The news arrived via Cain's YouTube channel, where a video blog explains that he has moved to Southern California to work at Obsidian in person.

Other than being the creator, producer, designer, and lead programmer of Fallout, he also went on to design Fallout 2 in 1998. Following that, Cain has been involved in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, and other projects until joining Obsidian Entertainment back in 2011.

This first stint at the studio had Cain working on Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and The Outer Worlds in various roles, including director. He has been working as a contractor for multiple studios since his "semi-retirement," even being a creative consultant for The Outer Worlds 2.

Following Cain's official return to Obsidian, he is already said to be working on a mystery project at the studio. Before anyone mentions Fallout, Cain has already said that the new project won't be an easy guess like that.

"I can't talk about the project that I'm working on at Obsidian, just because that's covered by NDA," he explains. "Don't bother guessing, you're not going to guess right."

It has been a busy year at Obsidian. The Microsoft-owned game developer has released three games in 2025, which are the RPGs Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 as well as the cooperative survival game Grounded 2. The studio is yet to announce what it is working on for 2026 and beyond, so there aren't any clues about the project Tim Cain is now involved in.

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Posted Saturday 6 December 2025 at 3:30 am AEST (my time).

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A Reddit post about a bride who demands a wedding guest wear a specific, unflattering shade is sure to provoke rage, let alone one about a bridesmaid or mother of the groom who wants to wear white. A scenario where a parent asks someone on an airplane to switch seats so they can sit next to their young child is likely to invoke the same rush of anger. But those posts may trigger a Reddit moderator’s annoyance for a different reason—they are common themes within a growing genre of AI-generated, fake posts.

These are examples that spring to mind for Cassie, one of dozens of moderators for r/AmItheAsshole. With over 24 million members, it's one of the biggest subreddits, and it explicitly bans AI-generated content and other made-up stories. Since late 2022, when ChatGPT first launched to the public, Cassie (who wanted to be referred to by first name only) and other people who volunteer their time to moderate Reddit posts have been struggling with an influx of AI content. Some of it is entirely AI-generated, while other users have taken to editing their posts and comments with AI programs like Grammarly.

“It’s probably more prevalent than anybody wants to really admit, because it’s just so easy to shove your post into ChatGPT and say ‘Hey, make this more exciting,’” says Cassie, who thinks as much as half of all content being posted to Reddit may have been created or reworked with AI in some way.

r/AmItheAsshole is a pillar of Reddit culture, a format that has inspired dozens if not hundreds of derivatives like r/AmIOverreacting, r/AmITheDevil, and r/AmItheKameena, a subreddit with over 100,000 members described as “Am I the asshole, but the Indian version.” Posts tend to feature stories about interpersonal conflicts, where Redditors can weigh in on who is wrong (“YTA” means “You’re the asshole,” while “ESH” means “Everyone sucks here”), who is right, and what the best course of action to take is moving forward. Users and moderators across these r/AmItheAsshole variants have reported seeing more content they suspect is AI-generated, and others say it's a sitewide issue happening in all kinds of subreddits.

“If you have a general wedding sub or AITA, relationships, or something like that, you will get hit hard,” says a moderator of r/AITAH, a variant of r/AmItheAsshole that has almost 7 million members. This moderator, a retiree who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has been active on Reddit for 18 years—most of its existence—and also had decades of experience in the web business before that. She views AI as a potential existential threat to the platform.

“Reddit itself is either going to have to do something, or the snake is going to swallow its own tail,” she says. “It’s getting to the point where the AI is feeding the AI.”

In a response to a request for comment, a Reddit spokesperson said: “Reddit is the most human place on the Internet, and we want it to stay that way. We prohibit manipulated content and inauthentic behavior, including misleading AI bot accounts posing as people and foreign influence campaigns. Clearly labeled AI-generated content is generally allowed as long as it’s within a community’s rules and our sitewide rules.” The spokesperson added that there were over 40 million “spam and manipulated content removals” in the first half of 2025.

Vibe Shift for the Worse

Ally, a 26-year-old who tutors at a community college in Florida and spoke using her first name only for her privacy, has noticed Reddit “really going downhill” in the past year because of AI. Her feelings are shared by other users in subreddits like r/EntitledPeople, r/simpleliving, and r/self, where posts in the last year have bemoaned the rise of suspected AI. The mere possibility that something could be AI-generated has already eroded trust between users. “AI is turning Reddit into a heap of garbage,” one account wrote in r/AmITheJerk. “Even if a post suspected of being AI isn’t, just the existence of AI is like having a spy in the room. Suspicion itself is an enemy.” Ally used to enjoy reading subreddits like r/AmIOverreacting. But now she doesn’t know if her interactions are real anymore, and she’s spending less time on the platform than in years past.

“AI burns everybody out,” says the r/AITAH moderator. “I see people put an immense amount of effort into finding resources for people, only to get answered back with ‘Ha, you fell for it, this is all a lie.’”

Detecting AI

There are few foolproof ways to prove that something is AI or not, and most everyday people are relying on their own intuition. Text can be even harder to evaluate than photos and videos, which often have pretty definitive tells. Five Redditors who spoke to WIRED all had different strategies for identifying AI-generated text. Cassie notices when posts restate their title verbatim in the body or use em dashes, as well as when a poster has terrible spelling and punctuation in their comment history but posts something with perfect grammar. Ally is thrown off by newly created Reddit accounts and posts with emojis in the title. The r/AITAH mod gets an “uncanny valley” feeling from certain posts. But these “tells” could also be present in a post that isn’t using AI at all.

“At this point, it’s a bit of a you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of vibe,” says Travis Lloyd, a PhD student at Cornell Tech who has published research into new AI-driven challenges that Reddit moderators face. “Right now, there are no reliable tools to detect it 100 percent of the time. So people have their strategies, but they’re not necessarily foolproof.”

Plus, as more AI text appears in the wild, people start mimicking the commonalities of AI-generated language whether they use AI or not. On Reddit, the AI feedback loop may be even more incestuous, since the platform has sued AI companies like Anthropic and Perplexity for allegedly scraping Reddit content without consent to train chatbots. Google’s AI summary results have infamously pulled from Reddit comments that are actually sarcastic jokes, like a user who suggested using glue to make cheese stick to pizza crust better.

“AI is trained off people, and people copy what they see other people doing,” Cassie says. “People become more like AI, and AI becomes more like people.”

Rage-Bait Targeting Minorities

Both AITA moderators say they’ve observed a trend of rage-bait posts that could be written with AI and seem to exist just to malign trans people and other vulnerable populations. The r/AITAH moderator says the subreddit received a deluge of anti-trans content during Pride Month, while Cassie says it pops up in the moderation queue intermittently.

“Stuff like ‘My parents didn’t use my chosen name and I’m trans and I blew up on them because how dare they’ or ‘Somebody assumed my gender and I’m cis but how dare they assume my gender,’” Cassie says. “They’re just meant to make you mad at trans people, at gay people, at Black people, at women.”

In subreddits that revolve around news and politics, AI has enabled new ways of spreading disinformation. It’s something that Tom, a Redditor who helped moderate r/Ukraine for three years and spoke using only his first name for privacy, encountered alongside social manipulation techniques like astroturfing that predated programs like ChatGPT. But now, AI can automate those tactics, making it even harder for human moderators to keep up.

