The shopping-giant has revealed that the feature uses agentic AI, based on Amazon’s Nova AI system, and aims to streamline the purchasing process by navigating to various retailer sites to complete transactions on behalf of users.

When searching for products to users in the Amazon Shopping app, users can tap the “Buy for me” option on an item in the results. The app will present an estimated total that includes the item price, shipping, and applicable taxes. Importantly, the product information is sourced directly from the retailers' websites and refreshed regularly to ensure accuracy. Once a purchase is initiated, Amazon utilizes the user's pre-configured contact, payment, and shipping details, effectively keeping the transaction within the familiar framework of the Amazon app. The company has highlighted that all personal data is encrypted, and that it does not have access to previous orders made on the brand's websites.

Despite this seamless experience, it’s critical to note that purchases made through this feature are not classified as transactions by Amazon. Consequently, the company's established policies regarding returns and terms of service do not apply to these third-party purchases, which could pose some challenges for consumers who may be unsatisfied with their purchase. It is unclear whether third-part stores can opt out of the feature, or whether Amazon takes a cut from these purchases.

As AI technologies continue to evolve, Amazon's foray into agentic AI shopping may set a precedent that could influence how other retailers approach their online services. It's still in testing, available to some iOS and Android users. This development could potentially position Amazon as a comprehensive shopping application.

Source: The Verge

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European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against X, including a fine that could exceed $1 billion, according to a New York Times report yesterday.

The European Commission determined last year that Elon Musk's social network violated the Digital Services Act. Regulators are now in the process of determining what punishment to impose.

"The penalties are set to include a fine and demands for product changes," the NYT report said, attributing the information to "four people with knowledge of the plans." The penalty is expected to be issued this summer and would be the first one under the new EU law.

"European authorities have been weighing how large a fine to issue X as they consider the risks of further antagonizing [President] Trump amid wider trans-Atlantic disputes over trade, tariffs and the war in Ukraine," the NYT report said. "The fine could surpass $1 billion, one person said, as regulators seek to make an example of X to deter other companies from violating the law, the Digital Services Act."

X's global government affairs account criticized European regulators in a post last night. "If the reports that the European Commission is considering enforcement actions against X are accurate, it represents an unprecedented act of political censorship and an attack on free speech," X said. "X has gone above and beyond to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act, and we will use every option at our disposal to defend our business, keep our users safe, and protect freedom of speech in Europe."

Penalty math could include Musk’s other firms

The Digital Services Act allows fines of up to 6 percent of a company's total worldwide annual turnover. EU regulators suggested last year that they could calculate fines by including revenue from Musk's other companies, including SpaceX. Yesterday's NYT report says this method is still under consideration:

Unlike Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon, which are publicly traded, X is owned solely by Mr. Musk. EU regulators are considering using a piece of the law that lets them calculate a fine based on revenue that also includes other companies Mr. Musk privately controls, like his rocket maker, SpaceX. That increases the potential penalty to well over $1 billion, one person said.

The NYT report said it's possible the EU and X could reach "a settlement if the company agrees to changes that satisfy regulators' concerns." But there is also a separate EU investigation in which regulators "are building a case that X's hands-off approach to policing user-generated content has made it a hub of illegal hate speech, disinformation and other material that is viewed as undercutting democracy across the 27-nation bloc," the report said. This second investigation reportedly could lead to additional penalties.

The EU announced a formal investigation into X in December 2023, saying it would "assess whether X may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers." A July 2024 ruling that X violated the law cited Musk's overhaul of the verification system created when the company was called Twitter, and other changes.

X "designs and operates its interface for the 'verified accounts' with the 'Blue checkmark' in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users," the EU regulator said at the time. "Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a 'verified' status, it negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the 'verified account' to deceive users."

The EU further said that "X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising," and "fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA."

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Among the changes mentioned in yesterday's Nintendo Switch 2 presentation was a note that the new console doesn't just support MicroSD Express cards for augmenting the device's 256GB of internal storage, but it requires MicroSD Express. Whatever plentiful, cheap microSD card you're using in your current Switch, including Sandisk's Nintendo-branded ones, can't migrate over to your Switch 2 alongside all your Switch 1 games.

MicroSD Express, explained

Why is regular-old MicroSD no longer good enough? It all comes down to speed.

Most run-of-the-mill SD and microSD cards you can buy today are using some version of the Ultra High Speed (UHS) standard. Designed to augment the default speed (12.5MB/s) and high speed (25MB/s) from the earliest versions of the SD card standard, the three UHS versions enable data transfers of up to 624MB/s.

But most commodity microSD cards, including pricier models like Samsung's Pro Ultimate series, use UHS-I, which has a maximum data transfer speed of 104MB/s. The original Switch uses a UHS-I microSD card slot for storage expansion.

Why have newer and faster versions of the standard—UHS-II, UHS-III, and SD Express—failed to achieve critical mass? Because for most consumer applications, it turns out that 100-ish megabytes per second is plenty. The SD Association itself says that 90MB per second is good enough to record an 8K video stream at up to 120 frames per second. Recording pictures and video is the most demanding thing most SD cards are called upon to do—give or take a Raspberry Pi-based computer—and you don't need to overspend to get extra speed you're not going to use.

All of that said, there is a small but measurable increase in launch and loading times when loading games from the original Switch's microSD card instead of from internal storage. And for games with chronic performance issues like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, one of the community-suggested fixes was to move the game from your microSD card to your Switch's internal storage to alleviate one of the system's plentiful performance bottlenecks.

The Switch 2's additional power opens the door to more complex games that could lag even more noticeably, especially if they're ported from consoles that expect more than 50 times the storage bandwidth (Sony requires an SSD with read speeds of at least 5,500MB/s for the PlayStation 5).

And that's where SD Express comes in. These cards are connected to the same PCI Express/NVMe interface that internal SSDs use in modern PCs and the other game consoles, theoretically giving your SD card access to the same bandwidth as internal storage.

Now, you won't actually get performance as fast as an internal SSD using this interface. The speed varies a lot based on the PCI Express version your gadget is using (3.0 or 4.0) and how many "lanes" of bandwidth it's allowed to use (these are, in short, the connections between a device's CPU and external accessories like SSDs, Wi-Fi adapters, or dedicated GPUs, and all CPUs and SoCs have a limited number of them to hand out). Depending on these factors, microSD Express can deliver anywhere between 985MB/s and 3940MB/s of theoretical bandwidth.

MicroSD cards will also be slowed down because there are fewer physical flash memory chips to write to at a time, a process called "interleaving" that is responsible for much of an SSD's speed. This SanDisk microSD Express card, one of the only ones actually available at retail right now, lists its top speeds as 880MB/s for reads and 650MB/s for writes.

But even at its worst, this is several times the amount of bandwidth available to whatever UHS-I microSD card is inserted into your current Switch. Express cards won't make an SD card feel as fast as internal storage, but it will help the microSD card keep pace a bit.

At what cost?

One other benefit of workaday, plain-old UHS-I microSD cards? The price. Great ones are cheap. Good-enough ones are dirt cheap, even if you stick to major storage vendors like Samsung, Sandisk, and Lexar (please do not buy no-name solid state storage). A quality 256GB microSD card will run you around $20, a pittance compared to whatever you paid for the device you're putting it in.

