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Nvidia’s HGX H200.

Image: Nvidia

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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 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.

Although Windows 11 continues gaining more customers, it is still far behind Windows 10, the dominant PC operating system. Microsoft understands that Windows 10's 1 billion+ device base is nothing to scoff at, so the company plans to backport Copilot to Windows 10. Having Copilot on more than 1.4 billion devices will make it easier for Microsoft to convince third-party developers to create plugins for it.

Speaking of Copilot, Windows 11 users with two or more monitors should beware of Microsoft's newest AI assistant messing with desktop icons. The company has confirmed that the recently released Windows 11 version 23H2 contains a bug causing Copilot to shift desktop icons on multi-monitor systems. A fix should arrive in a later update.

Last week, we noticed that Microsoft deprecated three services in Windows 10 and 11, one of which dates back to the MS-DOS era. It appeared that the company is not over with deprecating features—the Microsoft Tips joined the list of features that are no longer in active development. Although the app is still available in Windows 11, including the latest 23H2 version, Microsoft will remove it from the operating system at some point in the near future.

Windows Insider Program

This week, Microsoft released the following preview builds:

• Canary Channel: 25922 with SMB changes and Snipping Tool improvements. The latter now works better on systems with HDR monitors.
• Dev Channel: 23585 with minor changes and the ability to uninstall more inbox applications, such as the Camera app, Cortana, Photos, People, and Remote Desktop (MSTCS).

Shortly after pushing out the latest Dev and Canary builds, Microsoft updated their changelogs to include info about archive-related improvements. The latest Windows 11 preview builds let you compress files and folders into 7Z and TAR archives. The stable Windows 11 version only supports ZIP.

Another interesting change, albeit hidden, lets you reposition the Copilot icon. You can use a feature ID to put Copilot in the notification area next to the tray clock.

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.

OneDrive is a great cloud storage solution, especially for Microsoft 365 subscribers. However, its Windows client's latest update contains a rather mind-boggling change: the app now asks you to explain why you are trying to close it. And the worst part is that you cannot proceed without answering. It is similar to the recently spotted poll targeting Edge users trying to download Chrome. However, the latter can be easily ignored, while this one is mandatory.

Luckily, the controversy forced Microsoft to backtrack and undo the questionable change. The company said the new "Quit OneDrive" UI was only available to "a subset of OneDrive customers." The prompt is no longer there, and you can close the app without being forced into giving Microsoft feedback.

If you have upgraded your computer to the recently launched Windows 11 version 23H2, you already know how slow and buggy File Explorer is. You can mitigate that using the Files app, a popular third-party file manager. This week, the program received a big update to version 3.0 with a redesigned UI, modern copy-paste dialogs, Office documents preview, and more.

If you are not shy of deeper Windows customizations, check out the Windhawk app and its latest update. It is a repository of useful and convenient Windows mods for improving your Windows 11 experience. StartAllBack is another app for "fixing" Windows 11, and it also received an update with version 23H2 support. Finally, Stardock's Start11 v2 is out of beta with a rounded taskbar and other great features replacing the stock and underwhelming Start menu.

Other notable app updates released this week include the following:

• Microsoft Office 2024 images leaked. Although those screenshots do not contain much, they confirm that Microsoft is working on another single-purchase Office release (perpetual). Following the leak, Microsoft's official Windows Insider X account confirmed that "the future is bright," assuming great things are coming to customers in 2024.
• A picture preview feature for Microsoft Edge Canary called "Magnify image." It lets you enlarge an image on a webpage without leaving your current tab or opening a new browser window.
• Excel integration in Bing Chat. You can now ask Microsoft's AI assistant to generate spreadsheets and then edit those spreadsheets in Excel or Excel for the Web.
• Meeting Details improvements in OneNote with a dedicated panel containing additional meeting info.
• Extended security protections in Microsoft Authenticator to ensure users do not receive authentication notifications from suspicious locations or containing another anomaly. Microsoft says this approach "significantly reduces user inconvenience by eliminating irrelevant authentication promts."
• Surface Pro 9 with Intel processors received the November 2023 firmware update. It fixes the "battery not genuine" error, resolves bugs with screen rotation, improves external monitor support, and more.
• Finally, we have updated our guide detailing how to create a Windows 11 install USB using Rufus. Check it out if you plan to clean-install Windows 11 version 23H2 or another version.

Microsoft also published a word about the new Outlook app, namely about its lackluster feature set. The company provided a list of capabilities it is working on, promising customers to resolve missing features, such as auto-capitalization, conditional formatting, EML support, Offline support, Outbox, local file sharing, folder reordering, inking, drag and drop, etc.

Now let us move from app updates to drivers. Although we did not get new drivers this week, AMD confirmed that GCN-based graphics cards (Polaris and Vega) are now getting reduced driver support. Those GPUs have yet to move to the list of legacy products, but customers should no longer expect feature parity with newer products. According to AMD, Polaris and Vega are "mature" products that no longer benefit from regular software tuning.

As usual, we finish the update section with the latest addition to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. They include a new feature to explore your organization using Outlook and a walkie-talkie feature for Microsoft Teams on iOS and Android.

On the gaming side

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

The biggest gaming news of this week comes from Rockstar Games. The studio confirmed it would reveal the first Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer in December 2023. With GTA V recently turning ten, it is time for Rockstar Games to show the much-anticipated sequel to one of the most popular open-world games spanning three generations of consoles and multiple generations of PC hardware.

Playground Games announced the next series of updates for its racing franchise. Forza Horizon 5's next update will focus on American car manufacturers and bring several new vehicles, such as the 2024 Lucid Air Sapphire, the 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, and more. Besides, gamers can spend $4.99 on the new four-car DLC pack.

As for the recently launched Forza Motorsport, its second update will bring stability fixes, multiplayer improvements, car patches, and more. Content-wise, look for four new cars and the Yas Marina Circuit.

Cities Skylines II is another game that desperately needs some fixes and patches. The situation is so bad it forced developers to put all DLCs on hold and focus solely on fixing performance issues. Mariina Hallikainen, Colossal Order CEO, announced that "no new paid content is planned" until the studio gets Cities Skylines II to the proper performance level.

Microsoft Flight Simulator moves us from new and unpolished titles to more mature releases. The game's latest update focuses on Nordic countries and Greenland, offering pilots 90 hand-made points of interest, 10 highly detailed cities, 5 hand-crafted airports, high-resolution geographic updates, and fresh aerial imagery. Update XV is now available for free on Xbox consoles and PCs.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a demanding game, but you do not need an overpowered computer to play the latest releases. NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud streaming service is a solid and affordable option, assuming you are okay with the downsides of cloud gaming. This week, the service received 16 new titles: The Invincible, Roboquest, Airport CEO, Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, and more. Just remember that GeForce NOW is a "bring your own games" kind of service—it only provides you with hardware to run the titles you own.

Deals and Freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away an indie horror game called Golden Light. It is a mix of first-person shooters, survival horrors, and roguelike elements.

In addition, our Weekend PC Deals series brings you a plethora of discounted games of different scales. Humble Bundle is offering an eight-game collection for one fixed price. In addition, you can build your own Bethesda bundle at Fanatical and get three games for $5.99, five for $8.99, or seven for $11.99. Other deals include discounts on Mafia II: Definitive Edition, Pillars of Eternity, Nioh: Complete Edition, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and more.

Let us finish the gaming section with the news about a new head of Xbox Game Studios. This part of Microsoft is now run by Alan Hartman, who replaced Matt Booty (now President of Game Content and Studios at Microsoft). Alan Hartman has been working for Microsoft since 2001 and has extensive experience in the gaming industry.

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.

Last week, we remembered a quirky gamepad duo Microsoft released in the late nineties, a few years before the release of the original Xbox. This week's look-back article is also about a gamepad, albeit not from Microsoft. Meet The Frag Master from Thrustmaster, released in 1998. This odd-looking contraption was aimed at first-person shooters, promising gamers "more frags in your next deathmatch." You were supposed to place the controller on your desk, hold it with two hands, and move it in four axes. The idea was to give PC gamers a controller easier to use than a conventional keyboard and mouse combo, but it failed miserably.

On November 10, 2023, Windows marked its 40th anniversary. To celebrate the original Windows 1.0 release, we published a look-back story detailing how Microsoft wanted to create a more affordable operating system with lower hardware requirements than its competitors (Apple Lisa with its whopping $10,000 price tag).

Finally, we have another look-back article from Microsoft itself. The company published a blog post detailing the history of Patch Tuesday. Microsoft launched the first Windows cumulative update 20 years ago, in October 2003. Check out this article to learn more about what inspired Microsoft to create its iconic update program.

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 once launched a service later classified as a military weapon? In 1996, the software giant launched WebTV, an affordable alternative to a standard PC capable of checking emails, browsing the internet, reading news, chatrooms, weather reports, and more.

Although nothing of that sounds like weapon-related stuff, the United States government flagged WebTV as "munitions" due to the 128-bit encryption used by the service. As a result, it was banned from export from the United States. It took Microsoft two years to receive a special permit to export WebTV to other countries.

Microsoft closed WebTV (MSN TV) in 2013.

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This was the 41st edition of the Golden Joystick Awards, which is the longest-running gaming awards event in the world. Millions of people around the world voted for their picks in over 20 categories.

In addition to Ultimate Game of the Year, Baldur's Gate 3 won for PC Game of the Year, Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, and Best Game Community, while its developer Larian won the Studio of the Year award.

