This week, on a more focused episode of The TT Show, Jak and Kosta break down and go through the crazy Helldivers 2 controversy on PC. If you were offline for a few days (and this all played out throughout a single weekend), the decision to force the Helddivers 2's PC players to link their Steam Account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account caused a veritable backlash storm.

From the review bombing to developers being grilled to Sony and developer Arrowhead's damage control to the surprisingly swift happy ending, Jak and Kosta discuss the implications and consider what might happen in the aftermath.

This week's other big story comes from the world of Apple, with the company lifting the lid on its new iPad Pro lineup powered by the new AI-powered 3 nanometer M4 chip. The big thing here is that it represents Apple's first dip into the world of OLED displays, with a groundbreaking 1000-nit SDR and HDR screen that has two OLED panels in one!

Apple last week announced a flurry of iPads during the Let Loose event, adding the M4 chip and an OLED display to the iPad Pro and an M2 chip and all-new 13-inch display size to the iPad Air. But there was no mention of updating the iPad mini and the beloved mature tablet hasn't received any attention since it was last refreshed in 2021. That will surely change soon enough, but how soon that will happen is a matter for debate. Now, a new report suggests that while a new iPad mini is indeed part of Apple's plans, we shouldn't expect it to debut any time soon.

Writing in the paywalled version of the Power On newsletter that was reported by MacRumors, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman noted that the updated iPad mini isn't something that is likely to be announced within the next couple of months. In fact, the way Gurman was speaking, it seems possible that the new iPad mini might not arrive until 2025 although there remains hope it could debut before then.

When answering a reader's question about when the new iPad mini would debut, Gurman said that they would likely have to wait until the end of this year at the earliest, perhaps hinting that Apple could choose to hang fire on the new launch until 2025. It's absolutely clear that there won't be any iPad mini news at the WWDC event that is set to take place on June 10, however.

By the end of the decade an asteroid that measures approximately 1,000-foot-wide will approach Earth, and this asteroid has been named after the Egyptian god of chaos and destruction.

The closest approach of the asteroid called Apophis will occur on April 13, 2029, and due to its incredible size and close proximity to Earth, a safe but extremely close 30,000 miles, skywatchers will be able to observe the asteroid with the naked eye. Apophis has been at the top of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) "impact risk list" of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) and NASA's Sentry Risk Table for 17 years, but further analysis by NASA determined it won't hit Earth for at least the next 100 years.

So, what's the big deal? NASA plans on using the close approach of Apophis as an opportunity to learn more about near-Earth asteroids, and space rocks in general, as Apophis formed around the same time the as the planets, making its material extremely valuable to researchers that want to piece together the long evolution of the solar system.

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 has certainly come a long way from its release in December 2020, when at the time was met with extreme criticism from console players that nearly resulted in CD Projekt Red investors suing the developer.

If you remember the release of Cyberpunk 2077, you will likely remember absolute chaos, widespread criticism, performance issues across the board, and overall thousands of unhappy gamers - so many that Sony even gave refunds to those who wanted them before pulling the game from its marketplace altogether. Since its release, Cyberpunk 2077 has been slowly climbing its way back to where it should have been at launch, and now the game is stable, playable, enjoyable, and, most of all, gorgeous.

A testament to the Cyberpunk 2077 community turning around the game is CD Projekt Red's Phantom Liberty DLC, which has been well-received by gamers. 95% of the 7000+ reviews left in the last month are positive, and according to Cyberpunk's director, Paweł Sasko, he "always believed" it was possible, but "never thought [he] would actually see it".

NASA has taken to its website to highlight a "rocky" planet approximately 41 light-years from Earth within the constellation Cancer.

That planet is called 55 Cancri e, and is referred to as a super-hot super-Earth exoplanet by researchers as it has a diameter twice that of Earth and has a composition similar to our planet's. As for super-hot, 55 Cancri e orbits its host star at approximately 1.4 million miles, or about one-twenty-fifth the distance between Mercury and the Sun. Due to its extremely close proximity, 55 Cancri e is believed to be tidally locked to its star, meaning only one side of the planet is facing the host star - exactly how from Earth we can only see one side of the Moon.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) pointed its sensitive infrared images at the planet and measured the light coming off it. By measuring the light researchers are able to determine what elements are present in the atmosphere, and the first indication 55 Cancri e could have a substantial atmosphere came from temperature measurements, or the heat energy given off in the form of infrared light.

Gamma is a new iOS app flying up the charts, and it's pretty easy to understand why. It's the next major emulator for Apple iOS devices, a free app that lets you play original PlayStation or PS1 games on iPhone and iPad. Developed by developer ZodTTD, it brings games from Sony's iconic console to iOS users without third-party software or jailbreaking.

