I first caught a glimpse of Intel’s new handheld silicon at Computex 2026, where I saw early hardware powered by it, including the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ and Acer Predator Atlas 8. But seeing a chip run a demo on a show floor and actually pushing it through real-world workloads are two very different things. When MSI eventually sent me the production Claw for a spin, I finally got that opportunity. I only had the device for a short time, but that brief window was enough to make one thing clear: Intel’s Arc G3 Extreme is a seriously capable handheld gaming platform.

Built for the handheld watt wars

What makes it particularly interesting is that this isn’t simply another laptop processor squeezed into a smaller chassis. Intel has built the Arc G3 Extreme specifically for handheld gaming, with its power envelope and platform tuned around portable workloads. At its heart sits the Arc B390 GPU, based on Intel’s Xe3 architecture, with 12 Xe-cores, hardware ray tracing and up to 113 TOPS of INT8 GPU compute. The chip also features 14 CPU cores, an NPU and support for up to LPDDR5X-8533 memory.

That distinction matters because handheld gaming is ultimately a battle for watts. There is only so much power available, and every watt spent on CPU performance is potentially a watt that could have gone towards graphics. Arc G3 Extreme takes a more graphics-focused approach, and after testing it, I think Intel has finally built a handheld chip that understands the assignment.

The test: How fast is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme?

There’s an important caveat before getting into the numbers. I only had the MSI Claw for a short testing window, so my dedicated synthetic and gaming benchmark runs were conducted at its 35W performance setting. I therefore wouldn’t present this as a comprehensive analysis of how Arc G3 Extreme behaves across every possible TDP level. Instead, these results show what Intel’s new handheld silicon can do when given a generous power budget.

And at 35W, the results are seriously impressive. Across my synthetic tests, the Arc G3 Extreme delivered the kind of performance I simply haven’t seen from an Intel-powered handheld before. The CPU is capable enough to deliver laptop-class performance, but the real star is the Arc B390 GPU. I found the Arc G3 Extreme comfortably ahead of AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme in its gaming tests. In fact, the Claw is the most powerful handheld gaming PC I’ve tested.

The gaming results are even more telling. Across the titles and settings I tested, the Arc G3 Extreme consistently delivered the kind of performance that makes 1080p gaming genuinely viable on a handheld. More importantly, it doesn’t need to lean entirely on upscaling to get there. Native performance is already strong, while XeSS 3 provides additional headroom in supported games. Intel isn’t merely catching up anymore. It’s competing at the very top of the handheld performance stack.

The interesting part isn’t just performance

Raw performance is only half the story with a handheld. Give a chip 35W, and it should be fast. The more difficult question is what happens when the power budget comes down.

I didn’t have enough time with the Claw to build a comprehensive 17W, 20W, and 25W benchmark suite, so I took a different approach. I wanted to test efficiency the way a regular gamer would actually experience it. I switched to Endurance Mode and spent several hours playing Sleeping Dogs. The result? More than four hours of continuous gameplay, without turning the experience into a compromised version of the game. That is particularly interesting because the same silicon that can deliver this level of performance at 35W can scale down into a genuinely usable, battery-conscious gaming platform.

Then there’s standby behaviour, which might be my favourite efficiency improvement. The Claw’s idle drain was practically non-existent during my testing. Leave it in sleep mode overnight, and it wakes up with almost the same battery percentage. That’s a surprisingly important quality-of-life feature for a Windows handheld because nothing kills the convenience of portable gaming faster than picking up the device to find a dead battery.

Intel’s handheld redemption is real

I’ve tested most of the mainstream handhelds, from the Steam Deck and ROG Ally to the ROG Ally X and other AMD-powered devices, and based on that experience, the Arc G3 Extreme is comfortably the most powerful handheld platform I’ve tested. The performance advantage is especially noticeable in demanding AAA games, but Intel isn’t simply brute-forcing its way there with more watts; the chip also scales intelligently when the workload gets lighter.

Of course, there’s some context worth acknowledging. AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme launched around a year earlier, giving Intel plenty of time to study the handheld market, improve its drivers and close the gap. And the first Arc G3 Extreme devices are expensive enough that this isn’t about to become a mainstream replacement for the Steam Deck or ROG Ally overnight. But the price of the hardware doesn’t change what Intel has achieved with the silicon. Intel has finally arrived in handheld gaming, and it has done so with enough performance to compete with AMD at the top end, while bringing the efficiency to make that performance genuinely useful away from the charger.

The first Claw showed that Intel wasn’t ready. The Arc G3 Extreme shows that Intel finally is.

