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In September, HP officially announced its Spectre Fold foldable PC. While it's definitely an engineering marvel, it's also extremely expensive at nearly $5,000. This week, HP announced another different kind of PC design that's far more affordable.

The new HP Envy Move is a 23.8-inch touchscreen all-in-one PC that's been made to be quickly transported to anywhere the owner wants to go, whether it's just to another room in the house, to and from work, or even across the world.

HP's press release states that the Windows 11 PC has a built-in handle that lets owners just pick up the nine-pound PC and move it from place to place. The PC can be put on any table, and its two built-in kickstand feet on the bottom automatically come out via pins so you can set it down.

It also comes with a wireless keyboard that can be stored in a pouch in the back of the display for transport. Finally, the PC has its own rechargeable battery that allows it to work up to four hours on a single charge.

In terms of specs, HP says that people can order it with up to an Intel 13th Gen Core i5-1355U processor and an onboard Intel graphics chip, along with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage. It includes an HDMI port, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port. You can also order it with either a WiFi-6 or WiFi-6E hardware.

The PC also has a built-in 5MP camera on top of its display with a privacy shutter and support for logging into the PC using Windows Hello.

The HP Envy Move is on sale right now for the starting price of $899, which certainly makes it cheaper than the cool but far more expensive HP Spectre Fold. It's available now at HP.com.

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Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold over 25 million copies. It was just over a year ago that the company revealed the game has surpassed the 20 million milestone. The latest five million players have arrived within the last 12 months.

While The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's latest sales numbers put it at an impressive 50 million copies sold, it took the fan-favorite RPG almost five years to hit the 25 million milestone, a feat Cyberpunk 2077 has achieved within three years.

Despite strong sales at launch, Cyberpunk 2077 suffered a rather controversial launch due to major performance issues and bugs, which were primarily seen on last-generation console versions. Sony even pulled the game from the PlayStation store for some time during the peak of the fallout. The 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty expansion skipped out on last-gen platforms entirely.

Another impressive sales stat from today's presentation was for Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. The expansion only released only a week ago on September 26, but within that period, the Idris Elba-featuring spy-thriller expansion has sold three million copies across all platforms.

A sales breakdown was also shared, with CD Projekt saying 68% of that three million number came from PC platforms (10% from CD Projekt's own GOG store). 20% of sales had arrived from PlayStation 5 while Xbox Series X|S platforms brought in 13%.

While Phantom Liberty is slated to be the only expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED has already announced plans for a sequel. Codenamed Projekt Orion, it is currently in "conceptual design level" according to the studio. For those wanting more of the dystopian sci-fi universe, the company announced today that it is also working on a live-action project.

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The company said that it brings Bard’s reasoning capabilities and mixes them with Assistant’s personalized help features. Google says that you’ll be able to interact with it with text, voice, or images and that it will be able to do actions for you.

The company said that you’ll be able to access the new Assistant on Android and iOS devices but there’s no word about a rollout on its Nest speakers.

The company is referring to Assistant with Bard as an ‘early experiment’ in its current state and that it will be rolling it out to early testers soon to get feedback before bringing it to the public in the next few months.

Details have not been revealed today about how you can opt in to try it but it said to stay tuned as it will be sharing more information soon. The merger of Assistant and Bard was a natural step and something many people will have been wondering about for most of this year since Google launched Bard.

Like other assistants, Google’s Assistant could at times be pretty useless - whether it was because it didn’t catch what you said, or couldn’t provide any information for some reason. Assistant with Bard should be much more helpful, now however, users will need to be on the lookout for false information due to hallucination which generative AI suffers from.

Explaining a bit more how you’ll be able to use Assistant with Bard on Android, Google writes:

Assistant is just one of the many Google services that Bard is being integrated into. The company also wants it available through Gmail, Docs, and Google Search. The rollout is going a bit slowly, though, so it can make its technology better and more responsible.

Have you used Bard yet and are you looking forward to Google baking it into Assistant?

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The official OneDrive blog has an extensive look at what's coming for users with the 3.0 update. One of the major efforts with this update is to make it easier for users to find the stored files they need. That has caused Microsoft to make some design changes to the OneDrive home page on the web.

Microsoft stated:

The new OneDrive Home experience reduces the time to find your files so you can spend more time doing. Our new “For you” area uses AI-powered file recommendations to surface files personalized to you, bringing the most relevant, time-sensitive content to top of your OneDrive. We’ve also added rich, context-based organization, such as views that show you recent, shared, and favorite and files from meetings.

Microsoft also has a new Shared page in OneDrive, where users can see which files are shared by which people and how they were shared. There's also a new People view page, where you can see the files shared with individuals. Other new OneDrive file pages including seeing which files were shared in different meetings, along with filtering files by their specific type.

You can also customize the look of your OneDrive files by changing the colours of different files in the interface, and also by labeling certain files you want to go back to as Favorites. All of these features are available now for Microsoft 365 work and school customers

Microsoft also has a bunch of other OneDrive features it will be adding in the coming months. They include being able to open a file stored in OneDrive on your preferred desktop app. Microsoft is also working on a new Media view where you can see all of your stored photos and videos in one page. There will also be an "Add new" where you can simply create a new document inside OneDrive.

Microsoft also plans to add its Copilot generative AI assistant in OneDrive for Microsoft 365 customers in December. It will let users find the files they need and even summarize them without having to open and look at them.

There's a ton of other new and upcoming OneDrive 3.0 features we didn't mention so be sure to go to the official OneDrive blog for all the info.

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Emoji reactions are coming to a Gmail inbox near you.

Image: Gmail

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The story claims Meta will offer the EU a way to ditch ads on Instagram on their smartphones for $14 a month. It will also offer a way to get rid of ads for both Facebook and Instagram on the desktop for $17 a month. Meta will still keep the ad-based versions for free in the EU.

Previous rumors have popped up about such plans, but this is the first time we have gotten possible info about a timeline and a price tag for the ad-free plans.

Meta is facing a November 30 deadline from European regulators, who claim that it cannot offer services like Instagram or Facebook that take personal data from people so it can show ads to its users without their consent. An option to offer a subscription-based ad-free network could appease those regulators.

Meta has already been hit by a €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) fine by the European Data Protection Board earlier this year. The fine was made due to Meta transferring the personal data of European citizens to Facebook servers based in the US. Meta says it is appealing the decision.