Bethesda Game Studios' sci-fi RPG Starfield won for Xbox Game of the Year, while the Resident Evil 4 remake won for PlayStation Game of the Year. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won for Nintendo Game of the Year.

Here's the full list of the 2023 Golden Joystick Awards winners:

• Best Storytelling - Baldur's Gate 3
• Still Playing Award - No Man's Sky
• Best Visual Design - Baldur's Gate 3
• Studio of the Year - Larian Studios
• Best Game Expansion - Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
• Best Indie Game - Sea of Stars
• Best VR Game - Horizon Call of the Mountain
• Best Multiplayer Game - Mortal Kombat 1
• Best Audio - Final Fantasy XVI
• Best Game Trailer - Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
• Best Streaming Game - Valorant
• Best Game Community - Baldur's Gate 3
• Best Gaming Hardware - PSVR 2
• Breakthrough Award - Coccoon / Geometric Interactive
• Critics' Choice Award - Alan Wake II
• Best Lead Performer - Ben Starr, Final Fantasy XVI
• Best Supporting Performer - Neil Newborn, Astarion, Baldur's Gate 3
• Nintendo Game of the Year - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• PC Game of the Year - Baldur's Gate 3
• Xbox Game of the Year - Starfield
• PlayStation Game of the Year - Resident Evil 4
• Most Wanted Game - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• UGOTY - Baldur's Gate 3

On Monday, The Game Awards, which are voted on by a select group of game reviewers and critics, will reveal its nominees. The award ceremony, which will also feature a ton of upcoming game trailers and major reveals, will be held on December 7 in Los Angeles.

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When Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, suffered a dizzy spell on Wednesday, he took a precautionary trip to the hospital and learned that he had suffered a minor stroke. A day later, he said in an interview, the hospital released him and he was “doing good.”

The health scare came during a trip to Mexico City, where Mr. Wozniak, 73, was slated to speak at a conference called the World Business Forum.

He said the dizzy spell hit him as he was typing at his computer. The hospital did an M.R.I., he added, and determined that he had a small capillary leak as well as symptoms of vertigo.

Mr. Wozniak flew home to Los Gatos, Calif., on Thursday and was waiting for dinner to be served when he talked with The New York Times. “I’m back home and feeling good,” he said.

The worst part of the experience, he said, was that the hospital required him to stay on a gurney for 24 hours and wouldn’t let him roll onto his side.

The health scare, he added, means that he will have to cancel a number of upcoming trips for speaking engagements in Dubai; Medellín, Colombia; and Baku, Azerbaijan.

“That’s life for me in the busy times,” Mr. Wozniak said of the travel.

Known as “Woz,” Mr. Wozniak teamed with Steve Jobs to build the first Apple computer in 1976. The business they built helped popularize the personal computer and became one of the world’s most influential technology companies.

Mr. Wozniak left Apple in the 1980s but has remained close to the company and regularly attends its high-profile events. His legend at Apple helped him build a huge fan base among tech enthusiasts, and his celebrity broadened beyond tech in 2009 after he became a contestant on the popular show “Dancing With the Stars.”

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The invite made no mention of what NVIDIA might reveal at the CES press event. However recent rumors claim that the company could officially announce "Super" versions of some of its GeForce RTX Series 40 GPUs at the press conference.

Unconfirmed reports claim that NVIDIA is working on as many as three "Super" versions of its Series 40 GPUs. Those rumors claim that one of them will be the GeForce RTX 4080 Super, which could have a AD102 GPU core, 10,240 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6X memory.

The other two upgraded GPUs that have been rumored are the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super chip with 8,448 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6X memory and the GeForce RTX 4070 Super with 7,168 CUDA cords and 12GB of GDDR6X memory.

Right now, there's no word on when these new "Super" GeForce Series 40 GPUs might launch, nor what their price points could be like. We would expect they will be on the higher side of graphics card prices.

NVIDIA could also use the CES 2024 press conference to talk about some other consumer-related products. We would get some updates on its GeForce Now game streaming service, possibly with some new tiers that would add support for accessing the "Super" Series 40 GPUs in the cloud for playing games.

Recent rumors also claim that NVIDIA is working on Arm-based CPUs for use inside Windows-based PCs. Those unconfirmed reports claim the company could launch those ARM-based CPUs sometime in 2024.

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YouTube also went on to say that creators need to review their channel settings and select formats that will be displayed in the new section prior to the rollout date. Viewers will begin seeing this new section on channel pages starting from 20th November.

In a response to the original post on X, YouTube went on to demonstrate what this will look like to viewers, which will be a carousel style view on mobile combining videos, shorts, and livestreams that have been posted to a channel.

This change will also bring older content on channels back to the forefront, potentially increasing exposure to videos and shorts that have been buried for some time now. However, it will also push down the content lists that have been curated by channels to a lower view, almost off the screen in this example.

These settings can be found on the web as well as in the YouTube Studio app, by navigating to channel settings. Displaying this panel does appear to be optional, with YouTube stating that the section can be toggled on/off in these settings as well, so it will be interesting to see how widespread the adoption of this is, and how beneficial it is to channels.

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In a post, founder Leif K-Brooks shared his sentiments about the decision. He mentioned how the internet developed his personality, exposed him to new people and ideas, and made him develop new connections by just being online.

Brooks mentioned that Omegle kept users anonymous and let them talk to strangers online for as long or as short as they wanted to. He shared that virtually every tool can be used for good or evil and acknowledged that some users misused the platform.

He pointed out the recent criticism the platform was getting and suggested that the “only way to please these people is to stop offering the service.” He added:

“Omegle is the direct target of these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you: all of you out there who have used, or would have used, Omegle to improve your lives, and the lives of others. When they say Omegle shouldn’t exist, they are really saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it; that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet random new people online.”

According to BBC News, Omegle was under fire for many alleged cases of fostering pedophiles. Since the platform paired users with strangers randomly, there appeared a landmark case where an American girl named Alice (not her real name) was paired with a pedophile who abused her for three years.

The girl was a minor when the incident occurred, but the case was filed 10 years later in November 2021. Alice proceeded to sue Omegle in February 2023, but the company argued that the actions of the criminal had nothing to do with the website and rejected the idea of it being a haven for pedophiles.

Apart from this, in the last two years, there have been over 50 cases against pedophilia that mention Omegle from countries like the U.S., U.K., and Australia. Additionally, with the U.K. Online Safety Bill Act in place, Omegle found itself in an even more difficult position than before.

While Brooks argued that such acts were not under the control of Omegle and that the platform had helped catch criminals, nevertheless, the uneasiness pursued among the public.

In his post on Thursday, he wrote:

“I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?”

Brooks ended his note by thanking users who enjoyed Omegle and used it positively and apologized that the platform had to be discontinued.

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More than 6 years ago, Sony released Horizon Zero Dawn for PlayStation 4. The game was made by a well known Dutch studio Guerrilla Games. The reviews for the game were very good. So good that Sony decided to release the game on PC three years ago.

Sony named it Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition. This is because it not only came with the base game but also came with the DLC and other additional things.

Recently, Sony announced that the sequel of Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West, is coming to PC. We thought it’s the best time to try and review the first game. To understand the world and story behind it.

Before we start on the review, we would like everyone to read the official description of the game to get a better understanding of it:

In an era where Machines roam the land and mankind is no longer the dominant species, a young hunter named Aloy embarks on a journey to discover her destiny.

 

In a lush, post-apocalyptic world where nature has reclaimed the ruins of a forgotten civilization, pockets of humanity live on in primitive hunter-gatherer tribes. Their dominion over the new wilderness has been usurped by the Machines – fearsome mechanical creatures of unknown origin.

Simply put, Horizon Zero Dawn is an open world action RPG where the players have to battle against machines. But the question is, is it worth it. Let’s find out.

We have to warn, though. While we are trying our best to make sure the reviews don’t contain any spoilers. But some spoilers are expected.

Story

The story of the Horizon Zero Dawn takes place a long time ahead in the future. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the world is filled with aggressive machines which look similar to wild animals we find in forests.

In that world, a new girl is born. She’s of unknown origins and immediately gets outcasted by her tribe – named Nora. The Noras think that the girl is a curse to the world. That girl is given to another outcast man named Rost, who becomes her caretaker and an important figure in the game.

Rost names that girl as Aloy. Aloy is the protagonist of the game and the central figure of it. As per Guerrilla Games, Aloy is one of the three main pillars of Horizon Zero Dawn and rightfully so.

By the age of 6 years, she stumbles upon a new AR device, which is called the Focus. A technology known only the humans of the 21st century, whom the tribes all over the world refer to as the Old Ones. Through this Focus device, she’s able to see what others cannot. A tech unknown to most people in various tribes.

The Focus device allows Aloy to see movement of machines, understand their strength and weaknesses. Not only that, it also allows her to unlock areas which are inaccessible to most others.

However, Aloy wants to know two things. What are the origins of her and what are the origins of the machines – why they have taken over the world and why they are hunting humans. For this, Rost trains Aloy to become a fighter. Aloy trains under him for years and years, into her adulthood, this is where the game completely starts.

Story Ahead

Aloy in her adulthood travels in the world outside her Nora tribe. To find answers. To find reasons. Also, to understand the world around her. Why did the Old Ones and their tech disappear? What happened to them? What’s her origins? Why was she outcasted at birth? All her question is answered in the game.

