Latest News - Page 552

When it comes to productivity, the dual-screen setup actively improves your work speed and the time it takes to complete tasks. An ultrawide display also does the trick because screen real estate matters; the more you have, the bigger your digital workspace becomes. Adding a second screen is possible for those who work remotely or do most of their day-to-day tasks on a laptop, but this requires buying an additional portable display, plugging in cables, and some setup.

This is where the new ACEMAGIC X1 steps in. It is a dual-screen laptop that the company describes as the "world's first 360-degree dual-screen business laptop." Boasting a unique folding dual-screen design (the second display unfolds horizontally), it's an all-in-one solution that includes a second screen for those moments when you need an extra screen for emails, documents, spreadsheets, chat, or something else.

Spec-wise, the ACEMAGIC X1 is powered by the Intel Core i7-1255U processor, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and 1TB of PCIe 3.0 SSD storage. Each of the dual displays is 14 inches with a Full HD resolution.

Reports point to Apple announcing a partnership with Google at the company's upcoming iPhone 16 event.

The information comes from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known Apple insider who has previously revealed what Apple is cooking up behind the scenes ahead of time. According to Gurman, Apple is expected to announce a new partnership with Google at the iPhone 16 launch event, and the new partnership will involve introducing Google Gemini to the iPhone.

The coming Apple event is scheduled for September, and according to reports, Apple is looking to provide users with a variety of different AI-powered tools in addition to the already announced ChatGPT integration with its creators, OpenAI, and local Apple Intelligence processing. Additionally, Gurman writes that Meta asked Apple if it wanted to adopt its Llama AI model, to which the Cupertino company promptly refused, even declining a sitdown meeting with the Facebook and Instagram parent company.

The Watch Dogs has been in what Hollywood refers to as "development hell" for 10 years now, but today the official Ubisoft account on X posted an image of a clapperboard from the set, simply teasing "Lights_Camera_Actiion.exe" for the Watch Dogs movie. Check it out:

We have absolutely no more information regarding the Watch Dogs movie from this post on X, but it looks like the production team versus the cast of the movie itself. What we do know, is that actors Tom Blyth and Sophie Wilde will be starring in the Watch Dogs movie, but we don't know which roles they'll assume.

Ubisoft's head of content Margaret Boykin, New Regency CEO Yariv Milchan, and the company president of motion pictures Natalie Lehmann, are all producers on the Watch Dogs movie. Now that the Watch Dogs movie has officially started production, we should see more and more teases from the set, and a teaser trailer in the coming months. It would be nice to see a new Watch Dogs game get announced during this time, considering Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2 sold around 20 million units combined globally.

Microsoft has slowly been changing Windows 11 to feature more advertisements for its products, pushing users to adopt its services such as OneDrive, Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and more.

It was only last week Microsoft was caught turning on automatic OneDrive folder backup in Windows 11 without asking for the user's permission. New installs of Windows 11 were automatically found to have OneDrive backup on, meaning folders such as Desktop Pictures, Documents, Music, and Videos will automatically sync to a user's OneDrive account. Additionally, Microsoft recently took a step toward removing local Windows accounts.

Now it's been discovered that Windows 11's Start Menu is going to get slightly louder with advertisements for Microsoft's products, or at least that is what the latest test versions of Windows 11 that's available to Windows Insiders reveal. Build 26120.961 has introduced a redesign to the Start Menu, as users will be able to easily navigate to their Microsoft products, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. The above image showcases the difference between the Windows 11 builds.

OpenAI's ChatGPT was discovered to have a security flaw that made it extremely easy to find your chats with the AI-powered tool on your device. The exploit enabled a user to read the chats as they were in plain text.

The security exploit was demonstrated by Pedro José Pereira Vieito on Threads, and replicated by The Verge, and it appears it was up until Friday last week that ChatGPT for Mac OS saved chat logs with the AI-powered tool right after they were sent. The saving of the chatlogs made it extremely easy for them to be accessed by another app that was made by Pereira Vieito. The problem with this exploit?

