The latest addition to Microsoft’s PowerToys suite is a tool called PowerOCR. Created by Windows app developer Joseph Finney, the feature allows users to pull text from images using OCR (optical character recognition). It is not exactly unchartered waters as OCR has existed for decades, but until now there was no hint of such a functionality getting added at the OS level in Windows. Microsoft does offer OCR in OneNote though, which is free to download....

For about the last three years, Nvidia’s Lightspeed Studios has been working on a tool called “RTX Remix.” The company first demonstrated it in September by adding impressive lighting effects to Bethesda’s 20-year-old The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Valve’s Portal from 2007. The results were amazing, but were only video demos. On December 8, Nvidia released the Portal with RTX DLC for PC with Valve’s blessing. The game features full ray tracing and DLSS 3 support....

And, well, that is about it. For a franchise with such a rich history, this feels awfully disappointing. Would it have been that much trouble for NetherRealm Studios to put together remakes of the first game or two in the series for modern platforms, or to throw fans a couple of other bones? Mortal Kombat hit arcades on October 8, 1992, with “realistic” digitized graphics, extreme violence and levels of gore that were unprecedented for the time....

Originally announced as a multi-platform reboot in 2009, MechWarrior’s development was curbed amidst licensing quarrels. It remained on the backburner until Piranha Games finished its work on Duke Nukem Forever and the project was reintroduced in October 2011 as a free-to-play PC-exclusive. The title is set in the year 3049, but time advances concurrently with the real. It’s being built with CryEngine 3 and will improve upon previous games by using urban environments to address excessive circle-strafing and sniping....

Unless you’re doing a lot of gaming or CPU intensive tasks on the Moto G, it could be possible to get two days of light usage out of the handset. If you are gaming, naturally your expected life will be reduced to somewhere around four hours, which is a decent but not excellent result. Also worth mentioning is Motorola’s battery saver mode, which doesn’t do much apart from restrict mobile data usage when the battery starts to get low....

The Moto G4 Play boasted 23 percent longer battery life in our Wi-Fi browsing test, which is better than the mere 13 percent increase in battery capacity. This is likely due to improvements in display efficiency and tweaks to software, because the SoC in both phones (the Snapdragon 410) is otherwise identical.

From a cold boot, the GX60 is ready to go in Windows 7 in 48 seconds - a tiny bit slower than I anticipated from a system equipped with a solid state drive, but still not terrible for Microsoft’s previous-gen OS that many hardcore users and gamers appear to prefer. The first thing I typically do with a new PC after measuring initial boot time is head to the Add/Remove programs list and take a count of what I need to discard....

Naturally, with the preview build readily available, we couldn’t resist installing Windows 8 on the WindPad. First impressions are good. So good in fact, I think Google and Apple should be on alert. Although this is only meant to be an early preview for developers, it feels so much more complete than that. I already prefer Windows 8 to the latest Android and iOS operating systems as it feels polished, powerful and interactive....

I was pleased to find that MSI kept the useless software bundle to a minimum. There were only three programs which I chose to uninstall right away: Norton Internet Security, EasyFace Logon and CrazyTalk Cam Suite. More seasoned users also have the option of jumping the initial setup completely in favor of reformatting the system after receiving their Windows 7 install disks. Below we have included a set of benchmark numbers and graphs from several tests that were run on the X340 to give you an idea of how its processor, hard drive and memory system perform under load....

The Super PI result produced by the MSI X58 Pro-E was quite good, standing on top of the Asus P6T Deluxe by a small margin. The overclocked X58 Pro-E configuration showed some impressive performance gains in Super PI. The X58 Pro-E was slower than the P6T Deluxe in the CINEBENCH R10 multi-CPU rendering test, but was able to claim the OpenGL rendering test. We finished off the synthetic application testing phase with WinRAR measuring both single and multi-threading performance....

