Technology

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VPN support for next-generation Windows computers strengthens as another one of the best VPN apps on the market launches its dedicated app.

Today, November 5, 2024, Proton VPN unveiled its native application specially developed for ARM-based devices. Users can expect all the provider's core functionalities, privacy, and security features natively supported for seamless performances.

Alongside the new release, the Swiss provider also revealed an exciting lineup of upgrades which are set to be officially released throughout the winter season. Keep reading as I walk you through everything you need to know.

ARM VPN support, for Windows and beyond

The long-awaited Snapdragon X Elite chip Landed on Windows devices over the summer, offering users better battery life and super-fast performances thanks to its dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which can handle up to 45 trillion operations per second.

While the release was surely exciting for Windows aficionados – Apple launched its ARM-based M1 processor back in 2020, in fact – Snapdragon VPN apps still weren't ready at that time. This delay is because providers had to build their VPN app from scratch to be compatible with Windows ARM devices – and this needed some time.

Proton VPN said to have worked in close collaboration with Microsoft to deliver a fully compatible VPN app. This means that also subscribers using Windows' latest computers can now enjoy a secure and private browsing experience.

"Overall, it was a smooth build despite the specialist nature of building apps for ARM devices," Antonio Cesarano, Product Lead at Proton VPN told me. "We’ve worked hard to make it easy to identify and download the right version, while also preparing our support team for a growing number of requests from ARM users.

Cesearno confirmed, in fact, that the team is currently working on extending ARM support for other platforms – namely macOS and Linux.

Proton launched its native-ARM Windows VPN app after a successful Beta period. (Image credit: Proton)

Proton VPN has joined a handful of Windows VPN providers already offering a native application for Windows ARM devices.

TechRadar's top pick, NordVPN, unveiled its native app for Snapdragon PCs only a few weeks ago. Private Internet Access (PIA) launched its ARM-native app back in August, with Windscribe and Surfshark also offering ARM-native Windows VPN apps.

ExpressVPN has been the only provider so far to take a different path, coming up with an "innovative" solution for its ARM-compatible VPN. With the release of Microsoft’s new Prism emulator, the provider believes it's now possible for emulated apps to match the quality of a native build. The team then decided to harness this new opportunity by shaping its in-house WireGuard-inspired VPN protocol, Lightway, accordingly.

However, Cesarano believes that native technologies perform better, hence the decision to build a native implementation for ARM users. "We were able to do this for two reasons. Firstly we use the standard version of Wireguard, and we also use open-source technologies, which happen to be the most secure," he added.

A winter of upgrades

As mentioned earlier, the provider has also unveiled some details for further updates expected to be launched over the next few months. These upgrades include:

• IPv6 support on more apps. Already supported across Proton's browser extensions and Linux apps, IPv6 promises to improve VPN functionality and security.
• Port forwarding on macOS and Linux. Already available on the Windows VPN app, port-forwarding is a feature that routes connections through the Proton VPN firewall to enable external devices to access computers on a private network through a VPN.
• Guest mode for iOS and iPadOS. In July, the provider ditched credential logins for Android to make its free anti-censorship features more accessible. The team is now bringing this popular feature to its iPad and iPhone VPN apps.
• New Windows and iOS/iPadOS apps. Perhaps the most exciting upgrade, the provider is set to unveil new apps for Windows and iOS devices. Ceserano told me users can expect lots of improvements such as "further customizations, new mobile widgets, and some battery optimization for mobile apps, as well as improvements specifically for gamers."

For more information on past and new releases, you can check the provider's dedicated blog post on its website.

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Too much else is at stake with the economy and elections.

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We know the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is going to be powerful – that almost goes without saying – but exactly how powerful is less clear. Now though, we have a slightly better idea, thanks to an early benchmark.

A screenshot of a Geekbench result for what’s apparently a US model of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has been shared by leaker @Jukanlosreve, and it shows 12GB of RAM along with impressively high scores, with a single-core result of 3,148 and a multi-core score of 10,236.

