An apparently sad and defeated GPT-6 Astra spent several hours doing nothing but farming potatoes during a 141-hour Minecraft benchmark test, after dying and losing all of its gear to an exploding Creeper. Vals AI records that while GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI's latest frontier model, got further than any AI system had in its 141-hour test, the experiment did reveal a distinctly human lapse in motivation after all of its progress was wiped out by the destructive mob.

While the model outclassed rivals in how much it was able to achieve, the test has gone viral for a different reason. After Astra put all of its valuable end-game items in a chest, a Creeper appeared and blew up both the chest and Astra's bed — a calamity any Minecraft player will tell you is the worst thing that can happen. Not only did Astra lose all of the items to the explosion, but the bed destruction wiped the spawn point out, effectively resetting your game progress to zero. "Here, the most expensive creeper explosion occurred. Later, on a coincidentally rainy day, Astra discovers it lost everything. It all went downhill from here," Vals records.

"The model appeared defeated, spending the next several hours doing essentially nothing but farming potatoes," Vals observed. In fact, it got so bad that viewers on Twitch watching the experiment live started to agitate for the model to pick up the pace. Like all good Minecraft players, Astra reportedly became "paranoid about creepers," logging "GREEN tall thing ahead was SUGARCANE, NOT creeper!"

The AI was also recorded berating itself for dropping things, and even warned itself, "do NOT waste another night chasing dark pink pixels," i.e., pigs.

Astra has made waves as OpenAI's latest frontier model, which is notably adept thanks to its computer use and browsing, letting it navigate, click, and type like a human using a computer. The company has claimed it's an ethereal 'Alien Mind' with AGI-like qualities. Last week, the model was recorded autonomously completing Portal in just 24 hours at a cost of just $571 in tokens.

Residents of Frederick County, Maryland, could be the beneficiaries of what is purported to be the biggest residential benefits package yet to be offered by data center developers, in a move a new report claims is a sign of a growing trend that Big Tech is trying to get ahead of fears and community pushback surrounding AI infrastructure. The $110 million deal includes new schools, water reclamation, and more, The Information reports.

According to the report, the Frederick Digital Campus offering could be a sign that data center developers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle are wising up to growing residential pushback and concerns around the building of large AI data centers in their communities, with developers "sweetening financial offers to municipalities and regulators to gain approval for new facilities" while "getting smarter" about ensuring they shoulder the cost of utilities like electricity. The report says AI builders are turning towards tangible benefits, rather than rhetoric, to get their projects approved.

The Maryland site, if approved, would see residents of Frederick County benefit from a $110 million investment in total, including a $30 million elementary school, $40 million of recreational facilities, a $14.5 million workforce training center, and a further $10.5 million for "agricultural preservation." That comes on top of a purported $215 million in annual property taxes the campus would pay upon completion, a 40% uptick in tax revenue.

It appears the developers have also offered concessions regarding construction, reducing the square footage by almost 20%, and reducing potable water (water safe for human consumption and use) usage by 80%, with up to $100 million also proposed for a water reclamation system.

The proposal is yet to be approved, but if passed, the campus would boast Amazon and Aligned Data centers amongst its tenants. The report reiterates the deal "reflects a rapidly emerging consensus by both tech companies and host governments to eliminate giveaways to developers and to accelerate benefits to towns in the vicinity of the facilities."

A further cited example from Pennsylvania claims AWS announced it would not seek any economic incentives to reduce the tax burden on its 4.5GW, 36-building data center campus in Homer City.

The report further cites occasions where big tech companies are taking the side of consumers and residents over power rate debates, with Microsoft recently said to have challenged an American Transmission Co. and We Energies’ proposal for its Wisconsin data center, claiming the plan wasn't robust enough to protect retail customers from footing the bill if demand was lower than expected. In another case, Google and Amazon are said to have lobbied Virginia regulators to ensure they would fund transmission upgrades required for their infrastructure, rather than let an energy company cover the cost by marking up customer bills.

With concerns around data center buildouts impacting local water supplies, energy rates, and even contributing to noise pollution, it's clear that Big Tech companies appear to be trying to grease the wheels on a local level by investing more directly in some local communities. Big Tech has reportedly now spent more than $1 trillion on AI infrastructure, so even local investments to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars are a drop in the ocean for companies.

Regulators are trying to pump the brakes on data center buildouts, with some 500 data centers on hold in the US because of various moratoriums and legal pauses.

