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!

HPE was showing off a server blade from its upcoming El Capitan supercomputer at the recent ISC High Performance event in Hamburg, Germany.

The server blade had its front cover removed, showing off the internals that include AMD's new Instinct MI300A AI accelerator. The blade is called the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX255a accelerator blade, featuring a single-slot 1U blade chassis. It might be small, but it packs an incredible 8 x MI300A chips, with copper cooling blocks and copper cooling pipes linking everything together, rather beautifully I might add.

Each of the blades uses liquid cooling to keep the crazy amounts of heat generated by the 8 x AMD Instinct MI300A chips, with each of the MI300A APUs featuring a 550W TDP, and a peak power rating of 760W. This means that the cooling for the blades needs to be able to handle an incredible 4400W of power on average, and peak power of up to an even higher 6080W.

Phison Electronics is one of the global leaders in NAND controller and storage technologies, supplying solutions and partnering with notable consumer-facing SSD brands like KIOXIA, Micron, Western Digital, and Samsung. Today, Phison announced that it has launched its new Pascari brand, which will deliver and tailor SSDs for the enterprise and data center markets.

Pascari's first product is the new 2.5-inch form factor X200 Series of SSDs, which are high-performance PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSDs with NVMe 2.0 and up to 32TB for maximum capacity and advanced features. They have a dual port design, ultra-low latency, and read speeds of 14.8 GB/s-you're looking at some serious speed.

"Introducing the Pascari brand marks a milestone for Phison as we continue to innovate and lead in NAND Flash technology," said K.S. Pua, CEO of Phison. "Our commitment extends beyond products; with Pascari and our IMAGIN+ design services, we are enabling organizations to custom-build flash storage architectures that precisely fit their performance demands, ensuring accelerated business growth and enhanced value creation."

Earlier this year, AMD launched its latest Ryzen 8000G Series of desktop processors, which featured built-in Radeon graphics (up to a Radeon 780M), offering PC gamers an entry-level option that doesn't require a discrete graphics card. With the AMD Ryzen 7 8700G, you've got a CPU that can play modern PC games in 1080p without a GPU.

The Ryzen 8000G Series is AMD's first desktop processor lineup to include dedicated AI NPU hardware - with up to 39 TFLOPs of AI processing power. Combining AMD XDNA AI hardware, Zen 4 CPU architecture, and RDNA 3 graphics, you've got a series of AMD chips to suit all workloads.

This week, AMD unveiled two new entries to the lineup: the AMD Ryzen 7 8700F and AMD Ryzen 5 8400F. These variants ship without Radeon graphics and are optimized for efficiency and low-power draw.

In 2024, putting together a gaming rig with the attached gear (keyboard, mouse, headset, etc.) usually means choosing a bunch of black or white-colored hardware, with both options often including a hefty dose of RGB lighting. White-colored PC hardware and peripherals are minimal, sleek, modern-looking, and growing in popularity.

It's not unusual for hardware makers to release both 'light' and 'dark' versions of hardware to cater to the tastes of different gamers. With that, Razer has introduced White Editions for some of its high-end gear: Razer Cobra Pro, Razer Basilisk V3, Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro, Razer Huntsman V3 Pro, and Razer Seiren V3 Chroma.

The list covers Razer mice, keyboards, and the latest USB microphone. Hit the jump for the entire product breakdown. All gear is now available via Razer.com and retailers like Best Buy.

Windows 11 just got its latest cumulative update and there's some good and bad news here - the latter being the fact that adverts are officially debuting in the Start menu.

If you've been following the story of adverts creeping into Windows 11, you might have noticed that with last month's preview (optional) update, a new form of promotion appeared in the Start menu - suggested Microsoft Store apps picked from certain developers.

Windows Latest observes that this is now rolling out to all Windows 11 users with the latest patch released yesterday (KB5037771).

After a week-long preorder window, Apple has now made the new M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air available to buy both online and at its retail store locations around the globe. Select third-party retail partners also have stocks right now, too.

The new iPads were both announced at last week's Let Loose event alongside the new Apple Pencil Pro and iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. Both of the accessories are also available to buy and are reportedly big upgrades over previous iterations of the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard.

