In nearly every corner of our lives, the buzz about AI is impossible to ignore. It's destined to revolutionize how we work, learn, and play. For those of us immersed in the world of gaming—whether as players or creators—the question isn't just how AI will change the game, but how it will ignite new possibilities.

At Xbox, we're all about using AI to make things better (and more fun!) for players and game creators. We want to bring more games to more people around the world and always stay true to the creative vision and artistry of game developers. We believe generative AI can boost this creativity and open up new possibilities. We're excited to announce a generative AI breakthrough, published today in the journal Nature and announced by Microsoft Research, that shows this potential to open up new possibilities—including the opportunity to make older games accessible to future generations of players across new devices and in new ways.

People are using AI more and more at home, at work, in school, and everywhere in between. According to the most recent Microsoft Global Online Safety Survey, there has been a global increase in active generative AI users. Our findings showed that in 2024, 51% of people are users or experimenters of generative AI compared to 38% in 2023. Generation Z continues to drive this adoption with 64% of young adults reporting ever using the technology. That means it's up to us - especially those of us who work in technology and gaming - to make sure that young people have the support they need to navigate the world of AI safely while also fostering their curiosity and creativity in exploring these new technologies.

That's why, for Safer Internet Day 2025, Minecraft Education is releasing a new installment in the CyberSafe series where players can explore the risks and opportunities of AI use through fun, game-based challenges. In each instance, players are tasked with articulating guidelines for how to use AI safely and responsibly. Welcome to CyberSafe AI: Dig Deeper, available free on the Minecraft Marketplace and in Minecraft Education!

Late last month, NVIDIA claimed that 16-pin power connector issues were a thing of the past. The controversial 12VHPWR connection standard has fueled many online debates—prompting investigations from several prominent press outlets. Following NVIDIA's latest "safety" declaration—likely by coincidence—PCM Hong Kong reported another melting incident, affecting two cables and a power supply unit. The publication's hardware reviewer was recently engaged in the "full-load" testing of GeForce RTX 5090D and RTX 5080 graphics cards. Last week's evaluation session was interrupted by notable test system instabilities—upon downing tools, the PCM staffer discovered that their 1200 W PSU had given up the ghost. Additionally, two 16-pin cables had melted at both ends—initial detective work pointed to a GeForce RTX 4090 sample card being the main culprit.

VideoCardz and UNIKO's Hardware kept close tabs on PCM's next steps—online interactions, over the past weekend, spurred a re-evaluation of circumstances. According to PCM's latest update, they noticed burn marks on the GeForce RTX 4090 test unit—the two GeForce RTX-50-series cards did not exhibit any physical damage. Post-analysis, the reviewer now suspects that an SSD failure could be the root cause. They were happy to report that all involved RTX cards have survived, and that their test platform has been re-equipped with 12V-2x6 cables. An amended VideoCardz article proposes that everything came down to a simple human error.

An academic collaboration—between research departments at Georgia Institute of Technology and Ruhr University Bochum—has produced two white paper studies that disclose details regarding the vulnerable nature of certain generations of Apple Silicon. The documents were made available online earlier in the week; readily accessible through their Predictors.Fail webpage. The "SLAP" attack paper's moniker is derived/abbreviated from its long-form title: "Data Speculation Attacks via Load Address Prediction on Apple" Silicon. A similarly uncatchy acronymization has been generated by the second paper's full title: "Breaking the Apple M3 CPU via False Load Output Predictions"—aka "FLOP" attack. The North American and German security research teams have partnered up in the past—their "iLeakage" speculative execution side-channel attack was documented back in October 2023.

