Well, you can now say "Goodbye" to that previous concurrent player level. SteamDB reports that on Sunday, a new milestone was set when Steam had a whopping 36,354,393 players online at the same time. That beats last week's record by nearly one million players; 968,863 to be exact.

Of that new record number, 11,576,186 Steam users were actively playing games on Sunday. That is still just a tad smaller than the previous active player record of 11,582,167 gamers. That record was set on January 28, at the height of Palworld's popularity on Steam.

It's likely that the new concurrent player record number on Steam on Sunday was set in part because of the current Steam Spring Sale, with deep discounts on thousands of games. The sale will continue until March 21.

The usual games that have been on the top 10 list of concurrent players on Steam have remained steady for the most part this weekend. SteamDB shows Valve's Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 in the number one and three slots respectively, with PUBG: Battlegrounds in the number 2 position.

One major change for a Steam game in terms of concurrent player number was Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege. On Sunday, the tactical shooter hit a new record of 201,933 players online at once. The last record for this game was set three years ago when it hit 201,053 players in March 2021. Part of the reason for that was that the game got a deep 80 percent discount during the Steam Spring Sale.

It will be interesting to see if Steam continues to bring in new players over the next year.

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Table of contents:

1. Windows 11 news
2. Updates are available
3. Gaming news
4. A blast from Microsoft's past
5. Random fact about Microsoft

Windows 11

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.

March 2024 Patch Tuesday updates are out, which means it is time to update your computer with the latest fixes, security improvements, and more. Windows 11 received KB5035853 (it also fixed the 0x800F0922 error), and Windows 10 received KB5035845. Note that Windows 10 version 21H2 will soon reach its end of life. Microsoft published a support document reminding users that support for enterprise editions will end on June 11, 2024.

Only a few weeks before the Microsoft event, Samsung revealed some of the upcoming Copilot features. The company's Galaxy Book4 product pages revealed advanced capabilities, such as improved Phone Link integration, which would let Copilot get data from an Android smartphone connected to a Windows 11 PC.

Another AI-related feature coming soon to Windows 11 is camera filters. Enthusiasts discovered new strings in the latest Local Experience Pack pointing to AI filters to make you look like "a watercolor painting," "an animated cartoon," or "an illustrated drawing."

Microsoft published an article detailing the latest changes in Windows to make the operating system DMA-compliant in Europe. Those changes include the ability to uninstall Microsoft Edge and the Bing search, third-party search provider support, and more.

In addition, the company discontinued a few things across its services. 1024-bit certificate keys are now deprecated and Visual Studio App Center will stop working in March 2025.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for testing this week:

In addition, Windows Insiders can try a new set of features for Paint. Version 1.2402.32.0 adds a reworked brush slider and the ability to copy visible content on all layers.

Finally, here is a neat Windows concept imagining a Microsoft-made operating system with cool features and without bloatware.

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 Copilot now uses GPT-4 Turbo by default, including the free tier. This week, Mikhail Prakhin announced the update and said that users could still switch to the previous model if necessary. GPT-4 Turbo was previously available only in Copilot Pro, a $20/month subscription.

Copilot Pro subscribers can now access Copilot GPT Builder, a special tool that lets you build custom Copilot versions with specific instructions and documents for more specific tasks. The subscription itself is now available worldwide, plus users can try it thanks to the new trial mode.

Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, and Google announced their joint contribution to the release of Speedometer 3, a new browser benchmark aiming to reflect real-world web usage as much as possible. Changes in Speedometer 3 include better runtime measurements, updated JavaScript UI frameworks, the inclusion of complex DOM versions, SPA testing, and more.

Despite working with Google and other companies on improving the web for everyone, Microsoft is extremely unfriendly to those not using Edge. This week, the company once again started harassing Chrome users with banners, begging them to set Bing as their default search engine. The ad's nature made many users believe their PCs were infected with malware. Microsoft confirmed that the banner was legit and it should only appear once.

Although Google cannot protect its customers from Microsoft, it can provide additional security against malicious websites. This week, the company announced that its Safe Browsing feature is now keeping and updating the list of malicious websites in real-time. The change should improve phishing attacks by up to 25% compared with the old on-device list method.

Microsoft Office 2024 and its LTSC variant are coming later this year. Microsoft confirmed that preview testing begins in April, with a consumer version scheduled to arrive later. A new version of Office with perpetual licensing will be available on Windows 10 and 11 in both 32 and 64-bit variants. Prices will remain the same for consumers, but commercial customers will have to pay Microsoft 10% more than before.

On the third-party side, we have Proton launching its Mail app on Windows and Mac (a version for Linux is now in beta) and Meta launching its Threads app.

In July 2023, a China-based group hacked consumer systems after forging tokens from an MSA key. This unfortunate event upset quite a few US government agencies, resulting in some of them promptly moving their data to rivaling services from Google and Amazon.

Other notable updates released this week include the following:

• PowerPoint for the web received improved animation controls for various objects you can add to your presentation slides.
• Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 2 adds GitHub Copilot features.
• Evernote received Outlook Calendar support with the ability to create event-specific notes.
• Excel for the web now supports CSV export.
• Microsoft Edge Dev received a Bing search box for error pages.
• Skype Insiders received a new update with improved rich-text formatting on Android.
• Microsoft has launched a public preview of its new Planner app in Teams.

Here are the new drivers released this week:

• A new Ryzen Chipset driver for AM4 and AM5-based motherboards. Version 6.02.07.2300 brings bug fixes for AMD PSP and SFH drivers.

Finally, here is this week's Microsoft 365 Roadmap with the latest additions, such as new features for Teams on mobile, email search filters for the new Outlook, and more.

On the gaming side

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

Turn 10 Studios released Forza Motorsport Update 6 with multiple important changes, such as reworked car progression, the ability to buy car points with credits, a fix for the blocked pit lane exit in Daytona, a new career mode, and a few fresh vehicles for Car Pass owners.

Age of Empires IV will receive an update next week. The biggest change will be cross-play support on PC and Xbox. The update will also bring Team Ranked Mode on Xbox and various changes and bug fixes.

Another big update is coming soon to Halo: Infinite. Look out for reworked networking for "a better and more consistent multiplayer experience," a new anti-cheat system, seven fresh maps, and more. The update lands on March 19 on Xbox and PC.

Mojang has issued an important warning for Minecraft players, urging them not to update the game with the Xbox app on Windows 10 and 11. Doing so may result in a permanent loss of worlds (saves). You can bypass the issue by running a built-in Game Services troubleshooter in the Xbox app. Check out this article to learn how to do that.

Speaking of Minecraft, Mojang launched something called Marketplace Pass, a new subscription that lets you access dozens of premium content from the in-game marketplace for only $3.99 per month.

Nvidia announced eight new titles for GeForce NOW, its cloud-based gaming service. Also, the company announced DLSS 3.5 support for more games.

Deals and freebies

Those wanting to expand their gaming libraries have plenty of deals and freebies to check out this week. Be sure to visit our latest Weekend PC Deals section featuring a freebie from the Epic Game Store and Steam Spring Sale 2024.

And how about a hardware giveaway? Microsoft lets its customers in the United States win a custom Xbox Series X made in partnership with Square Enix. The unique Final Fantasy XIV-themed Xbox Series X and 12 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate could be yours on March 28.

A blast from Microsoft's past

John Callaham's weekly "Look back" series provides throwbacks into the past, detailing the company's products, partnerships, mishaps, and successes from years ago.

3D Pinball Space Cadet is one of the most iconic Windows games that Microsoft has been bundled with its operating system for quite a while. This week's blast from Microsoft's past tells a story of this neat time killer, which was released as part of Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 many years ago.

Random fact about Microsoft

And here is a randomly selected piece of trivia about the company, Windows, and other Microsoft-made things.

This week's trivia is about Windows 95 and its user interface with the Start menu, the taskbar, and other now-standard elements. Unlike Metro in Windows 8 or Aqua in macOS, Windows 95's UI had no distinct marketing name. Despite being a big deal and pretty much a revolution in the PC market, it was just "the new shell" or "the shell." However, internally, Microsoft called the UI rework "Stimpy."

Windows 95 running as an Electron app on macOS. Image credit: felixrieseberg on GitHub

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What a wild week it's been for Microsoft and Windows news. Seemingly by coincidence, the biggest news stories of the week have a theme, crossing platforms. Sea of Thieves became was the most pre-ordered game on PlayStation, developers managed to get the Surface Duo to run Windows 11, and new EU law forced Microsoft to let people use non-Microsoft services on Windows. Toss in Windows 11 shoving an ad for Bing into Chrome, and you have a packed week of news. Oh, and did I mention the free version of Copilot got an upgrade as well?

EU helps fix Windows 11

(Image credit: Future)

Windows 11 just got a bit better, and you have the European Union (EU) to thank for it. The EU's new DMA regulations are designed to foster competition among companies, and Windows is one of the big players affected by the legislation. While some Microsoft products are exempt from the DMA regulation, the tech giant had to make several changes to Windows 11 to comply with the law.

