KLEVV's URBANE V RGB DDR5 Gaming OC memory not only launched with a futuristic and stylish all-white aesthetic, but with low-latency speeds of up to 8400 MT/s while running cool. In our review from earlier this year, regardless of the voltage applied, temperatures never rose above 43°C. Pair solid performance, fast speeds, tight timings, and a robust 'limited lifetime warranty', and it's no wonder the 32GB kit we reviewed earned an Editor's Choice award.

Although white PC gaming hardware is becoming increasingly popular and a go-to aesthetic for many gamers, black remains the preferred choice for many enthusiasts. And with that, it's great to see that KLEVV has finally launched a Jet Black Edition for its URBANE V RGB DDR5 Gaming OC memory. At launch, the only option was Brilliant White, with KLEVV adding black to broaden the number of builds URBANE V RGB kits can seamlessly slot into.

This is strictly a secondary color option, as you've got the same 2mm-thick aluminum heatsink, the stylish futuristic look with RGB "dual-beam" light bar, and low-profile height of 42.5mm. And yes, it remains one of the best-looking DDR5 memory kits in 'Jet Black' and one of the best-performing.

I don't know about you, but when I put my earbuds in playing my nu-metal Spotify playlist, I might expect to hear some Static-X - but not actual static.

However, this is what's happening to some folks with Apple's AirPods Pro 3, which went on sale last month.

MacRumors highlighted some complaints on Reddit - and its own forum - about a static, or white noise kind of sound, which is audible when nothing's playing through the AirPods, when noise cancelling is active.

If you were thinking of casting caution to the wind and sacrificing your bank balance to own an NVIDIA RTX 5090 graphics card, here's some bad news - the cost of these already incredibly pricey GPUs appears to be going up, over in Europe, and also in the US.

First off, VideoCardz spotted a report on pricing over in Europe from German tech site PC Games Hardware (PCGH) as highlighted by 3D Center (see the above post on X).

According to PCGH, you can't get the Founders Edition direct from NVIDIA in Germany as it's out of stock, and custom third-party spins on the RTX 5090 are mostly around the €2600 to €2800 mark. (While there are some listings towards the €2200 price point, these are pre-order graphics cards with dubious delivery dates, we're told).

YouTube has published a new press release that reveals the video platform will now be using artificial intelligence to upscale low-quality videos to 1080p (HD).

In a new blog post on the official YouTube blog, the company outlines how it will be using the power of AI to give a resolution bump to lower quality videos to make them easier to watch on higher resolution displays, such as 4K, or even 8K TVs. Notably, YouTube states that it will also be expanding the thumbnail file size limit from 2 megabytes to 50 megabytes, which enables the use of 4K thumbnails for creators.

As for the upscaling, YouTube writes that AI upscaling on sub-1080p (HD) content will be enabled by default, but creators, or the uploaders of the video will be able to disable the feature upon upload, with YouTube writing, "creators will retain complete control over their library."

A recent report by The Guardian claimed Google and Amazon agreed to demands by the Israeli government in order to ink the Project Nimbus deal worth $1.2 billion, and one of those demands was allegedly a "secret code" the companies were required to use to inform the Israeli government when its data, stored on Google and Amazon services, was being handed over to foreign countries as part of court orders or investigations by local authorities.

The Guardian report cited leaked documents about the Project Nimbus deal and claimed both Google and Amazon agreed to these terms with the Israeli government, and this secret code was called the "winking mechanism". For those who don't know, companies such as Google and Amazon are commonly requested to hand over data on individuals by authorities of various countries, and typically, the companies are gagged by local courts from informing the individual that their data is now with the authorities.

To get around this, The Guardian report claims leaked documents revealed a "winking mechanism" was devised by the Israeli government so Amazon and Google could inform it that its data, which was hosted on the company's servers, was now in the hands of authorities. The alleged code was in the form of payments to the Israeli government with a corresponding dialing code. For example, if US authorities asked Google or Amazon to hand over data, either company would send 1,000 shekels, as the US has a dialing code of +1.