If a user is having private conversations with ChatGPT and within those conversations is sensitive information, such as finances, passwords, etc, a bad actor would have an easily accessible way of tracking/saving all of those conversations if it had access to the computer. OpenAI was alerted about this issue, and the AI company rolled out an update that fixed the exploit, saying its new update has encrypted the conversations.

Noctua has just introduced its brand-new NH-D15 G2 CPU cooler, revising its dual-fan NH-D15 design with engineering improvements that make it quieter, stronger, and improved in its air-cooling abilities. Check it out:

The new Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler has some design tweaks, with offset, asymmetrical fin stacks above 8 separate heat pipes, which are redesigned pieces of metal that have 20% more surface area for cooling through dual 140mm fans, as well as a more smoothed-out acoustic profile. So good, so far, Noctua.

The company itself posted a promotional video that shows its new NH-D15 G2 cooler being 20% better at heat dissipation load at 60C. The company will offer its new NH-D15 G2 cooler in three different configurations:

The Japanese government has followed through on its promises of removing 1.44MB floppy disks from operating in government computer systems.

In a new report from Reuters, we're learning that Digital Minister Taro Kono was proud to announce: "We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!" The Japanese government and its Digital Agency removed all 1034 regulations governing the use of 1.44MB floppy disks, except for a single environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling.

Kono has been quite vocal about removing fax machines and other older technology being used by the Japanese government, with the Digital Agency established during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. They were tasked with rolling out nationwide testing and vaccinations, revealing that the Japanese government still relied on paper filing and outdated technology.

Lenovo's next-generation IdeaPad laptop has been benchmarked on Geekbench, rocking AMD's upcoming Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 9 365 "Strix Point" APU, which shows it's up to 9% faster than the Zen 4-based Ryzen 9 8945HS processor.

The new Lenovo IdeaPad laptop features the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 "Strix Point" APU with 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, listed as the "LENOVO 83HN" and based on the motherboard model, it looks like it's the IdeaPad SKU (LNVNB161216). As for the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 "Strix Point" APU, it features 10 cores and 20 threads of Zen 5-powered CPU goodness, clocking up to 5.0GHz with 34MB of cache.

The Strix Point APU features an integrated Radeon 880M GPU with 12 compute units (768 cores), while the 10 cores and 20 threads of Zen 5 processing power are split into 4 x Zen 5 and 6 x Zen5c cores, with the upgraded XDNA2-based NPU capable of pushing 50 TOPS of AI workload performance. TDP wise, we have the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs with a TDP between 15W through to 54W.

Panmnesia is a company you probably haven't heard of until today, but the KAIST startup has unveiled its cutting-edge IP that enables adding external memory to AI GPUs over the CXL protocol over PCIe, which enables new levels of memory capacity for AI workloads.

The current fleets of AI GPUs and AI accelerators use their on-board memory -- usually super-fast HBM -- but this is limited to smaller quantities like 80GB on the current NVIDIA Hopper H100 AI GPU. AMD and NVIDIA's next-gen AI chip offerings will usher in up to 141GB HBM3E (H200 AI GPU from NVIDIA) and up to 192GB HBM3E (B200 AI GPU from NVIDIA, and Instinct MI300X from AMD).

But now, Panmnesia's new CXL IP will let GPUs access memory from DRAM and SSDs, expanding the memory capacity from its built-in HBM memory... very nifty. The South Korean Institute (KAIST) startup bridges the connectivity with CXL over PCIe links, which means mass adoption is easy with this new tech. Regular AI accelerators don't have the subsystems required to connect with and use CXL for memory expansion directly, relying on solutions like UVM (Unified Virtual Memory) which is slower, defeating the purpose completely... which is where Panmnesia's new IP comes into play.

NVIDIA launched its SUPER refresh for the GeForce RTX 40 Series earlier this year, with the RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4080 SUPER. A GeForce RTX 4090 SUPER was absent, which would have introduced a new flagship beast.

With no sign of a GeForce RTX 4090 Ti, the current flagship will most likely remain as is until the arrival of the GeForce RTX 5090 later this year (or early 2025, depending on when NVIDIA decides to launch its next-gen Blackwell GPUs). However, thanks to the modding team at Teclab, we now glimpse what a GeForce RTX 4090 SUPER looks like - and it's impressive.

