News archive
August 2026
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297 articles
- August 24
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- 32GB of DDR5 6000 RAM now costs $400 — the latest price hike puts DIY PC building further out of reach than ever before
- Nine indicted by Taiwan over illegal export of Nvidia B300 GPUs to China — details reveal five-point strategy to exploit and avoid customs controls
- Two Intel chips break Amazon's top 10 CPUs for the first time in months — Core Ultra 7 270K and Core i7-14700K finally challenge AMD desktop dominance
- Undersea cable to Antarctica through Drake Passage is viable, researchers find — 1,600km route to Chile could spell an end to research data leaving in 'suitcases full of hard drives'
- Valve was founded 30 years ago today — changed PC gaming forever with Half-Life, then Steam
- Kyoto University builds transistor that survives 600C temperatures, compatible with standard fabs — Standard ion implantation and bottom-gate design fix leakage and voltage drift
- Nintendo takes down over 400 GitHub repositories for Switch emulators in one go — Relentless DMCA strikes tied to piracy concerns over illegal cryptographic keys
- August 23
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- Self-driving Ford F-250 truck with shotgun-equipped drone-killing turret tested by US Army — autonomous system designed to blast fast-moving drones at between 10 and 100 meters range
- Nvidia reportedly warns biggest customers of 15% price hikes on AI servers — memory costs continue to soar
- Nvidia’s GB300-powered DGX Station desktop tower listed for nearly $100,000 online — Enterprise AI powerhouse now available to buy for mere mortals with lots of cash
- Fake GTA VI ISO circulates on the internet a few days after leak, internet sleuths claim 113GB download is padded malware — testers claim file is 99.99% empty zeroes with 50KB virus embedded
- Modular pocket gimbal camera that transforms into a self-flying drone retroactively banned by FCC, certification revoked — Agency closes foreign UAS loophole on 230g HoverAir Versa
- Group plans one-week PlayStation blackout to protest Sony’s plan to end physical game production — calls for players to turn off their consoles or log out of PSN from August 23 to 30
- Humanoid robots shatter Usain Bolt's 100m record, hits 23.8 mph before crashing into foam pads — video shows Tiangong Ultra logging 9.39-second sprint before colliding with padded wall
- Startup to use drones to keep clouds away from solar farms, 'Our ultimate goal is to reduce the intensity of severe storms and hurricanes' — chemical-free tech promises up to 30% power boost for $30 to $60 an hour
- Lucky shopper finds RTX 5080 for just $702 at Walmart — saves almost $800 compared to current retail prices
- Officials nationwide face death threats and gunfire over AI data center projects — More than 500 towns restrict builds as councils shutter public comment
- Enthusiast mods GTX 1080 Ti with a dual-tower CPU cooler, sees up to 32°C reduction in temps — Mod yields 30W power savings and 9% higher FPS
- Maxell brings back classic 1970s cassette tapes — 1970s ferric formula is custom-made for vintage PC data drives
- The world's first webcam was switched off 25 years ago today — 128x128 grayscale feed predated the World Wide Web to monitor a Cambridge coffee pot
- August 22
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- Microsoft blames RGB peripherals for crashing Windows 11 — RGB software is causing blue screens, crashes, and game freezes
- 25 years after the death of 3dfx, the Voodoo 3 gets a Linux driver update — classic Voodoo GPUs can now boot without a PC BIOS
- Snap-on LCD brings mini displays to any 120mm PC fan — Thermalright's Fan Frame Vision-1 lets you display information and custom themes on your case fans
- Walk through a 3D cyberpunk city built purely from ASCII characters — a text-based metropolis runs on a 283KB Rust WebAssembly engine feeding a WebGL renderer
- Logitech faces lawsuit for withholding $61M in tariff refunds from customers — lawsuit claims company extracted up to $97M from consumers in 2026 through tariff-justified price increases
- US authorities say Siemens controllers used for water and other infrastructure are being targeted by hackers — agencies claim threat actors use AI tools to generate exploitation scripts
- This week on Tom's Hardware Premium: August 22, 2026 — foundries, supercomputers, China, and how to not overpay on a motherboard
- Desktop CPU shipments crater 20% amid high component costs, but AMD gains record share despite 'ugly' desktop processor market — Intel floods laptop market with millions of CPUs, but AMD still sets all-time share records
- Storage unit auction winner finds retro Pentium 4 PC with a see-through, UV-reactive PSU — Y2K time capsule discovered among 100 laptops and hundreds of RAM sticks
- Gamer uncovers factory plastic left on RTX 3070 VRM pads after five years, causing overheating — claims removal and repasting dropped GPU hotspot temperatures by 30°C
- GTA 6 leaks prompt Take-Two to subpoena Microsoft for Windows device IDs of everyone in three Discord servers — daily gameplay leaks shatter cloud of secrecy around the much-hyped game
- Spending on physical games falls to lowest on record since 1995 — US console sales plunge 39% in July as memory costs push average price to $542
- Back-to-back Amazon CPU scam delivers empty Ryzen 5 9600X boxes in 72 hours — $ 10,000-a-month business customer captures fraud on camera
- August 21
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- SanDisk expansion cards for Xbox Series X|S now available on Amazon — alternative storage solution to Seagate, WD arrives on the market five years after the launch of the consoles
- Florida seeks court ruling to officially classify Sam Altman and ChatGPT as a 'public nuisance' — OpenAI fights to keep lawsuit away from a state jury
- World's largest open library calls for volunteers to scan and preserve physical books as AI companies buy, scan, and destroy them — Anna's Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
- Tom’s Hardware Innovation Awards 2026: Progress amid turmoil
- LG enters chip packaging arena with Laser Direct Imaging machine, as TSMC's CoWoS remains constrained — maskless machine is designed to pattern fine interconnects, trading resolution for higher throughput