Spectre and Meltdown are the original, and likely most famous/notorious examples of speculative execution CPU vulnerability—owners of particular processor architectures were affected at the start of 2018. The Predictors.Fail bulletin proposes that the latest side-channel attacks affect Apple hardware of 2021 vintage and beyond. The teams introduced SLAP as: "a new speculative execution attack that arises from optimizing data dependencies, as opposed to control flow dependencies." They believe that Apple models: "starting with the M2 and A15 are equipped with a Load Address Predictor (LAP), which improves performance by guessing the next memory address the CPU will retrieve data from based on prior memory access patterns. However, if the LAP guesses wrong, it causes the CPU to perform arbitrary computations on out-of-bounds data, which should never have been accessed to begin with, under speculative execution. Building on this observation, we demonstrate the real-world security risks of the LAP via an end-to-end attack on the Safari web browser, where an unprivileged remote adversary can recover email content and browsing behavior."

In the early hours of Tuesday, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck near a remote mountainous region roughly 24 miles southeast of Chiayi in Taiwan, causing temporary operational halts at multiple TSMC facilities. The tremor occurred at 12:17 AM local time and was felt in Tainan, home to four of TSMC's manufacturing sites. Workers in both Central and Southern Taiwan were evacuated as a precaution, following standard company protocols designed to ensure employee safety. TSMC initiated thorough structural inspections immediately after the quake. According to company representatives, all crucial infrastructure, such as water supply and power systems, remained fully functional. With no significant damage detected during safety assessments, TSMC has gradually restarted its production lines, minimizing any long-term impact on its global client base.

Despite the relatively brief disruption, the incident exposes the fragility of the semiconductor manufacturing process. Taiwan's frequent seismic activity has the potential to affect the complex manufacturing processes crucial for producing silicon. Given the company's massive consumption of chemicals and silicon ingots, any significant production setbacks at TSMC can resonate through global supply chains. To reduce these geographical and nature-inspired risks, TSMC is investing heavily in new manufacturing facilities elsewhere, notably in Arizona. Although these sites are expected to enhance the company's resilience, they will only account for around 10% of TSMC's total production capacity. Additionally, as TSMC doesn't plan to bring state-of-the-art production to other sites, the company must implement safety features against earthquake protection in its Taiwan facilities to continue production. A minor manufacturing hiccup can equate to billions of losses across the supply chain.

MSI is preparing a new selection of yellow-tipped 16-pin power adapters—as reported by VideoCardz earlier today—for inclusion with certain GeForce RX 50 series "Blackwell" GPU-based graphics card models. An official announcement has not been released—regarding the latest color coding for power connectors—but new product photos have appeared on the MSI website. The yellow sections provide a clear "visual guide" when hooking the relevant adapter up to a graphics card—full insertion is achieved when the yellow tip is fully obscured by its surroundings. MSI's latest image uploads indicate that dual 8-pin to single 16-pin adapters will likely be bundled with MSI's GeForce RTX 5070 models. The RTX 5070 Ti and 5080 product tiers will be getting three 8-pin ended adapters. A very busy-looking 4-way splitter is seemingly reserved for flagship GeForce RTX 5090 cards.

The MAG GL PSU series debuted back in 2023, featuring a similarly-tinted "dual color" safety measure—based on customer and community feedback. At the time, MSI stated that it had reacted to: "reported cases of power supply connectors being burnt when paired with high-end graphics cards. We've identified the main reason: the connectors not being plugged in properly and the connector pins suffering from fall outs. With this new cable, we successfully tackle both issues head-on." Manufacturers have continued to release new products that utilize the "problematic" 12VHPWR standard, even years after the introduction of a successor: 12V-2x6. NVIDIA and several of its board partners are reported to be sticking with the first iteration PCIe Gen 5 16-pin connector for upcoming GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. The TechPowerUp team inspected ZOTAC's new 12WHPWR "Safety Light" feature at the recently concluded CES trade event—a visual warning will be displayed in the event of a connection problem being detected.

AI agents are poised to transform productivity for the world's billion knowledge workers with "knowledge robots" that can accomplish a variety of tasks. To develop AI agents, enterprises need to address critical concerns like trust, safety, security and compliance. New NVIDIA NIM microservices for AI guardrails—part of the NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails collection of software tools—are portable, optimized inference microservices that help companies improve the safety, precision and scalability of their generative AI applications.