Teclab's creation is impressively 13% faster than the stock GeForce RTX 4090, even though it features the same GPU with 16384 CUDA Cores. It even managed a score almost 40% higher than the reference RTX 4090 in Unigine Superposition at 8K - however, that was with LOD tweaks inflating the result.

Lenovo is taking the fight to Apple with the launch of its new ThinkCenter neo Ultra, which is powered by Intel and NVIDIA hardware, and will be a competitor to the Mac Studio. Check it out:

The company offers its new ThinkCenter neo Ultra PC with up to the Intel Core i9-14900T processor, packing 24 cores and 32 threads that boost up to 5.5GHz. Lenovo lets you customize the ThinkCenter neo Ultra with up to 64GB of RAM (up to DDR5-4800), and up to 2 x 1TB Gen4 SSDs for up to 2TB of Gen4 SSD storage.

On the GPU side of things, Lenovo lets you bake in up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, with the PC using a 350W power supply.

ASUS has moved its launch event for next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APU-powered laptops, originally penciled in for July 8, the launch event will take place on July 17... not too far away at all.

ASUS has now announced the ProArt PX13 laptop with a 13.3-inch OLED panel with a 3K resolution and a nice 360-degree hinge, so it means the Zen 5-powered laptop can also act as a tablet, with touch support and even a stylus. Inside, we'll have the Zen 5-based AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, with an option for the Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 chip. There's discrete graphics here with up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, and up to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, with USB4 and Wi-Fi 7 support.

There's also a 16-inch version with the same Strix Point APU and up to RTX 4070 GPU, with support for up to 64GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to 4TB of Gen4 SSD storage (compared to the PX13 with 2TB SSD max). There's an even better 4K-capable OLED display in the 16-inch ASUS laptop, in 16:10 aspect ratio.

PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny has had some interesting comments during a recent interview with GamesIndustry, where he said he was surprised by the wide adoption of ray tracing, and the huge push for 60FPS gaming.

During his chat with GamesIndustry, Cerny discussed his career that spans being the lead system architect for both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles, the present state of the industry, and the future of gaming. When asked about what has surprised him the most with the current-generation consoles, Cerny said he was surprised with the wide adoption of ray tracing, and the push for 60FPS, which was unexpected based on previous-gen consoles.

Cerny said: "The other thing that has been surprising is the push to 60 frames per second. Based on previous console lifecycles, I would have expected there to be a lot more games that are 30 frames per second only, just because the artwork can be so much more detailed if you have longer time to render it. Instead, the almost universal rule this time around has been the games run at 60".

Last week, AMD's long-awaited FSR 3.1 update arrived, with support from five games - all first-party PlayStation 5 ports from Sony studio Nixxes. Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man Remastered, and Spider-Man Miles now feature FSR 3.1, which updates the upscaling Super Resolution component and Frame Generation.

It's good news regarding the latter because AMD's Frame Generation is now decoupled from FSR upscaling. It now works natively with NVIDIA DLSS, bringing Frame Generation to a legion of GeForce RTX 30 Series owners. As NVIDIA's AI-powered version is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series, AMD FSR 3.1 is the update you love to see, especially when AMDS Frame Generation performance and image quality are up there.

Even though AMD touted significant image quality updates to FSR 3.1, upscaling from less noise and ghosting, that's not the case. Based on initial reviews and tests from Digital Foundry and others, FSR upscaling is still a distant third behind NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS.

In 2002, Ubisoft released the original Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell for the original Xbox console with the tagline 'Stealth Action Redefined.' A landmark release that created a PC gaming franchise focused on stealth, espionage, and tactical gameplay - and has been dormant for over a decade: the last Splinter Cell game, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, released in 2013.

Although Ubisoft announced in 2021 that it was working on a full remake of the original game, using the Snowdrop engine that powers The Division, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Star Wars Outlaws, that hasn't stopped people from giving the game an RTX Remix makeover.

