A federal judge ruled today that Google is a monopolist in some parts of the online advertising market, marking the second case in a year where the company was found to have violated US antitrust law. Last August, a federal judge ruled that Google was maintaining an illegal monopoly in search.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia determined that Google illegally monopolized parts of its advertising technology business to dominate the programmatic ad market, a major source of revenue for the company. Google generated nearly $30.4 billion in worldwide revenue last year from placing ads on other apps and websites. Now, a substantial portion of those sales are threatened by penalties that may follow Brinkema’s ruling. A best-case scenario for US consumers is a browsing experience filled with fewer ads and paywalls and more content choices.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, [Google’s] exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema wrote.

Google was found to have violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the cornerstone antitrust law in the US, “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market, and has unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX).” In other words, the way that Google tied parts of its ad tech together was deemed unlawful.

Online ads end up in front of consumers after passing through a chain of systems linking publishers to advertisers. Google has long been viewed as a dominant provider of tools at nearly every step in this process, which critics argue enables the company to give preferential treatment to its own systems and box out competitors. Some of Google’s offerings came through acquisitions, like the purchase of DoubleClick in 2007.

But Brinkema rejected the Justice Department’s allegation that Google illegally monopolized the market for some tools used by advertisers to buy ads, claiming the government’s definition of the market was too narrow and ill-defined. As a result, Google was not determined to be a monopolist as it relates to ad-buying tools, but it was deemed to be one in the market for publisher tools to sell advertising space.

The company is leaning into the fact that not all of the plaintiff’s claims stand up in court. Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, put out a statement on X stating that Google won “half the case” and that the company plans to appeal the other half.

“The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition. We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective,” Mulholland said.

The ad tech suit was first filed in January 2023 by the Department of Justice and eight states, which alleged that Google had illegally squashed competition in the advertising market by acting as a powerful middleman in the ad business and taking a large cut of advertising revenue in the process. Google has argued that there’s plenty of competition in the online advertising market. The case went to trial last September, and closing arguments were delivered in November.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Jonathan Kanter, an attorney who oversaw the trial while at the department, wrote on X that Thursday’s ruling “is a huge victory for antitrust enforcement, the media industry, and the free and open internet.”

Last August, a district judge for the District of Columbia, Amit Mehta, ruled that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly both in general search and general search text ads. The Justice Department has proposed that Google should be ordered to “promptly and fully divest” its Chrome web browser, and also stop paying partners, such as Apple, for preferential treatment on its iPhones. Google is fighting the proposals, and a trial for Mehta to reach a final remedy is scheduled to begin on Monday.

Brinkema has asked Google and the Justice Department to now propose a schedule for determining remedies in the ad tech case. The company could be ordered to sell off its ad tools for publishers as a result of this process.

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Ever since the Borderlands series made its debut in 2009, this critically acclaimed looter-shooter franchise has blazed a trail of cathartic destruction in the gaming industry for over 16 years and brought millions of fans along for the ride.

With several games, spin-offs, and even a movie under its belt, Borderlands is now looking to take next-gen gaming by storm with its newest installment – Borderlands 4. Like previous games, Borderlands 4 will have players assume the role of Vault Hunters traversing the galaxy to loot the legendary Vaults while blowing up monsters, raiders, and any other bad guys dumb enough to get in your way.

Here’s everything you need to know about Borderlands 4.

Borderlands 4 – Release date and platforms

2K released a gameplay trailer for Borderlands 4, which confirmed its release date will be September 23, 2025. Additionally, the game will launch on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Windows and Steam.

Borderlands 4 – What is it?

According to Neowin's own performance estimate, AMD's upcoming RX 9060 XT will fall quite short of the 5060 Ti (though we also expect it to be quite a bit cheaper too) and that is likely why a 9070 GRE is also in the works.

However, so far, core specification details for the 9070 GRE have eluded us, as we only had information regarding the purported memory configuration. Today, courtesy of VideoCardz, we now know the supposed stream processor count and compute unit (CU) count for the 9070 GRE.

According to the report, AMD's 9070 GRE could be packing 48 CUs or 3072 stream processors and it will still be based on the Navi 48 XT die. The core clocks on the GRE are said be lower than the 9070 XT's at 2.79 GHz compared to 2.97 on the XT. The memory clocks too will apparently be 18 Gbps as opposed to 20 Gbps used on the 9070 and 9070 XT.

Hence, the 9070 GRE's core throughput is around 70.5% of the 9070 XT's while the memory bandwidth is ~67.5% of the XT's. Using these alleged spec details, we estimated the performance of the RX 9070 GRE in 3DMark's Speed Way and Steel Nomad benchmarks. The former is a ray tracing test while the latter is for rasterization:

Hence, it looks like the card could completely stomp the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, since based on the specs, AMD could price the 9070 GRE at somewhere around $449, which will be only $20 more than 5060 Ti 16 GB. While the ray tracing output of both the 9070 GRE is going to be similar to that of the GeForce card, in rasterization, we are looking at a near 34% advantage for the GRE.

Unfortunately, though the GRE model is said to only be a China-specific release but we do hope it goes out to the rest of the world too as the card appears to have the lot of potential be a great mid-range offering.

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Gamers Nexus (2.43M subscribers)

April 16, 2025

Video length: 34m 26s

00:00 - Recap for the Week 

01:06 - GN Tariffs Impact Investigation 

03:06 - Trailer of Tariffs Report 

05:06 - Remainder of GN Updates 

08:35 - NVIDIA Opens PhysX More 

10:16 - AMD RX 9070 GRE Rumored

11:16 - Valve VR Headset Rumors 

11:55 - AMD RX 9060 XT in Korea 

12:55 - Nintendo Switch 2 Specs 

18:11 - NVIDIA Shares Switch 2 SOC Details 

19:53 - Switch 2 Pre-Orders Delayed Due to Tariffs 

22:38 - Tariffs Up, Tariffs Down, Exemptions 

26:39 - Impact on Hardware Pricing 

30:14 - NVIDIA Export Ban Dissolved

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Following up on March's Patch 1.2 update that brought over 1,000 important fixes to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, developer Warhorse Studios is back with Patch 1.2.4 for its best-selling, critically acclaimed medieval RPG. The update was released on Tuesday morning, and is available to download and install now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.

This patch implemented some balance tweaks and bugfixes I'll list in the patch notes section below, but far, far more interesting is the addition of Hardcore Mode — a new way to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 that spikes the difficulty significantly. At its core, Hardcore Mode hides your map position, removes direction indicators from the HUD compass, and gets rid of the option to fast travel, while also disabling the combat HUD (including perfect block and riposte indicators) and tuning enemy AI to be more aggressive when they outnumber you.

That alone makes Henry's journey through medieval Bohemia a lot tougher, but Hardcore Mode also makes you take at least three special negative perks (taking them all and beating the game will give you a prestigious achievement). These can permanently debuff you by slowing experience gains, making it difficult to stay clean (and subsequently affecting your reputation in the game world), reducing your carrying capacity, and more; a few of these perks have returned from the original Kingdom Come's Hardcore Mode, but Warhorse says most of them are entirely new.

Nvidia is rounding out its GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards today with the official announcement of the mainstream RTX 5060 series. The company is announcing three new GPUs today: The 5060 Ti will launch on April 16 in both 8GB and 16GB variations, for $379 and $429, respectively. The regular RTX 5060 will follow at some point in May for the same $299 MSRP as the last-generation RTX 4060. It is also sticking with 8GB of RAM.

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the company and its partners can actually stock these cards at these prices. GPUs from the top-tier RTX 5090 to the mainstream RTX 5070 have been difficult to impossible to buy at their announced MSRPs. And it's not just Nvidia's problem or a high-end problem—AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs have also been hard to buy, as have Intel's Arc B580 and B570 cards.

The new graphics cards' specs essentially match numbers that have been floating around for a couple of months now. Both models include modest increases in the number of CUDA cores compared to the last-generation 4060 and 4060 Ti models, with the same amount of RAM and the same 128-bit memory interface. But an upgrade to GDDR7 instead of GDDR6 provides a healthy bump to memory bandwidth and is probably also partially responsible for an increase in peak power consumption. The 4060 Ti in particular was memory bandwidth-constrained at higher resolutions, so hopefully some extra bandwidth will make it a better choice for a decent 1440p gaming PC.

Nvidia's xx60 tier generally ends up being its most popular, going off of the statistics provided by the Steam Hardware Survey; mobile and desktop xx60 models from various generations account for seven of Steam's 10 most-used GPUs, led by the RTX 3060 and 4060. That means that new xx60 GPUs are an important baseline for PC gaming performance.

