Microsoft plans to launch Surface devices with Intel's new Lunar Lake mobile chips. As seen on Reddit (thanks, Windows Central), a Surface Laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V processor went up for sale on the Chinese eBay-like website Goofish. The listing even stated that the laptop won't officially be available for purchase until 2025.

Microsoft's new Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 launched earlier this year exclusively with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, marking the arrival of Copilot+ PCs with Windows on Arm tech instead of traditional x86 hardware.

With Microsoft mandating a minimum of 40+ TOPS of AI performance to be compatible with Copilot+ AI features, Lunar Lake is Intel's first mobile architecture that meets this requirement. This new mysterious Surface Laptop could be the current Surface Laptop 7 with Intel Lunar Lake or a Surface Laptop 8 refresh on track for next year.

Yesterday, October 17, 2024, we lost a great man and friend. Tyler Bernath, TweakTown Hardware Editor, lost his battle with cancer at age 41 years old at his home in Montpelier, Ohio. After going through several rounds of chemotherapy and treatment over several years, sadly, the cancer took over. He fought against the terrible disease for as long as he could with huge courage. In the end, he went peacefully at his home.

Tyler started with us in 2013 and was with TweakTown for almost 12 years and published 1452 content items - most of which were reviews. That's an amazing average of 2.5 reviews every week over 12 years - an incredible effort that will be hard for anyone to reproduce again. His first review was of the Sandisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, and his final was of the Acer Predator Triton Neo 16 Gaming Laptop.

In fact, till the end, when he knew his time was near, he was still trying to complete reviews. That's sad, but it also makes me happy in a way, knowing that his work kept him busy and occupied. Tyler informed hundreds of thousands of consumers on which products to buy or avoid in the storage, networking, NAS, Mini PC, CPU, and motherboard fields.

If you own certain models of Western Digital SSDs then the company is 'highly recommending' that you install a new firmware update that resolves a bug in Windows 11 24H2.

As you may have seen yesterday, the issue pertains to the Host Memory Buffer feature (for more details, read our previous article), and the resulting bug means that some SSDs are affected by repeated crashing (with some ending up in a boot loop of BSoDs, in fact - really nasty).

WD tells us that the affected models are as follows:

We've likely all been in the situation where we've subscribed to a service, and then had difficulty canceling that subscription - it's a frustrating place to be, but one which might be a thing of the past thanks to new regulations in the US.

The FTC has just announced a finalized 'click-to-cancel' rule which requires that businesses which get consumers to sign up to a subscription should ensure that it's very easy to subsequently cancel that service.

As mentioned at the outset, we've likely all been there where we come to cancel a service and find ourselves scratching our heads as to how this is achieved. Often, the method of canceling can be hidden deep within the service's dashboard, behind multiple nested menus perhaps.

Missed out on buying Doom Eternal when it was released? Well, don't miss out on this offer if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, as you can now get the game for absolutely nothing.

Doom Eternal is the latest freebie to be provided by Amazon as part of its Prime Gaming package, which gives Prime subscribers access to a number of free games every month.

In this case, the slight catch with Doom Eternal is that you get a code for a download (of the Standard Edition) from the Microsoft Store, so that's not everyone's first port of call for their gaming platform (or indeed their second, third, or fourth port probably). Indeed, this is a major sticking point for some PC gamers, who apparently would rather have nothing than a game from the Microsoft Store.

Fallen out with your partner? That's nothing new, all couples have disagreements - or even more full-on arguments at times - but one person's solution, namely turning to AI, has gone viral for reasons that, well, you'll see.

This comes to us courtesy of a post on Reddit by 'Drawss4scoress' on r/AmITheA**hole (or AITAH) where as you can guess, people ask whether they might be, shall we say - in the wrong.

To sum up the gist of this scenario, Drawss4scoress has been dating their girlfriend for eight months, and every time they argue, to quote the Redditor:

Color e-ink displays have existed for a while. Still, this week, Amazon announced its very first e-reader with a color display - the new Kindle Colorsoft (priced at $279.99 USD), available for preorder today.

As part of the announcement, Amazon noted that creating a colorized Kindle required more than simply swapping out the traditional black-and-white display for a color one. "It uses an oxide backplane with custom waveforms for fast performance and a higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content," Amazon writes in the announcement.

The display includes custom nitride LEDs that enhance color and brightness without affecting image quality. Amazon adds that you can zoom in on images without "worrying about pixelation." The new technology also means that Amazon's new Kindle Paperwhite is the fastest yet, with 25% faster page turns.

Dell has just unleashed its new PowerEdge XE9712 with NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 AI servers, with 30x faster real-time LLM performance over the H100 AI GPU.

Dell Technologies' new AI Factory with NVIDIA sees the GB200 NVL72 AI server cabinet with 30x faster real-time LLM performance, lighting-fast connectivity with 72 x B200 AI GPUs connected and acting as one with NVLink technology. Dell points out that the liquid-cooled system maximizes your datacenter power utilization, while rapid deployment will see your AI cluster at-scale, with a "white glove experience" adds Dell.

We have 25x more efficiency than Hopper H100, 8K for LLM training with the highest performance delta at 8K+ GPU clusters, and 30x faster real-time trillion-parameter LLM inference compared to the H100 AI GPU.

ASUS has announced its new line-up of Republic of Gamers (ROG) power supplies with the Thor III Series. This includes the ROG Thor 1600 W Titanium III, ROG Thor 1200 W Platinum III, and ROG Thor 1000 W Platinum III.

As premium ROG products, you've got gallium nitride (GaN) MOSFETs that are 30% more efficient than standard MOSFETs, high-performance copper components, a detachable magnetic OLED display, and something called 'GPU-FIRST' voltage sensing with a patented intelligent voltage stabilizer (IVS) cable.

ASUS says this enhances voltage delivery to your GPU by up to 45% for "smooth and consistent gaming." The Voltage Sensing Mode involves connecting a purple-colored patented IVS cable for more stable power. Disconnecting the cable switches things back to "conventional CPU-focused voltage sensing."

The debut of the new 12VHPWR power connector with the arrival of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 Series wasn't smooth. With widespread reports of cables 'melting,' it led to a redesign with the newer and 'safer' 12V-2x6 power connectors. These new connectors can be found on the latest GeForce RTX 40 Series SUPER cards and will be utilized across NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 50 Series, coming early 2025.

According to a new report by the Hungarian outlet Prohardver (via Wccftech), Intel and AMD are currently testing 12V-2x6 power connectors with their partners to see if the new standard will be used in their upcoming GPUs. With Intel prepping next-gen Intel Arc 'Battlemage' and AMD prepping RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX GPUs for the desktop market, a shift in connector would mean that all next-gen GPUs will feature 12V-2x6 power connectors.

Interestingly, the report indicates that even though Intel and AMD are testing the new power connectors, they're still reluctant to change.

Google has signed the world's first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMR) to be developed by Kairos Power.

The company says that the initial phase of work will bring Kairos Power's first SMR online quickly and safely by 2030, followed by additional reactor deployments through 2035. Overall, this deal will enable up to 500MW of new 24/7 carbon-free power to US electricity grids, with Google adding that this will "help more communities benefit from clean and affordable nuclear power".

Google explains why the company is supporting new advanced nuclear energy: "This agreement is part of our efforts to develop and commercialize a broad portfolio of advanced clean electricity technologies to power our global data centers and offices. This approach will complement our use of variable renewables, like solar and wind, and help us reach our ambitious 24/7 carbon-free energy and net-zero goals".

Google has teased some photos of using NVIDIA's new Blackwell GB200 NVL AI server racks for its AI cloud platform, using liquid-cooled GB200 AI GPUs. Check it out, because it's utterly gorgeous:

The official Google Cloud account shared the photo on X, with the US-based search giant showing off its first GB200 NVL-based server, deployed to power its AI cloud platform. Google is now deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL racks for its AI cloud platform, showing off liquid-cooled GB200 high-performance AI GPUs: each of the GB200 chips feature 1 x Grace CPU and 1 x B200 AI GPU for up to 90 TFLOPs of FP64 compute performance.

Google is using custom GB200 NVL racks here, so we don't know what the configuration is exactly -- as the GB200 NVL72 packs 32 x Grace CPUs and 72 x B200 AI GPUs through a 72-GPU NVLink domain.

Qualcomm is awaiting the outcome of the upcoming 2024 US presidential elections, before it sinks its teeth into an acquisition of Intel.

In a new report from BNN Bloomberg, we're learning that Qualcomm continues to discuss its takeover plans of Intel, but the company is waiting for the US 2024 presidential elections between Trump and Harris, before it makes its move. We should expect some big Qualcomm + Intel news in the first week of November, with the elections decided on November 5.

Qualcomm is awaiting a change at the White House to see what antitrust issues it'll be walking into depending on a Trump administration or Harris administration, as an acquisition of Intel is going to be incredibly difficult, no matter what happens with the 2024 US presidential elections.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is a monstrous success for Pullup Entertainment (formerly Focus Home Entertainment).

