Motorola provides telecommunications, surveillance and military technology to the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlements. Read...

Don’t want to deal with rearranging your living room furniture to place Dolby Atmos speakers in just the right place? Dolby’s new and more flexible Atmos technology lets you decide where your speakers go, and the feature has arrived in a soundbar for the first time.  Slated to take the spotlight at CES next month, the LG H7 soundbar is just one component of the manufacturer’s new and modular Sound Suite system, which also incorporates surround speakers (in two sizes) and a subwoofer.  LG hasn’t announced pricing or shipping details for the Sound Suite quite yet (hopefully we’ll learn more once CES kicks off in early January), but what we do know is that the system works with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, a Dolby technology that lets you place FlexConnect-enabled Atmos speakers whenever you like in a room.  TCL was the first home-entertainment manufacturer to partner with Dolby on its new “Atmos-anywhere” technology, with TCL’s Dolby Atmos FlexConnect TVs and speakers arriving in stores back in August.   Dolby Atmos FlexConnect gear only plays nice with components that also employ the technology. For example, TCL’s Atmos FlexConnect speakers must be paired with specific and similarly equipped TCL QD-Mini LED TV models, meaning you can’t use the TCL Atmos FlexConnect speakers with just any TV. A similar limitation applies with LG’s Dolby Atmos FlexConnect equipment, except this time, the LG H7 soundbar itself can serve as the main hub for LG’s FlexConnect speakers, meaning you can use LG’s new FlexConnect gear with any TV, providing you’re using the H7 soundbar. LG also says it will bring FlexConnect to its 2026 lineup of “premium” TVs and to select 2025 models via a software update, good for users who elect to buy LG’s new Dolby Atmos FlexConnect satellite speakers or subwoofer without the soundbar. Powered by LG’s Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen 3, the LG H7 soundbar boasts an AI Sound Pro+ mode that intelligently up-mixes stereo audio to multi-channel sound while automatically adjusting its audio signature depending on the content you’re watching.  Also included in the LG Sound Suite are M7 and M2 surround speakers as well as the W7 subwoofer (we’re awaiting more details on those speakers). If you combine the H7 soundbar with four M7 or M2 speakers plus the subwoofer, you’ll wind up with a full-on 13.1.7-channel configuration, LG says.  The overall LG Sound Suite system boasts an ultra wideband-enabled “Sound Follow” feature that positions the “sweet spot” wherever you’re sitting, while Room Calibration Pro tailors the audio depending on the acoustics of the room.  This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers. Read...

This JBL PartyBox Encore Essential portable Bluetooth speaker has been the heart of nearly all my friend and family gatherings in the past year. The best news for you, though, is that it’s on sale right now! Act fast and you can get it for 39% off on Amazon, an incredible discount that brings it down to one of its best prices ever: $200 (was $330). View this Amazon deal The JBL PartyBox Encore Essential is one of the best portable Bluetooth speakers for parties and events. It’s large, fairly heavy, and loud. Seriously, it gets really loud. To set the mood, it even features a dynamic light show feature that’ll dazzle your guests, but you can turn it off and ignore it if that’s not really the vibe you want to put out. It comes with a built-in handle, too, so it’s easy to move around. That said, although it’s a “portable” Bluetooth speaker, don’t expect it to be small or light enough that you can carry it with you when you go, say, hiking—it’s definitely not for that. It’s more for indoor venues or your backyard patio. You could take it to the pool, though, and you won’t have to worry about water damage because it’s IPX4 splash-proof. Measurement-wise, it’s 12.9 inches tall, 10.9 inches wide, and 11.5 inches deep. It ain’t massive, but it’s pretty hefty. If you want to take things to the next level, you can wirelessly pair it with two other speakers using JBL’s True Wireless Stereo technology. But for the most part, it’s an incredible speaker on its own—and this is a fantastic deal, so get it now for just $200 before this deal expires! Save $130 on the JBL Partybox Encore Essential while you canBuy now at Amazon Read...

