Latest News - Page 145

The developer of Notepad++ has furnished us with more information about how the popular text editor was compromised by hackers for some six months.

Ars Technica picked up the blog post which supplies further details about the exploitation of some Notepad++ users, which was leveraged via an "infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org".

Meaning that the compromise was enacted at the web hosting provider level, and wasn't a direct hack of the Notepad++ software itself - targeted users were redirected to download compromised updates, essentially.

Nintendo scores big over the holidays with net sales exceeding $5.1 billion--middling results for the period.

Nintendo's latest Q3'26 earnings deliver somewhat middle-ground holiday results. Throughout the Holiday 2025 period, Nintendo generated over $5.147 billion in net sales, which ranks as the 5th highest holiday net sales since the Switch's debut.

Operating profit was hit by rising costs--SG&A, development, and production costs--leading to $991 million operating profit and a 19.2% margin.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has already beaten the Wii U's lifetime sales with over 17 million shipments worldwide.

Nintendo's latest Q3'26 results are out, revealing critical sales figures for the Switch 2's first holiday period on the market. According to the earnings, Nintendo sold 7.01 million Switch 2 consoles during Holiday 2025, which is just a little less than the 7.24 million that the Switch 1 sold during its first three-month holiday quarter.

Altogether, the Switch 2 is now at 17.37 million, beating out Nintendo's beleaguered, the Wii U, which is frozen in place as Nintendo's worst-selling console at 13.56 million units.

It's no secret that PC enthusiasts and PC gamers have a generally unfavorable opinion of Windows 11, Microsoft's latest operating system, which many feel like they have to use on account of there being no real alternative. Yes, that includes Linux. In recent years, in addition to performance, bloat, and mountains of telemetry, the shoehorning of Copilot AI features into the operating system has been met with, again, a generally unfavorable reception.

From changing PC keyboards to now including a dedicated Copilot AI key, and from adding new AI features to legacy apps like Paint and Notepad, Microsoft has definitely exhibited a lot of "all in on AI" energy of late. Throw in the lukewarm response to Copilot+ PCs and the whole Recal debacle, where Microsoft's new AI would screenshot everything you do on your PC and store those unencrypted images in an indexable database, and there's good reason to get a little excited about this news.

According to sources close to Windows Central, Microsoft is reportedly "reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11" and will reportedly make changes to either improve or streamline these features, or, get this, remove them entirely.

NVIDIA first released the Shield TV back in 2015, and even though a decade is like an eternity in the world of processors, graphics cards, and PC technology, it's still one of the best hardware streamers in 2026. The Shield has been revised a couple of times over the years, but even though we haven't seen a new model since 2029, the NVIDIA Shield TV family of devices is still getting updated.

And that doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. Speaking candidly with Ars Technica, Andrew Bell, NVIDIA's Senior VP of Hardware Engineering, says that supporting these devices is a labor of love as the teams built the Shield for themselves after being frustrated with the quality of streamers and set-top devices in the market.

"We were all frustrated as buyers of phones and tablets, that you buy a device, you get one or two updates, and that's it!" Andrew Bell explains. "Early on, when we were building Shield TV, we decided we were going to make it for a long time. Jensen and I had a discussion, and it was, 'How long do we want to support this thing?' And Jensen said, 'For as long as we shall live.'"

As the old saying goes, things are going to get worse before they get better. When it comes to the DRAM and NAND Flash crisis affecting all corners of the consumer technology space, including PC hardware, the analysts at TrendForce have "significantly raised" their pricing forecasts for memory (DRAM) and storage (NAND) due to the unprecedented global supply and demand constraints caused by "persistent AI and data center demands."

Translation: things are looking worse than what was previously forecasted, and that right now, it's a seller's market. TrendForce's previous estimate of a 55-60% increase in DRAM pricing for Q1 2026 has been raised to 90-95%. On top of this, NAND Flash contract prices are now expected to increase by 55-60%, up from the previous estimate of 33-38%.

One reason for the change is that PC shipments in Q4 2025 were much higher than expected. And with that, it has escalated the DRAM shortage and crisis. TrendForce notes that Tier-1 PC OEMs, which include companies like Dell, HP, and Lenovo, are now "experiencing declining inventory levels." And with that, an almost 100% increase in DRAM contract pricing will set a "new record for a quarterly surge."

Samsung has announced that its 2026 OLED TV lineup and next-generation Odyssey gaming monitors, set to release this year, will all be NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible. G-SYNC is all about matching a display's refresh rate to a game's frame rate to reduce tearing, stuttering, and improve the gaming experience.

Samsung confirms that its two flagship OLED TVs for this year, the S95H and the S90H, will support refresh rates of up to 4K 165 Hz, while the S85H model will support the standard 4K 120 Hz. 4K at 165 Hz is great to see, as a GPU like the GeForce RTX 5080 should be able to deliver close to that in a wide range of games, and thanks to G-SYNC, deliver that level of performance with a smooth and seamless presentation.

