This summer, a pill intended to treat a chronic, incurable lung disease entered mid-phase human trials. Previous studies have demonstrated that the drug is safe to swallow, although whether it will improve symptoms of the painful fibrosis that it targets remains unknown; this is what the current trial will determine, perhaps by next year. Such a tentative advance would hardly be newsworthy, except for a wrinkle in the medicine’s genesis: It is likely the first drug fully designed by artificial intelligence to come this far in the development pipeline.

The pill’s maker, the biotech company Insilico Medicine, used hundreds of AI models to discover both a new target in the body that could treat the fibrosis and which molecules might be synthesized for the drug itself. Those programs allowed Insilico to go from scratch to putting this drug through the first phase of human trials in two and a half years, rather than the typical five or so. Even if the pill proves useless, a real possibility, plenty of other drugs designed with the help of AI are in the wings. Scientists and companies alike hope that these will reach pharmacies far faster than traditionally designed medicine—bringing a drug to market typically takes well over a decade, and failure rates are high.

Medicine is just one aspect of a broader transformation in science. In only the past few months, AI has appeared to predict tropical storms with similar accuracy and much more speed than conventional models; Meta has released a model that can analyze brain scans to reproduce what a person is looking at; Google recently used AI to propose millions of new materials that could enhance supercomputers, electric vehicles, and more. Just as the technology has blurred the line between human-created and computer-generated text and images—upending how people work, learn, and socialize—AI tools are accelerating and refashioning some of the basic elements of science. “We can really make discoveries that would not be possible without the use of AI,” Marinka Zitnik, a biomedical and AI researcher at Harvard, told me.

Science has never been faster than it is today. But the introduction of AI is also, in some ways, making science less human. For centuries, knowledge of the world has been rooted in observing and explaining it. Many of today’s AI models twist this endeavor, providing answers without justifications and leading scientists to study their own algorithms as much as they study nature. In doing so, AI may be challenging the very nature of discovery.

Ai exists to derive impossibly intricate patterns from data sets that are too large for any person to fathom, a mystifying phenomenon that has grown more familiar since ChatGPT was released last year. The chatbot—a tool suddenly at everyone’s fingertips that appears to synthesize the entire internet—changed how we can access and apply knowledge, but it simultaneously tainted much of our thinking with doubt. We do not understand exactly how generative-AI chatbots determine their responses, only that they sound remarkably human, making it hard to parse what is real, logical, or trustworthy, and whether writing, even our own, is fully human or bears a silicon touch. When a response does make sense, it can seem to offer a shortcut rather than any true understanding of how or why the answer came to be.

AI may be doing something similar in a broad range of scientific disciplines. Among the most notable scientific advances achieved via AI may be those in molecular biology from DeepMind, a leading AI research lab now based at Google. After DeepMind’s programs conquered the game of Go in 2016—a game so much more complex than chess that many thought that computers could never master it—Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s CEO, told me that he began considering how to build an AI program for the decades-old challenge of protein folding. All sorts of biological processes depend on proteins, and every protein is made of a sequence of amino acids. How those molecules fold into a three-dimensional shape determines a protein’s function, and mapping those structures could help scientists develop new vaccines, kill antibiotics-resistant bacteria, and explore new cancer treatments. Without a protein’s 3-D shape, scientists have little more than a bunch of Lego bricks without instructions for putting them together.

Figuring out a single protein structure from a sequence of amino acids used to take years. But in 2022, DeepMind’s flagship scientific model, AlphaFold, found the most likely structure of almost every protein known to science—some 200 million of them. Much like the company’s chess- and Go-playing programs, which search for the best possible move, AlphaFold searches the number of possible structures for an amino-acid sequence to find the most probable one. The program compresses what could have been an entire Ph.D.’s worth of work into seconds, and it has been widely lauded for its “revolutionary impact” on basic biology and the development of novel treatments alike. Still, independent researchers have noted that despite inhuman speed, the model does not fully explain why a specific structure is likely. As a result, scientists are trying to demystify AlphaFold’s predictions, and Hassabis noted that those efforts are making good progress.

AI allows researchers to study complex systems in “the world of bits” at a much faster pace than in the “world of atoms,” Hassabis said, and then physically test their hypotheses as a final step. The technology is pushing forward advances in numerous other disciplines—not just improving speed and scale, but changing what kind of research is thought possible. Neuroscientists at Meta and elsewhere, for instance, are turning artificial neural networks trained to “see” photographs or “read” text into hypotheses for how the brain processes both images and language. Biologists are using AI trained on genetic data to study rare diseases, improve immunotherapies, and better understand SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. “Now we have viable hypotheses, where before we had mysteries,” Jim DiCarlo, a cognitive scientist at MIT who has pioneered the use of AI to study vision in the brain, told me.

Astronomers and physicists are using machine learning to process data sets from the universe that were too immense to touch before, Brice Ménard, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins, told me. Some experiments, such as the CERN particle collider, produce too much information to physically store. Researchers rely on AI to throw out familiar observations while keeping unknowns for analysis. “We don’t know what the needle looks like, because these are undetected physics events, but we know what the hay looks like,” Alexander Szalay, the director of the Institute for Data Intensive Science at Johns Hopkins, told me. “So computers are trained to recognize the hay and basically throw it away.”

The long-term vision could even involve combining AI models and physical experiments in a sort of “self-driving lab,” Zitnik said, wherein computer programs and robots generate hypotheses, plan experiments to test them, and analyze the results. Such labs are a ways off, although prototypes do exist, such as the Scientific Autonomous Reasoning Agent, a robotic system that has already discovered new materials for renewable energy. SARA uses a laser to analyze and alter materials iteratively, with each loop lasting a few seconds, Carla Gomes, a computer scientist at Cornell, told me—reducing days of research to hours. This future, if it comes to pass, will elevate software and robots from tools to collaborators, even co-creators of knowledge.

Quantum observations too numerous for humans to store, experiments too rapid for humans to run, neuroscientific hypotheses too complex for humans to derive—even as AI enables scientific work never before thought possible, those same tools pose an epistemic dilemma. They will produce groundbreaking knowledge while breaking apart what it means to know in the first place.

“The holy grail of science is understanding,” Zitnik said. “To be able to understand a phenomenon, whether that’s the behavior of a cell or a planetary system, requires being able to identify causes and effects.” But AI models are famously opaque. They detect patterns based on gargantuan data sets via software architectures whose inner workings baffle human intuition and reasoning. Experts have taken to calling them “black boxes.”

This presents obvious problems for the scientific method. “We have to understand what is going on inside this black box so we can see where this discovery is coming from,” Szalay told me. To predict events without understanding why those predictions are accurate might gesture toward a different type of science, in which knowledge and the resulting actions are not always accompanied by an explanation. An AI model might predict a thunderstorm’s arrival but struggle to explain the underlying physics and atmospheric changes that triggered it, analyze an X-ray without showing how it arrived at its diagnosis, or propose abstract mathematical conjectures without proving them. Such shifts from observations and grounded reasoning to mathematical probability have happened in the sciences before: The equations of quantum mechanics, which emerged in the 20th century, accurately predict subatomic phenomena that physicists still don’t fully understand—leading Albert Einstein himself to doubt quantum theory.

From the January 1951 issue: Faith in science

Science itself may offer a solution to this conundrum. Physical experiments have uncovered a great deal in the past century about the quantum world, and similarly, AI tools might appear inscrutable partly because researchers haven’t spent enough time probing them. “You have to build the artifact first before you can pull it apart and scientifically analyze it,” Hassabis told me, and scientists have only recently begun to build AI models worthy of study. Even older numerical simulations, although far less complex than today’s AI models, are hard to interpret in an intuitive way, but they have nevertheless informed new discoveries for decades.

If researchers understand how artificial neurons respond to an image, they might be able to translate those predictions to biological neurons; if researchers understand which parts of an AI model link a mutation to a disease, scientists could gain new insights into the human genome. Such models are “fully observable systems. You can measure all the parts,” DiCarlo said. Whereas he cannot measure every neuron and synapse in a monkey brain during surgery, he can do that for an AI model. With the right access, AI programs might present scientists not with black boxes so much as with a new type of object requiring a new sort of inquiry—not “models” of the natural world so much as addendums to it. Some scientists even hope to build “digital twins” to simulate cells, organs, and the planet.

Ai is not a silver bullet, though. AlphaFold may be revolutionary, and perhaps Insilico will indeed drastically reduce the time it takes to develop new medicine. But the technology has significant limitations. For instance, AI models need to train on large amounts of relevant data. AlphaFold is a “spectacular success,” Jennifer Listgarten, a computational biologist and computer scientist at UC Berkeley, told me—but it also “relied on very expensive, highly curated data that was generated over decades in the laboratory on a very crisply defined problem that could be evaluated extremely cleanly.” The lack of high-quality data in other disciplines can prevent or limit the use of AI.

Even with those data, the real world can be more complex and dynamic than a silicon simulation. Translating the static structure of a molecule into its interactions with various systems in the body, for instance, is a problem that researchers are still working on, Andreas Bender, who studies molecular informatics at the University of Cambridge, told me. AI can propose new medicines quickly, but “you still need to run the drug-discovery process, which is, of course, quite long,” John Jumper, a researcher at DeepMind who led the development of AlphaFold, told me.

Clinical trials take years and many are unsuccessful; plenty of AI drug start-ups and initiatives have scaled back. Those failures are, in some sense, evidence of science working. Experimental results, along with known physical laws, allow scientists to prevent their models from hallucinating, Anima Anandkumar, a computer scientist at Caltech, told me. No analogous laws of linguistic accuracy exist for chatbots—consumers have to trust Big Tech.

In a lab, novel predictions can be physically and safely tested in an isolated setting. But when developing drugs or treating patients, the stakes are much higher. Existing maps of the human genome, for instance, skew toward white Europeans, but the expression of many conditions, such as diabetes, varies significantly by race and ethnicity. Just as biased data sets produce racist chatbots, skewed biological data might mean that “models are not applicable to people of non-caucasian origin,” Bender told me, or those of different ages, or with existing diseases and on co-medications. A cancer-diagnosis program or treatment designed by AI might be especially effective only on a small slice of the population.

AI models might transform not just how we understand the world but how we understand understanding itself. If so, we must build out new models of knowledge as well—what we can trust, why, and when. Otherwise, our reliance on a chatbot, drug-discovery tool, or AI hurricane forecast might depart from the realm of science. It might be more akin to faith.

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What’s Wi-Fi Alliance?