Full year 2022 revenue was $31.62 billion with $4.5 billion in net income and diluted earnings per share of $11.24. Netflix managed to add 7.66 million paid subscribers during the holiday season, pushing the total number of paid memberships to 230.75 million. The launch of Netflix’s lower-priced ad-supported tier in November no doubt played a role here, with the company saying it was pleased with the offering’s early results. Unfortunately for the curious among us, Netflix did not disclose what portion of its subscribers are signed up for the ad-supported tier so it is tough to gauge (as an outsider) just how successful it is....

Earlier this year, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang declared Moore’s Law dead (again) during a 4000-series launch Q&A session. The prediction echoed similar statements made by Huang during the 2017 Beijing GPU Technology Conference. And much like those times before, Intel isn’t buying what Nvidia’s leather leader is selling. The company’s 2023 IEDM research submissions highlight several processes, materials, and technologies that could help the semiconductor giant to support their previous statements on delivering chiplet-based trillion transistor processors by 2030....

It’s been a long road, but the movement has successfully managed to push New York’s Senate to bring a new bill to the floor – and pass it. The bill in question, “Bill S4104A,” has passed both New York’s Senate and Assembly; the latter’s voting just concluded today with a supermajority of 145 “Ayes” and just one “Nay.” So, what’s next? As usual, S4104A still has to be delivered to the Governor’s desk, where it will await a signature from Kathy Hochul....

According to iThemes researchers, Hackers are actively exploiting the vulnerability (CVE-2022-31474) across impacted systems using specific versions of the BackupBuddy plugin. The exploit allows attackers to view the contents of any WordPress-accessible file on the affected server. This includes those with sensitive information, including /etc/passwd, /wp-config.php, .my.cnf, and .accesshash. These files can provide unauthorized access to system user details, WordPress database settings, and even authentication permissions to the affected server as the root user....

Following the success of the My Nintendo Store in Europe and the UK, Nintendo is now inviting US and Canadian residents to try out the shopping experience. To access the new web store, visit Nintendo’s official website and look for the “My Nintendo Store” tab on the top bar. The store features many games in physical and digital formats, including new titles like Pokémon Legends Arceus and upcoming ones such as Nintendo Switch Sports....

One of the problems we’ve seen with Windows Phone devices thus far is that if you’ve seen one Windows Phone, you’ve basically seen them all. After all, how much can you do when all the phones feature the same basic specifications and are dominated by a similar touchscreen. The answer usually is “not much.” Or so we thought… Nokia has proven to the industry that it can do Windows Phone better than the competition....

The Snapdragon 800 SoC that powers the Lumia 930 is one of Qualcomm’s more energy efficient chips, and the architecture of Windows Phone can make the software side quite efficient as well. Despite this, during my general usage of the 930 I didn’t think the battery life was all that good, lasting less time than other flagships I’ve used recently. That’s a fairly subjective assessment though, so let’s dive into the battery benchmarks....

For one, the Snapdragon 800 was more than capable of driving Windows Phone on the Lumia 1520, and so should be fine for the Lumia 930 as well. The Snapdragon 801 also brought minimal CPU performance gains, as I noted in my review of the HTC One M8, mostly boosting GPU performance through a higher clock speed. This extra GPU power is more necessary on a 1440p device like the LG G3; the Snapdragon 800 is designed for 1080p and carries a GPU more powerful than current mobile games require....

The standard 1660 is 21% cheaper but packs only 8% fewer CUDA cores. Going off by that alone you’d expect it to be ~5% slower on average, as the base and boost clocks are very similar. However, there’s one other major change. Whereas the 1660 Ti features a 192-bit wide memory bus using 12Gbps GDDR6 memory for a bandwidth of 288 GB/s, the new vanilla model has been downgraded with GDDR5 memory....

Having tested the GTX 660, we’re inclined to conclude that Nvidia has done it again – sort of. While the new GK106-based card is a solid value at its price, AMD has already slashed prices where necessary, so its lineup isn’t quite as displaced as with previous Kepler launches. The GTX 660 provides a surprisingly high level of performance for its MSRP of $230. It’s roughly 23% cheaper than last month’s GTX 660 Ti while being only 14% slower when running games at 1920x1200....