To put that in perspective, the average single-core score achieved by the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is 2,137, and the average multi-core result is 6,680, so the scores shown in this Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra benchmark are massively higher.

The multi-core score at least is also higher than the multi-core score achieved by the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with that phone managing an average single-core score of 3,392 and an average multi-core result of 8,352.

(Image credit: Geekbench / @Jukanlosreve) Don't read too much into one benchmark

So in other words, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra could be astonishingly powerful – but ‘could’ is the operative word there, as this is just one benchmark, so it could be an outlier. In fact, it’s just a screenshot of a supposed benchmark listing, so it could even be fake.

Plus, an earlier Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra benchmark recorded lower – but still impressively high – scores of 3,011 for single-core and 9,706 for multi-core.

So we wouldn’t read too much into these latest results, but it’s certainly possible that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will have the iPhone 16 Pro Max beat. Either way, it’s sure to be very powerful – leaks suggest it will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and that certainly has impressive specs on paper.

We should find out how exactly how both that chip and Galaxy S25 Ultra perform early next year, with the Samsung Galaxy S25 line likely to launch in January or February.

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• Gigabyte indirectly mentioned 16-core X3D Zen 5 chip in a press release
• Flagship CPU should get a major boost from Gigabyte’s turbo mode
• AMD is expected to reveal new flagship at CES 2025 if rumors are right

AMD’s flagship 3D V-Cache processor for the Zen 5 family has again been leaked, this time as part of a press release penned by Gigabyte.

We know that the Ryzen 9800X3D is incoming – actually later this week, on November 7 – as AMD already announced it, and Gigabyte mentions that chip in the press release (noticed by German tech site ComputerBase) on the subject of the benefits of its ‘X3D turbo mode’ (which we’ve been hearing a lot about lately).

The interesting bit is that Gigabyte mentions “performance increases of up to 18% for incoming Ryzen 9000 series 16-core X3D processors” (using said turbo mode) as well as the 9800X3D.

No other Ryzen X3D CPUs have yet been revealed, but the rumor mill strongly believes that the Ryzen 9800X3D (8-core workhorse) will eventually be joined by the Ryzen 9900X3D (12-core) and Ryzen 9950X3D (16-core) processors.

So, it seems that this is an indirect confirmation that there will indeed be a 16-core X3D flagship, which will almost certainly be the Ryzen 9950X3D (there’s no reason AMD wouldn’t stick to its previous naming scheme, after all, following the Ryzen 7950X3D flagship for Zen 4).

On top of this, as VideoCardz (which flagged the ComputerBase post) points out, the Ryzen 9950X3D was actually mentioned – using the chip’s full name – by Thermal Grizzly recently, with the firm telling us that the flagship will be compatible with various cooling solutions that it makes.

There have been plenty of rumors about the Ryzen 9950X3D (and 9900X3D for that matter) running alongside speculation about the 9800X3D before that processor was formally unveiled by AMD.

At this point, it would be a shock if there wasn’t a 16-core Ryzen 9950X3D inbound, but we won’t get to see the CPU revealed in the immediate future if the rumor mill is correct on the release timeframe. While the 9800X3D is about to arrive, the other Ryzen 9 models for the Zen 5 X3D range aren’t expected to be aired until CES 2025, with a launch probably shortly thereafter.

(Image credit: Shutterstock) Analysis: The benefits of turbo mode for the Zen 5 flagship

What’s interesting about the turbo mode Gigabyte is stoking hype around is that it apparently applies a raft of tuning measures to 3D V-Cache processors, including disabling SMT (multithreading) which can improve gaming performance, and also disabling one CCD (Core Chiplet Die, or chiplet for short).

Now, the Ryzen 9950X3D should consist of two chiplets (of 8-cores apiece, likely one with 3D V-Cache, and one without, as is the case with the 7950X3D). And, in some situations, with some PC games, it’s not necessarily the best idea to have both of those chiplets active. So, using the turbo mode will intelligently turn off one CCD to improve performance – it may seem odd the 8-cores can be faster than 16-cores, but that is indeed the case sometimes, and at any rate, for many games, 8-cores is plenty enough anyway.

