Generative AI has undoubtedly revolutionized the world across a wide range of sectors since its emergence, including medicine, education, computing, and more. However, investors and users have raised critical concerns and skepticism, citing that the technology might be a passing fad despite the billions of dollars invested in the ever-evolving landscape.

As NVIDIA briefly became the world's first $5 trillion company, CEO Jensen Huang dismissed claims of an AI bubble, further suggesting that the technology will drive revolutionary scientific breakthroughs and global innovation. Contrary to popular opinion, the executive says AI is driven by real demand.

However, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates takes a different view, claiming the world is in the midst of an AI bubble during a recent interview on CNBC's Squawk Box show (via Business Insider). However, the philanthropic billionaire indicated that the AI bubble is quite different from the Netherlands' "tulip mania" in the 1630s, when tulip prices reached an all-time high before suddenly dropping. "That's not where we are," the executive added.

Gates suggests it was more like the dot-com bubble, where several internet-based companies became overvalued, leading to a significant crash.

The executive predicts that some of the companies plunging billions into the AI sector might not reap any profits as their investments hit dead ends. "There are a ton of these investments that will be dead ends."

According to Bill Gates:

"The value is extremely high, just like creating the internet ended up being, in net, very valuable. But you have a frenzy. And some of these companies will be glad they spent all this money. Some of them, you know, they'll commit to data centers whose electricity is too expensive."

Obsidian Entertainment's third game launch this year is available now. Ahead of the launch, I recently had the chance to chat with Brandon Adler and Matthew Singh, game directors on The Outer Worlds 2.

One of the more interesting tidbits that came out of our conversation was the reveal that the Rifts players can find scattered across planets and space stations weren't originally something that could be interacted with.

This came as a surprise to me, since much of the game's plot revolves around finding a way to keep the larger Rifts from completely destroying the solar system. After acquiring a special device partway through the game, players gain the ability to temporarily reset Rifts, exposing new pathways and uncovering interesting secrets.

"We didn't know we actually wanted to do interactible Rifts at the beginning. It wasn't until maybe a year or two in that we were talking about 'Hey, this is a pretty important story point for the player, and we don't really have much interaction with that,'" Alder says.

"And so we were like, 'Hey, let's just do it. Let's come up with a way for players to interact with these in some way, use these as puzzles and we can do some fun stuff."

From here, Alder explains he tasked Singh's team with finding the right places to include Rifts and use them as part of the game's design, something that came as a process and required a decent bit of iteration in order to figure out. That in turn led to other quality-of-life additions, such as making sure a rift was marked on the player's map once it was found.

"I wish we had come up with it even earlier, because I think it would have been even more deeply integrated into what we were doing," Adler says. "But I think that luckily we did do it early enough where we could actually still make those fairly impactful and just fun."

Scientists in China have developed a new chip, with a twist: it's analog, meaning it performs calculations on its own physical circuits rather than via the binary 1s and 0s of standard digital processors.

What’s more, its creators say the new chip is capable of outperforming top-end graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia and AMD by as much as 1,000 times.

In a new study published Oct. 13 in the journal Nature Electronics, researchers from Peking University said their device tackled two key bottlenecks: the energy and data constraints digital chips face in emerging fields like artificial intelligence (AI) and 6G, and the "century-old problem" of poor precision and impracticality that has limited analog computing.

When put to work on complex communications problems — including matrix inversion problems used in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems (a wireless technological system) — the chip matched the accuracy of standard digital processors while using about 100 times less energy.

By making adjustments, the researchers said the device then trounced the performance of top-end GPUs like the Nvidia H100 and AMD Vega 20 by as much as 1,000 times. Both chips are major players in AI model training; Nvidia's H100, for instance, is the newer version of the A100 graphics cards, which OpenAI used to train ChatGPT.

The new device is built from arrays of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells that store and process data by adjusting how easily electricity flows through each cell.

Unlike digital processors that compute in binary 1s and 0s, the analog design processes information as continuous electrical currents across its network of RRAM cells. By processing data directly within its own hardware, the chip avoids the energy-intensive task of shuttling information between itself and an external memory source.

"With the rise of applications using vast amounts of data, this creates a challenge for digital computers, particularly as traditional device scaling becomes increasingly challenging," the researchers said in the study. "Benchmarking shows that our analogue computing approach could offer a 1,000 times higher throughput and 100 times better energy efficiency than state-of-the-art digital processors for the same precision."

Old tech, new tricks

Analog computing isn't new — quite the opposite, in fact. The Antikythera mechanism, discovered off the coast of Greece in 1901, is estimated to have been built more than 2,000 years ago. It used interlocking gears to perform calculations.

For most of modern computing history, however, analog technology has been written off as an impractical alternative to digital processors. This is because analog systems rely on continuous physical signals to process information — for example, a voltage or electric current. These are much more difficult to control precisely than the two stable states (1 and 0) that digital computers have to work with.

Where analog systems excel is in speed and efficiency. Because they don't need to break calculations down into long strings of binary code — instead representing them as physical operations on the chip's circuitry — analog chips can handle large volumes of information simultaneously while using far less energy.

This becomes particularly significant in data- and energy-intensive applications like AI, where digital processors face limitations in how much information they can process sequentially, as well as in future 6G communications — where networks will have to process huge volumes of overlapping wireless signals in real time.

The researchers said that recent advances in memory hardware could make analog computing viable once again. The team configured the chip's RRAM cells into two circuits: one that provided a fast but approximate calculation, and a second that refined and fine-tuned the result over subsequent iterations until it landed on a more precise number.

Configuring the chip in this way meant that the team was able to combine the speed of analog computation with the accuracy normally associated with digital processing. Crucially, the chip was manufactured using a commercial production process, meaning it could potentially be mass-produced.

Future improvements to the chip's circuitry could boost its performance even more, the researchers said. Their next goal is to build larger, fully integrated chips capable of handling more complex problems at faster speeds.

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It’s nice to see that Techland is supporting two titles at once with Dying Light: The Beast and Dying Light 2. While The Beast Within launched earlier this year as a standalone spin-off to a decent reception, Dying Light 2 first released back in 2022, where it was well-received and reviewed positively by us.

This round of updates for The Beast brings some welcome changes, including new AI behavior, community challenges, and more. With it being spooky season — or at least the tail end — fans of Dying Light 2 can dive into a new, Halloween-themed event to close out October.

Dying Light: The Beast update adds surrendering enemies and brutal finishers

The Outer Worlds 2 has arrived, and you can spend dozens of hours exploring this vibrant sci-fi universe and collecting a veritable armory of powerful gear and weapons. It turns out, though, that one unique weapon is safely stashed inside The Incognito, your space-faring ship.

At first glance, it may seem impossible to obtain this special gun in the first half of the game, but there's actually a secret way to access it the moment you get past the prologue. Even better, this gun's unique ability is that it grows more powerful the longer you use it.

Here's everything you need to know about obtaining the Rookie's Reward submachine gun in The Outer Worlds 2, including the secret trick to unlocking its case and whether it's actually worth using during your adventures.

How do you get the Rookie's Reward unique weapon in The Outer Worlds 2?

You'll find what you're looking for in this room of The Incognito.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

Normally, it'd take a long time to get your Lockpick skill this high.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

Look past Niles and the Workstation, though, and you may find a secret.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

This lever disables the lock on the cabinet, giving you access.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

Now you have the Rookie's Reward unique weapon.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

Following the short prologue section in The Outer Worlds 2 (after you've wakened from hibernation and can travel to Paradise Island on Eden), you'll have free rein to explore the entirety of The Incognito, your trusty ship and home.