“It was like one guy standing in a field against a tidal wave,” Tom says. “You can create so much noise with such little effort.”

On r/Ukraine, which has close to a million members, Tom remembers getting training from other mods to try and mitigate the spread of Russian propaganda and even receiving specialized support from Reddit admins, who are a step above the volunteers and actually work for and get paid by Reddit.

Monetizing Karma

In addition to ideological motivations, there are also little-known ways to monetize Reddit content. Some are more obvious, like the Reddit Contributor Program, which lets posters make money from getting upvotes (referred to as “karma”) and awards that other users can purchase for them. Reddit hustlers can theoretically use AI-generated content to rack up karma, profit from it, and even sell their accounts.

“My Reddit account is worth a lot of money, and I know because people keep trying to buy it,” Tom says. “It could also be used for nefarious purposes, but I suspect a lot of it is people who are bored and have time, they’re like ‘Well, I could make a hundred bucks in a month on the side by doing almost nothing.’”

Other accounts need the karma to get access to post in NSFW subreddits that have karma requirements to do so, where they can then promote things like OnlyFans links. Both Cassie and the r/AITAH moderator have noticed accounts posting in their larger subreddits to rack up karma before moving on to posting adult content. Some of them are scammers. Others may just be trying to make a living.

“Sometimes it’s real, sometimes it’s an actual conflict they have actually had, sometimes it’s fake, sometimes either way it’s AI-generated,” Cassie says. “I almost want to call it gamification, where they’re just trying to use the system the way that it’s been set up.”

The extra time it takes for Reddit moderators to sift through potential AI material is a reflection of how AI content in general has created new roadblocks, which extends well beyond the realm of social media moderation.

“What Reddit moderators are dealing with is what people all over the place are dealing with right now, which is adjusting to a world where it takes incredibly little effort to create AI-generated content that looks plausible, and it takes way more effort to evaluate it,” Lloyd says. “That’s a real burden on them, like it is for teachers and whoever else.”

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Posted Saturday 6 December 2025 at 3:29 am AEST (my time).

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Iconic horde shooter games like Left 4 Dead don't appear that often, but it looks like the mind behind the hit title is looking to return to the genre. Today, Sony announced that it is partnering up with Bad Robot Games, the video game division of JJ Abrams' production company Bad Robot, to publish a four-player cooperative game. The studio's Chief Creative Officer, Mike Booth, will be directing this experience, who was the designer of Left 4 Dead.

The new game does not have a public name attached to it just yet, with today's announcement focusing mostly on the partnership being formed between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Bad Robot Games.

“Partnering with Sony Interactive Entertainment allows us to bring our new IP to life, with an expansive vision for this new universe,” said Anna Sweet, CEO of Bad Robot Games. “With the support of PlayStation, we hope to deliver a bold, innovative experience that is truly special for players. I could not be more excited that Mike Booth is at the creative helm, crafting a cooperative adventure that will lead to unforgettable moments with friends.”

The cooperative experience will be the studio's first internally developed game. It's also unclear how far along the development is and if it will be a live service title akin to Helldivers 2 or a campaign-oriented experience like Left 4 Dead.

"Their unique creative voice and passion for innovating across all forms of interactive entertainment perfectly aligns with SIE’s mission to craft experiences that resonate deeply with players," adds Christian Svensson, VP and Head of 2P/3P Content Ventures & Strategic Initiatives at Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We can’t wait for gamers to step into the world they’ve been building."

While we don’t have much information about the project just yet, platforms are something the companies announced today. The Sony-published co-op project will be reaching both PlayStation 5 and PC.

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Posted Friday 5 December 2025 at 12:13 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

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AMD's specialized Ryzen processors (CPU) with a unique 3D V-Cache design are considered the pinnacle of hardware for PC gamers. The latest flagship Zen 5 chip, known as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, is considered the top option right now, having succeeded the previous top option, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

Although AMD offers more powerful variants — including the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D — the combination of stellar performance and a very competitive price pushes the 9800X3D to the forefront for most gamers.

The Druid is able to fight in human form with staves and nature spells and, at any time, transform into one of the three available animal forms: Bear, Wolf, or Wyvern. Each of these forms has its own skills, attack types, and effects, which can also complement the Druid's human powers when used in combos. The studio says this is one of the hardest classes it has designed so far.

The Druid also has Ascendancy classes, with two options available with this update and another one on the way. One of them is the Shaman, letting players harness nature and rage in their spellcasting. This includes the ability to become a "walking disaster" and additional exclusive mods for all Runes and Idols for more varied builds as well.

Next is the Oracle Druid Ascendancy. This variant lets players peek into the future to get visions of possible actions. If the player activates the specific power or attacks the future version of the enemy, bonus effects and damage can apply.

Aside from the Druid class and its massive customizations, Grinding Gear is also bringing in a new league named Fate of the Vaal with this update. Its biggest feature is the dungeon-building system.

Each time they go into this special temple, players can select what rooms spawn during their runs and even upgrade them using proximity bonuses for spawning harder enemies, which in turn will give better drops. These rooms include limb replacement machines for new abilities, more corrupted items, and more. The finale even includes a fight with Atziri, Queen of the Vaal, using time travel.

Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids content expansion launches on December 12 across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms at 11AM PT. For players who have yet to jump into the game, a free-to-play weekend is also incoming this month. From December 12 through December 15, the game will be fully playable without having to pay for early access.

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Posted Friday 5 December 2025 at 12:09 pm AEST (my time).

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The original Medieval: Total War arrived back in 2002, making it only the second game of the franchise to come out of the studio. A sequel arrived only a few years later in 2006. Now, after a long wait, fans can finally return to the era with a brand-new entry.

"Built as the ultimate medieval strategy sandbox, it will empower players to shape realms, rewrite history, and immerse themselves in the Middle Ages like never before," says Creative Assembly, describing Total War: Medieval III. "Combining meticulous historical authenticity with unprecedented player agency, this is more than a sequel, it’s the rebirth of historical Total War."

Unfortunately, it looks like fans will be waiting a while to get the game though, as the studio says the project is still in "early pre-production."

The title will be built on Warcore, the latest version of Creative Assembly's proprietary development engine. The studio says that the new tools will allow its developers to offer a much more immersive and responsive experience than before. This will also allow future Total War games to be available on consoles.

"It’s incredible to think Total War is 25 years old," adds Vice President of Total War, Roger Collum. "We’re extremely grateful that we get to make games that our community get to play for decades, and without them we wouldn't be here. This year was a moment where all Total War fans; old or new, historical or fantasy, could come together and celebrate the exciting next chapter in our story. Here's to 25 more years!"

The announcements aren't over just yet. Sega and Creative Assembly say that a surprise reveal is planned for The Game Awards showcase on December 11. This is also slated to be a new game, but it seems to be aiming for a much sooner launch than Medieval III.

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Posted Friday 5 December 2025 at 12:09 pm AEST (my time).

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While it may be sad from the consumer perspective that a reliable NAND and memory maker is no longer going to be serving us, from Micron's point of view, this is a big opportunity as the company has confirmed that it made this "difficult decision" to focus on the much more profitable sector which happens to currently be the enterprise AI market.