This CCD issue was one of the reasons why PC gamers preferred the 7800X3D over the 7950X3D – well, that and the cost – but with the Zen 5 flagship, it seems this may no longer be the case (save for the point about the 9950X3D being expensive, which it undoubtedly will be).

In Gigabyte’s press release, performance boosts of up to 18% for the 16-core X3D processor are highlighted, compared to 5% for the 9800X3D, and the fine-tuning around those CCDs is likely to be a big part of the reason why – and equally the reason why this generation’s flagship might be more tempting for gamers. You’ll definitely need deep pockets, though, especially as AMD has hiked the price for the 9800X3D (slightly), so the same may be true of the 9950X3D.

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• More than 50 games are to receive PS5 Pro enhancement patches on launch day
• Titles include Alan Wake 2, Demon's Souls, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• PS5 Pro launches this week on November 7

With PS5 Pro arriving in just a couple of days, you might be curious to know exactly which games you can expect to receive PS5 Pro enhancement patches especially if you've put down a PS5 Pro pre-order of your own.

Thankfully, Sony has you covered with an official PlayStation Blog post which confirms more than 50 PS5 games are set to receive PS5 Pro enhancement patches when the mid-gen console launches on November 7.

These enhancement patches will typically allow for better performance and image quality overall, offering framerates of 60fps - 120fps with no compromise to resolution as we often see on the base PS5 console. PS5 Pro will also make use of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (or PSSR) - a dynamic resolution solution like Nvidia's DLSS that helps to keep images and performance crisp and smooth during gameplay.

Sony has already prepared bite-sized showcase videos for some of its games including Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5 Pro trailer as well as one for Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The full list of PS5 Pro enhanced games arriving on day one can be viewed at the PlayStation Blog post above, but we've also included it here below for your convenience.

• Alan Wake 2
• Albatroz
• Apex Legends
• Assassin's Creed Mirage
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• EA Sports College Football 25
• Dead Island 2
• Demon's Souls
• Diablo 4
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• Dragon's Dogma 2
• Dying Light 2 Reloaded Edition
• EA Sports FC 25
• Enlisted
• F1 24
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Fortnite
• God of War Ragnarok
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
• Kayak VR: Mirage
• Lies of P
• Lords of the Fallen
• Madden NFL 25
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• Naraka: Bladepoint
• NBA 2K25
• No Man's Sky
• Palworld
• Paladin's Passage
• Planet Coaster 2
• Professional Spirits Baseball 2024-2025
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Resident Evil 4
• Resident Evil Village
• Rise of the Ronin
• Rogue Flight
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• Star Wars Outlaws
• Stellar Blade
• Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown
• The Callisto Protocol
• The Crew Motorfest
• The Finals
• The First Descendant
• The Last of Us Part 1
• The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered
• Until Dawn
• War Thunder
• Warframe
• World of Warships: Legends

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In the IT world, repatriation is when businesses bring back their services, applications or data from public clouds to in-house, be it to private cloud or on-premise. After years of companies leveraging offerings from large cloud computing service providers like AWS and Azure, the evidence – both anecdotal and research – suggests the tide has turned and companies are wanting to regain full control.

The Barclays CIO Survey, for example, revealed that the “proportion of respondents planning repatriation rose from 49% in 1H21 to 69% in 2H2”. By 1H24 it had increased to 83%, which is “the highest reading since the survey has been conducted”. Interestingly, storage and databases were the most likely assets to be moved back to private cloud or on-prem.

But why now are companies choosing to repatriate? And how hard is it to do effectively?

A costly service running out of power?

One of the key reasons for the move to repatriation is, naturally, cloud cost management. Cutting back on fees paid to service providers has become a necessary step, especially in an uncertain economic landscape. Yet this isn’t the only factor. The hype around the cloud was building so greatly that it too is naturally starting to level off. Why be tied to the cloud with managed services or serverless offerings when you can now run it on your own hardware and have full ownership?

The continuing evolution of cloud services and the methods cloud providers use to expand their services are generating even more costs for customers. This ongoing change to services to match what customers might want and need also means organizations are having to alter how their own services work to make the most of the new provisions – but crucially, without interrogating just how much this will add to their monthly cloud subscription bill. The fear of falling behind by not adopting new products inevitably results in higher cost structures, even when the new services might not be necessary.

But, if using the public cloud is starting to run out of power, what do organizations need to achieve repatriation effectively?

A move requiring careful considerations

Again, cost – and capital investment – is the first item on the agenda. Quite simply, do you have enough investment accessible and ready to go? Cloud costs generally fall under operational expenditure. However, building or re-implementing on-premise cloud is likely to be capitalized and therefore needs to be budgeted for appropriately.

What’s more, organizations need to adopt a proactive approach to training, learning and skills enhancement. In today’s businesses, on-premise clouds are evolving at the same rate as the public ones – they necessitate a similar level of skill sets, cloud management and tools to operate them. CIOs therefore need to frankly assess whether they can provide the investment in people and skills to do this in-house. If this isn’t the case, repatriating by themselves might not be the best course of action.

An assessment of these areas must take place before embarking on any repatriation, not only to ensure CIOs have buy-in from senior level but also to mitigate any risks – and this is something requiring serious consideration.

Before withdrawing from the cloud, companies need to decide if they will just run on the mainframe or if they are still after the benefits of cloud. If the latter is the case, then careful thought is required to map out how IT will still deliver these benefits, including facilitating virtualization, containers and adopting these technologies in house.

Is the future hybrid?

With the vast majority of CIOs now looking to repatriate, how will this trend evolve over the next few years and what will a typical structure look like?

Just as remote working was followed by many companies settling for hybrid, flexible arrangements, a similar occurrence may occur between cloud and on-prem solutions. From costs to security to flexibility, customers are considering these factors and concluding that self-ownership of the base metal and adopting on-prem approaches isn’t necessarily a bad strategy.

When it comes to cloud, it’s all about having the ‘right fit’ approach. If it makes sense and gives the company the agility and scalability required, use it – and the same applies to on-prem. In this light, having all of one or the other isn’t always a necessary solution. That is why many are opting for hybrid approaches because, just like with work patterns, it suits them best and gives them the benefits from both worlds.

The right fit approach

Increasing costs and falling hype around the cloud are key reasons driving the growing trend to repatriation. Companies are looking to regain control and manage their services in-house, be it on private clouds or on-premise. However, careful consideration is required by CIOs to honestly assess whether a repatriation is both possible and beneficial. If they don’t have the budget or skills, it can bring more risk than good.

As more CIOs look to repatriate, what is emerging is a hybrid approach, where self-ownership isn’t seen as a bad thing but the benefits of both cloud and on-prem are explored and integrated into operations. Like with any decision, it’s wise to do it if it's well thought through, the right fit and suits you best.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

The film industry is renowned for vividly depicting an imagined near future. Think humanoid robots (I, Robot), memory erasure (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or even life extension (Vanilla Sky). Inevitably, some portrayals and predictions are wide of the mark; others, however, give viewers a glimpse of what technology is to come.

While we still haven’t unlocked the full potential of fully automated cars or jetpack transportation, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the novel, Minority Report, managed to correctly anticipate some aspects of the future – such as personalized digital ads, iris recognition software and kinetic virtual interfaces. Subtly, though, the film’s most central theme has become its most prescient: technology capable of predetermination.

Set in 2054, the sci-fi whodunnit imagines a world in which a trio of ‘precognitive’ humans can foresee violent crimes before they’re committed. Tom Cruise stars as a detective accused of ‘future-murder’, with the narrative following his attempts to acquire the titular ‘report’, alleged to contain information integral to the incriminating prophecy.

In reality, it’s fair to say we tend not to rely on clairvoyants as credible sources for identifying impending issues. However, the film’s ‘pre-crime’ measures do share similarities with the ways we now use AI tools to protect our digital ecosystems – coincidentally bringing Gartner’s premonition to life that ‘there is no future of IT operations that doesn’t include artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps)’.

Perhaps the modern-day relevance of the 22-year-old Minority Report is why a stage adaptation was launched in the UK this year…

Back to reality

Today, IT managers have a big task on their hands. They’re responsible for keeping their business operational and secure – while striving to constantly improve the digital experiences (DEX) they provide.

Alongside their teams, IT leaders are expected to deal with the flood of notifications and alerts that occur as a byproduct of managing huge numbers of applications within unnecessarily complex digital estates. On top of this, they’re also tasked with triaging and remedying a varying severity of incoming help desk tickets.

According to market research, over a third of managers (38%) feel overwhelmed by this mounting burden of information – showing it’s not unusual for IT infrastructure to become so overloaded with data that it begins to obstruct operational efficiency and clarity.

This presents a challenge that requires IT teams to seamlessly juggle their time and people – but unfortunately, the majority of businesses don’t have a full armory of Hollywood technology at their disposal. The best way to address these problems is to get ahead of them.

“Now, the system can work for you”

What today’s businesses need, then, is software capable of identifying and resolving issues before they escalate into notifications, alerts or tickets. Or, to use a term from Minority Report: ‘precognitive’ technology.

AIOps can be that solution. Platforms are available on the market today that proactively manage IT operations on behalf of IT managers and their teams – taking the burdens of resource and cost away from human labor, and towards digital autonomy. This empowers the IT estate to run more self-sufficiently, allowing IT leaders to refocus on bigger issues, like delivering superior DEX or maximizing commercial opportunities.

The added flexibility and freedom this permits IT managers is surely why 45% of those polled in Riverbed’s Global DEX Survey identified AI as being increasingly business-critical – the most of any new or familiar technology expected to reshape digital experiences in the next eighteen months.

“We see what they see”

Imagine a scenario in which a well-respected retailer experiences higher volumes of digital traffic during peak times. If their website lacks the agility to cope with this increased demand, they risk encountering issues like downtime or transaction failures. Similarly, the applications, devices and networks they rely on to deliver exceptional service in-store or in the customer contact centre might also falter, with employees contacting support teams in their droves. Altogether, insufficient and outdated IT could affect their sales, reputation and customer satisfaction.

This hypothetical organization could avoid these issues by embracing AIOps, which uses AI and machine learning to conduct an ongoing appraisal of performance metrics and network patterns – IT’s very own ‘minority report’ if you will. By analyzing the historical evidence they collect, these platforms can then identify anomalies and predict forthcoming issues, such as overwhelmed servers, disk space shortages or application incompetency's.

These ‘pre-visions’ – to borrow more jargon from the film – offer the kind of data-driven insights that support the strategic interests of IT teams. Decision-makers can rely on this added end-to-end visibility to develop a comprehensive image of their organization's digital vulnerabilities, before then targeting the relevant changes. To make things even simpler, many intelligent automation platforms can even implement these fixes without the need for human intervention.

A new age

By proactively surfacing fledgling issues and automatically remediating them before they develop into active problems, AIOps relieve IT teams of the responsibility of finding and fixing these concerns themselves. Harnessing these added capabilities empowers businesses to increase their uptime and deliver accelerated network performance – providing their customers with exceptional digital experiences.

Eliminating emergency error resolutions and avoiding digital downtime also considerably reduces IT team workload. In this way, the extra security and efficiency granted by AIOps enable organizations to unlock substantial cost savings.

While the progress we’ve made in the tech industry might not have realized Steven Spielberg’s full cinematic vision quite yet, the emergence of sophisticated AIOps has ushered in IT’s very own Minority Report era.

Not only are businesses experiencing enhanced network reliability, but their newfound time, money and resources can now be reallocated towards embracing the next phase of digital innovation – whatever that might be.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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