Bad news for anyone who was hoping for some relief from the memory shortage — Digitimes is reporting that the production capacity of major players such as Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix has already been booked for 2027 due to record demand. Their industry sources indicate that what we’re experiencing currently is just a prelude to when things get really ugly, which is why customers are paying a premium to lock in their orders so far out.

Although there’s been no official word from either side of the transaction, the Digitimes article further points out that these sort of agreements are usually 3 to 5 year contracts. If that’s the case, and nothing changes in supply and demand equation, we could be in for a very rough ride. There’s a potential opportunity here for other manufacturers to step in and start producing DRAM, possibly even focusing on lower-performance offerings intended for the consumer market, but setting up those production lines isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s always possible the AI bubble could pop in the next couple of years, but we’re not sure we’d put money on it.

There’s a developing story this weekend about the breach of customer data over at Framework. The maker of modular and repairable computers has recently sent an email out to all customers that their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses were leaked due to an upstream zero-day attack against database provider Metabase.

Metabase disclosed the breach on August 3rd, but we were mildly surprised to see that Framework doesn’t seem to have made any public acknowledgement of the event so far. As far as we can tell, the only reason there are copies of the email from them circulating online is because several customers posted it to social media. In their statements to sources such as TechCrunch, Framework reps were also hesitant to give hard details such as how many customers were impacted. While we’re fans of what Framework is trying to do in terms of hardware customization and repairability, we have to admit that being cagey about this sort of thing isn’t a good look.

If you’re looking to vent about this situation and others like it with similarly-minded folks, HOPE 26 will be the perfect place to do it. We’re just days away from the New York hacker con, and there are less than 150 tickets still available for anyone who’s still undecided about going. At this point, it seems likely there won’t be any ticket sales at the door.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of virtual tickets which will let you experience the event from the comfort of your own basement. Since their week-long marathon event during COVID, HOPE has offered a better virtual experience than most hacker cons, so ticket holders can look forward to more than just a YouTube link.

As reported by Neowin, developer Justin Marshall has ported Word for Windows 1.1a to Microsoft’s modern incarnation of the operating system on 64-bit hardware. Rather than running it in some emulator, Justin took the source code that Microsoft released back in 2014 and rewrote the bits that relied on the early 90s platform it was intended for.

While we’re not sure the lawyers in Redmond are going to lose much sleep over somebody hacking around with a 35 year old version of Word, it’s worth mentioning that the Microsoft Research License that the code was released under back in 2014 allows access to the source for personal use but specifically forbids redistribution.

To comply with the letter of the law on this one, our read on it is that this project should have been made public as a series of patches against that release rather than bundling in Microsoft’s own code. In other words, if you’re interested in this one, you might want to pull down a local copy now in the event it goes down the memory hole.

Finally, Word isn’t the only decades-old piece of software getting a new lease on life in 2026. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Quake, and to celebrate Bethesda has unveiled a new chapter for the seminal first person shooter. Titled Dawn of the Machine, the update was created by a group of developers within MachineGames, who have not only been responsible for the modern Wolfenstein games but also 2024’s critically-acclaimed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Although Quake may be 30 years young, it’s still available on pretty much everything, so you won’t need to break out your old DOS machine to get in on the action. The announcement page says the free update is available now for all current and previous-generation game consoles, as well as PC.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.

Situational Awareness may have had to sell off the majority of its public portfolio last month, but the AI-focused hedge fund is still making some big bets.

This week, the fund invested $400 million into Source Foundry, a startup founded by Stanford researchers aiming to make chip manufacturing faster and cheaper, according to The Wall Street Journal. That brings its total investment in Source Foundry to $500 million.

Situational Awareness was founded by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher in his mid-twenties who had no trading experience when he launched the fund in 2024. Early returns were reportedly strong, but the fund faced steep losses in recent months amidst the decline in AI infrastructure stocks.

At the end of July, Situational Awareness sold off the majority of its public portfolio to Ken Griffin’s Citadel, although the fund held on to its Anthropic shares. Its assets under management reportedly fell from $20 billion to $10 billion.

On the bright side, Aschenbrenner didn’t let those setbacks get in the way of his wedding.

Sounding off: As AI moves into more parts of daily life, the possibility of using it in New Orleans’ 911 system struck a nerve. Residents were relieved to learn that reports of AI replacing emergency call-takers were inaccurate, but the reaction underscored a larger reality.The technology is reshaping essential services, often faster than the public is ready to accept.

New Orleans is using artificial intelligence in a limited part of its 911 operation: screening some duplicate calls about vehicle crashes when human call-takers are unavailable.

