In another advancement for robotics, Figure AI has introduced Helix, a new Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that enables humanoid robots to see, understand, and interact with the world in real-time. Unlike traditional robotic systems, Helix allows robots to pick up objects they've never seen before, coordinate with other robots, and even understand natural language instructions, like putting away groceries in the right place.

In the footage, Helix-powered robots are presented with common grocery items - like eggs, fruit, and ketchup - and tasked with figuring out where they belong. Unlike conventional robots that require extensive programming or thousands of pre-recorded examples, Helix enables these robots to make real-time decisions based on their environment and natural language commands.

The robots move slowly throughout the demonstration, taking their time to process each object in the scene. However, they very carefully and deliberately identify each object in the scene, and carry out the task as assigned.

The race to create advanced humanoid robots has intensified significantly in 2025. 1X Technologies released a teaser showcasing NEO Gamma, their latest offering designed to help out around the house.

NEO Gamma is 'built for the home,' equipped for daily household tasks such as tidying, deep cleaning, and home management. It sports a unique, fabric-knit design that conveys a retro-futuristic aesthetic - somewhat reminiscent of something you'd see in a sci-fi arthouse film like Ex Machina (2014) or Swan Song (2021).

The teaser footage shows that the robot is designed with a distinctively human-centric feel. Opting for gentleness and simplicity in both its design and movements. Typically, you'll find a metallic, mechanical look to most humanoid robots showcased these days. However, the visuals of NEO pouring a cup of coffee or carrying around loads of laundry effectively convey what a robot could look like as a complement to your home, with some of that intimidation factor removed.

In a recent developer livestream, the team behind the ambitious Skyblivion project shared some promising updates regarding the mod's completion.

For those unfamiliar with the project, Skyblivion is a fan-made remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion built within Skyrim's engine. It has been in development for over 11 years, and aims to modernize the classic RPG with improved visuals, mechanics, and world design while staying faithful to the original experience.

Throughout the stream, the developers confirmed that Skyblivion is still on track for a 2025 release. While unable to commit to a specific date, they were able to share that several major cities, including Cheydinhal, are fully completed with expanded environments to boot. Bug fixes, optimization, and balancing take on key priority, along with additional tasks such as finalizing enemy scaling, quest testing, and completing the remaining cities.

Intel has announced that its cutting-edge 18A process node is now "ready" to compete, with tape-out expected in 1H 2025, ready to compete with semiconductor leader TSMC.

The official announcement is exciting as Intel has been down and out from the semiconductor and processor business for many years now, with Intel Foundry falling behind in the semiconductor business with processes like Intel 4 (7nm). But, Intel's new 18A process is expected to provide the company's foundry business with a huge comeback, ready to battle TSMC.

The new Intel 18A process node will feature BSPDN (Backside Power Delivery) which sees the power delivery moved to the backside of the wafer, with RibbonFET GAA technology and higher chip densities, the new Intel 18A process should compete directly with the best process nodes from Taiwan-based TSMC.

AMD is just weeks away from unleashing its next-gen Radeon RX 9070 series "RDNA 4" graphics cards, with news breaking that we'll see NO reference model, leaving the future of RDNA 4 in the hands of AIB partners and custom Radeon RX 9070 series graphics cards.

In new rumors, we're learning that we won't see a "Made-By-AMD" (MBA) variant of the new RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs, which means it'll be the first time in Radeon history that AMD won't have a reference model. There have been renders of the reference model so far, and now we know why official shots of the Radeon RX 9070 series reference cards haven't been released.

We are learning this news from a new share on X from AMD, where there is a render of the Radeon RX 9070 series GPU but the company states in the bottom left: "Artistic Render. Not Available for Purchase". Damn... would've been nice to see a new (possibly even more curvier) Radeon RX 9070 series GPU... but it appears we won't.

NVIDIA has confirmed issues of GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards shipping with missing ROPs, which reduce gaming performance.

The company has issued a statement, explaining that less than 0.5% of its cards are affected, and that consumers can contact their AIB board partners to get replacements sent out. Recently, TechPowerUp reported that they found missing ROPs on their GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card sample, with 188 ROPs found versus 176 ROPs on the RTX 5090.

NVIDIA explains: "We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D and 5070 Ti GPUs which have fewer ROPs than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anamoly has been corrected".

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards are shipping with missing ROPs, seeing the flagship RTX 5090 experiencing 4.5% reduced performance.

The news started with TechPowerUp user "Wuxi Gamer" discovering that some review samples and even retail graphics cards with missing ROPs, with TPU noting that its ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5090 SOLID graphics card sample was underperforming by a few percentage points, falling behind NVIDIA's in-house GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

The missing ROPs are a major issue, with ROPs being responsible for pixel data, taking care of tasks like blending and anti-aliasing. NVIDIA usually reduces ROPs count to keep separation between SKUs, but this is a far bigger issue.

AMD's new RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPU inside of the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card has 53.9 billion transistors, meaning it has more transistors than NVIDIA's new GB203 GPU inside of the GeForce RTX 5080.

In a new post on Tieba Baidu, we're learning that AMD's new Navi 48 GPU should be 350mm2, which is smaller than the 390mm2 in previous leaks. AMD recently confirmed its new RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPU has 53.9 billion transitors in a press briefing earlier this week.

If the new Baidu figures are correct, we're looking at AMD's new RDNA 4-based Navi 48 GPU being smaller than both NVIDIA's previous-gen Ada Lovelace-based AD103 GPU, and its new Blackwell-based GB203 GPU that is inside of the new GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card.

ASUS's new flagship ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 has caught fire with smoke billowing out of it, leaving burn marks on both the GPU and motherboard of a Redditor. Check it out:

In a post on Reddit, user "Impossible-Weight485" was browsing the internet when his PC shut down all of the sudden. After restarting his system, the graphics card caught fire and smoke started coming out of it. Not a good thing to see for one of the most expensive graphics cards on the planet.

The Redditor explained: "I was playing PC games this afternoon, and when I was done with the games, my PC suddenly shut down while I was browsing websites. When I restarted the PC, the GPU caught fire, and smoke started coming out. When I took out the GPU, I saw burn marks on both the GPU and the motherboard".

ASUS's in-house overclocking team has pushed NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards to new limits: overclocking the GB202 GPU to a record 3.5GHz, and the 32GB of GDDR7 to 34Gbps, breaking multiple OC world records in the process.

SAFEDISK is ASUS's in-house OC secret weapon, overclocking a custom ASUS GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card under LN2 cooling and various tweaks. The GB202 GPU was pushed to an impressive 3480MHz while the 32GB of GDDR7 memory was pushed up to 34Gbps on its wide 512-bit memory bus.

The overclocker used AMD's Zen 5-based Ryzen 9 9950X processor with 16 cores and 32 threads of processing power, 48GB of DDR5-8000 memory from G.SKILL (dual 24GB DIMMs) and an ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E APEX motherboard. It will be interesting to see these results re-run with AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, too.

BioWare veteran Mark Darrah has called out gamers for being "cruel" if they are excited about layoffs at development studios, which has sparked quite a rebuttal by some members of the community.

Darrah, a BioWare veteran and consultant on the recent Dragon Age: Veilguard, which was renowned as an industry flop, posted the video "Your $70 Doesn't Buy You Cruelty," where he explains that gamers should have some more empathy for the humans working at development studios as gamers aren't aware of the logistics behind the choices made that result in aspects of the game the gamers don't enjoy.

Moreover, Darrah says that gamers shouldn't be directing their complaints to any studio employee who isn't top leadership, as top leadership is paid to bear the responsibility of being a lightning rod for community feedback. The BioWare veteran is now facing immense pushback from gamers who pointed out Darrah doesn't specify or define "cruelty," with one of the only examples being given by Darrah being a gamer getting angry at a voice actor because they didn't like the way an in-game character delivered a line.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal X account to call for the International Space Station (ISS) to be deorbited early, as it serves "very little incremental utility."

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO recommended the ISS be deorbited "2 years from now," which is ahead of the official NASA scheduled that was to deorbit the floating laboratory sometime in 2030. Notably, SpaceX was awarded a contract in 2024 that was worth close to $1 billion to power the deorbiting process, which involves SpaceX creating a deorbiting vehicle that is ready for use by 2029. However, Musk seems to want to speed that timeline up significantly.

For those who don't know, the International Space Station is used by not only the United States to conduct scientific experiments in microgravity but also its partners, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), JAXA, Japan's NASA equivalent, and others. Moreover, the ending of the ISS won't just affect government space agencies but also the private sector, as several companies have already solidified plans that involve the ISS. So, why deorbit the ISS early?

Avowed has been released, and while the single-player semi-open-world game has received mixed opinions, the game we see today wasn't the original intention of the developers.

It was revealed by Carrie Patel, the game director for Avowed, in a recent interview with Bloomberg that Avowed actually endured a reboot in 2021 that pivoted the title away from its original concept of being a cross between Destiny and Skyrim where players could adventure together in a massive fantasy world. However, that same year, Microsoft purchased the developers of Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment, and it was decided the game's multiplayer component would be cut from the project.

Additionally, the leadership team was replaced, and Patel was tasked with bringing up to speed a new team and a complete reevaluation of the creative direction. More pivotal decisions were mad,e such as the switch from an open-world model to a "zone-based" model, which was a take on 2019's The Outer Worlds. The reason behind this change was to enable the development team to create distinct and dense regions over the Skyrim model where players could walk for hours and hours in an open-world environment.

Tesla has issued a public recall of nearly 400,000 Tesla vehicles over failing power-assisted steering systems, according to a new statement by the U.S National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A new safety recall report posted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration details Tesla is voluntarily recalling precisely 376,241 vehicles across the US, which includes Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that were manufactured between Feb. 28, 2023, and October 11, 2023. Additionally, the vehicles were equipped with an older software release.

According to the document, the printed circuit boards (PCBs) within the affected vehicles could become overstressed, resulting in the power-assist steering failing and the driver having to exert more force to turn the wheel, thus increasing the risk of a collision. Reports indicate Tesla has informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that as a remedy, it has offered an over-the-air software update and that it isn't aware of any crashes as a result of the issue.

It appears Tony Hawk Pro Skater fans are finally going to be getting the remaster they have been waiting for - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.

Over the last few days, we have had some small tidbits of news that indicate a new remaster is about to be released, with the hype beginning after professional skater Tyshawn Jones revealed during an interview that he was going to be in a new Tony Hawk remaster that was "about to be released". This teaser was followed by fans discovering a mysterious date within the Black Ops 6 map Grind that indicated an announcement was scheduled for March 3, 2025.

Now, Activision has added a countdown timer to the Tony Hawk website, which coincides with the date that was discovered within Black Ops 6. So, what could this mean? Given the comments from Jones, it appears Activision has been secretly working on a new remaster of a Tony Hawk game, presumably Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.

AMD's RX 9070 XT graphics card has seemingly been spotted in more leaked benchmarks and this time the claim is that this is going to be a seriously fast piece of hardware.

As you can see in the above post from Tomasz Gawroński (a regular contributor of leaks on X), these are apparently FurMark results for the RX 9070 XT.

That's a little muddied by the fact that the benchmarks (for 4K resolution) in question are attributed to a 'Radeon RX 7800 XT' card, but as Gawroński points out, the GPU carries the same PCI-ID as that previously attached to the RX 9070 in the likes of Geekbench leaks. So, it appears someone is trying to fudge things and cover up the identity of the RDNA 4 GPU.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has already received its own parody game that will launch alongside Ubisoft's latest installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise on March 20.

Introducing Yasuke Simulator, a clear parody title of the upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows, where players will assume the role of Yasuke, an African samurai in the year 1579 who has traveled to Japan alongside a Jesuit missionary. The Steam listing for the title states the game has been made using AI, and it appears the entire creation of the game is designed to be a jab at Ubisoft, as the name for the developer/publisher is "HistoryAccurateDevelopers".

As you are already probably imagining, Yasuke Simulator won't be a very good game at all, it has purely been made as a joke at the expense of Ubisoft, who previously stated that Assassin's Creed Shadows was "historically accurate." However, it was later discovered that wasn't the case at all, and the part of history the game focuses on is at most debatable among historians.

A former Sony boss has revealed an insight into the company's perspective on bringing PlayStation-exclusive titles over to PC, and it essentially confirms what every PC gamer has been thinking this whole time.

Up until just a few years ago, if someone suggested that Sony would bring PlayStation-exclusive titles over to PC, that person would have been called stupid. However, that has now become the norm, with titles such as the God of War franchise, Spider-Man, Horizon series, and more heading over to PC after timed exclusivity on PlayStation. So, what has changed? The market as a whole has shifted away from gatekeeping titles to specific platforms, and while there's a myriad of reasons contributing to the general shift, one of the main reasons is simply... money (I can picture the shock on your face).

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida discussed in a recent interview with Sacred Symbols+ Sony releasing first-party titles on PC and how it benefits PlayStation as a whole. Yoshida said, "Releasing on PC does many things: it reaches a new audience who do not own consoles--especially in regions where consoles are not as popular." Adding, "The idea is that those people may become fans of a particular franchise, and when a new game in that series comes out, they may be convinced to purchase a PlayStation."

Data conscious iOS users across the UK just lost the ability to add extra layers of security as Apple has revoked the option of Advanced Data Protection for iCloud users.

For those unfamiliar with Advanced Data Protection, the feature enables users to add end-to-end encryption for their iCloud data, making it extremely difficult for their iCloud data to be stolen, tampered with, or viewed. However, UK users of this feature won't be able to use it any longer as Apple has responded to the recent UK government orders that force companies such as Apple to add backdoors to its encrypted systems.

Instead of enabling the backdoors Apple has decided to remove the feature entirely for UK users, and for users that currently have it enabled Apple says they will have to disable it to regain access to their iCloud account. Notably, due to the nature of the end-to-end encryption system, Apple is unable to make the change remotely, so users will have to navigate to the Advanced Data Protection page within the settings and disable it manually.

Aspiring filmmakers who can't yet afford a full DSLR camera setup but purchased an iPhone with a USB-C port need an SSD to record Apple ProRes. But who wants to carry around an SSD in their pocket when they are filming?

Introducing the Planck, the world's smallest Phone-first SSD that is designed for creators who need extra storage but don't want to have additional cables and clutter in their pocket/backpack. Planck has been with creators in mind and offers up to 2TB of storage, with variants in 1TB and 2TB models. The small SSD plugs directly into the USB-C port at the base of your iPhone and enables the device's highest-quality video recording setting, Apple ProRes, which actually requires an external storage device to enable.

The tiny device gets lost in the palm of your hand when you are recording, and for those wondering how much additional recording time you will get, Planck will grant as much as 150 mins of recording time at 4K/120FPS ProRes Log. As for images, the small SSD will grant 27,500+ images at 48MP ProRaw quality. After recording, creators won't have to wait long for their footage to transfer as the Planck SSD can move data at 1050Mbps thanks to its NVMe chip.