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.

It was only recently that NASA confirmed a massive solar flare taking place on the surface of the Sun, with officials confirming its the biggest solar eruption of the last 20 years and this 11-year cycle.

The solar flare took place at 12:51 pm ET on May 14 and was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. For those that don't know, a solar flare happens when the Sun's magnetic field lines are contorted and snap, resulting in a massive outburst of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. These solar eruptions can significantly impact Earth by causing interference with satellite communications, power grids and GPS signals.

Additionally, a solar flare can typically be paired with a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is a blast of solar plasma, or charged particles. When these charged particles either from the CME or the initial flare hit Earth they can produce auroras to appear at lower altitudes, or further south than they typically do. NASA JPL compiled the images of the May 14 solar flare and placed them into a video, which can be seen above.

The European Commission has officially launched an investigation into Meta and it's products, specifically Facebook and Instagram, to see if its breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.

The European Commission writes in its press release that its concerned that Facebook and Instagram aren't doing enough to protect the mental and physical health of children using the apps. The EU states its concerned specifically with the platforms' algorithms as they may create a "rabbit-hole effects" that leads to behavioural addictions in children. Additionally, the Commission is concerned with the Meta's implementation of age verification on both platforms.

In simpler words, the Commission is accusing Facebook and Meta of having algorithms that cause behavioural addictions in children, which leads to them not wanting to put the social media down and participate in real life. Moreover, the investigation will evaluate if Meta is doing all it can to protect children from digesting inappropriate content, and isn't intentionally curating its algorithm to promote addiction.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut is out now for PC. It's one of the latest releases to support DLSS 2 Super Resolution for all GeForce RTX GPUs and DLSS 3 Frame Generation for the latest GeForce RTX 40 Series. With that, NVIDIA has presented benchmark results for what to expect at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with max settings and DLSS 3 enabled.

The video above shows that the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 delivers a smooth 200 FPS experience at 4K. Digging into the full benchmark results (which you can see after the jump), the mid-range GeForce RTX 4070 can also hit an average of 108.7 FPS at 4K with DLSS 3. From the RTX 4070 to the RTX 4090, DLSS 3 delivers a 2.6X increase in performance at 4K.

Interestingly, since the game supports DLSS 3, FSR 3, and XeSS, GeForce RTX 30 Series owners can enable FSR 3 frame generation with DLSS 2 upscaling to boost performance. X user @BlooHook (via Videocardz) posted a screenshot showcasing the GeForce RTX 3090 hitting an impressive 170 FPS using a combination of DLSS and FSR.

The first human to accept a Neuralink brain chip implant was able to control a PC through their thoughts, and now the Elon Musk-led company is looking for its second participant.

In early March, Neuralink showcased a 29-year-old man named Nolan Arbaugh, who was unfortunately paralyzed from the neck down following a tragic diving accident eight years ago. Arbaugh demonstrated the capabilities of the Neuralink brain chip called "Telepathy" in a video that showed him controlling the cursor on a PC and even playing a game of Mario Kart against another player.

Neuralink has since taken to its official X account to share a video of Arbaugh talking about his motivations behind agreeing to participate in the trial, saying that he wants to help future quadriplegics based on what is learned from his involvement now. Notably, Arbaugh said the surgery for the brain implant was "super easy," and there was a significant learning process to differentiate "imagined movement versus attempted movement" in order to control a cursor on a PC.

NVIDIA's RTX Remix (available now) tool for modders is a powerful tool that has opened the door to a new type of remaster. Ray-tracing, AI-enhanced textures, and direct control over a game's visuals, effects, models, and more are already delivering stunning results. The best part is that it takes older DirectX games and gives them a modern makeover.

EA's Need For Speed: Underground from 2003 is a great example, primarily because the Need For Speed: Underground RTX mod (via modDB) is the work of a single person - alessandro893. With RTX Remix, the game's lighting is now fully ray-traced, including over 1,000 additional lights to the world to help improve immersion. Several in-game textures have also been enhanced.

It's still a work in progress, with some sections looking better than others, and elements like car headlights still need the RTX and ray-tracing treatment, but it's showing great promise. Need For Speed: Underground is one of the most beloved entries in the series, and it's fantastic to see it with full ray-tracing and updated visuals.

