In the lead-up to next month's CES trade show in Las Vegas, NVIDIA will unveil its latest advancements in artificial intelligence - including generative AI - and a spectrum of other cutting-edge technologies. Scheduled for Monday, Jan. 8, at 8 a.m. PT, the company's special address will be publicly streamed. Save the date and plan to tune in to the virtual address, which will focus on consumer technologies and robotics, on NVIDIA's website, YouTube or Twitch.

AI and NVIDIA technologies will be the focus of 14 conference sessions, including four at CES Digital Hollywood, "Reshaping Retail - AI Creating Opportunity," "Robots at Work" and "Cracking the Smart Car." And throughout CES, NVIDIA's story will be enriched by the presence of over 85 NVIDIA customers and partners.
Read full story

More...

Starfield Played By 13 Million Players and Bethesda Promises Updates Every Six Weeks Next Year
Bethesda has released its "end of the year update" for Starfield, as well as shared some statistics from the game, including the fact that it has been played by 13 million players. In addition, Bethesda has also promised updates every six weeks, starting in February next year.

While the published statistics do not give a lot of details and those 13 million players do not translate to actual sold games, mostly due to the Xbox Game Pass, it does have some fun facts, including that the game has over 22 million days played, with 40 hours as an average playtime per player, and that players have visited nearly 2 billion planets. As of February next year, Bethesda's new updates for Starfield will include everything from quality-of-life improvements to content and feature updates. Bethesda has also promised the all new gameplay options, as well as the official mod support with the launch of Creations. The first major expansion for the game, Shattered Space, is also under development and more information should be available next year.

More...

GoDeal24 Ultimate Software Sale: Last-minute Gifting Ideas
This Christmas, give your loved ones Genuine, Globally Valid software. This is an excellent last-minute gifting idea, given that it is completely electronic, and needs no shipping. Get Office 2021 Professional Plus, the most powerful productivity suite, at just $25.25, save big on multi-PC packs. Also check out Office 2021 and Office 2019 for Macs. Windows 11 Pro, the most powerful PC operating system, can be had at $13.25. Check out great combo deals on your favorite editions of Windows and Office to save even more. Merry Christmas!

Buy Office 2021 Professional Plus at $25.25 | Buy Office 2021 Professional Plus 2-PC at $46.25 | Buy Office 2021 Professional Plus 3-PC at $65.25 | Buy Office 2021 Professional Plus 5-PC at $75.25 | Buy Office 2019 Professional Plus at $22.25 | Buy Office 2019 Professional Plus 3-PC at $64.99 | Buy Office 2021 Home and Business for Mac at $49.25 | Buy Office 2021 Home and Business for Mac 2-Macs at $94.25 | Buy Office 2019 Home and Business for Mac at $28.99 | Buy Windows 11 Pro at $13.25 | Buy Windows 11 Pro 2-PC at $24.75 | Buy Windows 11 Pro 3-PC at $34.45 | Buy Windows 11 Pro 5-PC at $50.12 | Buy Windows 11 Home at $13.05 | Buy Windows 10 Pro at $8.25 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 2-PC at $14.25 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 3-PC at $21.25 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 5-PC at $34.15 | Buy Windows 10 Home at $8.15

Please use the coupon code SGO62 on the following items to avail the prices you see here.
Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2021 Professional Plus at $32.56 | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2019 Professional Plus at $28.29 | Buy Windows 11 Pro + Office 2021 Professional Plus at $36.59 | Buy Windows 11 Pro + Office 2019 Professional Plus at $34.11

Have a really long list of people you want to gift? Go bananas with our bulk deals.
Buy Windows 10 Pro 5-PC at $325 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 100-PC at $600 | Buy Windows 11 Pro 50-PC at $400 | Buy Windows 11 Pro 100-PC at $750 | Buy Office 2021 Professional 50-PC at $1,050 | Buy Office 2021 Professional 100-PC at $2,000

Please use the coupon code SGO50 on the following items.
Buy Visio Professional 2021 at $30.23 | Buy Project Professional 2021 at $33.82 | Buy Windows Server 2022 Standard at $26.13 | Buy Windows Server 2022 Datacenter at $30.75 | Buy Visual Studio 2022 Enterprise at $60.00 | Buy Windows 10 Enterprise 2021 LTSC at $12.81
Check out great deals on system utilities you may want.Read full story

More...