The move to offer subscription-based services on social networks that have previously been completely free to access has been growing for some time. X (formerly Twitter) launched its X Blue service in 2023. It offers quite a few features, including decreased ads, for $8 a month.

This week, another big social network, TikTok, was discovered to have some code threads in its app that could indicate it plans to launch its own ad-free version of the service very soon.

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As reported by The Verge, Nadella stated that he was prepared to give Apple all of the economic upside of a search deal if it made Bing the default. Nadella said such an agreement would cost Microsoft as much as $15 billion a year.

He suggested it’s more about being competitive and less about the money. “We needed to be less greedy and more competitive,” Nadella stated.

Nadella was even ready to hide the Bing name in Apple users' search engines and respect any of the company's privacy wishes, reports The Verge. Currently, Google is the default search engine on Apple devices, and the former apparently pays the latter billions of dollars to maintain that arrangement.

Nadella said he has tried to replace Google as Apple’s default search engine every year since he became CEO in 2014, as reported by Bloomberg. Although that hasn't happened yet, a report revealed Bing may soon replace Google as Firefox's default search engine.

Earlier in the hearing, Nadella also mentioned that Microsoft has spent around $100 billion to build and develop its Bing search engine. He noted the Redmond-based company Microsoft believes it can contribute to the internet search industry, despite lagging behind Google in terms of market share.

I see search or internet search as the largest software category out there. We are a very, very low share player. But we continue to persist in it because we think of it as a software category we can contribute to.

He also addressed Google's market dominance, remarking, "You wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, and your instinct is to search on Google." He further emphasized Microsoft's challenge, stating, "We're competing against someone who holds a 97% share."

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Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, testified on Monday that Google’s power in online search was so ubiquitous that even his company found it difficult to compete on the internet, becoming the government’s highest-profile witness in its landmark antitrust trial against the search giant.

In more than three-and-a-half hours of testimony in federal court in Washington, Mr. Nadella was often direct and sometimes combative as he laid out how Microsoft could not overcome Google’s use of multibillion-dollar deals to be the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers.

The internet is really the “Google web,” Mr. Nadella told the packed courtroom, adding that Google could now use its advantage and scale to build tools to dominate the emerging artificial intelligence industry.

The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking. Mr. Nadella’s testimony underscored how entrenched Google has become in online search as the government seeks to prove that the company broke monopoly laws by forging anticompetitive deals to crush rivals.

Mr. Nadella’s appearance on the witness stand in the case — U.S. et al v. Google, which is the first monopoly trial of the modern internet era — was also a sign that the bitter rivalry between Microsoft and Google continues unfettered. Over more than two decades, the two companies have battled over online search, mobile computing, web browsing and cloud computing, and dueled in multiple legal battles as both became ever more powerful. Now the companies are locked in an increasingly intense fight over A.I.

“Despite my enthusiasm that there is a new angle with A.I., I worry a lot that this vicious cycle that I’m trapped in could get even more vicious,” Mr. Nadella said.

Regulators around the world have been working to rein in the power and reach of Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, arguing it broke antitrust laws by squeezing merchants on its site. The F.T.C. has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, claiming it snuffed out nascent rivals, and the Justice Department has sued Google in a second case over its control of online advertising.

The 10-week Google trial is being closely watched as a referendum on whether the government can slow down Silicon Valley’s biggest companies. A Google victory could be a major rebuke of regulators who say the tech giants have too much sway over their customers, partners and start-up competitors.

At the heart of the government’s case is the contention that Google illegally cemented its monopoly in online search by paying to be the default search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, as well as on the home screen of smartphones. Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like.

But in court, Mr. Nadella said that argument was “bogus” because users generally don’t change their default search engine, even if they can do so.

“You get up in the morning, you brush you teeth and you search on Google,” he said, later adding that the arrangement between Google and Apple in particular was “oligopolistic.”

Mr. Nadella said Microsoft had tried to win deals for the default positions on browsers and smartphones for Bing, its own search engine. But it had not been very successful, he said.

Microsoft introduced Bing to compete against Google in 2009. At the time, Microsoft began an aggressive public relations campaign against Google and both companies lobbied against the other with regulators in Europe and the United States.

In 2016, the public mudslinging seemed to come to an end with Mr. Nadella and Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, who were both new to their roles, declaring a détente. The rivalry had become a distraction, they said, and they had different priorities.

The testimony from Mr. Nadella showed their rivalry had continued. John Schmidtlein, Google’s lead litigator, said in his opening statement that the case was “really all about Microsoft.”

Last week, other Microsoft executives such as Jonathan Tinter, a business development executive, and Mikhail Parakhin, an advertising executive, testified about the search business. Mr. Tinter said that Google used its scale to make its search engine the default on Apple and Samsung phones, stifling competitors like Microsoft.

On Monday, Mr. Schmidtlein sought to undermine Mr. Nadella’s testimony by suggesting that Microsoft’s failure to compete with Google was the result of an inferior product and a lack of investment.

Mr. Schmidtlein hammered Mr. Nadella with questions about instances in which Bing had been the default on mobile phones, only for users to switch back to Google. He noted that Mr. Nadella had referred to Google as “dominant,” and asked him if he could substitute for the word “popular.”

Mr. Nadella said that whether you “call it popular or dominant,” Microsoft was still competing against Google’s massive market share.

“This testimony paints Google as a bully that everyone’s afraid of,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School, adding that it suggested that Google’s motivation for signing exclusive search deals was not “merely sharing revenue for a valuable product with a distributor like Apple, but it is primarily to keep competitors like Bing at bay.”

While much of the trial has revolved around Google’s past behavior, Mr. Nadella shifted some of the focus to the future and A.I. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, which can now use Bing as a search default. Google has begun offering its own A.I.-powered chatbot, Bard.

Mr. Nadella said he was worried that Google would strike deals to exclusively use content online to train its A.I. tools.

“When I am meeting with publishers now, they are saying, ‘Google’s going to write this check to us, and it’s going to be exclusive and you have to match it,’” he said.

Mr. Nadella said that would prime Google to dominate the next generation of online search, too.

“My main worry now, other than my early exuberance about an opportunity that we may have here, is: Is this going to be even more of a nightmare to make progress in search?” he said.

At the end of Mr. Nadella’s appearance, a Justice Department lawyer asked why he thought Google paid Apple so much money to be the default search engine on Apple’s web browser Safari.

“That’s a great question,” Mr. Nadella said. “I would love an opportunity to sort of not have them pay — maybe on behalf of the Google shareholders.”

