Blizzard Entertainment is looking to introduce a single-player "story mode" with the soon-to-be-released expansion for World of Warcraft.

According to a recent interview with PCGamer, associate game director Morgan Day sat down with Tyler Colp to tease a coming story mode, which players could use to level up characters through playing past expansion narratives. Notably, this single-player mode would enable players to experience classic raid moments in past expansions, and the experience gained would be included in their journey to reach the maximum level.

Researchers have used machine learning techniques, the fundamental technology powering artificial intelligence, to analyze hundreds of wild elephants that were captured between 1986 and 2022.

The team published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, which states that researchers looked at how each elephant "rumbles." These rumblings are believed to be the primary way elephants communicate with each other, and the study has broken the rumbles into three categories: greeting, caregiving, and contact calls.

While there are other prominent rumble categories, such as "let's go," the team found the aforementioned three types of rumble are most likely tied to names between elephants. Notably, the study found through the power of AI analysis that elephants appear to be attaching names to these rumbles, which is very different from imitation communication that is used by dolphins or parrots to communicate.

With the recent success of Amazon Prime's Fallout TV adaptation, more people have played games in the long-running Fallout franchise than ever before. The most recent mainline entry, Fallout 4, saw its Steam concurrent player count reach heights it hadn't seen since 2015. The co-op and multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 is also breaking player-count records as Bethesda releases its first map expansion since its 2018 debut.

In a new interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard addressed several questions surrounding the future of the Fallout franchise while offering tempering expectations for those of us who thought the success of the Fallout TV show would expedite development on Fallout 5.

From Todd's comments, it sounds like Fallout 76 will be updated for many years to come. And right now, the Fallout TV show is the place for those wanting a cinematic or in-depth story set in the Fallout universe.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft made it to the International Space Station (ISS) last week, and now it has been caught in the foreground of a video that captures a stunning aurora appear over Earth.

Last week, the Starliner leaked its way to the ISS, delivering two NASA astronauts safely to the floating laboratory. NASA has since launched an investigation into the leaks that were detected prior, and post-launch. According to the space agency, the Starliner vessel was suffering from leaks that were traced back to its helium tanks, and after a preliminary analysis, NASA has determined there is enough helium, or fuel, in the tanks to make a return trip back to Earth.

Now docked at the ISS, Boeing's Starliner will remain there until June 22, where it will carry out engine tests to further evaluate its performance. ISS astronaut Matthew Dominick has shared videos and images of the newest addition to the floating laboratory, capturing a stunning video of the Starliner floating above a beautiful aurora happening in Earth's upper atmosphere. Dominick notes that you can even see the NASA astronauts within the Starliner lighting up its interior with their flashlights.

Earlier this year, when Microsoft announced it would start releasing more first-party Xbox titles on Sony's PlayStation consoles, it shocked many longtime Xbox gamers. Although we're now in a place where even Sony is releasing major first-party PlayStation games on PC and even the Nintendo Switch (with its upcoming LEGO Horizon spin-off), seeing first-party Xbox games on PS5 hits a little differently because they're competing platforms.

With the dust now settled on Microsoft's decision to bring select Xbox titles to the PS5, the controversial move is proving successful. First-party Xbox Game Studios game Sea of Thieves was the most downloaded PlayStation 5 game chart in the US/Canada and the European region in May 2024.

More PlayStation 5 gamers downloaded and installed Sea of Thieves in May 2024 than they did Madden, Call of Duty, Helldivers 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, Fallout 4, and Stellar Blade. Fellow Xbox game Minecraft topped the PS4 charts for the same regions.

Gamers are always looking for the latest game everyone has jumped on, and usually, these titles offer something unique in terms of gameplay or overall immersion. An example of this would be the rise in popularity of Helldivers 2.

A good place to find these emerging titles and get in on the action early is the Steam charts, which tracks the most-played games across the client. The top five most played concurrent titles hardly change, and when it does, it's a representation of the game making a noticeable splash in the gaming community. As I previously stated, when a game makes it into the top five, it usually has something unique about it that has attracted players or has legacy power behind it.

