Latest News - Page 435

Anker has taken to its website to announce the recall of thousands of its Soundcore and PowerConf Bluetooth speakers, with the company citing a fault in the manufacturing process that has led to incidents related to affected devices batteries.

Anker wrote in a new announcement that a "small number" number of the affected speakers were manufactured between March and April 2023 and that Anker will be reaching out to customers who purchased one of the affected products between March 1, 2023, and June 6, 2024. According to reports, the affected products could be as many as 69,000 across the US, with an additional 9,764 sold in Canada. As for what products are affected, Anker highlights the following models as potentially being faulty: A3102016, A3302011, and A3302031.

So far 33 reports of problems with the aforementioned models have surfaced, with some of the reports claiming the device began smoking, started a small fire, and even one report cited a minor burn. It's advised to try to find the serial number on your speaker and then navigate to Anker's website to check if it is included in the recall. If you own an affected device, you are advised to immediately turn it off and contact Anker customer support, who will instruct you on how to dispose of it correctly.

Microsoft has taken to its blog to announce the availability of Copilot Vision, a new Copilot Pro feature that is designed to provide a helpful AI companion for internet browsing.

Microsoft has detailed the new feature in its blog post where it states Copilot Vision will require permission of the user and, if enabled, will be able to see what webpage a user is on, digest the information on the webpage, and provide helpful answers and information about what the user is searching. The new feature is currently only available in the US to a small group of Copilot Pro subscribers, which is a $20 per month subscription that unlocks Copilot across Office applications, priority access to Copilot during peak times, and now Copilot Vision.

The Windows maker explains that Copilot will be able to "understand the full context of what you're doing online," and when Copilot Vision is enabled, it "sees the page you're on, it reads along with you, and you can talk through the problem you're facing together. Browsing no longer needs to be a lonely experience with just you and all your tabs." For those worried about security, Microsoft has emphasized that Copilot VIsion is an entirely optional feature that needs to be manually switched on by a user for it to be enabled.

NASA has wrapped up a two-year-long investigation into the cracked heatshield on the Artemis I Orion module that landed back on Earth after being sent on a journey around the Moon.

The space agency took to its website to announce the re-entry method of the Orion module during the Artemis I mission was the cause of the cracks. The re-entry method, known as a skip guidance technique, entails the spacecraft "skipping" across the atmospheric layers, analogous to how a thrown stone skips across the surface of water. NASA wrote that Orion dipped into the upper atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to reduce its speed. The spacecraft then initiated aerodynamic lift to skip the capsule back out of the atmosphere, then it re-entered for its final descent into parachutes and splashdown.

After performing more than 100 tests, NASA determined that between skips, Orion's heat shield didn't allow enough of the gasses generated inside a material called Avcoat to escape. This caused some of the material to crack and break off from the heat shield. Avcoat is designed to erode away from the heat shield as the module descends through the atmosphere, increasing in temperature due to friction.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brain Thompson was killed in Midtown Manhattan earlier this week, and with the suspect currently on the run, the public has begun digging into a potential motive for the grim assassination.

With police having yet to make an arrest, publications have begun looking into UnitedHealthcare, and one of the points leading to a possible motive that has gained some attention is a lawsuit filed against UnitedHealthcare in November 2023. The lawsuit filed by two now-deceased individuals, but still ongoing and yet to reach a final conclusion, alleges UnitedHealthcare pressed employees to use an algorithm designed to evaluate how long a patient would be staying based on their condition and issue denials for coverage. Moreover, the suit alleges internally, UnitedHealthcare knew the algorithm had an error rate of approximately 90%.

Notably, the lawsuit specifically states that UnitedHealth and its subsidiary, NaviHealth, are using a computer algorithm reportedly called nH Predict to "systematically deny claims" for coverage for beneficiaries struggling to recover from illnesses while in nursing homes. A UnitedHealth spokesperson responded to the suit, stating the company doesn't use its NaviHealth predict tool to make coverage determinations and that the "lawsuit has no merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously."

