USB sticks, thumb drives, and tiny portable storage devices that can fit on a keychain and move more quickly from device to device have been staples for what feels like decades. These storage devices have been affordable for quite some time; however, their capacities and relatively slow speeds have made them feel less relevant.

ADATA's new SC750 External SSD is looking to change that because it's a cable-free external SSD roughly the size of a traditional USB thumb drive - with the bonus of read and write speeds of 1,050 and 1,000 MB/s, respectively. As a portable SSD, you've got much larger 500GB and 1TB capacities.

The speed and space offered by ADATA's new SC750 External SSD make it fast and compact enough to connect to an iPhone and record Apple ProRes image files directly to the SSD. It weighs only 11 grams.

Fallout: London, the ambitious and impressive-looking DLC-sized mod from Team FOLON, is finally available and free for all who own Fallout 4 with all of its DLC or the Game of the Year Edition on GOG or Steam. Due to the size of the mod (it weighs in at a hefty 33.8 GB) and is a brand-new game set in the Fallout universe, it's being distributed via GOG. You can check out the official store page for it here.

The size is one reason it's currently PC-only and unavailable for consoles. Another (and why the release was delayed) is that it requires you to downgrade Fallout 4 to the pre-Next-Gen version of the game. However, the development team is open to working with Bethesda and Xbox to make it available as a standalone release on Xbox consoles.

As the name suggests, Fallout: London takes place in a post-apocalyptic London, taking the series from its American-based setting to the wider world for the first time. With this, there are new weapons, factions, stories, London-centric items, art, and futuristic oddities to experience. Instead of the Pip-Boy, there's the Atta-Boy, alongside clothing, items, collectibles, architecture, foliage, and NPCs to suit the London setting.

Monopoly Go! remains one of the best-earning mobile games available today with over $3 billion revenues since release, Hasbro today announced.

Hasbro and Scopely are making tons of cash from Monopoly Go!, the free-to-play sensation that has quickly become one of the quickest-earning new mobile games. In a recent Q2 earnings report, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said that Monopoly Go! has made in excess of $3 billion in total in lifetime revenues, up an incredible $1 billion since last quarter.

In just 14 months, this single mobile game has made nearly half as much money as Electronic Arts' entire business throughout FY24 ($7.1 billion).

The majority of developers at key Bethesda Game Studios have voted to unionize, becoming the first "wall-to-wall" union under Microsoft.

Bethesda's core game development studios have unionized under the Communication Workers of America (CWA), including BGS' headquarters in Rockville, Maryland alongside its satellite studios in Austin and Dallas. The company's Montreal-based studio also seeking unionization at the CWA's Canadian branch.

This marks a historic occasion as Bethesda was the initial group to form a solidified union under Microsoft, with the union encompassing all disciplines at the billion-dollar games group. Combined with the recently-formed union at Blizzard, the CWA now represents over 1,750 Microsoft game workers.

In the vast and immersive world of gaming, the allure of experiencing your favorite games in a real-world setting is an enticing prospect. Gamers are not just confined to their consoles and PCs; many seek out the ultimate gaming experiences in vibrant cities around the globe. These destinations offer unique cultural experiences, state-of-the-art gaming centers, and events that bring virtual adventures to life. If you're looking to level up your gaming journey, here are the top gaming destinations you should consider.

Gaming transcends mere entertainment; it's a form of art, a competitive sport, and a way to connect with people worldwide. The thrill of stepping into different worlds, mastering complex challenges, and competing with others is a universal experience. This passion for gaming is mirrored in various cities that have embraced the gaming culture, offering everything from massive eSports arenas to themed cafes and gaming conventions.

Exploring these cities not only enriches your gaming experience but also allows you to delve into the local gaming culture, meet like-minded enthusiasts, and participate in events that can only be experienced in those locales. Let's take a tour of some of the top gaming hotspots around the world.

Members of SAG-AFTRA's video games branch are advised to strike as negotiations for AI protections hit a wall.

Video game voice and motion-capture actors represented by SAG-AFTRA are called upon to strike, a new announcement has confirmed. The strike comes after 1 1/2 years of negotiations with billion-dollar publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts for guaranteed protections against AI in their contract policies--e.g. how voice and body image captures are used in proprietary AI technologies. The strike will start on July 26 at 12:01am.

"Eighteen months of negotiations have shown us that our employers are not interested in fair, reasonable A.I. protections, but rather flagrant exploitation," Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh said in the press release.

A full year after Microsoft acquired Activision-Blizzard for $70 billion, and months after Microsoft laid off 1,900 workers across all studios, a core group of Blizzard developers has voted to unionize in an effort to push back against the volatile video games market.

After years of breakout revenues and big spending, the global interactive entertainment industry is currently contracting and pulling back into itself. The goal is simple: Publishers want to reduce costs amid the uncertain economic climate that has driven up basic costs of living for their workers. This has led to mass layoffs across the industry, with tens of thousands of jobs and positions being eliminated.

