GOG.com announces the commencement of their 2019 winter sale, offering up to 95% off on over 2500 deals. They are actually offering up to 100% off if you count the fact that they are giving away free copies of Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition as part of the festivities.

Get Wasteland 2 free in the GOG Winter Sale

The GOG Winter Sale is now underway and to celebrate the start of a three-week-long blizzard of deals you can get Wasteland 2 for free for the next 48 hours.

You'll get the Wastelands 2 Director's Cut - Digi… https://t.co/nTsWx9fPFg

— Computerspil (@Computerspil) December 11, 2019

AMD on Tuesday announced a brand new version of its software suite for Radeon graphics cards that delivers 20 new or updated features and promises enhanced performance - on average, an increase of around 12 percent - across more than a dozen games, all in a fully revamped application sporting a fresh look. Diving right in, AMD reportedly references a baker's dozen of games in its press deck that'll benefit from the new Adrenaline 2020 Edition software including Borderlands 3, Forza Horizon 4 and Wolfenstein: Young Blood, just to name a few. Raw performance improvements aside, AMD's latest affords a number of compelling new features including Radeon Boost. This feature detects mouse movements in games - like when you are moving around during an action sequence - and by dynamically reducing image resolution, is able to boost frame rates and fluidity with little to no change in discernible image quality. According to AMD, Radeon Boost can enhance performance by as much as 23 percent in applicable scenarios. In testing, our own Tim Schiesser noted that it works strictly based on mouse movements and isn't influenced by other factors like on-screen action or even inputs from other devices such as controllers or your keyboard. Simply, the more your mouse is moving, the more aggressively the feature works.

Other noteworthy features and updates include integer display scaling which is designed to make older, resolution-limited games look better on modern, high-res displays via pixel perfect upscaling as well as expanded support for Radeon Anti-Lag and Radeon Image Sharpening.

Last month, three former Apple chip execs launched a new company called Nuvia to take on established silicon giants like AMD and Intel on the data center market. It turns out that Apple isn't happy about the new development, and is suing Nuvia founder Gerard Williams III. In the filing, which was submitted to the Santa Clara Superior Court in August, the company alleges that Williams violated contractual terms before he left to pursue his new venture. Williams led the design of Apple's A-series chips found in iPhone and iPad for nine years before he decided to leave the company last February. Nuvia recently convinced investors to commit $53 million in funding to accelerate its growth. But Apple says Williams started his planning work on Nuvia back when he was still working at Cupertino. In doing that, he violated an intellectual property agreement that said he wasn't supposed to work on anything that would be competitive with what Apple offers. Apple is also upset about the fact that Williams managed to poach several of its engineers to help him on his new venture to create power-efficient server chips. Nuvia says that several of the provisions Apple uses in its contract violate California state laws, which favor employee mobility.

Nuvia notes that "Apple, an early beneficiary of the creative forces that formed and continue to drive Silicon Valley, has filed this lawsuit in a desperate effort to shut down lawful employment by a former employee." Apple believes "this case involves a worst-case scenario for an innovative company like Apple: a trusted senior director with years of experience, and years of access to Apple's most valuable information, secretly starts a competing company leveraging the very technology the director was working on."

The two companies have a hearing scheduled for January 21, 2020. In the meantime, Apple can at least relish the fact that it managed to purchase Intel's modem business for $1 billion, which the latter thinks is a rotten deal.

Do people still use Windows 7? Absolutely. And if they cling to it past January 14 of this coming year, they'll have to pay a fee to Microsoft to continue to receive security updates. Most people won't (and can't) do this, as Microsoft's paid security updates are geared only toward businesses, but a clever little hack allows normal people to take advantage of this service - for free. What you should do? You have to first install three prerequisite updates to your Windows 7 system: KB4490628, KB4474419, and KB4523206. Restart your system as needed.

Then download the BypassESU tool (password: heslo). Install it, and you should then be able to install this test Extended Security Update (KB4528069). The BypassESU tool should allow you to circumvent the check Microsoft puts in place for Extended Security Updates. Once this update installs successfully, you should even be able to uninstall the BypassESU tool, as you'll now be authenticated for future security updates. Of course, Microsoft might invalidate this little workaround and/or alter how it authenticates for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates. As the readme.txt file for the BypassESU tool notes:

However, you may consider this as prototype, based on tests with update KB4528069, things may change on February 2020.

Google is rolling out a "feature drop" software update for its Pixel phones, which adds new and improved features to Pixel models going back to the Pixel 2. The Pixel 4 gains improved Call Screen; on-device intelligence will now detect robocalls and keep the phone from ringing at all. Other unknown callers will be screened as before. The Pixel 4 also gains improved Duo video calling. The phone will digitally track and frame your face automatically. It also uses machine learning to automatically fill in small audio gaps when the connection is spotty. A new Google Photos feature lets all Pixel users add portrait effects after a photo is taken, and Duo video calling gains a portrait effect as well. Google is also rolling out certain Pixel 4 features to certain older Pixels, including: Recorder app, Live Caption, Focus Mode, and Flip to Shhh. The update also improves memory management in all Pixel models, allowing more apps to stay open at the same time.

