When we review a gaming laptop, we really put it through its paces—and only the strong survive. Our Jacob knows his gaming laptops better than just about anyone, and he gave this particular Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 a score of 90 in his review.

I can’t think of a better recommendation than that.

This little lappy sits as the best 14-inch gaming laptop in our best gaming laptop guide, and you can pick one up right now for $1,700 at Best Buy. That might seem like a lot for a small machine, but what you’re getting here is a set of components that are set to stun, wrapped up in a chassis that feels miles ahead of the competition.

Let’s talk about the shining star of this machine: its 14-inch OLED 120 Hz display. It’s got fantastic color and contrast, and the fact it’s a slightly larger 16:10 aspect ratio means—even at such a compact size—you don’t feel too constrained for screen real estate. It’s a real looker in person, and games bring out its best quali…

After so many years of Sims series dominance, we’re about to have tons of Sims competitors in the life simulation space. The prettiest one of the bunch, announced late last year, is called “inZOI,” and it’s being made by PUBG publisher Krafton of all places. Inzoi is expected to launch at some point this year and the developers have just revealed a lot of features planned for the game in a new video this week.

As its developers note, we don’t know a ton about Inzoi yet, so they wanted to show off lots of things they’ve been working on in the upcoming life sim. Here’s the quick and skimmable list of what they covered:

• Drivable cars with color customization (and car accidents?)
• Autosave functionality
• Group activities like karaoke, chess, and visiting cafes
• Difficulty settings controlling how quickly you can progress relationships
• A reputation system based on your good and bad actions
• City editing features for controlling …
  

The PC servers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (the one from 2009, not the recent one, yes I’m still upset about this) have gone down temporarily after players of the venerable classic reported encountering hacked lobbies in the game’s multiplayer mode. Not ordinary hacked lobbies, mind you—the ones that just reset your settings or do something else mildly aggravating—these ones were apparently infecting players with a self-spreading worm virus.

A post last Wednesday on the official Call of Duty Updates Twitter account reads that “Multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam was brought offline while we investigate reports of an issue.” Eagle-eyed readers will note that the tweet very specifically does not mention which “issue” in particular the shutdown is related to, but given that it came a month after players began reporting encounters with a worm called Wacatac.B!ml in MW2 lobbies, it seems likely it’s related.

Either that, …

In a joint venture with Honda, Sony unveiled this prototype car during its press conference at CES 2023, which will hit the road in 2026. The Afeela is a tricked-out electric vehicle that seems to be an upgrade from the Vision-S concept car Sony showed off a few years back. 

The Afeela has got everything you’d expect from a prototype car made by Sony and Honda. Sleek design, a load of sensors and safety features, and even a big fancy dashboard with screens to watch movies and play PlayStation 5 games on the go. 

On the car’s exterior is the ‘media bar,’ a long horizontal display between the headlights. Yashide Mizuno, Ceo of Sony Honda Mobility, says the purpose of the media bar is so that the car can “express itself by sharing various types of information to people around it.” It can show off custom colors as if it were RGB on a laptop, the EV’s battery level, or even the weather. 

However, it wasn’t until w…

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Baldur’s Gate 3 has claimed the Game of the Year award in the 2023 Steam Awards, along with the crown for Outstanding Story-Rich Game. It probably would have won even more, but the Steam Awards rules limit games to nominations in a maximum of two categories, presumably to avoid any across-the-board ass-kickings.

The Steam Awards win comes on top of Game of the Year titles at The Game Awards and the Golden Joysticks, giving Baldur’s Gate 3 a proper Game of the Year trifecta—a GOAT of GOTYs, you might say. I never imagined when a new Baldur’s Gate was announced back in 2019 that the oddball little RPG studio from Ghent would end up so thoroughly dominating the videogame scene on PC and console alike, but here we are: If there was a trophy in sight anywhere in 2023, Larian Studios carried it home.

“After more than 40 million votes, we’re delighted that Baldur’s Gate 3 has won Game of the Year AND Outstanding Story…

When it comes to training large language models, the usual refrain is that the problem is a GPU shortage. Nvidia’s dominant chips, of course, are the ones all the various AI outfits beat each other up to acquire.

But everyone’s favourite billionaire and tech prognosticator sees a different problem: We might not have enough power. Musk says the next Grok 3 generation of the AI model from his start up xAI is going to need around 100,000 of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs to train the model.

For sure, getting hold of 100,000 H100s isn’t going to be easy. Or cheap. But here’s the thing. Each H100 eats up a peak of 700W of power. So, that’s a peak of 70 megawatts for 100,000 of the things. OK, you’re probably not going to have all 100,000 running at 100% load at the same time. But then there’s more to an AI setup than just the GPUs. There’s all kinds of supporting hardware and infrastructure involved.

So, with 100,000 H100s, you’re looking at in excess of 100 megawatts or about the …

TennoCon is upon us once again, and the Digital Extremes fan event’s brought us an extended gameplay demo for Warframe: 1999, Warframe’s next major story update. When Warframe: 1999 was first teased last year, I’ll admit I was skeptical about how on-board I’d be for the space ninja game’s dabbling in CRT-era nostalgia. But when this year’s TennoCon gameplay demo kicked off with an original single from On-lyne, an alt-universe NSYNC knockoff, I knew I was wrong to doubt.

Warframe: 1999 will pluck players out of Warframe’s far future setting and place them in an episode from its history: the final New Year’s Eve of an alternate 20th century, where they’ll hunt named Albrecht Entrati as an outbreak of a biomechanical Techrot infestation is corrupting the world’s computers and machinery. While hunting Entrati, you’ll get to explore city streets littered with alt-history ’90s ephemera and Techrot monsters, drive high tech motorcycles, and—prepare yourselves—dabble in Wa…

Find a fresh perspective for your daily Wordle with our help. Skip straight to the August 17 (789) answer if you need a win in a hurry, or sit for a while and mull over the clue written especially for today’s game—however you want to win, I’ve got your back.

In many ways today’s game went brilliantly for me. I had a seriously productive opener, and that soon led to four greens. Then that led to another four greens. And then… and then, after missing the most obvious answer twice, I finally got today’s Wordle answer right. 

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Thursday, August 17

Anything that’s not quite right, or hasn’t hit its mark in some way, whether that’s an emotional problem or a physical fault, could be described using today’s answer—although the term is more likely to be found in classic romance novels than modern conversation. 

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Is there a double letter in today’s …

The humble data center is not so humble. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, data centers and data transmission networks consume between 2-3% of global power consumption, and as global internet traffic grows, and demand for things like AI explodes, 3% is a number that will surely increase in the years ahead.

Microsoft knows a thing or two about big data, and I shudder to think what its monthly power bill looks like. Heck, I’d be shocked at its hourly power bills. How do you minimize the cost of power, and do it sustainably? The answer might be nuclear. Specifically, small modular reactors (SMR). 

Microsoft is certainly giving it some serious thought as it’s looking to hire a “Principal Program Manager Nuclear Technology” (reported by DCD’s Sebastian Moss). The job description calls for someone “who will be responsible for maturing and implementing a global Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and microreactor energy strategy.”

According to the IAEA, SM…