It is time for another major No Man's Sky update from Hello Games. Dubbed Endurance, the latest features in it include a massively overhauled freighter space bases system, living vessels as ships for player fleets, and more. Watch the update overview trailer above.

Freighters have been a part of the space game almost since the beginning, offering a mobile base for players to utilize in their adventures. Now, they can be customized nearly as heavily as what is available on planetary bases.

The new systems offer the creation of various themed rooms with windows, farms for growing specialized crops, and even observation decks to sight see. To make things livelier during space travel, aside from hired crews, new specialized engineer, biologist, and technician crew members will now automatically populate player freighter bases.

Hello Games has also implemented a short-range teleportation network between the hanger and bridge for easy access. This is in addition to the new freighter teleportation option available from any space station or player base.

Other features of this massive update include organic frigates players can add to their fleet for missions. These procedurally generated space aliens can even be fed foodstuffs to elevate their mood and learn new abilities.

Players will also find object rendering distances has been vastly increased, new black hole traversal visuals, a new expedition to band up and complete, and many more changes in this free update for all platforms.

Read the complete list of changes in the No Man's Sky 3.94 Endurance update by checking out its changelog here. The space exploration game is also coming to the Nintendo Switch in October, but without multiplayer.

No Man's Sky Endurance update has freighter overhauls, organic frigates, and more

Today, Western Digital announced that it has begun shipping a range of HDDs that go up to a mind-boggling 22 TB capacity. These new hard drives come in three flavours to suit various applications. These were announced at the What's Next Western Digital Event in May this year.

The WD Red Pro is designed for NAS usage, with availability for up to 24-bay NAS systems and includes their NASware 3.0 Technology, a multi-axis shock sensor and error recovery controls to help reduce drive fallout in RAID applications.

The WD Purple Pro is for surveillance applications, designed to handle up to 64 single stream HD cameras as well as up to 32 concurrent AI streams, and are rated for up to 550 TB/year and a disk speed of 7200 RPM.

Finally, the WD Gold is specifically labelled as enterprise class, for use by IT and data centre channel customers. It includes power loss protection and is listed as compatible with Windows, Windows Server and Linux, with a Cache of 512 MB and speed of 7200 RPM. Furthermore, the listed OptiNAND technology has helped enabled the increased capacity of these drives.

All three of these drives are priced at $599.99 and are listed as available within 3-4 weeks.

Western Digital begins shipping HDDs with up to 22 TB of storage

When Facebook changed its name to Meta in October, there were a few concerns that the company was planning to dominate the nascent metaverse — but there’s one aggrieved party that’s only now going public.

An installation-art company called META (or Meta.is) announced Tuesday that it will be suing Meta (or Facebook) for trademark violation, alleging that Zuckerberg’s name change violated the smaller company’s established brand.

“On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years,” reads a post on the smaller company’s site. “Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit against them.”

(Disclosure: The Verge partnered with Meta.is for a number of art installations at the Panorama Festival in 2016. In order to make this post comprehensible, we’re going to refer to the billion-dollar social media company as Facebook and the smaller augmented-reality company as Meta.is; this is not an endorsement of either side’s legal claims.)

Much of the case hinges on Facebook’s many privacy scandals, which Meta.is argues has made it impossible to share the name. “Meta can no longer provide goods and services under the META mark,” the complaint argues, “because consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Meta’s goods and services emanate from Facebook and that Meta is associated with the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook.”

Meta.is holds a valid trademark for the name but may still be facing an uphill battle in court, given the broad range of trademark applications Facebook has made since the name change became official — including separate marks for messaging, social networks, and financial services. There are also a number of trademarks claiming the Meta name for non-tech products, including a hard seltzer and manufacturer of prosthetic limbs.

Meta / Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A company called Meta is suing Meta for naming itself Meta

TikTok has begun a global restructuring of its business that includes layoffs, according to five people with knowledge of the process.

The short-form video app, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has rapidly expanded both its user base and workforce in recent years. Despite tensions with the Trump administration over fears it could be a tool of China’s government, TikTok crossed 1 billion monthly active users in September and now has thousands of employees worldwide. Its rapid growth and success with younger users inspired Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube to launch competing short-form video products.

But on Monday morning, some employees based in Europe were informed that their jobs were at risk and told to expect invitations to meet with human resources staff in coming weeks, according to sources at the company. Some UK employees were warned that job losses will occur in a number of departments within TikTok. When US-based employees began work hours later, some were informed their roles were being eliminated.

The restructuring announced internally today includes layoffs and the closing of some vacant roles, one staff member said, and affects TikTok’s businesses in the US, EU, and UK. Plans to expand some teams inside the company have been put on hold.

One of TikTok’s earliest executive hires outside of China, David Ortiz, a veteran of Snap, announced on LinkedIn today that he was leaving the company because his role was being eliminated as part of “a much larger re-organization effort.”

A senior staff member with knowledge of the changes did not deny that a restructuring with job losses was taking place. A TikTok spokesperson responding to a request for comment made this morning did not dispute that layoffs are taking place, but did not provide on the record comment by time of publication.

TikTok joins the ranks of major tech companies and startups that have frozen hiring or made layoffs in recent weeks as fears of an economic downturn have taken hold. The company recently abandoned plans to expand its live shopping platform TikTok Shop, seen as a major new revenue source, in the United States and Europe. One former TikTok employee who left the company earlier this year says the restructuring was probably related to the broader economic climate. “I don’t think what’s happening here with TikTok’s layoffs is any different to what’s going on in big tech,” the former employee says.

Another TikTok staffer says that the layoffs were focused on individuals and teams that managers believed were not contributing enough to the company, and claimed that the number of layoffs would be less than 100. Previous statements by TikTok and sources inside the company suggest it has at least 10,000 employees across the US and Europe.

TikTok was created in 2018 after ByteDance acquired Chinese startup Musical.ly. Its rapid growth has seen the company reach milestones such as reaching 1 billion active users, drawing political scrutiny, and playing a central role in a war much more quickly than older social networks such as Facebook. “They’ve scaled at a rate we’ve never seen before,” says Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, a New York marketing agency. He guesses that the restructuring won’t do much to blunt TikTok’s impact or popularity. “I can't imagine that a few layoffs is a sign of broader troubles or anything that’s going to slow their momentum.”

Ortiz, the executive who announced his departure on LinkedIn, declined to speak with WIRED. In his post he gestured at TikTok’s brief but eventful trajectory. “Working at TikTok has been quite a ride.”

