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A new report has claimed that X has put out a call for financial data giants to construct a dedicated trading hub within the X app.

According to Semafor that claims it saw X's request for plans and spoke to people familiar with the matter, X is planning on constructing a trading hub within the app, which ties perfectly into X owner Elon Musk's overall vision of converting the social media platform into "the everything app". The publication states that the request for plans was sent out to multiple big providers, and each was requested to provide a proposal for how such an idea would be implemented.

Notably, the request states that X will offer the bidders a chance to reach "hundreds of millions of highly-qualified users," while also stating it won't be providing any compensation for the project. In fact, Semafor reports that the request asks companies to state how much money they would be committing to the project. Furthermore, the publication writes that it needs to be clarified which companies, if any, followed through with proposals, which were due sometime last week.

Baldur's Gate 3 has arrived - as you surely won't have failed to notice - and the RPG has already racked up a record on Steam.

It was always clear Steam was going to take quite a hammering from keen role-players when the game went live, especially given its download size of 122GB, and that did indeed turn out to be the case (remember, there was no option to preload it).

As PC Gamer spotted, the Steam stats page shows that Baldur's Gate 3 hit a total bandwidth usage of 146Tbps (terabits per second) at its peak. That's a whole lot of data flying around, and it's nearly three times the peak load that Cyberpunk 2077 put on Steam's servers.

For the first time ever, a group of astronomers has identified black hole's on a collision course within a dwarf galaxy, a scientific observation that was yet to be achieved until now.

As detailed in a February press release, a group of astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory identified two separate pairs of black holes and published their results in a study added to The Astrophysical Journal. The astronomers explain that dwarf galaxies on a set course to collide are expected to form a larger galaxy once the merger is complete. As for the black holes, the press release states that as gas is pulled toward the giant black holes within each of the dwarf galaxies, they grow in size.

Eventually, the black holes within each of those galaxies will grow and collide with opposing dwarf galaxies, forming an even greater black hole. Why is this important? Researchers believe studying dwarf galaxies unlocks more knowledge about the early stages of the universe, specifically several hundred million years after the Big Bang. The press release explains that scientists think that in the early stages of the universe, dwarf galaxies were in abundance, which, after millions of years, eventually collided together to form the galaxies we are observing today.

Researchers have, for the very first time, watched cracked pieces of metal fusing back together without any human intervention.

The newly discovered phenomenon could revolutionize engineering if it can be harnessed correctly, and according to the researchers that watched the event, it was "absolutely stunning to watch". The team behind the study is from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University, and according to the paper published in the journal Nature, the team has confirmed that metals "have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale."

Machines experiencing repeated stress eventually break through microscopic cracks that eventually become bigger and bigger. These small cracks can appear in various types of engineering, from vehicle engines, to bridges, to solder joints within electronic devices. All of these metals can break unexpectedly, which can lead to an eventual failure of the entire device/structure/creation. However, an experiment done at the nanoscale has proven that these microscopic cracks can heal, or at least they can within a vacuum.

A new simulation from an international team of scientists has given some insight into the inner workings of a star and how stars twinkle.

At the heart of stars is extremely hot material the moves around similar to boiling water, or waves in the ocean. An example of how these waves are generated we need to think about the star similar to a boiling pot of water on a stovetop. Similar to a bubbling boiling pot of water, the plasma within the core of the star is pushed to the surface since heat always rises.

When this plasma hits the perimeter of the star it creates clash that reverberates through the star, creating what is known as gravitational waves. When these gravitational waves are generated they can affect the iconic twinkle that observers see. Now, a new study published in Nature Astronomy puts forward a new simulation of stellar gravity that may allow astronomers to accurately predict how much "twinkling" a star can do.

Twitter is no more as the social media platform has been rebranded to X, and amid the changes, trolls have snatched up X's CEO's former handle.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who X owner Elon Musk appointed in May, announced that she had changed her username from @lindayaccs to @lindayaX. Faster than you can say, the letter X Yaccarino's former username was picked up by an online troll who changed their display picture to Yaccarino's current display picture and began posting jokes. The troll account is mostly the same as Yaccarino's, except it features the words "parody" in the username, a rule on X that must be followed, per the social media platforms guidelines.

So, what has the troll account been posting? Examples include, "Hello fellow Reptilians!" and "Let's revert back to Twitter! Who's with me?" As previously stated, X requires parody accounts to clearly list the words "fake" "fan," or "commentary" within the username/bio. However, there are some caveats to its rules, as Musk famously banned the account that was tracking the location of his private jet using public flight data.

Lenovo has unveiled two new gaming monitors that it will be releasing under its Legion brand. Both of these monitors come with a high refresh rate and are overclockable.