 

It's here you can find a new unique weapon to add to your arsenal, and you can do so the moment you're given the controls. Here are the steps, quick and simple:

 

1. Find the room in The Incognito with the Workstation, various lockers, and the locked cabinet.
2. Ignore the cabinet (it requires a Lockpicking skill of 11, which is very high), and turn toward the Workstation.
3. Climb on top of the boxes stacked in the corner next to the Workstation, and find the lever hidden behind them.
4. Interact with this lever to power down the cabinet and disable its lock.
5. Return to the cabinet and collect your prize, the Rookie's Reward unique weapon.

 

I wish I had discovered this secret earlier, because the Rookie's Reward is actually quite an interesting weapon, and its value only increases the longer you have it.

What does the Rookie's Reward gun do in The Outer Worlds 2?

The Rookie's Reward isn't the most exciting to look at, but its unique skill is interesting.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

The more you use this gun, the stronger it becomes, with each level increasing its damage, magazine size, and fire rate.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

Just an hour of gameplay improved the Rookie's Reward a decent amount.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

 

The Rookie's Reward is an "assuming gun" based on its official description, and that largely tracks. This is a straightforward fully automatic submachine gun; unlike most unique weapons with special interactions or damage types, this gun's unique modification doesn't change its fundamentals.

 

Instead, the Rookie's Reward also gains experience from your kills, and it can level up over time. As you earn levels (simply by killing enemies with it), the Rookie's Reward will permanently increase its damage, fire rate, and magazine size — and each level earned will come with a celebratory explosion of confetti.

 

You can earn levels relatively quickly with the Rookie's Reward, and the improvements are immediately noticeable. At first, this gun fires quite slowly and doesn't boast a lot of ammo, but even at level 12 (when I found it) I was still able to stay competitive in fire fights — and that's without any skill points in Guns or gun-related perks.

 

After about an hour of gameplay, the Rookie's Reward had reached level 5 and was considerably more effective at dispatching opponents. I assume this gun does have a maximum level (possibly level 30, the same as the player), but I haven't reached it yet and can't say for certain.

 

I'm enjoying the Rookie's Reward enough that I'm going to continue relying on it moving forward. My only complaint is that it can't accept a barrel mod, so I can't silence it or change its damage type. That aside, it's a fun unique weapon, and I'm excited to see just how much it can grow.

FAQ

What is The Outer Worlds 2?

The Outer Worlds 2 is the latest video game from Obsidian Entertainment, one of Xbox's top first-party studios. Like its predecessor, The Outer Worlds, TOW2 is a semi open-world sci-fi RPG with vibrant visuals, varied role-playing gameplay, and a dark sense of humor. The Outer Worlds 2 released on Oct. 29, 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.

Is The Outer Worlds 2 on Xbox Game Pass?

Yes, The Outer Worlds 2 is available on Xbox Game Pass. More specifically, it can be downloaded through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, and can be streamed through Xbox Cloud Gaming. The Outer Worlds 2 is also an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so your progress syncs across Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.

Is The Outer Worlds 2 worth playing?

Yes, The Outer Worlds 2 is worth playing, and has enjoyed positive feedback from critics. In our The Outer Worlds 2 review, we gave the game a Windows Central "Must Play" award alongside our 4.5/5 star score. I've been playing The Outer Worlds 2 myself, and I am enjoying it a lot — but if you absolutely hated the first game, you probably won't love the sequel.

Do I need to play The Outer Worlds 1 first?

While both The Outer Worlds games are set in the same universe, the stories aren't directly connected. I still recommend the first game and think it's worth a play through, but you don't have to play it to understand The Outer Worlds 2 and enjoy it fully.

How long is The Outer Worlds 2?

Like most RPGs, how long it'll take to complete The Outer Worlds 2 depends on your play style. For most players, it'll likely take between 30 and 40 hours to finish the game. Players who rush through the game can do so in around 20-25 hours, and those who take their time (like me) can easily get 50 hours of fun out of The Outer Worlds 2.

Which version of The Outer Worlds 2 should I buy?

For most people, the standard version of The Outer Worlds 2 will be best. If you're playing The Outer Worlds 2 through Xbox Game Pass, you can also consider getting the Premium Edition Upgrade, which gives you access to two DLC expansions as they release and some in-game perks, including unique gear.

 

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Posted Friday 31 October 2025 at 4:24 pm AEST (my time).

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The revenue growth was driven mainly by the iPhone, Mac, and Services businesses. iPhone sales led the performance, climbing to $49.03 billion compared with $46.22 billion a year earlier. Mac sales also rose, moving from $7.74 billion to $8.73 billion, while iPad revenue remained essentially flat at around $6.95 billion.

The Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment remained relatively steady at just over $9.0 billion, showing only a slight dip from the prior period. Services delivered the highest growth, increasing from $24.97 billion to $28.75 billion, highlighting its growing importance in Apple’s overall revenue mix.

For the fiscal year ending with this September quarter, Apple posted a record revenue of $416 billion. Apple also highlighted that its installed base of active devices reached a new all-time high across all product categories and geographic segments.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said the following:

“Today, Apple is very proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $102.5 billion, including a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record for Services. In September, we were thrilled to launch our best iPhone lineup ever, including iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, and iPhone Air. In addition, we launched the fantastic AirPods Pro 3 and the all-new Apple Watch lineup. When combined with the recently announced MacBook Pro and iPad Pro with the powerhouse M5 chip, we are excited to be sharing our most extraordinary lineup of products as we head into the holiday season.”

Apple announced a cash dividend of $0.26 per share, payable on November 13, 2025, to shareholders of record as of the close of market on November 10, 2025.

Apple also gave strong guidance for the upcoming quarter, including iPhone revenue growth in the double digits, thanks to strong reception for the iPhone 17 series models.

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Posted Friday 31 October 2025 at 4:23 pm AEST (my time).

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A Palo Alto company is taking preorders for a $20,000 humanoid home robot, but to get the most out of it, you might need to make some privacy trade-offs.

On Tuesday, 1X Technologies introduced Neo, which it says is the "world’s first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home."

The company published a 10-minute video about Neo, a 66-pound robot that’s supposed to run for up to 4 hours on a single charge. The machine stands at 5 feet, 6 inches, can carry up to 55 pounds, and contains cameras that let you remotely view what it sees. 

 (Credit: 1X Technologies )

The machine can be controlled via a mobile app or through voice commands. This includes being programmed to handle a variety of chores, such as watering the plants, unloading the dishwasher, or tidying up the house. 

But it looks like the robot’s AI intelligence still needs work. For more complicated tasks the machine hasn’t been trained in, 1X built an “expert mode” for Neo that involves a company employee “supervising” the session while the robot works. 

This means a 1X employee in the US will be able to see inside your home to control the robot in expert mode, which occurs through a VR headset, The Wall Street Journal reports. The obvious trade-off is privacy. But CEO Bernt Børnich says, “If you buy this product, it is because you’re OK with that social contract. If we don’t have your data, we can’t make the product better.” 

In an FAQ, 1X also noted that “owners have to actively schedule a time for an Expert to support with their chores and accept them into their robot using voice or mobile.” 

The robot's “emotive ear rings” will also change color while an 1X Expert Operator is active. “Owners have full control over each session,” the company adds. 

Still, paying a human housekeeper might be cheaper, more effective, and less invasive. The Journal reports that Neo sometimes falls over, making it a potential danger to children or pets. In a demo at the company’s headquarters, the Journal also "didn’t see Neo do anything autonomously, although the company did share a video of Neo opening a door on its own."

1X Technologies is also offering the bot at $499 per month as a subscription. The company expects to kick off US deliveries sometime next year before expanding to other markets in 2027. 