TikTok Starts Layoffs in Company-Wide Restructuring

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However, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and it looks like Nvidia has risen up to the occasion according to prolific leakster and Twitter user kopite7kimi. Apparently, the RTX 4090 is able to score over 19,000 points in 3DMark's Time Spy Extreme graphics test. Time Spy is UL Benchmarks' DirectX12 test, and the Extreme benchmark is meant to test GPUs at the 4K resolution.

Twitter user and hardware enthusiast @harukaze5719 has made a graphic showing the alleged 4090 scored alongside known benchmark results of Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti AIB variants as well as RTX 3090 and AMD RX 6900 XT.

The 19,000 score puts it at 82% faster than its direct predecessor, the RTX 3090, and nearly 70% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti. The leaker also adds that this is a conservative measure, and the full potential is actually even higher for the upcoming RTX 4090. The new performance number is pretty much in line with previous rumors, which suggested that the 4090 will be nearly double the performance of the RTX 3090.

Whether these performance claims are true or not should become clear sooner rather than later. The launch of the upcoming RTX 4000 series shouldn't be too far off since we are already seeing support for the new cards in various software, like recently in AIDA64.

Source: kopite7kimi (Twitter) via @harukaze5719 (Twitter)

Alleged Nvidia RTX 4090 benchmark suggests it's an absolute monster

The story is interesting and you can see it in the video below.

Apparently when news of ENIAC reached the USSR, many dismissed it as fanciful propaganda. However, there were some who thought computing would be the future. Sergey Lebedev in Ukraine built a “small” machine around 1951. Small, of course, is relative since the machine had 6,000 tubes in it. It performed 250,000 calculations for artillery tables in about 2 and half hours.

The success of this computer led to two teams being asked to build two different machines. Although one of the machines was less capable, the better machine needed a part they could only get from the other team which they withheld, forcing them to use outdated — even then — mercury delay lines for storage.

The more sophisticated machine, the BESM-1, didn’t perform well thanks to this substitution and so the competitor, STRELA, was selected. However, it broke down frequently and was unable to handle certain computations. Finally, the BESM-1 was completed and was the fastest computer in Europe for several years starting in 1955.

By 1959, the Soviets produced $59 million worth of computer parts compared to the US’s output of around $1 billion. There are many reasons for the limited supply and limited demand that you’ll hear about in the video. In particular, there was little commercial demand for computers in the Soviet Union. Nearly all the computer usage was in the military and academia.

Eventually, the Russians wound up buying and copying the IBM 360. Not all of the engineers thought this was a good idea, but it did have the advantage of allowing for existing software to run. The US government tried to forbid IBM from exporting key items, so ICL — a UK company — offered up their IBM 360-compatible system.

The Soviets have been known to borrow tech before. Not that the west didn’t do some borrowing, too, at least temporarily.

Source

If you are wondering about other Arc desktop SKUs, today a new report from Wccftech claims to have leaked the entire line-up. According to the report, aside from the A380 and A750, there are three other SKUs. One more from the Arc 3 line called A310, which will come under the A380. There is one from Arc 5 dubbed A580, and finally, there is Arc A770, which will be the flagship.

The leaked image shows how Intel seemingly plans to price its upcoming Alchemist SKUs, and it suggests that the company is going to top out at around $399 for its flagship A770 model.

You can view the alleged hardware specifications of the leaked Arc A-series line-up in the table below:

Do keep in mind though that by the time Intel launches Arc for desktop, AMD and Nvidia will already have their Radeon RX 7000 series (RDNA 3) and RTX 4000 series (Ada Lovelace) lined up for release. This means Intel's entry is probably not going to be easy.

Source and image: Wccftech

Entire Intel Arc Alchemist desktop GPU line-up and pricing allegedly leaks

Windows 12 (?)

This week, we learned via a rather interesting report that Microsoft is switching its release cadence for Windows yet again. The company will apparently be moving back to the three-year release cycle with new features being spread out between big releases. What this also means is that Windows 11 version 23H2 (Sun Valley 3) is being scrapped and the capabilities planned for that release will be added to version 22H2 (Sun Valley 2) eventually. Then, in 2024, Microsoft will roll out a brand-new version of Windows. It's unclear at this point if it will be called Windows 12 or something else, but we do know that it's being referred to as "Next Valley" internally. Microsoft naturally hasn't confirmed any of the claims made in this report.

In related news, if you're an IT admin who wants to hand over the update deployment reins to Microsoft, you'll be happy to know that Windows Autopatch is now generally available. It's only been rolled out to Enterprise E3 and E5 customers and is pitched as a way to automate updates while empowering IT admins to ensure that endpoints are healthy and compliant through ring-based, staggered deployments. IT admins also have the ability to reverse updates easily if something does go wrong.

But if you're tired of all these Windows release shenanigans and are considering switching operating systems, Google may have something for you. The tech giant has made its cloud-first operating system Chrome OS Flex generally available for Windows and Mac users. The benefit is that you'll be able to run Chrome OS on your existing hardware (minus Android apps) with a lower power draw and an overall reduction in e-waste.

At the same time, if you are running an older version of Windows, such as Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and use Microsoft 365 Apps heavily, do consider upgrading to a newer version of Windows in order to receive security updates and support after January 10, 2023. A supported version of Windows will also become the requirement for new installs after the aforementioned date.

Patch Tuesday

The second Tuesday of the month also occurred within the past few days, and that obviously means that we received a bunch of Patch Tuesday updates.

Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 received KB5015861 and KB5015874, respectively. The most notable change is present in the latter OS where Microsoft will start showing an End of Support (EOS) dialog box reminding users that Windows 8.1 will reach end of life in January 2023, while also urging people to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Other changes across the operating systems include NTLM authentication improvements, AppLocker enhancements, and fixes for Wi-Fi hotspots. There are also quite a few known issues so do check out the details here.

Meanwhile, Windows 10's Patch Tuesday was distributed under KB5015807. The update primarily packs a bunch of security updates but there are also three known issues, so do be mindful of them impacting you if you upgrade. That said, all the bugs fortunately have workarounds.

Finally, Windows 11 netted KB5015814 which "addresses an issue that redirects the PowerShell command output so that transcript logs do not contain any output of the command. Consequently, the decrypted password is lost." There are also two known bugs with workarounds, but they are only applicable to IT admins.