Imagine it’s the year 2030 and Nvidia has just announced its newest RTX 7000-series graphics cards. But the cheapest of the cards is priced over $2,000 and the top model is nearly double that. The series offer minimal uplift on rendering performance, but they’re incredibly good at accelerated upscaling and frame generation. Plus, memory bandwidth is almost double over the last-gen models. Let’s continue the hypothetical: Nvidia’s new xx60-series cards aren’t expected for months while Nvidia stockpiles enough defective GPUs. But don’t worry if you can’t afford these new cards or don’t want to wait. Why? Because GeForce Now offers the full upgrade right now for an “affordable” monthly fee, especially with an annual sub locked in. I wrote the above as a nightmare scenario, but it’s odd how close it sounds to the launch of the RTX 50-series. It’s a history that seems likely to repeat and accelerate as Nvidia’s gaming division becomes an ever-more-minor side hustle to its AI initiatives. Nvidia could effectively give up on gaming in the near future, and that might be the most financially sensible thing to do if the AI bubble doesn’t burst. But what would happen if they did? Just follow the money The numbers behind my pessimistic prognosis paint a stark picture. Nvidia’s Q3 2025 revenue topped $57 billion. Guess how much of that money came from data centers? A whopping $51.2 billion. That’s just shy of 90% of its total revenue and represents a 25% increase over the previous quarter and a 66% increase year on year. How much revenue do you think Nvidia pulled in from gaming? A measly $4.3 billion by comparison. That’s down 1% on the previous quarter, and that’s despite having the most powerful graphics cards available and with stock and prices being far more favorable than they were earlier in the year. It’s still up 30% on last year, but the difference in potential between data centers and gaming is staggering. Nvidia Indeed, gaming makes up less than 8% of Nvidia’s total revenue as of now, and although the overall income from gaming continues to increase, it’s miniscule in comparison to its data center take. Bullfincher highlights how quickly that’s changed, too: just a few years ago, gaming represented over 33% of Nvidia’s total revenue. Where do you think it’s going to be in another five years? Assuming the AI bubble doesn’t pop as catastrophically as it could, gaming is going to become a tiny footnote on Nvidia’s balance sheet. Will Jensen Huang even bother doing gaming hardware keynotes at that point? Mark Hachman / IDG Nvidia might be the biggest megacorp in this space, but its contemporaries show similar gaming red flags on their balance sheets. AMD made just over $9 billion this past quarter, but $4.3 billion was from data center sales while only $1.3 billion came from gaming. That’s much better than last year—when data centers brought in $3.5 billion and gaming just $462 million—but data centers are still a far bigger portion of AMD’s revenue than gaming. These numbers make a compelling case for giving up some interest and investment in gaming hardware development. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop make gaming GPUs entirely. (Or does it?) But if you’re Jensen Huang facing off against shareholders who are demanding the revenue numbers go up as much as possible as fast as possible, what are you going to sell them on: a new gaming GPU that has historically low margins, or a new generation of data center hardware to feed into the accelerating AI bubble with untold potential? You could even argue that Nvidia’s increasing focus over the past few years on DLSS and ray tracing over pure rasterization performance is an early sign of it putting its eggs in the data center basket. A canary in the RAM mines The biggest side effect of all these new data center builds hasn’t been GPU scarcity, surprisingly. (At least, not to the degree we saw during the cryptocurrency craze.) Rather, it’s skyrocketing memory prices. RAM kits have increased in price by over 200 percent in some cases, making large capacity kits more costly than top-tier GPUs. Some modest RAM options are even more expensive than gaming consoles. Consumer RAM is shooting up in price because all the major memory manufacturers are inundated with orders for data center memory, like HBM and LPDDR. Some have begun pivoting their fabrication lines to these higher-margin memory types, leading to shortages of NAND chips—and, consequently, shortages of consumer memory and SSDs. Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com Those shortages are making RAM and SSDs far more expensive. And yet, despite the increased margins and diminishing supply versus demand, Micron just closed its Crucial brand of consumer RAM and SSDs. It was profitable, it was popular, it had a distinct market niche that served consumers and gamers for decades. But even Micron didn’t see the point of keeping it going when it could instead make heaps more cash from selling Micron NAND chips and server memory. And if Micron is so willing to pull out of the consumer space due to AI-driven demand, how much more will Nvidia be tempted to do the same? What’s stopping Nvidia from reaching the same conclusion? For further proof of this future, Nvidia is rumored to be cutting its gaming GPU supply in 2026 due to memory shortages. It’s especially notable how Nvidia appears to be cutting the more affordable mid-range graphics cards first, leaving ultra-budget and ultra-high-end lines intact for now. Is this just the first step in Nvidia leaving gamers behind? Where things could go from here There are some intriguing comparisons to make between Nvidia and other big businesses that found growth and revenue in avenues that weren’t where they started. IBM went from being the name in computing hardware to one that largely runs in the background. It sold off its core hardware businesses and became a software and services company that’s still worth tens of billions of dollars. It recently spun off again, creating a separate company to handle IT services while the core business refocused on cloud computing and AI. Nvidia could do that: spin or sell off its gaming divisions and license its GPU technology to that spun-or-sold-off subsidiary. Notice the lack of graphics cards in this Nvidia promo image.Nvidia Perhaps Nvidia could even end up like Adobe. In the mid-2010s, the developer of Photoshop launched Creative Cloud and slowly pushed all its once-in-perpetuity software licenses into a subscription model that’s still going on today. Could that apply to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service? It had 25 million subscribers as of 2023 and ran on GPUs designed for data center server racks. Nvidia could leave dedicated desktop and laptop GPUs behind entirely and pivot its gaming divisions into software/hardware-as-a-service firms. If gaming goes a similar way to TV and movie streaming, it’s possible Nvidia could even pull a Netflix and slowly de-emphasize its DVD-like hardware business in favor of powering it all from the cloud. Gaming won’t die, but it will change As much as this article is heavy on the doom, Nvidia is unlikely to exit gaming entirely. People want to play games and there’s money to be made there, so someone will keep tapping that market. But how that revenue is extracted may change—dramatically so. Microsoft is already talking about making the next Xbox more of a PC/console hybrid. And with the latest Xbox consoles being the third wheel of this generation, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the future of Xbox focus more on streaming games than buying/owning them. Xbox Game Pass already has over 37 million subscribers—that’s more than the number of Xbox Series X/S consoles sold this generation. Nvidia could do something similar. Or it could spin off. Or it could stop making gaming GPUs entirely. The only thing we know for sure is this: when a gaming company starts making astronomical amounts of money due to AI-driven demand, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be tempted to dive head-first into an AI-first strategy at the expense of gaming. Further reading: PC vs. consoles? Gaming’s future is blurrier than ever Read...

