The US State of Texas sued Facebook parent company Meta in 2022, allegedly the Mark Zuckerberg-run company "unlawfully" used facial recognition technology on Texans without any prior consent, which is a violation of the state's 2009 Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act.

Meta has agreed to a settlement with the state of Texas by agreeing to pay out $1.4 billion over five years, but never admitted any wrongdoing. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton includes a subtle warning to all other tech firms that any violation of Texas' laws surrounding abusing sensitive data of Texans will be "met with the full force of the law."

The settlement is actually a new record in terms of the maximum amount of action brought by a single state, according to Paxton. Notably, the lawsuit included Facebook's 2011 photo tagging feature that used facial recognition software to identify the people in images. Once identified, the feature suggested a user tag that individual in the image, which embedded a link to that person's profile.

Logitech is no stranger to the peripheral market, making some of the highest-quality peripherals for gamers and creatives alike.

But have you ever considered paying a monthly subscription for one of your peripherals? Logitech has, and the company's CEO Hanneke Faber recently revealed in an interview with The Verge they were shown a "forever mouse" at Logitech's "innovation center" in Ireland. This "forever mouse" was directly compared to the longevity of a watch in the way that people, more often than not, choose not to throw away their old watch. Logitech is aiming to create a product that captures that some longevity.

Faber was asked follow-up questions about this mysterious "forever mouse," such as "What made the mouse a forever mouse?" Faber described it as a "little heavier," having "great software and services you'd constantly update," and "it was beautiful." Faber added, "I don't think we're necessarily super far away from that."

Micron has just announced it is shipping ninth-generation (G9) TLC NAND in SSDs, which marks an industry first with this milestone.

The new Micron G9 NAND features the industry's highest transfer speed of 3.6GB/sec, which the company says delivers "unsurpassed bandwidth for reading and writing data". The new G9 NAND enables best-in-class performance for AI and other data-intensive workloads, from personal devices and edge servers to enterprise and cloud data centers.

Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of Technology and Products at Micron, explains: "The shipment of Micron G9 NAND is a testament to Micron's prowess in process technology and design innovations. Micron G9 NAND is up to 73% denser than competitive technologies in the market today, allowing for more compact and efficient storage solutions that benefit both consumers and businesses".

AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs are now out in the wild inside of a new wave of Copilot+ AI systems, and now we've got our first (and most beautiful) die shot of Strix Point. Check it out:

The Zen 5-based Strix Point APU die is larger than the previous-gen Zen 4-based Phoenix APU, measuring 12.06 mm x 18.71 mm (L x W), compared to Phoenix's 9.06 mm x 15.01 mm. This is because AMD has a bigger CPU (Zen 5), a bigger integrated GPU (RDNA 3.5), and a bigger NPU (XDNA 2).

AMD also uses the improved TSMC N4P process node for the Strix Point APU at TSMC after using the N4 process node on its Phoenix and Hawk Point APUs. Nemez (GPUsAreMagic) annotated the die shot in fantastic detail, as seen in the image above.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has confirmed that engineering samples of its next-gen Blackwell AI GPUs will be sent out "all over the world".

The news comes from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang himself during a chat at SIGGRAPH 2024 this week, with Jensen saying: "This week, we are sending out engineering samples of Blackwell all over the world".

SIGGRAPH is more tailored towards the "software side of things" so NVIDIA didn't go into the nitty-gritty of its AI hardware, but it did tease that the engineering samples of Blackwell will be headed out this week. That's a very good sign, as it shows that Blackwell AI GPUs are very, very close to being in customers' hands.

Windows 11 has a neat little feature hidden away that has just been discovered, and it's all about making it far easier to accomplish a semi-regular chore - namely dealing with a misbehaving app.

Tom's Hardware spotted that a new option is in Windows 11 - though it may have been introduced some time back - to force-close an unresponsive app just by right-clicking it in the taskbar.

Before now, having to deal with a frozen app involved heading to the Task Manager, hunting through the list of running processes, finding the offender, and then force-closing it here via the 'end task' option.

Microsoft has provided another update on the fallout of the CrowdStrike outage that knocked out an initially estimated 8.5 million Windows machines around the globe.

The outage affected numerous facets of infrastructure globally, as affected machines were mostly used by big businesses such as airlines, telecommunications companies, banks, stock exchanges, and more. The first revenue loss estimates of the outage approximated a $5.4 billion loss for affected companies in the Fortune 500.

Microsoft initially stated in a blog post that CrowdStrike's outage was caused by a faulty driver update for the company's cybersecurity Falcon Sensor software that triggered kernel errors, and that it estimated 8.5 million Windows machines were affected.

SK hynix has announced that its new fifth-generation HBM3E memory is expected to make up for over half its HBM shipments in 2024.

During the company's Q2 2024 earnings call on July 25, SK hynix vice president and chief financial officer Kim Woo-hyun said: "We significantly expanded HBM3E shipments in the second quarter as demand was in full swing. In the third quarter, HBM3E shipments will significantly exceed HBM3 shipments, and HBM3E to account for more than half of our total HBM shipments in 2024, we expect".

He continued: "We have already provided HBM3E 12-layer product samples to major customers and will start volume production in the third quarter as planned. With a full product portfolio from HBM2E to HBM3E 12-speed, SK hynix plans to continue its competitive advantage in the HBM market".

CrowdStrike rolled out an update earlier this month that caused an estimated 8.5 million Windows machines to crash worldwide. The outage affected many forms of infrastructure, particularly airlines that were unable to access systems that were caught in infinite blue screen of death boot loops.

The severity of the outage in terms of loss of revenue has yet to be measured exactly, but last week, it was estimated by Parametrix, a cloud monitoring and insurance company, the CrowdStrike outage loss of revenue globally is approximately $15 billion. Out of that $15 billion, Parametrix estimated airlines lost $860 million, which they will likely want returned to them if it were legally possible. Furthermore, the insurance company estimated $5.4 billion was lost from Fortune 500 companies, not including Microsoft.

Delta is the first to seek damages for the event as reports indicate the company has hired prominent attorney David Boies, the chairman of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, who rose to fame for his role in the landmark case the US government won against Microsoft, his participating in overturning California's ban on gay marriage, and his work with Harvey Weinstein, the now imprisoned Hollywood producer.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has said that the next wave of AI is "physical AI" which will require three computer systems to make happen: AI, robotics, and Omniverse.

At the recent SIGGRAPH 2024 event, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed the next wave of AI, something he calls "physical AI" and that it currently has a three-computer problem, or a three-body problem (shout out to the Netflix series "3 Body Problem" which is fantastic).

Jensen said: "Generative AI, the first wave of, it, of course, is all the pioneers. And we know many of the pioneers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, a whole bunch of amazing doing this. X is doing this. xAI is doing this. Amazing companies doing this. The next wave of AI, we did talk about, which is enterprise".

This is a sign of the end times or the latest example of AI moving at a pace that is almost impossible for people to predict. With the recent launch of Meta's open-source and powerful Llama 3.1 AI model, the company hasn't skipped a beat and is currently rolling out its new AI Studio tool in the US.

What is AI Studio? Well, it's described as "a place for people to create, share, and discover AIs to chat with," with no tech skills required. Integrated into Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, these AIs are custom chatbots with a twist. They're your online friends, community, specialists, or even digital twins that can be trained to become you - respond to messages, post content, and even "generate memes."

"You can use a wide variety of prompt templates or start from scratch to make an AI that teaches you how to cook, helps you with your Instagram captions, or generates memes to make your friends laugh - the possibilities are endless," Meta writes in the announcement post.

SK hynix has announced its SSD export volume from its M15 production line located in Cheongju, Chungbuk, where SK hynix makes its NAND flash and SSDs, has increased 84% in 1H 2024 compared to 1H 2023.

The South Korean semiconductor manufacturing giant exported around $501 million in SSDs in the first half of 2024, compared to $272 million in the first half of 2023, driven largely by AI demand and data centers' need for more and faster SSDs.

Kim Woo-hyun, SK Hynix's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) said: "We are currently expanding sales of high-capacity enterprise SSDs in response to increasing demand, and to this end, we are increasing the utilization rate of some NAND plants".

"Everybody will have an AI assistant," NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said at SIGGRAPH 2024. "Every single company, every single job within the company, will have AI assistance." This is a bold statement, to be sure, but not a surprising one considering the state of the industry.

SIGGRAPH is a professional graphics conference, and yes, this year, AI was not only on the menu but also included in every dish. From new microservices for 3D modeling to physics, materials, and robotics, generative AI is driving innovation. At SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA also announced that the world's largest advertising company was using generative AI as part of the Omniverse to create content for Coca-Cola - arguably the gold standard for brand advertising.

So, where does the AI assistant fit in? At this year's show, NVIDIA discussed the concept of digital agents, which are digital AIs trained on specific data. For example, an AI modeled after everything you've ever written, said, or done at work (that is measurable) could then become a personal AI assistant.

Game graphics have evolved at a breakneck pace over the past few decades. We're now at the point where certain materials - metal, glass, ceramic, or cloth - are rendered with accurate and believable detail. In this way, you know the object you're supposed to be looking at because there's depth and detail.

However, creating the look and feel of a real-world material is time-consuming and requires a lot of computational power - driven by the GPU. If you've watched a recent game "compile shaders," after firing it up for the first time, this is why. The alternative would be watching a game stuffer or freeze every time a new material or object enters a detailed 3D world.

At SIGGRAPH 2024, NVIDIA presented new technology called Real-Time Neural Appearance Models, a "complete real-time neural materials system" that aims to add film-like quality to real-time visuals while dramatically improving shading performance versus traditional rendering. Translation: In-game objects will look better than ever.

Apple has said it has been using Google TPU chips to train its AI software infrastructure, which will power its upcoming suite of Apple Intelligence, AI tools, and features.

In a new research paper from Apple, the company detailed the hardware and software infrastructure of its AI tools and features without any mention of NVIDIA hardware whatsoever. Apple said in its research paper that to train its new AI models, it used two different TPUs from Google that are organized in large clusters of chips.

Apple used 2048 x TPUv5p chips from Google for the AI model that will work on the iPhone and other devices, while the company used 8192 x TPUv4 chips for its server AI model. NVIDIA doesn't design TPUs but instead makes GPUs for gaming, workstations, AI GPUs, and more.

The power required to run complex, massive clusters of high-performance AI GPUs continues to skyrocket with the power of the AI chips themselves, but new research has a reduction in energy consumption required by AI processing by at least 1000x.

In a new peer-reviewed paper, a group of engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have showed an AI efficiency-boosting technology, which is in lamens terms a shortcut in the regular practice of AI computations that massively reduces energy consumption for those workloads.

AI computing sees data transferred between components processing it (logic) and where data is stored (memory and storage). The moving around of this data back and forth is the main factor in power consumption being 200x higher than the energy used in the computation, according to this research.

AMD Fluid Motion Frames of AFMF is the company's driver-based frame generation solution, which means that with a compatible Radeon GPU and the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, you can enable the technology in thousands of games via this one-click solution.

As a driver-based solution, AFMF differs from AMD's FSR 3 and NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation, which require per-game implementation. AFMF debuted not that long ago, and the consensus is that its impressive tech has the potential to become a game changer for boosting performance in a wide range of machines, including mobile devices like the Steam Deck.

In a surprise announcement, AMD has launched AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 into 'Technical Preview,' promising lower latency and higher performance. Thanks to new AI-optimized enhancements, AMD calls it a "significant upgrade" from the initial release.

According to reports, one of the most popular GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, the GeForce RTX 4070, could be in short supply as of August 2024 due to issues regarding the supply of GDDR6X memory.

According to the Board Channels forum (via @harukaze5719 on X), an unforeseen issue with a new batch of GDDR6X memory modules will directly impact the GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU supply. GDDR6X memory can be found in the GeForce RTX 4070 and above, so the shortage will also apply to the newer RTX 4070 SUPER, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, the RTX 4080 SUPER, and the flagship GeForce RTX 4090.

According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software survey, the GeForce RTX 4070 is one of the most popular new GPUs among PC gamers. It hits a 1440p sweet spot, making it an attractive option. If supplies become constrained, it will be interesting to see if gamers opt for the AMD alternative or wait to purchase a new GPU.

AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs have a new integrated RDNA 3.5 GPU, which has arrived in the form of the Radeon 890M and 880M integrated GPUs.

The new RDNA 3.5-powered Radeon 890M and 880M have been tested, which show us we can expect up to 41% more performance over previous-gen RDNA 3 integrated GPUs. AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs have new Zen 5 CPU cores, new RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, and a new XDNA 2 NPU for AI workloads.

AMD's new RDNA 3.5 GPU acts as a refresh and optimization of RDNA 3, with the RDNA 3.5 GPU powering the Radeon 890M integrated GPU inside of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and the Radeon 880M inside of the Ryzen AI 9 365.

AMD's new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9 9950X processor is nearly here, with Bilibili tech influencer "Ordinary Uncle Tony" using LN2 cooling and overclocking the 9950X to 6.5GHz, breaking the Cinebench R23 world record.

The new Ryzen 9 9950X processor was pushed to 6.5GHz using LN2 cooling, with Ordinary Uncle Tony hitting a multi-core score in Cinebench R23 of 55,327 points during a live event held in China called China Joy. As it stands, the current world record Cinebench R23 (16-core) score on HWBot's official charts is 50,843 by the Ryzen 9 7950X overclocked by Safedisk.

Tony ran his Ryzen 9 9950X processor at stock, scoring 42,689 points at its stock 5.0GHz. When aiming for his 6.0GHz target, Tony reached a score of 51,204 points which beat out the current 16-core Cinebench R23 world record by Safedisk and the 7950X.