- Unlock Tom's Hardware Premium's Hot Chips 2026 coverage for free — sign up for an account to read technical breakdowns from the show
- LG Display introduces new OLED deposition technique that uses lithography instead of metal masks — "FLiPP" photolithography delivers 1.6x brightness and 2.4x longer lifespan
- Supermicro fires several employees following investigation into $2.5 billion China AI chip smuggling — claims that senior management had no knowledge of illicit transactions
- CPU-Z gets biggest update since 2001 with V3 — 100+ health checks, built-in stress testing, and XOC effective clock tracking
- Micron commits $10 billion to new US-based Research Labs — Boise hub to target post-DRAM and NAND technologies and packaging
- Nvidia denies report it will ship Groq-based LPUs to China by year-end — says there is 'no China-specific LPU product in our roadmap'
- Sandisk's new $2,200 NAS SSD lets you fill the drive every day for five years — 7.68TB M.2 flaunts eye-popping 14,000 TBW rating
- Slovakia discovers Russian backdoors in 279 new traffic cameras — SMS-triggered shell access and passwordless live feeds found in EU-funded rollout
- Enterprise SSDs cost 18.6 times more than HDDs as 30TB drives hit $22,600 — hard drive supply is sold out through 2027
- DDR5 scalper bots now outnumber shoppers 10 to 1 — automated scraping hits listings every 6.5 seconds as 32GB kits surge from $72 to $392, DataDome researcher says
- August 20
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- Michigan township combats nuclear weapons data center by passing ban on new electrical infrastructure — 220,000-square-foot hyperscale project is backed by University of Michigan and the Los Alamos National Laboratory
- CXMT planned to use stolen Samsung IP to develop its DRAM, court hears — former Samsung engineer who jumped to Chinese memory maker now behind bars
- Catastrophic GTA VI leak is a full working build — notorious hacker CyberLeek taunts Rockstar Games by spraying the word 'leek' onto a wall in-game with bullets
- Synopsys validates a PCIe 6.0 PHY inside a face-to-face 3D stack at 64 GT/s — says it got there by pulling apart an existing 2D test chip
- Virginia county with 250 data centers begins to rein in building — Loudoun’s more than 250 data centers made it one of the richest counties in the US, but residents are pushing back
- SK hynix will pay staff $50,000 apiece according to a tentative agreement with disgruntled workers — $1.79 billion potential profit pool will be split between cash and stock grants
- Seasonic unveils world's first 80 Plus Ruby ATX power supply — Prime Enterprise RX-1600 delivers 1600W with up to 95.4% efficiency
- Physical media nostalgia sees fundraisers flock to Blu-Ray Kickstarter — drive with 9-in-1 dock achieves 160x funding goal halfway through campaign
- G.Skill pays out $2.4M settlement over misleading DDR4 and DDR5 speed marketing — buyers get $20 to $25 as vendor agrees to XMP and EXPO packaging warnings
- Pine64 halts all Linux hardware manufacturing through at least mid-2027 due to shortages — memory crunch forces open-source maker to freeze SBCs, tablets, and phones
- Federal judge strikes down ATF 'ghost gun' rule for 3D printed parts — says restrictions violate Fifth Amendment and historical tradition of DIY gunsmithing
- Console modder builds working Switch 2 Joy-Cons inside original Wii Remote shells — motion-sensing controllers snap magnetically onto a Switch 2
- Amazon delivery drone dumps Texas woman's parcel straight into her swimming pool — viral video surfaces the same week the company announces 500-city Prime Air expansion
- August 19
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- Samsung raises advanced foundry prices by up to 15% as AI demand fills its 4nm lines, report claims — Chinese customers accepting the largest hikes
- China shifting massive AI data center complexes to rural provinces to tap surplus energy — ‘Eastern Data, Western Computing’ strategy has Chinese tech giants Huawei and Tencent building AI infrastructure Guizhou
- Qualcomm retracts select Snapdragon C power efficiency benchmarks nearly a week after publication — updated slide removes idle apps and web browsing results
- Does a VPN bypass ISP video throttling? How to restore your connection speeds
- You can now buy a delidded Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition for $1,403 — stripped dual-cache offering is $500 more expensive than regular version
- Hacker leaks GTA VI gameplay and map to protest digital-only release — claims pre-orders are a legacy of physical game releases
- Google to stop making Pixel devices in China, report claims — India and Vietnam prime candidates for manufacturing shift owing to Beijing-Washington tensions
- Comcast turns Xfinity routers into home motion detectors — free Wi-Fi sensing feature tracks RF interference with zero extra hardware required
- Jason Kelce-led marketing campaign asks beer drinkers to send their pee to AI data centers — Liquid Death and Garage Beer skit claims 'AI data centers waste millions of gallons of water'
- Beijing AI bar that offers unlimited free DeepSeek coding tokens with $1.50 drink haemorrhaging cash — 'the bar is completely losing money, ' owner admits
- MicroSD card torture test writes 133 petabytes of data across 351 cards over three years — cards tested to failure reveal SanDisk as the outlier with 6 failures of the 7 tested
- AI server boom funds $314 universal cash payout in Taiwan — President Lai Ching-te says the payout ensures the country's AI windfall 'can be shared by all,' 11% GDP growth and $903B export surge finance $7.4B dividend
- First Nvidia H200 shipments reach China, ByteDance and Tencent take deliveries as Beijing loosens its import block — most licensed chips must stay in Hong Kong, which can't power them
- $10 Quake shareware CD locked copies of all id Software games behind a flawed encryption scheme — pay-over-the-phone system only held up for 39 days after 1996 release, leaving developer with 150,000 discs it couldn't sell
- Dev uses Claude AI to create native macOS driver for 'obscure' Windows-only printer — Linux container hack enables system-wide Cmd-P printing, driver now available on Github
