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These new features are coming to your Android phone and tablet and WearOS watch.

Android 15 has finally arrived. Here are the notable features and upgrades Google is rolling out.

The Bentgo bento box was made for kids, has compartments for all their snacks and is now $10 off.

This taupe-colored cookware set looks like a million bucks but won't hurt your wallet.

Alibaba Cloud has shared more information on a technology it uses to enhance fault prediction and detection for its servers, claiming a 10% improvement compared with existing models.

The Chinese company’s latest tool, Time-Aware Attention-Based Transformer (TAAT), addressed the limitations of existing machine learning tools that overlook the importance of log timestamps.

Detailed in a new research paper co-written by Alibaba Cloud workers and a researcher from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, TAAT uses timestamps to make failure predictions more accurate.

Alibaba Cloud boost server failure predictions by 10%

The paper’s authors highlight growing concern over server reliability and stability in light of the “wide-spread applications of cloud computing,” which impact the availability of virtual machines.

Noting that previous failures can help companies predict future failures, the company has opted to use timestamps to improve accuracy.

TAAT integrates semantic and temporal data by using the Google-developed Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) language model, which Alibaba says is good for analyzing log data. An enhancement to BERT’s capabilities add a time-aware attention mechanism.

Consequentially, Alibaba Cloud is now using TAAT in daily operations to improve predictions. The company has also released the real-world cloud computing failure prediction dataset used in its study to help further developments from the community. The dataset contains approximately 2.7 billion logs from around 300,000 servers, collected over a four-month period, and is believed to be the largest log of its kind.

With TAAT, Alibaba hopes for more reliable cloud infrastructure, and while the tool is not yet available for public download, it paves the way for an increasingly cloud-based landscape.

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A beloved beluga whale with a mysterious past was found dead in the waters of Norway over the weekend. Admirers are paying tribute as authorities investigate.

(Image credit: Al Armiger)

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a nice mini tablet that doubles as a ‘normal’ phone, but it sometimes feels like you’re not getting the best Pixel experience despite the $1,800 price.

VideoCardz has spotted, via Olrak29 on X, the appearance of AMD's upcoming Threadripper 9000 series on NBD (a shipping manifest aggregation and query system). Codenamed "Shimada Peak" the information provided positions this as-yet unannounced series as AMD's most powerful processor for the prosumer market.

The first SKU identified is a 96-core part, potentially representing the full configuration for the next-generation Threadripper. The CPU is based on AMD's Zen5 architecture, the latest in its high-performance core lineup. This Threadripper variant will belong to the Zen5-based Genoa package, which comes in two configurations: one with Zen4 cores and another with denser Zen4c cores. It is likely, VideoCardz says, to be 12 CCDs, each with eight classic Zen 5 cores.

Threadripper 9000 is expected to support the same socket as the existing "Storm Peak" platform, sTR5. AMD will offer two motherboard designs: the WRX90 and TRX50, targeting the workstation market and high-end desktop (HEDT) market respectively.

Launch coming soon?

Despite the inevitable interest this NBD leak has generated, the release of the Shimada Peak series is not expected any time soon. The previous generation, Threadripper 7000, launched in Q4 2023 after a long delay, and AMD has not disclosed a specific release timeline for Threadripper 9000. VideoCardz speculates that AMD might announce this new processor at the upcoming press event in October or, failing that, at CES 2025 next January, but there’s nothing official yet.

While the exact lineup for AMD's October 10 press event remains under wraps, expectations are high that the company will unveil its next-generation server and data center lineup, including the Ryzen AI 300 PRO, Zen5-based EPYC Turin (Classic and Dense flavors), and Instinct MI325X AI processor.

VideoCardz points out that the Threadripper 9000 would be a fitting addition to the October
event's lineup, and put it in great company, but raises the all-important question, “Is AMD ready?” AMD is staying mum right now, but we shall find out its plans in due course.

Shimada Peak pic.twitter.com/5UnpSlRPHEAugust 27, 2024

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Dell already released its first AI-powered laptop in 2024, the Dell XPS 13 equipped with Snapdragon X Elite, and now it plans to follow up with another entry in the line, the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 AI processor.

The latest XPS 13 features a dedicated NPU capable of up to 48 TOPS, an incredibly high amount that’s only beaten out by two other laptops — the upcoming HP OmniBook Ultra with a Ryzen mobile CPU with an NPU that boasts 55 TOPS and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 equipped with an NPU in that chip boasting 50 TOPS.

The AI-powered XPS 13 is also claimed to feature 26 hours of battery life, all while streaming on an FHD+ (1920 x 1200) display. It has two other more powerful display configurations — a QHD+ (2560 x 1600) and a 2880 x 1800 OLED — so the battery life should still be quite excellent.