For the SanDisk microSD Express, the same amount of storage will run you around $60. This is not only more expensive than a regular cheap SD card, but it's more expensive than actual internal SSDs. The cheaper name-brand 1TB internal SSDs, including some sold by SanDisk parent company Western Digital, can give you four times as much space for around the same price.

These prices should go down over time, and the Switch 2 will be a part of the reason why—at a bare minimum, it will likely prompt the creation of multiple alternate microSD Express options from SanDisk's competitors. But at launch, it may still feel like a raw deal because it's just one of many things about the Switch 2 that costs more money than the Switch 1. Compared to the first Switch, you're paying between $100 and $150 more for the console itself, $10 more for each pair of Joy-Cons or Pro Controllers you buy, $50 for a replacement dock, and between $10 and $20 more for first-party games.

The Switch 2's relatively generous 256GB of internal storage should help you avoid the need for an SD card, and it could be all you ever need if you manage your storage space carefully. But the extra cost of microSD Express on top of everything else does rankle, even if the technical reasons behind the move are totally justifiable.

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Nintendo and Nvidia have now confirmed that the Switch 2 will have official support for Nvidia's popular Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology on the console for games to utilize. The Switch 2 has already been confirmed to run a custom processor made by Nvidia featuring dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores, which the company says can deliver "stunning visuals and AI-driven enhancements."

For those in the dark, the machine learning-powered techniques used by DLSS can upscale games running at lower resolutions while they are running. So far, it has only been seen on PCs with Nvidia graphics hardware. However, it's unclear what version of DLSS the device will support.

"With 1,000 engineer-years of effort across every element — from system and chip design to a custom GPU, APIs and world-class development tools — the Nintendo Switch 2 brings major upgrades," adds the company.

According to Nvidia, the new chip powering the Switch 2 delivers 10x the graphics performance of the original Switch as well.

Here are some feature highlights shared by the company today:

• Tensor Cores boost AI-powered graphics while keeping power consumption efficient.
• RT Cores enhance in-game realism with dynamic lighting and natural reflections.
• Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) via NVIDIA G-SYNC in handheld mode ensures ultra-smooth, tear-free gameplay.

The Nintendo Switch 2 also has a camera accessory that's being sold separately, letting players use video chat while in the game. Nvidia says it's the chip's Tensor Cores that are enabling the hybrid console to do face tracking and background removal on the fly during video chats with the power of AI.

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If you want a brief performance idea, the 9070 XT is almost as fast as the Nvidia 5070 Ti while being cheaper (outside of heavy ray tracing and path tracing), and the RX 9070 non-XT is much faster than the RTX 5070 in rasterization while also being close to the same performance in intense ray tracing.

Overall, it is a successful launch from Team Red, and CEO Dr. Lisa Su has already confirmed that the Radeon division has managed to sell ten times more 9070 XT GPUs at launch than previous generations (source: 普普通通Tony大叔 on YouTube via PCMag).

While AMD has confirmed that a high-end premium tier GPU like a 9090 XTX or 9080 XT is not coming anytime soon, the company will continue competing with Nvidia in the mid-segment.

According to a new report by Chinese outlet ITHome, AMD is allegedly preparing a new 9070 series card called the RX 9070 GRE. Given that the company has released multiple GRE-labelled cards the rumor may not be completely unfounded.

However, there are no specification details or any other information. We know the vanilla 9070 also packs 16 GB VRAM like the XT model, but with fewer compute units (56 in total). Thus, the GRE may have a similar memory configuration but with even fewer CUs than the RX 9070, assuming AMD will employ the same die for the purported 9070 GRE.

Meanwhile, AMD is also working on its RX 9060 lineup that is expected to be unveiled sometime this quarter (Q2 2025). If you have noticed, AMD has changed its nomenclature again to better align with the names of Nvidia cards; so the 9070 series is competing with the 5070 series and the 9060 will be rivalling the 5060 series.

Thus, AMD's 9070 GRE may be a nice middle ground card that could serve to completely throttle the upcoming Nvidia 5060 and Ti GPUs while also offering decent value. We will have to wait to see if such an SKU is indeed being made by AMD.

However, do note that GRE SKUs often land in the east in places like China first before a wider launch worldwide.

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In a statement to Tom's Hardware, a representative of the chipmaker stated that “We are aware of a limited number of user reports involving ASRock AM5 motherboards failing to complete POST. Following a joint investigation, AMD and ASRock identified a memory compatibility issue present in earlier BIOS versions, which has been rectified in the latest BIOS,”

ASRock has released a beta BIOS update designed to rectify the situation. Despite reports from over a hundred users experiencing boot failures, the number of failures remains minor compared to the vast array of Ryzen 7 9800X3D processors and ASRock motherboards in circulation.

AMD has emphasized that failure to POST can stem from various factors and does not automatically indicate a malfunctioning CPU. Users are strongly advised to begin by updating their BIOS to the latest version specific to their motherboard model. If issues persist after the BIOS update, AMD recommends reaching out to its customer support channels for further assistance and diagnostics. If the problem cannot be resolved on-site, users might need to pursue a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) process.

ASRock and AMD have also clarified that a report of a burnt-out 9800X3D, was in fact not a case of a burnt product, but simply a dirty one. Once it had been cleaned, the motherboard booted and passed extensive testing.

Despite these assurances, some users have criticized the companies for their delayed response, and the fact that there have been multiple reports and videos that show discoloration on the CPU.

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Tomorrow on April 4, 2025, the 1st Title Update for Monster Hunter Wilds will finally go live. To help prepare players for what they can expect in this update, Capcom has released the patch notes for it on its official website.

Aside from recapping previously announced additional content like new monsters to hunt like Mizutsune and a High-Rank version of Zoh Shia, the patch notes reveal that the 1st Title Update will contain several weapon balance changes, bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, performance upgrades for the PC (Steam) version, and more.

Here are the full patch notes as taken from the official Monster Hunter Wilds website:

Monster Hunter Wilds 1st Title Update patch notes - Major changes and additions

– New monsters can now be hunted after meeting certain in-game conditions.

– Mizutsune has been added. Reach HR 21 to unlock an extra mission that can be started by speaking to Kanya in the Scarlet Forest Base Camp. Complete the mission to unlock Mizutsune.

– Tempered Mizutsune has been added and will appear when you are HR 41+ after completing the Mizutsune extra mission.

– Zoh Shia has been added as a high-rank monster. Reach HR 50 to unlock a story mission that unlocks Zoh Shia.

On Wednesday, a team of researchers from China used a paper published in Nature to describe a 32-bit RISC-V processor built using molybdenum disulfide instead of silicon as the semiconductor. For those not up on their chemistry, molybdenum disulfide is a bit like graphene: a single molecule of MoS₂ is a sheet that is only a bit over a single atom thick, due to the angles between its chemical bonds. But unlike graphene, molybdenum disulfide is a semiconductor.

The material has been used in a variety of demonstration electronics, including flash storage and image sensors. But we've recently figured out how to generate wafer-scale sheets of MoS₂ on a sapphire substrate, and the team took advantage of that to build the processor, which they call RV32-WUJI. It can only add single bits at a time and is limited to kilohertz clock speeds, but it is capable of executing the full RISC-V 32-bit instruction set thanks to nearly 6,000 individual transistors.

