It only seems right that cloud gaming should welcome virtual pilots, and that’s definitely now the case if GeForce Now is your streaming platform of choice. One of the most frequently requested features from its community according to NVIDIA, flight control support has now been added to its GeForce Now offering, meaning you can live your Top Gun fantasies without worrying about your rig buckling under the pressure.
The first compatible peripheral is the Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS One — which incidentally NVIDIA is giving away to five winners of a competition it’s currently running, along with a month of GeForce Now Ultimate — with more to be supported over time. A dedicated row in the GeForce Now app will highlight games that you can play with flight controls, one of which will be Team Jade’s Delta Force, which arrives on the service soon.
Last year NVIDIA started using RTX 5080 GPUs to power its $20-per-month GeForce Now Ultimate servers, allowing for 5K streaming up to 120fps. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar called the update a “cloud gaming revelation” and was blown away by how sharp and smooth the experience was.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/geforce-now-adds-support-for-flight-controllers-171047006.html?src=rss
As part of my end-of-year 2025 benchmarking I looked at how the Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids performance evolved in the year since launch and seeing some nice open-source/Linux optimizations during that time. On the other side of the table were also benchmarks of how AMD EPYC 8004 Sienna evolved in its two years, Ubuntu 24.04 vs. 26.04 development for AMD EPYC Turin, the AMD EPYC Milan-X in its four years since launch, and also a look at the performance evolution lower down the stack with the likes of sub-$500 laptop hardware. Out today is a fresh look at how the Intel Xeon 6780E Sierra Forest has evolved in its one and a half years since its launch.
Forbidden has unveiled the Puritan and the Heathen, two titanium-framed hardtails with different purposes.
The mountain bikes are the first from the brand not to feature the iconic idler and high-pivot layout, as well as its first bikes made from metal rather than carbon.
While the Heathen fits the trail hardtail category, the Puritan is harder to box, with Forbidden calling it an ATB – all-terrain bike.
The bikes are a part of a limited run, with Forbidden saying they are “designed to be ridden hard and kept for a lifetime”.
The brand’s ONERIDE proportional sizing is carried over, meaning ride feel, handling characteristics and weight distribution should remain consistent across all frame sizes.
The Puritan is a flat-bar hardtail, similar to Scott’s Scale Gravel. Forbidden
Forbidden says the Puritan is built for long hauls and takes 700c wheels with clearance for 50mm tyres – not dissimilar to modern gravel bikes.
While you can run it with a drop bar, the brand says it is purpose-built to run a flat bar and a 60mm stem.
Running a drop bar is said to stretch out the rider triangle, which the brand is unapologetic about.
The bike is designed with bikepacking in mind. Forbidden
It has accessory mounts on the top tube and down tube for bikepacking duties, and room for two 750ml+ bottles for long days in the saddle.
There’s external cable routing, making maintenance easy, and a 73mm threaded bottom bracket, which should help with longevity compared to press-fit options.
Fans of simplicity will respect the external cable routing. Forbidden
The Puritan comes in fours sizes, ranging from S1 to S4, and is priced at £3,299 / $4,199 / €3,999 / CAD$4,599 for the frame kit.
This includes a 50mm RockShox Rudy XL fork and Cane Creek headset.
Super-slack hardtail
The Heathen looks super-slack. Forbidden
The Heathen is an aggressive hardtail designed around a 130mm fork, which has a slack 64-degree head angle.
Forbidden says it has designed it to be cherished or neglected, alluding to its durability and strong looks.
Like the Puritan, it comes in four sizes, with the smaller S1 and S2 featuring an MX-wheel setup, while the S3 and S4 are full-29in.
The bike looks dialled for long days on downcountry trails. Forbidden
The brand acknowledges that the slack head angle might raise eyebrows for a short-travel bike, saying, “It’s deliberate”.
“A shorter fork keeps the geometry consistent under compression. Meaning the Heathen remains composed when it matters most,” Forbidden explains.
The bike also features external cable routing and a 73mm threaded bottom bracket, but is limited to one 750ml+ bottle.
The Heathen frame kit is cheaper because you have to source your own fork. Forbidden
There are accessory mounts under the top tube for keeping tools and essentials.
The Heathen is priced at £2,599 / $3,399 / €3,199 / CAD$3,599.
At CES earlier this month, AMD announced the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, a more wallet-friendly take on its $700 9950X3D. The company promised the new chip would be out sometime in the first three months of the year, and it’s going to arrive a bit sooner than you might have expected. It can be all yours on January 29 for $499.
AMD says the 9850X3D builds on the 9800X3D with an 400MHz upgrade to the boost clock. It can reach boost speeds of 5.6GHz. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D is an 8-core CPU with 16 threads and 104MB of combined L2 and L3 cache. AMD is employing its 3D V-cache tech so it can vertically stack more cache memory onto the chip.
The 9850X3D also has a 120W TDP. AMD claims the CPU is able to deliver an average 27 percent faster gaming performance than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285k. We’ll be able to assess that for ourselves very soon given that the 9850X3D will hit shelves in just a few days.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amds-ryzen-7-9850x3d-cpu-will-arrive-on-january-29-and-cost-499-165000446.html?src=rss
The Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which was announced by AMD during (not at) CES 2026, has had a date and price finally set: January 29th, and $499 USD. That’s only a $20 jump over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D’s MSRP, although those parts have been available as cheap as $430 in the past. The new model brings a 400 MHz bump in peak boost clocks and absolutely no
Autodesk said today it plans to cut approximately 1,000 jobs, or roughly 7% of its workforce, as part of what the company described as the final phase of a global restructuring effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations.
The maker of AutoCAD and other digital design software said a significant portion of the cuts will fall within customer-facing sales functions.
Google believes AI is the future of search, and it’s not shy about saying it. After adding account-level personalization to Gemini earlier this month, it’s now updating AI Mode with so-called “Personal Intelligence.” According to Google, this makes the bot’s answers more useful because they are tailored to your personal context.
Starting today, the feature is rolling out to all users who subscribe to Google AI Pro or AI Ultra. However, it will be a Labs feature that needs to be explicitly enabled (subscribers will be prompted to do this). Google tends to expand access to new AI features to free accounts later on, so free users will most likely get access to Personal Intelligence in the future. Whenever this option does land on your account, it’s entirely optional and can be disabled at any time.
If you decide to integrate your data with AI Mode, the search bot will be able to scan your Gmail and Google Photos. That’s less extensive than the Gemini app version, which supports Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history. Gmail will probably be the biggest contributor to AI Mode—a great many life events involve confirmation emails. Traditional search results when you are logged in are adjusted based on your usage history, but this goes a step further.
The nominees for the 2026 Academy Awards were just announced and Ryan Coogler’s vampire-adjacent period drama Sinners received a record-breaking 16 nominations. That’s the highest number of Oscar nominations for a single film in the history of the awards, followed by Titanic, La La Land and All About Eve with 14 noms each.
Sinners grabbed a nomination in nearly every major category, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The same goes for the performances, as Michael B. Jordan captured the nomination for Best Actor. Even Delroy Lindo got nominated for Best Supporting Actor, which is his very first Oscar nomination after 50 years in the business.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another walked away with 13 nominations and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia scored four. Apple’s F1 actually got nominated for Best Picture, which is unusual for a popcorn-style blockbuster. Netflix scored Best Picture noms for both Frankenstein and Train Dreams.
Netflix also got its flowers for the international animated sensation KPop Demon Hunters. It got nominated for Best Animated Feature and, of course, Best Original Song.
The 98th annual Academy Awards will take place on March 15, with Conan O’Brien returning to host. It’ll be broadcast live on ABC. The awards ceremony will be moving to YouTube in 2029.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/netflix-scores-oscar-nominations-for-frankenstein-and-kpop-demon-hunters-163521141.html?src=rss
Another wave of malicious browser extensions capable of tracking user activity and compromising privacy have been found across Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, some of which may have been active for up to five years.
The campaign, known as GhostPoster, was identified by Koi Security in December and included 17 Firefox add-ons designed to monitor users’ browsing activity. Threat actors planted malicious JavaScript code in the extension’s PNG logo, which served as a malware loader to retrieve the main payload from a remote server. Researchers at LayerX have found an additional 17 malicious extensions across multiple browsers that have collectively been installed more than 840,000 times.
Ongoing GhostPoster malware campaign
According to the report from LayerX, GhostPoster initially targeted Microsoft Edge and then expanded to Chrome and Firefox. The malicious add-ons may have been active as early as 2020 and include the following:
Google Translate in Right Click
Translate Selected Text with Google
Ads Block Ultimate
Floating Player – PiP Mode
Convert Everything
Youtube Download
One Key Translate
AdBlocker
Save Image to Pinterest on Right Click
Instagram Downloader
RSS Feed
Cool Cursor
Full Page Screenshot
Amazon Price History
Color Enhancer
Translate Selected Text with Right Click
Page Screenshot Clipper
“Google Translate in Right Click” alone had 522,398 installs. The next most popular add-on was “Translate Selected Text with Google” with 159,645 installs. Researchers also found a more sophisticated variant of the campaign in “Instagram Downloader,” which had 3,822 installs.
GhostPoster malware has built-in safeguards to prevent detection—for example, activation is delayed by 48 hours, and it only communicates with remote attack servers under certain conditions. Once installed, though, extensions that are part of GhostPoster have the ability to hijack affiliate traffic (and redirect commissions to attackers), strip and inject HTTP headers to weaken security, bypass CAPTCHA, and inject iframes and scripts for click fraud and user tracking. The only sort-of good news is that the malware doesn’t harvest credentials or engage in phishing.
