Want to put a new GeForce RTX 4080 in a new small form factor PC case? The SFF-ready label is here to make it much easier. NVIDIA has announced a new Small Form Factor (SFF) guideline for its GeForce graphics cards, enabling a much easier time with case selection for end consumers.

The new SFF-Ready GeForce card guideline was announced at Computex 2024 and will be the stamp of approval consumers will be looking for when purchasing a GeForce graphics card. More specifically, the SFF stamp of approval will be on the packaging alongside other GeForce features, and will be a guarantee that specific graphics cards are compatible with a small form factor PC case.

Having the SFF-ready stamp will make picking a new GPU and a case much easier as all consumers will have to do is look for NVIDIA's seal of approval. NVIDIA explained it has already partnered with a bunch of AIBs for the SFF-ready stamp, with companies such as ASUS, CoolerMaster, Fractal, Galaxy, GIGABYTE, INNO3D, MSI, NZXT, Palit, ZOTAC and many more on board.

In late February NVIDIA released the beta for its new NVIDIA App, which combines the company's GeForce Experience and Control Panel.

NVIDIA has announced at Computex 2024 that owners of its graphics cards will now be able to access the new app, which incorporates all of the features within GeForce Experience and Control Panel in one single unified application. The release of the new app will mean gamers won't have to dance between GeForce Experience and Control Panel, which are used for separate settings customizations in both graphics configurations and display settings.

Not only is everything now in one place, but NVIDIA has taken this opportunity to overhaul the visuals of the client, making a much cleaner, modern and minimal look. The new client enables gamers quick access to NVIDIA, GeForce, and RTX applications that are available to download/install, while also doubling as a way to tweak game settings within the Graphics tab.

At Computex last year, NVIDIA showcased a glimpse at the future of gaming with a real-time NVIDIA ACE demonstration of a cyberpunk-style game scenario in which you could fully interact (with voice) with an AI-driven NPC to ask narrative-specific questions or anything else and get dynamic responses.

With speech recognition and Audio2Face animation, the technology has evolved and become more impressive in the following months. At Computex 2024, NVIDIA is presenting game-specific AI technology called Project G-Assist, an "RTX-powered AI assistant technology demo that provides context-aware help for PC games and apps."

How this works is fascinating. Take a game like ARK: Survival Ascended; you can ask for help on where to find resources and offer some tips on building the perfect base and how to overcome a boss or enemy. You can go beyond that and ask Project G-Assist to help optimize the game's settings so you can hit a steady 60 FPS. Very cool.

Sabrent has some rather wicked deals on its Amazon UK store, with up to 35% savings on their USB-C Universal Laptop Docking Station.

The Sabrent USB-C Universal Laptop Docking Station (DS-UICA) is the ultimate docking station for your laptop, portable computer, smart portables, and other USB-C devices. There's a bunch of USB ports for you to plug everything under the sun into, with 2 x 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 USB-C ports, dual 5Gbps (USB 3.1 Gen 1x1) ports, and USB_A ports for those new, power-hungry devices.

Next up is Sabrent's Steam Deck Docking Station, which is 18% off it provides gamers with a 6-in-1 Steam Deck Dock with HDMI (4K @ 60Hz), USB-C 95W PD 3.0 fast-charging, triple USB 3.0 hub, and 1 x USB-C port that's designed for Valve's Steam Deck gaming portable.

We're counting down the hours into Computex 2024, where NVIDIA will be showing off a bunch of the coolest things we can imagine... and now, their NVLink dominance is being fought against.

The interconnect market is a hot one for servers right now, especially in the age of AI. We've now got technology giants including Intel, AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, HPE, Meta, and Microsoft have formed an Ultra Accelerator Promotor Group that focuses on developing an AI-focused interconnect system specifically aimed at data centers.

The group has announced its lofty intentions with UALink (Ultra Accelerator Link) which aims to connect accelerators through an open -- non NVIDIA exclusive -- protocol.