NVIDIA's RTX Remix tools allow modders to update almost any classic PC game with full path-traced lighting, AI-powered texture upscaling, DLSS, and Frame Generation support, and the ability to replace models with updated versions. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell RTX from modder Skurtyyskirts is one of the many impressive RTX Remix mods currently in development. If you're a fan of Sam Fisher's exploits and funky night vision goggles, you'll want to check this out.

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for June 2024 are in, and the story remains reasonably close to what we saw in May 2024. NVIDIA sits pretty with a 76.38% share of GPUs used by PC gamers, followed by AMD with a 15.59% share. It's another bleak picture for Team Red, with Valve's data showing that there are more flagship GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs with PC gamers than any discrete Radeon GPU.

For the current generation of graphics cards, covering the GeForce RTX 40 Series, Radeon RX 7000 Series, and Intel Arc Graphics Series lineups, the only non-NVIDIA card to make the list is the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. As for Team Green, the Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for June 2024 show that the GeForce RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, and RTX 4070 are very popular cards among PC gamers.

Here's a look at the Top 20 GPUs according to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for June 2024. Outside of a couple of integrated graphics options from AMD and Intel, the list includes cards from the current and previous three generations of GeForce hardware.

Activision's principal first-party games will start to show up on Xbox Game Pass next month, sources have told leaker eXtas1s and Windows Central.

It's been nearly a year since gaming's largest-ever merger closed, and now Microsoft is starting to make good on its promises to bring Activision titles to Xbox Game Pass. The first game from ABK dropped back in March 2024 with Blizzard's Diablo IV, but so far there haven't been any Activision-developed and -published games on the service. New reports say that will change next month.

Sources have told credible leaker eXtas1s that the first Activision title will drop on Game Pass in August (technically this would be the first Activision game on Game Pass, with Diablo IV technically being a Blizzard game). It won't be a watershed moment with classic Call of Duty games--instead, Microsoft appears to be starting off small with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Windows Central's Jez Corden has also corroborated the report, with sources telling Corden similar details.

Windows 11 has just edged closer to toppling Windows 10 as the most-used operating system, at least for PC gamers who are on Valve's Steam platform.

Yes, the monthly Steam hardware survey figures are in, and when it comes to operating systems, in June 2024 Windows 11 notched up its overall share to 46.63%, which represents an increase of 0.55% on May.

Windows 10 slid by almost a whole percentage point, dropping 0.93% to finish on 49.42%, still in the lead, but not by much.

Ransomware is a popular form of malware in which files on a device, server, or computer system are encrypted, and the actors (often a hacker group or syndicate) demand a ransom to decrypt the data - and it's on the rise. According to ExpressVPN, ransomware payments exceeded 1 billion USD in 2023, the highest amount ever. In the age of generative AI, increasingly sophisticated encryption methods will see this figure grow even higher.

And then there's the rise of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), which is almost like a marketplace for ransomware tools and services - powered by the anonymity of cryptocurrency, the payment of choice for ransomware groups and hackers. The democratization of cyberattacks has opened the door to virtually anyone launching a cyberattack on unsuspecting individuals, businesses, or government bodies.

In recent years, large-scale ransomware attacks have targeted the healthcare industry, network security companies, Windows users, oil pipelines, and even Costa Rica. Here's a breakdown of the most notable.

It's a sad day for the Battlefield franchise, a franchise of first-person-shooter games that was once held in extremely high regard for its realistic gameplay (compared to Call of Duty), incredible map design, and vehicle use. Unfortunately, the days of Bad Company 2 Battlefield are behind us, and now it appears Battlefield 3 is also joining that list.

Electronic Arts (EA) took to the official Battlefield Comms X page to announce that on July 31st, the following Battlefield games will be removed from digital storefronts, along with access to any DLC content associated with the titles. The games that will be removed will be the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, and Battlefield Hardline.

Additionally, EA announced that online services for these titles will end on November 7, 2024, with the single-player content in the games still remaining available to buyers. It should be noted that purchasing and online services for the aforementioned titles are only being removed from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. All of the aforementioned titles will still be available to play and purchase on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.