• Google is making “significant” cuts to its recruiting organization and as it pulls back on hiring.

• “It definitely isn’t a conversation any of us wanted to have again this year,” a recruiting vice president at Google said in a video meeting announcing the layoffs.

Google  is cutting hundreds of jobs in its global recruiting organization as part of a broader pullback in hiring over the next several quarters, CNBC has confirmed.

“We unfortunately need to make a significant reduction to the size of the recruiting organization,” Brian Ong, Google’s recruiting vice president, told employees in a Wednesday video meeting, a recording of which was obtained by CNBC.

“It’s not something that was an easy decision to make, and it definitely isn’t a conversation any of us wanted to have again this year,” Ong said. “Given the base of hiring that we’ve received the next several quarters, it’s the right thing to do overall.”

Employees involved in the recruiting group reductions will receive emails starting Wednesday, Ong said. 

In January, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs, affecting roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. The layoffs occurred across the company, including in Google’s recruiting organization. While Google has been in cost-cutting mode since last year, Alphabet reported a 7% increase in second-quarter revenue, which was better than analysts expected.

Ong also said that employees hit in the latest layoffs will retain access to offices this week and online systems for longer. Employees had previously criticized the company for abruptly cutting off access to those who lost their jobs in January.

Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokesperson, confirmed the cuts in an email to CNBC.

“We continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,” Mencini wrote. “In line with this, the volume of requests for our recruiters has gone down. In order to continue our important work to ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team.”

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USB-C is a small, versatile connector for mobile and portable devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones. It transfers data at high speeds, transmits video signals and delivers power to charge devices’ batteries. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. The C refers to the third type, following types A and B.

The USB Implementers Forum, a consortium of over 1,000 companies that promote and support USB technology, developed the USB-C connector to replace the older USB connectors as well as other types of ports like HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA. The aim is to create a single, universal connector for a wide range of devices.

The key features and benefits of USB-C include a reversible connector that you can insert in either orientation. It also allows some cables to have the same connector on both ends for connecting between devices and connecting devices to chargers, unlike most earlier USB and Lightning cables.

USB-C’s widespread adoption in the electronics industry is likely to lead to a universal standard that reduces the need for multiple types of cables and adapters. Also, its slim and compact shape allows manufacturers to make thinner and lighter devices.

USB-C refers to the physical connector. Connectors use a variety of data transfer protocols – sets of rules for formatting and handling data – such as the USB and Thunderbolt protocols. USB-C supports USB and Thunderbolt, which makes it suitable for connecting laptops, smartphones, tablets, monitors, docking stations and many other devices.

The latest USB protocol, version 4, provides a data transfer rate of up to 40 gigabits per second, depending on the rating of the cable. The latest Thunderbolt, also on version 4, supports up to 40 gigabits-per-second data transfer and 100 watts charging. The newly announced Thunderbolt 5 will support up to 80 and 120 gigabits-per-second transfer and 140 to 240 watts power transfer over a USB-C connector.

Why USB-C matters

Due to the fragmented nature of technology evolution, computer users a decade ago were struggling with too many connectors: USB for data; power cables for charging; HDMI, DisplayPort or VGA for video; and Ethernet for internet. This called for an industrywide effort to convergence on an all-purpose connector.

Since its introduction in 2014, USB-C has gained widespread popularity and has already become the connector of choice for most non-Apple devices. Apple converted the iPad Pro to USB-C in 2018 and now is doing the same for the best selling Apple device, the iPhone. Some market forecasts suggest there will be close to 4 billion USB-C connector sales by 2025 and 19 billion by 2033.

Thanks to the industrywide adoption of USB-C, consumers soon won’t have to ask “Is this the right connector?” when they reach for a cable to charge or sync their portable devices. And if you’re an iPhone user and find yourself with a new model, you can recycle your no-longer-needed Lightning cables by, for example, bringing them to an Apple store.

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By Glennda Chui

Billions of tiny particles packed into rechargeable lithium-ion battery electrodes are responsible for storing charge and making it available when it’s needed to do work. X-ray movies of this process show the particles absorbing and releasing lithium ions as the battery charges and discharges.

Now, in an important step forward, researchers have used a type of machine learning called “computer vision” to dig even deeper, analyzing each and every pixel of those X-ray movies to discover physical and chemical details of battery cycling that couldn’t be seen before. 

The new method has already suggested a way to make the billions of nanoparticles in one type of lithium-ion battery electrode store and release charge more efficiently, researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Toyota Research Institute reported in Nature today. 

“Until now, we could make these beautiful X-ray movies of battery nanoparticles at work, but the movies were so information-rich that understanding the subtle details of how the particles function was a real challenge,” said William Chueh, a Stanford associate professor, SLAC faculty scientist and director of the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, who co-led the study with MIT Professor Martin Bazant.

“Now we can extract insights that were not possible before,” Chueh said. “This is the kind of fundamental, science-based information that our partners in industry need to develop better batteries faster.” 

More broadly, the researchers said, this approach to discovering the physics behind complex patterns in images could even provide unprecedented insights into other types of chemical and biological systems, such as cells dividing in a developing embryo.

See-through batteries give up their secrets

The battery particles the research team studied are made of lithium iron phosphate, or LFP. They’re packed by the billions into the positive electrodes of many lithium-ion batteries, each one coated with a thin layer of carbon to improve the electrode’s electrical conductivity.

To watch what’s happening inside the battery while it operates, Chueh’s team builds tiny, transparent cell batteries in which two electrodes are surrounded by an electrolyte solution full of free-moving lithium ions. 

When the battery discharges, lithium ions flow into the positive LFP electrode and lodge inside its nanoparticles like cars in a crowded parking garage, in a reaction called intercalation. When the battery charges, they flow back out again and travel to the opposite, negative electrode.

“Lithium iron phosphate is an important battery material due to low cost, a good safety record and its use of abundant elements,” said Brian Storey, senior director of Energy and  Materials at the Toyota Research Institute, which funded the work at SLAC and MIT. “We are seeing an increased use of LFP in the electric vehicle market, so the timing of this study could not be better.” 

Chueh and Bazant started collaborating on battery research eight years ago. Bazant had already done a lot of mathematical modeling of patterns formed by lithium ions as they move in and out of LFP particles. Chueh had been using an advanced X-ray microscope at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source to make nanoscale movies, with details as small as billionths of a meter, of battery particles at work. 

In 2016, their research teams published groundbreaking nanoscale movies of how lithium ions flow in and out of individual LFP nanoparticles. 

