Author: Chema Carvajal Sarabia

AMD has released its new Ryzen X3D processors, and yes, they bring faster, more high-end gaming chips into the lineup. Still, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D remains the CPU to beat if gaming comes first. Its gaming performance is still excellent, and it usually sells for less than the new Ryzen 9 X3D models.

CPU-Z Download

The new Ryzen 9 X3D parts give buyers 12-core and 16-core options, and AMD’s 3D V-Cache approach still pays off where it counts: high frame rates, good efficiency, and clear gains in games that respond well to extra cache. But most games just don’t need that many cores. So in actual gaming, the gap often ends up much smaller than the spec sheet makes it look.

For people who mostly play games, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still a smart buy. It’s still one of the best gaming CPUs you can get, usually costs less than the top Ryzen 9 chips, and that leaves more room in the budget for a stronger graphics card, extra storage, or faster memory.

The Ryzen 9 X3D chips do make sense if you’re building one PC for everything: gaming, streaming, video editing, and heavy multitasking. That’s where the extra cores matter. If gaming is the main job, though, added cost is a lot harder to justify. Ryzen 9 is the premium option, sure, but there’s no urgent reason to move on from a Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

AMD says the new Ryzen X3D CPUs are available through its retail partners and system builders. If prices stay in a reasonable range, the older Ryzen 7 7800X3D will still be the easiest recommendation. This new generation feels more like a refinement of a formula that already worked than a real reset.

AMD Ryzen Master Download

For 2027, Porsche is giving North American 911 Carrera S buyers a six-speed manual through the brand’s MT Package, putting three pedals back into the lineup after the model had gone PDK-only. The company says this manual version will be sold only in North America.

Assetto Corsa Download

Porsche says a manual 911 Carrera S wasn’t part of the original plan. Then the requests kept coming, and steady feedback from U.S. retailers pushed the company to change course. You’ll only be able to buy it in North America, where Porsche says demand is strongest. The manual Carrera S now joins seven manual 911 variants in the region, and Porsche puts manual take rates at 37% on eligible 911 models and 43% on the 718 Boxster and 718 Cayman.

According to Porsche, the MT Package adds more than just the shifter. It also brings rear-axle steering, a sport-tuned suspension, and the Sport Chrono Package, so for anyone who wants a more involved 911, this update makes a lot of sense. Porsche is making the move with strong numbers behind it, too: the company says U.S. sales rose from 75,415 in 2023 to 76,167 in 2024, 911 sales reached 14,128, and J.D. Power ranked the brand first in the luxury segment in its 2024 U.S. Initial Quality Study.

The manual Porsche 911 Carrera S will be a North America-only offering, and Porsche says manuals should remain available as long as regulations allow and buyers keep asking for them. Hybrid 911 models, though, won’t support one.

Recent U.S. coffee consumption numbers show a clear shift: specialty coffee has now edged past traditional coffee in daily drinking. In the last day, 46% of U.S. adults drank specialty coffee, compared with 42% who drank traditional coffee. Premium coffee isn’t niche anymore. It’s part of the everyday routine.

The same data points to a strong younger audience. Among adults ages 25 to 39, 64% had specialty coffee in the past week. That’s the group pushing subscriptions, buying higher-end kitchen gear, and driving demand for better beans, better brewing, and more interesting flavor.

At home, the equipment tells the story too. Recent U.S. coffee consumption data shows more burr grinders, gooseneck kettles, and pour-over setups in the mix. At the same time, connected brewers that adjust for bean origin and grind size are making the process easier to get into, and smart coffee makers now make up nearly 30% of premium home-brewing equipment sales.

Cold brew and iced coffee aren’t just summer orders now. They’re year-round habits. A UK cold coffee sales study found that sales climbed by more than 2% for every 1-degree increase in temperature.

There’s movement in functional coffee as well. Recent U.S. coffee consumption data shows growth in coffee with adaptogens, nootropics, and collagen. Shoppers also keep asking harder questions about where their coffee comes from, how farmers are paid, and what the environmental cost looks like.

If you work in coffee, retail, or consumer tech, this move toward specialty coffee is a real market signal.

Starting August 24, 2026, YouTube says a public view will count from the first frame of playback on long-form videos, Shorts, and live streams. That means the numbers under YouTube videos are about to jump, even if watch time, retention, and real audience interest barely change, and it brings YouTube closer to the way TikTok and Instagram report views.

YouTube Download

The platform is also adding a new analytics metric that YouTube calls Engaged Views, giving creators and marketers a way to separate raw reach from the people who actually stick around past those opening moments.

If you make videos or track campaign performance, this changes the read on the numbers: bigger public totals could help with sponsor pitches and make cross-platform comparisons easier, but they also dilute the old meaning of a YouTube view and put more pressure on thumbnails, titles, autoplay traffic, retention, and average view duration.

Monetization and YouTube Partner Program eligibility aren’t changing, YouTube says. Revenue and qualification will still be tied to engaged Shorts views and engaged watch hours, not the inflated public count.

The change goes live on YouTube on August 24. It follows YouTube’s Shorts view update from March 2025 and comes ahead of tougher YouTube Partner Program thresholds planned for 2027.

Tesla’s Cybercab robotaxi could start carrying Tesla employees on public roads in Austin as soon as this month, according to reports. If that happens, it would mark one of the first real-world outings for Tesla’s dedicated autonomous ride-hailing program.

The rollout appears to follow the same Austin pattern Tesla has used before, with limited access at the start. What makes this different is the vehicle itself. This would be Tesla’s first purpose-built robotaxi: the compact two-seater Cybercab, with no steering wheel and no pedals. That makes it a much bigger step than adapting a Tesla Model Y.

Tesla has already begun Cybercab production at Gigafactory Texas, although CEO Elon Musk has said output will be agonizingly slow at first.

Reports also suggest Tesla is making its usual case for the vehicle: low running costs, scale later on, a target price below $30,000, private-road testing in Texas, first-responder training in Austin, and some vehicles reportedly outfitted with Starlink antennas for connectivity.

If you’ve been following Tesla’s autonomy plans, this is the part to watch. Safety and regulation may matter more right now than production.

The Cybercab is expected to run on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system, which is still under investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Tesla also remains behind Waymo, Zoox, and Apollo Go, with reported totals of about 380,000 driverless miles, versus Waymo’s more than 220 million rider-only driverless miles.

For now, the Cybercab is only expected to show up in Tesla’s Austin employee program. Any broader robotaxi rollout still appears to be further off.

A repair shop in Saitama, Japan, has started offering a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 22GB upgrade, a mod that takes NVIDIA’s 11GB card and doubles its VRAM.

MSI Afterburner Download

The going price is reportedly ¥45,000, or about $282. That comes out to roughly $25 for each extra gigabyte of VRAM. And if you don’t already have a card to bring in, the same shop is also said to be selling pre-modded 22GB units for under $500. Reports also say the shop recently got hold of enough 2GB Samsung GDDR6 modules to convert 36 cards. That tracks with the market right now: high-VRAM GPUs are still pricey, DRAM costs are climbing, and older cards are getting another look from people running memory-heavy workloads.

The RTX 2080 Ti is a common candidate for this because its memory layout makes higher-capacity chip swaps more workable. Still, if you’re after cheap hardware with a lot of memory, this only really makes sense if you’re fine with advanced soldering, a modified BIOS, a voided warranty, the risk of damage, possible instability, extra heat, weaker long-term reliability, and the fact that gaming performance usually won’t move much anyway since the GPU core itself hasn’t changed.

You can get the service in Japan, and similar 22GB RTX 2080 Ti mods have also been reported in China and the UAE. Hong Kong-based eBay sellers are listing the cards at around $500.

GPU-Z Download

Google began offering downloads from third-party app stores in the Play Store earlier this week, but a federal judge says the company isn’t doing enough.

Aptoide Download

After reviewing the process for accessing the first non-Google store, the judge ruled that Google has added unnecessary “anticompetitive friction” and ordered the company to fix the problems.

Judge gives Google one week to fix anticompetitive app store downloads on Google Play

Google began offering third-party app store downloads in the Play Store earlier this week, but US District Judge James…

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Although Epic and Google are smoothing things over through a global partnership agreement, the two sides are still at odds in the antitrust case in the US. Google lost the case in 2023, and the focus since then has been on determining how to apply the remedies to address Google’s anticompetitive behavior.

One of the key elements of the ruling is the requirement that Google include third-party app stores in the Play Store, giving users an easy way to get apps from sources other than Google. Aptoide Games recently became the first app store of its kind.

However, Google worked hard to avoid this outcome, trying to reach an agreement with Epic to keep third-party app stores out. When it was forced to allow Aptoide’s store under the terms of the ruling, Google didn’t exactly put up a welcome sign for third-party app stores. In fact, the judge found at a hearing held Thursday that Google’s implementation was not good enough, according to The Verge.

Although there is a link to the Play Store’s alternative app stores page, it’s buried several levels deep in its confusing menus. Epic’s lawyer, Yonatan Even, showed in court that even searching for “app store” and “aptoide” did not bring up the expected results, as they do with any other search. Will Google have time to make the changes in a week?