Some people have been complaining about the Patch Tuesday build for Windows 11 introducing new bugs including boot loops, problems accessing the Start Menu, and the update itself failing to install. Microsoft is yet to acknowledge and officially comment on these problems.

And while it's not related to a specific Windows build, Microsoft has cautioned about some search issues in Outlook Desktop in Windows 11. There is a workaround though, if you are impacted.

Interestingly, back in July 2021, Microsoft broke print and scanning for customers using Smart Card authentication. Although the company issued some mitigations to fix the issue, it has now announced that it will be removing these mitigations on July 19. All organizations will be required to use compliant devices without fallback options.

Windows 11 Dev Channel build 25158

The Windows 11 Dev Channel received build 25158 in the latest drop. This is a relatively significant build because it packs a bunch of new features. That said, you should remember that the functionalities present in this build are not intended for general rollout in Windows 11 version 22H2, arriving later this year.

Some of the capabilities in tow include notification badging for Widgets, new Windows Search styles for the Taskbar, and lots of bug fixes.

Another interesting capability is support for DNS over TLS (DoT). This is an alternative for DNS over HTTPS (DoH) that is already built into Windows 11. This protocol could enable faster network performance in some use-cases but you'd also lose some of the flexibility offered by DoH.

Build 25158 is not all good news, though. There is a new bug that messes up weather information in the Widget. That said, minor issues like these are expected in pre-release builds and Microsoft has already confirmed that it is looking into the problem.

The Dev Channel as a whole has received a couple of apps updates too. The Media Player can now rip CDs, something which will likely be welcomed by the old-school crowd. Currently supported formats include AAC, WMA, FLAC, and ALAC. Meanwhile, the Camera app has been updated with some Windows 11 design aesthetics and support for QR code and barcode scanning.

Finally, the Release Preview Channel also received some love in the form of build 22000.829 (KB5015882). There are a lot of improvements in this build but there is also a known issue related to the Weather Widget (again), you can check out all the details here.

Git gud

We'll kick off our latest gaming section with news about Epic Games confirming support for Microsoft DirectStorage in Unreal Engine 5. Although we don't have an ETA on when this will actually happen, a senior Epic Games executive noted that DirectStorage can help with Virtual Textures (VT) once the next-gen storage API gets proper support from Nanite, which is Unreal Engine 5's virtualized geometry system.

And talking about how innovations in tech are further enhancing gameplay experiences, it might please you to know that Minecraft on iOS can now be enjoyed with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. On the other hand, Age of Empires IV players can participate in Season Two which includes a new camera, map picking, and a lot more. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite players can finally dive into the co-op campaign playtest, which will end on August 1.

But if you're more interested in grabbing games on the cheap or claiming them via a subscription, you'll want to check out this week's Deals with Gold, headlined by Call of Duty and LEGO titles. Meanwhile, For the King, MLB The Show 22, and Tropico 6 are being offered via Xbox's Free Play Days, and Torchlight and Relicta are now free via Xbox Games with Gold.

But if you're a PC purist, don't miss out on this selection of deals from various storefronts, curated by our very own Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• Surface Duo with Windows 11 has received working Wi-Fi, Cellular, eSIM, and GPS
• Microsoft Teams will now allow meeting organizers to assign seats in Together Mode
• Surface Pro X (Wi-Fi) has received the July firmware update
• Microsoft will help Netflix to introduce a cheaper subscription tier with ads powered by the Redmond tech giant
• Microsoft PowerToys 0.60.1 has a fix for context menus in Windows 11

Under the spotlight

In his latest edition of Tech Tip Tuesday, Adam Bottjen - better known as "Warwagon" in the forums - wrote a handy tip about how you can use a shortcut to pin windows to your preferred side of the screen. If this sounds interesting to you, check out the details here.

Meanwhile, News Reporter Taras Buria penned a guide about how you can install the public beta for iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 on a supported device. If you're an iPhone or iPad owner who wants to check out the latest features (at your own risk) planned by Apple, do read the detailed guide here.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week is related to a joke screenshot about Microsoft working on "EdgeOS". While the fake screenshot is arguably funny, it's not that far from reality considering all the bloat (?) that Microsoft has been adding to its browser lately. It remains to be seen when Microsoft will announce EdgeOS as a full-fledged operating system... I kid, I kid.

Microsoft Weekly: Windows 12, Patch Tuesday, and Dev Channel build 25158

• GPU information for nVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (AD102)

Leaked purported specifications of the RTX 4090 and the other Ada Lovelace SKUs suggest that Nvidia is increasing the CUDA core count once more like in previous generations. VRAM capacity is apparently going to remain the same for the 4090 at 24GB though the rest of the SKUs are expected to come equipped with more memory. Alleged performance numbers suggest that the upcoming RTX 4090 could be twice as fast as the RTX 3090.

Alongside the addition of RTX 4090 support, the new beta AIDA64 Extreme also adds support for the new GTX 1630 budget offering, something we don't fully recommend. Nvidia's Hopper H100 also gets support. Hopper is the first GPU in the world to support PCIe Gen5.

Over on the AMD side, the Radeon PRO W6600 gets support, though more interestingly, MSI Socket AM5 X670E, X670, and B650 chipset motherboards get sensor support.

Finally for Intel, there is improved support for Alder Lake-P and -M CPUs as well as some bug fixes related to older Coffee Lake-H SKUs.

Via: VideoCardz

Nvidia RTX 4000 series could launch soon as AIDA64 adds RTX 4090 support

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" series CPUs are expected to arrive soon, in about two months time in September, according to a leak. As such, it is natural that some benchmark scores run internally are going to leak out here and there.

Today, such a leak for a Ryzen 7000 engineering sample (ES) has surfaced on Basemark, spotted by leakster APISAK on Twitter, where the ES in question, a hexa-core Zen 4 processor, was tested alongside an Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 Ampere workstation GPU on an X670E chipset motherboard in Windows 10. You can see the specifications of the test bench alongside the AMD ES below:

Twitter user @harukaze5719 managed to dig up a similar benchmark score featuring a Ryzen 9 5950X, the current AMD flagship. The scores are close, but the leaked Zen 4 6 core ES chip is able to beat out the 16 core 5950X here. Only the OpenGL 4.5 and the Vulkan 1.0 API tests were done, and it looks like the DirectX 12 test was skipped.

