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Received today — 26. September 2026

27-year-old GTA 2 gets full path tracing and 60 FPS frame generation via RTX Remix

26. September 2026 um 17:10

While gamers wait for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, whether on their consoles or gaming PCs with one of the best graphics cards, they can relive one of the franchise's most memorable titles. Modder gebdag has unveiled GTA2 RTX Remix, a mod that harnesses Nvidia’s RTX Remix technology to add full path tracing and dynamic time-of-day cycles to the 27-year-old classic, Grand Theft Auto 2.

Grand Theft Auto 2, released in 1999, used older graphics APIs such as DirectDraw and an earlier version of Direct3D. The problem is that these legacy APIs create a technical barrier to modern technologies like RTX Remix. Nvidia's platform lacks native support for DirectDraw and only plays well with Direct3D 9. It requires a wrapper to interface with previous versions of Direct3D, which is where the GTA2 RTX Remix comes in.

Modder gebdag ingeniously developed a custom Direct3D 9 renderer for Grand Theft Auto 2. It acts as a generational bridge between the original game and Nvidia’s RTX Remix. To do so, the mod relies on two DLLs (gta2dx9.dll and gta2dx9_vid.dll) that serve as translators, converting the game's legacy graphics pipeline into a modern Direct3D 9 renderer that RTX Remix can understand. As a result, RTX Remix can interpret Grand Theft Auto 2's visuals in real time and do its magic.

As you can see in the embedded video below, the mod preserves the core gameplay fans will appreciate while adding a dramatic graphic overhaul to the classic top-down action title. Anywhere City now looks like a living metropolis, with realistic lighting and shadow effects throughout. The dynamic day-night cycle is a great addition that lets you see the sun set and the moon rise. Things like explosions, vehicle fires, or neon signs now have their own light sources with glows and reflections. Press F4 to open the menu and tweak the lighting to your taste.

Here comes a GTA2 RTX Remix mod with full path tracing + dynamic time of day! From modder gabdeg 🤯 pic.twitter.com/dZ0eMyIfmsSeptember 25, 2026

The graphics revamp is just one of the mod’s improvements. Beyond the eye-candy upgrade, it also adds other features to bring Grand Theft Auto 2 up to modern standards. While the original was limited to a 4:3 native aspect ratio, the mod supports widescreen 16:9 displays, giving gamers a more immersive view of Anywhere City. The mod also improves gameplay by adding support for frame rates up to 60 FPS through Frame Generation technology. It also fixes the nuisance of cars and pedestrians popping in at the screen edges.

GTA2 RTX Remix is an open-source project available on GitHub. To use the mod, you will need a copy of Grand Theft Auto 2. The modder tested it specifically with version 9.6, which Rockstar Games distributed for free in 2004. You will also need a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or Windows 11, along with the required RTX Remix runtime files.

RTX Remix has opened the floodgates to a plethora of mods from studios and the modding community that transform some of the most beloved games from our childhood. Now, Grand Theft Auto 2 has joined this notable list, which also includes Need For Speed Carbon, Tomb Raider, Max Payne, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, to name just a few.

Russia bombs Ukrainian data centers in latest escalation

The Russian military has started striking data centers within Ukraine in its latest escalation against the country. According to the BBC, a Russian drone hit the data center, which was situated in a central business district in Kyiv, damaging it and killing four people in the area. Multiple reports also suggest that other data centers and network infrastructure have been hit across the country as well, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying that Moscow wants to maximize disruption for the common people.

“All this affects people’s ability to stay connected, study, work,” Zelensky said. He also wrote in a social media post, “The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation operation: American and other businesses, data centers, internet providers — for Russia, all ordinary life is simply a target. It is important that the world responds to all of this and that Russia feels the response to its terror.” Russia, on the other hand, confirmed that it attacked the Datagroup site, claiming that Ukrainian military intelligence used it, and that it’s also targeting other data and telecommunications centers owned by New-Telco, United DC, Kyivstar, and Parkovyi.

These attacks have left about 100,000 households in Ukraine without internet connectivity, and some companies have begun migrating their data across the border to avoid disruption. Nevertheless, one government official said that Ukraine’s internet network is highly decentralized, but people should still expect some local disruptions. However, Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Russia’s targeting of data centers would affect the flow of “life-saving information.” “Rapid alerts about missile and drone threats are essential — they save lives. This is crucial civilian infrastructure… It is not a military target,” Sybiha said. “It is essential to keeping everyday life functioning.”

Data centers are considered critical infrastructure as modern society increasingly relies on online services. Because of this, they’re now considered strategic targets in a conflict. While government-owned data processing sites have historically been one of the first targets in military operations, Iran’s response to the U.S.’s bombing campaign in March marked one of the first instances where commercial civilian data center infrastructure was deliberately targeted. This included drone and missile attacks on AWS Middle East regional data centers in Dubai and Bahrain. It also directly threatened the offices of Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and 14 other American tech companies in the region, as well as OpenAI’s Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi.+

Microsoft quietly drops Copilot+ branding from new laptops

Microsoft launched the Copilot+ brand in 2024 to differentiate its offerings with local AI capabilities from other devices that do not have NPUs or fail to meet the minimum 40+ TOPS requirement. But a little over two years after the disastrous launch and poor sales, the company has quietly moved away from the brand. Microsoft Surface CVP Brett Ostrum confirmed this to Windows Central in an interview on the sidelines of Snapdragon Summit 2026.

“These are not called Copilot+ PCs,” Ostrum said. “They do meet all the requirements of our previous bar for what Copilot+ devices are. We still lean into the narrative around AI on the edge and being able to have a hybrid out there.” Even other devices that would’ve been eligible under the branding, including the upcoming Nvidia RTX Spark N1X and Microsoft’s own Project Zenith, are missing the Copilot+ badges. The company also said that it’s scaling back Copilot’s presence in Windows 11, promising to improve the operating system’s performance, reliability, and updates. Microsoft also vowed to optimize it to run smoothly on just 8GB of RAM amid the AI-driven memory shortage.

However, that doesn’t mean Microsoft is backing away completely from Copilot. Despite dropping the hardware branding, it’s still working on numerous AI features for its product lineup. The company recently revamped Copilot and added new features like Home, Code, and Autopilot. It has also tested Copilot+ AI features that run on discrete GPUs, possibly expanding the feature set to PCs that use processors without a built-in NPU. In fact, one AI consultant mapped out Microsoft Copilot products and discovered more than 80 unique offerings, with many more possibly unaccounted for.