As for aesthetics and build quality, the Intel-equipped Dell XPS 13 is mostly unchanged with its thin and lightweight chassis, seamless Gorilla Glass touchpad, edge-to-edge keyboard design, and the infamous touch-based touchpad. Not a bad thing, of course, as the XPS 13 is well-known for this look.

Will Intel pull through in the end? 

I sang praises in my review of the Dell XPS 13 with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite CPU, citing both its exceptional performance and battery life thanks to the aforementioned chip. The laptop ran with speed and efficiency that I hadn’t experienced in a Windows laptop in years, with a battery that lasted up to 20 hours between charges.

And though Dell claims that this upcoming Intel version of its laptop will feature an even higher battery life, I remain skeptical. Intel’s processors have been rather lackluster in the battery life category for several generations now, thanks to the focus on sheer performance over power management. And yet, the Snapdragon has it beat out in both, showing the true potential of Windows laptops, even with some limitations for Windows on ARM.

It’s difficult to gauge how much better the Intel CPU in this laptop will be since we haven’t really seen it in action yet on the AI PC side. This could end up being what brings Team Blue back from the jaws of defeat or, if performance ends up still inferior to Snapdragon, could end up as the swan song for the manufacturer.

Only time will tell how the Intel version of this machine will fare. Hopefully, it will dispel my doubts and end up competitive with the Snapdragon one, as more options and competition in this space are always welcome in my book.

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Every true crime fan’s wish was granted back in 2022 when Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was dropped on Netflix as it became the platform’s most-watched show at the time – it's currently the best streaming service's third most-watched series ever. Now the anthology’s long-awaited second season has a release date, and this time it follows the story of another case popular among true crime fans. 

Netflix finally dropped the teaser trailer for Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in March, making it one of the most exciting shows that we couldn't wait for. The second season will be arriving on the platform on September 19 and, as its title implies, will reenact the events around the case of the Menendez brothers who were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989 – one of the most followed true crime stories. 

Being one of the star titles of everything new on Netflix in September 2024, you can expect the second insert in the anthology series to pack an all-star cast. The best Netflix show’s creator Ryan Murphy, aka the king of television anthologies, has roped in a number of his esteemed acting collaborators including Chloë Sevigny, Nathan Lane, and Leslie Grossman, along with Javier Bardem.  

A mere 54-second trailer (see above) shows the Menendez family sitting for what appears to be an innocent family photo, overlapped by an ominous pulsing sound followed by the motherly plea "I need to know what’s going on between you and the boys". Ending with the brothers embracing each other covered in blood splats, the second season of Murphy’s Monster anthology points to another shocking retelling of a gruesome tale, but this time feels injected with a sense of empathy for the brothers. 

What can you expect from Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story? 

Inspired by the true story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, the second season is set to follow the two brothers (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch) who shot and killed their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez (Chloë Sevigny & Javier Bardem) in their home in Beverly Hills on August 20, 1989. Following the aftermath of the murder, the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder at ages 21 and 18. 

At the time of the case, the brothers shared that the motive behind their brutal killings stemmed from years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse from their father, who the brothers believed would kill them if they exposed him. But the prosecutor argued that they committed murder in order to obtain the family’s multi-million dollar estate. 

In the show’s first season, not only did it follow the murders committed by Jeffrey Dahmer between 1978 and 1991 across the 10 episodes, but included scenes that gave an insight to the lives of his victims and the mind of Dahmer himself. Looking at the trailer for the new season, we get the impression that it will follow a similar narrative structure to the first season, but will hit differently on an emotional level. 

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard just got a brand-new gameplay demo exploring several new locations and the mage class.

As part of IGN's month-long coverage of The Veilguard, which was teased last month through BioWare's roadmap, fans were treated to 22 minutes of gameplay guided by the game's director Corinne Busche, and creative director John Epler.

After sharing a series of screenshots last week, the demo started by giving us our first in-game look at the player's base of operations in the Fade, The Lighthouse, which is owned by Solas.

As Rook, the playable protagonist, walks around the base the area looks huge and you can see there are many places you can explore, for instance, the seven companion bedrooms. 

Each has their personal space in The Lighthouse, and from what the developers teased, these places can be upgraded as you progress through the story to fit the respective character's personality. 

BioWare also confirmed that the game will feature visual, glowing alerts that will let players know when a companion is ready to speak with them, so there's no worry about missing optional dialogue. 

As for the rest of the demo, the directors guide us through the beginning of a quest for one of your companions, and Grey Warden, Davrin; along with his adorable griffon Assan. 