The @harukaze5719 also compiled the results into a graphic showing the performance advantage in favor of the leaked 6 core Ryzen 7000 ES. Overall there is around a 10% improvement on the Zen 4 part:

It should be noted here that Basemark may not always be the most accurate or representative of actual gaming performance though it is still impressive to see decent gains on Zen 4 considering it is an engineering sample apparently running at 4.4GHz, which is significantly lower than the expected 5+GHz on the final retail samples. Also since it is gaming test, it is likely that the CPU wasn't hit as hard as the GPU.

Source: Basemark via APISAK (Twitter), @harukaze5719 (Twitter) (1), (2)

AMD Ryzen 7000 6 core ES topples 16 core Ryzen 5950X in leaked gaming benchmark

As such, motherboard vendor partners of Intel have also begun rolling out compatibility firmware for running the upcoming Raptor Lake-S CPUs on the current 600 series chipset motherboards. At the end of June, ASRock released the necessary firmware for Intel Z690, H670, B660 and H610 boards. Asus followed soon after and also released its firmware.

Today, MSI is the third vendor to join the list as it has as released the firmware necessary for running 13th Gen Intel Raptor Lake-S chips on its 600 series boards. The list includes Z690, H670, B660 and H610.

You can view the full list of motherboards and corresponding firmware versions in the image below:

If you wish to update your motherboard BIOS, head over to the support page of your motherboard model where you should be able to locate the necessary update.

Note however that this is just a compatibility firmware and the motherboard vendors have warned against serious performance and stress testing using these updates.

Source: MSI

After ASRock and Asus, MSI outs BIOS updates for Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake support

Now, the company has also begun teasing its higher end A750 offering. This one, on paper could be up to three times faster than the Arc A380 as the A750 purportedly features 24 Xe-cores while the A380 has 8 Xe-cores.

The company has also shared performance numbers for the Arc A750 GPU and according to Intel, the A380 is often significantly faster than Nvidia's RTX 3060. Although numbers compared to AMD weren't released, this performance looks to be equivalent to around the Radeon RX 6650 XT.

Performance across only five titles was shown, and the company will likely share more numbers later. Although only the percentage advantage for the Arc A750 was shown here, Intel did say that in Cyberpunk 2077, using these same settings, the A750 was able to achieve close to 60 fps on average.

Source: Intel Graphics (YouTube)

Intel shares official Arc A750 GPU benchmarks showing better than RTX 3060 performance

Why can’t Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs pass the bar exam? Blame the E-cores

In the description of the event, Intel says it will talk about its hybrid architecture among many other things. But of course hybrid architecture stands out here as it was introduced by the company with its current 12th Gen Alder Lake, and the upcoming 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs are also going to continue this trend, albeit with more cores.

Here is what the description of the Modern Client Computing section on Intel's Innovation event promo page reads:

Modern Client Computing

In this new era of Modern Client computing, PCs are more vital and ubiquitous than ever while delivering amazing experiences for Client users. New platform capabilities such as hybrid architecture, advanced AI, video conferencing, creation, and gaming have combined with cloud native capabilities to deliver a seamless compute experience.

Although just having the mention of hybrid architecture does not ascertain that Raptor Lake details will be shared here, it is very likely that the company will at least discuss some of it and give a few hints on when the chip could be out.

A recent rumor suggested that Raptor Lake-S, the desktop variants, will be arriving in October, following Ryzen 7000 and Socket AM5, which are expected to launch next month according to a leak. And since the Innovation event is right after that, an October arrival for Intel 13th Gen chips seems pretty plausible.

In terms of what to expect from it, early reviews of Raptor Lake-S Core i9-13900K and Core i9-13900 show lukewarm reception due to very high heat output and power draw. However, the upcoming Intel 13th Gen desktop chips could mean a budget friendly system, as it will apparently continue to support DDR4 memory, something which is unlikely to be available on Ryzen 7000 and AM5 offerings.

Source: Intel

Intel may launch its 13th Gen Raptor Lake right after AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4)

Samsung has built the new memory chips using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and third-gen 10 nm process. They feature “innovative circuit design” and “highly advanced insulating material” to minimize current leakage. Technology improvements allowed Samsung to boost speeds by 30% from 18Gbps in the previous generation to 24 Gbps. The latter roughly translates to transferring 1.1 TB of data in just one second.

Samsung also plans to include low-power solutions for laptops, where energy consumption is more important. The new chips will deliver speeds up to 20 Gbps with lower voltage and 20% better efficiency at 1.1 V, which is 0.25 V lower than the standard.

You can expect the new memory chips from Samsung to show up in the upcoming next-gen graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia. Samsung plans to start customer validation later this month with a commercial launch alongside new GPUs.

Samsung announces its fastest 24 Gbps GDDR6 DRAM for flagship graphics cards

Amazon leaks Genesis Mini 2—Sega immediately confirms its October 27 launch

While running the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) stress test, the PL4 (Power Limit 4) figures apparently reach 420W of power draw. The temperature during this stress test was equally bad as it reached 100°C even with a 360mm AIO cooler. Expectedly, XTU indicates that the chip was thermal throttling.

While the power consumption and temperatures don't instill much confidence, the performance of the CPU looks pretty good. In heavily multithreaded situations, there is around a 40% improvement in the throughput in Raptor Lake-S compared to 12th Gen Alder Lake-S i9-12900KF. In some scenarios, the lead extends up to 50%. In terms of single-threaded improvement, there is around a 10% gain.

You can view the performance comparison numbers in the images below. They paint a similar picture to the early official review by SiSoftware Sandra that tested the locked Core i9-13900 variant.

This hefty uptick in multi-threaded performance is thanks to the additional eight E-cores that Raptor Lake has compared to Alder Lake, alongside general instructions per cycle (IPC) improvements. Compared to Alder Lake-S' 16 cores 24 threads, Raptor Lake-S packs 24 cores and 32 threads.

Source and images: ExtremePlayer (bilibili) via HXL (Twitter)

Intel i9-13900K review shows Raptor Lake reach 100°C even with 360 AIO, gobbling 420W

However, there has also been some positive news surrounding the technology. Recently, in an "Ask Unreal Anything" Q&A session, Brian Karis, the Engineering Fellow of Graphics
at Epic Games, confirmed that Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) will gain Microsoft DirectStorage support.

Although no ETA was given during this, Karis did provide an idea about how the technology could help shape UE5 and next gen games based on it. He explained that DirectStorage can help with Virtual Texures (VT) once the next-gen storage API gets proper support from Nanite, which is Unreal Engine 5's virtualized geometry system. Although not a requirement, the UE5 documentation on Nanite also recommends the use of VT with this next-gen geometry implementation.