Amid the tumult, some of the biggest games teams are unionizing in a bid to help bring more stability and bargaining power to the creatives of the $180 billion games market. Yesterday, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) announced that Blizzard's World of Warcraft team has unionized, with over 500 developers voting to form the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild - CWA Union (WoWGG-CWA) union.

If you don't use Google as your search engine, then you won't get the full benefit of the experience of Redditors when it comes to search results.

This is due to a new agreement between Google and Reddit, and it means that Bing, and other search rivals, will no longer get to plug into Reddit and flag up useful posts on the platform as answers to search queries - or at least not recent posts. Only older content (like 2+ years old, from what we can tell via Bing) will be surfaced from Reddit when using any search engine save for Google, according to a report from The Verge.

It's an important move, because Reddit is a useful source of tips and advice, plus, shall we say, lively debate (mind you - where on the web isn't, these days, when it comes to the latter).

Netflix is working on dozens of new games, but a good portion of them will be "interactive" experiences like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch and Bear Grylls' You vs Wild.

In a bid to engage its core subscribers, Netflix has expanded into gaming, going so far as to acquire whole game studios and develop first-party titles for its service. Right now the gaming initiative is mostly limited to mobile devices, with Netflix even securing the immensely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise for release onto mobile, but the company has developed what it calls "interactive narrative experiences" that are playable on TVs--these vary from basic trivia games to choose-your-own-adventure scripted content.

Now the company has given a quick update on where its gaming plans currently stand. Netflix is making/securing over 80 games right now, but from the sound of it, the bulk of these titles should be the aforementioned interactive experiences that tie viewers to their favorite Netflix IPs.

For quite some time now, some Windows 11 users have been vocal about the seemingly exponential push into "Suggestions" becoming embedded in different regions of the operating system.

Many of these Windows users, including myself for that matter, consider what Microsoft's is calling "Suggestions" as advertisements, and they are seemingly popping up in various places around the operating system. It was only earlier this month that Microsoft stuck with its decision to roll out a new advertisement for Xbox Game Pass within the Start Menu and Settings.

As for the Start Menu update, Microsoft added advertisement placements for Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass and OneDrive. These updates are being viewed by many as ways for Microsoft to sell its Windows users on its other products. Luckily, in most cases Redmond allows users to turn off these advertisements, but not always.

MAINGEAR has just unveiled its all-new 17-inch ML-17 gaming laptop, packing in the flagship Intel Core i9-14900HX mobile processor, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU.

The US company worked with CLEVO on the new ML-17 gaming laptop, which features a large 17.3-inch 16:9 display with a native 2560 x 1440 resolution and super-smooth 240Hz refresh rate. Inside, you've got an advanced cooling system with dual fans, 4 vents, and 9 heatpipes which will keep the MAINGEAR MG-17 gaming laptop cool even after lengthy gaming marathons, says MAINGEAR.

The ML-17 gaming laptop features a full-sized keyboard with a number pad and customizable per-key full-color RGB illumination, with a large touchpad for precise control, when not using a gaming mouse, that is.

Windows has had a hell of a week as last Friday, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike rolled out an update that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows machines to be thrown into infinite boot loops.

While the fault of the global outage that disrupted airlines, banks, telecommunications systems, supermarkets, and point of sale systems lies at the feet of CrowdStrike and not Microsoft, the Redmond company was lumped into the negative wave of press simply because it was their platform the disruption occurred on. Unfortunately, Microsoft has another negative press story that perhaps wouldn't even be discussed if the CrowdStrike meltdown didn't happen.

Microsoft has confirmed a security update for Windows 11 is sending PCs into recovery. The fault was spotted by BleepingComputer, which states the fault affects versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft confirmed this via an update on its Windows release health dashboard where it explained that users may see a "BitLocker recovery screen upon booting your device".

Last Friday, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike issued an update to its kernel-level software that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows PCs to be thrown into infinite blue screen of death boot loops.

The IT outage was global, impacting multiple facets of society, such as point-of-sale systems, hospital services, emergency services, airlines, and various businesses. Unfortunately, for the systems that downloaded the update, the only way to implement a fix was to boot it into Safe Mode and delete the faulty files. This means an individual must be physically present to boot the system into Safe Mode.

Grant Thornton Australia, the Australian arm of one of the world's leading assurance, tax and advisory firms, was hit by the CrowdStrike outage. No less than 100 servers were knocked out of service by the update, and facing an untold number of maintenance hours ahead of them, the IT staff there began work on bringing the servers back online. However, senior systems engineer Rob Woltz and infrastructure manager Ben Watson remembered the utility of barcode scanners.

Yellowstone National Park sits atop the largest super volcano on the continent, and while it is considered to be a dormant volcano it still causes geological events across the park, such as hydrothermal geysers.

Yellowstone is home to more than half of the world's geysers and contains the tallest active geyser, the Steamboat Geyser, which erupts every 90 minutes. Geyser explosions are commonplace in Yellowstone, but not every day is there a significant explosion caught on video. The large explosion took place in the Biscuit Basin, and reports indicate it was a hydrothermal explosion and (luckily) wasn't a catalyst to awaken the dormant super volcano.

A hydrothermal explosion is a rapid ejection of boiling water, steam, mud, and rock fragments. The event occurs when pockets of fluids rapidly transition to steam, and since vapor particles are much larger than water particles, extreme pressure is placed on the surrounding rocks. Pressure reaching a proverbial "boiling point" and boom. Mud, boiling water, and steam are all launched outwards. The above video shot by visitors at the park shows them running in fear as the explosion is taking place.

Apple has been working on an in-house 5G modem for many years now, but for years it has been using Qualcomm 5G chips inside of its iPhone... but the company is now prepping a couple of new iPhones with Apple's in-house 5G chip inside.

According to analyst and insider Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will debut its in-house 5G chip inside of two new iPhones in 2025: the iPhone SE 4 and a new ultra-slim iPhone 17. The iPhone SE 4 will launch in the spring, while the new ultra-slim iPhone 17 model will debut in the fall, says Kuo.

Apple won't be using its in-house 5G modem across its entire fleet of iPhones, but in these two models specifically. This means that outside of the upcoming iPhone SE 4 and ultra-slim iPhone 17, every other member of the iPhone 2025 family will be using Qualcomm 5G modems inside.

iOS 18 is Apple's biggest overhaul to its operating system in years. It will be the first update to introduce AI-powered features to the Cupertino company's product lineup.

The new operating system update coming to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad contains Apple's version of artificial intelligence, which it's calling Apple Intelligence. Last week, Apple rolled out the public beta for iOS 18, but it doesn't include the suite of Apple Intelligence features, leaving users confused as Apple said it would be included in iOS 18. However, it will likely first go to developer beta and then to a public opt-in beta before being pushed out to the wider public.

So, when will you be able to try Apple's new AI features? I can see Apple limiting access to its AI features all the way up until the launch of the iPhone 16, as the company won't want to prematurely release its biggest selling point for its new generation of devices only to see its customers go out and buy now-discounted previous generations that are still AI compatible.

Microsoft has just announced Bing Generative Search, an overhaul and upgrade of Bing Search that is provides AI-generated results directly on the Bing search page.

At the top of Bing search you'll soon find an AI-generated answer that is created from small and large language models that have reviewed millions of sources to provide what Microsoft hopes is the most accurate (AI-powered) answer.

The AI-powered Bing Generative Search will break the answer down into a document index that provides more information about what you're searching for, if you want to know more. The Bing search page will also provide a list of sources that the AI-generated text was created from, and show traditional search results in the sidebar on the right, if you dont' care about the AI-powered Bing search.

SK hynix has announced its Q2 2024 financial results, with quarter revenues hitting an all-time high, and SK hynix cementing its position as the leader of AI memory providers.

The South Korean memory giant recorded 16.4 trillion won in revenue, 5.46 trillion won in operating profit (with an operating margin of 33%), and 4.12 trillion won in net profit (with a net margin of 25%) in Q2 2024.

SK hynix notes that quarter revenues reached an all-time high, "far exceeding" the previous record of 13.81 trillion won in Q2 2022. SK hynix said that the continuous rise in overall prices of DRAM and NAND products, with unstoppable demand for AI memory, including HBM, led to a 32% increase in revenues compared to the prior quarter.

Elon Musk recently flicked the 'power on' switch to his new Memphis Supercluster, which is the world's fastest AI data center, with 100,000 liquid-cooled NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, but just how much power does this AI data center need? Lots, lots and lots of power.

In a new X post by AI and semiconductor analyst who runs SemiAnalysis, Dylan Patel, ruminated on X that it would be impossible for Elon Musk to run his Memphis Supercluster because he doesn't have enough power. He said that only 7MW is being drawn from the grid, which is enough power to run just 4000 of the H100 AI GPUs.

Patel is aware that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will deliver an additional 50MW to the Memphis Supercluster if xAI signs a pending deal, but that would be by August 1 at the very earliest. Patel also noted that the 150MW substation on the xAI site is still under construction and won't be complete by Q4 2024.

How do you get $5 billion out of Tesla to invest into your AI startup? You poll your followers on X if you're Elon Musk, which is exactly what he did:

The Tesla and SpaceX founder asked his followers "should Tesla invest $5 billion into xAI, assuming the valuation is set by several credible outside investors? (Board approval & shareholders vote are needed, so this is just to test the waters).

He posted a poll which had 958,086 votes with 67.9% of his followers voting "yes" while 32.1% voted "no". I guess we'll see in the coming weeks if Tesla announces a $5 billion investment into xAI, we'll know where it's coming from. The public voting, and Elon using that as leverage to get Tesla to invest $5 billion into xAI is... different, to see.