Foundries like TSMC have been scrambling to expand capacity amid a boom in demand for everything with a chip inside. In the case of TSMC, no less than $40 billion will go into these efforts this year, and chances are the total expenditure will reach $44 billion. Additionally, it will need to hire around 8,000 engineers across the US, Taiwan, Japan, and China. That said, the progress on these expansions has been slower than expected....

Inside the MT6753 there’s a Mali-T720 MP3 GPU clocked at 700 MHz, which is an entry-level configuration. This device comes with 3 GB of LPDDR3 memory and 16 GB of internal NAND plus a microSD card slot. Wireless support is average across the board. There’s Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, but no 802.11ac. Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS are built-in as well, and the lack of NFC isn’t surprising at this price point....

The BIS, an agency of the US Department of Commerce, has announced new export controls on tech deemed essential to US national security. The rule took effect on Monday and involves four technologies supporting the production of advanced semiconductors and gas turbine engines. All four technologies are covered by the Wassenaar Arrangement, meaning that 41 other states will also impose stricter export controls on these items. Notably missing from that list of countries is China, a strategic competitor of the US....

Also read: The Most Memorable Game Controllers from the Last 40 Years The PlayStation 4 gamepad’s ergonomic and efficient design cannot be denied. Whether you play first-person shooters, roleplaying games, or any other genre, the DS4 is crafted to feel comfortable in button placement, weight, and grip. Long-time PlayStation gamers may wish to use it on their PC games because of its familiarity. Others opt for it instead of spending money on a new controller....

FreeSync and G-Sync: What You Need to Know Best Gaming Monitors 2021: 1440p, 4K, Budget and Ultrawide FreeSync on Nvidia GPUs Revisited Our original article follows below, citing various monitors we tested for FreeSync compatibility with Nvidia GPUs… To the surprise of many, Nvidia has backed down from their G-Sync tower and enabled Nvidia GPU owners to use adaptive sync with a wide range of FreeSync monitors. The feature was announced during CEO Jensen Huang CES 2019 keynote and this week it’s been enabled by the latest GeForce drivers....

High-quality, clicky mechanical switches, remappable keys, and – of course – fancy RGB lighting can make your gaming experience all the more satisfying. However, throughout my many years of PC gaming, I’ve always had one major gripe with using keyboards as a controller: variable movement, or more accurately, the lack of variable movement. To elaborate, if you’ve played games on a modern console, you’re probably aware that you can precisely control your character’s speed by merely moving your controller’s joystick less than its full range of movement....

If only there was a quick way to see if that the item you’ve just downloaded is exactly the same as the file that was on the website. Well, there is. Welcome to the world of checksums! Just what the heck is a checksum? TL;DR: A checksum is a number, in the form of a binary or hexadecimal value, that’s been derived from a data source. The important bits to know: a checksum is typically much smaller than the data source, and it’s also almost entirely unique....

Finzer yesterday tweeted a screenshot of the message he sent to OpenSea staff. “The reality is that we have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn,” he wrote. The changes will give the company five years’ worth of runway if the crypto winter doesn’t improve—or doesn’t gets worse, presumably. Those let go will be provided with generous severance, healthcare coverage into 2023, and accelerated equity vesting “for those who haven’t hit their cliff,” according to the note....

Death Stranding was one of the most hotly anticipated games when released on the PS4 in 2019 (the PC version arrived in 2020). The open-world adventure and its all-star cast arrived to critical acclaim—it was PC Gamer’s best title of 2020—but the unique gameplay and mechanics mean it’s not for everyone, which is why Epic’s free giveaway is so appealing; there’s no need to risk any money on something you might not like....

But sometimes we just want to chillax with a game. Few things are better after a hard day than plopping down on the couch for a couple of hours to explore other worlds in a relaxed environment that lets you unwind. There is a multitude of games that can serve this purpose. Even the titles mentioned above can be relaxing for some, however certain games are better suited to reducing stress levels....