Question: Any plans to integrate DirectStorage directly into the engine?

Response: Yes, although I can’t comment on when. When DirectStorage is well supported by the UE file system Nanite and VT will be first in line to make use of it.

From the demos available, Unreal Engine 5 looks mighty impressive and combined with DirectStorage's greatly improved I/O throughput among others, the two could go on to become a match made it heaven.

Thanks for the tip, yakumo!

Epic Games confirms Microsoft DirectStorage support is coming to Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)

Multiple Ubisoft games on Steam “will not be accessible” after September 1st, according to notices on the games’ Steam pages. But based on a statement from Ubisoft, the situation isn’t as bad as that message would make it seem.

If you want to see an example of the new notice, check out the Steam page for Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD. It has two:

• “At the request of the publisher, Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD is no longer available for sale on Steam.”
• “Please note this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022.”

Last week, Ubisoft announced that it would be shutting down multiplayer for more than a dozen games, also on September 1st, and four games on that list have the “will not be accessible” notice. The notice appears to warn players that their purchases won’t be playable at all. But confusingly, current owners will actually be able to access affected games, according to Ubisoft.

“As stated in our support article, only DLCs and online features will be affected by the upcoming decommissioning,” Ubisoft senior corporate communications manager Jessica Roache said in a statement to The Verge. “Current owners of those games will still be able to access, play, or redownload them. Our teams are working with our partners to update this information across all storefronts and are also assessing all available options for players who will be impacted when these games’ online services are decommissioned on September 1st, 2022.”

I asked specifically if this means that people who own the games with the “will not be accessible” message will be able to access, play, or redownload them, and Roache confirmed that would be the case.

As of this writing, all but one of the PC games mentioned in Ubisoft’s support article that I could find on Steam have a notice of some kind.

Here are the games with the no longer for sale notice and the “will not be accessible” notice:

• Anno 2070
• Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD
• Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic
• Space Junkies

Some games have a notice saying that “DLC within this product as well as online elements and features will become unavailable, though the base game will remain accessible as of Sept 1st, 2022.” That tracks with what Ubisoft said about those games last week. Here’s the full list of those titles:

• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
• Far Cry 3
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
• Splinter Cell Blacklist

As for other games mentioned in Ubisoft’s blog post, Assassin’s Creed III has the notice that it’s no longer for sale on Steam, but it does not have the notice that it will become inaccessible. Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t have any notices on its Steam page. I couldn’t find a Steam overview page for Driver San Francisco, though, on a community page, there are some complaints about the game being inaccessible.

This messy situation is yet another reminder that ownership of digital content is often at the whims of companies and situations outside of your control. Just last week, it came to light that Sony would be removing some movies and TV shows bought on the PlayStation Store from libraries for customers in Germany and Austria.

Ubisoft says Steam games like Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD will remain playable despite warning

In 1994, a mathematician figured out how make a quantum computer do something that no ordinary classical computer could. The work revealed that, in principle, a machine based on the rules of quantum mechanics could efficiently break a large number into its prime factors — a task so difficult for a classical computer that it forms the basis for much of today’s internet security.

A surge of optimism followed. Perhaps, researchers thought, we’ll be able to invent quantum algorithms that can solve a huge range of different problems.

But progress stalled. “It’s been a bit of a bummer trajectory,” said Ryan O’Donnell of Carnegie Mellon University. “People were like, ‘This is amazing, I’m sure we’re going to get all sorts of other amazing algorithms.’ Nope.” Scientists discovered dramatic speedups only for a single, narrow class of problems from within a standard set called NP, meaning they had efficiently verifiable solutions — such as factoring.

That was the case for nearly three decades. Then in April, researchers invented a fundamentally new kind of problem that a quantum computer should be able to solve exponentially faster than a classical one. It involves calculating the inputs to a complicated mathematical process, based solely on its jumbled outputs. Whether the problem stands alone or is the first in a new frontier of many others has yet to be determined.

“There is a sense of excitement,” said Vinod Vaikuntanathan, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A lot of people are thinking about what else is out there.”

Computer scientists try to understand what quantum computers do better by studying mathematical models that represent them. Often, they imagine a model of a quantum or classical computer paired with an idealized calculating machine called an oracle. Oracles are like simple mathematical functions or computer programs, taking in an input and spitting out a predetermined output. They might have a random behavior, outputting “yes” if the input falls within a certain random range (say, 12 to 67) and “no” if it doesn’t. Or they might be periodic, so that an input between 1 to 10 returns “yes,” 11 to 20 yields “no,” 21 to 30 produces “yes” again, and so on.

Let’s say you have one of these periodic oracles and you don’t know the period. All you can do is feed it numbers and see what it outputs. With those constraints, how fast could a computer find the period? In 1993, Daniel Simon, then at the University of Montreal, found that a quantum algorithm could calculate the answer to a closely related problem exponentially faster than any classical algorithm.

Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

The result enabled Simon to determine one of the first hints of where dramatic superiority for quantum computers could be expected. But when he submitted his paper to a leading conference, it was rejected. The paper did, however, interest a junior member of the conference’s program committee — Peter Shor, who at the time was at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Shor went on to find that he could adapt Simon’s algorithm to calculate the period of an oracle, if it had one. Then he realized he could adapt the algorithm once again, to solve an equation that behaves similarly to a periodic oracle: the equation that describes factoring, which is periodic.

Shor’s result was historic. The quantum algorithm he discovered could rapidly reduce gigantic numbers into their constituent prime factors, something that no known classical algorithm can do. In the years that followed, researchers discovered other efficient quantum algorithms. Some of them, like Shor’s algorithm, even provided exponential advantage, but no one could prove a dramatic quantum advantage on any NP problem that wasn’t periodic.

This dearth of progress led two computer scientists, Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas, Austin, and Andris Ambainis of the University of Latvia, to make an observation. Proofs of quantum advantage always seemed dependent on oracles that had some kind of nonrandom structure, such as periodicity. In 2009, they conjectured that there couldn’t be dramatic speedups on NP problems that were random, or unstructured. No one could find an exception.

Their conjecture put a bound on the powers of quantum computers. But it said only that there were no dramatic speedups for a specific type of unstructured NP problem — those with yes or no answers. If a problem involved figuring out more specific, quantitative answers, which is known as a search problem, the conjecture didn’t apply.

