Technology

Y2K is heading to one of the best streaming services, joining a host of other great movies arriving on Max in March. You'll have to wait a little longer for this one, as it's released on April 4, but there's plenty to sink your teeth into before then.

Max continues to impress me with its huge library of A24 movies, two of which were listed when I rounded up 6 Max movies and shows I’m most excited about.

If you haven't seen much about Y2K, you can check out the bonkers trailer below, and I mean that in the best way possible. Unfortunately, the movie was a box office and a critical flop, but I'm willing to make my mind up about it. If nothing else, it's a very fun concept.

What is Y2K about?

(Image credit: A24)

Kyle Mooney's directorial debut, Y2K, follows a group of friends as they discuss New Year's Eve plans while their parents are out. It's a big one as it marks a new millennium, but their celebrations don't go as planned after the year 2000 problem causes all technology worldwide to come to life and turn against humanity. This makes for some baffling situations, as anything electronically powered starts to attack, such as a toy car, a fan, and more.

The concept is silly enough to be considered ridiculous by some, but I'm hoping this one will be fun, even if it's not particularly highbrow.

It won't be arriving at the best Max movies round-up due to its poor Rotten Tomatoes score, but it might find a place in my personal recommendations. We'll have to wait and see!

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• Researchers from Mandiant saw a new hacking campaign targeting Juniper Networks routers
• They attributed it to a Chinese actor, targeting telcos, defense, and tech firms
• Users are urged to upgrade and scan their devices

Chinese hackers are targeting Juniper Networks routers with different modifications of a backdoor malware, in an attempt to access defense, technology, and telecommunications organizations in the US, and Asia.

Google’s cybersecurity team Mandiant wrote an in-depth analysis on the group earlier today. As per the report, the researchers first spotted malicious activity in mid-2024, and attributed it to the China-nexus espionage group UNC3886.

TechRadar Pro has reported about this threat actor on numerous occasions in the past, when they were observed targeting VMware, Ivanti VPN, and other products, with backdoors and malware.

Six malware samples

Mandiant says that the attackers infiltrated Junos OS-powered devices by circumventing Veriexec, (Verified Exec), the device’s kernel-based file integrity subsystem that protects the OS from unauthorized code binaries such as libraries and scripts.

“Execution of untrusted code is still possible if it occurs within the context of a trusted process,” the researchers explained. “Mandiant’s investigation revealed that UNC3886 was able to circumvent this protection by injecting malicious code into the memory of a legitimate process.”

UNC3886 targeted its victims with six distinct malware samples, all of which are a variant of the TINYSHELL backdoor with unique capabilities. While all have the same core backdoor functionality, they differ in terms of activation methods and different OS-specific features.

Mandiant says that the attackers “continue to show a deep understanding of the underlying technology” of the appliances being targeted, and recommended users upgrade their Juniper devices to the latest images. These include mitigations and updated signatures for the Juniper Malware Removal Tool (JMRT), which should be activated after the upgrade to scan the integrity of the endpoints.

“At the time of writing, Mandiant has not identified any technical overlaps between activities detailed in this blog post and those publicly reported by other parties as Volt Typhoon or Salt Typhoon,” Mandiant added, suggesting that Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon, and UNC3886, are distinct entities (but possibly working under the same umbrella).

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• GAT Online publisher Take-Two is suing Paiao Network Technology, the owner of online marketplace PlayerAuctions
• The lawsuit claims PlayerAuctions makes millions from facilitating the sale of illegitimate content and hacked accounts
• Such sales can give new players massive advantages in GTA Online, basically enabling a form of cheating

As GTA V is one of the biggest games in the world, it’s no wonder developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive take it very seriously, so much so that the latter is suing online marketplace PlayerAuctions for allegedly selling unauthorized content that infringes GTA V’s copyright.

Spotted by Polygon, the lawsuit is directed at Chinese company Paiao Network Technology, which owns the PlayerAuctions platform, and alleges that the marketplace sells "thousands of listings for unauthorized, infringing GTA Online content – including heavily modified player accounts, in-game assets, and virtual currency – all gained by using hacking software, cheats, and technical exploits."

The filing accuses PlayerActions of doing this with the full knowledge that sellers on the website were “engaged in rampant infringement and other unauthorized conduct” and that it makes millions in reverence by taking a cut in these illicit transactions.

While it’s not illegal to sell your GTA Online account, it does infringe the terms of service for GTA Online, which is one of the issues Take-Two has with PlayerAuctions. But the big issue is that third-party sellers are selling illegitimate items that have been gained by hacking accounts or using exploits to sell high-ranked game accounts or masses of game currency, as well as unlock content that would usually require an investment in gaming time or legitimate purchase via GTA Online’s virtual currency.

