IBM’s Quantum Developer’s Conference is being held this week, and the company is using the gathering to provide an update to its roadmap: It is aiming to make error-corrected quantum computers before the decade is out.

The changes greatly expand the scope of its next-generation Nighthawk general-use processors by adding a version with over 500 programmable qubits. At the same time, it’s stepping back a bit on its plan to link multiple Nighthawk processors together, dropping the intended number of linked systems from nine to two.

The total number of qubits planned for next year will remain the same; how the company is getting there, however, will be different.

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Apple is shutting down its Apple Support Community forum on November 20, ending a user-to-user support platform whose history stretches back to the 1998 launch as the Apple Tech Exchange. The forum is already read-only, and Apple has not said whether the nearly three decades of community posts will be preserved or disappear when the site closes. Here’s the full banner notice that’s currently displayed on the website:
“The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state. You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site. We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.” Apple told MacRumors that it decided to sunset the forum after a careful evaluation of strategy and customer needs.

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Grand Theft Auto 6 might just be the most anticipated game of all time. It’s been 13 years since Rockstar dropped GTA 5, and after years of rumors, leaks, and official announcements, the sixth mainstream installment in the series is nearly here. In fact, anyone who pre-ordered the game digitally can now pre-load it onto their console, if you want to ensure you’re ready to play the second the game comes out.

Now, few of us will buy a game console specifically for GTA 6—unless you don’t already have a current-generation PlayStation or Xbox. (The PC version of the game isn’t expected until at least early 2027.) But, as it turns out, there’s one specific console that can run GTA 6 better than the rest.

The PS5 Pro is apparently the best way to experience “GTA 6”

Rockstar confirmed as much in a post on Tuesday, which was meant to spread the news about pre-loading the game. But, interestingly, it spurred a discussion about the performance of the game itself, as well as which consoles are best to run it.

No matter which console you play GTA 6 on, Rockstar says that the game will only target 30 fps (frames per second). That’s decided slow for a mainstream game in 2026. GTA 5 also shipped at 30 fps in 2013, but newer consoles can run it at higher frame rates. In fact, most games that launch on the latest generation of consoles can run at 60 fps, if not higher. While it’s certainly not a dealbreaker, it is interesting that Rockstar’s latest game can’t run at a faster frame rate even on the PS5 Pro or the Xbox Series X.

To that point, Rockstar called out the PS5 Pro specifically in its post, announcing, “The PlayStation 5 Pro offers breathtaking visuals, with improved clarity through PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) and ray-traced shadows only available on PlayStation 5 Pro.”

PSSR is Sony’s AI upscaler, similar to options like DLSS from Nvidia, which uses AI to add extra graphical information to games in real time. That allows developers like Rockstar to run the game at a lower resolution to save on processing power, but still boost the visuals to reach a higher perceived resolution. As such, it’s not as ideal as running the game at a higher resolution natively, but it can help improve the visuals without pushing the hardware beyond its limits. Meanwhile, ray-tracing offers realistic lighting effects and can also be graphically intense.

While PlayStation and Xbox players alike will be stuck at 30 fps, it seems only PS5 Pro gamers will be able to play the game with ray-tracing effects and AI upscaling. It’s surprising that Xbox Series X players don’t have similar benefits, as the hardware is more powerful than Xbox Series S. Rockstar didn’t specify why only the PS5 Pro gets these upgrades.

Other console perks for “GTA 6”

In the post, Rockstar also announced that the PS5 version of GTA 6 takes advantage of other PlayStation-exclusive perks, like high-fidelity haptic feedback in the DualSense controller, spatial audio rendering using the PlayStation’s Tempest 3D audio, as well as improved load times—though Rockstar didn’t specify what those load times would be. These perks apply to all PS5 consoles, not just PS5 Pros. Rockstar goes so far as to say that GTA 6 plays best on PlayStation 5 consoles.

That’s not to say that Microsoft’s consoles are totally left out of the perks. Rockstar says that GTA 6 will be available on Xbox Cloud Gaming on both Xbox Series X and S, as well as Xbox One. In addition, both PlayStation and Xbox gamers can play GTA 6 using Remote Play, so no one has to physically play on their console if they want to game on the go.

Again, there’s no reason to go out and buy a specific console for GTA 6, so long as you have something that can run the game. After all, PS5 Pros are difficult to find, especially without wildly overpaying. But it’s interesting that Rockstar has managed to give Sony’s consoles the extra perks here, particularly since the company hasn’t explained why that is.

The company will stop selling video doorbells, its home monitoring system and other products.

The last few years have seen significant debate over the widespread use of AI-powered tools in game development and the responsible disclosure of that usage to players. That debate has exploded into a full-blown controversy in the indie game development space this week, as Big Walk developer House House has publicly and belatedly disclosed minimal AI use in its popular co-operative puzzle exploration game.

