Online retailer Newegg is trying to clear its shelves of gaming gear right now, likely in anticipation of the next-gen components that will be arriving in the next few months. It’s been a while since any site offered steep discounts on formerly hard-to-find gear. That includes GPUs, gaming monitors, motherboards, AIO CPU coolers, and more. We have no affiliate links here — just a general report of some good deals. is part of a “bonanza” event that the company started a week ago. Newegg says since the first round went so well, it’s now adding more gear to the pile.
Google has spotted a dangerous new breed of malware making the rounds online, but the tool ID’d by security firm Lookout as “Hermit” isn’t your average money-making scheme. According to Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), this spyware was developed by an Italian company called RCS Labs. The firm claims to be on the right side of the law, but that doesn’t change the fact its software is being used to breach user privacy. RCS Labs is one of numerous “lawful intercept” businesses, which work with governments and law enforcement to collect data from targets. Often, that means developing powerful surveillance tools with the help of undocumented security vulnerabilities.
(Photo: PCMag)Time to break out the violins folks, because the world’s largest motherboard manufacturers have a tearjerker of a tale to tell. Both Asus and Gigabyte are projecting significantly lower motherboard shipments for the rest of 2022. In fact, the companies will likely ship 25 percent fewer mainboards this year than in 2021. The big disruptor here isn’t the chip shortage. It’s due in part to the fact they can no longer bundle motherboards with formerly-hard-to-find GPUs. Now that the GPU crisis is effectively over, nobody in their right mind would pay for a bundle like that if they only wanted the GPU.
(Photo: University of Maryland)At the beginning of the year, we reported on an exciting yet precarious : the transplant of a pig heart into a human patient. The experiment unfortunately didn’t end as optimistically as it started, with the recipient showing “signs of acceptance” in the first few days but passing away two months later. Researchers immediately got to work determining what went wrong. Now, the potential reasons for the transplant’s failure are detailed in a paper published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine. David Bennett, a 57-year-old man with terminal heart disease, was considered an appropriate xenotransplantation recipient because of (not despite) the rapid and aggressive progression of his illness.
(Photo: Wayne Robinson/Unsplash)Many of us share a sense of awe at reptiles’ and amphibians’ lengthy lifespans. If you haven’t peered over the fence at a zoo’s desert tortoise while trying to absorb the fact that they’re a cool 93 years old, you’ve probably read about similarly “ageless” creatures, whose scales and slippery skin seemingly ward off the effects of time. But despite our general knowledge that these animals enjoy long lives, most of what we know about their lifespans is anecdotal; few studies have inspected reptiles’ and amphibians’ virtual lack of senescence. One recent study defies that. An international team of 114 researchers recently worked together to conduct the largest known study of reptile and amphibian aging.
Crypto currencies are taking a beating right now. All the big coins are way, way down in price from where they were two years ago, while electricity prices have risen at the same time. For a lot of people, this means that the math simply doesn’t work anymore when it comes to using GPUs to mine crypto. Right now it’s cheaper to just buy crypto, since it’s so “affordable.” As we head into summer, there’s no relief in sight for anyone’s electricity bills. This confluence of events has created something PC gamers have been waiting for since 2019 or so: the mass GPU selloff.
Intel was planning on holding a ceremonial groundbreaking event at its new Ohio fab in July. Now, those plans are on hold. The July 22nd event has been shelved, and Intel says it’s up to Congress whether it will ever be held at all. Intel is calling on the nation’s legislative bodies to pass the CHIPS Act. This would release funds Intel was planning on receiving to help shore up the cost of building out the new megafab near Columbus. The crux of the dispute is over funding. The CHIPS Act was first passed by the Senate in the summer of 2021.
A news agency in Korea is reporting Samsung is about to make a major announcement. The world’s second-largest silicon foundry will reportedly enter mass production of its 3nm process next week. In doing so, Samsung becomes the first global foundry to reach this milestone in advanced node production. It notably beats its main rival TSMC to the punch, as the Taiwanese powerhouse isn’t expected to ramp 3nm until later this year. Intel will reach 3nm sometime in 2023 with its Intel 3 process. The move by Samsung marks its transition from FinFet to Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistors. It’s the first major foundry to make the switch.
(Photo: Turag Photography/Unsplash)Microsoft has decided to retire its emotional assessment technology, as well as place restrictions on the use of its facial recognition systems. In a blog post published Tuesday, the software giant announced that it would be sunsetting facial analysis tools that claim to identify emotional states and personal attributes, like a person’s gender or age. Before, these capabilities were freely available within Azure Face API, Computer Vision, and Video Indexer. Now those who already have access to Microsoft’s emotional-reading features will have one year of use before their access is revoked. “We collaborated with internal and external researchers to understand the limitations and potential benefits of this technology and navigate the tradeoffs,” wrote Sarah Bird, Azure AI’s principal group product manager, in the .
