This week on the TT Show, Lord of the Rings superfan (and also superfan) Jak and Kosta discuss Peter Jackson returning to The Lord of the Rings franchise with the new movie 'The Hunt for Gollum.' They discuss the potential story, timeline, and their hopes for a return to the magic of the original trilogy. And not, you know, The Hobbit.

Another big story this week is Apple's apologizing for its seemingly tone-deaf iPad Pro advertisement that quickly caused a massive wave of negative backlash. Is it as bad as some of the comments? As a fan of retro hardware who doesn't like seeing it get destroyed, Kosta thinks so, while Jak is more on the fence and 'meh.'

And it wouldn't be an episode of The TT Show without GPU news, with all of the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series, Radeon, and Intel graphics talk bundled into a new section of the podcast called 'GPU Corner.' Speaking of new sections, Jak and Kosta play a round of Guess the Headline for some fun.

Astronomers published a new study in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy detailing the discovery of an exoplanet called SPECULOOS-3 b.

The newly found exoplanet is approximately 55 light-years away from Earth, which is in the world of astronomy is extremely close to our planet, given the vastness of the Milky Way. SPECULOOS-3 b orbits its host star once every 17 hours, and astronomers expect that its also tidally locked, meaning one side of the planet is perpetually being blasted by host stars light, while the other side is stuck in perpetual cold darkness.

Due to its proximity to its host star, SPECULOOS-3 b is being bathed in high amounts of radiation, peeling away any form of atmosphere the planet may have had at one stage. The lack of atmosphere and the impossibility of hosting water due to its extreme temperatures make SPECULOOS-3 b inhospitable to life as we know it, but that isn't why astronomers are excited about it.

Microsoft is preparing to announce one of, if not the biggest change to Windows in its existence, which is the inclusion of artificial intelligence-powered tools.

The company is set to showcase its latest integrations of AI into PCs at the Build developers conference on Tuesday. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said in January 2024, AI will become the "first-class part of every PC". That shift has already begun with the inclusion of Copilot chatbot assistant in Microsoft's Bing search engine, and direct integration into Windows 11.

What users can expect out of tomorrow's conference is Microsoft explaining how AI will become fully integrated into Windows, specifically Windows 11, and what users will be able to do on the next generation of AI PCs. More specifically, AI PCs will have a two-purpose goal: increase the number of PC sales and maintain Microsoft's position in the AI industry via AI being rolled out to millions of Windows users.

Intel has released Intel Graphics Driver 31.0.101.5522 (WHQL Certified) for its Arc graphics cards for desktop and mobile Intel Core Ultra processors. It brings day one support for this week's big PC release, the highly anticipated Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, alongside optimizations for Starfield's big May 2024 update and support for Wuthering Waves and Ubisoft's XDefiant.

Starfield performance for Intel Arc GPUs has been something of a disappointment for months, so it's good to see progress being made here - with Intel noting that desktop Arc owners should see an 8% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings and a 7% average FPS uplift at 1440p with High settings. It's not a game-changer, like some previous Arc driver releases that have brought massive 100%+ improvements, but welcome nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the driver's release notes still list several outstanding Known Issues related to games like No Rest of the Wicked, DOOM Eternal, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora crashing and software like the popular video more upscale Topaz Video AI having issues exporting videos.

Creative Assembly, the developer and studio behind the Total War series of PC strategy games, is rumored to be working on multiple new entries in the franchise - including one set in the Star Wars universe.

According to the publication DualShockers, citing sources within the studio, three new Total War games are in development - although it's uncertain how far along the Star Wars-themed entry is.

If true, development would have commenced after a deal with Lucasfilm Games was struck. Although there's no word on a potential setting, timeline, characters, or storyline, all of that has probably already been decided. The odds are it will feature Stormtroopers with blasters and Jedi with lightsabers.

Two college students discovered a security exploit within the API of a washing machine that is currently in use across several countries.

Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko discovered the security flaw within the API created by the company behind the washing machines, CSC ServiceWorks. The two students claim the vulnerability within the internet-connected API enabled them to remotely turn a machine on without payment, and update their laundry account to display millions of dollars. Reports indicate that CSC ServiceWorks has more than a million machines across college campuses, housing communities, and laundromats in the US, Canada, and Europe.

The two college students contacted CSC ServiceWorks about the security flaw and didn't receive a response from the company, but noticed shortly after their laundry account balance was changed from millions of dollars back to $0. The two students spoke to The Verge and said the lack of response from CSC ServiceWorks led them to tell other people about the vulnerability, which resulted in the posting of the list of commands that enables anyone to access CSC's network-connected laundry machines.

Barring the big Helldivers 2 controversy, PlayStation is having a massive year on PC, with the release of Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut already cementing itself as Sony's most successful single-player PC game on Steam.

Regarding peak concurrent player counts, Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut's 77,154 figure is higher than those of God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part I, and Marvel's Spider-Man. All of these are considered successful PC ports and are used as examples of why Sony is going all-in on and moving toward a multi-platform future for PlayStation.

As far as popular PlayStation PC games go, it is second only to the juggernaut, Helldivers II, one of the most talked-about co-op shooters in years and a game on track for a few Game of the Year awards. Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut is currently the best-selling game on Steam, with the enhanced PC version supporting features like advanced graphics settings, uncapped frame rates, ultrawide support, and tech like NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3, and Intel XeSS.

Game Science, the developers behind Black Myth: WuKong have released a new trailer for the highly anticipated title, showcasing some incredible graphics and gameplay all powered by Unreal Engine 5.

The new official trailer was revealed at the WeGame Event, and showcases the iconic Chinese legend about the Monkey King, otherwise known as WuKong. The trailer shows incredible visuals, some cutscenes and gameplay of the title, all of which has been developed entirely in Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.

As for the game itself, Black Myth: WuKong is a third-person game that is based on Journey to the West, a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty that follows the travels of the Tang dynasty Buddist monk Xuanzang, who travelled to "Western Regions" (Central Asia and India) to gather sacred texts.

What would happen if you installed Windows XP in 2024, set the internet connection to be fully open without any firewalls or anti-virus software, and just let the computer sit there idling? If you answered, malware and hackers would obtain full access to the file system and admin privileges in minutes - then you'd be on the right track.

YouTuber Eric Parker decided to run an experiment to see how dangerous running Windows XP in 2024 is, and the results were alarming. Without browning downloading or opening suspicious files, the PC (a virtual installation) was immediately infected by malware. Granted, the Windows XP Firewall was disabled, too, but it's wild to think how vulnerable XP was/is to attacks.

All you need to do is go online with Windows XP, and you're open to all manner of malware, Trojans, new admin accounts being created, and even an FTP server starting, which all happens here.

As part of its AYANEO REMAKE product lineup, the company has announced a pair of new portable gaming handhelds inspired by classic Game Boy hardware - albeit far more powerful. The AYANEO Pocket DMG is a new vertical handheld modeled after the iconic Game Boy Pocket or Game Boy Advance SP and powered by the Snapdragon G3x Gen 3 Gaming Platform.

The sleek and minimal design is optimized for vertical gaming, and the 3.92-inch OLED display sports an impressive resolution of 1240x1080 and a pixel density of 419 PPI. As a handheld geared toward sprite-based retro gaming and emulation, having an OLED display is a definite selling point - it will make many games look better than ever, thanks to the brilliant contrast and color accuracy.

AYANEO's second retro-inspired handheld that got revealed is the new AYANEO Pocket MICRO - which is reminiscent of the pocket or keyring-sized Game Boy Micro that played Game Boy Advance cartridges on a tiny 240×160 pixel 2-inch screen.

Microsoft will soon offer AMD's new Instinct MI300X AI accelerator for its cloud computing customers, as well as introducing a preview of its new Cobalt 100 customer processors during its upcoming Build conference this week.

The new clusters of AMD's flagship Instinct MI300X AI accelerator will be available for purchase by cloud computing customers through Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service, where they'll be an alternative to NVIDIA's family of H100 AI GPUs, which absolutely dominate the AI GPU market, but they're getting harder to purchase in big numbers.

Microsoft will also be offering AMD's new 4th Gen EPYC processors adapted for general purpose, memory-intensive, and compute-optimized virtual machines. Microsoft's new Cobalt 100 processors that the company will show off next week at the Build conference will feature 40% more performance compared to other processors based on the Arm architecture.