Going flat

We've identified a wide range of what are termed 2D materials. These all form repeated chemical bonds in more or less a single plane. In the case of graphene, which consists only of carbon, the bonds are all in the same plane, meaning the molecule is as thick as a carbon atom. Molybdenum disulfide is slightly different, as the angle of the chemical bonds is out of plane, resulting in a zig-zag pattern. This means the sheet is slightly thicker than its component atoms.

In any case, the electronic properties of these materials are strictly a product of the orbital configurations of the molecule itself—there is no bulk material from which bulk properties can emerge. While graphene is an excellent conductor, MoS₂ is a semiconductor.

Some of the demonstration devices built using MoS₂ have used graphene for the conductive material. But the team behind the new work focused on making the experimental hardware that was compatible with silicon manufacturing techniques. This would allow for easier production and could enable the integration of silicon support chips.

Still, there were some distinct challenges involved with MoS₂. In normal silicon, a transistor's threshold voltage can be adjusted by doping the silicon—implanting impurities that change the semiconductor's behavior. But there's no way to implant an impurity in a single molecule. All of the semiconductors of RV32-WUJI are n-type, and their performance can't be adjusted. So the researchers here used two different metals (aluminum and gold) for the wiring and adjusted each transistor's threshold voltages through the choice of wiring, as well as the material the wiring was embedded in.

Making chips

On the chip level, the researchers experimented with building many individual devices and then used machine learning to identify the optimal combination of wiring and materials that ensured each individual transistor would reside within the needed performance envelope.

At the transistor level, the device uses what are called depletion-mode inverters. To build functional circuitry, the researchers built and tested a full suite of 25 logic gates and tested them. Eighteen were functional, and the researchers built the chip using those. They used the longest path through the chip to determine the delay they had to account for, which set an upper limit on clock speed in the kilohertz range. The overall yield when finally making the chip was over 99.9 percent, with a chip-level yield of 99.8 percent.

That said, some of the circuitry proved considerably more challenging. The yield on eight-bit registers, for example, was only 71 percent, and that dropped to only 7 percent for a 64-bit register (which required 1,152 transistors).

The resulting processor involves 5,900 individual transistors and is capable of implementing the full 32-bit version of the RISC-V instruction set, which necessarily means it includes sophisticated circuitry like the RISC-V instruction decoder. At the same time, some aspects are intentionally kept simple; while it can perform the addition of two 32-bit numbers, it does so by operating a single bit at a time, meaning it takes 32 clock cycles to perform the operation. This also required on-board buffers to store the intermediate results.

Still, it works, and the authors argue that it's probably one of the most sophisticated bits of "beyond silicon" hardware yet implemented. That said, they don't expect this technology to replace silicon; instead, they view it as potentially filling some niche needs, like ultra-low-power processing for simple sensors. But if the technology continues to advance, the scope of its potential uses may expand beyond that.

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08759-9  (About DOIs).

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You'll run into "Something went wrong while generating the response. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com." error message when you try to chat with the AI.

If you click the Retry button, ChatGPT will recommend you refresh the page, but the error will not go away even after reloading the page.

According to DownDetector, this outage started within the last 30 minutes.

ChatGPT is currently experiencing an outage in the U.S, Europe, India, Japan, Australia, and other parts of the world.

In an update to its support document, OpenAI confirmed it's aware of the reports and is working on a mitigation.

“We have identified that users are experiencing elevated errors for the impacted services. We are working on implementing a mitigation," OpenAI noted.

This is a developing story...

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The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on June 5 worldwide. It will cost $449.99 for the base edition.

The Switch 2 is a 1080p resolution system supporting up to 120fps on its LCD screen (with HDR support). 256GB of internal storage has been confirmed for the base unit too, with faster read and write speeds than the last console. When docked, the console will be able to output at 4K HDR, on supported games, to compatible displays. A fan will be present on the dock itself to keep the Switch 2 cool while playing games at more power as well.

As for the controllers, the company is touting a more comfortable experience with larger buttons and control sticks. Mouse controls are confirmed too, letting Joy-Cons be used on a flat surface for navigation and, potentially, in upcoming games. The Joy-Cons are now attached magnetically to the console.

The new C button on the right Joy-Con that everyone has been curious about turned out to be a communications button, letting users open a chat and streaming window to quickly check on their friends. The Game Chat feature works while in docked and handheld modes, with a mic now being featured on top of the console itself. A separate Switch 2 camera is also launching alongside the console for use in group video chats with Game Chat and some game features.

A new Switch 2 Pro Controller is coming soon as well, with it touting an audio jack and a C button of its own for full compatibility with the new system.

As for returning features, the Switch 2 continues the company's trend of hybrid approach for its consoles, allowing both handheld and docked TV play. Backward compatibility is confirmed for last-generation Switch games. However, regular microSD cards will not be supported on the Switch 2, with it only supporting microSD Express.

Nintendo will be charging for Upgrade Packs to enhance Switch games for the Switch 2, with first-party games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom already being confirmed for the program. Pricing has not been announced just yet.

Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, Hitman World of Assassination, Split Fiction, Street Fighter 6, Elden Ring, Hades 2, and many more games have been confirmed for the system from third-party publishers already.

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I've been complaining about tech a lot recently, and I don't apologize for it. Complaining feels great. That feeling of beleaguered, I-against-the-world self-righteousness? Highly underrated.

But a little righteous complaint goes a long, long, loooong way. (Just ask my wife.) Too much can be corrosive, it can make you insufferable to others, and it can leave you jaded, as many people, myself included, have become about technology.

I had three recent experiences, however, that were each quite small in their way but which reminded me that not everything in the tech world has fallen victim to the forces of "enshittification." Once in a while, technology still feels easy and—dare I co-opt the world from Apple's marketing department?—even magical.

Call it "unshittification."

Better DRM

Ars has complained about DRM since our founding over 25 years ago. As writers and editors ourselves, we certainly get the desire not to have one's work ripped off or repurposed without payment, but even effective DRM imposes annoying costs on those who actually paid the money for the thing.

Case in point: I've been teaching myself songwriting, audio production, and mixing for the last 18 months, and part of that process has led me to invest some decent money into Universal Audio products. I bought its stellar and rock-solid-reliable Volt 2 audio interface and then spent much of 2024 snapping up high-quality plugins like Topline Vocal Suite, the Manley Voxbox, and the Electra 88 Rhodes piano. Terrific stuff—but not necessarily cheap.

So it was just insulting to find out the hard way that Universal Audio used a variant of the iLok DRM system—itself unfortunately common in the audio industry—that required constant Internet connectivity to function.

The iLok ecosystem can be configured in three main ways, authorizing your plugins 1) to a custom iLok USB dongle (which costs $50–$70 and requires a USB port—plus, you have to remember it at all times), 2) to the local machine you are working on, or 3) to the cloud. Universal Audio allowed only dongle and cloud authorizations, but I figured this wouldn't be a problem because, surely, the system would only need to check in semi-regularly.

In fact, the system checked in constantly. Go even a few minutes without Internet access, and all your plugins will disable themselves, leading any mix that uses them to fall apart immediately. Want to work on your laptop during a power outage? Edit some audio on a flight? Use a studio computer that—for stability, performance, and security reasons—is not generally online? Well, I hope you like dongles.

