Erik Wolpaw was the co-writer on the Portal series and various other Valve games, including Half-Life, Psychonauts, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In a recent interview with Kiwi Talkz, the now independent contractor said he would love to work on Portal 3 before he gets too old but notes that it’s not likely to happen (below). “I am not getting any younger,” said the 55-year-old gaming veteran. “We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think we [the original developers] are literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it....

Recently, Asustor (yes, it’s affiliated with Asus) introduced the AS-202TE specifically for multimedia tasks and its HDMI output can be connected directly to your TV. Before that, QNAP did something similar with the HDMI-equipped TS-269L. And not to be excluded, Synology has started offering the DS214play which touts 1080p transcoding on the fly, but its usefulness as an HTPC replacement is limited because it doesn’t have an HDMI port. Instead, it relies on DLNA and AirPlay to pipe content where you want it....

The NAS company announced this week that it has fixed a vulnerability affecting PHP versions 7.1.x, 7.1.33, 7.2.x, 7.2.24, 7.3.x, and 7.3.11. Attackers could exploit it to gain remote execution on QNAP operating systems. The affected OS versions include QTS 5.0 and 4.5, along with QuTS hero h5.0, 4.5, and c5.0. QTS 5.0.1 build 20220515 and later as well as QuTS hero h5.0.0.2069 build 20220614 and later are safe. The exploit only works in systems running nginx, which QNAP NAS systems don’t have installed by default....

We’ll be placing particular focus on comparing the RTX 3080 against the RTX 2080 Ti just because that was the fastest GPU you could get before for ray tracing, but for good measure you will also see results for the RTX 2080 and 2070. As you’d expect, we plan to discuss RTX on versus RTX off, which is the main talking point when it comes to ray tracing in particular....

Starting with the staff-cut news, company CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev announced that Robinhood would reduce its headcount by approximately 23% as part of a broader company reorganization into a General Manager structure. Tenev said while all parts of the business will be affected, the main areas will be operations, marketing, and program management functions. The move comes just a few months after Robinhood laid off around 9% of its staff in April....

StarCraft II is one of the few games, possibly the only in fact that plays noticeably better on Intel hardware. These results are from a 2v2 match but in busy 4v4 battles the 2700X and all Ryzen CPUs for that matter do lag a little while CPUs such as the 8700K generally spit our smooth frame rates even in the most intense matches. Sadly, this game does only utilize a single thread which is why it hurts Ryzen a little and as a result the 8700K was up to 28% faster....

Update (Jun 30): Confirmed! Samsung starts manufacturing chips on a 3nm process, DRAM supply glut brewing in South Korea Samsung has great ambitions for its semiconductor arm and it’s a key part of its $205 billion plan to conquer chip making, robotics, artificial intelligence, and biopharmaceuticals. No less than half of those funds will go towards advanced chip factories and the research and development of new process nodes and new transistors....

The biggest and most obvious change to the Note line is the refined design. Samsung finally ditched the cheap plastic in favour of a part-metal design, improving the plastic back cover in the process. The Note 4 is truly the first Galaxy product I’ve used that feels and looks like it’s worth the asking price, which is a massive step forward for the company. And this isn’t just token praising of improvement and effort: the Note 4’s has one of the better designs of the year....

With the Galaxy S5, for example, Samsung marketed a Snapdragon 801-powered model with LTE for most developed markets, while the Exynos 5422 model (that lacked LTE) was available in select regions. In my performance review of the Galaxy S5 I discovered that although the Snapdragon 801 model was faster and supported LTE, the Exynos variant was $50 cheaper and still held its own despite somewhat weaker hardware. When it comes to the Galaxy Note 4, both models have been upgraded significantly from a hardware perspective relative to the Galaxy S5, the Exynos model especially....

The Note Edge comes with Android 4.4.4 ‘KitKat’ out of the box, and I believe Samsung will update it to Android 5.0 in the near future, just like the Note 4. Samsung’s TouchWiz UI has been applied with exactly the same style as the Note 4 and many other Galaxies as well, and all the flagship features are intact. As such, heading to the software section of my Note 4 review will tell you all about what you’re getting with the Note Edge....