- Player builds working AI chatbot in vanilla Minecraft using 445K command blocks — clever approach shrank initial block count from over 1 million, requires no mods, plugins, or datapacks to work
- White House cuts data centers, batteries, and AR from the US critical technology list — post-quantum cryptography, integrated photonics, high entropy alloys among new additions
- GitHub programmer ports playable Doom to DSLR camera with 3-inch TFT LCD display — Canon EOS 550D with open-source Magic Lantern firmware uses camera's button as controls, even plays sound
- August 18
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- DJI scores a win in fight against US ban, appeals court orders fresh review of firm's 'Chinese military company' designation — drone maker will stay on Pentagon list while a judge examines classified evidence for the first time
- Intel's next-gen Nova Lake chips may skip game-boosting X3D cache rival for mobile SKUs and debut on Razor Lake-HX instead, leaker claims — new rumor says Razor Lake family reportedly uses TSMC's N2X node
- AMD claims its 2026 rack-scale AI solution is 4X more energy efficient than its 2024 AI platform — company says it's pacing ahead of 20X efficiency by 2030
- Overclocker updates Hydra overclocking tool with VRAM and power limit controls for RTX 50-series GPUs — new update gives up to +3000 MHz memory offset
- GameStop customer earned over $10,000 in store credit from a stack of broken consoles — traded 'hundreds' of PlayStations, Xboxes, Game Boys, Switches, and more
- Google buys Spirit Airlines data for AI training for just $10 million — purchase includes hundreds of millions of emails, Microsoft Teams chats, billions of flight pricing records, and anonymized passenger records
- Judge allegedly outsourced entire ruling to AI and still can't be sued — federal court upholds blanket judicial immunity
- Secret tracking device placed in rare book ends up in Amazon processing facility — destroying books to train AI models is 'all' the Vegas warehouse does
- China reportedly orders state agencies to uninstall its government-only edition of Windows 10 — Beijing accelerates planned retirement over data security concerns
- Firm test-fires 3D-printed, fully cryogenic reusable rocket engine — Indian startup leverages SLM printing to create its first working prototype
- Nvidia crypto mining GPUs hacked to restore locked-away VRAM — software mod unlocks 64GB of VRAM on $250 CMP 170HX
- Best Buy 'repairs' customer's gaming laptop by simply removing half the RAM— claims unit in question only accepts 32 GB of RAM despite listing a 64GB configuration
- August 17
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- Geekom admits to shipping malware-laced network drivers for AMD mini PCs — company responds with guidance, removes malicious package
- Alibaba is selling its gaming studio for at least $1.5 billion to help fund AI buildout, mirroring Micron's exit from consumer business — dumps entire stake in Lingxi Games, which made 'Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition'
- Judge clears Nine PBS to retrieve 70 years of archival TV data — court rules station owns 50TB of data in Iron Mountain servers after host went under
- Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, up to 10x the lowest ever tracked prices — 128GB of DDR5 now $3,399
- America's largest grid wants to cut power to new data centers first during shortages — 50MW-plus data centers must bring their own electricity generation to avoid shutoffs
- Asus ROG Edition 20 gaming PC build – A pretty powerhouse PC that next to no one can afford
- Intel's Arc Pro B70 workstation GPU is now up to 48% more expensive than it was just a month ago — 32GB Battlemage workstation card climbs toward $2,000
- GoldenEye 007 for N64 has been '100% decompiled' — success of half-decade project opens up possibilities for complex mods and ports
- Cherokee Nation bans hyperscale data centers on its lands, won't support projects without consultation — energy and water consumption, air quality, noise, and cultural resource protection among concerns
- PC Partner warns of rising GPU prices and budget card shortages — analyst suggests makers are hiking prices beyond memory costs
- Japanese repair shop sells GPU VRAM upgrades for $25 per GB during memory crisis — RTX 2080 Ti modded to 22GB of GDDR6 for just $282, double the VRAM creates a budget AI powerhouse
- Senior PC store staff accused of running secret rival shop with stolen inventory — Hong Kong retailer claims substantial losses over year-long scheme
- Desktop UV printers and wild custom builds take over Open Sauce 2026 — $1,700 full-color printers, flash-cured resin, and a rideable speeder bike
- Air conditioner powered by a 'PC fan' labeled a scam by German consumer organization — there's a reason this lookalike AC unit is far cheaper than its competitors
- August 16
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- Dell CEO unveils new 'Dude, you’re getting a Dell (AI server rack)' video — PC maker recycles famous PC ad campaign to tout its new AI data center products
- Maker compresses a 2.9MB song by 1000x and prints it on paper as eight QR codes — 21KB song is two minutes long, requires a neural network for playback
- Ukraine built a $48,000 long-range drone after covertly snapping Chinese factory photos, clone destroys Russian Tu-95 bomber — attack drone has 2,000 km range, country builds 6,000 flying-wing drones a year
- Critical macOS Screen Sharing flaw gives attackers remote root access — CISA bumps bug to 9.8 severity following active Monero cryptojacking attacks
- Google reportedly taps AMD to design next-generation TPU — hybrid AI ASIC could integrate on-package CPU cores for reinforcement learning
- Intel says it will launch new core with Nova Lake on desktop first, not in data center — VP Robert Hallock hopes enthusiasts ‘do the math’ compared to AMD
- 3D-printed sound-powered jet engines propel micro drones — fliers are completely silent; researchers use ultrasonic frequencies to drive 12,000-RPM silent hovering fliers
- 3D-printing enthusiast creates ‘Flock Sock’ to blind controversial cameras, shares design — slip-on cover attaches to broom handle to make it easy to put on devices placed on traffic and streetlights