LG's new UltraGear OLED 45GS95QE gaming monitor is now the world's first certified gaming monitor with VESA DisplayHDR 1.2 certification. The South Korean giant announced it in a new post on X, check it out:

If you're in the market for a new gaming monitor, the new VESA DisplayHDR 1.2 certified badges will ensure you know the display's capabilities easily, especially when it comes to their HDR performance. The new DisplayHDR 1.2 specs introduce new testing requirements for monitor makers, with over 3000 monitors passing under DisplayHDR 1.0, and now the new LG UltraGear OLED 45GS95QE gaming monitor is the very first that's officially compliant with DisplayHDR 1.2 TrueBlack 400 standards.

As for the LG UltraGear OLED 45GS95QE gaming monitor, it's a wicked huge 45-inch OLED panel with a native 3440 x 1440 resolution and super-smooth 240Hz refresh rate. There's a peak brightness of 1000 nits, and a typical brightness of 275 nits. AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, NVIDIA G-SYNC compatible, and AdaptiveSync are all ready to go on the LG UltraGear OLED 45GS95QE gaming monitor.

A hacking group has claimed to have stolen an astonishing 500 million Ticketmaster customers' data, which includes a treasure trove of sensitive user data.

It was only last month Ticketmaster was slapped by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster's parent company Live Nation Entertainment over its alleged monopoly on the entertainment industry. Now, Ticketmaster is reportedly suffering as a hacking group claimed to have stolen more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers' data in a recent attack, which the group is now turning around and attempting to sell for $500,000.

According to the hacker group the treasure trove of stolen data is approximately 1.3 terabytes and contains various sensitive user information such as full names of Ticketmaster customers, their addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, order history and ticket purchase details. It doesn't stop there. The group also claims to have scraped customers' payment data which includes names and the last four digits of their credit card numbers that were used at checkout of the ticketing service.

Google has confirmed the thousands of leaked documents that first emerged earlier this week are in fact internal company documents that reveal some aspects of the inner-workings of Google Search.

The leak of 2,500 documents is likely to cause a ripple effect across the SEO industry as many of the documents, while still being hard to decipher, reveal details about the way Google Search works, particularly the information and data Google collects to rank content on its search engine. Notably, The Verge reports the internal documents details run contrary to what Google representatives have said in the past about what contributes to webpage rankings on Search.

These thousands of documents contain a plethora of information about Search rankings, but none of the information is outlined in a way that makes it clear which data is more valuable than other data, making the entire leak very murky for interpretation. Additionally, there is a chance all of the information is completely out of date, or no longer considered valuable by Google as its data collection/ranking processes may have changed entirely.

One of the strangest and most beloved characters in J.R.R Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is officially coming to Amazon's The Rings of Power season 2.

That character is none other than Tom Bombadil, who was famously cut from Peter Jackson's iconic trilogy of movies. For those that don't know who Tom Bombadil is, he is a merry fellow that lives in the valley of the Withywindle in the depths of the Old Forest, east of Buckland, and close to the dangerous Barrow-downs. While movie fans have never seen Tom, he is a big part of the start of The Fellowship of the Ring book where he rescues the hobbits from an old willow tree, and again from Wights in the Barrow-Downs.

The origin of Bombadil was purposely left in ambiguity, with very little canonical information to go by besides Tom being described as "Eldest" Tom, himself, said he remembers the "first raindrop and the first acorn... He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside." Tom is one of, if not the most mysterious character in Tolkien's legendarium, with the majority of his intervention being in the Third Age of Middle-Earth, or in the age of Frodo, Bilbo and the One Ring.

Dataminers don't let anything scrape by unnoticed and that's exactly what happened in the latest Activision release for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone.

The Season 4 update was rolled out to the two aforementioned titles and dataminers dug through all of the files looking for clues about the upcoming and highly anticipated, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The dataminers discovered some files that appear to reveal a major aspect regarding the launch of upcoming title, and that is Black Ops 6 supposedly releasing on multiple generations via a "cross-gen bundle".