Space Marine 2 has become a huge hit for developer Saber Interactive and publisher Pullup Entertainment. The game did so well at launch that Tim Willits, who had previously worked at id Software on games on Quake and Doom, said that Space Marine 2 could actually be the fastest-selling game he's ever worked on. The publisher went on to say Space Marine 2 has sold 4.5 million copies.

"Todd Hollenshead (former CEO of id Software) and I believe that Space Marine 2 is the fastest selling game we've ever worked on, including all the Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein, and RAGE games over the years," Willits said when the game launched in September.

Sonos has just unveiled its new Arc Ultra, a new premium soundbar that features the company's revolutionary transducer technology called "Sound Motion" with a price of $999.

The company says that a significant breakthrough in audio engineering is something that Sonos is calling Sound Motion, which drastically reduces the size of the transducer while supercharging the bass, which the company adds opens a "new chapter in sound innovation where bigger, better sound can be delivered from smaller products".

Sonos' new Arc Ultra delivers up to double the bass of its predecessor, with an unprecedented 9.1.4 spatial audio in a sleek, sophisticated design. The company has also unveiled its new Sonos Sub 4, which is the next-generation of our iconic subwoofer with a refreshed design and internals, that Sonos says will "elevate your favorite movies, hit shows and more with rumbling bass".

The latest Dragon Ball fighting game has ignited the industry with a killer kamehameha on the competition.

Interactive entertainment proves once again that nostalgia is one hell of a sales pitch. This time the nostalgia effect has driven up sales of the latest Dragon Ball game to astronomical heights, making this the third quarterly hit for Bandai Namco--Tekken 8 in Q4, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree in Q1, and now Dragon Ball Sparking Zero in Q3.

"Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc. today announced DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO, the first sequel in more than 15 years in the legendary DRAGON BALL Z: BUDOKAI TENKAICHI series, has surpassed a total of 3 million units sold worldwide in 24 hours after its launch," the company said in a press release.

Halo Infinite's unannounced battle royale game has been mentioned by a former Certain Affinity developer.

343 Industries' original vision for Halo Infinite was an interesting one. Both the F2P multiplayer and premium campaign came to fruition, but the team was also working on a new gametype alongside longtime franchise partner Certain Affinity.

The mode was codenamed Tatanka, and would've been Halo's take on the then-popular battle royale craze (for reference, Call of Duty Warzone, a breakout battle royale hit, achieved 85 million players in less than a year and contributed many millions of mTX revenues).

Discord's co-founder says that the app was created to have a better way to talk about Final Fantasy XI with friends.

Square Enix's 2002 MMORPG Final Fantasy XI is one of the main inspirations for Discord, the world's most popular video games chat platform. In a recent interview with Japanese publication Famitsu, Discord co-creator and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevsky said that the first prototype of the app was made specifically to discuss FFXI with both written and voice chatting.

"When I was a student, I was obsessed with FF11 , and I made something like a prototype of Discord as software that could be used while playing the game. From there, I moved to California and joined a company called GREE, where I met co-founder Jason Citron. I thought it would be nice to make the communication tool we created available to even more people, so I started developing Discord in earnest," Vishnevsky said.

The class-action antitrust lawsuit challenging the $70 billion Microsoft-Activision merger has been dismissed.

One of the last lawsuits opposing Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard has been dismissed. The case in question, Dante DeMartini et al v. Microsoft, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:22-cv-08991-JSC, also referred to as the "gamer's lawsuit" by media, alleged that Microsoft's buyout of Activision Blizzard King showed signs of breaking antitrust law. A group of private citizens banded together to sue to challenge the merger, seeking an enjoining ruling that would prevent the two groups from merging.

The case has been dismissed with prejudice by the courts, meaning that the same complaints cannot be refiled. It's believed that Microsoft has settled the lawsuit with the plaintiffs, but exact details remain unclear.

When Windows 11 arrived, it received a rather lukewarm reception - something that continues up until today, in some respects (as evidenced by the OS adoption figures) - and some of that reaction was bound up in the interface.

Granted, most of the grimacing was around mysterious and baffling UI changes (getting rid of 'never combine', taskbar options and so on), but there were folks who didn't take to the new look (and especially the Start menu).

Of course, if you want to tinker and customize Windows 11, you have a raft of options and software to help you, and one intrepid modder has illustrated how radical a change it's possible to make - in reskinning Windows 11 to look like Windows 95.