As a result of the extremely high demand for RAM and related products, since AI and ML workloads absolutely love to gobble down memory, the prices of RAM kits, be it DDR5 or DDR4, is very very high right now, and many of their stocks are running very dry so in case of price drops or cuts, the products are not really lasting on shelves for very long.

Alongside RAM, graphics cards are also expected to be hit with price hikes very soon since the demand for them are also very high since GPUs do inferencing and other AI computation tasks very fast. Besides the GPU's core, the memory is also going to be affected in case memory chips go up in prices.

Besides those, SSDs may also see price hikes, and thus, any component that is related to memory or can solve AI problems fast, are going to remain in major demand.

Rather surprisingly, it is also being reported that AMD's Ryzen processors could also be seeing a price increase, and it could happen very very soon. According to a report by OC3D which, citing sources familiar with matter, claims that Ryzen is set to get quite expensive. The report expected that prices for Ryzen would start looking up by the midnight of December 1, 2025, though that did not happen as prices are still stable.

However, it may still happen and so this might be a wise time to pick one up in case of a bump up. Head over to Amazon at this link to see if you like anything.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

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Posted Thursday 4 December 2025 at 12:23 pm AEST (my time).

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On Wednesday, Micron Technology announced it will exit the consumer RAM business in 2026, ending 29 years of selling RAM and SSDs to PC builders and enthusiasts under the Crucial brand. The company cited heavy demand from AI data centers as the reason for abandoning its consumer brand, a move that will remove one of the most recognizable names in the do-it-yourself PC upgrade market.

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer at Micron Technology, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”

Micron said it will continue shipping Crucial consumer products through the end of its fiscal second quarter in February 2026 and will honor warranties on existing products. The company will continue selling Micron-branded enterprise products to commercial customers and plans to redeploy affected employees to other positions within the company.

Crucial launched in 1996 during the Pentium era as Micron’s consumer brand for RAM and storage upgrades. Over the years, the brand expanded to encompass other memory-related products such as SSDs, flash memory cards, and portable storage drives. Micron Technology has been manufacturing RAM since 1981.

Consumer RAM market squeezed by AI infrastructure

The surprise announcement from Micron follows a period of rapidly escalating memory prices, as we reported in November. A typical 32GB DDR5 RAM kit that cost around $82 in August now sells for about $310, and higher-capacity kits have seen even steeper increases.

DRAM contract prices have increased 171 percent year over year, according to industry data. Gerry Chen, general manager of memory manufacturer TeamGroup, warned that the situation will worsen in the first half of 2026 once distributors exhaust their remaining inventory. He expects supply constraints to persist through late 2027 or beyond.

The fault lies squarely at the feet of AI mania in the tech industry. The construction of new AI infrastructure has created unprecedented demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized DRAM used in AI accelerators from Nvidia and AMD. Memory manufacturers have been reallocating production capacity away from consumer products toward these more profitable enterprise components, and Micron has presold its entire HBM output through 2026.

At the moment, the structural imbalance between AI demand and consumer supply shows no signs of easing. OpenAI’s Stargate project has reportedly signed agreements for up to 900,000 wafers of DRAM per month, which could account for nearly 40 percent of global production.

The shortage has already forced companies to adapt. As Ars’ Andrew Cunningham reported, laptop maker Framework stopped selling standalone RAM kits in late November to prevent scalping and said it will likely be forced to raise prices soon.

For Micron, the calculus is clear: Enterprise customers pay more and buy in bulk. But for the DIY PC community, the decision will leave PC builders with one fewer option when reaching for the RAM sticks. In his statement, Sadana reflected on the brand’s 29-year run.

“Thanks to a passionate community of consumers, the Crucial brand has become synonymous with technical leadership, quality and reliability of leading-edge memory and storage products,” Sadana said. “We would like to thank our millions of customers, hundreds of partners and all of the Micron team members who have supported the Crucial journey for the last 29 years.”

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Posted Thursday 4 December 2025 at 12:22 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft has lowered sales growth targets for its AI agent products after many salespeople missed their quotas in the fiscal year ending in June, according to a report Wednesday from The Information. The adjustment is reportedly unusual for Microsoft, and it comes after the company missed a number of ambitious sales goals for its AI offerings.

AI agents are specialized implementations of AI language models designed to perform multistep tasks autonomously rather than simply responding to single prompts. So-called “agentic” features have been central to Microsoft’s 2025 sales pitch: At its Build conference in May, the company declared that it has entered “the era of AI agents.”

The company has promised customers that agents could automate complex tasks, such as generating dashboards from sales data or writing customer reports. At its Ignite conference in November, Microsoft announced new features like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, along with tools for building and deploying agents through Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. But as the year draws to a close, that promise has proven harder to deliver than the company expected.

According to The Information, one US Azure sales unit set quotas for salespeople to increase customer spending on a product called Foundry, which helps customers develop AI applications, by 50 percent. Less than a fifth of salespeople in that unit met their Foundry sales growth targets. In July, Microsoft lowered those targets to roughly 25 percent growth for the current fiscal year. In another US Azure unit, most salespeople failed to meet an earlier quota to double Foundry sales, and Microsoft cut their quotas to 50 percent for the current fiscal year.

The sales figures suggest enterprises aren’t yet willing to pay premium prices for these AI agent tools. And Microsoft’s Copilot itself has faced a brand preference challenge: Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft salespeople were having trouble selling Copilot to enterprises because many employees prefer ChatGPT instead. The drugmaker Amgen reportedly bought Copilot software for 20,000 staffers only for them to ignore it in favor of OpenAI’s chatbot.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the changes in sales quotas when asked by The Information. But behind these withering sales figures may lie a deeper, more fundamental issue: AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising.

The gap between promise and reality

The concepts behind agentic AI systems emerged shortly after the release of OpenAI’s GPT-4 in 2023. They typically involve spinning off “worker tasks” to AI models running in parallel with a supervising AI model, and incorporate techniques to evaluate and act on their own results. Over the past few years, companies like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have refined those early approaches into far more useful products for tasks like software development, but they are still prone to errors.

At the heart of the problem is the tendency for AI language models to confabulate, which means they may confidently generate a false output that is stated as being factual. While confabulation issues have reduced over time with more recent AI models, as we’ve seen through recent studies, the simulated reasoning techniques behind the current slate of agentic AI assistants on the market can still make catastrophic mistakes and run with them, making them unreliable for the kinds of hands-off autonomous work companies like Microsoft are promising.

While looping agentic systems are better at catching their own mistakes than running a single AI model alone, they still inherit the fundamental pattern-matching limitations of the underlying AI models, particularly when facing novel problems outside their training distribution. So if an agent isn’t properly trained to perform a task or encounters a unique scenario, it could easily draw the wrong inference and make costly mistakes for a business.

The “brittleness” of current AI agents is why the concept of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is so appealing to those in the AI industry. In AI, “general intelligence” typically implies an AI model that can learn or perform novel tasks without having to specifically be shown thousands or millions of examples of it beforehand. Although AGI is a nebulous term that is difficult to define in practice, if such a general AI system were ever developed, it would hypothetically make for a far more competent agentic worker than what AI companies offer today.

