PRO to our U.S. customers and hope to share good news soon.”

Despite the headline, this isn’t really a story about superconductivity—at least not the superconductivity that people care about, the stuff that doesn’t require exotic refrigeration to work. Instead, it’s a story about how superconductivity can be used as a test of some of the weirder consequences of quantum mechanics, one that involves non-existent particles of light that still act like they exist.

Researchers have found a way to get these virtual photons to influence the behavior of a superconductor, ultimately making it worse. That may in the end tell us something useful about superconductivity, but it’ll probably take a little while.

Virtual reality

The story starts with quantum field theory, which is incredibly complex, but the simplified version is that even empty space is filled with fields that could govern the interactions of any quantum objects in or near that space. You can think of different particles as energetic excitements of these fields—so a photon is simply an energetic state of the quantum field.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Weeks after the U.S. Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing.

One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to authorize its release. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far not received approval to spend any of the research funding allocated in a budget bill signed into law on 3 February. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) was authorized to spend its funding just last week. And NASA has had its full funding authorized for release, but with an unusual restriction that limits spending on ten specific programmes — many of which the Trump team had tried to cancel last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a column: I’m going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It’s a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all of that, the platform still struggles to maintain a healthy profit margin.

The streaming business model is fundamentally broken. And eventually, its demise will become more and more obvious to recognize. I’ll break down exactly why the DSP era is coming to a grinding halt, why the major labels are quietly terrified, and why the artists who don’t pivot now are going to go down with the ship.

[…] Jimmy Iovine put it bluntly: “The streaming services have a bad situation, there’s no margins, they’re not making any money.” This model only works for Apple, Amazon, and Google, because they don’t need their music platforms to be wildly profitable. Amazon uses music as a loss-leader to keep you paying for Prime. Apple uses it to sell $1,000 iPhones. As for Spotify, or any standalone music streaming company, they’re kind of screwed. And guess what — when the platform’s margins are structurally squeezed, guess who gets squeezed first? The artists.

[…] What if Jimmy is right? If the DSPs are “minutes away from obsolete,” what replaces them? Well, I’m not sure the DSPs are going to disappear overnight, but if you’re an artist or a manager trying to sustain yourself in this evolving music economy, the answer is direct ownership. The artists who will survive the next five years are the ones who are quietly shifting their focus away from the “ATM Machine.”

They are building their own cultural hangars. They are capturing phone numbers on Laylo. They are driving fans to private Discord servers. They are focusing on ARPF (Average Revenue Per Fan) through high-margin merch, vinyl, and hard tickets, rather than begging for fractions of a penny from a playlist placement. We are witnessing the death of the “Mass Audience” and the birth of the “Micro-Community.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’ve been eyeing a Hyrox race, but weren’t sure how to train for one, Peloton may have just solved your problem. The fitness platform announced today the launch of a 12-week Hyrox training program, timed specifically for athletes preparing for the upcoming Hyrox NYC events taking place May 28-31 and June 4-7, 2026. And if you’re not racing in New York, don’t worry—the program lives in Peloton’s library for all members, meaning you can start it 12 weeks out from any Hyrox event on your calendar.

What is Hyrox, anyway?

Before diving into the program, a quick primer for the uninitiated. As my colleague Beth Skwarecki explains here, your friend who used to be obsessed with Crossfit is probably now obsessed with Hyrox (unofficially short for “hybrid rockstar”). Hyrox is a fitness competition designed for athletes who don’t quite see themselves as pure endurance athletes or pure strength athletes, but something in between. 

What seems to make Hyrox unique—or at least, uniquely appealing—is its consistency. Unlike Crossfit competitions, where the format can change dramatically from event to event, every single Hyrox race follows the same predictable structure: eight 1-kilometer runs, with a functional fitness station in between each one. Those stations include things like sled pushes, wall balls, rowing, and ski erg work, adding up to roughly 5 miles of running plus eight rounds of serious effort. Because the format never changes, you can compare your finish time against anyone else who has ever raced Hyrox, much like comparing marathon times.