Most notably, users in the European Economic Area can uninstall Microsoft Edge, disable Bing in Windows Search, and turn off the Microsoft News feed and ads in the Widgets Board on Windows 11. Why won't Microsoft just allow anyone to have the option to do so? I'll leave the to you to guess.

The changes made their way to PCs through the latest Windows 11 feature drop. That update also has some new features for Copilot and some other changes.

Sea of Thieves PS5 preorders

(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Some were unhappy when Microsoft announced that a handful of its Xbox console exclusives would ship to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. It appears PlayStation owners aren't among those complaining. Sea of Thieves, which is among the first four Xbox console exclusives to make their way to other consoles, reached the top spot on the PlayStation preorder chart in the United States.

Microsoft already has several popular titles on PlayStation, including Minecraft, Minecraft Dungeons, and many Bethesda titles and Activision Blizzard games. But Sea of Thieves is a different beast, considering it was once Xbox console exclusive and is now on PlayStation.

Surface Duo lives on

Microsoft has essentially abandoned the Surface Duo lineup. Technically the Surface Duo 2 is still supported until later this year (the first one reached end of support last year), but Microsoft hasn't shipped a meaningful update to a Surface Duo in a while. That hasn't stopped third-party developers from having fun with the device, however. Gustave Monce led the charge to get Windows 11 to run on Surface Duo, and our Senior Editor Zac Bowden showed the technical marvel in a recent video.

Windows 11 looks surprisingly good on Surface Duo. Given that Surface Duo runs Android out of the box, there are some odd behaviors here and there. There are also some noteworthy limits, such as not being able to send text messages. This is more of a passion project than a way to get a device you can use daily.

The Surface Duo was originally supposed to run Windows, but Microsoft's leadership shifted plans late in the development of the device.

While Windows 11 on Surface Duo is a technical marvel, owners of a Surface Duo may be more interested in the work of Thai Nguyen, who made a custom Android 14 ROM for Surface Duo.

Bowden spoke with Monce and Nguyen, both of whom shared insight into the unique challenges of their respective projects.

Copilot gets an upgrade

The free version of Copilot now uses GPT-4 Turbo. (Image credit: Windows Central | Jez Corden)

The free version of Microsoft Copilot is now more accurate and powerful, thanks to an upgrade to GPT-4 Turbo. The tool previously used GPT-4, which has a much earlier cutoff date than GPT-4 Turbo. The older GPT-4 also has a smaller context window (8k vs. 128k). In layman's terms, GPT-4 Turbo is better in many cases and should result in an improve Copilot experience.

OpenAI explained the four main benefits of GPT-4 Turbo over other models:

• Context window (some models have as low as an 8k context window while some have an 128k context window)
• Knowledge cutoff (some models have been training on more up to date information which makes them better at certain tasks)
• Cost (the cost for models vary, our latest GPT-4 Turbo model is less expensive than previous GPT-4 model variants, you can learn more on our pricing page)
• Feature set (some models offer new features like JSON mode, reproducible outputs, parallel function calling, etc)
• Rate limits (different models have different rate limits, check out the limits page for more details on each models limits)

While newer is often better, sometimes old tech is best. If you prefer the GPT-4 model, it is still available, but using it requires a Copilot Pro license.

Reviews

(Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Our team takes a close look at the latest games, gadgets, PCs, and accessories each week. Recently, our experts went hands-on with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro, sat down and watched episode 6 of the Halo TV series' second season, and used a surprisingly good flight stick from Turtle Beach. Here are all of our recent reviews.

• SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro review — The king of all Xbox and PC gaming headsets
• Huion Kamvas Pro 19 review: You don't need to spend crazy money to get the perfect high-end professional Windows drawing display
• Halo TV series Season 2, Episode 6 review: Tensions boil over into disaster
• I never expected Turtle Beach to build my new favorite flight stick but the VelocityOne Flightdeck is perfect
• ASUS upgrades to the latest Intel Core Ultra CPUs with its new ROG Zephyrus OLED gaming laptop and it's gorgeous
• Logitech's best wireless keyboard proves the MX Master mouse wasn't an anomaly, and even makes it better

Tech deals of the week

(Image credit: Daniel Rubino)

Some excellent laptops and convertibles are on sale at the moment, including the Surface Pro 9, Dell XPS 17, and Lenovo Yoga 9i. We also saw a discount on the Xbox Series X|S Seagate Storage Card (2TB) that's still going strong.

In addition to the deals below, make sure to check out our collection of the 7 best Xbox games under $10.

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However, it was Apple who made a pretty aggressive move a few decades ago. On March 17, 1988, 36 years ago today, the folks in Cupertino filed a lawsuit against the team in Redmond, claiming copyright infringement.

The Thomson Reuters site has posted a feature on this lawsuit, and more importantly the origins of this legal action. You may remember that in November 1983 Microsoft first announced plans to launch Windows 1.0, its graphical user interface operating system. However, the actual launch of Windows 1.0 didn't actually happen until November 1985.

Microsoft and its CEO Bill Gates reportedly got a chance to check out an early prototype of the Apple Macintosh computer, and its operating system before it launched. That was because Microsoft was planning to release Word and other software for the Mac. Gates reportedly loved the UI design for the Mac OS.

After the Macintosh launched in January 1984, Gates reportedly went to Apple and suggested the company license its OS so it could be used by other PC makers, similar to how Microsoft offered its MS-DOS system to PC companies. However, Apple didn't want to make that move.

Then Microsoft finally launched Windows 1.0, and Apple was reportedly not happy. They threatened a lawsuit against Microsoft at that time, believing that the company had stolen UI designs from the Mac OS to use in Windows 1.0. However, in 1985, the two companies decided to make an agreement. Microsoft would pay some money to Apple to use Mac OS UI designs in Windows 1.0.

Apple's agreement also allowed Microsoft to use Mac OS graphical UI designs in future Windows releases, and not just with Windows 1.0. However, when Windows 2.0 launched in December 1987, which included using overlapping windows similar to the Mac OS, among other things, Apple felt that Microsoft went beyond the bounds of that 1985 agreement, and that's when plans were made for legal action.

As we mentioned, Apple officially filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, along with one against HP, on March 17, 1988. The New York Times reported on the lawsuit at the time, stating:

Apple said software programs sold by the two companies infringed on copyrights Apple held for the way information is presented and controlled on Macintosh screens. The programs are New Wave, sold by Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft's Windows version 2.03.

Apple tried to make the argument that 189 separate graphical user interface elements from the Mac OS were being used by Microsoft's Windows 2.0 without an agreement from Apple.

According to Freibrun Law, the US District Court ruled in 1992 that over 90 percent of those separate Mac OS GUI elements that Apple said were illegally taken by Microsoft for Windows 2.0 were already covered in the original 1985 agreement between Apple and Microsoft. The other elements that were not covered in that agreement "were primarily graphical symbols representing generic ideas or purely functional components of the program, or were insufficiently original to merit copyright protection."

Apple appealed this decision, but in 1994, in a 3-0 vote, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's decision in the case. Apple made a long-shot appeal to the US Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear the case in February 1995. This marked the end of what turned out to be a pretty fruitless legal fight for Apple.

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There are only a very few PC games that have been released that you might consider to be a huge influence on the entire industry. 25 years ago today, on March 16, 1999, one of those games officially launched. It's the fantasy massively multiplayer game EverQuest.

The game was certainly not the first MMO that launched, as the genre could trace its roots back to text-based MUD games in the 1980s. Other internet-based commercial MMO games like Meridian 59 from 3DO in 1996, and of course Ultima Online from Richard Garriott's Origin Systems in 1997, came before EverQuest

PC Gamer has an extensive look back at the creation of EverQuest, and it's well worth reading. In summary, John Smedley, who was at what was then called Sony Interactive Studios of America, came up with the idea of creating a MUD-style online game with thousands of players and with 3D graphics, which back then was just starting to become more prevalent in PC gaming. Smedley recruited programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover to come up with the design of the game.

That design was heavily influenced by MUDs, and also of course from the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop RPG. When it launched, EverQuest had 12 different races and 14 character classes to choose from. Players could pick their race and class to make their character, and then they could enter the game's fantasy world of Norrath, fighting NPC monsters and, more importantly, getting together with other online players to form guilds and even battle each other in PvP servers.

The PC Gamer article stated that the EverQuest team was very quietly working on the game, but that their big bosses at Sony didn't really know that it was being developed at this studio. Later, Sony Interactive Studios of America was renamed 989 Studios, and the decision was made that it would make just PlayStation games.

That could have left the EverQuest team out in the cold, but an offer was made to Smedley by Sony. The team could continue to make the game at a new spin-off studio that was partly owned by Sony, but they had to find the funding to keep making the game on their own.

Here's the really interesting bit of EverQuest's early development history. PC Gamer says that the team got an offer to fund the remaining part of the game's creation from none other than Microsoft. Indeed, it states that the offer was ready to be signed. There's no word on the terms of the deal, but it's interesting to think about the idea that in an alternate universe, EverQuest might have become a Microsoft game.