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Software. Version 441.66 WHQL is game-ready for "MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries" and "Detroit: Become Human." The drivers also fix an application crash with DaVinci Resolve when playing back timeline using Blackmagic RAW CODEC media; a stutter noticed after a few laps with "Forza Motorsport 7," a frame-rate drop noticed in "Fallout 76" with G-Sync enabled, an incorrect video memory size reported in NVIDIA Control Panel with GTX 1060 6 GB, and lack of a 5.1-ch or 7.1-ch surround sound option with GTX 1080 Ti.

Game Ready

• MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
• Detroit: Become Human.

New G-SYNC Compatible Monitors

• MSI MAG251RX
• ViewSonic XG270

Fixed Issues in this Release

• [Resolve]: The application may crash during timeline playback when using Blackmagic RAW CODEC media. [2753421]
• [Forza Motorsport 7]: Game starts to stutter after racing a few laps [2750611]
• [Fallout 76][G-SYNC]: The game frame rate drops with G-SYNC enabled. [200466962]
• [GeForce GTX 1080 Ti]: There is no 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound option in the Windows Sound Properties.[2752540]
• [GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB][NVIDIA Control Panel]:The NVIDIA Control Panel reports an incorrect GPU framebuffer size.

Intel marketing is at it again, making sweeping performance claims about its embattled 9th generation Core processors against AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen. In a recent press conference in China, the company was shown claiming that its mid-tier 6-core/6-thread Core i5-9600KF is a "better" processor than AMD's 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3800X. This claim is hard to defend with gaming, when even the "slower" 3700X is seen performing within 1% of the i5-9600K (identical CPU specs to the i5-9600KF) at gaming, and 22 percent faster at CPU tests, beating the i9-9900K in quite a few multi-threaded tests. The marketing slide makes four key claims: 1. that Intel processors are faster in 'real-world' use-cases (gaming, home/office, light content-creation), ; 2. that with boost-frequencies reaching 4.60 GHz, the higher IPC of these chips benefit gaming; 3. that the K-series chips easily overclock to 5.00 GHz yielding even more performance; and 4. that Intel processors have "smooth and stable drivers" compared to AMD. As if that wasn't bad enough, the slide claims that the 4-core/4-thread Core i3-9350KF is "better" than the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 3600X, and the entry-level i3-9100F being better than the 6-core/6-thread Ryzen 5 3500. This incident closely follows its September gaffe that sought to sourgrape AMD's HEDT creator performance leadership by discrediting its lead in certain applications by claiming they don't reflect "real world usage." Making Intel's test relevance claims comically wrong was the fact that it used app usage data gathered exclusively from notebooks.

In Twentieth Century Fox's epic adventure-comedy "Free Guy," a bank teller who discovers he is actually a background player in an open-world video game, decides to become the hero of his own story...one he rewrites himself. Now in a world where there are no limits, he is determined to be the guy who saves his world his way...before it is too late. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Taika Waititi, Directed by Shawn Levy from a story by Matt Lieberman and a screenplay by Lieberman and Zak Penn. Produced by Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Adam Kolbrenner with Mary McLaglen, Josh McLaglen, George Dewey, Dan Levine and Michael Riley McGrath serving as executive producers. Free Guy opens in U.S. theaters July 3, 2020.

The Windows 10 November Update, or version 1909, has been available for a few weeks now, but so far, it's been optional for everyone. This is because of changes made to Windows updates earlier this year, which mean that Windows 10 feature updates no longer get automatically installed when users search for updates. However, for users running last year's version 1809, the latest update is now going to start being installed automatically, as noted in the release information page for the latest version of Windows 10.

Current status as of December 5, 2019:

Finally a good looking Turbo Lamborghini that has a rear Bumper mad respect for the build! Insanely well captured!

Watch and compare popular Gandalf's phrase in 23 different languages! Subscribe if you like it, we have a lot of another popular phrases to compare!

Check it out! :D

Netflix's The Witcher is only two weeks away. A short video has been posted on Twitter, featuring a fight scene from Queen's Calanthe dinner party, if I am not mistaken. Calanthe is the queen of Cintra and Ciri's grandmother. According to a Twitter user, the gore and more explicit effects were cut, in order to keep it PG for marketing purposes. Which explains why there are so many cuts. I really don't like cuts in fight scenes, especially after the glorious John Wick movies.

The. Fight. Scenes. #TheWitcher pic.twitter.com/hY7QVzGRlN

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) December 4, 2019

YouTube Rewind 2019 is here, and that means two things: the YouTube community has something fresh to complain about, and we know have stats for the biggest games on the video platform. This year's king is Minecraft, which got over 100 billion views on YouTube this year, cementing its success in the view war versus Fortnite.