As with its other 50-series announcements, Nvidia is leaning on its DLSS Multi-Frame Generation technology to make lofty performance claims—the GPUs can insert up to three AI-interpolated frames in between each pair of frames that the GPU actually renders. The 40 series could only generate a single frame, and 30-series and older GPUs don't support DLSS Frame Generation at all. This makes apples-to-apples performance comparisons difficult.

Generally, the company says the 5060 Ti and 5060 offer double the performance of the 4060 Ti and 4060, but all of its benchmarks are made using the "max Frame Gen level supported by each GPU." The small snippets of native performance information we do have—Hogwarts Legacy runs on a 5060 Ti at 61 FPS 1440p, compared to 34 FPS for the 3060 Ti—suggests that it's slightly less than twice as fast as that two-generation-old card. This would still be reasonably impressive, given the underwhelming 4060 Ti refresh. But we'll need to wait for third-party testing before we really have a good idea of how performance will stack up without Frame Generation enabled.

Nvidia is making lofty performance claims about both the 5060 Ti and the 5060, but all of these numbers enable 

Multi-Frame Generation for the 50-series cards and not for the older ones (since they don't support the feature).

Nvidia

 

Similar numbers for the 5060. Nvidia is claiming doubled performance compared to the 4060, but take that with a brick of salt.

Nvidia

 

The frame-gen-enabled performance numbers here make apples-to-apples generational comparisons difficult to make.

Nvidia

 

One of the only concrete references to the 5060 Ti's native frame rate. This suggests the 5060 Ti will be 

something slightly less than twice as fast as the 3060 Ti.

Nvidia

As we and others have observed since the launch of the 40-series a few years ago, Frame Generation gives the best results when your base frame rate is already reasonably high; the technology is best used to make a good frame rate better and is less useful if you're trying to make a bad frame rate good. That's even more relevant for the slower 50-series than for the other GPUs in the lineup, which makes Nvidia's reticence to provide native performance comparisons especially frustrating.

Rumors from earlier this year that correctly reported the specs of the 5060 series also indicated that Nvidia was planning to launch a low-end RTX 5050 GPU at some point, its first new entry-level GPU since launching the RTX 3050 in January 2022. The 5050 could still be coming, but if it is, it wasn't part of Nvidia's announcements today.

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It’s important to point out that Google isn’t quite phasing out these URLs just yet, rather, it’s just redirecting you from them to Google.com. It seems pretty unlikely that they will ever be phased out entirely, so your bookmarks that use these addresses should still be fine.

Big tech giants always seem to be in trouble with governments around the world for one thing or another. The search giant has said that even though it’s going to be redirecting to Google.com, this won’t change its obligations under the national laws of the countries it operates in.

You will begin noticing the redirection to Google.com in the coming months as the change is rolled out to more users. The company warned that you may be prompted to re-enter some of your Search preferences during the process. It didn’t mention which preferences you’d need to provide.

The change is quite a subtle one and since 2017, you’ve been able to go to Google.com and get local results from your searches. It’s quite unlikely that the vast majority of users will even notice this change. With the shift to mobile, many searches nowadays are also coming from the Google app on Android, in that case, you cannot even see a URL bar.

While the change is pretty notable, most readers do not need to think about this change. Just head to the URL you normally use to access Google and you’ll be sent to Google.com. You will still get your local results.

Source: Google

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In a blog post today, GSC Game World detailed what it hopes to ship out to players in upcoming updates, including beta modding tools for the community, massive A-Life updates to improve the game's AI aspects, new weapons, mutant loot, and more.

Here's the 2025 Q2 roadmap that was shared today:

• Beta Mod SDK Kit
  • Closed Beta with Mod Makers to test the ModKit
  • Release Beta Mod SDK
  • Mod Guide (SCRAA will provide the info)
  • Mod.io and Steam Workshop integration
• A-Life/AI Updates
  • Persistent A-Life improvements
  • Smarter human combat: better cover/flanking use, limited grenades
  • Mutants eat corpses
  • Mutants react to threats
  • Mutant Loot
• Shader Compilation Skip
• Player Stash Window Increase
• Wide Screen Aspect Ratio Support
• Two New Weapons
• Further Stabilization, Optimization, and “Anomalies” Fixing

Unfortunately, no solid release dates have been attached to any of the promised features and changes. The studio said it will be updating the roadmap every quarter, though, so expect another announcement in about three months.

"The Zone is evolving and will continue to. Throughout the year, we will be delivering updates and hotfixes dedicated to making the game better in every aspect," added the studio. "With proper planning, double testing (internal and closed beta for big updates) of all features and fixes, and your feedback, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will become the game we imagined — and you deserve."

Moreover, the studio hopes to ship the next-gen update for the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy during the same 2025 time frame.

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In a very real sense, the Internet, this marvelous worldwide digital communications network that you’re using right now, was created because one man was annoyed at having too many computer terminals in his office.

The year was 1966. Robert Taylor was the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Processing Techniques Office. The agency was created in 1958 by President Eisenhower in response to the launch of Sputnik. So Taylor was in the Pentagon, a great place for acronyms like ARPA and IPTO. He had three massive terminals crammed into a room next to his office. Each one was connected to a different mainframe computer. They all worked slightly differently, and it was frustrating to remember multiple procedures to log in and retrieve information.

In those days, computers took up entire rooms, and users accessed them through teletype terminals—electric typewriters hooked up to either a serial cable or a modem and a phone line. ARPA was funding multiple research projects across the United States, but users of these different systems had no way to share their resources with each other. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a network that connected all these computers?

The dream is given form

Taylor’s predecessor, Joseph “J.C.R.” Licklider, had released a memo in 1963 that whimsically described an “Intergalactic Computer Network” that would allow users of different computers to collaborate and share information. The idea was mostly aspirational, and Licklider wasn’t able to turn it into a real project. But Taylor knew that he could.

In a 1998 interview, Taylor explained: “In most government funding, there are committees that decide who gets what and who does what. In ARPA, that was not the way it worked. The person who was responsible for the office that was concerned with that particular technology—in my case, computer technology—was the person who made the decision about what to fund and what to do and what not to do. The decision to start the ARPANET was mine, with very little or no red tape.”

Taylor marched into the office of his boss, Charles Herzfeld. He described how a network could save ARPA time and money by allowing different institutions to share resources. He suggested starting with a small network of four computers as a proof of concept.

“Is it going to be hard to do?” Herzfeld asked.

“Oh no. We already know how to do it,” Taylor replied.

“Great idea,” Herzfeld said. “Get it going. You’ve got a million dollars more in your budget right now. Go.”

Taylor wasn’t lying—at least, not completely. At the time, there were multiple people around the world thinking about computer networking. Paul Baran, working for RAND, published a paper in 1964 describing how a distributed military networking system could be made resilient even if some nodes were destroyed in a nuclear attack. Over in the UK, Donald Davies independently came up with a similar concept (minus the nukes) and invented a term for the way these types of networks would communicate. He called it “packet switching.”

On a regular phone network, after some circuit switching, a caller and answerer would be connected via a dedicated wire. They had exclusive use of that wire until the call was completed. Computers communicated in short bursts and didn’t require pauses the way humans did. So it would be a waste for two computers to tie up a whole line for extended periods. But how could many computers talk at the same time without their messages getting mixed up?

Packet switching was the answer. Messages were divided into multiple snippets. The order and destination were included with each message packet. The network could then route the packets in any way that made sense. At the destination, all the appropriate packets were put into the correct order and reassembled. It was like moving a house across the country: It was more efficient to send all the parts in separate trucks, each taking their own route to avoid congestion.

By the end of 1966, Taylor had hired a program director, Larry Roberts. Roberts sketched a diagram of a possible network on a napkin and met with his team to propose a design. One problem was that each computer on the network would need to use a big chunk of its resources to manage the packets. In a meeting, Wes Clark passed a note to Roberts saying, “You have the network inside-out.” Clark’s alternative plan was to ship a bunch of smaller computers to connect to each host. These dedicated machines would do all the hard work of creating, moving, and reassembling packets.

With the design complete, Roberts sent out a request for proposals for constructing the ARPANET. All they had to do now was pick the winning bid, and the project could begin.

BB&N and the IMPs

IBM, Control Data Corporation, and AT&T were among the first to respond to the request. They all turned it down. Their reasons were the same: None of these giant companies believed the network could be built. IBM and CDC thought the dedicated computers would be too expensive, but AT&T flat-out said that packet switching wouldn’t work on its phone network.