Microsoft did not give a specific reason for dropping the branding, but as many modern mainstream and high-end processors now come with NPUs that can hit 40 TOPS or more, it seems that it no longer makes sense to offer that differentiation. Aside from that, the current memory chip shortage has made the minimum 16GB requirement rather expensive, with Microsoft even purging its 32GB RAM recommendation from its website and releasing brand-new Surface for Business laptops with as little as 8GB of RAM.

It’s still unclear if the quiet sunset of the Copilot+ brand means that every Windows 11 PC will now get all the AI features that were once locked behind the name. But even if it will no longer exist on the hardware side, we still expect the Copilot branding to stay inside Windows and other Microsoft products for better or for worse.

Open-source AnyPS5 dumps emulation to run PlayStation 5 console games natively on PC

PlayStation 5 emulation has witnessed massive growth ever since Sony confirmed its plans to end PC ports for its first-party, narrative-driven single-player games. The latest name joining the list is the open source project AnyPS5, which is claimed to run PS5 games natively on PC without requiring any emulation. The official GitHub page describes it as a tool for automatically porting executables to Linux and Windows.

Since the PS5 is powered by AMD’s Zen 2 hardware, it uses the x86-64 architecture, thus allowing AnyPS5 to work as a compatibility translation layer somewhat similar to Proton or Wine. It takes the original PS5 executable files and converts them into Windows and Linux formats, while the shaders are recompiled into SPIR-V for Vulkan. By avoiding emulation altogether, AnyPS5 can potentially eliminate some of the computational overhead, resulting in a smoother experience.

That said, development is still in the early stages, with test builds reportedly managing to boot select games as far as the main menu, with some even reaching gameplay with audio. However, the tool still requires a lot of work, particularly when it comes to system libraries and proprietary APIs unique to the PlayStation 5’s operating system. While the project is currently active on GitHub, a working public build is yet to be released.

PS5 emulation is still far from being practical, but if you are interested or have been following the topic, make sure to check out KytyPS5, one of the most prominent and popular PlayStation 5 emulators in active development. It recently managed to run the PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto V as high as 40 to 60 FPS using high-end PC hardware. Unfortunately, this one is also in an early experimental phase and is not stable enough to maintain playable frame rates.

There is also SharpEmu, which focuses on accuracy and the underlying infrastructure needed to improve compatibility with PS5 games. The project has managed to successfully run Astro’s Playroom on a Steam Deck and was shown booting on the handheld at around 0.5 to 1 FPS. The game remains unplayable at those frame rates and does not progress beyond the introductory sequence, but getting PS5 emulation to run on the Steam Deck represents a major step forward for the project.

Nvidia patents AI chatbot to streamline PC game optimization

26. September 2026 um 15:00

A newly published patent shows that Nvidia has been working on an AI chatbot that could make it quicker and easier for developers to optimize their PC games. The chatbot would be capable of receiving a plain English request for help before running diagnostics based on the specific issue at hand.

PC gamers are well aware of the impact of poor optimization on games. And while there are tools available to developers that help them identify issues and then address them, they require specialist knowledge to use. They also take time, something that developers rarely have — especially as they get closer to a release date.

The patent, first spotted by Patentlyze, could help. It depicts a chatbot-like interface in which developers would be able to outline the issue that they are seeing. They would be able to do so using normal language, allowing even relatively inexperienced developers to use the tool.

Example questions provided by the patent include "What is causing the micro-stutter during camera cuts?" and "Why is frame time spiking when ray-traced reflections enter the viewport?".

Once the question has been posed, the AI would then write a diagnostic specific to the issue before automatically running it on the GPU and then providing the results for interpretation. The developer would then be able to implement any fixes and re-run any testing that is still required.

The patent doesn't make it clear whether there will be any validation or testing of the diagnostic code this tool would create, something that may give some pause. Test results are only as strong as the test that was used to get them, and developers will need to trust that Nvidia's chatbot is up to the job before relying on it.

However, it's important to remember that companies like Nvidia apply for countless patents every year. Not all of those patents turn into shipping products or features, and there is no guarantee that this one will ever see the light of day. That being said, it does seem similar to G-Assist, a chatbot-like tool that allows gamers to get AI-powered assistance for their GeForce RTX PC. Nvidia has also sought to bring its AI chops to bear on other aspects of gaming, not least DLSS 5 and its multiple AI modes for different levels of detail — whether gamers want it or not.

For gamers, the hope will be that this patent will result in a tool that makes it easier for game developers to optimize their wares ahead of release.

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Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD review: A PS5 SSD you recognize at a price you don’t

26. September 2026 um 15:00

The good news is that Sandisk is still putting out SSDs for consumers, and these are not just cheap replacements. The Optimus GX Pro 850P is a bona fide high-end Gen 4 SSD that puts Sandisk’s name on the WD Black SN850X’s legendary design. This means DRAM, TLC flash, and good performance for any role.

Like the Black SN850P, which is a Black SN850X made with a heatsink and for the PS5, the 850P is made for the console. Its heatsink is excellent, and it would fit right into your desktop PC, too. We wouldn’t recommend shucking it for use in a laptop, but theoretically it could work there as well. Our main concern would be the pricing, which is a bit steep – this is a nice drive, but you’ll pay a premium for it.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P Specifications

Product

1TB

2TB

4TB

8TB

Pricing

$309.99

$609.99

$1,139.99

$2,249.99

Form Factor

M.2 2280-S3-M (PS heatsink)

M.2 2280-S3-M (PS heatsink)

M.2 2280-D5-M (PS heatsink)

M.2 2280-D5-M (PS heatsink)

Interface / Protocol

PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4

PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4

PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4

PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4

Controller

Sandisk Proprietary

Sandisk Proprietary

Sandisk Proprietary

Sandisk Proprietary

DRAM

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Memory

Sandisk TLC 3D NAND

Sandisk TLC 3D NAND

Sandisk TLC 3D NAND

Sandisk TLC 3D NAND

Sequential Read

7,300 MB/s

7,300 MB/s

7,300 MB/s

7,200 MB/s

Sequential Write

6,300 MB/s

6,600 MB/s

6,600 MB/s

6,600 MB/s

Random Read

800K

1,200K

1,200K

1,200K

Random Write

1,100K

1,100K

1,100K

1,200K

Security

TCG Opal v2.01

TCG Opal v2.01

TCG Opal v2.01

TCG Opal v2.01

Endurance (TBW)