With iPhone and iPad versions available to download, Gamma has customizable on-screen touch controls and support for Bluetooth controllers and even keyboards. The app connects to Google Drive and Dropbox for game saves and game files without the need to track down BIOS files or other proprietary data.

All you need to do is supply the ROMs or images of old-school PlayStation games. Gamma's UI and feel are similar to Delta, a popular Game Boy Advance emulator for iOS that is currently the top Entertainment app on iOS, beating out the likes of TikTok, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.

Microsoft has previously confirmed that it has been breached by hackers from both China and Russia, and now the US government wants to talk about it.

The House Committee on Homeland Security has selected Microsoft's vice chair and president, Brad Smith, to attend a hearing called "A Cascade of Security Failures: Assessing Microsoft Corporation's Cybersecurity Shortfalls and the Implications for Homeland Security." For those that don't know, Microsoft has recently been put under the microscope by security researchers and the US government following a slew of security breaches.

Prominent incidents that likely caught the attention of Homeland Security were the attack on Microsoft Exchange in June 2023 that resulted in senior US government officials having their emails compromised - approximately 60,000, and the January 2024 attack by Midnight Blizzard. The latter of the two was traced back to Russia, and the breach resulted in Midnight Blizzard breaking into the email accounts of Microsoft executives and stealing messages and files from the leadership team.

Astrophotography can be really easier and really difficult, and sometimes the most difficult attempts at capturing the cosmos pay off immensely. This is one of those examples.

Astrophotographer Betul Turksoy captured what is called an analemma, which is a figure 8 curve that is created from the elliptical curve of the Moon. Where it gets difficult is the requirements to take the above photograph. The above photograph was featured on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 10, 2022, where it's explained to capture an analemma, typically of the Sun, the camera needs to be planted in a single spot and the time of the time of the Sun marked for the first photograph. Then, take a photograph at the same time each day for one year.

However, a Moon analemma comes with some caveats. According to NASA, on average, the Moon returns to the same position in the sky about 50 minutes and 29 seconds later each day, which means to achieve a true Moon analemma, every photograph needs to be taken 50 minutes 29 seconds later each day. The duration of the photography bout will be one lunar month. Due to the above taking two months to capture, it technically shows a double lunar analemma.

The Nintendo 64, a 1996 console, has undoubtedly aged in the ensuing decades. However, as one of the first pieces of hardware to present full 3D worlds to explore, it's fondly remembered by many. A vibrant emulation and mod scene helped to keep the late '90s Nintendo gaming era alive. From Super Mario 64 to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, some of the most beloved 3D games of all time were for the N64.

In recent years, we've had some impressive N64 projects and endeavors, including full decompilation and native PC ports. This has led to games like Super Mario 64 getting ray-tracing support and other enhancements. But the manual decompilation and then recompilation process is long, often taking fans years - until now.

One of the N64 scene's most talented coders, Mr. Wiseguy, has created N64: Recompiled - 'a tool to statically recompile N64 binaries into C code that can be compiled for any platform.' Any N64 can now be ported to a PC and run as a native app, paving the way for mods and ray-tracing support.

It was only a few weeks ago that Microsoft continued with its plan to roll out a controversial Windows 11 update that implemented new advertisements into Windows 11, and now users have spotted yet another additional promotion now baked into Windows.

The new advertisement from a few weeks ago was implementing a "Recommended" section within Windows 11's Start menu. This new section first began testing within Microsoft's Insider program and according to Microsoft the recommendations within the section will be for apps sourced from a "small set of curated developers" that will meet Microsoft's quality standards. Notably, users are able to switch off recommendations within the Personalization section of Windows 11.

Now, Microsoft has rolled out a new advertisement within the "Settings" option for Windows, and this advertisement is for its Game Pass subscription service. The advertisement was discovered in the latest Dev channel version 26120.470 (KB5037864). The new Game Pass promotion ties in with the company's previous statements regarding Game Pass growth on PC still being present, while it stagnating on Xbox consoles.

The race to achieve the world's first petabyte-sized SSD is being headed by Samsung Electronics, and the finish line may be closer than we previously thought.

It was only in March last year that reports surfaced that Samsung Electronics was approximately a decade away from creating the first petabyte SSD, but now new research has come out that may reduce that timeline significantly. Firstly, Samsung is preparing to launch its 9th Gen V-NAND flash that features 290 layers stacked, a new global benchmark. Additionally, the manufacturer announced the existence of its 10th Gen V-NAND flash that features 430-layer stacking.

The quest to achieve a 1,000 terabyte, or 1 petabyte single SSD may still be some years away, but recently, we got a peak into the behind-the-scenes at what new technology the company is working on to make that storage goal a reality. Giwuk Kim, a Ph.D student at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), is set to present an analysis on Hafnia Ferroelectrics, and how ferroelectric properties could lead to smaller and more efficient capacitors/memory.