Central to the orchestration of the microservices is NeMo Guardrails, part of the NVIDIA NeMo platform for curating, customizing and guardrailing AI. NeMo Guardrails helps developers integrate and manage AI guardrails in large language model (LLM) applications. Industry leaders Amdocs, Cerence AI and Lowe's are among those using NeMo Guardrails to safeguard AI applications. Developers can use the NIM microservices to build more secure, trustworthy AI agents that provide safe, appropriate responses within context-specific guidelines and are bolstered against jailbreak attempts. Deployed in customer service across industries like automotive, finance, healthcare, manufacturing and retail, the agents can boost customer satisfaction and trust.

IQVIA, the world's leading provider of clinical research services, commercial insights and healthcare intelligence, is working with NVIDIA to build custom foundation models and agentic AI workflows that can accelerate research, clinical development and access to new treatments. AI applications trained on the organization's vast healthcare-specific information and guided by its deep domain expertise will help the industry boost the efficiency of clinical trials and optimize planning for the launch of therapies and medical devices—ultimately improving patient outcomes.

Operating in over 100 countries, IQVIA has built the largest global healthcare network and is uniquely connected to the ecosystem with the most comprehensive and granular set of information, analytics and technologies in the industry. Announced today at the J.P. Morgan Conference in San Francisco, IQVIA's collection of models, AI agents and reference workflows will be developed with the NVIDIA AI Foundry platform for building custom models, allowing IQVIA's thousands of pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device customers to benefit from NVIDIA's agentic AI capabilities and IQVIA's technologies, life sciences information and expertise.

A new security breach is trying to pump the brakes on Path Of Exile 2's overwhelmingly positive late 2024 launch, as a mysterious hack appears to be making the rounds in the new RPG, although the source of the vulnerability is yet to be identified. According to a growing number of posts on the Path of Exile 2 forum, subreddit, and even the game's Steam reviews, players are apparently logging into their PoE 2 accounts only to find that all their loot and gear they've now spent dozens or even hundreds of hours grinding for, has been removed from their accounts. The most alarming thing is that nobody seems to know how these hacks are happening. Some players say they changed their main email address and Steam login passwords days before they were hacked, and most seem to have no Steam 2FA requests, suggesting that there is either a security issue with the Path of Exile 2 game servers or there is some sort of session hijacking happening that is giving bad actors access to player accounts.

Until now, Grinding Gear Games, the developer behind Path of Exile 2, has not openly commented on the hacking incidents, with a single comment from the support team on the forum advising players to email support about it if they encounter such instances. According to the Steam review mentioning an account hacking incident, however, the player managed to track down the hacker on his own, subsequently contacted support and posted about it in the PoE 2 forum, and asked the moderator to assist in preventing the sale of the rest of his goods. This attempt was apparently enough to get the gamer's forum posts removed and put on probation. Meanwhile, the support request was met even more unkindly, with PoE 2 support going so far as to lock him out of his own account. He also isn't alone, with others in the Path of Exile 2 forum reporting that sharing the in-game name of their alleged hacker with support has led to their game account being locked.

Transcend Information Inc. (Transcend ), a leading global manufacturer of memory storage solutions, announces the launch of its new CFX735 and CFX735I CFast cards. These cards feature built-in write protection technology, designed specifically for professional applications that require secure data storage and stable, high-performance write capabilities.

Leveraging 112-layer 3D NAND flash technology and a SATA III 6 Gb/s interface, this series offers exceptional read/write speeds and large storage capacities. Whether you're dealing with data-intensive applications or operating in demanding environments, these cards deliver reliable performance. The CFX735 operates in a temperature range of -5°C to 70°C, while the CFX735I is built for extreme environments, functioning reliably from -40°C to 85°C, perfect for outdoor and temperature fluctuating scenarios.