The Wi-Fi Alliance is an organization that promotes the adoption of Wi-Fi technology worldwide and owns the Wi-Fi trademark. It was founded in 1999 and has over 900 member companies from around the globe, including major manufacturers of Wi-Fi devices such as Apple, Samsung, Intel, and Cisco.

Wi-Fi 7 promises speeds up to 40 Gbit/s, a significant improvement over the current Wi-Fi 6 standard. It also offers reduced latency and increased capacity, making it ideal for online gaming, streaming, and AR/VR applications.

Wi-Fi 7 utilizes three frequency bands (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz) with wider channels (320 MHz) and advanced modulation techniques (4096-QAM) to achieve unparalleled speeds.

• Speeds up to 40 Gbit/s: 4.8x faster than Wi-Fi 6.
• Reduced latency: This will enhance the speed of online gaming and AR/VR applications, resulting in better responsiveness.
• Increased capacity will allow more devices to connect to the network without impacting performance.
• Improved security: Wi-Fi 7 includes new security features that will make it more difficult for hackers to steal data.

Here is the difference between Wi-Fi 5, 6 and 7

Wi-Fi 7 devices are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2024. However, some manufacturers have already released “draft” Wi-Fi 7 devices that will be compatible with the full standard once a firmware update is applied.

More about it here.

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Hallikainen gave a teaser of what's incoming with the update in the latest Word of the Week development blog post. Aside from the usual array of bug fixes, the studio is also putting in a holiday treat for players in the form of two new maps.

Titled Sunshine Peninsula and Corral Richers, the former will offer a map with only warm temperatures while the latter will be almost completely flat. The duo is being made using the Map Editor that's coming soon to players.

Meanwhile, to improve performance, Colossal Order will be adding new character-level of detail models and improving geometry layouts for assets. Players wanting better control over their city budget will be seeing improvements too, with changes hitting how money is calculated and shown off in menus.

"We’ve also improved how vehicles change lanes, fixed situations where the resource amount stored would end up as a negative value, and added the line colour to ships and cargo trains so you can easily see which lines they belong to," says the studio.

An exact release date has not yet been given to his upcoming Cities: Skylines II update, but it is coming to both Steam and Microsoft Store (PC Game Pass) players sometime this week. The Colossal Order team will then be off for three weeks for the holidays before development resumes in 2024.

Modding support with the studio's official Editor tools is still coming next year. The focus on boosting performance and bug fixes will continue as DLC production remains paused. The studio is also working on the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 ports of the game, which have not received firm release dates yet since their last-minute delays from earlier this year.

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Brain organoids, clumps of human brain cells grown in a dish, can be hooked up to an electronic chip and carry out simple computational tasks, a new study shows. 

Feng Guo and his team at Indiana University Bloomington generated a brain organoid from stem cells, attached it to a computer chip, and connected their setup, known as Brainoware, to an AI tool. They found that this hybrid system could process, learn, and remember information. It was even able to carry out some rudimentary speech recognition. The work, published today in Nature Electronics, could one day lead to new kinds of bio-computers that are more efficient than conventional computers.

Scientists have been trying to build computers based on advanced biological systems for decades. Guo says that such computers could overcome some challenges of silicon-based computers, such as bottlenecks in data processing. 

Conventional computers are much better than brains in dealing with numbers, but human brains are better at processing complex information while using relatively little energy. “This is a first demonstration of using brain organoids [for computing],” says Guo. “It’s exciting to see the possibilities of organoids for biocomputing in the future.”    

With Brainoware, Guo aimed to use actual brain cells to send and receive information. When the researchers applied electrical stimulation to the hybrid system they’d built, Brainoware responded to those signals, and changes occurred in its neural networks. According to the researchers, this result suggests that the hybrid system did process information, and could perhaps even perform computing tasks without supervision.

Guo and his colleagues then attempted to see if Brainoware could perform any useful tasks. In one test, they used Brainoware to try to solve mathematical equations. They also gave it a benchmark test for speech recognition, using 240 audio clips of eight people pronouncing Japanese vowels. The clips were converted into electrical signals and applied to the Brainoware system. This generated signals in the neural networks of the brain organoid, which were then fed into an AI tool for decoding.

The researchers found that the brain organoid–AI system could decode the signals from the audio recordings, which is a form of speech recognition, says Guo. “But the accuracy was low,” he says. Although the system improved with training, reaching an accuracy of about 78%, it was still less accurate than artificial neural networks, according to the study. 

Lena Smirnova, an assistant professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University,  points out that brain organoids do not have the ability to truly hear speech but simply exhibit “a reaction” to pulses of electrical stimulation from the audio clips. And the study did not demonstrate whether Brainoware can process and store information over the long term or learn multiple tasks. Generating brain cell cultures in a lab and maintaining them long enough to perform computations is also a huge undertaking.

Still, she adds, “it’s a really good demonstration that shows the capabilities of brain organoids.”

Source

Until this year, it was possible to learn a lot about artificial intelligence technology simply by reading research documentation published by Google and other AI leaders with each new program they released. Open disclosure was the norm for the AI world. 

All that changed in March of this year, when OpenAI elected to announce its latest program, GPT-4, with almost no technical detail. The research paper provided by the company obscured just about every important detail of GPT-4 that would allow researchers to understand its structure and to attempt to replicate its effects. 

Last week, Google continued that new approach of obfuscation, announcing the formal release of its newest generative AI program, Gemini, developed in conjunction with its DeepMind unit, which was first unveiled in May. The Google and DeepMind researchers offered a blog post devoid of technical specifications, and an accompanying technical report almost completely devoid of any relevant technical details. 

Much of the blog post and the technical report cite a raft of benchmark scores, with Google boasting of beating out OpenAI's GPT-4 on most measures, and beating Google's former top neural network, PaLM. 

Neither the blog nor the technical paper include key details that have been customary in years past, such as how many neural net "parameters," or, "weights," the program has, a key aspect of its design and function. Instead, Google refers to three versions of Gemini, with three different sizes, "Ultra," "Pro," and "Nano." The paper does disclose that Nano is trained with two different weight counts, 1.8 billion and 3.25 billion, while failing to disclose the weights of the other two sizes. 

Numerous other technical details are absent, just as with the GPT-4 technical paper from OpenAI. In the absence of technical details, online debate has focused on whether the boasting of benchmarks means anything. 

OpenAI researcher Rowan Zellers wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that Gemini is "super impressive," and added, "I also don't have a good sense on how much to trust the dozen or so text benchmarks that all the LLM papers report on these days." 

😂 in a more serious note though --

the gemini model is super impressive (can't wait to play with the new multimodality aspects!)
I also don't have a good sense on how much to trust the dozen or so text benchmarks that all the LLM papers report on these days 😀

— Rowan Zellers (@rown) December 7, 2023

Tech news site TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers reports anecdotes of poor performance by Google's Bard search engine, enhanced by Gemini. He cites posts on X by people asking Bard questions such as movie trivia or vocabulary suggestions and reporting the failures. 

Mud-slinging is a common phenomenon in the introduction of a new technology or product. In the past, however, technical details allowed outsiders to make a more-informed assessment of capabilities by assessing the technical differences between the latest program and the program's immediate predecessors, such as PaLM. 

For lack of such information, assessments are being made in hit-or-miss fashion, by people randomly typing things to Bard. 

The sudden swing to secrecy by Google and OpenAI is becoming a major ethical issue for the tech industry because no one knows, outside OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, what is going on in the black box in their computing cloud. 

In October, scholars Emanuele La Malfa at the University of Oxford and collaborators at The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Leeds, warned that the obscurity of GPT-4 and other models "causes a significant problem" for AI for society, namely that, "the most potent and risky models are also the most difficult to analyze." 

Google's lack of disclosure, while not surprising given its commercial battle with OpenAI, and partner Microsoft, for market share, is made more striking by one very large omission: model cards. 

Model cards are a form of standard disclosure used in AI to report on the details of neural networks, including potential harms of the program (hate speech, etc.) While the GPT-4 report from OpenAI omitted most details, it at least made a nod to model cards with a "GPT-4 System Card" section in the paper, which it said was inspired by model cards.

Google doesn't even go that far, omitting anything resembling model cards. The omission is particularly strange given that model cards were invented at Google, by a team that included Margaret Mitchell, formerly co-lead of Ethical AI at Google, and former co-lead Timnit Gebru. 

Instead of model cards, the report offers a brief, rather bizarre passage about the deployment of the program with vague language about having model cards at some point:

Following the completion of reviews, model cards ?? [emphasis Google's] for each approved Gemini model are created for structured and consistent internal documentation of critical performance and responsibility metrics as well as to inform appropriate external communication of these metrics over time.

If Google puts question marks next to model cards in its own technical disclosure, one has to wonder what the future of oversight and safety is for neural networks.

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Here's just some of the search trends that were on top of these lists globally in 2023 in Google:

People:

1. Damar Hamlin
2. Jeremy Renner
3. Andrew Tate
4. Kylian Mbappé
5. Travis Kelce
6. Jenna Ortega
7. Lil Tay
8. Danny Masterson
9. David Beckham
10. Pedro Pascal

Movies

1. Barbie
2. Oppenheimer
3. Jawan
4. Sound of Freedom
5. John Wick: Chapter 4
6. Avatar: The Way of Water
7. Everything Everywhere All at Once
8. Gadar 2
9. Creed III
10. Pathaan

TV Shows

1. The Last of Us
2. Wednesday
3. Ginny & Georgia
4. One Piece
5. Kaleidoscope
6. King the Land
7. The Glory
8. That '90s Show
9. The Fall of the House of Usher
10. Shadow and Bone

Video Games

1. Hogwarts Legacy
2. The Last of Us
3. Connections
4. Battlegrounds Mobile India
5. Starfield
6. Baldur's Gate 3
7. スイカ ゲーム
8. Diablo IV
9. Atomic Heart
10. Sons of the Forest

Meme

1. Kevin James
2. Ohio
3. Police girl
4. Folding chair
5. Smurf cat
6. The waffle house new host
7. One two buckle my shoe
8. Animan Studios
9. Selena Gomez
10. Submarine

News

1. War in Israel and Gaza
2. Titanic submarine
3. Turkey earthquake
4. Hurricane Hilary
5. Hurricane Idalia
6. Hurricane Lee
7. Maine shooting
8. Nashville shooting
9. Chandrayaan-3
10. War in Sudan

In addition to the 2023 year in search trends, Google is celebrating its 25th year with a new YouTube video that looks back at the last two and a half decades in search trends. Google stated:

Soccer, the world's most-searched sport, and Cristiano Ronaldo, its most-searched athlete, demonstrate a love for the game that transcends borders. Taylor Swift's status as the most-searched songwriter highlights the profound connection people feel with her music, and by extension, with each other. We also see shared humanity in the most-searched "how to help" query: how to help people. And the heart emoji, the most-searched emoji, reveals yet another universal theme: our shared need for love and understanding.