600TB

1,200TB

2,400TB

4,800TB

Part Number

SDSG81100TAH-000E0

SDSG81200TAH-000E0

SDSG81400TAH-000E0

SDSG81800TAH-000E0

Height

9.89 mm (w/ HS)

9.89 mm (w/ HS)

10.31 mm (w/ HS)

10.31 mm (w/ HS)

Warranty

5-Year

5-Year

5-Year

5-Year

The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P is available at the same capacities as its WD Black SN850P forebear: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. This also matches the original WD Black SN850X and its later 8TB SKU. Prices at the time of review for the Optimus GX Pro 850P are $309.99, $609.99, $1,139.99, and $2,249.99. These prices are well above the $234.99, $494.99, and $1,019.00 that the Black SN850P is currently demanding. We think the prices will come down on the Sandisk drive, but be aware of the comparable alternatives when making a purchase.

The drive can reach up to 7,300 / 6,600 MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 1.2 million random read/write IOPS. This performance is at the top for a Gen 4 drive and, frankly, is capable of delivering an excellent experience even for heavier workloads. The drive’s warranty is standard at five years with 600TB of writes for every TB of capacity. The Optimus GX Pro 850P supports data-at-rest encryption through TCG Opal v2.01, but this is not explicitly listed for the SN850P, likely as this model is designed for use in the PS5.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P Software and Accessories

Sandisk fully supports its drives with downloadable software. For the Optimus GX Pro 850P this includes the Sandisk Dashboard, which is Sandisk’s version of WD’s Dashboard, and Acronis True Image for Sandisk. The former is an SSD toolbox with all of the expected features: drive health and SMART monitoring, firmware updating, performance testing, etc. Acronis True Image is OEM-licensed software used for backing up files and imaging drives.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P: A Closer Look

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

The Optimus GX Pro 850P is designed to specifically fit into the PS5 with an effective heatsink. The bare drive underneath is single-sided at 1TB and 2TB but double-sided at 4TB and 8TB. For that reason, the rated height is larger for the latter two SKUs. In general, this should not be an issue for fit in desktop PCs. The heatsink itself is finned for extra surface area for better heat dissipation and should keep the drive cool even under harsh conditions. It does not have RGB, unlike the WD Black SN850’s heatsinked SKU.

The drive label gives some additional information, such as a rating for 3.3V / 2.8A. This is ~9W, which matches the drive’s highest reported power state. This is certainly higher than the ~5W we see for many DRAM-less drives, which have half the flash channels on top of not having DRAM to worry about, but it is not enough to be a problem with this heatsink.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

The Optimus GX Pro 850P has a relatively standard SSD layout with an SSD controller, a DRAM module, power management circuitry, and two NAND flash packages. The larger, double-sided versions of the drive will have more NAND flash packages, with two additional packages on the back. We’ve covered the controller and its iterations in the past. The DRAM, for what it’s worth, is DDR4, which is serviceable for the role volatile memory plays on an SSD: mostly as a metadata cache. The one caveat here is that our 2TB drive only has 1GB of DRAM, which is one-half the usual and likewise one-half of what we had on our 2TB WD Black SN850X sample. In practice, this should have no impact on intended workload performance and could potentially reduce cost a small amount.

The flash is potentially more interesting, as it could be the expected BiCS5, or it could have been updated. The 8TB WD Black SN850X uses BiCS6, and it can make sense to cycle in newer flash later on in a product’s lifetime. The Optimus GX Pro 850P is essentially in that line. What we can say for sure is that the flash on here was manufactured more recently than the flash on the Black SN850X samples we’ve reviewed at both capacities – newer in production date, not necessarily in generation – but the performance is close enough that there would be little perceptible difference even if it were generationally different. This drive is at the edge of what you can get out of this controller technology and Sandisk could also choose to tune it specifically for this performance range, so at the end of the day one could say this is, effectively, equivalent to the WD Black SN850X with BiCS5 TLC flash.

We believe our sample is still using BiCS5 anyway – the coding’s sixth character “C” implies that – but that statement applies to any potential BiCS6 swap. In this case, moving to newer BiCS5 means a higher I/O rate, 1,200 MT/s to 1,600 MT/s. The former is plenty to saturate a PCIe 4.0 link with an eight-channel controller like the 850P’s, but putting in newer flash makes sense from a supply perspective. Higher MT/s flash can have lower latency and potentially better power efficiency when run at a lower MT/s, but we don’t believe either is a motivation here. Real-world impacts are, again, minimal, with minor exceptions that might not exist if we were comparing to a current Black SN850X.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs

MORE: Best SSD for the Steam Deck

Comparison Products

The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P is Sandisk’s take on the WD Black SN850P, which in turn is a PS5 version of the Black SN850X, so we have to compare it to that latter drive. The stiffest proprietary competition is from Samsung with the 990 Pro. Alternatives with DRAM but different hardware include the Crucial T500, the Adata Legend 960 Max, the TeamGroup G70 Pro, and the Inland Gaming Performance Plus. To keep things honest, we also want to compare faster DRAM-less drives that have historically been great for the PS5. These include the Addlink A93 (4TB) and the WD Black SN7100.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and an evaluation for future-proofing is included where applicable.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

Is the 850P a good game drive? In our estimation, yes. It beats the original Black SN850X, due in part to firmware maturity and/or the newer BiCS5 – we would expect these two to be comparable if the Black is or has been updated – and it is also faster than popular DRAM-less options like the A93. In general, we think going with something DRAM-less, like the A93, is a good way to save some money if you’re buying an SSD just to host games. This approach extends even to the Black SN7100, which struggles on this list against the largely DRAM-equipped competition, as it still scores pretty well. We consider 45µs or better to be excellent for load times.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is an industry standard trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

For general application use, we are a little more disappointed. The 850P ends up in the middle of the pack, although its results are still quite good. This will beat most DRAM-less drives, although it falls behind the Black SN7100, as that drive uses very responsive BiCS8 flash. This makes it clear that the 850P is using older BiCS flash, which doesn’t have the same latency edge. This isn’t the worst trade-off if you’re looking for a full-fledged SSD with eight flash channels and DRAM – this drive will sustain better over time and through heavier workloads. Again, anything at or below 45µs for latency is good in our book, so this would be perfectly suitable as an OS drive.