The first gaming monitor is the Legion R25f-30, which is a 24.5-inch VA display panel that is 1920x1080 (FHD) and comes with a refresh rate of 240Hz. The panel is also overclockable up to 280Hz, which is aimed at gamers looking to squeeze as many frames into their games as possible.

As for other specifications, the Legion R25f-30 comes with a peak brightness of 380 nits, a 3000:1 static contrast ratio, 99% sRGB coverage, and 90% DCi-P3 coverage. Additional specs are as follows; AMD FreeSync Premium support, HDR10, two HDMI 2.1 inputs, a DisplayPort 1.4, and a headphone jack.

Phanteks has announced the release of its latest AIO cooler for CPUs, the new Glacier One D30 240 and 360 - denoting the two radiator sizes. Sporting a stylish RGB-lit pump and fans, the new Glacier One D30 series adopts the latest trend of offering models in white and black variants to suit different builds.

Alongside GPUs, AIO coolers are some of the most visually prominent parts of a new PC build and are a component where looks matter - bolstered here by Phanteks' D-RGB lighting system. The new Glacier One D30 series sports the company's stylish and cutting-edge D30 fans (the naming comes from the 30mm thick frame) that feature lighting throughout the frame alongside the ability to link them together in a daisy-chain fashion to cut down on the need for multiple cables.

"One of the standout qualities of the Glacier One D30 AIO cooler is its ability to be daisy-chained and controlled through a single cable," writes Phanteks in the press release. "This innovative design eliminates cable clutter and simplifies the installation process, making it easier than ever to achieve a clean and organized build."

Yesterday we looked at AMD's new budget-friendly entry-level and mainstream workstation GPUs, the new Radeon PRO W7600 and Radeon PRO W7500. But, as is the case with many shiny new things in the world of tech, all of that info was gleaned from leaks and documents making its way online before official details were officially announced.

And that's what we've got today, with AMD announcing two new additions to the AMD Radeon PRO W7000 Series graphics product line; the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 and AMD Radeon PRO W7500 workstation graphics cards. They join the existing AMD Radeon PRO W7900 and W7800. Per the announcement, these new cards are designed to "tackle mainstream workloads across a range of professional industries."

The announcement confirms that the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 is priced at USD 599, and the AMD Radeon PRO W7500 is priced at USD 429 - with the cards available today and set to be featured at SIGGRAPH 2023 next week.

The Acer Predator X45 OLED Curved Gaming Monitor is a show-stopper display featuring an ultrawide curved 45-inch OLED panel with a UWQHD 3,440 x 1,440-pixel resolution, 240 Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. And taking advantage of OLED display technology, it features an incredible 0.01 ms response time (GtG).

Showcased at CES 2023, the display is finally ready to hit retail - though it looks to be a Newegg exclusive, with the Acer Predator X45 currently on sale for USD 1,599.99. It's a premium price, to be sure, and on par with the similarly specced 45-inch Corsair Xeneon Flex that features a bendable OLED panel. There's no such action for the Acer Predator X45, which ships with an immersive 800R curvature.

Although we're starting to see many more OLED panels in the PC display space targeting more traditional monitor sizes, releases like the Acer Predator X45 OLED Curved Gaming Monitor are a nice little reminder that large high-end gaming displays are more impressive than ever.

With AMD set to unveil the new Radeon RX 7800 XT later this month, with the launch shortly after that, today comes our first look at one of the partner cards - courtesy of PowerColor. The company inadvertently leaked the info by posting the full product page for the upcoming PowerColor Radeon RX 7800 XT Red Devil graphics card.

Naturally, the page has since been taken offline, but only after everyone got a full look at the specs - and it paints an interesting picture for the upcoming GPU. With 3840 Stream Processors, the Radeon RX 7800 XT shares the same core count as the previous generation's Radeon RX 6800 (non-XT) but fewer cores than the Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Of course, we're talking about RDNA 2 versus the new RDNA 3 architecture, so there's a lot more to it than this. The full specs for the PowerColor Radeon RX 7800 XT Red Devil also confirm the clock speeds for the new GPU, 2255 MHz for gaming and 2565 MHz for boost which represents a slight overclock over the reference 2210 MHz and 2520 MHz speeds.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a smash hit on PC and has achieved astronomically high player counts on its launch day.

After six years of development and multiple delays, it's finally here. Larian's epic D&D RPG, which continues the grand fantasy Baldur's Gate saga, released today to massive fanfare and applause. Baldur's Gate 3 is doing so well on Steam that it has risen to the second most-played game for the day, surpassing DOTA 2 and second only to the mighty Counter-Strike GO.