You can also check out the Google Trends Time Capsule website to learn more about the history of search trends for the last 25 years.

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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 and Windows 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.

Here is some big news for Windows 10 users, especially those not planning to upgrade to Windows 10 any time soon. Microsoft revealed that Windows 10 would get three years of paid extended security updates. However, this time, for the first time ever, the ESU program will be available for "regular customers." Microsoft said paid updates would be available for a fee, but the exact details are yet to be revealed. If you think that sounds fishy, you are not alone. I published an editorial with a few thoughts on why paid security updates might become a big problem for regular users.

Shortly after that, a new report emerged about Microsoft's plans for Windows in 2024. The company wants to release a new Windows client with a heavy focus on AI-powered features, some of which are allegedly "groundbreaking." The first release on a new platform is expected somewhere in mid-2024, with another update containing new features in the second half of the year.

Microsoft published a short blog post to recap all the accessibility features it added to Windows 11 during this year. They are available as a part of the recent Windows 11 feature updates, and you can get them all in one package by updating your system to Windows 11 version 23H2. However, beware of potential performance issues—some customers on Reddit are complaining about notable CPU performance degradation after installing the latest Windows 11 version.

It is also worth noting that your computer may not "see" Windows 11 in Windows Update even if its hardware supports Microsoft's latest operating system. A temporary compatibility issue may be the reason, as explained in the updated PC Health Check documentation.

There is another confirmed bug affecting every client and server edition of Windows 10 and 11. Microsoft has updated its Windows Health Dashboard documentation with details about weird printing-related issues, such as printers suddenly changing their names and icons, error messages, and the HP Smart App installing without permission. The good thing is that Microsoft is working on resolving the problem as soon as possible. The company also confirmed it is not HP's fault.

Speaking of accessibility, Microsoft launched its Seeing AI app on Android, giving visually impaired users a new method to "see" the world using their smartphones. The app allows pointing a smartphone at an object for a quick scan and audio description, recognizing faces, scanning emotions, and more. For some reason, it took Microsoft more than six years to port Seeing AI from iOS to Android, but it is better later than never.

Microsoft once again updated its list of deprecated Windows features. This time, the old Speech Recognition app from the Windows Vista era is on the way out. That should not upset users since modern Windows versions have a much better alternative called Voice Access.

Windows Insider Program

Microsoft released the following preview builds to test:

• Canary Channel: 26010 with Copilot undocking, Quick Settings improvements, and more.
• Dev Channel: 23601 with tons of Windows 365 changes and improvements, changes for screen casting and Nearby Share, and more.
• Beta Channel: KB5032286 or 22635.2841 with changes for the recently deprecated Steps Recorder, improvements for Windows Widgets, and more.
• Beta Channel (again): KB5033453 or 22635.2850 with WhatsApp support in Windows Share and Microsoft Store updates.

Another preview update for Windows released this week was KB5032288 for Windows 11 23H2 and 22H2. It introduced multiple Copilot improvements and fixes for other parts of the operating system. You can download it from Windows Update without signing up for the Windows Insider Program.

In addition to shipping new preview builds, the company pushed some app updates for Windows Insiders. For example, the Microsoft Store app now has a dedicated tab for instant games. It is called "Arcade," and you can use it to play games without downloading them.

In addition, the latest Microsoft Store preview release lets you install apps and games as you browse and enjoy performance improvements for smoother animations and a snappier experience.

Notepad also received an update with new features. Windows Insiders running the latest preview builds can try a new "Edit with Notepad" entry in context menus and character count for keeping track of your document's length.

Finally, Microsoft announced that getting Windows Insider builds for Windows Server would soon be much easier. The company plans to bring the same flight system to its Server edition as the consumer version, allowing users to sign up for the program from the Settings app.

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.

For Windows 11 users, the biggest update of this week was a new version of Web Experience Pack, a system component that handles Windows Widgets and other web-dependent elements. What was so special about it? All Windows 11 customers can rejoice as they finally can turn off the news feed on the widget board and keep it for widgets only. Microsoft announced the toggle as a part of the latest preview update in the Beta Channel. Just keep in mind that there are a few notable bugs.

You can check out our guide to learn how to disable news in Windows 11 Widgets properly.

Microsoft Edge 120 is now available in the Stable Channel. Its changelog focuses primarily on enterprise-related changes and policies, but there is still one neat feature to delight regular users, especially on Windows 11. The Mica material is back, and you can turn it on using an experimental flag.

PowerToys, everyone's favorite toolbox with convenient utilities for Windows 10 and 11, received an update to version 0.76 (yes, it is still technically a preview). Its changelog includes a new add-on for File Explorer that lets you handle QOI images and modernized user interfaces for PowerToys Run, Quick Accent, Text Extractor, and Keyboard Manager.

Another Microsoft product to get a big update is Copilot (recently left the preview stage). Microsoft announced plenty of new features, such as GPT-4 Turbo, Deep Search, code interpreter, and more. The company is also trialing a new Copilot Notebook interface where you can adjust your prompt on one side and see changes on the other.

If you use third-party apps for creating Windows images and bootable media, you will be glad to learn that the Universal Media Creation Tool script and UUP Media Creator received important updates. The latest version of the UMCT script finally allows downloading the most recent Windows 10 and 11 releases, versions 22H2 and 23H2. As for the UUP Media Creator app, its update brings the necessary fixes to resolve issues with downloading new Windows 11 preview builds.

AV-Comparatives published results of their latest tests and comparisons between different antivirus software providers to see how they stack up against each other when detecting new Windows malware and how big their performance impact is.

Other notable updates released this week include the following:

• The Surface Pro 8 and Pro 7+ received new firmware updates with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth improvements, inking enhancements, and security patches.
• Surface Hub 3 is now available for purchase in two screen sizes. This massive touchscreen PC powered by Microsoft Teams Rooms for Windows starts at $9,499 for the 50-inch model and a whopping $22,999 for the 85-inch model.
• Fences 5 is out of preview and is now available on Windows for $9.99. This convenient app will help keep your desktop tidy and organized.
• Word for the web and Mac received comment filtering.
• Outlook for the web and Windows received voice dictation support.

Here are the new drivers released this week:

• NVIDIA Game-Ready 546.29 WHQL with DLSS 3.5 support for Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Season 1. Note that the update contains two bugs: washed-out colours when streaming and intermittent stutters after toggling on V-SYNC. You can fix that using hotfix 546.31.
• AMD Radeon Software 23.12.1 with support for The Finals, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a few tweaks for the Radeon Settings app, and Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling for the RX 7000 Series.
• Intel Arc 31.0.101.5074 with optimizations for multiple games and bug fixes.

On the gaming side

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

Rockstar Games has finally revealed the first trailer for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI. Scheduled for 2025 on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 (no info about a PC release so far), the game will take players back to Vice City, twenty years after the original Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, allowing to play for two main characters in a potential Bonnie and Clyde-style storyline. The details remain scarce, but the trailer itself looks promising and impressive.

Although Grand Theft Auto VI clearly stole the show this week, other studios also announced some gaming news. Sea of Thieves, Microsoft's long-standing pirate simulator, received a new mode called "Safer Seas." In a nutshell, Sea of Thieves Safer Seas mode lets you play the game with up to three friends without worrying about random encounters with strangers. You can learn more details about it here.

Ubisoft finally launched Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and we published a comprehensive review of the title. It features fantastic visuals, a diverse alien environment, and interesting exploration but falls flat with its stale storyline, repetitive enemies, and the classic outpost clearing.

The 2023 Game Awards show took place this week, where hosts unveiled winners in various nominations, such as Game of the Year, Best Art Direction, Best Mobile Game, Best Multiplayer, Most Anticipated Game, etc. We recapped everything in one article, so you can check out the winners here if you missed everything.

NVIDIA announced 17 new titles for its GeForce NOW streaming service. The latest additions include Avatar: The Frontiers of Pandora, Goat Simulator 3, Dungeons 4, Farming Simulator 22, Hollow Knight, World War Z: Aftermath, and others. You can find the complete list here.

Deals and freebies

During December 2023, Xbox owners can try over 30 upcoming games as a part of the annual ID@Xbox Demo Winterfest. Keep in mind, though, that final demos do not always represent the final product.

GigaBash and Predecessor are available for free in the Epic Games Store. GigaBash lets you take control of huge monsters and mecha to fight with enemies. Predecessor is a sci-fi game multiplayer-themed game that combines first-person shooter gameplay with MOBA features.

If you want more, check out our Weekend PC Game Deals series, where we regularly cover multitudes of deals, freebies, and special offers on games from Steam and other stores.

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.

In August 2023, one of our Microsoft Weeklies mentioned the Hover game, Microsoft's first first-person game quietly shipped inside the CD-ROM editions of Windows 95 (in the "Fun Stuff" folder, to be precise). John's weekly blast from Microsoft's past digs a bit deeper into this hidden and long-forgotten gem that the company tried to resuscitate in October 2013 to showcase the capabilities of then-new Internet Explorer 11.

Random fact about Microsoft

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

Did you know that Microsoft used to sell Microsoft-branded Wi-Fi routers? In 2002, the MN-500 became Microsoft's first consumer-focused Wi-Fi router with a reasonable price tag of just $100, while most competitors back then offered their solutions for $150 and more. Although the MN-500 was a relatively simple Wi-Fi router without bells and whistles, it was a reliable and straightforward device with 128-bit WEP encryption turned on by default.

Other MN-500 Series devices included a Wi-Fi adapter for notebooks (remember laptops with no Wi-Fi?) and a Wi-Fi USB dongle to equip your desktop computer with a wireless Internet connection. You can learn more about the Microsoft MN-500 lineup and its successor in this article.

You can find other issues of the Microsoft Weekly series using this link. Also, you can support Neowin by subscribing to our Newsletter to get regular news recaps delivered directly to your email.

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30 years ago, today, on December 10, 1993, id Software released the shareware version of its first-person shooter game Doom. It's safe to say that the gaming industry, and maybe the entire world, was never quite the same again, as the game became a massive hit and helped to launch an entire genre of titles.

Today, on Doom's 30th anniversary, John Romero, the co-creator of the original game while he was at id, released a new nine-level episode for that game, Sigil 2, that he also created. It's also a sequel to Sigil, anotherDoom episode that he created and released in 2019.

Here's the description of Sigil 2:

Upon breaching the pentagram of invulnerability in the final moments of SIGIL, Episode Five, you find yourself not on a victorious journey back to save Earth, but caught in Baphomet's cunning snare, catapulted into a new, grotesque domain of relentless torment, unending demon hordes, and an onslaught of heavy metal mayhem!

All but one of the nine new levels in Sigil 2 include a deathmatch arena for multiplayer. Sigil 2 does have some new art, along with a new MIDI soundtrack by James Paddock. If you own Doom, you can download the small 2MB Sigil 2 Doom episode now for free from Romero.com

In addition to releasing Sigil 2, Romero will participate in an online chat later today on Twitch with John Carmack, the man who created the Doom engine technology and went on to become a game development legend as well. The event begins at 3 pm Eastern time (noon Pacific time).

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Announced at The Game Awards 2023, 'Light No Fire' is a fantasy game from Hello Games, the developers of No Man's Sky—a title with a tumultuous history. Light No Fire has a Steam page confirming its arrival on PC, but it's fair to assume it'll hit Xbox Series X|S as well down the line similarly to its predecessor.

Over the past five years, Hello Games has been creating this new adventure, described by founder Sean Murray as "something very different, something more ambitious."

This proclamation comes on the heels of No Man's Sky's transformation from one of the most hyped and anticipated titles of the decade to one of the most disappointing and controversial flops in gaming history. However, it’s time to stop dwelling on the past and extend a fresh opportunity to Hello Games. Through their continued dedication to the development of No Man's Sky, they have proven more than capable of a successful launch, and here's why.

Hello Games has already weathered this storm and harnessed its power for positive change

The self-burn is admirable, from both studios. (Image credit: X/Twitter)

The anticipation for No Man's Sky was palpable back in 2016. However, the game, which promised to be a groundbreaking sci-fi exploration universe featuring procedurally-generated planets, lifeforms, and mysteries, turned out to be a disappointment. The trailers and interviews showcased stunning visuals, diverse environments, and intriguing gameplay, none of which players experienced in the released game. Hello Games learned the bitter lesson of overpromising the hard way, to the extent that they are now comfortable poking fun at themselves, showcasing a newfound confidence. With even Cyberpunk2077 jumping in on the roast.

In a fan-made YouTube video comparing both launch trailers side by side, the similarities are undeniable. While some may consider this an omen, I firmly believe that Hello Games has learned valuable lessons about not showcasing elements they can't deliver, and many things show in the Light No Fire trailer exist in some form in No Man's Sky already. 

They've amassed years of experience in developing, updating, and supporting a large-scale and ambitious game at this stage. Their communication and transparency with both the No Man's Sky community and the media have improved significantly over the past years. It's unlikely that they would easily discard all the goodwill they've earned by repeating the mistakes of the past.

No publisher deadlines, no crunch

(Image credit: Hello Games)

Another significant factor contributing to No Man’s Sky's troubled launch was the pressure imposed by Sony to meet deadlines. Sony had a major role in marketing and distributing the game, and they had high expectations and demands. This led to Hello Games being forced to expedite the development process, resulting in the unfortunate necessity to cut planned features and content in order to meet the strict release timeline.

This in turn created a disconnect between the game’s vision and the game’s reality, as the trailers and interviews did not match the final product. Shawn Layden, Sony's leader at the time, expressed remorse for the treatment of Hello Games' development process in this interview with Geoff Keighly of The Game Awards in 2016. 

Layden noted, "What we learned from [No Man's Sky] is that we don't want to stifle ambition, we don't want to stifle creativity. We don't want to put people into slots where they must execute against an action-adventure path or a fighting path or a shooting path. And perhaps over time, it'll reveal itself to be all that it can be."

With Light no Fire, Hello Games will be experiencing a full-circle moment. Self-publishing the game, they have more creative and financial freedom and control over their game, and won't be a slave to the pressures of a huge publisher, as Sony candidly admitted. They can set their own deadlines and priorities, and focus on making the game they want to make, without external interference or influence.

The turnaround of No Man's Sky will be referenced in the gaming history books for millenia

No Man's Sky is an impressive comeback that other games like Cyberpunk2077 have tried to emulate

(Image credit: Hello Games)

Hello Games has truly resurrected No Man's Sky, transforming it like a phoenix rising from the ashes through over 30 major updates and patches in the seven years since its initial launch. To suggest that they have learned nothing from this journey would be disingenuous.

Of recent reviews, the game now sits at an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, due in no small part to the fact all those updates have been completely and utterly free to the players. The support that has been thrown behind this game has gone above and beyond what would be expected for a non-subscription title.

I jumped into the game myself when the NEXT update dropped in 2018, the game had benefitted from 2 years in the wild at this point and I couldn't believe how good it was. The transformation was staggering even back then, and I found myself spending over 200 hours engaged in mining, building, and traversing the universe while contributing to the vibrant Reddit community with money-making tips. I still remember the day I found and acquired my first S-level freighter, I couldn't believe that this was the game everyone had been so angry about two years prior. 

In the years since my experience, so much has been added to the game it's too overwhelming for me to consider a return, but for NEW players we now have underwater exploration, more planet diversity, organic and sentient starships, exo-mechs suits, haunted freighters, companions, community expeditions and settlements. The list never ends. The metamorphosis of No Man's Sky stands as a testament to Hello Games' commitment to continuous improvement and player satisfaction.

No Man's Sky has Overwhelmingly Positive reviews in the 4065 received in the last 30 days, mainly due

to the recent Echoes update. (Image credit: Steam)

Hello Games deserves some faith

Hello Games has remained steadfast in honoring its original promise to deliver an exceptional game, realizing its complete vision that couldn't be hastily executed at launch.

Their ability and willingness to improve and evolve their game over time is admirable, and something I always reference as the blueprint for how you bring a game back from the dead. All of that being said, we live in different times now. In a stacked year for gaming like 2023, a successful launch is more critical than ever. With an abundance of outstanding titles capturing players' attention, the margin for error is slim. Failing to captivate players from the outset risks permanent disengagement, regardless of subsequent improvements. Hello Games is undoubtedly aware of this paradigm shift, navigating the "fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you" scenario with heightened senses (and one of humor as has been displayed on Twitter/X).

Light No Fire will be the culmination of all Hello Games' hard work over the past decade, and I am rooting for them — as should we all.

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What is new in the December 2023 update for the Surface Pro 8?

• This update addresses a potential security vulnerability related to Intel® Security Advisory INTEL-SA-00783, addressing CVE-2022-36392 & CVE-2022-38102.

• Addresses intermittent Wi-Fi dropout and improves connection stability to Wi-Fi Access points.

• Improves Bluetooth peripheral connectivity.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

The eighth-generation Surface Pro has a six-year lifecycle. Microsoft will end its support on October 5, 2027.

What is new in the December 2023 update for the Surface Pro 7+?

• Improves device camera performance and stability.

• Addresses potential security vulnerability and improves system stability and performance.

• Better pen inking performance, improved graphics stability, better support for the 3rd party apps.

• Addresses intermittent Wi-Fi dropout and improves connection stability to Wi-Fi Access points.

• Improves Bluetooth peripheral connectivity.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

The Surface Pro 7+ will continue receiving firmware and driver updates until January 15, 2027.

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Today, the market for home Wi-Fi routers is huge. Lots of companies sell a wide variety of Wi-Fi router products for all kinds of consumers. Of course, you have your PC accessories makers like Netgear, Linksys, and TP-Link in this industry, but major PC makers like ASUS and MSI also sell routers made for gamers. Even businesses like Google and Amazon, which are not primarily in the PC business, sell their own Wi-Fi routers right now.

However, over 20 years ago, back when high-speed internet connections in the home were still a relatively new development, the biggest PC company of all, Microsoft, decided to launch its own Wi-Fi hardware line for consumers. It first launched in 2002 with the MN-500 base station.

Here's the thing: I was one of those folks who bought that MN-500 base station when my home first got broadband internet. I chose Microsoft's product for a number of reasons; it was a known name (I wasn't familiar with the other PC accessory companies like Netgear at the time), the product had some solid reviews, and most importantly, it didn't cost an arm and a leg. It cost me just over $100 after a mail-in rebate (the normal price was still a reasonable $150).

While it has been 20 years since I owned the Microsoft MN-500 Wi-Fi base station, I do remember being simple to set up and use, and I don't remember having any issues with it while I used it. It supported Wi-Fi 802.11b at 2.4Ghz and the speed was plenty for my place at the time. It didn't have a lot of bells and whistles like you might find on high-end gaming-based routers. It was basic, and it worked and at the time that was enough for me.

Microsoft's own press release announcing the MN-500 noted one thing that many routers didn't have set up by default:

To help prevent wireless eavesdropping, 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption is turned on by default. Network address translation (NAT) and a built-in hardware firewall help prevent attacks from the Internet. And built-in Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support helps keeps hackers out while enabling users to play multiplayer games and conduct video and voice conversations over the Internet from any networked PC in the house.

The company also sold the MN-520 Notebook Wireless Adapter (yes, a lot of notebooks back then didn't have integrated Wi-Fi hardware inside - it's shocking to me, too) for $79.95, and an MN-510 Wireless USB Adapter, again for $79.95.

Initially, Microsoft's entry into the Wi-Fi hardware market was pretty successful. Indeed, as CNET noted in January 2003, Microsoft was the number two company selling these products in the US.

However that didn't last long, and the big reason was that other companies in that industry started selling hardware that supported the newer and faster 802.11g standards. Microsoft simply didn't have anything ready to offer consumers with those new standards, and so its sales started to go down.

In September 2003, Microsoft finally launched its 802.11g-based MN-700 wireless router modem for $109, along with both a MN-720 notebook adapter for $84.95, and a wireless PCI Adapter for notebooks, also for $84.95. There was also the wireless adapter made especially for Microsoft's first Xbox console, the MN-740, which for some reason was much more expensive at $139.

However, the effort to switch over to the new Wi-Fi standard was too little, too late for Microsoft. CNET reported in May 2004 that, after less than two years of selling Wi-Fi consumer products, the company had pulled the plug on that business, although it would make and sell a Wi-Fi adapter for its Xbox 360 console in 2005.

Honestly, if rivals like Amazon and Google are selling their own Wi-Fi routers, we think it might be worth Microsoft time to look back into entering this business again, especially with the new Wi-Fi 7 standard about to become official sometime in 2024.

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Around noon on Nov. 17, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, logged into a video call from a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. He was in the city for its inaugural Formula 1 race, which had drawn 315,000 visitors including Rihanna and Kylie Minogue.

Mr. Altman, who had parlayed the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot into personal stardom beyond the tech world, had a meeting lined up that day with Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of the artificial intelligence start-up. But when the call started, Mr. Altman saw that Dr. Sutskever was not alone — he was virtually flanked by OpenAI’s three independent board members.

Instantly, Mr. Altman knew something was wrong.

Unbeknownst to Mr. Altman, Dr. Sutskever and the three board members had been whispering behind his back for months. They believed Mr. Altman had been dishonest and should no longer lead a company that was driving the A.I. race. On a hush-hush 15-minute video call the previous afternoon, the board members had voted one by one to push Mr. Altman out of OpenAI.

Now they were delivering the news. Shocked that he was being fired from a start-up he had helped found, Mr. Altman widened his eyes and then asked, “How can I help?” The board members urged him to support an interim chief executive. He assured them that he would.

Within hours, Mr. Altman changed his mind and declared war on OpenAI’s board.

His ouster was the culmination of years of simmering tensions at OpenAI that pit those alarmed by A.I.’s power against others who saw the technology as a once-in-a-lifetime profit and prestige bonanza. As divisions deepened, the organization’s leaders sniped and turned on one another. That led to a boardroom brawl that ultimately showed who has the upper hand in A.I.’s future development: Silicon Valley’s tech elite and deep-pocketed corporate interests.

The drama embroiled Microsoft, which had committed $13 billion to OpenAI and weighed in to protect its investment. Many top Silicon Valley executives and investors, including the chief executive of Airbnb, also mobilized to support Mr. Altman.

Some fought back from Mr. Altman’s $27 million mansion in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, lobbying through social media and voicing their displeasure in private text threads, according to interviews with more than 25 people with knowledge of the events. Many of their conversations and the details of their confrontations have not been previously reported.

At the center of the storm was Mr. Altman, a 38-year-old multimillionaire. A vegetarian who raises cattle and a tech leader with little engineering training, he is driven by a hunger for power more than by money, a longtime mentor said. And even as Mr. Altman became A.I.’s public face, charming heads of state with predictions of the technology’s positive effects, he privately angered those who believed he ignored its potential dangers.

OpenAI’s chaos has raised new questions about the people and companies behind the A.I. revolution. If the world’s premier A.I. start-up can so easily plunge into crisis over backbiting behavior and slippery ideas of wrongdoing, can it be trusted to advance a technology that may have untold effects on billions of people?

“OpenAI’s aura of invulnerability has been shaken,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford professor who helped found the A.I. labs at Google and the Chinese tech giant Baidu.

An Incendiary Mix

From the moment it was created in 2015, OpenAI was primed to combust.

The San Francisco lab was founded by Elon Musk, Mr. Altman, Dr. Sutskever and nine others. Its goal was to build A.I. systems to benefit all of humanity. Unlike most tech start-ups, it was established as a nonprofit with a board that was responsible for making sure it fulfilled that mission.

Hokyoung Kim

The board was stacked with people who had competing A.I. philosophies. On one side were those who worried about A.I.’s dangers, like Mr. Musk, who left OpenAI in a huff in 2018. On the other were Mr. Altman and those focused more on the technology’s potential benefits.

In 2019, Mr. Altman — who had extensive contacts in Silicon Valley as president of the start-up incubator Y Combinator — became OpenAI’s chief executive. He would own just a tiny stake in the start-up.

“Why is he working on something that won’t make him richer? One answer is that lots of people do that once they have enough money, which Sam probably does,” said Paul Graham, a founder of Y Combinator and Mr. Altman’s mentor. “The other is that he likes power.”

Mr. Altman quickly changed OpenAI’s direction by creating a for-profit subsidiary and raising $1 billion from Microsoft, spurring questions about how that would work with the board’s mission of safe A.I.

Earlier this year, departures shrank OpenAI’s board to six people from nine. Three — Mr. Altman, Dr. Sutskever and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president — were founders of the lab. The others were independent members.

Helen Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, was part of the effective altruist community that believes A.I. could one day destroy humanity. Adam D’Angelo had long worked with A.I. as the chief executive of the question-and-answer website Quora. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct scientist at the RAND Corporation, had worked on tech and A.I. policy and governance issues and taught at Singularity University, which was named for the moment when machines can no longer be controlled by their creators.

They were united by a concern that A.I. could become more intelligent than humans.

Tensions Mount

After OpenAI introduced ChatGPT last year, the board became jumpier.

As millions of people used the chatbot to write love letters and brainstorm college essays, Mr. Altman embraced the spotlight. He appeared with Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, at tech events. He met President Biden and embarked on a 21-city global tour, hobnobbing with leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

Yet as Mr. Altman raised OpenAI’s profile, some board members worried that ChatGPT’s success was antithetical to creating safe A.I., two people familiar with their thinking said.

Their concerns were compounded when they clashed with Mr. Altman in recent months over who should fill the board’s three open seats.

In September, Mr. Altman met investors in the Middle East to discuss an A.I. chip project. The board was concerned that he wasn’t sharing all his plans with it, three people familiar with the matter said.

Dr. Sutskever, 37, who helped pioneer modern A.I., was especially disgruntled. He had become fearful that the technology could wipe out humanity. He also believed that Mr. Altman was bad-mouthing the board to OpenAI executives, two people with knowledge of the situation said. Other employees have also complained to the board about Mr. Altman’s behavior.

In October, Mr. Altman promoted another OpenAI researcher to the same level as Dr. Sutskever, who saw it as a slight. Dr. Sutskever told several board members that he might quit, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The board interpreted the move as an ultimatum to choose between him and Mr. Altman, the people said.

Dr. Sutskever’s lawyer said it was “categorically false” that he had threatened to quit.

Another conflict erupted in October when Ms. Toner published a paper, “Decoding Intentions: Artificial Intelligence and Costly Signals,” at her Georgetown think tank. In it, she and her co-authors praised Anthropic, an OpenAI rival, for delaying a product release and avoiding the “frantic corner-cutting that the release of ChatGPT appeared to spur.”

Mr. Altman was displeased, especially since the Federal Trade Commission had begun investigating OpenAI’s data collection. He called Ms. Toner, saying her paper “could cause problems.”

The paper was merely academic, Ms. Toner said, offering to write an apology to OpenAI’s board. Mr. Altman accepted. He later emailed OpenAI’s executives, telling them that he had reprimanded Ms. Toner.

“I did not feel we’re on the same page on the damage of all this,” he wrote.

Mr. Altman called other board members and said Ms. McCauley wanted Ms. Toner removed from the board, people with knowledge of the conversations said. When board members later asked Ms. McCauley if that was true, she said that was “absolutely false.”

“This significantly differs from Sam’s recollection of these conversations,” an OpenAI spokeswoman said, adding that the company was looking forward to an independent review of what transpired.

Some board members believed that Mr. Altman was trying to pit them against each other. Last month, they decided to act.

Dialing in from Washington, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, they voted on Nov. 16 to dismiss Mr. Altman. OpenAI’s outside lawyer advised them to limit what they said publicly about the removal.

Fearing that if Mr. Altman got wind of their plan he would marshal his network against them, they acted quickly and secretly.

What Did Sam Do?

When news broke of Mr. Altman’s firing on Nov. 17, a text landed in a private WhatsApp group of more than 100 chief executives of Silicon Valley companies, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Dropbox’s Drew Houston.

“Sam is out,” the text said.

The thread immediately blew up with questions: What did Sam do?

That same query was being asked at Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor. As Mr. Altman was being fired, Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, got a call from Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer. She told him that in a matter of minutes, OpenAI’s board would announce that it had canned Mr. Altman and that she was the interim chief.

Mr. Scott immediately asked someone at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to get Mr. Nadella, the chief executive, out of a meeting he was having with top lieutenants. Shocked, Mr. Nadella called Ms. Murati about the OpenAI board’s reasoning, three people with knowledge of the call said. In a statement, OpenAI’s board had said only that Mr. Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications” with the board. Ms. Murati didn’t have answers.

Mr. Nadella then phoned Mr. D’Angelo, OpenAI’s lead independent director. What could Mr. Altman have done, Mr. Nadella asked, to cause the board to act so abruptly? Was there anything nefarious?

“No,” Mr. D’Angelo replied, speaking in generalities. Mr. Nadella remained confused.

Turning the Tables

Shortly after Mr. Altman’s removal from OpenAI, a friend reached out to him. It was Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive.

Mr. Chesky asked Mr. Altman what he could do to help. Mr. Altman, who was still in Las Vegas, said he wanted to talk.

The two men had met in 2009 at Y Combinator. When they spoke on Nov. 17, Mr. Chesky peppered Mr. Altman with questions about why OpenAI’s board had terminated him. Mr. Altman said he was as uncertain as everyone else.

At the same time, OpenAI’s employees were demanding details. The board dialed into a call that afternoon to talk to about 15 OpenAI executives, who crowded into a conference room at the company’s offices in a former mayonnaise factory in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood.

The board members said that Mr. Altman had lied to the board, but that they couldn’t elaborate for legal reasons.

“This is a coup,” one employee shouted.

Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, accused the board of violating its fiduciary responsibilities. “It cannot be your duty to allow the company to die,” he said, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.

Ms. Toner replied, “The destruction of the company could be consistent with the board’s mission.”

OpenAI’s executives insisted that the board resign that night or they would all leave. Mr. Brockman, 35, OpenAI’s president, had already quit.

The support gave Mr. Altman ammunition. He flirted with creating a new start-up, but Mr. Chesky and Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley investor and friend, urged Mr. Altman to reconsider.

“You should be willing to fight back at least a little more,” Mr. Chesky told him.

Mr. Altman decided to take back what he felt was his.

Pressuring the Board

After flying back from Las Vegas, Mr. Altman awoke on Nov. 18 in his San Francisco home, with sweeping views of Alcatraz Island. Just before 8 a.m., his phone rang. It was Mr. D’Angelo and Ms. McCauley.

The board members were rattled by the meeting with OpenAI executives the day before. Customers were considering shifting to rival platforms. Google was already trying to poach top talent, two people with knowledge of the efforts said.

Mr. D’Angelo and Ms. McCauley asked Mr. Altman to help stabilize the company.

That day, more than two dozen supporters showed up at Mr. Altman’s house to lobby OpenAI’s board to reinstate him. They set up laptops on his kitchen’s white marble countertops and spread out across his living room. Ms. Murati joined them and told the board that she could no longer be interim chief executive.