It should be noted there isn't anything confirming if this bundle is real or not, but let's assume it is for a second. If there is a cross-gen bundle purchasable at launch it will mean Activision will be releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. If true, it wouldn't make it the first time this has happened for the Call of Duty franchise, as Modern Warfare 3 also released with a cross-gen bundle. So, it's not completely out of the ordinary.

Robot dogs carrying guns is real, and there are videos posted of these new war machines being tested for upcoming combat missions.

What a time to be alive - quadruped robotic dogs with rifles strapped to their backs is actually something that is a real life thing. The first reports of such a creation come from Agence France-Presse, who covered a video published by state-owned broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), which showed Chinese military testing a weaponized robotic dog in various scenarios. The rifle-equipped robotic pooch was shown hopping, diving, leading teams on reconnaissance objectives, and repeatedly firing its rifle attached to its back.

The robotic gun-wielding dogs were created with Unitree's $2,800 Go2 models, which are capable of being active on their own from anywhere between two and four hours depending on the task. The CCTV video shows a Chinese military soldier explaining the new robodogs "can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations" and are capable of "replacing our members to conduct reconnaissance and identify [the] enemy and strike the target."

The world's first biprocessor has been created using human brain tissue, according to Swiss startup FinalSpark that recently published their results.

The company has claimed the bioprocessor is connected to an online platform that enables remote access to 16 human brain organoids. The startup says its neuroplatform is a first-of-its-link and can deliver access to biological neurons in vitro.

Notably, the company claims its new bioprocessor requires 1 million times less power than a traditional processor, and if the startup's claims are proven to be true, these bioprocessors could revolutionize heavy usage processing situations where power is a problem. An example of this would be training large language models, the underpinning technology powering AI.

Sony has officially publicly apologized to Neil Druckmann, the studio head at Naughty Dog for misrepresenting his comments in a recent interview.

The interview with the boss of Naughty Dog, the studio behind extremely successful The Last of Us franchise, was published by Sony and it depicts Druckmann praising the explosion of AI tools as it will enable developers to push the boundaries of storytelling in games. Additionally, Sony's interview depicted Druckmann teasing the studio's next project, with the studio head reportedly saying it "could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming."

However, not too long after the interview went live Druckmann took to his personal X account to clarify his statements, saying the comment about redefining perceptions of gaming was "not quite what I said." Druckmann didn't appear angry at the misrepresentation, writing, "In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with Sony, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost." While Druckmann certainly took the diplomatic and admirable stance on his words being misconstrued, it appears he has downplayed Sony's violation.

Viggo Mortensen, the actor who played Aragorn in Peter Jackson's beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy has been asked if he will reprise his role of the Numenorian king in the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum movie.

For those that missed the news, last year Warner Discovery announced it was creating three new Lord of the Rings movies. There was radio silence from the studio for quite some time until its recent earnings call this year where it announced the title and release year for next film. The Hunt for Gollum will star and be directed by Andy Serkis, and produced by Peter Jackson. More good news is that it will be written by Jackson's original trilogy writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

Canonically, The Hunt for Gollum takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. Please read no further if you don't want any spoilers, as I'm about to explain the basic premise for the movie based on the events that take place in the books.

United States authorities announced they have arrested the administrator behind what is likely the world's largest botnet, which included more than 19 million compromised Windows machines across multiple countries.

The description of the world's largest botnet comes from FBI director Christopher Wray, who said the botnet was used to gather millions of dollars from people over the last 10 years. More specifically, the FBI director said to the Justice Department that a international cyber operation was conducted to identify the alleged administrator of the botnet known as "911 S5", who was found to be the individual Yunhe Wang. Wang was arrested and US authorities "seized infrastructure and assets, and levied sanctions against Wang and his co-conspirators," said Wray.

The infection of this botnet was truly global, with US officials writing the 911 S5 Botnet had infected PCs in nearly 200 countries and "facilitated a whole host of computer-enabled crimes, including financial frauds, identity theft, and child exploitation." Moreover, the US Treasury wrote in its announcement Wang didn't act alone in the venture, and named two more alleged perpetrators, Jingping Liu and Yanni Zheng. In total, the US authorities believe the botnet netted Wang and others involved $99 million.

