Articles by Mark Tyson, News Editor

Mark's enthusiasm for computers dampened at an early age by the rubber-keyed Sinclair Spectrum 48K and feelings of Commodore 64 envy. However, in the mid-80s, hope in a digital future was rekindled by the purchase of an Atari 520 STe. Since that time Mark has used a multitude of computers for fun and professional endeavors. He often owned both Macs and PCs but went cold on the former after OS9 was killed off, and warmed to the latter with the introduction of Windows XP.

Early work years were spent in artwork and reprographics but in the late noughties, Mark started to blog about computers, Taiwanese food culture, and guitar design. This activity led to a full-time position writing about breaking PC tech news for HEXUS, for the best part of a decade. When HEXUS was abruptly closed, Mark helped with the foundation of Club386, before finding a new home at Tom's Hardware.

When not wearing through the keycap legends on his PC keyboards, Mark can be found wandering the computer malls of Taiwan's neon-lit conurbations and enjoying local and international cuisine.

Articles by: Mark Tyson

Fully custom copper PC features upcycled blowtorch reservoir — antique wooden pedestal complements steampunk design hiding a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RX 9070 XT

By Mark Tyson

If Edison and Stephenson had teamed up to build a gaming PC, it might have looked like this custom copper and wood all-AMD design.

Enthusiast digs into CPU substrate for surgery to replace ripped-off data pin — resurrected chip boots and hits 33% overclock

By Mark Tyson

An Intel Celeron 1200 (Tualatin) was revived from the dead after a ripped-off pin was successfully replaced.

Dev gets CoD: Black Ops 2 Hijacked map running natively in Minecraft

Developer uses GPT-6 Astra to get CoD Black Ops 2 Hijacked map running natively inside Minecraft — achieves 45fps performance using Minecraft’s OpenGL context

By Mark Tyson

An artificial intelligence and games development enthusiast has demonstrated Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Hijacked map running natively in Minecraft.

Sony PS2 security chip ‘broken wide open’

Original Sony PlayStation 2 security chip ‘broken wide open’ after 26 years — chemical decapping and four years of reverse engineering unlocks MechaCon secrets

By Mark Tyson

The ‘magic security chip’ inside the original PlayStation 2 has been successfully reverse engineered and dumped after four years of effort.

Minecraft Legacy for the Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii

Minecraft Legacy gets rewritten in C++ for PS2 and Wii ports — code is tuned so it works well even on the PS2’s meager 32MB of RAM

By Mark Tyson

Games optimization specialist OptiProjects (AKA OptiJeugos) has released a new port of Minecraft Legacy for the Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii consoles.

Need for Speed Underground 2 - Windows game on the Switch

Need for Speed Underground 2 now runs directly on Nintendo Switch — other Classic Windows titles playable thanks to custom firmware boot

By Mark Tyson

Retro gaming fans who own Nintendo Switch consoles now have several classic Windows titles they can now enjoy.

A futuristic Meta Quest plus 3D printer workflow

Meta Quest user vibe-codes 3D object throwing to 3D printer — ‘I've never felt more like Tony Stark’ says the software engineer

By Mark Tyson

A software engineer has shown off a futuristic Meta Quest plus 3D printer workflow where models are 'thrown' to the output device.

County landfill trash to treasure picking

Dumpster diver builds home lab Proxmox server from weekly landfill runs for SSDs, HDDs, GPUs, and even RAM — weekly e-waste raids net multi-drive Proxmox server and Asus ROG laptop

By Mark Tyson

A tech enthusiast says that they managed to put together a home lab-worthy Proxmox server using PC parts scavenged from the nearby county landfill.

Bernie Sanders proposes 20 year prison sentence for AI devs who plow ahead with Artificial Superintelligence plans — penalty on par with illegally developing rogue nuclear weapons

By Mark Tyson

Senators Bernie Sanders and Greg Cezar have announced their Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act which threatens 20-year prison sentences for rule breakers.

Mexican cartel's crypto farm seized in mountain raid — 300 GPUs, satellite links, and industrial transformers tapped hydroelectric power

By Mark Tyson

There is increasing evidence that Mexican drug cartels are diversifying into cryptocurrency mining and are using crypto platforms to launder their ill-gotten gains.