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While these hearings are usually broadcasted or media is allowed, Google had earlier argued for a veil of secrecy which probably was the reason why media has not been allowed to live-blog the hearing.

However, Bloomberg (Paywall) has now shared some snippets from Nadella's testimony in front of the judge. In the hearing, Nadella mentioned that Microsoft has spent around $100 billion to build and develop its Bing search engine. He also noted that Microsoft believes that it can contribute to the internet search industry, despite being behind Google in terms of market share.

I see search or internet search as the largest software category out there. We are a very, very low share player. But we continue to persist in it because we think of it as a software category we can contribute to.

He further honed in his point noting that he had asked Google to add a feature to transfer ad campaigns from Google to Bing but received no response from the company.

We keep asking for them to add some features we want. They’ve asked us to go pound sand.

He also touched upon the news of Google paying Apple to keep Google Search as the default search on iOS devices. Nadella questioned if Google would continue paying if it were the only player in the market. He also said that Apple was using Microsoft to “bid up the price” it received from Google.

Do you think Google would continue to pay Apple if there was no search competition? Why would they do that?

Satya Nadella also talked about Google's dominance in the market saying, “You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google”. He also told the Google lawyer that Microsoft is "competing against someone who has a 97% share”.

Lastly, as per Reuters, Satya Nadella talked about the user preferences for services as well. He noted that it's easier to switch search engines on desktop and Google has made it complicated on mobile phones.

Changing defaults today is easiest on Windows and toughest on mobile

This connects back to Jonathan Tinter's testimony (Paywall) from last week where he claimed that Microsoft had to concede and make Google the default search engine on its Surface Duo smartphone in order to receive the Android license from Google.

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As the game's release date of October 5 gets close, Ubisoft is trying to keep the mystery of what's actually happening in the game, in terms of its story, from leaking out. In a post on the game's official X (formerly Twitter) account, it pleads with gamers to "refrain from posting or sharing unmarked spoilers that would impact their experience."

The request for no spoilers reminds us of the launch of the first game in the series, way back in 2007. Before the game launched, it was assumed that it took place in the Middle East in 1191.

However, there were hints that there was something else going on in the game's marketing material. It was eventually revealed that the game was set in the future, with the main character accessing his ancestor's genetic memories of that earlier time period. Whether or not that kind of plot twist is coming to Assassin's Creed Mirage is something we will have to wait and see.

Ubisoft has stated the game takes place in 9th-century Baghdad as Basim Ibn Ishaq, who was seen previously in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, learns to become a member of the Assassin Brotherhood.

The game is being released on the PC, Xbox and PlayStation platforms, and you can pre-order the console versions on Amazon. All preorders will get an extra quest, The Forty Thieves. The game will also be released in 2024 for the Apple iPhone 15.

As an Amazon Associate when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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Google has to pay Apple a handsome figure to keep its search engine as the default on Apple products, now that Apple has its own search technology as leverage, it can squeeze greater sums of money out of Google.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is already using its new search technology (codenamed Pegasus) in some of its apps but very soon it will also be arriving on the App Store. One area Apple already couples its search technology with Google Search is in Spotlight where it has previously added the ability to point users to sites that could answer their questions.

While Apple has not launched its own search engine, it has still been very interested in the field. At the end of September, it was reported that Microsoft entered exploratory talks with Apple in 2020 to sell off its Bing search engine to the iPhone maker.

Ultimately, Apple never bought Bing but it has still continued to work on its search abilities for its own software. By maintaining the ability to launch a good search engine, Apple can use it as leverage against Google to make the search firm pay up more money to keep its engine as the default on Apple’s operating systems.

While not the case everywhere, in more affluent countries, iOS makes up a large portion of mobile market share; it’s more popular than Android in some places. As a result, it’s likely Google would pay more money to Apple to remain the default search engine as not doing so could have a significant impact on its traffic.

While it’s still unlikely that Apple will launch a search engine, we cannot forget about Apple Maps. Apple decided to launch this despite the dominant position of Google Maps and could ultimately do the same with a search engine if it wanted to.

Source: Bloomberg

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GTC has become a platform for NVIDIA to unveil its latest innovations in AI and data center technologies. This year may mark the anticipated debut of NVIDIA's next-generation "Blackwell" GPU, explicitly designed for AI workloads.

The Blackwell is rumored to utilize TSMC's 3nm process and introduce a chiplet design to replace previous GPU architectures. It will succeed NVIDIA's current Hopper GPU and is slated to enter production in the second half of 2024.

Previously, we reported that NVIDIA plans to target an overall 1.7x performance boost for its next-generation architecture GPUs. Leaked specs of the flagship RTX 5090 showed bringing the total to a massive 24,576 CUDA cores. That's over 8x the cores of Turing-based RTX 2080.

In the past, NVIDIA has unveiled new AI platforms, software, and cloud services at GTC. This year, attendees will be looking for more information on Blackwell GPUs as well as any other AI-focused announcements from CEO Jensen Huang's keynote.

For those who may not remember, NVIDIA made a number of important announcements at GTC 2023 last year including the expansion of Hopper-based NVIDIA H100 GPUs to be used by companies like Meta and OpenAI for their AI services. The company also partnered with Shutterstock to create 3D models, Microsoft Azure for AI and the Metaverse.

While consumer GPUs often take a backseat, GTC still provides a vision for where NVIDIA is steering the industry. With the rise of generative AI models and an increased focus on AI hardware, GTC 2024 seems poised to provide more details about NVIDIA's strategic AI plans for the coming years.

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Several months ago, Intel had revealed that the Intel Meteor Lake CPUs would release this year itself. However, to everyone’s disappointment, rumors which followed that said that Intel won’t release the Meteor Lake series on desktops.

There’s a good reason to be disappointed by that, too. Architecturally speaking, Intel Meteor Lake is the biggest change in the design of the processor that Intel has made in 40 years.

Meteor Lake Features

Unlike the traditional monolithic processors, Meteor Lake is Intel’s first shift towards chiplet or as Intel calls it, tiles based processor design. In it, Intel puts 4 different chips on a CPU base tile.

The Meteor Lake processors will have at least 4 different tiles. The CPU or the Compute Tile, the SoC tile, the IO tile and the new ARC graphics tile. All that put on top of a new FOVEROS 3D packaging base tile.

But that is not alone, Intel has made so many architectural changes, big and small, in Meteor Lake that some of it is marvelous.

