Latest News - Page 779

Windows 11 is now the operating system of choice for over 400 million monthly active devices. Windows Central reportedly is getting eyes-on with "Microsoft internal data" that has Windows 11 on track to hit 500 million monthly active devices in early 2024.

Microsoft launched Windows 11 in October 2021, so it has taken two years to reach the 400 million milestone, versus Windows 10 only taking just over 12 months to hit 400 million users. Windows 10 had reached a huge 600 million devices just a few months after the two-year mark, so Windows 11 is a little behind when it comes to operating system upgrades and adoption rates.

We should note Windows 11 is only supported by CPUs that were released in 2018 and newer, as well as with devices with TPM security chips. Windows 11 had higher minimum system requirements than previous operating systems, with modern chips and TPM (Trust Platform Module) support.

We heard it was coming in a leak not too long ago now, but now it's official: AMD has announced its new Radeon RX 7900M mobile GPU, its most powerful GPU inside of a laptop ever released.

The new AMD Radeon RX 7900M uses the Navi 31 GPU with 4608 Stream Processors, with a Game Clock of 1825MHz and a Boost Clock of up to 2090MHz; we have some powerhouse Radeon RX mobile GPU goodness in a new wave of Radeon RX 7900M-powered gaming laptops. There's also 16GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 18Gbps on a 256-bit memory bus, while the Total Graphics Power (TGP) sits at up to 180W.

AMD is really pushing the limits with 180W TGP and up to 200W using SmartShift Max technology, while NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU with 16GB GDDR6 memory also has a TGP of 150W but can hit up to 175W with Dynamic Boost technology.

Well, this isn't a surprise: NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card has doubled in price in China because of US sanctions banning high-end GPUs from being exported to China.

The new rules set by the Biden administration will go into effect on November 16, 2023, after which NVIDIA won't be allowed to ship most of its high-end AI GPUs, and for gamers: NVIDIA can't ship its GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card to China. Well, given that the GeForce RTX 4090 is effectively banned in China in a few weeks' time, the price of the RTX 4090 graphics cards has skyrocketed, doubling in price within hours.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card launched in China back in October 2022, priced at 12,999 RMB. But now, the current price as of October 19, 2023 -- is around 26,000 RMB. You can see in the above screenshot that some of these Chinese outlets are selling a GeForce RTX 4090 for up to 29,999 RMB. A quick currency exchange turns that 29,999 RMB to around $4000 USD.

NVIDIA's blazing-fast Grace Hopper GH200 Superchip will never see the shores of China, with the US government applying sanctions on the country, stopping them from acquiring, buying, or touching any high-end supercomputer or semiconductor technology. This means GPUs, and this means NVIDIA losing parts of its market.

The US government has just imposed new restrictions, which are different to the first restrictions, which looked at the on-device connection speed. Still, with the new rules, it'll see NVIDIA's gaming-focused GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card being banned from entering China. High-end enthusiast PC gamers will miss out on the best gaming GPU money can buy.

The Biden administration has pushed new rules that see limits on high-performance computing chips, with the new sanctions looking to destroy any ability of China being able to advance its high-performance computing chip technology. This new set of requirements will go into effect in 29 days, meaning NVIDIA has a very short amount of time -- while head-first into the holiday season -- to adapt to the Biden administration's new sanctions and regulatory changes.

Rockstar Games is expanding its GTA+ subscription to include mobile games.

GTA+ is essentially Rockstar Games' own personal publisher-specific Game Pass subscription. The service was originally created to supplement GTA Online content by offering a slew of bonuses and extras, but recently expanded to include classic games.

Users who pay $5.99 per month will now get access to a handful of Rockstar titles across consoles and mobile, complete with a cyclic catalog that rotates games in and out on a specific timed basis.

Windows 11's Copilot AI has seen some useful changes in a new preview build released by Microsoft.

For starters, in preview build 23570 which has just been unleashed in the Dev channel, Copilot now has a lot more finesse in the way the assistant appears, as you can see in the above tweet from PhantomOfEarth.

In previous builds, when you clicked on Copilot and the side-panel (which may eventually be expandable) came into view from the right-hand side of the screen, the AI rather rudely shoved other windows on the desktop out of the way - they positively jerked aside.

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirms that Activision-Blizzard games won't start showing up on Xbox Game Pass until 2024.

Microsoft has closed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, so why hasn't a bunch of classic Call of Duty games been added to the Xbox Game Pass subscription? The answer is pretty simple: Migrating and incorporating that much content into Xbox Game Pass takes time and work, and Microsoft simply wasn't prepared.

In a recent Xbox podcast interview, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer says that the 11th hour regulatory approval process didn't give neither Microsoft nor Activision enough time to ready a high-level multi-game integration onto Game Pass. That means there's no surprise launch of Activision games planned for Game Pass, and Activision's previous 2024 schedule was accurate.

A scratched smartphone screen is a bit of a downer, because as such marks accumulate, your device loses that fresh out of the box look, and it can be annoying to constantly notice these blemishes.