NASA has selected giant Martian "spiderwebs" as the next target for the famed Mars rover named Curiosity, which will be traveling to a location known as "boxwork".

NASA has taken to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) blog to announce that it will be sending the Mars rover named Curiosity on the next leg of its journey across the plains of the Red Planet. The journey will take Curiosity approximately a month, and the rover will be heading to a location known as "boxwork," which is a set of weblike patterns on the surface of Mars.

These weblike patterns stretch for miles, and Curiosity will soon be departing its current location in the Gediz Vallis, with the rover signing off in the area with a 360-degree panoramic image. Boxwork is a patch of zigzagging rocks, or boxwork deposits, and NASA plans to send Curiosity there to investigate the location for any signs of ancient microbial life, along with documenting the area so NASA researchers can attempt to understand how the land formation came to be. Notably, boxwork deposits aren't exclusive to Mars, as the geological formation can be found on Earth in caves.

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.12.1 WHQL driver for Radeon owners is here, and it seems Team Red is playing a little catch-up as it includes new game support for several high-profile releases that have been out for weeks - including Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

New game support often means performance optimizations and stability tweaks, which is why major driver updates arrive in time for new releases. In addition to the games mentioned above, Adrenalin Edition 24.12.1 also adds support for Marvel Rivals, Slitterhead, and Detal Force.

Outside of game-specific support, the latest driver is good news for AI developers as it brings official support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2), which allows AMD ROCm software development on Windows systems. Hit the jump for the full AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.12.1 Release Notes.

NVIDIA has released GeForce Game Ready Driver 566.36, which adds day-one support to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - which is available to play right now in early access for those who have bought the Digital Premium Edition. It also adds day support to the highly anticipated action RPG Path of Exile 2 and Marvel Rivals' official launch.

Marvel Rivals is a new free-to-play hero shooter with a cast of some of the most iconic superheroes ever created, and it features support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation as seen in the trailer above. The latest driver also adds support to some major updates for existing titles. There's Forza Motorsport, which is getting immersive in-race Ray-Traced Global lumination in its next update. Also, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is adding DLSS 3 Frame Generation in its next update, which will help boost performance for GeForce RTX 40 Series owners.

Outside of game support, the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver 566.36 is also the first to include the new NVIDIA App, which has exited beta and replaced GeForce Experience as the main software tool for GeForce customization.

Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, the creator of PUBG, has announced multiple new projects, with his main new title being a survival game called Prologue: Go Wayback! which launches into early access on Steam in 2025.

Prologue: Go Wayback! is explained as a "single-player open world emergent game within the survival genre" that will be available on Steam in early access form in Q2 2025, however, the developer teases that a "series of playtests" will begin before the early access launch.

Greene describes Prologue as a survival experience, and a "prototype of an idea" that will use the early access version to build upon, turning it into a full product. Prologue: Go Wayback! will see gamers playing on a new map, each and every time they play the game. Greene added: "We have a simple survival loop. Get from one side of the map to the other side of the map with some difficult weather on the way".

This week, Intel officially announced the first Xe2 'Battlemage' desktop graphics card, the Intel Arc B580, which will launch on December 13, 2024. With a wallet-friendly price point of $249 USD, 12GB of VRAM, and 1440p performance that outclasses the GeForce RTX 4060, it will be an interesting addition to the GPU landscape when it debuts.

In a new hourlong interview on PCWorld's The Full Nerd Podcast, Intel's Tom Petersen confirmed that even though the first second-gen Xe2 desktop GPU product is a week away from launch, the Arc team has already finalized the Xe3 'Celestial' architecture and is already working on Xe4. Now, it's up to the software team to ensure that drivers are ready for Xe3's launch.

"Our architects are way ahead of us and they are already working on not the next thing but the next thing after the next thing," Tom Petersen confirms.

AMD has confirmed that the first two RDNA 4 GPUs, the Radeon RX 8600 and Radeon RX 8800, will launch in early 2025. Both appeared in a recent update to AMD's ROCm (Radeon Open Compute) software libraries, and the GPUs were spotted in the codebase over at GitHub (which has since been removed).