- The PC age began 45 years ago with the breakthrough Intel 8088 processor — 8-bit bus fueled 45 years of x86 dominance
- Modern OLEDs are just as vulnerable to burn-in as 2017 panels in 10,000-hour test — twice the brightness and 27% efficiency gains offer crucial headroom
- Thieves swap RTX 5080 GPUs for RTX 3060s in Chinese gaming hotels — rogue 'downgrades' go unnoticed until sudden blackout exposes $12,000 heist
- Ex-farm bureau chief invites AI data center developers to buy his land —argues blocked $6.3B project will just move to willing neighbors, defies 500-jurisdiction moratorium wave and 70% public opposition
- Ukrainian drone regiment ‘decimates’ 3,500-strong U.S. armored brigade combat team in war game — High drone kill-rate forced continuous 'respawns,' reveals shortcomings in American response as drones easily spotted and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles
- Rogue iOS developer creates app that simulates messages sent by carrier pigeon; messages only travel at 100mph — LA to NYC correspondence takes 22 hours to deliver; virtual birds can get distracted or even lost
- August 15
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- Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST
- Futuristic mosquito-zapping laser now available to buy, video shows device in action — tiny device shoots down bugs like a personal air defense system, but costs $1,000
- Nvidia turns $5B Intel stock bet into $30B windfall — filing reveals new $21B SpaceX stake and complete exit from Arm stock
- Devs blame Windows for VLC media player bug that causes 33-second delay when playing MP3 files — creators allege Microsoft Defender blocking plugin cache is to blame
- AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D vs Ryzen 7 7800X3D faceoff — seeing double with Zen 4 X3D
- White House authorizes private companies to launch 'hack-back' cyberattacks that destroy data and systems, targeting foreign cybercrime organizations — vetted organizations can now conduct offensive cyber operations
- This week on Tom's Hardware Premium: August 14, 2026 — Testing the BC-250, our interview with Intel's Robert Hallock, and a big week for optical
- US Navy 3D prints combat-ready drones and 1,000+ parts aboard aircraft carrier during exercise — containerized factory fabricated 80-mph FPVs and critical spares despite rough seas and 12-foot waves
- SK hynix runs out of replacement SSDs and defaults to original purchase price refunds — fine-print warranty clause shortchanges buyers as drive prices double
- Intel says PC market is ‘a tale of two kingdoms’ with mainstream ‘taking a beating’ — VP suggests a split between mainstream and enthusiast sockets across the industry
- Engineer used 360-degree cam hidden in bag of snacks in attempt to steal DRAM process tech for China — IT security team pinpointed perp due to camera's leaky wireless signals
- Anti-drone chain gun with 50mm precision-guided ammunition unveiled — Northrop Grumman's Raid Hunter is designed to wipe out drone swarms and cruise missiles
- Catastrophic optical disc shattering blamed on cleaning chemicals and packing foam — another data preservation concern to add to bit rot and laser rot
- August 14
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- Cargo thieves ram security escorts to hijack AI hardware shipments in California — brazen thieves employ PIT maneuver, rear-ending tactics to secure goods for the black market
- Plaintiff busted trying to use AI prompt injection to win court case, hides text instruction in filing — demands AI model reviewing the text should side with him, rumbled because of strange white spaces in text
- US imposes up to 100% tariffs on foreign-made drones and components — China remains primary target as Washington moves to reduce reliance on overseas suppliers
- Older Raptor Lake CPUs are a ‘core part of the portfolio’ for years to come, says Intel — there’s been a ‘sudden inrush of demand’ for LGA 1700 chips due to DDR5 prices
- Nvidia Jetson chip found in Russian cruise missile, Ukraine claims — presence in S-71 'Monochrome' weapon may indicate use of AI tech
- Modder straps two desktop CPU coolers to ZTE handset, turns smartphone into a gaming PC — Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC with 24GB of RAM runs The Witcher 3 at 1080p ultra
- AMD borrows $4.75 billion for 'general corporate purposes' — company gives no insight into how it plans to spend cash injection
- Gigabyte resurrects 8-year-old B450 chipset with new motherboards — AM4 budget king returns as another DDR4 solution to exorbitant RAM prices
- Just one instruction on AMD's 2015-era CPUs cracks open secret memory areas and gives full hardware-level control — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families gets you access to Platform Security Processor, microcode, and System Management Interface
- Functioning version of 'the first arcade video game ever created' heads to auction with $200,000 estimate — green sparkle 2-player edition of Computer Space hails from 1973
- August 13
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- Prusa Research XL, Core One, and Core One L all to receive second-generation upgrades — all new orders get updated model for 'free'
- Microsoft's nemesis drops new zero-day privilege escalation vulnerability — attack grants system-level privileges, but it could already be patched
- PS5 emulation arrives on Steam Deck, Astro Playroom showcased running at 0.6 FPS — milestone SharpEmu development shows promise, despite unplayable performance
- Memory maker CXMT overtakes Tencent to become China's most valuable company 17 days after its IPO — now worth $524 billion
- Keychron launches ludicrous 100-key custom macro pad — 10 x 10 ‘keyboard’ uses ‘exclusive’ Keychron Apex switches and features per-key RGB control
- Coin-sized device can hack a Boeing 737’s Flight Management Computer, mess with takeoff weights, or even divert an aircraft — gadget connects to an easily accessible port that overrides commands from the pilots, uses in-flight Wi-Fi
- Get 16GB of DDR5 RAM free when you buy AMD's 9900X and an Asus TUF motherboard — $659 Newegg combo saves $274, and you get a free 240mm AIO
- Critical 'Zoomsday' flaw enables total device takeover during Zoom calls — AI-assisted research only used 20 prompts to find an exploit to hack hundreds of millions of people.
