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SpaceX is currently preparing for the sixth launch of the world's largest and most powerful rocket Starship, with company CEO Elon Musk taking to his personal X account to share a video of the success of the last flight.

It was only yesterday SpaceX announced it had moved the Starship vehicle to the launch pad ahead of the scheduled launch on November 18. Now, SpaceX has announced via its official X account that Super Heavy has also joined its counterpart at the launch pad. The sixth launch of Starship will be very similar to the fifth launch, which was when SpaceX demonstrated the impressive capability of being able to launch and catch a 233-foot-tall or 20-story building-sized rocket mid-air.

The catch was achieved with the "chopstick" arms attached to the Mechazilla launch tower, which closed around Super Heavy as it made a controlled descent back down to the launch pad. Flight 6 will essentially be the same as Flight 5, but with a few small additions. SpaceX's objectives will be once again to return Super Heavy back to the launch site for a catch and reignite a Raptor engine in space, along with testing a bunch of heatshield experiments and maneuvering capabilities.

Elon Musk made a big bet on the battery technology known as 4680 cylindrical cell technology, making as many as 100 million of them. Unfortunately, these Tesla 4680 cells are supposed to have "five times" more energy capacity than what was announced back in September this year.

A report by The Information revealed Musk set a deadline for Tesla employees to complete the stack of batteries before the end of the year. Notably, these batteries are the bread and butter for Tesla as they are used in some of the company's electric vehicles, such as the Cybertruck. However, Robin Zeng, the founder of the world's biggest EV battery company, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), told Reuters that Musk's big bet on 4680 cylindrical cell technology "is going to fail and never be successful."

CATL batteries are used in some Tesla vehicles and are also used in other branded EVs such as Ford and Mustang. However, the company specializes in a different type of battery technology called lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), which can't provide as much as the cylindrical cell units. Zeng also spoke about meeting with Musk and discussing batteries, to which he said he wasn't impressed with the CEO's knowledge on the subject. Zeng did acknowledge that he was impressed with Musk's knowledge on chips, software, hardware, and "mechanical things".

Microsoft has announces its closing the Beta Channel for the world's most popular operating system after making it available just five months ago.

The Redmond company committed to adding new features to Windows 10 last year despite its looming support severance slated for October 2025. With less than two years left of official support for Windows 10, Microsoft added the Insider Beta Channel, which would roll out new features to beta testers who opted into the program. Now, Microsoft has announced via a blog post that it's closing the Insider Beta Channel, indicating what seems to be the beginning of the end of new features for Windows 10.

Microsoft writes that it will still continue to release new builds in the Release Preview Channel, and that all users in the Insider Beta Channel will be moved over to the Release Preview Channel. For those wondering what's in the Beta Channel, admittedly not much, as most of the additions are simply features that direct users to adopt Microsoft services. For example, Microsoft added Windows 11's lock screen widgets, along with the new Copilot app, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 advertisements within Settings and Start.

NASA has been capturing valuable data on our planet for many years now, and according to a recent blog post from Microsoft, the US space agency has gathered more than 100 petabytes of data on various Earth-related scientific domains.

Microsoft has announced that it's partnering with NASA to create a new AI chatbot that will be trained on NASA's mountain of Earth data. The goal of the new AI chatbot is to make it easier to shift through the plethora of data NASA has gathered, making it easier to answer questions about the planet. The new AI chatbot will be called Earth Copilot, and its purpose is to "democratize" access to scientific data, while also developing a keen understanding of the information within NASA's databases.

Tyler Bryson, Microsoft's corporate vice president of health and public sector industries, explained in the announcement that those interested in acquiring Earth-related answers through scientific data have to know how to navigate technical interfaces, understand how to correctly interpret data, and have already acquired other various specialized skills. However, with the implementation of Earth Copilot, users will be able to engage with the chatbot through natural language and then be presented with answers cleanly and concisely. This would considerably speed up the time it takes to gain an insight.

