This week on the TT Show, Lord of the Rings superfan (and also superfan) Jak and Kosta discuss Peter Jackson returning to The Lord of the Rings franchise with the new movie 'The Hunt for Gollum.' They discuss the potential story, timeline, and their hopes for a return to the magic of the original trilogy. And not, you know, The Hobbit.

Another big story this week is Apple's apologizing for its seemingly tone-deaf iPad Pro advertisement that quickly caused a massive wave of negative backlash. Is it as bad as some of the comments? As a fan of retro hardware who doesn't like seeing it get destroyed, Kosta thinks so, while Jak is more on the fence and 'meh.'

And it wouldn't be an episode of The TT Show without GPU news, with all of the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series, Radeon, and Intel graphics talk bundled into a new section of the podcast called 'GPU Corner.' Speaking of new sections, Jak and Kosta play a round of Guess the Headline for some fun.

Reddit and OpenAI have announced a new partnership agreement that will enable the AI developer to scrape data from Reddit's valuable API.

The new partnership agreement has been signed into effect and now OpenAI is able to scrape real-time data from Reddit's API, meaning users will be able to see Reddit posts in responses by OpenAI products when they are appropriately queried. It should be noted that OpenAI isn't the first company to come to Reddit with a bucket full of money to scrape its API for data to train AI models, as Google entered into a similar partnership earlier this year, which is reportedly valued at $60 million annually.

A report from The Verge cites a blogpost from Reddit that explains the deal with OpenAI will bring "new AI-powered features to Redditors and mods". It should be noted the new detail will bring OpenAI on to Reddit as an advertiser and that no specific financials were announced alongside the deal, meaning we don't have a specific value of the deal.

A group of scientists have managed to thaw frozen human brain tissue without causing any damage to the tissue itself.

The new research is coming out of the Fudan University in Shanghai, China, where a team led by Zhicheng Shao grew self-organizing brain samples that are called organoids. These organoids are grown from embryonic stem cells and take three weeks to fully mature. Once fully mature the brain tissue has developed neurons and neural stem cells, which means they are ready for experimentation.

The team then took these brain tissue samples and combined them with various chemicals with the goal of discovering which chemical compound would enable the brain tissue to survive being frozen and still enable growth following its thawing. According to the team's results, which were published in the scientific journal Cell Reports Methods, the most successful combination of chemicals was methylcellulose, ethylene glycol, DMSO, and Y27632 - together, the solution is called MEDY.

The team at OpenAI that was dedicated to reducing the existential risk of the emerging technology has reportedly been disbanded, only days after two of the company's founders quit.

According to a new report from Wired, OpenAI's Superalignment team, which was tasked on identifying risks of advanced artificial intelligence-powered systems going rogue and endangering humanity, has been disbanded by the report, and absorbed into its numerous research and development ranks. The report states research into the risk of AI-powered systems will now be headed by OpenAI cofounder John Schulman.

Notably, Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, founders of OpenAI, announced only a few days ago they were departing the company. Both Sutskever and Leike were top researchers focussing on AI risk mitigation, and following his departure from the company, Leike took to X explaining he had been fighting with OpenAI leadership for quite some time about its core values but, unfortunately, reached his tipping point this week.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, recently held its earnings call where the publisher's CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on the release date for GTA 6.

It was only earlier in the week that we heard from Take-Two Interactive a more specific release date for GTA 6, and while it wasn't an exact date, it was more specific than sometime in 2025. The Take-Two earnings call revealed the publisher is planning on dropping GTA 6, saying it will be arriving in the Fall 2025 season. Despite this more accurate release date, Zelnick said that it doesn't really matter when GTA 6 releases as excitement for the next installment in the billion-dollar franchise has already reached "fever pitch".

Zelnick was asked if there is any benefit to releasing GTA 6 during the holiday period, a strategy many game publishers decide to take as game sales typically spike during the holidays. Zelnick replied to the question by saying GTA 6 will likely be a massive success whenever it releases simply due to the hype surrounding the title. However, Zelnick did say the holiday release window is preferable for all developers and publishers.

Valve appears to be working on its next game and it fans of the company and it's title may be glad to know it's going to be an Overwatch-style shooter.

The new Valve title was made available to a select group of competitive gaming YouTubers who would have undoubtedly had to agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to gain early access to the title. Under this agreement, which I can personally verify as someone who has signed many of them, it's typically stipulated that you are unable to share any images, video, or even descriptions of the product you agree to see under embargo. Simply, it's in the name of the agreement "Non-Disclosure".

According to the leaks, the new Valve title will be called Deadlock, and it appears to be an amalgamation of "Valorant, Overwatch, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2," according to Valve reporter Tyler McVicker. As for what was specifically leaked, the above images show third-person gameplay and a character called "Grey Talon," who is armed with a bow and can lay traps for enemy players.

Sony has officially put its stake in the ground on where it stands when it comes to AI models using the company's IP for training, or at least Sony Music has.

According to a letter seen by the Financial Times, Sony Music has warned more than 700 companies developing AI products, along with music streaming platforms, that using any of Sony's music is strictly prohibited, and the company, along with all of its signed artists opt of out any text and data mining. It should be noted the letter states Sony has opted out of data mining for individuals and companies that are using its content for the purpose of commercialization, or in other words, to make money.

Companies that have already received the letter include OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and many more. Additionally, music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify have received a different letter recommending they implement measures that will align with Sony's new policy. This move by Sony Music is the latest from the Sony arm that has signed artists such as Harry Styles, Adele, and Beyoncé to protect its IP from being used to train an AI model that can then produce its own unique music.

Behind the scenes, Microsoft is working on rolling out a slew of new artificial intelligence-powered features for Windows 11 users, and now the company has implemented a dedicated section within the Settings menu for "AI components".

The new addition to the Settings menu was discovered in Windows 11 Build 26217, and isn't officially mentioned by Microsoft within its official blog post for the build. Notably, the new feature is available to developers and testers in the Canary alpha channel, and at the moment it's up for interpretation on what this new feature will do. Presumably, it will track all of the updates for coming AI features such as AI Explorer and Copilot, which was recently rolled out to Windows 11 users' taskbars.

There is also the possibility that "AI component updates" will not only be for AI-powered apps or features but also for hardware dedicated to running AI-based operations locally. Reports indicate Microsoft is preparing for its upcoming Build Developer conference later this year, which is associated with the company encouraging developers to take advantage of Windows and build their own AI features.

It was only recently that NASA confirmed a massive solar flare taking place on the surface of the Sun, with officials confirming its the biggest solar eruption of the last 20 years and this 11-year cycle.

The solar flare took place at 12:51 pm ET on May 14 and was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. For those that don't know, a solar flare happens when the Sun's magnetic field lines are contorted and snap, resulting in a massive outburst of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. These solar eruptions can significantly impact Earth by causing interference with satellite communications, power grids and GPS signals.

Additionally, a solar flare can typically be paired with a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is a blast of solar plasma, or charged particles. When these charged particles either from the CME or the initial flare hit Earth they can produce auroras to appear at lower altitudes, or further south than they typically do. NASA JPL compiled the images of the May 14 solar flare and placed them into a video, which can be seen above.

The European Commission has officially launched an investigation into Meta and it's products, specifically Facebook and Instagram, to see if its breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.

The European Commission writes in its press release that its concerned that Facebook and Instagram aren't doing enough to protect the mental and physical health of children using the apps. The EU states its concerned specifically with the platforms' algorithms as they may create a "rabbit-hole effects" that leads to behavioural addictions in children. Additionally, the Commission is concerned with the Meta's implementation of age verification on both platforms.

In simpler words, the Commission is accusing Facebook and Meta of having algorithms that cause behavioural addictions in children, which leads to them not wanting to put the social media down and participate in real life. Moreover, the investigation will evaluate if Meta is doing all it can to protect children from digesting inappropriate content, and isn't intentionally curating its algorithm to promote addiction.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut is out now for PC. It's one of the latest releases to support DLSS 2 Super Resolution for all GeForce RTX GPUs and DLSS 3 Frame Generation for the latest GeForce RTX 40 Series. With that, NVIDIA has presented benchmark results for what to expect at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with max settings and DLSS 3 enabled.

The video above shows that the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 delivers a smooth 200 FPS experience at 4K. Digging into the full benchmark results (which you can see after the jump), the mid-range GeForce RTX 4070 can also hit an average of 108.7 FPS at 4K with DLSS 3. From the RTX 4070 to the RTX 4090, DLSS 3 delivers a 2.6X increase in performance at 4K.

Interestingly, since the game supports DLSS 3, FSR 3, and XeSS, GeForce RTX 30 Series owners can enable FSR 3 frame generation with DLSS 2 upscaling to boost performance. X user @BlooHook (via Videocardz) posted a screenshot showcasing the GeForce RTX 3090 hitting an impressive 170 FPS using a combination of DLSS and FSR.