After accepting the quest, the player heads to the Crossroads - an important place in Solas' history where he originally began his plans against the Elven Gods, as well as a place the developers said players can spend more time exploring and learning about moments in Solas' history. 

Although this is Davrin's personal quest, he has proceeded to the quest location on his own because, as the developers put it, it gives the companions more autonomy in the story. 

We also got a decent look at a new party combat, specifically with the mage class and the orb and dagger weapon duo. The developers compared this class to Dragon Age: Inquisition's Knight Enchanter specialization, which allows the player to stack elemental damage on an enemy, and then use the dagger to detonate the magic.

BioWare also demonstrated the new skill combinations that can be used alongside your companions, which can deal greater damage to enemies. Since there are several classes in the game, players will be able to experiment by combining mage abilities with Harding's rogue skills, for example. 

The developer also confirmed that when players are knocked down in battle, companions will be able to revive them with the click of a button.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard launches on October 31 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC. 

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Following poor sales and a drastically low player count, live-service PS5 multiplayer hero shooter Concord is being taken offline just two weeks after its full launch.

The news was confirmed by Concord game director Ryan Ellis via an official PlayStation Blog post. Ellis confirms that the game will be taken offline on September 6, 2024. That gives you just three days, at the time of writing, to squeeze in some play time if you happen to own the game.

In the post, Ellis writes: "We have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.

"While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method."

The post goes on to detail how players who purchased Concord on PC via Steam or the Epic Games Store can obtain their own refunds, as well as those who bought the game through various other retailers.

It's nothing short of disastrous news for Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game's publisher, and its plans to produce more live-service games, as well as Concord developer Firewalk Studios, naturally. The game, which the developer confirmed took a frankly absurd eight years to make. The team had also stated it was "strapped in and ready to push [the game] for years to come."

While Concord's budget and sales numbers remain unconfirmed, a report by Forbes' Paul Tassi suggests the game had made approximately $1 million, selling an abysmal 25,000 copies. With Tassi also stating that budget estimates are "around the $100 million mark," that's a pretty tragic return on investment.

It remains to be seen as to whether or not Concord will make a comeback; the wording of the PlayStation Blog post, particularly the desire to "explore options," implies there may be a future for the game yet. However, given its Steam all-time peak concurrent player count of 697 (according to SteamDB), it seems like Concord and its players don't have much of a future to look forward to.

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According to new Nikkei reporting, China has become the leading spender on chipmaking equipment, amassing $25 billion in investments during the first six months of 2024.

Moreover, the spend is expected to continue at the same rate, with the country likely to hit $50 billion on semiconductor equipment by the end of this year.

So far this year, China has spent more than South Korea, Taiwan and the US combined, highlighting the country’s major buying power and its commitment to bolstering the sector amid US and EU-imposed export tariffs.

China is spending big on chipmaking equipment

Clark Tseng, SEMI's senior director of market intelligence, summarized: "Concerns over potential further [export control] restrictions also pushed them to pull in and secure more equipment they could buy in advance.”

Beyond the four walls of China, global chip industry association SEMI (cited in Nikkei’s article) noted that the likes of Japan along with countries in Southeast Asia, America and Europe are all likely to increase spending in the sector by 2027, fuelled by the trend of localizing production in order to circumvent restrictions and tariffs as well as reduce reliance on other nations, which could pose a security issue.

In comparison, South Korea, Taiwan and the US have all decreased spending in the sector year-over-year thanks to tough economic conditions.

Looking ahead, this year’s 20% market growth is expected to continue, with a further 20% growth predicted by 2025. While artificial intelligence has undoubtedly fuelled chip sales, future developments around software-defined vehicles and other smart technologies will continue to push the market in an upward trajectory.

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Eight legs, one web and a 38% discount. What's not to like?

V-color has announced the launch of a world-first in the form of its new RGB DDR5 O CUDIMM system memory.

The CUDIMM RAM sticks – which stands for Clocked Unbuffered DIMM, as opposed to a standard DIMMs (Dual In-line Memory Modules) for PCs, and we’ll come back to the difference – will come in 32GB (2 x 16GB) and 48GB (2 x 24GB) packs of varying speeds.

The DDR5 RAM will start at a transfer rate of 6400MT/s and run up to 9200MT/s (or more with overclocking, which is the idea with this memory). In short, the higher-end flavors are very fast indeed.

As the name tells us, the V-color RAM boasts RGB lighting, and looks slick with or without the lighting on, as the bar for the RGB is either silver or gold when the lights are turned off. It looks pretty smart, for sure.

Moreover, V-color has used a nifty new heatsink design for improved cooling. The company tells us that the RAM runs some 2% to 5% cooler than its previous heatsink with this new patented design.

V-color didn’t give us any details on the pricing yet.

(Image credit: V-color) Analysis: Clock wisdom

What’s the big deal about CUDIMMs compared to traditional DIMMS then? The CUDIMM memory modules come with a clock driver on the memory stick itself, so the RAM doesn’t have to rely on the system clock. Having a clock right there on the RAM module leads to better stability and reliability, which becomes increasingly important as you push DDR5 RAM faster and faster.

And indeed these V-color RAM sticks are reaching hugely fast speeds with the top SKUs which hit 9200MT/s as mentioned (not quite as fast as G.Skill’s DDR5 RAM kits that we saw at Computex 2024, mind, which reach 10,600MT/s).

The improved cooling here should help overclockers really push the boundaries, and this product could end up on our list of the best RAM modules – but doubtless when the price tag for this V-color RAM is revealed, it’ll be very expensive.

Via Wccftech

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Intel launched its latest mobile processor series, the Intel Core Ultra 200 series (known as Lunar Lake), this afternoon at an event in Berlin ahead of the start of IFA 2024.

The new system-on-a-chip (SoC) promises substantial performance increases over last year’s Intel ‘Meteor Lake’ Core Ultra 100 series, as well as competitive performance against archrival AMD and newcomer Qualcomm in the thin-and-light laptop market.

With the launch of Intel Core Ultra 200 series chips, laptop manufacturers like Lenovo, Asus, and others are starting preorders today, with delivery and in-store availability starting on September 24.

The new chips were originally announced at Computex 2024 back in June, and now we have a whole lot more detail on the architecture and performance of these chips. Lunar Lake’s microarchitecture has been completely rebuilt from the ground up, with a new focus on energy efficiency while also delivering the kind of gen-on-gen performance uplift that one would expect with a new processor generation.

As an example of this performance and efficiency marriage, Intel said that for chips running at 20W, which would be around the midrange of the laptop market, an 8-core single-threaded Lunar Lake chip would match the performance of a 22-core multi-threaded Meteor Lake chip. This is due to the tripled performance-per-thread that Lunar Lake’s new architecture provides over the last-gen Meteor Lake chips.

Serious performance across the board

On the graphics side, Intel is promising up to 50% better graphics performance from the new Intel Xe2 graphics cores (the same architecture that will power Intel’s next-gen Battlemage desktop GPUs) over the Xe1 cores in Intel Meteor Lake. This includes better real-time ray tracing performance—which, when combined with Intel’s XeSS graphics upscaled, could make it possible to play ray-traced PC games at 1080p on low to medium graphics settings on an integrated GPU.

And we certainly can’t skip over the NPU performance of Lunar Lake, as Microsoft’s new Copilot+ AI PC push has been a major innovation in computing in 2024. In terms of NPU performance, Intel Lunar Lake gets up to 48 trillion operations per second (TOPS), which is among the fastest NPUs currently on the market (Qualcomm’s competing Snapdragon X Elite chip offers 45 TOPS) and Intel says that its real-world application performance in apps like Adobe Lightroom and GIMP’s Stable Diffusion plug-in is substantially better than its competitors.

These are laptops, after all, and maybe the most important feature of this chip is its battery life - and Intel says that a Lunar Lake laptop can get up to 20.1 hours of battery life, which is substantially more than any previous Intel-based laptop, and a stark contrast to the past few years where laptop battery life took a backseat to high-end performance.

Of course, none of this has been independently tested, so take everything with a grain of salt for now, but given the stakes for Intel, Lunar Lake is at least teasing a major show of force in the AI PC market.

A major opportunity for Intel at a particularly challenging time

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

After announcing major layoffs and cost-cutting measures across the company in recent months, Intel could really use a win. 

With Qualcomm making a splash in the laptop market with its Snapdragon X series SoCs and AMD Ryzen AI 300 chips beating Intel to market, Intel is the last of the three chipmakers to release its AI laptop chips. Intel would really like you to believe that the best was saved for last, and the claimed performance for its new Lunar Lake chips is certainly compelling.

If Intel is able to deliver on the promises it’s made today, not only will it retain its status as the premier laptop chipmaker in a market it absolutely dominates by market share, but it will give itself a major shot in the arm as it heads into 2025 where competition from AMD and Qualcomm is expected to be fierce.

Fortunately, the more the three chipmakers fight it out to deliver better performance and efficiency, the better for the end user looking to upgrade their pandemic-purchased laptop in 2024 and 2025.

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