Microsoft switched the Surface Pro tablet and both sizes of Surface Laptop from Intel and AMD’s processors to Qualcomm’s Arm-based processors last summer, part of a renewed hardware and software push to make the Arm version of Windows a thing. That ended a few years of a bifurcated approach, where the Intel and AMD versions of Surface PCs were the “main” versions and the Arm variants felt more like proof-of-concept…

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card was faster than the RTX 3080 card it replaced. But it was also faster than the RTX 3080 Ti, 3090, and 3090 Ti. One of the good things about a new graphics card generation is that the new cards bring the last generation’s inaccessibly expensive high-end performance down to cards that more people can actually afford. That’s not the case with the new $999…

If you were hoping for a respite from rising streaming subscription fees in 2025, you’re out of luck. Several streaming providers have already increased monthly and/or annual subscription rates, continuing a disappointing trend from the past few years, with no foreseeable end. Years of pricing and value concerns Subscribers have generally seen an uptick in how much money they spend to access streaming services. In June, Forbes reported that 44…

Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information, locations, and other sensitive data from the Chrome and Safari browsers as they visit sites such as iCloud Calendar, Google Maps, and Proton Mail. The vulnerabilities, affecting the CPUs in later generations of Apple A- and M-series chip sets, open them to side channel attacks, a class of exploit that infers secrets by…

High above a barren California desert on Tuesday, a privately developed aircraft broke the sound barrier for the first time when Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator reached Mach 1.122. Piloted by a former US Navy aviator, Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg, the XB-1 vehicle broke the supersonic barrier on three separate occasions before safely landing back at Mojave Air & Space Port, where it had taken off half an hour earlier. It marked…

“We’re making new Pebble watches,” writes original Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky on the “rePebble” launch page. Eight years after Pebble’s time as an upstart watchmaker came to an end, Migicovsky says that he’s working with a small team on “a Pebble-like smartwatch that runs open source PebbleOS.” There should be some new features, but new watches would stay “true to the core Pebble vision.” With enough signups, the site claims,…

Retro game enthusiasts may already be acquainted with Analogue, a company that designs and manufactures updated versions of classic consoles that can play original games but also be hooked up to modern televisions and monitors. The most recent of its announcements is the Analogue 3D, a console designed to play Nintendo 64 cartridges. Now, a company called Retro Remake is reigniting the console wars of the 1990s with its SuperStation…

Broadcom’s ownership of VMware has discouraged many of its customers, as companies are displeased with how the trillion-dollar firm has run the virtualization business since buying it in November 2023. Many have discussed reducing or eliminating ties with the company. Now, over a year after the acquisition, the pressure is on for customers to start committing to a VMware subscription, forego VMware support, or move on from VMware technologies. The…

Nvidia is launching the first volley of RTX 50-series GPUs based on its new Blackwell architecture, starting with the RTX 5090 and working downward from there. The company also appears to be winding down support for a few of its older GPU architectures, according to these CUDA release notes spotted by Tom’s Hardware. The release notes say that CUDA support for the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPU architectures “is considered…

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 starts at $1,999 before you factor in upsells from the company’s partners or price increases driven by scalpers and/or genuine demand. It costs more than my entire gaming PC. The new GPU is so expensive that you could build an entire well-specced gaming PC with Nvidia’s next-fastest GPU in it—the $999 RTX 5080, which we don’t have in hand yet—for the same money, or maybe even…