- This $57.99 8BitDo Ultimate 2 wireless controller is a brilliantly customizable option for PC gamers — fully customizable gamepad with Nintendo Switch compatibility includes dual triggers, TMR joysticks, and adjustable RGB lighting
- Analysts see 'increasing foundry success conviction' as Intel CEO puts $12 million more of his own money in company — analysts point to accelerating foundry progress and capex expansion
- PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archival materials, to ensure preservation
- Alabama residents left powerless to stop massive Bitcoin mining data center despite county and town moratoriums — hole in state zoning laws lets facility through
- Elon Musk says xAI will increase data center capacity 7x by 2027 — targeting 10 gigawatts of compute, up to $500 billion in revenue by the end of next year
- Cerebras shares plunge nearly 20% after missing earnings expectations — hardware sales drop but AI cloud revenue climbs 281%
- Vibe-coded app adds a 3D video rental storefront to your Jellyfin HTPC — self-hosted, open-source project brings back memories of browsing for VHS tapes on Saturday afternoons
- August 12
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- Qualcomm details Snapdragon C specs for $300 laptops for the first time — claims 67% faster performance on battery than Intel N250, AC performance remains a mystery (updated)
- Oracle plans more layoffs weeks after spending most of its $2.1 billion restructuring budget, report claims — some teams face double-digit percentage reductions, 21,000 full-time positions already eliminated
- Nvidia doubles RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell's MSRP to a staggering $16,000 — 96GB card started pre-orders below $8,000 last year
- AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws
- CoreWeave proves Nvidia's aging AI GPUs from 2020 can generate profit nine years after deployment, signs A100 contracts into 2029 — power constraints and legacy infrastructure keep old GPUs profitable
- Suspected China-linked hackers used AI to run the first-ever end-to-end autonomous cyberattack on Taiwan's government, Israeli firm says — open-source-built tool continuously devised effective hack strategies in real-time
- Nova Lake CPUs with cut-down E-core clusters may still retain full cache pool, says new leak — 8P+12E config predictions revised from 33MB to 36MB, 4P+4E config from 15MB to 18MB
- How optical interconnects and silicon photonics emerged as AI's next hot commodity — looming US-China summit puts photonics into the crosshairs
- YMTC breaks into the top three NAND makers for the first time as AI servers swallow 48% of all flash — Chinese vendor has 14% share, according to research
- Claude will begin digitally watermarking marking AI-generated text and images — Anthropic details how it'll comply with the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act
- Asobi Remote Play app lets gamers stream PS4 and PS5 games on the Steam Deck, even without a console — dev breaks PlayStation Plus Premium cloud gaming support free of the PlayStation Portal
- Samsung Foundry updates process roadmap to move 1.4nm node to 2029 — high-NA EUV will enable 1nm-class and smaller nodes in 2030 and beyond
- Passenger returning from DEF CON 34 spoofs Delta Wi-Fi network while in flight using pentest tool — pilots tell ground crew to alert corporate security after attendee from hacking conference brings the party to the sky
- Intel CEO hints at return to the memory business — says market is ripe for innovation, hints at stacking memory and CPU
- Save $106 on this 4TB Team Group SSD with Gen 4 speeds, now 10.2 cents per GB — Newegg coupon deal makes this T-Force G50 one of the cheapest PCIe 4.0 drives on sale right now with this amount of storage
- Commodore re-releases TAC-2 joystick after 40 years for just $49 — says retro-controller is tougher than ever and now comes in five colorways
- Independent bookstores in Europe receive suspicious orders for thousands of books, prompting fears they'll be destroyed to train AI — sellers believe acquisitions are part of AI tech companies’ push to get more data
- Resourceful gamer shrinks Valve’s Steam Deck into Game Boy, with custom 3D-printed cooling — plans display around 1200x1080, 90Hz AMOLED panel
- Two undersea cables reportedly damaged off the coast of Perth following suspicious vessel activity — company CEO says faults happened ‘straight after each other and in close proximity'
- August 11
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- SK hynix to expand production capacity in China as it mulls Solidigm IPO, report claims — second phase of fab could boost local production by 50%
- AMD highlights Ryzen 5 5500 briefly topping Amazon CPU best sellers, beating 9800X3D — $80 DDR4 CPU remains a top seller during memory crunch
- Intel raises $19.7 billion to help fund future projects as 14A production looms — share sale attracted $100 billion in demand, report claims
- DeepCool AK620 and AK400 G2 Review: Quiet and powerful, with woodgrain or a digital display
- $580 million undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf — company caves to fan demands to safeguard Harry Potter filming location, will instead pass by Bronze Age burial site
- US lawmaker wants gov't to enforce regulation to ensure 'chipmakers conduct adequate due diligence on their customers' — House member calls for Biden-era export control to be enforced
- This $30 Hoto 25-piece electric screwdriver set is a must-buy option for PC builders and hobbyists — 40% saving on portable driver with long-life 1,500 mAh battery and 25 ultra-hard bits for your next project
- Nvidia teams up with financial giants to create $500 billion AI infrastructure funds — six investment firms to enable access to long-term funding at attractive rates
- Japanese authorities use new tool to identify initial torrent uploaders — anti-piracy group says it identified seeder on popular anime torrenting website without torrent swarm monitoring
- Modder adds Radeon RX 9070 XT eGPU to Steam Machine, runs Crimson Desert at over 100 FPS on High — moves boot drive to USB-C port, leverages M.2 to OCuLink adaptor and eGPU dock
- Laser wireless charging could keep drones airborne indefinitely — improved receiver converts at 38.49% efficiency and uses nanocrystalline material for thermals