Console Testing — PlayStation 5 Transfers

The PlayStation 5 is capable of taking one additional PCIe 4.0 or faster SSD for extra game storage. While any 4.0 drive will technically work, Sony recommends drives that can deliver at least 5,500 MB/s of sequential read bandwidth for optimal performance. Based on our extensive testing, PCIe 5.0 SSDs don’t bring much to the table and generally shouldn’t be used in the PS5, especially as they may require additional cooling. Check our Best PS5 SSDs article for more information.

Our testing utilizes the PS5’s internal storage test and manual read/write tests with over 192GB of data both from and to the internal storage. Throttling is prevented where possible to see how each drive operates under ideal conditions. While game load times should not deviate much from drive to drive, our results can indicate which drives may be more responsive in long-term use.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

The 850P should be, by most accounts, the definitive PS5 SSD. We’ve had the Black SN850X as our best SSD for the PS5 for quite a long time, although the SN850P is the PS5-specific model. The Black SN850X simply delivers a similar experience to the SN850P at a lower price point. Why is this the best SSD for the platform? Well, you get top-tier Gen 4 performance with reliability and an excellent heatsink. All of this still applies to Sandisk’s 850P.

Now, a DRAM-less alternative with half the flash channels – which means it runs cooler – like the A93 seems to be more sensible. It’s less expensive, and the PS5 doesn’t benefit from more performance than it provides. The argument here is therefore more on reliability and, possibly, consistency. The 850P can manage more flash at once – which actually is ideal for larger capacities, including 2TB for this generation – and it also has DRAM.

Many enthusiasts still want DRAM as it can improve performance and endurance. Keep in mind that our A93 sample is the 4TB model, which its controller can address thanks to a revision made for that purpose. A four-channel drive is still at its best with up to four dies per channel, or 16 in total, which works out to 2TB with 1Tb dies. Going past that doesn’t really deliver more performance, and having an eight-channel controller is preferable at higher capacities. A stronger argument would be this: the 850P is a quality, mature product that could act as an investment. Considering that a 2TB Black SN850X bought at its lowest price beats the stock market right now, that’s not as crazy as it once sounded.

Our take is that, for a PS5, you really can get anything. If you’re set on a quality drive, though, this one is basically as good as it gets. You’re here for the numbers, though, and it only wins in transfers to the drive, and not by much. That’s valid, but with more wear and a fuller drive, it is more likely to maintain peak performance for longer. So, don’t buy this drive for faster game load times or FPS, because you won’t get that here.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real-world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

Our DiskBench test gives a good measure of real-world performance with a mixed file load, with Gen 4 expectations around 2 GB/s for copies and writes and 4 GB/s for reads. Writes are going to be slower than reads and can help cap copy performance. The 850P does nothing unusual here, coming in at numbers close to these. We tend to put the most weight on copy performance and, here, the 850P manages to come in second behind only the T500. This makes sense as the T500 has newer flash with more planes, which helps it eke out more bandwidth. The Black SN7100 also has newer flash, specifically a newer form of BiCS, which keeps it competitive. Still, the 850P impressively beats the Black SN850X by a significant amount – perhaps due to firmware maturity and/or newer BiCS5 – and the 990 Pro as well.

This is an important result because most of what people use storage for ultimately comes down to transfers like these. Files between drives. Backups. Updating software. You’re not going to have a lot of transfers going on at once with a high queue depth, and if you’re working with smaller files, you are not going to get near the theoretical throughput. So, the 850P certainly earns the mantle of being a high-end Gen 4 drive. On the other hand, even the DRAM-less A93 is not that much slower. If you’re someone who does a lot of transfers, the added time could add up, though.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

The 850P performs very closely to the Black SN850X in ATTO, as expected. We see no real anomalies here. The drive is very consistent, which makes for a reliable user experience regardless of workload type. It is easy to notice, however, that the 850P and Black SN850X have weaker performance between the 512B and 2KiB block sizes, closer to the Legend 960 Max and WD Black SN7100. We would chalk this up to the controller technology for the WD and Sandisk drives – they all use proprietary ones with the same foundation – with the Legend 960 Max being the singular SMI-based drive.

We’ve found historically that drives may show up weaker here in ATTO as indicative of a trade-off. This is because, generally, we think in terms of 4KiB – a typical cluster and sector size that is used for performance metrics everywhere – which is a logical page downstream from the 16KiB physical pages that modern flash uses. Handling smaller reads/writes could increase memory load and can increase latency. However, focusing on 4KiB and larger block sizes makes more sense for a variety of workloads, and performance is not the only factor. A manufacturer also has to consider power consumption and wear, for example. So there may be good design reasons for this behavior.

If we move on to CDM to see performance at 4KiB, at a typical queue depth of 1, the 850P is average with reads and on top with writes. Anything at or below 45µs for reads is pretty good, and the drive competes well. The SN7100 is in a class of its own with its BiCS8 flash. For writes, which are often less important, we see strong numbers from most drives. The DRAM-less A93, the SMI-based Legend 960 Max, and the proprietary 990 Pro are on the weaker end. Generally speaking, this does not indicate a problem with the drive at this level and could be a facet of the controller, the flash, or both, often also as a trade-off. What we can say is that the 850P is stellar here, which certainly makes it more attractive for use in a NAS, for caching, and for workloads that are not found in the PS5. That’s not a knock – it simply illustrates the drive’s heritage and underlines that this drive could be good anywhere.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states including the steady state write performance.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

We’ll start with the 850P’s fastest mode in the cache: over 6.46 GB/s for just over 92 seconds. This is a 595GB cache, more or less exactly matching the Black SN850X. A drive with 3-bit TLC cache can handle up to one-third its actual size, so this is smaller than what’s possible but still large in the grand scheme of things. It’s more than suitably large to cache even large file writes, which means it can be used for things outside of gaming. This is reinforced by the post-cache speed, where it’s writing to the native TLC flash at a respectable 1.6 GB/s. This doesn’t sound like much given the speed of drives today, but it would be at or above the best Gen 3 drives in this mode while generally having a larger and faster cache.

Samsung’s 990 Pro is in the same boat, providing consistent performance outside the cache but looking slow compared to the steady state speeds we see with other drives. In part, this is due to the flash being used on it, as well as the WD/Sandisk drives. Newer flash has more planes and lower latency, both of which can boost throughput. Some drives, like the Inland Gaming Performance Plus, alternatively have smaller caches, which allow the drive to maintain higher sustained speeds. The same goes for the Legend 960 Max. Speed is also not everything, as not all drives write as smoothly in their post-cache modes. Maintaining responsiveness can help a drive feel spunkier when it hits this slower state.

If we take all of this into consideration, the 850P actually has some interesting applications. You could use this as a NAS drive, for example. Generally, we think the Inland Gaming Performance Plus – or the updated Performance Plus – would be better, as a super large cache leans more towards everyday consumer workloads. However, the 850P is steady enough with still sufficient speed. It would probably provide a better experience than the T500, especially as it has twice the flash channels, so it can manage better at high capacity. So, yes, this is a PS5 drive, but its heatsink and performance profile are such that you could use it as a workhorse drive as well.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade, as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage in terms of capacity and performance. Desktops are often more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features, so we show the worst-case for idle.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

For temperature recording, we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature, but real-world temperatures will vary due to the environment and workload factors.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware
Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD
Tom's Hardware

The 850P has a heatsink, so it’s not going into a laptop, and concerns about power consumption are a little less important. The presence of the heatsink also helps keep the drive cool, so throttling is also not a big concern. Still, you could choose to remove the heatsink, and maybe you want to toss this into a small form factor media machine. In those cases, the 850P’s efficiency – which lands in the lower half of the pack – is sufficient but not great. It’s better than the SM2264-based Legend 960 Max and E18-based Gaming Performance Plus, which are good baselines, but falls behind newer drives and technology.

Our feeling here is that a high-end Gen 4 drive should get at least 400 MB/s per watt, which is generally the case. DRAM-less options can target much higher and are often a better choice if you’re worried about heat or power consumption. If you are going for a high-end drive, ideally you have a heatsink. The one the 850P comes with is very effective, with us measuring a maximum temperature of 54 degrees Celsius. This is very far off from throttling and, frankly, it is a fantastic result.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and antivirus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P Bottom Line

The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P brings no real surprises. If you were expecting it to be a WD Black SN850P – which itself is just a Black SN850X with a PS5-compliant heatsink – with a Sandisk badge, then you won’t be disappointed. Technically, there are some firmware optimizations possible for a drive destined to be used in PS5s, but we’ve found that any such changes have little impact on overall performance. The 850P is a drive with mature hardware and firmware, and that’s the main story here. It’s a reliable, consistent, well-performing drive that will rock the PS5 but is also good in regular computers.

Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Our biggest complaint is probably that the 850P can be bested by other drives in any given category. There are less expensive drives with similar performance in the PS5. There are drives that will be better in a laptop, even assuming the 850P’s heatsink is removed. There are even drives that beat it on the desktop in some areas, or are less expensive. Frankly, it feels like a premium drive, and that’s long been the case for the Black SN850X and its progeny. This is also true of the Samsung 990 Pro, its direct competitor, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want a rock-solid drive that can do anything, look no further. If you have a specific application in mind or want to save some money, there are other options.

Considering how much people value their data and worry about storage stability, we think the Optimus GX Pro 850P does have a place. It’s a no-nonsense drive that gets the job done with a proven track record. The heatsink is very effective, and the drive itself doesn’t really struggle with any one workload. While it is designed for the PS5, it would be plenty happy in an enthusiast’s desktop. Not everybody needs a Gen 5 powerhouse. We recommend it for the discerning buyer who wants something fast and reliable without having to guess what hardware is inside some generic brand’s drive.

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Nvidia’s RTX Mega Geometry 2.0 streams ray-tracing geometry into VRAM on demand

26. September 2026 um 14:30

Nvidia has updated its RTX Mega Geometry SDK to 2.0, adding streaming support for “continuous level-of-detail clusters” to handle high-density meshes, according to the developer blog post. Nvidia says it works even for scenes too big for the VRAM budget. The technology is in addition to its RTX Kit, arriving alongside RTX Kit 2026.3. The announcement comes close to the release of Gears of War: E-Day, which makes use of RTX Mega Geometry technology. Nvidia has not explicitly said what version of Mega Geometry the game uses.

Mega Geometry “organizes detailed meshes into clusters so ray-traced scenes can adapt geometric detail efficiently,” according to Nvidia. The SDK appeared at version 0.9.0 beta in 2025 and found its way into Alan Wake 2’s title update 1.2.8 early that same year. Our test on an RTX 4090 found about 1GB of VRAM saved with a performance boost of 13%, at native 4K and with DLSS Quality. On an 8GB graphics card, that 1GB is an eighth of the memory.

The SDK is at version 2.0.0 on GitHub as of this week. The technology makes dense scenes less expensive to ray trace, with 2.0 specifically targeting geometry that doesn’t fit in VRAM. This means that “a scene’s source geometry no longer has to fit in VRAM [with detail] bounded by a memory budget rather than by mesh count,” according to Nvidia’s changelog.

When a scene goes over budget, it settles at lower detail instead of constantly swapping geometry in and out of VRAM. By default, this is based on 2GB of VRAM for streamed geometry, another 2GB for ray-tracing acceleration structures, and 4GB of material textures, but these are adjustable. The existing tessellation path remains.

In the case of Nvidia’s sample Zorah, there are 1.6 billion unique triangles in a 70GB download, with a first load that can require up to 64GB of RAM at peak. Zorah uses 31GB of mesh data, but the courtyard sample view only has 1.5GB of mesh data in VRAM, using an RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS Quality.

Nvidia's path-traced Zorah sample scene courtyard
Nvidia
Nvidia's Zorah courtyard in Mega Geometry's level-of-detail view
Nvidia

The sample requires an RTX GPU with 10GB of VRAM or more, a Game Ready driver 570 or later, Microsoft’s DXR 1.1 or later, and Windows 10 at a minimum. For now, this looks more like a tool for developers than players. It’s an SDK with a reference sample, and currently no game has been confirmed to use it.