A team from SLAC, Stanford, MIT and Toyota Research Institute used machine learning to re-analyze X-ray movies like this one pixel by pixel and discover new physical and chemical details of battery cycling. This animation is based on X-ray images the team made in 2016. It shows some of the billions of nanoparticles in a lithium-ion battery electrode charging (red to green) and discharging (green to red) as lithium ions flow in and out of them, and reveals how uneven the process within a single particle can be. (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Then, with funding from Toyota Research Institute, the team started using machine learning tools developed at MIT to dramatically accelerate both battery testing and the process of winnowing down many possible charging methods to find the ones that work best. They also combined conventional machine learning, which looks for patterns in data, with knowledge gained from experiments and equations guided by physics to discover and explain a process that shortens the lifetimes of fast-charging lithium-ion batteries.

A pixel-by-pixel analysis

In this latest study, Chueh and Bazant used a subfield of machine learning called computer vision to mine more detailed information from 62 of the nanoscale X-ray movies they made in 2016 of LFP particles charging or discharging. Each still image from those movies contained roughly 490 pixels – the smallest units of information that can be obtained from an image, whether it’s made with X-ray light hitting a detector or with visible light hitting a smartphone camera. This gave them about 180,000 pixels of information to work with.

The team used those 180,000 pixels to train their computational model to produce equations that accurately described how the lithium insertion reactions proceed. They discovered that the ions’ movements within the LFP particles closely matched the predictions of Bazant’s computer simulations.

“Every little pixel in there is jumping from full to empty, full to empty,” Bazant said. “And we’re mapping that whole process, using our equations to understand how that's happening.” 

The new technique has revealed several phenomena that couldn’t be seen before, including variations in the rate of lithium insertion reactions in different regions of a single LFP nanoparticle. “There are regions that seem to be fast,” Bazant said, “and others that seem to be slow.”

The paper’s most significant practical finding – that variations in the thickness of an LFP particle’s carbon coating directly control the rate at which lithium ions flow in and out – could lead to more efficient charging and discharging. 

What the scientists learned from this study, Bazant said, is that it’s the interface between the liquid electrolyte and the solid electrode materials – where the intercalation reaction and variations in the thickness of the particles’ carbon coating interact in complicated ways – that controls battery processes. “That means that our focus should really be on engineering that interface,” he said. 

Toyota Research Institute’s Storey added, “This publication is the culmination of six years of dedication and collaboration. This technique allows us to unlock the inner workings of the battery in a way not previously possible. Our next goal is to improve battery design by applying this new understanding.”  

This article is based on a press release from MIT.

Hongbo Zhao, a former MIT graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, and MIT Professor Richard Bratz also made major contributions to this study, which was supported by the Toyota Research Institute through the Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery program. The Advanced Light Source is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

Citation: Hongbo Zhao et al., Nature, 13 September 2023 (10.1038/s41586-023-06393-x)

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Rogue Trader takes place in the Koronus Expanse region of the Warhammer 40k universe. Players assume the role of a Rogue Trader, authorized by the Empire to explore uncharted territories and trade between alien worlds. They must navigate the dangers that threaten the Empire while seeking fortune and glory.

The game will offer an open-ended experience with meaningful player choices that can impact how the story unfolds. Players will recruit a variety of unique companions to their crew, including a Space Marine from the Space Wolves chapter.

These companions will provide different skills and abilities to aid the Rogue Trader. Players can develop relationships with their companions and explore their backgrounds. Successful missions will earn rewards that can be used to upgrade a player's ship and crew.

While the main focus of Rogue Trader remains a single-player campaign where players take on the role of an up-and-coming trader, the developer has confirmed it will feature a co-op mode. This mode will be available on PC at launch and arrive later on consoles.

The Warhammer 40k universe and CRPG fans have new adventures to look forward to this coming December when it launches on major consoles, PC and Mac. You can sign up now for the game's open beta.

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The UK government has announced it will build a £900 million (US$1.1 billion) supercomputer, to drive the country’s AI research and innovation capabilities.

The supercomputer, dubbed Isambard-3 after the 19th century British civil and mechanical engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is set to be installed at the National Composites Centre in Bristol later this year. The University of Bristol is home to the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Interactive Artificial intelligence and is part of the GW4 group of universities — an alliance of research-intensive universities that also includes Bath, Cardiff and Exeter.

Bristol University will also host the new AI Research Resource (AIRR or Isambard-AI), a national facility to help support AI research and promote the safe use of the technology. Both the supercomputer and AIRR are financed by the by the AI investment announced the government announced in March.

The machine will be “made up of thousands of state of the art graphics processing units (GPUs)” making it “one of the most powerful in Europe,” according to a statement from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in a statement on Wednesday.

“We are backing the future of British innovation, investing in a world-leading AI Research Resource in Bristol that will catalyse scientific discovery and keep the UK at the forefront of AI development,” said Michelle Donelan, secretary of state for Science, Innovation and Technology, in comments posted alongside the announcement.

“The Isambard-AI cluster will be one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, and will help industry experts and researchers harness the game-changing potential of AI, including through the mission-critical work of our Frontier AI Taskforce,” she said.

Asked about system details including number of cores and processor types, a spokesperson for the University of Bristol said that it is too early to confirm details about the supercomputer's specifications.

The university, however, already offers several supercomputer clusters for research purposes, and notes that they all run Linux. Its BlueCrystal Phase 4 system is primarily meant for large parallel jobs that use Nvidia P100 GPUs, and offers 32 GPU nodes with two cards each. It also has 525 Lenovo compute nodes that use Intel E5-2680 v4 (Broadwell) CPUs. 

Upcoming summit to focus on benefits and risks of AI

The Isambard-AI announcement comes a month and a half before the UK hosts its global AI Safety Summit on November 1 and 2 at Bletchley Park.

First announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in June during a visit to Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden, the summit aims to bring together government officials, AI companies, and researchers to consider the risks and development of AI technologies and discuss how they can be mitigated through internationally coordinated action.

At the summit, attendees will focus on a number of objectives, including putting forward a process for international collaboration on AI safety, identifying areas for potential collaboration on AI safety research, and showcasing how the development of AI will enable the technology to be used for good.

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"First, an enormous thank you to all of you playing Starfield and your support. We are absolutely blown away by the response and all you love about the game," said the company in a blog post today. "We’re also reading all your great feedback on what you’d like to see improved or added to the game."

Bethesda explains that even if some of the popular fan requests, such as the availability of city maps for instance, won't be fulfilled immediately, it plans to support the game with updates and features for "years and years".

"Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for," adds the company. It confirmed today that upcoming patches will include things like built-in Brightness and Contrast controls, HDR Calibration, an FOV Slider (which can already be done via file tweaks), and ultra-wide monitor support.

While some fans already have hacked in Nvidia DLSS support for the title, Bethesda will also be implementing the upscaling tech in a future update. A quality of life feature that's requested by many, a button to simply eat the food players encounter in their travels instead of storing them is incoming too. The company is also working with AMD, Nvidia, and Intel for further driver optimizations.

Alongside all this, the studio has pushed out Starfield's first post-launch update today. Version 1.7.29 brings performance improvements and a few bug fixes:

PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY

• Xbox Series X|S Improved stability related to installations.

• Various stability and performance improvements to reduce crashes and improve framerate.

QUESTS

• All That Money Can Buy: Fixed an issue where player activity could result in a quest blocker.

• Into the Unknown: Fixed an issue that could prevent the quest from appearing after the game is completed.

• Shadows in Neon: Fixed an issue where player activity could result in a quest blocker.

Official modding support for PC and Xbox consoles was also announced as coming in early 2024, something which Bethesda head Todd Howard already confirmed recently.

Starfield is out now across PC, Xbox Series X|S, as well as across Xbox and PC Game Pass subscription services.

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The new update brings support for PS Remote Play on more Android devices. It also adds new voice command options (only in the US and the UK) and new PS app enhancements, allowing to react to messages with emojis and see a preview of someone’s Share Screen before joining the party on PS App.

Here’s the detailed changelog shared by Sony:

PS Remote Play support on additional Android devices

• PS Remote Play allows you to stream games from your PS5 or PS4 console to another device – including smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android), PCs and Mac – over the internet or through your home network. This provides you with more options to enjoy your favorite games even when you’re away from the living room.*

• Starting today, the PS Remote Play app will be available on devices running Android TV OS 12.**

• Here are the verified devices so far:

  • Chromecast with Google TV (4K model)

  • BRAVIA XR A95L model

• To use Remote Play on these devices, search for the PS Remote Play app on your Android device to download and install the app.

• To learn more about PS Remote Play, visit PlayStation.com.

New Voice Command options (U.S. and U.K. limited release)

• Voice Command has been improved.

  • Say “Hey PlayStation, help” to activate Help content. You can now navigate between help content pages using Voice Command.

  • Say “Hey PlayStation, what’s new?” and you can now check for new PS5 features and see the current PlayStation Plus monthly games lineup.

• Note: Voice Command (Preview) is currently available in English for PS5 players with accounts registered to the U.S. and U.K.

New PS App enhancements

Later this month, we’ll also gradually roll out some new features for PS App globally, on iOS and Android. Just like the PS5 console updates, you’ll be able to react to messages with emojis and see a preview of someone’s Share Screen before joining the party on PS App.

As mentioned, the update also includes features from the latest PS5 beta, including using a second DualSense controller for assistance and new audio options that allow 3D Audio powered by Tempest 3D AudioTech. In addition, PS5 players will now have new ways to connect with other players and customize their multiplayer sessions. SSD capacity has also been expanded to 8TB.

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Two decades ago, after a year in pre-release testing phrase, a certain PC gaming client’s stable version was finally released to the public.

That software completely changed the future of PC gaming. On 12th of September 2003, Steam was officially released by Valve.

Steam Turns 20: A journey

In 2002, Valve was getting tired of finding that whenever there was an update to a multiplayer game, the players wouldn’t be able to play that game for days because they hadn’t installed the new update.

Then Valve decided something was required to streamline those updates so that they could reach common users faster. In addition to that, providing DRM and anti-cheat in multiplayer was becoming important too. This is how Steam was born.

Internally named Grid and Gazelle, an initial pre-release version of Steam was announced and released to the public on 22nd March 2002 at the Game Developer Conference. The pre-release version’s user base had reached about 300,000 players thanks to the games and mods it hosted.

Then, on 12th of September 2003 Steam’s stable version was officially released to the public. Though not without issues. The software and the site were buggy and kept crashing.

Half-Life 2’s Release

The biggest breakthrough for Steam came a year later, when Valve released what is considered to be one of the greatest games ever made. The Half-Life 2 was released digitally on Steam.

Speaking from personal experience, the Steam client in its iconic green colour back then was, politely speaking, absolutely bad. It was buggy, slow, kept crashing and kept using the computer’s resources.

If it wasn’t for Half-Life 2 (also its free demo) requiring it, some of us would have never downloaded it or ever made an account on Steam. But we are very happy that we did.

More Games Join

After that, more gaming companies started selling games on Steam.

This included game makers like id Software (Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake), Eidos Interactive (Tomb Raider), Capcom, Ubisoft, THQ, Bethesda, Activision and even EA.

All of them added their games one after another, year after year. Since then Steam hasn’t looked back.

Modern Day PC Gaming Legend

Throughout the years, Steam has received updates to improve itself. From UI to performance, to game delivery to reviews, to streamlined game purchase to regional pricing, to user profiles and chatting with each other, Steam has set a standard that is unmatched.

Ask anyone to buy a game on PC and the first thing that will come to mind is to purchase it through Steam. Most companies will link to their Steam page in the purchase link for their PC version. So great is its influence that Steam has almost become synonymous with PC gaming.

Sure, it has its rivals, like GOG, Epic Store and stores run by game developers themselves. But none of them can match the features and user-friendliness of Steam. These days, even gaming companies that had earlier stopped selling on Steam to sell on their own are being virtually forced to release their games on Steam. This is because of the large number of users and buyers Steam has, which, as per Valve, goes above 120 million active monthly users.

Steam has its fair share of issues and controversies, too. For example, for years, its support has not been that great. Then there are also issues like Steam not giving (even) higher share of revenues to gaming companies and such. But those things are nothing in comparison to how big Steam really is.

Steam numbers

To just take things further it’s important to mention how big Steam is. As per Valve, Steam has:

• Crossed the 33,000,000 mark for concurrent users.
• Allowed 83,000 new first-time purchasers every day of the previous year.
• Had 44.7 exabytes of total data downloaded by players. That’s about as much data as if every one of the 8 billion people on planet Earth downloaded a 5.5 gigabyte game.

Not Just A Gaming Client

Over the years, Steam has evolved itself above just being a gaming client. Valve has used the Steam brand to launch many products.

This includes the SteamOS, which has brought PC gaming to Linux. Steam Link, which allows players to play games owned on Steam on their mobile devices and other displays by streaming them via Wi-Fi.