This particular controversy has been brewing behind the scenes for months, as judges and jury members for the prestigious Independent Games Festival Awards discussed the issue in private discussion groups. But the debate started to break into public view on Monday when 19 members of the 50-plus-member jury released a signed statement outlining a stance “declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity.”

Noting “a significant increase in the number of submitted games developer with generative AI tools,” the group of jurors called out AI’s ecological, economic, psychological, and labor harms in rejecting tools whose use, they said, is still “not a foregone conclusion in our industry.”

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Welcome to Holiday Office Hours From the Labs, a collaborative multimedia project in which Lifehacker, CNET, ZDNET, and Mashable harness the power of our product testing laboratory and our editors’ expertise to offer the best gift-buying recommendations possible. In this episode, we’re talking televisions.

I recently did a deep dive into TV development history, checked out what was on shelves for 2026, and I concluded that the best gift TV you can give this year is, actually, a pair of sunglasses. The XBX by XReal video display glasses are basically a TV you can shove in your pocket. Check them out:

I looked past traditional sets for a couple of reasons. First, because as much as we all love a great show or movie, who actually buys someone a TV set as a gift? More importantly, there’s the nature of television itself. Since it was invented in the late 1920s, television quality has been measured by how big the screen is and how clear and bright the picture is, but in 2026, a nothing-special 4K television delivers an image that is pixel-invisible to a typical viewer, and most of us don’t have living rooms big enough to need a display bigger than 65 inches. I think the innovation in the space is going to come from the form factor and the use case, and what better form factor is there than a pair of sunglasses?

These glasses deliver the equivalent of a 142″ TV viewed from across the room. It’s hard to compare resolution to traditional TVs—technically, the display is 1080p in each eye, but because the TV is just millimeters from your eye, it looks much clearer than that. The peak brightness is 1,600 nits, bright enough for most rooms, and there’s a totally opaque shield if you need it. The refresh rate is a crisp 120Hz. They support HDR10 and real-time SDR-to-HDR upscaling, offer billions of colors, and it’s all in a package that weighs only 62 grams.

Then there are the use cases. It can act as a separate monitor for your computer; you can watch a different show than your roommate without bothering them; but most of all, these are great for flights. There is no situation in life that calls for a big screen TV more than a cross-country airplane flight. Slip these on with a pair of headphones, and you can fly to Boise in your own private, virtual theater.

They plug right into any device that supports USB-C video, there’s no battery to remember to charge, and they cost less than $300. In other words: They’re the perfect TV gift for the holidays, even if they aren’t technically a TV.

Apple’s online community forum will close on November 20.

On Tuesday night, Apple posted a message to the Apple Support Community announcing the forum’s closure:

The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.

You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.

We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.

For 28 years, the forum has provided Apple users with a way to get quick technical advice about their products. That advice usually came from fellow users, though Apple employees occasionally chimed in. As with any community forum, the helpfulness and accuracy of the advice varied.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon’s Ring is going deeper into surveillance with an indoor drone for home monitoring and an autonomous robot designed to patrol businesses. The company on Tuesday unveiled the $250 Ring Drone Cam, a security camera that can fly from room to room, including upstairs, as well as capture footage during the day or at night. When an alarm or sensor on windows, doors and home security devices is triggered, the textbook-sized drone travels a preset path to investigate suspicious activity. Users can also deploy the drone at any time, the company said.

[…] The company on Tuesday also debuted the $1,000 Ring Rover Cam. The device repurposes Amazon’s Astro home robot, which had a short life as a business device and has seen few upgrades since its 2021 debut, for companies to use to patrol offices, warehouses and other workspaces. Ring said it “leveraged the best of Astro” to build the Ring Rover Cam, which it describes as a “purpose-built security robot.” Similar to the Astro, the device is a display mounted on a two-wheeled base with an extendable periscope camera. It also features a “built-in siren,” two-way audio and a “light tower” that shines onto the ceiling to help users keep track of its whereabouts. The Ring Drone Cam ships in the U.S. on Jan. 27, while the Ring Rover Cam will begin shipping to users on Dec. 16.

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The idea that Americans should be offered a greater choice of smaller cars has support from strange bedfellows indeed. After all, who could forget President Trump—usually one to take a maximalist approach to any problem—announcing last year that he wanted the Department of Transportation to make Japan’s diminutive “Kei” cars legal here in the US.

Ars’ attempts to get DoT to tell us more about the potential influx of little vehicles have mostly fallen on deaf ears. But this week, there has been movement on the topic, with Toyota announcing that it will bring back the Scion brand with the KEI-01.

What’s a Kei car?

Here in the US, the preponderance of humongous SUVs is a consequence largely of government policies, specifically corporate average fuel economy standards that made it less profitable to sell smaller, efficient cars. Japan’s Kei cars are what happens if the government instead restricts the size, engine capacity, and power output.

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