To clarify, this isn't an official announcement from AMD representatives or a mention of these GPUs in a press release - but it's a clear indicator that RDNA 4 is going to get one or multiple SKUs in the Radeon RX 8600 and Radeon RX 8800 line-ups. If we had to take an educated guess, the actual SKUs would be the Radeon RX 8600 for the mainstream market and the Radeon RX 8800 XT for the mid-range market.

The references to "gfx12_rx8800," "gfx12_rx8600," and "nav4x arch" confirm that these are RDNA 4 cards in the next-gen Navi 4X series, which is expected to be formally announced at CES 2025. We've heard about the Radeon RX 8800 XT for a while, which makes the Radeon RX 8600 very interesting.

Jon Peddie Research has published its Q3 2024 GPU shipment report, seeing 73.6 million GPUs shipped in the three-month period, with PC CPU shipments increasing to 66.5 million units.

According to JPR, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of -1.9% from 2025 to 2028, reaching an install base of close to 3 billion units by the end of this period. Over the next 4 years, JPR predicts that the penetration of discrete GPUs inside of PCs will reach 17%.

Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research said: "A surge led to the jump in overall GPU and CPU shipments in Q3. AMD and Intel released new CPUs, and there was some pent-up demand for them. However, looking forward, we think that if the proposed tariffs are imposed, the PC market will suffer a recession due to increased prices and unmatched increases in income".

The release of Intel's new Core Ultra desktop processors has been a world record season for overclockers pushing DDR5 memory frequencies to insane new heights. In the past month or so, we've seen the record broken at least five times, and today it's two-time OC Champion of the G.SKILL OC World Cup and the Number 1 ranked overclocker on HWBOT, Splave's turn.

With G.SKILL Trident Z5 DDR5 memory, the incredible ASRock Z890 Taichi OCF motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, and what we're assuming is lots of liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling, Splave managed to break the world record with an impressive speed of DDR5-12666.

Splave's world record memory frequency score is currently in first place at HWBOT, and it will be fascinating to see if it will stand the test of time.

Telsa could have 1000+ of its advanced Optimus robots on factory floors by the end of 2025 according to Wall Street analysts.

Bank of America analyst John Murphy has said that the "Optimus is real and development is poised to accelerate. Optimus is currently used by TSLA to sort 4680 cells with no intervention. TSLA is testing Optimus in various use cases (i.e., catching a tennis ball) to refine the robot and determine a final design".

Tesla plans to have 1000 of its Optimus robots by the end of 2025, most of them operating inside of its plant, with more robots in use the training will accelerate. Optimus makes up just a single-digit percentage of Tesla's compute, but BofA expects to see the resources made available to Optimus will grow as the "robotaxi technology matures".

The Lenovo Legion Go was designed as a premium PC gaming handheld with detachable controllers, a sizeable high-refresh-rate display, the latest AMD hardware, and fast storage and memory. With new renders of a new Lenovo Legion Go S gaming handheld surfacing at Windows Central, Lenovo plans to release a more affordable refresh very soon.

According to Videocardz, the handheld uses AMD's new Ryzen Z2 platform. However, the more entry-level Ryzen Z2G will pair 8 Zen 3+ CPU Cores with 12 RDNA2 Compute Units via integrated Radeon 680M graphics. It won't be a Hawk Point or Strix Point device; it'll be a blast from the part - Rembrandt. This decision looks to have been made to help keep the cost down.

In fact, with a rumored price point as low as $399, it could give Valve's Steam Deck a run for its money as one of the most affordable PC gaming handhelds on the market.

Microsoft's DirectStorage technology is designed to help games load faster, reducing the time it takes to get into the action to a handful of seconds. It works by cutting out the middleman, so to speak, by allowing game file access and decompression to be handled directly by the GPU. It's a technology designed for NVMe SSD storage with at least PCIe Gen4 speeds.

It's been talked about for a few years as a game-changer; however, only a handful of titles support the technology compared to other gaming technologies like DLSS. This week, UL Solutions announced that it has updated its popular 3DMark benchmark suite with a new 3DMark DirectStorage feature test as part of its Storage Benchmark DLC.

