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As outlined in a recent 10-K filing, computer maker Dell has been shring in terms of staff volume, with 25,000 of its employees no longer on the payroll as of January 2025.

As reported by Business Insider, the company said that it had 133,000 staff as of February 2023. According to the recent filing, the figure currently stands at 108,000 global employees as of January 31, 2025. This represents a total reduction of 25,000, marking a 10% shrinkage every year. Altogether, the company's workforce has reduced by 19% over the two-year period.

In August 2024, Dell significantly restructured its sales divisions, laying off over 20,000 workers. The laid-off staff were told the restructure was to prepare for "the world of AI". The company also began issuing return-to-office mandates last year, eventually ordering all staff within 90 minutes of Dell offices to return full-time as of January 2025.

Concerns about job displacement continue to mount, as OpenAI, Anthropic, and the broader market continue to roll out new models seemingly on the daily. Bill Gates has been relatively vocal about AI's potential to replace humans in most markets and professions. However, according to the Microsoft co-founder, there's a few exceptions.

Coding is widely considered one of the first professions on the chopping block due to AI. Major tech leaders, including NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, have each been insistent that programming will cease to exist when AI reaches a particular stage. However, Gates takes a different stance, explaining that human oversight is essential for identifying and correcting errors, refining algorithms, and helping to improve AI development.

NVIDIA has released an "experimental version" of its Project G-Assist System Assistant, which we previewed back at Computex 2024. Available for GeForce RTX desktop owners (GeForce RTX laptop support is coming in a future update) via the NVIDIA App, the AI assistant will simplify optimizing your PC if you have a GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM.

"G-Assist helps users control a wide range of PC settings, from optimizing game and system settings, charting frame rates and other key performance statistics, to controlling select peripheral settings such as lighting - all via basic voice or text commands," NVIDIA explains.

Project G-Assist is powered by a custom Small Language Model (SLM) using a Llama-based Instruct model with 8 billion parameters to interpret natural language. This means you can ask it about your PC's hardware, explain what DLSS or other RTX technologies do, and provide detailed performance. You can even use it to overclock your GPU or change your display settings.

For those who remember the Wild Wild West days of the internet, Napster was a peer-to-peer file-sharing program that launched in 1999. It quickly took off as a means to share MP3 music files and quickly grew in popularity thanks to the arrival of high-speed broadband internet at the time. Most users had dial-up connections and had to wait several minutes or an hour to get a few songs.

It didn't take long until the Recording Industry Association of America took note, and bands like Metallica made headlines as they moved to sue Napster for facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material. After bankruptcy, Napster became a music streaming service similar to Spotify in 2016 - even though the name 'Napster' has faded into the background.

This week, Napster was acquired by Infinite Reality, the creator of "immersive 3D interfaces," for a cool $207 million. According to CNBC, the company and its name will be used to create virtual 3D spaces for music fans and artists - aka metaverse stuff.

ENDORFY has announced a new range of ultra-lightweight gaming mice, the LIV series. This series covers a range of wired and wireless offerings to suit all budgets and needs, joining the flagship LIV Plus Wireless mouse released last year. The new models include the LIV Plus Wireless Onyx White, LIV Wireless Onyx White, LIV Wireless, LIV Onyx White, and LIV - all ultra-lightweight ranging from 54 to 69 grams.

Depending on the model, the LIV series sports the PixArt PAW3395 or PixArt PAW3311 sensor, which feature a sensitivity of up to 12,000 or 26,000 DPI and 300 IPS or 650 IPS tracking speed, respectively. It also features Kailh GM 8.0 or Kailh GM 4.0 switches for responsive clicks. All models sport the wireframe look of ultra-lightweight mice, and the wireless models support Bluetooth, low-latency 2.4 GHz wireless, and USB connection options.

The premium LIV Plus Wireless Onyx White also has a charging dock with ARGB lighting. The LIV series is available in black or 'onyx white,' and each model features ARGB lighting, which is not seen on many ultra-lightweight mice.

Launching at the end of this week, the life simulation game inZOI has skyrocketed up the Steam wishlist charts - making the game's Early Access debut one of the most highly anticipated releases on the PC gaming platform. inZOI lets players control and simulate an entire community, where the characters - called Zois - will live out their lives.

From robust character creation tools to customize housing, rooms, and even a city, inZOI is also shipping with powerful AI tools, including the ability to generate images and transform those images into in-game 3D objects. The game will also feature a "Smart Zoi" experimental setting, allowing players to turn Zois into NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters.

As a life simulation where 'Zois' carry out their daily lives based on their own in-game experiences, switching them to generative AI characters sounds fascinating. You'll be able to read their inner thoughts as they go about their day while also customizing their personalities, life goals, and other settings to see how they interact with other Zois and the world.

