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TCL has been busy leaking out Sony and Microsoft's upgraded current-gen consoles, which we've already heard rumors about, but now we're finding out where the GPU performance might land when compared to the PC.

Polish website PPE attended a press event that TCL held recently, where it talked about its predictions for the upgraded consoles. TCL talked about the "new Xbox Series S/X" and "PS5 Pro" consoles, predicting that we'll see them push out 4K @ 60-120FPS "render" while they'll have 4K to 8K @ 60-120FPS "output".

More interestingly, TCL predicts that the upgraded consoles will have GPU power comparable to AMD's upcoming Navi 33-based Radeon RX 7700 XT graphics card. Out of context, this sounds amazing... but we did hear last month that the Radeon RX 7700 XT would beat the Radeon RX 6900 XT. So, what does this mean?

ZOTAC has just unveiled its new 4th Generation of VR backpacks with the introduction of the new VR GO 4.0 backpack. Check it out:

The new ZOTAC VR GO 4.0 backpack has been designed with the most advanced technologies, with some upgrades to the hardware, design, and more. We have an Intel Core i7-11800H processor (8C/16T), an NVIDIA RTX A4500 with 16GB GDDR6 memory, 16GB of DDR4 RAM + 512GB M.2 SSD + Windows 11 Pro pre-installed.

ZOTAC does provide the ability to upgrade your storage + RAM, adding in some top and side-loaded I/O ports. The company has used an "intelligent thermal design" with padded support and strap, as well as "sweatproof wearable materials". It wouldn't be a new VR backpack without ZOTAC's in-house SPECTRA 2.0 RGB lighting, with a battery good enough for up to 50 minutes of playtime.

SteelSeries announced and released their new Arctis Nova Pro gaming headset at Computex 2022, which the company teased has been "four years in the making".

The company set itself some great goals from the start: removing pain points when gaming, and the best audio in gaming. SteelSeries has provided a clean look, has AI-powered voice clarity, high-fidelity audio, and the best comfort so you can be wearing them all day without feeling discomfort... and that's a big deal.

SteelSeries uses a dual-battery "Infinity Power System" for "unlimited battery life", where you can use one of the batteries in the headset, while charging another -- and then swap them out when needed. The new SteelSeries Arctic Nova Pro gaming headset is tapping "Quantum 2.0 Wireless" letting gamers mix two audio connections simultaneously: this allows for communicating with your friends over the phone, while you're gaming on your PC or console.

MSI has leaked out an interesting new dual-chipset X670 motherboard, which is ready for the next-gen AMD AM5 socket (LGA1718) and upcoming family of Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.

But the new dual-chipset motherboard was teased during the recent MSI Insider live stream, the company teased an AMD X670 chipset design that was not only passively cooled but rocked a dual-chipset design. AMD's next-gen AM5 platform will support CPUs of up to 170W PPT (socket power).

As for the AMD X670E and X670 chipsets, their dual-chipset design will have up to 24 PCIe Gen5 lanes -- which can be used for PCIe 5.0-based GPUs and SSDs. AMD's upcoming X670 chipsets can be passively cooled, and don't require cooling -- allowing for a more simple design of X670-based motherboards -- which is good for consumers and gamers alike.

Amazon's new AWS Graviton3 CPU instances have reached Georgia, packing support for triple-sockets per motherboard: that's something you don't see every day.

The new Amazon AWS Graviton3 CPU offer up to 64 cores, dual DDR5 memory chips, 55 billion transistors, and over 25% higher performance/core vs. the previous-gen Graviton2 CPU. Amazon is using 7 chiplets on the AWS Graviton3 CPU: 4 memory channels that have 2 x DDR5 channels each, and then 2 x PCIe Gen5 chiplets.

ServeTheHome reports that AWS says the monolithic die + chiplet DDR5 controllers have more consistent latency than chiplet-based CPUs like Intel's Sapphire Rapids (4 main compute dies) and AMD EPYC.

Crucial has just introduced its new P3 and P3 Plus Value M.2 SSDs that are for the mainstream market, and available in both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 variants.

The new Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe and Crucial P3 NVMe SSDs offer some great speeds, with the Crucial P3 Plus SSD pushing up to 5000MB/sec (5GB/sec) reads, and up to 4200MB/sec (4.2GB/sec) writes. The new Crucial P3 SSDs offer slower, but still great speeds of up to 3500MB/sec (3.5GB/sec) reads, and up to 3000MB/sec (3GB/sec) writes.