For example, it has introduced a new low powered E-core inside the SoC tile itself. The IO tile too sees PCIe Gen5 and other other connectivity options added to it. It has separated media from graphics, allowing low powered video playback and encoding.

Intel has also designed all the parts of the processor in such a way that all of them can access the memory individually and can be independently enabled or disabled as per the requirement. Not to forget, Meteor Lake is going to be made on Intel 4 node, which is similar to 7nm, but Intel calls it Intel 4 instead.

Those are just some examples of the many changes Intel has made in Meteor Lake, Intel has detailed all these changes in a PDF file found here. We insist everyone to go through it.

So the question is, if it’s so good. Is it coming to desktop PCs.

Confusion Over Intel Meteor Lake On Desktop

PCWorld had managed to interview (YouTube), via VideoCardz, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Executive Vice President & General Manager of Client Computing Group at Intel.

In the interview, when asked about whether Intel Meteor Lake would come on desktop, she revealed that yes, it’s coming on desktops in 2024.

This statement came as a surprise to many. Because everyone knew that while the Meteor Lake architecture is going to continue forward by being used in Arrow Lake CPUs, the Meteor Lake CPUs themselves are made more for notebooks. Because they are aiming power efficiency, rather than improvement in performance.

To add to that, it’s well known that Intel is going to release the Raptor Lake Refresh series later this year and Arrow Lake is going to come later next year. So where’s the place for Intel to release Meteor Lake CPUs on desktops.

Later, in a clarification (translated) to German publisher ComputerBase, Intel said this:

Meteor Lake is a power efficient architecture that will power innovative mobile and desktop designs, including desktop form factors such as All-in-One (AIO). We will have more product details to share in the future.

Basically, what Intel is saying is that by desktop, it meant to say only All-in-One (AIO) PCs and likely even Mini PCs will get these new Meteor Lake CPUs. Not traditional desktops where one can buy CPUs, boards and other parts individually to make a desktop.

It must be mentioned that these AIOs and Mini PCs could come with Meteor Lake mobile processors soldered on the board, allowing no customization.

So with this clarification, Intel has basically said that no, Intel Meteor Lake is not coming on traditional desktops.

This goes along the line of the earlier rumors that said that Meteor Lake for desktop has been canceled and whatever wafers they made, they made it for the mobile processors to be in used in notebook and others.

Conclusion

For us, we are confused why Intel doesn’t come out and clarify it outright. That no, it’s not coming on traditional desktops, as we have something even better waiting for them in Arrow Lake series of CPUs. Not sure why this ambiguity.

In all, from the looks of it, for everyone to get their hands on the new tile based architecture for desktops, they would need to wait till later parts of next year when Intel releases the new Arrow Lake series of processors.

Meanwhile, Intel has announced that it has begun high volume production of Intel 4 process node on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, which is the most advanced method of manufacturing the latest generation of chips. This also means, in simple words, Intel has started the mass-production of Meteor Lake CPUs using the very latest technology available.

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When Nvidia GeForce released the RTX 4000 series, there was one graphics card which ruled all the discussion, the RTX 4090.

The flagship RTX 4090 came with a massive performance increase over the previous-gen RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti.

In fact, so powerful the RTX 4090 is, that it still remains unmatched when it comes to competition. Even AMD’s flagship RX 7900 XTX barely comes near it in some games.

The ray tracing performance of RTX 4090 too is so powerful that no other graphics card is expected to rival it for now.

But what about its successor, the RTX 5090. So far, we do know that the RTX 5000 series will be made by TSMC on a 3nm process. We also know that it’s unlikely for the RTX 5000 series to be released before 2025.

However, so far we had no proper information about the specs of the next-generation of the graphics cards by Nvidia. Now we do.

RTX 5090 Specs Leak

One of the most well known leaker, @kopite7kimi on Twitter, has shared some early specs for the GPU which could possibly power the RTX 5090.

In it, he reveals that the GB202 GPU, which is most likely the GPU which will be used by desktop based RTX 5090 graphics card, will come with a 12*8 specification.

In a reply to that tweet, Sebastian Castellanos explains things further:

This means that the GB202 GPU will come with 192 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) in total. This is a 28% increase in SM counts over the AD102 GPU used in the RTX 4090. However, the RTX 4090 didn’t come with a fully enabled GPU and came with just 128 SMs.

VideoCardz mentions that these 192 SMs translate to 24,576 CUDA cores, which is an increase over the 16,384 CUDA cores found in the RTX 4090. Increasing the core count by 40% which is massive if it turns out to be true.

Additionally, when asked about the memory bus width, @kopite7kimi has revealed that this new GPU will come with a 512-bit memory bus. This allows the RTX 5090 to come with about 32GB of VRAM.

Conclusion

To put it simply, the RTX 5090 could come with a performance increase of at least 28%. Add potential SM redesign, increase in clock speed, bandwidth and cache. This could mean that the RTX 5090 could be very powerful.

Not to forget, the RTX 5090 graphics card can potentially come with 32GB of VRAM. For now, we don’t know whether Nvidia will use GDDR7 or will stick to GDDR6X instead. If it does go with GDDR7, then expect even better performance.

It must be again mentioned, though, these GPU specs could be changed later. Take RTX 4090 for example. As mentioned before, the RTX 4090 doesn’t use a full sized AD102 GPU.

Instead, it uses a cut-down version of the GPU with some amount of SMs and hence CUDA cores disabled. Allowing a room for Nvidia to release 4090 Ti if required.

However, for now, it’s unlikely for AMD to provide a massive challenge to Nvidia’s flagship graphics card. Either way, AMD is rumored to not release any flagship model in its next-gen graphics card.

Having said all this, as always, all these are just rumors. Even if true, which they are, going by the history of the leaker, expect Nvidia to change the specs of the graphics card like Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and others in the RTX 5000 series.

However, expect more and more rumors to come out on it.

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More than two decades ago, the original Counter-Strike game was launched. The original game started as a multiplayer mod of Half-Life game, which later got bought by Valve, which also hired the developers of the mod.

Also known as CS 1.6, it was the first iteration of a game series which later went onto to become one of the most iconic multiplayer game series of PC gaming. It was also among the first games that were available on Steam’s launch day, which celebrated its 20th anniversary about 15 days ago.

Valve later released its successor Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, which received mixed reviews. Valve quickly released Counter-Strike: Source, which was a remake of the original Counter-Strike on the Source engine.

The biggest recent name in the series in the recent times, however, came in the name of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which was also known as CS:GO and was released more than a decade ago.

CS:GO not only got favorable reviews, but it remained among the top played game on Valve’s Steam gaming client and store. This was boosted by the fact that it had become a free to play game in a few years ago.

So after the success of CS:GO, everyone were wondering when will Valve release its successor. It did. Valve officially released Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) to everyone.

Counter-Strike 2 Released

Counter-Strike 2 – Launch Trailer By Valve.

After some leaks and rumors, Valve announced a pre-release version of Valve’s next-generation upgrade of Counter-Strike. On 22nd March of this year, Valve introduced Counter-Strike 2 for a limited number of testers.

After staying several months in a limited pre-release, Valve on 28th September, officially released Counter-Strike 2 for everyone.

To those who are unaware, CS2 is a massive graphical upgrade to CS:GO with same overall gameplay. Basically, Valve has remade CS:GO in Source 2 game engine. Valve explains it as:

The next era of Counter-Strike is here.

Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come.

Counter-Strike 2 is a free upgrade to CS:GO. So build your loadout, hone your skills, and prepare yourself for what’s next.

To take it further, CS2 comes with a New CS Rating system which measures the player performance.

CS2 also comes with new Smoke Grenades, which are now dynamic volumetric objects that interact with the environment, and react to lighting, gunfire, and explosions. This changes the gameplay and creates new opportunities.

CS2 also comes with an improved tick-rate by introducing sub-ticks. This means that the gameplay is more responsive.

Additionally, as far as maps are concerned, some maps are completely overhauled, some are upgraded, some have been re-touched.

CS2 also comes with new Hi-Def VFX, in which Valve claims that from UI to gameplay, all visual effects have been reimagined. This means even items come with new and better lighting.

Not to forget, even audio has been improved by reworking and rebalancing.

Conclusion

To the disappointment of many, CS2 is not a massive upgrade over CS:GO when it comes to gameplay. It’s basically a replacement with an upgraded graphics, which does looks good.

This is also proved by the fact that Valve has replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s official store page on Steam with Counter-Strike 2, which means CS:GO is completely unavailable for anyone to play. Valve has posted a questions and answers page to explain some things about the new game.

As far as performance of the new game is concerned, TechPowerUP has done a good benchmarking of the game on 40 GPUs and it seems to perform really nice on all of them.

CS2 does seem to have its own share of issues, cheaters being one of them. However, overall, recommend everyone to try it once. After all, it’s free to play for everyone gaming on a PC.

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About a few years ago, Nvidia released the very first iteration of Deep learning super sampling (DLSS). While the reviews weren’t that welcoming, Nvidia followed it with DLSS 2 graphics upscaling technology, which was welcomed and praised by many.

If an upscaler wasn’t enough, Nvidia released DLSS 3 a year ago, with frame generation, which basically added additional frames, with an intention to improve the frame rates of the games further.

The problem with DLSS, however, is that it runs only on Nvidia graphics cards, that too only on RTX versions, not GTX ones. DLSS 3 takes it even further, where it runs only RTX 4000 series graphics cards.

In reply, AMD too came with its own upscaling technology named FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). The first version left everyone really wanting. AMD then followed it up with FSR 2, which was a massive upgrade over FSR 2 in terms of quality. However, it’s still not a competition to Nvidia’s DLSS 2.

The thing about FSR 2 is that while game support is required, AMD has kept it open for all. Meaning, any graphics cards with a good capability can run it, as it’s not exclusive to just AMD ones. This means even Nvidia GTX version of graphics cards can run it and so can Intel ones.

So everyone thought, when is AMD going to release the next version of its upscaler, the FSR 3. Today it has done so.

FSR 3 Officially Released

AMD had teased FSR 3 almost a year ago. However, it released more information about the FSR 3 about a month ago when it announced the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards.

In a written announcement, AMD mentioned both the challenges and requirements to be able to run it. However, it didn’t give us the exact date for its release.

Yesterday, in a surprise announcement, Frank Azor of AMD tweeted that AMD FSR 3 is going to release today.

In an official blog post, AMD explains how FSR 3 improves upon FSR 2. Simply put, FSR 3 adds its own version of frame generation, which AMD claims runs not just on the desktop but all kinds of hardware. Not only that, AMD claims it allows 60FPS games to run at 120FPS.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 First Look, Which Was Released A Month Ago

It basically inserts artificially generated frames between frames to increase the frame rate. This is a very complicated process, which AMD has explained in detail in that blog post.

For now, two games have received a support for FSR 3. With more games to follow soon.

Reviews And Performance

As the FSR 3 was released without any prior announcement, many reviewers were surprised by it. Some were even amused that AMD provided no pre-release samples to them or provided some materials for them to try. So as the release is new, there aren’t enough reviews available for it right now.

However, German publisher Hardwareluxx.de, via Andreas Schilling, has tested (translated) it.

Additionally, Sebastian Castellanos on Twitter too seems to have tested it. It’s worth checking out.

VideoCardz says that AMD has officially released some charts about the performance. Update: These charts can be found here.

In our opinion, AMD FSR 3 provides a good flexibility. It works on virtually all kinds of graphics cards, provided that the game supports it.

Frame generation too seems to be working as intended, however, don’t expect it to run on cheaper or outdated graphics cards, as AMD doesn’t recommend it.

However, the flexibility does come at a cost. Don’t expect FSR 3 to match DLSS 3 in image quality. DLSS 3 works on a hardware specifically dedicated for it. Whereas FSR 3 uses graphics card’s own processing power to do so.

Expect more games, hundreds of them, to add a support for it. Honestly, it gives a good option to the users to decide what they want to use.

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It may be difficult to separate the company’s business motivations from potential attempts to preempt the structural relief pursued by the FTC in the case, which was filed this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

But as one example, Amazon’s decision to axe a previously planned 2% surcharge for its rebooted Seller-Fulfilled Prime program came just days before the FTC suit was filed — perhaps not coincidentally running counter to one of the core themes in the subsequent antitrust complaint.

It’s part of a broader trend of Amazon making decisions and launching programs more favorable to sellers, says Jason Boyce, a former seller who has been critical of the company’s policies and practices in the past.

“Undoubtedly, there’s some pressure coming from the FTC case,” he says. Internal factors, including changes in Amazon’s executive leadership, may also be playing a role in the changes. But ultimately, he says, Amazon sellers don’t care about the company’s motivations, as long as it keeps listening and addressing their challenges.

Long term, Boyce says he hopes the case will help spur Amazon to do even more for sellers, rethinking its own far-flung corporate ambitions (i.e, brick-and-mortar stores, OneMedical, Project Kuiper, Prime Video, etc.), and applying its financial resources instead to restructuring the fundamental economics of its flagship e-commerce marketplace.

“Sellers would love to see lower fees,” he says. “I’d love to see it for my clients. … Maybe this pressure will help.”

Amazon’s seller fees, and the impact on consumer prices, are core to the dispute between the FTC and the company.

• The FTC says the company’s tactics “allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”

• Amazon says the “practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store.”

That’s one of the angles we explore on this week’s GeekWire Podcast, as we dive deep into the landmark lawsuit. Boyce, the co-author of “The Amazon Jungle,” host of the Day 2 podcast, and CEO of Avenue7Media. Boyce offers a unique perspective on Amazon’s practices and the broader e-commerce landscape, drawing from his 17 years of experience as a seller and his current role working with third-party sellers.

We discuss the implications of the lawsuit for Amazon, consumers, and sellers in the context of the changing dynamics of online retail. We also touch on Amazon’s evolving relationship with sellers, the challenges of omni-channel retail, and the rise of new online marketplace competitors. 

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Table of contents:

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

Windows 11

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

The Windows 11 Moment 4 update is finally available (KB5030310 or 22621.2361) with plenty of great changes and useful features. Check out our guide detailing how to upgrade to the latest feature update without waiting for Microsoft to install Moment 4 on your PC automatically. The update is available for manual installation only and will become mandatory in November.

As for Windows 11 version 23H2, it will arrive later this year as an enablement package with no changes to hardware requirements.

In addition to the new features in Moment 4, Microsoft unveiled a few extras:

• Instant games in the Microsoft Store. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Multiple developer-related changes and new features.
• Security improvements and other enhancements for IT admins and enterprise users.

Those living in the European Union might be tempted to try Copilot, Microsoft's latest AI-powered assistant integrated into the Windows 11 Moment 4 update. Sadly, it is not available for EU residents yet. As it turned out, Microsoft has restricted access to Copilot due to the Digital Markets Act. Those upset with this can work around the limitation with one simple trick. As the meme says, the EU hates it!

By the way, if you do not like Copilot and want to remove it from your system, check out this guide describing how to turn off Windows Copilot in Windows 11.

Another weird thing in the Moment 4 update is File Explorer, namely its address bar. Users discovered that the redesigned app no longer allows dragging files and folders onto the address bar. Microsoft said few people actually use this tool, which is why it is no longer available.

Although the Moment 4 update was the biggest Windows news this week, Microsoft also released a few extra optional non-security updates for Windows 11 and Windows 10:

• Windows 11 version 21H2: KB5030301 or 22000.2482. This is the final non-security update for the initial Windows 11 release, which will reach its end of life next month.
• Windows 10 version 22H2: KB5030300 or 19045.3516.

Following the release of the Moment 4 update, the news broke out about Microsoft closing a loophole that allowed activating Windows 11 with old Windows 7/8/8.1 keys. Although those still work with the current Windows 11 version from the Stable Channel, old license keys are no longer valid for activating Canary builds (version 24H2 and newer). Besides, those still sticking to the good old Windows 7 and not-so-good Windows 8 cannot update to Windows 10 anymore—after eight long years, that path is now closed.

Windows Insider Program

Here are the latest preview builds released for Windows 11 Insiders:

• Dev Channel: 23555 with minor improvements and bug fixes. Do not expect much from preview builds these days since Microsoft has just released a big Windows 11 feature update.
• Release Preview: version 23H2 is now available for testing with only one Chat-related change.

Windows Insiders in the Dev and Canary Channels can download yet another big update for Paint. The app received the rumored generative AI support called "Cocreator." It is available for insiders in the United States, France, the UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, and Germany.

This week, more information about Wi-Fi 7 support in Microsoft's operating systems emerged. Contrary to the previous belief, it seems that Wi-Fi 7 and 6GHz network support might be exclusive to Windows 11 and whatever comes after it. Support articles published by Intel and Netgear revealed that you might need to leave Windows 10 behind to benefit from the latest Wi-Fi standard.

On the controversial side, we have KB5030211 installing the new Windows Backup app on systems running Windows 10 LTSC. Needless to say, IT admins are not happy about it. Although they do not mind Microsoft bringing the app to "regular" consumers with home PCs, installing Windows Backup on managed devices with no easy way to get rid of it is slightly irritating.

To finish the Windows 11 section, here is a new unconventional laptop called LG Gram Fold. It is a 17-inch Windows 11 tablet with a foldable display capable of turning into a 12-inch laptop. LG Gram Fold will rival the recently announced HP Spectre Foldable with a relatively similar price tag. Sadly, LG Gram Fold will only be available in South Korea, and those living there should prepare to shell out 4.99 million won or roughly $3,700, a hardly shocking price considering that the foldable PC market is still in its infancy.

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.

Mozilla Foundation released a feature update for its desktop browser. Version 118 is now available in the Release Channel with automated web content translation (local processing), font improvements, video effects support in Google Meet, and other changes to make your non-Chromium browsing better.

In addition to a substantial feature update for Windows 11, Microsoft announced several improvements for OneDrive. Work and school customers will soon get new tools for preventing accidental file deletions, better shortcut management, updated sync settings, and more.

There are also new official virtual machines with Windows 11 and various developer tools. Version 2309 is now available for download from the official website, letting everyone try the latest Windows 11 updates (Moment 4 is not there yet) without purchasing a license key or installing the operating system locally. You can use Microsoft's virtual machines without activation for 90 days.

Microsoft continues updating Bing Chat and its components with new features and technology (after failed negotiations with Apple about selling Bing to the Cupertino company). This week, the company rolled out DALL-E 3 support, giving users access to the latest version of OpenAI's image generator.

However, it is worth noting that modern AI chatbots are still extremely far from perfect. According to a report published by Malwarebytes, Bing Chat sometimes serves malicious ads to its customers. One example of such behavior is the service giving a link to a malicious website instead of serving a legitimate website of the requested software.

