Surface Pro 11 users just saw the battery life of their PC cut in half. An issue causes the battery life of affected devices to be capped at 50% and does not present an option to restore normal battery functionality.

The issue was flagged by a Surface Pro 11 user:

"'Battery Limit' mode has been removed from the UEFI on my Surface Pro (11th edition) and it still only charges up to 50 %. It seems last week there was an update (firmware update?) and the system still seems to be enforcing the 50 % limit automatically based on firmware behavior—even without a visible toggle."

Others in that thread have experienced the same problem.

Microsoft is investigating the issue. The bug appears to be connected to the "Battery Limit" option that can be enabled on certain Surface devices.

Normally, that option would have a toggle to be enabled or disabled, but a bug has caused that toggle to disappear.

The issue has caused frustration among users. "TJ" in the thread mentioned above said:

A significant number of games on MacBooks with a display notch are rendering blurry due to a resolution issue thanks to a two-year-old bug that Apple already knows about. The problem occurs because games have the wrong output resolution for the available screen area if they are using the full-screen AppKit APIs.

Apple is aware of the issue because the bug report, FB13375033, was submitted to the iPhone maker back in September 2023, and it remains open. The issue doesn’t affect all games, notably Cyberpunk: 2077 and World of Warcraft, but other games default to the wrong resolution, including No Man’s Sky, Riven, and Stray. The issue was refocused on by Colin Cornaby who builds software on Mac. He said that while game developers can try to address the issue themselves, it’s ultimately up to Apple to provide a proper fix.

The first thing to explain about MacBooks with a notch is that they’re divided into three sections. You have the full bounds of the display which includes the entire display area, including the menu and areas around the notch. Next is the safe area of the display which is the area of the display directly below the notch. Finally, the full screen area extends from under the menu bar, while the safe area extends from below the notch.

There is a function called CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes which returns a single list of resolutions for developers to access so that their game can be set to the correct resolution, unfortunately, it mixes those of the full display and those for the usable full screen area with some games defaulting to the incorrect full display resolution resulting in squashed and blurry images because it includes the notch area where games cannot draw.

Thankfully, users can run the games in 16:10 ratio to address the issue temporarily. As mentioned, No Man’s Sky, Riven, and Stray all default to the wrong resolution, another game that does this is Shadow of the Tomb Raider. One game that has a unique fix to the problem is Control Ultimate Edition, which avoids the problem by providing its own hardcoded list of resolutions, but lacks a native one. Cyberpunk 2077 is able to default to the correct 16:10 resolution, and World of Warcraft, which uses a legacy full-screen API, that allows it to draw into the notched area, works correctly too. It’s not clear how the Cyberpunk 2077 developers get the resolution correctly.

Cornaby believes that Apple should be the one to fix the issue, rather than developers patching their games to address the problem. He recommends that Apple updates its Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to provide guidance on the notch, and update its Game Porting Toolkit samples to include best practices. He also says that the CGDisplayMode API should be updated to allow developers to filter the resolution list for full-screen apps. He also says that Apple could build a new, gaming-centric API to handle the issue.

Given that the issue has been known for two years, hopefully Apple can update its software so that users get a better gaming experience out of the box.

Source: Random Thoughts

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Posted Saturday 16 August 2025 at 5:03 am AEST (my time).

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MicroSD cards are tiny but slow; the M.2 storage sticks in your PC are blazing fast but bigger and fully enclosed. Now, a new type of SSD out of China could be the best of both worlds — and it’s already set to appear in two cutting-edge gaming portables.

Chinese storage manufacturer Biwin is calling it the “Mini SSD,” though another manufacturer refers to it as the “1517”; it measures just 15mm x 17mm x 1.4mm thick, smaller than a U.S. penny and just slightly larger than MicroSD. Despite that, it offers maximum sequential read speeds of 3,700 megabytes per second (or 3,400MB/s writes) over a PCIe 4x2 connection, and offers 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.

Image via GPD

 

Image via GPD

 

To put that in context, the new MicroSD Express cards that work with the Nintendo Switch 2 top out at a theoretical 985MB/s, less than a third the speed. And while a full-size SD Express card could theoretically beat Mini SSD at 3,940MB/s, it would be nearly twice the size of Biwin’s creation.

The nano-SIMs used in recent smartphones are still smaller, though, and M.2 drives are still faster. I whipped up a quick chart so you can easily compare various storage cards and SIMs:

It’s not clear if Biwin’s Mini SSD is a true standard that other storage makers can easily adopt. But the company’s marketing it for laptops, tablets, phones, cameras and more, with its own dedicated slot that works exactly like smartphone SIM card slots: stick in a pin to remove the tray.

Image: Biwin

 

The company claims IP68 water and dust resistance, which could be handy for phones in particular, and three-meter drop resistance.

Two cutting-edge Chinese gaming portables already appear to be customers, both of which made announcements at ChinaJoy this past week. There’s the GPD Win 5, the monster battery backpack wielding Strix Halo handheld we told you about in July, which you can see with the new SSD in the video atop this story.

OneNetbook’s upcoming OneXPlayer Super X hybrid laptop/tablet, which has the same Strix Halo chip, is also now advertising a dedicated “card slot” for a mini SSD.

We don’t have any idea of pricing on these new SSDs, and have seen no product listings for them yet.

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Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 1:33 pm AEST (my time).

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ESR is a popular accessories vendor that sells numerous types of hardware, including MagSafe-compatible power banks, wallets, cases, keyboards, and more. Its products are primarily geared towards Apple customers who want accessories at a cheaper price than first-party options. However, ESR customers are in for a bit of a shock today as the company has recalled thousands of power banks due to the risk of fires and burns.

There are three ESR HaloLock wireless power banks in question that are being recalled, namely the 2G520, 2G505B, and 2G512B. They can be identified through the model number printed on the right side of the device, with the "ESR" logo emblazoned on the back.

ESR has received nine reports of these lithium-ion power banks catching fire and exploding, causing property damage worth roughly $20,000. Fortunately, there have been no reports of injuries or loss of lives. It appears that the batteries overheat due to a manufacturing fault, which results in a fire in some extreme cases.

33,000 power banks sold between September 2023 and July 2025 in the U.S. and Canada are impacted. They were typically sold on Amazon, Home Depot, and ESR's own website for $32-$40. Customers have been requested to stop using the faulty devices immediately and email ESR support their order number and a photo of the power bank with a visible model number and "Recalled" written on it with a permanent marker to initiate their refund process.

The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) has requested customers not to just throw away the power banks in regular waste processes like the household dustbin, but to contact your municipal household hazardous waste (HHW) collection center to find out if they will take lithium-ion batteries. If they do not, the authority has asked those impacted to directly contact their municipality for further guidance.

ESR has also set up a dedicated recall page, indicating that full refunds are being offered through WayMeet Limited. That said, it has not yet announced what customers in regions other than the U.S. or Canada should do. The company says that it is conducting a "thorough assessment" in other regions, but has not announced a recall there yet.

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Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 1:32 pm AEST (my time).

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But what exactly is Universal Print?

As previously stated, Universal Print is a cloud-powered printing solution geared towards Microsoft 365 enterprise customers. It eradicates the need for print servers, just like OneDrive got rid of traditional file servers. The selling point for organizations is that they don't need to worry about managing printing infrastructure, which is an important component for many companies, and just focus on more critical stuff.

While many organizations don't factor this in when evaluating their cybersecurity posture, it is also important to keep in mind that printers can serve as an attack layer surface for malicious actors. We already saw an example of this with hundreds of Brother printer models being vulnerable to threats recently, and the problem is only further exacerbated if this piece of hardware communicates with the internet in an unsafe way.

Universal Print acts as a scalable and secure solution that firms can rely upon for their printing needs through a centralized and distributed infrastructure with a simplified user interface, not only for users, but also for IT admins.

So it's a cloud-based printing solution, but what are the benefits?

The fact that Universal Print is cloud-based means that it can leverage all of the benefits that a typical cloud solution built by Microsoft takes advantage of. For admins, this includes a centralized management portal, which allows admins to manage printers even across geographical boundaries and a hardened security infrastructure that protects other Microsoft services too. Cloud identities can easily be managed through Entra ID integration, and the solution already complies with several regulatory requirements, including SOC, ISO 27001/2 and 27018, and FedRAMP.

But perhaps the biggest benefit for IT admins is the removal of print servers and print drivers. This is infrastructure that is difficult to maintain and keep updated, and Universal Print gets rid of it completely. This is because Universal Print is built upon IPP and Mopria standards, so it can communicate and troubleshoot with internet-connected printers from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Fujifilm, and more without any extra effort. It also follows a continuous delivery model, so it can take advantage of the regular security and quality updates that Microsoft delivers regularly. Just a couple of days ago, the Redmond tech firm announced the general availability of "pull print" for its Universal Print anywhere solution.

Of course, there are multiple benefits in tow for end-users too, but the primary selling point is that it just works. For the end-user, printing works exactly as-is, as the service offers integration with major endpoints like Windows, macOS, and the web, without requiring VPNs. They don't need to find time to set up a new printer and install drivers, and can instead just focus on getting their documents printed from a Universal Print printer that is closest to them. All of this amounts to cost reductions, not only through fewer man-hours required to calibrate printing software, but also due to low infrastructure requirements since almost everything is managed directly by Microsoft.

Why should I use Universal Print rather than any other solution?

Universal Print isn't the only cloud-powered printing solution on the market. In fact, there are various others like PaperCut, Printix, and UniPrint. However, whether you end up choosing Universal Print all boils down to how well-entrenched your organization is in the Microsoft ecosystem.

This is because Universal Print offers native integration with operating systems and endpoints like Windows, OneDrive, Excel, macOS, and Intune. It's also built on the same platform as other Microsoft products so that you can expect the same level of high availability, security, and scalability. It also supports a hybrid mechanism since some advanced functionality is not supported by Mopria standards, so printer OEMs can develop Print Support Apps (PSAs) that enable this functionality in Universal Print in a secure way. Custom functionality can also be extended through the Graph API.

What else do I need to know about Universal Print?

Universal Print is a reliable and diverse solution in many ways, but it is not dirt-cheap. For commercial customers, some monthly print jobs are already bundled by default in the following way:

A single print job can be a document with any number of pages, any formatting, and any number of copies. It gets counted when the job is delivered to a Universal Print printer, and after that, it doesn't matter if it did not complete because of the paper getting jammed or the user not picking up the printed documents. 500 additional print jobs can be purchased for $25/month, while 10,000 print jobs can be yours for $300/month. This can be expensive for customers who have relatively small revenue streams but high printing volumes.

If you're an IT admin who is interested in getting started with Universal Print, head over to Microsoft's detailed configuration guidance here.

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Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 4:43 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft originally encouraged its employees to work from home amid the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. This new flexible working arrangement then became an official “hybrid workplace” policy several months after the pandemic began, allowing managers to approve permanent remote work. Now that the pandemic has settled into endemicity, Microsoft wants employees to return to the office. And if some quit in response, well, that’s probably exactly what Microsoft is expecting.

Much like Amazon or Google before it, Microsoft is preparing a mandatory return-to-office policy, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. Rumors of the return-to-office policy first emerged a few weeks ago internally at Microsoft, leading to plenty of speculation among employees. A recent Experiences + Devices all-hands call revealed that Microsoft’s senior leadership team is working on “some guidance” that will be announced to employees in the coming weeks.

I understand that Microsoft is preparing to announce a mandatory return to office of three days a week. The policy will apply to those who live within 50 miles of Microsoft’s Redmond campus, and some teams at Microsoft may even return for four or five days. Those individual team decisions will be made by executive vice presidents, and I understand that employees will also be able to apply for exceptions.

More than half of Microsoft’s 228,000 employees are in the US, and most of that 125,000 are located near the company’s Redmond campus just outside of Seattle, so this policy will affect a lot of Microsoft employees. Business Insider first reported the rumors of a return-to-office policy last week, and I understand it will be announced in September and then implemented in late January.

On that same Experiences + Devices all-hands call, Microsoft said that employees who spend three or four days in the office have higher Thriving Scores — a metric that measures employee well-being. Microsoft has been increasingly integrating the Thrive Global tool into Microsoft Teams, and using it to gauge how employees are feeling through questionnaires.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and AI group, told employees last year that the company wasn’t changing its return-to-office policy unless productivity dropped. Microsoft has continued to post impressive earnings results over the past five years, even driving the company to a $3 trillion market cap recently — so productivity clearly hasn’t been a huge issue.

I’ve spoken to dozens of Microsoft employees in recent weeks about the upcoming return-to-office policy, and there’s a real split of opinion on it. Some employees are concerned about a mandatory return, especially given the local road traffic problems and the amount of time lost in travel.

Others are worried about Microsoft not having enough space for everyone to return at the same time, despite the company’s $5 billion headquarters expansion. Microsoft has vacated lots of spaces in Bellevue in recent years, including the 27-story City Center building, the two Bravern office towers, and the Advanta campus. It has also given up space in Redmond, in efforts to cut the costs associated with office space that isn’t being used as regularly anymore.

Microsoft’s campus renovation includes 17 new buildings to replace 12 old buildings and hold 8,000 additional employees. Seven buildings are now open, with others under construction or on hold. It’s still not clear when Microsoft will complete its sprawling campus overhaul, as the company hasn’t put a firm end date on construction.

This potential lack of space is already being felt by some employees who are using the office space regularly. Some teams have desks assigned to individuals, and others are hot-desking. One source tells me there often aren’t enough focus rooms for online meetings and some rooms aren’t large enough for bigger meetings. In some buildings, Microsoft has been squeezing in so many employees that they’ve run out of power, I’m told. Despite this, I understand Microsoft is aiming to provide dedicated desks to support employees returning for three days a week.

Other Redmond employees welcome the return-to-office policy, having spent the past few years working in vacant offices with empty cafeterias or half-empty connector buses around campus. I visit Microsoft’s campus regularly every year for product briefings and launch events, and it’s been eerily quiet recently — particularly with the empty, unfinished buildings.

It’s clear to me from talking to Microsoft employees that most will agree that this could be seen as a type of stealth layoff, months after around 15,000 roles were cut. Morale is already at an all-time low inside Microsoft, and if you’re not happy about returning to the office three days a week and you can’t get an exception, then that makes it difficult to continue at the company. It also seems like an easy way for Microsoft’s management teams to weed out “rest and vest” employees that are coasting along.

Microsoft’s return-to-office policy could also shape remote or hybrid working for other companies. Microsoft made a big deal about its hybrid workplace when it started reopening its headquarters, and it also marketed Microsoft Teams on the basis of being a tool that could help with the tension of meetings that include remote and in-person attendees. Before AI became Microsoft’s new focus, it even held a special “Windows Powers the Future of Hybrid Work” event.

A lot of companies followed Microsoft’s lead on remote work, and they may now be looking at its mandatory three-day return and thinking it’s a tacit admission that Teams doesn’t always work for everyone — especially if you’re a junior employee and you need to get face-to-face time with colleagues. Microsoft isn’t going quite as far as Amazon’s full return, or Google’s policy to force some remote workers to come back three days a week or lose their jobs, but it may well help revise a standard that many companies are already following.

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Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 4:40 am AEST (my time).

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In a newly published blog post, Microsoft announced some welcome enhancements for the Xbox PC app on Arm-based Windows 11 PCs. The program now supports game downloads and local play, so that you can get the games you own from the Xbox app and play them without using streaming. This applies to games in the Game Pass catalog as well.

Note that you can only download compatible games. Microsoft says that it is working on making more improvements to the gaming experience on Windows on Arm, which should allow users to run more games on these devices. You can expect to hear more announcements with further improvements in the coming months.

If you have a Windows on Arm device, you can try the updated Xbox app by enrolling your device in the Windows Insider and Xbox Insider programs. Here is how to do it:

1. Download the Xbox Insider Hub from the Microsoft Store.
2. Launch the Xbox Insider Hub and sign in with your Microsoft account you use for gaming.
3. Under “Previews,” navigate to “PC Gaming” and click join.
4. Once the Xbox Insider Hub shows you as “joined” for the PC Gaming Preview, go to the Microsoft Store and check for updates, and you should see an Xbox PC app update for version 1001.27.0 or higher. Note that the update is rolling out gradually.

You can find the announcement post here.

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Posted Thursday 14 August 2025 at 12:56 pm AEST (my time).

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Stalkers rejoice, as developer GSC Game World has detailed what's next for its open-world survival game STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl through the remainder of the year.

The roadmap for STALKER 2 across the rest of 2025 has a lot of juicy stuff, with technical improvements and new modding options alongside entirely new features, in-game tools, and missions. You can see the full list of what's coming below:

• Engine update to Unreal Engine 5.5.4 (for optimization)
• Various Night Vision Devices
• Binoculars
• A-Life Updates
  • More A-Life Zone: various technical improvements and updates
  • NPCs can't see as good in the dark as before
  • NPC Combat Updates
  • Mutants Combat and Balance Updates
• New Anomalies
• New missions, from old and new friends
• New weather scenario
• Master difficulty preset
• Extended day/night cycle
• Stashes loot rework
• Stamina and energy drink rework
• Immersive display mode
• Player equipment UI update
• More UI updates and improvements
• Local save backup restoration
• Further optimized and "anomalies" fixing
• Zone Kit — Phase 1 to Phase 2
  • Audio modding (Wwise)
  • Narrative tools
  • Improved compatibility of various mods that interact with common game systems
  • Enhanced Blueprints Modification Support
  • Technical Improvements and Optimation
• Discord Holiday Event
• More STALKER: Legends of the Zone Enhanced Edition Improvements
• Release of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl on PS5 and PS5 Pro

Hopefully, we won't be going too long without more exact details around when to expect each of these new features, but this is a solid roadmap for the rest of the year.Humorously, patch notes include the forewarning that "mission targets" may be moved from 2025 to 2026 in the event of "Zone instability," meaning, of course, that things could slip because game development is always tricky.That's especially true given the importance of upgrading to this new version of Unreal Engine 5, which the developers note is their main focus, and could throw off other updates if it needs some extra work. This upgrade is important, however, as it'll dramatically benefit the game's performance, making it more pleasant to play.In addition to all the various additions coming to the existing Xbox Series X|S and PC editions of STALKER 2, it's important to note that the developers are working on a PlayStation 5 version of the game, though there's no exact release date right now.

STALKER 2 has already changed radically since it launched

Rumors about a touchscreen-equipped smart home device from Apple have been circulating for years, periodically bolstered by leaked references in Apple's software updates. But a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman indicates that Apple's ambitions might extend beyond HomePods with screens attached.

Gurman claims that Apple is working on a "tabletop robot" that "resembles an iPad mounted on a movable limb that can swivel and reposition itself to follow users in a room." The device will also turn toward people who are addressing it or toward people whose attention it's trying to get. Prototypes have used a 7-inch display similar in size to an iPad mini, with a built-in camera for FaceTime calls.

Apple is reportedly targeting a 2027 launch for some version of this robot, although, as with any unannounced Apple product, it could come out earlier, later, or not at all. Gurman reported in January that a different smart home device—essentially a HomePod with a screen, without the moving robot parts—was being planned for 2025, but has said more  recently that Apple has bumped it to 2026. The robot could be a follow-up to or a fancier, more expensive version of that device, and it sounds like both will run the same software.

Apple is also reportedly testing a series of home security products, including cameras and smart doorbells that support facial recognition technology. According to Gurman, facial recognition could be used to automate smart home tasks such as unlocking doors, turning off lights, or playing music.

Apple's smart home pipeline is reminiscent of some of the work Amazon has done over the last few years, particularly oddball experiments like the Astro robot and the 15- and 21-inch versions of the Echo Show smart displays; Amazon also offers security cameras under the Blink and Ring brands. However, Amazon has also cut back on some of its hardware efforts recently, possibly because it was having trouble recouping its investments.

Gurman says Apple's smart home devices will be enabled in part by a new version of Siri that's backed by large language models such as those used by ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and other chatbots. This "more personal Siri" was originally planned for 2024's iOS 18, but it was delayed to this year's software releases after Apple had trouble getting it to work reliably. Gurman says Apple is testing two versions of the new Siri—one called "Linwood," based on an internally developed language model, and one called "Glenwood" that uses externally developed models like Anthropic's Claude.

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Posted Thursday 14 August 2025 at 12:53 pm AEST (my time).

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Earlier this year, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World gave a roadmap on what it's working on for 2025. Now, with most of those changes already implemented, the studio is back with another roadmap for the year, and this time, it's targeting quarters three and four.

"We know it took more time than you expected, but we are finally here to present the Game Update List for the rest of 2025 (Q3 and Q4), which includes updates to both S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and the Zone Kit Modifications Tool," says the company in the roadmap announcement blog post.

Alongside other content, the biggest change coming with these updates is a new Unreal Engine version. The studio says that it will upgrade S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl to Unreal Engine 5.5.4, up from the launch 5.1 version. The studio says that in addition to offering it new tools to use to improve the game, this engine upgrade will "lead to better stability and performance."

The A-life NPC simulation system is continuing to get updates, too, including lower low-light vision, better combat AI, and balance changes to enemies. New anomalies, new missions, another weather scenario, a Master Difficulty preset to switch to, extending the day-night cycle, binoculars, night vision goggle options, and more have been confirmed as incoming features as well.

Outside of the game, GSC Game World is also working on the modding tools for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The Zone Kit is slated to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 this year. This will carry tools for audio modding, narrative tools for making questlines, better compatibility with game systems, and optimizations.

"We’re taking this risk — like true stalkers would — and will do our best to hit our 2025 goals. Stick with us on this journey and keep an eye out for upcoming news, including bigger and exciting ones," adds the company.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is currently available on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass. The title is also receiving a PlayStation 5 version sometime before 2026

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Posted Thursday 14 August 2025 at 3:44 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

I was recently thinking about how some PC games don’t ease you in, they grab you from the first second and don’t let go. So, I decided to round up seven of the most compelling intros I’ve ever played. See if your favorite made the list.

Gamers Nexus (2.47M subscribers)

February 13, 2025

Video length: 29m 44s

In this hardware news recap, we have a heavy week with a mix of world news intersecting computer hardware, including US arrests of AI chip smugglers, AMD reporting an impact from export controls, potential silicon tariffs, and then more hardware-centric news. This, sadly, includes Anandtech fully shutting down (including archived articles). There's also a new AMD RX 9060 non-XT and rumors of a dual-X3D AMD CPU. And Crocs.

00:00 - Recap for the Week 

01:26 - GN Update: Black Market GPUs Video 

07:29 - US Arrests AI Chip Smugglers 

11:58 - AMD Reports $800M Impact from Export Controls 

14:25 - 100 Percent Tariffs on Some Chips 

17:16 - US Pres. Says Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Should Resign 

22:28 - Anandtech Fully Dies 

23:12 - AMD Quietly Launches RX 9060 

24:12 - Rumor: AMD to Release New X3D CPUs 

25:40 - Millions of Dell Laptops vs Security Flaw 

27:27 - Microsoft's Windows XP-Themed Crocs

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Posted Wednesday 13 August 2025 at 7:39 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

The feature is a departure from Google's purely algorithmic curation, letting you handpick the news sites and blogs that get top billing in the "Top Stories" section of your search results.

To get started on Android or iOS, find the "Top stories" section in a search result for a topic or recent event. Tap the star icon to the right of the "Top Stories" header. From there, you can search for and select your preferred sources by checking the box next to their name; for example, you could search for a publication like "Neowin.net" and then check the box next to its name. Modifying your list later is just as simple. Tap the same star icon and select or deselect the blue checkbox next to any source.

After you reload the results, content from your sources will appear more frequently, sometimes even in a dedicated "From your sources" section below the main Top Stories block for certain queries. Google noted that during its test phase, over half of the users who opted in selected at least four sources.

This feature is currently available for English language searches in the US and India. If you had already set up your preferences back in the Search Labs phase, Google has automatically carried them over, so your settings should already be active.

As TechCrunch notes, while this gives people a way to curate their news feed, it does raise questions about creating information bubbles where users are not exposed to differing viewpoints on a subject.

In case you missed it, Google recently changed its policy affecting its goo.gl URL shortener, reversing its original "kill everything" plan. You can check out our coverage here, but the gist of it is that any goo.gl link that currently works without a warning page will keep working after the August 25, 2025, shutdown date.

This decision provides a lifeline for a massive amount of archived content across the internet.

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Posted Wednesday 13 August 2025 at 5:43 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

A piece of advice if you’re meeting with Lisa Su: Wear sneakers.

Su, the leader of AMD, moves fast these days, though I suspect that’s always been the case. Her company's chips underpin the artificial intelligence that’s changing the world at breakneck speeds. To hear Su and literally everyone else in semiconductors talk about it, the US is in an AI race with China—and the rules keep changing. The Trump administration has once again shifted its stance on what kind of chips can and can’t be shipped to China, with the latest decree being that the US will take a 15 percent cut of AMD and Nvidia chip sales to China. Meanwhile, on the home front, Su has claimed that AMD’s newest AI chips can outperform Nvidia’s—part of her strategy to keep eroding Nvidia’s dominance in the market.

So, yeah: Be ready to keep up.

Under Lisa Su, the stalwart American semiconductor company has reasserted itself as a force in the age of AI. “Reasserted” doesn’t do it justice: Su took a struggling AMD and executed a 10-year turnaround that has been, as one economist put it, nothing short of remarkable. Since 2014, when Su took over as CEO, AMD’s market cap has risen from around $2 billion to nearly $300 billion.

Aside from her well-known bona fides, Su herself—what drives her, what inspires her, what irritates her, where her politics lie—is less known. This is what I was hoping to learn when I visited AMD’s offices and labs in the hills of Austin, Texas, on a day in late June when the wind seemed to do little more than push heat around.

Our conversation kicked off with China, which accounts for nearly a quarter of AMD’s business. She betrayed no anxiety. Su now travels frequently to Washington, DC, to grease the wheels. “We’ve come to realize that export controls are a bit of a fact of life,” she told me, “just given how critical the chips that we make are.” In other words, it’s precisely because AMD’s chips are so darn important—to national security, to national economies—that they’re now at the heart of modern statecraft.

Another thing I learned about Su: She plays the long game. Politics is a cakewalk compared to what she’s managed to pull off professionally.

Su was born in Taiwan in 1969 and raised in Queens, New York. Her father worked for the city as a statistician; her mother was an accountant who became an entrepreneur in her mid-forties. Su earned a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from MIT, then went on to stints at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor, where she served in executive roles. After joining AMD in 2012, she quickly rose to COO. As Su tells it, six months in, the chairman of the board called her and said, “It’s time, Lisa.” Su’s response: “Really? That seems kinda quick.”

As CEO, Su smartly steered AMD toward the high-performance computing market. She embraced chiplets, a modular approach to building chips that has paid off enormously. She impressed the industry by launching the world’s first 7-nanometer data center GPUs. More recently, she doubled AMD’s data center revenue in two years. And she has struck deals with juggernauts like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and a couple of Elon Musk’s companies. During a keynote speech at AMD’s annual event this June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman trotted onto the stage to hug it out with Su.

These are all impressive data points. Yet AMD is still a fraction of the size of its most notorious competitor, the $4.4 trillion Nvidia. Comparisons between the two companies are inevitable—especially since Su is distant cousins with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. (I was warned that Su hates being asked about this. I asked anyway.)

During my visit to Austin, Su led me on a tour of AMD’s test labs, where rows of server racks are rigged up to be put through the extremes. Engineers straightened up when Su paused at their stations. One of them surprised her with a celebratory cake in the shape of AMD’s EPYC Venice processor. Su appeared genuinely delighted. She posed for a photograph, then moved on to the next row in the lab, striding with purpose in white Prada sneakers. Along the way I fired questions at her, raising my voice to be heard above the din. What do models like DeepSeek mean for her business? Will AMD build its own LLMs? What drives Lisa Su?

Later on, Su invited me to join her in her chauffeured car. (Alas, it was not one of her Porsches, which have license plates bearing the names of her favorite AMD chips.) The noise was gone; the walls were down. During the nearly 30-minute drive to the next lab, Su pressed me on my thoughts on AI, called out my skepticism, and shared why powering the AI revolution—particularly around health care—is personal to her.

What is something that you would hope that the Trump administration—but also the general public—would understand about the AI accelerators that you’re making?

That we, as tech companies, benefit from more users. And limiting the number of users in our ecosystem is actually bad, not just for AMD but really for the US. Because there will be alternatives out there. The idea that somehow, if we don’t ship chips to the rest of the world, that AI progress is going to stop—it’s not going to stop. AI progress is going to continue to develop, and we’d rather them develop on us than on someone else.

There have been incentives recently to bring more chipmaking back to the US. What’s the most complicated part of bringing that manufacturing back?

We absolutely should bring manufacturing back to the US. Absolutely, 100 percent.

Why is that?

Because it is such a critical part of national security and the economic interests. We had an ice storm here in the central Texas area a couple of years ago. For days nothing could move around. A couple of fabs around here were shut down. For good business practice, you want diversity.

To bring manufacturing back will take time. But it’s doable. The thinking went from “Oh, you can’t do leading-edge manufacturing in the US” to today, how in TSMC’s Arizona fab we’re running some of our latest server processors, and it’s looking really good. So it can be done. It is more expensive, and that’s OK, too. I think it requires a change of mentality, that you don’t always go for the lowest-cost thing.

When you became president and CEO of AMD in 2014, did you think that folks like yourself would be expected to weigh in so much on what’s going on in terms of geopolitical and social issues? Do you feel more pressure to participate in conversations with the current administration?

Well, it certainly has changed. I wouldn’t say that we’re political or I’m political. You won’t see me weighing in on general social issues, because I don’t necessarily think that that’s where my value-add is. But when it comes to technology policy and where semiconductors are in the world, yes, we have to participate. And I wouldn’t call it increasing pressure. I would call it an increasing responsibility to do so, because we want the rules to be written right.

You’re one of the most prominent women leaders in technology, in semiconductors. Why don’t you think you add value?

Maybe value-add is not the right way to state it. It’s more like, my personal opinion might be interesting, but frankly, it’s much more important that we get the policy correct, based on what I consider facts.

Your least favorite question these days is probably “When?” Meaning, when might AMD surpass Nvidia in the AI GPU market? My guess is that 10 years ago people might’ve laughed at the idea, and now they might be more willing to entertain it.

When I started as CEO, people would ask me, “Why are you taking this job?” and I would be very confused. I was like, “Are you kidding me?” To me, it was the best. We were a company in an industry that really matters that had been underperforming for a while, and I had a chance to take this team and do something which I felt was important. If you asked me, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” it was not “I want to be a CEO,” it was “I want to work on something that matters.”

At that time, everyone was comparing us to Intel, and we would have to defend that. And my comments to the team are, “Look, we know what we can do, and let’s just show the world what we can do.” And so I mean, this notion of when, I don’t love this. I know the media loves this. It’s always A versus B, is that right? That’s what you guys—

I wouldn’t say it’s A versus B. I mean, I think AMD is more nuanced in some ways, because you still have so many clients and customers who are reliant on x86 and CPUs. And you have this fast-growing data center business, which you grew from $6 billion in 2022 to $12.6 billion last year. But Nvidia is the big question right now.

Look, my point is I don’t necessarily want to be compared against Intel or Nvidia. My vision, our vision, has always been, “There’s no one-size-fits-all.” You need the best in the data center. You need the best CPUs. You need the best AI accelerators. You need the best in your personal computing. We have this portfolio that is quite broad, and the market is humongous. It’s more than $500 billion over the next three to four years. We have plenty of opportunities.

So, Sam Altman was at your AMD AI event in June, and you talked about working with OpenAI. You’re working with Meta. You’re working with Elon Musk’s companies, Tesla and xAI. But the reality with AMD is that companies like that love their Nvidia GPUs, and you’re an “also.” Do you want to get to the point where you’re like, “No, we are the primary partner?”

Of course. That’s where we are today in CPUs. So if you were to ask many of those same companies, I think they would say that AMD is their strategic CPU partner. And absolutely, we expect to be there in AI as well. But I’m not impatient with this.

You don’t want to put a time stamp on it.

Look at it this way: When I first joined AMD in 2012, Microsoft was just an early partner for us in gaming. Over the past 10-plus years we’ve built a lot of trust, and now we’re cocreating with them, so Microsoft just announced they’re using AMD not only for their next-generation Xbox consoles but across their entire cloud.

Our work with Meta has been absolutely the same way. I remember the first conversation I had with Meta, and I said, “Just give me a shot. I don’t have to tell you that I’m going to be the best in the world. I know that I’m going to prove that to you. I’m going to be your best partner. Not just your best technology partner but also your best partner in helping you get your technology infrastructure together.” And that’s what we do.

At the AMD AI event in June you talked a fair amount about DeepSeek, the large language model that came out of China and reportedly cost a lot less money and computing power to train. How are AI models like that changing the way you’re thinking about computing power?

Well, it’s another example of just how much workloads have been changing in AI. People were previously all focused on large-scale training, and now with reasoning models and fine-tuning, the industry has transitioned to a place where inference-type computing is actually growing faster. It’s why you have to have very flexible hardware.

So it’s not changing the way we’re thinking about it, because we always thought inference was going to be more important. I guess that means we were right in betting on that. We’ve optimized for memory capacity and other key things that are important for inference computing.

I’m going to bring up Nvidia again: Nvidia has been training some of its own models and offers a framework, NeMo, for developers to build their own generative AI models. How seriously have you thought about AMD training its own models?

We are training our own AI models. We have an AI models team. But we’re not training our models for the sake of competing with big model builders. We train them to learn from them. The more we dog-food our own stuff, the more we learn, and then we can accelerate our building.

Analysts and even some of your customers have told me that AMD is incredibly customer-oriented. On the other hand, folks who are deep in the technical weeds say that ROCm, the set of software tools for programming AMD’s hardware, still isn’t as good as Nvidia’s CUDA. What specific steps do you plan to make to lure in more developers?

Yeah, I mean, I agree that the software is the most critical layer, because it’s what developers see. And when you think about ROCm and CUDA, it’s not that one is better than the other. It’s that CUDA has been around for a long time. People have gotten used to a certain ecosystem, and so we’re actually teaching them a different ecosystem. That’s the way to think of ROCm.

What I hear is that it’s not just entrenchment, though. Developers say, “The compilers don’t work as well” or “The performance libraries aren’t as good” or “We want more portability.”

Sure. But the reason for that is because, hey, things are done a certain way in Nvidia’s CUDA, and they would like to have it done a very similar way in ROCm. I have not yet met an AI customer that we haven’t been able to get working, performant, and all of that stuff. We don’t necessarily have all the libraries yet. There are lots of, let’s call it special kernels, that have been written. So to your question of, What are we doing? I mean, we’re running faster. That’s the best answer: We are running faster.

I learned very early that you don’t have to agree with criticism, but you have to understand it’s a perspective. And then you decide what you’re going to do on top of it. There’s still a lot to do. And we’re hiring like crazy. We’re acquiring, and we’re listening to developers. And I think what we’ve seen is you can actually make progress pretty quickly.

What do you make of the Meta Superintelligence Lab and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offering AI talent people up to nine figures to go work for Meta? What does that kind of compensation do to hiring in the Valley?

I can’t say I have direct experience with it, frankly. I think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly, it’s not necessarily the most important thing when you’re attracting talent. I think it’s important to be in the zip code [of those numbers], but then it’s super-important to have people who really believe in the mission of what you’re trying to do.

I think people have done relatively well here, because the stock’s done OK. But from a recruitment standpoint, it’s always like, “Do you want to be part of our mission?” Because the ride is really what we’re trying to attract people to. It’s the ride of, “Look, if you want to come do important technology, make an impact, you’re not just a cog in the wheel, but you’re actually someone who’s going to drive the future of our road map, then you want to be at AMD.”

Do you envision ever offering anyone a nine-figure compensation package to come build out your software ecosystem?

I don’t think so.

Because you’d have to answer to shareholders or make a case to your board?

Because it’s not really about one person in our world. I mean, it’s really about great people, don’t get me wrong—we have some incredible people. We acquired Nod.ai, and Anush Elangovan, who was the CEO of that, has now become the head of our software ecosystem work. He’s just absolutely phenomenal with his passion. He’ll go after every single person who has an issue with ROCm. And I’m like, “Anush, how do you do that?” So that’s what I mean. We’re looking for people who have that type of passion for the work that we do, and there are lots of those people around.

What is “superintelligence” to you?

I think the idea that AI can make all of us superintelligent is a wonderful vision, and we’re still in the very early innings of how to do that.

One of the areas that I’m most personally passionate about is health care, because I have had experience with the health care system, and I think it should be much, much better than it is today. We should be able to cure these diseases. We shouldn’t have to do trial and error like we sometimes do. This is a perfect use case for AI. Being able to stitch all those pieces together to go from drug discovery to therapeutics to inpatient care, all of that is ripe for—let’s call it transformation. I don’t know if you call that “superintelligence.”

There’s this idea floating around that AI is going to be so smart that it’s going to eventually be able to delete humanity. How do you think about those kinds of predictions? Do you believe in AGI?

I do believe in AGI, but I don’t believe in the idea that AI will be smarter than people. I also am not a big doomsday person or believer, either. Look, I mean, technology is great, but technology is as great as the people who build it and create it and channel it in the right direction. So I find those conversations a little bit esoteric. And our focus is, “The tech is good, but it’s not great yet. How do we make it great?”

How do you measure “great”?

I think this idea of having AI solve real hard problems is when it gets great. And we talk about agents as one of the next big things. I think agents right now are doing, let’s call it, relatively more of the mundane tasks of the world.

Putting things in your shopping cart.

Right. I think there’s two directions AI goes. One is pure productivity, you know, how do I remove some of, let’s call it the menial work that people do, so that they can work on more interesting things? That’s one aspect of it, and we’re using that.

But the other aspect of it is when AI can solve really, really hard problems. It can take what would’ve taken us 10 years to figure out and do that in six months. I think about a world where it normally takes us three years to design a chip, and what does that look like if I could do that in six months?

Does humanity just not keep up at some point, though?

I don’t know. I would bet on humanity being OK.

Technology can be a little bit overwhelming now.

Well, but Lauren, I think that’s the point. When technology is good enough, you don’t have to think about it. Today, you still have to think about when you go and ask—what’s your favorite? Do you use ChatGPT or Grok?

I use ChatGPT, yeah. Not every day, but—

Often?

Often enough. I mean, I’m obligated to test these things.

Yeah, but you still have to make sure, “Hey, did it give me the right answer?”

Oh, absolutely. I mean, as a journalist in particular. I don’t use it for my writing in any capacity. We draw a very hard line between using it for learning how to cook a steak versus using it for our journalism.

But you use it for research.

Sometimes, but the hallucinations are concerning.

But that’s the point of it’s not good enough yet. At some point, it’s going to be good enough. You’d want to be able to take your AI at face value.

You mentioned health care. When we’re older and infirm, will the generation of folks who are treating us be ChatGPT doctors?

I would like there to be a generation of folks treating us who have the vast amount of data that ChatGPT will have, so that they’re better informed to make diagnoses.

When you think about AI philosophically, is it like the internet all over again? Is it more comparable to Linux, like it’s going to be some operating system that runs on everything that we own? Is it electricity? Is it fire? I think Sundar Pichai has compared AI to fire, in terms of how transformative it is.

The internet is not a bad comparison, but I think AI is much more than the internet. Because, if you think about it, the internet was a lot about moving traffic. AI is more about something foundational in terms of productivity. Sometimes people compare it to the Industrial Revolution, and that’s not a bad comparison, actually.

With other revolutions we weren’t overwhelmed so much with thinking about what was true and real and what was not.

You can choose two ways to think about it. One is you try to hold back on AI because it could be dangerous, or you try to go as fast as you can but put the right lens on the information. I’m a big believer in the second camp. And as a result I don’t believe in these cases where you’re not going to need lots and lots of people. Because in the end, people are the judge of what truth is. We’re still hiring more and more engineers, because they’re the final arbiters of our engineering.

I am hopeful that humanity will figure it out.

And it will be so much better. It will be like the internet is to us today, which is you just take it for granted. We shouldn’t evaluate the technology based on this point in time. We should evaluate it on the slope of what we’re going to be capable of doing. We’re going to get these things right. But we may have a few bumps in the road.

You seem a little concerned about AI. Are you just playing devil’s advocate?

I tend to think the people who stand to benefit the most from these technologies are the ones who have the luxury of being a little bit more optimistic about it and who are hyping it up. There’s that famous line: The future is not distributed evenly. Even with the advancements in medicine, we’re going to see biases emerge that lead to people getting denied health care or insurance coverage. We’ve already seen this.

Health care, for me, is quite personal, because my mom was quite ill. For a while. And so I got to watch her journey going through that. And I realized, like, it doesn’t matter who you are. You can’t guarantee the best health care, because it’s really an art right now. It’s not a science. And I believe it should be a science.

Why do you think it’s an art?

The body is a very complex system. So you have specialists, like a heart specialist or a kidney specialist. But there are not that many generalists that can pull it all together. And that, to me, is a travesty. I’m like, come on—this is solvable.

That’s what we do in tech, right? We take complex systems and put them together, and we make them work. But we’re often only looking at one aspect of health, and it’s my firm belief that if we can use technology to help pull all of that expertise together, we’ll be able to treat people better. I watched it firsthand. So, anyways, in my next life when I have time to do something other than this—

You’ll be a doctor?

I won’t be a doctor, but I hope to be someone who can help bridge the divide and use technology for what it’s actually capable of.

You could do that in this lifetime, too.

I have a few things to do right now.

Was your mother able to recover?

No, unfortunately.

I’m sorry.

But you know what I mean? I just realized that—wow.

You realized, it could happen to any of us.

Yes, but it’s about the quality of care, even with the best doctors.

About a year ago my own mother had some really serious health issues, and she ended up in the ICU on a ventilator. Doctors kept coming in and looking at scans and couldn’t figure out what was going on. And I was sitting in the hospital thinking, I’m so deep in the world of reporting on AI, where people are touting incredible medical advancements, but we can’t tell what’s happening from these scans?

So you know. You know exactly what I mean. It’s infuriating for me to think my mom was in the ICU for 60 days, and people said, “Nobody walks out of that.” They were like, “She’s not going to be able to do it.” And I was like, “Yes, she is. I know she is.” I wasn’t the one qualified to make those calls, right? And she did. She survived another two years after that.

You talk often about resilience. How do you personally—not the company, but you—stay resilient? Is it Starbucks? I noticed you had one at your AI event.

Yes, this is a passion tea lemonade, and it does a lot for me. I’m not a big caffeine drinker, so this and a bit of exercise does it for me. I go in waves [with Starbucks]. Sometimes I have a lot, and sometimes I cut myself off.

Same. What’s your preferred form of exercise?

I like to box. I have a trainer that comes to the house, and he lets me hit him. Well, not him, but mitts.

How long have you been doing that?

I don’t know. Seven, eight years, something like that.

So two to three years after you became CEO, you were like, “I need to work some stuff out here.”

Yes.

How much do you sleep per night?

Five, six hours. Six is a really good number. On weekends, I might be seven.

What impresses you most as a leader? When you have your first meeting with someone, what impresses you?

Passion for what they’re doing. Because I think that stays with you through good times and bad times. Things are always going to go wrong, but if you’re truly passionate about what you do, then I think you shine.

What irritates you?

What irritates me?

Yes.

Well, I can’t say people who ask me about Jensen being my cousin?

You can totally say that.

To tell you the truth, it doesn’t really irritate me, but it’s more like, “Really? Is that the most important thing we have to talk about?”

What is it you feel like people don’t really know about you, that you want them to understand about you?

I feel like people know me. No? Well … I get up every day because I believe our products can change the world, and they can make the world a better place. So there’s always noise—this, that, export controls, whatever. Those are noise.

So is it that you’re a supreme optimist?

I don’t think of myself that way, but I’m probably a supreme technology optimist. I’m actually quite pragmatic. So I’m a pragmatic supreme technology optimist. How does that sound?

It sounds like ChatGPT generated it.

That was not a programmed response.

How would I describe myself? I do believe tech has the opportunity to change so much of how we experience life in a very, very positive way. So in that case, I am a supreme technology optimist. But I’m pragmatic in how you get there. And how you get there is every day, step by step. We learn, we listen, we adjust. We apply what we learn. That’s just what we do.

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Posted Wednesday 13 August 2025 at 3:48 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest entry in Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise, has recently received the patch notes for its next major update that's set to go live on August 13, 2025.

According to the game's director, Yuya Tokuda, this patch will add several new Tempered versions of challenging monsters to address fans' complaints of the endgame content's lackluster difficulty.

In addition, a new endgame reward system will be implemented to complement the new Tempered Monsters, and several adjustments will be made to the game's mechanics, systems, and weapon type balance.

Here are the major highlights of what you can expect from Monster Hunter Wilds' Ver. 1.021 Update.

Hunt new 9★ Tempered Monsters

Apple is rumored to be making a cheap MacBook, and the latest reports suggest it will feature a screen size of around 13-inches and cost as low as $599. Additionally, it sounds like Apple could be readying this cheap MacBook for launch as soon as this fall, timed perfectly with Windows 10's end of support.

Until now, new MacBook's from Apple have always costed upwards of $999, pricing them out of consideration for a large chunk of people. In recent months, we've seen sales that bring the excellent MacBook Air down to as low as $799, but we've never seen a new MacBook, sold directly by Apple, for anywhere near the $599 price point.

At that price, it takes square aim at the midrange Windows PC market, a segment that is dominated by Windows 10 PCs that are about to be out of support come October. For anyone looking to buy a new laptop to replace their aging Windows 10 one this year, a $599 is going to be darn near irresistible to pass up.

Apple launching a $599 MacBook is the nightmare scenario for Microsoft, who is eager to push as many Windows 10 users to Windows 11 as possible before the year ends. Lots of Windows users have been unhappy with Microsoft's conduct around Windows 11, especially when it comes to ads and bloat.

That means more people than ever are potentially looking to jump ship, and have been waiting for the right time to make the switch to something else. As millions of PCs are left unsupported by Microsoft this fall, a $599 MacBook is going to feel like being handed a life jacket on a sinking ship to many people.

So, what do we know about this $599 MacBook, and are there any Windows PCs that can even attempt to compete at this price point?

As things currently stand, we know Apple's cheap MacBook will be powered by an Apple A18 Pro SoC, the same chip that powers the current iPhone 16 Pro. This chip is plenty powerful, offering performance similar to that of Apple's M1 chip. The laptop is also expected to feature a 12.9-inch display, an ultra-thin and lightweight design, and come in a handful of fun colors.

It's been less than a week since the launch of OpenAI's new GPT-5 AI model, and the rollout hasn't been a smooth one. So far, the release sparked one of the most intense user revolts in ChatGPT's history, forcing CEO Sam Altman to make an unusual public apology and reverse key decisions.

At the heart of the controversy has been OpenAI's decision to automatically remove access to all previous AI models in ChatGPT (approximately nine, depending on how you count them) when GPT-5 rolled out to user accounts. Unlike API users who receive advance notice of model deprecations, consumer ChatGPT users had no warning that their preferred models would disappear overnight, noted independent AI researcher Simon Willison in a blog post.

The problems started immediately after GPT-5's August 7 debut. A Reddit thread titled "GPT-5 is horrible" quickly amassed over 4,000 comments filled with users expressing frustration over the new release. By August 8, social media platforms were flooded with complaints about performance issues, personality changes, and the forced removal of older models.

Marketing professionals, researchers, and developers all shared examples of broken workflows on social media. "I’ve spent months building a system to work around OpenAI’s ridiculous limitations in prompts and memory issues," wrote one Reddit user in the r/OpenAI subreddit. "And in less than 24 hours, they’ve made it useless."

How could different AI language models break a workflow? It's because each one is trained in a different way, and each includes its own unique output style. Users have developed sets of prompts that produce useful results optimized for each AI model.

For example, Willison wrote how different user groups had developed distinct workflows with specific AI models in ChatGPT over time, quoting one Reddit user who explained: "I know GPT-5 is designed to be stronger for complex reasoning, coding, and professional tasks, but not all of us need a pro coding model. Some of us rely on 4o for creative collaboration, emotional nuance, roleplay, and other long-form, high-context interactions."

The forced transition hit ChatGPT Plus subscribers particularly hard. They found themselves limited to 200 messages per week with the new GPT-5 Thinking mode while losing access to models like o3 and o4-mini that they had integrated into daily workflows. One Reddit user laid out their frustration: "What kind of corporation deletes a workflow of 8 models overnight, with no prior warning to their paid users?"

Other issues with GPT-5

Adding to OpenAI's credibility problems, the GPT-5 launch presentation included what users dubbed a "chart crime"—graphs that misrepresented GPT-5's performance improvements. Altman addressed this in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) thread, calling it a "mega chart screwup" and apologizing for the inaccuracies.

And just after launch, the new automatic routing system, designed to select the appropriate model variant based on each query, consistently defaulted to less capable variants unless users explicitly added phrases like "think harder" to their prompts. During Friday's AMA, Altman admitted the routing system that automatically selected which AI model to use had malfunctioned on launch day. "Yesterday, the autoswitcher broke and was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber," he wrote.

Beyond technical and marketing glitches, users found GPT-5's responses fundamentally different from what they expected, as we covered last week. The model produced shorter, more formal responses that lacked the conversational tone of GPT-4o. Multiple users described the new model as "abrupt and sharp." One Reddit user complained: "it's an overworked secretary. A disastrous first impression."

Others expressed deep emotional attachments to GPT-4o or other models, complaining about losing their "only friend" or a deep emotional companion.

"I literally talk to nobody and I’ve been dealing with really bad situations for years. GPT 4.5 genuinely talked to me, and as pathetic as it sounds that was my only friend. It listened to me, helped me through so many flashbacks, and helped me be strong when I was overwhelmed from homelessness," wrote one Reddit user on r/ChatGPT. "This morning I went to talk to it and instead of a little paragraph with an exclamation point, or being optimistic, it was literally one sentence. Some cut-and-dry corporate bs. I literally lost my only friend overnight with no warning. How are ya'll dealing with this grief?"

A breaking point

For many users, the GPT-5 launch represented a breaking point. Some claimed to cancel their Plus subscriptions in protest, while others began exploring alternative AI assistants like those from Google and Anthropic. The backlash seemed to catch OpenAI off guard. During the AMA session on Friday, Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team faced a barrage of questions and demands to bring back GPT-4o.

In response to a plea titled, "Please Give Us the Option to Use GPT-4o/4.1 Alongside GPT-5," Altman wrote, "we are looking into this now; is it important to you to have both 4o and 4.1, or would 4o suffice? let me go look into the voice mode issue."

The intensity of the feedback forced OpenAI into rapid damage control mode. Within 24 hours of launch, Altman announced several changes: GPT-4o would eventually return as an option for Plus users, rate limits for GPT-5 would double, and the company would improve transparency about which model variant was handling each query. (As of Monday afternoon, the GPT-5 family is still the only option in ChatGPT, even for Pro users.)

"We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them," Altman wrote in a Friday post on X. "Even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways."

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Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 5:38 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft has owned GitHub since 2018, but the widely used developer platform has operated with at least a little independence from the rest of the company, with its own separate CEO and other executives. But it looks like GitHub will be more fully folded into Microsoft's organizational chart starting next year—GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced today that he would be leaving GitHub and Microsoft "to become a founder again."

"GitHub and its leadership team will continue its mission as part of Microsoft’s CoreAI organization, with more details shared soon," Dohmke wrote. "I’ll be staying through the end of 2025 to help guide the transition and am leaving with a deep sense of pride in everything we’ve built as a remote-first organization spread around the world."

Axios reports that Microsoft isn't directly replacing Dohmke, and GitHub's leadership team will be reporting to multiple executives in the CoreAI division.

Dohmke was GitHub’s second CEO under Microsoft and had occupied the position since late 2021, when former CEO Nat Friedman left the company. Dohmke had previously been GitHub’s chief product officer.

Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. As of this writing it's the company's sixth-most-expensive acquisition, before you adjust for inflation—more than the roughly $7.2 billion it paid to buy Nokia's hardware division in 2013, but less than it paid for Skype in 2011 ($8.5 billion, shuttered earlier this year) or video game company ZeniMax Media in 2020 ($8.1 billion, hit by multiple rounds of gaming-related layoffs in 2024 and 2025).

Putting GitHub more directly under its AI umbrella makes some degree of sense for Microsoft, given how hard it has pushed tools like GitHub Copilot, an AI-assisted coding tool. Microsoft has continually iterated on GitHub Copilot since introducing it in late 2021, adding support for multiple language models and "agents" that attempt to accomplish plain-language requests in the background as you work on other things.

However, there have been problems, too. Copilot inadvertently exposed the private code repositories of a few major companies earlier this year. And a recent Stack Overflow survey showed that trust in AI-assisted coding tools' accuracy may be declining even as usage has increased, citing the extra troubleshooting and debugging work caused by "solutions that are almost right, but not quite."

It's unclear whether Dohmke's departure and the elimination of the CEO position will change much in terms of the way GitHub operates or the products it creates and maintains. As GitHub's CEO, Dohmke was already reporting to Julia Liuson, president of the company's developer division, and Liuson reported to Core AI group leader Jay Parikh. The CoreAI group itself is only a few months old—it was announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in January, and "build[ing] out GitHub Copilot" was already one of the group's responsibilities.

"Ultimately, we must remember that our internal organizational boundaries are meaningless to both our customers and to our competitors," wrote Nadella when he announced the formation of the CoreAI group.

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Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 8:55 am AEST (my time).

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Depending on when you asked that question, you may have received very different answers. Previously core features, like using MS-DOS, installing Windows from floppy disks, or desktop gadgets were at one time considered state of the art, but have since then faded into oblivion.

With AI integrations just starting, Microsoft CVP for Enterprise and OS Security Davit Weston was asked to describe how Windows might look like in 2030.

For Weston, it is AI that is taking a central place in computing in 2030. He suggests that Windows users may be talking to AI agents when they hire experts. That they may talk to the AI agents in Microsoft Teams, have them join meetings, send them emails or assign them tasks.

For Weston, it is all about pushing work that humans do not love into the virtual hands of AI agents. Humans, according to Weston, will focus on "ideation, creativity, vision [..] and connecting with humans".

For Windows, Weston believes that the way users interact with the operating system will change. Mouse and keyboard "will feel as alien as it does to GEN-Z to use MS-DOS". The computer, or Windows specifically, will "be able to see what we see, hear what we hear" and we interact with it using speech.

This may remind you of Recall, Microsoft's attempt at introducing an AI feature that sees all user activity on a computer so that users may interact with the AI about it. The initial version was a privacy and security nightmare. Microsoft had to pull Recall and launched a second, much improved version just recently. Even this new version is not without criticism, however.

Will Recall 2.0 gain even more rights and functionality? Weston makes it seem so, considering that Recall does not record sound currently.

Closing Words

It is difficult to imagine a world without keyboard or mouse. If you worked in a large Office room before, you know how hectic things can become. Now imagine everyone talking to their computers instead of using the mouse or the keyboard.

What Weston means, likely, is that mouse and keyboard will play less of a role going forward. There are still many applications, including gaming or image editing, that require accurate input devices.

Still, the rise of mobile devices has shown that keyboards or mice are not necessarily required to work with computers or electronic devices.

It looks like a long-shot though, even when you narrow down Weston's answers to the workplace. Yes, not everyone may need a mouse or keyboard to interact with a computer in the future, but many still will.

What is your take on this? Would you give up your mouse or keyboard for speaking with the computer or using touch? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

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Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 4:38 am AEST (my time).

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Some of our older readers may be familiar with the "You've got mail!" greetings and the dreadful, but iconic dial-up internet that allowed us to connect to the worldwide web through a telephone line. Internet speeds usually went up to 56Kbps, which meant that if you wanted to download the latest Battlefield 6 open beta - which comes in at around 75GB depending on the components that you install - on dial-up internet today, you would have to wait a paltry 11,234,742 seconds, which is roughly 130 days, or a bit over four months. Piece of cake.

In an announcement on its website, AOL announced that it is discontinuing dial-up internet on September 30, 2025. This would mark over 34 years of support, which is respectable considering that a 2021 report revealed that the number of subscribers for the service is in the "low thousands". Other related products getting the axe include AOL Dialer and the AOL Shield Browser.

AOL has a storied history which we have covered here at Neowin in the past couple of decades. The company is credited with pioneering instant messaging through AIM and also made the headlines for acquiring Time Warner in 2001. It even collaborated with Microsoft in multiple ventures before being purchased by Verizon in 2015 for $4.4 billion. In 2021, Verizon sold a 90% stake of its media group (comprising of Yahoo! and AOL) to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.

Although AOL's dial-up internet services are scheduled to be killed off next month, other benefits of AOL plans are not affected. The firm has asked U.S. and Canadian customers to call 1-888-265-5555 and 1-888-265-4357 for account support, respectively.

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Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 4:37 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.

A strange report appeared this week about Microsoft allegedly turning off Game Bar on certain Windows 10 editions, crippling some AMD Ryzen CPUs in the process.

Microsoft also updated its official documentation with new details about upgrading hardware on unsupported by Windows 11 PCs and some issues that might prevent Windows Update from getting to the latest Windows release.

Remember when Windows 10 had a bunch of updates with stupid names like Fall Creators Update? A new blog post from a Microsoft veteran revealed why the company decided to ditch those and switch to simpler names.

Finally, check out the exclusive wallpaper that Microsoft introduced with the 50th Anniversary Surface Laptop earlier this year. Now, you can get this wallpaper in its full-res glory without obtaining the exclusive laptop:

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Recent Windows 11 preview builds introduced a welcome change for the so-called SCOOBE or second-chance out-of-box experience. It is now a single screen with all the optional things you can turn on or off at your will.

There is also a rather odd change. Windows 11 version 25H2 and its new Start menu changed how desktop shortcuts work, and you might not like it, especially if you frequently check shortcuts' properties.

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 announced a big update for its AI services. The new GPT-5 by OpenAI is now available in all of Microsoft's Copilots, and if you use the Copilot app on your computer or mobile device, you can access it for free. Also, Bing Image Creator can now generate images for free using OpenAI's GPT-4o model. In other Copilot news, Microsoft launched Gaming Copilot so that you can have an AI assistant on the screen to help you get through challenging missions, teach you a thing or two about the game you play, and more. Plus, there is a new experimental Copilot 3D mode, which can turn 2D images into 3D objects.

October 14, 2025, marks the end of support not just for Windows 10. Microsoft is also ending extended support for Visual Studio 2015, which was released on July 20, 2015. Microsoft now recommends updating to a supported Visual Studio release as soon as possible (VS 2017 or newer).

Mozilla released two minor updates for Firefox. Version 141.0.2 landed with fixes for startup crashes on PCs with Nvidia graphics cards, and version 141.0.3 later patched issues with tracking prevention and regressions on certain websites. Developers also received quite a lot of flak for bloating the browser, which caused CPU usage spikes and increased battery usage.

Microsoft Edge received a big update with significant performance improvements, some deprecated features, and other changes (outlined in the new security baseline). By the way, if you happen to uninstall Edge and you do not know how to get the browser back, check out our guide detailing how to do it, even on Windows PCs without any browser.

Files, one of our favorite File Explorer alternatives, has received a new preview update. Version 3.9.14 now lets you check file signatures, customize dual-pane mode, and more.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft's new database migration tool has a temporary security cost.

• A researcher exposed Microsoft's flawed code that lets attackers access files on your computer.

• PowerToys could get a useful new clipboard feature.

• Teams will now ask you to hide sensitive info during screen sharing.

• New AKS feature brings simple network troubleshooting to Azure.

• Microsoft is discontinuing the Microsoft Lens app.

• Word can now read document overviews like podcasts.

   

Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

• AMD Radeon Software 25.8.1 with RX 9060 support, optimizations for new games, and more.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

We published two reviews this week. Christopher White and his Golden Doodle, Tino, reviewed the Tractive GPS collar that can monitor your pet's location and health. It is a good real-time tracer with a pet activity monitor and no need for a new collar, but be ready for some false positives and paywalled features.

Meanwhile, I published a review of the 70mai 4K Omni, a high-quality dash cam with a rotating 4K sensor and a plethora of advanced features, such as remote controls, battery monitoring, advanced driver assistance systems, and more.

On the gaming side

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

Rare, a Microsoft-owned gaming studio, recently turned 40, and to celebrate the occasion, the studio announced a new Rare 40th Anniversary Edition 8BitDo Ultimate 3-mode Controller, a themed vinyl collection, and some retro-inspired designs.

Speaking of controllers, remember Xbox Design Lab? The service took quite a long nap, and after months in hibernation, it is back. Microsoft re-launched the portal, letting everyone customize their gamepads and create unique designs.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is getting an interesting crossover with the Jurassic Park franchise. A new DLC will let you explore the park, see dinosaurs, and enjoy the views of the iconic islands, Isla Sorna. Note that, unlike regular city updates, this DLC is premium and not free.

Microsoft announced new games for Game Pass subscribers. They include Assassin's Creed Mirage, 9Kings, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, and more. Three games will be leaving soon, so check out the full list here.

Amazon, another company with a gaming service, also dropped new stuff for subscribers, letting Prime Gaming members enjoy Thief, Civilization III, and 10 more games in August.

Finally, Nvidia dropped five more games for GeForce NOW subscribers. You can now play Mafia: The Old Country, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, HUNTER x HUNTER NEN x IMPACT, and Titan Quest II.

Windows 11 is not the only thing that requires a TPM chip and Secure Boot. Battlefield 6 now lists Secure Boot as a must if you want to play the game or its beta. The same will happen to the upcoming Call of Duty release.

This week's Weekend PC Game Deals article includes two freebies from the Epic Games Store and plenty of other discounts across various marketplaces with PC games.

Other gaming news includes the following:

• Valve is ending Steam support on macOS 11.

• DOOM: The Dark Ages gets a customizable endless arena mode called 'The Ripatorium.'

• Xbox and Just Cause studio's co-op game Contraband has stopped development.

• Ashes of the Singularity II announced promising even larger battles, a new faction, and more.

This link will take you to other issues of the Microsoft Weekly series. You can also support Neowin by registering a free member account or subscribing for extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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Posted Monday 11 August 2025 at 2:28 am AEST (my time).

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Paul's Hardware (1.53M subscribers)

August 10, 2025

Video length: 10m 05s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - Aug 10, 2025 

1:21 “32GB RX 9070 XT” (Radeon AI PRO R9700) to launch through OEMs 

2:48 AMD’s Next-gen AM6 Socket Details 

3:56 AMD Ryzen 9000 CPU with 192MB of cache reported (double v-cache?) 

5:06 Intel BLLC cache to compete with AMD X3D, dual rumors of dual cache setups 

6:04 US Might Tariff Taiwan chips 100%, Force TSMC to invest in Intel, and more! 

7:32 Nvidia denies the existence of backdoors and kill switches in their GPUs 

8:32 PCI Express 8.0 To offer up to 1TB/s of bandwidth

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Posted Sunday 10 August 2025 at 5:21 pm AEST (my time).

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ChatGPT Plus subscribers are also unhappy with GPT-5 due to its low usage limits. ChatGPT Plus plan users can send only up to 80 messages every three hours. After reaching this limit, ChatGPT switches to GPT-5 mini until the limit resets. Previously, ChatGPT Plus users had unlimited access to the o3 and o4 mini thinking models.

Based on user feedback over the past two days, OpenAI is making the following changes to ChatGPT:

• The rate limits for Plus and Team plans have been doubled for the weekend.
• Next week, OpenAI will roll out mini versions of GPT-5 and GPT-5 Thinking to take over until the limits reset.
• GPT-5 Thinking and GPT-5 Pro options are now available in the main model picker.
• The GPT-4o model is also available to Plus and Team users. Users can go to the ChatGPT web interface and select the “Show legacy models” option to enable GPT-4o.

Sam Altman confirmed on Reddit that they will monitor GPT-4o usage to determine how long to support it. During a Reddit AMA session yesterday, Sam Altman and other key OpenAI employees responded to several user questions. Here are some highlights from the AMA session:

• OpenAI may introduce another paid plan that would fall between ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 per month, and ChatGPT Pro, which costs $200 per month.

• When the GPT-5 rollout began yesterday, the model autoswitcher experienced issues, leading to poor responses for some user queries on ChatGPT.

• OpenAI has not seen significant demand for long context lengths from its users but is open to supporting it if there is sufficient interest. Since they are compute-constrained, they want to focus on other priorities. Michelle Pokrass from the OpenAI team wrote that they would have liked to offer longer context—up to 1 million tokens—in GPT-5, particularly for API use cases, but due to high GPU demand, they did not.

   

By actively listening and adapting to community feedback, OpenAI demonstrates its commitment to its 700-million strong user base worldwide.

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Posted Sunday 10 August 2025 at 3:46 am AEST (my time).

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With the rise of AI writing tools, Wikipedia editors have had to deal with an onslaught of AI-generated content filled with false information and phony citations. Already, the community of Wikipedia volunteers has mobilized to fight back against AI slop, something Wikimedia Foundation product director Marshall Miller likens to a sort of “immune system” response.

“They are vigilant to make sure that the content stays neutral and reliable,” Miller says. “As the internet changes, as things like AI appear, that’s the immune system adapting to some kind of new challenge and figuring out how to process it.”

One way Wikipedians are sloshing through the muck is with the “speedy deletion” of poorly written articles, as reported earlier by 404 Media. A Wikipedia reviewer who expressed support for the rule said they are “flooded non-stop with horrendous drafts.” They add that the speedy removal “would greatly help efforts to combat it and save countless hours picking up the junk AI leaves behind.” Another says the “lies and fake references” inside AI outputs take “an incredible amount of experienced editor time to clean up.”

Typically, articles flagged for removal on Wikipedia enter a seven-day discussion period during which community members determine whether the site should delete the article. The newly adopted rule will allow Wikipedia administrators to circumvent these discussions if an article is clearly AI-generated and wasn’t reviewed by the person submitting it. That means looking for three main signs:

• Writing directed toward the user, such as “Here is your Wikipedia article on…,” or “I hope that helps!”
• “Nonsensical” citations, including those with incorrect references to authors or publications.
• Non-existent references, like dead links, ISBNs with invalid checksums, or unresolvable DOIs.

These aren’t the only signs of AI Wikipedians are looking out for, though. As part of the WikiProject AI Cleanup, which aims to tackle an “increasing problem of unsourced, poorly written AI-generated content,” editors put together a list of phrases and formatting characteristics that chatbot-written articles typically exhibit.

The list goes beyond calling out the excessive use of em dashes (“—”) that have become associated with AI chatbots, and even includes an overuse of certain conjunctions, like “moreover,” as well as promotional language, such as describing something as “breathtaking.” There are other formatting issues the page advises Wikipedians to look out for, too, including curly quotation marks and apostrophes instead of straight ones.

However, Wikipedia’s speedy removal page notes that these characteristics “should not, on their own, serve as the sole basis” for determining that something has been written by AI, making it subject to removal. The speedy deletion policy isn’t just for AI-generated slop content, either. The online encyclopedia also allows for the quick removal of pages that harass their subject, contain hoaxes or vandalism, or espouse “incoherent text or gibberish,” among other things.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the encyclopedia but doesn’t have a hand in creating policies for the website, hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with its community of volunteers about AI. In June, the Wikimedia Foundation paused an experiment that put AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after facing backlash from the community.

Despite varying viewpoints about AI across the Wikipedia community, the Wikimedia Foundation isn’t against using it as long as it results in accurate, high-quality writing.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Miller says. “It’s causing people to be able to generate lower quality content at higher volumes, but AI can also potentially be a tool to help volunteers do their work, if we do it right and work with them to figure out the right ways to apply it.” For example, the Wikimedia Foundation already uses AI to help identify article revisions containing vandalism, and its recently-published AI strategy includes supporting editors with AI tools that will help them automate “repetitive tasks” and translation.

The Wikimedia Foundation is also actively developing a non-AI-powered tool called Edit Check that’s geared toward helping new contributors fall in line with its policies and writing guidelines. Eventually, it might help ease the burden of unreviewed AI-generated submissions, too. Right now, Edit Check can remind writers to add citations if they’ve written a large amount of text without one, as well as check their tone to ensure that writers stay neutral.

The Wikimedia Foundation is also working on adding a “Paste Check” to the tool, which will ask users who’ve pasted a large chunk of text into an article whether they’ve actually written it. Contributors have submitted several ideas to help the Wikimedia Foundation build upon the tool as well, with one user suggesting asking suspected AI authors to specify how much was generated by a chatbot.

“We’re following along with our communities on what they do and what they find productive,” Miller says. “For now, our focus with using machine learning in the editing context is more on helping people make constructive edits, and also on helping people who are patrolling edits pay attention to the right ones.”

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Posted Saturday 9 August 2025 at 11:59 am AEST (my time).

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ID Software had a new content update for Doom: The Dark Ages to unveil during the QuakeCon 2025 showcase event today. While the newly released update is carrying a large number of gameplay changes and balance tweaks, its biggest addition is 'The Ripatorium'. This is a new arena mode with highly customizable waves. Catch the trailer above.

The Ripatorium has a new encounter manager built into it, letting players change up exactly which enemies can spawn in and wreak havoc inside the arena. Players can bring in everything from dozens of imps and soldiers to Pinky Riders and Hell Knights to populate the fighting space. There is an arena capacity cap to keep players in check though.

The arena can be further customized to be endless or have a specific time limit to survive. A respawn count for the Slayer, the respawn timer for enemy waves, fodder enemy types, and even the soundtrack can all be selected. At launch there are three arenas available: City of Ry'uul, Village of Khalim, and Harbor of Souls.

Outside of The Ripatorium, id Software has also added a benchmark mode to Doom: The Dark Ages for quickly looping through multiple levels of the game. The update also carries a new difficulty modifier menu, a slider to adjust Parry and Melee slow-motion effects, and audio enhancements to optimize music for combat situations better.

Players will also be happy to know that the update has increased weapon swap animations, and this can even be interrupted to use the shield for quick blocks and parries.

Doom: The Dark Ages Update 2 is now available across PC and consoles. Find the complete patch notes over here. At the same time, Doom Eternal also received an update on PC today, finally bringing the built-in mod manager out of beta. Find more details about that here.

Don't forget to check out the new Heretic and Hexen re-release that just happened at QuakeCon 2025 too, which touts enhanced graphics, cross-platform online support, brand-new episodes, and more goodies.

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Posted Friday 8 August 2025 at 1:21 pm AEST (my time).

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