With the once-lucrative business of cryptocurrency mining now slowly falling out of favor for discrete graphics, crypto miners are turning their heads to creative solutions to "refurbish" and sell their remaining inventory to third-party users. When GPU components, such as the die or GDDR memory, overheat, they can produce visual signs of damage, such as discoloration or melting. Some miners have started painting the memory on their GPU's boards with special thermal paint to hide the wear and tear from the naked eye and make the GDDR chips appear new in hopes that no one would notice. According to Iskandar Souza and TecLab, their cases are now getting debunked.

As these reports note, miners are removing the stock cooling systems from GPUs to install a third-party solution or recently tried to resolder failed GPU dies back in place and paint the yellowish GDDR memory chips. According to the testing done by Iskandar Souza, you can see below the difference between a worn-out yellowish GDDR chip and its painted deception standing next to one another. Below you can also see the process of resoldering failed GPUs back in place. Crypto miners have been very careful to make them look almost as brand new, so GPU buyers from third-party sources need to be extra cautious before making a purchase.

To be fair, the writing was already on the wall, in a way. It was so when Microsoft announced the introduction of a UWP app called Paint 3D. Paint 3D, which supplants Paint in a number of ways, is like the 1984-introduced app's big brother. It's meaner, faster, and thinks history is all its own. But that's fine.

So yes, Paint is dying. The prognosis: death by deprecation. Paint is being put on a "deprecated" list (which means "not in active development and might be removed in future releases" for Windows 10's latest update, the Fall Creators Update, which means that it's somewhat like Schrödinger's cat: it's in a limbo of life and death. It's not really dead, no; but at the same time, it really kind of is. "Whether you're an artist or just want to try out some doodles-Paint 3D makes it easy to unleash your creativity and bring your ideas to life. Classic Paint has been reimagined, with an updated look and feel and a ton of new brushes and tools. And now, create in every dimension. Make 2D masterpieces or 3D models that you can play with from all angles," Microsoft explains. And that's all well and good; but where is my nostalgia-factor? A small sentence lends hope to the Paint defenders out there, where Microsoft says "Paint will be available through the Windows Store." Alas, even so, it seems tales of Paint's demise weren't greatly exaggerated...

Even though the awaited Creators Update for Windows 10 is only set to arrive on April 11th, users who want to get ahead of the launch - and maybe themselves - can now update their version of Windows. Through the Windows 10 Update Assistant, Microsoft has made it possible for users to update to the latest version of windows ahead of time. After downloading and running the tool from Microsoft's website, it should display that Build 15063 is available - the official build number for the Creators Update.

The most awaited feature for the upcoming Windows update should be the Game Mode, though Beam live-streaming (which some say is better than Twitch) from the Game Bar, a PiP (picture-in-picture) mode for streaming videos while working on those pesky Excel budget .xlxs, and improved privacy settings (which aren't at the same level as the special edition built for the chinese market, though.) Microsoft's Edge is also seeing performance and security improvements, and Windows will now integrate a night mode that reduces blue light emissions - and thus the strain in your old eye globes. You can now also lock your Windows 10 PC at a distance through Windows Hello on your smartphone of choice, and can partake on some crazy Paint marathons with its improved 3D tool, which should elevate it to new, never before seen heights - maybe in the next update you can use the new Paint with Mixed-Reality products?