FlashFeed

Full text

Credit: Joe Maring / Android Authority

TL;DR

There are a growing number of reports saying that T-Mobile is down.

Reports appear to span across the country.

If you’re a T-Mobile user, you may have some trouble with your service today. It appears that the network is experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment.

According to Downdetector , T-Mobile users are reporting that the network appears to be down. Looking at the heat map, the reports are coming in from all across the country, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, and more. There are hundreds of reports so far, and it looks like problems began around 10 AM ET.

Full text

Astronauts have grown a common crystal in space — but this extraterrestrial version is exhibiting a very uncommon behavior. Under a microscope, the crystal looks more like a tiny futuristic sculpture than something that formed naturally. The pyramid-like assembly curls in on itself in stair-stepped layers, seeming almost too orderly to be real. But according to scientists, the striking shape is what happens when gravity stops calling the shots.

The image , shared on July 18 by NASA astronaut Don Pettit , and accompanying video were captured aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and show potassium chloride crystals growing in microgravity — the near-weightless environment experienced in orbit.

Microgravity isn't quite zero gravity; astronauts experience a gravitational pull roughly a million times weaker than on Earth's surface, Anne Wilson , a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Butler University, told Live Science. That reduction in gravity's tug has profound impacts on the human body , and, as the new image shows, completely changes how liquids and crystals behave as well.

"[Other] forces start to become far more pronounced than gravity forces," Wilson said, pointing to molecular attraction and polarity as two influences that suddenly take over once gravity fades into the background.

Those conditions enable potassium chloride — a common salt used as a sodium substitute in foods and sports drinks — to crystallize in ways that are nearly impossible to reproduce in a terrestrial lab.

On Earth, growing crystals eventually get heavy enough to sag, break or settle at the bottom of their container. But in microgravity, they keep growing outward from wherever they started.

Potassium chloride naturally forms cube-shaped crystals, Wilson said. In microgravity, those crystals grow mainly from their edges and corners instead of across their faces, leaving the center hollow and creating the striking pyramid-like structures seen in the image.

In microgravity, crystals experience "hopper growth," where the outer edges and corners grow at faster rates than the flat faces, creating a step-like appearance. This timelapse records their growth inside a thin water film. Look closely, and you will see the patterns emerge! pic.twitter.com/iSlqJvke1G June 6, 2026

Scientists call this pattern hopper growth , and it isn't unique to potassium chloride (ordinary table salt forms the same way). As new corners emerge during growth, the crystal can change direction entirely, producing the elegant scrolling pattern visible in the new image.

RELATED STORIES

'Extreme' crystal that formed in 1945 nuclear bomb test is unlike anything scientists have seen

Science history: Chemists discover buckyballs — the most perfect molecules in existence — Nov. 14, 1985

Only 1% of chemicals in the universe have been discovered. Here's how scientists are hunting for the rest.

While the crystal is visually stunning, the science behind it could prove just as valuable. Materials grown without gravity's interference often form with fewer defects, giving researchers a rare look at what a truly "ideal" structure looks like. This insight could help refine manufacturing processes for semiconductors and other advanced materials back on Earth.

For Wilson, images like this serve another purpose: inspiring curiosity.

"I love seeing videos of how things behave in space," she said. "Who would think that something as simple as potassium chloride could still be super cool?"

ISS astronauts spend a significant amount of their time conducting science experiments that would be near-impossible on Earth. Recently, astronauts used the space station’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Laboratory to create and study an elusive fifth state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate. And last year, researchers demonstrated how moss spores exposed to space for nine months on the outside of the ISS continued to grow after being returned to Earth.

Full text

Nvidia's Arm-based processor for laptops was unveiled after much waiting at Computex back in June. RTX Spark is Nvidia's first proper go at a consumer chip, combining CPU and GPU, and while it is of course targeted at AI workloads, it's also targeted at gaming. Now, Nvidia has confirmed which will be the first brands of RTX Spark laptop to come to market this fall and which will follow those.

According to Nvidia , "RTX Spark systems will be available this fall from Asus, Dell Technologies, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and Gigabyte to follow."

The initial few aren't a big surprise given these are the exact companies that were announced as partners when RTX Spark was revealed. Of note is Acer and Gigabyte following the initial six, though.

As Chinese news site the Commercial Times points out (via VideoCardz ), MSI and Asus will be the first Taiwanese companies to launch Spark lappies. But given it was the Surface Laptop Ultra that RTX Spark was most commonly shown running on at Computex, it'll be surprising if that's not the first one to market.

That being said, I'm looking forward to RTX Spark laptops other than the Surface. Back when it was announced, I reported just how much I liked the look of the thin MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ .

(Image credit: Future (left), AP - Associated Press (right)) If laptops as thin as this can really pump out 100 fps at 1440p like Nvidia claims—and our Dave's hands-on experience gaming on RTX Spark certainly does make me hopeful—then getting that kind of power out of such a thin laptop is an exciting prospect. Though I guess that will depend on the TDPs and cooling in question, too.

The other big announcement from Nvidia at SIGGRAPH 2026, at least as far as we gamers are concerned, was a closer look at how DLSS 5 works . For now, the AI filter looks to be controllable with just a couple of sliders, though Nvidia says it's working on building more controls for devs. And I can't deny that cranking up the subsurface scattering on masked-off environmental objects looks pretty damn good to my eyes, even if the controls are limited.

That technology will launch this fall, too, so the end of 2026 might be an interesting time for PC gaming. Setting aside the usual affordability provisos given the current state of the market, of course.