NVIDIA has just published some juicy benchmarks of its new Blackwell AI GPUs in MLPerf v4.1 AI training workloads, where against Hopper the new Blackwell chips are up to 2.2x faster. Check it out:

The new Blackwell AI GPUs have set all 7 per-accelerator records using its Nyx AI supercomputer, which packs DGX B200 systems. The Nyx AI supercomputer is 2.2x faster in Llama 2 70B (Fine-Tuning) versus Hopper H100, 2x faster in GPT-3 175B (Pre-Training) versus Hopper H100, and it also demolished the entire set of workloads inside of the MLPerf Training 4.1 suite.

NVIDIA explains: "The first Blackwell training submission to the MLCommons Consortium - which creates standardized, unbiased and rigorously peer-reviewed testing for industry participants - highlights how the architecture is advancing generative AI training performance. For instance, the architecture includes new kernels that make more efficient use of Tensor Cores. Kernels are optimized, purpose-built math operations like matrix-multiplies that are at the heart of many deep learning algorithms".

Microsoft is finally offering a generic Windows 11 ISO for Arm-based PCs, which includes Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X chips. The downloadable ISO will allow people with Arm-based Windows devices to 'do a fresh install' or set up a Windows 11 Arm PC from scratch.

As with the x86 version, you can download the file to create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 11's Arm64 version. Creating a boot disc is the same process as with other Windows ISOs; all you need to do is 'Mount' the file and run Windows setup. Access to an ISO like this is essential for the future of Windows on Arm devices, as replacing an SSD can require a fresh installation - necessitating an ISO.

The ISO allows users to set up virtual machines on Arm-based PCs and Macs, including the operating system's latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 update.

GMKTec has just launched its new EVO X1 Mini-PC: powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI HX 370 "Strix Point" APU with 12 cores and 24 threads of CPU power and Radeon 890M "RDNA 3.5" GPU with a 70W TDP mode, the highest for any HX 370-based system so far.

The new EVO X1 Mini-PC also features LPDDR5X-7500 memory and has 32GB in its base model, with users also able to upgrade the 2 x PCIe 4.0 SSD M.2 2280 slots, which are placed at the bottom for easy installation. The memory itself (32GB LPDDR5X-7500) is soldered to the motherboard, so there's no upgrading or replacing the RAM.

GMKTec's new EVO X1 Mini-PC is pretty small, measuring just 110 x 107 x 63mm (4.3 x 4.2 x 2.4 inches) with a 0.7-liter chassis, close to the size of the Intel NUC 4x4 form factor.

TSMC's new Arizona fab opening ceremony has reportedly been delayed from December 2024 until January 2025, after President-elect Trump is inaugurated and US (and TSMC, and the world) enters the "Trump 2.0" generation.

In a new report from DigiTimes, we're learning that the "supply chain revealed" that TSMC has informed invited guests to its Arizona fab completion ceremony -- something both President Biden and President-elect Trump are expected to attend -- and "may be postponed until after Trump takes office in January or then, depending on the atmosphere".

TSMC is the key player in the technology industry, making chips for the largest tech companies on the planet -- most of them from the USA -- including NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, and more. TSMC is aware of the geopolitical risks, and that the changing of the administration in the US will change across the next 4 years. DigiTimes reports that the "script had to be rewritten again, and it (TSMC) was once again on alert and combat readiness".

For veteran PC gamers, the word 'Unreal' means a lot more than that engine every modern game developer seems to be using. Unreal (1998) and the multiplayer-focused Unreal Tournament (1999) are iconic first-person shooters that helped establish the genre as the gaming world transitioned to full-3D environments, characters, and animation.

And now, both games are freely accessible and available to download via the Internet Archive, with Epic Games' blessing. In a statement provided to PC Game, the company wrote, "We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on Archive.org, and people are free to independently link to and play these versions."

In 1999 and 2000, the biggest PC shooters were undoubtedly Quake and Unreal, with Unreal Tournament in particular helping usher in the age of readily accessible, fast-paced online multiplayer shooters. Both titles were visual showcases for in-game visuals, running on the first version of the 'Unreal Engine.'

SpaceX is currently preparing for the 6th launch of the world's most powerful and largest rocket, Starship, where the company will once again attempt to catch the monstrous rocket on the launch pad.