Nintendo is known for having one of, if not the most active, legal teams in the gaming industry, with the company not being afraid whatsoever to try and shut down any form of creative endeavor that it may impact the sales or misrepresent its products.

An example of Nintendo's willingness to go above and beyond to protect its products is the rampant trademarking it has been filing to prevent other game developers, or anyone else for that matter, from replicating certain aspects of its games. One example is the capturing of monsters, for which Nintendo attempted to file a trademark with Japan's Patent Office, which, if accepted, would give Nintendo the legal right to file lawsuits against any other game developer that used a similar mechanic.

However, Nintendo has experienced a rare occurrence as it has been told "no" by the Japanese patent authority, as the application, 2024-031879, was rejected over its lack of originality. Japan's Patent Office cited games that already existed before Nintendo filed the patent in December 2021, such as ARK: Survival Evolved, Monster Hunter 4, Craftopia, and even Pokémon GO.

If you've been distracted by Google's playable Pac-Man doodle today - yes, check out the search engine for a Halloween-themed take on the arcade classic - there's something far spookier on the loose for PC gamers.

XDA Developers noticed that Welcome To The Dark Place has been released by Zeekerss, the improbably named creator of the well-liked Steam early access horror hit Lethal Company.

The Dark Place as I'll call it for short - not to be confused with the classic Quake deathmatch level, The Bad Place (aka the duellist's paradise) - is a single player effort for Halloween which is available as a free download on Steam.

The 1992 release of "Little Samson" is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, according to an announcement by Limited Run Games.

Little Samson was originally released for the NES in 1992 and has become somewhat of a collector's item, with copies of the title going for hundreds, and even thousands of dollars, depending on the condition. For those who don't know, Little Samson is a side-scrolling title directed by former Capcom designer Shinichi Yoshimoto, and enables players to control four characters: Samson, a dragon named Kikira, a golem named Gamm, and a mouse named K.O.

Each of the characters is distinctly different by featuring different abilities, and players can swap between characters at any point following the completion of the first four levels. Nintendo Switch 2 owners will be able to enjoy Little Samson for the first time, or relive the experience on Nintendo's latest console when Limited Run Games launches the Switch 2 port sometime in 2026.

Samsung has just unfolded some new details on its upcoming tri-fold Galaxy Z TriFold smartphone, which will be between 12mm and 15mm thick when folded, and could be using new silicon-carbon (Si/C) batteries.

The new tri-fold smartphone only has a single competitor on the market, the China-exclusive Huawei Mate XT, but now Samsung has had its new Galaxy Z TriFold smartphone on display and in the flesh at the K-Tech Showcase event on October 28 in South Korea.

The folks over at the Korea Economic Daily were at the event, reporting that the dimensions of Samsung's new Galaxy Z TriFold were between 12mm and 15mm thick when folded. Huawei's tri-fold competitor, the Mate XT, is just 12.8mm when folded, so it's good to hear that Samsung will be in that vicinity when its upcoming Galaxy Z TriFold is folded.

Apple's new iPhone 17 Pro Max comes with 256GB of storage on its base model, but the upgrade to the flagship 2TB storage costs $800... unless you have precise machinery, and steady hands like this modder.

YouTuber "DirectorFeng" has modded his iPhone 17 Pro which has 256GB of NAND flash made by Toshiba with part number "K5A4", saying that physically formatting the flash drive preparing for the 2TB upgrade is impossible without using machines, and even then, you'll need specific gear and years of knowledge to do so.

The 1TB and 2TB NAND flash modules are the same length, but they're not the same thickness or width, making the upgrading process of an iPhone 17 Pro Max not so easy. But, it seems that the dimension change hasn't caused a problem for the modder, as he soldered the Toshiba "K6B3" 2TB NAND flash module to the logic board of the iPhone 17 Pro Max using tin planting, followed by fuming with resin, and then installing the beefier NAND flash module.

The crumbling of Amazon Games has revealed some interesting insider information about what the company was developing before it was hit with the recently announced widespread layoffs and studio closures.

For those who aren't caught up, Amazon Games announced major layoffs as it switches its focus away from MMOs to its Luna cloud gaming platform. According to the announcement, 14,000 employees were laid off from Amazon, and of those, an unknown number will be let go from Amazon Games and its studios. What is known is that Amazon Games will be hit quite hard by the layoffs, following the publisher's dismal track record of game releases and failed projects.

It was back in February of this year that we heard about Amazon's ultimate goal, and that was to compete with Steam, and it believed it could since it was far larger than Valve and possessed more resources. This revelation came from Ethan Evans, who was the former Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon until 2020, who wrote on LinkedIn that despite being 250x the size of Valve, Amazon was unable to crack the code.

A new report has claimed Amazon and Google agreed to use a secret code with the Israeli government called the "winking mechanism" when obfuscating legal obligations in countries around the world.

The Guardian has cited leaked documents between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government that were part of the $1.2 billion cloud-computing deal in 2021, with the publication writing that Israel was concerned that, as the companies moved data through global corporate cloud networks, the data could end up in the hands of foreign authorities.

Global corporations controlling the routing of data and the storage regularly comply with laws that compel the holders of the data to hand over information regarding specific persons of interest, and typically, the companies are gagged by authorities to prevent them from informing the individual that their data has been handed over to authorities. However, according to The Guardian report, Israel demanded a workaround for this, and it involved the creation of a secret warning system.

A Microsoft Azure outage occurred only a week after the Amazon Web Services outage, which took down large portions of the internet. The Azure outage took out Microsoft services such as Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Minecraft, along with other companies you may not expect to be impacted, such as Starbucks, Capital One, and Alaska Airlines.

According to Microsoft, the outage was a result of an "inadvertent configuration change" and a DNS problem, which the company followed up with several messages on its various social media channels explaining that it's currently working to recover services. At 7:40 ET Microsoft wrote on its status page for Azure that 98% of the Azure Front Door (AFD) service is operating, and that "majority of customers and services are mitigated or seeing strong improvements".

Additionally, "We have revised our mitigation time and are currently tracking toward full mitigation by 00:40 UTC on 30 October 2025." It seems that goal has been somewhat achieved as Xbox Support wrote on its X account that Xbox gaming services have recovered completely. However, some Xbox owners have reported they were required to restart their console to access the service.

According to a local news report from WBAL-TV 11 News, an "artificial intelligence detector" called the cops on a student at a Baltimore County school for mistaking a bag of Doritos for a gun. Apparently, the student was outside his high school, eating some Doritos and chatting to friends when the Omnilert AI system notified the police that a gun-carrying individual was on school property.

'Omnilert: AI Gun Detection & Emergency Response Technology' is a security and proactive system that automatically notifies law enforcement and emergency services when it detects firearms within a "fraction of a second." According to Omnilert's official website, there's a human verification step with one of its certified operators before a call is placed to the police, so it's unclear how a bag of chips could have been mistaken for a gun.

The student in question, Taki Allen, told reporters that "eight cop cars" pulled up with officers pointing their guns at him, asking him to get on the ground, on the suspicion that he was carrying a firearm. "They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me," Allen said. "Then, they searched me and they figured out I had nothing."

Samsung has just announced it will begin mass production of its new 1c DRAM-based next-gen HBM4 memory, as well as new 24Gb GDDR7 memory dies, and 128GB+ DDR5 products in 2026.

The company announced its recent Q3 2025 earnings, with a 15.4% increase in revenue over Q2 2025, with a new all-time high in quarterly sales from its Memory business, thanks to strong demand for HBM3E memory and server SSDs in the continuing wave of AI demand.

Samsung recently showed off its new HBM4 memory, offering up to 11Gbps bandwidth per IC, and should be featured inside of the next-generation of AI hardware from NVIDIA and AMD in the upcoming Rubin and Instinct MI400 series AI GPUs.

Microsoft has released its Q1 2026 earnings, noting that Xbox hardware revenue is down 29% year over year. Xbox hardware revenue, which covers the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, has been in steady decline for a couple of years now, so this isn't all that surprising for those who have been following or keeping track of behind-the-scenes Xbox news.

What is alarming, at least from an Xbox console perspective, is that this 29% decline in revenue is identical to Microsoft's Q1 2025 earnings, which showed Xbox hardware revenue dropping by the same amount compared to 2024. And with Microsoft recently increasing the price of its Xbox Series X|S hardware to the point that the consoles are no longer competitive with Sony's PlayStation 5 lineup, the expectation is that this downward trend will continue. And possibly, accelerate.

However, it's worth noting that Microsoft's Xbox strategy has moved beyond Xbox hardware for some time. Its current marketing slogan for the brand, 'This is an Xbox,' emphasizes that every device can be an Xbox through Windows 11, Game Pass, and cloud gaming. For Q1 2026, Xbox content and services revenue was up 1%, which includes revenue from Game Pass and publishing first-party titles on PC, Xbox, PS5, and Switch - a better result and more reflective of the Xbox brand shift.

Rockstar has just updated its website with a slick new look, also teasing a new Grand Theft Auto 6 logo, which hopefully means we'll see GTA 6's third trailer ahead of the holidays.

We had Trailer 2 for GTA 6 earlier this year, but the year has flown past and we haven't had anything new from Rockstar regarding Grand Theft Auto 6, and now the developer has a flashy new website. It would be good to see this new website design from Rockstar lead into a new promotion of GTA 6 in the coming days and weeks ahead as we slide into the holidays and the end of the year.

Rockstar unleashed the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 in December 2023, following it up with the second trailer earlier this year with a promise of releasing GTA 6 on May 26, 2026. We're in the final two months of 2025, so to hype up the biggest release of all time on any medium -- movies, TV shows, games, etc -- Grand Theft Auto 6's third trailer releasing soon makes sense.

Duke Nukem was massive in the 1990s, thanks to the success of Duke Nukem 3D on PC and consoles. In addition to starring in one of the defining first-person shooters of the decade, Duke's other outings were limited to the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation consoles. Yes, PC gamers missed out on what is widely considered to be one of the best Duke games from the era, the Nintendo 64-exclusive Duke Nukem: Zero Hour.

The third-person shooter saw Duke travel back in time to the Old West and Victorian London to save the world from a new alien threat, with the game being best known for adding a more nuanced plot to the franchise's trademark over-the-top tone. This included a depiction of post-apocalyptic New York, ravaged by nuclear war, as well as taking down Jack the Ripper.

Duke Nukem Zero Hour: Recompiled is an unofficial PC port of the game that adds native support for widescreen displays, higher frame rates, and the ability to remap and configure controls. There are even plans to add ray tracing to the game, as seen in other N64 ports for PC (Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) that decompile and recompile the game's source code to run on PC.

Although Valve and Steam dominate the PC gaming landscape, GOG is still widely considered the most consumer-friendly platform. Not only does the service continue to offer DRM-free games that can be backed up, installed, and played without a launcher or online access, but it's also committed to preserving gaming history through the GOG Preservation Program.

GOG, which stands for Good Old Game, is living up to its namesake with the Preservation Program. Basically, it's GOG's commitment to keep the games in the program up to date and compatible with modern PC hardware. This means that these classic PC games will run on Windows 12 and whatever the next Xbox console PC hybrid is, without issues.

And this month, GOG is expanding the Preservation Program with 16 new titles, including several well-known PC classics like the original Hitman and Splinter Cell, and some obscure titles like Clive Barker's Undying that would have otherwise been lost to time. Here's the full list.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is already discussing future installments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise and how artificial intelligence will play a role in development.

One of the hottest topics in the gaming industry is how developers will adopt artificial intelligence into their workflow, and if the power of AI will be used as a tool to speed up game development without compromising the end product, and ultimately, making thousands of game developers obsolete in the process. In a recent interview with CNBC, the CEO of Grand Theft Auto's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, was asked if AI would play a role in the development of titles under Take-Two's banner.

Zelnick said that while he isn't a "naysayer" when it comes to integrating AI into video game development, he remains skeptical about its use, for several reasons. The first being intellectual property rights, and how creating any IP with AI automatically makes it unprotected. This point echoes a popular ongoing debate between AI companies, Hollywood, musicians, and other creative industries, as many AI models have gained the ability to create "unique" content by absorbing intellectual property.