As for wireless connectivity, the Galaxy S6 Active features Category 6 LTE support, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS+GLONASS, and NFC. The LTE bands the S6 Active supports are bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17 and 20, which covers the most widely used frequencies across the globe. There’s also 3 GB of RAM in this smartphone. Internally there’s 32 GB of non-expandable storage, which is a little slim for my liking....

Now that the Edge is larger than the standard Galaxy S7, it’s found a true home in Samsung’s smartphone range. At 5.5-inches, the S7 Edge works really well for everyday use and content consumption and the refined design makes it more comfortable to hold than most phones with this screen size. The use of curved glass and sturdy metal gives the devices a top-end look and feel, and although it’s still slippery and a fingerprint magnet, I feel compelled to overlook these issues in the name of beauty....

According to leaker SnoopyTech, Samsung will be dropping the ‘Z’ from the names of the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, a change that will also apply to all future foldables in the series. While the majority of consumers tend not to mention the Z part when talking about Galaxy Folds and Galaxy Flips, the reason behind Samsung’s purported decision is the negative connotations behind the letter following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine....

At this size and resolution, it’s the equivalent of two 27-inch 1440p monitors glued together into one seamless display. The refresh rate is still a very impressive 240Hz, with support for AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync Compatible. The big area of improvement is HDR. The original Odyssey G9 packed a rather pathetic 10 edge lit dimming zones, which is insufficient for true HDR visuals on such a large display....

The availability of GPUs has improved a lot over the past few months. It’s been enough pressure to drive prices down much closer to MSRP than a year ago. That said, multiple industry leaders believe they’ll continue to deal with a chip shortage until 2023 or even 2024, despite the best efforts of foundries to add more capacity. For lithography equipment supplier ASML, the added demand from foundries looking to fast-track their expansion is a blessing and a curse....

Granted, $115 isn’t cheap for a mid-tower, particularly when products such as the Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 and Silverstone’s own budget Precision Series PS10B can be had for $50. However, neither of those are as big as the Raven RV05. The Carbide Series SPEC-01 is a tiny 41L enclosure while the Precision Series PS10B is 55L. The 64L RV05 is in a different class with superior cooling and features such as fan controllers....

In February and March last year, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Intel became one of the first companies to suspend all shipments to customers in the country; this was followed by a suspension of all business activities in Russia soon after. Russian media outlets are now reporting that users can download Intel drivers once again. However, sources told Tom’s Hardware that while Intel did block Intel Driver and Support Assistant (DSA) downloads in Russia last year, access was restored later in 2022—Intel said in a statement that it hadn’t made any “recent” changes in regards to its Russia operations....

The Apple News push notifications from Fast Company contained racist slurs and obscene language. Some Twitter users captured screenshots of the messages—two were sent about one minute apart. “The messages are vile and are not in line with the content of Fast Company,” the publication said in a statement. Apple News confirmed the incident and disabled the FC channel. Fast Company went so far as to shut down its website until it could resolve the situation....

A Nintendo hacker has successfully ported the smash hit internet word game Wordle to the original Game Boy. Nintendo discontinued the Game Boy 19 years ago, so it’s not likely that you still own one. However, even if you own one, you would also have to have a way to flash the ROM onto a blank GB cartridge. Fortunately, security researcher and Nintendo enthusiast, “stacksmashing,” also created a version for the Analogue Pocket that can run from a microSD card....

I’m a big fan of the vanilla Android design, so it’s always disappointing to see a manufacturer ditch the stylish Google-made visuals in favor of their own concoction. It’s even more disappointing when the skin applied across the operating system and its applications doesn’t add any new features, a phenomenon I like to call ‘skinning for the sake of skinning’. While the Xperia Z1 Compact’s skin doesn’t add many features, and is essentially skinning for the sake of skinning, I can forgive it somewhat for not being a ‘heavy’ skin....