But one thing that sets Hyrox training apart from something like classic marathon prep is that it’s inherently communal. While you can train for a race on your own with nothing but a good pair of shoes, Hyrox training requires access to a rowing machine, a ski erg, a sled, and a wall ball target—in other words, the sort of equipment that’s hard to come by outside of gyms geared toward this kind of training. (For the record, most Crossfit gyms and a growing number of commercial gyms can accommodate these types of workouts, but it’s worth calling ahead.) That shared training environment tends to foster a community that athletes say is a big part of the draw.

What Peloton’s Hyrox program offers

Peloton’s new 12-week program is structured around six training days per week, with many days including both a strength and a run component. Classes include strength, running, rowing, tread bootcamps, mobility and stretching, and meditation. As a regular ol’ race runner myself, I’m drawn to the ways these classes cover so many different disciplines.

My colleague Beth shares a screenshot of the Peloton Hyrox training program.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Week 12 is race week, so the training load lightens considerably as athletes taper toward the starting line. There aren’t many workouts that final week, but one notable inclusion is a Hyrox pre-race meditation, which I find speaks to the program’s whole community-based philosophy. 

Week one of the Peloton Hyrox training program.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Week 12 of the Peloton Hyrox training program.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

How Peloton’s Hyrox program is built

The program is grounded in five core principles that Peloton describes as the five pillars of Hyrox performance:

• Aerobic Power: Threshold work starts on Day 1, teaching athletes how to manage effort and develop sustainable high gears over time.

• Simple Tools, High Impact: The program leans on running, the erg, and strength training as its primary vehicles for building hybrid endurance.

• Efficiency Over Speed: Rather than chasing raw pace, the focus is on smart pacing and clean technique that conserves energy across transitions.

• Progressive Volume: Training load builds deliberately over the weeks, developing the ability to perform under cumulative fatigue.

• Performance Drivers: Recovery, fueling, and mindset are treated as training components, not afterthoughts.

Taking a look at the program here, its structure reflects these principles in a clear arc. The first six weeks focus on building what Peloton calls the “aerobic engine” and establishing threshold control, laying the foundation before intensity picks up. By Week 7, athletes complete a 75-minute simulation designed to test their pacing strategy and transition skills under realistic race conditions. The final weeks then shift toward what the program describes as “real demand” training, simulating the fatigue carryover of heavy sled pushes and wall balls bleeding into running. Like with any good training program, the goal is to arrive at race day sharp and well-prepared, not worn down.

How to join the Peloton Hyrox training program

Needless to say, you need an active Peloton membership. And for now, the Hyrox program can only be joined from the Peloton app or Peloton hardware like the Peloton Bikes, Tread, Row, and Guide. You can’t join from the Peloton website or TV apps. To find it on your device, you can browse the programs area, find the Hyrox Training program, and hit join. 

The $200 billion video game industry is caught between studios eager to cut ballooning development costs through AI and a player base that has grown openly hostile to the technology after a string of visible blunders.

As Bloomberg news, Arc Raiders, a surprise hit from Stockholm-based Embark Studios that sold 12 million copies in three months, was briefly vilified online for its robotic-sounding auto-generated voices — even as CEO Patrick Soderlund insists AI was only used for non-essential elements. EA’s Battlefield 6 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 both drew gamer anger this winter over thematically mismatched or poorly generated graphics, and Valve’s Steam has added labels to flag games made using AI.

Some 47% of developers polled by research house Omdia said they expect generative AI to reduce game quality, and PC gamers — now facing inflated hardware prices from AI-driven demand for graphics chips — have turned reflexively antagonistic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After suggesting a version of AMD’s FSR 4 could be ported to the PS5 Pro last year, it looks like Sony is finally rolling out an update with the upscaling tech in March. Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS4, PS5 and PS5 Pro, shared via a blog post that the PS5 Pro will be updated with a new version of the company’s PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) upscaling tech next month, and Resident Evil Requiem is one of the first games to use it.

PSSR is “an AI library that analyzes game images pixel by pixel as it upscales them,” Cerny says, which boosts the visual fidelity of games on the PS5 Pro, while running them at a less demanding resolution. The upgraded version of PSSR “takes a very different approach to not only the neural network but also the overall algorithm,” and is now able to keep both framerate and image quality high when it’s enabled.

Cerny’s blog post includes comparison images if you’re curious about the visual differences the new PSSR is able to achieve. Masaru Ijuin, a Senior Manager from Capcom’s Engine Development Support Section R&D Foundational Technology Department, also provided comments on how the new upscaling tech improves Resident Evil Requiem:

With Resident Evil Requiem, we focused on enhancing the presentation quality of the protagonist through an upgraded version of RE Engine to deepen the player’s immersion in horror. For example, each individual strand of hair and beard is rendered as a polygon, allowing it to move realistically in response to body motion and wind. The way light passes through his hair changes depending on how the strands of hair are overlapped as well. This detailed expression of texture is one of the many details that we would especially love for our fans to see.

The upgraded PSSR has allowed us to elevate our expressiveness by successfully processing these details and textural particularities, which are traditionally difficult to upscale because of their intricacy. We hope you will experience this unprecedented level of horror and visual fidelity, and the new gameplay feel it delivers.

Sony and AMD formally announced “Project Amethyst,” their collaboration to develop machine-learning technology to improve graphics and gameplay, in 2024. The partnership has already benefitted both companies: Cerny says Sony contributed to the development of AMD’s FSR 4 and similar improvements are now trickling back to the PS5 Pro. Both companies’ plans to improve everything from upscaling performance to energy efficiency could also pay further dividends in future consoles and GPUs. 

Sony Interactive Entertainment

The upgraded PSSR will roll out to PS5 Pro owners as part of a software update in March, and will be able to be toggled on and off in the console’s settings, according to Cerny. Around the same time, multiple PS5 games are also supposed to be updated to support the upscaling tech. While the graphical improvements are still incremental over a normal PS5, the fact that Sony’s still squeezing more performance out of its console should at least be reassuring to anyone who spent $700 (or now $750) on a PS5 Pro.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/the-ps5-pro-is-getting-upgraded-upscaling-tech-in-march-200105816.html?src=rss

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Meta’s strategy for its Quest 3 and 3S VR headsets is clearly to make virtual and mixed reality as easy, fun, and affordable as possible, but they might have done the job a little too well. All that user-friendliness has left a lot of power on the table. Casual Questers don’t know that the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor is powerful enough to handle spatial computing and multitasking that rivals some laptops, and that they can link their headset to a PC for close-to-4K visuals that rival much more expensive headsets. With the right software and a little bit of monkeying around with (often-hidden) settings, you can take the Quest 3 and 3S way beyond its the out-of-the-box performance. Below are ten hacks every Meta Quest user should know to get the most out of their headset.

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Download the Quest Games Optimizer for Your Meta Quest 3

If you choose just one hack, it should be downloading Quest Game Optimizer. QGO is a third-party utility that lets you control a ton of hidden settings for any Quest game or app. Meta typically locks its hardware to conservative clock speeds to preserve battery and thermal headroom, but QGO lets you force the Quest’s chip to work at its maximum power. Most impressively, it lets you to increase the internal render resolution up to 300%, effectively “supersampling” your games to match the high-fidelity density of the Quest 3’s pancake lenses. It really makes a difference.

As you might have guessed, you won’t find QGO on the official Meta Store, and it takes some lightly hacker-ish work to set up. To get it running, you’ll need to:

• Purchase the software. It’s currently $9.99 on itch.io.

• Create a developer account with Meta. This is free, and you can do it from inside your headset.

• Enable Developer Mode on your Meta account.

• Uncompress the QGO app. Either sideload the compressed Android file on your PC using a tool like SideQuest, or unzip it straight in the headset using a file manager like AnExplorer or Mobile VR Station.

• Grant Accessibility Permissions within the headset to allow the optimizer to override system defaults.

That’s the gist, but check out these deeper guides for how to do all of the above with just your Quest headset, with SideQuest and a PC, and through Meta Quest’s developer’s mode.

Link your Quest to your PC

You can take the Quest 3 beyond standalone by linking it to your PC, either tethered or with a virtual link. This offloads the computing to a more powerful processor, turns your headset into a high-def display, and lets you use programs like Half-Life: Alyx or Microsoft Flight Simulator that would be impossible to run natively. You’ll seriously be shocked at how good they look and how smoothly they run. You can do this in two ways:

Wired

This is the best choice for the highest possible fidelity visuals and the easiest set-up, plus you don’t have to worry about how fast your wifi works.

• Open the Meta Horizon Link app on your PC.

• Get a high-quality USB-C 3.1 cable or the Meta Link Cable, and plug it in.

• Follow the instructions on your headset.

Wireless

This is the choice if you want the freedom of wireless connection and you have really reliably wifi.

• For best results, connect your PC to your router via Ethernet, make sure your Quest 3 is on a 5GHz or 6GHz (Wi-Fi 6E) band, and use the Quest and PC in the same room.

• Run Meta Horizon Link on your PC.

• In the Quest, go to “quick settings” and select the “Link” tile.

• Switch “Use Air Link” to “On,” select your PC, and hit “Pair.”

• Click “Launch” and you’ll be streaming directly from your PC to your face computer.

Unlock experimental features on the Meta Quest 3

Meta lets users test out “coming soon” features in its experimental menu and get an early look at “quality-of-life” improvements, most of which will be heading to the Quest soon. Among other improvements, the current experimental menu contains a couple of bangers: “lying down mode,” and “Meta AI” integration. Here’s how to check it out:

• Open the “Settings” menu.

• Scroll down to the Experimental tab on the left-hand sidebar.

• Toggle the features you want to try.

Try the Meta Quest 3’s new spatial locking feature

This brand new (as of February 2026) feature is evidence of how hard Meta is leaning into mixed reality. Spatial locking lets you anchor windows wherever you want in physical space, so you can look at your real television and see a virtual one, have three virtual monitors extending your workspace, or create a window to YouTube over your sink for when you’re washing dishes. Bonus: The Quest will remember where these windows are when you restart it.

Here’s how it works:

• Make sure you’re in pass-through mode.

• Open a window in your headset.

• Grab the window with the control bar at the bottom and move it where you’d like.

• Select the “anchor” icon on the control bar.

• This won’t work with travel mode. But speaking of travel mode…

Enable travel mode on the Meta Quest 3

Yes, you’ll look sort of dorky on a plane, but the Quest 3’s travel mode makes it possible to use your Quest on the road by creating a stationary boundary, and setting the Quest to ignore external velocity and rely only on head movements. Here’s how to turn it on:

• Go to the “Settings” menu.

• Click on “Environmental Set Up.”

• Click on “Travel Mode.”

Install Bigscreen Beta streaming app on the Meta Quest 3

Bigscreen Beta is the go-to video streaming app on Quest headsets. It allows you to sit in a highly detailed virtual environment—a cozy modern living room, a massive outdoor drive-in, another planet, etc.—and stream video. You can use the Bigscreen Remote Desktop tool on your PC to stream content from Netflix, Disney+ or just about anywhere else directly into your virtual environment. Not only that, you can stream content directly from Bigscreen into your private space, invite friends over to watch with you, or watch movies and TV with strangers in shared virtual theaters.