The new iPad Pro is undoubtedly the star of the show. Available in both 11-inch and 13-inch sizes and starting from $999, the new iPad Pro comes with the first OLED display ever used in an Apple tablet. That display allows for a peak HDR brightness of 1,600 nits as well as a peak SDR brightness of 1,000 nits. Apple calls the new display the Ultra Retina XDR and it offers improved colors and contrast alongside incredible brightness. For the first time, Apple is also offering a nano-texture display option for the new iPad Pro, albeit only available on the 1TB and 2TB storage configuration options. An additional $100 fee is required to upgrade to the nano-texture finish.

The Apple Vision Pro went on sale in the United States this past February and while it was an initial hit among early adopters, it's that that retail interest in the mixed reality headset has started to die down. There has so far been little information on when we can expect the spatial computer to go on sale outside the United States, but there have been reports that something could happen within weeks. Apple's own website simply says that the Apple Vision Pro will go on sale internationally in 2024.

Now, we might have our best indication yet that a larger launch is in the offing and we might even know one of the countries that will be included in the second wave of Apple Vision Pro launches. China is one country that had previously been tipped to be involved, and now the country's regulatory outfit has approved the Apple Vision Pro for sale.

The news was shared by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in a post on the X social network that confirmed China's Quality Certification Center approved the Apple Vision Pro for sale on Monday. This is the last major hurdle that Apple needs to overcome before the Apple Vision Pro headset can go on sale in China, suggesting that a launch is imminent.

Apple only released the iOS 17.5 software update to the public yesterday but already some users are reporting that a somewhat strange bug is causing their old, deleted photos to reappear in the Photos app. The reports suggest that even deleting the photos again isn't enough to make sure that they stay deleted, too.

The problem has started to pop up across social media with MacRumors reporting on a Reddit post in which people have been detailing their experiences. One user says that four photos that were taken in 2010 have now popped back up and appear as if they were recently taken. Another user explained that a photo taken at a concert has recently shown up as if it was taken today.

There is currently no indication of why this is happening, but the age of some of these photos suggests that these aren't images that are being held in the Recently Deleted album within the Photos app. Photos normally wait there for 30 days after they were deleted before they are actually deleted properly, but given the age of some of the photos discussed in the Reddit thread, this issue appears to be more related to iCloud than anything local to the iPhone in question.

Apple CarPlay is a great way to enjoy some of your favorite iPhone apps and features while driving without taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. It's an infinitely better approach than trying to use your phone in your hands or via something like an in-car phone holder because the car's entertainment system screen is always bigger and within reach. Now, Apple has previewed some new accessibility features that are going to make CarPlay even better and easier to use for everyone.

Apple has previewed a number of new accessibility features that are set to ship later this year, like as part of iOS 18 and other software updates that are expected to be announced next month. In the case of CarPlay, there are multiple new additions to look forward to including Voice Control, Color Filters, and Sound Recognition.

Sound Recognition will allow drivers or passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing to enable alerts and then be notified if car horns and sirens are heard by the iPhone. That could be a huge feature for people who worry that they will be in front of an ambulance without hearing its sirens, for example.

Suffering from motion sickness is nobody's idea of fun, especially if you have to travel in vehicles a lot for whatever reason. Thankfully, there are ways to help alleviate the symptoms of motion or travel sickness, and Apple has announced a new one specifically designed for iPhone and iPad users.

Rather than taking a tablet or using another approach, Apple has told users that it has a software fix for their very real-world problem. In a press release previewing new accessibility features coming to the iPhone and iPad later this year, Apple pointed out a new Vehicle Motion Cues feature that will help people deal with sickness while on the move.

Apple says that research has shown that motion sickness is commonly caused by a sensory conflict between what a person can see and what they can feel. For example, looking at a stationary object - like an iPhone or iPad - while feeling the motion of a vehicle can be enough to make some people feel unwell. To help with that, Apple's new Vehicle Motion Cues feature will use animated dots on the edges of the screen to represent the changes in motion. The idea is to remove that sensory conflict mentioned earlier.