We previously covered a damning report that levelled some pretty severe allegations at Roblox concerning a mix of child safety and false platform metrics. While nothing seems to have been done about the latter, Roblox looks to be addressing the former, and far more serious, of the allegations. According to a Bloomberg report, Roblox will add child safety measures in November that will give parents more control over what their children can see and interact with in Roblox's various games and communities.

According to Bloomberg, Roblox sent parents of the platform's minor audience an email detailing the new changes coming in November. Seemingly in response to the recent criticism, Roblox is putting more control in the hands of parents. Specifically, children under 13 will need parental approval in order to access certain chat features, although the company declined to clarify on exactly what it means by this. Additionally, children under nine years of age will require parental approval in order to play games known to contain moderate violence or crude humor. For more involved parents, Roblox is also introducing a new account type that will allow parents to supervise their online activities. These new safety measures come after Roblox effectively dismissed the October 9 Hindenburg report's accusations that it wasn't doing enough to protect its minor audience.

To anyone following gaming with any sort of regularity, it's plain to see that Roblox is by far one of the biggest, if not the biggest game among young audiences. Now, a new report from Hindenburg Research claims that Roblox has not only misrepresented its user count but has also failed to protect minors, who make up as much as 60% of the game platform's users. After Hindenburg released the statement, Roblox responded to the claim denying the allegations, citing that it strictly enforces its community standards, although it admits that bots and inflated user counts are an issue the company actively tries to fight.

Hindenburg's report alleges that Roblox has repeatedly inflated its user figure, intentionally using vague language to mislead its investors about how many users it has. The organization also claims to have discovered several cases of sexual abuse and exploitation of minors on the platform, citing incidents involving kidnapping and sexual assault against minors that stemmed from in-game meetings.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the organization that oversees Bluetooth technology, announced the release of Bluetooth Channel Sounding, a new secure, fine-ranging feature that promises to enhance the convenience, safety, and security of Bluetooth connected devices. By enabling true distance awareness in billions of everyday devices, Bluetooth Channel Sounding opens countless possibilities for developers and users alike.

"Bluetooth technology has become an ingredient of everyday life," said Neville Meijers, CEO, Bluetooth Special Interest Group. "When connected devices are distance-aware, a range of new possibilities emerge. Adding true distance awareness to Bluetooth technology exemplifies the ongoing commitment of the Bluetooth SIG community to continuously enhance our connection with our devices, one another, and the world around us."

ESR, the leading brand for mobile accessories and the #1 brand for MagSafe accessories, proudly announces the launch of its latest innovation: the Cyber FlickLock Case for AirPods. This new product sets a benchmark in AirPod protection, combining ESR's exclusive FlickLock safety lock design with advanced features that enhance both security and usability.

Unmatched Security with FlickLock Lock System
The Cyber FlickLock case showcases ESR's new proprietary FlickLock safety lock, ensuring your AirPods always remain secure. The case lid is designed with a total of 7 strong magnets on the upper and lower sides, providing a powerful magnetic strength of 1480 g. The entire body is crafted from resilient TPU + PC materials, fortified with Air Guard corners that offer dual-layer shock absorption. This design provides robust drop-proof protection, safeguarding your AirPods from everyday impacts.

Seasonic introduced a new 12V-2x6 modular PSU cable model late last year—at the time, interested parties were also invited to Beta test early examples. Finalized versions have been introduced, via a freshly uploaded YouTube video (see below) and a dedicated product page. The "H++" connector standard—part of a new ATX 3.1 specification—is expected to replace the troubled "H+" 12VHWPR design. The PC hardware community has engaged in long-running debates about the development and rollout of a danger/peril-free alternative. PCI-SIG drafted the 12V-2x6 design last summer.

Seasonic's introductory section stated: "with the arrival of the new ATX 3 / PCIe 5.0 specifications, some graphic cards will now be powered by the new 12V-2x6 connector. Offering up to 600 W of power, the Seasonic native 12V-2x6 cable has been crafted with high quality materials, such as high current terminal connectors and 16 AWG wires to ensure the highest performance and safety in usage." The new cables are compatible with Seasonic's current ATX 3.0 power supply unit range—including "PRIME TX, PRIME PX, VERTEX GX, PX, GX White and Sakura, FOCUS GX and GX White" models. Owners of older Seasonic ATX 2.0 PSUs are best served with an optional 2x8-pin to 12V-2x6 adapter cable—although 650 W rated and single PCIe connector-equipped units are not supported at all. Two native cable models, and a non-native variant are advertised in the manufacturer's video.