The good news is that Apple has a plan to keep the scratches and screen chip marks at bay, or at least there's a patent out there that suggests a 'self-healing' iPhone of the foldable variety might arrive at some point in the future.

Patently Apple spotted the patent that just emerged via the US Patent & Trademark Office (hat tip to The Verge here, too).

The future is upon us already, as an individual has walked into a coffee shop and ordered a beverage with a mixed reality headset on.

With the release of the Meta Quest 3, there are many videos circulating online of people performing seemingly everyday tasks, such as cooking while wearing the Meta Quest 3. These individuals are taking advantage of the headset's passthrough capabilities, which is the ability to see a real-time projection of the real-world within the virtual world, giving the illusion of the virtual world overlayed on the real-world.

Now, an individual has taken the mixed reality headset into public by walking into a cafe and ordering a coffee while wearing the headset. That individual was X user @CixLiv, and they recorded the cashier's response, writing in a post on X, "Ok, don't be mad. But someone had to do it". The cashier didn't appear to be too phased by the fact the customer was wearing a bulky headset while ordering a coffee, but according to a follow-up response by @CixLiv, "she absolutely hated me".

NASA's spacecraft that is orbiting the sun has absolutely smashed its previous record set back in November 2021.

The Parker Solar Probe is a NASA spacecraft designed to monitor and observe our local star, and while it orbits the sun it collects valuable data that is then relayed back to Earth for researchers to interpret and develop a deeper understanding of solar weather, solar patterns, star evolution and more. The Parker Solar Probe is the fastest human-made object, and on September 27 the probe reached 394,736 mph (635,266 km/h), breaking its previous record of 364,660 mph (586,863 kmh).

That wasn't the only record that the Parker Solar Probe broke on September 27, as reports indicate it also broke its distance record by coming within 4.51 million miles of the surface of the Sun, which is closer than any other spacecraft has been before. The probe has one more scheduled fly-by of the sun, and it will be its closest approach yet at 3.83 million miles from the surface of the sun. That fly-by is scheduled to take place in late 2024.

The iconic Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in operation for more than 30 years, has captured a stunning view of a distant spiral galaxy.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has pointed its old, yet still extremely powerful instruments at the spiral galaxy known as IC 5332, which resides approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth within the constellation Sculptor. The European Space Agency (ESA) notes that IC 5332's orientation is almost "face-on" to Earth, which may not make sense at first, but imagine if a spiral galaxy was a large disk or a circular plate.

From Earth's perspective, the spiral galaxy appears to be completely circular, which is how astronomers determine if Earth is "face-on" to the astronomical object they are attempting to observe. If the spiral galaxy appeared flat, it would mean Earth is looking at it from the side-on - the same as if you were to look at a plate side-on.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has captured a stunning image of the most volcanic body in the solar system, a moon of the largest planet in our solar system - Jupiter.

The Juno spacecraft passed Jupiter's fifth moon, named IO, on October 15 and, during its fly-by, snapped an incredible shot that displays the scorched surface of the body. The surface of IO is covered in volcanic activity, with the red spots in the above photo representing lakes of molten silicate lava.

These patches of molten lava are spread across the entire moon, as the moon has hundreds of volcanos that are consistently erupting and flowing more lava out onto the barren landscape. For reference, IO is approximately the same size as our moon, with estimates putting it only just a little bit bigger. Notably, Jupiter has 92 moons, and IO is the fourth largest moon in the solar system and also the innermost moon orbiting Jupiter.

The Meta Quest 3 launched earlier this month, and sitting at the heart of Meta's latest VR and Mixed-Reality headset is the new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor, the latest extended reality (XR) platform from Qualcomm Technologies. A new APU is simply one part of the picture for bringing VR and Mixed-Reality to a broader audience; there's also memory and flash storage.

On that front, Micron is leading the pack with its low-power double data rate 5X (LPDDR5X) DRAM and Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 3.1, designed to deliver next-gen speeds and performance in the smallest form factors for true untethered VR and Mixed-Reality devices. One of the reasons why Meta's Quest range has become so popular is because it delivers a wire-free experience that feels like the next step forward for VR/AR and Mixed-Reality tech.

Micron's LPDDR5X uses cutting-edge 1-alpha process node technology in addition to featuring JEDEC power advancements, where it can deliver speeds of up to 8.533 Gbps with full backward compatibility with LPDDR5 - a 33% increase in data access speeds. The company's UFS 3.1 storage is the world's first UFS powered by Micron's 176-layer NAND.

NASA has taken to its exoplanets X account to highlight an image captured by multiple of its telescopes, writing "something's watching".

The space agency explains in its X post that it appears the Helix Nebula was looking right back at Earth when NASA pointed its extremely sensitive instruments at it to observe it in a variety of wavelengths of light. Notably, the Helix Nebula is a dying star that is located approximately 700 light-years away from Earth within the constellation Aquarius, and is officially defined as a "planetary nebula", which is a phase of the life of a star.