The ECS Z77H2-AX can’t catch a break. Not only does it have the worst UEFI and performance, but it’s also the most power hungry Z77 we tested, with the test rig drawing 92W at idle and 179W under load. The Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB was a bit better at 89W and 171W, the Asrock Z77 Extreme6 dropped to 84W and 168W, while the Intel DZ77GA-70K setup consumed the least power at 82W and 162W....

Next up we have Excel and here the 8700K was around 3% quicker than the 1600X when matched clock for clock. However the 2600X is able to match the 8700K with the same completion time of 2.85 seconds, impressive stuff. The HandBrake test we run doesn’t leverage the AMD Ryzen CPUs that well and here we see that the 2600X is only able to match the 8600K and is therefore 15% slower than the 8700K....

That sounded like a good idea to us and we were also curious to see how well the Core i7-4770K has aged – we first tested this CPU in June 2013. This article should also give 4790K owners a good idea of the gains they can expect when upgrading to a new Core i7-8700K. For a quick refresher, the 4770K and 4790K are both based on the Haswell architecture, with the former arriving in mid-2013 and the latter coming a year later with overclocked parts and a new range of chipsets....

In Total War: Warhammer and Call of Duty: WWII we’re going to look at the performance across three quality presets being medium, high and ultra with the GTX 1080 Ti, just for something different. Starting with the medium results we see something quite interesting. Although the average frame rate is similar across the CPUs tested the 1% low result does vary quite a bit. Even after overclocking, the 4770K trails the 7600K and is 22% slower than the 8700K....

Apple analyst and trusted leaker Ming-Chi Kuo said this week that the company is readying a new iPad mini to ship in late 2023 or sometime in the first half of 2024. It will be a refresh of last year’s model with a new processor. The 6th generation iPad mini runs on a downclocked version of the iPhone 13’s A15 Bionic processor – one step behind the iPhone 14’s A16 chip....

As one of the most popular games with children, Roblox is an obvious target for malicious actors. A popular Chrome extension related to the game tried to steal users’ login details and tradeable assets. Bleeping Computer found that the two instances of the extension “SearchBlox” on the Chrome web store contained malware. The code stole account credentials and items from the Roblox trading platform Rolimons. Currently, antivirus software doesn’t flag the extension or related URLs, making it hard to detect....

Cybersecurity startup Buguard has been hard at work hacking hackers. Using an exploit it found, it has disrupted malware and ransomware servers, locking out their operators. TechCrunch notes that the firm has effectively taken five command-and-control (C&C) servers offline, four of which have gone entirely dark. The counterattacks were made possible after the source code of a malware called Mars Stealer leaked online. Mars Stealer is a malware-as-a-service platform where hackers can rent server time to conduct attacks....

Announced as “Sets” late last year, the feature has been added to several Insider Preview builds of Windows 10 including version 17618 released in March, with reports at the time claiming that mainstream users could expect tabbed apps to be included as part of the October 2018 Update. However, Microsoft has continually removed Sets from the Windows 10 previews and the feature was also excluded from this October’s update, which is currently unavailable due to a bug but should relaunch soon and includes a new dark theme for File Explorer among other additions....

Editor’s Note: Guest author Jonathan Goldberg is the founder of D2D Advisory, a multi-functional consulting firm. Jonathan has developed growth strategies and alliances for companies in the mobile, networking, gaming, and software industries. Part of the problem rests in the fact that AI has become a term owned by the marketing department. For the average, non-tech person, AI sounds almost magical, conjuring images of talking robots and computers that tell jokes....

Enter the new Alienware 15. This much larger gaming laptop from Dell’s enthusiasts brand is a completely different story. Designed for high-end gaming, the Alienware 15 packs powerful hardware rivalling decent gaming desktops, including flagship mobile GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia. And like other Alienware machines, the 15 is highly customizable, with pricing ranging from $1,200 up to $2,700 depending on the hardware inside. To make sure we got the message that the Alienware 15 means business, Dell sent us the top-spec model to review....