In late 1968, ARPA announced a winner for the bid: Bolt Beranek and Newman. It seemed like an odd choice. BB&N had started as a consulting firm that calculated acoustics for theaters. But the need for calculations led to the creation of a computing division, and its first manager had been none other than J.C.R. Licklider. In fact, some BB&N employees had been working on a plan to build a network even before the ARPA bid was sent out. Robert Kahn led the team that drafted BB&N’s proposal.

Their plan was to create a network of “Interface Message Processors,” or IMPs, out of Honeywell 516 computers. They were ruggedized versions of the DDP-516 16-bit minicomputer. Each had 24 kilobytes of core memory and no mass storage other than a paper tape reader, and each cost $80,000 (about $700,000 today). In comparison, an IBM 360 mainframe cost between $7 million and $12 million at the time.

The 516’s rugged appearance appealed to BB&N, who didn’t want a bunch of university students tampering with its IMPs. The computer came with no operating system, but it didn’t really have enough RAM for one. The software to control the IMPs was written on bare metal using the 516’s assembly language. One of the developers was Will Crowther, who went on to create the first computer adventure game.

One other hurdle remained before the IMPs could be put to use: The Honeywell design was missing certain components needed to handle input and output. BB&N employees were dismayed that the first 516, which they named IMP-0, didn’t have working versions of the hardware additions they had requested.

It fell on Ben Barker, a brilliant undergrad student interning at BB&N, to manually fix the machine. Barker was the best choice, even though he had slight palsy in his hands. After several stressful 16-hour days wrapping and unwrapping wires, all the changes were complete and working. IMP-0 was ready.

In the meantime, Steve Crocker at the University of California, Los Angeles, was working on a set of software specifications for the host computers. It wouldn’t matter if the IMPs were perfect at sending and receiving messages if the computers themselves didn’t know what to do with them. Because the host computers were part of important academic research, Crocker didn’t want to seem like he was a dictator telling people what to do with their machines. So he titled his draft a “Request for Comments,” or RFC.

This one act of politeness forever changed the nature of computing. Every change since has been done as an RFC, and the culture of asking for comments pervades the tech industry even today.

RFC No. 1 proposed two types of host software. The first was the simplest possible interface, in which a computer pretended to be a dumb terminal. This was dubbed a “terminal emulator,” and if you’ve ever done any administration on a server, you’ve probably used one. The second was a more complex protocol that could be used to transfer large files. This became FTP, which is still used today.

A single IMP connected to one computer wasn’t much of a network. So it was very exciting in September 1969 when IMP-1 was delivered to BB&N and then shipped via air freight to UCLA. The first test of the ARPANET was done with simultaneous phone support. The plan was to type “LOGIN” to start a login sequence. This was the exchange:

“Did you get the L?”

“I got the L!”

“Did you get the O?”

“I got the O!”

“Did you get the G?”

“Oh no, the computer crashed!”

It was an inauspicious beginning. The computer on the other end was helpfully filling in the “GIN” part of “LOGIN,” but the terminal emulator wasn’t expecting three characters at once and locked up. It was the first time that autocomplete had ruined someone’s day. The bug was fixed, and the test completed successfully.

IMP-2, IMP-3, and IMP-4 were delivered to the Stanford Research Institute (where Doug Engelbart was keen to expand his vision of connecting people), UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

Now that the four-node test network was complete, the team at BB&N could work with the researchers at each node to put the ARPANET through its paces. They deliberately created the first ever denial of service attack in January 1970, flooding the network with packets until it screeched to a halt.

Surprisingly, many of the administrators of the early ARPANET nodes weren’t keen to join the network.  They didn’t like the idea of anyone else being able to use resources on “their” computers. Taylor reminded them that their hardware and software projects were mostly ARPA-funded, so they couldn’t opt out.

The next month, Stephen Carr, Stephen Crocker, and Vint Cerf released RFC No. 33. It described a Network Control Protocol (NCP) that standardized how the hosts would communicate with each other. After this was adopted, the network was off and running.

The ARPANET grew significantly over the next few years. Important events included the first ever email between two different computers, sent by Roy Tomlinson in July 1972. Another groundbreaking demonstration involved a PDP-10 in Harvard simulating, in real-time, an aircraft landing on a carrier. The data was sent over the ARPANET to a MIT-based graphics terminal, and the wireframe graphical view was shipped back to a PDP-1 at Harvard and displayed on a screen. Although it was primitive and slow, it was technically the first gaming stream.

A big moment came in October 1972 at the International Conference on Computer Communication. This was the first time the network had been demonstrated to the public. Interest in the ARPANET was growing, and people were excited. A group of AT&T executives noticed a brief crash and laughed, confident that they were correct in thinking that packet switching would never work. Overall, however, the demonstration was a resounding success.

But the ARPANET was no longer the only network out there.

A network of networks

The rest of the world had not been standing still. In Hawaii, Norman Abramson and Franklin Kuo created ALOHAnet, which connected computers on the islands using radio. It was the first public demonstration of a wireless packet switching network. In the UK, Donald Davies’ team developed the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) network. It seemed like a good idea to start connecting these networks together, but they all used different protocols, packet formats, and transmission rates. In 1972, the heads of several national networking projects created an International Networking Working Group. Cerf was chosen to lead it.

The first attempt to bridge this gap was SATNET, also known as the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network. Using satellite links, it connected the US-based ARPANET with networks in the UK. Unfortunately, SATNET itself used its own set of protocols. In true tech fashion, an attempt to make a universal standard had created one more standard instead.

Robert Kahn asked Vint Cerf to try and fix these problems once and for all. They came up with a new plan called the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. The idea was to connect different networks through specialized computers, called “gateways,” that translated and forwarded packets. TCP was like an envelope for packets, making sure they got to the right destination on the correct network. Because some networks were not guaranteed to be reliable, when one computer successfully received a complete and undamaged message, it would send an acknowledgement (ACK) back to the sender. If the ACK wasn’t received in a certain amount of time, the message was retransmitted.

In December 1974, Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine wrote a complete specification for TCP. Two years later, Cerf and Kahn, along with a dozen others, demonstrated the first three-network system. The demo connected packet radio, the ARPANET, and SATNET, all using TCP. Afterward, Cerf, Jon Postel, and Danny Cohen suggested a small but important change: They should take out all the routing information and put it into a new protocol, called the Internet Protocol (IP). All the remaining stuff, like breaking and reassembling messages, detecting errors, and retransmission, would stay in TCP. Thus, in 1978, the protocol officially became known as, and was forever thereafter, TCP/IP.

If the story of creating the Internet was a movie, the release of TCP/IP would have been the triumphant conclusion. But things weren’t so simple. The world was changing, and the path ahead was murky at best.

At the time, joining the ARPANET required leasing high-speed phone lines for $100,000 per year. This limited it to large universities, research companies, and defense contractors. The situation led the National Science Foundation (NSF) to propose a new network that would be cheaper to operate. Other educational networks arose at around the same time. While it made sense to connect these networks to the growing Internet, there was no guarantee that this would continue. And there were other, larger forces at work.

By the end of the 1970s, computers had improved significantly. The invention of the microprocessor set the stage for smaller, cheaper computers that were just beginning to enter people’s homes. Bulky teletypes were being replaced with sleek, TV-like terminals. The first commercial online service, CompuServe, was released to the public in 1979. For just $5 per hour, you could connect to a private network, get weather and financial reports, and trade gossip with other users. At first, these systems were completely separate from the Internet. But they grew quickly. By 1987, CompuServe had 380,000 subscribers.

Meanwhile, the adoption of TCP/IP was not guaranteed. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) group at the International Standardization Organization (ISO) decided that what the world needed was more acronyms—and also a new, global, standardized networking model.

The OSI model was first drafted in 1980, but it wasn’t published until 1984. Nevertheless, many European governments, and even the US Department of Defense, planned to transition from TCP/IP to OSI. It seemed like this new standard was inevitable.

While the world waited for OSI, the Internet continued to grow and evolve. In 1981, the fourth version of the IP protocol, IPv4, was released. On January 1, 1983, the ARPANET itself fully transitioned to using TCP/IP. This date is sometimes referred to as the “birth of the Internet,” although from a user’s perspective, the network still functioned the same way it had for years.

In 1986, the NFSNET came online, running under TCP/IP and connected to the rest of the Internet. It also used a new standard, the Domain Name System (DNS). This system, still in use today, used easy-to-remember names to point to a machine’s individual IP address. Computer names were assigned “top-level” domains based on their purpose, so you could connect to “frodo.edu” at an educational institution, or “frodo.gov” at a governmental one.