Despite these struggles, Microsoft continues to spend heavily on AI infrastructure. The company reported capital expenditures of $34.9 billion for its fiscal first quarter ending in October, a record, and warned that spending would rise further. The Information notes that much of Microsoft’s AI revenue comes from AI companies themselves renting cloud infrastructure rather than from traditional enterprises adopting AI tools for their own operations.

For now, as all eyes focus on a potential bubble in the AI market, Microsoft seems to be building infrastructure for a revolution that many enterprises haven’t yet signed up for.

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Posted Thursday 4 December 2025 at 12:21 pm AEST (my time).

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Did you know that BG3 players exploit children? Are you aware that Qi2 slows older Pixels? If we wrote those misleading headlines, readers would rip us a new one — but Google is experimentally beginning to replace the original headlines on stories it serves with AI nonsense like that.

Come on.

I read a lot of my bedtime news via Google Discover, aka “swipe right on your Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel homescreen until you see a news feed appear,” and that’s where these new AI headlines are beginning to show up.

They’re not all bad. For example, “Origami model wins prize” and “Hyundai, Kia gain share” seem fine, even if not remotely as interesting as the original headlines. (“Hyundai and Kia are lapping the competition as US market share reaches a new record” and “14-year-old wins prize for origami that can hold 10,000 times its own weight” sound like they’re actually worth a click!)

But in the seeming attempt to boil down every story to four words or less, Google’s new headline experiment is attaching plenty of misleading and inane headlines to journalists’ work, and with little disclosure that Google’s AI is rewriting them.

The very first one I saw was “Steam Machine price revealed,” which it most certainly was not! Valve won’t reveal that till next year. Ars Technica’s original headline was the far more reasonable “Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to be priced like one.”

“Microsoft developers using AI”? No shit, Sherlock. (That one was tacked on my colleague Tom Warren’s story about “How Microsoft’s developers are using AI” — Google removed the two words that make a silly headline into a real one!)

Reached for comment, my colleague Tom Warren said: “lol wtf Google.”

I also saw Google try to claim that “AMD GPU tops Nvidia,” as if AMD had announced a new groundbreaking graphics card, when the actual Wccftech story is about how a single German retailer managed to sell more AMD units than Nvidia units within a single week’s span. Wccftech’s headline was relatively responsible, but Google turned it into clickbait.

Then there are the headlines that simply don’t make sense out of context, something real human editors avoid like plague. What does “Schedule 1 farming backup” mean? How about “AI tag debate heats”?

The original PC Gamer and PCGamesN headlines for those stories are more interesting and intelligible.

Make no mistake, the problem isn’t just that these AI headlines are bad. It’s that Google is taking away our agency to market our own work, like if we’d written a book and the bookstore decided to replace its cover.

We try hard to craft headlines that invite readers in, ones that responsibly encapsulate the news, ones that help you understand why a story matters right away and get you excited when it’s justified. (Does my headline for this story seem the right amount of excited?) And yet Google seems to think it can just replace these headlines, in a way that might confuse our readers and think we’re the ones generating clickbait, since our publications’ names appear right next to them.

Google does disclose that something about these news items is “Generated with AI, which can make mistakes,” but not what, and readers only see that message if they tap the “See more” button:

What Google shows me when I tap “see more.”

It’s too easy for readers to think we intentionally send our stories to Google Discover with these headlines.

The good news is, this is a Google experiment. If there’s enough backlash, the company probably won’t proceed. “These screenshots show a small UI experiment for a subset of Discover users,” Google spokesperson Mallory Deleon tells The Verge. “We are testing a new design that changes the placement of existing headlines to make topic details easier to digest before they explore links from across the web.”

But the overall trend at Google has been to prioritize its own products at the expense of sending clicks to news websites. While the company swears it isn’t destroying the web with AI search, you’d be hard-pressed to find a news outlet that agrees, and even Google has admitted in court that “the open web is already in rapid decline.”

It’s the reason The Verge now has a subscription: We can’t survive Google Zero without your help.

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Posted Wednesday 3 December 2025 at 12:14 pm AEST (my time).

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I can take or leave some of the things that Microsoft is doing with Windows 11 these days, but I do usually enjoy the company’s yearly limited-time holiday sweater releases. Usually crafted around a specific image or product from the company’s ’90s-and-early-2000s heyday—2022’s sweater was Clippy themed, and 2023’s was just the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper in sweater form—the sweaters usually hit the exact combination of dorky/cute/recognizable that makes for a good holiday party conversation starter.

Microsoft is reviving the tradition for 2025 after taking a year off, and the design for this year’s flagship $80 sweater is mostly in line with what the company has done in past years. The 2025 “Artifact Holiday Sweater” revives multiple pixelated icons that Windows 3.1-to-XP users will recognize, including Notepad, Reversi, Paint, MS-DOS, Internet Explorer, and even the MSN butterfly logo. Clippy is, once again, front and center, looking happy to be included.

Not all of the icons are from Microsoft’s past; a sunglasses-wearing emoji, a “50” in the style of the old flying Windows icon (for Microsoft’s 50th anniversary), and a Minecraft Creeper face all nod to the company’s more modern products. But the only one I really take issue with is on the right sleeve, where Microsoft has stuck a pixelated monochrome icon for its Copilot AI assistant.

This year's "Artifact" sweater is mostly retro icons, but with some decidedly anachronistic modern ones included too.

Microsoft

 

File Explorer fans will find a lot to like on the back.

Microsoft

 

A black and green Xbox-themed option.

Microsoft

 

And a Zune-themed option for the truly hardcore.

Microsoft

 

Sometimes it feels like Microsoft is set on pushing Copilot into flagship products like Windows, Office, and the Edge browser. But this sweater proves that even explicitly retro-themed vanity projects aren’t immune to the company’s AI push. In sweaters and in Windows PC keyboards, you’re getting a Copilot icon whether you like it or not.

If the icons aren’t doing it for you, Microsoft is also offering a black-and-lime-green Xbox-themed sweater and, most horrific of all, a brown-and-orange Zune sweater complete with back and play/pause buttons.

Microsoft’s holiday sweaters are always available in limited quantities, and as of this writing (about an hour after the store listing went live), most sizes of the Artifact sweater are already sold out. Buyers can still place orders, though, and Microsoft says that they “will be filled once the stock becomes available.”

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Posted Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 5:06 pm AEST (my time).

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The $800 million mark was reached in April of this year. That makes the latest $100 million arrive within just eight months. The company's own funding tracker has been updated to show that the community has now raised over $900,000,000, with a massive amount of money being raised in the past week or so as the milestone drew nearer.

The in-development title, which is still in alpha, has been receiving a steady stream of updates in 2025, just like in previous years. The most recent one was Alpha 4.4, bringing in the third star system of the game universe: Nyx. Surrounded by largely uninhabitable planets, this system's star has a dense asteroid belt surrounding it, which is where mining locations, abandoned sites, and the 'free-town' Levski landing zone are situated.

Previous updates in the year have brought along orbital lasers, mini sandworms, its first alien NPC, radiation hazards, dynamic rain, various mission chains, abandoned research stations across systems, and more.