It has used the Steam name on various hardware too. Like the Steam Controller, which is a great gamepad made to act like a mouse and a gaming controller together. Not to forget SteamVR, Valve’s hardware entry into virtual reality gaming.

However, the biggest Steam name is the massively popular Steam Deck. It is a handheld gaming device rivaling the likes of the Switch by Nintendo and others that allows one to play PC games on the go. While it’s still not available everywhere in the world, it’s currently among the most sought-after handheld gaming devices everywhere.

20 Years Celebration

To celebrate the 20 years of Steam, Valve has released a small video on YouTube.

In fact, they have even dedicated a page to celebrate and showcase their 20 year journey. With a special piece for each year.

They have a good reason too. Afterall, in the 20 years of their, they have changed how PC gaming works.

Let’s hope Valve continues to improve Steam further and it remains one of the most important PC gaming client and store out there.

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Microsoft’s latest sustainability report revealed that the software giant’s water usage saw a tremendous spike between 2021 and 2022. In 2021, the company used up 4,772,890 cubic meters of water. In 2022 that went up to 6,399,415—which is around a 30 percent increase from one year to the next. That’s almost 1.7 billion gallons of water in just one year, which is enough to fill more than 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Why did Microsoft draw so much freaking water? Data centres that run AI supercomputers are hot. Equipment heats up, and if a centre overheats, those computers can shut down. The increase in water use is directly tied to the company’s investment and development of AI. Microsoft has backed OpenAI, which has a data centre in Des Moines, Iowa. During the summer months, the centre has to use a ton of water to keep equipment cool, especially as Iowa experiences rising temperatures due to climate change.

The water is drawn from nearby watersheds including the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers to cool the supercomputer that develops AI systems, the Associated Press reported. However, local waterways also provide drinking water for nearby communities. The volume used by the data centres has become a concern for the local utility company, West Des Moines Water Works.

A document from the utility dated April 2022 outlined that officials and the utility will only “consider future data centre projects beyond Microsoft Data Center Project Ginger East and West” unless the new projects can significantly lower their water usage. “This approach to resource conservation will help preserve the water supply for current and future commercial and residential needs of West Des Moines,” the document read.

Google, another tech giant that has heavily invested in AI products, has also seen a spike in water usage. An environmental report released this July outlined that the company’s water usage increased about 20% from 2021 to 2022. “We’re working to address the impact of our water consumption through our climate-conscious data centre cooling approach and water stewardship strategy,” a spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email this July.

As the planet becomes warmer, it may become harder for large tech companies to cool facilities. Many data centres are in cooler locations like the Pacific Northwest and states like Iowa in the upper Midwest, but neither location has been spared from heat waves.

Other tech companies have experienced challenges with keeping their centres online during especially hot weather. Last September, equipment at then Twitter’s data centre in Sacramento shut down during a heat wave. Increased instances of heat waves due to the climate crisis have also plagued data centres overseas. Last July, Google and Oracle’s London-based data centres went offline as England baked through sky-high temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius.

Want more climate and environment stories? Check out Earther’s guides to decarbonizing your home, divesting from fossil fuels, packing a disaster go bag, and overcoming climate dread. And don’t miss our coverage of the latest IPCC climate report, the future of carbon dioxide removal, and the invasive plants you should rip to shreds.

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The tech giant confirmed later that it would indeed be holding such an event next month, on the third, and also shared a very brief glimpse of what people could expect at the event. These include "new enhancements to OneDrive, benefits of faster file access, better organization, simpler collaboration, and improved file security across Microsoft 365". And of course, there will be announcements regarding AI-based features as well.

While it is possible that Microsoft will reiterate features already available, it does seem like there will be a healthy dose of new stuff too. One of those might be about a new Offline mode for the web that the company is working on at the moment. This option will be a welcome addition since Microsoft 365 services including OneDrive often experience outages, with the most recent one being earlier this month.

The Microsoft 365 roadmap has some details on this upcoming feature. The description of it reads:

OneDrive: Offline mode

This feature will allow you to launch OneDrive in your browser and view, sort, rename, move, copy, delete and files even without internet access. Additionally, for locally stored OneDrive files (those that are marked as “always available offline”) you will be able to open and work on these in your browser even if you are offline. All of the changes you make offline will be automatically synced back when Internet connection is restored.

According to the M365 roadmap, the preview version of the OneDrive offline mode will be out in November 2023, with the general availability planned for a month later in December 2023. The feature ID of this is 168618 and it was added earlier today.

On a somewhat related note, we do hope Microsoft has plans for something similar for Windows 11 setup too as users require a working internet. However, chances of that might be slim seeing how the company is moving more on more towards a cloud PC future.

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Back in June, AMD and Bethesda announced that the former would be the exclusive PC partner for Starfield. What this essentially meant was the highly anticipated space action RPG would be optimized for AMD hardware, i.e., Radeon GPUs on the graphics side and Ryzen on the CPU side. And while this is generally true in terms of framerate output on the graphics side, users of AMD Radeon GPUs almost all over the internet are complaining that the game does not render the sun on their RX 6000 or RX 7000 series cards.

Perhaps the issue may present on older Polaris-based RX 400 and 500 series too, as well as RDNA 1-based RX 5000 GPUs.This is not a problem on Nvidia GeForce GPUs as the sun is rendered correctly on such PCs, while on Radeon systems, apparently, the sky or things are illuminated without the source, which is the sun, even being there.

The issue was brought to the attention by a Reddit user Seblique when they noticed no sun in their sky on Starfield. Soon others on Steam also began picking up on the issue as well though interestingly there are a few who claim they do not have the bug.

The best example of the problem at hand was provided by a Reddit user Yorax who uploaded demonstrative examples of the same scene one on AMD that has no sun and the other on Nvidia where the sun is clearly visible:

If you guessed the screenshot on the top was captured on an AMD card you would be right though this is hardly a challenging test as the two images, despite being taken at the same place in the Skybox, are completely different as the sun is completely absent on one.

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What you need to know

• For as good a game as Starfield is at its core, the PC gaming community hasn't all been too thrilled with its performance. 
• A YouTuber has run some tests with a PCIe 5.0 SSD that shows even the absolute fastest storage you can get still isn't enough. 
• After many took exception to Bethesda's Todd Howard saying we should just upgrade our PCs, what exactly are we supposed to upgrade to?!

Starfield is certainly the hot topic in gaming land right now and while a lot of it is fun (it is, after all, a good game at its core), the PC gaming community has been poking and prodding at the game quite a bit. This latest video that has surfaced shows something pretty remarkable, and that's a suggestion even the absolute fastest storage a consumer can buy right now isn't necessarily enough for this game. 

Surfaced on Reddit, the video from Compusemble on YouTube shows Starfield being played on a system with a brand spanking new, ridiculously fast PCIe 5.0 SSD. And yet, the system is still hitting the wall. 

The video below demonstrates what seems to be happening with the "traversal stutter" and that it might not just be down to your CPU when it occurs. 

The testing in the video suggests that in some larger cities in Starfield, SSD usage is hitting 100%, followed by a drop in GPU usage and then stuttering. To think a PCIe 5.0 SSD is being maxed out is pretty crazy. More curious is that the throughput is apparently far below the maximum that the SSD is capable of, and a comparison is drawn later with Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Here, the throughput is higher, but SSD usage is much lower. 

Presumably, per Todd Howard's "upgrade your PC" approach, we're going to need as yet unreleased hardware for Starfield? 

Jokes aside, it's interesting data. There's also another thread on Reddit which summarizes some other interesting information that could allude to another reason behind disappointing PC performance.

It does feel like Starfield's PC version has been a bit of an afterthought, and I think it'd be fair for a lot of PC gamers to feel a little hard done by. Those with the absolute most powerful beastly rigs are probably having a great time, but the rest of us, aka, the masses, do have legitimate reasons to feel disappointed. Trust me, I'm an Intel Arc user, I feel all the pain. 

While we wait for PCIe 6.0 SSDs, so we can upgrade our rigs to handle Starfield, it would be nice if instead of sound bites from the developer, we got some kind of commitment to make the game better. I don't know about you, but I'd definitely prefer that. 

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The game also launched without any official mod tools. However, in a translated interview with the Japanese website Famitsu, the head of Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, confirmed that "Mod support will be available next year" for the game.

Details about the official mod support for Starfield were not discussed in the interview. The developer has included mod support for both Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with its Creation Club system.

It allows mod makers to create content for these games. They are available to download via an in-game library for the console versions of these games as well as the PC versions. Mods are usually free to download for players but mod creators do get paid if they go through the Creation Club and opt in for a priced option.

Having said that, the release of Starfield has already generated a number of unofficial mods for the PC version of the game. The best way to get these mods is to go to the NexusMods community site, where you can download and install its Vortex Mod Manager app.

One of the most popular mods is the Starfield Upscaler. It allows users to replace AMD's FSR2 with Intel's XeSS or, more importantly, to NVIDIA's DLSS technology. That means PC owners with NVIDIA GPUs should get a nice frame rate boosts at higher resolutions. So far, there's no word when or IF Bethesda Game Studios will add support for DLSS to Starfield.

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What you need to know

• Embracer Group, owner of Gearbox, is reported to be weighing options, including a full sale, for the Borderlands developer. 
• Embracer bought Gearbox in 2021 in a deal valued around $1.4 billion. 
• The news comes less than two weeks after Embracer decided to close Volition of Saint's Row fame. 

Embracer Group made a fast name for itself by scooping up studios and IP galore, but in recent times things have taken a sour turn. 

Less than two weeks after the news Embracer was shutting down Volition Games, many of whose staff ended up being moved to Gearbox, a story from Reuters claims that Gearbox itself could be next on the chopping block. 

"The maker of Tomb Raider video games, whose shares are traded in Stockholm, is working with Goldman Sachs and Aream & Co to explore a sale, the people said.

Embracer is weighing selling the unit, which is known for first-person shooter game Borderlands, after receiving interest from third parties, two of the people said."

It doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion with Embracer weighing options, but the report goes on to claim that there are already third-parties interested, as well as marketing materials produced for interested suitors. 

Embracer is no stranger to the headlines, with its vast acquisition strategy scooping up not just Gearbox, but other studios including Square Enix's western portfolio and taking control of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex IPs. But a more recent development saw the company lose out on a $2 billion deal and the dropping share price that followed. 

Gearbox is clearly a golden goose in the Embracer stable, with its most famous franchise the much-loved Borderlands. More recently we've seen Gearbox publish Remnant 2, and it also has the rights to the Risk of Rain IP. Gearbox and Borderlands would certainly attract a few buyers with their wallets wide open. 

The question is...who would buy it? Microsoft? Sony? Someone else? I guess we'll have to wait and see how it all pans out. 

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The gameplay clip on YouTube shows some of the 500 high-end vehicles that will be featured in the game, along with a few of the 20 tracks, and some of the game's customization features. The final part of the clip shows a full race against other AI drivers at the Grand Oak Raceway, with the player driving the 2018 Honda Civic.

The clips also shows off the 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray driving a practice lap through the Maple Valley track, along with the very fast 2023 Cadillac V-Series.R racecar during an endurance event on the Hakone track in Japan.

The new blog post talks about a number of the new gameplay features in the Forza Motorsport reboot. It states:

We have built a new gameplay loop where you are constantly learning through play and improving yourself on the track in a fun and approachable way. You are getting comfortable with a car and the nuances of a stock car really come out in a way that they haven't since Forza Motorsport 1 through 4. The new physics brings out the differences in all these cars so you’re not just learning how to drive a car, but how to race it through traffic and pass your opponents.

After those opening races shown in the new gameplay clip, you will be able to drive in any of the game's different modes: Builders Cup Career Mode, Featured Multiplayer, Free Play, or Rivals.

Forza Motorsport is due out on October 10 for the Standard Edition for the PC, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles, and will also be included in Xbox Game Pass. If you preorder the Premium Edition, you can play five days earlier.

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

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These days, cars are computer centers on wheels. Today’s vehicles can contain over 100 computers and millions of lines of software code. These computers are all networked together and can operate all aspects of your vehicle.

It’s not surprising, then, that car theft has also become high-tech.

Table of contents [hide]

1 The ones and zeros of getting from A to B
2 Hijacking wireless keys
3 Hacking the network
4 Throwback attack
5 Limiting your car’s vulnerability

The ones and zeros of getting from A to B

The computers in a vehicle can be divided into four categories. Many computers are dedicated to operating the vehicle’s drive train, including controlling the fuel, battery or both, monitoring emissions and operating cruise control.

The second category is dedicated to providing safety. These computers collect data from the vehicle and the outside environment and provide functions like lane correction, automatic braking and backup monitoring.

The third category is infotainment systems that provide music and video and can interface with your personal devices through Bluetooth wireless communications. Many vehicles can also connect to cellular services and provide Wi-Fi connectivity. The final category is the navigation system, including the car’s GPS system.

Computers in one category often need to communicate with computers in another category. For example, the safety system must be able to control the drive train and the infotainment systems.

One difference between the network in your car and a typical computer network is that all devices in the car trust each other. Therefore, if an attacker can access one computer, they can easily access other computers in the car.

As with any new technology, some aspects of today’s cars make it harder for thieves, and some make it easier. There are several methods of stealing a car that are enabled by today’s technology.

Hijacking wireless keys

One of the high-tech features is the use of keyless entry and remote start. Keyless entry has become common on many vehicles and is very convenient. The fob you have is paired to your car using a code that both your car and fob know, which prevents you from starting other cars. The difference between keyless entry and the remotes that unlock your car is that keyless entry fobs are always transmitting, so when you get near your car and touch the door, it will unlock. You had to press a button for old fobs to unlock the car door and then use your key to start the car.

The first keyless fobs transmitted a digital code to the car, and it would unlock. Thieves quickly realized they could eavesdrop on the radio signal and make a recording. They could then “replay” the recording and unlock the car. To help with security, the newest fobs use a one-time code to open the door. https://www.youtube.com/embed/rx5mjOEixMY?wmode=transparent&start=0 Thieves can hijack your car’s wireless key fob even when it’s in your home.

One method of stealing cars involves using two devices to build an electronic bridge between your fob and your car. One person goes near the car and uses a device to trick the car into sending a digital code used to verify the owner’s fob. The thief’s device sends that signal to an accomplice standing near the owner’s home, which transmits a copy of the car’s signal. When the owner’s fob replies, the device near the house sends the fob signal to the device near the car, and the car opens. The thieves can then drive off, but once they turn the car off they cannot restart it. Carmakers are looking to fix this by ensuring the fob is in the car for it to be driven.

Hacking the network

The network used by all computers in a car to communicate is called a controller area network bus. It’s designed to allow the computers in a car to send commands and information to each other. The CAN bus was not designed for security, because all of the devices are assumed to be self-contained. But that presumption leaves the CAN bus vulnerable to hackers.

Your car has a computer network, and like most networks, it can be hacked. Electronic control units (ECUs) are sets of computer chips that control the various systems in your car. Khatri, Shrestha and Nam, CC BY

Car thieves often try to hack into the CAN bus and from there the computers that control the car’s engine. The engine control unit stores a copy of the wireless key code, and thieves can clone this to a blank key fob to use to start the victim’s car. One method is accessing a car’s onboard diagnostics through a physical port or wireless connection meant for repair technicians. Thieves who access the onboard diagnostics gain access to the CAN bus.

Another network hacking method is breaking through a headlight to reach the CAN bus via a direct wiring connection.

Throwback attack

Modern thieves also try the USB hack, which exploits a design flaw in Hyundai and Kia vehicles. This is more of an old-style hot-wiring of a car than a high-tech computer issue. It is named the USB hack because when thieves break into a car, they look for a slot in the steering column. It turns out that a USB connector fits into the slot, and this allows you to turn on the ignition.

So all someone has to do is break the window, insert a USB connector and start the car. This technique has become infamous thanks to a loose affiliation of young car thieves in Milwaukee dubbed the Kia Boyz who have gained notoriety on TikTok.

Hyundai and Kia have issued an update that closes the vulnerability by requiring the fob to be in the car before you can start it.

Limiting your car’s vulnerability

Given there are so many different car models, and their complexity is increasing, there are likely to continue to be new and creative ways for thieves to steal cars.

So what can you do? Some things are the same as always: Keep your vehicle locked, and don’t leave your key fob in it. What is new is keeping your vehicle’s software up to date, just as you do with your phone and computer.

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The trial in a landmark antitrust case against Google is scheduled to start on Tuesday in Washington district court over charges of monopolizing the online search space.

The suit, filed by the US justice department in 2020, represents the biggest legal challenge to the power and influence of big tech in decades, and could be a bellwether in the fight against the industry’s monopolies.

“The Google search trial will be hugely consequential for our digital world where the outcome will determine how millions of Americans access and use the internet,” said Katherine Van Dyck, senior counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a non-profit that filed a motion to make court proceedings public due to the importance of the case.

The justice department has accused Google of using its market power to unfairly lock out rivals and position itself as a gatekeeper of the web. The case marks the first brought by the government against Google to go to trial. The justice department has also joined a separate case against Google brought by the attorneys general of 38 states and territories over monopoly concerns in advertising.

Google has denied wrongdoing in both cases and did not immediately respond to request for comment. The justice department did not immediately comment.

In filings unsealed last month, Judge Amit P Mehta tossed out a handful of charges brought against Google, narrowing the case in a slight victory for the company. He said Google was not required to defend itself against charges that the design of its search results page has harmed rivals such as Expedia or Yelp.

Still, Mehta allowed some of the more significant charges to proceed, including key arguments that Google’s exclusive contracts with phone manufacturers allegedly harmed competitors. The department alleges the company pays billions each year to “secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors”.

Mehta said in an opinion unsealed in August that Google’s “brand name has become so ubiquitous that dictionaries recognize it as a verb”. He said Google in 2020 had nearly 90% of market share and advertisers spend over $80bn annually alone to reach general search users.

“A company with monopoly power acts unlawfully only when its conduct stifles competition”, Mehta wrote.

The judge said the justice department is required to show that each particular action – for example, how Google handles search advertising – is a violation of antitrust law. This means that the government cannot show a string of actions and argue that these cumulatively break antitrust law.

“We look forward to showing at trial that promoting and distributing our services is both legal and pro-competitive,” said Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, in response to Mehta’s decision.

While big tech has remained largely unscathed over the past few decades of unfettered success, lawsuits including these against Google could mark a changing of the tides. Attorneys general filed an antitrust suit against Meta that was thrown out earlier this year. The Federal Trade Commission, under new antitrust leader Lina Khan, also filed a suit against Amazon earlier this year.

The outcome of the Google case, the first major one of its kind to have its day in court, could be seen as a sign of to what extent those tides will turn.

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ACROSS A STERILE white table in a windowless room, I’m introduced to a woman in her forties. She has a square jaw and blonde hair that has been pulled back from her face with a baby-blue scrunchie. “The girls call me Marmalade,” she says, inviting me to use her prison nickname. Early on a Wednesday morning, Marmalade is here, in a Finnish prison, to demonstrate a new type of prison labor.

The table is bare except for a small plastic bottle of water and an HP laptop. During three-hour shifts, for which she’s paid €1.54 ($1.67) an hour, the laptop is programmed to show Marmalade short chunks of text about real estate and then ask her yes or no questions about what she’s just read. One question asks: “is the previous paragraph referring to a real estate decision, rather than an application?”

“It’s a little boring,” Marmalade shrugs. She’s also not entirely sure of the purpose of this exercise. Maybe she is helping to create a customer service chatbot, she muses.

In fact, she is training a large language model owned by Metroc, a Finnish startup that has created a search engine designed to help construction companies find newly approved building projects. To do that, Metroc needs data labelers to help its models understand clues from news articles and municipality documents about upcoming building projects. The AI has to be able to tell the difference between a hospital project that has already commissioned an architect or a window fitter, for example, and projects that might still be hiring.

Around the world, millions of so-called “clickworkers” train artificial intelligence models, teaching machines the difference between pedestrians and palm trees, or what combination of words describe violence or sexual abuse. Usually these workers are stationed in the global south, where wages are cheap. OpenAI, for example, uses an outsourcing firm that employs clickworkers in Kenya, Uganda, and India. That arrangement works for American companies, operating in the world’s most widely spoken language, English. But there are not a lot of people in the global south who speak Finnish.

That’s why Metroc turned to prison labor. The company gets cheap, Finnish-speaking workers, while the prison system can offer inmates employment that, it says, prepares them for the digital world of work after their release. Using prisoners to train AI creates uneasy parallels with the kind of low-paid and sometimes exploitive labor that has often existed downstream in technology. But in Finland, the project has received widespread support.

“There's this global idea of what data labor is. And then there's what happens in Finland, which is very different if you look at it closely,” says Tuukka Lehtiniemi, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, who has been studying data labor in Finnish prisons.

For four months, Marmalade has lived here, in Hämeenlinna prison. The building is modern, with big windows. Colorful artwork tries to enforce a sense of cheeriness on otherwise empty corridors. If it wasn’t for the heavy gray security doors blocking every entry and exit, these rooms could easily belong to a particularly soulless school or university complex.

Finland might be famous for its open prisons—where inmates can work or study in nearby towns—but this is not one of them. Instead, Hämeenlinna is the country’s highest-security institution housing exclusively female inmates. Marmalade has been sentenced to six years. Under privacy rules set by the prison, WIRED is not able to publish Marmalade’s real name, exact age, or any other information that could be used to identify her. But in a country where prisoners serving life terms can apply to be released after 12 years, six years is a heavy sentence. And like the other 100 inmates who live here, she is not allowed to leave.

Hämeenlinna PrisonCOURTESY OF RISE

When Marmalade first arrived, she would watch the other women get up and go to work each morning: they could volunteer to clean, do laundry, or sew their own clothes. And for a six hour shift, they would receive roughly €6 ($6.50). But Marmalade couldn’t bear to take part. “I would find it very tiring,” she says. Instead she was spending long stretches of time in her cell. When a prison counselor suggested she try “AI work,” the short, three-hour shifts appealed to her, and the money was better than nothing. “Even though it’s not a lot, it’s better than staying in the cell,” she says” She’s only done three shifts so far, but already she feels a sense of achievement.

This is one of three Finnish prisons where inmates can volunteer to earn money through data labor. In each one, there are three laptops set up for inmates to take part in this AI work. There are no targets. Inmates are paid by the hour, not by their work’s speed or quality. In Hämeenlinna, around 20 inmates have tried it out, says Minna Inkinen, a prison work instructor, with cropped red hair, who sits alongside Marmalade as we talk. “Some definitely like it more than others”. When I arrive at the prison on a Wednesday morning, the sewing room is already busy. Inmates are huddled over sewing machines or conferring in pairs over mounds of fabric. But the small room where the AI work takes place is entirely empty until Marmalade arrives. There are only three inmates in total who regularly volunteer for AI shifts, Inkinen says, explaining that the other two are currently in court. “I would prefer to do it in a group,” says Marmalade, adding that she keeps the door open so she can chat with the people sewing next door, in between answering questions.

Those questions have been manually written in an office 100 kilometers south of the prison, in a slick Helsinki coworking space. Here, I meet Metroc’s tall and boyish founder and CEO, Jussi Virnala. He leads me to a stiflingly hot phone booth, past a row of indoor swings, a pool table, and a series of men in suits. It’s an exciting week, he explains, with a grin. The company has just announced a €2 million ($2.1 million) funding round which he plans to use to expand across the Nordics. The investors he spoke with were intrigued by the company’s connection to Finland’s prisons, he says. “Everyone was just interested in and excited about what an innovative way to do it,” says Virnala. “I think it’s been really valuable product-wise.”

It was Virnala’s idea to turn to the prisons for labor. The company needed native Finnish speakers to help improve its large language model’s understanding of the construction-specific language. But in a high-wage economy like Finland, finding those data laborers was difficult. The Finnish welfare system’s generous unemployment benefits leaves little incentive for Finns to sign up to low-wage clickwork platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. “Mechanical Turk didn’t have many Finnish-language workers,” says Virnala. At the same time, he adds, automatic translation tools are still no good at Finnish, a language with only 5 million native speakers.

When Virnala pitched his idea to Pia Puolakka, head of the Smart Prison Project at Finland’s prison and probation agency, she was instantly interested, she says. Before the pandemic, another Finnish tech company called Vainu had been using prisoners for data labor. But Vainu abruptly pulled out after a disagreement between cofounders prompted Tuomas Rasila, who had been in charge of the project, to leave the company.

By the time Virnala approached her with his proposal in 2022, Puolakka was eager to resurrect the AI work. Her job is to try and make the relationship between Finnish prisons and the internet more closely resemble the increasingly digital outside world. So far, she has been installing laptops in individual cells so inmates can browse a restricted list of websites and apply for permission to make video calls. She considers data labor just another part of that mission.

The aim is not to replace traditional prison labor, such as making road signs or gardening. It’s about giving prisoners more variety. Data labeling can only be done in three-hour shifts. “It might be tiring to do this eight hours a day, only this type of work,” she says, adding that it would be nice if inmates did the data labeling alongside other types of prison labor. “This type of work is the future, and if we want to prepare prisoners for life outside prison, a life without crime, these types of skills might be at least as important as the traditional work types that prisons provide,” she says.

But how much data labeling offers inmates skills that are transferable to work after prison is unclear. Tuomas Rasila, the now estranged cofounder of Vainu, who managed the prison project there for a year, admits he has no evidence of this; the project wasn’t running for long enough to collect it, he says. “I think asking people, who might feel outside of society, to train the most high-tech aspect of a modern society is an empowering idea.”

However, others consider this new form of prison labor part of a problematic rush for cheap labor that underpins the AI revolution. “The narrative that we are moving towards a fully automated society that is more convenient and more efficient tends to obscure the fact that there are actual human people powering a lot of these systems,” says Amos Toh, a senior researcher focusing on artificial intelligence at Human Rights Watch.

For Toh, the accelerating search for so-called clickworkers has created a trend where companies are increasingly turning to groups of people who have few other options: refugees, populations in countries gripped by economic crisis—and now prisoners.

“This dynamic is a deeply familiar one,” says Toh. “What we are seeing here is part of a broader phenomenon where the labor behind building tech is being outsourced to workers that toil in potentially exploitative working conditions.”

Toh is also skeptical about whether data labor can help inmates build digital skills. “There are many ways in which people in prison can advance themselves, like getting certificates and taking part in advanced education,” he says. “But I'm skeptical about whether doing data labeling for a company at one euro per hour will lead to meaningful advancement.” Hämeenlinna prison does offer inmates online courses in AI, but Marmalade sits blank-faced as staff try to explain its benefits.

By the time I meet Lehtiniemi, the researcher from Helsinki University, I’m feeling torn about the merits of the prison project. Traveling straight from the prison, where women worked for €1.54 an hour, to Metroc’s offices, where the company was celebrating a €20 million funding round, felt jarring.

In a café, opposite the grand, domed Helsinki cathedral, Lehtiniemi patiently listens to me describe that feeling.

But Lehtiniemi’s own interviews with inmates have given him a different view—he’s generally positive about the project. On my point about pay disparity, he argues this is not an ordinary workforce in mainstream society. These people are in prison. “Comparing the money I get as a researcher and what the prisoner gets for their prison labor, it doesn't make sense,” he says. “The only negative thing I’ve heard has been that there’s not enough of this work. Only a few people can do it,” he says, referring to the limit of three laptops per prison.

“When we think about data labor, we tend to think about Mechanical Turk, people in the global south or the rural US,” he says. But for him, this is a distinct local version of data labor, which comes with a twist that benefits society. It’s giving prisoners cognitively stimulating work—compared to other prison labor options—while also representing the Finnish language in the AI revolution.

Without this kind of initiative, Lehtiniemi worries that non-English languages are being locked out of this next generation of technology. Smart speakers still struggle to understand Finnish dialects. “Not all Finnish people speak English very well, so there's a need for these local forms of data labeling as well,” Lehtiniemi says. Metroc isn’t the only company that has been forced to get creative about finding Finnish data labor. In 2011, the national library created a game to incentivize volunteers to help digitize its archive. In 2020, broadcaster YLE teamed up with Helsinki University and the state development company VAKE to ask volunteers to donate recordings of them speaking Finnish.

There is a sense in Finland that the prison project is just the beginning. Some are worried it could set a precedent that could introduce more controversial types of data labeling, like moderating violent content, to prisons. “Even if the data being labeled in Finland is uncontroversial right now, we have to think about the precedent it sets,” says Toh. “What stops companies from outsourcing data labeling of traumatic and unsavory content to people in prison, especially if they see this as an untapped labor pool?”

It's also not clear whether labor conditions in Finland's prisons—which famously focus on rehabilitation—could be replicated in other countries with a less progressive approach to justice. In the US, 76 percent of prisoners report that prison labor is mandatory, according to civil rights group, the ACLU. “The prison system in the United States is very, very different from what we have in Finland or Nordic countries. It's a completely different idea,” says Rasila. “In Finland, there is an exclusively positive feeling around the project because everyone knows that this is very voluntary.”

AI companies are only going to need more data labor, forcing them to keep seeking out increasingly unusual labor forces to keep pace. As Metroc plots its expansion across the Nordics and into languages other than Finnish, Virnala is considering whether to expand the prison labor project to other countries. “It’s something we need to explore,” he says.

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About 15 days ago, AMD announced Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards along with many other important things like an update on the FSR3.

A few days ago, both the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT were released to the public. Along with the release came the reviews from the various hardware review sites.

As far as the reviews themselves are concerned, the reviews for the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT were good, but for the RX 7700 XT they were lackluster.

In them, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT was praised for an increase of in raytracing performance and an improvement in power efficiency over its predecessor, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT.

However, what’s important about the RX 7800 XT is that while its raster performance is similar to that of the RX 6800 XT, its the pricing that is the most attractive feature of the RX 7800 XT.

While the RX 6800 XT had an MSRP of $649, it’s selling around $500 now. So as the RX 7800 XT is priced at the same $500 with some additional improvements, it basically replaces the RX 6800 XT, even if it’s similar in raster performance.

If raytracing performance and power usage are ignored, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is also a great alternative to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, which sells for $600. That’s because the RX 7800 XT is faster than the RTX 4070 in overall graphics card’s raster performance.

The RX 7700 XT, however, didn’t get that much a praise. For it being just $50 cheaper and the pricing not being worth it.

But the question is, how well are these new graphics cards selling? Now we have some ideas about it.

RX 7800 XT Becomes Top-Seller

Twitter (now X Corp) based user, @TechEpiphany has, as always, shared the list of the previous week’s best-selling graphics cards from one of Germany’s largest retailers, Mindfactory.

That list shows the list of top-selling graphics cards in the week that the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT launched.

As per the list, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT was the best-selling graphics card on MindFactory. Over 650 AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics cards were sold.

This was followed by the likes of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and others.

The RX 7700 XT however, was relatively far behind. It is 18th on the list, with just 55 graphics cards sold on it.

Conclusion

One important thing should be mentioned. The RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT were launched on Friday. Yet, it managed to top the previous week’s list. That is massively impressive. Whether this includes pre-orders (if any) or not, we don’t know. But even then, it’s big.

The second important thing that should be mentioned is that these days Germany is an AMD friendly country. What this means is that the Germans prefer to buy AMD graphics cards and CPUs over Nvidia graphics cards and Intel CPUs these days. This is also highlighted in the other top CPUs sold list by @TechEpiphany, where AMD leads massively over Intel.

So the new AMD graphics cards being sold in high numbers is not a surprise. But Germans are not naive when it comes to tech or engineering, for that matter. They know a lot when it comes to these things. It is, however, surprising that the RX 7800 XT is topping the list within the first few days itself.

Now we don’t know if this continues this week too. In fact, we believe the numbers will improve further. Whatever it maybe. It’s impressive that the RX 7800 XT is doing so nicely there.

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