The NFSNET grew rapidly, dwarfing the ARPANET in size. In 1989, the original ARPANET was decommissioned. The IMPs, long since obsolete, were retired. However, all the ARPANET hosts were successfully migrated to other Internet networks. Like a Ship of Theseus, the ARPANET lived on even after every component of it was replaced.

Still, the experts and pundits predicted that all of these systems would eventually have to transfer over to the OSI model. The people who had built the Internet were not impressed. In 1987, writing RFC No. 1,000, Crocker said, “If we had only consulted the ancient mystics, we would have seen immediately that seven layers were required.”

The Internet pioneers felt they had spent many years refining and improving a working system. But now, OSI had arrived with a bunch of complicated standards and expected everyone to adopt their new design. Vint Cerf had a more pragmatic outlook. In 1982, he left ARPA for a new job at MCI, where he helped build the first commercial email system (MCI Mail) that was connected to the Internet. While at MCI, he contacted researchers at IBM, Digital, and Hewlett-Packard and convinced them to experiment with TCP/IP. Leadership at these companies still officially supported OSI, however.

The debate raged on through the latter half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Tired of the endless arguments, Cerf contacted the head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and asked him to write a blue ribbon report comparing OSI and TCP/IP. Meanwhile, while planning a successor to IPv4, the Internet Advisory Board (IAB) was looking at the OSI Connectionless Network Protocol and its 128-bit addressing for inspiration. In an interview with Ars, Vint Cerf explained what happened next.

“It was deliberately misunderstood by firebrands in the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] that we are traitors by adopting OSI,” he said. “They raised a gigantic hoo-hah. The IAB was deposed, and the authority in the system flipped. IAB used to be the decision makers, but the fight flips it, and IETF becomes the standard maker.”

To calm everybody down, Cerf performed a striptease at a meeting of the IETF in 1992. He revealed a T-shirt that said “IP ON EVERYTHING.” At the same meeting, David Clark summarized the feelings of the IETF by saying, “We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.”

The fate of the Internet

The split design of TCP/IP, which was a small technical choice at the time, had long-lasting political implications. In 2001, David Clark and Marjory Blumenthal wrote a paper that looked back on the Protocol War. They noted that the Internet’s complex functions were performed at the endpoints, while the network itself ran only the IP part and was concerned simply with moving data from place to place. These “end-to-end principles” formed the basis of “… the ‘Internet Philosophy’: freedom of action, user empowerment, end-user responsibility for actions undertaken, and lack of controls ‘in’ the Net that limit or regulate what users can do,” they said.

In other words, the battle between TCP/IP and OSI wasn’t just about two competing sets of acronyms. On the one hand, you had a small group of computer scientists who had spent many years building a relatively open network and wanted to see it continue under their own benevolent guidance. On the other hand, you had a huge collective of powerful organizations that believed they should be in charge of the future of the Internet—and maybe the behavior of everyone on it.

But this impossible argument and the ultimate fate of the Internet was about to be decided, and not by governments, committees, or even the IETF. The world was changed forever by the actions of one man. He was a mild-mannered computer scientist, born in England and working for a physics research institute in Switzerland.

That’s the story covered in the next article in our series.

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Paul's Hardware (1.51M subscribers)

April 13, 2025

Video length: 11m 56s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - April 13, 2025 

1:25 RTX 5070 at MSRP (briefly) in US, below MSRP in UK 

3:25 RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti News - price, performance, and 8-pin power connectors 

6:00 GPU-Z update supports RTX 5060 Ti, RX 9070 GRE; 9070 XT Spectral White launches 

TECH BRIEFS 

7:40 Tariff Turmoil Continues, Laptop Manufacturers Halt Orders and Shipments 

9:11 China’s HDMI / DisplayPort alternative: GPMI boasts up to 192 Gbps, 480W

10:09 Kawasaki unveils Corleo - a hydrogen-powered, ride-on robot horse 

10:52 Burbank Fry’s Electronics Finally Demolished - RIP Spaceship

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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.

April 2025 Patch Tuesday updates are available for Windows 10 and 11. Windows 11 users can download KB5055523 for version 24H2, while KB5055528 is available for those on version 23H2. These updates addressed plenty of bugs and security issues, including a Kerberos bug preventing users from changing passwords. Also, they quietly create a new folder in the root of drive C, which, as Microsoft says, is related to the latest security patches and should not be deleted.

Windows 10, on the other hand, received KB5055518, plus there are new out-of-band updates for Windows 10 and 11.

As we get closer to the end of Windows 10 support (in October 2025), Microsoft is ramping up its efforts to convert users from the outgoing operating system to Windows 11. If you have already pulled the trigger on Windows 11 but now want to go back, Microsoft has a list of tips and tricks that might make you stay. Also, Microsoft posted a detailed guide for admins on how to fix Windows 11/10 feature update issues.

Microsoft expanded the list of deprecated features and APIs in Windows 10 and 11. Microsoft is ditching the Windows UWP Map control and Windows Maps Platform APIs that allow developers to integrate maps into their Windows applications:

The United States Library of Congress now recognizes Windows 95's boot theme and the original Minecraft Volume Alpha as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and inform or reflect life in the United States."

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

In addition to the new Windows 11 preview builds, Microsoft is rolling out two big changes to the Copilot app. One feature enables Copilot to find files on your system and ask you various questions about them. The second feature is Copilot Vision. With it, Copilot can look at your screen and provide additional useful information or answer your questions.

Also, users discovered that the recent Windows 11 preview builds contain references to a feature that lets you show or hide the clock in the notification center. Interestingly, for some reason, Microsoft is removing that feature from Windows 10.

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.

It appears that Microsoft wants to redesign the icons of Office apps once again. Users found that the company is sending out email surveys, asking people to share their thoughts about a new set of icons for Word, Excel, OneDrive, PowerPoint, and other apps. If this comes to fruition, it will be the first redesign in nearly seven years. The last one was in 2018.

Speaking of Office, we have fixes for Excel, Word, Outlook, and other apps freezing in recent updates. However, the classic Outlook experienced a problem due to Microsoft pushing the new Outlook for Windows.

Following the release of PowerToys 0.90, Microsoft released a small bug-fixing update for everyone's favorite set of Windows utilities. Version 0.90.1 landed to resolve issues with PowerToys not installing using winget and various problems with the recently introduced Command Palette.

Mozilla released a small update for Firefox 137. Version 137.0.1 arrived with a few fixes for Windows users. The update patches three bugs: Two of them cause the browser to crash on Windows, while the third messes with the way Firefox treats folder shortcuts.

Microsoft Edge also received its fair share of updates. For one, Microsoft released a new version of Game Assist with UI and UX improvements, plus support for more games. Edge Insiders in the Dev Channel got a new weekly update with fixes and small improvements, and those in the Beta Channel got version 136 with multiple improvements to the settings page. Finally, Microsoft shared details about performance improvements in the latest version.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft changed its mind about WSUS driver sync via Update Catalog.
• Microsoft revealed what is going to happen to users who are not updating Teams on their systems.
• Microsoft announced "Templates," a new feature coming to Clipchamp for work users.

What is not going to receive new updates soon is the original Surface Hub and the Surface Hub 2S. Their software support is ending in October, alongside the end of support for Windows 10. This week, Microsoft published a new blog post to inform users about the upcoming EOL and offer various options to stay supported.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

This week, we posted a review of the GameSir X3 Pro, a mobile controller with a rich feature set, Hall Effect sticks, a very effective cooling system, and plenty of bundled accessories. It is a great companion for your mobile device, just not a very good one if you have an iPhone.

On the gaming side

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

Microsoft announced a new Xbox Game Showcase event. It is happening on June 8, 2025. As usual, expect to see a bunch of games that are coming soon to PC and Xbox. Plus, there will be a separate section dedicated to Outer Wilds 2.

Turn 10 Studios released a new Forza Motorsport update. Update 19 arrived ahead of the game's 20th anniversary, and it packs a bunch of Porsche icons, plus various improvements for different aspects of the game. The next one, Update 20, is expected to be a much bigger release, as the game is about to celebrate a major milestone.

Microsoft and the Age development team, Forgotten Empires, announced Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition – The Three Kingdoms, which is set to expand on "China’s epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where history and legend collide in a battle for supremacy." The expansion offers three new campaigns that take players to China, offering intertwined stories set during the early medieval period that split into 15 missions.

Bungie is getting ready to dip its toes into the world of extraction shooters. This week, the studio revealed Marathon, a game that is coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 on September 23.

Nvidia announced new games for the GeForce NOW cloud streaming gaming service. The latest additions include South of Midnight, Commandos: Origins, The Thalos Principle: Reawakened, Diablo III, Blackrooms: Escape Together, and more. As usual, you need to own these games to play them on GeForce NOW.