Imagine it’s the year 2030 and Nvidia has just announced its newest RTX 7000-series graphics cards. But the cheapest of the cards is priced over $2,000 and the top model is nearly double that. The series offer minimal uplift on rendering performance, but they’re incredibly good at accelerated upscaling and frame generation. Plus, memory bandwidth is almost double over the last-gen models. Let’s continue the hypothetical: Nvidia’s new xx60-series cards aren’t expected for months while Nvidia stockpiles enough defective GPUs. But don’t worry if you can’t afford these new cards or don’t want to wait. Why? Because GeForce Now offers the full upgrade right now for an “affordable” monthly fee, especially with an annual sub locked in. I wrote the above as a nightmare scenario, but it’s odd how close it sounds to the launch of the RTX 50-series. It’s a history that seems likely to repeat and accelerate as Nvidia’s gaming division becomes an ever-more-minor side hustle to its AI initiatives. Nvidia could effectively give up on gaming in the near future, and that might be the most financially sensible thing to do if the AI bubble doesn’t burst. But what would happen if they did? Just follow the money The numbers behind my pessimistic prognosis paint a stark picture. Nvidia’s Q3 2025 revenue topped $57 billion. Guess how much of that money came from data centers? A whopping $51.2 billion. That’s just shy of 90% of its total revenue and represents a 25% increase over the previous quarter and a 66% increase year on year. How much revenue do you think Nvidia pulled in from gaming? A measly $4.3 billion by comparison. That’s down 1% on the previous quarter, and that’s despite having the most powerful graphics cards available and with stock and prices being far more favorable than they were earlier in the year. It’s still up 30% on last year, but the difference in potential between data centers and gaming is staggering. Nvidia Indeed, gaming makes up less than 8% of Nvidia’s total revenue as of now, and although the overall income from gaming continues to increase, it’s miniscule in comparison to its data center take. Bullfincher highlights how quickly that’s changed, too: just a few years ago, gaming represented over 33% of Nvidia’s total revenue. Where do you think it’s going to be in another five years? Assuming the AI bubble doesn’t pop as catastrophically as it could, gaming is going to become a tiny footnote on Nvidia’s balance sheet. Will Jensen Huang even bother doing gaming hardware keynotes at that point? Mark Hachman / IDG Nvidia might be the biggest megacorp in this space, but its contemporaries show similar gaming red flags on their balance sheets. AMD made just over $9 billion this past quarter, but $4.3 billion was from data center sales while only $1.3 billion came from gaming. That’s much better than last year—when data centers brought in $3.5 billion and gaming just $462 million—but data centers are still a far bigger portion of AMD’s revenue than gaming. These numbers make a compelling case for giving up some interest and investment in gaming hardware development. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop make gaming GPUs entirely. (Or does it?) But if you’re Jensen Huang facing off against shareholders who are demanding the revenue numbers go up as much as possible as fast as possible, what are you going to sell them on: a new gaming GPU that has historically low margins, or a new generation of data center hardware to feed into the accelerating AI bubble with untold potential? You could even argue that Nvidia’s increasing focus over the past few years on DLSS and ray tracing over pure rasterization performance is an early sign of it putting its eggs in the data center basket. A canary in the RAM mines The biggest side effect of all these new data center builds hasn’t been GPU scarcity, surprisingly. (At least, not to the degree we saw during the cryptocurrency craze.) Rather, it’s skyrocketing memory prices. RAM kits have increased in price by over 200 percent in some cases, making large capacity kits more costly than top-tier GPUs. Some modest RAM options are even more expensive than gaming consoles. Consumer RAM is shooting up in price because all the major memory manufacturers are inundated with orders for data center memory, like HBM and LPDDR. Some have begun pivoting their fabrication lines to these higher-margin memory types, leading to shortages of NAND chips—and, consequently, shortages of consumer memory and SSDs. Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com Those shortages are making RAM and SSDs far more expensive. And yet, despite the increased margins and diminishing supply versus demand, Micron just closed its Crucial brand of consumer RAM and SSDs. It was profitable, it was popular, it had a distinct market niche that served consumers and gamers for decades. But even Micron didn’t see the point of keeping it going when it could instead make heaps more cash from selling Micron NAND chips and server memory. And if Micron is so willing to pull out of the consumer space due to AI-driven demand, how much more will Nvidia be tempted to do the same? What’s stopping Nvidia from reaching the same conclusion? For further proof of this future, Nvidia is rumored to be cutting its gaming GPU supply in 2026 due to memory shortages. It’s especially notable how Nvidia appears to be cutting the more affordable mid-range graphics cards first, leaving ultra-budget and ultra-high-end lines intact for now. Is this just the first step in Nvidia leaving gamers behind? Where things could go from here There are some intriguing comparisons to make between Nvidia and other big businesses that found growth and revenue in avenues that weren’t where they started. IBM went from being the name in computing hardware to one that largely runs in the background. It sold off its core hardware businesses and became a software and services company that’s still worth tens of billions of dollars. It recently spun off again, creating a separate company to handle IT services while the core business refocused on cloud computing and AI. Nvidia could do that: spin or sell off its gaming divisions and license its GPU technology to that spun-or-sold-off subsidiary. Notice the lack of graphics cards in this Nvidia promo image.Nvidia Perhaps Nvidia could even end up like Adobe. In the mid-2010s, the developer of Photoshop launched Creative Cloud and slowly pushed all its once-in-perpetuity software licenses into a subscription model that’s still going on today. Could that apply to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service? It had 25 million subscribers as of 2023 and ran on GPUs designed for data center server racks. Nvidia could leave dedicated desktop and laptop GPUs behind entirely and pivot its gaming divisions into software/hardware-as-a-service firms. If gaming goes a similar way to TV and movie streaming, it’s possible Nvidia could even pull a Netflix and slowly de-emphasize its DVD-like hardware business in favor of powering it all from the cloud. Gaming won’t die, but it will change As much as this article is heavy on the doom, Nvidia is unlikely to exit gaming entirely. People want to play games and there’s money to be made there, so someone will keep tapping that market. But how that revenue is extracted may change—dramatically so. Microsoft is already talking about making the next Xbox more of a PC/console hybrid. And with the latest Xbox consoles being the third wheel of this generation, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the future of Xbox focus more on streaming games than buying/owning them. Xbox Game Pass already has over 37 million subscribers—that’s more than the number of Xbox Series X/S consoles sold this generation. Nvidia could do something similar. Or it could spin off. Or it could stop making gaming GPUs entirely. The only thing we know for sure is this: when a gaming company starts making astronomical amounts of money due to AI-driven demand, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be tempted to dive head-first into an AI-first strategy at the expense of gaming. Further reading: PC vs. consoles? Gaming’s future is blurrier than ever Read...