< Watch the video at the source page. >

Video: Quantum computers aren’t the next generation of supercomputers — they’re something else entirely. Before we can even begin to talk about their potential applications, we need to understand the fundamental physics that drives the theory of quantum computing.

With that in mind, researchers Takashi Yamakawa of NTT Social Informatics Laboratories and Mark Zhandry of NTT Research and Princeton University decided to experiment with a specific search problem, introduced in 2005 by Oded Regev.

Imagine a set of weather vanes that are all pointing in the same direction. Give each of them a measured shove, then let a gusty wind influence their direction. Regev wanted to determine, based on their final directions, where they all pointed initially. Problems like this came to be called “learning with errors,” because the shove and the wind act like a source of random error on the original direction. There is evidence that it is hard to solve for both classical and quantum algorithms.

Yamakawa and Zhandry tweaked the setup. They modified the strength of those starting shoves, making them more predictable. They also caused the wind to be determined by a random oracle so that it was even more random in certain cases but completely dormant in others.

With these modifications, the researchers discovered that a quantum algorithm could efficiently find the initial direction. They also proved that any classical algorithm must be slower by an exponential factor. Like Shor, they then adapted their algorithm to solve a real-world version of the problem, which replaces the oracle with an actual mathematical equation.

Computer scientists are still working to understand and build on the problem. Vaikuntanathan compares it to a different one that arises when doing data compression: When information is being squeezed down, two bits can accidentally be squeezed into the same place, overwriting them. The problem of predicting those collisions in advance, so that you can avoid them, bears some resemblance. “That’s a class of problems which basically look like this,” he said. “Maybe these problems can be solved quantumly.”

There were hopes that an unstructured problem like the new one might be solvable even on today’s fledgling versions of quantum computers, thereby providing a means to test them. The thinking was that unstructured problems might take fewer resources to program, or be less sensitive to noise, since they are already random. But so far, the new problem still appears too advanced for existing quantum computers to solve. “It’s a weird problem. I had not thought to define it,” said Aaronson. “But in retrospect, it has some very nice features.”

The result provides the first example of dramatic quantum advantage on an unstructured NP problem. Could there be many other problems that the quantum world changes from practically unsolvable to solvable? There is now more reason to think so.

“It’s somewhat overturned our beliefs about what kinds of problems quantum computers could be good at,” said O’Donnell.

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According to reports online from users and alike, these UPSs seemingly have a tendency to burn up making them major fire hazard in case someone isn't careful. Unlike the recent Gigabyte PSU fiasco, the cause for fire isn't looking like subpar electronic components. The culprit this time is apparently the yellow glue that is used in these models.

The CP1350PFCLCD and CP1500PFCLCD, the rev 1 and rev 2 variants, seem to house this yellow glue inside them as the primary adhesive. While using yellow glue is a common practice in the electronics industry, often used in audio components, among others, it is said to become partially conductive as it gets to older brownish form. So essentially, any such product of yours that houses such an adhesive is potential fire hazard. But of course, it will also depend on the temperatures.

YouTuber Mark Furneaux first brought this problem to notice last year when they published a video about it on their channel. The issue has resurfaced after Reddit user posted into_devoid posted a video of their CP1500PFCLCD catching fire (via Reddit) when it was switched on.

Beware: Your CyberPower UPS with yellow glue inside could burn up

Hitman 3’s new map, Ambrose Island, will arrive as free DLC to all players on July 26th, IO Interactive announced in its July roadmap. This marks the game’s first new map since it launched last January.

Judging by the trailer, Ambrose Island looks like a dingy, tropical locale led by a rebel outcast. IO Interactive says the map is a “fully explorable sandbox location” with a “hidden cove, home to a dangerous pirate syndicate operating in the Andaman Sea and to many hidden secrets.” It’s also set to come with a slate of new targets, challenges, and rewards to unlock.

IO Interactive first previewed the map — codenamed “Rocky” at the time — as part of its year two reveal earlier this year. In May, the game studio announced that it had pushed Ambrose Island’s release date up to make up for the delay of Hitman 3’s upcoming roguelike mode, called Freelancer. The new mode was originally set to come out in spring 2022, but it’s now supposed to arrive in the second half of this year.

IO Interactive also outlined a number of other changes in its roadmap. It’s swapping in Himmapan Hotel as the game’s free rotating location until July 17th, and has added Vicente Murillo as the current Elusive Target, with Wen Ts’ai set to make a return on July 15th.

Hitman 3 is getting its first new map on July 26th as free DLC

Windows security

A few days ago, Microsoft issued a warning about a worm called Raspberry Robin that is infecting enterprise Windows networks. This has been labeled as a high-risk threat that spreads via infected USB devices which contain a .LNK file. As soon as a user clicks on it, the malware contacts command and control servers and installs a bunch of malicious DLLs. While the worm doesn't do anything more malicious right now, Microsoft is still warning companies about it because the DLLs do have the ability to modify Windows security settings and leverage the exploit to gain access to sensitive information or deploy ransomware.

On the other hand, security firm AV-TEST has revealed the results of its Advanced Threat Protection Test Against Ransomware for February 2022 and walked away very impressed with Microsoft Defender. The security solution was able to detect ransomware infection in the initial access phase in almost all cases and performed admirably in other areas too.

And this might be surprising news, especially for people involved in the enterprise cybersecurity domain but Microsoft has decided to quietly roll back its decision to block internet macros in Office applications by default. This is strange because the Redmond tech giant has been talking about the positive effects of this change for quite some time and reverting the default behavior - especially on such short notice - exposes companies to an easily accessible attack surface. The move has faced a lot of criticism but Microsoft has informed Neowin that the change is only temporary and it does plan to re-introduce default blocking behavior as soon as it makes some usability enhancements. However, it has not provided a time frame for this yet.

Moreover, if you use Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, make sure to update them ASAP as Chromium is affected by a high severity 0-day exploit, a fix for which is now available.

Leaked OneDrive

Earlier this week, a preview build of the updated OneDrive client for Windows 11 leaked. Although there are no new functionalities in the app, we can spot new controls, navigation, and overhauled visuals in the style of Windows 11. It is important to note that Microsoft has not announced when this revamped app will be publicly available, but it should happen sooner rather than later.