On top of all of this, selling such accounts gives players a massive advantage in GTA Online that’s tantamount to cheating, meaning online marketplaces like PlayerAuctions could be seen as nirvana for people who want to get ahead in a game without putting in the gaming grind.

While in-game purchases are absolutely part of GTA Online, they tend to be balanced in a way that doesn't give players an overwhelming advantage, and people who don’t want to spend real money for in-game currency can still earn virtual money by playing the game and completing heists.

“Through these offerings, PlayerAuctions markets to Take-Two’s customers an otherwise impossible experience: new players can begin GTA V with billions in VC and with a massive arsenal of in-game content — such as vehicles, clothing, and weapons — configurations only possible by hacking and modifying the GTA V game in breach of the Rockstar TOS. In some cases, these listings advertise ‘unlock all’ accounts preloaded with maxed-out character levels and virtually all in-game assets available to acquire in GTA Online,” Take-Two’s lawsuit explained.

GTA V is arguably one of the largest games in history, with the online element making billions of dollars for Rockstar and Take-Two. As such, both companies are bound to take action on anything that could mess with their money-making machine.

While it’s hard to feel a great deal of sympathy for Take-Two, especially as GTA can make hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per quarter, having masses of cash hopefully means Rockstar has the resources and funds to make GTA 6 one of the best entries in the series, if not one of the best games ever. Rockstar’s last major game was Red Dead Redemption 2, arguably a masterpiece in open-world design and cinematic storytelling – it’s one of my favorite games – which I’m sure benefitted from the wild success of GTA V and its online element.

We’ll have to see how this lawsuit plays out, but by the looks of it Take-Two has a strong claim; I for one wouldn't like to be in the shoes of Paiao Network Technology’s legal team.

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• Bolt Graphics unveils Zeus GPU, targeting rendering, HPC, and gaming
• Claims include 10x faster rendering, 6x FP64, 300x simulation gains
• Zeus supports up to 2.25TB memory, 6x 800GbE, 8x PCIe Gen5

Bolt Graphics has announced what it says is the fastest graphics processor ever, which is quite the claim.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, the semiconductor startup says Zeus has a “completely new GPU design for high-performance workloads including rendering, HPC, and gaming” and that it “addresses performance, efficiency, and functionality limitations with legacy GPUs.”

Bolt Graphics adds Zeus offers up to 10 times faster rendering, 6 times higher FP64 HPC performance, and up to 300 times faster electromagnetic wave simulation speeds compared to legacy GPUs.

Stunning path tracing performance

It supports expanded memory through Bolt’s architecture, allowing up to 384GB per PCIe card and up to 2.25TB per Zeus unit in a 2U server, with rack configurations reaching 180TB. Zeus also integrates 400 GbE and 800 GbE Ethernet interfaces directly into the GPU, reduces energy use despite the higher performance, and will be available in PCIe, server, and cloud form factors.

"Zeus increases performance while simultaneously reducing power consumption," said Darwesh Singh, Founder and CEO of Bolt Graphics. "I'm proud of the Bolt team's dedicated effort to create a solution that addresses key customer pain points, enabling them to be more productive and bring their ideas to life."

Slides published by ServeTheHome show Zeus is based on a RISC-V RVA23 out-of-order scalar core and there are a number of different architectures.

The Zeus 1c26-032 is a single-chiplet design and supports DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b, along with an RJ45 BMC port - typically seen on DPUs, servers, and other infrastructure components. There’s also a QSFP-DD port for 400GbE and two PCIe Gen5 x16 slots. The 1c26-032 includes 32GB of LPDDR5X and up to 128GB of DDR5.

The Zeus 2c26-064/128 is a two-chiplet module, while the 4c26-256 is a four-chiplet configuration. In the case of the latter, which has 500W of chip power, each chiplet is paired with 64GB of LPDDR5X and up to 512GB of DDR5, bringing the total memory capacity to 256GB of LPDDR5X and up to 2TB of DDR5. Combined, the GPU supports up to 2.25TB of total memory.

It also includes six 800GbE (OSFP) ports, which ServeTheHome notes is “a lot of connectivity coming out of a GPU. Putting that into perspective, that is ~12x PCIe Gen5 x16 lanes worth of bandwidth.”

The slides show the Zeus 2c26-064/128 outperforms the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 in path tracing workloads by roughly 9x and 4.8x, delivering 154 Gigarays compared to 17 Gigarays (RTX 4090) and 32 Gigarays (RTX 5090). In FP64 compute performance, Zeus achieves 10 TFLOPS, significantly ahead of 1.4 TFLOPS (RTX 4090) and 1.6 TFLOPS (RTX 5090) - roughly 7.1x and 6.25x higher, respectively.

Comparing the Bolt Zeus 4c26-256 against Nvidia’s consumer GPUs, path tracing performance is approximately 18x higher than the RTX 4090 and nearly 10x higher than the RTX 5090, while FP64 compute throughput is over 12x greater.