But that isn't 100% of all cases. Sometimes, a game can enter the top five for no apparent reason at all besides players simply choosing to get behind it. An example of that is Banana, developed by Pony, Sky, and AestheticSpark and published by Sky. Banana is a clicker game that involves players just clicking on the banana in the middle of the screen, and a tally starts. It's a free-to-play game that has earned itself more than 775,000 concurrent players at the time of writing, and peaked today for concurrent players at 830,000.

Intel Arc graphics driver 31.0.101.5590 WHQL for discrete GPUs and Intel Core Ultra rigs with integrated Arc graphics is here - adding support for a pair of new titles, Destiny 2: The Final Shape and the highly anticipated Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.

As per the headline, there's some added goodness for legacy titles, including Crysis (2007) and Crysis 2 (2011). The latest Intel Game On driver release boosts the original Crysis performance at 1080p with Very High settings by up to 10% on a discrete Arc GPU. Crysis 2 also gets up to a 6% increase in 1080p performance - this time on a Core Ultra chip with Arc graphics.

With that, the answer to the question of whether Intel Arc GPUs can run Crysis is now "better than before."

Gears of War studio The Coalition is widely considered one of the most adept at working with Unreal Engine 5. It has collaborated with Epic Games to create UE tech demos like the impressive The Matrix Awakens from 2021. The studio's first proper Unreal Engine 5-powered game, Gears of War: E-Day, was revealed last week, and it's set to be a technical showstopper.

The reveal trailer for Gears of War prequel taps into the horror of the first game while bringing back iconic characters like Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago. Although a pre-rendered cinematic, developers at The Coalition note that it was created using in-game assets and lighting effects to give gamers and Gears fans a taste of what to expect.

"Our ambition is to, once again, set a new standard in technical excellence," explains Kate Rayner, Studio Technical Director at The Coalition. "We have fully modernized Gears from the ground up, infusing the DNA of Gears with the full capabilities of modern gaming technology. Every character, environment, and animation in Gears of War: E-Day has been completely rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, allowing us to portray the Gears universe with unprecedented detail and fidelity."

One of the most prolific tests a machine can undertake is called the Turing Test, created by Alan Turing in 1950 that's purpose was to test if a machine is capable of displaying a level of intelligence that can convince, or fool a human they are engaging with another human.

Researchers have put OpenAI's GPT-4 up against the Turing Test, and according to a new study the impressive large language model passed the test. The not-yet-peer-reviewed-study asked 500 people to engage with four different respondents. One of those respondents was a human, another was a 1960s-era AI called ELIZA, another was OpenAI's less sophisticated GPT-3.5, and finally GPT-4.

The paper states each conversation lasted approximately five minutes, and according to the study's results, humans found GPT-4 to be a human 54% of the time. These results lead researchers to claim GPT-4 has already passed the Turing Test. However, the study also indicated study participants believed the human respondent was a human 67% of the time, while ELIZA scored just 22%, and GPT-3.5 scored 50%.

After sustained criticism and widespread disdain, Microsoft will not roll out its controversial AI-powered 'screenshot everything you do on Windows 11, including capturing sensitive data' Recall feature as part of the Copilot+ PC launch. Instead, a revamped Recall feature will be available in the coming weeks as part of the Windows Insider Program (WIP).

Copilot+ PCs, which are basically laptops with CPUs equipped with at least a 40 TOPS NPU, are set to hit retail shelves this week. The Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite processor exclusively powers the first run, which, without Recall, will be limited to Microsoft's AI tools for photo and video editing, live captions, and Cocreator image generation. Plus, apps from third parties that require 40 TOPS of AI Performance.

This is for the best, as Recall has been under fire since its announcement on May 20. The controversial snapshot tool - designed to make it easier to search through your local PC usage to find documents, images, or anything else - was quickly discovered to be lacking security features. It would record things like passwords, banking information, and more.