In the end, the team decided to take an offer from another subsidiary of Sony, called Sony Online Entertainment. The EverQuest studio itself was renamed Verant Interactive and they got to finish making the MMO, with the majority of their original design documentation intact.

When it launched 25 years ago today, no one on the EverQuest team expected the huge response from PC games. 10,000 players bought and signed into the game on the first day. Of course, the servers quickly crashed. In fact, the amount of broadband traffic that was being used by the game in its San Diego-based studio was higher than the entire Internet infrastructure for that city was able to support at that time. Thankfully it wasn't long before more broadband traffic was freed up.

The final result was that by the end of 1999, EverQuest outsold Ultima Online's numbers and became a massive hit. Sony officially bought Verant Interactive and merged it with Sony Online Entertainment. The game continued to gain more and more players over the next several years, and the team released paid expansions every year (sometimes twice a year) that increased the content of the game with new races, classes, monsters, and more features.

Today, the original game is still live at its current owner Daybreak Entertainment (Sony sold off the game in 2015). While it doesn't have the player numbers that it once had, Daybreak mentioned today that 84 characters that were created in the game on March 16, 1999 are still active.

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That's a four-fold increase when compared to the previous numbers set by the FCC almost nine years ago. In 2015, the fixed broadband speed benchmarks for download and upload speeds were 25 Mbps and 3 Mbps, respectively. The updated benchmarks are based on consumer usage patterns, standards used in federal and state programs, and what the internet service providers are marketing and delivering.

In a press release, the agency stated:

The Federal Communications Commission today adopted its annual assessment of whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion across the U.S. In addition to deployment, the Report considers broadband affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access, when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to “all Americans.”

It's worth noting that while ISPs have started offering gigabit connections to users, popular streaming services like Netflix still recommends a minimum of 15 Mbps download speed to watch titles in 4K UHD. However, you may need a faster internet connection to enjoy buffer-free streaming and use modern technologies such as virtual reality and cloud gaming.

The agency concluded in its report that "advanced telecommunications capability" hasn't reached many Americans living in rural and tribal areas. As of December 2022, fixed broadband service (excluding satellite) wasn't deployed to over 24 million Americans, including about 28% living in rural areas and over 23% living on Tribal lands. The report added that over 45 million Americans still lack access to a 100/20 Mbps fixed service.

With that said, the Commission has set a long-term goal of reaching 1 Gbps download and 500 Mbps upload speeds. The latest benchmark stands above the 91.93 Mbps global median download speed recorded by Ookla in January 2024. However, the global median upload speed is still double the latest benchmark.

The global median download speed has increased to 91.93 Mbps from 79 Mbps in 2023. Meanwhile, the global median upload speed increased from 34.92 Mbps in 2023 to 43.40 Mbps in 2024.

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The conference's official website is pretty bare-bones at the moment. The About section does reveal that Google I/O 2024 will mostly be an online-only event. While there will be a "small live audience", most of the people will have to live stream the keynote address as well as the the other sessions and panels. The official Google for Developers blog says the event will include "over 100 sessions, workshops, codelabs, and demos" Those events and sessions will be available to view after Google I/O 2024 on demand.

As for what will be revealed or talked about during Google I/O, that's still something of a mystery. The Google Developers' blog post mentions the "Gemini era" so you can definitely expect to get more info and announcements on Google's plans for its Gemini generative AI projects. We will also certainly get some Android 15 updates at the conference.

We could also get some new hardware reveals. There are rumors the company is working on a Google Pixel 8a smartphone, and that could be officially announced at Google I/O 2024. There are also rumors of a refresh of its Chromecast with Google TV dongle, and that could be revealed during the conference as well. Of course, we could also see some surprise concept devices or services as well.

Google's nearly virtual developer conference is a bit of a contrast to Microsoft Build 2024. That company will be live-streaming the keynote addresses and some of its sessions, but it will also be holding a three-day live Build event in Seattle on May 21-23.

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The Meta Ray Ban smart glasses and the Apple Vision Pro represent two very different types of

the computer you wear on your face.

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According to IDC, the trend reversal in the fourth quarter will lead into a better 2024 where a market recovery is predicted thanks to several market drivers coalescing. Going into some detail, Jay Chou, research manager for IDC’s Worldwide Client Devices Trackers, said:

“We expect several drivers to take place beginning in the latter half of 2024. With Windows 10 support expiring in late 2025, we expect enterprises to speed up the migration toward Windows 11, which should last through next year. We also expect new CPU and GPU launches to occur around this timeframe. Finally, current exploration around AI for work should translate into an expansion of use cases, including model development, across numerous industries.”

Going back to the fourth quarter of 2023, IDC reports that Dell was the largest OEM in terms of shipments followed by HP, Lenovo, NEC, and ASUS.

Outlining its forecast, IDC said that workstation shipments will grow by 5.2% in 2024 then in 2025 momentum will build with growth topping 7.9% as customers seek to transition to Windows 11 by the Windows 10 retirement date in October 2025. After this, IDC expects the growth in this sector to moderate.

IDC’s forecast is predicting a period in the not-to-distant-future so it should not take long to hear how well it predicted things. While inflation may be falling, the higher prices aren’t going anywhere and unemployment could rise soon as a result of higher interest rates having an impact on the economy; this could suppress the shipments of PCs in 2024 and 2025.

Source: IDC

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What you need to know

• New research highlights that ChatGPT uses 17 thousand times more electricity than an average US household consumes.
• The data scientist behind the study states that the AI sector might consume between 85 and 134 terawatt-hours annually by 2027, translating to half a percent of global electricity consumption.
• ChatGPT uses one water bottle for cooling per query and $700,000 daily for its operations.

A new report indicates that ChatGPT consumes up to 17,000 times more electricity than the average US household uses daily (via The New Yorker). Elon Musk recently indicated we're on the verge of the biggest technology revolution with AI, but there won't be enough electricity by 2025 to power these advancements. 

Putting this into perspective, The New Yorker indicates that an average US household consumes up to 29 kilowatt-hours daily. This essentially means that 493,000 kilowatt-hours daily. With the exponential growth, advances, and rapid adoption of generative AI worldwide, things could go from bad to worse.

According to a research paper published by Dutch National Bank data scientist Alex de Vries, if at one point Google decides to integrate AI into every search, this would ultimately lead to a surge in the amount of electricity the technology consumes pushing it to approximately twenty-nine billion kilowatt-hours per year. The data scientist indicates that this is well beyond the amount of electricity consumed by most countries, including Kenya, Guatemala, and Croatia.

While speaking to Business Insider, de Vries indicated:

"AI is just very energy intensive. Every single of these AI servers can already consume as much power as more than a dozen UK households combined. So the numbers add up really quickly."

Per de Vries' estimations (if all factors are held constant), by 2027 the AI sector could potentially be at a point where it consumes anything from 85 to 134 terawatt-hours annually. While speaking to The Verge, the data scientist added that:

"You're talking about AI electricity consumption potentially being half a percent of global electricity consumption by 2027. I think that's a pretty significant number." 

Concerns are well beyond power consumption

(Image credit: Future)

ChatGPT is arguably one of the best AI-powered chatbots right now. A recent report disclosed that the AI assistant dominates the mobile market share even after Microsoft shipped Copilot AI to iOS and Android users with free access to OpenAI's GPT-4 model and DALL-E 3 image generation technology.

The chatbot has achieved incredible feats, including developing software in under 7 minutes, generating free Windows keys, and bypassing paywalled information. While impressive, all these come at an exorbitant cost.

OpenAI uses up to $700,000 daily to keep ChatGPT running, which could be a possible explanation for the reports looming the year indicating that the ChatGPT-maker is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is amid reports that the chatbot is losing accuracy and is seemingly getting dumber.

Last year, new research showed that Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT could consume enough to power a small country for a year by 2027. This is on top of the exorbitant cost of the high demand for cooling water, as the chatbot consumes one water bottle for cooling per query. 

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The RTX 5000 series is all set to come with better memory config. But in what way. Let’s find out.

In October 2022, Nvidia released the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It was the first entry in the RTX 40 series of graphics cards. It was the most expensive and most powerful consumer graphics card ever released.

An interesting thing about the RTX 4090 graphics card was that it came with a 384-bit memory bus. This means that it can hold 12 chips of VRAM.

This is counted such as one VRAM chip uses 32-bit memory. So if one divides 384 by 32, we get 12 chips. Now VRAM chips used in RTX 4090 are of 2GB capacity. So that’s how we get 24GB of VRAM in RTX 4090.

But now that we know all about them, we are looking the successor of the RTX 40 series, the RTX 50 series, or RTX 5000 graphics cards as some might call it. Looks like we are getting even more information about them.

32GB VRAM For RTX 5090

Well known Twitter (now X) based leaker @kopite7kimi has leaked some very important possible specs for the Nvidia GeForce 5090 graphics card.

The first thing he has revealed is that he has almost confirmed that the flagship GPU, in the RTX 5000 range, the GB202, which will most likely be used in the RTX 5090 graphics card, will come with a massive 512-bit memory.

If Nvidia continues this path, then we might see that the RTX 5090 may come with 32GB VRAM. Which is 8GB more than what RTX 4090 came with.

For the record, 512-bit memory is very rare. The only time Nvidia used it in the GeForce graphics cards was in GTX 280 and GTX 285 series, was released 15 years ago. AMD too rarely used it. It was found in Radeon HD 2900 (ATI), Radeon R9 290, R9 295 and R9 390 series of graphics cards. Most of them, in exception to ATI Radeon HD 2900, came around a decade ago.

But despite larger memory bus width, we might see the RTX 5090 come with just 32GB VRAM and not more at start. Like something like 48GB. The reason is, memory chipmakers are still working on larger memory chips, like 3GB chips. But they may not be available by the time the RTX 50 series releases. The RTX 50 refresh might probably come with them.

RTX 5080 GPU Might Be Half Size Of RTX 5090

@kopite7kimi also speculates that the GB203 GPU is half the size of GB202. But he doesn’t know if GB202 will come in a multi-chip package – think of chiplets by AMD in the Radeon RX 7000 series. He says that chiplets could be used in Nvidia’s server GPUs, but not desktop ones.

Going by recent record, it’s likely that Nvidia might use the GB202 chip for the RTX 5090 and GB203 for the RTX 5080. So if that GPU used in the RTX 5080 is just half in size, then we might see a massive difference in performance between the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards.

There’s one possibility. That is Nvidia using a full GB202 GPU chip for RTX 5090 and using the same cut-down version of the GPU for the RTX 5080. That will leave lesser performance difference between the two graphics card models. But that’s very unlikely.

There’s another possibility that Nvidia could use a two GB202 GPUs for the RTX 5090 series. One full size GPU for RTX 5090 Ti and one cut-down version for RTX 5090. But this is nothing but complete speculation from our side and it’s again very unlikely. Why, because Nvidia might want to keep the full sized chip for later if required. For the record, even RTX 4090 doesn’t use a full size AD102 GPU.

Faster VRAM With GDDR7

When asked about the speeds of the VRAM that will be found in the RTX 5000 graphics cards, @kopite7kimi revealed that they will come with an effective memory speed of 28Gbps.

We had revealed few days ago that the GDDR7 graphics card memory was officially announced. This GDDR7 is all likely to power the next-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards. It’s this GDDR7 VRAM chips that will allow them to run at 28Gbps.

While the official specs say that GDDR7 can run at an effective rate of 32Gbps, that’s not always the case for new chips. For example, the official speed for the GDDR6 was 16Gbps. But the first graphics cards in using them came with a 14Gbps memory speeds. We had detailed them in our tweet a few days ago:

Either way. Graphics card running at 28Gbps is still massive. This makes it 28% faster than the GDDR6X memory chips found in the RTX 4090, which came with an effective memory speed of 21Gbps.

Conclusion

@kopite7kimi remains among the most trustable hardware leaker out there. Though some of the leaks are speculations from his side. Even his speculations have come out to be true before. So while leaks are expected to change, his leaks are very likely to be correct.

So if Nvidia RTX 5090 indeed comes with 512-bit bus and 28Gbps VRAM, then we might see a huge performance increase over RTX 4090, which itself is the fastest consumer graphics card ever released. However, the next GPU in the line in the same series being just half as powerful is going to be a big disappointment if true.

Either way, the RTX 5000 graphics cards are not expected to release this year. So we might get even more information about them before they are officially released.

Source

As the US ratchets up sanctions, China throws more money at its semiconductor industry. The sanctions have slowed but not stopped the advance of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing while sales of unsanctioned equipment to China have gone through the roof.

China is raising another US$27 billion from government institutions, state-owned enterprises and the private sector for its National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, according to recent reports. Also called the Big Fund, it currently has about $45 billion in capital, the reports said.

This will likely bring total financial support for the Chinese semiconductor industry in the five years to 2027 to roughly three times the $52.7 billion in government subsidies to be allocated for US-based chip production under the CHIPS Act.

China’s semiconductor industrial policy appears to be working reasonably well. Despite reports of financial mismanagement and setbacks in production schedules, China’s leading integrated circuit (IC) foundry, SMIC, is now making 7nm chips and is developing 5nm capability, according to reports.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and her staff initially designed their sanctions to stop China at 10nm, making the production of advanced smartphone chips impossible. But information publicly available from lithography system makers ASML and Nikon made clear that would not be the case.

The US has thus recently expanded its lithography sanctions from the extreme ultra-violet (EUV) systems made only by ASML of the Netherlands to the most sophisticated deep ultra-violet (DUV) systems made by ASML and Nikon of Japan.

These expanded sanctions took effect in the second half of 2023, too late to stop the launch of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro 5G smartphones with 7nm processors made by SMIC.

Then, in February this year, the Commerce Department ordered Entegris and other US companies to stop shipping sophisticated components and materials to the factory where SMIC fabricates those processors.

Entegris produces gas and liquid filtration and purification systems, fluid chemical and component handling systems, specialty gases and other advanced materials. Finding alternatives will take time and cost money but it can likely be done.

Now the US is reported to be pressuring the Netherlands and Japan to force ASML and Nikon to stop servicing DUV lithography systems sold to China before the sanctions were tightened. The US is also said to be asking Japan to stop selling photoresists and other chemicals used in semiconductor production to China.

The Dutch and Japanese may or may not oblige. On March 8, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ken Saito told Nikkei Asia, “We have no plans to take new measures at this time.” The Dutch response has also been noncommittal, according to preliminary reports.

The US Commerce Department is also apparently considering adding Chinese DRAM maker CXMT and five other Chinese tech companies to its Entity List, which would cut them off from US technology. With the US in a heated election cycle where China is portrayed by all sides as the enemy, more such announcements are expected sooner rather than later.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says the US will work with its allies to enforce its chip export ban against China. Photo: Reagan National Defense Forum

While media reports have focused on the Netherlands and Japan, the new restrictions would of course also affect US suppliers of semiconductor production equipment and materials.

Last week, it was widely reported that Applied Materials and Lam Research supplied SMIC with equipment used to make Huawei’s 7nm processor, which should have been common knowledge months ago.

In fact, most leading makers of semiconductor equipment have become heavily dependent on the Chinese market. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the share of their sales going to customers in China was as follows:

China was the largest regional market for every one of these companies.

Applied Materials, the world’s largest and most diversified maker of SPE, told investors “We believe equipment demand in China is likely to remain healthy for an extended period because China’s domestic manufacturing capacity remains significantly below its share of worldwide semiconductor demand. In addition, while nameplate fab capacity is growing in China, effective capacity is likely to remain below industry averages for some time until product and process yields gradually improve.”

Lam Research, one of the three leading makers of etch equipment (along with Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron), said that growth in sales to the foundry and logic segment was “led by leading-edge investments offset in part by mature node declines outside of China.” They also said that Chinese investment, which is almost all mature node, is stable at a high level.

KLA, the leading maker of semiconductor inspection equipment, reported “strong product success in legacy [mature node] foundry/logic optical inspection” – i.e., in China.

ASML, the dominant supplier of lithography equipment, reported 60% growth in shipments of DUV systems, compared with 30% growth in the more advanced EUV systems which could not be shipped to China.

Management told investors that, “While the export control regulations had an impact on our business, we continue to see strong demand for mid-critical and mature nodes in China.”

Tokyo Electron, the largest and most diversified SPE maker in Japan, raised its sales and profit guidance due to increased investment by Chinese semiconductor makers, one of its senior managers stating, “We expect strong demand from China to continue or grow stronger still.”

Industry sources estimate that China now makes about 20% of the semiconductor devices it consumes – up from 10% recently. With at least 20 new production lines under construction in China, the figure seems likely to rise at least to 30% and more likely to 50% by the end of the decade.

This is the “oversupply” that Raimondo and others in the US and Europe have said they are worried about: Chinese companies making semiconductors for sale in China.

Screen Holdings, the world’s top producer of cleaning equipment, said that “investment in China for mature nodes remains active.” This quarter, management expects more than half of the company’s semiconductor equipment sales to be made in China.

Disco, the dominant producer of wafer dicing, grinding and polishing equipment, sounded the only cautionary note in the group, with its director of investor relations telling the media that Chinese demand for some wafer fabrication processes might be leveling off. Nevertheless, Disco plans to increase production capacity by 40%.

Gregory Allen, director of the CSIS Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies and former director of strategy and policy at the US Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told Bloomberg:

“Nothing that Japan sells today is going to dissuade China from its goal of producing all of these machines domestically as soon as possible. However, if Japan exports machines, components and critical knowledge, it can significantly speed up China’s advanced node production in the short term and its indigenization goals in the medium and long term.”

The same is obviously true for the US and Europe. Justifiably concerned that sanctions will be tightened even more, China is loading up on the foreign equipment available now while doing everything possible to develop its own.

