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What you need to know

• A new report indicates that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is still intimately involved in the company's affairs years after stepping down from the board to focus on philanthropy.
• Gates' advice is reportedly treated as gospel, and he also played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership, and consequently, the success witnessed in the category.
• Gates actively takes part in the recruitment of high-ranking executives at the firm, reviews new products, and more.

Microsoft has enjoyed great success since it started dabbling in AI and integrated its fully-fledged AI-powered assistant, Copilot across most of its products and services. The tech giant is now the world's most valuable company with over $3 trillion in market capitalization. 

The tech firm's multi-billion dollar investment (recently mistaken as an acquisition of ChatGPT-maker company) and extended partnership with OpenAI has 13 market analysts unanimously voting that Microsoft will be the world's most valuable company in the next five years ahead of Apple. Some have indicated Microsoft is on the verge of reaching its iPhone moment with AI with the company's latest earnings report building on this premise.

The immense success Microsoft currently enjoys is often attributed to the company's early lead and investment in AI coupled with Satya Nadella's impeccable leadership skills. But as it turns out, there's more to the story than Microsoft lets on.

To the public eye, Microsoft co-founder and former Bill Gates left the firm's board of directors to focus more on his philanthropic efforts at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, according to a report by Business Insider, the former CEO is still involved in the company's affairs and has been the muscle behind its AI efforts.

Per sources familiar with the matter, Bill Gates is still 'intimately' involved in Microsoft's operations and strategies and is often a part of the recruitment of high-ranking executives at the firm, reviews new products, and more. More importantly, Gates' contributions have heavily impacted Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI, however complicated it might be. 

According to one of Microsoft's top executives:

"What you read is not what's happening in reality. Satya and the entire senior leadership team lean on Gates very significantly. His opinion is sought every time we make a major change."

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took over the company's leadership from Steve Ballmer but had been working there since 1992. Satya started his humble beginnings at Microsoft as an Excel product demonstrator. He quickly climbed the ranks at the company and ultimately rose to the top seat but saw himself as an "internal stranger" and even admitted that he never thought "someday Microsoft would have neither Bill nor Steve."

Microsoft CEO heavily relies on Bill Gates for technical advice

(Image credit: moneycontrol on YouTube)

Upon his appointment as CEO, Satya often turned to Gates for advice. He reportedly asked Gates to set aside 30% of his time to serve as a technical advisor for Microsoft. Satya and Gate's professional relationship continued to thrive beyond the latter's departure from the company's board in 2020.

During Gates' departure from the company, Satya praised him for his contributions and promised that the company would continue to profit from his technical advice and passion. But this tone quickly changed in 2021 while Gates and Melinda were in divorce proceedings. At the time, Gates had reportedly been forced to step down from the company for having an affair with an employee. The situation worsened when several female employees highlighted Gates' misconduct, including asking them out. It is at this juncture that Satya seemingly distanced himself from Gates.

And while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's relationship with Bill Gates seemed broken, this wasn't the case. It's reported that Satya continued to rely on Gates for his technical advice and knowledge, which has heavily impacted the company's direction and AI advances.

Was Bill Gates the key ingredient that fostered the Microsoft-OpenAI deal?

(Image credit: Microsoft, OpenAI | MIcrosoft Image Creator)

While Microsoft's CTO Kevin Scott brokered the Microsoft and OpenAI partnership in 2018, it's reported that Bill Gates had been meeting up with the ChatGPT-maker from as early as 2016. As such, it's believed that he played an important role in the partnership. 

Gates is also rumored to have challenged OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, to create an LLM with the capability of passing an advanced Biology test. At the time, Gates didn't believe it was possible, but it was indeed. Interestingly, OpenAI's Sam Altman debuted GPT-4 outside Gates' residence in 2022 where he'd been having dinner with the billionaire and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Gates indicated it was "the most stunning demo I've ever seen in my life."

Gates skillfully curated Copilot's plot

(Image credit: Windows Central | Jez Corden)

Before Microsoft and OpenAI forged their tech bromance, Bill Gates shared an internal memo with Satya Nadella alongside top executives at the company. While vague, it talks about "AI agents" designed to help satisfy your wants and needs, but are more powerful than your basic voice assistant.

After Altman debuted GPT-4, Gates shared another memo highlighting several ways the technology should be leveraged to make work easier, including reading and summarizing your emails and more. Gates believed that the model trained using the information on the internet was the beginning of a new era with personal AI agents. 

Sources with close affiliations to Microsoft detailed Gates' words and advice were treated as the gospel. Consequently, Satya Nadella challenged his team to integrate AI across its wide portfolio of products and services, including cybersecurity, Microsoft 365, etc.

Microsoft spread its AI glory to its seemingly dead search engine, Bing, ultimately placing it on an even playing field to potentially compete with Google. Microsoft CEO has indicated that Google doesn't play fair with Bing. However, supercharging the search engine with AI doesn't seem to have any major impact on Google's search market share. However, it recently surpassed 140 million daily active users after the EU antitrust watchdog gave the service and Edge a pass on DMA rules since they aren't dominant enough in the digital markets.

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Table of contents:

1. Windows 10 and 11 news
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Gaming news
5. Reviews
6. Great deals to check
7. A blast from Microsoft's past

This Microsoft Weekly starts with the latest financial report from Microsoft. On April 26, the company announced its earnings, revealing $61.9 billion in revenue and $21.9 billion in net income. Most of the company's divisions reported double-digit growth.

Windows 11 and 10

Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.

The April 2024 non-security updates for Windows 10 and 11 are now available. Windows 10 received KB5036979, and Windows 11 got KB5036980.

Those non-security updates contain one thing that will most likely upset many Windows 11 users: The company is now stuffing the Start menu with app ads. Fortunately, you can turn them off. This short guide provides more insight into that. Also, Windows 11 should soon become more clear about ads across its parts.

On the bride side, Windows 10 updates are now significantly smaller in size. Microsoft implemented some of Windows 11's practices in its previous-gen operating systems, resulting in a notable decrease of hundreds of megabytes.

This week, NTDEV, the maker of Tiny11, released a new version of Tiny11 Builder, a script that uses official Microsoft-made tools to debloat any Windows 11 build or edition. You can now make your own Tiny11 without risking using modified Windows images.