Microsoft wants people to move off Windows 10 and move onto Windows 11, and one of the ways the company intends to attract customers to its latest operating system is AI-powered PCs - and the exclusive features that come with them.

Microsoft only recently announced a selection of AI PCs in the form of new Copilot+ laptops. These laptops are different from traditional versions as they feature a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is a piece of hardware dedicated to running AI tasks locally. Microsoft has locked many, if not all of its of Copilot+'s attractive features behind this hardware requirement in a bid to entice customers to go out and purchase a new Copilot+ PC.

One of the most talked about Copilot+ features is Windows Recall, which enables a user to ask the Copilot AI in natural language to show them what they were doing on the PC at specific times. For example, if a user at 4pm forgot what they were doing at 1pm they would be able to ask the AI and it would show them what was on their desktop at 1pm. Recall is able to create this timeline of a users desktop by taking screenshots of the desktop every few minutes, which are then stored locally.

A self-proclaimed good-guy hacker has taken to X, formerly Twitter, to post an unhinged version of OpenAI's ChatGPT called "Godmode GPT".

The hacker announced the creation of a jailbroken version of GPT-4o, the latest large language model released by OpenAI, the creators of the intensely popular ChatGPT. According to the hacker who calls themselves Pliny the Prompter, the now-released Godmode GPT doesn't have any guardrails as this version of the AI arrives with an in-built jailbreak prompt. Prompter writes this unhinged AI provides users with an "out-of-the-box liberated ChatGPT" that enables everyone to "experience AI the way it was always meant to be: free".

Prompter even shared some screenshots of the responses they were able to get from ChatGPT that have seemingly bypassed some of the AI's guardrails. Examples of clear circumvention of OpenAI's policies are detailed instructions on how to cook crystal meth, how to make napalm out of household items, and more responses along those lines. Notably, OpenAI was contacted about the GPT and told the publication Futurism that it has taken action against the AI, citing policy violations that have seemingly led to its complete removal.

AMD's Ryzen 9000 launch has been leaked ahead of Computex, although we should add a hefty helping of seasoning with this one.

The leak comes from Wxnod on X (formerly Twitter) and is supposedly a deck of presentation slides from AORUS (GIGABYTE), but separately, CodeCommando has also spilled the specs of AMD's initial Zen 5 desktop CPUs. (Hat tips to Wccftech and VideoCardz respectively here).

While the two leaks appear to match, and show an initial four chips that AMD is set to unleash, we should still be very cautious about all this.

Many gamers have fully adopted digital libraries of the titles they have purchased whether by choice or by need, and one of the most popular services of these is Valve's Steam client.

Steam is easily the most-popular games library for PC gaming, with millions of gamers using the service to access hundreds, or even thousands of games. Many PC gamers may have believed that their digital collection of games would be transferable to a loved one, especially considering the amount of money that some accounts have poured into collecting games. However, that isn't the case - even in the event of the account holder dying.

A user on ResetEra posted a screenshot of the reply they received from Steam support querying about this very topic. A representative from Valve replied to the user informing them Steam accounts and the games linked to them are unfortunately "non-transferable". Moreover, the representative informed the user that Steam is unable to provide access to an account or merge its contents with another. Furthermore, the Steam representative stated that even if the Steam account is outlined in a will it still won't be transferable.

Sony's PlayStation 4 is doing some heavy lifting for Gen9, and is helping prop up and accelerate spending across the new generation.

Sony Interactive Entertainment recently held their annual state of the business presentation, complete with eye-opening figures, lots of slides, and discussions about the future of PlayStation. The slide deck highlighted various operating metrics like revenue, profit, and console user base numbers.

Interestingly enough, the PS4 still accounts for 50% of total monthly active consoles, or 49 million gamers, meaning about half of all PlayStation console users are still playing on PS4 hardware. The PS5 beats the PS4 in terms of total gameplay hours, though, clocking in 1 billion more hours than its predecessor. This speaks volumes as to what kind of games that PS5 owners are playing, and that they are more engaged for longer periods of time.