All of this should be taken with a pinch of salt of course. As ServeTheHome observes, “This feels like an announcement where we really want to see product. The fact that we are still a few months away from early developer kits makes this feel a bit early. On the other hand, if Bolt Graphics has Zeus competing with a combination of NIC and consumer GPU, while offering more memory, then it could be a really neat combination. I am always a bit skeptical of products until we see them live.”

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• New AI tools are coming to Google Workspace
• Automatic translation is coming to Google Chat
• Your image and voice will be sharper with Studio lighting and sound

Google Workspace is adding new AI powered tools to both Google Meet and Google Chat, without the need to buy a separate Gemini add-on. These come in the form of Generated Background Images and Studio Look, Studio Lighting, and Studio Sound for Google Meet, as well as Translate for me, coming to Google Chat.

This follows Google’s recent infusion of Gemini AI across services, most recently with its introduction into Google Calendar - so that users no longer have to manually add diary entries, or schedule meetings.

Translate for me, the AI injection into Google Chat, is an in-chat automatic detection and translation tool which can identify over 120 languages, and translate messages whilst keeping the original available for review.

Google Meet gets studio tools

For Google Meet, AI is coming with new Generated Background Images, which can help users create unique and bespoke meeting backgrounds, and can obscure your surroundings during a meeting, just in case your home office isn’t as presentable as you’d like.

Also coming to Meet is Studio Look, which uses machine learning to “detect and enhance” image quality with noise reduction and image sharpening, making sure you’re always in focus.

It won’t just be your image that’s sharper though, as Studio Lighting and Studio Sound will be introduced to simulate studio-quality lighting, with automatic light position and brightness adjustments - but only for devices that meet specific browser and processor requirements.

Your voice will sound more balanced and crisp, with Studio Sound making sure even the low quality headset users are still understood perfectly.

If you want to get a bit more creative, Google Drawings is also bringing in Gemini’s image background removal function, to help reduce time spent on fiddly tasks and give you more time to perfect your drawings.

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• Apple's M3 Ultra defeats most desktop CPUs in terms of power efficiency
• This is thanks to its ARM-based instruction set compared to x86 used for desktop processors
• It does lag behind the M4 Max in power efficiency, however

Apple's new Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) has received critical acclaim from multiple reviewers thanks to its M3 Ultra processor, despite apparently losing out to the M4 Max in single-core processes. However, its performance capabilities aren't where the praise stops - a new benchmark suggests there is another, equally important benefit to using the M3 Ultra chip compared to other processors on the market.

As highlighted by Wccftech (based on the Ars Technica Mac Studio review), the M3 Ultra's benchmark in Handbrake (a video encoding program that can be used for benchmarking both CPUs and GPUs) reveals that it's only slightly less power efficient than its Mac Studio M4 Max counterpart - and it also proves to be far more efficient than other powerful desktop processors. This is likely due to Apple opting for an Arm-based architecture instead of x86, which is used for most mainstream desktop CPUs, notably those offered by Intel and AMD.

Ars Technica's analysis shows that the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) draws 77.3W of power on average in Handbrake, slightly lagging behind the M4 Max variant which uses an incredibly low 50.2W. While the latter is more efficient, the M3 Ultra arguably makes up for it with its better performance in multi-core processing based on benchmarks - albeit at a much higher price.

Up against x86 processors, the M-based chips are the clear victors - the prime examples are the Intel Core i9-14900K using 233.6W, and the AMD Ryzen 9950X using 194.6W on average. It's worth noting that none of there aren't any other ARM processors among the comparisons; Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips are also highly power-efficient, but were likely omitted as they’re still a long way off the likes of the M3 Ultra in terms of performance.

The Mac Studio is, at first glance, just a super-chunky Mac mini - but there's more going on under the surface. (Image credit: Future) Buy the M3 Ultra Mac Studio if you can, but the M4 Max model makes more sense for most users…

There’s no denying that these power-efficiency claims are impressive. But unless you're looking for the absolute best hardware available with deep pockets to justify it, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio is overkill in my eyes.

It might be more powerful than the M4 Max (specifically for gaming and multi-core processes), but I'd argue it may not be a significant enough margin to justify spending more. The M4 Max model starts at $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499 while the M3 Ultra starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999 - bear in mind, the M4 Max isn’t that far behind the M3 Ultra in terms of performance, while also being more power efficient. I don't know about you, but the M4 Max model seems like the easy choice here.

If Apple's M3 Ultra Mac Studio is on your radar for its gaming capabilities, I would still argue the M4 Max is the reasonable option - or even the shockingly impressive M4 Mac mini. We all want great performance from our hardware in some capacity - but it's always worth considering factors like power consumption and whether the price tag is justified, and this is a perfect example of that.

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