In addition to being G-SYNC Compatible, Samsung's 2026 OLED TV lineup will also support AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and the new HDR10+ ADVANCED format for enhanced brightness and contrast. On the display front, Samsung has confirmed that its impressive 27-inch Odyssey G6 (G60H), with its 1,040 Hz refresh rate, will be G-SYNC Compatible.

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for January 2026 are in, and even though the memory crisis will most likely slow the adoption of GeForce RTX 50 and Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards as prices increase and stock becomes harder to find, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series is shaping up to be one of the company's most popular to date.

Well, at least for now, as what we're seeing here could be a surge in GeForce RTX 50 Series cards based on the fact that during the final months of 2025, several models could be found close to or even slightly below MSRP. Case in point: the GeForce RTX 5070 is one of the best bang-for-your-buck 1440p PC gaming GPUs, and it's proving to be the most popular card in the GeForce RTX 50 Series lineup.

So much so that when looking at discrete GPUs for desktop and laptops, the GeForce RTX 5070 is currently the fifth most popular graphics card on Steam, sitting below the GeForce RTX 4060 (and its laptop variant), the GeForce RTX 3060, and the GeForce RTX 3050. And the GeForce RTX 5060 isn't far behind, as it's cracked the Top 10, sitting in the number nine spot for most popular GPU on Steam.

TSMC founder Morris Chang is reportedly not in the best health right now, but he still found his way to meet up with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang for dinner at a local Taiwanese restaurant while Jensen was in Taipei.

In a new report from DigiTimes, we're hearing that local media said the TSMC founder attended a restaurant in Taipei just to meet Jensen, and that the Taiwanese media took some photos of the 94-year-old semiconductor "godfather" as it was Chang's first appearance in over 12 months.

The NVIDIA and TSMC bosses have been good friends for a couple of decades now, with Jensen promising Chang that TSMC would be his biggest customer. Jensen and Morris have a relationship that expands outside of semiconductors, as in the past Jensen was actually offered the CEO position at TSMC, but he refused and continued to steer the NVIDIA ship.

A user on Reddit purchased a fake 2TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD, ending up with a fake SSD that performed like a USB stick from 2005 at just 20MB/sec... instead of what it's actually capable of at 7000MB/sec+ (7GB/sec) reads.

The drive detected normally at first, with Windows detecting it as the Samsung 990 PRO 2TB SSD, but the link speed showed PCIe 3.0 x4 instead of PCIe 4.0... the first clue. After that, the Redditor experienced super-slow file transfers, with large copies only hitting 20MB/sec reads and 9-10MB/sec writes, with CrystalDiskMark noting the same numbers... where he should be getting 7000MB/sec reads... much, much faster.

The Redditor started off with "A few days ago, a friend of mine (who's a PC peripherals distributor and someone I've bought legit stuff from before) posted that he had Samsung 990 PRO 2TB units for sale at just 19,000 INR ($205 USD). Official price right now is usually 30,000+ INR (even more on Amazon/Flipkart sometimes), so yeah way too good to be true. But since I know the guy and have history with him, I didn't overthink it. Messaged him, booked one, paid, and it arrived the next day".

Intel has announced its new Xeon 600 "Granite Rapids" workstation CPUs, offering up to 86 cores and 172 threads of CPU power, 8000 MT/s memory support, 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes, 350W TDP with OC support, and costs up to $7699.

This is the company's answer to AMD and its fantastic Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs, with the new Intel Xeon 600 series CPUs fabbed on its in-house Intel 3 process node using Redwood Cove P-Cores. Xeon 600 workstation processors are aimed at content creators, data scientists, professionals, AI workloads, and other workstation segments. These include AI Dev, Media, Energy & Geo-Sciences, Life Sciences & Healthcare, and Financial Services.

Intel says its new Xeon 600 "Granite Rapids" workstation CPUs are designed to "Unleash Heavy-Duty Compute" with higher performance efficiency in an expandable platform, and with vPro technologies, the new Granite Rapids CPUs are ready for modern AI developers.

Capcom has released a grim and rather emotional live action trailer for Resident Evil 9, highlighting how the game will also tell a story full of intrigue and evil.

Resident Evil 9 releases in just a few weeks, and Capcom has prepped a surprising new 4-minute live action short film that sets the tone and story for the new game. The footage shows the fall of Raccoon City during the outbreak, and how society completely fell apart, leading to the disastrous thermobaric bomb strike that leveled the city.

The footage ends with a zombie character that we might actually end up seeing in Resident Evil 9 Requiem, along with the heartbreaking photograph amid the post-apocalyptic ruins of Raccoon City.

GOG was caught using AI in a recent banner image, and now the company comes clean and admits that the promos were made with AI, but it wasn't meant to be published.

Typically, gamers have a positive outlook on GOG, a store that sells classic PC games that have either disappeared or are very hard to find. That's not the case with a recent controversy, and GOG was caught using artificial intelligence in some of the art used for its New Year Sale promo.

GOG has since clarified exactly what happened to the subscribers of its new GOG Patrons program. In a private Discord, a GOG representative confirmed that the New Year Sale art was created using AI, but it wasn't meant to be pushed live as part of the sale, nor was it meant to be published at all.

