Recorded just before they headed off to Taipei for the tech oasis that is Computex 2024, this week's episode of the TT Show sees Jak and Kosta discuss the latest news in gaming, tech, and science. Kicking off with Jak's impressions of Hellblade 2 (which he calls the best-looking game he's ever seen), the duo digs into Valve's next game - Deadlock.

Although it hasn't been officially announced, the next major release from the company behind Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Steam is significant news - even in leaked screenshot form. The game is described as a mix between the hero shooting of Overwatch and the MOBA lane-based gameplay of DOTA 2.

In the world of GPUs, AMD Anti-Lag 2 sees Team Red's latency reduction tech finally return after it was controversially disabled last year. This time, the tech requires game-specific integration, debuting in Counter-Strike 2 in Technical Preview form. In other Radeon news, FSR 3 Frame Generation makes its PS5 and Xbox Series X, bringing triple-digit performance to consoles.

Windows 11 recently experienced a troubling bug with the interface which pretty much broke the taskbar, albeit temporarily, but the good news is that it's now fixed with the rollout of today's cumulative update for June - the patch which just arrived.

Yes, today is Patch Tuesday for June in case you hadn't realized, and as ever, the cumulative update for Windows 11 was tested in an optional update at the end of the preceding month.

In this case, that May preview update came afflicted with a gremlin in the UI works whereby the taskbar would temporarily glitch out and fail to respond, or vanish entirely before reappearing - a pretty frustrating sounding bug.

Officials at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) confirmed on June 8 the Sun released a record-breaking solar flare that was the most intense flare released in the last seven years.

Researchers that conduct round-the-clock tracking of our local star confirmed the solar flare came from sunspot region AR3664, which was calculated to be an M9.7-class solar clare, the second strongest type on the solar flare classification scale. For those that don't know, solar flares are massive, intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that are a result of the Sun's ever-chaging magnetic field contorting, twisting and snapping.

The blast can cause an impact on Earth, resulting in space launch's being postponed due to the charged particles hitting Earth's atmosphere and widespread radio communication blackouts. Additionally, a solar flare is typically followed by a cornal mass ejection (CME), a wave of charged particles released by the Sun that can cause geomagnetic storms.

Apple has just unveiled iOS 18, the largest update to its operating system powering millions of devices around the world and one feature just made them all much more private.

At Apple's WWDC event, the Cupertino company unveiled its highly anticipated iOS 18 update, which is expected to be released alongside the new iPhone 16 later this year. The announcement revealed Apple is rolling out major changes to its operating system that will include the integration of what it calls Apple Intelligence, or its own version of AI, massive improvements to Siri through the AI implementation, user interface overhauls, customization, and new privacy features.

The update is truly massive, and prior to its unveiling was considered by Apple developers as possibly the largest operating system update its ever made. Privacy is a big part of iOS 18 as there is a large number of people concerned about the company's AI scanning all of users private data in return for new features, which is why Apple made it such a point that user privacy is at the forefront of its consideration with the new update.

Just before the weekend, Microsoft announced it was making changes to the controversial incoming Windows 11 features that will be exclusive to the company's Copilot+ PCs.

That feature is Windows Recall, which is a Copilot+ PC tool that enables users to access different times on their PC through screenshots the PC is continuously snapping. These snapshots are of the users desktop and don't hide any potential sensitive information, and are also stored in a single folder. Security researchers and the public raised serious concerns with Microsoft about the potential of hackers gaining access to the folder and the ramifications that could follow.

Microsoft has since responded and said it is adding additional security measures and encryption to Recall, making it much harder for a bad actor to gain access to Recall's data stored on a user's PC. Now, Microsoft has quietly pulled the build of Windows 11 24H2 update, which contains the Recall feature and was being tested in its Release Preview channel - usually the last stop before a Windows update is rolled out the public.

Computex 2024 has finally wrapped up, and the madness of the AI-based announcements from various companies has returned to a steady yet exponentially growing stream. Amongst the talk of new AI innovations was CPU hardware - new chips from both Intel and AMD.