Finally, we have a fresh issue of our Weekend PC Game Deals series, where you can find neon bundles, fighting freebies from the Epic Games Store, and more discounts across digital storefronts.

Other gaming news include the following:

• Razer is launching PC Remote Play to let gamers stream PC games to mobile devices

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle received a new update with fresh abilities, ray tracing upgrades, and more.

   

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Concerns about AI's energy use have a lot of people looking into ways to cut down on its power requirements. Many of these focus on hardware and software approaches that are pretty straightforward extensions of existing technologies. But a few technologies are much farther out there. One that's definitely in the latter category? Quantum computing.

In some ways, quantum hardware is a better match for some of the math that underlies AI than more traditional hardware. While the current quantum hardware is a bit too error-prone for the more elaborate AI models currently in use, researchers are starting to put the pieces in place to run AI models when the hardware is ready. This week, a couple of commercial interests are releasing a draft of a paper describing how to get classical image data into a quantum processor (actually, two different processors) and perform a basic AI image classification.

All of which gives us a great opportunity to discuss why quantum AI may be more than just hype.

Machine learning goes quantum

Just as there are many machine-learning techniques that fall under the AI umbrella, there are many ways to potentially use quantum computing to perform some aspect of an AI algorithm. Some are simply matters of math; some forms of machine learning require, for example, many matrix operations, which can be performed efficiently on quantum hardware. (Here is a good review of all the ways quantum hardware might help machine learning.)

But there are also ways in which the quantum hardware can be a good match for AI. One of the challenges of running AI on traditional computing hardware is that the processing and memory are separate. To run something like a neural network requires repeated trips to memory to look up which destination signals from one artificial neuron need to be sent to and what weight to assign each signal. This creates a major bottleneck.

Quantum computers don't have that sort of separation. While they could include some quantum memory, the data is generally housed directly in the qubits, while computation involves performing operations, called gates, directly on the qubits themselves. In fact, there has been a demonstration that, for supervised machine learning, where a system can learn to classify items after training on pre-classified data, a quantum system can outperform classical ones, even when the data being processed is housed on classical hardware.

This form of machine learning relies on what are called variational quantum circuits. This is a two-qubit gate operation that takes an additional factor that can be held on the classical side of the hardware and imparted to the qubits via the control signals that trigger the gate operation. You can think of this as analogous to the communications involved in a neural network, with the two-qubit gate operation equivalent to the passing of information between two artificial neurons and the factor analogous to the weight given to the signal.

That's exactly the system that a team from the Honda Research Institute worked on in collaboration with a quantum software company called Blue Qubit.

Pixels to qubits

The focus of the new work was mostly on how to get data from the classical world into the quantum system for characterization. But the researchers ended up testing the results on two different quantum processors.

The problem they were testing is one of image classification. The raw material was from the Honda Scenes dataset, which has images taken from roughly 80 hours of driving in Northern California; the images are tagged with information about what's in the scene. And the question the researchers wanted the machine learning to handle was a simple one: Is it snowing in the scene?

All the images were sitting on classical hardware, of course. To classify an image on quantum hardware, it had to be converted to quantum information for processing. The team tried three methods of encoding the data, which differed in terms of how the pixels of the images were sliced up and how many qubits the resulting slices were sent to. The researchers used a classical simulator of a quantum processor to do the training steps, which identified the appropriate numbers—again, think in terms of the weights of a neural network—to use during the two-qubit gate operations.

They then ran the hardware on two different quantum processors. One, from IBM, has a lot of qubits (156) but a slightly higher error rate during gate operations. The second is from Quantinuum and is notable for having a very low error rate during operations, but it only has 56 qubits. In general, the accuracy of the classification went up as the researchers used more qubits or as they ran more gates.

In general, though, the system worked; accuracies were well above what you'd expect from random chance. At the same time, they were generally lower than what you'd get from a standard algorithm run on normal hardware. We're still not at the point where existing hardware has both enough qubits and a low enough error rate to be competitive on classical hardware. Still, the work was clearly able to show that real-world quantum hardware is capable of running the sorts of AI algorithms that people have been expecting it to. But like everyone else, people hoping to solve useful problems will have to wait for further improvements on the hardware side.

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Microsoft still owns the land in Ohio and the company plans to complete the project at some point in the future. In the meantime, two sites will be used for farming.

Microsoft confirmed that it will still fund upgrades to local roadways and other select infrastructure in the area.

"We will continue to evaluate these sites in line with our investment strategy," said a Microsoft spokesperson to The Columbus Dispatch. "We sincerely appreciate the leadership and partnership of Ohio government officials and the support of Licking County residents."

Microsoft also clarified that it will "continue to invest in and collaborate with local organizations to support digital skills development, restoration efforts, and to strengthen the communities in Licking County for future generations."

Is AI overhyped?

Microsoft has paused or pulled back from several data center projects, leading many to speculate that the company fears outpacing demand for AI.

Reuters reported recently that Microsoft has abandoned several data center projects across the United States and Europe over the last six months.

Google has unveiled a new AI processor, the seventh generation of its custom TPU architecture. The chip, known as Ironwood, was reportedly designed for the emerging needs of Google's most powerful Gemini models, like simulated reasoning, which Google prefers to call "thinking." The company claims this chip represents a major shift that will unlock more powerful agentic AI capabilities. Google calls this the "age of inference."

Whenever Google talks about the capabilities of a new Gemini version, it notes that the model's capabilities are tied not only to the code but to Google's infrastructure. Its custom AI hardware is a key element of accelerating inference and expanding context windows. With Ironwood, Google says it has its most scalable and powerful TPU yet, which will allow AI to act on behalf of a user to proactively gather data and generate outputs. This is what Google means when it talks about agentic AI.

Ironwood delivers higher throughput compared to previous Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and Google really plans to pack these chips in. Ironwood is designed to operate in clusters of up to 9,216 liquid-cooled chips, which will communicate directly with each other through a newly enhanced Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI).

Google says this design will be a boon not only for its own Gemini models but also to developers looking to run AI projects in the cloud. Developers will be able to leverage Ironwood in two different configurations: a 256-chip server or the full-size 9,216-chip cluster.

In its larger incarnation, Google's Ironwood pods can generate a staggering 42.5 Exaflops of inference computing. Each chip has a peak throughput of 4,614 TFLOPs, which Google claims is a substantial improvement over previous chips. Google has also boosted memory for the new TPUs, with each chip sporting 192GB, which is six times more than Google's last-gen Trillium TPU. The memory bandwidth has also increased to 7.2 Tbps, a 4.5x improvement.

There are numerous ways to measure AI throughput, making it difficult to compare chips. Google is using FP8 precision as its benchmark for the new TPU, but it's comparing it to some systems, like the El Capitan supercomputer, that don't support FP8 in hardware. So you should take its claim that Ironwood "pods" are 24 times faster than comparable segments of the world's most powerful supercomputer with a grain of salt. Google's TPU v6 hardware is also conspicuously absent from the comparison chart above. The company says Ironwood is twice as powerful per watt compared to that chip, though.

While the provided benchmarks are a bit odd, Ironwood is clearly a big improvement for Google's AI ecosystem. It's faster and more efficient than previous TPUs by a considerable margin, and Google's existing infrastructure has enabled rapid improvements to LLMs and simulated reasoning. Google's market-leading Gemini 2.5 model is running on last-gen TPUs right now, and Google says the higher inference speed and efficiency of Ironwood sets the stage for more breakthroughs in the coming year.

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Recently, Blizzard unveiled its Diablo 4 roadmap, and responses have been a bit mixed.

Diablo 4 is a wildly successful ARPG sequel to the legendary franchise that created the genre. At launch, it was an incredibly promising platform upon which to build something special, but arguably, a lot of that early promise has petered out.

I myself have stopped playing Diablo 4, because the seasonal content model didn't really grab me. Every season feels practically the same, and it's difficult for me not to compare it to the absolute deluge of content I get playing World of Warcraft season over season. Even WoW's upcoming "mini" mid-season patch feels beefier than what Diablo 4 has been offering in some of its seasons — and part of the problem is that Diablo, for some reason, hasn't learned from World of Warcraft's previous mistakes.

On Monday, John Carmack, co-creator of id Software's Quake franchise, defended Microsoft's recent AI-generated Quake II demo against criticism from a fan about the technology's impact on industry jobs, calling it "impressive research work."

Last Friday, Microsoft released a new playable tech demo of a generative AI game engine called WHAMM (World and Human Action MaskGIT Model) that generates each simulated frame of Quake II in real time using an AI world model instead of traditional game engine techniques. However, Microsoft is up front about the limitations: "We do not intend for this to fully replicate the actual experience of playing the original Quake II game," the researchers wrote on the project's announcement page.

Carmack's comments came after an X user with the handle "Quake Dad" called the new demo "disgusting" and claimed it "spits on the work of every developer everywhere." The critic expressed concern that such technology would eliminate jobs in an industry already facing layoffs, writing: "A fully generative game cuts out the number of jobs necessary for such a project which in turn makes it harder for devs to get jobs."

Carmack responded directly to these concerns in a lengthy post. "I think you are misunderstanding what this tech demo actually is," he wrote, before addressing the broader concern about "AI tooling trivializing the skillsets of programmers, artists, and designers." Carmack positioned AI as the latest in a long history of technological advancements that have transformed game development.

"My first games involved hand assembling machine code and turning graph paper characters into hex digits. Software progress has made that work as irrelevant as chariot wheel maintenance," Carmack explained. "Building power tools is central to all the progress in computers."

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, joined the conversation with a similar perspective: "AI will ultimately be a powerful tool in the toolbox of every programmer, artist, and designer, just as high level languages, paint programs, and visual scripting were in previous eras."

Both industry veterans pushed back against the notion that AI tools would simply eliminate jobs rather than create new opportunities. Carmack acknowledged that, while eventually AI might generate complete games from simple prompts, "there will be far better exemplars of the medium still created by dedicated teams of passionate developers."

A limited fever dream

Microsoft's research team describes its WHAMM technology as "an early exploration of real-time generated gameplay experiences" with sizable limitations. The demo only recreates a small portion of Quake II and has persistent issues with enemy interactions, short-term memory, and numerical calculations. "Think of this as playing the model as opposed to playing the game," the researchers wrote.

The WHAMM system works by breaking down recorded gameplay footage into small pieces of data called tokens—essentially turning images and player actions into data the AI can understand. Using a transformer architecture similar to those found in text-generation models, WHAMM processes sequences of these image and action tokens to predict what the next frame should look like based on player input. This approach allows the system to generate new frames on demand rather than following traditional rendering rules.

Like previous generative game engines we've covered (such as a simulation of Doom), the generative Quake experience is surreal and dreamlike. Since Microsoft trained the AI model generating the interactive Quake II imagery on video footage of people playing the actual game, predictable things happen in predictable places. For example, every time you turn to look at a particular corridor, an enemy comes running around it, even if you "kill" the enemy—like a ghostly echo stuck in a loop. It repeats because it's the most likely thing that would happen in that area. And if you walk past explosive barrels and don't shoot them and turn around to look back, the barrels will be gone, since it's most likely a player would have already destroyed them at that point in the level.

The current generative Quake II demo represents a slight advancement from Microsoft's previous generative AI gaming model (confusingly titled "WHAM" with only one "M") we covered in February. That earlier model, while showing progress in generating interactive gameplay footage, operated at 300×180 resolution at 10 frames per second—far below practical modern gaming standards. The new WHAMM demonstration doubles the resolution to 640×360. However, both remain well below what gamers expect from a functional video game in almost every conceivable way. It truly is an AI tech demo.

For example, the technology faces substantial challenges beyond just performance metrics. Microsoft acknowledges several limitations, including poor enemy interactions, a short context length of just 0.9 seconds (meaning the system forgets objects outside its view), and unreliable numerical tracking for game elements like health values.

Which brings us to another point: A significant gap persists between the technology's marketing portrayal and its practical applications. While industry veterans like Carmack and Sweeney view AI as another tool in the development arsenal, demonstrations like the Quake II instance may create inflated expectations about AI's current capabilities for complete game generation.

The most realistic near-term application of generative AI technology remains as coding assistants and perhaps rapid prototyping tools for developers, rather than a drop-in replacement for traditional game development pipelines. The technology's current limitations suggest that human developers will remain essential for creating compelling, polished game experiences for now. But given the general pace of progress, that might be small comfort for those who worry about losing jobs to AI in the near-term.

Ultimately, Sweeney says not to worry: "There’s always a fear that automation will lead companies to make the same old products while employing fewer people to do it," Sweeney wrote in a follow-up post on X. "But competition will ultimately lead to companies producing the best work they’re capable of given the new tools, and that tends to mean more jobs."

And Carmack closed with this: "Will there be more or less game developer jobs? That is an open question. It could go the way of farming, where labor-saving technology allow a tiny fraction of the previous workforce to satisfy everyone, or it could be like social media, where creative entrepreneurship has flourished at many different scales. Regardless, “don’t use power tools because they take people’s jobs” is not a winning strategy."

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The Porsche Tour invites you on a journey to discover how the German manufacturer’s commitment to innovation and excellence has led to an impressive trophy cabinet of motorsport victories that span multiple decades.

 

Get behind the wheel of the latest Porsches in the Showroom and compete in both Porsche production cars and racecars in Porsche Motorsport Icons, Porsche Endurance, Mid-Engine Porsche, and Rear-Engine Porsche.

As usual, the new Forza Motorsport update delivers fresh cars to unlock. In Update 19, players can earn the following vehicles:

• 1981 Porsche #1 Porsche System Engineering 924 GTP Le Mans (new to the game, available in the Porsche Tour)
• 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo S (new to the game, available in the Open Class Tour)
• 1978 Porsche #43 Porsche Racing 935/78 (available in the Showroom)
• 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 R (available in the Showroom and the Challenge Hub)

In addition, you can unlock new racing suits, such as the Earth Day Suit and the Rewind Driver Suit (available in the Challenge Hub).

Changes, fixes, and improvements include the following:

• Car audio for the 2016 Ford Shelby GT-350R, 2015 Jaguar F-Type R Coupé, and 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG has been updated based on community feedback.
• Updated default track rubbering-in behavior in both Career and Featured Multiplayer:
  • Practice will now always start at 20% rubbered in (previously 33%)
  • Races will now always start at 75% rubbered in (previously 66%)
• Removed the following cars from the Featured Multiplayer Forza GT3 Series eligible car list with plans for a future release of dedicated one-make series of each car, to more accurately reflect their usage in real-world motorsport:
  • 2018 Lamborghini #63 Squadra Corse Huracán Super Trofeo Evo
  • 2015 Lamborghini #63 Squadra Corse Huracán LP620-2 Super Trofeo
  • 2017 Ferrari #25 Corse Clienti 488 Challenge

In May, Forza Motorsport celebrates its 20th anniversary, and Turn 10 Studios is busy working on a corresponding update to honor the date. There is not that much official information about the next update, except for the Fujimi Kaido track. Developers say you can also expect more new-to-the-game cars, fresh driving suits, special in-game events, and more.

Meanwhile, Forza Motorsport Update 19 is now available on Xbox and PC (Microsoft Store and Steam). You can read more about the update here, while the full changelog is available here.

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The GPMI standard incorporates ultra-high bandwidth capabilities of up to 192 Gbps and high-power supply capacity of up to 480 W. It enables two-way communication of audio, video, data, and control signals, along with support for 128-node mesh networking.

GPMI is said to work across both USB type-B and type-C interfaces, though the output will vary with Type-B promising double the power and throughput:

• Type-C Interface: Compatible with USB Type-C, it supports up to 96 Gbps data transmission and 240 W power delivery.
• Type-B Interface: Designed for larger devices, it features forward and reverse insertion capabilities, offering up to 192 Gbps data bandwidth and 480W power delivery.

Applications Across Devices One innovation enabled by GPMI is the concept of modular split TVs, which allow the "screen" and "computing unit" to function separately. Users can customize, upgrade, and reconfigure TV components by connecting a GPMI cable, providing flexibility based on individual preferences.

Two-way control signal transmission is another key feature, facilitating operations such as set-top boxes controlling TVs, TVs controlling set-top boxes, or a single remote managing multiple TVs. GPMI also enables ultra-low latency wired screen projection using a smartphone’s Type-C interface connected directly to a TV.

Here's how it compares to the latest available HDMI and DisplayPort standards:

• HDMI 2.2 FRL (Fixed Rate Link) (96Gbps / no power delivery)

• DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20 (80Gbps / 240W Power)

• GPMI Type-C (96Gbps / 240W power supply)

• GPMI Type-B (192Gbps / 480W power supply)

   

Since its inception in 2019, GPMI has undergone significant development milestones, including the release of core group standards in 2021 and the first FPGA prototype in 2023. By 2024, the industry roadmap was introduced, and GPMI obtained SVID (Specific Vendor ID) authorization from the USB organization for compatibility within the Type-C ecosystem. Five series of group standards were officially published in February 2025, establishing a unified, standardized framework for multimedia interfaces.

In addition, existing devices can adopt GPMI using adapters, expanding their functionality and promoting integration across the audio and video industry chain. The technology's high bandwidth, low latency, and multi-device collaboration capabilities position it as a transformative solution for sectors such as smart homes, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, and industrial applications.

Source: HiSilicon via ITHome | Image via ITHome

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor.

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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.

Let us start with some stats. Although we are about six months away from the end of Windows 10 support (Microsoft says you should dump your old Windows 10 PC and buy a new one), Windows 11 is catching up to its predecessor rather quickly. In March 2025, the operating system climbed to 42.66%, which is a new all-time high. Windows 10, on the other hand, dropped to 54.23%.

Windows 11 is doing even better among the gaming audience. Valve reports that in March 2025, Windows 11 reached a new all-time high of 55.34%. As for Windows 10, it is now at 40.58%.

Microsoft is finally rolling out more AI-powered features to Copilot+ PC users with Intel and AMD-based computers. The latest additions include Live Captions (your PC generates system-wide captions for any audio), Paint Cocreator (you draw something, and Paint completes the picture for you), Restyle Image (reimagine your image in a different style), and Image Creator (generate a picture based on your prompt).

Microsoft had some big announcements for business users. For one, Windows Hotpatch is now available in Windows 11 version 24H2. This feature allows deploying critical security patches with no need to reboot client systems as it patches in-memory processes. However, Windows Hotpatch is only available in the Enterprise edition.

Also, the Windows 365 Link is now available for purchase in various countries. In the United States, this mini-PC-like device costs $349.99, and it provides access to Windows 365 (a Windows installation in the cloud) with a few additional features and conveniences. Like Windows Hotpatch, the Windows 365 Link is only available for commercial customers.

The Windows 365 Link is not the only device that can access Windows 365. This feature is also available in the new Windows App, which now available on Android as well (say goodbye to the old Remote Desktop app).

You may probably remember last week's story about Microsoft pulling the plug on a certain command that allowed setting up Windows 11 without an active internet connection and a Microsoft account. Although the "killed" command can still work with some trickery, users discovered that there is another official way to skip Microsoft's Internet and MSA requirements.

Finally, Microsoft released new recovery updates for Windows 11 and confirmed a new Windows 11 24H2 block on some new computers due to compatibility issues with the sprotect.sys driver.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Besides taskbar improvements, the latest Dev and Beta builds contain a massive Start menu redesign, which addresses popular feedback from users. The updated version is finally ditching a two-section design in favor of a single scrollable view. Your pins and recommendations sit on top, while the All Apps list is right below them—simply start scrolling, and you are good to go browse all installed apps, no more clicking the "All" button.

Updates are available

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

This week, Microsoft celebrates its 50th birthday. To mark the occasion, the company released some celebratory wallpapers and held a special event where its CEOs reunited for an exclusive Copilot interview (Bill Gates also shared some of the earliest Microsoft code). During the event, Microsoft also announced new features for Copilot, such as Copilot Memory, Copilot Vision for Windows, Copilot Podcasts, Copilot Search, and Copilot Avatar. However, the celebration was briefly disrupted by a protester claiming that Microsoft uses AI for war and genocide.

There are a few updates for various Windows toys. PowerToys, for one, has been updated to version 0.90. This update brought a redesigned PowerToys Run launcher (now called Command Palette), an improved Color Picker, variables support for New+, and quite a lot of other changes.

Wintoys is another "toys" app, but its purpose and update are slightly different. This Windows-tweaking utility received a big update to version 2.0 with many new features, like the ability to force the classic File Explorer, gracefully uninstall Edge, a new super-user section, and more changes. Plus, there is a very long list of fixes and improvements.

Microsoft 365 users who often summarize documents in Word will be glad to know that the app can now summarize much larger documents. Like, significantly larger. Microsoft says that Copilot can summarize up to 3000 pages in a single file. Also, you can select between three summarization sizes: brief, balanced, and detailed.

Other Office updates include an easier way to upload photos from your phone to Microsoft 365 Copilot, increased prices for all standalone on-premises server products, and some frustrated IT admins calling the new Outlook for Windows "hot garbage."

On the more positive side, Microsoft finally shared a detailed fix for a six-month-old DLL bug in Outlook and Word. However, the company also confirmed a problem with blank calendars and broken meetings in Outlook, so beware.

Finally, Microsoft published a new blog post urging users to drop perpetual Office releases and move to Microsoft 365. The post lists several key features and upgrades that the subscription gives you.

A week rarely goes by without a browser update. This time, Mozilla dropped a big one for Firefox users. Version 137 is here (in case you missed it) with some much-requested features like tab grouping, PDF signature support, and more. And hey, the address bar is now a makeshift calculator.

Mozilla is also making some changes to how add-ons and extensions collect user data.

Microsoft released Edge 135 for all users and announced an under-the-hood change to improve privacy and eliminate user fingerprinting.

What is not getting any more updates is the Surface Book 3. On April 1, this computer reached its end of life, which means there will be no more driver and firmware updates. You can continue using it as is, and Windows will continue getting new updates; just no more new firmware releases for you.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Apple Music for Windows now supports Dolby Atmos.
• Rufus has been updated with ztsd compression support and other changes.
• Intel is killing its Unison app that connects computers with phones.
• Proton Drive is now available natively on Windows on ARM, and Proton VPN received a redesigned app.
• There is a new benchmark app that can measure the performance of all sorts of Windows versions, all the way down to Windows 95.
• exFAT received a very significant performance boost thanks to a Sony contribution.

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

• Intel 32.0.101.6732 non-WHQL with The Last of Us Part II Remastered support and performance improvements in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Pulasthi Ariyasinghe reviewed South of Midnight this week, offering a detailed look at what he called "a must-play gorgeous platformer from Xbox." The game has an engaging storyline, a beautiful world, interesting characters, and an amazing soundtrack.

Steven Parker reviewed the HONOR Pad V9, a lightweight Android tablet with all the media support you need, good build quality, and a decent price tag. If you need an affordable Android tablet, it is a good pick, but just make sure you do not need a microSD slot or cellular connectivity.

On the gaming side

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

While not really a Microsoft story, the biggest gaming news from this week was the announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2. The new console is coming on June 5, and it packs a 120Hz display, 256GB of storage, reworked controllers, 4K display output, new social features, and a lot more for $449. Preorders start on April 9, but not in the US as Nintendo assesses the potential impact of Trump's tariffs and "evolving market conditions."

If you are looking for something more special than your run-off-the-mill Xbox Wireless Controller, 8BitDo's new Ultimate 3-mode Controller for Xbox might catch your attention. It features a translucent green case inspired by the legendary special edition of the original Xbox and Hall effect sticks and triggers. The controller is now available for pre-order.

Minecraft's visual overhaul is now available for testing. Mojang released Vibrant Visuals for beta testers on Windows and other platforms. Before you head to try it, though, keep in mind that the graphics update is not compatible with all devices, plus you will get a notable hit on FPS after toggling it on.

Microsoft has announced a big list of new games for Xbox and PC Game Pass subscribers. The latest additions include Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition, Wargroove 2, Blue Prince, Hunt Showdown, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, South of Midnight, and more. Some games are also leaving the service; check out the complete list here.

Later this month, Grand Theft Auto V will make its grand return to Game Pass as well.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away Cat Quest II, so grab it while you can if you are into cute feline adventures. More deals, as usual, are available in our weekly Weekend PC Game Deals series.

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My home network is a small miracle of backward compatibility, slinging data across 60-plus devices that span five generations of Wi-Fi. Everything on it, from my iPhone 15 Pro all the way down to my Nintendo Wii, manages to connect to the internet, most of it wirelessly through my router, with shockingly few issues. That’s possible because of Wi-Fi’s essentially unbroken line of interoperability that stretches from its 1999 introduction in consumer products through today.

Wi-Fi devices do this by being shapeshifters. When two of them connect, the one using the newest generation of the standard will automatically switch to the highest Wi-Fi version the other one is equipped for. Making sure that works means lots of testing for compatibility, maintaining old parts of the standard, and coming up with new ways to make existing tech more viable. That approach has led to a level of backward compatibility and long-term device support that few gadgets or standards in the tech world can match.

One reason Wi-Fi operates this way is the glacial transitions between generations of the standard. It can take a long time for a new version to proliferate — see the 2022 Apple HomePod and its use of Wi-Fi 4, which debuted in 2009. And even when new products move forward old tech still lingers in homes and businesses everywhere.

Netgear’s VP of product management, Sandeep Harpalani, says backward compatibility is “intrinsic” to Wi-Fi — products that hew closely to the spec should have it by design. But they still need to be tested to make sure things work. In many cases, that’s done by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The Wi-Fi Certified logo is an interoperability guarantee.

Image: Wi-Fi Alliance

 

As of early 2024, the Wi-Fi Alliance was made up of more than 900 member companies, many of which submit their products to be tested and certified by independent, Wi-Fi Alliance-trained testing labs. According to a 2020 Wi-Fi Alliance testing guide, products that pass get a certificate that “assures the end customer of interoperability with other standards-compatible networking equipment that also bears the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo.” Basically, if you see that logo on a package, the product should work with any other Wi-Fi Certified device.

Given that the Wi-Fi Alliance, formed in 1999 as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, has been certifying products for Wi-Fi interoperability since 2000, that’s a long list of devices. Initial certification is optional, but once a product has been certified, the Wi-Fi Alliance enforces that certification by requiring that each product be retested after any changes are made that affect Wi-Fi functionality. Otherwise, the product risks losing its badge.

The certification process takes time, though, so some companies will forego the badge altogether. Amazon-owned mesh router company Eero is among those that skip the certification. Eero CEO Nick Weaver says that the company has a “rigorous internal certification process” and that it doesn’t want to wait for external approval to ship its products.

“The last thing we’d want to do,” he says, “is pull the product back for something that we knew was going to get fixed with a day-zero software update when a customer sets it up.”

Part of Eero’s process is checking connections to outdated devices or emulating large numbers of gadgets connecting at once to make sure its routers can handle it. Similar to the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification process, Weaver says Eero repeats its tests for every firmware update, too.

Maintaining support matters for Eero because its routers are often handed down by customers who’ve replaced them with newer models, Weaver tells me. “Somebody’s got an 85-year-old grandmother, and they want to have a network that just works,” he says.

When there are compatibility issues, it usually comes down to the manufacturer of a given device, according to Maureen Gallagher, VP of marketing at the Wi-Fi Alliance. Gallagher says that, most often, if an older device won’t connect, it’s not due to any disparity in Wi-Fi version. Instead, they’re usually uncertified devices that don’t properly implement the Wi-Fi standard or use proprietary features that don’t play well with other versions of Wi-Fi. “So in those two instances,” she says, “the backward compatibility can be compromised, but that’s very, very rare.”

When things do go wrong and you see problems such as unusual congestion, Weaver says it’s often due to a poorly made device that doesn’t always “hear” packets sent to it, prompting the router to try again, sometimes over and over. That eats up airtime and keeps other devices waiting, and it becomes quickly noticeable on the 2.4GHz band, which is the only band devices older than Wi-Fi 4 can use (barring the rare 5GHz-only 802.11a device, or what might have been called Wi-Fi 2 under the current Wi-Fi naming scheme) and has much narrower spectrum available compared to the 5GHz or 6GHz bands.

If there is any threat to backward compatibility continuing, support for the 2.4GHz band is it. Harpalani says he wants to see “a world where there’s no 2.4GHz.” It’s a narrow band, and a single connection uses up half of the spectrum available to it. Its advantages start to slip as your neighbors’ 2.4GHz signals start gumming up the works-with-wireless interference. That’s why your streams look like garbage and your downloads start to crawl when you accidentally end up on that band.

In fact, according to Gallagher, the certification stopped requiring 2.4GHz support with Wi-Fi 6, though she says 99 percent of certified products come with that support. But getting rid of it would break the Wi-Fi connection for essentially all devices predating Wi-Fi 4, which introduced 5GHz as a second band. It would also be devastating for smart homes, with Wi-Fi-enabled smart home products generally relying on the 2.4GHz band due to its lower power requirements and longer range. Those benefits are hard to leave behind. Even Harpalani doesn’t see a future without it.

That all adds up to Wi-Fi continuing to be the rare technology without major compatibility issues. Your new phone will work with your old router. And when you eventually upgrade that router to something better, all your devices will come along with it.

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Paul's Hardware (1.51M subscribers)

April 6, 2025

Video length: 9m 05s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - April 6, 2025 

1:31 RTX 5060 Ti rumored to cost the same as the RTX 4060 Ti 

2:53 AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE 12GB GPU rumored

4:00 Tariffs Making Everything in US More Expensive, including new Switch 2 

TECH BRIEFS

5:50 RTX 5090 Mobile is 50 percent slower than RTX 5090 Desktop 

6:34 Microsoft to remove Win11 BYPASSNRO workaround; new workaround available 

7:07 Dying Ryzen 9000 CPUs? AsRock Motherboards Still Questionable 

7:46 Intel's rumored high-end Battlemage GPUs have been cancelled 

8:14 Best April fools Tech Story - 5090 Found with “Too Many ROPs”

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Gamers Nexus (2.43M subscribers)

April 6, 2025

Video length: 32m 18s

In this news round-up, we recap the last two weeks of hardware and industry news. This episode includes ASUS' revision of its Q-Release system, its "new" 600W power connector re-emerging, rumors of Intel's high-end GPU being canceled (we'll see about that), impact from tariffs, and more.

00:00 - Recapping the Week 

01:13 - AMD Says 9070 GPUs are Biggest Launch 

02:39 - ASUS Revamps Q-Release System 

05:40 - ASUS Boards with 600W Power Connector 

10:31 - SoftBank Group Set to Acquire Ampere Computing 

12:40 - Rumor: Intel Cancels High-End Xe2 Arc BMG GPUs 

15:01 - NVIDIA 50-Series Laptops Are Out 

21:06 - Developers Recommend Old NVIDIA Drivers 

22:30 - Hyte on Tariff Impact 

26:46 - April Fools Round-Up

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Microsoft unveiled its Xbox AI era earlier this year with a new Muse AI model that can generate gameplay. While it looked like Muse was still an early Microsoft Research project, the Xbox maker is now allowing Copilot users to try out Muse through an AI-generated version of Quake II.

The tech demo is part of Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming push, and features an AI-generated replica of Quake II that is playable in a browser. The Quake II level is very basic and includes blurry enemies and interactions, and Microsoft is limiting the amount of time you can even play this tech demo.

While Microsoft originally demonstrated its Muse AI model at 10fps and a 300 x 180 resolution, this latest demo runs at a playable frame rate and at a slightly higher resolution of 640 x 360. It’s still a very limited experience though, and more of hint at what might be possible in the future.

Microsoft is still positioning Muse as an AI model that can help game developers prototype games. When Muse was unveiled in February, Microsoft also mentioned it was exploring how this AI model could help improve classic games, just like Quake II, and bring them to modern hardware.

“You could imagine a world where from gameplay data and video that a model could learn old games and really make them portable to any platform where these models could run,” said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February. “We’ve talked about game preservation as an activity for us, and these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware opens up a ton of opportunity.”

It’s clear that Microsoft is now training Muse on more games than just Bleeding Edge, and it’s likely we’ll see more short interactive AI game experiences in Copilot Labs soon. Microsoft is also working on turning Copilot into a coach for games, allowing the AI assistant to see what you’re playing and help with tips and guides. Part of that experience will be available to Windows Insiders through Copilot Vision soon.

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As Microsoft is turning 50, and while it would be tempting to create a meme for each of its 50 years, that's a task even Copilot would find daunting; after all, Internet memes didn't exist 50 years ago, right?Instead, I’ve gathered some of my favorite memes, along with picks from the Windows Central staff. Narrowing them down wasn’t easy, given the sheer volume of great ones out there (and seriously, can we please normalize 16:9 ratio memes going into 2025?).Microsoft memes are universally understood because most of us working class folk spend a good chunk of our lives staring at Windows screens, and that's just Windows Update...Poking fun at these tools of our corporate overlords is a collective coping mechanism, and generally something people from all walks of life understand. But anyway, less talk, more memes!

Learning to count, the Microsoft way...

Today, Microsoft has officially turned 50, marking decades of innovation and software development, and more recently, generative AI advances. At Windows Central, we've had a blast looking back at the tech giant's successes and failures over the past 50 years this week.

Our Senior Editor, Zac Bowden, recently predicted what Microsoft's 50th anniversary event will look like, including speculations that Microsoft might finally give a specific timeline when Windows 11's AI-powered features, such as Windows Recall, Click To Do, and AI in Search, would ship to broad availability.

While we'll have a clear account of what Microsoft plans to announce later today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted an interesting clip on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media platforms. I never thought I'd witness an AI-powered platform interview the Microsoft CEOs, including co-founder Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella, but here we are.

I almost wouldn't tell that it's Microsoft Copilot conducting a seamless interview with such a great flow of thoughts and topics.