This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta examine Microsoft's new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices running on the Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chipset and the beginning of the Copilot+ AI PC era. Hardware-wise, it all sounds impressive, with Windows on Arm coming along nicely, but the Copilot+ AI side is a different story.

Microsoft's latest AI tool for Windows users is called Recall. It apparently takes screenshots and snapshots of your PC at regular intervals to build up a searchable database of everything you've seen or done. It sounds like the most invasive piece of software ever created, and Jak and Kosta discuss how it might work and whether there's even a use case for such a feature.

This week, the duo also discuss NVIDIA getting in on the Arm-based CPU business and pairing it with GeForce hardware for a potential gaming handheld to rival the ROG Ally and Steam Deck.

Apple recently released iOS 17.5 to all of its users, and one bug that some users were reporting was concerning to many as it revived long-deleted photos on devices, leading owners to believe Apple has kept all of their deleted photos.

The bug quickly became controversial as users were reporting seeing images reappear in the Photos app that were deleted and even permanently deleted. Apple described this issue as "rare" and issued an iOS 17.5.1 update, which addressed the bug but didn't provide an explanation as to what caused it in the first place, with the company writing it was related to photos experiencing "database corruption," enabling them to reappear in the Photos library despite being deleted.

Now, Apple has given a proper explanation as to what is behind the bug, with the Cupertino company explaining to 9to5Mac, the bug has nothing to do with iCloud Photos and the problem can be traced to the "corrupt database entry that existed on the device's file system" and that a photo reappearing on a device from years ago (some cases as old as 2010) can be explained by the new device restoring from an old backup.

Spotify had a brief go at being a hardware company with the release of its Car Thing gadget, a device that served as a remote control for Spotify and could be attached to the vents in a car.

Car Thing wasn't a success, as the $90 product was only available for five months after going through an invite-only test in April 2021 and then a public waitlist to purchase one. General sales for Car Thing began in February 2022, and less than five months later, the product was stopped.

While initially seemingly like a good idea, Car Thing ended up being a remote control for Spotify that was playing on a smartphone, which significantly reduced the number of users interested in it. However, it still got into the hands of a very niche audience.

US government officials have said that Russia's recent rocket launch deployed a payload that is likely a classified space weapon capable of destroying satellites.

The warning comes from Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations, who said last week Russia conducted a rocket launch, specifically on May 16, when it launched a satellite into low-Earth orbit that the United States has now assessed. According to Wood, the US has reason to believe the payload deployment is likely a counter-space weapon, and it's location is the "same orbit as a US government satellite".

More specifically, the Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage released Kosmos 2576 (the payload) into orbit approximately 275 miles above Earth at an inclination of 97.25 degrees to the equator. Notably, Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said the US's assessment of the payload is "fake news", but didn't provide any clarifying information.

According to a new report at PC Mag, which the outlet has confirmed with the US Trade Representative (USTR), the Biden administration is set to resume tariffs on PC hardware from the Trump era. These tariffs would place a 25% duty or import tax on goods assembled in China, including graphics cards, motherboards, and PC cases.

There's no word on when the tariffs will resume, nor has there been an official notice with confirmation that they're right around the corner. A spokesperson from the USTR told PC Mag, "We are maintaining tariffs on products currently subject to the action, including the two tariffs you've inquired about." Translation: Yes, the GPU tax is coming back.

What does this mean for those putting together PC rigs for gaming, recreation, or even work at home? Higher prices at a time when the last thing you'd want to see is a notable rise in the cost of buying a new GPU or motherboard. Hardware like graphics cards will fall under the new 25% duty, as China is the primary manufacturing and assembly base for PC hardware.

SpaceX is currently undergoing rigorous testing of its Raptor rocket engines, which will be used by the company's next-generation rocket, Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket.

The Elon Musk-led company has been conducting research and development on its Raptor engines for quite some time now, and it appears to still be in the midst of tweaking and changing the engine design ahead of the highly anticipated fourth launch of Starship. According to a livestream of SpaceX's McGregor, Texas testing facility by NASASpaceFlight, a Raptor engine recently experienced an anomaly that resulted in an initial explosion and a secondary explosion.

