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Articles by Rob Williams
2000 AD Prog 2200 Is The Latest Jumping-On Point For New Readers
Looking from the outside in, 2000 AD, the legendary weekly anthology, can appear to be impenetrable to new readers. With up to a dozen stories concurrently running at any given time, it can be hard to jump on in and figure out what’s going on. But a few times a year, the editorial stars align and we get a jumping-on issue that’s jam-packed full of brand-new stories. Luckily, this week sees the release of 2000 AD Prog 2200, which just happens to be one of those issues.
Intel Set To Reclaim Semiconductor Supplier Crown In 2019: Report
by Rob Williams — Sunday, March 10, 2019 Following an incredibly long tenure at the top of the semiconductor sales charts, Intel found itself playing second fiddle to Samsung in 2017, thanks to a booming memory business. According to a new report by IC Insights, however, the Korean chip giant is not going to be sitting on top for too long - and it's due more to its own losses than Intel's gains. In 2016, Intel peaked hit $57.0B in sales, easily placing itself in first ahead of Samsung's $44.3B.
Respawn’s Trusty Apex Legends Banhammer Has Already Crushed 355,000 Cheaters
by Rob Williams — Saturday, March 09, 2019 Apex Legends is one of those super-rare games that seems to come along out of nowhere, and then strikes the right chord with millions upon millions of gamers a mere month after its launch -- over 50 million gamers and counting, in fact. In 2019, it certainly helps to have the phrases "battle royale" and "free-to-play" tied to a game, but developer Respawn has proven once again that "free" games can be great.
Windows IoT Core Machines Vulnerable To Crippling Remote Hijacking Trojan
by Rob Williams — Sunday, March 03, 2019 IoT Core, you'll want to pay attention to the latest vulnerability discovered by Dor Azouri, a researcher for SafeBreach. The risk of leaving the bug unpatched is great, but fortunately, most of the Windows ecosystem is safe. Even the IoT Enterprise version is safe from this bug; only those using the free IoT Core on their DIY devices (eg: Raspberry Pi) will need to take action.
Windows 10 Update Adds Performance Boosting Retpoline Support To Spectre Mitigation
by Rob Williams — Saturday, March 02, 2019 Where computing is concerned, security should always be a major focus. In 2018, that focus almost seemed overwhelming, thanks in part to the fact that the infamous Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities impacted so many end users and industries. And let's not forget then-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich during his CES keynote, where he wasted no time at all in addressing the problem, along with the company's commitment to fix it for its processors.
Intel Slips 9th Gen Laptop CPU Details With An 8-Core 5GHz Core i9 Beast On Top
by Rob Williams — Sunday, February 17, 2019 When Intel released its 9th-gen Core processors in the fall, the company quickly found itself retaining its comfortable perch on top of the performance charts. That's thanks in part to a company which seems to be growing more aggressive by the day. The i7-8700K was already a very fast CPU, and the i9-9900K successfully took things to the next level. How good would it be to have that kind of processing horsepower in a notebook?
Windows 10 April 2019 Update Brings Linux File Access With Enhanced WSL
by Rob Williams — Saturday, February 16, 2019 Windows 10's infamous October 2018 Update is soon to become a distant memory, as Microsoft is hard at work putting the polish on the next major Windows build, expected in April. In a new blog post, Microsoft's Craig Loewen reports that big changes are coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, including the ability to read and write to Linux distros from within Windows itself.
Alarming Wi-Fi Chipset Bug A Security Risk For Millions Of Game Consoles, Laptops, Routers And Other Devices
by Rob Williams — Saturday, January 19, 2019 Most of the security vulnerabilities we write about at HotHardware fortunately won't affect the vast majority of readers. Either these exploits require user interaction to kick-start, or you have to be of particular interest as a target for someone to go through the effort of executing more complex attacks against you or your devices.
Firefox 69 Puts Stranglehold On Adobe Flash, Disabling It By Default
by Rob Williams — Sunday, January 13, 2019 At one point in time, it seemed like Adobe's Flash animation plugin was invincible. How could such a widely-used API ever die off? Well, as it turns out, when the plugin in question has been riddled with security vulnerabilities for most of its life, sometimes the developer will do the world a favor and put the solution out to pasture. In 2017, Adobe announced that it was doing just that. Flash was effectively dead, or at least will be by the end of 2020.