Looking ahead, Cloud Imperium Games has said that, after plenty of delays, it is aiming at a 2026 launch for the Star Citizen single-player story campaign Squadron 42. Featuring a large cast of well-known actors like Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, and Gary Oldman, the campaign was announced to be feature-complete back in 2023, with it now in the polishing stage. The multiplayer portion of the game does not have a release window attached to it just yet.

If it keeps the current pace, it's likely that the Star Citizen crowdfunding campaign will reach one billion dollars in 2026.

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Posted Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 4:05 am AEST (my time).

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The new costs for the various products are as follows:

In addition to more expensive Raspberry Pi computers, the 16GB variants of Compute Module 5 are also rising by $20. It said "The prices of lower-density Raspberry Pi 4 variants, of Raspberry Pi 3+ and earlier models, and of Raspberry Pi Zero products remain unchanged."

Raspberry Pi said that the price increases were a hard choice to make, but needs must, and prices have been bumped up. The company said it views the rises as temporary and intends to unwind them when its costs fall.

While price rises suck, the company did show that it has managed to keep prices fairly consistent over the last decade. It said that for $35, you can get the Raspberry Pi 4 with 1GB of RAM today; back in 2012, the Raspberry Pi 1 with 256MB RAM cost that much.

Exploring lower-cost single-board computers

For those who find the price rise a deal breaker, Raspberry Pi is far from the only company offering this type of board computer, and you can find cheaper models elsewhere. Alternative brands worth considering include the Orange Pi, ODROID, Radxa, and ASUS Tinker Board.

Are you sticking with Raspberry Pi and its large ecosystem, or are you choosing an alternative brand for lower prices?

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Posted Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 4:03 am AEST (my time).

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Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

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

Dell revealed that Windows 11's adoption is much slower compared to Windows 10. In the Q3 results for the financial year 2026, Dell's CEO said that people have been quite slow in migrating to Windows 11.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Users discovered that the recent Windows 11 preview updates contain a new "App Updates" section in the Settings app. As it turned out, it will serve as an update mechanism for applications whose developers decided to allow updates via the Windows Update mechanism. This could be useful on systems without the Microsoft Store and other, more niche scenarios.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

This week, we had a bunch of PowerToys-related news. For one, Microsoft released version 0.96.1 to bring back a missing module on Windows 10. Image Resizer is now working as it should on the now-unsupported Windows 10. The update also fixed bugs in Advanced Paste and Awake. Also, Microsoft is working on a new monitor utility. PowerMonitor will let you control various monitor settings using a handy flyout. Brightness, contrast, volume, and more.

A new entry on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website revealed that Microsoft is working on a new feature that allows ending conversations with Copilot by simply saying bye or goodbye. Paired with the new "Hey Copilot" command, this will enable complete hands-free experiences for voice on Windows devices.

Also, check out our recap of everything new in Excel in November 2025 and our weekly overview of new stuff that is coming soon to Outlook, Teams, Edge, Copilot, and other productivity apps from Microsoft.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Steven Parker published a review of the GEEKOM AX8 Max, a mini PC with 32GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB storage. This small device costs only $500 and has plenty of ports, power, and good thermals. It is not flawless, so check out the complete review here.

For those who want to build a new gaming PC, we published two guides detailing the best graphics cards for 1080p in 2025 from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, and another one with the best processors to buy from Intel and AMD in late 2025.

On the gaming side

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

Microsoft is adding more features to its recently launched handheld consoles. The ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X have received the new Default Game Profile feature that tunes the hardware according to the needs of supported games to ensure the best battery life with the maximum frame rates possible.

It looks like another Sony exclusive is heading towards PC. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for PC appeared on the official ESRB website, which could indicate its imminent announcement. The game originally launched on PlayStation 5 in June 2025.

Mojang revealed the release date for Minecraft's next big update, Mounts of Mayhem. It will arrive on all supported platforms (Bedrock and Java) on December 9, 2025. New content in the update includes the Nautilus, underwater mount, the Camel Husk, spears, and other changes.

Valve shared more details about the new Steam Machine, a Linux-powered gaming PC that is coming soon. While we do not know the exact price just yet, Valve says that the device will be a "good deal." However, the company does not plan to subsidize its costs.

As usual, we also published our weekly Weekend PC Game Deals article, where we gathered plenty of discounts across various digital storefronts, the latest freebie from the Epic Games Store, and more.

By the way, you can still join the free-to-play event in Battlefield 6. The game is available for everyone for free until December 2, 4 AM PT. Speaking of Battlefield 6, EA recently announced that 98% of all matches have been cheater-free thanks to tougher security in the game and its anti-cheat mechanisms.

If you want to play all these games but you do not have a device that can run them, you may consider purchasing a GeForce NOW membership, which is now 50% off for three months.

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Posted Monday 1 December 2025 at 3:12 am AEST (my time).

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Paul's Hardware (1.54m subscribers)

November 30, 2025

Video length: 9m 31s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - November 30, 2025 

1:29 Intel’s 18A-P Process Is Expected to Be Adopted by Apple for “M-Series” SoCs 

3:07 Intel Nova Lake-S bLLC lineup said to include at least two K-series chips 

5:07 Nvidia puppies distract from rumor they’ll stop sending VRAM to GPU board partners 

TECH BRIEFS 

6:45 The Cherry era of keyboards might be at an end after a $23 million loss 

7:35 Colorful introduces white COLORFIRE B850M-MEOW WIFI7 V14 “Cat” board 

8:31 End of Year Build Series Continues - Awesome Hardware Charity Stream Sat Dec 6th

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Posted Sunday 30 November 2025 at 6:46 pm AEST (my time).

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The reason is pretty simple, albeit alarming: It's because AI applications introduce cross-prompt injection (XPIA) risks through the way that they are granted access to user files. Agentic accounts, those that would be offered when the features are enabled, are granted limited access to your user profile directory located at "Maindrive > Users > Username." As such, if an agent needs access to files, Windows grants them read and write access to anything in that directory. 

Because of this, Microsoft says "malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions," which could lead to unintended consequences. It then gives the examples of data exfiltration or malware installation through AI applications. In other words, these vulnerabilities could be used to install malware or gain access to user-sensitive files. In addition, when using the agent workspace, "the agentic app has access to the apps that are available to all users by default." Agentic AI applications could install or modify software without your knowledge, which is the alarming bit.

What are the agentic features coming to Windows 11?

Going by what Microsoft has described in the recent support bulletin, the experimental feature is called the Agent Workspace. It's available in a private developer preview for Windows Insiders, and has already rolled out to some. Although, there are no apps that support the new functionality yet, Copilot will soon have access to agentic workspaces, with other apps coming soon. More specifically, the AI agents are coming as an addition to Ask Copilot, the feature that allows you to call upon an AI assistant in Windows 11. 

Copilot is already problematic for those who value privacy; the AI can see your entire display, for example. Admittedly, it Copilot can handle some useful tasks, too. But that depends on if you're willing to embrace the risks, especially now. This initial build will start with limited access to help developers "gather feedback and strengthen foundational security." Microsoft also outlines that security is not a "one-time feature," but a "continuous commitment" that will be adapted over time to meet the needs of the technology. 

Agent workspaces are separate, contained spaces, where you allow the AI applications or agents access to files in the background, while you continue to use your device. The dedicated account or separation "establishes clear boundaries between agent activity and your own," achieving what the company refers to as "scoped authorization and runtime isolation." That gives you full control, while the agent works in the background, including the ability to "manage access at any time." Theoretically, you should be able to stop agents, but it's still concerning. As more users gain access to these experimental features, more information will be available on how they work and how secure they are. Though, no one is really happy about it, and users are voicing their dissent online.

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Will Apple turn to Intel for production of its M-series chips in 2027? That’s what supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted on X Friday. Citing his latest industry surveys, Kuo says that Intel’s chances of becoming Apple’s latest “advanced-node supplier… has improved significantly” in recent weeks.

Any deal with Intel would be significant considering the chipmaker famously missed out on supplying its own processors for the original iPhone. Apple now has a deal with Taiwan-based TSMC to supply silicon chips for its iPhone, iPad and Mac products.

Kuo says that Apple has a non-disclosure agreement with Intel to acquire the company’s 18AP PDK 0.9.1GA chips. At this point, the company is waiting on Intel to deliver the PDK 1.0/1.1 kit, which is supposed to arrive in the first quarter of 2026. If everything stays on track, Intel could start shipping Apple’s lowest-end M-series processor, built on the 18AP advanced node, sometime in the second or third quarter of 2027, Kuo says. But that timing still depends on how smoothly things go once Apple actually gets the PDK 1.0/1.1 kit.

Kuo theorizes that a deal with Intel could help Apple demonstrate to the Trump administration that its committed to “buying American” by rerouting its supply chain to include more US-based companies. For Intel, a deal could signal that the company’s worst days are passed. “Looking ahead, the 14A node and beyond could capture more orders from Apple and other tier-one customers, turning Intel’s long-term outlook more positive,” Kuo writes.

Could Apple strike a deal with Intel? And what would happen if it decided to use the chipmaker’s 18AP processors for its entry-level M-series?

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Posted Saturday 29 November 2025 at 9:46 am AEST (my time).

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Ever since the dawn of online multiplayer gaming, cheating has been a constant issue that game developers have had to combat with anticheat programs that prevent or detect hacking attempts, and then ban the account responsible shortly thereafter. Many turn to third-party solutions like Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye for this, though some studios opt for first-party software developed in-house.

Games published by Electronic Arts (EA) use one such proprietary program called EA Javelin, noteworthy for being a kernel-level anticheat — a controversial solution that operates at the deepest level of your computer's operating system, past your system's other security measures, to work more effectively and efficiently.

The true efficacy of kernel-level programs has been in question ever since they became as fairly widespread as they are now, with many arguing that such deep access to your operating system isn't necessary for an anticheat to do its job. For its hit new FPS Battlefield 6, though, EA and Battlefield Studios say that Javelin has been hugely successful.

That news comes in a new report from the Battlefield developer in which it was announced that since the game's October 10 launch, 2.39 million cheat attempts have been blocked by Javelin, with 190 different cheat sellers/programs detected and 183 (96.3%) of them reporting failures or announcing takedowns as a result.

Battlefield Studios also announced that in the shooter's opening week, it had a Match Infection Rate (MIR) — a measure of the percentage of games with a cheater in them — of just 2%, meaning 98% of Battlefield 6 games in that time were hacker-free. A graph further shows that in the month after launch, that number has only slightly grown to an average of about 2.3-2.5%.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

 

The Match Infection Rate (MIR) of games played during Battlefield 6's Open Beta.

 

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

 

The Match Infection Rate (MIR) of games played during the month after Battlefield 6's launch.

 

A big reason for this "successful disruption of the cheater community" was the ability to test and improve Javelin during Battlefield 6's Open Beta weekends in August, during which over 1.2 million cheating attempts were thwarted, and the number of cheater-free matches rose from 93.1% to 98% by the time the beta was concluding.

 

The widespread use of Secure Boot — a security feature enabled in your motherboard BIOS that combats malware and other untrustworthy software — was also a factor, with adoption of the required setting rising from 62.5% to 92.5% by the beta's end.

 

Enabling Secure Boot is kind of a pain, and in some other FPS titles like recent Call of Duty games, it, as well as kernel-level anticheat, has struggled to effectively counter cheaters. Javelin appears to be taking advantage of the feature to great effect, however, so digging into your BIOS to turn it on is worth the hassle in the end.

 

Of course, the fight against cheaters is never-ending, so Battlefield Studios intends to keep winning it by continuously improving Javelin's systems while also making it easier to report players.

 

It also plans to address the use of third-party "cheating hardware" peripherals like the Cronus Zen that convert mouse and keyboard inputs into controller ones, giving M&K users access to gamepad aim assist. The developers acknowledge that some use these for accessibility, and recommend official solutions like the Xbox Adaptive Controller and PlayStation Access Controller.

 

Cheaters using sniper rifles to dominate entire servers is a big problem in many FPS games, but so far, 

Battlefield 6's anticheat defenses have held strong. 

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

 

Ultimately, it's great to see that cheating has been kept an extremely minor issue in Battlefield 6 thus far; speaking anecdotally, I've put over 120 hours into multiplayer at this point and haven't come across a single offender. It remains to be seen if that remains the case in the long term, but hopefully EA and Battlefield Studios remain this vigilant.

 

Battlefield 6 is in the middle of a free trial week right now, and is available permanently for $69.99 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5. Notably, the Xbox version is selling for just $60.69 at Loaded, as is the EA App edition on PC, thanks to Black Friday.

 

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Posted Saturday 29 November 2025 at 9:45 am AEST (my time).

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Dying Light: The Beast’s 1.4 update is a substantial one, especially if you stepped away after finishing the main story or were waiting for something with more long-term depth. New Game+ gives you the option to replay Kyle’s journey with all your gear intact while enemies scale higher and loot becomes more rewarding.

Fans of the original Dying Light progression will appreciate the return of Legend Levels, which sit on top of the normal skill tree to keep XP meaningful and offer new ways to strengthen your character. It keeps the endgame loop active without changing the core pacing.

Players on PC with capable hardware can now enable ray tracing for improved lighting, shadows, and reflections. For everyone else, there is a new week-long community challenge with rewards, along with broad improvements across the entire game that make exploration and combat feel more polished.

New Game+ and Legend Levels and more

What can researchers do if they suspect that their manuscripts have been peer reviewed using artificial intelligence (AI)? Dozens of academics have raised concerns on social media about manuscripts and peer reviews submitted to the organizers of next year’s International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), an annual gathering of specialists in machine learning.

Among other things, they flagged hallucinated citations and suspiciously long and vague feedback on their work.

Graham Neubig, an AI researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of those who received peer reviews that seemed to have been produced using large language models (LLMs). The reports, he says, were “very verbose with lots of bullet points” and requested analyses that were not “the standard statistical analyses that reviewers ask for in typical AI or machine-learning papers.”

But Neubig needed help proving that the reports were AI-generated. So, he posted on X (formerly Twitter) and offered a reward for anyone who could scan all the conference submissions and their peer reviews for AI-generated text. The next day, he got a response from Max Spero, chief executive of Pangram Labs in New York City, which develops tools to detect AI-generated text.