Play Xbox games on the Meta Quest 3 in mixed reality

If you have an Xbox Live account, you can play (2D) Xbox games right from your VR headset, giving you a portable game console with a 100″ screen. Here’s how it works:

• Download the XBox app on your Quest headset.

• Pair a controller with your Quest. Quest controllers aren’t made to work with XBox games, so you’ll have to use Bluetooth to pair a game controller to your Quest. You can use an XBox controller, a PS5 controller, a Switch 2 controller, and a ton of generic controllers.

• Run the Xbox app and choose a game.

• Enable passthrough. This lets you play your game on as big a screen as you’d like while still being in the “real” world.

• There can be some latency, as the game is being run from the cloud, but it’s surprisingly smooth in my experience.

Explore WebXR on the Meta Quest 3

WebXR might be the Quest’s biggest secret. It lets you use a seemingly infinite number of games and apps that are not available in the Meta store, and are almost all free. Since WebXR apps are browser based, all you have to do is point your Meta browser to a site that hosts a WebXR program and hit go. If you like experimental little tests and whatnot, you’ll never run out. Here are some to check out:

• Moon Rider: A totally free, open-source alternative to Beat Sabre.

• Silkbrush: A web-based version of the famous Tilt Brush that lets you paint in 3D space.

• Above Par-adowski: A surprisingly deep browser-based miniature golf game.

Master the Meta Horizon mobile app

You can do a lot with your Quest without even turning it on. The Meta Horizon mobile app lets you manage your library, download games, change your settings, and more, all without strapping anything to your face. Browsing the Meta store feels way more natural on the app, and it’s easier to navigate and change setting there too. Plus, the app can tell you how much charge is left in your battery, whether your friends are online, download screenshots and videos, and cast what’s going on in your headset to another screen.

Invest in a third-party battery strap for the Meta Quest 3

The Meta Quest 3 is ergonomically fine for shorter sessions, but if you wear it long enough, you realize how much the design is a battle between comfort and performance, and it compromises on both ends—it’s kind of heavy and the battery life is kind of short. The front-weighted design puts pressure on your face and the battery life rarely survives a two-hour session, but there’s a solution to both problems: Trade the stock fabric strap for a third-party “Elite” style strap with a built in extra battery, like the KIWI design H4 Boost or the BOBOVR S3 Pro. These move the extra weight to the back of your head, balancing the ergonomics, and they have swappable extra batteries so you can use your headset as long as you’d like.

BOBOVR S3 Pro Battery Strap Accessories,Head air Conditioning and 10000mah hot-swappable Battery Pack,Compatible with Meta Quest 3/Quest 3s

$85.99
at Amazon

$85.99
at Amazon

Hundreds of employees at Google and OpenAI have signed an open letter urging their companies to stand with Anthropic in its standoff with the Pentagon over military applications for AI tools like Claude.

The letter, titled “We Will Not Be Divided,” calls on the leadership of both companies to “put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War’s current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight.” These are two lines that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said should not be crossed by his or any other AI company.

As of publication, the letter has over 450 signatures, almost 400 of which come from Google employees and the rest from OpenAI. Currently, roughly 50 percent of all participants have chosen to attach their names to the cause, with the rest remaining anonymous. All are verified as current employees of these companies. The original organizers of the letter aren’t Google or OpenAI employees; they say are unaffiliated with any AI company, political party or advocacy group.

The open letter is the latest development in the saga between Anthropic and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who threatened to label the company a “supply chain risk” if it did not agree to withdraw certain guardrails for classified work. The Pentagon has also been in talks with Google and OpenAI about using their models for classified work, with xAI coming on board earlier this week. The letter argues the government is “trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his employees on Friday that the ChatGPT maker will draw the same red lines as Anthropic, according to an internal memo seen by Axios. He told CNBC on the same day that he doesn’t “personally think the Pentagon should be threatening DPA against these companies.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-and-openai-employees-sign-open-letter-in-solidarity-with-anthropic-194957274.html?src=rss