Here are other notable updates released this week:

• PowerToys 0.74 with Text Extractor 2.0, stability fixes, and other minor changes for multiple utilities.
• Windows Subsystem for Android 2309 Preview with graphics improvements, .cer support, new APIs, security patches, and more.
• Groupy 2.12 with improved compatibility, better tab management, and enhanced localization.
• Skype Insider 8.105 with reworked chat management, better conversation pinning, and more.
• ExplorerPatcher 22621.2361.58.1 with taskbar fixes and patches for explorer.exe crashing on Windows 11.
• WingetUI 2.1.0 with performance improvements, source filtering, custom source support, and more.

Microsoft was very busy updating its Surface devices with new firmware this month. This week, five more Surface models received the September 2023 update:

• AMD-powered Surface Laptop 4 got charging stability improvements, fixes for boot issues, and security patches.
• Surface Book 3 received battery and power performance stability improvements.
• Surface Go 3 now works better with its LTE modem and GPS.
• The fifth-generation Surface Pro got patches for security vulnerabilities.
• Surface Duo 2 received a similar update offering only general Android security fixes.

And here are the latest drivers released this week:

• AMD Radeon Software 23.9.3 with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Payday 3 support.

Finally, here is our weekly Microsoft 365 Roadmap recap detailing the upcoming features, such as dictation support in Outlook for the web, offline support for the new Outlook for Windows, branded launcher screen support for Teams Premium users, SharePoint List templates, and more. We have also prepared a roundup of features added to Microsoft Teams in September 2023.

Reviews are in

Here you will find software and hardware reviews published on Neowin this week.

We got a chance to review the GEEKOM Mini IT13 this week. It is a small desktop computer with serious horsepower under its compact, well-built aluminum case. The PC features a 13th gen Intel Core i9, 32GB of RAM, and up to 2TB storage, with plenty of ports to connect your accessories, monitors, and external devices.

On the gaming side

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

Starfield opens the gaming section with an update delivering performance improvements and bug fixes, something the game cannot have enough of. Version 1.7.33 fixes characters, star stations, vendors, missing suns on AMD-powered systems, stability issues, and more.

Kerbal Space Program 2, another space-exploring game, made it to this week's news headlines. However, unlike Starfield, the headlines are not-so-positive. Gamers discovered that the early access game is flooding the Windows Registry with tons of junk data. Developers have already acknowledged the problem and promised to release a hotfix.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's cloud streaming service, received 27 new games this week. You can now play Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Quake II, Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector, Amnesia: Rebirth, and other titles without investing in a modern Xbox or gaming PC.

However, those into first-person shooters with relatively capable gaming computers can check out Counter-Strike 2, Valve's latest creation and the successor to the critically acclaimed Counter-Striker: Global Offensive. As it usually goes with hot new titles, be sure to install the latest graphics driver to get the most out of your PC hardware.

Moving from good news to less exciting, we have the upcoming release of Cities: Skylines 2. This week, developers announced a surprising delay, pushing the console launch from October 24 to Spring 2024. However, the PC version is still coming next month. Colossal Order said that the studio needs more time to reach its quality targets, hence such a drastic delay.

Mojang also announced that Minecraft Dungeons would no longer receive new content and updates. In a blog post on the official Minecraft website, the studio revealed that Minecraft Dungeons amassed more than 25 million players. After multiple DLCs and content updates, Mojang is ready to end Minecraft Dungeons support to give its team "the freedom to keep exploring the types of games they are passionate about."

On the hardware side, Microsoft updated its Design Lab with new options for top cases, allowing gamers to personalize their controllers with new shimmering variants. Note that the new gradient options will bump the final price by $9.99.

Also, Xbox owners can download a new software update for their consoles. The second September 2023 update delivers a better OneDrive integration, allowing you to move, manage, and bulk upload captures from your Xbox to OneDrive. There is also a new way to quickly get up to date on any new content or in-game events.

Finally, here is a small weird PSA for Xbox owners: do not try insider trading using Xbox 360 chat. The FBI has arrested a man allegedly involved in insider trading and sharing information using online chat on Microsoft's old Xbox 360 console. The FBI still got the crim, even though he thought no one could trace his conversations.

Deals and Freebies

Here are the games you can get for free or with notable discounts this week. The Epic Games Store is giving away Soulstice, an action RPG, and Model Builder, a simulator that lets you assemble scale models in a virtual hobby room.

This week's Weekend PC Game Deals series includes indie bundles shoot 'em up festivals, free events, and big deals for popular titles.

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.

John's "Look back" articles from this week are about Microsoft's Office apps, namely Excel and Word. On September 30, 2023, the world's most popular spreadsheet manager turned 38. What started as a program for Macintosh amid the sea of popular alternatives eventually became one of the most successful cross-platform Office apps.

As for Word, released on September 29, 1983, Microsoft initially planned to call the app "Multi-Tool Word." However, the company decided to go for a shorter name and include a free demo with the November 1983 issue of the PC World magazine. Microsoft Word was the first software bundled with print media.

Another mind-boggling fact about Word from 1983 is its price. What now costs $6.99/mo and includes a few more Office apps would set you back almost $500 40 years ago.

Random fact about Microsoft

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

Although Windows ME, released in 2000 and superseded by Windows XP in just one year, is mostly considered a flop, it introduced several important features and system components we still use. For example, we often recommend creating a restore point before messing with Windows' internals using ViVeTool or similar apps. Did you know Windows ME was the first to offer the System Restore feature? It also introduced System File Protection, a silent background process guarding protected files from modification or corruption.

However, despite offering new utilities to safeguard your PC experience, Windows ME was infamous for its instabilities and frequent crashes, leading to a poor reputation among users and relatively quick demise compared to other, far more successful releases.

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You can use the following links to quickly jump to the device you need:

Surface Book 3 | Surface Go 3 | Surface Pro 5

What is new in the Surface Book 3 September 2023 firmware update?

• Improves battery and power performance stability.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

The Surface Book 3, Microsoft's once most powerful and quirky laptop-tablet combo, will remain supported until April 1, 2025.

What is new in the Surface Go 3 September 2023 firmware update?

• Improves LTE modem stability and GPS experience.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

Microsoft will continue releasing firmware updates with new drivers for the Surface Go 3 until at least October 5, 2027.

What is new in the Surface Pro 5 firmware update?

• This update addresses potential security vulnerability and improves system stability.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

The fifth-generation Surface Pro and its LTE variant is the next Surface device to reach its end of life. According to Microsoft, support will end on January 15, 2024.

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He said the company wants to take on more staff to work in artificial intelligence (AI).

