Russia's space program recently launched the Angara-1 rocket carrying a "classified payload" to lower-Earth orbit.

According to space journalist Anatoly Zak who recently took to Twitter to announce that the Angara-1 rocket that was launched in April is carrying a "classified payload" that appears to be inactive, resulting in it eventually falling back down to Earth. According to Russian Space Web, on April 22, Russian authorities released several warnings to both air and sea traffic controllers that informed them there was to be a launch near the end of April.

The launch vehicle lifted off on April 29, and according to the publication, the initial launch went according to plan, but the classified military satellite it was carrying never performed any maneuvers to maintain its position in Earth's orbit. Notably, Russian officials inscribed the letter "Z" on the Angara rocket's payload fairing. The "Z" letter is commonly associated with showing support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, "Z" has been spotted drawn on several Russian vehicles being used in the invasion.

Unreal Engine 5 is an absolute masterpiece of graphics technology, with every new tease making the world of gamers drool... myself included. Quixel is now here with their insane "Ninety Days in Unreal Engine 5". Check it out:

Quixel explains: "The Ninety Days project kicked off with just three core artists and a simple concept: make something beautiful and inspiring, keep it real-time, and if possible, build each environment in just three days".

Alec Tucker, Cinematic Environment Artist, Quixel, Epic Games said: "Working on several different environments that convey varied stories and moods was extremely fast and iterative using Unreal Engine 5 and Quixel Megascans. This project made me realize how quickly you can put scenes together that hit the detail level of animated films in real-time".

Intel is still preparing its Arc GPU family for the desktop, but now we have some unannounced Arc GPUs for the desktop that have appeared in the new beta GPU drivers.

Inside of the new v30.0.101.1723 drivers we have 5 new desktop Arc GPU SKUs: the A770, A750, A580, A380 and A310. The higher-end A780 isn't anywhere to be seen, nor is the A350 series GPU.

The list also includes the Intel Arc Pro A40/A50 and A30M GPUs for laptops, as they'll be destined for workstation and professional solutions in the future. All of this doesn't really matter, as Intel will be launching its new Arc GPUs as an exclusive to China at first... which I truly don't understand... I don't understand this entire launch from Intel to be honest.

AMD's next-gen Zen 4 architecture is shaping up to be a beast, with new rumors suggesting a flagship Zen 4-powered Ryzen 9 7950X processor with a huge 24 cores and 48 threads that boost up to an incredible 5.4GHz.

Can you imagine? 24 cores... 48 threads.. at up to 5.4GHz? Oh man. Intel's next-gen 13th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" CPUs will be competing directly against AMD's upcoming Zen 4 chips, with Intel's new flagship Core i9-13900K processor to be standing up for the fight.

In some new leaks with a huge sprinkle of speculation from RedGamingTech and Zhongzheng Evaluation, we're told to expect AMD's next-gen Zen 4-powered "Raphael" CPUs to be led by the Ryzen 9 7950X processor with 24 cores and 48 threads with boosts of up to 5.4GHz.

AYANEO has just announced its next-gen handheld gaming console, with the AYANEO 2 packing AMD's latest Ryzen 7 6800U "Rembrandt" APU.

The Ryzen 7 6800U "Rembrandt" APU is based on the refreshed Zen 3+ CPU architecture with 8 cores and 16 threads that boost up to 4.7GHz, which is a 300MHz boost over the AYANEO Next system. Inside, we have RDNA 2 graphics which brings the AYANEO 2 up to the same GPU architecture as Valve's Steam Deck.

AYANEO 2's new Ryzen 7 6800U-powered APU has the Radeon 680M integrated GPU, packing 12 Compute Units: which is a 50% upgrade over the GPU inside of the Steam Deck. The GPU can boost up to 2.2GHz which is a huge 600MHz higher than the Steam Deck GPU, making its integrated GPU twice as fast: 3.38 TFLOPs versus 1.6 TFLOPs.

EK continues to outdo itself with each product release, where today the watercooling company has just announced the combination of nature + technology with its new EK-Quantum water blocks that feature a gorgeous walnut wood top.

The new signature CPU water blocks - EK-Quantum Velocity² and EK-Quantum Magnitude Lignum edition. Lignum Lime, you say? Lignum Lime is inspired by Edvard Koning's love of woodwork, as well as modern computer technology, and is named after the Latin translation of the word "wood".

The new EK-Quantum Velocity² Lignum Edition - Walnut is available for both AMD AM4 and Intel LGA1700 sockets -- meaning no matter the PC you've got, you'll keep it cool (and woody). EK explains its specialized manufacturing techniques: "deployed to create this truly unique product. Not a single Magnitude component was made using mass production techniques. Instead, every single piece was CNC-milled separately out of a solid piece of material. At the heart of Magnitude lies the CNC-machined solid brass insert. This component made it possible to significantly enlarge and optimize the cooling engine".

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs could be here sooner rather than later, with leaker "kopite7kimi" teasing a "Q3 early" release... meaning July/August (which would be early Q3) with September being the end of Q3.

I was personally in Cologne, Germany during Gamescom 2018 when NVIDIA announced its Turing GPU architecture and new GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs, back in September 2018. This would be earlier than regular scheduled releases from NVIDIA, but we are in a Bizarro GPU world... and next-gen GPUs would be welcomed right now.

NVIDIA would be out of the gate ahead of AMD and its upcoming RDNA 3 architecture and new MCD-based Navi 31 GPU. MCD being a multi-chip die, with a chiplet-based GPU design compared to NVIDIA's monolithic GPU design expected with Ada Lovelace and the new flagship AD102 GPU that should power the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Elon Musk doesn't know how to stay out of trouble, but I wouldn't have him any other way... the world's richest man has had his Twitter acquisition deal put on pause, and now Twitter's legal team has reached out to him saying he breached his NDA.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO wanted to know exactly how many of Twitter's purported (as we don't really know the exact number of Twitter users) are real: 229 million is the number for Q1 2022, and Musk wants to know just how many. In his first tweet, Musk said: "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users".

Musk was asked about the "process", to which he said: "Any sensible random sampling process is fine. If many people independently get similar results for % of fake/spam/duplicate accounts, that will be telling. I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate".

AUO has just teased an incredible display feat: 480Hz -- yeah we're talking up to 480FPS -- during the SID Display Week 2022. Check it out:

The company teased two panels: a 24-inch 1080p 480Hz display for the desktop and a 16-inch 1080p 480Hz display for laptops. The company is only tapping a 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution, but all next-gen panels start at 1080p before moving up to 1440p and then 4K -- just imagine 4K @ 480Hz. AUO is tapping a TN panel with an average 1ms response time.

My problem here is that the gaming monitor world moved away from TN a while ago, where VA, IPS, Mini-LED, and especially OLED display technology are vastly superior. Still, 480FPS would be an incredible thing to see, with the company showing off CS:GO which is a game people running a 480Hz monitor would play. Mostly esports-funded and sponsored gigs where they don't get an option of what display they're using.

Square Enix has invested a record-breaking $792 million into new projects and business models, including new games, studio ramp-ups, and emerging technologies like blockchain.

Square Enix just reported its best year ever. During FY22, Square Enix hit new all-time highs across sales, operating profit, and overall profits. The company raked in $3 billion in net sales thanks to strong over-performance in the MMO segment and consistent earnings in HD Games and mobile. What's even more interesting is how much Square Enix is re-investing into new projects.

Throughout FY22, Square Enix's production account spending grew to a new high of $792 million. Every year the company invests around 26-30% of its net sales into the production account, which is a big budget that's spent across all of its upcoming projects. As net sales rise, so too does production investment.