The story of the base game has 22 main quests, 22 side quests and 14 additional errands. With additional side quests and errands in the DLC The Frozen Wilds.

Each main quest reveals new information in the story in a way that is nothing less than extraordinary. Completing every new quest slowly reveals answers to many questions of the game. One after another, it reveals Aloy’s origins, information about why she and before that even Rost were outcasted, why are machines hunting humans and what happened to the humans of the 21st century.

A lot of the story in the game is heard through by scanning voice recordings, holograms and documents with your Focus device inside many of the ruins.

Character Development

Another thing special about the story is the character development. Aloy’s development too is excellent. She’s slightly rebellious, but also curious, determined, likes technology and makes a good use of her environment.

Honestly speaking, for us, Aloy has turned out to be one of the greatest female video game characters of all time. She’s up there, right near the top, if not at the top. Her strength, her emotions, her humane approach. She’s designed in a simply outstanding way.

The other characters in the game are great too. Especially main characters. Each main character plays an important role in the game. Even some side characters which are found in side quests join Aloy in the climax of the game.

Outstanding Story

If one reads the above and thinks that we are revealing too much, let us tell you that what we have revealed is just the base and premise of the game, the actual story is way deeper and complex and turns out very nicely.

Simply put, the story of Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the best we have played. Revelations after revelations, twists after twists. It’s incredible what Guerrilla Games has been able to make.

If Horizon Zero Dawn was a film, it could have been nominated for the Academy Awards. Not won it, but good enough to be nominated for one.

Sure, the game does drag a bit in the middle – a complaint of many. But the massive improvement it makes in later parts of the story and missions of the game is incredible. It’s amazing and it’s written very well.

Overall, both the story and the climax of Horizon Zero Dawn is very emotional, wonderful and striking. We would give it top marks.

Gameplay

Weapons And Hunting

The gameplay of Horizon Zero Dawn consists mainly of Aloy hunting machines with bow and arrows and then looting the metal shards and other parts out of those machines. The metal shards are found when looting all the machines and form the main form of currency and ammo crafting in the game.

There are many weapons in the game, but most come in the form of bows mostly and slings. There’s also melee combat with the spear when machines come too close, but there’s hardly any different options in it.

The weapons come in different tiers and different specialities. All weapons, despite their similarities, offer a lot of variety. Some weapons can shoot fire based bows, some can shoot arrows which freeze machines temporarily, some shock the machines and some offer hunting from far (an enjoyable experience), some offer setting of traps and a lot more. Overall, it craters to many play styles.

Interestingly, the weapons in the game aren’t found laying anywhere. They are to be bought from the merchants found everywhere in the game where humans exist. These weapons are bought by paying various amounts of metal shards and other machine parts, depending on the weapon specialty.

The ammo in the game is primarily made from sticks of ridge-wood (found laying in every nook and corner of the game) and metal shards and other machine parts. The more powerful the ammo, the more amount of ridge-wood, metal and parts are required to make them. Making new ammo is very quick and easy and can be done during the gameplay.

The game also has different outfits which one can by from merchants. Like weapons, all outfits have different specialities and can be changed on the go through the inventory screen. For example, some outfits have better stats for stealth – an important part of the gameplay, some have better stats against freeze, some have better stats against close combat and some better in long range and so on.

Crafting

The weapons in the game can also be modified by adding modifications to them in the crafting screen. The higher tier the weapon, the more modification slots it has.

Modifications too come in a lot of varieties and found randomly by hunting and looting machines. The stronger the machines, the more powerful the modifications you can find on them.

Crafting in the game might look slightly complex, but that isn’t the case, it’s easy but requires resources.

The ammo carrying capacity too can be increased via crafting, but that usually requires the players to hunt some small sized real farm animals and use the resources found through them.

Machines

Machines in the game are among the top 3 main pillars of the game. They come in all shapes and sizes and are designed after the animals we find in the wild in the real world. Though there are some which are also designed after dinosaurs. Why are they designed such is answered very nicely in the latter part of the game.

All machines have their own strength and weaknesses and they need to be combated and defeated depending on them. Some are weak on their head, some on their back, some on their below parts. Some have armor protecting their weak parts, while some have it in the open.

How to know about strength and weaknesses of machines? Simple, your Focus device. Whenever your Focus device finds a new machine, all its details are shown in the special machine screen, which describes everything about them. Think of it like a Pokedex. Except, rather than Pokemon, you are hunting metal machines. The Focus device can be used on all machines also to tag them during the combat and to also highlight their weaknesses.

There are more than two dozen of machines in Horizon Zero Dawn. Some are heavy and powerful. Some are agile and quick. Then are also some which don’t fight you quickly and would rather prefer to run away.

In major part of the game, you will find that dodging these machines, either towards them or towards other direction, forms an important part of the gameplay.

Overriding Machines

As you progress in the game, you can also override these machines and stop them from being hostile towards you and others. You can even ride some of them. But there’s one thing for sure. Machines are everywhere.

But how to override them. For that, you need to go into Cauldrons – there are five of them in the game, that is, four in base game and one in DLC. Cauldrons are underground caves which are made of huge manufacturing facilities. It’s only when you clear individual Cauldrons – one after another, that you unlock the ability to override more and more machines.

However, overriding machines isn’t easy and requires one to sneak upon them and get near them. It isn’t much of a problem on easier machines, which one can use for riding across the map.

Inventory

A huge issue in the game is how it handles inventory. There are dozens and dozens of machine parts which you can loot and carry. Unlike other games, Horizon Zero Dawn puts a hard limit on the number of items you can carry. Sure, you can sell those items to merchants or even drop them, but some of those items are required to buy new weapons and outfits – a difficult choice to make

So frustrated we were with the limited inventory that we had to use a mod to increase the carrying capacity of Aloy. Though other, more powerful mods exist, a lot of them don’t work in the latest version of the game.

Inventory isn’t about just resources. It’s also about weapons, ammo, modifications and others. The carrying capacity of these things can be upgraded till a limit is reached.

Map

The map in the Horizon Zero Dawn is huge when one looks from the top. But when you are running, all the locations are reached relatively quickly.

Speaking about map, despite being a relatively smaller world, it takes a long time for one to actually reach places manually. One might ask why. This because the whole map is filled with specific machine sites where you will find specific type of machines spawning at specific locations. Hunting them makes no difference as they would re-spawn when you come back – it’s a hunting and scavenging game after all.

You can buy different maps inside the game from merchants, which allows you to see marked locations of particular machine sites, human settlements and other things. A large part of the map is hidden from you until you travel through it or unlock it during the gameplay.

Fast travel in the game is initially limited by the number of fast travel packs you can find or buy in the early part of the game. However, by the 1/4th part of the game, you reach merchants which sell unlimited travel packs, which makes it easy.

You can only fast travel to campfires you find while traveling. These campfires also act as save points – you cannot manually save in this game otherwise without being near one – a big frustration.

Another frustrating thing about the game is that it lacks a mini-map. While not a big issue – one can still open the big map quickly, but this can lead to wrong path sometimes.

Those who want to see the whole map in its full size (with spoilers), there’s a web page dedicated for it. Helps a lot to find various items.

Day-Night Cycle

Another thing the game offers is a day and night cycle. The game progresses nicely through it all the time. After some research, we found that the game provides 40 mins in real time of daytime and 40 mins in nighttime.

However, we found the nighttime frustrating. There’s a big visibility issues during the nighttime – despite the machines having headlamps on their faces and we had to increase the brightness inside the game to enjoy it. Thankfully most main quests happen in daytime and switch to it as required.

Tutorials And Hunting Grounds

One more interesting part of the game is that while it doesn’t provide enough immersive tutorials. The only way you understand how to use certain weapons is through short videos on how to use weapons during their purchase screen.

However, it has a whole section dedicated to tutorial missions for various weapons and ammo types, which one can play to get XP points and rewards.

But a lot of practice can be done through a few Hunting Grounds found throughout the map. Each hunting ground has its own specialities and each offer 3 different challenges and different types of machines to practice against on a timer. The faster you complete the hunting challenge, the bigger rewards you get. These hunting challenges, while largely optional (only need to clear 3 challenges for main missions), are required to complete if one wants 100% completion stats for the game.

Difficulty And Skill

An important part of any action game is the health bar. In Horizon Zero Dawn, you get a 10% increase in health every time you level up. In Horizon Zero Dawn, the machines hunt you and try to damage your health.

You can restore your health by easily consuming health plants anytime, which you can find scattered all over the world. You can carry about 3 layers of health plants in the game, allowing 3 layers of the health bar if considered that way.

The more machines you hunt and more missions you complete, the more experience points you earn. These XP points then add to your skill level. There are 60 skill levels in the game.

Just like other RPGs, there’s also a Skill tree in the game. As you level up and earn more skill points, you unlock the ability to increase the Aloy’s strengths.

The skill tree for example unlocks a lot of things, like allowing one to unlock the ability to concentrate more during aiming, running quietly among other things. There are 44 unlockable skills in Horizon Zero Dawn. Easier ones require 1 skill points, some require 2 and some advanced ones require 3 skill points of unlock.

Coming back to the difficulty of the game. The game isn’t that difficult, but hunting big machines isn’t easy. For this review, we wanted to enjoy the experience rather than the grind and that’s why we chose to play easier game modes. This allowed us to enjoy the game, not make it too grindy and review it quickly.

Mixed Gameplay Experience

Honestly speaking, we have mixed opinion about the combat in the game. While ranged combat in the game is unique – you are fighting metal dinosaurs with bows and arrows, the close range combat isn’t good. Also, you have to keep dodging against these machines to avoid them striking you.

The machines are quick to charge at you and that’s why close combat is very hard with bow and arrow. Sure, you can turn on aim assist which help you hit machines, but that mostly works at longer range, at close range it’s very hard to hit exact locations on machines.

That’s when melee fighting comes through your spear. There’s only one usable spear in the game and it offers no modifications in the base game. In addition to that, hitting enemies using your spear isn’t easy – it goes only towards where you are looking at, not always towards the machines.

One more issue we have is that there’s a lot of mountain climbing in the game. But you cannot climb anywhere. There are marked areas (which aren’t always easily visible) where you can climb, which limits the ability to reach the top of mountains – despite it being an open world game. Climbing during main missions isn’t a big issue, but if you are trying to do side quests – like finding metal flowers, reaching them is not easy.

Interestingly, Horizon Zero Dawn is the first RPG made by Guerrilla Games. They had to consult various experts in designing the game due to that. But we feel they could have done better.

Graphics

The graphics form the third main pillar of the game and rightfully so. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most beautiful games we have ever played.

The game is spread across three major geographies. Snow clad plains and mountains, lush green areas like open forests and dry and rocky deserts. Each one of them designed beautifully.

To make people understand, when we played at the game, for the first few days we were not only in the awe of its graphics, but we found real photos from real locations to be lacking and not good-looking when compared to the game. That’s how beautiful the game is.

After some searching, we found that Horizon Zero Dawn was designed after real locations and all the mountains and places one sees and finds in the game do exist in the real world.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the facial features of Aloy are designed very nicely. However, we do feel that the animations could have been designed better – the emotions on her face is either hit or miss. Surprisingly, we found that during the story of the DLC Frozen Wilds, her facial expressions have been improved a lot.

The amount of efforts that Guerrilla Games has put into the graphics of the game is tremendous. If we were to recommend this game for its graphics alone, we would, without any doubts. Play it to see it yourself.

The only problem is that the PC port does seem to have its own issues with the graphics, which we will discuss in the performance part.

Performance

No PC game review is complete without the discussion about the PC performance. Something that some major PC gaming sites ignore or avoid completely – to many people’s disappointment.

The performance of Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition is, simply put, uninspiring. Now we must mention, we are testing this game on a budget PC with an ancient graphics card, so that does play an important role, but even then it’s worth discussing it. We played this game on 1080p.

When Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition was released on PC, many reviewers found issues with the PC port. First was, it kept crashing and second was it didn’t perform that nicely and third was that the visuals would randomly turn blurry.

There’s a reason behind why this happened. After some searching, we found that Guerrilla Games had hired a Singapore and China based company called Virtuos to port the game to PC. The problem with Virtuos is that, as per some, didn’t have prior experience in porting games to PC, at least not using latest technology.

However, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition did receive a lot of performance improvement updates. It was later revealed that Nixxes Software – who are known for great PC ports, played an important part in it. For the record, the sequel of Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West is going to be ported to PC by Nixxes Software, which is much welcomed.

Our Performance Tests And Issues

Coming back to Horizon Zero Dawn. When we played this game using latest patches, we don’t remember getting any crashes whatsoever. However, we did find performance issues.

The problem is, Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC version ships with only FSR 1 upscaler by AMD and DLSS 2 by Nvidia. This means it has no option to use FSR 2 to improve the performance while still keeping the graphics looking good.

To solve that, we had to again use a mod which replaces DLSS 2 with FSR 2 instead. However, the latest version of the mod crashes with the latest version of the game, so we downloaded the 2.1b version posted in the comments instead.

The FSR 2 mod does make the graphics look blurry when playing in performance mode, but for the PCs which do have performance issues, this is probably the only option.

Speaking of performance of the game itself, it varies a lot. The performance in the initial Sacred Lands area, which is the territory of the Nora tribes, is good. We got almost 60FPS in it. But as we move outside, where there’s more grass, the performance dips a bit by about 15FPS average.

A further dip is seen in the city areas, where there are a lot of humans and other objects around. However, the biggest dip we saw was in three different places.

First is the DLC Frozen Wilds, which takes places in the northern snowy mountains of the territory of the Banuk tribes. Now, usually many games perform better in snowy areas, however, the areas where the DLC takes place, has a lot of snow clad trees and vegetation. Not to forget, snowfall that occurs from time to time. We do however feel that that area of the game could be optimized further.

This unoptimized performance in the DLC is seen during the climax mission of the DLC. Where the FPS dips drastically. The same is for the climax mission for the base game, but that dip in performance doesn’t last that long.

The third performance dip we see is during the cinematic credits after the completion of the game which take place inside a cauldron, which don’t have any issues inside the game but somehow performs poorly in the credits.

I don’t know if it’s the fonts they used during the credits, or it’s something else, but the cinematic credits perform so abysmally poor that it’s not worth not mentioning. Thankfully, the cinematic credits are completely optional, can be skipped and is followed by normal rolling credits with same names.

Tell us about it. We went through 30 mins of badly performing credits only to be told that normal rolling credits with repeated names exist that performs completely fine. Are we nitpicking? Maybe. But try sitting through 30 mins of screen running at 5 to 7 FPS.

Overall, we also found that the game isn’t really CPU bound (at least on our CPU), which is a good thing. The CPU is hardly fully utilized – sometimes only half. But requires a good graphics card as a lot of heavy lifting is done by it.

Sound

The sound of the game can be divided in three different parts. Voice acting, sounds during the gameplay and music.

Aloy, the main character of the game, is voiced by Ashly Burch, who won many awards for her performance in the game. Rightfully so too. She has done a tremendous job in her dialogs and her voice acting. This also comes from a fact that she has almost become a legend in the voice acting in the gaming industry.

Speaking of dialogs, there are many dialogs in the game – both from Aloy and other side characters. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Each one of them are important and don’t seem boring (at least to us). The voice acting of all these dialogs seem fine to us.

The second part is the sounds you hear during the gameplay. Think about it. Except seeing through the Focus device, how else can you find machines near you? The game lets you know through the music.

As soon as you reach near machines, the game alerts you through various sounds. Whether it’s the music alert when the animals are nearby, or through the animals making sounds themselves.

The third part is the soundtrack. While used only like two times inside the game, we thoroughly enjoyed Aloy’s theme – sung by Julie Elven. It captures Aloy’s emotions and her journey in the game perfectly – without any words.

Aloy’s theme is usually heard in the menu. While tastes differ, some comments on the YouTube video speak about how they like launching the game for only hearing this theme. We feel this is enough to say how good the sound is of this game. The Whole OST of the game is available on Spotify and other places.

The only small problem we have in the game, a problem we have found in other Sony ports, is that the sound isn’t loud enough. We had to increase the speaker volume a lot to be able to enjoy the game sounds properly.

Verdict – A Masterpiece

What is it with Sony. No really. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the greatest game we have ever played. It’s a masterpiece. If it wasn’t for some combat issues during the gameplay and performance issues of the PC port, it could have been right near to top games ever made.

We are very happy that we got a chance to play and review this game. We are very thankful to Sony and Guerrilla Games for making such a beautiful game.

Pros

• Incredible story.
• Great main character.
• Unique gameplay.
• Outstanding graphics.
• Good soundtrack.
• Excellent voice acting.
• RPG elements are good.
• Overall bug-free game after patches.

Cons

• Bad close / near range combat.
• Side quests aren’t bad, but can drag the game a bit.
• The game is filled with machines, which might be fun, but can become grindy.
• The day-night cycle can be fun sometimes, but can also be frustrating in others.
• Facial expressions are something which could have been improved in the base game.
• Performance on the PC port should have improved further.
• Saving feature could have been better.
• Climbing could have been better.

If one notices the cons, they would realize that most of these issues aren’t that big or game breaking. The cons are overshadowed massively by the pros, which are great.

In terms of bugs, we found just 2 bugs. Both the times we were able to fix by restarting from the previous save.

As for the game itself. Metacritic rates the Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition (PC version) at 84, which we find is just about right.

We would rate it 8.5 out of 10. The game is great, only some issues drag it down a bit.

Editors Message: We completed the whole game, including the Frozen Wilds DLC, excluding some hunting ground missions, in 76 hours spanning over more than a month. We took a lot of efforts in writing this review. We had to avoid writing some articles to concentrate on completing this game.

If you like the review, then please like it, comment about it below and share it on social sites and other places.

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Cruise has pushed an update to its self-driving taxi fleet, so that its autonomous driving software will no longer run over and drag injured pedestrians along the road.

The GM subsidiary submitted what is technically a recall notice [PDF] to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday, saying it needed to fix up the robo-vehicles' collision detection subsystem.

More specifically: the over-the-air update is intended to make the software better at realizing when a car's hit a person who is already down low or on the ground, and making sure the autonomous vehicle (AV) doesn't make the situation worse by pulling over and further injuring the victim.

"In certain circumstances, a collision may occur, after which the Collision Detection Subsystem may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response," the biz said in its notice. 

"This issue could occur after a collision with a pedestrian positioned low on the ground in the path of the AV," Cruise added. 

That's precisely what happened on October 2 in San Francisco, when a Cruise self-driving taxi, with no humans onboard, ran over a woman who had seconds earlier been knocked to the ground by a hit-and-run driver. The woman fell in front of the Cruise car, which drove over her, realized it hit something, and then tried to pull over to safely, dragging her along and stopping on top of her, trapping her.

In its recall notice referring to that accident, Cruise said its automated driving system "inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward, rather than remaining stationary."

The woman was treated in hospital and was in a critical condition. That accident, and another pedestrian collision in August when an individual stepped off a curb in front of a driverless Cruise taxi as the light turned green, triggered the NHTSA to launch a probe into Cruise over fears its AV software "may not be exercising appropriate caution around pedestrians." 

en days after the NHTSA launched its investigation, Cruise announced it was pausing all driverless operations. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt admitted over the weekend that Cruise's vehicles needed regular remote intervention by humans to stay on track, and GM also announced a temporary pause of production of a Cruise-branded driverless van called Origin.

Cruise has now issued the update to fix the issues with its collision-detection software, and was testing the new code in its supervised test fleet - with a safety driver behind the wheel just in case. 

As it has since these investigations began, Cruise has maintained its self-driving cars are still safer than human drivers. "Although we determined that a similar collision with a risk of serious injury could have recurred every 10 million - 100 million miles of driving on average prior to the software update, we strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer," the biz said.

Wait, you didn't have what?

Cruise also announced plans today to hire a chief safety officer, a role which apparently didn't exist at the auto-tech car biz in its first decade of operation. Cruise did have a VP of safety and systems, Dr Louise Zhang, who will be assuming the CSO role in the interim until a permanent person is found.  

Cruise also said it has retained law firm Quinn Emanuel "to examine and better understand Cruise's response to the October 2 incident," and had also contracted with engineering consulting firm Exponent "to perform a technical root cause analysis" of the SF accident. 

Cruise has also identified "four key areas of potential improvements," namely safety governance, safety and engineering processes, internal/external transparency and community engagement, and had assigned company leadership to "investigate each one and complete follow up actions." 

It's unclear what today's announcements mean for Cruise's return to driverless operations but we'll update if we hear back. ®

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A week of reduced social media usage neither increased nor decreased people’s desire to get back online, a new study finds. The lack of craving to return to social media platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) suggests that for most people, the use of social media may not be truly addictive, the authors argue. Some experts remain skeptical, however.

“It’s a really well done study,” says Mariek Vanden Abeele, a communication scientist at Ghent University who was not involved in the research.

Because people often frame excessive social media use in terms of addiction, she says, the idea of “detoxing” from Instagram and X, as one might from drugs or alcohol, has garnered attention as well. “What do we see in this study? That actually does not work very well,” Vanden Abeele says.

As social media usage has exploded over the past decade, public discourse has fixated on its potential to erode our emotional well-being and even to addict us to likes and follows. Some research has shown that excessive usage correlates with increased depression and anxiety. In rare cases, it can resemble substance use disorders such as drug dependence or pathological gambling, complete with withdrawal-like symptoms such as cravings, loneliness, and dark moods when users go cold turkey.

But the results have not been conclusive. Some studies have indicated that instead of suffering withdrawal symptoms, people feel happier during a “digital detox,” whereas others have found no change. For this reason and others, some experts hesitate to apply the language of addiction to social media usage. “We are hugely dependent on these devices,” Vanden Abeele says. “But that does not make us pathologically addicted.”

To probe how abstaining from social media impacts emotional health—and whether doing so reveals any signs of addiction—Niklas Ihssen and Michael Wadsley, psychologists at Durham University, asked 51 student volunteers to swear off social media for 1 week—but did not restrict their access to social media, leaving the results up to the honor system. Throughout that week, surveys recorded how much time subjects spent on different smartphone apps and their emotional well-being.

The duo also put subjects through lab exercises similar to those used in some addiction studies. In one, the researchers told subjects to either approach or avoid social media icons on a screen by pressing buttons, like moving a video game character toward a target. In another, they offered longer access to social media the faster subjects could tap a space bar. After 1 week of effort to avoid social media, subjects were no more likely to gravitate much more or less toward app icons, or to mash the keyboard much faster or slower.

Overall, the findings showed no change in desire for social media over the week, the researchers report today in PLOS ONE. “What we see with social media is qualitatively different compared to drugs,” where craving or compulsive usage would be expected, Ihssen says. “We should not overpathologize normal behaviors.”

That’s not to say the social media break didn’t affect subjects at all. In fact, with less social media usage, subjects experienced a drop in negative emotions. However, positive ones subsided, too. “You take away that good feeling of seeing how many people liked your photos,” Ihssen says.

Not everyone is convinced by the study. “One week is just not long enough to see consistent or meaningful changes in well-being,” Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, said in an email. “And 51 people is not enough to get reliable results.” Ihssen says a statistical method determined the study size and that because subjects’ emotional changes mostly stabilized after a few days, avoiding social media for a longer time might not change the results much.

A few days was also long enough for most subjects to slip back into old habits, at least a little: All but seven failed to avoid social media entirely.

Most, however, significantly cut their usage—from nearly 3.5 hours down to 35 minutes per day, on average. And although the numbers crept back up in the four monitored days following the “detox” week, it remained roughly a full hour per day lower than before. This may indicate that a short-term break like this could be a starting point for people looking to cut back on social media, some experts say, even if the mental health impacts of doing so remain uncertain.

“When you teach [people] that they could do OK if they used social media for half an hour a day, they may develop better habits,” says Ofir Turel, an information systems scientist at the University of Melbourne who was not involved in the study.

Adopting a new social media “diet” like this invites a comparison to certain foods, which many experts prefer to the comparison to drugs. “You need food to survive, but the quantity and quality of what you eat really matter,” Vanden Abeele says. Similarly, she says, we often depend on social media for social contact, but it’s possible to overdo it. “If Instagram is your vice, that’s like chocolate cookies.”

Replacing chocolate cookies with ice cream may defeat the purpose of a diet, however. In the absence of social media, the authors of the new study note, subjects spent more time playing video games and shopping online.

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Note: this update does not apply to the Surface Pro 9 with the Microsoft SQ3 processor.

What is new in the Surface Pro 9 November 2023 firmware update?

• Addresses screen rotation issue.

• Resolves "battery not genuine" notification.

• Improves stability when attached to Surface Docks.

• Improves external display connection stability.

• Resolves a device booting to Surface logo issue.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

Surface Pro 9 with Intel and ARM processors will be supported until October 25, 2028. It is Microsoft's current flagship Windows 11 tablet, and you can pick one starting at $999 on Amazon US or the Microsoft Store.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Chinese tech outlet HKEPC says it now has purported details on the upcoming APUs which will launch as the Ryzen 8000G lineup. The information is apparently according to a Taiwanese motherboard maker, which is basically every major board vendor.

According to the report, there will be four SKUs, namely, the Ryzen 7 8700G, the Ryzen 5 8600G and 8500G, and the Ryzen 3 8300G. The report adds that the two lower SKUs, the 8500G, and the 8300G will be hybrid and marry Zen 4 and the more compact Zen 4c cores, and will essentially be the desktop equivalents of the recently unveiled Phoenix 2 lineup. The other two higher models will only be based on the bigger Zen 4 cores.

[NDA] AMD recently updated the AGESA Combo AM5 PI 1.1.0.0 Firmware, adding support for AM5 APU processors. According to a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer revealed to HKEPC, AMD has provided ES samples for testing, and has received news that it is likely to be named Ryzen 8000G series. There are currently 4 SKUs known, including Ryzen 3 8300G, Ryzen 5 8500G, and Ryzen 5 8600G. and Ryzen 7 8700G, with a PRO version commercial model also available.

 

According to sources, the Ryzen 8000G series will have two different cores. Ryzen 3 8300G and Ryzen 5 8500G will use the Phoenix 2 core and adopt the large core and small core design of Zen4 + Zen4c. The 8300G will have 4 cores (1C+3c / 8T), the 8500G will have 6 cores (2C+4c / 12T), and the graphics core will only have 4 RDNA3 CUs. The Ryzen 5 8600G and Ryzen 7 8700G will use Phoenix full Zen 4 cores. The 8600G will have 6 cores (6C/12T) and the 8700G will have 8 cores (8C/16T), with 8 and 12 RDNA3 CUs for graphics cores respectively.

What is interesting about these upcoming hybrid AMD parts is that they, unlike Intel's hybrid chips, claim to not require a dedicated hardware OS (like for Windows) scheduler, at least according to AMD.

The report also adds a bit about the release date of the 8000G series APUs, though it's mostly vague at this point.

As for the launch date of Ryzen 8000G, sources revealed that AMD has not yet discussed the release schedule with manufacturers, and it may not be available until the end of the year or even early next year.

Hence, it looks pretty much in line with what we speculated too, that AMD will likely unveil these APUs for the first time at next year's CES with wider availability picking up later.

Source: HKEPC (X / Twitter)

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If you are a Starfield player on Steam here's how to get the beta update:

• Open your steam Library and navigate to Starfield
• Right click on "Starfield" and select "Properties"
• In the new properties pop-up window, select "Betas"
• In the beta drop down to opt into, select "[beta]"
• Wait for app to download new build and launch

Bethesda notes that your last Starfield save game will work in the beta update but new saves created in the beta build will not work in the non-beta version until the final update goes live. That's expected for PC and Xbox players later in November.

Here is the full changelog:

UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS

 

NVIDIA DLSS SUPPORT

 

• This update introduces Nvidia DLSS support for our PC players. Compatible Nvidia graphic cards can now use DLSS Super Resolution, Deep Learning Anti-aliasing (DLAA), Nvidia Reflex Low Latency, and DLSS Frame generation. Please note: While DLSS Frame Generation is active, VSync needs to be toggled OFF to see the benefit. We are working to automatically adjust this setting in a future update.

 

LET THEM EAT!

 

• By popular request, we have added the ability to ingest food and drink items upon finding them in the environment. You can enjoy those Chunks immediately or save them for later. The choice is yours.

 

FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

 

PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY

 

• Addressed a number of memory related issues and leaks.
• [PC Only] Add some GPU performance optimizations, which will be more impactful on higher end cards.
• [PC Only] Improved renderer threading model, improving CPU usage most notably on higher end systems.
• Various stability and performance improvements.

 

GAMEPLAY

 

• Added the ability to eat the food placed in the world
• Adjusted stealth to be a bit more forgiving.
• Fixed an issue where Andreja’s head would stay permanently cloaked.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from firing their weapons.
• Fixed issues where some NPC could be seen not wearing clothes.
• Fixed an issue where already in-progress skill challenges could stop progressing after reaching the Unity and starting a new game.
• Fixed an issue that could temporarily prevent opening the inventory or saving after entering the Unity.
• PC: Fixed an issue where mouse movement could be choppy.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause the home ship to be lost.
• Fixed an issue where the ship services technician might be missing.

 

GRAPHICS

 

• Addressed an issue with how ambient occlusion appeared in ultrawide resolutions.
• Optimized initial shader compilation that occurs on start-up.
• Added the ability to adjust Brightness and Contrast in the Display Settings menu.
• Added the ability to adjust HDR Brightness provided that the system supports it. (Xbox & Windows 11 only).
• Addressed a number of materials that could sometimes present an unintended pattern under certain conditions.
• Fixed various visual issues related to the new FOV slider options.
• Improved the appearance of the eyes on crowd characters.
• Addressed a number of minor visual issues related to lighting, shadows, terrain, and vegetation.

 

QUESTS

 

• All That Money Can Buy: Fixed a rare issue where players couldn’t sit during the negotiation with Musgrove.
• Blast Zone: Fixed an issue where the hard rocks that need to be cleared out by players will not appear on Ngodup Tate’s land.
• Echoes of the Past: Fixed an issue where the Grylloba Queen could sometimes not be reachable during the objective “Secure the Shuttle Bay”.
• Eye of the Storm: Fixed an issue where players' quest progression could potentially be blocked due to a missing docking prompt.
• Grunt Work: Addressed an issue where progress could appear blocked if “Supra et Ultra” was completed while returning to the Lodge during “High Price to Pay”.
• No Sudden Moves: Fixed an issue the that could prevent the entrance door to the Scow ship from being opened again.
• Operation Starseed: Fixed an issue where the key that is needed to exit the facility could sometimes not be present.
• Sabotage: Fixed an issue where David Barron could potentially not be found by players.
• Short Sighted: Fixed an issue where players could rarely become control-locked while speaking with Vladimir.
• The Heart of Mars: Fixed an issue where players might not be able to mine the “The Heart of Mars”.

Bethesda has also confirmed that support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 graphics tech will be added in a future update for Starfield.

Source

In a post on the X (formerly Twitter) today, Rockstar confirmed long-standing rumors that it plans to share an initial trailer for "next GTA" next month. While Rockstar didn't provide full details on the game, it expressed excitement "to let you know that in early December, we will release the first trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto."

The timing lines up with the 25th anniversary of Rockstar's founding in December 1998, suggesting the trailer could potentially drop on that date. However, Rockstar did not specify a concrete reveal date. Industry insiders have pointed to The Game Awards on December 7 as a likely event for the debut, given Rockstar's past appearances at the show.

GTA 6 has been shrouded in secrecy for years since work began following 2013's record-breaking GTA 5. In an investor call earlier this year, Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, noted that it expects record sales levels next year, hinting that the game may officially launch next year.

Previously, minor details emerged in leaks and reports, but this will mark the first official confirmation of the game directly from Rockstar.

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Customers affected by these ongoing issues see "something seems to have gone wrong" errors, with ChatGPT adding that "There was an error generating a response" to their queries.

"If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com," the errors also read.

In an incident report published on the company's official status page, OpenAI confirmed that its engineering teams are investigating the issue.

"We've identified an issue resulting in high error rates across the API and ChatGPT, and we are working on remediation," it said.

"We're experiencing exceptionally high demand. Please hang tight as we work on scaling our systems," a banner displayed in ChatGPT's interface warns.

Today's issues follow another partial outage on Tuesday that also impacted the company's API and ChatGPT, both hit by periodic outages for several hours.

On Monday, users of OpenAI's Dall-E image generation service API also experienced elevated error rates for most of the day.

The ChatGPT chatbot was also down worldwide in May when the service was inaccessible for multiple hours.

ChatGPT outage (BleepingComputer)

Today's outage follows a Monday announcement when OpenAI said it's rolling out improvements and new features to its API and ChatGPT service.

Starting this week, the company introduced a new and less expensive GPT-4 Turbo model with "128K context and has fresher knowledge than GPT-4," available to all developers in preview.

GPT-4 Turbo also adds Vision, DALL·E 3, and text-to-speech capabilities for all devs, and the company also announced that it doubled GPT-4 rate limits.

"To help you scale your applications, we’re doubling the tokens per minute limit for all our paying GPT-4 customers," OpenAI said.

Update November 8, 11:05 EST: OpenAI has restored impacted services.

"Between 5:42AM - 7:16AM PT we saw errors impacting all services. We identified the problem and implemented a fix. We are now seeing normal responses from our services," the company said.

Source

The incident occurred when the man, a robotics company employee in his 40s, was inspecting the robot.

The robotic arm, confusing the man for a box of vegetables, grabbed him and pushed his body against the conveyer belt, crushing his face and chest, South Korean news agency Yonhap said.

He was sent to hospital but later died.

According to Yonhap, the robot was responsible for lifting boxes of peppers and transferring them onto pallets.

The man had been checking the robot's sensor operations ahead of its test run at the pepper sorting plant in South Gyeongsang province, scheduled for 8 November, the agency adds, quoting police.

The test had been originally been planned for 6 November, but was pushed back by two days due to problems with the robot's sensor.

The man, a worker from the company that manufactured the robotic arm, was running checks on the machine late into the night on Wednesday when it malfunctioned.

In a statement after the incident, an official from the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the plant, called for a "precise and safe" system to be established.

In March, a South Korean man in his 50s suffered serious injuries after getting trapped by a robot while working at an automobile parts manufacturing plant.

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What you need to know

• Lords of the Fallen is a reboot of the original 2014 Soulslike of the same name by developer HexWorks. It released on October 13 on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and Windows PC.
• HexWorks has shown off a roadmap for all of the additional free DLC content coming to the game before 2023 ends, and also confirmed support for the game in 2024.
• These content additions include new questlines, armor sets, spells, features, and more. For the full list of what's coming, refer to the text below.
• Lords of the Fallen has gotten a few updates since it launched, including a "Pumpkin Patch" that kicked off a Halloween-themed event.

About a month after the launch of developer HexWorks' reboot of Lords of the Fallen, the studio has shown fans of the popular Soulslike a roadmap of the content they can expect to get in DLC updates before the end of 2023.

These updates — which will be free for all players — will include everything from additional armor sets and questlines to packs of new spells, special enhancements to boss weapons, and the introduction of some highly requested gameplay features. At the same time, HexWorks will also seek to make weekly adjustments and improvements to stability, performance, co-op and PvP, game balance, and more. 

For a complete look at everything coming to Lords of the Fallen, check the official image of the roadmap below (or the list that's below that). Note that while there's no concrete release date for any of these additions, they're expected to come during "the remainder of 2023" and are "actively being worked on."

Here's everything we know is coming to Lords of the Fallen in the remainder of 2023. (Image credit: HexWorks)

• Ongoing Weekly Enhancements
  • Stability fixes
  • Performance improvements
  • Save game fixes
  • Co-op/PvP improvements
  • Balancing (PvE priority)
  • Increased boss difficulty
  • QoL tweaks

• Content In Development
  • Umbral, Rhogar, and Radiant armor sets and questlines
  • New questline event
  • Two packs of new spells
  • Inventory expansion
  • Stash for item storage
  • Secret boss weapon abilities
  • New Grievous Strikes (critical hits)
  • New Game Plus (NG+) modifiers
  • Gamepad rebinding
  • Split PvE/PvP balancing

Notably, Lords of the Fallen will also continue to get support in 2024, though it's unclear what HexWorks' plans for the game are in the long term. In its blog post, the studio says "a number of free events" that "add new questlines, content, armor sets, weapons, spells and more" are on the way, though there's been no word of full-sized expansions.

Since the game's release on October 13, a number of patches have come out to address performance issues, fix bugs, reduce enemy density a bit, and tone down the difficulty of NG+. There was also the comically named "Pumpkin Patch," which kicked off the Season of the Bleak event and introduced Halloween-themed decorations and gear.

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Alex has been passionate about space exploration since her childhood. (Pseudonyms are used, and some genders are obscured throughout this piece, as sources requested anonymity to speak freely.) She considered pursuing astronomy as a career but ended up on a different professional path, one that ultimately led to a job at the European Space Agency (ESA). Alex thought she was set for a career filled with professional fulfillment.

At first, things were good. Alex worked for ESA full time but wasn’t employed directly by the agency; she was hired as a contractor through a manpower company. The staff-versus-contractor divide quickly became obvious. Although colleagues employed as staff performed similar tasks, they were often invited to meetings that Alex felt were relevant to the entire team but from which contractors were excluded.

Over time, Alex soured on the experience of working at ESA. “What I was not prepared for was the prevailing culture of fear, the extremely hierarchical structure, and the dysfunctional nature of management,” she said.

About a year after Alex started at ESA, a new manager was put in charge of the team, and problems quickly grew. Alex felt like contractors were not always given proper briefs for the tasks they were asked to complete. When they sought more information, Alex said that contractors would sometimes be put down and shouted at in meetings. At the same time, the manager obsessed with what the workers were doing, sometimes messaging them more than 10 times a day.

“My line manager consistently undermined my abilities and expertise, making derogatory comments about my work and belittling my contributions,” Alex told Ars. “I witnessed my colleagues being subjected to similar mistreatment, which created a hostile and distressing atmosphere within the team. There were instances where the manager would physically intimidate and threaten employees.”

Her ESA experience was quickly becoming a nightmare—and she wasn’t alone.

Ars Technica spoke with four other people who had also worked with Alex's manager. Their testimonies align. Another contractor, Nic, said, “I was told by many colleagues to keep my head down, be quiet, and not to upset people.” But just like Alex, Nic said he “experienced verbal aggression on multiple occasions” and “countless times of rude, dismissive, condescending, unprofessional behavior to myself and other contractors.”

These behaviors, Nic said, were driven by the manager and a small clique of supporters. When Nic tried to raise these issues directly with the manager, he was told there wasn’t a problem.

Jo, who also briefly worked with the same team, confirmed that the general atmosphere was one of put-downs and bullying. "People were spoken to in disrespectful ways," Jo told Ars. "'Why are you talking, you know nothing about this, your work is embarrassing,' that type of stuff." Jo decided to leave after a few months.

"The overall situation at the center was a constant revolving door of contractors," said Sam, another former team member. "Out of our team of nine people, six either left or were fired within a half-year."

A dream vs. reality

For many European space enthusiasts, a job at ESA is a dream. But as 18 different sources who spoke to Ars Technica have described their experience, the dream often turns bad as ESA’s corporate environment appears to suffer from bullying, and employees find little in the way of protection.

ESA denies the problem, citing internal anti-harassment policies, but internal documents reviewed by Ars that date back to the late 2000s suggest that, depending on the ESA facility, between 30 and 50 percent of the people working there said they had witnessed harassment. These internal surveys describe the same problems—ostracism, undermining employees, and threats to employment—mentioned by our sources.

“The most common example of harassment behaviors concerned the way in which contractors are treated,” one of the documents says, “and this was an issue identified by both contractors and staff members alike.”

Due to the agency’s special status as an intergovernmental organization, workers who seek legal redress frequently face additional obstacles, as the agency is outside the jurisdiction of any national legal system, and its internal documents are largely inaccessible.

The 18 people who shared their stories with Ars Technica have worked at four of ESA’s six main centers over the past 15 years. Many of these sources don’t know each other and have approached Ars independently. All of the sources requested anonymity, citing fear of retaliation—including never being able to find further work in the space sector. They describe similar patterns of harassment, including verbal insults, ostracism, public denigration, and harsh criticism.

Beyond the law

ESA is one of the world’s leading space exploration organizations and one of the few that is international in scope, representing 22 member states. Contrary to a common misconception, ESA is not part of the European Union and not bound by European law. In fact, ESA is not bound by any real-world law, either local or national—it’s governed only by its 130-page Convention and a set of internal regulations.

This international status grants the ESA and its staff privileges that are far superior to those afforded to its bigger sister and role model, NASA, notably the ability to maintain any internal documents as confidential.

The agency is effectively a legal microcosm where only internal rules and regulations apply—although only if the ESA chooses to enforce them.

With centers in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium, ESA employs 2,200 staff from all over Europe. These employees enjoy generous salaries and other benefits, including child care allowances, abundant pension packages, and extra money for relocating to another country. Staff also enjoy the agency’s diplomatic immunity, which grants them “inviolability” of all their official documents and email exchanges.

Most ESA staff members initially receive four-year contracts, which can be subsequently extended “up to the ESA retirement age of 63,” according to information on the agency’s website. According to the ESA employees we’ve spoken with, those senior ESA staff managers with permanent contracts have significant power over newer or lower-ranking employees, whose contracts are frequently temporary—and whose contract extensions are in the hands of their superiors.

In addition to its staff, ESA employs thousands of full-time workers through manpower agencies—engineers, scientists, communications specialists, and administrative workers. These contractors are even more vulnerable than junior staff members.

ESA told Ars Technica that these contractors and its temporary staff can report issues without disclosing their identity, "which also aims at encouraging submission of reports without fearing possible retaliation. If a complaint is submitted, a dedicated fact-finding procedure is launched and required follow-up action is taken."

In addition, the agency has an Administrative Tribunal that deals with disputes that arise with its staff members through an internal court consisting of three judges appointed by the space agency's council. But few issues seem to reach the point where the tribunal becomes involved; it has only reached decisions in 50 cases since 2010. And of those, 45 were decided in favor of the ESA.

“Bad behavior”

Alex had faith in ESA and its policies against harassment. Just like Nic, she tried to talk things out with her manager. When this failed, Alex next turned to the manager at the contractor company that hired her; she then went to the ESA Welfare Officer, then to the center’s HR department, and finally to the head of the department where she was stationed.

“There was no opportunity for mediation nor raising a complaint of harassment and bullying at that time,” said Alex. Alex followed the advice she received from the Welfare Officer and tried one more time to talk things out with her manager. Instead of defusing the tension, this escalated the situation. “I was then met with accusations from the Head of Department that I was being difficult in terms of arranging a meeting with the line manager,” said Alex.

Alex's enthusiasm for and commitment to Europe's space endeavor was quickly withering away. Her well-being also took a hit, so Alex requested a few weeks off work. Shortly after her return, Alex was fired for alleged “bad behavior.”

“It became clear that despite there being policies and procedures which are meant to protect the accuser, it only took some words from your line manager for your contracting agency to dismiss you,” said Alex.

Limited protection

Roderik Mol is an official at the Dutch union CNV, which represents contractors working for ESA’s Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. He argues that ESA contractors are in a vulnerable position. "If ESA claims that they are not happy with how a contractor is performing their job, they don’t need to do what they would have to do with regular employees," Mol said. "In the Netherlands, with regular labor contracts, you have to give employees the chance to improve their performance, but ESA doesn’t have to do that with the loan employees." Instead, it becomes the responsibility of the manpower contractor company to either compensate the worker or find other work for them.

Mol also confirms that the ESA contractors the union represents frequently mention bullying as a concern and that the agency’s resources to handle the problem appear limited.

A survey conducted by the union found that almost none of the contractors knew how to address conflict with ESA staffers. Of the more than 200 contractors who completed the survey, 45 percent said they believed there was no clear path to conflict resolution, while 52 percent said they didn't know whether any existed.

Without explanation

After her dismissal, Alex sought an explanation from managers at her manpower company and was told that her continued employment would place the manpower agency’s relationship with ESA at risk. According to an email from the company, “We were informed by the customer verbally and categorically that they would stop the contract on [date removed for confidentiality] if we did not remove you.”

Alex requested documentation of the alleged investigation into the bad behavior but was told that no written records existed, as all had been done verbally.

Alex filed a Subject Access Request with ESA to legally obtain the file the agency held about the supposed bad behavior and poor performance. After three months of waiting, she received an official response, which confirmed that the agency had no records of any complaints against Alex. (Ars Technica has seen this document.)

The manager accused of bullying by Alex and her colleagues still works at the space agency, according to information available on LinkedIn.

A history of problems

Despite its systems for resolving conflicts, the ESA has had a history of alleged problematic behavior by its managers. Ars has obtained four internal reports published in 2009, based on focus group surveys conducted at four ESA centers: ESTEC, the ESA Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN) near Rome; the Paris headquarters; and the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. These revealed a level of harassment allegations against ESA managers that the firm that ran the focus groups described as concerning, while noting the actions took place across all of the surveyed centers.

On average, more than 30 percent of those surveyed at that time said they had experienced or witnessed harassment at the agency. "[The] figures do give sufficient cause for concern to suggest that they should be addressed promptly," the report's authors stated.

The problematic behaviors described in the surveys are similar to those detailed by our sources. “Issues highlighted include staff treating contractors in an arrogant manner, contractors being fired at short notice and, at times, termination of contract being used as a threat,” the reports note. It goes on to describe problems such as harsh public denigration of a person and their work, micromanagement, ostracism, and shouting at meetings. Managers also failed to explain tasks properly, then criticized their employees for not knowing what to do.

They recount a number of specific events that were described by people in the focus groups. “I witnessed the ostracism of an experienced female colleague by a new male manager who overlooked her in staff meetings and did not allow her to say her part,” one worker said. “He progressively stripped her of tasks and responsibilities within her remit in favor of others.”

Another described their department head as “determined to divide his staff by talking badly about each of us to each of us… He will make it very clear that he does not want to listen to certain members of staff when they attempt to speak in meetings.”