A new rumor has surfaced from Club386, who said they spoke to an unnamed source at Computex that informed them AMD was planning on releasing its new 3D V-cache-equipped version of new Ryzen 9000 processors sometime in September. If this rumor is true, AMD would have achieved a new record in terms of how soon they release the X3D version of new CPU generations. For example, AMD released the X3D version for its Zen 3 CPUs 18 months later, while Zen 4 was six months later.

So, what models of new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs will be getting the extra 64MB slices of extra L3 cache? Judging from what has already been announced by AMD, it won't be surprising if the company's top contending CPUs are selected, which appear to be the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D, 12-core 9900X3D and an 8-core 9800X3D. That doesn't rule out the possibility of some mid-range CPUs getting some X3D variants, as AMD did say they were currently testing "cool differentiators" with the cache technology.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPU configurations have been leaked: we now have the skinny on the GB202, GB203, GB205, GB206, and GB207 GPUs.

In a new post on X by leaker "kopite7kimi" we're learning that the flagship GB202 GPU -- the one that will power the GeForce RTX 5090 flagship graphics card -- will reportedly have a massive 512-bit memory bus, powered by ultra-fast, next-generation GDDR7 memory. GB202 will reportedly have 24,576 CUDA cores, which is a 33% increase of CUDA cores inside of AD102, the GPU that powers the RTX 4090.

Microsoft just announced it will be releasing three new Xbox consoles, two in the new Robot White color scheme and one in Galaxy Black.

The new consoles were unveiled by Xbox president Sarah Bond, who showcased the new Xbox Series X "Galaxy Black", which is exactly the same as the standard Xbox Series X performance-wise, but instead comes with a 2TB SSD.

The Galaxy Black console has drawn inspiration from constellations and space, featuring a silver, grey and green celestial effect that is meant to represent "thousands of games and millions of gamers playing on Xbox". The Galaxy Black edition will be a limited release and be priced at $559.99.

AMD didn't talk about its next-generation RDNA 4 GPU architecture at Computex 2024 last week, but we know it's coming... and now we've got some Navi 48 XTX graphics cards that have been spotted in a new shipping manifest.

NVIDIA will have its powerful next-gen Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards later this year, which will be the new flagship gaming GPUs to buy... but the market under that, is what AMD is aiming at this generation. RDNA 5 will hopefully mark the return to the high-end GPU business for AMD, for now... Navi 44 and Navi 48 are coming.

Being PC a gamer means you are exposed to an unfathomable number of new games that are released on Steam, and with the more than 100 new games released almost every day on Valve's platform some simply slip through the cracks of your gaming radar.

I believe one of those titles is Empire of the Ants, developed by Tower Five and published by Microids. This soon-to-be-released real-time strategy (RTS) game is powered by the latest version of Epic Games' stunning Unreal Engine 5, specifically Unreal Engine 5.4, and will take players on a journey that's based on the famous French novel of the same name (Les Fourmis) by Bernard Werber.

Personally being a big fan of real-time strategy games, as they were the catalyst to my now profound love for gaming, Empire of the Ants will let players assume the role of 103,683e, a determined ant on a mission to protect its colony. Microids explains the title will force players to make critical decisions that will need to be heavily considered as each strategic choice will have a great impact on the survival of the colony.

Star Wars Outlaws, the new open-world game from Ubisoft Massive (The Division) set in the iconic Star Wars universe, is just around the corner. It will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on August 30. As part of its Ubisoft Forward event, we got our best look at the game, including a 10-minute gameplay demonstration showcasing what you'll do in the game.

It's an impressive showing because the game will include several planets to explore, start systems, and more, with secrets, side quests, and key targets to track down. And when you're in a world with a heavy Imperial presence, living the smuggler and outlaw life will attract unwanted attention. Yes, Star Wars Outlaws handles crime the same way as Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.

Increase your notoriety, and you'll have squads of Stormtroopers looking for you, AT-ST Walkers (the iconic two-legged machines from Return of the Jedi), and even Tie Fighters. Very cool.