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Starting off on Windows PCs, Microsoft says it has made an optimization update to the Xbox PC app that will improve download speeds. There weren't any numbers attached to the announcement, but the company says players will be able to jump into the games even faster thanks to the changes under the hood.

"We’ve made improvements to the download tool, allowing the app to better optimize your PC’s internet connection," explained the company. "That means fewer slowdowns and smarter bandwidth usage, especially on high-speed networks."

Over on Xbox One and Series X|S consoles, two new modules have been added to Game Hubs.
Said to be designed to keep players "informed and engaged," these will offer news from official clubs and highlights from Game Pass perks that may be applied to the selected game.

Meanwhile, the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X are being upgraded with the new Advanced Shader Delivery feature that was announced by Microsoft back in August.

This will preload hardware-specific shaders into the device while supported games are downloading, letting players skip the initial shader compilation roadblock. Microsoft says this will let players start playing their games 10 times faster than before, use less battery, and run smoothly on their first play.

Here are the currently supported games for Advanced Shader Delivery on ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X:

Microsoft also announced more titles that have entered Xbox Play Anywhere and Stream Your Own Game groups, titles gaining mouse and keyboard support on console, and Retro Classics additions. Head here to read the full blog post.

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Posted Friday 31 October 2025 at 5:14 am AEST (my time).

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The record revenue was achieved because of double-digit growth in all of Google's main businesses: Google Search & other, YouTube ads, Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, and Google Cloud.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet said the following regarding the earnings results:

We delivered our first-ever $100 billion quarter. Five years ago our quarterly revenue was at $50 billion. Our revenue number has doubled since then, and we’re firmly in the generative AI era. In parallel, we’ve built for the long term and diversified, with successful businesses in Cloud, YouTube and subscriptions.

Google Services business that includes Google Search & other, Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, and YouTube ads delivered $87.1 billion in revenue, a 14% growth year over year. Google Search was a real surprise since it posted 14.6% annual growth in revenue despite strong competition from ChatGPT and other AI assistants including Google's own Gemini.

As expected, Google Cloud business had strong momentum with its revenue increasing 34% to $15.2 billion, thanks to strong growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core products, AI Infrastructure and Generative AI Solutions.

Recently, GCP signed a cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars with Anthropic involving a million TPUs and related AI infrastructure. During the earnings call, Alphabet revealed that it signed more Google Cloud deals over $1 billion through Q3 this year than it did in the previous two years combined. Also, Google Cloud's backlog grew 46% quarter over quarter to $155 billion.

In order to meet the demand from the growth across its businesses and demand from Cloud customers, Alphabet is now expecting this year's capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion.

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Posted Thursday 30 October 2025 at 5:41 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, its widely used 365 services, Xbox, and Minecraft started suffering outages at roughly noon Eastern time on Wednesday, the result of what Microsoft said was “an inadvertent configuration change.” The incident—which marks the second major cloud provider outage in less than two weeks—highlights the instability of an internet built largely on infrastructure run by a few tech giants.

Microsoft's problems specifically originated from Azure's Front Door content delivery network and emerged just hours before Microsoft's scheduled earnings announcement. The company website, including its investor relations page, was still down on Wednesday afternoon, and the Azure status page where Microsoft provides updates was having intermittent issues as well.

Microsoft described in status updates on Wednesday that it went through a process of sequentially rolling back recent versions of its environment until it could pinpoint the “last known good” configuration. At 3:01 pm ET, the company said it had identified and pushed this stable configuration and that “customers may begin to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes.”

A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement, “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services. Customers should continue to check their Service Health Alerts." The company did not immediately respond to questions from WIRED about the nature of the configuration change that caused the outage.

In addition to occurring on Microsoft's earnings day, the outage comes nine days after Azure rival Amazon Web Services suffered a massive outage that impacted sites and services around the world. Major cloud providers, often called “hyperscalers,” standardize and often improve baseline security and reliability for their customers, but problems and outages can cause them to become single points of failure for large populations of critical digital services

“Even Azure’s outage status page is down,” says Davi Ottenheimer, a longtime security operations and compliance manager and a vice president at the data infrastructure company Inrupt. “Another configuration change error—we are in the age of integrity breach more so now than ever.”

Azure blocked customers from making configuration changes to their instances while it worked to address the issue. The company said in a status update at 3:22 pm ET that it expects “full mitigation” of the situation by 7:20 pm ET.

“Organizations may think they’re insulated by their choice of cloud provider, but dependencies run deeper,” says Munish Walther-Puri, an adjunct faculty member at IANS Research and the former director of cyber risk for the city of New York. “When key partners rely on other hyperscalers, exposure multiplies. As AI becomes the next layer of critical infrastructure, these outages demonstrate the brittleness of our digital backbone.”

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Posted Thursday 30 October 2025 at 12:15 pm AEST (my time).

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The company attributed the widespread service disruption, which affected Microsoft's own services, like Xbox, and third parties like Alaska Airlines, to an inadvertent configuration change impacting its Azure Front Door (AFD) service.

Based on the numbers the Redmond giant posted, it pulled in revenue of $77.7 billion for the quarter ending September 30, 2025, an 18% increase year-over-year. This figure is slightly higher than $76.4 billion in revenue the company reported in the previous quarter, FY25 Q4.

The company's operating income jumped to $38.0 billion, a significant 24% increase from the same period last year. On a GAAP basis, net income was $27.7 billion. Microsoft also returned a cool $10.7 billion to its shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.

The company notes that its investment in OpenAI required a non-GAAP adjustment. The filing details a decrease in net income of $3.1 billion directly related to its OpenAI partnership.

It may be of interest to you that Microsoft and OpenAI recently revised their historic partnership. The new terms altered Microsoft's position in OpenAI's for-profit arm to around 27%, down from its previous 32.5% stake, while extending its IP rights through 2032.

As for the main drivers behind these numbers, Cloud, as usual, was the star performer, with Azure and other cloud services revenue rocketing up by 40%.

The Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes its Office suite, saw a 17% increase in revenue. This was led by a 17% increase for Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud revenue and an 18% jump for Dynamics 365. LinkedIn revenue grew 10%, while search and news advertising rose 16%.

Executive VP and CFO Amy Hood said that Microsoft delivered a "strong start to the fiscal year". CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella added that the company will continue to increase its investments in both capital and talent for AI to meet the "massive opportunity ahead".

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Posted Thursday 30 October 2025 at 12:13 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft and OpenAI's multi-billion-dollar partnership can be viewed as both the best "tech bromance" in history and the most scrutinized/controversial partnership agreement. The tech giant $1 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker back in 2019 is arguably one of the smartest investments in the history of technology.

However, not everyone in the tech industry shares the same views. Following OpenAI's long-anticipated launch of GPT-5, Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk claimed that the ChatGPT maker was going to eat Microsoft alive, potentially predicting its apocalypse.

Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella seemed unfazed by Musk's claims. "You know, I don’t think about him that much," indicated Altman. "I thought he was just, like, tweeting all day [on X] about how much OpenAI sucks, and our model is bad, and, you know, [we’re] not gonna be a good company and all that.”

According to Nadella:

"People have been trying for 50 years, and that’s the fun of it! Each day you learn something new, and innovate, partner, and compete. Excited for Grok 4 on Azure and looking forward to Grok 5!"

Interestingly, Bill Gates was reportedly skeptical about Microsoft forming a partnership with OpenAI during its initial $1 billion investment in 2019 (now up to $13.5 billion). In a recent interview at the TPBN podcast, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that securing board approval for the investment was initially challenging.

