Path tracing mods for Deus Ex, Dark Messiah, and Half-Life 2 show stunning progress
Nvidia adds ray reconstruction to RTX Remix path tracing mod framework
Google supercharges Chrome's omnibox address bar with machine learning
More relevant suggestions are on their way
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Hyped Rabbit R1 AI device faces harsh criticism in first reviews
Someone has already turned it into an Android app
Facepalm: The Rabbit R1, the AI-powered digital assistant device that attracted massive levels of hype during CES earlier this year, is here. Like the Humane AI Pin, it has been met with reviews that range from okay to downright bad. Many people question why the device isn't just an app, and one person has shown that, it could have been – though its developers dispute this.
Google flexes security muscle, says it stopped 2.2 million rogue apps from hitting Play Store in 2023
A couple of crypto scammers also received some legal treatment
The US government is auctioning the Cheyenne supercomputer: 145,152 CPU cores and 313 TB of RAM
This 5.34-petaflops supercomputer could be yours
Tesla lays off entire Supercharger and new vehicles teams, weeks after previous cuts
Elon Musk is going "hard core"
AMD's cancelled RDNA 4 GPU could have doubled the 7900 XTX's performance
A Radeon RX 8900 XTX would have featured 9 shader engines, 200 compute units, and up to 20 chiplets
Rumor mill: It has long been suspected that the Radeon RX 8000 series – AMD's next generation of graphics cards – will focus exclusively on affordable mid-range products. However, this wasn't always the plan. Newly unveiled code suggests that AMD canceled a flagship RDNA 4 model that might have directly competed with upcoming high-end offerings from Intel and Nvidia.
Apple poached three dozen Google experts to open a secret AI lab in Zurich
Former Google AI head now leads Apple's Machine Learning and AI Strategy division
Researchers create a new circuit board material that can be easily recycled
A hot potato: Printed circuit boards are ubiquitous; they are used in nearly all electronic devices and constitute a significant portion of the electronic waste accumulating in landfills. A new polymer-based material could render PCBs much more environmentally friendly and facilitate endless recycling.
Refreshed Beats Solo on-ear headphones get better battery life, improved acoustics
Beats also has a new set of Solo Buds
MS-DOS 4.00 source code's sloppy Git dump breaks build and erases metadata
Good intentions, poor execution?
Facepalm: Microsoft deserves kudos for open-sourcing the MS-DOS 4.00 source code, shedding light on an important milestone in computing history. But the tech giant has bungled the release in a way that may cause needless headaches for historians and archivists eager to study the decades-old code.
Arc Browser reaches stable release on Windows, available for download
The Arc Browser, previously exclusive to macOS and iOS, is now out of beta on Windows and available for download. As of writing, it only supports Windows 11.
YouTube is experimenting with showing ads when you pause a video
Invasive ads mar the user experience
Microsoft rolls out update to fix a bug that was installing Copilot on Windows 11 PCs
The unwanted Copilot installation was first reported in March
Despite soaring profits, Google lays off more staff, including Python and Flutter engineers
The Python, Dart, and Flutter teams have been impacted
This techie created a GPU from scratch in under two weeks
Designing custom CPUs and GPUs has become something of a trend for hobbyists of late
In brief: Building your own graphics card is the kind of undertaking that most people wouldn't even dream of attempting. But for one enterprising engineer known as "adammaj" on X/Twitter, constructing a GPU from the ground up wasn't just a crazy idea; it was a challenge conquered in just two weeks, even "with no prior experience."
Razer to refund over $1 million for misleading "N95-grade" claims on its Zephyr masks
Maybe stick to gaming products, Razer?
FCC slaps top telecom companies with $200 million in fines for selling user location data
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint continued to sell data even after warnings
Airline ticketing system repeatedly confuses 101-year-old passenger for a baby
"They thought I was only a little child and I'm an old lady"
Epic will relaunch Fortnite on iPad, Apple ordered to open up iPadOS in the EU
Fortnite is coming to iPhone soon
Intel CPUs Are Crashing and It's Intel's Fault: Intel Baseline Profile Benchmark
For years, we have highlighted Intel's loosely defined CPU power specs and the problems they pose for customers. The issue now is that some 13th and 14th-gen processors have started crashing.
UK becomes first country to outlaw easily guessable default passwords on connected devices
Companies that ignore the law face a $12.5 million fine
US opens investigation into Ford's BlueCruise driver assist feature after two fatal accidents
Governments approved the system's use on predetermined sections of US and UK highways
Manor Lords achieves Steam's most successful city builder launch ever
One million in sales and 170,000 concurrent players on day one, more than any other city builder on Steam
NASA uses laser link to beam data 140 million miles across space at 25 Mbps
Using lasers to send data across the cosmos
Raspberry Pi adding new memory options to its compact Compute Module 4S boards
Greater computing power and more memory for industrial applications
Battery costs have plummeted by 90% in less than 15 years, turbocharging renewable energy shift
Predicting a sixfold increase in global energy storage capacity by 2030
This precision crafted manual transmission pen features a functional clutch
A novel writing utensil
Scammers are selling fake RTX 4090 graphics cards without GPU and memory chips
The used graphics card market is a hotbed of scammers
Desert land in India to host renewable energy park 5 times bigger than Paris
Ironically, it's being built by a coal billionaire
WordPress plugin vulnerability poses severe security risk, allows for site takeovers
Millions of exploitation attempts were detected in under a month