A new report claims that NATO allies have foiled a Russian training exercise simulating the deployment of a secret weapon against undersea cables in Norway. According to Reuters, Russian subs were caught training "to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints," in waters near Norway's Svalbard archipelago this spring.

The mission to uncover the plot was purportedly a joint naval exercise between Britain, Norway, and the U.S. While the mission itself was previously public knowledge, Reuters says the revelation of a new weapon in the field, the location, and U.S. involvement are all previously unknown details.

As the report notes, Norway has two 1,400km cables connecting Svalbard to the mainland, sitting at a depth of nearly 3km. The cables are the world's largest, relaying satellite data.

The report indicates the foiled exercise was indeed a training mission, and that no cables were actually damaged. "The exercise focused on simulating the deployment of the technology in the event of a conflict with NATO," the report claimed. An X post by the U.S. Helsinki Commission framed the report differently, claiming "Russia’s shadow war against NATO includes efforts to disable subsea cables vital for global communication. This spring, the United States, the UK, and Norway foiled an attempt to sabotage subsea cables off the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic."

The report didn't provide any further details about the "secret weapon" Russia was said to be using, only that it was designed to disable cables "without leaving any fingerprints." The report further states the op as a whole was carried out by Russia's GUGI undersea warfare directorate.

Undersea cables are increasingly seen not only as vital infrastructure, but as potential flashpoints in geopolitical confrontations. Russia specifically has been spotted loitering over undersea cables in the UK, and one vessel tracked three Russian submarines during a monthlong exercise to survey cables.

Many territories, notably island nations, rely heavily or even exclusively on cables for their connectivity to the outside world, powering every industry including banking, defence, e-commerce, retail, and beyond.

In a statement to Tom's Hardware, TV manufacturer LG has strongly denied recent claims that its smart TVs constantly log and upload data, record audio while in standby, while confirming they scan local area networks for other devices, a feature common in smart TVs and media devices. The statement follows an investigation published online by Gamers Nexus, which claims LG is operating "216,000,000" spy TVs.

Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus published a video on YouTube claiming that LG smart TVs have several security and privacy concerns. The two-hour video claims, among other things, that LG's smart TVs constantly log and upload user data, even when offline or in standby mode. The TVs were also purported to be found scanning Wi-Fi networks, recording audio logs, and sampling inputs for audio and video to identify what users were watching.

The testing was done in collaboration with two security researchers, MrBruh and uturn, and includes packet capture and firmware analysis. The TVs were reportedly seen identifying other devices on local networks, including phones, printers, and more. Perhaps the most significant claim regards the capturing of audio through TV microphones, even when the devices were off, with the report claiming the TVs stored data when offline for retrieval later on.

"The claims made in the recently published video are not true," LG told Tom's Hardware in a statement. "LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a wake word such as 'Hi LG' is recognized after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature."

LG went on to say that beyond the aforementioned instances, "the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations." The company further stated that if the wake word is not recognized, then no voice data is transmitted from the TV to the server, and said audio processing for the wake word is done on-device.

The company did admit its smart TV functionality includes scanning for devices on the same network. However, as many observers have been quick to point out, LG says this is a standard function of all smart TVs and other smart home devices.

Automatic content recognition (ACR) is an opt-in feature according to LG, which delivers personalized content recommendations, as well as services and advertisements. The company says that, as standard, ACR data isn't used for advertising purposes without consent.

Addressing some of the claims in more detail, LG stated that its smart TVs don't collect, record, or transmit ambient conversations in the home unless voice functionality has been activated by a user. It further stated that its far-field voice recognition tech (Hi LG) must be activated by a user before the TV starts listening, much like Apple's "Hey Siri" mechanism for iPhone.

LG did confirm that its TVs monitor for Hi LG's wake word while in standby mode, but says that unless the wake word is detected, the audio is only processed locally before being deleted. The company didn't address some of the other claims and vulnerabilities pointed out in the video, such as the storing of transcripts in plain text.

Tom's Hardware has not independently verified either the claims made by Gamers Nexus in its documentary or LG's counterclaims regarding the issue. LG's full statement follows:

LG Statement:

This is to provide LG's position regarding the claims recently raised by the Gamers Nexus YouTube channel.

The claims made in the recently published video are not true. LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a wake word such as 'Hi LG' is recognized after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature. Other than these instances, the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations. (If the wake word is not recognized, no voice data is transmitted to the server; the audio processing for wake word detection is performed locally on the device and is immediately deleted.)

Additionally, to provide smart TV functionalities, LG TVs feature the ability to scan for and connect to nearby devices on the same network. This is a standard function commonly provided by smart TVs and smart home devices.

The ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) feature is provided on an opt-in basis to deliver personalized content recommendation, services, and advertisements. If a user does not consent to the applicable optional agreement, ACR data is not used for advertising purposes.

Topic by topic breakdown:

At LG Electronics, we are committed to transparency and secure user experience. To clarify recent concerns and reiterate our commitment, we would like to emphasize the following points:

• Protecting Voice Privacy: We ensure that your LG TV does not collect, record or transmit ambient conversations in your home, unless voice functionality has been intentionally activated by the user.
• Far-Field Voice Recognition ("Hi LG"): This feature must be manually activated by the user before the TV begins listening for the specific wake word. Audio processing occurs only when voice functionality has been activated by the user and a wake work (such as “Hi LG”) is detected.
• Standby Mode Operation: When the TV is in standby mode and appears to be turned off, it only monitors for the wake word if you have previously enabled the Far-Field feature. If no wake word is detected, the audio used for wake word detection is processed locally on the TV, promptly deleted, and is not transmitted to LG servers.
• Transparent and Useful Connectivity: LG TVs can identify compatible devices on the same network to enable features such as device connectivity, content sharing or smart home functionality.
• Proactive and Continuous Security: Data security is a top priority for LG. We continuously monitor our platform and partner with independent security experts to identify vulnerabilities and deliver timely security updates.
• Full Control Over Data and Terms: LG Electronics is committed to providing transparency and rejecting deceptive practices (dark patterns), ensuring users can choose their preferred privacy and consent options directly through their TV settings.
• Consent-Based Activation: To provide a more tailored and convenient experience, LG TVs offer Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to enhance viewing experiences, Voice Recognition for hands-free control, and Interest-Based Advertising to deliver relevant advertisements. Each feature requires separate explicit user opt-in consent and can be disabled at any time through the TV settings.

Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger has warned there is a more than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade, but reassured the public the company is "trying its best." The revelation comes following Jacob Coxon's public resignation from the company, where he stated that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is acting responsibly, accusing both companies of gambling with human lives in the pursuit of self-improving super-intelligence.

"I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic," Coxon said in a tweet Wednesday. "Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

Expanding on his thoughts, Coxon warned readers not to underestimate the powers of AI, which he says will soon be "superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."

Coxon went on to state that the people who are building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," and further warned that executives and researchers — rather than playing up fears around AI, as some have accused — are actually restraining themselves, expressing much more candid views in private.

Evan Hubinger, a security researcher at Anthropic who hasn't departed the company, chimed in to state, "Jacob is correct here," in no uncertain terms. "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to."

Hubinger casually admitted that Anthropic is not only worried about the prospect of AI wiping out humankind, but that it currently doesn't have the tools to stop such an eventuality.

The revelations follow increasingly alarming reports of AI agents acting up during testing, escaping sandbox environments, and even collaborating with each other in order to cheat benchmarks and tests, or figure out problems without human oversight. OpenAI recently admitted its agents were discovered using a programming hub to communicate with each other, while earlier this year an OpenAI agent went rogue and hacked popular AI community Hugging Face. Further revelations about the incident revealed AI agents were on the loose on the open internet for several days, with details revealing the AI models broke out of their testing environment using thousands of individual actions, even collaborating.

Coxon, the resigning researcher who kicked off Wednesday's revelations, concluded by warning researchers to consider the next few years, urging them to call for "different conditions" in which to pursue superintelligence.

As building a PC becomes prohibitively more expensive, buying a pre-built option continues to look like a much better way to get started with PC gaming in 2026. Right now at Newegg, you can score this ABS Cyclone gaming PC with a 20-core Intel CPU, RTX 5060 8GB, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM for just $1,379. That's $420 off a 1440p-ready rig that should see you through the next few years of the RAMpocalypse.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The DDR5-6000 RAM in this PC is currently worth $400 alone, making this build a good value proposition over buying the parts yourself. Likewise, the GPU is worth $450, meaning that more than half your build cost is covered by just these two parts. This PC would be perfect as a beginner gaming rig or mid-range replacement for a DDR4 gaming PC. With a Raptor Lake refresh CPU and Nvidia's latest GPU technology, it's the perfect stepping stone into modern PC gaming without breaking the bank.

As you can see, without frame generation, the RTX 5060 can put out a respectable 41 frames per second across our 1440p test suite, and easily manages 60 frames per second at 1080p in our other testing. Using Nvidia's DLSS technology, you'll be able to bump that up no problem and enjoy high-fidelity gaming with good frame rates. With just 8GB of VRAM, this card won't be useful for 4K gaming but would make a great upgrade for someone on an older RTX 30-series card or integrated graphics.

The GPU is complemented by the excellent Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, with 20 cores (eight performance and 12 efficiency), perfect for productivity and gaming workloads. The Raptor Lake Refresh CPU offers boost clocks of up to 5.4GHz.

This is a great all-round build at the price point, as evidenced by the strong supporting cast of components. You're getting that all-important 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM for multitasking and gaming, as well as a 1TB Gen 4 SSD — specifically Kingston's SNV3S — for storage.

The motherboard is an ASRock B760M-CX with room for M.2 expansion should storage prices settle down in the future. You also get a very capable Cooler Master Hyper 212 air cooler, more than enough for this CPU, as well as a 650W 80 PLUS Gold PSU.

It also features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as a copy of Windows 11. For the price, this is a really good PC in the current market. You're getting a $300 discount, plus a further $120 off when you use the promo code SSF73457, for a $420 discount total. Thanks to the Intel's Gamer Days sale, you'll also get two free games to enjoy on your new PC: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, due to be released in February 2027 and October 2026, respectively. That's $120 of free upcoming new releases to enjoy on your new PC.

Nvidia's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering technology has taken the PC gaming world by storm since its recent leak and then official rollout in recent days. In what might be one of the most impressive technical applications and mods of the feature yet, one developer has showcased DLSS 5 running on a second GPU to share the processing load, rendering the game on the first GPU before applying Neural rendering at the end of the frame, thus boosting the performance of neural-rendered frames.

Marcelo Guibout shared the demonstration online, with videos showing the process running on a cinematic video from The Blood of Dawnwalker, as well as Cyberpunk 2077. Guibout was quick to clarify that the videos are technical showcases, not benchmarks. However, they did share some performance figures. More exciting still, you can download the project from GitHub and try it for yourself. However, the technique does require a second display and doubles the display latency.

The above demonstration features a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32GB DDR5 setup with two Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPUs, with both cards using PCIe 5.0 x8, and a display attached to each card. The ReShade add-on, dubbed MGPU Bridge, reads each finished frame before applying Nvidia's Neural rendering. "Neural rendering happens at the end of the frame: it takes a finished frame and hands a finished frame back," they explain. "That is what makes it possible to pick it up and run it somewhere else. The add-on creates its own D3D12 device on your second GPU, sends each finished frame across to it, runs DLSS-NR there, and displays the result on that card's own monitor — so nothing has to come back. The render GPU does no neural work at all and runs cooler for the same reason."

In the TBOD demo at 1080p, they shared the following performance numbers:

Guibout clarified that DLSS super-resolution is running in every column of the test, with the rows showing each mode tested. The game rendered at the same internal resolution in all three columns, with the first column giving figures with DLSS 5's neural rendering switched off, representing the ceiling for performance. As you can see, running DLSS 5 on the second card in this dual-GPU setup drastically increases performance in every mode.

"The frame rates are not the finding. The slope is: what you gain by going from DLAA down to Ultra Performance, and how much of that available gain each arm keeps," Guibout explains. "Neural post-processing saturates whatever device it runs on, and it always runs at output resolution. Its cost barely falls as you drop the DLSS mode, while the render work collapses. On the render card it therefore eats a larger and larger share of every frame, and upscaling stops paying for itself: you keep about a third of what the machine actually had to give. Move it to the second card and you keep 86% of it."

Other benefits include temperature reductions on the rendering card, with the first GPU running 21 degrees cooler without the neural load.

Guibout is cautious to note this isn't a return to Nvidia's SLI technology, which would split the workload of frame rendering between two GPUs. They also noted plainly this is not Nvidia's vision for DLSS 5 and lacks the native integration of official DLSS 5 support.

You can see the original demo for TBOD below:

As commenters online have noted, the method seems more akin to using Nvidia's dedicated PhysX cards, with plenty of potential for gamers who have the capacity to run a dual GPU setup. The second demo features a Ryzen 5 5600 on a DDR4 system, so top-of-the-line hardware isn't required to make it happen.

The price of PC parts continues to rise on a daily basis, so finding a monstrous gaming PC cheaper than it was in April is no small feat. Right now at Newegg, you can score an RTX 5080 gaming PC with a 9800X3D CPU, the ultimate in 4K gaming performance, for $2,999. A $500 saving that makes it cheaper than when we covered this same deal back in April.

● Check out this deal on Newegg's website

The individual cost of some of these components makes this a pretty remarkable deal in Fall 2026. The RTX 5080 GPU in this rig alone will set you back more than $1,500 in today's market. The CPU is nearly $500, bringing the cost of just those two components to 2/3 of the build's entire price.

RAM and SSD prices are heavily inflated, which means 32GB of DDR5 would normally set you back $400 right now. Add the storage to the bill of materials, and you've covered nearly the entire cost of this PC before you've added the case, fans, cooler, motherboard, and PSU. With the best CPU for gaming on the market and a huge GPU, this PC is no slouch either.

While the 9800X3D is not quite the fastest gaming CPU on the market these days, it is still the best all-rounder by some distance thanks to its combination of power efficiency and performance compared to the 9850X3D. This 8-core, 16-thread CPU chews through gaming titles, even at 4K, thanks to its 3D V-cache. Reducing reliance on slower RAM, this industry-leading tech makes AMD's X3D CPUs the best gaming chips on the market, as you can see from our testing data.

The RTX 5080 likewise needs no introduction. This behemoth features 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM and 10,752 CUDA cores. As you can see from our GPU hierarchy, that translates into average frames per second of 60 even at 4K, performance eclipsed only by the extremely powerful and expensive 5090. At 1440p, we clocked average fps of over 100. The 5080 will also unlock Nvidia's powerful DLSS 4.5 and new DLSS 5 technology for frame generation and neural rendering.

Headline components aside, this build features 32GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 6400 RAM, a fantastic addition considering it's easy to hide cheap, slow RAM inside a pre-built PC. The SSD is Team Group's NV5000 2TB Gen 4 drive, giving you plenty of storage and gaming performance. The motherboard is a Gigabyte B850 with Wi-Fi 6, giving you plenty of power and performance as well as room for expansion in the future. The build also features a 360mm AIO cooler for the CPU, Windows 11, and a 1000W 80 Plus Gold to keep everything running.

Following its announcement earlier this year, and just days after the DLL leaked inside NBA2K27, Nvidia has today confirmed that its controversial DLSS 5 will launch on September 3. Starting at 9 pm PT, the aforementioned NBA title will support DLSS 5 for all RTX 50 Series GPUs, laptops, and GeForce NOW. The company also shared its first in-house benchmarks of DLSS 5, which is expected to impact GPU performance.

As a series not primarily renowned for its graphical fidelity, NBA2K27 marks a fairly strange launch title for the tech, but Nvidia says that it has closely partnered with Visual Concepts and 2K to achieve "a new level of authentic sports experience for its players." The technology, which Nvidia officially dubs as 3D-guided Neural Rendering," will reportedly show players the natural passing of light through players' ears, light catching hair, and the natural lighting of skin "all while preserving the facial geometry scanned from real-world athletes."

DLSS 5 is not without controversy. As we explained during our first look at DLSS 5 back in March, DLSS 5's AI model "is trained to infer how certain complex features of game scenes like characters, skin, hair, and environmental lighting “should” look in the real world given certain inputs from the game engine (including, but not limited to, the color buffer and motion vectors) in combination with an input frame." While deep integration with a game's engine and assets should make it more consistent and predictable than run-of-the-mill generative AI imagery, that promise hasn't stopped some critics from raising severe objections to its premise since its initial reveal.

CEO Jensen Huang described DLSS 5 as "the GPT moment for graphics — blending hand-crafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.”

Its launch in NBA2K27 will mark the first time the technology debuts in a playable title, marking our first "fair" assessment of its capabilities.

DLSS 5 is very resource-intensive, with early testing and indications hinting at quite severe drops in frame rate when using the tech. As expected, Nvidia has confirmed DLSS 5 will only work with RTX 50-series GPUs and mobile GPUs, as well as through GeForce Now. Other older generation cards are left out in the cold for now. Along with the announcement, Nvidia has shared its first in-house benchmarks of DLSS 5 RTX Desktop performance.

While these are difficult to contextualize (they only show one game) and should be taken with the usual grain of salt for marketing material, they are interesting in one clear sense. Nvidia has pointedly only shared 4K results for its RTX 5090 and 5080, possibly hinting at the company's expectations of diminished results on anything less powerful, though cards lower in the stack do appear below 4K resolutions.

The recent DLL leak has led to some modders porting it to older RTX 40-series cards, or even older Ampere or Turing GPUs, with predictably varying results.