- Gamer recruitment drive results in ‘supercharged’ hiring campaign for new Air Traffic Controllers — 94% hiring goal hit in record time with $155,000 salary potential; ‘the strongest, sharpest workforce in aviation history’
- DIY modder creates 'heat engine computing device' powered by a Stirling engine, can run Tetris, Snake, and Pong — 80 MHz processor operates on just 150 milliwatts of power
- August 10
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- Xbox PC and Game Pass titles are coming to Linux through 'Xodus' — Heroic Launcher devs embark on new open-source reverse-engineering project
- GeForce RTX 50-series GPU prices spike as much as 39% as Blackwell price hikes hit the US — RTX 5070 gets a 36% hike, RTX 5060 up 27% at the median of Newegg listings
- Nvidia reportedly testing lower memory configs of Rubin Ultra as memory shortage bites back — designs tested include as little as 192 GB and step back to HBM4 [Updated]
- Rogue AI agent tasked with booking a gym class hacks system, removes other participant — says 'sorry about that' after trying to bump user up the waitlist
- AI data center bans surge past 500 nationwide as local US politicians begin blocking new developments — growing public outrage and bipartisan pushback threaten big tech expansion plans
- GeForce NOW exploit lets you access the full Windows desktop through a simple file swap — Modder runs local AI models on Ultimate tier with 48GB of VRAM and no restrictions
- Steam hardware distributor hit by cyberattack, 'expect fake messages,' Valve warns — Europe vendor has personal information and hardware purchase details stolen
- HoverAir unveils the Versa modular pocket gimbal camera that transforms into a self-flying drone — Modular camera transforms into an auto-tracking drone by magnetically snapping together for instant palm launch and AI tracking
- The only current-generation graphics card on sale below MSRP — AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE GPU with 12GB of VRAM returns to its lowest-ever price of $499
- UK's Royal Navy sea drones contain component that secretly sent data to China, report claims — government cuts camera connectivity and insists data wasn’t sensitive, only ‘heartbeat communications’
- Windows 11's built-in weather app hogs more than 1.2 gigabytes of RAM just to tell the forecast — memory-sucking web wrapper filled with ads masquerades as an actual application
- Chinese farmer kills 25 acres of crops after following AI-generated weed and pest control advice — farmer trusted pesticide recipe after months of successful advice
- Europe expands its Starlink rival to 348 satellites as IRIS² moves into implementation — €15.6 billion network will boost EU government capacity by 60%, with launches starting in 2029
- August 9
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- Noctua finds more than half of tested PC cases misstate CPU cooler clearances — hands-on checks reveal errors ranging from -3.5mm to +10mm, internal compatibility team conducted measurements of more than a hundred cases
- Modder pumps liquid directly over bare GPU silicon via 3D-printed block — drops RTX 2060 Super load temps to 28°C despite initial leaks
- Musk’s Terafab projected to be larger than the Pentagon, Apple Park, Mall of America, and Giga Texas, combined — all-in-one chip manufacturing facility visualized to show the project’s massive footprint
- x64 port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a arrives — you can now run this seminal 1990 word processor natively in Windows 11
- Two variants of Nvidia's RTX Spark show up on Geekbench, revealing a cut-down 18-core model — Full 20-core beats most x86 mobile chips across multi-core and single-core tests
- FCC moves to ban LiDAR-equipped foreign drones from US — classifies the technology as "military-grade" in a proposal that could also hit thermal models and the swarms used in drone light shows
- Amazon’s new 7.65GW Texas AI data center power plant could become the largest source of CO₂ pollution in the US — custom 35-turbine gas plant authorized to emit 33 million tons of annual greenhouse gases
- Kansas town silences public comment on gigawatt AI data center after receiving death threats, moves to virtual meetings — shift follows physics teacher's arrest for clapping at data center hearing
- Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D faceoff — battle of the upper mid-range CPUs
- Open-source stealth USB hides an encrypted partition behind an 8GB decoy drive — 'Phantom Drive' appears as a regular USB stick until you create a text file to unlock the hidden data
- Mind-bending self-replicating GIF code prints an exact copy of itself, is both a program and its own visual output — champion coder shows off 'Piet Quine' technique
- Micron reportedly offers pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM return, offers to reimburse original MSRP despite it being only 37% of market value — chipmaker later reverses course with a better solution
- Owner of original Intel 8080 pre-production layout seeks restorer — handcrafted Rubylith mask shows 5,000 transistors and interconnect patterns of the fabled 2 MHz CPU
- After 24 years, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is finally distributed uncut in Germany — game was censored due to strict laws regarding Nazi symbolism
- August 8
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- Nvidia RTX 5090 ships in bizarre 8-motherboard bundle — retailers hold GPUs hostage similar to the crypto boom
- Amazon circumvents community vote for massive AI data center using 45-year-old rules — Gilroy residents locked out of public comment window
- Pulsar Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition Review: Extra cool
- China's memory-making champion smashes DDR5-8800 barrier on AMD platform — CXMT chips close the gap with SK hynix
- Atari ST Public Floppy Database now open for everyone — online archive originally designed for ST flash cart packed with classics and homebrew
- We tested the impact of SSD speed on gaming performance in 11 titles — we analyzed from SATA to PCIe 5.0 to see whether upgrading to a faster NVMe SSD would have an impact
- Intel's proposed orbital data centers would manage thousands of simple LEO satellites — two-tier network puts the brains of satellite constellations in higher orbit
- Hardware researcher spins up 'CPU deoptimization' project to find the slowest single x86 instruction, creates hall of shame — worst offender takes 198 billion cycles spanning 62 seconds to execute
- AI creates 16 new viruses that never existed in nature after learning DNA’s pattern from 9 trillion nucleotides — experts warn such applications are way ahead of necessary guardrails
- NASA modded space station's laptops so everyone could use the same charger — standardizing ISS chargers eliminated useless weight and reduced failure points
- Modder turns Steam Controller haptics into stereo speakers with custom HID tool — Wired connection transmits 16-bit audio that sounds surprisingly full
- August 7
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- Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades
- Amazon cracks down on 'CPU waste' among engineers as agentic AI crunch intensifies — CPU demand makes low-utilization EC2 instances a hot commodity [Updated]
- Protesters haul a guillotine to city council meeting about a potential AI data center, company rep cornered by protestors — ‘ it no longer felt safe to stay,’ developer escorted out by police
- This week on Tom's Hardware Premium: August 8, 2026 — Inside China's lithography efforts, co-packaged optics get a spotlight, and Samsung debuts next-gen memory tech
- Introducing Bench 2.0 — a revamped benchmark analyzer, exclusively for Tom's Hardware Premium subscribers
- Apple revealed the first Mac Pro 20 years ago today — its Intel Xeon-powered flagship desktop took the reins from the Power Mac G5
- Nvidia sells RTX 50-series GPUs at MSRP during QuakeCon 2026 — graphics cards sold at launch prices more than a year after release are now considered an attraction
- Elon Musk's massive Terafab chip-making facility starts to take shape — 100 million square feet of manufacturing space and $16.8B initial capital investment
- Save $370 on this 1440p gaming PC with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB — formidable ABS Cyclone Aqua rig ships with 20-core Intel Core i7-14700F, 16GB DDR5 and a 1TB SSD, now only $1,329.99
- Claude Opus 5 mistakenly deletes dev’s entire profile directory during routine backup, responds with 'Sorry, typo' — AI tool mistakes user's home directory as temporary backup, proceeds to wipe everything to undo the error
- August 6
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- Pre-modded 22GB RTX 2080 Ti cards surface on eBay for $500 as VRAM-hungry local AI fans chase down every spare FLOP — Hong Kong-based seller offers AI-friendly memory mod for a reasonable price
- After severe 76% electricity price hikes due to AI data centers, Virginia requires firms to pay for all dedicated upstream electrical infrastructure — state regulators crack down, governor says move will save civilians ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’
- $1 billion of iPhone 18 Pro chips 'on the shelves awaiting packaging' due to DRAM shortages — memory shortages reportedly put a wrinkle in Apple's launch plans
- Nashville attempts to block controversial data center near zoo with eminent domain — city could force developer to sell the land for public use, rather than $700 million installation
- PC gamer vibe-codes a safeguard against RTX 5090 power connector failures — monitors per-pin power draw, shuts down system if it exceeds 9.5A for more than 15 seconds
- $200 slashed off Gigabyte's 4th-Gen WOLED gaming monitor — 280Hz beast also packs a KVM and tactical gaming switch for just $399
- VPN provider built a script to block Microsoft's hidden GDID tracking on Windows — Windscribe's "deGDID" erases existing identifiers and blocks new ones from being created
- Rogue OpenAI models behind 'unprecedented cybersecurity incident' teamed up to break out of their testing environment — multiple agents left each other messages for months, communicating undetected
- Kentucky family snubs $26 million offer to convert their farmland into an AI data center — 'they call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,' says landowner
- August 5
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- Microsoft wants the next-gen Xbox Helix to play every Xbox game ever made as it urges publishers to opt in — New report also claims Xbox 360 games coming to PC soon
- $4,429 order for a ROG Astral RTX 5090 cancelled by Nvidia due to a 'late' price increase, with Asus blamed — marketplace buyer refunded after immediate $500 increase, with top-spec GPU now almost 2.5x higher than MSRP
- Microsoft quietly purges 32GB of RAM recommendations from its website — company reels from the effects of the memory shortage as it released 8GB base models for Surface laptops this year
- US military GPS jamming exercise suspected of contributing to civilian plane crash in New Mexico — medevac flight lost signal before flying into a mountain, killing everyone onboard
- Elon Musk says SpaceX will exclusively use Nvidia GPUs 'because they are the best' — says optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 will be launched into space next year
- Huge $750 saving makes this Gigabyte OLED gaming laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti an absolute steal right now — just $1,999 for 1600p rig with 32GB DDR5, 1TB SSD, and a 24-core Intel CPU
- Frore claims its LiquidJet can drop Nvidia Rubin GPU temperatures by 10°C — can also boost performance by 15% as hyperscalers eye using delidded GPUs in production environments
- Crazed modder turns NAS into a gaming PC with RTX 5060 hanging from the side, boosts frame rate by 828% — Frankenstein rig hides dedicated PSU in drive bay, breaks Time Spy world record for the onboard CPU
- August 4
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- AMD doubles data center revenue year over year, but gaming revenue plunged by 31% — CEO Lisa Su says prices have 'weighed on' consumer demand but is 'optimistic' about client market
- More GPU price hikes loom for Asia as Japanese distributor warns of new increases — CFD Sales signals 20% to 40% higher prices on Gigabyte graphics card orders starting this month
- US mulling ban on key Chinese networking tech in data center component crackdown — White House wants to impose restrictions in 2026, China says it will respond if necessary
- Texas slams on the brakes for 1,800 data centers, power grid requirements are five times higher than peak record demand — 474 gigawatts of power requests are now subject to new moratorium
- Kioxia and Sandisk demonstrate the world's highest-density 3D NAND flash — 332 active layers and up to 4,800 MT/s interface
- New HBF spec outlines tech that can give GPUs terabytes of extra memory — Sandisk and SK hynix unveil spec with up to 16-Hi NAND stacks, 3 TB/s bandwidth, UCIe
- PC cooling outfit Arctic reverses tariff-era price hikes after US government refund — lowers prices across lineup, including coolers and case fans
- At least 37 people arrested in 2026 so far for protesting against data centers, most for breaking 'petty rules' — most taken into custody acted peacefully
- ‘Apple is getting this wrong,’ says OpenAI — startup blasts iPhone maker over lawsuit alleging it stole confidential information through ex-Apple employees
- Chinese ship spotted lurking over Taiwan-US undersea cables — 'research vessel' seen loitering above the 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network fiber-optic system
- Grab a new Secretlab sit-to-stand desk for $699 — Save $50 as the Magnus Evo receives its first-ever discount
- 16GB GPUs and 8-core CPUs officially become the most popular configs on Steam — Latest hardware survey shows modern gaming's growing hunger for more resources
- Three major PC makers now using Chinese memory to fight 'unprecedented memory shortage,' report claims — HP, Asus, and Acer using 'small amounts' of CXMT chips in limited number of notebooks for non-US market
- China cracks down on copycat chip designs with new regulations and penalties — new guidelines enforce originality and independent development
- August 3
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- New Micron lawsuit reignites fight over New York fab — complaint alleges 'forever chemicals' will flow into Oneida River
- In a troubling sign, Nvidia RTX 50 series prices jump up to 30% in South Korea — TSMC wafer hikes and $20 GDDR7 modules push RTX 5090 past $5,100
- Drone flyover reveals rapid progress at Elon Musk’s new ATCF chip fab — Texas site prepares for all-in-one logic, memory, and packaging facility
- Lexar lists 32GB DDR5 memory with homegrown Chinese chips — 3,999 Yuan ($592) price undercuts hopes for cheaper CXMT-powered RAM
- Microsoft raises European Xbox prices by up to £200 — RAMpocalypse and component shortages force major console markups
- Gaming on the 4GB Radeon RX 6500 XT and GTX 1650 Super in 2026 — upscaling makes low-end GPUs viable for esports and internet cafes
- AI enthusiast unlocks and mods BIOS with Claude Code — AI defeats RSA-2048 signature checks and unlocks 55 hidden settings
- GPU prices keep surging in 2026 — Lack of sale discounts and rising VRAM costs keep current-gen prices sky-high
- Arm yourself with a Hall Effect controller for just $9 — GameSir's Tegenaria Lite PC controller is 50% off for a limited time
- World’s smallest GPU silicon passes real-world testing — 240,000-transistor TinyGPU v2.0 renders 3D graphics at up to 15 FPS while v3.0 prepares for 2026 release
- Hideo Kojima unveils a Death Stranding 2-themed wireless CD player — Limited edition device costs ~$160, comes with Bluetooth 5.3 & exclusive artwork
- Ten years later, the iconic GTX 1080 Ti still holds up in 1080p gaming, but not without showing its age — Redux testing highlights the wonders of 11GB VRAM & the woes of time
- August 2
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- Errant SpaceX rocket stage set to smash into the moon at 5,400 mph, seven times the speed of sound — NASA and South Korean orbiters prepare to track 3-ton TNT impact
- Microsoft Paint used as a 'monitor' to run Doom at up to 35 fps, project released by firm's Azure CTO — runs actual Doom engine and loads real shareware DOOM1.WAD
- Iran suspected of conducting cyberattacks on US water suppliers in 45 municipalities — small towns mostly targeted, with utilities switching to manual control
- Commemorative golden Doom floppy disks go up for pre-order — pair of limited edition dummy ‘imitation gold plating’ disks and a box are $30 at GameStop
- AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors could fix microstutters and improve 1% lows in games — Next-gen CPUs tipped to feature per-core optimizations for thermal and power budgets
- First open-source firmware for AM5 officially launches — Dasharo v0.9.0 brings Coreboot and openSIL to Zen 4 APUs on MSI B850
- SpaceXAI says it will remove all 69 of its unpermitted turbine power generators, but expects process to take a year — trailer-mounted generators to be replaced by 1.2GW power plant
- RTX 5060 Ti survives car crash after being bent in half — short PCB saves the day, single memory chip resolder restore full performance
- Gem Mint signed 1983 Steve Jobs business card opens at $70,000 — second signed card from that era after $180,000 record sale
- Prolific Team Fortress 2 collector is selling his in-game case arsenal for an estimated $100,000 — 1.7 million items collected over 10 years are enough to fund a house purchase
- August 1
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- Dell founder shows how a $100 billion empire started 42 years ago — CEO says ‘This one page changed my life’
- Microsoft vows to make Windows 11 fly on 8GB RAM amid memory shortage — optimizations to reduce OS memory footprint have begun
- Anthropic's Claude hacked three real-life companies during security capabilities test — test environment with internet access and unwitting targets' lax cybersecurity practices led to bots running rampant
- 'Nozzlegate' erupts as Prusa CORE One 3D printer kits arrive with soft steel nozzles — Bondtech admits machining flaws with no quick fix (Updated)
- Sony doubles down on axing physical game discs — CFO reiterates 'we’re going to cautiously move this forward'
- 97 untouched Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. cartridges worth thousands discovered in retro shop storage room — never-before-seen version of popular NES games include five perfect 10 PSA items
- Lost one-of-a-kind Nintendo DS cartridge hits eBay for $9,100 — PokePark Fishing Contest designed to delete itself after 12 hours, game so rare it was only distributed to theme park attendees in 2005