(Some users do—though others have complained that they too can be unstable, they cost extra, and they permanently take up a USB port on your machine.)

Universal Audio is a big name in the business, and their users have complained endlessly about this situation, but the response has generally been that machine-based authorization is less secure and therefore not supported.

So it was a surprise and delight when, on March 25, Universal Audio saw the light and announced that "by popular demand" it was shifting to local machine or iLok USB authorizations. The cloud option was gone, and a company rep even admitted that cloud monitoring "requires a constant Internet and server connection. [In other words], more resources."

In addition, Universal Audio now allows "up to three" simultaneous authorizations of each digital tool, while before you could only have two.

The online response appears overwhelmingly positive. As one commenter put it, "Ok, I admit: I thought the 'submit feedback' feature was just there so users would vent without any serious change occurring... I was wrong on that front. Glad to see UA is listening. Good job!"

Others stressed just how beneficial the move was for touring musicians who may use various bits of Universal Audio tech on stage or on tour. "For touring musicians and all other people that often work in an offline environment this is awesome!" wrote one commenter. Another added, "iLok dongle on stage is scary and glad that's over with. Power move!"

I concur.

Better customer service

Let's stick with the "musical" theme for example No. 2.

I purchased Native Instruments' terrific piano library Noire, which sampled the specific grand piano used by Nihls Frahm in both standard and felted formats—and all of it capturing the ambience of Saal 3 in the East Berlin Funkhaus recording facility where Frahm works. The library is one of my favorites—evocative and gorgeous. But I was apparently the victim of fraud.

See, I purchased the library secondhand. This is completely legal and explicitly allowed by Native Instruments, though the company needs to get manually involved in the transfer process. I purchased Noire from a UK user who already had a "transfer code" approved by Native Instruments, indicating that the software in question was genuine and available for sale.

So I purchased Noire, completed the transfer, and the software showed up in my Native Instruments account. Everything went smoothly, and I was (very gently) rocking out with Noire's felted piano.

A few weeks (!) later, I received a note, completely out of the blue, from Native Instruments support. They had removed Noire from my account, they said, because the seller had committed some unspecified fraud, and Native Instruments had transferred my copy of Noire back to the original purchaser.

This was extremely uncool. Not only did I have nothing to do with any fraud, nor any reason to think fraud had occurred, but Native Instruments had vetted the software and approved it for transfer, which gave me the confidence to move forward with the purchase. So why was I now the only person to suffer? The original buyer got the plugin restored, the scammer had my money, and Native Instruments hadn't lost anything.

There appeared to be little I could do about all this. Sure, I could file a dispute with PayPal and try to claw my money back, but Native Instruments is a German company, and—let's face it—I wasn't going to do anything if they decided to screw me out of a purchase they had helped me make. (Well—I was going to do something, namely, never purchase from them again. After all, who knew, when they awoke in the morning, if their purchased products would still function?)

This may sound like a complaint, but here's the thing: When I made my case to Native Instruments over email, they got back to me in a day or two and agreed to put a free though "not for resale" copy of Noire on my account as a goodwill gesture. This was all conducted politely, in impeccable English, and without undue delay. It felt fair to me, and I'm likely to continue purchasing their excellent sample libraries.

Customer service can feel like a lesser priority to most companies, but done right, it actually ensures future sales.

Better money-taking

Finally, an almost trivial example, but one that worked so smoothly I still remember my feeling of shock. "Where's the catch?" pretty much summed it up.

I'm talking, of course, about March Madness, the annual NCAA college basketball tournament. It's a terrific spectacle if you can ignore all the economic questions about overpaid coaches, no-longer-amateur players, recruiting violations, and academic distortions that the big sports programs generate. And my University of North Carolina Tar Heels had juuuust squeaked in this year.

Ordinarily, watching the tournament is a nightmare if you don't have a pay-TV package. For years, streaming options were terrible, forcing you to log in with your "TV provider" (i.e., an expensive cable or satellite company) account or otherwise jump through hoops to watch the games, which are generally shown across three or four different TV channels.

All I wanted was a simple way to give someone my money. No gimmicks, no intro offers, no "TV provider" BS—just a pure streaming play that puts all the games in one place, for a reasonable fee. When I looked into the situation this year, I was surprised to find that this did now exist, it was easy, and it was cheap.

The Max streaming service had all the games, except for those shown on CBS. (You can't have everything, I guess, but I get CBS in HD using an over-the-air antenna.) It was $10 for a month of service. There were no "intro offers," no lock-ins, no "before you go!" pleas, no nothing. Indeed, I didn't even have to create a new account or share a credit card with some new vendor. I just added Max as a "subscription" within Amazon's video app and boom—tournament time. It took about four seconds, and it has worked flawlessly.

That something this simple could feel revelatory was a good reminder of just how crapified our tech and media ecosystems have become. On my expensive LG OLED TV, for instance, I have to go out of my way to literally prevent my TV from spying on everything that I watch. (Seriously, you should turn this "feature" off. Otherwise, your TV will watch your screen and try to identify everything you watch, then send that data back to whatever group of zombified MBAs thought this was a good idea.) Roku, which provides streaming services to my basement television, is toying with new ads. Every streaming service I've subscribed to has jacked up rates significantly over the last year or so.

So just being able to sign up quickly and easily, for 10 bucks, felt frictionless and magical in the way that tech used to do more often. As a bonus, I've been able to watch full episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I have never seen before.

Magic?

"Unshittification" is not always the result of "innovation"—sometimes it's just about treating people decently. Responding to feedback, personal customer service, and non-gimmicky pricing aren't new or hot technologies, but they are the sort of things that make for satisfied long-term customers.

So much tech has fallen victim to algorithms, scale, and monetization that it can be a surprising relief to connect easily with a Real Live Human, one empowered to act on your behalf, or to make a purchase without being part of some constantly upselling "sales funnel." But when it does happen, it feels good. Indeed, in a cynical and atomized age, it feels a tiny bit magical.

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Running a successful company like Microsoft for 50 years is no easy feat. As part of the challenges of operating a multi-trillion-dollar industry, several mistakes are made along the way.

For instance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted that pulling the plug on Windows Phone at the height of its glory was a strategic mistake. While in an interview, the executive indicated that there were other plausible alternatives that the company could've embraced rather than culling the mobile division:

"The decision I think a lot of people talk about — and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO — was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones."

As Microsoft's 50th anniversary edges closer, I'm looking back at Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' greatest mistake. In 2019, while speaking at an event with venture capital firm Village Global, the executive admitted that his greatest mistake during his tenure as Microsoft CEO was losing the mobile space to Android.

In every sense, Microsoft is arguably the best software development company, which is evident across its earnings reports. Building on this premise, the philanthropic billionaire claims developing an operating system similar to Android would've been "a natural thing for Microsoft to win."

However, Bill Gates indicated that Microsoft missed its opportunity with Android partly due to his mismanagement, coupled with anti-trust issues that capped the company's progression.

This gave Google the upper hand and competitive advantage over Microsoft, allowing it to acquire Android in 2005 and launch its first device in 2008. As you may know, Android is the most popular overall operating system in the world, predominantly because of its versatility and wide array of customization options.

The Surface Book 3 debuted on May 6, 2020, nearly five years ago. It went on sale two weeks later with a starting price of $1,600 for the 13-inch variant and $2,300 for the 15-inch variant. Like its predecessor, the Surface Book 3 kept its unique design that combined a tablet with a keyboard dock that also held the device's additional battery and a graphics card in more expensive configurations.

Despite the lack of visual changes (the 15-inch variant debuted with the Surface Book 2), the computer received Intel's then-latest 10th-generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors, up to 32GB of RAM (8GB in the base 13-inch variant), and up to 2TB of SSD. As for the graphics, Microsoft offered the Surface Book 3 with integrated Intel Iris Plus, the Nvidia GTX 1650 Max-Q, the Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q, or the Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 Max-Q.

Despite having a more capable processor and graphics, many agreed that the Surface Book 3 felt a bit stalled. Its wow-factor has worn off during five years and three generations, and design limitations compared to competing laptops at that price point led to a lukewarm reception (Neowin gave the Surface Book a 7/10 rating). After one year, Microsoft ditched the Surface Book paradigm entirely and introduced the original Surface Laptop Studio, a still quirky but more modern and up-to-times laptop.

Launched on May 26, 2020, the Surface Book 3 computer received nearly five years of active support. While you can continue using the device if it works well for you (it can still update to Windows 11 and receive feature updates and security fixes for the operating system), keep in mind that you will not get firmware updates with security improvements, bug fixes, and new drivers.

With the Surface Book 3 out of support, the next device on the chopping block is the Surface Pro X SQ1, Microsoft's first modern Windows on ARM device (we are not talking about the Surface RT and RT 2). The Surface Pro X SQ1 will be out of support on August 10, 2025.

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While that is something for AMD to be happy about, it also seems like several of its 9800X3D parts are failing. Users are reporting that their CPU burned up or died for some reason they can't quite pinpoint. As we mentioned above, though, there is also the possibility that several of them are first-time buyers and may not be all that familiar with DIY PC building quirks. So user-side error is certainly possible too.

Curiously, it looks like ASRock motherboards are the ones where users are reporting the highest number of failures. There is apparently mounting evidence to suggest may be the case.

A Reddit user natty_overlord on the ASRock subreddit has compiled as many as such cases and in total, the number of 9800X3D failures has crossed 100. They write:

So far there are 108 stories from people of 9800X3D which passed POST, and was working for a short amount of time before suddenly dying with no signs of failure. Also 2 9950X3D, and 10 other 9000 series Ryzen CPUs.

The issue is also not prominent on one or two particular motherboard variants or chipsets, as it is being seen across the board. They include ASRock Steel Legend, ASRock Taichi, Riptide, and more.

Out of the 108 total Ryzen 9000 failures, Tom's Hardware calculated that ASRock mainboards saw 98 failures or 82% of cases. Asus came second with 16 or 13% of the cases, MSI had five failures or 5% of the cases. Gigabyte managed to top the chart with just a single failure or approximately 1% of the cases.

Meanwhile, in terms of chipsets, the newer 800 series chipset boards had the majority of failures.

On one hand, situations like these especially on such an expensive gear, are never desirable; but on the other, we have also reported about instances where overclocking enthusiasts have pushed CPUs to their extremes, like this 9950X3D at 6 GHz. So they could well be user-side errors too.

Hopefully, AMD and ASRock as well as the other motherboard vendors, are investigating. But for that, the companies may require more data as the sample size is still fairly small compared to the total potential number of Ryzen 9000 CPUs out there. It is noteworthy here that ASRock had already issued a firmware update to fix X3D problems towards the end of February.

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Gaming laptops with NVIDIA's RTX 50-series mobile GPUs officially entered the market on March 28, with options from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, and more.

Many laptops are ready to ship, while others are being released throughout April. You can preorder most models even if there's a shipping delay.

However, I come to you with a word of warning regarding the most expensive new NVIDIA RTX gaming laptops.

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 laptop performance is half that of its desktop counterpart

The RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are thinner than ever, but there's still no way they're fitting into a laptop without some modifications.

(Image credit: Windows Central | Ben Wilson)

 

NVIDIA has provided OEMs with RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPUs, so there's plenty of variety from which you can choose.

 

However, I come with a word of warning for those who are interested in the mobile 5090.

 

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 Laptop GPU looks a lot like a desktop RTX 5080, so don't buy a new laptop expecting the same performance.

 

As Notebookcheck discovered in its initial RTX 5090 Laptop testing, the mobile version is up to 50% slower than its desktop counterpart.

 

That applies to PC games and synthetic benchmarks. I've included some results here, but I urge you to check out the full collection of graphs and further analysis at Notebookcheck.net.

 

A look at Notebookcheck's findings on RTX 5090 Laptop performance in 3DMark.

(Image credit: Notebookcheck)

 

Notebookcheck's graphs showing RTX 5090 desktop and laptop performance in Blender.

(Image credit: Notebookcheck)

 

You can see in the above graphs how big a difference there is between the laptop and desktop RTX 5090 GPUs.

 

Notebookcheck uses a Zotac RTX 5090 Solid model to compare to the new Razer Blade 16 (2025) and the ASUS Strix Scar 18 G835LX with the mobile 5090 card.

 

The difference in performance also extends to gaming benchmarks.

 

Notebookcheck's findings regarding RTX 5090 desktop and mobile performance in Cyberpunk 2077.

(Image credit: Notebookcheck)

 

It's no surprise that NVIDIA's laptop GPUs don't measure up to their desktop counterparts. I wasn't expecting such a large gap.

 

The NVIDIA RTX 5090 Founders Edition desktop GPU we reviewed is thinner than ever, but it's impossible to include as much raw horsepower in a thermal envelope as small as a laptop.

 

The RTX 4090 Laptop is slower than its desktop sibling, although the difference isn't quite as major, with roughly a 35% performance decrease.

 

The raw specs of the two NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs show some interesting bits, and I included the RTX 5080 desktop GPU for further comparison.

 

GPU	RTX 5090 Laptop	RTX 5090 Desktop	RTX 5080 Desktop
GPU name	GB203	GB202	GB203
CUDA cores	10,496	21,760	10,752
RT cores	82	170	84
Tensor cores	328	680	336
ROPs	112	176	112
VRAM	24GB	32GB	16GB
Memory bandwidth	890GB/s	1.79TB/s	960GB/s
Memory bus	256-bit	512-bit	256-bit
TGP	175W	575W	360W

 

The RTX 5090 Laptop GPU looks a lot closer to the desktop RTX 5080 than anything else.

 

Don't get me wrong; the mobile RTX 5090 is a monster GPU, but it probably shouldn't have been granted the top-tier XX90 branding.

 

Both the mobile 5090 and desktop 5080 use the same GB203 GPU chip, and other than the 24GB of VRAM and the lower power draw in the mobile 5090, the numbers are very similar.

 

The tradeoff is, of course, extra mobility and less power draw, with the mobile 5090 dropping to a fraction of the desktop 5090's power demands.

 

The major appeal for the 50-series cards includes access to the full suite of DLSS 4's tools, including Multi Frame Generation (MFG).

 

MFG is so far exclusive to RTX 50-series GPUs, and its performance boosting capabilities are impressive thanks to AI advancements.

Where can I buy NVIDIA RTX 50-series laptops?

I'm not here to stop you from buying the laptop of your dreams. I simply want to shed some light on the situation.

 

NVIDIA's RTX 5090 Laptop GPU isn't exactly going to offer the XX90 performance you might desire, and I want to temper expectations before these laptops ship.

 

If you're indeed in search of the power available from the desktop 5090, there's really only one avenue: build your own PC or check out a pre-built with the 5090 already inside.

 

If you are interested in checking out the fresh line of NVIDIA RTX 50-series laptops, it looks like Best Buy and Newegg currently have the most varied selection.

 

You can also head over to Razer to check out its refreshed Blade 16 and Blade 18 models, while Dell is home to the new Alienware Area-51 gaming laptops.

 

I also found the Legion Pro 7i (Gen 10) with RTX 5080 Laptop GPU available for preorder at Lenovo.

 

Are you buying a new laptop with NVIDIA's RTX 50-series mobile GPUs? Which one are you getting? Let me know in the comments section below!

 

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It's hard to believe, but many assumed Gmail was an April Fools' Day hoax, as Google picked April 1 as the official date to unveil the service. The tone of the announcement didn't make it believable enough, and the company downplayed its significance by describing Gmail as a search-based email application that offers a natural extension to the company's primary focus on organizing information.

However, it wasn't long before people realized Gmail wasn't a joke but an actual product that Google offered in beta to a select number of users. The email service stayed in beta for over five years from its launch and is now celebrating its 21st birthday.

Back in the day, the email territory was ruled by Yahoo!, AOL, and Hotmail. Google tried to win over users by baking its core offering, a capable search engine, into the service. Also, its 1GB storage limit for emails was over 100 times what free webmail services typically provided at the time.

Gmail tried to be more efficient by organizing emails into conversations that show messages in the context of all replies sent in response to them. The email service addressed issues like lack of storage that forced users to delete emails or file emails in folders to make them easier to find.

"If a Google user has a problem with email, well, so do we. And while developing Gmail was a bit more complicated than we anticipated, we’re pleased to be able to offer it to the user who asked for it," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in the press release.

Brin recalled how Gmail was inspired after a Google user complained about the poor quality of existing email services. It was also presented as an example of Google's 'engineers must spend 20 percent time on personal projects' culture.

Paul Buchheit, Google's 23rd employee and creator of Gmail, later clarified that he had been working on Gmail for years before its launch. He started working on Gmail in 2001, and the project was an official thing from the start. However, it was initially a part-time project as Paul was wrapping up the original Google Groups project.

Paul recalled during a podcast that someone inside Google leaked the story to the New York Times that the company was preparing to launch an email product on April 1st. Gmail was half-baked then, but Google published a press release at midnight UTC when it wasn't even April 1st in the US to try to beat the NY Times story.

Gmail may not have made it to the market, though. Many people inside Google didn't buy the idea of Gmail and thought the project should be scrapped. "One notable executive predicted that we would never even get to a million users. We can't let those voices drag us down," Paul wrote on his blog.

There was skepticism around using JavaScript to build the email product. It was feared that Microsoft would break it by tweaking its web browser (Internet Explorer) or the stuff would push web browsers too far and take the whole thing down. However, the opposite happened as Microsoft made changes to its browser to make Gmail work better. The engineer added in his blog:

When I decided to write the Gmail interface in Javascript, pretty much everyone who knew anything about Javascript or web browsers told me that it was a bad idea. It had been tried in the past, and always ended in disaster.

 

But times change fast, and fortunately I was in an environment where doing impossible things was not just permitted, but encouraged. After we launched, the impossible quickly became the new normal, completely changing how we think about web apps. That's fun.

When it launched, Gmail had an invite-based onboarding system and a capacity of about 10,000 users, which Paul said was enough for Google employees and their friends. The invite system allowed Google to control the number of users and prevent the entire system from collapsing.

It's interesting to note that no Gmail accounts existed when the service launched in 2004. All of them were created after it. Paul said that the very first account he made was "Hello World at Gmail," followed by his personal account as the second, and then he invited the rest of the team and the company.

The email storage limit was doubled a year after Gmail was unveiled and has been increased multiple times over the years. Fast-forward to 2025, and Google offers 15GB of free space, which is shared across different apps such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive.

Gmail's higher storage limit at launch was subsidized by ads based on keywords scanned from messages and delivered over the service. This quickly raised eyebrows around privacy and caught the attention of lawmakers.

It will take another article to discuss the numerous features Google has added to Gmail in the last two decades. Gmail is the living ancestor to the current suite of web apps the search giant ships under the Google Workspace umbrella.

Google has integrated Gmail with other apps and services like Keep, Calendar, and Contacts by adding quick access controls in its user interface. More recently, a platter of Gemini AI features has been stuffed in a side panel in Gmail.

The AI-powered assistant does many tasks, such as summarizing emails, drafting responses, and finding information quickly. Let's see what Google has in store for Gmail in the future.

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SoftBank is contributing the lion's share, cited as 75% in one report and $7.5 billion of an initial $10 billion investment in another. Other investors in the round include Microsoft, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital and Thrive Capital.

The investment plan includes an initial $10 billion, while the other $30 billion is conditional on OpenAI shifting to a for-profit corporation model before this year ends. Failure to meet this requirement could potentially jeopardize a large portion of the entire deal.

This investment capital is committed to supporting OpenAI's objectives, such as establishing its artificial intelligence research, expanding its computational and infrastructure capacities, and extending its product line, which the company states has 500 million weekly active users after a major update to AI image generation in ChatGPT. OpenAI publicly stated that its long-term purpose is to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) for broad human benefit.

The latest funding round is a major increase from OpenAI's previous valuation. In October, the company completed a $6.6 billion funding round at a valuation of $157 billion. CNBC stated that the new $40 billion investment is one of the largest funding rounds for a private technology company ever.

Despite the popularity of ChatGPT, OpenAI is still not profitable. The company is projecting $12.7 billion in revenue this year, from $3.7 billion in annualized recurring revenue last year. It's not expected to turn cash flow positive, however, until 2029 when it's forecasting $125 billion in annual revenue.

The funding comes at the same time as other OpenAI initiatives, including the Stargate project - a reported $500 billion joint investment with partners such as SoftBank and Oracle to develop massive networks of data centers to host AI workloads. OpenAI has also recently announced user growth milestones and release schedules for new AI models.

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If time travel were a reality in this era of AI, Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates would have gone back a few years to restart the software giant as an AI-centric firm. Microsoft is arguably one of the most successful companies ever, and it briefly became the world's most valuable company ahead of Apple and NVIDIA due to its cloud and, obviously, AI efforts.

Fifty years into its successful software development business, Gates seemingly shared his intrusive thoughts, suggesting that he would start Microsoft all over again as an AI firm to take on OpenAI and Google.

Last year, the philanthropic billionaire shared the idea while speaking to CNBC:

"Today, somebody could raise billions of dollars for a new AI company [that’s just] a few sketch ideas."

However, he admitted that the venture would require a huge amount of cash to hit the ground running and have the potential to catch up with OpenAI's uncontested 2-year lead developing ChatGPT.

Interestingly, the Microsoft co-founder indicated that he'd strive to identify a unique niche in the AI landscape to meet a specific need, unlike the ever-emerging startups that are seemingly hell-bent on chasing AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

While AI shows great promise, Gates admits that it would be virtually impossible to scale Microsoft's success. However, he claims AI presents a transformative opportunity for emerging AI startups to explore the landscape and identify their niche.

A report was made by a Redditor, showing a "delidding" of a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, the process of removing the CPU's Integrated Heat Spreader or the metal lid (IHS) on top of the CPU die. This allows the user to replace the thermal interface material (TIM) underneath, which was factory-installed, with a better-performing one, most typically liquid metal, for far superior heat transfer.

The Redditor described taking an extremely unusual method. Instead of using commercially available delidding kits, they said that they used a clothes iron to heat and soften the adhesive and then used fishing string to slice through the softened adhesive and detach the IHS from the CPU package. After the successful removal of the IHS, liquid metal was applied directly onto the CPU dies as the new thermal interface material before reapplying the cooling solution in a "direct die" configuration.

The user, who was described as liquid metal and water-cooling seasoned, said the altered CPU could overclock to nearly 6 GHz and operated at 72-73°C when it underwent a Furmark CPU stress test. The rest of the system was built with of high-end parts that included an RTX 5090 graphics card and the MSI MEG X870E Godlike motherboard.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D occupies the top spot in the lineup of AM5 socket processors since it costs $699. However, delidding procedures, though dangerous and warranty-voiding, illustrate the extent to which users will go to drive such hardware to its very limits. If you want a more conventional round up of AMD's top chip, you can check out our review of it right here.

Sources: Reddit via VideoCardz

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Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest entry in Capcom's immensely popular Monster Hunter franchise, has recently achieved a major milestone by selling over 10 million copies worldwide, as per an official statement on Capcom's official website.

What makes its sales figure so impressive is that it took Resident Evil Village three years after its release in 2021 to reach such sales numbers.

Additionally, Monster Hunter Wilds managed to ship 8 million units worldwide in only three days after its launch. This officially makes Monster Hunter Wilds the fastest-selling title in Capcom history, beating out the previous record-holder, Resident Evil 4 Remake, which sold 3 million copies in two days after its launch.

Major balance changes are coming to Monster Hunter Wilds in the coming months

To celebrate the occasion, the director of Monster Hunter Wilds, Yuya Tokuda, has announced on Monster Hunter Wilds' official website that Capcom will send players a free item pack in-game as a 'thank-you' gift for their support.

Additionally, Yuya Tokusa has shared plans with the community about Capcom's plans for Monster Hunter Wilds post-launch updates in the coming months.

These plans start with a brief recap of Monster Hunter Wilds' 1st Title Update, which is set to go live this week on April 4, 2025.

This update will bring a ton of new content to the game, including the addition of new monsters to fight, such as the returning Mizustune, more Tempered Monsters to fight, an online Gathering Hub called the Grand Hall, new quests to complete, new gear to collect, cosmetic DLC, and more.

Microsoft has never been a hardware company, but it has certainly dabbled with the idea. With dabbling comes ideas that never make it off the ground. T

To celebrate Microsoft’s 50^th anniversary, we wanted to take a look back at its most famously scrapped devices in the last couple of decades.

Microsoft Courier (2010)

Paul's Hardware (1.51M subscribers)

March 30, 2025

Video length: 8m 49s

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

1:23 Intel 'working to finalize commitments from Nvidia', gaming potential for 18A node

3:31 AMD CEO: RX 9070 Huge Success, 10X Sales vs Previous Gen, Supply to Increase

4:34 AMD Bringing Strix Halo To Desktop

5:29 Radeon 9060/9060 XT and RTX 5060/5060 Ti rumors

TECH BRIEFS

6:07 Memorial Service Held for Gordon Mah Ung

6:48 Nvidia Driver Black Screen Problem Passed Down to 40 Series GPUs Too

7:38 Noctua's pumpless 'thermosiphon' liquid cooling unit is expected to be released in 2026

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Table of contents:

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

Windows 11 and 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 but still supported versions.

This week brought new non-security updates for Windows 10 and 11. Windows 11 users (versions 22H2 and 23H2) received KB5053657 with a bunch of new features and improvements. Those on Windows 11 version 24H2 can download KB5053656 with quite a big list of new features, such as AI-powered search (requires a Copilot+ PC), a gamepad keyboard, Live captions improvements, and more. Windows 10, on the other hand, got KB5053643 with fixes for File Explorer, Remote Desktop, and more.

As usual, after releasing the latest updates, Microsoft posted more information about known bugs in Windows 10 and 11. For one, it confirmed that there is still a standing audio bug preventing some users from updating to Windows 11 version 24H2. Also, Microsoft notified users that it fixed the problem with USB printers printing gibberish after installing recent updates.

In addition to a massive chunk of updates, Microsoft announced a roadmap website for its operating system. Windows 11 now has a single place to track all its upcoming features. You can check that page to see recently announced capabilities, their rollout status, platform, descriptions, links to the original announcements, and more.

Finally, there is a new unofficial patch to resolve NTLM security vulnerabilities. However, it was issued by 0patch, not Microsoft, so getting that fix requires purchasing a third-party patching service.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:

A big change in the latest Windows 11 preview builds is the removal of a certain script that lets you bypass Microsoft's rule that mandates an active internet connection and a Microsoft Account during the initial Windows 11 setup. However, not all hope is lost as there is still a relatively easy method to bring the OOBE\bypassnro command back.

As for more positive changes, Microsoft started testing Quick Machine Recovery, a new tool that aims to help fix PCs that cannot boot. When crashing to recovery, QMR can connect to the internet and get the necessary patches from Microsoft to apply them via Windows Update and pull the system from its non-working state.

Besides fresh new builds, Microsoft released a big update for the Photos app. The latest version, currently available for all insiders on Windows 10 and 11, adds JPEG XL support, web search for OCR, improved context menus, and other changes.

Also, enthusiasts discovered that the Win + C shortcut (currently disabled) is apparently making a comeback to the operating system. This time, Microsoft wants to let users launch Copilot with it or assign it to perform another task or launch a different app.

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 section starts with a big update to Microsoft's sign-in experience. It received a big redesign with improved visuals, a simpler and more intuitive flow, dark mode support, and improvements for passwordless sign-in methods. The new UI is now rolling out, with Microsoft planning to complete the update by the end of April 2025.

Windows on ARM users can download another popular app that is now fully ARM-friendly. After a few months of testing, Google Drive for Windows on ARM is finally available for download, giving users a more battery-friendly cloud storage client with better performance.

Speaking of better performance, Microsoft's Office apps are about to become snappier. Microsoft announced that it is bringing Startup Boost to some of its Office apps (starting with Word) so that they can launch faster. However, there is one caveat, which you may not like.

On the browser side, we have a big announcement from Opera. The company announced a new AI-powered feature that can organize your tabs. Just say what you want to do using natural language, and the browser will take care of your tab hoards. Tab Commands are now available on Opera One. On Android, though, Opera 88 brought an overhaul for Aria, the browser's built-in AI assistant, and a new icon.

Mozilla also dropped a small update for Firefox to save those watching TikTok. Version 136.0.3 arrived with a single fix to resolve performance issues when browsing videos on the social media platform.

A big new update also arrived for Vivaldi. This time, one of the most customizable browsers partnered with Proton VPN to offer its users built-in VPN for free and without any privacy compromises. If you want a browser with a reliable and reputable VPN, Vivaldi definitely should be on your shortlist, if not the first choice.

For Microsoft Edge users (more like for those tired of it), there is a new version of MSEdgeRedirect, a popular tool that unhooks Edge from Windows 11. After over a year without updates, the maker of MSEdgeRedirect released version 0.8.0.0 with a bunch of fixes for PDF and news handling, Windows Spotlight, UWP apps, and more.

Also, Microsoft announced several security improvements for Microsoft Edge on personal devices on corporate networks.

Other notable updates include the following:

• Microsoft will be live streaming the 50th Anniversary Copilot Event.

• Microsoft announced several new AI agents for Security Copilot.

• Microsoft brought OpenAI o3 to the enterprise with new Analyst and Researcher agents.

• Microsoft is now deploying the New Outlook for Windows on Microsoft 365.
• Excel is getting value tokens to help you better understand data types.

And here are the newest drivers released this week:

• Nvidia released G-Assist so that you can talk to your PC and ask it to improve its performance.

Reviews are in

Here is hardware and software we reviewed this week

Robbie's latest review is here. This week, it is about the POCO F7 Ultra, Xiaomi's mid-ranger with some serious specs at a reasonable price. With this phone, you get a powerful CPU, good build quality, a super-fast charger in the box, and a great display. Of course, a cheap flagship has some corners cut, so beware of the lack of eSIM, questionable image processing, no LTPO support, and more.

Steven Parker reviewed the LincStation N2, a next-gen all-SSD NAS with 10 GbE at a seriously cool price. It has some cons (no device is perfect), but overall, it is a great NAS for those looking for an all-SSD solution.

On the gaming side

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

If you are waiting for Minecraft 2, bad news: the sequel is not coming. This week, Mojang confirmed that the game is not going free-to-play, and there are no plans for a sequel. 16 years after the initial release, Mojang feels no financial pressure to change its monetization system or release a new version of the game.

What is coming to Minecraft (already available, in fact) is a proper pause in the Bedrock Edition. You can now exit to the menu with the game paused without the risk of being blown up by a stray creeper. You will notice a new "Game is paused" message at the bottom of the screen. Also, there is a new Minecraft Movie-themed DLC that is available for free ahead of the movie's debut.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5 on April 17. MachineGames announced that the critically acclaimed title finally has a release date on Sony's console. Moreover, developers prepared a "visually optimized" experience for PlayStation 5 Pro owners, so look out for graphical upgrades over Xbox Series X and the standard PlayStation 5.

Forza Motorsport is turning 20 in a few weeks, and to celebrate the occasion, Turn 10 Studios is teasing the game's upcoming update with new cars and a long-awaited track. The track is Fujimi Kaido, a 10.24-mile long road with 144 turns going up a 2,711 ft summit. Turn 10 Studios says its development team has been busy recreating the track "to modern standards" and that it is the biggest track project to date.

Rare and Bungie teamed together to bring Destiny-themed cosmetics to Sea of Thieves. The crossover is here with an interesting item drop, such as appropriately themed pirate costumes, ship sets, matching weapons, and trinkets. They can be purchased in-game from the Pirate Emporium.

Microsoft released several preview updates for Xbox Insiders. In the Beta Ring, Microsoft introduced new storage tools, while the Delta Ring lost some social features. Alpha and Alpha-Skip Ahead users can try the new Game Hubs feature, which changes the way you launch games from the Dashboard.

There is also a big new update for the Game Bar on Windows. It received a shiny new interface and reworked widgets.

Now, here is some news about cloud gaming. Amazon, for one, partnered with EA to bring Electronic Arts' games to Luna. The multi-year agreement was announced alongside the service expansion to Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

Next, GeForce NOW received a fresh batch of newly supported games. They include inZOI, Atomfall, Half-Life 2 RTX Demo, Beholder, Psychonauts, Galacticare, Bus Simulator 21, and more. You can check out the full list here.

Finally, on the hardware side, we have a new mobile controller from Backbone, which offers a neat translucent design made in partnership with Xbox for those playing games on their mobile devices on the go.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store (hey, it received some much-needed improvements for its download manager) is giving away two cat-themed games. One is Cat Quest, and the other is Neko Ghost, Jump.

Also, be sure to check out the latest edition of our weekly Weekend PC Game Deals series, where you can find city-building fests, RPG bundles, and more sweet deals on games for your computer.

Other gaming stories include the following:

• Discord unveiled a brand-new overlay with better game support and performance.

• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again despite development being "done."

• Star Citizen Alpha 4.1 arrived with orbital lasers, mini sandworms, alien NPC, and more.

• CD Projekt Red confirmed that The Witcher 4 won't be out until at least 2027.

• No Man's Sky received a new update that lets you become an alien paleontologist.

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The Ryzen 9000G lineup would likely ship with AMD's latest Zen 5 CPU cores, a significant step up from the Zen 4 cores of the Ryzen 8000G lineup. The rumored platform for the new APUs is said to be Strix Point, which supports a hybrid core design with up to 12 cores—four high-performance Zen 5 cores and eight efficient Zen 5c cores.

As part of the CPU upgrade, the Ryzen 9000G series is also expected to feature a more powerful integrated graphics solution based on AMD's RDNA 3.5 architecture. The top-end Strix Point variant reportedly comes with a 16 compute unit (CU) GPU, potentially delivering a boost in gaming performance over the 12 CU RDNA 3 iGPU that's found in current Ryzen 8000G processors.

Also, the new APUs are said to feature an AI-focused XDNA 2 neural processing unit (NPU) with the ability to deliver up to 50 TOPS of AI capability. This can pave the way for the first "Copilot+ PC" certified desktop products with the utilization of AMD's on-chip AI capabilities.

It should be added that the Ryzen 9000G line is to be among the last Zen 5-based products from AMD since the company will allegedly switch to its Zen 6 architecture in 2026.

In addition to the Ryzen 9000G APUs, HXL also mentions that AMD may release a Ryzen 9000F line of budget-oriented desktop processors that do not contain integrated graphics. These SKUs would be in demand among price-sensitive PC builders as well as pre-built system vendors.

Source: HXL from X

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News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of February): 874

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Gamers Nexus (2.43M subscribers)

March 30, 2025

Video length: 35m 08s

We recap the last TWO weeks of news in our first episode back from a small break (after the crazy onslaught of GPU and CPU reviews). GN is hosting a meetup and PC repair event, Intel appoints a new CEO, AMD says its GPU demand is "unprecedented," and Valve is rumored to be opening up SteamOS.

00:00 - Recap for the Week

01:14 - GN Updates: Computer Refurb & Meetup

07:50 - Intel Appoints New CEO

12:17 - AMD Says Demand for its GPUs is "Unprecedented"

15:38 - MSI Won't Produce RX 9000 GPUs

18:03 - Rumor: Valve Opening Up SteamOS

19:15 - Qualcomm Expands into Handheld Market

20:47 - PC Gamers Mostly Play Old Games

23:30 - Steam Opens Pathway for Another Scam

26:49 - FBI Warns of Ransomware Scam

29:19 - Modder Gets Half-Life 2 Running on 8MB GPU

32:10 - Professional Smell Testing in GPU Reviews

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Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years.

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of February): 874

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend