TechRadar News

• New Apple report claims it's planning to enter the smart glasses space
• Former Meta AR glasses head is also now leading OpenAI's hardware team
• The two companies’ products are several years away from launching

If you’ve been following Apple rumors in recent years, you’ll know that the company reportedly doesn't just want to just develop mixed-reality headsets like the Vision Pro and call it a day – it wants to create full-blown smart glasses that are indistinguishable from a regular pair of specs.

Before now, that’s mostly remained mostly the realm of speculation and leaks. But now, it seems that Apple is taking some solid steps towards understanding what it needs to do to make a set of augmented reality (AR) glasses that can compete with rivals like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.

According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Apple has started conducting internal surveys of other smart glasses available on the market. The focus groups (codenamed Atlas) are comprised of Apple employees rather than members of the public to keep things as secret as possible (although that hasn’t stopped Gurman’s report) and see various Apple workers log what they like and dislike about existing smart eyewear.

The goal is to help Apple understand what people want from a set of AR glasses and what sorts of features, materials and price points would work for its own device. Whatever the outcome, we may not see the results of these efforts for another few years, but it's the first sign that Apple is actively looking to break into the world of the best smart glasses.

OpenAI enters the fray

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Rival companies like Meta have found success by offering relatively accessible smart glasses that may not be as technologically advanced as what Apple wants to achieve, but still offer users plenty of useful features for a comparatively affordable price.

And it looks like another one of Apple’s rivals is thinking of entering the smart eyewear market, as Caitlin Kalinowski, the former head of Meta’s AR glasses team, has just joined ChatGPT maker OpenAI to lead their robotics and consumer hardware division (via TechCrunch). It’s fueled speculation that OpenAI could be seeking to make its own pair of AR glasses.

Kalinowski previously oversaw Meta’s Orion AR prototype, as well as leading the hardware team behind Meta’s virtual reality eyewear for nine years. Posting on LinkedIn, Kalinowski wrote: “In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”

That all means competition could soon heat up for the smart glasses crown. With Apple and OpenAI looking to enter within the next few years, it could be a fascinating time if you want to see the next evolution in wearable technology.

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• iOS 18.2 is currently being tested by developers
• Numerous new features are being spotted
• Upgrades are coming to Find My and Camera Control

With iOS 18.1 now available to everyone, iOS 18.2 is at the developer beta stage – and as that testing continues we're discovering more new features that are on the way, on top of the ones already spotted in the next release.

First up, there's an interesting upgrade coming to the Find My service: the option to share the location of lost items with anyone you like (via 9to5Mac). At the moment, you can only share an AirTag location with trusted friends or family.

The example Apple gives is being able to share your lost luggage location with an airline, but there are a variety of other ways this could come in handy. There's the option to stop sharing at any time, and at most the sharing link will only be live for several hours.

Another feature is a little more behind-the-scenes, with Apple giving app developers the opportunity to share what's on screen with Siri (via MacRumors). That means you'll be able to give Siri (and possibly ChatGPT) commands related to what you're looking at inside an app, whether it's documents or photos, if the developer adds this kind of support.

More camera control

iOS 18.2 beta 2 adds a new AE/AF Lock option for Camera Control pic.twitter.com/OTSYZjvJeQNovember 4, 2024

The third upgrade is to the new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 series. As spotted by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris, a new auto-exposure and auto-focus lock option is on the way for the button – so the current exposure and focus settings would be fixed once the button is pushed.

On top of that, we've got a new double-click speed setting for Camera Control, so you'll be able to change how rapidly your iPhone expects a double click. The new options listed in the iOS 18.2 developer beta are Default, Slow, and Slower.

All this adds to the current functionality of the Camera Control, including zoom and exposure settings. As this is a beta release though, we can't be fully sure that any of these features are going to be kept once the software is pushed out for everyone.

The latest reports suggest that iOS 18.2 is going to roll out to the masses in the first week of December. We're also going to get ChatGPT integration (including a Plus upgrade function) and image generation in this release, by the looks of it.

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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.

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

US data center operator TECfusions has penned an AI infrastructure commitment deal with TensorWave described as “one of the largest” capacity agreements ever made for AI compute.

The deal will see TensorWave lease 1GW of AI capacity from TECfusions’ data center portfolio, with the deployment expected to begin in early 2025.

As part of the agreement, Tecfusion said it will leverage its on-site power generation capabilities to provide reliable services aimed specifically at AI-intensive applications.

"Watershed moment"

In a statement confirming the move, Shawn Novak, Chief Revenue Officer of TECfusions, described the collaboration as a “watershed moment in the AI infrastructure landscape.”

"TECfusions' Clarksville data center, already home to one of the world's largest GPU clusters, is a testament to TECfusions' industry-leading infrastructure for the most demanding AI applications and showcases our capability to handle TensorWave's extensive capacity requirements,” he added.

The collaboration will also help drive regional data center energy stability, according to the firm, as well as sustainable growth.

TECfusions said the strategy aims to both provide reliable power for AI workloads, which are energy-intensive, but also drive long-term reductions in energy costs.

Data center energy consumption has skyrocketed in recent years since the advent of generative AI, with the power-hungry technology placing significant strain on data center infrastructure amidst surging enterprise AI adoption rates.

Darrick Horton, CEO of TensorWave, said the agreement will provide “unparalleled energy independence” and drive the scalability of TensorWave’s AI infrastructure initiatives.

"As a company that specializes in providing AMD Instinct Series GPUs (MI300X and MI325x), TECfusions' rapid deployment model is a game-changer for us,” he said.

“Their ability to bring massive AI-ready capacity online in months rather than years significantly accelerates our time to market to support our customers. This partnership is crucial for maintaining our competitive edge in the fast-paced AI sector."

Moving forward, TECfusions will conduct a phased capacity deployment and a “significant portion” of the 1GW power capacity will be made available by early 2025. According to TensorWave, this phased approach coincides with anticipated demand for the year ahead.

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Back during CES 2023, Cooler Master unveiled a gorgeous – and unbelievably expensive – gaming PC that’s shaped like a shark. But now, if you’d rather buy just the case without all the components and innards, the manufacturer is happy to oblige.

The original Shark X PC was priced at nearly $7,000 and equipped with an Intel Core i7-14700F processor, an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics card, 64GB DDR5 RAM, and 2TB of M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage. But while the case itself is $2,700 less than the full PC, it’s only available in Japan in the Yodobashi Akiba store right now for an eyewatering 658,000 yen, or around $4,300.

While this is certainly an expensive PC or even case to own, it’s definitely eye-catching and makes for a stunning centerpiece in one’s living room. It would be a rare centerpiece as well since most gamers would be rightfully priced out of nabbing one for themselves. And if you only want the case, you still have to import it from Japan since there haven’t been any talks of a global release.

Cooler Master is the kind of the beautiful yet impractical

This isn’t Cooler Master’s only foray into the wacky and unique world of PC cases. In 2023, it revealed Sneaker X, which was a gaming PC shaped like a sneaker. It can accommodate components like ITX form factor motherboards, SFX PSUs, 3-slot GPUs, and up to 64GB of RAM while also equipped with liquid cooling.

During Computex 2024, Cooler Master had an interesting gaming PC with an RGB turntable displaying an action figure – a figure of X-Men's Wolverine to be precise. Of course, this display is a bit impractical since the turntable replaces one of the bottom air intake fans, meaning that the PC will be running slightly hotter. But the price of beauty is always a little steep, right?

At the very least, these designs are extremely entertaining and certainly buck the trend of the boring and dreaded ‘gamer aesthetic’ that plagues many of the best gaming PCs on the market. I understand the need for practicality as the performance demands of high-end gaming can be tough, but it would be nice to get more variety in the case color at least.

Regardless, I look forward to seeing what cool and impractical designs Cooler Master introduces next during CES 2025 and beyond. Or maybe we’ll even see something like the ​​ Motion 1 again, which was a chair that uses haptic technology to swing you around while you game. Kind of like those chairs you see in 4D cinemas, but in your living room for some reason.

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Google Research is showing off a new way to use AI to read handwriting that might radically change how machines convert what you put on paper into digital letters. The InkSight system transforms photos of handwritten words into digital text by leveraging AI without the need for any devices as intermediaries.

The idea is to replace the sometimes fallible optical character recognition (OCR) with AI that can emulate how humans actually learn to read, specifically by rewriting existing text to learn what whole words look like and mean. Doing so required the researchers to tutor the AI in both recognizing and mimicking handwriting by humans.

"Digital note-taking is gaining popularity, offering a durable, editable, and easily indexable way of storing notes in the vectorized form, known as digital ink. However, a substantial gap remains between this way of note-taking and traditional pen-and-paper note-taking, a practice still favored by a vast majority," the researchers explain in their paper. "Our approach combines reading and writing priors, allowing training a model in the absence of large amounts of paired samples, which are difficult to obtain. To our knowledge, this is the first work that effectively derenders handwritten text in arbitrary photos with diverse visual characteristics and backgrounds."

InkSight is more than just an alternative technique. It makes for more accurate results in circumstances that aren't ideal. For instance, if the photo is taken in dim light, has partially obscured text, or is on a confusing background when examined with OCR. The researchers found that humans could read 87% of the InkSight-made tracings of text. Two-thirds were good enough that people couldn't tell them from actual handwriting; you can see below how it looks when InkSight works.

(Image credit: Google) Penned by AI

If you like writing things by hand, InkSight has some potential benefits. Imagine writing by hand in a paper notebook, then showing the notes to your camera to instantly make them searchable and organize them in context with previous notes on physical pages. If you're like me and have particularly messy handwriting, InkSight could help turn your chicken scratch into typewritten text that is still accurate to what you scribble.

On a bigger scale, this could be a crucial tool for deciphering and converting handwritten text from across the centuries into digital form. Even when the text is in a language without much of a digital presence, InkSight could help preserve handwriting to help build up training sources for those languages.

Google isn't the only place where AI tools to decipher handwriting are underway. For example, Amazon's new Kindle Scribe upgrades the e-reader's ability to transform handwritten notes into legible text. There's also Goodnotes, a digital notetaking app that can read handwriting, and recently debuted handwriting editing tools using its Goodnotes Smart Ink technology to turn handwriting into typed text. The added tools let you edit handwritten notes as if they were typed, including aligning notes, copying and pasting, and reflowing the text to make it more logical.

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One of the most popular password managers out there, LastPass, is warning its customers not to fall for the latest scam campaign aimed directly at them.

In a blog post, the company explained scammers are targeting users via the Chrome Web Store. In the reviews section for LastPass’ Chrome add-on, the scammers are adding new content that directs the visitors to fake customer support.

Therefore, when victims who are having issues with the add-on visit the page, they might think that other users are helping them reach customer support directly. In reality, dialing the number shared there starts a conversation with the fraudsters, who will try to navigate the victims to a malicious website, and download malware.

Fake customer support

"Individuals calling this fake support number will be greeted by an individual asking what product they are having issues with and then a series of questions regarding whether they are attempting to access LastPass via a computer or a mobile device and what operating system they are using," explained LastPass.

"They will then be directed to the site dghelp[.]top while the threat actor remains on the line and attempts to get the potential victim to engage with the site, exposing their data."

Investigating further, BleepingComputer found the campaign’s goal is to get people to download ConnectWise ScreenConnect, a piece of remote support and access software that grants the attackers full access to the target computer. The publication also found that the phone number associated with this campaign was used in other similar campaigns, where crooks impersonated Amazon, Adobe, Facebook, YouTube TV, and many, many others. In other words, this is a well-organized team that has been impersonating major corporations and defrauding people for a while now.

As usual, the best way to defend against these attacks is to use common sense and double-check every piece of information found online.

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Seagate and BAE Systems have tested the first high-capacity data storage solution designed for use in space.

The hardened SSD was evaluated aboard the International Space Station as part of a mission aimed at improving data storage for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, addressing challenges such as heat dissipation, unpressurized environments, and the absence of conventional cooling.

This technology could ultimately expand CDNs and support AI-driven applications in space. By adding storage to satellite infrastructures, AI inferencing and real-time analysis could reach previously inaccessible regions, providing last-mile connectivity where fiber or cell networks are absent.

Drives in space

Seagate’s “Space Drive” was part of a broader payload by BAE Systems which included Linux-based software for real-time data processing.

This software enables containerized applications that can be updated in orbit, adapting to the evolving demands of space-based systems.

Additionally, the payload contained a radio frequency sounder and dual-band short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) camera for enhancing atmospheric measurement capabilities, hurricane modeling, and weather forecasting.

“Our team was able to assemble, integrate, and test this payload in just eight months,” Steve Smith, vice president of engineering, science and analysis for BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems told Aerospace Manufacturing.

The 2TB Seagate SSD with PCIe Gen3 x4 connectivity, which you can see in the “Terrestrial Demo Unit” photo below, and which Seagate plans to sell in 2025, has been specially designed to withstand the harsh conditions of space. Delivered to the ISS via a NASA resupply mission and assembled by the astronauts onboard, the device using the Seagate SSDs achieved impressive speeds of over 2Gbps.

Set for one year, the mission will conclude with the payload’s return to Earth for analysis. Engineers from BAE Systems and Seagate will examine the effects of space exposure on the SSD's performance and durability and use this data to refine future designs, advancing resilient storage solutions for space-based applications.

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• Paint 3D won’t be available from the Microsoft Store after today
• Microsoft warned us the app was on the way out a few months ago
• If you install it, you can keep Paint 3D, but it won’t be patched up

Windows 11 (and 10) users should be aware that it’s the final day for one of the optional apps for Microsoft’s operating system, namely Paint 3D.

We should clarify that this is the ‘3D’ spin on Paint, not the vanilla Microsoft Paint app which remains a core part of Windows 11 to this day (and is still being actively developed).

The scrapping of Paint 3D isn’t a surprise, mind, as we’ve had ample warning about the impending demise of the application.

To recap the tale of Paint 3D, you may recall it first graced Windows 10 as a new stock app in 2016, not long after the OS launched, as part of the first update. (This was the ‘Creators Update’ back when Microsoft had a plan to run themed feature updates for Windows 10, an idea that rapidly ran out of steam and evaporated into nothingness).

However, Paint 3D never really got off the ground (we’ll come back to why in a moment), and was removed from the collection of stock apps installed with Windows by default in 2021.

Since then, you could still grab Paint 3D from the Microsoft Store if you wanted the app, but now the final curtain is being drawn. After today, it will no longer be available to download as an option from the store (a fact that Microsoft warned us about via a pop-up back in August 2024).

So, if you want Paint 3D, grab it now, before today is over – and be aware that this is the final nail in the coffin for the venerable app.

Who cares about Paint 3D anyway?

(Image credit: Ollyy / Shutterstock)

Well, it’s a fair question. Indeed, you may have forgotten about Paint 3D completely. It wasn’t a big hit with the Windows 10 audience in general – or indeed Windows 11, though it had been dropped by that time – hence the reason for it getting the elbow.

Paint 3D tried something different in offering the functionality for creating 3D models, as the name suggests, so you could for example use it to turn a photo into a 3D model.

Also, as Ghacks – which reminded us about today’s deadline – points out, it was built to be more touch-friendly than vanilla Paint (with larger icons and sliders that make it easier to use with your fingers).

There was a niche audience that appreciated Paint 3D, certainly, but it was just that, a pretty small number of fans – so Microsoft didn’t push forward with any real drive to further develop the app as a result.

We should note that if you’ve installed Paint 3D, it won’t go anywhere, or be removed from your PC. But if you don’t have it, this is your last chance to get the app.

Bear in mind, though, that Microsoft won’t be doing any work with the client going forward, so if vulnerabilities pop up for example, they’ll remain unpatched. (In theory anyway, though if something particularly huge and gaping opened up exploit-wise, the software giant might take action). In short, you can continue using Paint 3D at your own risk, should you wish to do so.

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The future isn't looking bright for Sunny, as Apple TV Plus has reportedly cancelled the critically acclaimed sci-fi series after one season.

Screen Daily was the first to report the rumor, with the publication writing: "Sources close to the production confirmed that the series, produced by A24, will not return following the 10-episode run that began in July and concluded with a cliffhanger on September 4." TechRadar has contacted Apple TV Plus for comment, and we'll update this article if we get a response.

Apple TV Plus is a sci-fi show utopia, with the likes of Severance, Dark Matter, and Silo all becoming huge successes for one of the best streaming services. Sunny was Apple TV Plus' latest entry to the genre, but despite it earning an impressive 90% Rotten Tomatoes score there seemingly won't be a second season.

While the news hasn't officially been confirmed, Cancelled Sci fi cited that low viewership was a reason for its cancellation. The website said: "This is yet another show that arrived on Apple TV Plus with little in the way of promotion and it did not draw much of an audience. It did not make it into the Nielsen Streaming Rankings during its first season run."

What is Sunny about?

Sunny, which was one of four new Apple TV Plus shows arriving in July 2024 that we couldn’t wait to watch, stars Rashida Jones as Suzie Sakamoto, an American expat living in a future Japan whose life is turned upside down when her husband (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son (Fares Belkheir) disappear in a mysterious plane crash. In an effort to console her, her husband's electronics company gives her ‘Sunny’, one of a new class of domestic robots it’s developed. Suzie and Sunny form an unlikely bond, and together they begin to unravel the dark truth about what really happened to her family.

Sunny is based on the book The Dark Manual by Colin O'Sullivan, and trailer makes the show look like a buddy comedy, but the best Apple TV Plus show is actually more of a mystery thriller that balances humor with themes of grief, loneliness, and friendship. TechRadar's Amelia Schwanke, who spoke to the show's creator, Katie Robbins, found the show to be a sad yet uplifting tech story that raises questions about our relationship with AI. Sunny was shot wholly in Japan, and became known for its quirky, distinctive style.

Jones shared her wish for a season 2 renewal with The Hollywood Reporter, and the cliffhanger ending certainly paves the way for a second series, so we can only hope that Sunny gets picked up by another streamer.

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The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) has suffered its second ransomware attack in as many years.

Threat actors known as Cactus added HACLA to its data leak website, claiming to have stolen 891 GB of files from the organization.

The archives reportedly include, "personal Identifiable Information, actual database backups, financial documents, executives\employees personal data, customer personal information, corporate confidential data and correspondence.”

No details

A small sample was posted as proof of the claims, and soon after, HACLA confirmed the news to BleepingComputer, saying it was currently investigating the incident.

"We've been affected by an attack on our IT network. As soon as we became aware of this, we hired external forensic IT specialists to help us investigate and respond appropriately," a HACLA spokesperson told the publication.

"Our systems remain operational, we're taking expert advice, and we remain committed to delivering important services for low income and vulnerable people in Los Angeles."

The company did not share additional details, therefore we don’t know exactly when the breach happened, how the crooks gained access to the network, or if the information about stolen data is accurate. Furthermore, we don’t know who is affected by the breach, and if the stolen data belonged to employees, business partners, or end users.

HACLA is a public agency that provides affordable housing options and supportive services to low-income residents in Los Angeles, as well as families, seniors, and individuals with disabilities who need this type of assistance. It manages public housing, Section 8 vouchers, and various housing programs aimed at addressing homelessness and promoting community stability.

Cactus is a known ransomware group that first emerged almost two years ago. So far, it has breached more than 250 companies, but has been keeping a relatively low profile lately.

Via BleepingComputer

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• There’s a Google Chrome extension to ChatGPT search that makes using it so much better
• It's easy to install and here we show you how
• Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, calls it "really good"

ChatGPT search, a brand new search engine embedded into the popular ChatGPT chatbot, is already changing the way people search the web, but you can make it even easier to use by using its Chrome extension.

ChatGPT search is fast, accurate, and there are no ads. Unlike Google, it treats search more like a conversation, so you can ask it to search for something, then refine your search with follow up prompts and ChatGPT search will keep the original context of your search going. Lance Ulanoff, editor at large here at TechRadar, was so impressed with ChatGPT search that he said, “I might never Google again”.

Of course, everything in life comes with a downside, and with ChatGPT search there’s currently no way to get access to it unless you were on the original waitlist, or you pay for ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 (about £16 / AU$30) a month. If you were on the original wait list for it then you’ll get it now, even on the free tier.

The only other negative is that unless you are using the app, you have to fire up ChatGPT in your web browser to get to the search option. It’s accessible by clicking the search icon, which functions like a toggle switch, inside the prompt bar. With it set to ‘on’ you are using ChatGPT search.

However, there is a way around having to load up ChatGPT’s website before searching in Chrome, and that’s by using the Google Chrome extension, which means you can search using ChatGPT search by typing directly into your browser's address bar.

The Google extension is indeed a much better way to use ChatGPT search, but the problem with Google extensions is that it’s really hard to find, so here's the link directly to it.

Installing the extension

Once you've installed the ChatGPT search extension for Chrome you can just start to type in the Address bar to initiate a ChatGPT search query. (Image credit: OpenAI)

Go to the ChatGPT search extension page, then click the blue 'Add to Chrome' button and confirm the installation once prompted. That's all there is to do. Now when you start typing in the address bar you'll be searching with ChatGPT, not Google.

You can turn the ChatGPT search extension on and off by going to the Window menu in Chrome and selecting Extensions. You'll see an on/off toggle for the extension here.

If you need even more convincing to install the Google Chrome extension then listen to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.He recently posted on X that the Chrome extension is the best way to use ChatGPT search.

"Hey I'm really sorry to keep hyping our own product but you really should get ChatGPT plus and install the Chrome extension for search," Altman wrote. "I am cheerfully the first to admit when we ship something that isn't very good, but this time it's... really good.”

If the CEO of the company is suggesting this as the best way to use his product, then that’s a pretty strong recommendation.

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The US Department of Justice has shared details of two separate instances of fraud against the government relating to the overpriced sale of IT services and contracts as part of its ongoing investigation into IT manufacturers, distributors and resellers.

A Baltimore federal grand jury has returned indictments against two of the six defendants and charged the other four.

The fraudsters were accused of targeting key government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community.

Six individuals charged over defrauding US government

The first of the two, Victor M Marquez, was charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and major fraud. The Maryland-based IT company owner and two of his associates allegedly created “determined, non-competitive and non-independent” bids to ensure that Marquez’s unnamed company could win.

Marquez was accused of wire fraud conspiracy (worth up to 20 years in prison), wire fraud (adding another 20 years) and major fraud (accounting for 10 years’ prison time) by the federal grand jury.

In a separate incident, Breal L Madison Jr was charged with conspiracy, bribery of a public official, mail fraud and money laundering, defrauding his employer and the US government out of more than $7 million alongside two of his associates.

Madison hid much of his money behind two shell companies; the DoJ added that he also funded a luxury yacht, a Lamborghini and several other vehicles with the money.

Madison faces prison sentences of up to five years for the conspiracy count, 15 years for each bribery count, 20 years for each mail fraud count and 10 years for each money laundering count.

The DoJ did not share specific details about the nature of the fraud, including contract details and parties affected.

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As if Microsoft’s Rewards loyalty program couldn’t get any better; it’s offering a chance to win $1,000,000 (USD) if you make a transition from your current search engine to Bing - starting October 8.

It may sound too good to be true but as Windows Central reports, anyone in the United States, United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, Canada, France, and Germany has the chance of becoming a millionaire, just by browsing on Bing and entering the sweepstake for free.

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has done this, with the possibility of earning points just by searching using Bing previously - but now the stakes are much higher, and it hardly requires any effort. You’ll instantly gain five entries when sharing your link with friends once they enter, increasing your chances of winning.

If you aren’t lucky enough to net the jackpot (there can only be one winner), ten more winners will receive $10,000, which isn’t too shabby!

Is this a sign of bigger rewards in the future?

While we’ve seen a plethora of gifts available to win via Microsoft Rewards before, none of them have been at this magnitude - it’s essentially a free lottery ticket, that only needs you to use your internet browser as normal. Of course, the catch is using Bing over Google (which is still behind Google in terms of usage) and waiting to see if you’re lucky enough.

This is a clear attempt by Microsoft to convince users to switch over to Bing, even if it’s only for the time being. Despite the big push for Bing to dethrone Google (especially with ads on Windows 11), the chances of this making a significant impact on the popular search engine are minimal - especially considering Google’s search functionality in comparison to Bing’s.

Will this work in the long run? Probably not, but it's certainly a great opportunity to showcase the benefits of the search engine such as AI searching capabilities (uses Open AI GPT-4 which has conversational capabilities), that could potentially retain users.

If the jump from rewards like Xbox Game Pass subscriptions to a $1 million prize is any indication, then we could be seeing Microsoft Rewards become far more generous in the near future than before. Sure, this might be a sign of desperation from Microsoft, but we’re not complaining.

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Windows 11 version 24H2, the latest major feature update for the operating system (OS), is acting up again with a peculiar menu glitch in File Explorer, an important part of the OS that allows you to browse through file systems.

This new issue affects the “See more” menu, which flies out when you press a button labeled with three dots (or ellipses) and shows various actions you can do within File Explorer like "Select All" or "View Properties." Originally, the menu was meant to open as a dropdown menu below your mouse cursor.

Unfortunately, a newly discovered bug causes this menu to appear at the very top of the screen, often out of sight, making the menu difficult or impossible to read and use because some options are rendered outside of your screen. Windows Latest reports that this glitch appears while using File Explorer in full screen mode, providing screen recordings of the bug in action.

An easy way out of the woods (or back into the screen)

It’s not the most fatal flaw, but it does have plenty of potential to be incredibly annoying. The good news is that a fix is luckily pretty straightforward. To access the ‘See more’ menu fully, you’ll need to use File Explorer in window mode, then adjust the size of the File Explorer window so that the ‘See more’ menu is visible, even if it opens in its new unusual spot in your display.

Also, it seems like Microsoft is aware of the problem and working on a fix, according to Windows Latest, who asked the company about the bug, and this will be added to a future Windows 11 cumulative update. You can learn more about what Microsoft has in store in Windows Latest’s outline of future Windows 11 updates.

I understand that this isn’t a major issue for Windows 11, but this kind of baffling (and annoying) error is now considered pretty common for 24H2 and Windows 11 in general. Most people will probably get used to this state, but it also creates an opportunity for users to be lured away by the promise of an intuitive, functional OS that doesn’t malfunction as often.

While Windows 10 now enjoys the biggest user base out of Microsoft’s OSs, it also garnered a reputation of being buggy sometimes after updates, and it looks like Windows 11 isn’t escaping that fate – for now at least, unless Microsoft puts a little more effort into countering that.

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