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Tech companies have pushed for many years for smart glasses to become everyday items at the same level as smartphones, but unfortunately, the technology just doesn't seem there yet, or at least not at the level where everyone is walking around with a version of Tony Stark's sunglasses.

Despite the pushback from the public at the mass adoption of devices such as Google Glass or, even more recently, Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, this hasn't stopped tech companies from investing millions of dollars into various forms of smart glasses research and development. Now, a new partnership has been unveiled between three heavy hitters in the space, Qualcomm, Google, and Samsung - all of which have their own expertise in various forms of hardware and software.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon spoke to CNBC and revealed the company has partnered with Google and Samsung to create a brand new product that will explore mixed reality in a set of glasses, and these glasses will be linked to a smartphone. For those who don't know, mixed reality involves the device imposing digital images on top of the real world, versus virtual reality, which completely immerses a user in a virtual world.

A branch of Planned Parenthood has confirmed a ransomware group has gained access to it systems and stolen millions of people's sensitive data.

The CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of Montana, Martha Fuller, said in a recent statement to Recorded Future News the attack was internally discovered on August 28. Following the discovery the IT team at Planned Parenthood Montana responded by taking portions of their network offline, presumably as part of the investigation into the attack and to prevent any further known/unknown exploits in its system.

Fuller added that the organization is aware of the ransomware group known as RansomHub, which, upon a quick Google search, you will discover, is quite prolific in the space despite it only first appearing earlier this year. Reports indicate the hackers made off with 93GB of data, but when a spokesperson from Planned Parenthood was asked what the contents of that data were, they declined to comment.

The TT Show's 50th episode is here, and to celebrate the milestone (more like the timing lined up perfectly), we sit down with NVIDIA's Jacob Freeman, GeForce Evangelist, to talk about all things PC gaming. From DLSS to RTX Remix to Half-Life 2's impressive remake to the success of Black Myth: Wukong, and more.

It's a lengthy and great discussion worth tuning into. Jacob offers insights into how NVIDIA engages with game developers and sees AI evolving and changing how we all play. Ahead of that, though, it's your usual TT Show programming as Jak and Kosta go through all of the big stories that have cropped up in the PC, gaming, and tech space over the past week.

This week on the TT Show, the duo talks about the PlayStation 5 Pro's imminent reveal, thanks to Sony finally teasing the upgraded console and what to expect regarding games and performance.

Acer announced on September 4 that it will be expanding its line of Predator gaming monitors with two new 27-inch displays that will come with NVIDIA G-SYNC Pulsar technology.

NVIDIA announced Pulsar at the start of the year, and the new technology is an evolution of the company's G-SYNC technology, a piece of hardware dedicated to improving latency, motion clarity, and reducing motion blur to produce an overall crisper image. Pulsar is an evolution of that and with NVIDIA's partnership with MediaTek, the new technology is coming to MediaTek scales, removing the need for additional hardware.

Moreover, MediaTek is one of the market leaders in monitor scales, meaning the suite of impressive NVIDIA-created technology will be coming to more gaming monitors than ever before. So, what is Pulsar? The new technology is an upgrade to Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and dramatically improves the clarity of fast-moving images, which will benefit gamers who play competitive titles that benefit from high refresh rates.

After seeing Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project in person, it's quickly become one of my most anticipated games currently in development. Developed by Orbifold Studios, a global team of modders, coders, and artists, Half-Life 2 RTX looks and feels like a built-from-the-ground-up remake, even though it's a mod.

Like Capcom's recent Resident Evil 4 Remake or the brilliant Dead Space remake from EA and Motive Studios, it's new and familiar all at the same time. With new textures, new highly detailed models for objects and characters in the world, shiny new weapons, and full path-raced lighting, Half-Life 2 RTX breathes new life into one of the greatest games ever.

There's no denying that Valve's Half-Life 2 is one of the most celebrated and beloved first-person shooters. Initially released in 2004, Half-Life 2 RTX presents a modern 2024 spin on the all-time classic with incredible visual fidelity.

Samsung has announced it is partnering with TSMC on co-developing bufferless HBM4 memory chips for future AI chips at the SEMICON Taiwan 2024 forum on Thursday.

Samsung is the world's largest memory chipmaker, partnering with TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, with the South Korean and Taiwan semiconductor giants working together on bufferless HBM4 memory in order to strengthen their positions in the constantly-evoling AI chip market.

Dan Kochpatcharin, the head of Ecosystem and Alliance Management at TSMC, said during SEMICON Taiwan 2024 that the two companies were developing a bufferless HBM4 chip. Samsung makes its own HBM4, with TSMC forming a "triangular alliance" with SK hynix and NVIDIA on future HBM and AI designs. SK hynix is second to Samsung (and also native to South Korea) but this new development between Samsung + TSMC is very interesting.

Chinese cloud service providers have "renting services" where they rent out their hardware stack, with prices that are radically cheaper than those available in the United States... as low as $6 per hour.

The Financial Times reports that Chinese CSPs (cloud service providers) are renting out their AI GPU hardware, with small Chinese CSPs providing companies with an AI server that packs 8 x NVIDIA A100 AI GPUs that costs around $6 per hour to rent them out. If you're in the US, that would cost you around 50% more at $10 per hour.

US sanctions to the side, NVIDIA's newer H100 and older A100 AI GPUs are easily available in China, which is why the rental costs are so much lower than other regions. It's estimated that over 100,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs are in China right now, and they're openly being sold on Chinese marketplaces, smuggled all across the country according to one Chinese startup founder.

SCHENKER has just unveiled its monster new desktop replacement laptop, which features the flagship Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, and not one but two Thunderbolt 5 ports offering 80Gbps of bandwidth.

The new SCHENKER KEY 17 Pro features a 17.3-inch display, Intel Core i9-14900HX processor (24 cores, 24 threads), up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM (dual SO-DIMM) and 3 x M.2 SSD slots (1 x Gen5 and 2 x Gen4). The 17.3-inch display can come in two options: 1440p @ 240Hz or 4K @ 144Hz with both supporting NVIDIA G-SYNC, Advanced Optimus, and a manual MUX switch.

The workstation laptop packs the Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, and the choice between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 or RTX 4080 with 175W of graphics power (150W TGP + 25W Dynamic Boost). You've got the dual Thunderbolt 5 connections, but joined by HDMI 2.1 and mini DisplayPort 1.4a, which are all connected to the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 or RTX 4080 GPU.

Jon Peddie Research has just published its quarterly GPU shipment report, noting that 70 million GPUs were shipped in Q2 2024, and that PC CPU shipments increased by a "surprising" 11% year-over-year.

JPR notes that overall, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 4.2% through 2024 to 2026, and reach an installed base of close to 3.3 billion units by the end of 2026. Over the next 5 years, JPR predicts the penetration of discrete graphics cards inside of PCs will stand at 23%. The year-to-year total GPU shipments -- which include all platforms, and all types of GPUs -- increased by 16% reports JPR, with desktop GPUs increasing by 21% and notebooks by 13%.

Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, said: "The jump in shipments in Q2 was a welcomed surprise. The market has been bouncing around for a couple of years now, trying to find a rhythmic buoyancy. With all the turmoil of trade wars, pandemics, political elections, and interest rates, it's doubtful we'll see a so-called normalcy for some time".

Micron has just announced its shipping production-capable HBM3E 12-Hi memory in up to 36GB capacities, pushing 1.2TB/sec of memory bandwidth ready for AI GPUs.

The new Micron HBM3E 12-Hi features an impressive 36GB capacity, which is a 50% increase over current HBM3E 8-Hi stacks, allowing far larger AI models like Llama 2 with 70 billion parameters to run on a single AI processor. This increased capacity to 36GB allows faster time to insight by avoiding CPU offload and GPU-GPU communication delays.,

Micron's new HBM3E 12-Hi 36GB delivers "significantly" lower power consumption than competitors' HBM3E 8-Hi 24GB memory, with Micron's new HBM3E 12-Hi memory pushing over 1.2TB/sec of memory bandwidth at a pin speed of over 9.2Gbps. These combined benefits of Micron's new HBM3E memory modules over maximum throughput with the lowest power consumption, ensuring optimal outcomes for power-hungry data centers of the future.

Qualcomm has reportedly explored the possibility of acquiring portions of Intel's chip design business, in order to boost its own product portfolio, according to "two sources familiar with the matter" reports Reuters.

The mobile-focused company has looked into buying bits and pieces of Intel's businesses, just when Intel is struggling in multiple ways and needs to generate cash, and sell off its businesses. It's like playing Monopoly, the game, but with absolutely massive technology companies.

The client PC business for Intel is of "significant interest" to Qualcomm executives according to one of Reuters' sources, but they are "looking at all of the company's design units". There are some pieces of Intel that Qualcomm isn't interested in, Intel's server segment making less sense for Qualcomm to acquire, another source with knowledge of Qualcomm's operations told Reuters.

TIME has released its list of what it says are the top 100 most influential people in AI, a list that anyone that knows anything about AI would expect to see SpaceX, Tesla and xAI boss Elon Musk on the list... but nope. TIME doesn't think he's influential enough, but actress Scarlett Johansson is.

In the cover, you can see NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, and even YouTuber "MKBHD" who, as much as I somewhat enjoy some of his videos, is not top 100 most influential in AI material, sorry Marques. Elon Musk, however, has the largest AI GPU cluster in the world, millions of Tesla vehicles on the road capturing video and information and feeding it into an AI, X is feeding billions of bytes of data per day into AI, and he has self-landing rockets with SpaceX.

I mean, TIME isn't just out of touch -- this is showing their bias. Rewinding the clock back to 2016-2020, when anything Trump did saw people who didn't like Trump referred to as "TDS" or Trump Derangement Syndrome. This is some serious EDS, or Elon Derangement Syndrome. Just because they don't like his politics -- he's voting Trump, and is fully 100% behind President Trump -- so they omit him from a list where he should've been #1. Right.

After Concord's highly publicized failure, and that's the last time we'll reference it in this article, one 'hero shooter' multiplayer game is on track to be a massive hit. And that's Valve's third-person multiplayer shooter Deadlock, which blends DOTA 2-style MOBA mechanics with Overwatch and Team Fortress action.

Deadlock has been in development for some time, with Valve not so much announcing it as a thing as simply making its store page live for the thousands (or millions) of players gaining access to the current closed alpha test. Gaining access to play Deadlock on Steam is a case of friends sharing codes or copies with the knowledge of playing a brand-new Valve shooter and positive word of mouth driving the overall interest.

According to SteamDB, the game has already reached an impressive peak concurrent player count of 171,490, putting it on the list of most popular PC games on Steam. A number that makes it an actual hit, even though it's still in early development.

One of the biggest stories in gaming recently has been the unprecedented failure of Sony's first-party multiplayer game Concord for PlayStation 5 and PC. An Overwatch-style hero shooter that not only failed to find an audience but was taken offline within two weeks of its release, with Sony offering full refunds to all players. After a reported eight years of development and a budget north of $100 million, it's arguably the biggest flop in videogame history.

It's a very different story regarding Sony's next first-party PlayStation 5 release, Astro Bot, which is out this week. From developer Team ASOBI, the Super Mario Odyssey-style platformer has received rave reviews from critics - it currently has a Metacritic score of 94. Be sure to watch the trailer above; it looks great.

That's huge, and it puts this cute platformer in contention for Game of the Year - with over 110 reviews collated so far. There is also genuine excitement for Astro Bot's release among the PlayStation community, something that was utterly absent before Concord's release.

The ONEXGPU 2 with Radeon RX 7800M graphics is an external GPU with AMD's latest discrete mobile graphics card that slots in underneath the Radeon RX 7900M. One-Netbook, a creator of mini-PCs and gaming handhelds, has posted benchmark results for the new GPU inside the ONEXGPU 2 paired with an AMD Ryzen 8840U system.

The benchmark run (shown in the video above) is the tried-and-true synthetic Time Spy test, part of the 3D Mark suite. The Radeon RX 7800M's result is an impressive score of 15,806, which is only 1,200 points lower than the Radeon RX 7900M. This makes it slightly faster or on par with the desktop Radeon RX 7700 XT, a GPU comparable to what's inside the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro.

According to Tom's Hardware, this score is notably higher than what is achievable with the GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, sitting between that and the higher-end GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU. However, there is one caveat.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming platform continues to grow, with 19 games arriving in September 2024. This week's biggest PC releases are all accounted for: the return of the classic real-time strategy that is Age of Mythology: Retold, Supermassive Games' interactive movie The Casting of Frank Stone, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

These titles will be playable over the cloud for those with access via PC Game Pass, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Age of Mythology: Retold is one that we've covered in detail. It's a remake of the mythology-based Age of Empires spin-off, where Atlantean, Greek, Egyptian, and Norse gods and units battle across an epic campaign and multiplayer skirmishes. You can see it in action in the video above, with gameplay captured in 4K with ray-tracing and RTX features enabled.

GeForce NOW has various subscription tiers, with the highest offering PC gamers direct access to a GeForce RTX 4080-powered rig. So, Age of Mythology: Retold will look and feel the same as what you see above. Here's the complete list of confirmed GeForce NOW games for September 2024, including games due for release later in the month.

Intel has launched its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs with new laptops powered by Lunar Lake not hitting the market until September 27... and now we've got some simulated benchmark numbers from Intel's next-gen consumer desktop CPU: Arrow Lake.

The new Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" (the 200 series = desktop, while 200V series = laptop) has been put through a "simulated" benchmark by leaker Moore's Law is Dead. These numbers from the Core Ultra 9 285K are at its best, with the ideal IPC improvement over Raptor Lake, and it beats the Core i9-14900K but loses to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D with the new EXPO update. MLID assumes 5.4GHz for the 9800X3D (assume 2% IPC gain in gaming) while perfect 5.7GHz and "perfect gaming IPC uplift" for the Core Ultra 9 285K chip.

In some simulated benchmarks of the upcoming Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor against AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the new Arrow Lake-S desktop CPU loses to the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and loses with an even bigger margin against the Zen 5-based Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

A few months ago, Lian Li introduced a new compact and stylish PC case, the A3-mATX, with a design created in collaboration with Daniel Hansen from DAN Cases. Although the compact case is designed for Micro-ATX and Mini-ATX motherboards, it also supports 4.5-slot GPUs up to 415mm in length - which means you could install a GeForce RTX 4090 or RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card.

Lian Li has announced a new variant that replaces the front plastic panel with wooden slats over the fine mesh. The Wooden Edition looks fantastic and is reminiscent of some of Fractal Design's minimalist cases, like the popular North. We're starting to see more wood paneling on PC cases, and it's not hard to see why - it adds a nice contrast to the tempered glass with the RGB lighting aesthetic that has become the norm.

Outside of the new look, the Wooden Edition A3-mATX design remains the same, with support for ATX/SFX/SFX-L and the new LIAN LI Edge PSU (which earned an award at Computex 2024) and coolers with up to a 360mm radiator size. There's also room for an impressive 10 x 120mm fans.

SK hynix will begin mass production of its new 12-layer HBM3E memory chips before the end of September, with shipments of the new AI memory expected in Q4 2024... not long from now.

The South Korean memory leader isn't just teasing its 12-layer HBM3E memory, but its next-gen HBM4 memory that will be shipping in 2H 2025 ready for NVIDIA's next-generation Rubin R100 AI GPU which uses the ultra-fast next-generation HBM4 memory standard.

The new comments about 12-layer HBM3E and future-gen HBM4 AI memory were made during SEMICON Taiwan 2024, of which SK hynix was in attendance. SK hynix showed off its new 12-layer HBM3E AI memory at FMS 2024 back in July, but it appears we're even closer to it becoming a reality.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) has just released version 6.0 of the Bluetooth standard, and with it, come some upgrades since the last major version -- Bluetooth 5.0 -- launched all the way back in 2016.

The new Bluetooth 6.0 standard has two new features that assist in reducing power consumption: Decision-Based Advertising Filtering and Monitoring Advertisers. These new features help the upgraded Bluetooth 6.0 devices reduce power consumption, and increase efficiency making sure that they're only scanning for data packets when they receive data on their primary channel, relevant to their application.

Bluetooth 6.0 is also capable of telling devices when another device they want wants to connect to, moves out of range, so that they can cancel their attempts of making a connection and conserve energy. Another big feature is Bluetooth Channel Sounding, a new technology that provides two upgrades to Bluetooth devices: enhanced security, and improved accuracy in location finding.