Waymo robotaxi calls cops on riders handling loaded AR-style ghost gun — Waymo alerted San Francisco police, then juvenile riders were stopped and arrested

By Mark Tyson

Following a tip-off from robotaxi firm Waymo, San Francisco police conducted a 'high-risk vehicle stop' and arrested two juveniles for illegal possession of a firearm.

Playable Tomb Raider runs on a humble 1-watt chip

By Mark Tyson

A retro video gaming devotee has showcased Lara Croft adventuring in and among ancient tombs on a humble ESP32-P4 microcontroller.

Ukraine triumphs in 'first-ever' drone-vs-drone boat battle — video shows Russian MBeK destroyed by Sargan 3000's 12.7mm automatic turret

By Mark Tyson

Ukraine’s Navy has claimed that it has won 'the first-ever battle of unmanned naval boats.'

IKEA releases new Skyrim mod that adds gloriously mundane Kallax shelving unit as your newest companion — free collab provides a drab flatpack answer to your loot woes

By Mark Tyson

IKEA has announced the Kallax Storageborn companion creation for players of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition on PC or Xbox.

Apple’s new A20 Pro smartphone chip around 25% faster than its predecessor in leaked benchmark — the 2nm CPU in the iPhone Duo and 18 Pro hits nearly 5 GHz clocks

By Mark Tyson

The first Apple A20 Geekbench 6 benchmark results are starting to pop up online and the single-core score is very impressive.

McLaren cars were in the crypto gang's fleet

Minecraft-spawned crypto kingpin faces 20 years for $245 million heist — mastermind's role in hacking campaign fueled their supercar, bodyguards, and private jet habit

By Mark Tyson

The ringleader of a cybercrime gang, which reportedly formed after meetups in Minecraft online, has plead guilty to a racketeering charge and now faces up to 20 years in jail.

Old MacBook uses a mirror, webcam, and AI agent to code its own AMD GPU drivers — 'agent-first' Omarchy Linux debugs itself, AI can check its own progress on screen in real-time

By Mark Tyson

Using an 'age of agents' Linux distro a 'MacBook is using its webcam to look at its screen in a mirror to improve AMD Radeon chip support.'

Developer uses Claude to vibe code a Windows 3.1 shell in an hour — reanimated 12MB retro launcher runs on both Windows 11 and Apple Silicon

By Mark Tyson

There’s a new vibe-coded clone of the Windows 3.1 Program Manager that runs on modern Windows 11 or macOS systems.

Self-taught tinkerer demos working room-sized Cold War-era supercomputer with vacuum tubes — takes 15 minutes to warm up and smells like burning dust, 8-bit design uses 460 recycled 1950s Soviet tubes

By Mark Tyson

A self-taught electronics tinkerer called Mike recently shared details of his retro-computing vacuum tube computer project.

Big Tech eyes glacier-strewn Patagonia for building mega AI data centers — region offers 17,300 glaciers, coldness, and cheap energy, but fiber lines are scarce

By Mark Tyson

Patagonia, a region of Argentina with 17,300 glaciers has the potential to turn into a data center hotspot.

Super Smash Bros Melee gets fully decompiled after over six years of effort — ambitious and technically impressive project delivers GameCube classic as C code

By Mark Tyson

A Super Smash Bros Melee decompilation project hit its key long-standing goal a few hours ago.

Google maps entire brain and central nervous system of adult male fruit fly, software engineers immediately make it run Doom — AI-powered 3D model of over 166,000 neurons can also play Super Mario 64

By Mark Tyson

Any sufficiently advanced technology will immediately be forced to play Doom.

Tech enthusiast finds $12,000 stack of RAM in their garage — work let them keep an old server stuffed with 1,920GB of DDR4

By Mark Tyson

A computing enthusiast found a fat stack of DDR4 RAM sticks that might be worth $10,000 in their garage.

OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra model autonomously completes Portal in 24 hours — feat cost just $571 in tokens

By Mark Tyson

An AI enthusiast has conducted an experiment where OpenAI's new GPT-6 Astra played through the entirety of Valve's Portal 3D puzzler game on its own.

RPCS3 emulator can now run PS3 games on PC directly from a disc drive in landmark development — unlocks 20 years of physical titles on Windows, Linux, and macOS

By Mark Tyson

The developers of the Sony PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 have told their social media followers that it is now possible to play games straight from discs.

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