Qualcomm is making a move for the mid-range PC market with a new system-on-chip. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon X, the latest chip in its Snapdragon X Series of PC processors. The company claims that the chip, built on a 4nm fabrication process, delivers up to “multi-day” battery life […]
Last January at CES, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2024 the "year of the AI PC." And whether you believe that prediction came true or not—many new PCs come with AI-accelerating neural processing units (NPUs) onboard, but far from all of them—you can't deny that Microsoft did try very hard to make it happen.
This year, Mehdi is back with another prediction: 2025 will be "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." This year is also, not coincidentally, the year that most Windows 10 PCs will stop receiving new security updates.
Mehdi's post includes few, if any, new announcements, but it does set the tone for how Microsoft is handling the sunsetting of Windows 10, attempting to strike a balance between carrot and stick. The carrots include Windows 11's new features (both AI and otherwise) and the performance, security, and battery life benefits inherent to brand-new PC hardware. The stick is that Windows 10 support ends in October 2025, and Microsoft is not interested in extending that date for the general public or in expanding official Windows 11 support to older PCs.
Stalker 2 had big performance issues and game-breaking bugs, along with balance and difficulty spike issues. Some things that seem "wrong" in the game are just going to stay that way. The first-person survival/shooter series has always had a certain wobbly, wild feel to it. This expresses itself in both the game world, where a major villain can off themselves by walking through a window, and in the tech stack, where broken save games, DIY optimization, and other unmet needs have created thriving mod scenes.
Developer GSC Game World has been steadfastly patching the game since its release, and the latest one should nudge the needle a bit from "busted" to "charmingly wonky." Amid the "Over 1,800 fixes and adjustments" in Patch 1.1, the big changes are to "A-Life." In porting Stalker 2 to Unreal Engine 5, the developer faced a challenge in getting this global AI management system working, but it's showing its weird self again.