NVIDIA has joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology's new U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium as part of the company's effort to advance safe, secure and trustworthy AI. AISIC will work to create tools, methodologies and standards to promote the safe and trustworthy development and deployment of AI. As a member, NVIDIA will work with NIST—an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce—and fellow consortium members to advance the consortium's mandate. NVIDIA's participation builds on a record of working with governments, researchers and industries of all sizes to help ensure AI is developed and deployed safely and responsibly.

Through a broad range of development initiatives, including NeMo Guardrails, open-source software for ensuring large language model responses are accurate, appropriate, on topic and secure, NVIDIA actively works to make AI safety a reality. In 2023, NVIDIA endorsed the Biden Administration's voluntary AI safety commitments. Last month, the company announced a $30 million contribution to the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot program, which aims to broaden access to the tools needed to power responsible AI discovery and innovation.

CableMod issued a statement—just before the last Christmas holiday—detailing a safety recall of 16-pin 12VHPWR angled adapters, version 1.0 and 1.1. This announcement received widespread media coverage (at least in tech circles), but some unfortunate customers have not yet received the memo about faulty adapters—CableMod's 90° angled and 180° hard connectors can overheat and in worst case scenarios, actually melt. HotHardware, amusingly named given this context, was the first hardware news outlet to notice that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) had published a "GPU Angled Adapter" recall notice to its website earlier today, under "Recall number 24-112."

The US government body's listing outlines aforementioned hazardous conditions, along with an estimated 25,300 affected unit count. The CPSC's recommended "Remedy" advice is as follows: "Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled angled adapters and contact CableMod for instructions on how to safely remove their adapter from the GPU and for a full refund, including cost of shipping, or a $60 store credit for non-customized products, with free standard shipping. Consumers will be asked to destroy the adapter and upload a photo of the destroyed product to cablemod.com/adapterrecall/. The instructions on how to safely remove the adapter are also located on that site. Once destroyed, consumers should discard the adapter in accordance with local laws." The Safety Commission has gathered some customer feedback intelligence on this matter: "The firm (CableMod Ltd., of China) has received 272 reports of the adapters becoming loose, overheating and melting into the GPU, with at least $74,500 in property damage claims in the United States. No injuries have been reported."

Linksys, an iconic Home and Small Office connectivity company, announces in a statement of direction the new Cognitive Security capability, which will complement the newly released Designer Series through the end of the year. Cognitive Security technology will then be released in the soon-to-be announced Icon Series later this year.

The term "Cognitive" in the technology space refers to "thinking technologies," which can deterministically, either by user selection or automation, solve problems. In Phase 1 of its implementation, Linksys Cognitive Security was developed entirely based on user input and feedback, focusing on saving users time and effort.

In an event at the White House today, NVIDIA announced support for voluntary commitments that the Biden Administration developed to ensure advanced AI systems are safe, secure and trustworthy. The news came the same day NVIDIA's chief scientist, Bill Dally, testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee seeking input on potential legislation covering generative AI. Separately, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will join other industry leaders in a closed-door meeting on AI Wednesday with the full Senate.

Seven companies including Adobe, IBM, Palantir and Salesforce joined NVIDIA in supporting the eight agreements the Biden-Harris administration released in July with support from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI.

FSP has declared that it intends to update its entire 2023 PSU product lineup to include the latest "12V-2x6" power connector (part of the ATX 3.0 standard)—harukaze5719 posted about this development earlier today, citing a Quasarzone article. We heard mid-summer about PCI-SIG plowing ahead on an all-new ATX 3.0 connector to replace the 16-pin (12+4) 12VHPWR plug. They hope to introduce some key improvements with their new design, mainly in the areas of ease-of-use and safety.

