Id Software Rejects Unreal Engine 5 Switch After Xbox Layoffs, as Marty Stratton Vows Studio Stays a Tech Powerhouse

The Hot Take: Unreal is great but id tech is silky smooth and has great linux support.

The latest unfortunate wave of layoffs at Xbox, which will result in a loss of 3,200 jobs by July 2027, has affected pretty much every studio, ranging from those that went independent, like Tim Schafer's Double Fine, to those no one believed would be at risk, such as Bethesda. Among these, id Software was hit hard, so much so that the future of the id Tech engine, the impressive game engine that powers the DOOM series and MachineGames' Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, was put in question. According to the studio's Executive Producer Marty…

Read the full article

GPU Suffers From Thermal Degradation Just Because GIGABYTE Forgot To Remove The Protective Film; Company Dismisses User’s Concerns Over Warranty Status

The Hot Take: d0h, glade I didn't stick with Gigabyte after gel-gate.

The user only found it when he opened up his GPU, but it was too late since the protective film had already caused thermal degradation. User Says RTX 3070 Suffered From Thermal Degradation for Nearly Five Years as GIGABYTE Forgot to Remove Protective Film From the VRM Thermal Pads GIGABYTE reportedly made a blunder in the GPU assembly, which was later discovered by the user u/buczi94. The user reports that the problem was discovered only after he disassembled his GPU after using it for nearly five years, which suffered from thermal degradation…

Read the full article

Microsoft removes Windows Management InstrumentationCommand-line (WMIC) from Windows 11

The Hot Take: WMI dies finally. Whats next?

Microsoft has been on a drive to clean up Windows 11 by removing legacy features and components for some time now. The latest example of this is the company’s decision to remove Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) from the operating system. To the casual observer, this is something that has already been consigned to the history books as it was not included in a standard installation of Windows 11. However, the latest move sees Microsoft killing off the ability to add it as an optional Feature on Demand. The loss of Windows…

Read the full article

Intel says it will launch new core with Nova Lake on desktop first, not in data center — VP Robert Hallock hopes enthusiasts ‘do the math’ compared to AMD

The Hot Take: I'm thinking in a bid to win back all the people that moved to AMD because of the issues.

Intel will launch its new core with Nova Lake on desktop first, not in the data center. Tom’s Hardware Premium recently sat down with Intel VP and general manager of the enthusiast channel business Robert Hallock and asked about his reaction to AMD launching Zen 6 first in the data center with new EPYC Venice CPUs — breaking with over a decade of AMD leading with a client release for its new architectures. Hallock opened up about Intel’s enthusiast roadmap and said the company is “very serious” about executing that roadmap. Go deeper with TH…

Read the full article

The PC age began 45 years ago with the breakthrough Intel 8088 processor — 8-bit bus fueled 45 years of x86 dominance

The Hot Take: Always cool with history.

45 years ago, in August 1981, the PC age began in earnest with the launch of the IBM PC Model 5150. At its heart was the Intel 8088 microprocessor, a cheaper sibling of the processor that pioneered the x86 architecture, the famed Intel 8086. Intel’s new affordability-targeted processor, its IBM PC design win, and Big Blue’s decision to allow the making of PC clones would kickstart four and a half decades of PC compatibles dominating personal computing. Forty-five years ago, the @IBM PC, powered by the Intel 8088 processor, helped bring…

Read the full article

Just one instruction on AMD's 2015-era CPUs gets you access to Platform Security Processor, microcode, and System Management Interface — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families cracks open secret memory areas

The Hot Take: d0h!

Many cybersecurity exploits have been deemed The One Ring To Rule Them All, but that moniker is rarely as true as a literal bit that disables the memory mapping on some AMD CPUs, granting access to normally inaccessible areas. With just one instruction, you can access off-limits software like Platform Security Processor (PSP) where the fTPM runs, the System Management Mode (SMM), microcode patch RAM, and other various sundries — in other words, full hardware-level control.The exploit is called Skitter Creek Bath Salts (Skitter), and was…

Read the full article

Chinese Loongson processors have leaky caches, researchers find

The Hot Take: Well now.

Researchers from Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Information Security have found processors made by China’s Loongson have leaky caches that attackers could use to seek specific data. Loongson has developed its own LoongArch instruction set architecture (ISA) that blends approaches used by MIPS and RISC-V. On a site called LoongLeakAttack.com, the researchers explain that they found the leaky cache using a fuzzer, then noticed that the LoongArch ISA manual mentions an instruction that leaves 32 bits of a memory register in an “uncertain” state.…

Read the full article