The space agency explains on its website that when a star such as the sun runs out of fuel it will begin to expand and the outer layers of the star begin to "pull off". Simultaneously the core of the star begins to shrink in on itself. The Helix Nebula is experiencing both of these stages, and in approximately 5 billion years our sun will suffer the same fate.

A team of astronomers have identified what seems to be a rogue astronomical "zombie" object making its way from a cluster of stars.

Astronomers were thrown for a loop when they detected an object moving as fast as 22,000 mph relative to the Hyades star cluster located approximately 153 light years from Earth within the constellation Taurus. The detection proved to be an opportunity to learn about the mysterious star cluster, such as the low count of white dwarf stars (dead/zombie stars), given how approximately 97% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy will become white dwarfs.

Astronomers only estimate the Hyades star cluster having a few white dwarfs at its core, with the other stars located in the area only being loosely bound, enabling the possibility of them being ejected out of the group. But how would that happen? Two ways: a cloud of gas moving into the area or an interaction with another star cluster. Astronomers have further theorized that the lack of white dwarfs within the Hyades star cluster may be a result of them all being ejected.

You'll not often see a headline like this, where all of the big tech companies are coming together for something, so be sure to let it sit for a minute. Imagine it's a DC or Marvel situation, and the Justice League or the Avengers are coming together to save the world. Of course, this is nothing like that, but (deep breath) AMD, Arm, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm are coming together to standardize next-generation narrow precision data formats for AI.

This sounds a little boring compared to what a team-up like this could mean, but it is important for the future of AI training and inference. Narrow-precision AI data formats have played a major role in optimizing LLMs and AI, where the move from 32-bit floating point precision to the current 8-bits of precision played a big role in the evolution of AI tools and hardware.

Accelerating training and inference times, AI models can then take up less space and use less data and memory for improved performance and efficiency. The good news is AMD, Arm, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm have formed the Microscaling Formats (MX) Alliance to standardize the next-generation of 6 and 4-bit data types for AI.

Blizzard's Diablo IV, one of the biggest games of 2023, is now available on Steam - the second Blizzard Entertainment game to make up the jump from Battle.net. The first is the free-to-play Overwatch, which also recently jumped to Steam. And just like Blizzard's popular hero shooter, Diablo IV's arrival on Valve's platform is being review-bombed.

Naturally, these "reviews" are based on very little play time on Steam. However, there are fans of the game who have put in hundreds of hours on Battle.net coming to Valve's platform to praise the game - and the new Season of Blood, which introduces a lot of new content and features close to 40 pages of Patch Notes covering balance updates and quality of life fixes based on community feedback.

Diablo IV's community review rating is sitting on "Mixed," much of the negativity seems to be pointed towards Blizzard as a development studio, the Activision side of Activision Blizzard, and the company's love of microtransactions. Plus, many take aim at Diablo IV's 'live service game' aspects.

Foxconn Technology Group and NVIDIA have announced they're working together on building a new kind of data center; it will use NVIDIA's extensive GPU technology and software for various markets... including self-driving cars.

NVIDIA and Foxconn will work together on "AI factories" that will work on various applications, with both of the companies chipping in considerably in terms of what they individually excel in. Foxconn is a champion of manufacturing, while NVIDIA is a champion of technology and software.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Foxconn Chairman Liu Young, at the recent Foxconn annual tech showcase held in Taipei, discussed their plans for a very ambitious AI factory initiative. Huang highlighted the "production of intelligence" as a new wave of manufacturing, which will be managed by massive AI-powered data centers filled with NVIDIA technologies and software.

Amazon has just announced that its innovative Prime Air drone deliveries are being extended outside of the United States and into the skies of both the United Kingdom and Italy, as well as a third state in the US.

Amazon says that it has spent the necessary time and resources to build out its safe and scalable drone delivery service, where they said they've refined the technology and are now building the right infrastructure to ensure the Prime Air drone delivery service provides the ultimate convenience to Amazon customers. The design work on the drones has also been an important part, with a tease of its next-gen MK30 delivery drone.

The company has also been working closely with regulators to design their new drones -- including the new MK30 -- to the highest standard set with those regulations. UK's Aviation Minister Baroness Vere said in a statement in Amazon's announcement: "Not only will this help boost the economy, offering consumers even more choice while helping keep the environment clean with zero emission technology, but it will also build our understanding how to best use the new technology safely and securely".

Tesla's innovative and much-hyped Cybertruck EV will see its first deliveries roll off -- hopefully a Tesla Semi truck -- on November 30 during an event at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

On the official X account for Tesla, a post read, "Cybertruck production remains on track for later this year, with first deliveries scheduled for November 30th at Giga Texas". Tesla added that the production of their higher density 4680 cells is progressing as planned as they continue building capacity for cathode production and lithium refining in the United States.

Tesla originally announced its Cybertruck back in 2019, with production affected multiple times between then and now -- especially the pandemic right in the middle of it -- while in that time, other auto companies have stepped up with EV truck announcements. Ford has its fantastic F-150 Lightning, while there's also the R1T from Rivian.