The Orleans Parish Communication District issued the clarification after a Shreveport Times story reported that the city would use AI to answer 911 calls instead of human operators. OPCD said the technology is not replacing human call-takers and is used only in a narrow set of circumstances.

The Shreveport Times article, published Thursday under the headline “New Orleans will use AI to answer 911 calls instead of a human,” focused on Carbyne’s AI Emergency Call Triage tool. The system is designed to identify when multiple callers are reporting the same incident.

Under that process, callers reporting a crash that is already known to dispatchers may receive information or updates about the incident. Callers reporting a separate emergency would be routed to a human dispatcher. The story also noted that the tool would not replace dispatchers.

Still, the headline drew a wider reaction online, with commenters questioning whether AI should play any role in emergency communications.

“I wonder what happens if someone has to be discreet and order a ‘pizza’ and instead AI answers,” one commenter wrote.

Some commenters also pointed to McDonald’s abandoned test of AI drive-thru ordering. Widely shared examples of incorrect orders became a symbol of the technology’s shortcomings, and McDonald’s ended the test at more than 100 restaurants in 2024 after working with IBM on the automated ordering system.

The comparison isn’t exact. Ordering food at a drive-thru is very different from calling 911, and OPCD says its system is limited to duplicate reports of a known crash. But the reaction reflects a broader concern about using AI in situations where mistakes could have serious consequences. Questions about reliability, accountability, and access to a human operator are particularly sensitive in emergency response.

OPCD Executive Director Karl Fasold said the agency has used the AI tool for about two years. It can be activated only when all human call-takers are busy and a caller is within about 200 meters of a crash that has already been reported.

The system then determines whether the caller is reporting the same crash. If so, it can provide information or updates. If the caller is reporting something else, the call is routed to a human dispatcher.

OPCD said the technology is not used for other types of 911 calls. The agency also said it has safeguards in place to ensure callers can reach a person when needed.

Fasold said the Shreveport Times article left readers with the impression that New Orleans was moving toward an AI-run 911 system. He said that is not how the city is using the technology.

OPCD also said the reporter did not contact the agency before publishing the article and did not identify sources for some of its claims.

“Every 911 center in the country is dealing with the reality of tighter budgets and inability to reach full staffing even with funding to do so. We have found this AI triage tool, used specifically for the scenario outlined above involving motor vehicle accidents, to be an extremely positive use of the technology to make the best use of our staff’s very limited time,” Fasold said in a statement.

For more than a decade, the Apple Watch has looked like a tiny computer strapped to the wrist. But what if Apple made it look like an actual watch instead? Recent reports suggest that Apple is considering round displays for future Apple Watch models, alongside other design ideas as the company rethinks its wearable lineup. Nothing has been finalized, but the possibility raises a fascinating question: would a circular Apple Watch actually be better, or would Apple be fixing something that isn’t broken? I think the answer depends on what Apple wants the Watch to be.

A circle could finally make the Apple Watch feel like a watch

The biggest argument for going circular isn’t technical. It’s fashion.

The Apple Watch’s rounded-square design is instantly recognizable, but it also looks unmistakably like a piece of technology. A circular design could make it blend far more naturally with formal clothing, traditional outfits, or simply with users who prefer the look of a conventional timepiece. And Apple could potentially attract people who have avoided the Watch precisely because they don’t like its appearance. Samsung, Google, Garmin and countless traditional watchmakers have already demonstrated that a circular watch can look more natural on the wrist.

There is also something to be said for Apple’s design becoming less repetitive. The company has refined the Watch over the years, but the fundamental shape has remained remarkably consistent. Going circular would instantly make a new generation feel like a new Apple Watch, rather than another iteration with a thinner case and brighter screen. But there is a catch.

The Apple Watch is also a tiny computer.

The current shape isn’t just an aesthetic choice. It gives watchOS something extremely useful: a relatively rectangular canvas.

Apps, notifications, messages, maps, fitness statistics, calendars and settings are all much easier to arrange inside a rectangle. A circle removes usable space from the corners, which can leave text and interface elements feeling cramped. The keyboard is an obvious example. Typing on the Apple Watch is already an exercise in patience. Now imagine trying to squeeze a keyboard into a shape that gets narrower toward the edges.

Sure, Apple could redesign watchOS specifically for a circular screen, and that’s where things get interesting. The company controls both the hardware and software, so it could create a genuinely circular-first interface rather than simply cropping the existing one. But third-party developers don’t have the same luxury. Apple already has a somewhat fragile watchOS app ecosystem, with some developers moving away from standalone Watch apps in favor of quicker notifications and companion experiences. Asking developers to maintain another completely different interface system could make that problem worse.