Alleged OnePlus 7 Leak Points To Notch-Less Display And Slider Design
by Rob Williams — Sunday, January 13, 2019 When Apple unveiled its first iPhone X in 2017, iPhone (and Android) fans around the world let out a collective gasp as they witnessed the next stage of smartphone design: the infamous "notch." From the get-go, notched designs seemed forced, especially when countless Android manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon seemingly instantaneously, as if major display manufacturers were behind the design trend.
RetroArch Emulator Could Turn Xbox One Into Retro Gaming Powerhouse
by Rob Williams — Sunday, December 30, 2018 When someone is looking to get into game emulation in this day and age, RetroArch is likely the most common suggestion. It's a front-end that utilizes Libretro cores that open up the ability to emulate old platforms -- from Atari to NES to MSX to disc-based platforms like Dreamcast and PSone. RetroArch isn't too difficult to get up and running, although it might require a bit of patience from those who haven't dabbled with game emulation before.
FTC Warns Against Netflix Phishing Scam That Could Potentially Steal Your Identity
by Rob Williams — Saturday, December 29, 2018 Phishing attacks have become one of the most common methods of scamming unsuspecting people out of something - usually money. We may all think we have our guards up to all forms of attacks, but when they can hit us through every form of communication, it's bound to happen to someone. In a recent series of phishing attacks, Netflix and its many millions of customers have been targeted.
Google Begins Rolling Out Spam Protection For Android Messages
by Rob Williams — Saturday, December 29, 2018 There's no shortage of places to run into spam. It seems like nowadays, all you need to do is open a new email account, and there will already be spam in there waiting for you. Alright, that may be a slight exaggeration, but the problem was bad a decade or even twenty years ago, and it hasn't slowed down. Many companies push out spam protection for this very reason, but its effectiveness is largely hit-or-miss.
Modder Recreates Super Mario Bros In Super Mario 64 And You Can Play It Now
by Rob Williams — Sunday, December 23, 2018 The original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in 1985, is about as iconic as a video game could possibly get. The history of Mario has been retold a countless number of times, but when you sit back and look at the past 33 years of the mustached character, the amount of progress we've made is really breathtaking. Today, games are hyper-realistic at times, and the capabilities are only going to improve as time goes on.
Hacker Performs Awesome Tesla Model 3 Ubuntu Linux Infotainment System Mod
There's a lot to like about Tesla's Model 3, but as with most things with prepackaged entertainment (or infotainment) systems, even this beautiful electric car leave people yearning for a bit more. In the case of one reddit user, Tesla's infotainment system didn't satiate his/her entertainment hunger, so they decided to do what's perhaps one of the most interesting dual-OS installs ever, installing Ubuntu alongside Tesla's OS in their own car.
Microsoft Admits Windows Manual Updates Can Make You A Test Guinea Pig
In a new post on its Windows Blog, Microsoft details its Windows Update mechanism, allowing us to peer inside the company process to see how those precious updates are rolled out. While some Windows updates have clearly not gone according to plan, the vast majority do, and given the complexity and reach of these updates, it's actually surprising we don't see even more issues than we do.
Bethesda Reportedly Renegs On Promised Fallout 76 Refund Offers
Bethesda's online RPG Fallout 76 hasn't even been available for two full weeks yet, but given how much there has been to talk about, it's felt like a lot longer. That is unless, of course, you are one of the players who decided to hop into the online Fallout universe, one that is plagued with more bugs than you can shake a rifle at. As a quick recap, the game launched with a massive patch, weighing in at 56GB.
Intel's Mighty Comet Lake-S Desktop 14nm CPUs Rumored To Pack Up To 10 Cores
Since the launch of AMD's Ryzen processors last spring, the processor market has been an interesting, and even exciting one to follow. It seemed like overnight, we went from quad-cores to being the norm to eight-cores taking over. As AMD became even more aggressive after its Zen launch, we wound up seeing 16-core and higher CPUs come out from both it and Intel before the year ended. 2018 has been good to CPUs so far as well.
Nasty New Linux Crypto Malware Compromises Root, Launches DDoS Attacks
With the value of Bitcoin once again experiencing a big drop this past week, you may begin to think that malware developers would begin shifting focus elsewhere. Unfortunately, that's far from being the case. Even if crypto seems to have modest value, that value becomes substantial when you multiply it by every infected machine; it really is easy money for attackers. In case we needed a reminder that Linux is in fact susceptible to viruses, this latest malware targets that platform specifically.
Apple Eying Budget Apple TV Dongle To Compete With Roku Stick, Google Chromecast
The streaming market is booming, and everyone and their dog wants in on the action. Apple has of course been involved in streaming for a while, thanks both to its iTunes store and also its standalone Apple TV device. But as rumor has it, the company is going to begin taking things much more seriously over the next year. It's not difficult to find a streaming device that does the job you need it to for a reasonable price.
Get A Google Pixel 3 or 3 XL For $400 Off With This Red Hot Best Buy Black Friday Deal
As we discovered last month after a thorough review, Google's Pixel 3 and 3 XL smartphones are really good and we dubbed them as "Android Refined". And that camera! The camera is clearly one of the biggest attractions here, especially with the ability to take some of the best night shots we've ever seen. It's surprising, then, that even though the Pixel 3 and 3 XL only released last month, Best Buy is already applying one heck of a discount for Black Friday.
Best Buy Beat The Black Friday Rush Sale Deals LG 65-Inch 4K HDR TV For $599 And More
We hope you haven't had your fill of deals yet, because the deals dam is definitely getting ready to burst. Naturally, Best Buy has wasted no time getting its holiday deals online, with many alluring products on offer even well ahead of the official Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale dates. The holiday season will hopefully mean that you get some time to chill and take in some quality TV or movie content, and if that's the case, you might be on the lookout for a sweet upgrade.
This Creepy Facebook Patent Depicts Stalking Family Photos For Demographic Targeting
Some people look to their horror movie collection for a good scare, but others can just look at the realities of privacy invasion online. We're continually being tracked by companies all over the internet that use collected information for targeted marketing. This goes beyond simply seeing an ad for something you freely posted about or even searched online, but ads that come out of nowhere that seem to perfectly target you.
Cloudflare Free DNS Service Can Now Speed-Up And Secure Your Phone Privacy Too
At this point, it sure seems like the folks at Cloudflare know how this whole "internet" thing works, as the company is trying very hard to keep the web fast and more secure. That includes websites that are cached using its services, helping to deliver faster page loads to the reader, or even routing your own internet connection through its servers for better privacy.
Research Study Says Social Media Might Make You Lonely And Depressed
Social media provides a lot of value to the world, but a new study suggests that we should start taking it in smaller doses - ideally no more than 30 minutes per day. The experimental study was conducted by Melissa G. Hunt and others at the University of Pennsylvania, and indications so far show that modest use of social media can directly improve our mental well-being. With the help of 143 participants, two groups were created.
Seagate Will Swing Mighty HAMR Tech To Pound Out 100TB HDDs By 2025
Consumers have never had more choices if they need to purchase storage, whether it's hard drives, flash drives, solid-state drives, or even cloud or network-attached storage. Save for a couple of blips, prices have steadily creeped downward and today you can score a 10TB hard drive for only $300, or a measly $0.03 per gigabyte. For many users, that's plenty of space -- more than enough to store their movies, photos, music, and documents. For others, though, 10TB just won't cut it.
Microsoft Windows 10 Defender Antivirus And Anti-Malware Gains Secure Sandbox Functionality
It's not common to find free software that appears to be as feature-rich and capable as the commercial competition, but where Windows Defender is concerned, it's arguably one of the best free antivirus and anti- malware solutions out there. Many have come to trust it so much, that they don't even run an additional anti-virus solution, and Microsoft takes that responsibility seriously by constantly iterating on the software's capabilities.
EVGA Announces GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Black Edition Priced At $999
Considering the amount of hype that led to the launch of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX series, it seemed obvious that the cards were going to be mighty elusive once they hit retail. That turned out to be just the case, although perhaps less surprising than the lack of availability was the lack of cards being sold for NVIDIA's suggested price of $999.
Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 Battle Royale Mode Takes The Fight To Fortnite With Hot New Features
It's an old joke that every new Call of Duty game is just like the last, but if you say that about Black Ops 4 (or "IV"), chances are you're not actually paying attention. This game marks a major departure for the series, in that there is no focus on a single-player campaign (though solo elements still exist). Instead, the game's developer pads the mainstay multi-player modes with Call of Duty's first take on the Battle Royale genre.
Pro Overclockers Waste No Time Setting Intel Core i9-9900K Overclocking Records North Of 7GHz
After weeks (or even months) of build-up, Intel has today launched its 9th-gen Core series, led by the eight-core, sixteen-thread Core i9-9900K. We took an in-depth look at Intel's latest hotness earlier, finding that overall, Intel's new mainstream top dog offers the strongest single-threaded performance going, as well as great multi-threaded performance.
Windows 10 19H1 Preview Build Lets Users Remove More Preinstalled Apps And Bloat
As solid as Windows 10 is as an OS all-around, Microsoft made some design decisions with it that have annoyed its faithful customer base (unless you feel like you have no choice but to use Windows, of course). Privacy has been at the forefront of complaints, with the OS tracking us like never before, but more noticeably annoying has been the bloat the OS ships with. It used to be that after unpacking that brand-new laptop, any bloatware found on the system would be from the vendor itself.
Facebook Messenger Message Regret? Now You Can Unsend Like This
Earlier this year, Facebook came under fire when it was discovered that the company let a ton of user information fall into the hands of marketing companies. That fire later grew when the company continued issuing new responses that were weaker than the last. It's hard to say how this incident will affect Facebook in the long-run, but what we do know is that it's already led to the creation of a new feature.
Use This Tool To See If Facebook’s Latest Breach Leaked Your Personal Data
Being security conscious has always been important, but in recent years, it's become downright imperative. Hacks and leaks are happening at an alarming rate, which means we all need to be more cognizant about our digital security every day. When an incident does end up taking place, we also need to be on top of things, enacting recovery plans and swift damage control efforts. At the very least, it means a password change for the affected service would be in order.
Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 October 2018 Update After File Deletion Fiasco
The latest release of Windows 10 brings a lot of great near features to the table, including a long overdue enhancement of the OS' dark mode (which now applies itself to the file manager and context menus) and an integrated Your Phone feature for mobile device integration. While many have upgraded to the latest release of Windows (1809) without issue, we wrote yesterday that it's not going well for everyone.
PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Leak Confirms Beefy 4352 CUDA Cores, Preorder Pricing
Despite the fact that NVIDIA has kept tight-lipped about its upcoming Turing-based GeForce graphics cards, it really does seem like the worst-kept secret by this point. More information is starting to trickle out, and unfortunately for NVIDIA, its own partners are doing that leaking. Today, we learn of the specs of the so-called GeForce RTX 2080 Ti - notice the "RTX" there in place of "GTX".
Intel Core i9-9900K Reportedly Boosts To 4.7GHz On All 8 Cores
It's a ridiculously exciting time to be a PC enthusiast. AMD launched new Ryzen processors a few months ago , and will soon deliver 16- and 32-core Threadripper parts for those with huge computing needs. It's also been relentlessly rumored that NVIDIA will soon launch some new GeForce cards , and with the SIGGRAPH professional graphics conference taking place next week, we could see some new workstation cards, too.
Microsoft Set To Launch New Windows 10 Enterprise For Remote Sessions
It's almost comical to think of the sheer number of Windows 10 versions there are out there - a list that's still growing. Today, we have Windows 10 Home, Pro, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations, Enterprise, N editions of some versions, and last, but not least, an "Enterprise for Remote Sessions" will soon be joining the list. Interestingly, Microsoft isn't talking about this edition quite yet, despite the fact that the listing has appeared in the latest Insider build (17713).
Epic Games Opening Fortnite Summer Skirmish Cut Short Over Laggy Servers
The success of Epic Games' Fortnite is nothing short of incredible, with the company currently clearing a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue every month - which isn't bad at all for a free-to-play title. While Epic kicks butt and takes name, it's hard to feel anything but admiration for the company, because it seems to be doing everything it can to please everyone.
Microsoft Calls For Federal Regulation Of Facial Recognition AI Tech
Facial recognition offers a wealth of uses, from allowing us to unlock our phones quicker to smartly cataloging our photos. With most cool tech, though, there's a lot of room for ill use, and that's a reality not lost on Microsoft. In its latest corporate blog post, the company starts off with a humorous analogy: "All tools can be used for good or ill. Even a broom can be used to sweep the floor or hit someone over the head." The post becomes more serious from that point on.
