Latest News - Page 825

CNN's Fareed Zakaria has sat down with astrophysicist Michio Kaku for an interview where he threw a wet blanket on the erupting fire of artificial intelligence (AI).

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has calmed the rampant fears that artificial intelligence-powered chatbots are going to take over the world, either through replacing jobs or reaching a point of complexity where they are conscious and put into a physical robotic.

Kaku described these AI-powered systems, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, as "glorified tape recorders," saying that these systems simply take "snippets of what's on the web created by a human, splices them together and passes it off as if it created these things," he said. "And people are saying, 'Oh my God, it's a human, it's humanlike.'"

It's commonplace for internet users to take an unfounded rumor and simply run with it. The newest one circulating is that porn star Johnny Sins will be playing Lex Luthor in James Gunn's upcoming Superman film.

For those that don't know, Johnny Sins is a famous male porn star that has become the face of many internet memes over his countless performances playing different professions within pornographic movies. X users began circulating the rumor that Sins, whose real name is Stevie Wolfe, will be playing Lex Luthor in James Gunn's Superman: Legacy film, and now the director of the upcoming movie has put the rumor to bed.

Gunn replied to an X user that asked if it were true that Sins was playing Lex Luthor in Superman: Legacy, "You didn't cast a porn star as Lex, right? It's so ridiculous.... It could be true," to which Gunn replied, "Oh my God, you can't possibly believe that." While it's safe to assume that most people who heard about the rumor immediately dismissed it as not plausible, there are always internet users out there that simply read text on their screen and take what they read as factual.

We've known that the Paint application is getting a dark mode for some time now, and you may have been losing patience waiting for it to arrive - if so, we've got some good news.

As flagged up by leaker PhantomOfEarth on X (formerly Twitter), the new Paint app complete with dark mode is now rolling out to stable versions of Windows 11, so everyone should have it before too long.

Unfortunately, you won't necessarily receive the updated app just yet, because the rollout is not coming to everyone initially, as Brandon LeBlanc, Senior Program Manager on the Windows Insider team, clarified.

GIGABYTE has revealed that it will soon be launching a new curved ultrawide gaming monitor aimed at budget gamers.

Introducing the GIGABYTE GS34WQC, a 34-inch gaming monitor that sports a 3440 x 1440 resolution (WQHD) VA panel that's got a maximum refresh rate of 135Hz. The GS34WQC comes out of the box at a 120Hz refresh rate but can be overlocked to its maximum of 135Hz. As for the other specifications, GIGABYTE has equipped the GS34WQC with a 1ms (MPRT) response time, HDR support, Flicker-free technology, and HBR3.

Moving to connectivity, GIGABYTE has outfitted the GS34WQC with 2 HDMI 2.0 ports, 1 DisplayPort 1.4, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Additionally, the GS34WQC includes power-saving modes that will reduce its overall power consumption, bringing down its wattage to just 0.5W when in power-saving mode and 0.3W in power-off mode. If you are wondering about tilt angles and height adjustment, the GS34WQC is able to title from -5° to +20°, and the height adjustment features 100 x 100mm VESA support for those gamers that have ditched a monitor stand for a wall or desk mount.

Mecpow is about to launch two new laser engravers that are designed to make creation easier, safer, and last longer.

The company behind the two products has announced the Mecpow X3 and the Mecpow X3 Pro laser engraver, a laser cutter designed for engraving wood and metal. The X3 Pro features a 10W output laser cutter and the X3 features 5W output laser cutter with an emergency stop feature, along with flame and gyro detection. Additionally, the working area for both the laser engravers is the same, measuring 16.0" x 15.7", with the main difference between the two new products being the wattage, as well as the inclusion of air assist with the Pro version.

Both of the laser engravers have four connection options; USB, TF card, Wi-Fi, or the App. According to Mecpow, each of these ways of connectivity enable users to seamlessly connect to the laser engravers and immediately begin their creations. In terms of safety, both of the engravers are equipped with a flame detector and position movement protection, which is triggered when the machine is either tilted or fire/smoke has been detected.

A photographer taking a group on a storm tour with the intention of catching epic photographs of storms rolling in has photographed a rare atmospheric phenomenon.

That atmospheric phenomenon is called sprites, and in this case, red sprites, which are pictured above. So, what are sprites, and what makes them rare? Sprites are upper atmospheric discharges from lighting and typically occur around 50 miles above thunderstorms and, more specifically, appear right after a lightning strike.

