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

Russian ‘Starlink Rival’ established with 16 satellites launched, aims for 900 by 2035 — commercial operation to begin next year with 250 sputniks

By Mark Tyson published 25 March 26

Russia has began to deliver on its plans to establish a domestic state-funded rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink, dubbed Rassvet.

The Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV)

Autonomous mobile drone swarm killer created in trilateral US defense company collab — the new Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV) is a high-power microwave platform

By Mark Tyson published 24 March 26

A trio of US defense, autonomy, and directed energy industry leaders have created the Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV) to address the threat of drone swarms.

China laptop vendor eats humble pie, apology says ‘production error’ was behind chip mix-up — full refunds offered to those affected by the fake Ryzen 5 7430U ‘scam’

By Mark Tyson published 24 March 26

Budget portable PCs specialist Chuwi has released an official apology to customers who received devices that didn’t match up to expected specifications.

PowerVR - Fire Strike DX11 demo screenshot

Imagination Tech working on mainstream PC gaming with ‘ambitious graphics card and SoC design companies’ — shows off progress with DirectX 11 workloads

By Mark Tyson published 23 March 26

The UK’s Imagination Technologies is teasing its roadmap to 'bring high‑performance, scalable, PowerVR graphics to desktop, workstation, and cloud environments.'

A screenshot from the game Crimson Desert, showing intense melee combat gameplay.

Crimson Desert devs apologize for ‘confusion’ over Intel GPU FAQ — backtracks over prior dismissive language regarding Arc graphics support

By Mark Tyson published 23 March 26

The Crimson Desert devs have apologized for prior dismissive language regarding Intel GPUs and confirmed that a support update is on the way.

A Saegheh-2 UAV at the Eqtedar 40 Defence Exhibition in Tehran

Concerns raised over Shahed kamikaze drone listings on Alibaba — they featured AI guidance to lock onto ‘people, building, vehicles, ships, etc’

By Mark Tyson published 23 March 26

Chinese eTail giant Alibaba has removed listings and suspended the accounts of sellers that were found to be advertising 'cruise missiles' and 'suicide attack drones.'

Fixing a vintage 20-inch Trinitron CRT, suffering from cataracts, by injecting UV resin.

UV resin injection cures ancient, cataract-inflicted CRT monitor — repaired 20-inch Trinitron would have been an enviable display in the mid 1990s

By Mark Tyson published 23 March 26

A video documents attempts to fix a vintage 20-inch Trinitron CRT suffering from cataracts by injecting UV resin.

California scientists 'FlyTrap attack' on DJI drones demonstrated — patterned umbrellas lure autonomous drones close enough to be captured or even induced to crash

By Mark Tyson published 22 March 26

Researchers at UC Irvine have demonstrated a pattered umbrella-based drone capture and crashing technique.

Intel Pentium A80501 66MHz SX950 Die Image

Intel released its first Pentium chip on this day 33 years ago, came packing 3.1 million transistors — fifth-gen x86 chip built on an 800nm process

By Mark Tyson published 22 March 26

33 years ago today, the Pentium lineage began, shaping decades of personal computing to come.

Huawei crowdfunds world’s first ‘Mesh Crystal Antenna’ Wi-Fi 7 router — stunning glowing ornament also has a ‘shark fin’ heat exhaust, but is currently a Japan market exclusive

By Mark Tyson published 22 March 26

Chinese tech giant Huawei has lined up a magical looking Wi-Fi 7 router featuring the world’s first 'metal mesh crystal antenna' which looks like a glowing mountain.

'Silicon' is a new five-pound art book charting the semiconductor revolution with full-page die shots and commentary — 384 page tome is $99 to pre-order now

By Mark Tyson published 22 March 26

Silicon, Arena’s stylish and premium “coffee table book like no other,” is up for pre-order now priced at $99.

City has roads named Tape Drive and Disk Drive from bygone HDD-making era — area was once home to the StorageTek empire

By Mark Tyson published 22 March 26

Tape Drive and Disk Drive rods in the Louisville/Broomfield area are a relic of the STK diskmaker's time in the city.

Another major Japanese electronics firm exits the Blu-ray market — Elecom publishes notice of termination of all external drives

By Mark Tyson published 21 March 26

Japanese PC peripherals and accessories stalwart Elecom has announced that it is pulling out of the Blu-ray drive market.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin reveals 51,600 satellite space data center plans — Project Sunrise will operate in sun-synchronous orbits between 500–1,800km in altitude

By Mark Tyson published 20 March 26

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has revealed its plans to launch up to 51,600 satellites for a data center constellation in space.

CCTV scenes from the Southeast Asia warehouse

Supermicro employees accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China — perps used a hairdryer to move serial numbers between real hardware and thousands of dummy servers

By Mark Tyson published 20 March 26

Three Super Micro employees have been charged with conspiring to unlawfully divert cutting edge U.S. artificial intelligence technology to China.

Bitcoin is so resilient it could survive as much as 90% of the world's undersea cables failing simultaneously — study reveals Bitcoin could still be very vulnerable to targeted attacks, however

By Mark Tyson published 18 March 26

Cambridge scientists have completed the first longitudinal study of Bitcoin’s resilience to network infrastructure disruption, with a particular eye on submarine data cables.

South Korean company following ChatGPT management advice forced to backtrack by court — Krafton improperly ousted Subnautica developer bosses to dodge $250m bonus payout

By Mark Tyson published 17 March 26

Gaming company forced to backtrack by court after AI-driven plan to dodge $250m bonus payment backfires.

Enthusiast reverse engineers world’s smallest HDD to access data with help from an old Nokia N91 and OpenClaw — open source USB bridge unlocks 0.85-inch mechanical Toshiba drive from 2004

By Mark Tyson published 17 March 26

Maker Will Whang designed the MK4001MTD USB Bridge to facilitate the use of the world’s smallest (0.85-inch) mechanical hard drives, originally released by Toshiba in 2004.

Creative updates its Sound Blaster PCIe sound card line after 5 years — new $79.99 Audigy FX Pro 7.1 pitched as ‘clear upgrade over standard onboard audio’

By Mark Tyson published 16 March 26

Creative updates its roster of PCIe sound cards for PC desktop DIYers with the new Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro 7.1,