The rest of RTX Kit 2026.3 includes RTX Character Rendering 1.4, RTX Dynamic Illumination 3.1, RTX Neural Texture Compression (NTC) 0.10 beta, RTX Neural Shading 1.4, and RTX Texture Filtering 1.3. NTC has been at v0.10.0 beta on GitHub since Aug. 4, with the DX12 LinAlg path only for testing purposes. The DX12 LinAlg path requires preview driver 620.12, the preview Agility SDK, and Windows Developer Mode. That leaves Vulkan as the only way for released games to use NTC with Tensor Core acceleration today.

An existing problem, Nvidia said in August, is that under ray tracing, Nanite elements “switch to a single, static low-detail mesh” because it’s “prohibitively expensive” to build acceleration structures for them with “existing DXR 1.2 and Vulkan APIs.” It has taken six years of research and development to pioneer the new technology, with the innovations debuting with Gears of War: E-Day on Oct. 6. These will later be part of Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing 2.0 standard, according to Nvidia.

On Sept. 22, in a Game Ready driver post, Nvidia stated that Mega Geometry enables “accurate ray tracing of Nanite geometry for the very first time.” Nvidia’s Game Ready driver 617.14 for the game is already out. Early access on Oct. 1 is the first chance for players to see Nvidia’s Nanite ray tracing technology in action.

Novel attack slashes computing power needed to crack textbook RSA cryptography

Factoring attacks against the RSA algorithm were generally considered infeasible, but that may change dramatically if the findings in a paper from UC San Diego (California) and Inria Nancy (France) prove correct after peer review. The paper outlines a new attack that breaks RSA in record time. That's concerning because RSA-based encryption was in use for quite some time, and although it's been generally deprecated in favor of ECC and post-quantum algorithms, it's still employed today in a substantial portion of services.

Assuming the research holds up and the attack conditions are met, the number of necessary operations for cracking an RSA-encrypted key (and thus, inspecting network traffic encrypted with it) drops dramatically. (From 280, 2112, 2128, and 2144 down to 265, 290, 2105, and 2119 — for 1024, 2048, 3072-, and 4096-bit key lengths, respectively.)

Even for the 1024-bit keys, performing 265 calculations is still a lot, but it starts getting into the range where it's feasible for an entity with large resources at their disposal, like a number of state actors. Crucially, the paper indicates that the algorithms the team used are far from optimized and could hypothetically be significantly sped up after optimization passes, potentially with the help of AI tools and by leveraging GPUs for the task.

The attack only works against the textbook (or "raw") variant of RSA, which isn't widely used for commonplace computing like website certificates and remote access, but is nevertheless present in services like Cloudflare Privacy Pass, iCloud Private Relay, and Private Cloud Compute. Equipment and services using PKCS #11, like many smart cards, USB security tokens, code-signing pipelines, hardware security (HSM) and trusted platform (TPM) modules also use this variation. But fulfilling the attack conditions is much easier said than done.

In order to reach a point where an attacker can decipher data, they first must perform an exceedingly high number of queries against the key they're attacking, collecting enough data points from the key's oracle. In practical terms, this often means repeatedly poking a live server that's using that key to encrypt traffic, billions of times over, though it can also be done against a standalone hardware device.

In the practical context of an encryption algorithm, an oracle takes a number in, runs it through a computation involving a private key, and spits it back out, without revealing its key. The textbook variant of RSA under attack here lets the oracle be queried with any number, thus allowing the attacker to collect enough data points to perform the mathematical wizardry described in the paper. They can then proceed to throw a lot of computing power to ultimately inspect whichever traffic they captured that was using that same encryption key.

As network administrators have certainly figured out by now, running billions of queries against a live service is almost guaranteed to earn them an IP ban, among other measures. It's a reasonable assumption that entities like Cloudflare and Apple have those kinds of controls in place. Still, not everyone does, especially in the case of key management services that aren't closely monitored, including hardware-based ones. The scientists worked their magic on Thales Luna HSMs, in both hardware and online service form.

Although the bar for a practical application of this attack remains quite high, the key finding is that it may be significantly lowered. This opens the possibility that oracle data collected today may be used to decrypt saved traffic in a matter of weeks or months, especially in the near future as hardware advances. It's also possible that other scientists can take this idea and expand on it, finding additional flaws.

PNY allegedly refuses to cover melted RTX 5090 powered by native power supply cable

26. September 2026 um 13:30

When you buy a product, there is a reasonable expectation of warranty service. When you spend multiple thousands of dollars on a computer graphics card (a product category that has only recently entered the multi-thousand-dollar range), there is a reasonable expectation of exceptional service. What if, instead, you got absolutely no service? According to Redditor /u/Melodic_Initial_1767, that's what he got when he tried to RMA his burned GeForce RTX 5090.

Like so many others, "Melodic" found his graphics card non-functional after melting the 12V-2x6 connectors on both ends of the modular cable that came with his 1600-watt ASRock power supply (the PG-1600G, which we reviewed last year). This happened despite the fact that he says he was using the stock BIOS, no overclocking, and, in fact, a manually reduced power limit. Moreover, the card was supposedly sitting idle when it died, although that doesn't really mean anything. He opened a ticket with PNY and says he was denied the next day with this response:

All PNY GPUs that require a 16-pin (12VHPWR / 12V-2x6) input include a PNY-approved power cable or adapter in the box. This cable is the only configuration covered under warranty. If a third-party power cable, adapter, or PSU cable is used and damage occurs - including melting, burning, overheating, or deformation of the connector - PNY cannot accept the product under warranty. Damage caused by non-PNY cables falls under the responsibility of the manufacturer of that cable or power supply.

Alleged PNY Support response (via /u/Melodic_Initial_1767)

Well, he wasn't using the included cable or an approved one, but he was using the native cable from his power supply; surely that should be good enough, right? After all, the warranty terms actually don't appear to say a single thing about 12VHPWR or 12V-2x6 cables. According to the Redditor, the only thing the warranty says about power is that the card has to be "installed in accordance with the installation guide provided herewith." Guess what the installation guide says?