The 3DMark DirectStorage benchmark captures the speed of decompression and gives a detailed breakdown of the difference DirectStorage makes and how well it runs on your current hardware configuration.

TSMC is reportedly in discussions with NVIDIA to make its Blackwell AI GPUs in the USA, producing the world-leading AI chips at its new Fab 21 plant in Phoenix, Arizona.

In a new report from Reuters, we're learning that TSMC is "already making preparations to start production" in early 2025, according to Reuters' sources. NVIDIA unveiled its new Blackwell AI GPUs in March, and are now making their way into tech companies' hands in the form of B200 and GB200, with GB200 NVL72 AI server cabinets insanely popular.

If the agreement between TSMC and NVIDIA is made, it would see the Taiwanese contract manufacturer securing another high-profile client for its US semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC is already preparing to make next-gen chips for the likes of Apple and AMD on US soil, so if NVIDIA joins the party... it's going to be a rather big deal to have some of the most advanced AI chips made in the United States.

SpaceX has just launched 20 Starlink satellites with its recent Falcon 9 launch, with the first Starlink satellite direct-to-cell (DTC) phone constellation now complete.

In a new post on X, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk said that the "first Starlink satellite direct to cell phone constellation is now complete. This will enable unmodified cellphones to have Internet connectivity in remote areas. Bandwidth per beam is only ~10Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable".

The official SpaceX account posted on X, announcing that "Falcon 9 launches 20 Starlink satellites, completing the first orbital shell of our Direct to Cell constellation".

Elon Musk's xAI startup has promised to expand its Colossus AI supercomputer by 10x its computational power, with over 1 million GPUs in total... yes, 1,000,000+ AI GPUs.

xAI built Colossus in just 3 months earlier this year, with the world's largest AI supercomputer featuring over 100,000 x NVIDIA IA GPUs operating at once, training Grok for X, and more. The expansion project has already started, with the first step being increasing the size of the facility in Memphis, Tennessee.

NVIDIA, Dell, and Supermicro are going to establish operations in Memphis in order to support xAI's extension of Colossus, while FT reports that the chamber of commerce saying that it would establish an "xAI special operations team" in order to "provide round-the-clock concierge service to the company".

Amazon is set to launch its video game-inspired anthology series on Prime Video on December 10, and to increase hype for the show, the company is handing out free games.

Secret Level, the new 15-episode-long anthology series from the team behind Love, Death and Robots, will cover legendary video game characters that have been pulled from popular franchises. Notably, the series will feature original stories set in within the worlds of the characters, and it will include adaptations from popular franchises such as God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Dungeons and Dragons, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Concord, and others.

The new anthology features a star-studded cast, with some of the names attached to the project including "Arnold Schwarzenegger ("The Terminator" Franchise), Kevin Hart ("Jumanji"), and Keanu Reeves ("John Wick"), among others. As for the free games, Amazon is offering a selection of free games for Prime members, with many of the games inspired by episodes in the TV show. Below is a full list of all the free games, along with a code for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II in the Amazon Games App, becoming available on December 12.

Almost every week there is a new Nintendo Switch 2 rumor as fans of the extremely popular Nintendo Switch wait patiently for any news of the successor console.

The latest in the Nintendo Switch 2 rumor mill comes from Juan A. Fonesca at Nintenduo, who claims that members of at least six development studios have confirmed to him that titles currently in development are scheduled to launch for Nintendo's next-generation platform between June and July next year. If this is true, that means Nintendo's next-generation console, presumably called the Nintendo Switch 2, will have already been released, or these games will be released alongside it.

Additionally, Nintenduo commented on the price for the rumored console, stating it would be anywhere between 400 and 500 Euros, making it around $419 to $524 US. As for what is officially known about Switch 2, Nintendo confirmed during its financial report that it will continue with the current Nintendo Switch until the end of the financial year, April 2025. This means that it's extremely unlikely Nintendo will launch a new console before March next year. However, that doesn't mean Nintendo won't announce a new console this fiscal year.