Intel exec John Pitzer told a conference crowd that Team Blue wants to chase edge inference chips and custom ASICs after getting smoked by Nvidia and AMD in the datacenter AI race. The company thinks it can pull a Broadcom or Marvell move by selling custom silicon services while also offering foundry access to hyperscalers who want to skip the middleman and go straight to fab production.
The edge play is already happening through AI PC chips like Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake that pack beefier NPUs for local processing, and there is also Crescent Island coming for inference tasks. The ASIC hustle looks more interesting because new CEO Lip-Bu Tan brought serious custom silicon chops from his time at Cadence, and the company already has...
Some dude got his hands on an unreleased internal iOS 26 build, and the code dumps are spilling details about updates through iOS 28. Apple plans to drop context-aware Siri upgrades with iOS 26.4 that let the assistant handle tasks inside apps and understand what is actually on your screen. The spring patch also brings credit card autofill for third-party apps that syncs straight to iCloud Keychain, plus folder support finally hits the Freeform whiteboard thing.
iOS 27 code references point to a massive Health app redesign with personalized coaching powered by machine learning and nutrition tracking features. The Photos app gets better collections, and AirPods are getting a fresh pairing system.
Apple Watch sleep tracking is picking...
Polish studio The Astronauts just announced their roguelite shooter Witchfire crossed 500,000 copies sold after two years in early access, and they dropped a massive update called The Reckoning that adds four melee weapons like the Morgenstern and Katar, plus three guns. The triple-barrelled Tribunal shotgun lets players charge shots by sliding around, and charged kills trigger shock explosions that wreck nearby enemies.
The update brought a shooting range with an interactive bestiary where players can test loadouts against previously beaten foes before heading out. Steam Deck verification is live, and accessibility options got expanded with adjustable font sizes and a spider filter for people who hate creepy crawlies.
The game blends...
Toshihiro Nagoshi dropped the trailer for Gang of Dragon at The Game Awards after leaving SEGA back in 2021 and starting Nagoshi Studios under NetEase. The action-adventure game stars Korean actor Ma Dong-seok as Shin Ji-seong, a high-ranking thug in a crime syndicate operating around the Kabukicho nightlife district in Tokyo. Dong-seok previously appeared in Train to Busan, Eternals, and Death Stranding 2.
The cinematic reveal gives off heavy Yakuza energy without copying that series beat for beat, and Nagoshi confirmed the game depicts street-level criminals with what he calls unwavering honesty. The studio claims the project sits deep in development, but gave zero hints about release timing or console availability beyond PC.
Intel keeps teasing the Arc B770 graphics card but refuses to actually ship the thing. The chipmaker dropped another vague reply on social media about being hyped for the B770 alongside Panther Lake and Nova Lake, yet nobody has seen a release date or hard confirmation that this GPU will even exist.
The bigger BMG-G31 chip keeps popping up in software support lists and shipping manifests showing 300-watt power draw, but Intel launched the B580 and B570 over a year back without following up with anything else in the Battlemage lineup. AMD and NVIDIA both dropped multiple cards during that stretch while Intel sat on its hands.
People think the company might finally show something at the big Vegas tech show coming up, but waiting this...
Developers at id Software just unionized after 165 workers voted to join up with the Communications Workers of America, and the DOOM studio became another Microsoft-owned team using that labor neutrality deal the company signed during the Activision Blizzard buyout. Lead programmer Chris Hays told reporters the group wants protection for remote work options and pushback against whatever AI nonsense executives dream up next.
Producer Andrew Willis said the wall-to-wall effort gives developers actual control over workplace decisions instead of letting suits make unilateral changes every quarter. The union still needs to hammer out a contract and get it ratified, which took two years and a strike when ZeniMax Workers United QA went...
ASUS dropped a teaser for their upcoming Zenbook DUO laptop that apparently stuffs battery packs on both sides of the chassis instead of just one. The company posted a short clip showing off the dual-battery setup before the official CES reveal, and this thing seems pretty wild compared to most laptops that only pack cells on a single side.
The current Zenbook DUO runs a 75Wh battery that lasts around 13 hours, but splitting power between two packs could push runtime way higher without turning the laptop into a brick. The existing model sits at 1.65 kilograms, and adding extra cells will definitely bump the weight up a bit, though hopefully not past the 2-kilogram mark.
Lenovo pulled something similar with the ThinkPad T580 years back...
Colorful dropped their iGame X870E Vulcan OC V14 motherboard for AM5 socket chips, and the thing pushes memory speeds past DDR5-10000 with a dual-DIMM layout. The board rocks a beefy 22-phase power delivery system rated at 110 amps per phase, plus it supports Ryzen 9000 chips at DDR5-8600 speeds and Ryzen 8000G APUs up to DDR5-10000.
The setup gives you five M.2 slots with three running PCIe 5.0 speeds, two USB4 ports hitting 40Gbps on the back panel, and WiFi 7 with Bluetooth 5.4. Power comes through dual 8-pin connectors, and the main PCIe 5.0 x16 slot shares bandwidth with a couple of M.2 drives.
Colorful loaded the board with RGB zones across the I/O shroud and chipset heatsink, threw in an LCD near the RAM slots, and added...
NetEase dropped a Season 6 trailer for Marvel Rivals at The Game Awards, showing Deadpool joining the hero shooter roster mid-January. The Merc with a Mouth brings his usual fourth-wall-breaking nonsense to a cinematic reveal that matches his comic personality, and the developer tagged the update as Night at the Museum.
Season 5.5 went live right after the show with Rogue added as a new vanguard character following Gambit's arrival earlier in Season 5. Jeff's Winter Splash Festival came back with a holiday map called Jeffland that has a three-way brawl mode and three different Jeff builds with unique abilities.
The patch also fixed spectator bugs, added emotes, and corrected player stats that weren't tracking properly. NetEase...