A photo of the damaged connector on the Redditor's GeForce RTX 5090 card.

The card-side connector doesn't even look that bad, but apparently the card doesn't work at all. (Image credit: /u/Melodic_Initial_1767 on Reddit)

If you guessed "locate an unused power connector within your system and plug it into the corresponding connector on your graphics card," congratulations, you will also be denied warranty service from PNY, because apparently you have to intuit which cables are approved by PNY, since, as far as we can see, there's no list of approved cables anywhere on PNY's website, nor in the product documentation for its graphics cards. Besides, the card didn't come with a 16-pin cable, so it's not like he could have used PNY's own cable, and the idea that the firm would prefer him to use an "octopus" adapter over a native cable is shaky at best.

I personally have never had the pleasure of dealing with PNY support, but multiple other Redditors in the thread, which is nearing 1,200 replies at this point, have mentioned a history of difficulty getting support from PNY. When asking the company which clause of their warranty policy they are using to deny his warranty request, /u/Melodic_Initial_1767 was apparently told by a "Senior Technician" that the decision is final and that his ticket had been closed.

A photo showing a damaged 12V-2x6 connector on an ASRock power supply.

The power supply is supposed to include a temperature sensing mechanism to prevent this sort of thing from happening. (Image credit: /u/Melodic_Initial_1767 on Reddit)

A notable point brought up by /u/dusto_man in the thread is that the ASRock power supply used by "Melodic" advertises a "TempGuard" feature that supposedly monitors the temperature at the 12V-2x6 connector on the PSU side for safety, but clearly that either wasn't configured or also failed. ASRock offers a ten-year warranty on that unit; /u/dusto_man mentioned this in a thread where users were advising the original poster to contact ASRock and let that firm go after PNY to avoid covering the failed GPU, which is worth multiple thousands of dollars now.

Indeed, that could be why PNY is attempting to shut down the RMA attempt. The firm may not have any GeForce RTX 5090 cards to send him, and even if it does, the cheapest GeForce RTX 5090 card available to buy new on the market today is $4400 USD, and PNY would likely prefer to sell it at that price instead. While the board vendor is most likely only on the hook (legally) for /u/Melodic_Initial_1767's original purchase price, that could still easily be $2,000 or more. We have now seen these same RMA denial patterns with storage and memory devices from multiple vendors during the shortage, so it wouldn't be an exception. We'll have to wait and see if PNY will stand on unwritten technicalities rather than take a hit to its bottom line.

Enthusiast cooled iPhone 18 Pro with cold can of La Croix sparkling water; benchmarks show 25% higher sustained performance

Tech enthusiast and developer Matt Birchler has tested an Apple iPhone 18 Pro with a can of La Croix used as a cooling device to address persistent thermal throttling that he noticed during his other tests with the phone. Surprisingly, this yielded much stronger results than one would assume, given that he simply placed the can of sparkling water on top of the phone, providing a 25% improvement in sustained performance.

Birchier has been benchmarking the A20 Pro processor inside the iPhone 18 Pro, and it has so far offered excellent transcription results in its normal non-sparkling-water-cooled configuration. In one test run, the latest Apple smartphone hit a maximum speed of 447.9 words per second, before settling down to a little over 320 for the 7th to the 20th runs. The reduced performance during the latter stages of a prolonged benchmark run is normal for nearly every portable device, as they reduce performance to avoid thermally damaging their chips and other components.

It’s exactly for this reason that high-performance computers often come with the best CPU coolers, with some enthusiasts preferring the best AIO coolers or custom water-cooling loops to get the most out of their high-end processors. However, this usually isn’t possible with most mainstream phones, unless you’re running a specialized gaming handset like the liquid-cooled Redmagic 11 Pro — but it seems that Birchler found a solution for the iPhone 18 Pro. “I did some benchmarking today and saw how the newest iPhone thermal throttles, which isn’t severe, but does happen,” the developer said. “I know from experience that if you put a cold beverage on the back of your phone, it will cool down really quick, so I thought…the test is obvious.”

benchmark results of an iPhone 18 Pro comparing cooled and non-cooled results

(Image credit: Matt Birchler)

So, Birchler pulled out an ice-cold can of La Croix from the fridge, started a benchmarking session consisting of 20 runs, and placed the drink on the back of the phone. After the tests were completed, the results were as expected: even though its initial run had a slightly lower result of 429.5 words per second, the “liquid-cooled” iPhone 18 Pro had a higher average of 400.4. This meant that giving the iPhone a cold drink helped it sustain around 25% higher performance, but at the cost of keeping the phone facing down while running heavy loads.

The average user wouldn’t need cooling solutions like these for most mobile devices. But if you use your device for extensive loads, like gaming or shooting and editing photos and videos, you might notice slower performance and a dimmer screen after a few minutes. You could follow Birchler’s lead and strap a cold drink to the back of your phone to reduce thermal throttling, but it’s going to be inconvenient and impractical. After all, it’s quite awkward to hold your phone while a can is sticking out of its back. This is why some smartphone accessory manufacturers make devices like the Black Shark Magnetic Phone Cooler 6 Pro for gamers or the SmallRig Universal Hyper Chill Cooling Phone Cage and the Tilta Khronos Advanced Kit for filmmakers.

Other enthusiasts have also experimented with their own designs, like this monstrous SSD cooling solution strapped to the back of an iPhone 17 Pro Max. These will allow you to squeeze more performance from your phone, but at the expense of an impractical design, additional weight, and shorter battery life.

Federal bill would force VPN providers, ISPs, and DNS services to block foreign piracy sites

A week and change ago, the U.S. Congress saw yet another anti-piracy bill introduced, H.R. 10364, or by its full name, the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026 (ACPA). It would require internet service providers, DNS resolving services, and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to block foreign websites or services hosting pirated content. The full text for the bill is now public, and it stands out due to its targeting of foreign services and affecting connections "from the United States." That gets complicated pretty quick when VPNs and content delivery networks (CDNs) are in play.

In ACPA, a standard blocking order needs to be court-issued, but would apply in 14 to 30 days. There's a special case seemingly targeted at live-streaming of sports events and shows, or "time-sensitive events" in legal parlance, which can shorten the blocking deadline as a judge sees fit, so long as the first leak of copyrighted material appears within 24 hours after going live.

Blocking at the ISP and DNS level is relatively straightforward. The vast majority of users utilize their ISP's DNS, so not resolving a given domain if it's in the blocklist for its customers is simple enough. Some people, like yours truly, rely on external DNS servers like Google DNS, Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, OpenDNS, or NextDNS. These too could ignore specific DNS resolution requests from incoming users in the States, the accuracy of geolocation notwithstanding.

Small ISPs and services with less than 100,000 monthly users and public networks are exempted, as are root DNS and top-level domain (TLD) providers. However, the bill does not specify an exact means of blockage, and it's possible that service providers, out of fear of liability, may well take a heavy-handed approach. It also makes no mention of protecting or nullifying encryption.

When it comes to people using VPNs to bounce their connection through another location, things get tricky, as the bill does not clearly state what "from the United States" means, and even the definition of "foreign" can get fuzzy. Determining those might well be an exercise in quantum superposition, since any of the below scenarios can be argued to technically fulfill a criteria. We conjured up a handful of possibilities, though we're sure creative techies can come up with many more:

  1. A connection to a VPN originates from the U.S.
  2. A VPN's endpoint resides in the U.S.
  3. A VPN's registered subscriber is a U.S. person, but they are currently outside the U.S.
  4. The user uses a VPN to a foreign country, but connects to a website that's behind a CDN — does the CDN endpoint count as a destination?
  5. Same, but the actual website is on U.S. soil despite being accessed from outside; is it "foreign" if the endpoint is?
  6. For multi-hop VPNs, which hop or hops count towards determining a destination, especially if the traffic passes through the U.S. at some point?
  7. A U.S. citizen in a boat in international waters using Starlink (a U.S. satellite ISP) counts as foreign?
  8. A U.S. citizen goes abroad and uses roaming; are they considered foreign due to their physical location, or within the U.S. because they are using stateside infrastructure?

Additional legal questions can be raised with other technological factors. The use of shared IPs in hosting services, or CGNAT implementations, can create obfuscation of the concepts of "destination" and "origin." Is a DNS provider using Oblivious DoH, where the server responds to a request but doesn't know who made it and vice versa, liable? How does Apple's iCloud Private Relay feature, which hides a connection's source and destination from each other, sit within the legal framework? And with encrypted DNS, how much is the ISP liable, since they can't see which domain the user requested?

The neutrality of third-party service providers has come under fire in jurisdictions like France and Spain, where rulings mostly went against claims of neutrality. Some were forced to often enable large-scale blocking, an action likely to trigger more than a few false positives. A Spanish court ruled against Cloudflare and RootedCON for their part in providing CDNs, resulting in mass IP blockings. Over in France, a court found that VPNs do have to comply with blocking orders despite their job as "technical intermediaries."

For what it's worth, ACPA is only one of multiple bills sitting in Congress in the "introduced" state, and currently appears to have no sponsors, scheduled hearings, or even markup. If foreign activities are any indication, though, broad legislation like this may have substantial unintended consequences.

ChatGPT-6 Astra cracks 85-year-old 1941 Enigma-coded message in two days

26. September 2026 um 12:00

A German Army Enigma transmission from 85 years ago, known as the MVUEH message, has been cracked by GTP-Astra in two days, reports the Crypto Cella. MVUEH was sent by the German Army to the SS-Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Division on July 10, 1941, at the height of the Nazi military power in WWII. This uncracked Enigma message was shared with enthusiasts online in 2005, but its secrets had remained concealed until now.

Crypto Cellar researchers highlight that what Astra managed to do in just two days “would take a human researcher weeks or even months.” Currently, the awestruck researchers are still picking through logs to determine how Astra managed this feat and how it did it so quickly.

One of the most impressive things about Astra’s tackling of MVUEH was that it “did it entirely on its own,” says the source. It was merely asked whether it could break any of the unbroken Enigma machine messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page. In response, Astra picked Nr. 172, MVUEH as a promising target and thought it might be related to the plaintext of Nr. 173, SIPVX.

With its target decided and expecting the repeated place name "ROSENOW ROSENOW" as a probable plaintext clue, Astra developed Python and C++ software for an Enigma simulator and an Enigma Bombe. Its hunch appears to have been correct. You can see a demo of the radio message being decrypted online at the MVUEHA Cryptanalysis Case Study site (screenshot below).

Enigma machine message decoding

(Image credit: The MVUEHA Cryptanalysis Case Study site)

In brief, the encrypted 82-letter MVUEH cipher looked like this:
ICRVSORMCCWQTATYEVFXDBZGGSNXWLPSYWZYTCBSWULRTBZCVGODVJUSLSOOMJQJZSXSEBZPEYMDNXJYTC

Decrypted, with spaces added as appropriate, it looks like this:
BTTE UM ANGABE DES MARSQWEGES X BEFINDE MIQ IN X ROSENOW ROSENOW X SOFORT FUNKANTWORT X WASCHBBSCH

An approximate English translation is:
Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio

Note that there was a spelling mistake at the front of the original message, which wouldn’t help decoding efforts.

We’ve looked at Enigma machines before, as efforts to crack wartime ciphers from them, as well as from Lorenz machines, would lead to some of the first general-purpose digital computer designs.

The Enigma featured a 26-key keyboard, with 26 light-up letters on the ‘lampboard’ positioned above it. Behind the lampboard, three rotors were installed from a set of five. The signal from a keyboard press traveled through an input wheel, then the three manually turnable rotors with 26 pins each, then a reflector to return the signal, which lit up the lampboard. Making it even more tricky to crack, the rotors would advance every keypress. Thus, if you keep pressing the same letter, a different letter on the lampboard would be shown each time. Yet another layer of obfuscation was added via the plugboard at the front of the machine, where users swapped more letters around. Operators used up to 10 plugboard rerouting wires.

Before using the Enigma machine, four settings must be dialed in by the operator: rotor order, ring setting, rotor starting positions, and plugboard connection(s). These settings were distributed separately, and they changed following a calendar. Even if the enemy had an Enigma machine, they’d also need to know the settings on the day to decode the message(s).

We reported on GPT6-Astra's deciphering skills just last week. The LLM was behind the cracking of a 108-year-old unsolved WWI German code that had been encrypted using the ADFGVX method.

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