Pangram screened all 19,490 studies and 75,800 peer reviews submitted for ICLR 2026, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in April. Neubig and more than 11,000 other AI researchers will be attending.

Pangram’s analysis revealed that around 21% of the ICLR peer reviews were fully AI-generated, and more than half contained signs of AI use. The findings were posted online by Pangram Labs. “People were suspicious, but they didn’t have any concrete proof,” says Spero. “Over the course of 12 hours, we wrote some code to parse out all of the text content from these paper submissions,” he adds.

The conference organizers say they will now use automated tools to assess whether submissions and peer reviews breached policies on using AI in submissions and peer reviews. This is the first time that the conference has faced this issue at scale, says Bharath Hariharan, a computer scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and senior programme chair for ICLR 2026. “After we go through all this process … that will give us a better notion of trust.”

AI-written peer review

The Pangram team used one of its own tools, which predicts whether text is generated or edited by LLMs. Pangram’s analysis flagged 15,899 peer reviews that were fully AI-generated. But it also identified many manuscripts that had been submitted to the conference with suspected cases of AI-generated text: 199 manuscripts (1%) were found to be fully AI-generated; 61% of submissions were mostly human-written; but 9% contained more than 50% AI-generated text.

Pangram described the model in a preprint1, which it submitted to ICLR 2026. Of the four peer reviews received for the manuscript, one was flagged as fully AI-generated and another as lightly AI-edited, the team’s analysis found.

For many researchers who received peer reviews for their submissions to ICLR, the Pangram analysis confirmed what they had suspected. Desmond Elliott, a computer scientist at the University of Copenhagen, says that one of three reviews he received seemed to have missed “the point of the paper”. His PhD student who led the work suspected that the review was generated by LLMs, because it mentioned numerical results from the manuscript that were incorrect and contained odd expressions.

When Pangram released its findings, Elliott adds, “the first thing I did was I typed in the title of our paper because I wanted to know whether my student’s gut instinct was correct”. The suspect peer review, which Pangram’s analysis flagged as fully AI-generated, gave the manuscript the lowest rating, leaving it “on the borderline between accept and reject”, says Elliott. “It's deeply frustrating”.

Repercussions

The ICLR 2026 team permitted authors and reviewers to use AI tools to polish text, generate experiment codes or analyse results, but mandated disclosure of such uses. It also prohibited AI use that would have breached the confidentiality of manuscripts or produced falsified content.

The conference organizers will now use the Pangram analysis, as well as other automated tools, to assess whether submissions and reviews breached these policies, and will penalize authors and reviewers who violated them.

Researchers who oversee the peer-review process “are going to be asked to flag poor-quality reviews, not just reviews that are generated by LLMs,” says Hariharan. He adds that the “bar for desk-rejecting reviewers is going to be high. Given that these automated tools may have false positives, we are not going to be relying completely on those.”

Some authors have withdrawn their ICLR submissions because peer reviews of the manuscripts contained false claims. Others are still wondering how to respond to the peer reviews they received. “As a scientist, I’ve been in this game long enough that I know I’m going to get some low-quality reviews when we submit work to conferences,” says Elliott. But the suspected AI-generated reviews tend to contain “a lot of content”, he adds. Some of this “is relevant and worth responding to, but other parts don’t make sense”.

The situation at ICLR 2026 highlights the mounting pressure on peer reviewers to keep pace with a fast-growing field. “In AI and machine learning right now, we have a crisis in terms of reviewing, because the field has expanded exponentially for the past five years,” says Neubig.

Hariharan says each ICLR reviewer was assigned five papers that they had to review in two weeks, on average. “That is a very significant load. It is much higher than what has been done in the past.” He says discussions are taking place on how to manage this. “Everyone in the community is aware that we are in a regime where all of us are doing significantly more volunteer work than we used to.”

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CD Projekt RED's first-person role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 has now crossed 35 million copies, the company shared on Wednesday. As part of the publisher's Q3 2025 presentation, CD Projekt RED revealed the latest sales milestone for Cyberpunk 2077, sharing that the game has sold an additional five million copies since November 2024. CD Projekt RED did not share an update on the game's Phantom Liberty expansion, which was confirmed to have sold 10 million copies as of May earlier this year.

Cyberpunk 2077 is actually the second game from CD Projekt RED to pass this milestone, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt passing 30 million copies sold back in April 2021.The third entry in the saga has since passed many more milestones, reaching 60 million copies sold earlier in 2025, just in time for The Witcher 3's 10th anniversary.

CD Projekt RED's teams are growing

SteamOS, for those unfamiliar, is Valve’s Linux-based operating system. It acts as a console-like experience for the Steam Deck and for any device you manage to install it on. It offers a unified experience, and many believe it has largely achieved what Xbox wants to achieve with its own ecosystem. Cloud saves and cross-device connectivity through Steam already work across Windows, Linux, and Mac.

However, SteamOS isn’t without issues, and it may never overcome its biggest hurdle. More games are moving toward kernel-level anti-cheat systems and the growing requirement for Trusted Platform Module 2.0 support.

Developer concerns and Valve’s response to anti-cheat limitations

The Death Stranding 2: On the Beach unannounced port appeared on the official ESRB website without any announcements from Sony or Kojima Productions and is still available for viewing. The platform is clearly listed as Windows PC, with the title also keeping the original Mature 17+ rating from the ESRB due to the "Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, and Violence," seen in the campaign.

The Sony Interactive Entertainment-published action game from director Hideo Kojima first released on the PlayStation 5 back in June 2025. The sequel brings back the open-world traversal gameplay from the original, but with a Mexico and Australia setting this time. The story picks up 11 months after the previous campaign, with Sam Porter Bridges returning as the protagonist as he attempts to connect more pockets of civilization.

The original Death Stranding from 2019 was also a PlayStation exclusive, but a PC version appeared only a few months after the launch. An Xbox launch happened in 2024. It's unclear if a similar timetable is being followed for the sequel too. Keep in mind that the first game's publishing duties for platforms other than PlayStation were handled by 505 Games, but this time it looks like Sony is handling that department.

While an official announcement is yet to be made, the upcoming The Game Awards showcase may be where the PC port of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach will get announced. The title is up for multiple awards including Game of the Year, and Hideo Kojima has a history of appearing on the show to reveal his projects.

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Posted Thursday 27 November 2025 at 5:58 am AEST (my time).

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• Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study that found that artificial intelligence can already replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market.

• The study was conducted using a labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index, which was created by MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

• For lawmakers preparing billion-dollar reskilling and training investments, the index offers a detailed map of where disruption is forming down to the zip code.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday released a study that found that artificial intelligence can already replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market, or as much as $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, health care and professional services.

The study was conducted using a labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index, which was created by MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The index simulates how 151 million U.S. workers interact across the country and how they are affected by AI and corresponding policy.

The Iceberg Index, which was announced earlier this year, offers a forward-looking view of how AI may reshape the labor market, not just in coastal tech hubs but across every state in the country. For lawmakers preparing billion-dollar reskilling and training investments, the index offers a detailed map of where disruption is forming down to the zip code.

“Basically, we are creating a digital twin for the U.S. labor market,” said Prasanna Balaprakash, ORNL director and co-leader of the research. ORNL is a Department of Energy research center in eastern Tennessee, home to the Frontier supercomputer, which powers many large-scale modeling efforts.

