Though Black Friday and Cyber Monday are long gone, there are still some stellar deals available as we approach the holidays at a terrifyingly blistering pace. Chief among these are audio peripherals from soundbars to earbuds and that which is in between, any of which could make for a great gift that will last a long time.

Leading off the

Source: Hot Hardware – Listen Up, Sennheiser Deals On Soundbars, Earbuds And Headphones Are Up To 44% Off

Meta is bringing improvements to the company’s Meta AI virtual assistant, which will be made available to users across all the apps Meta offers. Users will be able to interact with the upgraded AI by creating a new message and selecting “Create an AI chat.” It’s also possible to summon Meta AI in a group chat by typing “@MetaAI.” Someone with

Source: Hot Hardware – Meta Releases An AI Image Generator Trained On Your Instagram And Facebook Posts

Google introduced its most capable AI model yet, Gemini, as being the next step in its journey to make AI helpful for everyone. Gemini appears to be the most promising competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai remarked in a Google blog post, “This is what excites me: the chance to make AI helpful for everyone,

Source: Hot Hardware – Google Unveils Gemini, Its Massive AI Model And Biggest Threat To ChatGPT Yet

Porsche Design has again teamed up with AOC (the display maker, not the politician) on a gaming display that’s “as large as a windshield” and “where sports car aesthetics meet gaming innovation.” The size of the display is only a slight exaggeration—it adds to a modest but growing pile of 49-inch ultrawide gaming displays, and it boasts a

Source: Hot Hardware – Porsche Design, AOC Release A 49-Inch Agon Pro OLED Gaming Monitor With A 240Hz Redline

According to a new study, astronomers were stunned to find a star that originated outside of the galaxy sitting near the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way. The find marks the first time a star of extragalactic origin has been identified so close to the supermassive black hole.

While researchers have observed

Source: Hot Hardware – Astronomers Shocked To Discover An Extragalactic Visitor Near A Supermassive Black Hole

Apple is looking to strengthen sales in 2024 by making upgrades to the iPad Pro and Macbook Air, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The iPad is struggling; it’s currently the product that generates the least amount of revenue for the company and is seeing sales slip to its lowest point since early 2020, says Gurman.

Apple is hoping to

Source: Hot Hardware – Apple’s Next-Gen iPad Plans Revealed And It Includes OLED, M3 MacBook Air Coming Too

Pardon us as we feign surprise, but a Sony exec involved with the PlayStation brand thinks that the PlayStation 5 is a better option than PC for gaming. Water is wet and the sky is blue, news at 11, right? While not the least bit surprising, it’s interesting to hear Sony’s reasoning for proclaiming the PS5 as the superior gaming platform,

Source: Hot Hardware – Sony Exec Talks PS5’s Advantages Over PC Gaming, Console Release Strategy And More

AMD has released its 23.12.1 update for AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, focusing on adding new features such as HYPR-RX Eco, an update to the game profile UI that allows HYPR-RX to be enabled on a game-by-game basis, and GPU hardware scheduling. Additionally, performance in a few AI applications has been improved, making 23.12.1 yet another

Source: Hot Hardware – AMD’s Latest Radeon GPU Driver Gives Adrenalin Software A Refreshed UI And New Features

Acer’s brand-new Nitro V 16 will be one of the first gaming laptops to offer AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 8040 Hawk Point APUs. The Nitro V 16 can soon be had with up to a Ryzen 7 8845HS, which features eight Zen 4 cores, 12 RDNA 3 Compute Units, and the new Hawk Point NPU, which is the main selling point over the Ryzen 7040 Phoenix APU. Though the

Source: Hot Hardware – Acer Unveils Nitro V 16 Gaming Laptop With Ryzen 8040 Hawk Point And RTX 40 Firepower

At its Advancing AI event that just concluded, AMD disclosed a myriad of additional details regarding its next-gen Instinct MI300 data center accelerators. It also discussed the company’s momentum as it relates to AI hardware, software, and partner engagements. AMD has previously shown off its Instinct MI300A and MI300X accelerators…

Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Instinct MI300 Series Architecture Deep Dive Reveal: Advancing AI And HPC

It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that AI may be the biggest tech buzzword since the invention of the integrated circuit—bigger than blockchain, bigger than cloud computing, bigger than IoT, and so on. Unlike a lot of buzzwords, however, AI isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and it’s critical for a processor company today to have strong

Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Announces Ryzen 8040 Series Mobile Processors With Revamped Ryzen AI

GALAX has launched the thinnest RTX 40 card thus far with its RTX 4060 Ti Unparalleled Max, a single-slot graphics card that’s just 20mm thick. The single-slot form factor is usually reserved for professional or workstation cards, and GALAX’s new model is (as far as we know) the first single-slot RTX 40 card. Even though it has a relatively

Source: Hot Hardware – There’s Finally A GeForce RTX 40 Series Graphics Card With A Single Slot Cooler

It appears as though enthusiast gamers are not the only ones with a keen-eye on every potential GPU release from NVIDIA. Due to recent turbulent waters in the Chinese market leading to the banning of various powerful GPUs, the United States Government has apparently also become hardware enthusiasts, in some respects. The special cut-down AD102

Source: Hot Hardware – Redesigned GeForce RTX 4090 Is Reportedly Still Outbound To China After US Warning

Apple’s incoming iOS 17.2 stable release is jam-packed with new features, as well as unlocking Qi2 wireless capabilities for iPhones 13 and 14. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a while to actually use the new protocol since you can’t buy Qi2 chargers just yet.

This week, Apple shared the release candidate beta version of iOS 17.2 with

Source: Hot Hardware – Apple iOS 17.2 Is Packed With Features Like Qi2 Wireless Charging For iPhone 13 And 14

As Android smartphone owners wait for Apple to implement RCS support to its iPhones, they can take advantage of an app called Beeper Mini that will get rid of the green bubbles when texting with an iPhone user. Beeper Mini: Chat With iPhones brings many of the features of iMessage to an Android phone, and without having to sign-in with an

Source: Hot Hardware – Beeper Mini For Android Pops Apple iPhone’s Blue Bubble Exclusivity

Microsoft continues to go all in with AI, announcing that Copilot will be receiving the addition of a new DALL-E 3 model and GPT-4 Turbo along with several other features. Windows 11 users can expect to see these improvements in 2024. Moreover, Microsoft will also be making Copilot available to anyone with a web browser with the launch of

Source: Hot Hardware – Microsoft Infuses Copilot For Windows 11 With DALL-E 3 And GPT-4 Turbo

If you’re still rocking Windows 10, don’t panic, fee-based security updates are not imminent. However, they are coming once Windows 10 officially reaches End of Life (EOL) status, which barring any reprieves will happen on October 14, 2025. If by chance you’re still running what will then be considered a legacy OS (and it’s likely many people

Source: Hot Hardware – Microsoft Details Plan To Charge Windows 10 Users A Fee For Future Security Updates

Popular genetic testing company 23andMe has revealed the possible true impact of its recent October data breach. Contrary to an SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing on Friday by the company, the breach is now said to affect 6.9 million individuals worldwide.

On Friday, 23andMe stated that only a small subset of its customers

Source: Hot Hardware – 23andMe Discloses Startling Data Breach To SEC Impacting 6.9M User Profiles

What exactly makes a graphics card a GeForce RTX 3050? Simply put, it’s the name on the box. From there, NVIDIA can dictate what specs constitute the model name, and those specs can be revised over time (a concept that’s not unique to NVIDIA, by the way). We bring this up because NVIDIA is reportedly preparing some changes to the GeForce RTX

Source: Hot Hardware – A Gimped GeForce RTX 3050 Desktop Card With A Mobile GPU May Be In The Pipeline

Counter-Strike 2 has been out for a little while now, providing an updated and perhaps a more fun experience than the former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, in the time since the game’s launch, some nefarious players have found way to cheats, which diminishes that experience in general. As such, Valve has had to ratchet up its bans

Source: Hot Hardware – Valve Counter Strike 2 Ban Wave Obliterates Seemingly Innocent Accounts