SpaceX has taken to its official X account to share images of the "Ship" section of the rocket being rolled out to the launch pad in preparation for the coming launch. The images reveal an engineering joke next to the "S31" moniker, an indicator of the ship version. The engineering joke is a banana holding a smaller banana for scale, which is likely a reference to engineers using a banana for scale when building something extremely large, such as Starship.

Let's use that banana for scale. Starship fully stacked measures an astonishing 400 feet tall, and the average banana measures anywhere between 6 and 9 inches in height. Starship's 400-foot height in inches is 4,800 inches, and if you divide that by the average length of a banana, let's use 7 inches, it would mean Starship is 685 bananas tall.

The satirical news outlet The Onion has officially announced it's purchased the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, now formerly run by Alex Jones.

Jones confirmed the news via a video posted to X where he said his lawyers informed him that he's being shut down "even without a court order," and "the Connecticut democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us". The Onion made its own announcement, with the satirical news outlet sharing a press release stating it acquired InfoWars' assets with the support of the families in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, who filed lawsuits against Alex Jones for spreading misinformation about the tragic event that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The lawsuits resulted in Jones being ordered to pay more than a $1 billion in damages, causing the media mogul to declare bankruptcy. The Onion acquired InfoWars at a bankruptcy auction, and wrote in its press release that its goal with the acquisition is to "end InfoWars' relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion's relentless barrage of humor for good".

Some fans and critics have criticized Microsoft's Xbox brand in recent years due to its unclear and somewhat confusing approach to first-party game releases. Ultimately, this boils down to a policy that has shifted from a policy where certain games will remain exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem on console and PC to one where everything is up in the air to the point where the next Halo game could be getting a day-one PlayStation release.

And with Xbox Game Pass on console becoming more expensive with the arrival of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (which is only available on the Ultimate subscription tier), Xbox Series X|S owners are increasingly feeling like an afterthought when it comes to the Xbox brand.

For die-hard Xbox fans, Microsoft's latest 'This is an Xbox' campaign will probably only confuse things even further. According to the slogan, everything from a TV to a smartphone to an Oculus Quest VR headset is "an Xbox."

Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer has had some potshots at Sony and its new PlayStation 5 Pro console, saying that "we're not going to grow the console with $1000 consoles".

In a new interview with Bloomberg, Spencer talked about acquisitions in world after the historic Activision-Blizzard deal, and that Microsoft is still looking at acquisitions and how to compete and partner in markets for handheld gaming devices and mobile stores.

Deals that would add "geography diversity" to Microsoft, including Asia, could be worthwhile Spencer told Bloomberg. He added: "We definitely want to be in the market, and when we can find teams and technology and capability that add to what we're trying to do in gaming at Microsoft, absolutely we will keep our heads up".

AMD launched its new Ryzen AI 300 Series processors for thin and light laptops earlier this year. These processors boast powerful Copilot+ AI performance and the latest in Radeon 800M Series graphics based on the company's RDNA 3.5 architecture.

Thanks to AMD's recent APU line-up, integrated graphics have come a long way in a very short time. It's now possible to game at 1080p on a laptop without needing a discrete GPU. It's also led to the rise of gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck from Valve and the ROG Ally from ASUS.

In a new post about the PC gaming performance of the Ryzen AI 300 Series, the company states that, on average, its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor is 75% faster than the new Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chip with the latest integrated Arc Graphics. However, the results aren't quite what they seem.

Samsung has reportedly started HBM4 development with the company rumored to offer customized HBM4 memory solutions to tech giants Meta and Microsoft.

The company has started developing "custom HBM4" memory that will be "customized" for Microsoft and Meta according to Korean outlet MK. According to a semiconductor company official, Microsoft "has its own artificial intelligence (AI) chips called Maia 100 and Meta Artemis". Samsung Electronics is the best partner for these big tech companies because it has a memory division and an LSI division that can design computational chips directly".

Most of the big tech companies have their own AI data centers and AI supercomputers, so there is a huge need for the reduction of chips purchased (which saves lots of money). This is why these companies design and use AI accelerator chips separately, while buying AI chips made by the likes of NVIDIA and AMD.