The index runs population-level experiments, revealing how AI reshapes tasks, skills and labor flows long before those changes show up in the real economy, Balaprakash said.

The index treats the 151 million workers as individual agents, each tagged with skills, tasks, occupation and location. It maps more than 32,000 skills across 923 occupations in 3,000 counties, then measures where current AI systems can already perform those skills.

What the researchers found is that the visible tip of the iceberg — the layoffs and role shifts in tech, computing and information technology — represents just 2.2% of total wage exposure, or about $211 billion. Beneath the surface lies the total exposure, the $1.2 trillion in wages, and that includes routine functions in human resources, logistics, finance, and office administration. Those are areas sometimes overlooked in automation forecasts.

The index is not a prediction engine about exactly when or where jobs will be lost, the researchers said. Instead, it’s meant to give a skills-centered snapshot of what today’s AI systems can already do, and give policymakers a structured way to explore what-if scenarios before they commit real money and legislation.

The researchers partnered with state governments to run proactive simulations. Tennessee, North Carolina and Utah helped validate the model using their own labor data and have begun building policy scenarios using the platform.

Tennessee moved first, citing the Iceberg Index in its official AI Workforce Action Plan released this month. Utah state leaders are preparing to release a similar report based on Iceberg’s modeling.

North Carolina state Sen. DeAndrea Salvador, who has worked closely with MIT on the project, said what drew her to the research is how it surfaces effects that traditional tools miss. She added that one of the most useful features is the ability to drill down to local detail.

“One of the things that you can go down to is county-specific data to essentially say, within a certain census block, here are the skills that is currently happening now and then matching those skills with what are the likelihood of them being automated or augmented, and what could that mean in terms of the shifts in the state’s GDP in that area, but also in employment,” she said.

Salvador said that kind of simulation work is especially valuable as states stand up overlapping AI task forces and working groups.

The Iceberg Index also challenges a common assumption about AI risk — that it will stay confined to tech roles in coastal hubs. The index’s simulations show exposed occupations spread across all 50 states, including inland and rural regions that are often left out of the AI conversation.

To address that gap, the Iceberg team has built an interactive simulation environment that allows states to experiment with different policy levers — from shifting workforce dollars and tweaking training programs to exploring how changes in technology adoption might affect local employment and gross domestic product.

“Project Iceberg enables policymakers and business leaders to identify exposure hotspots, prioritize training and infrastructure investments, and test interventions before committing billions to implementation,” the report says.

Balaprakash, who also serves on the Tennessee Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, shared state-specific findings with the governor’s team and the state’s AI director. He said many of Tennessee’s core sectors — health care, nuclear energy, manufacturing and transportation — still depend heavily on physical work, which offers some insulation from purely digital automation. The question, he said, is how to use new technologies such as robotics and AI assistants to strengthen those industries rather than hollow them out.

For now, the team is positioning Iceberg not as a finished product but as a sandbox that states can use to prepare for AI’s impact on their workforces.

“It is really aimed towards getting in and starting to try out different scenarios,” Salvador said. 

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It’s not a bad time to upgrade your gaming PC. Graphics card prices in the 2020s have undulated continuously as the industry has dealt with pandemic and AI-related shortages, but it’s actually possible to get respectable mainstream- to high-end GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT and 9070 series or Nvidia’s RTX 5060, 5070, and 5080 series for at or slightly under their suggested retail prices right now. This was close to impossible through the spring and summer.

But it’s not a good time to build a new PC or swap your older motherboard out for a new one that needs DDR5 RAM. And the culprit is a shortage of RAM and flash memory chips that has suddenly sent SSD and (especially) memory prices into the stratosphere, caused primarily by the ongoing AI boom and exacerbated by panic-fueled buying by end users and device manufacturers.

To illustrate just how high things have jumped in a short amount of time, let’s compare some of the RAM and storage prices listed in our system guide from three months ago to the pricing for the exact same components today. Note that several of these are based on the last available price and are currently sold out; we also haven’t looked into things like microSD or microSD Express cards, which could also be affected.

In short, there’s no escaping these price increases, which affect SSDs and both DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits of all capacities (though higher-capacity RAM kits do seem to be hit a little harder). If you’re thinking about an SSD upgrade, those increases haven’t become too ludicrous just yet, but if you were thinking about a RAM upgrade, your best bet is to hold on tight to whatever you already have and hope that nothing breaks any time soon.

Memory and storage shortages can be particularly difficult to get through. As with all chips, it can take years to ramp up capacity and/or build new manufacturing facilities. Not only do we need to meet today’s demand with supply levels that were decided years ago, but manufacturers also must try to decide tomorrow’s supply levels based on today’s demand. This was part of the problem during the pandemic-fueled chip shortages of 2021 and 2022—most companies weren’t prepared for the pandemic-fueled spike in demand for consumer tech, or for the lull in normal buying and upgrade patterns that followed (just look at PC sales, which went way up in 2020 and 2021, then crashed for a while, and then eventually returned to something resembling a normal pattern).

And memory makers in particular may be slow to ramp up manufacturing capacity in response to shortages. If they decide to start manufacturing more chips now, what happens if memory demand drops off a cliff in six months or a year (if, say, an AI bubble deflates or pops altogether)? It means an oversupply of memory chips—consumers benefit from rock-bottom prices for components, but it becomes harder for manufacturers to cover their costs. Memory shortages in late 2016 and 2017, for example, led to oversupply and big price cuts in 2018 and 2019, and some pretty awful earnings reports for manufacturers like Samsung and SK Hynix.

The upshot is: Not only are memory prices getting bad now, but it’s exceptionally difficult to predict when shortage-fueled price hikes might end.

It’s not just PC builders

PC and phone manufacturers—and makers of components that use memory chips, like GPUs—mostly haven’t hiked prices yet. These companies buy components in large quantities, and they typically do so ahead of time, dulling the impact of the increases in the short-term. The kinds of price increases we see, and what costs are passed on to consumers, will vary from company to company.

Bloomberg reports that Lenovo is “stockpiling memory and other critical components” to get it through 2026 without issues and that the company “will aim to avoid passing on rising costs to its customers in the current quarter.” Apple may also be in a good position to weather the shortage; analysts at Morgan Stanley and Bernstein Research believe that Apple has already laid claim to the RAM that it needs and that its healthy profit margins will allow it to absorb the increases better than most.

Framework on the other hand, a smaller company known best for its repairable and upgradeable laptop designs, says “it is likely we will need to increase memory pricing soon” to reflect price increases from its suppliers. The company has also stopped selling standalone RAM kits in its online store in an effort to fight scalpers who are trying to capitalize on the shortages.

Tom’s Hardware reports that AMD has told its partners that it expects to raise GPU prices by about 10 percent starting next year and that Nvidia may have canceled a planned RTX 50-series Super launch entirely because of shortages and price increases (the main draw of this Super refresh, according to the rumor mill, would have a bump from 2GB GDDR7 chips to 3GB chips, boosting memory capacities across the lineup by 50 percent).

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Posted Wednesday 26 November 2025 at 12:49 pm AEST (my time).

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