In related news, Outlook Lite is coming to Android devices later this month too. This variant of the app is designed for low-spec devices with speedier performance and a smaller download size being the priorities. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also making it easier for Teams organizers to host Q&A sessions by directly integrating the functionality in the app. Currently, this process involves installing a dedicated Teams app for this purpose but it's not entirely clear how, and if, the two offerings will differ. People who use the regular version of Outlook for Windows should also keep an eye out for a new Notifications pane coming soon. It will allow them to choose which types of notifications you wish to receive, including email and document @mentions, travel updates, deliveries, and more

Coming over to Microsoft Edge, we learned that Microsoft is hard at work making its browser into a dedicated OS bringing some features of the Windows Photos app to its browser. Edge Canary now offers a built-in photo editor that enables users to crop a picture, adjust various sliders (brightness, exposure, etc.), apply filters, and annotate with different tools. But if you prefer a more relatively more stable version of Edge that has more features than the generally available version, you can give Edge 104 a try in the Beta channel right now. That said, the latest build only includes some new policies for enterprise use-cases.

Furthermore, Office version 2206 has fixed a bunch of crashing and freezing issues affecting Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Workarounds have also been provided for Office 2019 and Office 2021. Finally, Microsoft PowerToys users can give version 0.60 a swing as well. It focuses on stability and usability enhancements including a new PowerToys Run plugin for OneNote.

Windows 11 updates

We'll start off this section by talking about Microsoft updating its free Windows 11 virtual machines. These machines contain evaluation versions of Windows 11 with development tools, since they are intended primarily for developers. Although they do not require immediate activation, they do expire after a short time. The latest virtual machines are only valid until September 11, 2022.

Microsoft also rolled out two builds to the Windows 11 Beta Channel. Build 22621.290 has new features turned off whereas build 22622.290 has them lit up. What new features, you ask? Well, they include Suggested Actions and OneDrive storage alert and subscription management in Windows Settings. There are a bunch of fixes and general improvements present in both builds too. As it currently stands, people who are seeded build 22621.290 (features off) can choose to install build 22622.290 (features on) through Windows Update.

Meanwhile, KB5014668, which was supposed to fix an issue in Windows 11 where new updates failed to install ironically fails in installing itself. The update is being offered in the Release Preview Channel but many are complaining that it fails to install. That said, some are saying that they are able to install the problematic update after multiple reboots, so if you're facing the same issue, give this workaround a go.

Continuing with the topic of Windows updates, Microsoft confirmed that a Dev Channel 23H2 build will not be flighted this week as the company is busy resolving a presumably important bug. However, if you're gearing up for Windows 11 22H2 instead and don't want to use your Microsoft Account in the setup process, you may want to check out Rufus 3.19, now available. Meanwhile, if you're an enterprise customer and are really confused by how Microsoft's Windows Autopatch fits in your Windows update delivery landscape, check out this helpful PSA which explains the differences between Autopatch, Endpoint Manager, and Windows Update for Business very succinctly.

And if you use Windows 11 but are bummed by the botched Calendar and Clock flyout in the Taskbar, give this app a go. It attempts to fix Microsoft's implementation but there are a few caveats to be aware of, which are natural because this is not a native implementation.

Those who use Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) on their Windows 11 machine will be pleased to know that the July update has added AV1 support, and updated Settings app, and more.

Finally, this might be interesting to some but system builder Puget Systems says that its testing has revealed that Windows 11 has received several performance improvements since launch and at least manages to keep up with Windows 10 now. That said, it is still hesitant in declaring it a clear winner against Windows 10.

Git gud

On the gaming side of things, Microsoft quietly sent out emails to Xbox Live Gold customers, saying that it will not be offering Xbox 360 games via the subscription from October as it has "reached its limit" to do so. Only Xbox One games will be offered after the aforementioned deadline. It's important to note that Xbox 360 games claimed via the service are yours to keep even if your subscription expires, which means that if you're a long-time subscriber, you should probably have a massive library of Xbox 360 games already.

It's become even more evident that Xbox Game Pass should be the preferred choice for most gamers as Gold is likely being kept around for legacy reasons and for customers who can't upgrade to Game Pass due to financial reasons. Talking about Game Pass, that service received a bunch of Yakuza games at the start of the month with more titles to become available throughout July.

If you have an Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, don't forget to check out this week's Free Play Days promotion, packing Saints Row IV, Assetto Corsa Competizione, and The Crew 2. All of these titles can be played for free until Sunday and can be nabbed at massively discounted prices during the same duration.

But if you'd rather play classic games, you'll be happy to know that Microsoft has brought previews of Wolfenstein 3D and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for Xbox Insiders on PC. The intention is to bring them to the Microsoft Store for everyone once they have been tested thoroughly by Insiders.

On the other hand, if you were eager to get your hands on the latest piece of PC gaming technology, you're in for some bad news as Forspoken, the first game to leverage Microsoft's DirectStorage implementation has been delayed yet again, this time to January 24, 2023.

Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is now being probed in the UK too (it was already being investigated in the U.S.). The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is inviting feedback on the topic until July 20 with an initial decision expected by September 1.

And as usual, if you'd like to grab some PC games at significantly reduced prices, don't miss out on our Weekend PC Game Deals piece, a handpicked collected of discounted games compiled by Neowin News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• Windows Terminal 1.14 and Terminal Preview 1.15 have brought several crash fixes

• The July update for Surface Duo and Duo 2 introduced several camera and ink responsiveness improvements

• Dell has launched new Windows 11 Inspiron Plus laptops with the latest Intel Core H-series CPUs

• Microsoft will offer its datacenter batteries for grid load-balancing in Ireland

• Lenovo ThinkPad Ryzen 6000 laptops with Microsoft Pluton refuse to run Linux by default

• Microsoft has clarified that it won't ban commercial open-source apps from the Microsoft Store after all

Under the spotlight

This week, forum member Adam Bottjen - better known by the alias Warwagon - wrote a handy guide about how you can change the default homepage in Microsoft Edge. While this may be a relatively simple procedure for some of our readers, the guide is very useful for people who are not that familiar with Edge or using Windows PCs in general.

Meanwhile, News Reporter Sayan Sen wrote a detailed guide that should make it easier for people to decide which GPU to purchase, if they are building a gaming PC on a budget right now. Sayan's write-up contains price and performance comparisons so you can figure out where you are willing to make some tradeoffs to keep the cost as low as possible.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week relates to Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk finally filing to terminate his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. Musk has cited multiple reasons including Twitter's failure to provide him data on bot activity on the social media platform as well as firing a third of its talent acquisition team and key executives. Twitter is not pleased with Musk backing off and its shares have started to tumble too. Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor has announced that the company will be taking Musk to court and ensure that the transaction is completed. That said, it remains to be seen how prolonged this court battle will be.