The documents also indicate that managers are the most likely source of problems and contractors the most vulnerable group—one that often perceives the managers as untouchable. This dynamic was highlighted both by staff and contractors. The report says that there is a “lack of consequences for poor behavior” by managers and that HR suffers from a “lack of real power to respond to incidents.”

Sources said that regular surveys of ESA’s staff also show high levels of job dissatisfaction among the agency’s non-contractor employees.

In a statement, however, ESA emphasized it had “a duly established anti-harassment policy, matching the best standards,” and it strongly challenged “any unsubstantiated allegations of a so-called ‘pattern’ towards any category of personnel at ESA.”

Consistent stories

In addition to Alex and her colleagues, Ars Technica has spoken with 13 contractors and staff who either still work or have worked at ESA centers over the past 15 years, all in countries other than Alex’s. They all reported either witnessing the bullying of others, being victims of bullying themselves, or both. Some of the reported incidents are very recent, while others took place over the past 15 years. In all the reported incidents, patterns emerge that are highly similar to those reported by Alex and her colleagues, as well as by the ESA’s own focus groups: complaints about management behavior that were not resolved internally, and allegations of retaliation against those doing the complaining.

For example, a former contractor named Jaimie said she was let go from her role after an ESA staff manager blamed her for a "mistake" that Jaimie believed was actually the manager's doing. Jamie sought help from the center's HR team, who "appeared sympathetic" but indicated that since the manager was a proper staff member and Jamie was only a contractor, little could be done to address the grievance.

Max, who worked at yet another ESA center, said he was "pushed away from a job I liked by an ESA manager who had a very long history of bullying and an extreme turnover of contractors." Max, too, tried to seek help from higher management. The managers acknowledged the problem, Max said, but the message was the same as the one Jamie was given.

"It was obvious from our conversation that they knew this behavior was consistent with [the manager's] past behavior, but it was also clear that with my word against the word of a staff member, I had zero chances," Max told Ars.

One source who worked for the agency for a significant amount of time said that they "knew of more than 20 cases of space professionals who had experienced harassment and had been unsuccessful in finding a resolution other than the victim being told to find another job."

Another witness told Ars Technica they had seen several women in their department subject to bullying by a manager who was known to be friends with people higher up ESA’s hierarchy. “HR didn’t want to touch it,” the source said.

Seeking accountability

Despite ESA’s legal status, a few allegations of harassment and bullying have made it to local court systems. In 2019, Ivan Balenzio, an Italian communications specialist employed as an ESA contractor at ESRIN, successfully sued ESA for paying him less than ESA staffers employed in equivalent roles. That, the Italian newspaper Open Online stated, is against Italy's employment law.

But Balenzio’s victory was mixed. He had also complained about homophobic harassment he had been subject to at the agency. "It was mainly jokes, comparisons, references," Balenzio told Open Online in 2019. "One thing I will never be able to forget is that during the parties organized after the various communication events, my boss constantly told me, 'Homosexuals drink prosecco.' Repeated several times, it seemed like a personal attack to me."

The court, however, didn't agree with Balenzio's assessment of the behavior as harassment.

A far more tragic case is in the courts in France. It involves the 2011 suicide of 38-year-old engineer Philippe Kieffer and his family's years-long—and so-far unsuccessful—battle to have the circumstances of the suicide investigated by a public court.

Kieffer was employed as a junior staff member on a temporary contract, which he was hoping to have made permanent. He started at ESTEC, in the Netherlands, in 2002, and his career seemed to progress without major glitches until 2009. In that year, a new head of section and a new head of division were appointed, and they began finding faults in his work, according to the French Association Supporting Victims and Organizations Dealing with Suicide and Professional Depression (ASD-Pro), which supports Kieffer's parents.

Because Kieffer was a staff member, the investigation of his suicide fell to the agency's Administrative Tribunal. According to a document on the tribunal's website, two of Kieffer's co-workers had met with the center’s head of HR and told her that Kieffer’s treatment by his manager was “tantamount to harassment.” The French newspaper Le Monde described an incident, reportedly detailed in Kieffer's journal, when his superior kicked Kieffer "out of a meeting, shouting at him, 'I don't want to see you anymore.'"

Kieffer was, according to the sources, pushed to the brink by constant put-downs, criticism of his work, and a threat of his contract not being renewed. The tribunal ruled his suicide a work-related accident, but it also ruled that no harassment had taken place. Instead, according to Le Monde, internal documents portray Kieffer as "a fragile personality" suffering from a "significant lack of communication" and even "autistic disorders." Kieffer’s mother, Denise, emphasized to Ars Technica that her son had never been diagnosed with autism by a psychiatrist, and she disagreed with the description of him put forward by ESA.

Another case involving alleged harassment reached ESA’s Administrative Tribunal in 2021 and was also dismissed by its judges. In that case, an unnamed woman challenged an earlier decision by ESA’s director general not to investigate her allegation of harassment against the then-head of the agency's directorate of Technology, Engineering, and Quality (TEC) and his wife, the head of the Clean Space Office.

The claimant believed that the pair worked together to bully her out of her job as the TEC directorate's space debris expert to make way for the wife’s appointment as head of the new office overseeing the space debris agenda. The behaviors the claimant described were similar to those experienced by Kieffer: sudden, unfair criticism of her work, public denigration, and subsequent removal of responsibilities. Just like Kieffer, the woman only had a temporary contract and had only been hired by the agency in 2011, while the husband-and-wife team have worked at ESA since the 1980s, according to public information.

At that time, an internal ESA committee that guards against nepotism advised against the wife's appointment, according to an available document. The committee reasoned that the TEC director would be in a position to directly influence his wife's career. But then-Director General Jean Jacques Dordain decided that the wife could report directly to Dordain. The committee approved of the solution.

Hoping for justice

Alex and her colleagues say they are still recovering from what they describe as a psychologically traumatizing experience working for an agency they once idolized. They hope that sharing their stories publicly might finally make ESA take the issue seriously.

“I want something positive to emerge from the challenges we've faced within ESA,” said Alex. “We've seen the devastating impact of a culture of fear and an organization that thinks it [is] above the law. My heart aches for the Kieffer family and all those who've suffered, and I want our stories to help prevent such tragedies in the future.”

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Although the description of the new AGESA firmware does not state this, at least not at the time of writing, Hardwareluxx editor Andreas Schilling ran the Ryzen SMU (System Management Unit) Checker to confirm this was the case.

As you can see in the image above, the AGESA 1.1.0.0 firmware of the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero board (BIOS version 1802) reveals the support for Ryzen 7000 "Phoenix" desktop APUs. The information was added fairly recently too as the date notes October 24, 2023.

With vendors slowly starting to roll the firmware out, it looks like AMD may be targeting the CES 2024 time frame for the announcement of these parts, with wider availability gradually picking up by the end of the end of the quarter (Q1 2024).

While all of AMD's socket AM5 processors have onboard graphics, a two compute unit (CU) RDNA 2 part, the company does not refer to these as APUs and has stated in the past that the latter will have more beefy integrated graphics as a result of higher CU count. It is expected that there will be 12 CUs on the flagship desktop Ryzen AM5 APU just like it is the case on mobile.

This means they will have to more heavily depend on the bandwidth provided by the system memory compared to the 2CU iGPs we have now. This should not be much of a problem as AMD also started supporting faster DDR5 frequencies with a July AGESA update.

However, despite supporting faster speeds, DDR5 on AM5 continues to be unstable from time to time. The main culprit often seems to be memory training which leads to severely slow boot times despite notable updates.

Neowin friend and colleague Steven Parker had the issue recently when their ASRock X670E Steel Legend board would memory train every time the system cold booted. After refraining from updating to the 1.30.AS05 beta BIOS that fixes EXPO and XMP-related issues, they eventually did; and thankfully, the problem was resolved.

This BIOS version has been in beta for far too long it seems even though it is such an important release. In ASRock's defense, testing and validating every memory kit on the memory QVL (qualified vendor list) must take a lot of time so it is sort of understandable why it is yet to be final.

Fixing the memory training bug is also important for the upcoming APUs' release as these are typically mid-range offerings that are purchased by consumers who are likely not going to be as patient as enthusiasts.

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Noted hardware leaker "kopite7kimi" posted a response to a question on a launch date for these "Super" NVIDIA GPUs on his X (formerly Twitter) account. He replied simply with, "CES".

CES is, of course, the acronym for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which will take place from January 9-12. As VideoCardz.com points out, NVIDIA will be at the event but it won't be at the exhibit hall. Instead, it has booked conference rooms at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

NVIDIA also has not booked any press appearances either at the show. However, it's possible that it could book its own media event to introduce the new GeForce Series 40 Super GPUs in Las Vegas between now at early January.

The current hardware specs about these GPUs, according to Videocardz.com, indicated NVIDIA could reveal two or three of these "Super" chips. The reports claim the GeForce RTX 4080 Super could have the AD102 GPU core, with 10,240 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6X memory.

Other rumors claim the company could release a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super chip with 8,448 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6X memory, while a GeForce RTX 4070 Super could have 7,168 CUDA cords and 12GB of GDDR6X memory. Prices for these new GPUs have not leaked yet but we would imagine them to be on the pricey side.

Another internet leaker "MEGAsizeGPU", posted what he claims is a leaked close up of packaging for the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics card on his own X account. As usual with these kinds of unconfirmed reports and rumors, take them with an appropriate grain of salt.

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