Bandai Namco reveals the new changes and characters that are coming to Tekken 8's new season 3 content.

Tekken 8's controversial season 2 is behind us, and it looks like Bandai Namco took the feedback to heart because season 3 is going "back to basics." Season 3 starts in March 2026 with a number of balance patches and tweaks. The devs are also wiping and resetting ranked match standings.

The season 3 pass will have four paid characters--three of which were revealed: Kunimitsu in late spring, Bob in the summer, and Roger Jr. in autumn. There's also a mystery character coming in the winter. Gamers can pre-order the season pass on all platforms on February 9, and receive a special cosmetic pack upgrade as well as 120 hours of early access when season 3 content is released.

Will Bethesda ever remake Morrowind, one of the weirdest RPGs of all time? Probably not--at least that's what Skyrim's lead designer thinks.

Bruce Nesmith has had a shaping hand in Bethesda's landmark games, having served as quest designer on Oblivion and lead designer on Skyrim, the best-selling roleplaying game of all time. After everything he's done at Bethesda, he thinks that Morrowind is a product of the past that wouldn't translate well to modern audiences (the diabolically frustrating dice-roll combat says hello).

In a recent PR interview, Nesmith shared his view on a Morrowind remake--assuming it's even possible and Bethesda hasn't lost the original source code. Nesmith thinks that the game is so old that new-age players would cringe in response.

Microsoft and unionized Blizzard QA testers have reached an agreement, ratifying a new 3-year union contract.

The efforts of the video game industry's slow move towards unionization are starting to pay off, with unionized developers being able to secure actionable changes in the workplace. The CWA today reports that Blizzard's unionized QA developers have reached an agreement with Microsoft, securing and ratifying a 3-year union contract with Microsoft.

As part of the contract, workers receive protections against AI and crunch, a guarantee track for gainful wage increases, and making sure the developers names show in the games that they help test at Blizzard--among others.

Apple's next-gen M6 processor has been rumored on TSMC's new "N2P" 2nm process node, but recent reports suggest N2P will be for Qualcomm and MediaTek, while Apple's new M6 will be fabbed on N2 to save on semiconductor manufacturing costs.

In a new report from China Times, it will be Qualcomm and MediaTek having an exclusive over Apple by using TSMC's freshest N2P process on its chips.

Apple will reportedly continue using the N2 process node from TSMC for its next-gen M6 processor to save on manufacturing costs, as there's only a touted 5% performance uplift at the same power consumption between the N2 and N2P process nodes. Apple's also expected to continue using the cheaper N2 node from TSMC for its next-gen iPhone chips in the A20 Pro and A20.

Project Genie, from Google, is a new experimental research prototype available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. Although it's only a couple of days old, Project Genie has been making waves across social media because it leverages AI to create fully interactive worlds and environments with realistic physics that you can freely explore.

Project Genie combines Google's general-purpose world model, Genie 3, with Nano Banana Pro and Gemini, allowing users to sketch and shape worlds before jumping in to explore them. And with that, many consider it a significant milestone for AI and a step toward generating video games that you can play in real time from a simple text prompt.

At a glance, it's groundbreaking and feels like a glimpse of a future of AI-generated games, but the resolution is limited to 720p, the frame rate is 24 FPS, and the input latency is anything but responsive or smooth. Plus, you've only got 60 seconds. That said, after Google announced Project Genie on Jan 29, 2026, its impact reached the stock market, causing several notable game-related stocks for companies creating engines and handcrafted open worlds to crash.

Apple's upgraded M5 Pro and M5 Max processors will reportedly be launching with its new macOS 26.3 operating system, powering a new wave of faster MacBook Pro laptops.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman said that the M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro would be launching alongside macOS 26.3, which will be a free download for Apple Mac users. Gurman didn't say exactly when, but Weibo tipster Fixed-focus digital cameras said Apple's new M5 Pro and M5 Max would be launching in March 2026.

Gurman teased that Apple's new M6 processor is "coming sooner than people anticipate", so we'd assume Apple would release its beefier M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets before its next-gen M6 launches. MacRumors also reports that Apple's new macOS 26.3 operating system is currently in beta testing, and could be released to the public in February, which means the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets could be announced and launched in the coming weeks.

Puget Systems, which has a strict testing process for components and RMA reviews for the systems it builds, has prepared its annual report on the most reliable PC hardware of 2025. Although it doesn't cover the entire brand landscape, it's still a great indicator of performance and reliability across the components that make up a modern desktop PC: CPU, GPU, motherboard, RAM, storage, and power supply.

Looking at the desktop CPU space, both AMD Ryzen 9000 Series and Intel Core Ultra processors have an almost identical failure rate: 2.52% for AMD and 2.49% for Intel. Although AMD edges out Intel here, the company notes that it's too close for there to be a "statistically significant difference."

When drilling down to specific models, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K takes the crown as the most reliable processor, with a failure rate of only 0.77%. This is followed by AMD's Ryzen 9000 X3D Series processors, which have a failure rate of just 1.51%.