The photographer behind these incredible photos is Greg McCown, who spoke to PetaPixel and said, "A large storm moved clear down in Mexico about 150 miles south of our position at Windy Point, lining up perfectly with the Milky Way core." Adding, "After some instruction on how to photograph sprites, most in our group were able to catch these elusive gems."

Mainstream media publications are reporting that Elon Musk's personal preference for news outlets has resulted in some sources being throttled.

Firstly, for those that don't know what website throttling is, throttling is the process of slowing down the time it takes for a website to load or adding an intentional delay to the loading process. The Washington Post reported that tests it conducted in-house found that links from publications such as The New York Times, Reuters, Instagram, and BlueSky, another social media network, had a 5-second delay on all links posted, redirecting users from X to the linked landing page.

The publication notes that these slowed links seemed to have only affected t.co domains, which is a service that abbreviates links posted to social media platforms such as X. Another example of this would be Bitly. However, WAPO reported that this delay was only in place for a few hours and was almost immediately reversed once the outlet published its story. Once the delay was reversed, links on X went back to having hardly any loading times.

Intel has just released a new driver for its Arc graphics cards, and took the opportunity to have a quick dig at NVIDIA's mid-range GPUs in terms of Team Blue working out much better value for money.

VideoCardz spotted the driver release which is version 31.0.101.4644 for Intel Arc and Iris, and it brings in official support for Arc Alchemist graphics cards with two new games: Madden NFL 24 and Wayfinder.

As well as support for Madden, though, Intel fired some flak at NVIDIA by producing a slide to accompany the driver release which shows a performance per dollar comparison between the Arc A750 GPU and NVIDIA's RTX 3060.

Microsoft has introduced a new system to deal with Xbox cheaters and toxic players which, after enough strikes for an offender have been racked up, will ban them for a year.

The 'enforcement strike system' ratchets up penalties for offenders as they are reported for violating Microsoft's community standards, assuming those reports are verified and turn into a strike. (All reports are scrutinized by the Xbox Safety Team as to whether they are genuine complaints that should be upheld).

The way it works is that one strike doesn't come with any punishment, but the second strike given entails a one-day suspension. Reach four strikes, and that's a week-long suspension.

Following up on its announcement from July 3, X has finally put its popular feature TweetDeck behind a paywall while rolling out a Pro version of the social media platform.

The change was noticed by many users who posted screenshots to their personal X accounts, paying their respects to the popular feature, with many users noticing that TweetDeck's page now leads to a sales page for X Premium, a new pro version of X. The paywall is a major blow to journalists, power users, and social media managers, who will now have to pay X a monthly payment to access the feature.

For those that don't know about TweetDeck, the feature essentially changes the user interface of X to enable users to interact with the various aspects of X much more seamlessly. TweetDeck users are able to dance between replying to what was called tweets, inbox messages, tags, and custom news - all within one page. The tool was so beneficial to what was Twitter power users that Twitter acquired TweetDeck in 2011 for $40 million.

Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been talking about the roadmap ahead for Baldur's Gate 3, making some interesting revelations.

As stated in the above tweet, the next step for Larian is deploying another hotfix for the RPG (which will be the fourth), and then we have the first big patch incoming.

That applies no fewer than 1,000+ fixes and bits of tinkering, so that's a lot of bug squashing and otherwise smoothing over the game.

The idea of a prefabricated home that can be transported and set up in just about any clear space conjures up imagery of function over style and comfort. The LG Smart Cottage is looking to change that with a prefabricated smart home of the future built to sustain two people.

Naturally, the LG Smart Cottage is filled with LG appliances and technology from kitchen appliances to heating to water purification - and we assume an OLED TV for entertainment. Energy-wise, the LG Smart Cottage features roof-mounted 4-kilowatt (kW) solar panels capable of generating up to 15 kilowatts daily with the ability to store energy in the Energy Storage System (ESS) or put it back onto the grid. Plus, it has an electric vehicle (EV) charger as standard.

The two-story design is built for comfort and space, with an eye toward sustainability. It is fully modular and replaceable and has also been designed to transport to the desired location quickly, which will be the sort of sci-fi future we see in TV and film where all the homes look sleek and compact.

AMD has apparently canceled its plans to release high-end models in its upcoming RDNA 4 range scheduled to launch sometime in 2024, which would mean no generational successor to the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Many factors potentially led to the cancellation, from architectural complexity and issues to delays and the softer market for high-end enthusiast GPUs for PC gaming in 2023.

Today we've got some fresh info on what was being dubbed 'Navi 4C,' a high-end GPU in the RDNA 4 line-up that will most likely be shelved as AMD moves away from high-end GPUs for its next generation. This new 'Navi 4C' leak from the YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) showcases a genuinely fascinating, if incomplete, design of a GPU that goes all-in on the whole chiplet design.

The shift to chiplet was first seen with Navi 31 and the Radeon RX 7900 Series, but what we see with 'Navi 4C' takes the idea to a whole new level with AIDs (Active Interposer Dies), MID (Multimedia and I/O die) and SEDs (Shader Engine Dies) all working as one - plus, the same separate memory controllers as seen on Navi 31.

MSI's Ventus range of graphics cards represents the company's entry-level or MSRP models and, over the years, have become some of the most popular GPUs in the world - especially in the mid-range market. With the arrival of the GeForce RTX 4060 and GeForce RTX 4070 in 2023, we've gone hands-on with the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X and MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 3X and reviewed both.

Featuring lightweight two-slot designs and excellent cooling for NVIDIA's power-efficient mid-range GeForce RTX 40 Series line-up, it now looks like MSI is prepping to launch brand-new MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X WHITE 8G OC and MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 2X WHITE 12G OC models.

White as a GPU color scheme has grown massively in popularity, to the point where it now seems like there are just as many White graphics card releases as those released in classic Black. Having MSI add new White revisions for its popular Ventus series is great news as these cards are super popular - and outside modifications to the underlying cooling and the addition of new generation architecture and hardware from NVIDIA, the Ventus line-up hasn't changed much over the years.

RADV is Mesa's unofficial open-source Radeon Vulkan driver for Linux that adds ray-tracing support for older RDNA 2-based Radeon GPUs like the Radeon RX 6800 XT. Games like Hitman III, Quake II RTX, Control, Resident Evil Village, and Metro Exodus: Extended Edition are all supported using the Vulkan-based driver, and the RADV Ray-Tracing driver just got a massive boost to performance.

According to a new report at Phoronix, adding "support for batch acceleration structure builds within the Mesa RADV driver" has led to a massive boost to RT performance in games "that don't do any build command batching of their own." One such game is Hitman III, where Friedrich Vock noted that the updated driver triples the in-game ray-tracing performance.

A massive increase to be sure, though it's worth noting that RDNA 2 and cards like the Radeon RX 6800 XT are not known for delivering when it comes to pure RT performance in games that push several different effects at the same time like ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion, global illumination, and shadows.

Cable management and keeping your PCs neat and tidy have evolved in recent years. From using cable ties to keeping a sea of wires in check, we're now at the point where the fewer calves you see, the better it is for a rig's overall aesthetics. In the age of liquid cooling and RGB lighting, aesthetics is king - and it's one of the reasons we're now seeing a shift to GPU and motherboard designs created to hide or even remove visible cables entirely.

INNO3D's innovative approach is one that we've covered multiple times here at TweakTown, and what makes it great is that it doesn't require additional specialized hardware like a specific case or motherboard.

And today, we've got confirmation that the company's Stealth Cable Management system is making its debut with the INNO3D GeForce RTX 4070 Twin X2 OC White Edition graphics card.

Google Photos has been updated with a revamped 'Memories' feature that employs a scrapbook-like view that's organized using AI (yes, artificial intelligence is creeping into everything, in case you hadn't noticed).

The overhauled Memories is part of a rejigged navigation bar, and it offers a new scrapbook take as mentioned, with photos (and videos) grouped together based on certain events, or specific days, or whatever criteria you want.

You can create views from scratch, or hide them, or fine-tune the contents by removing certain videos or photos as you prefer.

Baldur's Gate 3 saves have been hitting the headlines recently, due to a bug that could corrupt saved games, which was resolved - but now we have another warning about the RPG.

First of all, note that the reason saves were going corrupt was that they were becoming too big for the specified maximum parameters. Larian simply did not realize how much some players would do in terms of bulking their save with a whole load of stuff relating to their character progression.

So, the solution was to remove the limits on a save file so it can now get as big as it needs to. See where this is going?

The Steam Deck's engine, a Zen 2 APU, is vulnerable to the Zenbleed exploit - but a fix is now inbound (and a 'fallback' solution is activate for now).

The engine of the Steam Deck is a custom 'APU 0405' (toting Zen 2 and RDNA 2), and that particular chip was missed off the list for patching up when it came to the Linux kernel.

This is being swiftly remedied, as per a commit Gaming on Linux spotted (via Windows Central), which reads as follows:

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon comes out in just over a week and we've just had the official specs for the PC revealed.

The good news is that there's nothing too demanding here with FromSoftware's mech shooter, and the minimum requirements (flagged up by Wccftech) are certainly easy going enough.

Here's the minimum spec: