pcNewsBuzz

It might be challenging to find bright spots in financial news these days, but seismic economic shifts, such as the one COVID-19 has sparked, always give way to new markets and opportunities. As with past downturns, it’s in those areas that the next industry game-changers and investment darlings will emerge.

Nvidia posted big earnings gains and unveiled its 54-billion transistor A100 artificial intelligence chip in the past couple of weeks. We talked with CEO Jensen Huang about that and his view of the Metaverse, or the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. We also asked him if gaming will emerge from the pandemic as the biggest entertainment industry by any measure.

Gaming brands overall reduced their TV marketing from mid-April to mid-May with a 26.67% decrease in total ad impressions vs. the previous 30-day period. Nintendo continues to lead, but PlayStation is gaining steam; together, the two brands account for over 75% of the industry’s TV ad impressions.

Without further ado, here’s what we’re looking at. There are three tiers: Ryzen 7 with eight processor cores and eight graphics cores, Ryzen 5 with six processor cores and seven graphics cores, and Ryzen 3 with four processor cores and six graphics cores. Each tier comes in two or three flavors. Regular and PRO versions share of all the same specifications, including a 65 W TDP, and the GE version has a lower base clock with a 35 W TDP.

Google has released Google Chrome 83 for all supported platforms after the company decided to skip version 82 altogether and ship this new update earlier than anticipated.

I’m the president of Articulate, a highly profitable SaaS company that’s been fully remote since its founding in 2002, has more than 250 employees, and will reach $100 million in recurring revenue this year. So when I heard that Twitter is breaking new ground by letting its employees work remotely, as this article by Margaret O’Mara in The New York Times suggests, I felt the need to set the record straight.

It’s no fun being in lockdown, even if you have a dream job as a game developer. That’s why Blind Squirrel Games, a game development services company in Orange County, California, has been doing more to entertain its employees.

As strange as this year has been, we’re finally coming up on Memorial Day if you can believe it. With all of the madness around the world, VB Deals is here to cheer you up by bringing you some of the best deals online right now. From tension-relieving muscle relaxation mats to high quality noise-cancelling ear buds, these bargains are sure to have you feeling better about present times.

The spread of the novel coronavirus around the world has been unprecedented and rapid. In response, tech companies have scrambled to ensure their services are still available to their users, while also transitioning thousands of their employees to teleworking. However, due to privacy and security concerns, social media companies have been unable to transition all of their content moderators to remote work. As a result, they have become more reliant on artificial intelligence to make content moderation decisions. Facebook and YouTube admitted as much in their public announcements over the last couple of months, and Twitter appears to be taking a similar tack. This new sustained reliance on AI due to the coronavirus crisis is concerning as it has significant and ongoing consequences for the free expression rights of online users.

It was a busy week for defense-focused AI: DarwinAI signed a partnership with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, to work on explainable AI for solutions. Robotics company Sphero, the maker of BB-8 droid from Star Wars, spun out Company Six, which will focus on military and emergency medical applications. And Google Cloud was awarded a Pentagon contract for its multi-cloud solution Anthos this week, even though the $10 billion JEDI contract between AWS and Microsoft Azure is still tied up in courts.