Steam Winter Sale Kicks Off With Some Great Deals
Steam has launched its Winter Sale 2023, which runs from December 21st to January 4th, offering some impressive deals on popular games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo 4, Hoghwarts Legacy, Alan Wake 2, Assassin's Creed Mirage and others.

Although it does not offer free games, like it is the case with Epic Games Store Holiday Sale or GOG's Winter Sale, Steam might have the cheapest price on some games that you might have missed. There are plenty of titles on the list with discounts from 30, up to 75 percent, and it might be the perfect time to get some games that you might have missed.
Read full story

More...

New Chinese Online Gaming Regulations Send Tencent, NetEase, and Other Gaming Stocks Crashing
China, earlier today, brought into effect new online gaming and gambling regulations, which aim to curb down the time spent by gamers online, and remove all incentives to play daily, by regulating the way games reward gamers to play daily or often, causing them to spend more time and money online. The announcement sent shockwaves through the financial markets, causing investors to drain about $80 billion in value from two the leading online gaming stocks, Tencent and NetEase. The regulations essentially set spending limits for online games, by spelling out the exact ways in which game studios can monetize their online experiences and play reward systems. Tencent lost about 16% in share price, while that of NetEase crashed by 25%. Prosus, which owns a 26% stake in Tencent, slid by 14.2% in the markets. This is expected to have an effect on Western markets that open for trading in a bit.

More...

HP OMEN Transcend OLED Monitor Detailed Ahead of CES 2024
Hot on the heels of LG's UltraGear 4K OLED monitor with Dual-Hz feature, specifications and pictures of the upcoming HP OMEN Transcend 4K OLED monitor have leaked online. It will come with 32-inch 4K OLED panel with 240 Hz refresh rate and peak brightness of 1000 nits in HDR mode. The monitor will feature HP's Omen Tempest Cooling Tech to mitigate the risk of burn-in problems, as well as support for AMD FreeSync and Dolby Vision.

The rest of the known specifications, reported by Windows Report, include KVM switch, a feature that is quite popular in monitors these days, as well as HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 support. It also includes several other USB Type-C and Type-A ports. The monitor is expected to be the star of HP's OMEN CES 2024 lineup.

More...

Microsoft Pulls the Plug on Windows Mixed Reality, Reportedly Downsizing VR Division
Microsoft is discontinuing Windows Mixed Reality. This was discovered when the company added it to a list of deprecated Windows features. The Windows Mixed Reality platform, along with its accompanying Mixed Reality Portal app, and Mixed Reality for Steam VR, are on the list. For now it is deprecated, and Microsoft says that it will be removed in a future release of Windows. Mixed Reality was released in 2017, during the thick of the VR craze in the tech industry, a time when Facebook, having acquired Oculus, and betting big on the Metaverse, an endeavor that cost the company over $20 billion since. Mixed Reality served as a gateway to games and apps in the VR space. The company developed its own HoloLens Mixed Reality headset rivaling Oculus Rift, and got its OEM partners, such as Acer, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and HP, to invest in ones of their own. In all this, it doesn't look like Microsoft is winding down its enterprise-focused HoloLens 2 headset just yet.

More...

ASUS BIOS Update Improves Intel Core Ultra 155H "Meteor Lake" Performance/Watt
UltrabookReview, which recently took the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 for a spin, noticed something interesting with the Intel Core Ultra 155H "Meteor Lake" processor powering it—apparently Intel is still working with its device partners to improve performance and efficiency, and a UEFI firmware update (BIOS update) from ASUS improves the processor's performance/Watt. The reviewer compares the notebook with its original BIOS version 201, to the updated version 203, and notices improvements in performance/Watt at 28 W. The firmware apparently updates the notebook's power management. The improvements are most apparent with Cinebench R23, where the best-run score with the original 201 firmware was 12357 points, and the updated 203 firmware was 13873 points (a 12.25% improvement). You can catch the review in the source link below.

More...

Samsung and Naver Developing an AI Chip Claiming to be 8x More Power Efficient than NVIDIA H100
Naver, the firm behind the HyperCLOVA X large language model (LLM), has been working with Samsung Electronics toward the development of power-efficient AI accelerators. The collaboration brings Naver's expertise with Samsung's vast systems IP over silicon design, the ability to build complex SoCs, semiconductor fabrication, and its plethora of DRAM technologies. The two recently designed a proof of concept for an upcoming AI chip, which they iterated on an FPGA. Naver claims the AI chip it is co-developing with Samsung will be 8 times more energy efficient than an NVIDIA H100 AI accelerator, but did not elaborate on its actual throughput. Its solution, among other things, leverages energy-efficient LPDDR memory from Samsung. The two companies have been working on this project since December 2022.

More...

Austistic Lapsus$ Hacker Who Leaked GTA 6 Clips Sentenced to Life in a Hospital
18-year old Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, UK, was a key member of the international hacking gang Lapsus$, which, among several cases of cyber crime against tech giants, has been behind the recent leak of the Grand Theft Auto VI video clips, ahead of the official trailer by Rockstar Games. Over the years, Lapsus$ hit big tech companies, including Rockstar Games, NVIDIA, and Uber, with their exploits assessed to have caused these companies about $10 million in losses. In an interesting twist to the case, the Kurtaj was deemed by doctors unfit to stand trial as he is severely autistic, and so the jury in the case was asked to determine only whether or not he committed the acts of cyber crime, and not if he did so with criminal intent.

The judge hearing the case said Kurtaj's skills and desire to commit cyber crime meant he remained a high risk to the public. While on bail from his previous arrest for hacking NVIDIA and UK telecommunication giants EE and BT, and in police protection in a hotel, Kurtaj pulled off his most daring hack of breaching Rockstar Games, using only an Amazon Firestick, his hotel's TV, and a mobile phone. He stole 90 clips of unreleased footage from gameplay of Grand Theft Auto VI. He also broke into Rockstar's internal Slack channel, threatening to leak the game's source code if the studio didn't contact him within 24 hours. He was immediately re-arrested and in lock-up until his trial. Rockstar Games told the court that it cost the company $5 million to recover from the hack, in staff billable hours.
Read full story

More...

CableMod Recalls 12VHPWR v1.0 and v1.1 Angled Adapters
CableMod issued a safety recall of its 16-pin 12VHPWR angled adapters, versions 1.0 and 1.1. The company cites safety issues behind the recall. This includes both the company's 90° angled, and 180° hard connectors. The company observed that the contact points in the male connector is improper, causing it to overheat and melt into the GPU. The safety issue only affects CableMod's hard adapters, and not its angled cables. Owners of these cables are advised to stop using the adapters immediately, and contact CableMod to be part of the recall, and further service recovery options.

More...

(PR) ENERMAX Introduces The StarryKnight SK30 V2 Airflow Mid-Tower PC Case with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C
ENERMAX, an industry-leading force dedicated to designing high-performance computer hardware and cooling solutions, today announced the new StarryKnight SK30 (SK30 V2) mid-tower PC case, a follow-up and upgrade of its last-generation SK30 PC case.

The SK30 V2 comes with three pre-installed 140 mm and one 120 mm ENERMAX SquA RGB ADV fans with PWM function. The SquA RGB ADV fan, as one of ENERMAX's most powerful ARGB fans, delivers 40% stronger airflow than other regular-case fans with an enlarged blade surface. The combination of air-inlet and vortex-frame design will not only bring in more air but also direct and concentrate airflow across the system's components.
Read full story

More...