At the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 had over 472,000 players on Steam, clearly indicating early launch success for the cRPG. The game is currently sitting at a 89% positivity rating, and hit an all-time peak of 472,136 players in its first 24 hours of launch. Not bad for a release day.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms the new publisher's new FC24 game will feature 19,000 fully-licensed players.

Following its break with FIFA, EA decided to make its own football label with the FC brand. The first game in the series, FC24, aims to recreate the billion-dollar vivacity that the FIFA games are known for, and to do that, the publisher acquired rights to add a similar amount of footballers as FIFA 23:

"With these recent announcements, alongside our ongoing network of partnerships, the game will showcase 19,000 fully-licensed footballers, 700 squads, 30 leagues, and the biggest competitions," Wilson said during the EA Q1 2024 earnings call.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson affirms the publisher is working on its biggest-ever pipeline of video games, live services, and content.

EA's latest Q1 FY24 earnings call offered more insight into the company's future plans. Following the digital surge during COVID-19, EA has leaned more strongly into online-based experiences that churn out billions of dollars in microtransactions. The publisher is now adhering to creating Games-as-a-Platform, a new-ish concept that attaches multiple biz models around a specific title.

The idea is to treat EA's biggest franchises as an ecosystem of products, services, and experiences. EA still plans to release singleplayer-only games with strong storytelling--Jedi Fallen Order's success helped change how EA sees these games--and the new Dragon Age was given as an example.

This is a bit of an odd one: Intel announced a mid-range Arc A580 GPU last year, but since then, we've heard nothing about it - though this very A580 has just appeared in a leak.

As VideoCardz spotted, Benchleaks on Twitter uncovered a Geekbench result for an Arc A580 graphics card (apply all the usual caveats for leaks and rumors, of course - it might just be a falsified entry somehow).

The GPU scored 82992 points in the OpenCL test, which puts it pretty much bang-on level with AMD's Radeon RX 7600 (which is also around the 83000 mark). For the benchmark, the Intel graphics card was paired with one of the firm's Alder Lake processors, a Core i7-12700.

In a bit of a blunder, Microsoft accidentally let some folks access a configuration tool that can be used to switch on hidden features in Windows 11, with the predictable result that the utility has ended up being spread all over the web.

The app in question is called StagingTool, and it offers a command line interface that can enable features lurking in the background of test builds of Windows 11. You know, the features Microsoft has put the groundwork code in place for, but hasn't yet sent live.

All you need to know is the feature ID code to enable a piece of functionality in this way, and those codes tend to get discovered and posted on forums or social media here, there and everywhere.

It was thought that a max difficulty playthrough of the game Hades, with no mods or cheesing, was impossible to pull off - but an intrepid YouTuber has proved that isn't the case.

As you can see in the above video, Jade managed to beat Hades at Heat 64 (max difficulty), unmodded and unseeded, in a straight playthrough that took 30 minutes.

Hades, a rogue-like hack and slash dungeon crawler, is regarded as a masterpiece by many gamers, but when you notch up that difficulty, it becomes incredibly, incredibly hard.

Baldur's Gate 3 is set to launch imminently - in an hour, in fact - so if you're about to take the plunge with the RPG, what do you need to do?

PC Gamer spotted that the developer has put together a six-step checklist to ensure that players of the early access correctly prepare their PC for the launch day 122GB download and installation.

So, the first thing you need to do is delete your early access save games, and player profiles, as these won't work with the release version of Baldur's Gate 3.

Microsoft has seemingly lowered the bar of the system requirements necessary for Windows 11 users to run Android apps.

Neowin spotted the move, and as you may be aware, Microsoft previously stipulated that those wanting to run Windows Subsystem for Android to get these mobile apps on the desktop needed to have a certain minimum processor.

Namely at least an AMD Ryzen 3000 CPU, or an 8th-generation Intel Core i3 chip, or better.

The Linux Foundation's Software-Enabled Flash Community Project is not only about vendor-neutral flash storage technology; it's about driving all storage needs by software. Think of it like open-source SSDs, designed to meet the needs of hyperscale environments like the cloud, where developers can be in direct control to maximize the benefit of flash memory. Software-defined storage.

As one of the pioneers of flash memory, KIOXIA has announced that it will begin delivering samples of this new type of flash memory to customers this month, with the technology set to be showcased at Flash Memory Summit 2023 (FMS 2023) next week.

Described as a new class of drive, KIOXIA confirms that they are purpose-built with "an open source API and libraries to provide the needed functionality" for a hyperscale environment. Fully unlocked open-source SSDs that do away with standard and predefined HDD protocols to create a whole new platform for flash media is a fascinating approach to flash memory.