China’s SMIC chipmaker has transcended US sanctions. Image: Twitter / Global Times

In the meantime, analysts on Wall Street and elsewhere have started to recommend Chinese makers of semiconductor production equipment including Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc (AMEC) and Naura Technology, as long-term investments.

By shifting the focus of procurement from cost of ownership to security of supply, US sanctions have created an investment opportunity that otherwise would not be nearly as attractive.

The stock prices of those two companies, which compete with Applied Materials, Lam Research and Tokyo Electron, have risen by about a third since the beginning of February.

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According to SteamDB, Steam had a whopping 35,385,530 online players on Sunday. That's far higher than the previous record set last weekend when the service had 34,649,583 players online.

Of that number, 11,117,276 people were actively playing games on Steam on Sunday. However, that's still just a tad lower than the 11,582,167 active player record, which was set on January 28, at the height of Palworld's popularity on Steam.

In addition to Palworld and Helldivers 2, Valve's own Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 continue to be the number 1 and 2 games played, respectively, on Steam. Other older games like PUBG: Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, Nakara: Bladepoint, and Grand Theft Auto 5 are in the top 10 most-played games list at the moment.

The top 10 also includes the recently released fantasy action RPG Last Epoch. It also has a non-gaming app, Wallpaper Engine, which as of this writing has nearly 100,000 "players" online.

Later this week, Steam will hold its latest major sale event, the Steam Spring Sale. It will begin on March 14 at 10 am Pacific time (1 pm Eastern time), and will last until March 21. you can expect to see huge discounts on thousands of games in Valve's Steam library.

The service will also host some major upcoming PC games in the next several months, including S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Homeworld 3, Hades II, Manor Lords, Stormgate, and many more. Of course, it's very possible that another upcoming game that most have never heard of could sneak up on us and become the next viral game on Steam.

Did you assist Valve with this record by being online in Steam yesterday? Let us know in the comments.

Source

This change, which is now rolling out, shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch.

Before, even in incognito mode or when not logged in, Google would still show you video suggestions.

Now, users see a message saying "Get Started" and "Start watching videos to help us build a feed of videos you'll love" when they open YouTube in incognito mode, with videos no longer being recommended.

In multiple tests conducted by BleepingComputer on different computers, we observed that even when we search for something on YouTube, it doesn't show any suggestions, and we keep seeing the message to watch more videos.

As noted by some on X, users who have cleaned their search and watch history or turned off their history settings also see no suggestions when they're logged in.

Some people think YouTube is being pushy about this, trying to make users turn on their history settings.

BleepingComputer has reached out to Google to learn more about the YouTube update but a reply was not immediately available.

Source

Table of contents:

1. Windows 11 news
2. Updates are available
3. Gaming news
4. A blast from Microsoft's past
5. Random fact about Microsoft

Windows 11

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.

This week's Windows 11 section kicks off with major news. Out of the blue, Microsoft announced the end of the Windows Subsystem for Android and the Amazon App Store for Windows 11. You can no longer access it to download new Android apps. Existing apps will continue working for one more year. Amazon has already published a detailed FAQ page, and it will soon send you an email with extra information.

Last week, Microsoft started rolling out a new feature update for Windows 11. Codenamed "Moment 5," it adds several improvements and minor changes to the operating system. If you do not want to wait until it automatically lands in your system, check out this guide explaining how to install Windows 11 "Moment 5" and get its features right now.

Later this year, Microsoft will release the "2024 Update" with numerous new features and AI enhancements. One of those features is reportedly a so-called "AI Explorer." It will use on-device processing to let you find apps, files, messages, and other items related to your request.

Most of the AI features will work best on the new generation of Windows 11 computers called "AI PCs," and Microsoft is getting ready to ship its first AI PCs later this month. According to a new report, the software giant will unveil the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6 on March 21. Look out for an OLED display in the Surface Pro 10 and an ARM processor in the Surface Laptop 6.

Shortly after the leak, Microsoft confirmed the event, saying it would showcase "the latest in scaling AI in your environment with Copilot, Windows, and Surface."

Some changes to Copilot do not need a dedicated event. This week, Microsoft quietly started spamming Windows 11's lock screen with Copilot QR code ads. However, the experiment backfired, and Microsoft quickly pulled the controversial ad, claiming it was there to "educated users" about Copilot. Sure, sure, Microsoft.

If you often work with large folders containing hundreds of files, you know how File Explorer crawls to a complete halt, trying to parse everything. Fortunately, there is a fix for that atrocity. Users discovered that a single registry change could force Windows to consider every folder as one with misc files and no longer suffer from abominable performance issues.

Microsoft published an update about the 0x80070643 error in KB5034441 and KB5034440 and a revised PowerShell script for patching. The company also released KB5001716 to help migrate users from soon-to-be-unsupported Windows versions to newer releases. If that update fails, check out this article for possible solutions.

Finally, here is a fun experiment showing how powerful Windows' backward compatibility is and a detailed dissection of Windows 11's OOBE and its secrets.

Windows Insider Program

Here is everything Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

This week was pretty light in the Windows Insider Program. Hopefully, the next one will be packed with more features and updates.

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.

PowerToys has received a big update with new features for Keyboard Manager, a Color Picker redesign, and plenty of changes and improvements to existing tools.

Microsoft also announced new Privacy-Preserving Ads APIs for the Edge browser in an effort to phase out third-party cookies and cross-site tracking. The proposal offers an alternative solution that provides more privacy while still allowing personalized ads.

Besides adding features to existing products, Microsoft sometimes takes them away. In addition to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which was doomed from the very start, Microsoft pulled the plug on the OneDrive feature that allowed users to upload files from a URL.

Microsoft also released more details about the recent breach, claiming a russian hacker group got access to some of its source code repositories.

Besides the nasty lock screen ad, there were other developments on the Copilot side. Microsoft is now giving more Copilot Pro users access to the recently announced GPT Builder, and Copilot for Microsoft 365 is coming on April 1. We also have a few updates to the Microsoft Designer debacle, with a whistleblower raising more concerns about the company's Designer AI image generator. Besides, the latter is now blocking even more specific words and requests.

Other updates released this week include the following:

• Firefox 123.0.1 fixes color issues, incorrect translate indicators, and other bugs.
• Surface Pro 7 Plus and the original Surface Laptop Studio received new firmware with auto Slim Pen pairing and LTE improvements.
• Surface Laptop 4 received fixes for video freezes in Teams and audio device bugs when connected to the Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock.
• Microsoft Edge Dev received a new feature update with more actions for Adobe Viewer and more.
• Apple has updated its Windows Migration tool with support for macOS Sonoma.
• Microsoft published a new guidance to help organizations move to the new Outlook on Windows.
• Word for the web received new formatting options and support for headers/footers.
• Microsoft released TypeScript 5.4, a programming language that builds on top of JavaScript, with multiple changes and new features.

And here are the new drivers:

• Nvidia 551.76 WHQL Game-Ready adds The Thaumaturge support and fixes NVENC bugs.

On the gaming side

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

This week, Microsoft held its promised Xbox Partner Showcase event, where multiple third-party studios revealed fresh new details about their upcoming titles. There were plenty of announcements and trailers, so check out our detailed recap.

Microsoft announced a new custom Xbox Series X console in partnership with Nickelodeon and Best Buy. The SpongeBob-inspired console comes with a Special Edition controller featuring SpongeBob's underwater friends: Squidward, Gary, and Mr. Krabs. It also includes a copy of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.

In addition, there is a new custom Xbox controller for the fans of the Fallout universe. Xbox Design Lab now lets you add Fallout-themed faceplates featuring the Vault-Tec logo and the iconic Vault Boy.

Speaking of gamepads, Xbox Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring can try a new firmware that resolves "unexpected disconnections" when using a wired headset. You can update your controller using the Xbox Accessories app.

Halo Infinite received a new "Operations" update called Cyber Cyber Showdown III. It adds new armor cosmetics, a multiplayer map, and six new community-made Forge maps for the game's Husky Raid mode.

If you are looking to play Horizon Forbidden West on your computer, check out the newly published system requirements. The game lands on March 21, and it is pretty demanding if you want to play it on higher specs. Still, the minimum requirements include some pretty weak and old hardware, so most users should be able to run the game.

Here are the latest additions to the Game Pass catalog. Control Ultimate Edition returns to the subscription, plus you can play MLB The Show 24, Lightyear Frontier, No More Heroes 3, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, and more.

By the way, Game Pass titles, as well as other games you own in the Microsoft Store, are now available on Boosteroid, a cloud gaming service from Ukraine. The first batch of games includes Deathloop, Dishonored 2, Gears 5, Pentiment, and others.

Boosteroid competes with Nvidia's GeForce NOW service, which now supports Day Passes, a new method to get access to premium tiers for 24 hours. The Priority pass costs $3.99, and the Ultimate pass costs $7.99.

Deals and freebies

This week's Weekend PC Game Deals article includes discounts on some classic Electronic Arts titles, a Humble Bundle with games featuring female protagonists, Astro Duel 2, a freebie from the Epic Games Store, and more.

Reviews are in

Here are the hardware and software reviews we published this week

Robbie Khan reviewed the PB Tails Crush, a metal wireless controller inspired by an old Porsche sports car. This interesting-looking gamepad has solid performance, great ergonomics, solid triggers and sticks, and more. However, there are also some issues with RGB lights, no gyro support on Windows, and more. Check out the full review here.

Robbie's second reviewed device this week was the Baseus Blade2, a power bank in an unconventional form factor. If you are into quirky gadgets, check out the review here.

Christopher White reviewed the new Synology BeeStation, a personal cloud for backing up photos from family devices and more. It features an easy setup process, a small footprint, silent operating, and easy file sharing.

A blast from Microsoft's past

John Callaham's weekly "Look back" series provides throwbacks into the past, detailing the company's products, partnerships, mishaps, and successes from years ago.

This week's blast from the past is also about Microsoft's Simulator game series. Last week, we covered a series of combat Microsoft Flight Simulator spin-offs, and this time, take a look back at Microsoft Train Simulator and how it influenced a non-Microsoft-made lineup of games where you take the wheel of different trains across the world.

Another blast from Microsoft's past comes from Dave Plummer, a long-term Microsoft veteran. This week, Dave published a lengthy post on X with a story of how his side project ended up as native ZIP support in Windows 95 and a red Corvette. There are also some details about why the current ZIP implementation lags behind third-party alternatives.

Random fact about Microsoft

And here is a randomly selected piece of trivia about the company, Windows, and other Microsoft-made things.

2024 is a leap year, so here is an interesting fact about a Microsoft product not having a good time due to a year having one extra day. The original Zune 30, which was released in November 2006, froze on December 31, 2008, because it could not handle the last day of a leap year. A bugged MC13783 PMIC processor driver was the culprit, and since the Zune 30 was the only device in the family using it, subsequent Zune models handled leap years just fine.

The solution for the problem was as funny as the bug itself: drain the battery to zero until it dies and charge the device on January 1, 2009. People called that a Z2K bug.

Interestingly, even more recent Microsoft-made products experience problems with dates. For example, as users discovered, 32-bit Windows 10 completely trips over itself when you set the system date to 2038, which, to be fair, is not that far away. With Windows 10 being a dominant desktop OS, you can bet there will be users running it in 2038, so Microsoft better patch this up.

Source

In previous articles, we have looked back at the development of games that were bundled with Microsoft's various versions of Windows. Many were developed by Microsoft team members as side projects such as Solitaire, Minesweeper. and Hover. All of them became big hits, thanks in part to the fact that they were already installed with Windows.

However, one game that ended up being included in a number of Windows versions was actually a port of another game. We are talking about .

The game started its life at developer Cinematronics, which formed in 1994. A year later, in October 1995, the developer launched Full Tilt Pinball which was published by Maxis (Maxis would acquire Cinematronics in 1996). The Windows and Mac game included three pinball tables. One, Dragon's Keep, was a fantasy-themed tablet, while another, Skullduggery, was a pirate-themed pinball game. The third pinball table was Space Cadet and from its title, you can guess correctly that it had a sci-fi space theme.

However, even before Full Tilt Pinball was released, a version of the Space Cadet table was released by Microsoft as part of its Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 product. It launched on the same day that Windows 95 did, on August 24, 1995. Since lots of people got Windows 95, those of them that also decided to get the Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 pack, were able to play the version of the Space Cadet pinball tablet.

The Microsoft version of Space Cadet included with the Microsoft Plus! disk did have a few visual and gameplay differences from the Full Tilt Pinball versions. One big difference was that the Microsoft version of Space Cadet was locked at 640 x 480 resolution, while the Full Tilt Pinball edition included three resolution choices, including one at 1024×768.

The Microsoft 3D Pinball Space Cadet table turned out to be a big hit for people who bought the Microsoft Plus! add-on. Microsoft decided to bundle the game on the disk for the next version of the OS, Windows 98. However, when Windows 98 was released, the installation instructions included on the disc for Microsoft Pinball were incorrect. Microsoft had to post a correct version on its website.

After that, Microsoft 3D Pinball was included in Windows ME and Windows XP for consumers, and Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 for business desktop players. It was also added to the CD-ROM of the 2003 update of Windows XP 64-Bit version in 2003, and also in the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition in 2005.

According to the NCommander YouTube channel, Microsoft 3D Pinball was also included in early versions of Longhorn, which would later evolve into Windows Vista. While there is no official word from Microsoft on why the game didn't make it into Vista, NCommander speculates that the older graphics of Pinball, and the fact that it was locked in such a small resolution, would require a major upgrade to run well and display well on Vista. However, since Pinball was technically still a licensed title from Maxis, it's possible Microsoft didn't have the rights to make that kind of development effort.

While Microsoft 3D Pinball is no longer bundled with Windows, it still has a following online. Indeed, you can download it and play it on Windows 10 and 11. In this age where older games from the 1990s are getting official remastered versions all the time, perhaps there's a way for Microsoft to get the rights back to Pinball and make a new version for modern PCs. We would imagine that could turn out to be a popular release.

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OpenAI said it would conduct an investigation into what happened during those five days, and late on Friday, it announced that the third-party group that ran its investigation had completed its work. As a result, the decision was made to bring back Altman to the company's board. Also, the board "expressed its full confidence" in continuing to keep Altman as OpenAI's CEO and Greg Brockman as its President.

The blog post also announced that three new board members have been added. They are Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, the former EVP and General Counsel at Sony, and Fidji Simo, the current CEO of Instacart.

OpenAI said it will add some improvements to how the company is run. That will include adding new corporate governance guidelines, an anonymous whistleblower hotline, and more.

As far as the investigation into Altman's firing in November, OpenAI said WilmerHale, the third-party group that looked into the matter, conducted "dozens of interviews" with prior members of the company's board and others, along with looking into 30,000 documents.

In the end, the blog post stated that in WilmerHale's opinion, a lack of trust had developed between the prior board members and Altman. However, it added:

WilmerHale found the prior Board implemented its decision on an abridged timeframe, without advance notice to key stakeholders, and without a full inquiry or an opportunity for Mr. Altman to address the prior Board’s concerns.

WilmerHale stated that while OpenAI's prior board members "acted within its broad discretion" to fire Altman, it did say "his conduct did not mandate removal."

Source

What you need to know

• You'll need more Microsoft Reward points to get Xbox and Amazon gift cards.
• Microsoft has made significant adjustments to its Rewards program in the past few months, including the dropping points awarded for activities, introducing a cooldown period that limits how many points a user can get per hour and more. 
• Several users indicated that Microsoft Rewards was seemingly back to normal in January, garnering up to 30 points per reward, but this isn't the case.

The Microsoft Rewards program has undergone several changes in the past few months that most users aren't too happy about. It all started with Microsoft halting the capability to earn points for using Microsoft Edge daily, barely a week after killing the Xbox Rewards app.

At the time, most users speculated that Microsoft was discontinuing the program. However, this wasn't the case. The Redmond giant issued a statement indicating that it was evolving the program, having made significant adjustments to its loyalty awards points system, dropping points for "other activities" from 10 to 2.

Microsoft also introduced a "cooldown" period to the program, limiting users to award points for only 3 searches per 15 minutes. Based on opinions shared across social media platforms, it's apparent that these changes aren't welcome to the program. Some users said they would no longer use Microsoft Edge or Bing, further stating that Microsoft Rewards kept them there. 

While a January report seemingly indicated that the Microsoft Rewards program was back to normal, with users getting up to 30 points per reward again, this isn't the case (at least according to complaints lodged by multiple users across social media).

"Same exact situation here. Had enough for 25€ already, but today I still have to grind to get it back. To say that I thought of buying games last night is an understatement and I should have..US has a +5% increase, EU has a +12%. The MSR team is at it again. How is that fucking fair... 1€=1.10$. Yet they treat 1€=1$ on their store, shitting on it like always," a concerned user lamented on Reddit. 

Based on the Reddit thread, Microsoft has seemingly raised the points value for gift card redemptions and increased it by up to 33% (via MSPowerUser). According to some users in the United States, a $50 Microsoft gift card translates to 47,500 points, up from 46,000 points.

The same also applies to third-party gift cards from retailers like Amazon. You'll need anything from 7,600 to 8,125 points for a £5 Amazon gift card. It's worth noting that Amazon no longer lets users use their gift card balances to buy other gift cards. This means that you won't be able to use Microsoft Rewards to get an Amazon gift card to add to your Amazon account to buy other gift cards.

The drastic changes to the Microsoft Rewards Program are hurting Bing and Edge more

(Image credit: Future)

Multiple users have openly indicated that they've been using Microsoft Edge and Bing solely for the Microsoft Reward points they are awarded when using these services. It's no secret that Microsoft Edge and Bing's market share is struggling a bit; even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Google doesn't play fairly.

According to StatCounter's February report, Microsoft Edge holds a 5.07% stake in the browser market share globally. Users have previously outlined their preference for other browsers over Edge due to its "bloatedness," some have outlined Bing's search quality issues as the main reason they use other search engines.

Microsoft is placing all its bets on AI, integrating the technology across most of its products, including Edge and Bing. Interestingly, our recent poll indicated that most readers don't find Microsoft Copilot helpful.

It will be interesting to watch how Microsoft handles this issue moving forward. We'll keep a close tab on the issue as it unfolds and keep you posted on any developments.

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Part ofToday’s smart homes: the hopes and the realities

 

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I was minding my own business when the piercing shrill of the ADT alarm rang through my house. My Apple Watch gave me a loud noise alert. My cats hid under my desk. I ran down two flights of stairs to the security system control panel. It wanted me to punch in the passcode. I had no idea. I’d been away the week the system had been installed. I cursed myself for not downloading the ADT app earlier. Every second that passed was a second closer to my head exploding. So I did the only thing I could do.

 

I ran out the front door, called my spouse, and begged them to turn off the alarm from their phone. They were miles away, driving to the store. I had to wait until they could pull over. A few minutes later, blessed silence. When I went back inside the house, the alarm system announced the front door was open. I flipped it the bird.

 

My entry into the smart home was going swimmingly.

The best-laid plans were no match for ADT

To back it up, I got myself into this mess because I’m a sentimental biddy. To my immigrant parents, home ownership was the American dream. When they died, both my mom and dad were worried about me renting forever, never having a home to call my own. They begged me to work hard, buy a house, and build wealth because they didn’t have much to leave me. 

 

My money went as far as a house with good bones — three beds, 2.5 baths, with a bonus space and garage in Hackensack, New Jersey. It would never be the home of my dreams without a gut renovation, which I couldn’t afford. But maybe I could make it feel like mine by turning it into a “smart” home — a smart thermostat, a smart door lock, some smart lighting. Maybe one day, after some saving, a fancy Japanese toilet.

 

The Nest x Yale Lock is probably my favorite thing that I’ve installed. The Nest Doorbell was free.

 

I slid into the DMs of our resident smart home reviewer, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. (Lucky for you, you, too, have access to all of Jen’s reviews, buying guides, how-tos, and even Vergecast episodes!) Together, we refined my shopping list into something that would be manageable for a beginner. When all was said and done, I was looking at:

 

• an Ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced
• a Google Nest Wifi router and mesh access point
• a Nest x Yale Lock
• a Nest Cam (second-gen, indoors)
• Govee lights

 

The logic behind each product made sense. I live in a four-floor townhouse. That’s three flights of stairs with exactly 42 steps. Going up and down for every little thing gets old real fast. The smart thermostat meant we wouldn’t have to run down two flights at bedtime to adjust the temperature. A door lock meant we’d be able to let guests in from our phones. The camera would help us find our wily cats faster and double as a pet cam for when we were away. The mesh router would fix our Wi-Fi dead spots. Reviewer privilege meant that Jen could send me these devices in exchange for me agreeing to test them long term. If I had to pay for it all myself, it’d be about $1,020 total. As it is, I only paid for the lights. 

 

For lighting, I decided to go with Govee because I couldn’t justify spending the roughly $535 needed to kit out my entire home with Philips Hue. If my mom in heaven knew I spent $535 on light bulbs, she’d rise from her grave in Korea, fly to my house, and proceed to chase me with her slipper. All the Govee bulbs I needed cost a little under $300. For that price, I think Mom is content to simply roll over in her grave. 

 

It was a good game plan. I told my spouse. They gave me a thumbs-up and a “Whatever you want, honey.” But plans often go awry — especially when the person you live with forgets to tell you their plans.

 

I would like to drop-kick this thing into the fiery pits of hell.

 

While I was in Las Vegas for work, my spouse had an ADT smart security system installed. I’d intended to wait on that, but our house inspection company offered a free system, installation, and battery-powered Nest Doorbell. Free is good. (At least until you read the fine print and realize ADT’s expensive monthly subscription cancels it all out after a few months.) 

 

To be fair, it was an upgrade over the hole in the wall the previous residents left after ripping out the last security system. Now, I get why. This thing won’t shut up. When I come home, it declares “FRONT DOOR.” When I leave, another “FRONT DOOR.” Say I go get the mail and then move my car from the garage to the driveway, I’d hear, “FRONT DOOR. FRONT DOOR. INTERIOR GARAGE DOOR. FRONT DOOR.” If it’s my forgetful spouse, it sounds a little more like, “FRONT DOOR. FRONT DOOR. FRONT DOOR. INTERIOR GARAGE DOOR. FRONT DOOR. INTERIOR GARAGE DOOR. FRONT DOOR. INTERIOR GARAGE DOOR.”

 

There must be a way to turn this feature off, but I don’t know how. My spouse accidentally threw out the owner’s manual.

Your house is sometimes the bad guy

Aside from lighting, thermostats are supposed to be a simple “smart” thing to install. Friends, colleagues, and strangers on the internet all assured me this was true, and after the ADT debacle, I could use an easy victory.

 

The first time I tried installing the Ecobee, I eagerly followed the app’s installation walkthrough. I identified the wires, pulled out my screwdriver, and realized it was the wrong size. Somewhere during the move, we’d lost our tool kit. I had no choice but to buy another tool kit. 

 

In my second attempt, I got as far as taking the thermostat off the wall, only to discover that a previous owner painted the walls a putrid shade of salmon. Without a trim plate to cover it up, I’d have to paint it over and patch up various holes from the old thermostat. I accepted defeat and ordered a trim plate.

 

Having uninstalled and reinstalled my old thermostat twice, I was confident that the third time would be the charm. I even got to the part where it was time to hook up the Ecobee. That’s when I realized there was no C-wire.

 

Sure, Jan. YOU find the thermostat wires. This is beyond me.

 

A C-wire, or common wire, runs continuous power from your heating system to the thermostat. They’re usually blue but can be other colors. In my defense, I thought we had one. There was a reddish-orange wire going from the battery (aka power source) of the old thermostat, and there was a C under it! There just wasn’t an actual C-wire coming out of the wall.

 

That’s fine, the Ecobee app said. Just install the power extender kit (PEK) into the HVAC control panel. So down to the HVAC dungeon I went.

 

What the Ecobee app failed to do was prepare me for the cable salad that awaited me. All the app said to do was “Find thermostat wires.” My brain broke. I cackled a cackle that would make the Joker shudder because if I didn’t laugh, I’d cry. I asked my spouse if they could lend me a hand, but when they saw the wiring, they suggested calling a pro.

 

In a last-ditch effort, I watched several YouTube tutorials on installing the Ecobee PEK. The problem was nobody’s HVAC control panels looked remotely like mine. I started poking around to see if maybe there was another control panel I was missing. For my pains, I was rewarded by stepping on a rusty nail sticking up out of a plank. (Why that was there, ask the previous owners.) My big toe started spurting blood. I yelled for my spouse to get me our first aid kit.

 

While I sat there bleeding on the HVAC dungeon floor, searching my medical records for when I last got my tetanus shot, I decided my spouse was right and called a professional.

 

The Nest Learning Thermostat doesn’t require a C-wire, which is probably why it works with my house’s screwed-up wiring.

 

A technician came later that week. He poked, prodded, and ran up and down my stairs for two hours. The Ecobee would not turn on. After further investigation, he found a hidden C-wire in my wall. Both of us nearly wept for joy. Except it still didn’t work. I was told my house had “interesting” wiring, and I’d need a new transformer. We scheduled a follow-up visit.

 

The second time, my technician arrived with backup. For five hours, I heard two grown men cursing Ecobee from the HVAC dungeon. Occasionally, one of them would run up the stairs to check if the thermostat had turned on, only to slump their shoulders and slink back downstairs. Wiring was checked and rechecked. In the sixth hour, they told me my house and Ecobee were not meant to be. They asked if I was open to trying out a Nest Learning Thermostat instead. They’d encountered issues with Ecobee installation before, but Nest, they said, almost always works, regardless of the house.  

 

One absolutely eye-watering bill later, we now have a Nest thermostat.

The smart lighting cold war

Setting up everything else was less horrible, but there were more mishaps. I got through installing the door lock before realizing it wouldn’t pair with my phone. Jen had sent me a unit she tested, and it was still set up for her home. I had to unscrew it, run up and down a collective 10 flights of stairs to find misplaced parts and tools, battle my crappy Wi-Fi because I hadn’t set up the mesh routers first, stop the kitten from eating screws, and to top it all off, my spouse spent a half-hour shivering in the freezing cold because I forgot to tell them I’d changed the locks. 

 

Despite that, the smart home stuff has mostly worked out. Wi-Fi coverage is much better now that the mesh routers are up. I worry less that my cats somehow escaped the house because I can spy on them from the Nest Cam. Thanks to the door lock, we spend a lot less time running up and down stairs looking for our keys since we can just use an app on our phones. Freedom is also never having to stick a key in your sports bra during a run.

 

It’s not perfect. There are things we disagree on, but I never thought the thing we’d fight over the most was smart lighting. 

 

My spouse’s office. They wanted smart lights because chill lighting helps calm their anxiety.

 

When you install smart bulbs, your existing light switches are dead to you. The power has to be on all the time or they become regular lights — and I didn’t pay $300 for regular lights. 

 

To me, the easiest solution is to use voice control for everything. You say, “Hey Google, turn bedroom lights to 25 percent.” You set up automations so that your office lights turn on at sunset and shut off at bedtime. I’ve stuck Pixel Tablets and Nest Hubs in common areas so that anyone can futz around with brightness via the Google Home app. All of our rooms are sensibly named. If we want to change the color, it’s not hard to ask Google Assistant to do this.

 

My spouse would rather shoot a voice assistant into the sun. In their words, commanding robots to turn on lights is stupid when a light switch is right there. Supposedly, I’m making their life — and the lives of anyone who visits us — harder because my carefully named rooms don’t roll off the tongue. They hate having to use two different apps (Govee and Google Home) to control the lights. Do I realize, they ask, that I have become a smart home tyrant? 

 

I think it’s swell to wake up at sunrise to gradually brightening lights. My spouse cusses every morning at Google Assistant to turn the bedroom lights off. We bicker every Monday morning when I come to the living room, expecting my calm purple mood lighting for my 7AM yoga session, only to find that once again, my night owl spouse used the physical switch the previous night on their way up to bed. I’ve explained many times that this is why we need to use voice assistants, that using the light switches screws up all my automations. They always retort that my automations don’t consider their work schedule.

 

Would a tyrant draw a cute picture of a light bulb? I don’t think so.

 

Thankfully, years of therapy have given me the tools to maturely receive feedback and communicate my needs. I’ve put washi tape over the switches and stuck Post-it notes reminding them to use Google Assistant. Maybe I am being a tyrant, but the second my spouse has an alternative solution, I’m all ears.

My smart-ish home

I knew the smart home could get tricky. I knew my spouse and I would bicker. (I didn’t know this house had horrible wiring.) By setting up these gadgets, programming automations, and dueling with the HVAC from hell, I thought I’d feel happier, like I was finally home. 

 

It’s not that simple. You can’t turn a house into a home in two months. You also can’t build a smart home — at least a truly smart one — on your own. It has to be something I do with my spouse through what will likely be several rounds of trial and error. We’re putting together a new list of projects, and going forward, we’ll start ticking them off together, one by one. 

 

We use this to spy on the cats.

 

At dinner last night, I went on a rant about how much I hate the ADT system. My spouse shrugged. They confessed the smart lights ended up being the gadget they hated the most. It was surprising, they said, because the lights had been the thing they were most excited about. We sat in silence. They poked at their rigatoni with their fork and cleared their throat. Maybe, they said, we should get wireless remotes for the bulbs. 

 

I added it to our project list.

 

Photography by Victoria Song / The Verge

 

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However, the former head of Microsoft's Xbox division, Peter Moore, believes the company is having some discussions and debates right now on the future of releasing hardware consoles. In a new interview with IGN, Moore stated his belief that those discussions are also happening at Sony and Nintendo.

But I think it's a real serious question that's being asked I'm sure in Tokyo, in Redmond, Washington, in Kyoto. That's what everybody's working on right now, because when you start off that next generation, you've got to be ready to absorb billions of dollars in losses. And is the industry, given all the layoffs and everything we're going through right now, is the industry ready for that?

Moore believes that gamers could decide in the future that buying a separate piece of hardware to play games on their TV is not worth it and play their future games on a PC or their smartphone. The future of AI in developing games could also be a factor. Moore added:

And then if you're Microsoft and you're Phil Spencer, you've got Satya Nadella coming in and saying, alright, what is the future here and how does this play into the biggest strategy of cloud with Azure, with AI? What are we doing with AI game development? How do you make your games faster, cheaper, with less people? These are all the questions I think are being asked.

Moore also said that while he was at Microsoft running the Xbox division, there were questions about the future of console hardware, and there were discussions of whether television makers could just put in a chip inside a big screen PC to play games with a controller.

Moore certainly has some interesting opinions on the future of the game console business. While Microsoft has announced it is working on its next-gen Xbox hardware, its launch of Xbox Cloud Gaming could be a forerunner of a console-less game industry that could happen sooner rather than later.

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What you need to know

• MIT researchers recently revealed that we could be on the verge of battery-free technological breakthroughs.
• This could potentially present Windows, Xbox, and other tech users with a new scenario where they'll no longer need to charge their devices or use batteries.
• The technological breakthrough gets its energy from its surrounding environment.
• It relies on "ambient energy" which is sustainable, environment-friendly, and reliable.

One of the main things that perhaps hinders your productivity is the frequent need to charge your Windows laptop. This also applies when you have to hit pause on your gameplay to charge your Xbox controller's batteries when they run out of juice. It gets extremely annoying if you're on a tight deadline at work or want to wind down your day playing Helldivers 2.

According to new research, we're on the verge of a huge breakthrough that could render traditional batteries obsolete (via The Cool Down). Get this, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a top-of-the-line sensor that operates itself. It doesn't need to be plugged into a power outlet or have batteries installed to function. 

Researchers have already made significant headway on this front with "holy grail" Lithium-metal anode batteries well-known for their huge potential for storing energy, affordability, and recyclability, which can charge your Windows laptop or Xbox controller in 2 minutes. Lithium-metal anode batteries were previously considered unstable rendering them unreliable compared to traditional batteries, but this issue has been fixed.

Microsoft is also actively seeking a new material that can potentially replace Lithium in batteries owing to its dangerous nature, negative impact on the climate, and susceptibility to overheating and fires.

How does this new "battery-free" technology work?

(Image credit: Daniel Rubino)

MIT researchers developed a self-reliant sensor that doesn't require batteries or special wiring since it harvests energy from its surrounding environment. The sensor could be instrumental, especially in areas considered "hard to reach" like a ship's engine. In such an instance, it can monitor the engine's temperature and power consumption while running on ambient energy from the magnetic field surrounding the wire carrying electricity.

For context, ambient energy is a form of power readily available around our surroundings created naturally or by humans. It's a great substitute for other forms of energy currently in use because of its negligible impact on the environment and climate, sustainability, and reliability. And sure, while the amount of energy generated is only enough to power sensors right now, it offers some potential for powering certain low-power aspects of laptops, or perhaps even offer some passive charging, even if it's small amounts by today's standards. But who knows where the tech could go?

According to one of the researchers:

"We have provided an example of a battery-less sensor that does something useful, and shown that it is a practically realizable solution. Now others will hopefully use our framework to get the ball rolling to design their own sensors."

The researchers encountered several challenges during the sensor's development phase, including finding a way for the system to start without any voltage. The workaround for this was integrating circuits and transistors which allow the system to store energy until it can run by itself. 

Next, the researchers need to find a fire-proof way of ensuring that the system can store and convert the energy harvested from the environment effectively and efficiently.

While batteries might seem like the obvious solution, the researchers opted for an internal energy storage that can include a series of capacitors. The team wanted to maintain a maintenance-free arrangement because capacitors store energy in the electrical field between conductive plates.

The breakthrough shows great potential. It'll be interesting to see the advances made to expand its capabilities.

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Unlike Nvidia's G-SYNC, which relied on a dedicated hardware module inside the monitor to do adaptive framerate synchronization processing, FreeSync was a software-based approach built on top of VESA's Adaptive Sync solution.

Typically, the vast majority of 60, 75, 90 and 120Hz monitors come FreeSync certified nowadays. And while it generally worked via DisplayPort initially, over time, a lot of FreeSync monitors started supporting HDMI as well. HDMI seems to be a lot more common, especially in the budget segment, and as such, most monitors do come with an HDMI cable by default.

FreeSync has been such a success that Nvidia was forced to introduce a "G-SYNC Compatible" standard.

However, with new requirements, AMD has made it mandatory that monitors and TVs have a refresh rate of at least 144Hz for FreeSync to work. This applies to all monitors and TVs with a horizontal resolution of less than 3440 pixels.

Thus, monitors with an aspect ratio of 16:9, whether 1080p (1920X1080)—the most popular resolution—or 1440p (2560x1440) or anything below that, will now have to support 144Hz to be classified as FreeSync. This means future budget monitors will soon lose the FreeSync moniker.

For higher-resolution FreeSync Premium monitors, the refresh rate has been set to 120Hz. In its announcement blog post on the AMD community forum, the company writes:

For Monitors and TVs, the maximum refresh rates required for AMD FreeSync™ technology certification have been increased to reflect today’s best in class standards, and HDR requirements have been aligned with ecosystem specs.

Requirements for notebooks remain the same, and existing AMD FreeSync™ technology certified displays will continue to be supported.

You can view the new requirements in detail in the table below:

Hence, while desktop monitors and TVs now need to be beefier, AMD has kept the same requirements for notebooks and laptops, which also makes sense, given that desktops are also generally far more capable at similar price points.

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