TPU staffers had hands-on time with FSP's 2023 PSU product line at their Computex 2023 booth, showcased units were equipped with 16-pin 12VHPWR (at the time). Quasarzone's report (covering a recent press conference) has the following FSP power supply families listed with updates to the new "12V-2x6" standard: Hydro G PRO 1200 W ATX 3.0, Hydro PTM X PRO ATX 3.0 and Dagger PRO ATX 3.0.

We are constantly improving our safety measures and bringing more systems and tools in place that empower players to respectfully interact with one another - because everyone deserves a place to comfortably be themselves online, free from harassment and bullying. One of the most common questions we get from players through feedback, posts, and appeals is how repeated enforcements impact their gameplay, how they escalate, what they escalate to, and how they know when their account is back in good standing. To help address this, we are introducing a new enforcement strike system.

The new system attaches strikes to every enforcement, ranging in severity based on inappropriate activity. Each player will now have a view of their enforcement history including strikes and the overall impact these have on their player record. This revised system gives players a better understanding of enforcement severity and the cumulative effect of multiple enforcements. Enforcement transparency is about giving players clarity into how their behavior impacts their experience. Our content moderation efforts are not changing as a result of the new enforcement strike system.

China electric vehicle maker XPENG Motors has announced its new G6 coupe SUV—featuring an NVIDIA-powered intelligent advanced driver assistance system—is now available to the China market. The G6 is XPENG's first model featuring the company's proprietary Smart Electric Platform Architecture (SEPA) 2.0, which aims to reduce development and manufacturing costs and shorten R&D cycles since the modular architecture will be compatible with future models.

The electric SUV also features the XPENG Navigation Guided Pilot (XNGP), a full scenario-based intelligent assisted driving system. It's powered by the cutting-edge NVIDIA DRIVE Orin compute and XPENG's full-stack software developed in-house. The XNGP system first made its debut in the EV maker's flagship G9 SUV, touting a safe, reliable, advanced driving experience behind the wheel.

Targus, the number one laptop case brand in the US and Canada and a leader in laptop cases and mobile computing accessories, today announced that its CES 2021 Innovation Awards Honoree, the UV-C LED Disinfection Light, is now available for sale. This essential no-touch solution helps reduce pathogens on device surfaces by utilizing UV-C Light technology, which breaks down the DNA of microorganisms. Sleek, modern, and lightweight, the Disinfection Light is designed to stand between your keyboard and monitor on the desktop to automatically disinfect the surfaces of keyboards, mice, and other items within the disinfection range, reducing the need for manual intervention, cleaning, or touching.

"Maintaining a clean workspace is increasingly important post-pandemic as businesses move back to in-office and hybrid work environments," says Mike Sexton, Sr. Director of Global Product Management & Development, Targus. "Our UV-C LED Disinfection Light delivers the perfect low maintenance, automated disinfection solution for individual workstations to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms on critical high-touch surfaces of items like keyboards, mice, and tablets at the office and at home."

At Xbox, we have the fundamental commitment to provide all players with a safe and secure experience on our platform - and this is especially true for our youngest players. We frequently iterate on our safety measures, in collaboration and with feedback from the community, regulators and partners. We recently entered into a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to update our account creation process and resolve a data retention glitch found in our system. Regrettably, we did not meet customer expectations and are committed to complying with the order to continue improving upon our safety measures. We believe that we can and should do more, and we'll remain steadfast in our commitment to safety, privacy, and security for our community.

Our two decades of safety experience has taught us that all players want, and need, safety and privacy protections. Since 2005, when we launched the first console that could connect players online, we've continued to invest in tools and technologies to protect our community. That work evolved into a multifaceted safety strategy. Our suite of safety, privacy and security measures are designed to respect player privacy and safety, and empower players, as well as parents and caregivers, to have control over their gaming experiences.