It comes a day after Fortnite-maker, Epic Games, announced it was cutting 16% of its workforce.

Big firms including Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft have cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2022.

Mr Cook has been critical of the trend of tech layoffs and in May, he called it a "last resort".

Instead, he told the PA news agency when asked about AI and jobs in the UK: "We're hiring in that area, yes, and so I do expect [investment] to increase."

Companies are pouring money into AI. Amazon announced an investment of up to $4bn (£3.3bn) in San Francisco-based AI firm Anthropic on Monday.

That followed Microsoft's multibillion dollar investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI in January.

Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan said Apple's decision was "another vote of confidence in our burgeoning tech sector".

"Apple's ongoing investment in brilliant British talent highlights our global credentials as both an AI and technology superpower," she wrote on X, the microblogging site formerly known as Twitter.

Antony Walker, deputy chief of techUK, the industry association, said: "The transformative nature of AI will certainly boost staff headcount in AI businesses over the next couple of years."

But he added: "In the long term, the skills need of the AI-powered economy of the future is harder to predict. That is why businesses and government should work together on a long-term strategy that puts training in digital skills and lifelong learning at the core."

Meanwhile, Tim Pullan, CEO of ThoughtRiver, which provides AI for legal professionals, said he thought the global economy was at the start of "an AI-driven revolution".

"It's vitally important that the UK is at the forefront of this transformation," he said.

"As a country, we have huge potential to grow as an AI superpower, and I'm sure this is the start of a trend which will see more and more companies looking to take advantage of the UK's deep tech expertise, and the UK benefiting from the investment and innovation that this will bring."

Copyright concerns

Mr Cook said AI was behind several prominent features on Apple devices, such as software that detects if a person has fallen or been in a crash, as well as more commonly-used tools such as predictive typing.

"It's literally everywhere on our products and of course we're also researching generative AI as well, so we have a lot going on," he said.

Generative AI - artificial intelligence which can create media based on text prompts - continues to be a target of investment for big firms despite widespread concerns over its impact of copyright, or ownership.

That is because the software "learns" by analysing a massive amount of data often sourced online and people are concerned it draws on their copyrighted work.

It has led to high-profile lawsuits in the US, with authors George RR Martin and John Grisham suing OpenAI over claims their books were used to train the system.

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Under the agreement announced in April, the two companies aimed at starting mass production of the display in 2025, with HKC covering the costs for factory construction and JDI offering technological expertise.

But the Japanese company has decided to scrap the tie-up as some of its clients voiced concern over the plan in which HKC will play a leading role in the operation of the factories, JDI said.

The Japanese company still plans to build factories in China under a new scheme in which its customers shoulder some of the construction costs.

The display maker said it has decided to set up two factories in Anhui Province in eastern China.

The factories will produce a new type of EL display called eLEAP, which was developed by JDI and is of a higher quality than existing models in terms of brightness and product life.

"Our customers told us they want to buy directly from JDI," the company's CEO Scott Callon said in Japanese at an online press conference. "We will secure competitive production sites."

While canceling the tie-up, JDI will continue talks with HKC over a potential collaboration in the development of displays for cars, the company said.

© KYODO

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But in the race to decarbonize long-haul trucking, the niche technology is still stuck in the slow lane.

The Mercedes-Benz GenH2 truck started its demonstration run at the group's factory in Woerth am Rhein on Monday afternoon, near the border with France, and arrived in the German capital on Tuesday morning.

The prototype truck made the trip fully loaded on only one fill of liquid hydrogen, similar to what a diesel-powered truck can do.

Unlike planet-warming diesel however, the hydrogen fuel cell technology used in the truck emits only water vapor.

"You're showing that a heavy load can be transported over a long distance in a sustainable manner," Petra Dick-Walther, state secretary for economic affairs in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate region, said at the departure ceremony.

Germany's Daimler Truck, one of the world's biggest truckmakers, said the feat of cracking the 1,000-kilometer range marked "another milestone" for hydrogen-powered driving.

But the technology has plenty of hurdles to overcome before going mainstream.

Hydrogen fuel is produced through water electrolysis but is only considered "green" if the electricity required for the process is obtained from renewables such as wind or solar power.

Hydrogen produced using coal or natural gas is more widely available but less environmentally friendly.

Technical challenges, high costs and a lack of infrastructure have all slowed the advance of clean hydrogen.

German firms such as Daimler Truck and engineering giant Bosch are nevertheless betting that hydrogen has a role to play in slashing road transport emissions, alongside battery-powered electric vehicles.

"To decarbonize transport, we need both," said Andreas Gorbach, head of technology at Daimler Truck who drove the GenH2 across the finish line himself.

The "sweet spot" for hydrogen trucks lies in particularly demanding long-distance haulage, he said, whereas battery-electric trucks do well on planable routes with plenty of charging options.

Daimler Truck is aiming for series production of hydrogen trucks in "the second half of the decade", Gorbach added.

But he said the hydrogen breakthrough will depend on two major factors: the rollout of refueling stations, and "the availability of green energy at a competitive cost".

Under current European Union rules, truckmakers have to cut emissions of new trucks by 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2019 levels.

But European Commission said earlier this year it was eying tougher cuts of 45 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2040.

On top of the regulatory pressures, truck manufacturers face growing international competition as the battle to supply zero-emissions trucks heats up.

According to a recent study commissioned by campaign group Transport and Environment (T&E), European truckmakers "could lose 11 percent of the EU market to international electric rivals by 2035" if they don't go green faster, with the likes of Tesla and China's BYD snapping at their heels.

American company Nikola, a Bosch customer, has already begun mass production of its hydrogen-powered heavy-duty truck in the United States, benefiting from climate subsidies under President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

In August, Nikola reported a total of 202 orders from 18 customers.

To share out the costs of a hydrogen rollout, Daimler Truck has partnerships with other truckmakers and energy companies such as Shell, Total and BP to install refueling stations in Europe and the United States.

Bringing down the price tag of expensive hydrogen will be key to its success.

Rainer Mueller-Finkeldei, head of Mercedes-Benz Trucks product development, estimates that the infrastructure will be in place by 2030 and that the total cost of buying and operating hydrogen trucks will eventually be "similar" to diesel trucks.

But according to the campaign group T&E, it could take until 2040 for hydrogen trucks to reach cost parity with diesel.

Both will be more expensive than battery electric trucks by then, its calculations showed.

© 2023 AFP

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