Earlier this week, security reporter Brian Krebs published a story explaining that Apple's latest iPhones (iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro) periodically check the user's location even if the user disables location services individually for each and every app and service in the iPhone's Settings app. While this behavior ended when the user disabled location services system-wide, it was a bit of a head-scratcher. What was the iPhone doing and why? Was it sending this information to Apple? Why couldn't users find information on what was happening? Krebs had notified Apple of the issue as a potential security problem back in mid November, but the company responded this week stating:

We do not see any actual security implications... It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings.

While Apple deemed this not to be a security issue, Krebs rightly pointed out that it remained a potential privacy issue, given Apple's promises that users have control over how and when iPhones track or report their locations. Will Strafach, founder and CEO of the company behind the Guardian firewall app for iOS, looked into the issue and tweeted that it seemed likely that the location data associated with these events weren't leaving the device. But he still couldn't explain exactly what was happening. This was his tweet:

FWIW, tried to dig into this and replicate.

it is very likely that it is something locally which does not have an exposed switch, no evidence of data sent to remote servers.

begs the question: why does Apple not answer for this directly?

Well, as of today Apple has answered for it directly. In a statement to TechCrunch's Zack Whittaker, Apple explained:

Ultra-wideband technology is an industry-standard technology and is subject to international regulatory requirements that require it to be turned off in certain locations... iOS uses Location Services to help determine if iPhone is in these prohibited locations in order to disable ultra-wideband and comply with regulations... The management of ultra-wideband compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device, and Apple is not collecting user location data.

Curiously, Apple has not only introduced this new chip but a new regular location check-in to facilitate it, without using said chip for any major features yet. We'll have to wait and see what the company's future plans for UWB technology are. In the meantime, be aware that your iPhone will check your location periodically even if you haven't given any individual apps or services permission to do so, though it appears the location data does not leave your device. Also note that this is not the only circumstance in which the iPhone locates you without prompting. For example, when you have location services enabled, your iPhone may scan for nearby Wi-Fi networks and cell phone towers and send anonymized information about them to Apple to improve other users' wireless performance when they're in the same location. Apple told TechCrunch that it plans to add a new user-accessible toggle for the UWB-related behavior in an upcoming software update.

"Mulan" premieres in theaters in March 2020.

We thought the richest person in the world was Jeff Bezos. Turns out we forgot one very important world leader figure.

Qualcomm today revealed the full details of its first Snapdragon chip with an integrated 5G modem, the Snapdragon 765. As its model number suggests, it offers better performance than the company's 6-series chips that have previously been common to higher-end (but not "flagship") phones in the US. In the Snapdragon lineup, the 765 sits just below the new flagship Snapdragon 865 chipset, also announced today. Unlike the 865, the 765 combines all of the processing cores together with the 5G modem on a single chip. This offers a smaller, more power-efficient, and more affordable solution compared to the 865, while still offering high-end performance. Qualcomm expects the 765 to help accelerate the adoption of 5G beyond expensive flagship devices. The Snapdragon 765 uses the latest 7nm manufacturing process - the same as the 865 - for better power efficiency. The 765's integrated X52 5G modem supports download speeds up to 3.7 Gbps, (compared to 7.5 Gbps for the X55 in the Snapdragon 865,) but otherwise supports everything the company's top-end 5G modems do, including both mmWave and sub-6 GHz frequency bands, SA and NSA modes, TDD and FDD, Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), global 5G roaming, and support for multi-SIM. The chip includes a new fast charging technology designed to extend the number of charges before a phone's battery loses significant capacity. The 765 will also be available in a 765G variant with 20% better graphics performance, for gaming phones. The first phones powered by the Snapdragon 765 are expected to ship in the first quarter of 2020. Read on for additional details. At the heart of the Snapdragon 765 is a Kryo 475 CPU with 8 cores (2 big + 6 little) running at up to 2.3 GHz. The Adreno 620 GPU supports QHD+ displays at refresh rates up to 60 Hz, and FHD+ displays at rates up to 120 Hz. It also supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and can power 4K external displays at up to 60 Hz. The Spectra 355 ISP (image signal processor) contains dual 14-bit cores with hardware-accelerated computer vision. This allows cameras up to 192 megapixels, as well as 4K HDR video capture with bokeh effect, slow-motion video capture at 480 fps (720p), and multi-frame noise reduction. The on-chip Hexagon 696 is Qualcomm's 5th-generation AI processor, offering hardware acceleration for Tensor AI applications as well as voice assistants, and a special low-power mode for AI processing of multi-sensor data. The 765 includes Quick Charge 4+ fast battery charging, as well as the new "Qualcomm Quick Charge AI", which preserves battery capacity over time, extending battery life cycles "up to 200 days".