The Razer USB 4 Dock takes full advantage of the new standard's 40Gb/second transfer speeds, with up to 100W of power delivery over the dock's USB-C upstream port. But there's much more to the Razer USB 4 Dock than speed and power, as Razer's '14-Port Design' includes all the device connectivity, video, storage, and data capabilities you'll ever need. There's even a Gigabit Ethernet port.

On the display front, you've got dual-monitor support with up to 4K 120 Hz on your primary display over HDMI 2.1 or up to 4K 240 Hz over DisplayPort 1.4. For those with laptops and a display powering multiple devices, the Razer USB 4 Dock is an excellent option, as it comes with a 180W adapter to power all connected devices while charging a laptop simultaneously.

Compatible with Windows and Mac systems, the Razer USB 4 Dock is a sleek, minimal aluminum alloy device available in Black or Mercury. It feels like one of the company's most productivity-focused releases in a long time.

Solidigm has just unveiled the world's highest capacity PCIe SSD with an untouchable 122TB of storage capacity, with the new data center SSD targeting AI-focused workloads. Check it out:

The new Solidigm D5-P5336 data center SSD doubles the space of Solidigm's earlier 61.44TB version of the drive, and is the world's first SSD with unlimited Random Writes endurance for 5 years, which makes it the perfect SSD solution for AI and data-intensive workloads.

Greg Matson, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Marketing at Solidigm, explains: "Data center architects are scrambling to solve their power and space efficiency needs, and they can help address these issues with Solidigm's 122TB D5-P5336 that is designed to make every watt and square inch count. This massive capacity SSD is a game-changer - using far fewer watts per terabyte and freeing up valuable energy for other data center and edge power priorities".

Orbifold Studios has unleashed a new trailer for Half-Life 2 RTX to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, check it out:

In the video, we hear from Project Lead Wormslayer, who said that "Half-Life 2 is my favorite game. It's something I've been playing for over 20 years now. It was unlike any other game I've played before". Personally, I echo those comments... Valve's release of Half-Life 2 was incredible at the time, being one of the best games ever released, and still holds that title even to this day.

In full, Project Lead Wormslayer said: "Half-Life 2 is my favorite game. It's something I've been playing for over 20 years now. It was unlike any other game I'd played before. the whole game is packed with memorable experiences: stepping off the train for the first time and walking up that platform and seeing Dr Breen appear on the giant screen above you. The gameplay and the storytelling still stand up incredibly well, but we just wanted to recapture that sense of awe that we all had 20 years ago playing it for the first time. RTX remix is the core of our remastering process. The original engine has very hard limits".

NVIDIA is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Valve's game-changing Half-Life 2, with an exclusive custom-wrapped GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card with the Half-Life 2 logo and Gordon Freeman... you can win it, too! Check it out:

NVIDIA explained in its post on X: "Welcome! Welcome to City 17! To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, we're giving away an exclusive custom wrapped GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPU, highlighting the iconic Gordon Freeman. Want it? Comment #HalfLife2RTX + like this post to enter!"

The giveaway is awesome, but I don't know if I'd ever want to install that into a PC... it would be an amazing collector's item to sit on a shelf (in glass, of course). But, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card packs 10240 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6X memory, which will be able to easily handle Half-Life 2 RTX when it drops with its huge upgrade in graphics and lighting.

Artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and other big players such as Elon Musk's X-based AI Grok are all in a race to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI). But what if no one makes it to the finish line because it's not economically viable?

This suggestion has been made by several experts and is a theory held by Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and AI skeptic. Marcus says the current AI market is a bubble and that people haven't yet realized the valuations of companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft are predicated on the bet that the underlying technology powering AI systems, Large Language Models (LLMs), will grow in power with scale. However, that might not be the case.

The Information reported last week that OpenAI researchers discovered the company's latest AI model, codenamed Orion, was a noticeably less improvement in performance compared to the leaps made from GPT-3 to GPT-4. IIya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief science officer of OpenAI, previously told Reuters that improvements from scaling AI models bigger have plateaued, which harms the general theory that the bigger the AI model the more powerful.