Apple could potentially require developers to support both rectangular and circular layouts, but that means more development, testing, and maintenance for an ecosystem that isn’t exactly overflowing with developer attention. A circular Apple Watch could therefore become a beautiful device that increasingly relies on Apple’s own apps while third-party experiences take a back seat.

Then there’s the hardware problem nobody sees

There is another issue hiding inside that pretty circular chassis: the components aren’t circular.

Batteries, logic boards, speakers, sensors, and the Taptic Engine are generally rectangular, flat, or otherwise shaped around the available internal space. Put those components inside a circular case, and the corners inevitably become awkward dead space. Apple could compensate by redesigning virtually every internal component, but that would add complexity and potentially increase manufacturing costs. Alternatively, the company could make the circular Watch thicker to fit the same battery and hardware capacity, creating the dreaded “puck” effect.

That’s a particularly awkward trade-off for Apple. The company has spent years making the Watch thinner and more refined. Giving some of that progress back simply to accommodate a circular chassis would be a difficult sell. Samsung and Google have already had to deal with similar compromises in their circular watches, so Apple wouldn’t exactly be entering unexplored territory. The difference is that Apple tends to be particularly obsessive about internal packaging and thinness.

Maybe Apple needs to make a watch that looks like one

A circular Apple Watch could be the perfect fit for lifestyle users who want health tracking and smart features without wearing something that looks like a tiny computer. It could even coexist with the current design, giving Apple a more fashion-focused option while retaining the rounded rectangle for users who value screen space and information density. The trade-off is identity: the current Apple Watch is instantly recognizable, while a circular model could look more like a traditional timepiece, but also more like what Samsung, Google, and Garmin already offer.

That makes a circular Watch more interesting as a new branch of the lineup rather than a replacement. Apple could have one Watch designed around maximizing information and another designed around blending into everyday life. But making that work would require much more than putting a round panel inside a new case. Apple would need to rethink watchOS, third-party apps, internal component placement, battery capacity, and potentially even the thickness of the device.

Of course, there is still a very real possibility that none of this ever happens. The original report says Apple is exploring different designs, not that a circular Watch is confirmed, and plans can change long before a product reaches the market. Still, if Apple does decide to go round, it could make the Apple Watch feel less like another gadget and more like a genuine everyday watch, even if that comes with some serious compromises.

security

Gen Xers who feel triggered by this should remember to unplug the network cable and call the cops

Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn’t calling the CEO – it’s targeting the 46-year-old IT manager.

That’s according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month.

The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.

Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company’s response.

“The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns,” the security outfit wrote. “Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions.”

That shift reflects what Zscaler calls “business privilege” rather than technical privilege. Security teams have traditionally focused on privileged users with administrator rights. Attackers, meanwhile, are after employees whose day jobs give them access to invoices, payment approvals, budgets, supplier contracts, customer accounts, HR records, or other sensitive business processes.

“The value of a compromised managerial account lies in the breadth of business access associated with the position,” the researchers wrote. “Managers may approve payments, oversee budgets and vendors, review contracts, access sensitive records, or coordinate work across business units.”

The Gen X skew is probably no coincidence either. Zscaler says many workers in their forties and fifties have reached established management positions, giving attackers access to valuable systems, sensitive information, and people with decision-making authority without needing to compromise the executive suite.

It also found more than a dozen organizations said multiple employees were  compromised during the campaign, suggesting attackers weren’t content with a single foothold once inside a network. Instead, they appeared to work their way through different business functions to increase the chances of reaching valuable data and the people capable of influencing a ransom payment.

The wider report points to a ransomware ecosystem that is becoming increasingly focused on extortion rather than encryption alone. Zscaler said ransomware attempts blocked across its cloud platform increased 146 percent over the past year, while public extortion cases rose 70 percent and the volume of data stolen from victims climbed 92 percent.

By the time the ransom note lands, the crooks may already know who approves invoices, who signs contracts, who runs HR, and who reports to whom. The encryption is just the bit that victims notice. ®

Kasquez just released a complete fan recreation of Donkey Kong Land that runs natively on Windows. The 1995 Game Boy original from Rare now exists as a standalone PC build with visuals, audio, and movement drawn straight from the style of Donkey Kong Country. Over thirty full-sized levels wait, along with the usual banana collecting, secret hunting, and a fresh trip to reclaim the hoard from King K. Rool.

Rare spent a lot of time converting the handheld game from the ground up rather than simply copying the Super Nintendo version, but let’s be honest, the hardware limitations meant the original game was always going to be a little rough, with shorter stages, only one Kong on screen at a time, fewer animal friends, and monochrome graphics that still managed to flex some impressive pre-rendered detail. Nonetheless, the game leaned into its new ideas and restrictions, so much so that levels relied on set pieces like cliff rockfalls and big ol’ tornado enemies, without losing that same basic roll-and-jump momentum that made the game so much fun, and even tho it was half the length, the game still clocked up nearly four million sales and received glowing reviews for squeezing so much personality out of its tiny green screen.

LEGO Super Mario Donkey Kong Arcade 72051

• BUILDABLE ARCADE CABINET – Relive the fun of playing an iconic arcade game with the LEGO Donkey Kong Arcade (72051) building set for adults ages…
• AUTHENTIC ARCADE GAME DETAILS – Create a Donkey Kong arcade level featuring Jumpman, Donkey Kong and Lady, including iconic details like the…
• WORKING JUMP AND DODGE PLAY – Pull the lever on the left side of the base to release one barrel at a time, then move Jumpman with the joystick and…

This new release effectively removes all of those limits. Stages can be as long as they need to be, leaving plenty of area for platforming sequences, hidden paths, and the vertical and horizontal exploration that seemed constrained in the original. Donkey Kong Country’s richer colors and sprite presence improve character and landscape art, making jungles, reefs, mountains, and the climactic pirate ship appear and feel more like the SNES game than a clone. Backgrounds are also given a nice polish, making them seem natural on current monitors. Music and sound effects follow suit, replacing the Game Boy’s limited sound with true, full-fat versions that can compete with vintage console tunes.

The controls are also smooth and tight, as they are built for gamepads or keyboards rather than the handheld’s two-button configuration, so movement remains quick and responsive. Rolling, jumping, and barrel-blasting all feel immediate, which is exactly what you need when the game opens up and demands precise timing over longer stretches. There are still plenty of secrets to find, bonus rooms, alternate paths, and collectibles that will entice you to return and explore every nook and cranny just like you did in 1995, but this time with a camera and resolution that actually allows you to see what’s going on.

It all delivers as a self-contained Unity package, so you won’t need the original ROM because all of the assets are included in the download. That’s a good convenience, but it opens the door to Nintendo’s proclivity to shut down ventures that leverage its intellectual property. So the Google Drive link may have a limited shelf life, as Kasquez has included a quick how-to video that talks you thru the setup and choices, and folks have already reported that it plays well and the physics are spot on for the console game.
[Source]

• Samsung advances floating data center project with first Texas engineering agreement
• Floating facilities promise 50MW capacity while reducing traditional construction timelines significantly
• Texas grid review creates fresh uncertainty for expanding data center developments statewide

Samsung Heavy Industries and Dallas-based Mousterian Corporation have signed an engineering contract covering their first floating data center project planned for deployment in Texas.

The deal advances their partnership into the engineering phase, with both companies jointly responsible for the project’s basic design, detailed engineering, and production planning.

Anthropic’s chatbot can be very vocal, if you want it to be.

How to use Claude voice

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

Voice mode is available through the Claude mobile (Android and iOS) and desktop apps, as well as through the web. Anthropic says the feature works best from your phone.

To use voice mode on mobile:

1. Open the Claude app.

2. Tap the black waveform icon in the lower right corner of the interface (not the microphone icon right next to it).

3. Grant the app microphone permissions if necessary.

4. Start talking. Claude will generate a response once you finish a prompt.

5. Claude will remain in voice mode until you tap Stop.

One thing to keep in mind is Claude’s voice mode uses a “turn-based” architecture, meaning the chatbot will listen to you before it generates a response. This is different from ChatGPT’s voice mode, which OpenAI recently updated to use a “duplex” architecture. That system gives its GPT-Live models the ability to simultaneously process speech and generate outputs.

In practice, that means voice mode sometimes confuses a brief pause for the end of a question or prompt. For that reason, Anthropic recommends asking multi-part questions one at a time instead of all at once.

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How to select different models

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

You can change the model Claude will use to generate a response from the model picker at the bottom of the interface. See below for a list of available models, followed by a short description from Anthropic.

• Haiku: Fastest for quick answers

• Sonnet: Most efficient for everyday tasks

• Opus: For complex tasks. Only available to paid accounts.

How to use your connected apps

Like with text chat, voice mode can access apps and services you’ve connected to Claude, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Slack. For example, you can ask Claude to summarize your recent emails. Simply tell Claude the app you want it to use as part of a prompt. If you’re accessing a third-party app for the first time, you will need to grant Claude permission to use it.

How to change Claude’s voice and language

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

Do you need a paid account to use Claude Voice?

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget