Month: October 2022

Enlarge (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Nvidia's $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 is an incredibly powerful graphics card, but its performance comes at the cost of high power draw. Like a few of the RTX 3000-series cards, Nvidia uses a new kind of 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector to supply all that power to the card—you can plug up to four 8-pin GPU power cables into the 12VHPWR adapter, which then plugs into the connector on the GPU, saving some board space.

But at least two RT 4090 users are now reporting that their 12VHPWR connectors have overheated and melted during use. These complaints are sourced from Reddit (via Tom's Hardware), so take them with a grain of salt—we don't know the exact configuration of either user's PC setup. The specific model of graphics card (a Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC for one user, an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition for the other), the power supply, and any number of other factors could have contributed to the connectors overheating.

For its part, Nvidia told Tom's that it is "investigating the reports" and that the company is "in contact with the first owner" and planned to reach out to the other. We've followed up with Nvidia and will update this article if the company has more information to share.

Enlarge / The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Hot off of releasing Android 12L last month, Samsung is shipping its first finished builds of Android 13 this week. The Galaxy S22 (regular, Plus, and Ultra) is the first phone to get the update, with carriers like Verizon listing the update as available.

Samsung's Android 12L release in September arrived six months after the official release on foldables and tablets, and this Android 13 release represents a two-month wait from the Google release. Part of the reason for the quick turnaround might be that Android 13 is a very small release, with only things like a notification permission and a new media player to point to as user-facing features. The Galaxy S22 never got Android 12L, so this is its first major OS update.

Samsung's Android 13 skin is called "One UI 5," and the company detailed some of its features earlier this month. Samsung's headline additions are "Bixby Text Call," which lets you answer a call and speak to the caller through text-to-speech. A "Routines" feature can automatically trigger functions based on the time of day. You can set a video as your background wallpaper, and you can stack widgets on top of each other to swipe through them.

Enlarge / Did you miss me?

Jumping between worlds, mastering new powers, adding unique and powerful weapons to your arsenal, and realizing that true strength comes from your bonds with others—Bayonetta 3 boasts a formula that would sound familiar to any Kingdom Hearts fan, which is somewhat appropriate considering both series have an almost decade-long gap between their second and third releases.

In its third entry, the Bayonetta series sees some real forward momentum that was missing from the second, especially in terms of its story. The first Bayonetta was a flashy introduction to our titular hero and her crew of vaguely unsavory friends and acquaintances, setting a precedent for time travel and other instances of reality-bending within its world. Its sequel was more focused on the bonds between Bayonetta and her loved ones, with a narrative that focused too much on explaining the first game. Eight years later, Bayonetta 3 takes some bold steps forward while keeping all the sexy swagger we've come to expect from the giant Umbra Witch.

A spectacular fantasy, emphasis on “spectacle”

We open on Bayonetta and Enzo (a stereotypical Italian gangster gone family man) on a shopping spree in New York City. Unsurprisingly, the witch has dragged him along to carry her bags in return for a past pro bono job. We get our first taste of Jennifer Hale voicing this role, and despite all of the recent controversy, she offers a quality interpretation of the character. I was expecting "British Commander Shepard," but Hale lived up to her iconic status, managing to give her own take on the witch that felt true to the character.

Shortly after Jeanne reappears, sporting an updated look and a sick motorcycle, her entrance is quickly overshadowed by a giant wave that quickly starts to completely submerge the city. The witches, along with Rodin—who now has a pizza side gig in addition to managing The Gates of Hell—try to determine the cause of the disaster and soon encounter new, gooey, green enemies that aren't from Paradiso (Heaven) or Inferno (Hell). This poses a bit of a problem for Bayonetta, as her demonic contracts require her to provide angels for feeding, and these creatures don't seem to count. But as an ancient and powerful witch, Bayonetta still has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Enlarge (credit: Jacqui VanLiew/Getty Images)

In January, Jake Nelson, a London-based developer, submitted a routine update to his popular new iPhone word game to Apple’s App Store for review, adding support for a slate of new languages. This wasn’t his first app, but he was unprepared for what followed: It took a month of frustrating discussion with Apple’s App Store reviewers and 15 revisions to his code—made more or less at random—before his update was mysteriously approved.

Nelson never learned exactly why his app was first rejected or later accepted. An appeal mechanism Apple introduced in 2020 after bad press about its control of the App Store didn’t help. Revenue from his game had been about $1,000 a month but dwindled during the weeks he couldn’t keep users engaged with new updates, and he contemplated no longer selling iOS apps for a living. “I felt as if it was an unending, completely opaque process,” he says.