Microsoft has taken a few swings at making Windows work with ARM processors, stretching all the way back to Windows RT. It took that and a few more disasters before Microsoft realized it needed x86 software support. Today, on ARM is a reality, though not an extremely widespread one. Microsoft’s might not change that, but this tiny ARM-based desktop PC could be the start of something big. Project Volterra was announced at Microsoft’s Build conference, alongside a new suite of ARM development tools. Microsoft didn’t reveal all the specs of Project Volterra, but we did get a good look at the exterior of the matte black box.
(Photo: Coolcaesar/Wikimedia Commons)A group of employees at Activision Blizzard have made history by voting to join a union. Jessica Gonzalez, a former Activision employee who helped the group of 28 quality assurance testers organize, live streamed the vote count Monday as 19 employees voted in favor of joining the Game Workers Alliance. All 28 QA testers work for Raven Software, an Activision subsidiary that employs about 350 people. The organizers’ motivation is based on longstanding management issues, in which leaders communicate poorly, underpay staff, and require staff to work long hours. All three issues are reportedly exacerbated when the company is close to a new launch—a phenomenon known as “crunch” that occurs across the video games industry.
(Image: @Chi11eddog)With Computex happening this week a lot of interesting PC projects have appeared online. One of the trends we’re seeing emerge is a move towards hiding all of a PC’s cables. The result is not only a much cleaner appearance, but improved airflow. We previously covered an ambitious project from Gigabyte known as . It involves a custom motherboard with all its connectors on the back, fitted into a custom case. The result is a case/motherboard pairing that is bereft of all connectors when viewed through its side window. Gigabyte even added a custom GPU to the kit that also has its power connectors mounted behind it.
If you’ve been OK with the fact that Microsoft hasn’t pushed a recommendation to “upgrade” to Windows 11 to your PC yet, that will likely change soon. Microsoft has finally declared it ready for “broad deployment” almost seven months after it launched in October of 2021. This means it’ll begin pushing upgrade notices to people who haven’t yet received them. Upgrading is free, of course, should you choose to go along with it. You will need to be running Windows 10 version 2004 to upgrade. The change in the operating system’s status was posted recently to the . This is seemingly the culmination of Microsoft’s “phrased rollout” of Windows 11.
“TV will rot your brain!” We’ve all heard that old canard. The idea that screen time makes kids dumber is a staple of the “Father, I cannot click the book” genre of boomer humor. But science is turning that narrative on its head. A newly published report using data from an ABCD Study indicates that screen time doesn’t rot kids’ brains after all. On the contrary: video games might actually make kids smarter. The ABCD Study The Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is a gigantic longitudinal study of American child health and brain development.
While LG over a year ago, there are still a lot of these devices floating around. Anyone unlucky enough to be using one of those phones on T-Mobile is in a pickle today. with such frequency that you can’t use the phone for more than a few seconds at a time. The service in question is known as IMS or “IP Multimedia and voice Service,” which is an essential part of making a phone capable of voice calls and SMS messaging. Thus, it’s pre-installed on devices and doesn’t have an interface or app shortcut. It’s likely LG phone owners had never even thought about IMS until it began popping up in a crash dialog in the past few days.
If there’s one thing that unites PC builders of all stripes, it’s the difficulty of cable management. A lot of people (looks in mirror) would love to have cleaner wiring for their PC, but they feel it’s too time consuming to properly hide all those cables. Gigabyte has developed a solution to this problem in the form of a custom, “Stealth PC” kit. For now, Gigabyte is only selling these parts as a complete kit rather than individually, including the case, a custom motherboard, and a GPU. Gigabyte is only shipping an Intel motherboard for now. This project was first teased back in , and now it’s available for purchase according to .
At Computex today AMD unveiled a new mobile platform that takes its older Zen 2 architecture and reworks it as a mainstream laptop platform with an emphasis on long battery life, connectivity, and affordability. AMD calls this mobile platform Mendocino, and it’s expected to launch in Q4 of 2022. It features a revamped Zen 2 4C/8T architecture that’s been reworked on TSMC’s 6nm process, down from the 7nm node it was originally built on. The other big upgrade is it features the company’s latest RDNA2 graphics, as compared to the Vega-class GPUs that shipped with the Ryzen 4000 and Ryzen 5000 families.
Apple’s Augmented Reality (AR) slash Virtual Reality (VR) headset has seemingly been delayed more times than we can count. The ambitious program has been in the works for seven years now. Along the way it’s been repeatedly hampered by both hardware and software issues according to reports. That’s not a big surprise as it’s a brand new product for Apple, and it’s an inherently complex undertaking. Apple seems to be out of the woods though, as a new report states the company’s board received an in-person demo of it last week. Bloomberg’s is reporting that at the most recent quarterly gathering of the High Council, members were able to don the mixed reality device.