Facebook Recruits Top Google Chip Engineer To Spearhead Big Hardware Push
It almost feels inevitable that once a technology company grows to a massive size, the pursuit of designing its own chips is likewise inevitable. Case in point: Facebook, which follows many other technology companies - such as Google - in building its own chips to accelerate its business. Starting m earlier this year, Facebook began hiring chip engineers, but the specifics of what the company is working on isn't entirely clear.
This TCL 55-Inch 4K HDR Roku TV Is A Heck Of A Deal At $585
When the first 4K TVs hit the market, their high price and dearth of worthwhile content made them a tough sell. But before long, 4K TVs became much more affordable, to the point today where there's little reason not to consider one if you're looking to upgrade.
Microsoft Windows 10 Redstone 5 Insider Preview Brings HDR Controls And Fluent Design Drop Shadows
Microsoft has just rolled out a brand-new Windows Insider preview build for those running on the Fast Ring. This release is build number 17711, and is part of the upcoming Redstone 5 release, expected to become available this fall. In it, a number of quality improvements have been made, especially with regards to HDR control, and also the Edge web browser.
Gigabyte Single Board PC Is Like Raspberry Pi On Steroids With Quad-Core Intel CPU And Dual LAN
There's no shortage of options in the DIY micro-PC market, one that Raspberry Pi arguably spearheaded over five-years-ago with the release of its first unit. Since that time, a lot of competition has risen to the surface, including none other than Taiwan's GIGABYTE, a company that knows a thing or two about developing motherboards worth using. The GA-SBCAP3450 is an iterative design that builds on the initial release last year.
Cryptocurrency Downturn Means Steep Graphics Card Price Cuts Ahead For Gamers
To the glee of anyone who's been eying a new graphics card for a while, there seems to be a definitive end in sight to price-gouged GPUs. In recent months, mining has seemingly died down quite a bit as a result of cryptocurrency values likewise sliding.
Qualcomm QCC3026 Bluetooth Audio System Is Rocking Oppo’s O-Free Wireless Buds
With some smartphone vendors deciding for the rest of us that we don't need a headphone jack, the time for fast progression on the wireless audio front is needed now. Wireless audio isn't anything new, of course, but it's a technology that's extremely hard to get right. A good wireless solution needs to have decent battery-life, a stable connection, and of course, good audio quality.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 1000 Chip Could Bring Intel U Series-Like Performance To Windows 10 Laptops
At Computex a couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm unveiled its next gen Snapdragon platform targeting "always-on" laptops. That came to us in the form of the interestingly named Snapdragon 850 - a mere 5 digits higher than the 845, a chip which currently graces top-end Android smartphones, such as the OnePlus 6, and Samsung Galaxy S9. Features-wise, both the Snapdragon 845 and 850 are nearly identical, but the latter will be clocked a bit higher to deliver better performance for laptop convertibles.
Here’s A List Of Hundreds Of Forza Horizon 4 Cars You’ll Be Able To Drive
There's nothing like a racing sim game that allows you to slip into the seats of hundreds of different exotic vehicles, but finding a title like this that's also open-world, and offers a compelling single-player and multi-player campaign is a bit harder. Fortunately, there have been some shining examples released even in recent years, including Test Drive Unlimited, The Crew, and of course, Forza Horizon.
TSMC Hits Volume Production Of 7nm Silicon With AMD Zen 2 And Vega 7nm Incoming This Year
AMD has had some great momentum since it unleashed its first Zen-based processors to market early last year. A little while later, we saw EPYC hit the enterprise market and Threadripper hit soon therafter, to cater to high-end enthusiasts and workstation users. Recently, the company followed-up its initial Ryzen release with second-gen parts, and Threadripper 2 is also en route and due in a couple of months (which includes a beastly 32-core part).
PUBG Lost Half Its Player Base So Far This Year, While Fortnite Continues To Explode
Predicting the level of success enjoyed by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, aka PUBG, would have been very tough ahead of its launch. Who could really predict that an indie title would have three million concurrent players mere months after its launch? Since that time, the game has added two new maps, alternating modes, and more aesthetic enhancements than you can shake a frying pan at.
Cyberpunk 2077 Won’t Be Like Witcher 3 With Ability To Toggle Perspective Sometimes
There are few games that have been able to enjoy the level of hype that CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077 has generated. In some ways, it feels like the level of anticipation is higher for it than it was for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That game helped introduce legions of new fans to CDPR, so this new collective (and massive) fanbase is looking forward to the next mega adventure.
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