To capitalize on the board’s vulnerability, Mr. Altman posted on X: “i love openai employees so much.” Ms. Murati and dozens of employees replied with emojis of colored hearts.

Yet even as the board considered bringing Mr. Altman back, it wanted concessions. That included bringing on new members who could control Mr. Altman. The board encouraged the addition of Bret Taylor, Twitter’s former chairman, who quickly won everyone’s approval and agreed to help the parties negotiate. As insurance, the board also sought another interim chief executive in case talks with Mr. Altman broke down.

By then, Mr. Altman had gathered more allies. Mr. Nadella, now confident that Mr. Altman was not guilty of malfeasance, threw Microsoft’s weight behind him.

In a call with Mr. Altman that day, Mr. Nadella proposed another idea. What if Mr. Altman joined Microsoft? The $2.8 trillion company had the computing power for anything that he wanted to build.

Mr. Altman now had two options: negotiating a return to OpenAI on his terms or taking OpenAI’s talent with him to Microsoft.

The Board Stands Firm

By Nov. 19, Mr. Altman was so confident that he would be reappointed chief executive that he and his allies gave the board a deadline: Resign by 10 a.m. or everyone would leave.

Mr. Altman went to OpenAI’s office so he could be there when his return was announced. Mr. Brockman also showed up with his wife, Anna. (The couple had married at OpenAI’s office in a 2019 ceremony officiated by Dr. Sutskever. The ring bearer was a robotic hand.)

To reach a deal, Ms. Toner, Ms. McCauley and Mr. D’Angelo logged into a day of meetings from their homes. They said they were open to Mr. Altman’s return if they could agree on new board members.

Mr. Altman and his camp suggested Penny Pritzker, a secretary of commerce under President Barack Obama; Diane Greene, who founded the software company VMware; and others. But Mr. Altman and the board could not agree, and they bickered over whether he should rejoin OpenAI’s board and whether a law firm should conduct a review of his leadership.

With no compromise in sight, board members told Ms. Murati that evening that they were naming Emmett Shear, a founder of Twitch, a video-streaming service owned by Amazon, as interim chief executive. Mr. Shear was outspoken about developing A.I. slowly and safely.

Mr. Altman left OpenAI’s office in disbelief. “I’m going to Microsoft,” he told Mr. Chesky and others.

That night, Mr. Shear visited OpenAI’s offices and convened an employee meeting. The company’s Slack channel lit up with emojis of a middle finger.

Only about a dozen workers showed up, including Dr. Sutskever. In the lobby, Anna Brockman approached him in tears. She tugged his arm and urged him to reconsider Mr. Altman’s removal. He stood stone-faced.

Breaking the Logjam

At 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, Mr. D’Angelo was awakened by a phone call from a frightened OpenAI employee. If Mr. D’Angelo didn’t step down from the board in the next 30 minutes, the employee said, the company would collapse.

Mr. D’Angelo hung up. Over the past few hours, he realized, things had worsened.

Just before midnight, Mr. Nadella had posted on X that he was hiring Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman to lead a lab at Microsoft. He had invited other OpenAI employees to join.

That morning, more than 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees had also signed a letter saying they might follow Mr. Altman to Microsoft unless the board resigned.

One name on the letter stood out: Dr. Sutskever, who had changed sides. “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions,” he wrote on X that morning.

OpenAI’s viability was in question. The board members had little choice but to negotiate.

To break the impasse, Mr. D’Angelo and Mr. Altman talked the next day. Mr. D’Angelo suggested former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, a professor at Harvard, for the board. Mr. Altman liked the idea.

Mr. Summers, from his Boston-area home, spoke with Mr. D’Angelo, Mr. Altman, Mr. Nadella and others. Each probed him for his views on A.I. and management, while he asked about OpenAI’s tumult. He said he wanted to be sure that he could play the role of a broker.

Mr. Summers’s addition pushed Mr. Altman to abandon his demand for a board seat and agree to an independent investigation of his leadership and dismissal.

By late Nov. 21, they had a deal. Mr. Altman would return as chief executive, but not to the board. Mr. Summers, Mr. D’Angelo and Mr. Taylor would be board members, with Microsoft eventually joining as a nonvoting observer. Ms. Toner, Ms. McCauley and Dr. Sutskever would leave the board.

This week, Mr. Altman and some of his advisers were still fuming. They wanted his name cleared.

“Do u have a plan B to stop the postulation about u being fired its not healthy and its not true!!!” Mr. Conway texted Mr. Altman.

Mr. Altman said he was working with OpenAI’s board: “They really want silence but i think important to address soon.”

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The story does state that this examination of this relationship by the FTC is preliminary. So far, the agency has not launched a formal investigation into Microsoft and OpenAI.

This report comes just a few hours after the UK Competition and Markets Authority formally announced it was taking comments from both companies and third parties, before possibly launching its own investigation into the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.

The CMA stated it wanted to see if Microsoft's deal with OpenAI had affected competition in the AI space in the country. In response, Microsoft stated that its relationship with OpenAI had generated competition in the AI space "while preserving independence for both companies."

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI since 2019, although it is not the majority investor in the generative AI startup. After OpenAI reinstated its CEO Sam Altman a few weeks ago a few days after its old board of directors fired him, the new board brought in Microsoft as a non-voting board member.

Of course, Microsoft and the FTC are already in a long-running legal battle over another matter. The agency filed a lawsuit against Microsoft to try to stop the company from acquiring Activision Blizzard. However, the FTC failed to convince a judge to create a preliminary injunction to stop the purchase, which allowed Microsoft to close the deal to buy the game publisher in October.

Earlier this week, Microsoft and the FTC went before the three judges at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as the FTC tried again to claim Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard was a threat to competition and that the earlier judge's decision was a mistake. There's no word on when the judges will make their decision in this case.

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Its joint construction started in December 2020, by Tsinghua University and state-owned Yalong River Hydropower Development Company.
Located 2.4km underground in southwest China, this facility is expected to play a significant role in the global search for dark matter due to its unique testing conditions.

Ideal site for dark matter detection

At such depths, the laboratory is shielded from most cosmic rays.
This creates an ultra-clean environment for detecting dark matter, an invisible substance that is believed to make up at least a quarter of the universe.

According to Yue Qian, a Professor at Tsinghua University's Department of Engineering Physics, the lab experiences a tiny flux of cosmic rays, equal to one hundred-millionth of that on Earth's surface.

The extremely low environmental radiation and radon concentration improve dark matter detection capabilities.

Expansion and research capabilities

Now nearly double the size of Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the Jinping lab has a room capacity of 300,000 cubic meters, equivalent to about 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The facility will support interdisciplinary research in fields such as particle physics, cosmology, nuclear astrophysics, life sciences, and rock mechanics.

Ten research teams from various universities and institutes have already set up shop at the laboratory.

Potential medical breakthroughs

Researchers from Sichuan Medical University's West China Medical Centre have been studying deep-earth medicine at the Jinping lab.
They have identified molecular targets that are adapted to extremely low background radiation. According to state-backed China News Service, this discovery could potentially improve tumor treatment.

The lab's unique conditions are likely to open up new frontiers in deep-earth experiments and contribute significantly to scientific inquiries.

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The improved visuals are a part of the Edge 120 release, which, on the surface, looks completely uninspiring with its enterprise-related changes. For a regular Windows 11 enjoyer, the best part is not mentioned in the changelog—it hides in the edge://flags page. After installing Edge 120 on a Windows 11 PC, you can go to the Experiments page and toggle on the flag responsible for the Mica material. After that, you will get a new option in the Appearance settings section.

How to enable Mica in Microsoft Edge on Windows 11?

1. Go to edge://settings/help and install the latest updates for Microsoft Edge.
2. Restart the browser and then go to edge://flags/#edge-visual-rejuv-mica.
3. Toggle on the "Show Windows 11 visual effects in title bar and toolbar" flag.
4. Restart the browser.
5. Go to Settings > Appearance and enable the "Show Windows 11 visual effects in title bar and toolbar" option.
6. Restart the browser.

Here is what Microsoft Edge looks like with the Mica material and rounded corners:

And here is what it looks like with rounded corners turned off:

If you prefer the latter option, go to edge://flags and turn off the "Microsoft Edge rounded corners" and "Make Rounded Tabs feature available" flags.

For those unfamiliar, Mica is a new UI material introduced in 2021 as a part of Windows 11. It uses your desktop wallpaper and theme to create unique visuals, a distinct hierarchy, and overall delightful user interfaces. In addition to looking great, Mica is not straining your PC hardware since it captures the background only once to create eye candy. You can learn more about Mica in the official documentation.

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In a press release, the CMA stated it is "providing an early opportunity for the parties and interested third parties" to send comments to the regulator if the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI "has resulted in a relevant merger situation",

The CMA seems to have become interested in looking at this partnership after November's chaotic situation when OpenAI's board of directors fired its CEO Sam Altman. The rest of the company staged an open revolt against the board's decision, and after a few rough days, that board was removed and Altman returned as CEO. Microsoft is now also a non-voting member of OpenAI's new board of directors.

In today's announcement, the CMA stated:

In light of these developments, the CMA is now issuing an ITC to determine whether the Microsoft / OpenAI partnership, including recent developments, has resulted in a relevant merger situation and, if so, the potential impact on competition.

The regulator says it will investigate if it is possible Microsoft now has "material influence, de facto control or more than 50% of the voting rights" at OpenAI. If it feels that has happened, it may also see if such a move could have a competitive impact in the UK.

Microsoft President Brad Smith has commented on this move by the CMA in a post on X (formerly Twitter). He also took a bit of a shot against Microsoft's big AI rival Google:

Since 2019, we’ve forged a partnership with OpenAI that has fostered more AI innovation and competition, while preserving independence for both companies. The only thing that has changed is that Microsoft will now have a non-voting observer on OpenAI’s Board, which is very different from an acquisition such as Google’s purchase of DeepMind in the UK. We will work closely with the CMA to provide all the information it needs.

The CMA stated this is just the first phase of this look into Microsoft and OpenAI and that it "comes in advance of any launch of a formal phase 1 investigation." There's no word on when or if that might happen.

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What you need to know

• Monster Hunter Wilds, the seventh major installment of the Monster Hunter franchise, has been revealed at The Game Awards 2023.
• A reveal trailer teases that the game will have a desert/Badlands setting with environmental hazards, mounts similar to Monster Hunter Rise's Palamutes will return, alongside new and familiar monsters to hunt.
• Monster Hunter Wilds is scheduled to be released in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.

Thanks to 2023's Game Awards, tons of new announcements alongside release dates for highly anticipated upcoming Xbox games, and a massive amount of upcoming PC titles, it's been one of the most exciting years ever for gamers. The biggest highlight for me was Capcom finally revealing Monster Hunter Wilds, the next major entry in the Monster Hunter series.

This game will be the first Monster Hunter title designed for the current console generation with Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. Judging from the trailer, it looks like this entry aims to take full advantage of next-gen hardware to push the series to even greater heights of immersion and gameplay than Monster Hunter World did.

So, let's dive deep into this trailer and analyze it to see what we can expect from this long-awaited next-gen successor to Monster Hunter World.

Monster Hunter is going wild in the Badlands

The world of Monster Hunter is a wild place to live in. (Image credit: Capcom)

The first thing that strikes me about this trailer is the setting. It looks like the main area in which Monster Hunter Wilds will take place is a desert or Badlands-style environment. A vast desert, minimal vegetation, and plenty of mountains are in the distance. 

Monster Hunter has featured desert-style locales in the past but never on the colossal sense of scale and immersion that this trailer hints at. For example, the trailer shows that the player will have to contend with dangerous weather patterns, such as sandstorms and thunderstorms, while hunting monsters. 

Now granted, that isn't to say Monster Hunter Wilds will only take place in the desert. Previous Monster Hunter games had a variety of locales to hunt in to complement the main hunting grounds, like swamps, forests, ice lands, and volcanoes, but we'll wait to see more.

A land potentially bigger than all of Monster Hunter World awaits you. (Image credit: Capcom)

The end of the trailer showcases a giant view of the desert area, which stretches for miles with creatures running around. This could imply that the player can also traverse and explore this expansive land. If that's the case, Monster Hunter Wilds could be the first genuinely open-world game in the series. 

This means that Monster Hunter's small sandbox zones may be replaced by gigantic open worlds as big as those seen in iconic open-world games such as The Witcher 3 or Grand Theft Auto. 

Giddy-up as mounts are here to stay

Run for your life against the coming sandstorms. (Image credit: Capcom)

The next striking element shown is that Monster Hunter Wilds will feature the return of mounts. A playable character is seen with an Iron Greatsword riding on a velociraptor mount, trying to escape a horde of monsters and a giant sandstorm. This mount can run great distances, glide through the air, and make high jumps to cross rocky terrain. 

Mounts were a game mechanic introduced in the spin-off series Monster Hunter Stories, where the player could tame monsters like Pokémon and ride them into hunts.

Use your mount's abilities to overcome precarious terrain and avoid getting struck by lightning. (Image credit: Capcom)

The mainline series started dabbling into the idea in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne with the Raider Ride mechanic. It lets players summon small monsters and transport them to destinations selected on a map, but they have no direct control over them. 

Monster Hunter Rise expanded on this concept much further by introducing Palamutes. These were giant dog mounts that the player could directly control while riding and aided them in battle alongside the series' iconic cat helpers, the Palicos.

After seeing this new velociraptor in Monster Hunter Wilds, it's clear that mounts in the mainline Monster Hunter series are here to stay for good. Not to mention, it looks like mounts will be a necessity in this game as there will be leagues of more ground to cover than in previous games, and there will be plenty of fast-changing weather hazards to avoid. In short, trekking on foot is looking to be no longer a viable travel option.

Another thing to note about the mount is that it appears to carry bags, camping equipment, and a Bowgun of some kind. This is speculation on my part, but this could mean the mount may also provide the means to let players camp anywhere on the map now instead of resting at pre-fixed locations like in previous games. Mounts may allow players to switch weapon load-outs in the middle of combat. 

New desert-themed monsters and familiar foes

Some monsters are peaceful and will not attack the player unless provoked. (Image credit: Capcom)

The last major element revealed is, of course, the new monsters. Monster Hunter Wilds' trailer shows us some new monsters that will populate this desert-themed locale. The first new monster we see is a herd of peaceful, Amardillo-looking dinosaurs. Some of these dinosaurs have giant spikes growing out of their backs, which look like they act as lightning rods to protect their herd from being struck by lightning during thunderstorms, as seen in the trailer.

We also see some tiny creatures resembling the Compsognathus dinosaur running in front of monsters that resemble a raptor and buffalo mixture. The last new monster is a pack of vicious beasts similar to a cross between Bernese Mountain dogs and bears, chasing the player and attacking the smaller monsters.

New lands means new monsters to hunt. (Image credit: Capcom)

The trailer's final shot shows that Monster Hunter's mascot monster, Rathalos the Flying Wyvern, will also return to this game. From what we can gather, Monster Hunter Wilds' roster of new monsters will be returning to a more grounded and realistic aesthetic compared to Monster Hunter Rise's roster of mythologically inspired beasties. And these are just the small monsters, so I can't wait to see what the larger new monsters will look like.

Are you ready for the next generation of hunts?

And there you have our first glimpse into the next generation of Monster Hunter. As a diehard Monster Hunter fan, I'm thrilled to see the series moving forward to next-gen consoles. We can finally see the full power of Capcom's RE Engine breathe new life into Monster Hunter, much like it has done for Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Street Fighter.

On the downside, the wait for this title will be painful as Monster Hunter Wilds won't be coming out until 2025 for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam. I can't wait to see more of what Monster Hunter Wilds has in store and see if it has what it takes to top Monster Hunter World as one of the franchise's best Xbox games.

Have you spotted any hidden details we missed in the trailer? Let me know in the comments, and let's theorize.

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Until a couple of months ago, I hadn’t lived in a “smart home” built within the last five years. I was lured in by the availability of symmetrical 1GB fibre internet for the same $100 that got me 500Mbps of asymmetrical cable at my previous apartment. But I encountered more obstacles getting it set up than a track and field hurdler, everything from a missing fibre gateway port to my $1,000 robot vacuum losing connection every time it tried to clean too far away from the router. I was saved by the ethernet ports in every room and my off-the-shelf Asus gaming router, but I couldn’t (and still can’t) do anything about the cable Cthulhu monstrosity lurking behind a metal plate in my closet that drives most of my frustration.

 

It turns out that the “smart homes of the future” cannot run on Wi-Fi alone thanks to the materials we’ve been using to construct our homes cheaply and quickly for decades. Over the last several years, more engineering and architecture firms have started including ethernet wiring in their building plans, but that’s as far as the digital infrastructure of a home usually goes. What’s forgotten is not only where the pre-built internet hub is placed inside the building but also what materials are used for construction.

 

Clearly, the best place for a router is in the wall,

behind a metal plate, at ankle level.

Photo by Joanna Nelius / The Verge

 

I’m going to use my new home as an example. It was built with an “internet hub.” Every ethernet cable and coax cable threaded through the walls terminates inside a nook because that nook is where cable and fibre enter the house. The ISP’s provided modem / router goes inside the nook and is then covered with a wobbly metal plate that gets screwed into the wall at the corners.

 

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) noted in a recent blog postthat if the US were to focus a significant chunk of its efforts on creating a better digital infrastructure instead of “fixing” our physical infrastructure, it would result in “superior longer-term economic growth, competitiveness, national security, and environmental benefits.” This includes outfitting buildings and dwellings with wired Gigabit fibre internet and, more importantly, taking into consideration which materials would obstruct Wi-Fi signals the least.

 

A plethora of architects, civil engineers, and project managers across Orange and Los Angeles counties in California all told me the same thing: Wi-Fi-penetrating materials typically aren’t a consideration unless it’s a large structure like an office building or warehouse; telecom technicians are called in then, but mainly to help with wiring. However, those same people told me they’ve been able to reduce construction costs significantly by wiring residences for ethernet as they are building them.

 

The cost of common building materials like brick, wood, drywall, plywood, concrete, metal, and acoustic ceiling tiles is usually cheaper than Wi-Fi-penetrating materials, especially if they are sustainable — although the cost of even common materials has sharply increased by 20.4 percent year over year as of April 2022, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). With many states in the middle of a severe housing crisis driven in part by those rising material costs, it’s likely many companies will continue to build for speed. California, for example, needs 2.5 million new, affordable homes, and at least 1 million of those must be for low-income families or those experiencing houselessness.

 

As for older buildings, a recent study published by several members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, mentions that wireless signals running on mmWave (millimeter wave) or high-frequency bands like Verizon’s 5G home internet have worse “penetration loss” when the signal is being received from outside. Depending on which wave band is being used and what materials are on the outside of the building, that penetration loss can be severe to the point where the Wi-Fi signal can only penetrate a single room.

 

With cost reductions and speed currently at the forefront of many building projects, this puts the burden on the people living there to diagnose their own Wi-Fi issues and adds to the overall cost of getting internet set up in a home. And look, that’s no different than what many of us have been doing over the last couple of decades, but not everyone has the technical know-how or the extra cash to do it.

 

DIY-ing your own ethernet installation can cost several hundred dollars for the equipment alone. But even if you watch a bunch of YouTube videos and are confident you can do it yourself, and have convinced your landlord you can do it (assuming they even entertain the idea in the first place), that’s not the same as actually doing it. The other alternative is paying a professional thousands of dollars to wire your place with a few Cat 5 cables. (Preferably better than the setup built into my apartment.)

 

I have the privilege of knowing how to troubleshoot this stuff on my own largely due to my profession as a tech journalist. To others, this stuff is a foreign language. Knowing how to set up a home internet system is not a skill everyone has, and the complicated steps required to do it properly make moving to a new place more stressful, especially if you work remotely and need the internet to earn a paycheck.

 

If we don’t want our homes to eat Wi-Fi signals, companies will need to start eating the cost of choosing better Wi-Fi-penetrating materials — or, at the very least, they will need to stop putting fibre connection points literally inside walls.

 

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The reveal of Exodus was done on stage by actor and Austin resident Matthew McConaughey, who will voice one of the game's characters.

The game's official website has also gone live with some more info on Exodus:

We have only one chance to prevent extinction… the Travelers. Your destiny is to lead the Travelers to the stars in the hunt to steal alien weapons and technology from the most powerful enemy in this universe – the Celestials. Leading the fight for salvation, you will be forced to make sacrifices putting everyone you love at risk. How much are you willing to sacrifice?

 

No other game puts the immense storytelling impact of Time Dilation in the player’s hands. Traveling on interstellar missions at the edge of lightspeed, days for you are decades for friends and loved ones back home. Entire lifetimes may pass in your absence. Choices you make create consequences changing the fate of those you love most — reshaping your world, and changing the future of your entire civilization for generations. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

 

As the visionary leader of your people, you will face impossible choices. Sacrificing everything, you fight to protect your world from ancient aliens armed with technology that far exceeds our own. Existing outside of time, your choices change the very nature of your world, but one thing remains the same - your destiny is tied to the fate of humanity.

There's no release date for Exodus but it's coming for the PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

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Of all the layoffs happening at Spotify this week, this has to be the biggest. Chief financial officer Paul Vogel, who since 2020 has managed the company’s balance sheet as it expanded into podcasting and audiobooks, is leaving the company at the end of March 2024.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the decision was made because Vogel didn’t have the experience needed to help the company both expand and meet market expectations. The company is starting the search for a successor.

“Spotify has embarked on an evolution over the last two years to bring our spending more in line with market expectations while also funding the significant growth opportunities we continue to identify. I’ve talked a lot with Paul about the need to balance these two objectives carefully. Over time, we’ve come to the conclusion that Spotify is entering a new phase and needs a CFO with a different mix of experiences. As a result, we’ve decided to part ways, but I am very appreciative of the steady hand Paul has provided in supporting the expansion of our business through a global pandemic and unprecedented economic uncertainty,” Ek said in a statement published Thursday evening. Vogel did not issue a statement.

After testing investors’ patience with acquisitions and investments, Spotify is focusing on producing a profit, for better or worse. Much of its original podcasting operation has shuttered, including the cancellation this week of its two most prestigious shows, Heavyweight and Stolen. Approximately 1,500 people this week were laid off from product, advertising, marketing, and content, amounting to 17 percent of its staff.

Vogel is a longtime Spotify employee, joining the company in 2016 as the head of FP&A, treasury, and investor relations before being promoted to CFO in 2020. Prior to that, he had been a managing director at Barclay’s and an SVP at AllianceBernstein.

Before the news broke on Thursday, an SEC filing was posted that showed Vogel exercised 47,859 stock options on Tuesday and sold those shares at one of the highest prices Spotify has seen in two years. The sale was worth $9.38 million. Vogel had exercised options and sold stock in March and September, but this sale was significantly larger than the other two. It is possible the stock sale was previously scheduled or triggered by a stock price. Spotify did not return request for clarification on the stock sales.

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Oh, and there are actual awards that will be given out during the show. Sometimes it does feel that the awards themselves are a little bit of an afterthought compared to the game announcements, but make no mistake; they have also turned into the most notable awards game developers, publishers and others can win in the game industry.

Here's when and how you can watch the 2023 Game Awards live, info on the nominees for the actual awards, and some hints as to what game reveals and surprises might be in store.

What is the 2023 Game Awards?

The Game Awards is a streaming exclusive awards ceremony that is now in its 10th year. Organized by noted game journalist and host Geoff Keighley, it not only gives out awards for the past year in the games industry, it also doubles as a way for game publishers to make some major reveals and surprises.

When can I watch the 2023 Game Awards?

The streaming event begins with a 30-minute pre-show, hosted by Sydnee Goodman, beginning at 7:30 pm Eastern time (4:30 pm Pacific) where some of the smaller award categories, and some game reveals, will be shown. The main event, hosted by Keighley, begins at 8 pm Eastern time (5 pm Pacific). That part of the show should last between 2 to 2 1/2 hours so bring snacks if you are live streaming from home.

How can I watch the 2023 Game Awards?

The event is being held at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles to a live audience. Sorry; tickets for the event sold out weeks ago. However, the show will be available for streaming from a number of different outlets. They include the official Game Awards YouTube Channel. the Game Awards Twitch channel, and the show's many social media accounts like X, TikTok, Facebook and others. The show will also be co-streamed by several major gaming and media outlets, along with popular gaming influencers.

What games have been nominated for the 2023 Game Awards?

The award nominees themselves, which were picked by over 100 gaming media outlets, were announced a few weeks ago. Remedy's Alan Wake 2 and Larian's Baldur's Gate 3, got the most nominations with eight each. You can check out the full list of nominees here, but the games picked for Game of the Year consideration are:

• Alan Wake 2 (Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing)
• Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (Insomniac Games/SIE)
• Resident Evil 4 (Capcom)
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

What can we expect in terms of game reveals at the 2023 Game Awards?

The truth is that Keighley and the other organizers of the Game Awards usually do a pretty good job at keeping the big secrets until they are revealed during the event. That being said; here are some of the hints and reveals we do have a little concrete info about:

• Microsoft, which mostly didn't participate in the 2022 Game Awards, has confirmed it will make some "Xbox announcements" today during the awards.
• The launch date for the Xbox Series X|S version of Baldur's Gate 3 will be revealed during the awards.
• The first gameplay trailer for the Rocket Racing in-game experience in Fortnite will be shown during the event.
• Sega has . . . something to reveal at the show, with the teaser message "New Era, New Energy".
• There will be something shown about the upcoming Dead by Daylight spinoff game from Supermassive Games at the event.
• Game developer Sharkmod will show off a trailer for an all new game during the awards.
• The gameplay launch trailer for the Meta Quest VR game Asgard’s Wrath 2, will debut during the event.
• There will be news about Metaphor: ReFantazio, the upcoming fantasy RPG from Atlus at the show.
• Red Barrels, the developer of The Outlast Trials, will make some kind of reveal at the awards.
• Digital Extremes will have a reveal about the new Warfare update Whisper in the Woods, at the event.

There are also a number of unconfirmed rumors about what might be revealed at the 2023 Game Awards, but since many of them usually turn out to be false we won't be commenting on them.

What else happens during the 2023 Game Awards?

Lots, actually. You can expect celebrity presenters for the various awards, special musical performances, and giveaways for Steam Deck OLED PCs, the Lenovo Legion Go, and a high end AMD gaming PC from Maingear. You can also expect special sales events on Steam and other digital game stores during the Game Awards.

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Google has now identified the underlying issue that caused the loss of files for users. The culprit, according to Google, is Drive for Desktop. Google Drive for desktop version 84.0.0.0 to 84.0.4.0 may cause the issue for devices running Microsoft Windows or macOS.

Google posted instructions to restore lost files that affected Drive users may follow. A new support page lists three options that users have at their disposal to deal with the issue and recover their files.

• Recover files from backup from the Drive for desktop app
• Advanced: Recover files from backup using the command line interface
• Additional troubleshooting options for data recovery

Recover files from backup from the Drive for desktop app

This is probably the easiest option for most users. Here are the required steps:

1. Download and install the latest version of Drive for desktop for Windows or macOS.
2. Run Drive for the desktop.
3. Open the Drive interface with a click on the icon.
4. Hold down the Shift-key and left-click on the Settings icon in the Drive interface.
5. Select "Recover from backups". One of two things happens next:
   1. Recovery has started. This starts the restoration process of the files, which is good. There may still be issues related to disk space, but if you have enough free storage, the files should be restored.
   2. No backups found. The files can't be restored using this way.

The other options

Instead of trying to restore Google Drive files using the method described above, you may also try to restore backups from the command line.

Google suggests to run the following command on Windows after making sure that the Drive for desktop software is not running anymore: "C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\launch.bat"--recover_from_account_backups

Users on macOS need to run the following command in Terminal instead after closing Google Drive: "/Applications/Google Drive.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Drive"
--recover_from_account_backups

If this method fails as well, you may still be able to restore data from an operating system backup.

Here is how that is done on Windows:

1. Open the following directory in Explorer: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google
2. Right click on DriveFS -> Properties -> Previous Versions tab.
3. If a previous version is available, select the latest version before the Drive for desktop account was disconnected. Then click the dropdown next to the [Restore] button and select [Restore to ...]
4. Select a destination folder and save the DriveFS directory there.
5. The restored DriveFS folder can now be used to recover Drive files using the command line interface.

And this is the macOS step-by-step guide:

1. Open a new Finder window.
2. In the menu bar at the top of the screen open the “Go” menu and click “Go to Folder”.
3. Copy and paste the following into the box ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS
4. Follow the steps at Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support to restore any folders with 21-digit names that have been deleted.
5. Proceed with the steps to use the Drive recovery tool to recover your files.

Closing Words

Affected Google Drive users may be able to restore their files from a backup. Users who tried to fix the issue by disconnecting their accounts or deleting caches may not be able to restore their files.

Now You: were you affected by the Drive issue? Did one of the methods restore your files? (via Deskmodder)

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Almost two years ago, Nvidia released a budget graphics card in the RTX 3000 series – the RTX 3050. The RTX 3050 was never really the talk of the town. The reason was simple, it came with rather mediocre specs and performance.

The RTX 3050 is based on a massively cut-down GA106 GPU. It comes with just 2560 CUDA Cores and a 128-bit memory bus. If that was not enough, Nvidia released another version of the RTX 3050 for OEMs. It came with further cut-down specs with 2304 CUDA Cores and lower clock rates.

But despite all this, RTX 3050 enjoys a good market share. Take Steam Hardware Survey, for example, where it is 9th on the list of most used graphics card. The reason is simple, it comes with 8GB VRAM and is affordable. It released with an MSRP of $249 and now costs around $220. Which makes budget gamers attracted towards it.

Looks like Nvidia is not liking that people are still buying RTX 3050 with 8GB VRAM and wants that to change.

Nvidia To Discontinue RTX 3050 8GB

VideoCardz reports that Nvidia is not only phasing out the production of the RTX 3050 8GB GPU, but is going to release a 6GB version instead. The reason given is to meet the market demand. The new 6GB model is all set to release in January next year.

Why? VideoCardz says that a possible reason could be that the RTX 3050 comes with similar specs (only specs, not performance) of the RTX 4060 and hence could be impacting the sales of it. It must be mentioned that Nvidia hasn’t released RTX 4050 yet, which was earlier rumored to come with just 6GB VRAM but was never released.

Additionally, IT-Home reports (via @harukaze5719) that the RTX 3050 6GB version is expected to use the mobile version of the RTX 3050 graphics card, which is based on GA107. Not only that, the 6GB version could further cut-down the memory bus to 96-bit. They could also use 192-bit, but Nvidia is not going to do that. The power consumption could see a reduction too, which means no need for any external power plug.

Possible Specs

If Nvidia is going to base the RTX 3050 6GB VRAM graphics card on the mobile version, then expect the specs to be like this.

Conclusion

As one can see. The RTX 3050 could see a significant downgrade in specs and performance. Which is very concerning as budget buyers are the ones which form a big chunk of gamers. By doing this, Nvidia is disappointing them further.

It doesn’t help that both Nvidia and AMD haven’t released xx50 and x500 version of the budget graphics cards in the RTX 4000 and RX 7000 series, respectively. So rather than doing all this. We would suggest Nvidia to release RTX 4050 8GB instead at an acceptable price for everyone.

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