While the malicious extensions are no longer available to add in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, users who have them installed should remove them immediately, as they remain active until explicitly deleted.
Waymo’s fully autonomous robotaxis are now accepting passengers in Miami. The city was one of five named in expansion plans last year, and joins the likes of Phoenix, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area on Waymo’s existing network.
Waymo says that nearly 10,000 Miami residents have signed up so far, and that it will send out invites to new riders on a rolling basis” in the weeks and months to come. The autonomous ride-hailing service will initially cover a 60-square-mile area that includes neighborhoods like the Design District and Wynwood, with Waymo planning to expand to Miami International Airport soon.
Waymo started testing robotaxi rides in Miami in November, without passengers initially, which allows it to spot local potential issues and local quirks, and adjust the driving algorithm so things go smoothly once humans are involved. The company insists that autonomous vehicles are safe and reliable, claiming a “ten-fold reduction” in serious injuries caused by crashes compared to human drivers in its current areas of operation.
Waymo’s Florida expansion will move to Orlando next, with the Texas cities of San Antonio, Houston and Dallas also on the agenda for 2026.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/waymo-is-now-available-in-miami-162515070.html?src=rss
When I reviewed the Switch 2 back in June, I noted that the lack of any sort of extended grip on the extremely thin Joy-Con 2 controllers made them relatively awkward to hold, both when connected to the system and when cradled in separate hands. At the time, I said that “my Switch 2 will probably need something like the Nyxi Hyperion Pro, which I’ve come to rely on to make portable play on the original Switch much more comfortable.”
Over half a year later, Nyxi is once again addressing my Switch controller-related comfort concerns with the Hyperion 3, which was made available for preorder earlier this week ahead of planned March 1 shipments. Unfortunately, it looks like players will have to pay a relatively high price for a potentially more ergonomic Switch 2 experience.
While there are plenty of third-party controllers for the Switch 2, none of the current options mimic the official Joy-Cons’ ability to connect magnetically to the console tablet itself (controllers designed to slide into the grooves on the original Switch tablet also can’t hook to the successor console). The Hyperion 3 is the first Switch 2 controller to offer this magnetic connection, making it uniquely suited for handheld play on the system.
Xbox is set to hold the fourth installment of its now-annual Developer Direct showcase on January 22. You’ll be able to watch the 2026 edition at 1PM ET on YouTube (including versions with audio descriptions and ASL), Twitch, Facebook and Steam. Xbox will stream the Developer Direct on its regional channels simultaneously, and it’ll be available on Bilibili on Friday.
The YouTube stream might be the way to go, since that one will be available in 4K and 60 fps. Because we’re so nice, we’ve embedded that stream above, so all you have to do is click the play button when the time is right.
Microsoft has confirmed that it will feature three titles at the Developer Showcase: Fableand Forza Horizon 6 from Playground Games, and Beast of Reincarnation from Game Freak, which is best known for its work on Pokémon games. We should get developer interviews, gameplay footage and (for at least one of those) a release date.
There is a chance that there will be some surprises, of course. The three previous editions of Developer Direct all featured five games — the first one showcased Hi-Fi Rush, which was released on the same day.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-developer-direct-2026-how-to-watch-and-what-we-expect-to-see-from-fable-forza-horizon-6-and-beast-of-reincarnation-161000242.html?src=rss
How would Sony ceding control of its TV hardware business change the industry? The Verge has an optimistic take: […] As of today, Sony already relies on different manufacturing partners to create its TV lineup. While display panel manufacturers never reveal who they sell panels to, Sony is likely already using panels for its LCD TVs from TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), in addition to OLED panels from LG Display and Samsung Display. With this deal, a relationship between Sony and TCL CSOT LCD panels is guaranteed (although I doubt this would affect CSOT selling panels to other manufacturers). And with TCL CSOT building a new OLED facility, there’s a potential future in which Sony OLEDs will also get panels from TCL. Although I should point out that we’re not sure yet if the new facility will have the ability to make TV-sized OLED panels, at least to start.
[…] There’s some concern from fans that this could lead to a Sharp, Toshiba, or Pioneer situation where the names are licensed and the TVs produced are a shell of what the brands used to represent. I don’t see this happening with Sony. While the electronics side of the business hasn’t been as strong as in the past, Sony — and Bravia — is still a storied brand. It would take a lot for Sony to completely step aside and allow another company to slap its name on an inferior product. And based on TCL’s growth and technological improvements over the past few years, and the shrinking gap between premium and midrange TVs, I don’t expect Sony TVs will suffer from a partnership with TCL.
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured the most intricate view yet of the Helix Nebula, offering a sharp, infrared glimpse into the final moments of a dying sun.
Affectionately nicknamed either the “Eye of Sauron” or “Eye of God,” the Helix Nebula, located 650 light-years away, has been an astronomer favorite for ages. However,