"Even at Microsoft, you kind of got to have to get a board approval to just go throw a billion dollars out there. But I must say it was not that hard to convince anyone that this is an important area and it's going to be risky."

Bill Gates was skeptical about Satya Nadella investing a billion dollars in OpenAI, owing to the AI firm was fairly new and had structured itself as a non-profit venture. "I think Bill even said, 'Yeah, you're going to burn this billion dollars,'" Nadella added.

However, despite the hesitation and unclear profit path, Microsoft moved forward with its plans and invested in OpenAI — a move that has since paid off dramatically.

Is Bill Gates still intimately involved in Microsoft's affairs?

YouTube has announced several new features that aim to improve the viewing experience on TV screens, including an instant shopping tool and visual upgrades for low-resolution videos. Specifically, YouTube says it will start automatically upscaling videos uploaded below 1080p, using AI to bump them to HD resolution, and plans to support upscaling to 4K “in the near future” — but both creators and viewers will be able to opt out.

“Creators will retain complete control over their library, as both original files and original video resolution will be kept intact, with a clear option to opt-out of these enhancements,” YouTube says in the announcement. “And viewers will still be able to watch creators’ videos in the original uploaded resolution, as super resolution will be clearly labeled under settings.”

Almost every major TV brand offers its own form of built-in AI upscaling, as screen sizes have increased and 4K resolution stopped being a novelty, and Nvidia provides a similar feature on its Shield TV streaming devices. YouTube’s opt-out option is notable, however, given complaints from creators that the platform was applying enhancements to their videos without consent, sometimes resulting in undesirable visual distortions.

The automatic upscaling will only apply to videos uploaded in 240p to 720p resolutions, YouTube spokesperson Veronica Navarrete told The Verge. That means the feature won’t be applied to older videos that creators or channels have already digitally remastered to 1080p themselves.

In this example, viewers can still watch a video in its original 240p quality, with upscaled resolution options transparently labeled. Image: YouTube

YouTube is also expanding the current video thumbnail limit from 2MB to 50MB to support 4K images, and says it’s currently testing larger video uploads with select creators. On videos with tagged shopping products, viewers will soon be able to quickly buy whatever catches their eye by using their phone to scan a QR code displayed on the TV, taking them directly to the product page. YouTube is also testing the ability for creators to feature products at specific, timed moments within their videos.

More general viewing updates include immersive homepage previews that make it easier to flip through favored YouTube channels and a new Shows design for creators who’ve organized videos into “binge-worthy” seasons like you would on Netflix or another app. There are also improvements for contextual search on TV when viewers search from a creator’s channel page, prioritizing videos from that channel instead of pulling in content from across the platform.

“The TV screen is our fastest-growing surface, and we remain committed to delivering features that make creator content shine,” YouTube says.

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Researchers in South Korea have built an artificial muscle that can lift approximately 4,000 times its own weight. They say it can be used in future humanoid robots.

A key breakthrough with the muscle's design is its ability to be flexible or taut when needed, which is a first for this field of research. The scientists outlined their findings in a study published Sept. 7 in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

"This research overcomes the fundamental limitation where traditional artificial muscles are either highly stretchable but weak or strong but stiff," lead study author Hoon Eui Jeong, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), said in a statement. "Our composite material can do both, opening the door to more versatile soft robots, wearable devices, and intuitive human-machine interfaces."

Artificial muscles are often limited by an inability to be flexible or taut; they need to be stretchable while still offering enough energy output, or else their work densities are limited. But soft artificial muscles are believed to be transformative because they're lightweight, mechanically compliant, and capable of multidirectional actuation (movement).

When the researchers say "work density," they refer to how much energy per unit volume the muscle can deliver. Achieving high values alongside high stretchability is where the challenge lies for artificial muscles.

Do you even lift, robo?

The scientists described their artificial muscle as a "high-performance magnetic composite actuator," which means it's a complex chemical combination of polymers that link together to mimic the pull and release of muscles.

One of these polymers can have its level of stiffness altered and sits in a matrix that has magnetic microparticles on the surface that can also be controlled. This enables the muscle to be animated and controlled through the tunable stiffness, thus allowing it to be moved.

The researchers' new design integrates two distinct cross-linking mechanisms. The first is a covalently bonded chemical network (two or more atoms that share electrons to achieve a more stable configuration) and a reversible, physically interacting network. The two mechanisms, developed in this way, provide the durability for the muscle to work long-term, the researchers said in the study.

The trade-off between stiffness and stretchability is effectively solved by a dual cross-linking architecture, and the physical network is further reinforced by incorporating a type of microparticle (NdFeB) on the surface of the muscle that can be given a function via a colorless liquid (octadecyltrichlorosilane). The particles are dispersed throughout the polymer matrix.

The composite muscle becomes stiff when bearing heavy loads and softens when it needs to contract. In its stiffened state, the artificial muscle, which weighs just 0.04 ounce (1.13 grams), can support up to 11 pounds (5 kilograms) — roughly 4,400 times its own weight.

A human muscle contracts at approximately 40% strain, but the synthetic muscle achieves a strain of 86.4% — over double that of the human muscle, the researchers said in the study. This enables a work density of 1,150 kilojoules per meter cubed — 30 times higher than human tissue is capable of.

The researchers used a uniaxial tensile test to measure the strength of their artificial muscle. A type of mechanical test that applies a pulling force to a subject until it fractures – the elongation is measured against the applied force to find its ultimate tensile strength.

Source

Analogue computers that rapidly solve a key type of equation used in training artificial intelligence models could offer a potential solution to the growing energy consumption in data centres caused by the AI boom.

Laptops, smartphones and other familiar devices are known as digital computers, because they store and process data as a series of binary digits, either 0 or 1, and can be programmed to solve a range of problems. In contrast, analogue computers are normally designed to solve just one specific problem. They store and process data using quantities that can vary continuously such as electrical resistance, rather than discrete 0s and 1s.

Analogue computers can excel at speed and energy efficiency, but have previously lacked the accuracy of their digital counterparts. Now, Zhong Sun at Peking University, China, and his colleagues have created a pair of analogue chips that work together to accurately solve matrix equations – a fundamental part of sending data over telecom networks, running large scientific simulations or training AI models.

The first chip outputs a low-precision solution to matrix calculations very rapidly, while a second runs an iterative refinement algorithm to analyse the error rates of the first chip and so improve accuracy. Sun says that the first chip produces results with an error rate of around 1 per cent, but that after three cycles of the second chip, this drops to 0.0000001 per cent – which he says matches the precision of standard digital calculations.

So far, the researchers have built chips capable of solving 16 by 16 matrices, or those with 256 variables, which could have applications for some small problems. But Sun admits that tackling the questions used in today’s large AI models would require far larger circuits, perhaps a million by a million.

But one advantage analogue chips have over digital is that larger matrices don’t take any longer to solve, while digital chips struggle exponentially as the matrix size increases. That means the throughput – the amount of data crunched per second – of a 32 by 32 matrix chip would beat that of a Nvidia H100 GPU, one of the high-end chips used to train AI today.

Theoretically, scaling further could see throughput reach 1000 times that of digital chips like GPUs, while using 100 times less energy, says Sun. But he is quick to point out that real-world tasks may stray outside the extremely narrow capabilities of their circuits, leading to smaller gains.

“It’s only a comparison of speed, and for real applications, the problem may be different,” says Sun. “Our chip can only do matrix computations. If matrix computation occupies most of the computing task, it represents a very significant acceleration for the problem, but if not, it will be a limited speed-up.”

Sun says that because of this, the most likely outcome is the creation of hybrid chips, where a GPU features some analogue circuits that handle very specific parts of problems – but even that is likely some years away.

James Millen at King’s College London says that matrix calculations are a key process in training AI models and that analogue computing offers a potential boost.

“The modern world is built on digital computers. These incredible machines are universal computers, which means they can be used to calculate absolutely anything, but not everything can necessarily be computed efficiently or fast,” says Millen. “Analogue computers are tailored to specific tasks, and in this way can be incredibly fast and efficient. This work uses an analogue computing chip to speed up a process called matrix inversion, which is a key process in training certain AI models. Doing this more efficiently could help reduce the huge energy demands of our ever-growing reliance on AI.”

Source

AI chip juggernaut Nvidia became the world's first $5 trillion company on Wednesday, as investors remain confident that artificial intelligence will deliver a new wave of innovation and growth.

The California-based tech giant saw its share price rise by 4.91 percent to $210.90 at the open of trading on Wall Street, pushing Nvidia's market capitalisation past the never-before-seen threshold.

The surge in the company's share price follows continued strong sales, a flurry of new deals - including a partnership with Europe's Nokia announced on Tuesday - as well as expectations that the company may soon regain access to China.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected in South Korea this week, where he will attend the sidelines of the APEC summit at which US President Donald Trump will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, with issues related to AI development expected to be discussed.

AI trade tensions

The Trump administration favours a more nuanced approach to selling AI chips to Beijing, but faces deep scepticism from China hawks across the US political spectrum who favour tougher bans on AI technology.

Nvidia has announced a series of partnerships in recent weeks, including an intention to invest up to $100 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI over the coming years.

It also said it would invest $5 billion in struggling chip rival Intel, in response to the Trump administration's desire to bring back more manufacturing of semiconductors to the United States.

Nvidia produces the advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) that power most generative AI systems, including those behind ChatGPT and other large language models.

Source

"The best way to innovate is to have good margins"

Microsoft has, for the umpteenth time, committed to a multiformat future.

In an interview with TBPN, as transcribed by Game File, CEO Satya Nadella spoke for several minutes about his company’s gaming business without once saying the word ‘Xbox’.

He pointed out that, following the firm’s near-$70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it’s become the biggest publisher in the world. And now its goal is to bring its software to everyone.

He said:

“We want to be a fantastic publisher, similar to the approach of what we did with Office. We’re going to be everywhere, on every platform. We want to make sure, whether it's consoles, whether it’s the PC, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s cloud gaming, or the TV, so we just want to make sure the games are being enjoyed by gamers everywhere.”

Nadella did touch a little on Microsoft’s next-gen plans, reiterating that the organisation intends to blend the benefits of PCs and consoles, which reinforces a lot of what the organisation has been saying lately. However, he didn’t get into specifics.

The executive then concluded that the “best way to innovate is to have good margins”, perhaps corroborating recent reports about the intense profit goals which have been attributed to the Xbox division.

He concluded:

“Gaming's competition is not other gaming. Gaming's competition is short-form video. And so, if we as an industry don't continue to innovate both how we produce, what we produce, how we think about distribution, the economic model-best way to innovate is to have good margins.”

This reflects comments made by Xbox first-party executive Matt Booty recently, when he said the company is not competing with PlayStation, but social media platforms like TikTok instead.

Obviously, there’s a lot to dig into here, but it’s nothing particularly new.

We think it’s pretty clear at this point that Microsoft is completely done with exclusives, and we should expect practically all of its games on PS5 from this point onwards.

As for its new hardware, we have questions about how it’s going to effectively combine PC and console without completely undermining its own business model. And then you have to ponder how much all of this is going to cost.

We’re not convinced Xbox is going to win the war against TikTok with a $1,000-plus device, but it’s clear from Nadella’s comments that the company will no longer bankroll the division’s whims.

And so it’s going to be fascinating to see how Microsoft positions its next-gen device against the PS6 – if it even attempts that angle at all.

Source

With the imminent launch of The Outer Worlds 2, you might be thinking, "Do I need to play the first game before this one?" Well, not really, but it's still worthy of your time as The Outer Worlds is a great game with clever writing, an intriguing story, and fun gameplay.

What's more, The Outer Worlds is now a much more affordable alternative if you don't have the budget for the sequel, as the PC version is now on a 71% discount for $8.59 at Newegg.

It's a little dated, but The Outer Worlds is still a great sci-fi RPG whose blueprints gave us an even better sequel years later

One of the biggest RPGs of the fall, as well as one of the biggest games of the year, is imminently releasing: The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian Entertainment's ambitious follow-up to the original 2019 sci-fi adventure. It's coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, PS5, and Xbox Game Pass on October 29, with its full launch just a few days away and Early Access for Premium Edition owners already underway.

Remarkably, it's the third 2025 title from the studio after Avowed and Grounded 2, and has reviewed quite strongly across outlets and Metacritic ahead of its scheduled release. Windows Central's own Samuel Tolbert gave it a glowing 4.5/5 stars in his review, writing that "Better exploration and combat buoy a tight role-playing experience that feels crunchy and isn't afraid of cutting off branches depending on player skills."

Indeed, critics in general have praised The Outer Worlds 2 highly for its impressively deep and "crunchy" RPG systems, complete with countless options for combat and quest solutions, strong reactivity from the game world to player actions, and plenty of choice-based narrative depth.

In many ways, it's the Fallout: New Vegas sequel that we never got, built by the same studio a full 15 years later — and with that in mind, it's not hard to imagine why the game has garnered quite a bit of excitement and hype from RPG fans and the wider community overall.

Naturally, that interest has led to many PC players wondering if their rig is capable enough to run The Outer Worlds 2. Thankfully, the game's system requirements and recommended specs have been made available on its Steam page, and I've organized them into the table below for quick and easy viewing.

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.

This week, Microsoft released an out-of-band update for Windows 11 version 24H2 and 25H2. KB5070773 arrived to fix the bug with USB mice and keyboards not working after the recent updates. Windows Server received KB5070881, KB5070879, and KB5070884. In addition, Microsoft released new recovery updates for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

Speaking of fixes, Microsoft has published details about the smart card authentication issue that affects various editions of Windows after installing the October 2025 Patch Tuesday update. However, applying it is a bit tricky, and it requires messing with the system registry.

Additionally, after the October 2025 Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft turned off one File Explorer feature for files downloaded from the internet. The Preview Pane no longer shows files with the MOTW tag in order to prevent NTLM hash leaks. However, if you trust the downloaded file, you can get around the new limitation.

Microsoft also published a new support document with details about driver updates in Windows. While the article focuses mostly on basics, it also has interesting information on why Windows sometimes installs what seems like multiple identical or seriously outdated drivers. Another article details severe security risks for those wishing to stay on Windows 10 without security updates.

If you plan to update to Windows 11, given that Windows 10 is now out of support, you should know that the operating system encrypts your drives with BitLocker by default. If you are not happy with that, check out our recently published guide, which details how to remove BitLocker encryption in Windows 11.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

The Windows Insider Program turned 11 this week, and to celebrate this occasion, Microsoft released two new wallpapers. They are available in dark and light variants:

A new update arrived for Paint in the Windows Insider program. Microsoft introduced a new feature that lets you use AI to reimagine your canvas in different styles. The Restyle feature is now available in the Canary, Dev, and Beta Channels.

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.

Microsoft is making more improvements to Microsoft Edge, particularly its WebUI component. Soon, the browser's PDF viewer will migrate to WebUI, which will enable significant performance improvements. Also, a future Microsoft Edge update will bring autofill improvements, particularly when filling out addresses.

Copilot received a bunch of new features and announcements this week. Microsoft unveiled the Fall Update aimed to rival ChatGPT and Gemini with features like Copilot Appearance (meet Mico that can turn into Clippy), Copilot Groups, a feature that lets you invite other people to your conversations, Copilot Memory for long-term memories, Copilot for Health, and a lot more.

PowerToys received a maintenance update to fix several issues with the previously released major version 0.95. Version 0.95.1 fixed automatic theme switching in the new Light Switch module, Command Palette crashes and bugs, Find My Mouse issues, and more.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft is killing off Office Online Server.
• Microsoft is making some useful accessibility improvements in Microsoft 365 apps.

• Microsoft wants to know if you want Copilot integrated in on-prem Exchange Server.

• Microsoft is bringing an exciting new feature to Visual Studio.

   

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Steven Parker reviewed the TerraMaster F4-425 Plus, a modern NAS for tech enthusiasts and small offices. It features a high-quality aluminum build, one of Intel's newest processors, great energy efficiency, and quiet operation.

On the gaming side

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

Pulasthi Ariyasinghe published a review of Ninja Gaiden 4, giving gamers a look at the upcoming game with its intense combat, deep combos, and unique styles of each weapon. The game is already out on PC and consoles, and it is available in Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Fallout 4 is turning 10 this year, and Bethesda is celebrating the anniversary with a new Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition. It includes the base game with its six expansions, 150 creation club items, the ability to select a different breed for Dogmeat, and more. The game launches on November 10, 2025.

After many months of rumors and leaks, Halo: Campaign Evolved has finally been announced. A remake of the classic Halo: Combat Evolved is coming in 2026 to PC, Xbox, and, for the first time ever, PlayStation 5. Sadly, there is no exact launch date yet.

Microsoft announced new games for the Game Pass catalog. The latest additions include Football Manager 26, Power Wash Simulator 2, The Outer Worlds 2, and a bunch of other titles. Some games will leave the service soon, so check out the complete list here.

After the recent price increase of Xbox consoles, Microsoft is hiking up the price tags for developers as well. A new report emerged about the company making Xbox dev kits 33% more expensive. Now, a single Xbox Dev Kit costs as much as $2,000. Oof. All these price increases are reportedly due to Microsoft's CFO Amy Hood setting an extreme 30% profit margin for the Xbox division.

In addition to everyone hating Microsoft for the latest Game Pass price increase, the company received a fair share of criticism for Gaming Copilot. Gamers accused the company of screenshotting their gameplay without consent, and Microsoft was forced to explain what is actually going on when you use Gaming Copilot.

Electronic Arts is shutting down The Sims Mobile. The game has received its final update, and it will be fully shut down in 2026.

Nvidia announced new games for the GeForce NOW streaming service. This month's updates include NINJA GAIDEN 4, Jurassic World Evolution 3, Painkiller, The Outer Worlds 2, Tormented Souls 2, and more. Keep in mind that you need to own these games to play them on GeForce NOW.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away the horror game Fear the Spotlight. It is up for grabs until next Thursday, so go get it if you are into horror games. You can find more game deals in this week's Weekend PC Game Deals issue.

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Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 27 October 2025 at 3:26 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

TikTok and airlines have something in common with your search engine, your grocery app, and (increasingly) your car: They start out great, lock you in, and then quietly get worse while you keep using them. That very familiar decline now has a catchy name: “enshittification.”

Cory Doctorow has been writing about this for decades as a journalist, activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and science-fiction author. His new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, is a field guide to how platforms decay, why they get away with it, and what it will take to reverse course.

I invited Doctorow onto The Gray Area to map the lifecycle of a platform, explain the policy choices that made today’s tech feudalism possible, and outline the structural fixes that could make the internet (and the economy around it) less extractive and more humane.

As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is “enshittification”? Give me the cleanest definition.

At the descriptive level, it’s a pattern in how platforms go bad. First, they’re great to end users. Then they find ways to lock those users in — switching costs, network effects, contracts, DRM — and once users are stuck, the company makes the product worse for them to extract more value. Next, they use that surplus to woo business customers (advertisers, sellers, creators), lock them in, and start making the product worse for the business side too. Eventually, everyone is trapped and the platform turns into a pile of crap. You can see this in places as different as Google, Facebook, Uber, and Amazon.

The more interesting question is: Why now? Greed isn’t new. Venture capital isn’t new. What changed were the constraints on firms, especially the degree of competition and the legal environment that lets platforms “twiddle” the experience for each user, while blocking users and rivals from pushing back.

When did the “great enshittification” begin? Can you put a stake in the ground?

There are obvious post-enshittification moments. In 2019, for example, the Google antitrust case records show an internal clash: Google had 90 percent market share in search, growth had stalled, and an executive pitched a strategy to make search worse so users would have to run multiple queries and see more ads. That’s enshittification in a nutshell — and we all kept using Google anyway.

But it’s not a single date. The defining feature isn’t “things got worse” — it’s “things got worse and we stayed.” The preconditions — consolidation, policy choices, and legal shields — built up over years.

Why do we keep using products after they get worse? Why not just leave?

The galaxy-brain answer blames consumers for “shopping wrong,” or says, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” That’s not it. The real story is diminished constraint [on market consolidation]. It’s hard to take your business elsewhere when there is nowhere else to go.

That was policy-driven. For decades, antitrust enforcers embraced the Chicago School idea that monopolies are efficient and should be punished only if prices go up for consumers — not when a company buys its most dangerous rival. Facebook’s purchase of Instagram is the classic example. Mark Zuckerberg literally wrote that people were leaving Facebook for Instagram and that buying Instagram would keep them as Facebook users even if they never touched Facebook again. That’s an antitrust admission in plain English. And yet the Obama administration waved it through, just as the Bush and Trump administrations green-lit their own waves of consolidation.

You emphasize that this corrosion is especially intense on platforms. Why are platforms such fertile soil for enshittification?

Because platforms sit between two groups that need each other: end users and business customers. That intermediation is useful, and most of us don’t want to process payments or write our own mail servers just to publish a newsletter. But digital platforms have a unique superpower: They can change the business logic on a per-user, per-interaction basis. I call this “twiddling.”

Combine that with legal shields, and you get a one-way ratchet. Anti-circumvention laws (think DMCA §1201) make it illegal to reverse-engineer or “mod” an app or device to inspect, verify, or override what it’s doing — even for lawful purposes like price comparison or accessibility. Platforms can constantly tweak what you see and what you pay, while users and independent developers are barred from looking under the hood or restoring balance.

Is this just a platform story, or is everything enshittifying?

It’s spreading. When Jeff Bezos wants to change Amazon Fresh prices, he moves a slider. When he wants to change a Whole Foods shelf, he needs an army with price guns — unless the shelf labels are e-ink tags, which are rolling out everywhere. Once a sector is digitized, it’s platformized — and the twiddling follows. That’s how you get “dynamic” prices for fast food or “surge” pricing at the drive-thru. Even when companies walk back the PR, the trial balloon shows what’s technologically trivial and what’s hard for us to detect without the legal right to inspect the software.

Let’s ground this in a few case studies. Facebook feels like the poster child. How did it enshittify?

Early Facebook wooed users by promising reverse-chronological feeds from the people you chose — no surveillance, no “boosted” junk. Users piled in. Then the collective-action trap kicked in: you love your friends, you hate the platform, but you can’t coordinate a mass move. The larger Facebook gets, the harder it is to leave.

Once users were locked, Facebook twiddled to please business customers: “Give us a little money and we’ll target your ad to exactly who you want.” “Publishers, put teasers on Facebook and we’ll stuff them into eyeballs that didn’t ask to see them; you’ll get a free traffic funnel.” That locked the businesses in, too — a monopsony, where one buyer dominates sellers.

Then came the second squeeze: Ad targeting fidelity declined, fraud rose, and prices went up. Procter & Gamble famously cut $200 million in “programmatic” (surveillance) ads and saw no drop in sales, because so much of that spend was disappearing into the fraud hole. Meanwhile, users’ feeds filled with paid content until what they asked to see was homeopathic residue.

Everybody hated it; almost nobody left. That brittle equilibrium — “I hate this place but can’t stop visiting” — is where platforms mint money.

How did Amazon enshittify?

Start with the demand side. In a consumption-driven economy with rising inequality, a shrinking share of households buys a disproportionate share of stuff, and most of those households have Prime. If you sell goods, you have to be on Amazon, and you have to pay to be found on Amazon.

Amazon’s ad business — it was about $32B when I wrote the book; it’s now north of $50B — isn’t “advertising” in the classic sense. It’s payola: Pay to be placed at the top of search results. That means the top result is often not the best price or best quality; it’s who paid the most. On average, the first result is about 29 percent more expensive than the actual best deal; the entire top row is about 25 percent pricier; the true best buy is often buried around result 17 — into page two. Sellers game this by, say, selling four-packs instead of 10-packs so they look cheapest on a per-item sort, while the unit price is worse. Amazon knows unit sizes. It could let you sort by unit price. It doesn’t.

Then there’s “most-favored nation” clauses: If you [as a goods-selling business] raise prices on Amazon to recoup Amazon’s junk fees, you have to raise them everywhere else, including your own site. That’s how Amazon’s economics spread off-platform. And on the lock-in side, digital goods (Kindle books, Audible audiobooks, video) are wrapped in DRM; you [as a customer] leave Amazon, you lose your library. Prime pre-pays your shipping, and subscription mechanics (one credit per month) nudge you to keep using the store you’ve already funded. Exclusivity deals make rivals’ catalogs worse by design.

What about the “you don’t have to use Amazon” objection, because you can always just shop somewhere else?

There are switching costs and there’s the scorched earth enshittification leaves behind. Uber is instructive: It subsidized rides to kill off taxis, then raised prices. In cities like mine, there might be a dozen cabs left; buses cut service because “everyone takes Uber”; on a 115-degree day, your “choice” is an Uber Black at $96 for a mile and a half or…walking with a suitcase. The alternatives exist — they just suck more now.

That’s why I tell people: Don’t moralize your shopping cart. Zephyr Teachout makes this point well: If you skip a labor rally at the warehouse because you’re driving around looking for artisanal poster markers, so your sign won’t be “tainted” by Amazon, Jeff Bezos wins. You are not an ambulatory wallet. Structural problems need structural fixes.

Your book points to four buckets: antitrust, regulation with teeth, interoperability (the right to move between services and jailbreak your stuff), and worker power. Which is most achievable right now?

In the US, the antitrust coalition that briefly united Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren has mostly evaporated; the vibe is transactional. I’m more optimistic about foreign antitrust — the EU, UK, and others are motivated to reduce their dependence on American platforms, especially when US firms admit they can’t guarantee EU state secrets won’t be reachable under secret US orders. That geopolitical incentive produces muscular cases and new rules (see the EU’s DMA/DSA).

Worker power is also ripening. Tech workers are realizing they’re workers — not “founders in waiting.” The average Silicon Valley engineer generates about $1 million in revenue; now there’ve been hundreds of thousands of layoffs, and management is dangling AI as a way to make you feel replaceable. When bosses aren’t afraid of you, you get Foxconn-style treatment. Unions are the answer. Yes, the administration has kneecapped the NLRB, but that misunderstands the history: Unions didn’t arise because law permitted them; law permitted unions because workers organized anyway. If you’ve fired the referees, there are no rules left — and solidarity across sectors becomes even more powerful.

What is enshittification doing to our politics?

It breeds trauma and nihilism. Ask a vaccine skeptic why they’re skeptical: “Pharma is greedy and would kill us for a nickel; the FDA is captured and will let them.” In the wake of the opioid crisis — where the Sacklers made tens of billions while communities were gutted — that’s not an irrational story. Regulatory capture is downstream of monopolization: When there are five firms, they sing from the same hymn sheet; when there are 500, regulators hear discordant demands. Capture produces failure; failure produces trauma; trauma makes people vulnerable to grifters who tell them to tan their perineum and eat horse paste.

People say the answer is “restore trust” in agencies. I think the answer is “make the agencies trustworthy” — and the only way to do that is to break up the firms that captured them and restore healthy rivalry.

Are we nearing a tipping point where the pendulum swings back toward consumers and sanity?

There’s a finance maxim called Stein’s Law: “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.” You can only extract so much rent before there’s nothing left. What comes next is up for grabs. I don’t do predictions; the future isn’t a place we discover, it’s a place we make.

What gives me hope is what my friend James Boyle says about “ecology.” Before that word entered the lexicon, you could care about owls and I could care about the ozone layer, and we’d both be “right” without realizing we were on the same side. A shared frame reveals a common cause. Today, the shared frame is the fight against consolidated corporate power. If we connect the dots — between your crappy search results, your locked-down car, your exploding drug prices, your brittle supply chains, and your polarized feeds — we can build a coalition with enough mass to change the rules.

Source

Paul's Hardware (1.53M subscribers)

October 26, 2025

Video length: 11m 16s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - October 26, 2025 

1:51 AMD Ryzen 9950X3D2 (Dual X3D CCD), 9850X3D Rumored 

3:43 New AMD APUs incoming, but what about Strix Point? 

5:54 AWS largest data center cluster goes down, seems to take half the internet with it 

7:32 Intel Xe3 / Xe3P vs Celestial Explained Yet Again 

TECH BRIEFS 

9:19 Intel Secures Microsoft as 18A customer, but yields still a challenge 

10:10 Capacity Constraints Hit Intel, Demand Outstrips Intel 10/7 Node Supply

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Sunday 26 October 2025 at 6:18 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

Electronic Arts' (EA) new large-scale multiplayer FPS Battlefield 6 has enjoyed an incredibly successful launch period this month, complete with widespread positive reviews from critics and fans alike, almost 750K players on Steam on launch day, over 7 million copies sold in three days, and a peak position on the Steam Top Sellers chart that's still holding weeks later.

But while Battlefield 6 is all the rage right now — and for good reason — it notably hasn't been updated with very many post-launch fixes and adjustments yet, with only a handful coming in small hotfixes. This has been a source of frustration for many, especially those that have encountered the game's remaining bugs and launch issues often.

Some good news, though, is that that's ending with the launch of Battlefield 6 Season 1 next week, which is bringing a massive Update 1.1.1.0 patch to the game on Tuesday, October 28. Aside from implementing Season 1's launch content, it will also introduce tons of noteworthy changes and tweaks.

Developer Battlefield Studios has released the official patch notes for the update on social media ahead of its launch time, which you can read here. The developers note it "marks the next step in our ongoing journey to evolve and expand the Battlefield 6 experience. This includes fixes, balance changes, and quality-of-life improvements focused on polish, performance, and player feedback to deliver an even smoother experience moving forward."

There are far too many changes to get into many specifics here, but overall, some of the big highlights of the patch are:

• Improved movement and movement animations, including smoother transitions between stances, better vaulting, and physics fixes to prevent bouncing into the air after certain jumps or spawns
• Nerfs to progression Challenges that either make their objectives something less frustrating or much easier to complete
• A fix for the game's infamous bloom and weapon dispersion bugs causing inaccuracy issues, along with adjustments to make heavier-hitting weapons deviate from the crosshair slower, and faster low damage, high fire-rate ones build up dispersion a bit more rapidly
• Major improvements to lighting and visibility along with smoke and fog reductions to improve visual clarity and make enemy soldiers easier to see
• New sound effects and adjustments to audio mixing for a more balanced soundscape, along with better haptic feedback for controller users
• Fixes and improvements made to the UI and HUD, such as clear overtime indicators and new unlock notifications for weapons and attachements
• Countless map-specific fixes for spawning animation issues, out-of-bounds bugs, misplaced assets, and performance problems in Conquest, Breakthrough, and Rush.

All of these adjustments and fixes are fantastic, and many improvements in particular — such as more consistent movement, resolved weapon bloom bugs, and clearer visibility and overall visual clarity — are going to make Battlefield 6 an even more enjoyable experience than it already is. Challenge nerfs, too, will go a long way in rectifying how frustrating those are to engage with.

And yet, I can't help but feel quite disappointed with these patch notes, because they're missing one crucial fix for an issue making a huge part of the game unplayable right now: the infantry fighting vehicle's (IFV) secondary MR Missile unlock, and the way it guarantees kills on air vehicles.

Since the MR Missile is laser-guided — something IFV drivers can do themselves by switching to the secondary gunner seat and utilizing the vehicle's built-in laser designator to paint a target before switching back to the driver seat and firing the projectile — it's not stopped by flare countermeasures. The only way to deal with it is to use projectile-destroying countermeasures available to tanks and other IFVs, but aircraft don't have these.

 

Due to the fact that MR Missiles fired from IFV vehicles can't be countered by aircraft in any way, they're 

currently wildly overpowered and make flying helicopters or jets impossible in any match with players using them. 

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

 

Paired with how few buildings and other line-of-sight blockers Battlefield 6's maps have, this means that with the MR Missile, IFV drivers can shoot down helicopters and jets wherever they are on the map, from anywhere on the map, with just a single lock-on missile that can't be countered.

 

It's wildly overpowered, and has arguably been the one issue fans have complained about the most since launch, so I'm shocked that Battlefield Studios isn't addressing it with the Season 1 update. At the very least, the MR Missile needs to be disabled while its interactions with aircraft are reworked.

As frustrating as it is that the MR Missile isn't being addressed yet, though, I am at least glad that Season 1's big patch is significantly improving pretty much every other aspect of Battlefield 6.

As frustrating as it is that the MR Missile isn't being addressed yet, though, I am at least glad that Season 1's big patch is significantly improving pretty much every other aspect of Battlefield 6. From gunplay to UI, from sound design to visual clarity, an amazing FPS is about to get even better — and that's without even taking Season 1's new maps, weapons, and more into account, too.

 

Indeed, with this update and all of Season 1's content coming in hot, Battlefield 6 is poised to keep on going strong, attracting waves and waves of new players. If you'd like to be one of them, you can get the game now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5 for $69.99. Note that the Xbox version is just $61.19 at Loaded (formerly CDKeys) thanks to a nice deal.

 

 

The latest entry in the legendary Battlefield series is fantastic, and has brought the franchise back into a positive spotlight after the disappointment of Battlefield 2042. The game is available now across all its platforms, with Loaded (formerly CDKeys) offering some noteworthy discounts.

 

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Posted Saturday 25 October 2025 at 5:57 pm AEST (my time).

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It was only a few months ago that Stardock announced the return of Elemental. The classic 4X strategy series was being remastered and combined into one product under the fitting name Elemental: Reforged. Now, the title is out in early access on Steam. Check out the new gameplay trailer above.

The series originally received three installments: Elemental War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King. The games weren't the most stable releases, however, with more than a few technical issues plaguing the experiences. Stardock called out the 32-bit memory limit of the classic engine for not being able to handle the series' immense systems.

“Elemental: Reforged is the culmination of the vision Stardock had for this series since we started work on it over 15 years ago,” said Bradley Wardell, CEO of Stardock and designer of Elemental: Reforged. “The design of the game was ahead of its time, but limited by PC consumer hardware of the late 2000s. Now with a 64-bit engine, updated graphical fidelity, and a combination of features from all previous releases in the Elemental series, Reforged is exactly what we hoped the original game would be.”

Aside from engine upgrades and visual overhauls, the company is taking major elements from the original games and molding them into the new Reforged experience. Most of the development team that was working on the originals has returned to deliver this version too.

The company hadn't planned to take the early access route from the start, with it saying that fan reactions to the announcement had changed its course.

“We wanted to get players into the game as soon as possible,” adds Wardell. “As a way of making good on the promise of the original game’s ambitious design, our aim is to make sure we shape this the way our fans want to see.”

Here are the key features of this early access release:

• Ultimate Fantasy Sandbox. Players can create their own leaders, their own factions, and build a fantasy civilization with its own history and lore.
• Unified Elemental Experience. Brings together the strategic depth, smart AI, and rich gameplay from Fallen Enchantress, the immersive crafting and quest systems from Sorcerer King, and the dynasty-building, terraforming, and innovative mechanics first introduced in War of Magic.
• Rich, Dynamic Worlds. Enjoy endless replayability through procedurally generated fantasy worlds filled with lore-rich quests, evolving environments that respond to your magic, unique fantasy civilizations, and bustling cities populated with individually simulated characters.
• RPG-Infused Unit Design. Customize heroes and armies through an intuitive RPG-style character designer, crafting each unit with their own unique history, stats, equipment, and abilities, growing stronger with experience.
• Compelling, Short Tactical Combat. See how your designed units and characters fare in battle in highly refined tactical battles that reward strategic thinking, or leverage a sophisticated auto-resolve system powered by advanced AI for streamlined empire management.
• Deep Quest and Story Integration. Embark on rich, narrative-driven quests seamlessly woven into the empire-building experience, influencing diplomacy, unlocking secrets, and offering meaningful rewards.
• Modernized UI and Graphics Engine. Explore enhanced visuals powered by DirectX 11, seamless zooming from strategic cloth-map to detailed tactical view.
• Integrated Modding Tools. A comprehensive built-in modding and map-editing tool, and a fully redesigned user interface optimized for modern PC gaming with Steam workshop integration.

Don't forget to check out our interview with Brad Wardell over here, where he speaks about the development troubles of the original games during the late 2000s and how they are being remedied in the remaster.

Elemental: Reforged is now available on Steam in early access. It is currently discounted by 20% as an introductory promotion as well, dropping the price to $19.99. Stardock is also celebrating the occasion with discounts across most of its products on Steam as well.

Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardock

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Posted Saturday 25 October 2025 at 4:33 am AEST (my time).

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AMD earlier today revealed the availability date of its new Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card. If you recall, the company had initially unveiled this workstation GPU back in May where it touted Nvidia RTX 5080-besting performance in the case of AI.

The card was supposed to come out in July though that got delayed and now we finally have a date where you will be able to get the card on store shelves.

With this release AMD is promising to bring data-center-class performance into local workstations, and is mainly aimed at developers, researchers, and creators who need to train and run large artificial intelligence (AI) models be it Windows or Linux.

Similar to its gaming counterparts, the R9700 is powered by the company’s latest RDNA 4 architecture. AMD highlights the 32GB GDDR6 VRAM on the unit as one of the key specifications and that makes sense given that the R9700 is built for AI and ML number crunching and such workloads are VRAM-demanding.

The Radeon AI PRO R9700 begins shipping October 27 for $1299, with broader availability expected through Q4 2025.

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Posted Friday 24 October 2025 at 6:09 pm AEST (my time).

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