Dell Technologies World (DTW) will be held at The Venetian in Las Vegas from May 20-23, 2024. Dell and its partners will showcase the latest technology and AI innovations for businesses. KIOXIA, the pioneer of NAND flash memory, will be there with its range of SSD and memory solutions, including high-performance PCIe 5.0 SSDs, to demonstrate their benefits over PCIe 4.0.

KIOXIA (booth #436) will be on the show floor with real-world server and storage configurations, including its KIOXIA CD8 Series Data Center U.2 NVMeTM SSDs, KIOXIA CM7 Series Enterprise E3.S NVMe SSDs, and more. As AI is a transformative technology, KIOXIA SSDs are pivotal in Dell's AI solutions.

"Since the day we invented it more than 35 years ago, flash memory has been a dynamic force propelling innovation forward," noted Alex Mei, vice president of corporate marketing for KIOXIA America, Inc. "With groundbreaking technologies such as PCIe 5.0 and EDSFF SSDs, we empower our customers to not only elevate application performance but also drive down total cost of ownership, all while fostering a more sustainable future."

Google recently announced at its I/O event its sixth tensor processing unit (TPU) called Trillium, and according to the company the new processor is designed for powerful next-generation AI models.

The company initially created the TPUs for its own internal products such as Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube, which leverage machine learning workloads. Now, Google has created six generations of this technology and according to the company Trillium will arrive with a 4.7x increase in peak compute performance, along with double the high bandwidth memory capacity, compared to its TPU v5e design.

More specifically, Google's claim of a 4.7x increase in peak compute performance means the new TPU is capable of pushing 926 teraFLOPS at BF16 and 1,847 teraFLOPS at INT8, making it about twice as fast as TPU v5p accelerators that Google announced less than six months ago. How did Google do this? The company said the performance increase can be traced back to the decision to increase the size of TPU's matrix multiple units (MXUs), and boosting the clock speed.

Officials have confirmed the Sun has launched the strongest solar flare of this solar cycle, an 11-year period that takes the Sun from its least active to its most active.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center recently announced the eruption of a solar flare that measured X8.7, which resulted in radio blackouts and widespread auroras around our planet. Notably, researchers pinpointed the source of the massive solar flare to the sunspot region 3664, which reports indicate measure at least 15 Earths wide.

For those that don't know, a solar flare is caused by magnetic disturbances in the Sun, specifically when the magnetic field lines of the Sun are twisted and contorted. The snapping of these magnetic field lines results in the release of powerful exertion of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. Additionally, a solar flare can also release what is called a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is a powerful wave of charged solar particles that can hit Earth if the planet is in the direction of its trajectory.

A team of researchers has created an advanced version of silicon that could be used as the foundation for the next generation of computing.

The new breakthrough technology is described as an extremely pure form of silicon, the semiconductor material used in traditional computers, and has been detailed in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications Materials. According to the paper, the new form of silicon could be used to bring quantum computing to silicon-based hardware, making these powerful next-generation computers much more accessible to everyone.

A rudimentary explanation of quantum computing is as follows. Traditional computers operate by encoding in binary, 1's or 0's. A quantum computer can encode data separately and in both 1's and 0's, or what is called a qubit, superposition of both of these states. This state is called "coherence" and enables processing calculations much faster than traditional forms of encoding. However, quantum computing has its challenges, as qubits have proven to be "noisy," which means outside elements can easily interfere with the stability of the quantum state of data.

NVIDIA will play a central role in developing Japan's generative AI infrastructure, as the country seeks to capitalize on the technology's economic potential, and further develop its workforce.

The announcement from NVIDIA comes after Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on the future of AI with NVIDIA in the country. NVIDIA is collaborating with key digital infrastructure providers, including GMO Internet Group, Highreso, KDDI Corporation, RUTILEA, SAKURA internet Inc. and SoftBank Corp., which the ministry has certified to spearhead the development of cloud infrastructure crucial for AI applications.

The ministry announced plans to provide $740 million in funding to help 6 local firms in this new AI initiative, which means Japan is the latest nation to embrace the concept of sovereign AI by fortifying Japanese startups, enterprises, and research with advanced AI technologies.