Crucial is making its new P3 Plus and P3 SSDs available in up to 4TB capacities, the additional speeds that the P3 Plus SSDs are pushing is all thanks to its PCIe Gen4 standard. The regular Crucial P3 Gen3 NVMe SSD is still hella-fast, but if you've got a Gen4 board, get the Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe SSD.

Sony has confirmed that existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will need to pay a pro-rated fee to upgrade to the new Extra or Premium tiers. Here's what you can expect to pay.

The new PlayStation Plus is coming next month, but upgrading to the new Extra and Premium tiers will cost a fee. The upgrades are free for current PS Now subscribers but not for PS Plus members.

If you currently have an active PS Plus subscription, you can upgrade to Extra or Premium for a pro-rated cost. We've done some calculations to determine how much you'll be paying to upgrade your base PS Plus sub.

UPDATE:Sony has confirmed the extra fees were an error, and has fixed the problem.

Sony's new PlayStation Plus rollout just got a lot more controversial...and confusing.

Reports indicate that Sony may charge specific PlayStation Plus subscribers an extra fee to upgrade their subscriptions to the new Extra and Premium tiers. Existing PS Plus subscribers may have to pay two compounded fees: One pro-rated fee, and the extra fee to compensate for any discounts.

New upgraded PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles are coming in 2023 or 2024, electronics giant TCL predicts.

During a recent press event in Poland attended by Polish website PPE, TV-maker TCL outlined its predictions for a PS5 and Xbox Series mid-cycle refresh. The firm expects both Sony and Microsoft to release new "pro" versions of each console sometime next year or in 2024.

TCL has made some bold predictions on possible PS5 Pro and Xbox X/S Pro spec targets. The company postulates the consoles could deliver 8K 60FPS output and up to 4K 120FPS rendering, which is a pretty tall order for dedicated video games hardware. The so-called Gen 9.5 seems like it would performance befit of an actual generational leap rather than a mid-cycle refresh.

The latest No Man's Sky update transforms the game into a roguelike, complete with interstellar space whales.

No Man's Sky just keeps getting crazier and crazier in all the best ways. Today's new update, Leviathan, adds cosmic space whales and a unique time loop mechanic that essentially makes the game into a survival roguelike. The game is clearly a canvas for Hello Games' imagination to run wild and the team shows no signs of stopping just yet.

Oh, and one of the coolest features involves multiplayer. Hello Games is experimenting a lot with its live game focus. The more players that participate in the time loop, the stronger their bonuses become. During each run players can find procedurally-generated "memory fragments" that essentially include upgrades and technology. The more people that play, the better these bonuses become.

We all know that turning ray tracing on radically reduces performance, so any help in the performance department is not only welcomed, it's begged for.

A team of researchers from the UK, US, and Portugal have suggested that there's some huge untapped performance using a hybrid of classical ray tracing algorithms with quantum computing. Ray tracing workloads that were boosted by up to 190% by quantum computing.

How? By limiting the amount of computations needed by each individual ray. The researchers demonstrated this by rendering a small, 128x128 ray traced image in three approaches: classical rendering, non-optimized quantum rendering, and optimized quantum rendering.

Dyson is showing off a little bit of the future, and something that it's actually working on -- some prototype robots that are in development.

The company is working on autonomous robots that would do household chores and tasks around your house, with Dyson wanting to have the autonomous robots on the market, and in your house by 2030. Dyson showed off some impressive fine motor skills in these prototype robots: they have arms that can lift plates out of a rack after they've dried, vacuum the couch, and picking up mess off the ground.

It's all part of the "big bet" that Dyson has placed on making robots that can do your household tasks by 2030, with the company wanting to build the largest robotics research center in the UK -- at the Hullavington Airfield site -- which is close to its design center located in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

MSI has announced that it is updating its MEG series, MPG series, and MAG series products with new symbols and new looks for gamers. Check them out:

MSI breaks down its gaming products into three different segments: MEG series, MPG series, and MAG series. The company has now revealed new graphical symbols designed for each series, with new symbols that "will not only generate a new visual identity but also clearly define each series. More specifically, with the involvement of new symbols, the new looks of the MEG, MPG, and MAG series will also be presented to gamers".

We won't see the fruits of MSI's new symbol labor until "early 2023" when the new graphics will be applied to gaming motherboards, gaming desktops, gaming monitors, gaming chairs, cases, power supplies, and liquid coolers. MSI adds "with our new symbols, we have defined the design languages of each series and planned to make the products look like they belong in the same family".

Yet another cryptocurrency scam has surfaced, this time utilizing deep-fakes and Elon Musk's likeness to do the trick.

The deep faked video shows Elon Musk on the set of a TED talk originally from April 15, 2022 where he discusses Twitter, Tesla, and more. The video, titled "I Have Made $8K in 1 month via a new Trading Bot | BitVex Release", has Musk supposedly announcing a new cryptocurrency trading platform named BitVex, promising 30% returns.

Newly created YouTube channels and hacked existing ones have recently uploaded deep-faked videos of other notable people in the cryptocurrency space apparently endorsing BitVex. These include the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Ark Invest, Cathie Wood, and others.

SpaceX has received testing authorization from the FCC to use the Starlink satellite internet service to helicopters, and planes.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's (SpaceX) Starlink satellite internet service is now testing in-flight internet connectivity to commercial airlines -- you know, planes -- with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk testing it on his private jet.

The FCC filing happened in February 2022, with approval last week: allowing Starlink to test out their satellite internet services in the air. The filing explains: "In this experimental application, SpaceX seeks to expand this testing to allow operation of terminals on a variety of fixed wing and rotary airframes to support internal, commercial, and government research projects".

Samsung might not seem like it is struggling given their only competitor in the smartphone race is Apple, but internally -- and I really mean internally, as in at an SoC level -- the South Korean giant is shaking things up, big time.

The company is reportedly forming a "Joint Task Force" that has an internal name of "Dream Platform One Team" that will begin work on a next-gen high-end SoC starting in July 2022. We won't see the fruits of Samsung's new SoC labor until 2025, where it will be in a better poisition to fight Apple and its A-series SoC.

Samsung will see a collaboration between their semiconductor division -- Samsung LSI -- and Samsung Mobile Experience Group, with staffers from both divisions working towards a single goal: SoC domination. For those who aren't aware: Samsung has been struggling in a big way, with their new AMD RDNA 2-powered Exynos 2200 'Xclipse' GPU being a huge flop.

A study on the fossil specimens titled "Thanatosdrakon amaru, gen. et sp. nov., a giant azhdarchid pterosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina has been published in the journal Cretaceous Research.

Remains from the largest pterosaur species to have lived have been unearthed in Argentina in South America. Paleontologists found two specimens in the Plottier Formation, located in the Province of Mendoza. The wingspans of each specimen were 23 feet (7 meters) wide and 30 feet (9.1 meters) wide, respectively.

The specimens belong to the species Thanatosdrakon amaru and is the only species within the Thanatosdrakon genus, which belong to the Azhdarchidae family of pterosaurs. Its name derives from "Thanatos," meaning "death," "drakon" meaning "dragon", and "amaru" meaning "flying serpent." The species lived during the Cretaceous period between approximately 145.5 million and 65.5 million years ago, and these particular specimens are at least 86 million years old.

Heading toward the iPhone 15, Apple was rumored to switch its stance on its charging ports for devices, going from the current Lighting Port to USB-C.

Now those rumors appear to have taken a turn as reports indicate that Apple is planning on rolling out Lighting Ports for its AirPods Pro 2 charging case, a switch that will swap out USB-C for Lighting. The news comes from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who explained in several tweets that the upcoming next-generation AirPods will launch sometime during the second half of 2022, and will feature a Lightning Port.

Previous rumors have indicated that Apple is closing out the Lighting Port on its devices and will switch to USB-C for future iPhones and accessories. However, these are just rumors, and nothing has been confirmed nor denied by Apple. In other AirPods-related news, a 12-year-old boy's eardrums were allegedly ruptured after an amber alert was triggered. More on that story can be found below.

A study on binary stars and their possibility for alien life titled "Binarity of a protostar affects the evolution of the disk and planets" has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have determined that planetary systems form very differently around binary stars compared to how they do around singular stars. Almost half of all stars similar in size to our Sun exist in binary star systems, and in the search for potential alien life, looking for stars similar to our own is a good start.

GIGABYTE has unveiled its new flagship X670E AORUS Xtreme motherboard, ready for the world of next-gen Zen 4 processors from AMD.

The new GIGABYTE Z690 AORUS Xtreme motherboard features the new AMD AM5 socket (LGA1718) with an 18 Phase (105A) power delivery, through dual 8-pin connectors. GIGABYTE has 4 x DDR5 DIMMs that are good for up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, and feature EXPO (Ryzen Extended Profiles For Overclocking).

You've got 3 x PCIe x16 slots (1 x PCIe 5.0 x8, and 2 x PCIe 4.0 x4) as well as a total of 4 x PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots for some next-gen SSDs capable of pushing the dizzying heights of 13,000MB/sec (13GB/sec) reads. GIGABYTE includes some enthusiast-class 10GbE networking, plenty of USB ports, while we should have a price of around $500 for the X670E AORUS Xtreme motherboard. Not too bad at all.