Data is one of the most important possessions we have these days. Whether it’s crucial documents for work or those irreplaceable photos and videos of the kids, these digital files are precious and need to be protected. But, with so many threats now targeted at us every day, how can we keep our data safe from corruption, theft or even being held to ransom by online hackers? ESET Cybersecurity software has the answers. Keeping your data safe from thieves and hackers It seems like hardly a week goes by without some cyber-attack being reported on the news. These range from raids on government departments, to online retailers or banks being targeted by hackers, all of which can leave us feeling vulnerable. After all, if the security on those companies couldn’t protect it, what can we do? Well, the truth is it can be easier to secure one device or user than it is to cover a complicated organisation, but you need the right tools. ESET HOME Security software provides exactly that, without needing a business-sized budget. Save 30% on ESET HOME Security Its 24/7 real-time protection means your PC or mobile device is constantly monitored to ward off malware, viruses, or other potential hazards. There are also security restrictions in place so no outside party can copy your data to an external device. ESET’s detections rates have been shown to be higher than that of its main rivals, while also delivering less false positives, meaning you’re getting top-class levels of protection.   Of course, one of the most alarming threats in recent years is that of ransomware. This is software that takes over your machine, encrypts everything and return it until you pay a ransom. Essentially, your data becomes a hostage on your own device. ESET Cybersecurity software works to prevent this by employing a Ransomware Shield that blocks the delivery methods of attacks, plus its Ransomware Remediation technology uses backup of files and restoration tools to quickly get you up and running if you do suffer an attack. This isn’t restricted to just internal drives though, as you can also encrypt and protect external USB drives, something many alternative software packages can’t offer. ESET Secure online banking and identity protection A common vulnerability for many users is when logging onto their bank accounts or crypto-wallets. Cybercriminals can target keystrokes or intercept data as it passes across the web, making it easy for them to hack accounts. ESET Cybersecurity protects against this by offering plug-ins for the most popular browsers, which then encrypt any data traffic so that it’s unreadable to anyone but the intended recipient. On the Premium and Ultimate packages, you also get an unlimited VPN that encrypts and protects all your online activities from prying eyes. Web monitoring ensures no unseen dangers on pages and will instantly warn against unsafe search results that might take you to fake sites. There’s also dark web monitoring that looks for any data breaches or illegal selling of your personal data, preventing the risk of identity theft. With all these protections in place, you might worry that it will have a large impact on the performance of your device. Again, ESET has you covered, as its software has won multiple awards for its speed, beating out several of its main rivals in a recent AV Comparatives benchmark test. So, not only are you staying safe, but you’re also not slowing down. Peace of mind without worrying your wallet Premium protection doesn’t need to come at premium prices, which is something ESET proves. In fact, until January 5th, PCWorld readers can take advantage of a fantastic offer that reduces the cost of a yearly subscription by a massive 30%. This means you can sign up today to the ESET HOME Security Essential (1 device) tier for only $34.99 (usually $49.99), ESET HOME Security Premium (1 device) for $55.99 (usually $79.99), or ESET HOME Security Ultimate (5 devices) for $125.99 (usually $179.99). Protecting your data is one of the most sensible investments you can ever make, getting 30% off the cost only makes it better. Save 30% on ESET HOME Security View Deal Read...

The sport of cricket operates on one DRS framework using multiple technology packages with varying levels of accuracy. Read...

The former Test captain says the DRS technology used in Australia is considered inferior to other cricketing nations. Read...

A fresh US rate cut ripples through New Zealand markets as tech investors reassess global liquidity, risk assets and digital exposures. Read...

Be careful what you do with technology because it`s very likely going to be considered a crime and have heavy penalties attached. Read...