When we first saw PowerColor's impressive Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil at CES 2025, we were told it planned to release an all-white version in the months following RDNA 4's launch. The time has come, as the Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil Spectral White Edition is set to debut on April 8 in Limited Edition form.

PowerColor's Red Devil cards have always featured all-black designs with red flourishes, signaling their power and premium status among custom-overclocked models. This marks the first all-white edition designed for PC gamers with all-white builds, and as seen in a new video by Overclock3D that previews the card, everything is white.

Everything from the power 8-pin power connectors to the PCB, fin stack, I/O bracket, and heat pipes is all-white - which is very impressive. Most white GPUs rarely go this far in their commitment to an aesthetic.

As seen in our recent reviews of AMD's new Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon 9070 XT GPUs, one of the significant improvements with RDNA 4 is the arrival of FSR 4. The latest version of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution is exclusive to its latest generation of desktop graphics cards because it introduces a new complex AI model for upscaling, dramatically improving image fidelity compared to FSR 3.1.

Like with NVIDIA DLSS, if FSR 4 is available in a game using the 'Quality' preset at 1440p or 4K can be considered 'free performance' as it offers a clean and detailed image comparable to native rendering with TAA. However, as FSR 4 support is only available in a fraction of games compared to DLSS 3 and DLSS 4, it's not yet a selling point or reason to choose Radeon over the competition.

The good news is that AMD has noticed the positive response to FSR 4 among reviewers and RDNA 4 early adopters and is actively working with developers "to make sure the next blockbusters that come out are enabled with FSR 4 technology."

CD Projekt may be able to release the new Witcher saga in its entirety in the next 6 years, senior management for the Polish games-maker has told investors.

The Witcher 4 is in full production within Unreal Engine 5, and while progress appears to be going smoothly with 400 developers working on the project, CD Projekt did say the game won't release until 2027. With that news in mind, can CD Projekt deliver the full new Witcher trilogy in the same span as the original games?

From The Witcher in 2008 to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, it took nearly 7 years for Geralt's three-game adventure to come to a close. Can CD Projekt do the same and release Ciri's trilogy in, let's say, six years after the first game's release? Maybe.

We've caught an early glimpse of NVIDIA's RTX 5090 laptop GPU in action in a Razer laptop, with a YouTuber providing benchmarks that show the new mobile graphics card promises to be a major leap in performance - certainly in some scenarios.

You can see the results of YouTuber Dave2D running the RTX 5090 through its paces in the incoming Razer Blade 16 in the video above, as noticed by Notebookcheck.net.

In Black Myth: Wukong, Dave2D observes that at 1440p (ray tracing on, top graphics details, DLSS balanced) the RTX 5090 is a healthy 33% quicker than the RTX 4090.

European regulators have set their consumer-protecting eye of Sauron upon predatory gaming practices, with the focus on in-game currencies and how they can be used to manipulate and deceive consumers.

The European consumer watchdog Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC) has filed an enforcement action with the European Commission against the gaming company Star Stable Entertainment, the owners of the MMORPG/horse simulation game Star Stable Online. I explain the specifics of the enforcement action in this article, but I will briefly go over them here as the context is important for what could happen in the future.

EU regulators have deemed several areas of Star Stable Online's monetization practices as predatory, such as the in-game currencies not being one-to-one conversions with euros, and its in-game currency being bundled with "discounts" are both techniques to obfuscate the actual cost of in-game products, making it unnecessarily difficult for consumers to know how much real-life money they are actually spending.

Intel's freshly-minted CEO Lip-Bu Tan will provide an opening keynote at the company's upcoming Intel Vision 2025 event on March 31.

Intel Vision 2025 is being hosted on March 31 in Las Vegas, where the company will be on the ground with executives and partners from around the world. We should expect to hear about its US semiconductor business with Intel Foundry Services and its upcoming Intel 18A process node, next-gen consumer and server CPUs, AI, AI, AI, and a vision of what's ahead for the company that has had many hard years.

On its website, the company explains: "Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will deliver an opening keynote at Intel Vision 2025 on March 31 in Las Vegas. The two-day event brings together Intel customers and partners from around the world to discuss opportunities to innovate across the compute continuum and foster collaboration that will shape the future of the industry".

The Financial Times has admitted it made a lapse in judgment when it posted the article "$1.4bn is a lot to fall through the cracks, even for Tesla," which highlighted a purported gap between the company's capital investment and asset values.

The author of the article, Dan McCrum, has posted a follow-up article titled "Filling in that Tesla 'crack'" where the first line of that article is "Mea culpa," which is a Latin phrase that translates to "my fault" or "through my fault." McCrum goes on to explain the purported discrepancy that he reported "may have a benign explanation," which seems to be gathered from an expert who got in touch with FT to explain how to look at Tesla's books correctly.