Microsoft Weekly: Windows 11 updates, leaked OneDrive, and security

“Material Adverse Effect” was cited by Musk’s lawyers in a regulatory filing Friday which argued that undisclosed information about bots on the social media platform is “fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance.”

To escape the deal, Musk must prove the alleged omission amounts to an “unexpected, fundamental, permanent” negative development -- akin to blowing a hole in the transaction that can’t be fixed, said Larry Hamermesh, a University of Pennsylvania law professor.

In a 2020 case involving Boston Scientific Corp., a Delaware judge defined the term as an “adverse change in the target’s business that is consequential to the company’s long-term earnings power over a reasonable period, which one would expect to be measured in years rather than months.”

So far, Delaware courts have found only one case in which a clear MAE emerged -- Fresenius SE’s $4.3 billion buyout bid in 2018 for rival drugmaker Akorn Inc.

A judge blessed Fresenius’ decision to walk away from the deal after finding Akorn executives hid an array of problems that cast doubt on the validity of data backing up approval for some drugs and profitability of its operations.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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It’s on. Elon Musk has officially filed to kill his own Twitter acquisition, and Twitter is calling his bluff. They’ll see Musk in court. And while it’s only going to get messier from here, one important verdict has already been rendered by Elon Musk himself: he doesn’t have what it takes to run Twitter. And that’s a damning blow to his own central mythology.

We’ll look at the specifics of Musk’s formal SEC filing in a minute, but first it’s important to remember what he’s said about the deal and why he wanted to do it in the first place. It’s not like the world forced the acquisition of a relatively small social network on the world’s richest man. And Musk’s conduct surrounding the deal has been marked by a lot of obvious troll behavior. A reasonable person would conclude he was never serious about it to begin with, which is already leading to a lot of Musk stans and Twitter haters divining a 4D-chess narrative that makes his blunder seem intentional. But.

There are some things Musk said in the frenzy of the Twitter takeover that can’t be ignored. That’s because they strike at the heart of what built his original reputation: as a visionary, a bold industrialist, a futurist, and maybe even the guy who would solve climate change and multi-planetary civilization. Sure, lately he works tirelessly to attract a huge base of social reactionaries and various right-wingers who care more about his trolling than the missions of SpaceX or Tesla. But Musk’s real credibility — if he ever had any — was being the face of genuinely huge and ambitious efforts to change the world and make it better.

He probably didn’t need to, but he brought that same world-saving energy to the Twitter deal:

• Musk said he was motivated by the fact that Twitter had become a “de facto town square” and that it’s “really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely.” (He talked about “free speech” a lot during this time.)
• Speaking at a TED conference, Musk said the deal is not a way to make money. Some of his exact words: “it’s about the future of civilization, but you don’t care about the economics at all.”
• Later, speaking internally to employees of Twitter, Musk said “I want Twitter to contribute to a better, long-lasting civilization where we better understand the nature of reality.”
• Musk: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

These statements stand out above everything else because (a) things that are important to the future of human life are not things you typically troll people about, and (b) that should be especially true if you are Elon Musk, who has spent his entire modern career since Tesla cultivating the idea that he is on a mission to save the future of humanity and spread civilization across the stars. Does he tweet dumb memes a lot? Yes. Did he send a car into space as a joke? Sure. But the missions of his companies are dead serious. Tesla’s mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Neuralink wants to build devices that help people with paralysis to “regain independence.” And SpaceX? That’s about nothing less than “enabling people to live on other planets.”

So: Musk has intentionally spent his career leaning into some of the world’s most difficult-to-solve problems. He gives lots of keynotes, throws big ideas on the board, and makes lots of promises. Incidentally, this campaign to save the world earned him one of the biggest and most active fanbases on Twitter. And let’s be real: the man loves to tweet. The only person in the world who might love tweeting more than Elon Musk has been banned from the platform and impeached twice by the United States Congress.

But remember: Musk didn’t say “I want to buy Twitter because I love tweeting and I command an army of users here.” He said Twitter was important to the future of human civilization. And so, spiritually, the deal joined the ranks of the Teslas and the SpaceXs of the world.

What kind of problems would prevent this man from unlocking Twitter’s true potential? To help steer it and, along with his other companies, help humanity flourish in the future? He only really makes two assertions in his SEC filing:

1. Twitter won’t give him data necessary for him to figure out how many spam bots are on the platform.
2. Twitter fired some people and lost some executives.

This is weak crybaby stuff.

Musk has been going on about the alleged bot issue for a while, even getting into public beefs with the CEO of Twitter about it. I’m not going to unpack this whole spat — the Delaware Court of Chancery is about to examine that in some detail — but the TL;DR is that Musk wants to tank a huge deal over a problem known to every social media company on the planet, who have all dedicated vast amounts of resources toward fixing over several decades. It’s just a fundamentally unserious position from a guy who is willing to solve world-shaking problems like climate change

But let’s assume just for fun that Musk is right. After he started the deal and looked under the hood and laid out his plans for Twitter’s staff, he discovered Twitter’s bot population is more like 20% than 5%. So what? What’s a spread of 90 million users when TikTok and Facebook are ahead of you by billions? If your position is that Mark Zuckerberg is an unelected tyrant of speech, how is abandoning Twitter going to help you take him on? And why would you argue in your SEC filing that revenue from active users is at stake? That doesn’t sound like “not caring about the economics at all.” That sounds like only caring about the economics.

And as for blowing the deal because a few Twitter execs fired staff while continuing to operate normally and roll out new features (hi, co-tweeting!) — get real. You’re buying Twitter for $44 billion. It’s yours now. You can clean house if you want to and correct or reverse all of the ill-advised decisions that brought the platform within your sights originally. Nobody will stop you! The SEC couldn’t even get you to stop tweeting!

There are many possible theories for why Musk put himself, Twitter, and the world through this charade. But in the end, Musk wrote a check his myth couldn’t cash.

We’re left with two possibilities. Either Musk doesn’t think he can do the job he promised at Twitter, and he’s not the world-changing force he’s been made out to be. Or, he was lying about the kinds of lofty ideals and visions that built his companies and his image.

What kind of man trolls the world about a better future?

Elon Musk proves he’s the wrong man to save the world