The publication reports the secondary explosion on the test stand can be attributed to the vapors in the air from the first explosion. SpaceX hasn't officially offered any update on the explosion, and given how familiar SpaceX is with exploding rocket-related creations, it can safely assumed no one was injured from this explosion. For those that don't know, SpaceX's flagship rocket, Starship, uses 33 Raptor engines in its first stage booster called Super Heavy.

In the United States, the video game era in the late 1970s and early 1980s was defined by two consoles - the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. This rivalry predates the Nintendo versus Sega era by a decade and the current PlayStation versus Xbox versus Nintendo era. It even predates most gamers in 2024, who weren't even alive when the Atari 2600 was a thing that connected to a TV.

Atari and Intellivision aren't big players in the modern video game era, which makes today's announcement that Atari is acquiring Intellivision and its various trademarks and games more of a fun news story than the monumental news that something like PlayStation acquiring Xbox (or the other way around) would be.

What does Atari + Intellivision mean for gaming? The press release states, "Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision games, potentially create new games, and explore brand and licensing opportunities."

NVIDIA announced its financial results for the first quarter, and you can probably guess how it went - data center revenue from AI and GPU sales reached record highs, pushing the company's stock price to over $1,000 per share. With everyone all in on AI and NVIDIA leading the charge technology and hardware-wise, you might be wondering how the company's gaming side and GeForce business is going.

Unlike AMD's struggling Radeon and console gaming revenue, NVIDIA's Gaming sector is doing well - with $2.6 billion in revenue, up 18% from a year ago. Granted, it's nowhere near the $22.6 billion in data center revenue or the incredible 427% year-over-year growth seen in that sector - but it's good news for the traditionally quiet quarter for gaming revenue.

Gaming revenue was down 8% from the previous quarter, but the year-over-year growth is being hailed as a win for GeForce hardware. However, as AI continues to rule the day, NVIDIA's financial results cite 'AI gaming technologies' and 'AI performance optimizations' as critical milestones for NVIDIA's gaming business during the last quarter.

AMD Radeon Anti-Lag 2 has been formally announced and is now available in 'technical preview' form in Counter-Strike 2. Like NVIDIA's Reflex latency reduction technology, the new Radeon Anti-Lag 2 requires game integration - unlike Anti-Lag or last year's short-lived Anti-Lag+.

The choice of Counter-Strike 2 to debut Anti-Lag 2 is an excellent move from AMD because of the whole Anti-Lag+ controversy. Here's a quick rundown: Anti-Lag+ was launched as an in-driver solution for latency reduction in September 2023. Fast forward to October 2023, and Counter-Strike 2 players with Anti-Lag+ enabled were banned for cheating. It turns out Anti-Lag+ worked by accessing and even modifying game code and data.

From there, AMD disabled Anti-Lag+ and then removed it entirely. And now, several months later, we've got the new and very different Anti-Lag 2 that requires game integration.

TSMC has announced that it will build 7 new plants this year, in a bid to "boost its global competitiveness" reports Focus Taiwan.

The 7 new plants will include 3 new wafer plants, 2 new packaging factories in Taiwan, and two new wafer plants overseas. These new facilities are being built, or about to be built, to meet the fast-growing global demand for high-performance computing devices and smartphones, says Huang Yuan-kuo, head of the FAB18 plant in Tainan, at the TSMC 2024 Taiwan Technology Symposium.

TSMC has had bonkers demand for its 3nm process, but the world's largest contract chip maker expects 3nm orders to explode by 3x this year compared to 2023. TSMC is also boosting its production capacity of speciality technology, with the proportion of speciality technology relative to all mature processes is predicted to increase to 67% this year, compared to 61% back in 2020.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is now available on PC and Xbox consoles and is part of the Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass subscription service. Built with the latest Unreal Engine technology, it's being praised as one of the most cinematic and visually impressive games ever made. From character detail to realistic-looking environments to the lighting and other effects - it's jaw-dropping stuff.

The game is also available to play on NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud streaming service, bringing the total number of cloud-supported games on the service to over 1,900. Best of all, GeForce NOW Ultimate members can stream the game at up to 4K 120 frames per second on a GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPOD.

Per NVIDIA's benchmarks for Hellblade II running in 4K with Max Settings and DLSS 3 enabled, the only way to experience the game with this level of performance is with a GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090. This makes a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription (with a stable connection) one of the best ways to experience the game.