McCrum attempted to highlight the discrepancy between Tesla's $6.3 billion capital investment in the second half of last year and the smaller $4.9 billion rise in the value of gross assets the company reported, claiming Tesla seemingly lost the difference somewhere in the books. That simply isn't the case, or at least according to McCrum, who has now been informed about two explanations that can reconcile the figures: "payments for assets already purchased, and the possible disposal of depreciated property."

Intel's rumored to be preparing a fresh take on an Arrow Lake Refresh generation, so we might yet get new desktop CPUs from Team Blue later this year.

As VideoCardz picked up, one of the well-known hardware leakers on X, Jaykihn, posted to inform us that an Arrow Lake Refresh is seemingly back on the table (see above).

The leaker asserts that this new retake on the Core Ultra 200S chips will be different to the previously rumored refresh. (If you recall, speculation was rife about an Arrow Lake Refresh mid-2024, which Intel apparently cancelled).

Apple has reportedly placed a large order for $1 billion worth of NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers, powered by its beefed-up Blackwell Ultra AI GPUs according to Loop Capital.

Loop Capital's note explained that Apple is "officially" in the large server cluster Gen AI game, with Super Micro and Dell being Apple's key server partners. Apple's continued Siri AI stumbles might have seen an internal shift that is putting even more importance on AI, and that requires the best AI hardware on the market right now: NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers.

NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers cost around $3.7 million to $4 million each, so we're looking at around 250 new NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 AI servers, made by both Super Micro and Dell. This should see Apple with a Gen AI LLM cluster, which should change things up for Apple as the company seems to be having issues with its AI/ML (machine learning) versus GenAI.

Those who are keenly awaiting the release of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will be disappointed to hear that the game has been delayed (again).

We're now told that Bloodlines 2 is set to arrive in October 2025 (on Xbox, PS5 and PC), although that's barring any potential further delays, of course.

As Gamespot noticed, Marco Behrmann, who is executive producer of Bloodlines 2, clarified what's been happening with the title:

In a market where Assassin's Creed: Shadows just dropped, few games dominate discussions more than the series' return to feudal Japan. As it turns out, you don't need to be the center of conversation to dominate the Steam charts.

Schedule I, an indie drug-dealing simulator, is currently the most popular game on Steam. Released yesterday, it quickly climbed to the top of the "Trending Games," "Popular Releases," and "Hot Releases" charts on SteamDB. The game currently holds an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam based on over 4,000 reviews, and peaked with 116,408 concurrent first-day players - almost double that of Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

As the Steam community continues to react to the new title, these numbers may only continue climbing. The game is currently in early access and available with a 15% discount on Steam for its first week.

Europe's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPCN) has published an enforcement action with the European Commission to prevent rampant predatory monetization practices within video games, particularly with the game Star Stable Online.

The enforcement action explains that the EU views specific monetization strategies in the form of in-game currencies as designed to manipulate and deceive customers into spending more money on the game.

The notice has singled out Star Stable Online, an MMORPG/horse simulation developed by Star Stable Entertainment who is now feeling the sight of the EU regulator that is now requiring the developer to be more transparent with the cost of its in-game items, while simultaneously requesting a soft ban on in-game currency in general as there currently isn't a law in place to prevent it.

The physical sale of Assassin's Creed Shadows has been quite successful in the UK, with reports now indicating the latest addition to the Assassin's Creed franchise has now outsold Ubisoft's commercial failure Star Wars Outlaws by a considerable margin.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has moved more physical copies than Star Wars Outlaws in just 1 week than Outlaws did in 3 months. Additionally, Shadows' physical sales are approximately the same as Assassin's Creed Mirage, with the higher price of Shadows pulling in more revenue.

The data provided by The Game Business states that general sales in the UK are 63% of what Assassin's Creed Valhalla achieved in November 2020, with the discrepancy in sales being attributed to the pandemic causing a huge spike in software sales, and Valhalla being available physically on more platforms at launch.

Almost regardless of accolades, it's extremely common for games to ship Game of the Year editions these days. It turns out, according to a former executive, Valve originally pioneered the strategy - leveraging Half Life's critical success to boost lagging unit sales.

As reported by PCGamer, Monica Harrington, one of the founding members of Valve, and former Chief Marketing Officer, gave a talk at GDC diving into the brand's history. Looking back at the late 1990s, the company was facing challenges with moving copies of Half-Life. During a period where critical reception was strong but sales started to slow, the team needed a fresh angle to push the game further.

According to Harrington, adding a "Game of the Year" sticker and updating the box art had a huge impact on the game's sellability. The original release featured a plain orange cover with just the Half-Life title and logo. But with the awards Half-Life had earned by then, the "Game of the Year" label was a legitimate claim. Pairing that with new artwork featuring protagonist Gordon Freeman helped turn the game into a major commercial success, ultimately selling over 9 million copies over the next decade.