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Amazon has decided to remove its "Just Walk Out" technology from its Fresh grocery stories across the United States, following the self-checkout system being plagued with numerous problems.

According to a report from The Information, Amazon has decided to axe its "Just Walk Out" technology from its Fresh grocery stores across the US, which includes a multitude of cameras, sensors, and 1,000 human eyeballs to function. For those who don't know, the Just Walk Out system was touted as an automated future way of shopping as consumers could simply walk into the store, grab what they need, pay for it at a counter without a cashier, and then leave.

During this process a consumer is constantly scanned by sensors and cameras positioned around the store. However, Just Walk Out doesn't involve zero humans, as reports indicate there are more than 1,000 real people in India scanning the camera feeds to detect that all patrons are accurately checking out. Additionally, these stores required high ceilings to achieve the appropriate camera angles for maximum monitoring.

A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake has struck just off the coast of Taiwan, resulting in tsunami warnings being issued for Japan.

The earthquake struck off the east coast of Taiwan, approximately 100 kilometers from Taiwan's capital, Taipei, which has triggered nearly 3m-high waves in some areas 1,000 miles south of Tokyo within the Okinawa prefecture. Social media videos show buildings collapsing, massive dust clouds, and widespread damage throughout the affected region. Notably, Taiwanese officials pegged the earthquake at a 7.2 magnitude, while the US Geological Survey stated it was a 7.4.

Now, reports indicate that some of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's fabrication plants have been forced to halt chipmaking, with staff being told to evacuate the premises due to safety concerns. Bloomberg has reported that some machinery within these fabs have been switched off following the earthquake, and at the moment, it remains unclear if this pause in production will impact the global chip market timelines for product releases.

Sony amps up the competition as it signs multiple indie games as day one releases on PS Plus.

Sony doesn't want to bring its own games to PlayStation Plus on day one, but other projects are fair game. Unlike Microsoft, who took a radical subscription-first approach and promised to launch all first-party Xbox games day-and-date on Game Pass. This strategy has affected first-party game sales on Xbox as consumers opt for Game Pass subscriptions instead of buying some games--an effect referred to as cannibalization.

Game Pass has another part of its billion-dollar equation: Third-party games. For years now, Microsoft has been spending tens of millions of dollars to convince indie devs and publishers to launch their games on Game Pass day one. In other words, Microsoft trying to offset any game sales cannibalization with upfront payments. These deals can sometimes go far enough to fund an actual game.

ASUS has just unveiled its new ROG Mjolnir power station, with a new post on X that the company declared was "not an April Fool's joke," check it out:

The new ASUS ROG Mjolnir looks to be a portable power station that will provide flawless, uninterrupted gaming and working -- even outdoors. It sports four power outlets, which can power devices like gaming laptops, monitors, peripherals, lighting, and more.

The front of the ASUS ROG Mjolnir also has two USB Type-A and two USB Type-C ports, but we haven't seen any other sides of it, so we could expect (and hope) for some more connectivity. ASUS uses a design style borrowed from Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, on its new ROG Mjolnir (the name was a spoiler).

Rockstar's GTA+ subscription has become the cheapest way to play the publisher's games.

Two years ago, Rockstar Games announced GTA+, a new $5.99 subscription service aimed at its billion-dollar GTA Online mode. The idea was to give GTA Online players a bunch of extras if they subscribed, kind of like Runescape's Members subscription.

The service has grown tremendously in scope and value since then. In September 2023, Rockstar turned GTA+ into its own mini Game Pass subscription by offering a rotating lineup of full games. The catch is you can only play the games as long as your subscription is active (Rockstar went old-school PS Plus here), and the games will rotate in and out like Xbox Game Pass.

TSMC is "sprinting" to conduct a trial production of its first production line in mid-April at its new Arizona fabrication plant in the United States, where if these tests go well, mass production is expected at the Arizona plant by the end of the year.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) said yesterday that its Arizona wafer fab plant is making good progress, as planned. The company is expected to hold a press conference on April 18 to provide more details on the exact progress of the Arizona plant.

The new US-based TSMC fab plant will begin mass-producing new 4nm process nodes in the first half of 2025 when the Arizona plant will be in full operation. The new Arizona lab will produce the same quality wafers as its bleeding-edge Taiwan-based facilities.

A tsunami warning has been issued in southern Japan after a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck near Taiwan just minutes ago.

Videos posted on social media and television in Taiwan show collapsing buildings in the eastern city of Hualien. Japanese media reports that the 7.5-magnitude earthquake could trigger 3m-high waves in some areas 1000 miles south of Tokyo in the Okinawa prefecture.

NHK urged people not to go near the coasts and to get to higher areas, with warnings on broadcasts in both English and Japanese. NHK had an initial tsunami of around 30nm hit the shores of Yonaguni, a remote island around 110km from Taiwan, warning bigger tsunamis could follow.

Dragon's Dogma 2 has now sold more than 2.5 million copies on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, Capcom today announced.

Capcom's latest fantasy game is an innovative, if not sometimes maddeningly complex RPG that's taken the world by storm. The latest figures show that Dragon's Dogma 2 has now broken 2.5 million sales on all platforms in just 18 days' time.

While this is historically below Capcom's previous fastest-selling game records (see below), it's an important milestone for the house of Mega Man that punctuates the company's new modern approach. Capcom has emphasized selling as many games as possible, and this plan has led to multiple years of cumulative record-breaking profits.

SK hynix has become the second biggest company in South Korea, with its market value soaring above $100 billion for the first time, with Samsung in first place with a market cap of over $360 billion, reports Bloomberg Canada.

SK hynix has been riding an incredibly successful wave of success due to it providing its cutting-edge HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) that's used in AI GPUs, with the South Korean memory giant being the sole supplier of HBM3 memory chips for NVIDIA's mega-successful Hopper H100 AI GPU.

The company recently kicked off its next-gen HBM3E memory wave, which will be used on NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPU, leading SK hynix to have around 90% of the HBM market share. Samsung has been falling behind its South Korean rival when it comes to HBM, but Samsung has also recently formed a new dedicated HBM team to get production yields up so it can better fight SK hynix in the HBM arena.

Helldivers 2's latest update makes the tense squad-based shooter even more replayable.

Arrowhead just released patch 01.000.200 for Helldivers 2, bringing some welcomed changes. The most radical update is the level cap tripling from 50 to 150. We don't often see these kinds of dramatic level cap increases in live games, but Helldivers 2 is all about exaggeration. Plus there's some extra environmental hazards to keep you on your toes, including blinding sandstorms and frozen blizzards.

Other changes include a full-auto mode for the Liberator Penetrator, a 100 point damage boost to the Dominator, boosted damage to the Breaker Incendiary, bonuses to the Anti-Materiel Rifle, and the Guard Dog now refills full ammo when you pick up an ammo box (very welcomed change).

Samsung has just unveiled its next-generation 3D DRAM technology for next-generation memory solutions, with a single-chip capacity of over 100GB, a massive leap over current limitations in DRAM technology.

Samsung made the announcement at the recent Memcon 2024 conference. With DRAM line widths expected to fall below 10nm in the coming years, current memory architectures are getting close to their scaling limits. This is where 3D DRAM will come into play, boosting memory capacity and reducing its footprint.

Samsung talked about two different key technologies for 3D DRAM: Vertical Channel Transistors and Stacked DRAM. Starting with Vertical Channel Transistors (VCT), which will be a fundamental change in transistor design, where the current flow channel is changed from horizontal to vertical, Samsung aims to massively reduce the transistor's footprint. VCT requires much higher precision during the etching process, so there are caveats.

TSMC is reportedly partnering with Kyushu University in Japan, where the two will sign a memorandum for comprehensive collaboration that will be aimed at training and conducting joint research on semiconductors.

The news comes from the usual "sources close to the university," which have said that under the new agreement, TSMC -- the world's largest contract chip manufacturer -- will hold future seminars at Kyushu University. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is expected to cooperate on new research with Kyushu University, too.

TSMC was rumored to be building a new CoWoS advanced packaging facility in Japan, the only one outside of Taiwan. With this new agreement, TSMC and Kyushu University are fully cooperating to revive the semiconductor industry in Japan.

Sony publicly says PlayStation 2 has shipped 155 million units, but the actual numbers are quite higher.

Sony's PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video games hardware of all time. The system defined the early 2000s era thanks to its ability to play games and DVDs--the latter of which sparked widespread consumer adoption. So we have to wonder...just how many PS2s did Sony ship?

Shortly before leaving Sony, ex-PlayStation boss Jim Ryan recently said the PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units in its lifespan. Sony, on the other hand, officially puts the PS2 at 155 million. So what gives? Who's right?

The full scope of Tekken 8's monetization has been revealed, showing that Bandai Namco is trying to cast a wide net to capture more earnings.

Shortly after launch, Tekken 8 has become the most controversial game in the series. The fighter is packing a lot of extra microtransaction muscle this time around, offering three forms of monetization: Multiple full game versions, in-game premium currency, and the new battle pass. It's that last one that brings us here today.

Tekken 8's battle pass, aka the Fight Pass, has both a paid and free track. The paid Premium Pass track costs 600 Tekken Coins, or about $6, but you can't buy that many Tekken Coins in one go. Due to currency denominations, the Premium Pass requires at least a $10 purchase in order to get (this is by design). The pass will essentially "pay for itself" because it doles out a total of 600 Tekken Coins by the time you reach level 60.

Top gamers and athletes may have an advantage in terms of being able to see more images per second than us mere mortals, according to a new study.

This means they can more easily track fast moving objects, like a ball, or opponents in a shooter, with obvious advantages therein in terms of positioning or aiming.

The Guardian picked up on the research from Trinity College Dublin, published in Plos One, which tested some 80 people (aged 18 to 35) to find out whether they could tell if a light was flickering or not as the rate of flicker was increased.

Microsoft is currently working on a new AI-powered chatbot for Xbox, which will be designed to be a virtual support agent for users.

In a new report from The Verge, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the new AI-powered chatbot will called the "Xbox Support Virtual Agent" and it's currently in its prototype phase right now. Notably, this new chatbot will be animated and will be designed to answer Xbox-related questions with either voice or text. The Microsoft spokesperson said the prototype will make it "easier and quicker for players to get help with support topics" and will use "natural language, taking information from existing Xbox Support pages."

Furthermore, the publication reports that this Xbox AI chatbot is part of Microsoft's "larger effort" of implementing AI into the Xbox platform and services, which aligns perfectly with the company's overall push to add AI into whatever it can. Additionally, the new Xbox AI chatbot will be capable of processing game refunds and will be prepared to answer any support-related questions regarding Xbox issues, subscriptions, and general support queries.

A class-action lawsuit launched against Google is forcing the company to promise to delete all of the data it collected through its Incognito web browser.

The lawsuit was filed back in 2020 and required Google to pay $5 billion in damages, but according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Google has decided to instead destroy "billions of data points" it improperly collected. Additionally, the company has said it will update its data collection disclosures and maintain a setting that prevents Chrome's third-party cookies by default for the next five years.

The lawsuit alleged that Google misled Chrome users by telling them its Incognito browser was private despite it still monitoring user activity, which Google pushed back on, saying it informed users that Incognito didn't mean "invisible" and that sites were still able to see their activity. The lawsuit levied federal wiretapping and California privacy laws and asked for $5,000 in damages per user for the alleged offenses. In 2021, Judge Lucy Koh concluded that Google "did not notify" users that the company was still collecting user data in Incognito mode.

If you heard that AMD's next-gen Zen 5 processors were going to be 40% faster than current Ryzen 7000 models, you'd have a hard time believing it, right?

Well, this is the claim made by a fresh piece of spillage from the rumor mill, and it's something we need to dig into a little.

The speculation emerged over at the Anandtech forums, as 3D Center flagged up on X (formerly Twitter), where well-known leaker Kepler told us: "Core for core Zen5 is >40% faster than Zen4 in SPEC."

If you're one of the Windows 11 users out there who missed the drag and drop functionality that once applied to File Explorer's address bar, well, you can breathe a sigh of relief - it's coming back.

This is the ability to grab a file in a folder and drag it over to place the file directly in another folder using the bar at the top of the folder window.

It's a pretty basic ability really, but it was removed with the Windows 11 23H2 Moment 4 update.

NVIDIA's RTX 3060 is busy cementing its lead as the most popular graphics card with Steam gamers.

If you follow the Steam hardware survey, you'll likely be acquainted with the dominance of the RTX 3060 in the GPU department of late, as the NVIDIA board has been at the top of the rankings since October 2023 (when it dethroned the GTX 1650, in fact).

The RTX 3060 has been up and down a little in its percentages since then. The GPU rose to a mighty 6.27% last October, then dropped back down towards the 5% mark - still remaining in place as the top graphics card, mind - before grabbing a 6.17% share of Steam gamers in February.