Microsoft announced some big changes on the Microsoft Store website. Now, users can download app executables directly from the website with fewer clicks. Microsoft says that the new system is faster, allows installing apps on systems without the Microsoft Store, and downloading several apps side-by-side.

If you recently purchased a Windows 11 and are now wondering if it qualifies as an "AI-enabled" one, Dell has the answers you need. The company published a support page with detailed explanations of what makes a Windows computer "AI-enabled."

The upcoming Surface Pro 10 should be one such "AI-enabled" computer. We are less than one month away from the public announcement, and benchmark leaks are already spoiling the show. A test on Geekbnch revealed a Surface Pro 10 configuration with the Snapdragon X Plus chip and 16GB of RAM.

Shortly after that, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Plus, a new, more affordable SKU in its upcoming lineup. It features 10 Cryo cores operating at up to 4.3GHz and a GPU capable of delivering up to 3.8TFLOPs. However, that is not everything Qualcomm has in store. A new report emerged about the company planning to release even more versions, including 80-core server processors.

All those Snapdragon processors should enable the new AI Explorer, which will be available in Windows 11 later this year. Just short of one month before the official announcement, a new report revealed more details about the feature.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft Released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:

Besides the two documented changes in build 22635.3566, the latest Beta build brought updates to the new "All Apps" Start menu layout and the ability to duplicate tabs in File Explorer. You may not get the new AI Explorer on your old PC, but at least you can have some quality-of-life improvements for the classic File Explorer, which is nice.

To finish the Windows section, here is a useful guide explaining how to reinstall Windows 11 without losing your data using just Windows Update.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Microsoft announced a bunch of new text-editing features for the Edge browser. One allows you to rewrite any editable text using Copilot, and the other is Windows Ink support in the address bar, text areas, and more. Needless to say, not everyone is a fan of a Copilot banner popping on the screen when selecting text, so check out this guide to learn how to toggle it off.

But that is not all. Edge 124 received a much-needed update, which reverted the recently released (allegedly by mistake) Copilot app on Windows Server SKUs. Version 124.0.2478.67 also introduced notifications for insecure HTTP downloads and a new feature for IT admins.

Firefox received a minor update under version 125.0.2 to resolve problems with downloads introduced in versions 125.0 and 125.0.1 due to hardened security measures. Mozilla says developers are working on fixing the problem and plan to re-release security improvements in future updates.

Vivaldi Technologies released a big update for its browser and joined the ranks of browsers that offer tab hibernation for memory saving. Version 6.7 is now available for download.

Surface Pro X (Wi-Fi) and the second-generation Surface Studio received new firmware updates with stability and security improvements. Also, Surface Pro 9 (Intel), Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Laptop 4 (AMD) received audio playback and recording improvements. Get those updates in Windows Update if you have one of those Surface computers.

Remember the Windows Print Spooler security issue saga? As it turned out, a Russian hacker group has been actively exploiting an old security vulnerability to access networks around the globe and steal information.

We had a few interesting stories from Microsoft about AI this week. The company unveiled Phi-3, its latest and smallest AI model for smartphones. Available in three variants, it offers from 7 to 14 billion parameters while consuming notably fewer resources than traditional LLMs.

With the ever-increasing popularity of AI services, questions of security and ethics have become more apparent. This week, Microsoft and Google announced new child safety commitments, plus Microsoft expanded its private preview of Cotent Integrity tools to combat deepfakes.

Other notable updates include the following:

• The latest ExplorerPatcher update ditches the old Windows 10 taskbar in Windows 11 24H2.
• Skype 8.118 Preview is out with camera improvements, better chat sorting, and more.
• Dev Home Preview 0.13 is out with improved widgets and new Windows customization features.
• Microsoft will discontinue MDAG browser extensions in May 2024.
• Microsoft Planner received new features designed for frontline workers.
• Microsoft announced the end of support dates for the classic Teams app.
• Microsoft Defender for Individuals is now available on iOS in the US and UK.
• GitHub was abused to host malware and create legit-looking Microsoft links.
• Cognizant purchased 25,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats to expand enterprise AI.
• The Coca-Cola Company plans to spend $1.1 billion on Microsoft's cloud and AI services.
• ChromeOS can now open and edit Microsoft 365 files.
• Dropbox Beta received Microsoft 365 real-time co-authoring.

And here are the newest drivers released this week:

• Intel Arc 31.0.101.5445 WHQL with Manor Lords support and fixes for A Plague Tale: Requiem.
• AMD Radeon Software 24.4.1 WHQL with Manor Lords support and various bug fixes.

Finally, here is this week's recap of the latest additions to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. Those include Designer for Word, more AI features for Teams, Copilot in other apps, and more.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts and more.

On April 29, Microsoft will host its new ID@Xbox Digital Showcase event in partnership with IGN. Microsoft says we can expect many gaming news and gameplay videos of upcoming PC and Xbox games.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is now available in the EA Play catalog, which means Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing the game without paying anything extra.

Microsoft and Meta are working on a limited edition "Xbox-inspired" Quest VR headset. The story emerged after Meta announced that third-party VR headset makers can now license its Horizon OS.

On April 30, 343 Industries will release a new "Operations" update for Halo: Infinite. The update will bring a new in-game store (do not worry, there will be no microtransactions), weapons balance changes, tweaks to different gameplay modes, and more.

Forza Horizon 5 received a new free content update. "Apex AllStars" is now available on Xbox and PC, bringing new exclusive GT cars, some long-requested EventLab props, and more. In addition, gamers can purchase a new DLC car pack comprised of seven different GT cars.

Minecraft also received a new content update. Version 1.20.5 is now available on all supported platforms, bringing armadillos, eight wolf variations, new armor, and other changes. In addition, Mojang released several improvements for Realms Plus, allowing players to enjoy bigger render distance, feeds in their realms, and more.

Bethesda finally released the much-anticipated next-gen Fallout 4 update on PC and consoles. It includes two new performance modes on consoles, wide and ultra-wide display support on PC, and the official Steam Deck verification. In addition, the game is now available from the Epic Games Store.

Nvidia GeForce NOW received more Blizzard games, such as Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo III, and more. Also, there's now support for Dead Island 2, Phantom Fury, Metaball, and more.

On the hardware side, gamers in eligible countries can participate in Microsoft's latest Sweepstakes giveaway. This time, the company is offering a chance to win a custom Xbox Series X console and controller inspired by Marvel Animation's X-Men 97.

Finally, Microsoft published a head-up for Xbox users, reminding them to back up old game captures before it starts deleting them in May 2024.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away two games: Industria and LISA: Definitive Edition. You can add them to your library for $0 until next Thursday. For more deals, go to this week's Weekend PC Game Deals article, which contains Earth discounts, automation bundles, DRM-free Fallout, and more.

Other gaming stories from this week include the following:

• Rare, the maker of Sea of Thieves, revealed its new sustainable design building.
• Blizzard is now hiring new people for an unannounced project.
• Cities Skylines II received a new update with DLSS, free DLC content, and more.

Reviews are in

Here are the software and hardware reviews published this week.

Robbie Khan published a review of the EasySMX X10 Mechanical Master. This inexpensive controller offers comfortable ergonomics, solid performance, mechanical buttons, and other perks for just $49. However, it does not come with a case, and the app installation is a bit cumbersome.

Steven Parker reviewed the Acemagic F2A mini PC, one of the first with an Intel Core Ultra processor and Wi-Fi 7 support. This relatively inexpensive computer offers the latest hardware, fast storage and memory, and easy upgradeability.

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While previous speculation pointed to the M3 chip, Gurman reports that Apple is already opting for its next major silicon update. The M4 is said to position the iPad Pro as Apple's first "truly AI-powered device." Gurman believes that every new Apple product going forward will have advanced AI capabilities built around upcoming chips.

I’m hearing there is a strong possibility that the chip in the new iPad Pro will be the M4, not the M3. Better yet, I believe Apple will position the tablet as its first truly AI-powered device — and that it will tout each new product from then on as an AI device. This, of course, is all in response to the AI craze that has swept the tech industry over the last couple years.

This lines up with rumors of Apple exploring AI partnerships and new software features like personalized recommendations and translations coming in iOS 18. By introducing an M4-powered iPad Pro first, Apple can lay out its vision for embedding AI across hardware and software before developers at WWDC 2024.

In addition to M4 chip and OLED screens, the new iPad Pro could enable machine learning tools for content creators, designers, and more. The upgraded tablets are also expected to support the latest generation Apple Pencil, which could introduce haptic feedback for the first time to simulate the feel of writing on paper.

Expectations for new iPads have been at a high ever since there was no event in October 2023. There are expected to be four iPad models announced at this event, which would be two new iPad Pro devices and two new iPad Air devices.

Source: Bloomberg

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I eagerly refreshed the website, awaiting my brand-new headshots. When they finally appeared, I squinted, bewildered. I laughed out loud alone in my office, then sent a very confused email to customer support.

Every writer I know is talking about AI tools and whether they’re ethical to use. But what’s just as interesting to me is why we’re so enamored with them even if they produce outrageous or below-average results. Why do we chase the shiny new thing even if it’s not better, faster, or cheaper?

This year my LinkedIn feed has been full of posts touting the best new AI tools for doing absolutely everything, and I’ve already fallen for too many of them. I didn’t really ask myself until months later why, all of a sudden, I’m trying so hard to be one of the cool kids. Major FOMO led to me conveniently ignoring whether these tools were actually helpful.

One of the first ones that caught my eye was Aragon, a service that promises to generate professional, AI-generated headshots after uploading a few selfies. Up until then, I'd been using a picture of me jumping on a rainbow bouncy house as the hero image on my website, and a vacation snapshot as my profile photo.

Professional photographers are expensive and photoshoots are time-consuming. Aragon promised I could skip the logistical nightmare of setting up a photoshoot, finding an outfit, getting my hair done, and spending hours at a potentially awkward photoshoot that would cost hundreds of dollars and deliver images weeks later. Why not pay $39, upload a few selfies, and get 40 “professional” headshots in less than two hours?

After paying the fee and uploading selfies from different angles, I had to describe what I was looking for. I asked for a variety of images outside and inside, casual wear, and no cleavage. Some of the results were truly disturbing. Aragon gave me Instagram face in every single shot. “No cleavage” resulted in images of me wearing a “business casual” crop top with porn boobs, plastic doll teeth, and dinosaur claws. Some were plain ridiculous, like one of “me” sitting on a purse in a driveway, my pantsless legs melting together. Not even the ones that sort of looked like me actually looked like me. Aragon pretended I looked like a model, was 15 years younger, and definitely a hat person.

If you’ve ever been on a first date with someone who looks nothing like their dating app pictures, you know why people use this tool. We all want to pretend we’re more attractive than we are. Because so many of us are buying into the same lie, we start reinforcing it with each other. Hey, I won’t point out my surprise at the fact that your skin has pores in real life, if you don’t mention my digital nose job.

I’d found Aragon on one of those “173 gazillion best new AI tools you must try out TODAY” LinkedIn lists, and even though that experiment turned out to be a disaster, I continued down the list, making other people money with their affiliate links.

AdCreativeAI piqued my interest next because it offered beautifully designed ads and social posts in seconds. Just add your logo, text, and image, and the “#1 most used AI tool for advertising” would spit out hundreds of creative designs that promised to “outperform [my] competitors.” Tesla, Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft supposedly used this tool. So I signed up for a free trial, used it a few times, then got charged the hefty, regular monthly subscription fee of $200. Once I uploaded my logo, I chose brand colors and fonts, then picked a format, images, and copy (with the option to let AI generate the text). The output is ranked by predicted “engagement score,” which supposedly impacts the conversion rate. I have no clue how AdCreativeAI calculates these scores.

Up until then, I’d used Canva to design marketing collateral (and by design, I mean pick a template and plug in new text.) Any user can upload designs to Canva and sometimes they’re … not great. Since I’m not a designer, I can’t always tell the good from the bad. AdCreativeAI promised to take the guesswork out of it for me.

I created several different AdCreativeAI ads for a writing guide nobody bought. Maybe the offer wasn’t that interesting, or maybe it was the design. I’ll never know, because I wasn’t posting on social media or emailing my (nonexisting) list or paying for Facebook ads. Turns out, buying an expensive ad creation tool does nothing when you don’t actually run ads. Aside from that, I noticed that while there were a lot of options, the ones consistently marked with the highest potential “engagement score” were the same 10 to 20 designs, all of which got boring quickly. Finally, there was no way to resize logos or adjust images manually.

I never used AdCreativeAI enough to justify the high monthly expense, so I kept Canva instead, which, at $12/month, is a fraction of the cost. I didn’t save time between choosing a design template and plugging in my information (Canva), or feeding my information into a tool first to spit out options for me to review and pick my favorite (AdCreativeAI). Canva now offers Magic Studio, their version of AI-powered text-to-image, text-to-video, magic animate, and magic switch (for automatically changing the size and format of designs).

The most important thing I learned, though, was that the shiny tools made me believe I needed them to create something I didn’t want to create in the first place. I don’t want to sell courses and webinars. I don’t care about creating ads or engaging on social media. I’m not a bite-size person. I’m a “meandering-conversation-while-lingering-around-the-kitchen-table-after-dinner” kind of person. Plus, I’m a slow writer, so it takes a lot of effort for me to write an article. I’m cool with it taking time and effort to read, too.

What I do need for these long-form articles are great images. I relied heavily on Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash before I learned about Midjourney from an AI-obsessed client who’d asked me to write a series of blog posts about the intersection of technology and art. She gave me a short tutorial on how to use this text-to-image generator by using specific prompts and sent me on my way … down a rabbit hole. Three hours later, I emerged bleary-eyed, having generated exactly zero images for her blog posts. Instead, I’d created random psychedelic fairy kingdoms, hyperrealistic characters for novels I’d never write, and album covers for nonexisting bands.

I’ve used only one image that I created with Midjourney, for a blog post. It was a fun process, but the image itself is low quality and has random elements that make no sense. With Midjourney, you get four square images as output and can ask to regenerate different versions of each of them. I got frustrated thinking that I couldn’t make a small change to an image I otherwise liked, or that Midjourney seemed to generate only square images, which is not what I needed for blog posts.

I found out later that adding image dimensions to the prompt creates nonsquare images, and when doing research for this article I learned that Midjourney released Inpainting at the end of August 2023, allowing you to select parts of the image and edit them separately. This is what happens when non-techy people use tech; I can’t fault AI for that.

The most controversial subscription I’m happy to pay for is ChatGPT+, for $20 a month. ChatGPT recently crossed the 100 million active user mark, and has completely transformed the AI landscape. I’m surprised how many writers publicly deride ChatGPT, while almost every writer I know uses it—just not for writing.

By definition, you can’t use ChatGPT for truly creative work, because its output is “based on existing data and programmed algorithms.” It can only summarize, distill, copy, and paste. I use it to learn the basics about concepts, devices, time periods, or events that I write about, and use that basic explanation as a starting point for research. I use ChatGPT to find synonyms and alternatives to whole phrases. I can narrow down research studies and articles quickly because I can search with highly specific prompts rather than simple keywords or terms. Unfortunately, ChatGPT’s knowledge data isn’t up-to-date, so it won’t find the most recent studies. I love it for brainstorming titles, and chapter and section headings. It’s also great for checking title case and correct citation formatting. In other words, ChatGPT is my one-stop assistant instead of toggling between Google, my thesaurus, research database, and CMOS formatting tool.

As a ghostwriter, I regularly record interviews with authors to collect book content, so I started using Otter.ai to transcribe these calls. The transcripts are generally good, but the tech is glitchy, keeps signing in and out, and transcribes only up to 90 minutes at a time, even with a paid version. Worse, Otter joins your meetings even if you don’t. This is the default setting, and even when you disable it, the function still sometimes glitches and leads to the Otter assistant showing up uninvited. The default setting also allows the platform to email everyone in the meeting the transcript and invite them to start a free trial, which has weirded out some of my clients. I’m still looking for the perfect automated tool that records video and audio separately and provides a transcript without being creepy AF.

My initial FOMO ended up costing me quite a bit of time and money, but gave me some clarity, too. Turns out that while I’d like to sit at the cool table, I do care more about looking like me than looking poreless. I trust my own voice over ChatGPT’s edits, and you should too. Not everything has to be captured, as the CEO of Otter argues. In fact, it’s the ephemeral nature of undocumented moments that makes me feel most alive. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get tired of learning about the newest AI tool promising the closest thing to magic I’ve ever seen.

So, here’s my super official ranking of all the tools I’ve used so far:

1. Most ridiculous: Aragon.AI for headshots
2. Most expensive: AdCreativeAI for ads and social posts
3. Most value: Canva for designing anything
4. Most work to get good outputs: Midjourney
5. Most glitchy and frustrating: Otter.AI
6. Most consistent use: ChatGPT

After I put the vacation snapshot back up as my profile picture, I called the friend who always has an eye for my best angles while capturing my most recognizable facial expressions.

Turns out, yes, she’s for hire as a photographer.

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Here is the changelog for the Surface Go 2:

• This update addresses a potential security vulnerability related to Intel® Security Advisories INTEL-SA-00923.

• Improved interoperability with the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock by resolving issues that were preventing the system from detecting audio devices.

• Enhances the audio system's stability and reliability to ensure seamless playback and recording, preventing any potential disruptions or failures that may interrupt audio streams.

• Improves the audio quality of calls and recordings, and reduces audio latency by addressing audio processing object (APO) issue when capturing audio.

Here is the changelog for the Surface Studio 2+:

• Addresses potential Wi-Fi security vulnerability and improves system stability.

• Improved interoperability with the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock by resolving issues that were preventing the system from detecting audio devices.

• Resolves Wi-Fi stability issue during Reset/Recovery.

Note: the update does not apply to the Surface Studio 2.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

Surface Go 2 will reach its end of life on December 30, 2024, while the Surface Studio 2+ has its EOL date set to October 2, 2028.

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Paul's Hardware (1.48 million subscribers)

April 28, 2024

Video length: 11m 21s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - April 28, 2024

1:42 AMD “Ryzen 9000” Zen5 desktop CPUs apparently confirmed by Gigabyte

2:57 NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to deliver keynote on June 2nd, right before Computex

5:04 MSI Pretty Much Quits Making Radeon GPUs

6:11 EKWB is still in Hot Water

TECH BRIEFS

8:13 Shocker - switching to Intel “baseline” profile increases stability, reduces performance

9:00 Copper Prices Booming due to AI Hardware Demands

9:26 Nvidia CEO hand-delivers world's fastest AI system to OpenAI

9:50 You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000

YouTube Source

When a game is placed on over three million wishlists on Steam before it launches, you expect the game to sell well when it actually launches. To no one's surprise, that's exactly what happened with Manor Lords.

On Saturday, the official X (formerly Twitter) account for the game's publisher Hooded Horse, revealed that Manor Lords has already sold over one million copies since it launched just a day ago on Friday, April 26.

The historical city-builder game, and the creation of one person, Greg Styczeń, has shot up to the top of the Steam sales charts when it was released as an Early Access title.

In addition, the game has a ton of concurrent Steam users at the moment. It reached its current peak of 170,082 online players at once earlier today. That number could go even higher over the rest of the weekend.

Manor Lords is also at the top of the sales charts at the Epic Games Store. and is at number two currently on GoG.com after being on top earlier this weekend. The game is also available at no additional cost for Microsoft's PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. You can also play it on the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service if you bought the game on Steam or have a PC Game Pass subscription.

Hooded Horse has set the price for Manor Lords at $39.99, but it is currently available for a couple of weeks at a discount of $29.99. In a post on Steam, the CEO of Hooded Horse, Tim Bender, discussed the price of the game:

Your support of developer Greg and his game has already been huge, and so I want to say: please, don't feel any pressure to buy the game if waiting is better for you. If money is tight right now or you're still uncertain, we'll run those 25% discounts often and give you plenty of opportunities to get the game later as well, no one should feel any fear of missing out or any kind of pressure.

Styczeń also posted on the Manor Lords X (formerly Twitter) account back in March that he and Hooded Horse would begin to work on an Xbox console version of the game "as soon as possible."

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In a blog post and an accompanying YouTube video, Mojang says the name comes from one of the update's features, the new trial chambers. These will be procedurally generated underground chambers where players will face "tricky" challenges. There will also be a new mob creature, the tornado-like Breeze.

Along with the trial chambers and the new Breeze mob, the Tricky Trials update's biggest feature is the Crafter, which will add automatic crafting to Minecraft. Another new feature is the Copper Bulb, which can create light but can also dim over time due to oxidation. Another new mob, the skeleton-like creature known as the bogged, will also be a part of the update.

Mojang has not announced when the Tricky Trials update will become available for Minecraft gamers, but these updates are usually released sometime in the middle part of the year.

Mojang has already officially released another free update, called Armored Paws, earlier this week. The 1.20.5 update adds the new passive mob, the armadillo, to the game. There are also eight wolf variants included in that update, along with the new Wolf Armor.

Mojang also made some changes and improvements to its Realms Plus server hosting subscription service this week. They include the addition of Realm Stories, a social networking feature where players can share Minecraft screenshots with each other, chat about their in-game adventures, and more. Realms Plus also now has drops of Character Creator in-game items every month. Finally, you can sign into a Realms Plus Minecraft server and get "eight extra chunks" of render distance in your games.

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Unfortunately, it appears the update also comes with its share of bugs and other issues. The Xbox Series X and S update was supposed to add two different graphical modes; Quality Mode, (30FPS at 4K resolution with Ultra graphics settings) and Performance Mode (60FPS at 4K resolution with standard graphics settings).

However, Eurogamer reports that the Xbox Series X|S update currently only has support for the Performance Mode. Attempts to run the game in Quality Mode do not work at the moment.

The PC update, as expected, has caused a number of popular third-party mods for the game to break. If you play the PC version of Fallout 4 with one or more mods, you can head over to the NexusMods forums, where you can learn how to keep the update from being installed on your PC with Steam, GoG.com, and PC Game Pass.

This update was also supposed to make the game verified for Valve's Steam Deck portable gaming PC. While that does indeed happen, the update has also done away with the game's launcher, which let users customize their graphics. The launch command of "SteamDeck=0 %command%" will restore the game launcher.

Finally, PlayStation owners who have the game as part of their PlayStation Plus Extra subscription currently cannot get the next-gen update. Bethesda Game Studios has posted on its X (formerly Twitter) account that the update will be available for those members at some point, adding "Your patience is appreciated while the teams work on this."

The Fallout 4 update was released in the middle of a resurgence of gamer interest in the entire Fallout franchise, thanks in part to the success of the Fallout live action TV show on Amazon Prime Video.

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Quick answer: There is no official confirmation that Qualcomm will create additional Snapdragon X SoCs beyond what has already been announced for the platform. However, with the announcement of the more affordable Snapdragon X Plus, another, more powerful platform beyond the Snapdragon X Elite is not entirely ruled out. An Oryon CPU with over 12 cores and higher clock speeds would help Qualcomm compete with Apple's M-series ARM chips.

A quick look at the Snapdragon X platform

A Snapdragon X Elite benchmarked in Cinebench 2024. (Image credit: Future)

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform is a series of Systems-on-Chip (SoC) that is expected to significantly shake up the Windows on Arm landscape. The company has announced two platforms—the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus—with a total of four chips between them.

The more powerful Snapdragon X Elite was first introduced in October 2023, while the more affordable Snapdragon X Plus was unveiled on April 24, 2024. The X Plus announcement clarified the X Elite's chip layout; Qualcomm has three different SKUs for the X Elite, which I discuss below. The Snapdragon X Plus platform has one chip.

These SoCs consist of an ARM64 Oryon processor (CPU), Adreno integrated graphics (GPU), and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI acceleration. All SoCs offer 5G and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, support for three concurrent 4K displays at a 60Hz refresh rate, USB4 connectivity (Intel's Thunderbolt understandably won't be included), and AV1 decoding and encoding for 4K HDR video. The SoCs also contain a "Micro NPU" for always-enabled human presence detection.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite vs. X Plus

The Snapdragon X Plus is a more affordable alternative to the X Elite. (Image credit: Qualcomm)

The Snapdragon X Elite platform contains three different chips (aka SKUs), each with a 12-core CPU, 42MB cache, and 45 TOPS NPU. The most powerful X1E-84-100 chip has a multithread 3.8GHz clock speed and 4.2GHz dual-core boost clock, as well as a GPU with 4.6 TFLOPs of performance.

Next in line is the X Elite (X1E-80-100), which has a 3.4GHz multithread clock, 4.0GHz dual-core boost clock, and 3.8 TFLOPs GPU. Finally, the X Elite (X1E-78-100) is nearly identical to the X1E-80-100, except it lacks dual-core boost ability.

Here's a closer look at the breakdown between these CPUs.

The Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-64-100) has 10 CPU cores, a 42MB cache, and a 3.4GHz multithread frequency. It also lacks dual-core boost abilities, and its GPU hits 3.8 TFLOPs. Qualcomm hasn't listed any TDPs for its new chips, but based on performance specs, it's safe to assume that the X Plus will draw the least amount of power while the X Elite (X1E-84-100) will draw the most. (Perhaps more importantly, they all draw up to 50% less power than anything from Intel or AMD, although how efficient they are against Apple remains to be seen). 

Qualcomm Snapdragon X vs. Apple M

Apple M3 vs. Snapdragon X Elite (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Bing Image Creator)

Apple offers several performance tiers for its M-series chips using the ARM architecture. The M1 was launched in 2020, followed by the M1 Pro and M1 Max about a year later. About five months after that came the M1 Ultra.

The M2 launched in mid-2022, with the M2 Pro and M2 Max coming at the start of 2023. It took Apple about six months to launch the M2 Ultra used in desktops. We're now at the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, announced in October 2023. According to Apple's previous release schedules, an M3 Ultra will likely be announced soon.

Looking at the current range of M3 chips, Apple offers its CPUs between 8 and 16 cores, split into performance and efficiency cores designed for different tasks. 

The split big.LITTLE architecture, created by Arm over a decade ago, has not made it into Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips. Qualcomm believes that its Oryon CPU cores are all plenty efficient, and instead, it adds boost capabilities to two of its cores in the two top X Elite SKUs.

Apple MacBooks (late 2023) up against Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Oryon CPU using Geekbench 6.

(Image credit: Future)

Qualcomm hasn't been shy about showing off its Snapdragon X performance metrics compared to Apple's M-series SoCs. Performance claims by the company making the chips should always be approached warily, but it looks promising so far.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon suggested at a 2023 Snapdragon Summit that the X Elite (X1E-84-100) is faster and 30% more efficient in single-threaded situations than Apple's M2 Max.

Apple has since moved on to M3 hardware, but again, it looks like the X Elite can best the M3 and keep up with the M3 Pro in Geekbench 6 multi-core performance. We'll have to test this ourselves when we get our hands on some of the new Windows on Arm laptops, which are expected later this year.

The possibility of a third Snapdragon X SoC

Qualcomm is showing off its first-gen Snapdragon X chips as powerful and efficient alternatives to Apple, Intel, and AMD hardware. These preliminary performance comparisons do, however, leave a high-end performance gap where Apple still reigns.

The M3 Max, available with 14 or 16 cores, is still the most powerful ARM CPU for laptops today. And that's before the expected M3 Ultra for desktops makes its debut. The M2 Ultra has 24 cores, and with Apple feeling the competitive heat from Qualcomm, it might go all-out with the M3 Ultra.

Qualcomm clearly isn't going to sit back and rest on its X Elite platform. The X Plus has already been announced as a more affordable option for OEMs to use on more budget-friendly laptops. The "Plus" moniker suggests that we could see something even more basic in the future, but that also works the other way,

So what's stopping Qualcomm from creating a third Snapdragon X platform with superior performance compared to the X Elite SoCs? Qualcomm is clearly aiming to topple Apple's ARM CPU dominance, and it will need an SoC with enough performance to keep up with (or best) the M3 Max and whatever Apple is cooking up for its fourth-gen M4 chips. As AI PCs continue to gain popularity, stronger NPUs will also be required to keep up with the performance demands of localized AI acceleration.

We are calling Qualcomm's next platform "Snapdragon X Ultra" or "Snapdragon X Extreme" based on speculation; no matter what it's called, it will need more cores (including boost cores) and higher frequencies to compete with Apple's top silicon.

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The release should not be too far away and you can expect to see them in the second half (2H) of 2024 as we are already seeing firmware support as well as chipset support for these CPUs. Alongside Ryzen 9000, the company is also working on the next-generation stuff.

All of AMD's AM5 processors pack some amount of graphics which means technically all Ryzen 7000 and newer AMD CPUs are APUs. However, AMD has specified that based on the capability of the on-board GPU, APUs will be designated differently, as those with powerful integrated graphics, will continue to be referred to as APUs, while those with weaker graphics, with a few compute units (CUs), will simply be referred to as CPUs.

These Ryzen APUs, codenamed "Strix Halo," are supposedly really powerful if leaked spec details are to be believed. According to the leak, these APUs will sport up to 16 Zen 5 cores (32 threads) and up to 20 RDNA 3.5 Work Group Processors (WGPs) or 40 Compute Units (CUs), leading to a total of up to 2560 stream processors on the top-end SKU.

AMD's APUs currently top out at 12 CUs or 768 stream processors which means the next generation of APUs could be over three times faster.

Image via HKEPC

One thing that has always held back APU performance is the memory bandwidth which it derives from the system memory that is shared by both CPU cores as well as GPU cores. However, the rumoured specs suggest AMD is bringing MALL (Memory Attached Last Level) cache, commonly referred to as Infinity Cache, to these APUs, which will make them less reliant on the system memory bandwidth alone.

This will also help the CPU cores as they can more easily be fed data for processing as the CPU would not be fighting over bandwidth with the GPU.

Hence, the memory subsystem is apparently going to comprise 32MB of Inifity (MALL) cache alongside LPDDR5X-8000 support.

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CNBC says the numbers beat the estimates of financial analysts. Its share price went up over 5 percent in after hours trading as of this writing.

Microsoft Cloud revenue made up over half of the company's total revenue during the last quarter with $35.1 billion, up from $28.5 billion in revenue a year ago. The company also added that the number of its Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers went up to 80.8 million, up from 65.4 million a year ago.

The company's Productivity and Business Processes division generated $19.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, which was up 12 percent from the same period a year ago. Its intelligent Cloud division made $26.7 billion in revenue during the last quarter, up 21 percent from a year ago.

Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, which includes its Windows, devices, and Xbox divisions, made $15.6 billion in revenues for the quarter. That was up 17 percent compared to a year ago. The Xbox division had a huge 62 percent increase in revenue, which was mostly due to adding money from the recently acquired Activision Blizzard.

Windows revenues went up by 11 percent overall, with Windows OEM revenue also going up by 11 percent while Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenues went higher by 13 percent from a year ago. However, device revenues from Microsoft actually went down by 17 percent for the quarter.

Microsoft will hold a conference call with financial analysts later today, where we may learn more about the company's predictions for earnings in the current quarter.

Source: Microsoft

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The popular RPG is now a native application on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 consoles, and the developer now has two performance modes for players to choose from when jumping in. The first is Quality Mode, which runs the game at 30FPS at 4K resolution and at Ultra settings without dynamic resolution scaling. If the player is using a 120Hz display, Quality Mode will target 40FPS instead.

Meanwhile, the Performance Mode will target 60FPS at 4K resolution, and will utilize standard graphics settings alongside dynamic resolution to hit that frame rate. Interestingly, if Fallout 4 detects a 1440p display is connected to the console, it will automatically run at that resolution and target 60FPS at Ultra settings instead, regardless of what mode was selected.

PC players will find official support for widescreen and ultra-widescreen displays now. For handheld gaming fans, Fallout 4 Steam Deck verification has finally arrived with this update too. The title is now also available on the Epic Games Store for the first time.

Here are all the bug fixes included with this update straight from the changelog, which even apply to last-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players:

• Resolved issues preventing Japanese and Chinese users from connecting to Bethesda.net (this restores access to Mods).
• Resolved issue preventing save data from properly loading during the prologue.
• Resolved issue that could prevent the Vault 111 Door from opening on new games.
• Resolved issue that could prevent the quest “Go Home” from advancing.
• Resolved issue that could result in Codsworth being broken on the ground after fast traveling.
• Resolved issue with mipmaps in DLC.
• Resolved issue that could result in a softlock when in dialogue with Prestson Garvey.
• Resolved issue preventing autosaves while fast traveling in Power Armor.
• Fixed issue where text would occasionally disappear in the Creation Club menu.
• Resolved issues with text formatting in the credits in Japanese and Chinese.
• Resolved issue causing the camera to fail when leaving furniture after an extended time.
• Fixed issue that could misplace quest markers while the VR Workshop Creation was installed alongside Automatron.
• Resolved issue with player movement in some underwater areas at Thicket Excavations.
• Resolved issue that could cause corruption within the Settlement system resulting in wrong resource counts and/or destroyed settlements.
• Resolved issue where the “Level Up” notification would display even if there was not a level up available.
• Fixed some flickering in Vault 111.
• Stability improvements.

 

PC Only

 

• Resolved issue preventing saves being made under Windows Usernames with Cyrillic, Chinese, or Japanese characters.

 

Creation Kit

 

• Removed non-functional “Hot Load” button. Removed non-functional “Material Editor” button.
• Editor IDs longer than 99 characters will no longer crash the editor.
• Resolved crash that could occur while viewing a quest’s Objectives tab.
• Resolved hang that could occur while adding a reference to a layer.

Other than that, the "Enclave Remnants (New!), Enclave Weapon Skins, Enclave Armor Skins, Tesla Cannon, Hellfire Power Armor, X-02 Power Armor, Heavy Incinerator, Halloween Workshop (New!), Makeshift Weapon Pack (New!)" Creation Club items are now available to all players for free.

The Fallout 4 Next-gen Update is now rolling out across, PC (Steam, Microsoft Store, and GOG), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. Its size seems to vary from platform to platform, with Steam users seeing a 15GB download, while Xbox players are seeing a 22GB update.

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As of right now, Qualcomm officially unveiled four Snapdragon X processors: three X1 Elite SKUs and one X1 Plus. However, there should be one more X1 Plus variant with eight Oryon cores, fewer PCIe Gen 4 lanes, and less powerful graphics. The SKU in question is X1P-42-100.

Interestingly, Qualcomm is aiming at not just regular PCs, like the upcoming Surface Pro 10. The company reportedly works on server chips with Oryon cores. The "SD1" chip allegedly features the following specs:

• 80 Oryon cores at up to 3.8GHz
• 16 channels of DDR5 up to 5600MHz
• 70 PCIe 5.0 lanes
• CXL v1.1 support
• 9470-pin LGA socket (98.0×95.0mm)
• Support for a two-socket configuration
• Built on TSMC’s 5nm process (N5P)

According to the report, Qualcomm briefed its partners about its new server chip somewhere in late 2021 or early 2022. The SD1 could be Qualcomm's second attempt at server chips after the canceled Centriq in 2017.

Qualcomm has already provided the first benchmarks of its new Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors. They look on par with the modern competition, which backs the recent report about Microsoft being confident in its AI PCs being capable of outperforming Apple's M3-based MacBook Air.

Of course, real-world tests and benchmarks will have to wait for the first devices to hit the market, which should happen somewhere in mid-2024. Microsoft, for example, plans to unveil the ARM-powered Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on May 20, 2024.

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Reddit stopped working for most users this afternoon. For nearly an hour, the site didn’t load and displayed an error message reading, “Oops, something went wrong, please try again later.”

 

At 12:52PM ET, the platform made an update on its status page, saying, “An issue with a Reddit backend has impacted many users on our site.” The site later said it had “identified the issue” and is “remediating it.” The outage appears to have started around 12:45PM ET, with Downdetector recording a massive spike of outage reports at that time.

 

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

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What is new in the April 2024 firmware update for the Surface Pro 8 and 9 (Intel)?

The following update is available for Surface Pro 9 with Intel Processor devices running Windows 10 November 2021 Update, Version 21H2, or greater.

 

• Enhances the audio system's stability and reliability to ensure seamless playback and recording, preventing any potential disruptions or failures that may interrupt audio streams.

Here is the list of new drivers for the Surface Pro 9 (Intel):

And here are the new drivers for the Surface Pro 8:

Here is extra information about the updates:

The Surface Pro 8 will be supported until October 5, 2027, and the Surface Pro 9 (both Intel and ARM versions) will reach its end of life on October 25, 2028.

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It is speculated that this did not take place because Xbox postponed its plans. However, according to a new Xbox notification shared by a Reddit user, volcaandsora, Xbox has announced that it will start deleting game captures starting May 30, 2024.

While it is unclear if anyone was affected by Microsoft's deletion of game captures in January 2024, as per the previous announcement, it looks like now we have until May 30, 2024, to back up all of our game captures and images. The images that are at least 90 days old and are stored on the Xbox Network are again affected by the new notification.

Notably, images on Xbox Network mean screenshots or images that are uploaded to Xbox's servers, and not the images that are stored locally on a console. But to be extra safe, we would suggest you take a backup of all your favorite game's screenshots and images on an external hard drive or use any of the cloud storage options.

To back up your game captures on your Xbox;

1. Go to My Games & Apps.
2. Select Apps.
3. Choose Captures.
4. Here, you will be able to move them to OneDrive, an external hard drive, or a USB.

You also get the option to change the location and set future captures to be automatically stored in OneDrive. This would ensure that everything is backed up, and you don't have to worry about losing your favorite game's screenshots and images. Do keep in mind that the free version of OneDrive offers a 5GB limit.

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In August 2023, we reported how AMD is all likely to release the Radeon RX 8000 graphics cards series without any flagship graphics card.

The RX 8000 series is all set to have just two GPUs. The Navi 43 and the Navi 44. This means that the series is all set to target the mid-range of graphics cards, not flagship ones like the RX 7900 XTX or even RX 8900 XTX.

It’s not the first time AMD has done so. It has done something similar in the AMD Radeon RX 5000 and Radeon 400 series before.

However, those who thought that AMD is going to pair the RX 8000 with faster VRAM, are going to be disappointed.

GDDR6 On RX 8000

Well known Twitter (now X) based leaker @Kepler_L2 has revealed (via Club386 and VideoCardz) that all the graphics cards using the next-gen RDNA 4 based AMD GPUs will come with just 18Gbps of VRAM.

To those unaware, 18Gbps is commonly found in GDDR6 graphics memory. GDDR7, which was announced officially about a month ago, starts from 28Gbps.

The top Nvidia RTX 4000 graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 4090 and others come with GDDR6X memory clocked at 21Gbps.

Not A Surprising Move

The AMD RX 8000 coming with just 18Gbps might disappoint many. However, unlike others, we aren’t surprised.

First, as it’s rumored, the AMD Radeon RX 8000 series will not have a flagship graphics card. So why would AMD put newly released and expensive GDDR7 VRAM in it.

Second, AMD’s RX 8000 series will come earlier than the Nvidia RTX 5000 graphics cards, which were earlier stated to release next year. Though the latest rumors suggest that the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 will release earlier than expected, possibly later this year itself. So AMD might not have enough GDDR7 chips with them.

Third, it’s rumored that the Nvidia RTX 5000 graphics cards are going to rival both AMD Radeon RX 8000 series and AMD Radeon RX 9000 series. So it’s very much likely that AMD will use the GDDR7 VRAM in RX 9000 instead.

So this move by AMD shouldn’t be seen as a surprise. It was, in fact, quite expected move. What should be interesting, however, is how exactly the RX 8000 series performs and what it’s going to be priced at.

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The announcements arrived via social media posts on the official Fallout account, with them saying "Thank you to the over one million of you who adventured with us in #Fallout76 in a single day … and almost five million across all Fallout games in a single day!"

Steam is the only platform that shows live player numbers for these titles. SteamDB's latest data shows Fallout 76 broke its concurrent all-time player peaks just two days ago to hit almost 75,000 players on Steam alone. Don't forget that the title is also available on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as Microsoft's Xbox and PC Game Pass subscription programs.

Meanwhile, Fallout 4's Steam concurrent player numbers hit a peak of almost 165,000 earlier this week. The RPG is almost ready to receive its long-promised next-gen update too, bringing performance improvements, free content, and bug fixes to players across all platforms.

At the same time, the Obsidian-developed Fallout New Vegas almost reached its launch-day peak concurrent numbers this week, The fan-favorite RPG hit 43,000 players on Steam a few days ago. As millions logged in to these titles, even the popular modding platform Nexus was recently having trouble with the surge of players attempting to access its trove of custom modifications.

The massive resurgence of players for these classic titles, considering the last single-player Fallout entry released nine years ago, is primarily thanks to the brand-new live-action adaptation from Amazon Prime Video. The well-received TV series has proven to be a massive hit, becoming one of the top three most-watched shows ever on the network. A second season has already been confirmed too.

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Samsung is now mass-producing its 9th-generation triple-level cell (TLC) vertical NAND memory chips for high-performance and high-density solid-state drives. The new chips boast a smaller size and a 50% density improvement over the previous generation NAND memory.

Besides its smaller size, Samsung's new V-NAND memory packs several new technologies. In the official blog post, Samsung says it uses cell interference avoidance and cell life extension to make memory last longer and work more reliably. Also, the company uses "channel hole etching to maximize fabrication productivity:

Samsung’s advanced “channel hole etching” technology showcases the company’s leadership in process capabilities. This technology creates electron pathways by stacking mold layers and maximizes fabrication productivity as it enables simultaneous drilling of the industry’s highest cell layer count in a double-stack structure.

 

As the number of cell layers increase, the ability to pierce through higher cell numbers becomes essential, demanding more sophisticated etching techniques.

Samsung's 9th-generation vertical NAND uses the new "Toggle 5.1" NAND flash interface, which improves data input/out speeds by 33% up to 3.2Gbps. Samsung says it plans to use new memory chips and the interface for high-performance PCIe 5.0 SSDs. As of right now, the budget-friendly 990 EVO is the only PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive from Samsung.

Finally, technological improvements in the new V-NAND memory from Samsung allowed the company to decrease power consumption by 10%.

Samsung is already producing triple-level cell V-NAND memory, and the production of quad-level cell V-NAND will begin in the second half of 2024.

We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward. In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product.

 

Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation.

You can read more about the 9th-generation V-NAND from Samsung in a post on the Samsung Newsroom website.

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