Compact builds are becoming increasingly popular each year. Small form factor (SFF) cases can lead to a smaller desk footprint or a rig that can sit snugly underneath a TV. The big concern, at least when trying to assemble an SFF build that is powerful enough to play the latest PC games, is whether or not the hardware will fit.

Noticing the trend, NVIDIA announced, as part of its Computex 2024 announcements, a new 'SFF Ready' label that denotes which GeForce RTX 4070 through to GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GPUs can fit in smaller SFF cases. It all boils down to GPUs and SFF cases meeting specific dimension criteria (NVIDIA told us that pretty much all GeForce RTX 4060s are SFF Ready), and you can see all of the GeForce RTX cards (and compatible cases) here.

With that, ASUS is introducing a new line of budget-friendly GeForce RTX GPUs that are SFF Ready and called ASUS Prime. So far, the company has announced three models: the Prime GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, Prime GeForce RTX 4070, and Prime GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.

Lian Li's latest case collaboration sees the company team up with Automobili Lamborghini to create a custom Limited Edition run of its popular O11D EVO RGB chassis - with a look and feel inspired by Lamborghini's luxury sports car line. This partnership continues a trend we've seen for many years: PC gaming gear crossed with Italian supercars.

Limited to 6498 units, the Lian Li O11D EVO RGB Automobili Lamborghini Edition PC case included the black and gold Lamborghini badge on the front. The classic l-shaped tempered glass case sports a similar black and gold/yellow (Giallo Orion, to be exact) look for its default RGB lighting profile.

Lian Li notes that the feet and the I/O module for this limited edition case are made from 'complete carbon fiber,' a highly durable material also found throughout the case - 'seamlessly integrated into its design.' There's also an integrated 5-inch display showcasing CPU and GPU performance data in the style of a Lamborghini speedometer.

TSMC's 3nm supply exceeds demand right now, with major US tech companies including AMD, Apple, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and more have full production capacity, with orders expected to be filled through to 2026.

In a new report from Ctee, we're learning that TSMC's 3nm OEM price adjustment is expected to be "more than" 5%, and that the annual quotation for advanced packaging in 2026 will also increase, between 10-20% or so. TSMC's stock price closed at 922 yuan (around $129 USD or so), leading TSMC's market value to rise to a record 23.91 trillion yuan (around $894 billion USD or so).

Foreign investors have purchased around 395,000 units this year, with TSMC chairman Wei Zhejia's "value theory" cemented in, and will increase the advanced processing and packaging technologies, which is expected to be a "double success".

Samsung is preparing to launch 3D packaging services for HBM within the next 12 months. The new technology will be introduced for HBM4, ready for the next-gen AI GPUs of the future, which will be released in 2025.

The company held its Samsung Foundry Forum 2024 in San Jose, California, and teased its new 3D packaging technology for HBM chips in a public event, with current-gen HBM memory chips packaged mostly with 2.5D technology.

NVIDIA is about to introduce its new Blackwell B100, B200, and GB200 AI chips which will use the latest HBM3E memory, but its next-gen Rubin GPU architecture was teased just weeks ago, with the next-gen Rubin R100 AI GPU to feature next-generation HBM4 memory. Rubin will enter mass production in Q4 2025, using TSMC's newer N3 node and new CoWoS-L advanced packaging.

MSI showed off its interesting M.2 XPANDER-AERO SLIDER at Computex 2024 earlier this month, and while it might look like a graphics card... it's not: it's an expansion card that houses not one, but two M.2 PCIe Gen5 SSDs which is impressive.

The new MSI M.2 XPANDER-AERO SLIDER can hold two M.2 22100 form factor Gen5 SSDs, as well as supporting hot swapping, which means you can remove either of the Gen5 SSDs at any time (if that's something you need, or want to do).

MSI is providing some active cooling with its AERO fan cooling system for the Gen5 SSDs, with two cooling modes on offer: the fans can stop completely if the SSDs aren't running hot enough to require active cooling, or an automatic mode when the M.2 SSDs are removed.

The usual lifespan of solar panels is estimated to be between 20 and 40 years, with efficiency and power generation degrading over time. However, installation in France from 1992 is still pumping away with 79% of their output.

Technicians dismantled the vintage 10-square-meter 1-kilowatt solar array last year, running the solar panels through rigorous lab testing per international standards and finding impressive results. Even after 31 years of service, an average of 79.5% of the initial rated power output is achieved.

Solar panel manufacturers usually guarantee around 80% of their original performance for up to 25 years, but the "Phébus 1" solar system has been running for 31 years and counting, with an average annual decline of just 0.66%. The solar system celebrated its 20th anniversary of installation back in 2012, with the panels pumping 91.7% of their rated output, but with the years clicking away the drop-off in efficiency has increased on particular modules.

Well... the United States House of Representatives passed a ban on future sales of DJI drones in the US on Friday, which means we're looking down the barrel of a DJI ban in the US coming into effect under the "Countering CCP Drones Act."

The upcoming "Countering CCP Drones Act" is a part of the United States' 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (FY25 NDAA) which is a major piece of yearly legislation put aside for defense spending in the year ahead. DJI is a Chinese-owned company with a gigantic 70% of the world's drone market share, making US lawmakers a little nervous.

Around 6% of DJI stock is owned by Chinese state-owned businesses, which is leading to fears that the Chinese government has backdoors in DJI drones flying over US soil, national security risks, and other worries about China's surveillance. Another big issue is that US lawmakers are worried that DJI's continued success would strengthen the Chinese economy.

McDonald's has just told its franchise operators on Thursday that it's removing AI order-taking technology from over 100 drive-thrus after a test period ends with an AI partnership with IBM.

A McDonald's spokesperson confirmed the news with Business Insider, saying that customers have been using the AI-powered drive-thru technology since 2021, after McDonald's entered a global partnership with IBM. Under the partnership, IBM acquired McD Tech Labs, something McDonald's created after taking control of AI speec company Apprente back in 2019.

The two companies deployed and developed the AI technology during the test period to "determined if an automated voice ordering solution could simplify operations for crew and create a faster, improved experience for our fans". But, it simply didn't work. McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski told CNBC in June 2021 that the voice recognition technology was accurate about 85% of the time, with human staff assisting in around 1-in-5 orders.

If you're living in Texas and in the market to buy an interesting -- to say the least -- new house, then check out this $2.4 million property that has NO bedrooms... but a built-in 5786 sq ft data center with a full liquid cooling immersion system. Check it out:

In a new post on X by "zillowgonewild," there's a pretty big residential house in Texas with no bedrooms but a single bathroom that has a warehouse-style look as soon as you walk into it. There's even a glass-protected reception desk in a white-brick corridor, with the "Crypto Collective" branding showing that this house was a crypto mining base... but not anymore.

The $2.4 million "upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center" includes all of the required exotic cooling and power infrastructure, where there are 3 x Engineered Fluids "SLICTanks," single-phase liquid immersion cooling tanks that are used with a dielectric coolant, which comes with a pump, and a 500kW dry cooler. The tanks themselves are filled with at least 80 crypto mining systems, run through the SLICTanks that can be tweaked to fit even more crypto mining systems.

Minisforum is about to unleash its new UM880 Pro and UM890 Pro Mini-PC systems, both packing AMD's Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point" APUs. Check them out:

First off, we've got the Minisforum UM880 Pro, which features the Ryzen 7 8845HS "Hawk Point" APU, while the UM890 Pro features the beefed-up Ryzen 9 8945HS "Hawk Point" APU. Minisforum has crammed in a higher-end cooling system to keep the Hawk Point APUs as cool as possible, which allows the company to boost up to 70W TDP, higher than AMD's default of 35-65W TDP.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 series "Hawk Point" APUs can boost up to 5.2GHz, while the Ryzen 7 "Hawk Point" APU can boost up to 5.1GHz. These higher boost clocks being maintained at all times during gaming or productivity loads is a bit harder inside of a smaller system, but in other Mini-PCs we have 50-60W TDPs, so Minisforum is pushing things here (which we love to see).