Jon Martindale

Gloucester

Buyer's guide writer at U.S. News & World Report

Vetted Contributor at Forbes

Evergreen Writer, Freelance at Digital Trends

Byline hog. I write for @DigitalTrends @Forbes @lifewiretech @pcworld and a bunch of other places. Self-published author. Indie gamedev. FOD Labour

Articles

TSMC Plans to Produce 30% of 2nm and Sub-2nm Chips in US

5 days ago | extremetech.com | Josh Gulick |Jon Martindale

Credit: TSMC TSMC made clear this week that it has big plans for Fab 21, its Arizona chip manufacturing campus. In an earnings call, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei dismissed reports that the company was considering a joint venture with Intel and laid out the chipmaker’s plans for its burgeoning US presence.
SpaceX Starship, Explained: What You Need to Know About Elon Musk's Biggest Project Ever

5 days ago | extremetech.com | Ryan Whitwam |Jon Martindale

Credit: SpaceX SpaceX has changed humanity's relationship with space. Where once we had to painstakingly plan every rocket launch and dump most of the vehicle in the ocean, SpaceX now sends Falcon 9s into orbit at an industrial scale. This reusable rocket regularly deploys dozens of internet satellites and has now completed multiple launches to the International Space Station. NASA has even authorized the Falcon 9 and its Dragon capsule to transport astronauts, a first for private aerospace.
Try Out the Future of Gaming With Nvidia's Zorah Demo

5 days ago | extremetech.com | Jon Martindale |Devesh Beri

If you have a fancy new RTX 50-series graphics card, or something equally capable, and want to try out Nvidia's impressive Zorah demo for yourself, now you can. Initially unveiled alongside its RTX 50 graphics cards at CES 2025, Nvidia's new demo lets you see how advanced raytracing and neural shaders might make the games of the future look borderline photo realistic. Graphics demos are nothing new in gaming—I still remember being blown away by 3DMark 2001's Matrix-inspired elevator scene.
Gigabyte's RTX 5060 Cards Are Adorably Short

5 days ago | extremetech.com | Jon Martindale |Devesh Beri

Credit: HardwareLuxx If you want to pack a lot of graphical power into your next compact gaming PC, Gigabyte's new range of RTX 5060 GPUs may be the cards for you. They use a mere x8 PCIe 5 interface rather than the full x16, allowing them to run on much shorter PCBs. Indeed, the board inside the new RTX 5060 Ti Eagle is just four inches long, despite the full-size cooler design making the card much longer in total.
What Is an LLM and How Does It Work?

5 days ago | extremetech.com | David Cardinal |Devesh Beri |Jon Martindale

The world is being taken by storm by the apparently amazing "superpowers" of the latest generation of large language models (LLMs). Whether you've used DeepSeek, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude, you've almost certainly wondered, "How did they do that?"Artificial intelligence guru Andrej Karpathy has produced one of the best tech videos I've ever watched.
Buying a USB-C cable? Beware these 6 crucial gotchas

5 days ago | pcworld.com | Jon Martindale

It’s been a few years since USB-C first hit the scene. And while we still love how reversible it is and how powerful it’s become, we’re also more aware of the potential pitfalls around this high-powered cable. There have been plenty of stories of poor-quality cables frying components, shorting chargers, or even catching fire, so we’ve gone to great lengths to test many options, including some of the best USB-C cables you can get and some of the most hazardous to avoid.
Microsoft: Work PCs Are Getting Windows 11 Upgrades Even When Blocked by Company Settings

6 days ago | extremetech.com | Devesh Beri |Jon Martindale

Microsoft has stated that some users are still being offered upgrades to Windows 11, even when Intune settings are in place to prevent these updates. Not all organizations or users are affected, but those impacted have reported that even devices 100% excluded by the policy were offered the upgrade. Reports from organizations say thousands of devices are affected, with users receiving the upgrade prompt despite being excluded from the policy.
Microsoft’s Copilot Studio Now Lets AI Handle Tasks on Any App or Website

6 days ago | extremetech.com | Devesh Beri |Jon Martindale

Microsoft has added a new tool to Copilot Studio this week that lets AI agents use websites and desktop apps just like people do. With this update, the AI can click buttons, choose menu items, and type into fields on the screen. The Computer Use tool is described by Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s business & industry Copilot, as a way for agents to handle tasks even when there is no API available to connect to the system directly.
Galax's Record-Breaking HOF RTX 5090D Graphics Card Will Get a Public Release After All

6 days ago | extremetech.com | Jon Martindale |Josh Gulick

Credit: Galax/VideoCardz Nvidia board partner Galax has announced that its record-breaking Hall of Fame RTX 5090D graphics card will get a public release. Although it's likely to be a Chinese-only launch, the RTX 5090D HOF OC Lab XOC Edition GPU will be available to general enthusiasts, not just Galax partner overclockers. No word on pricing or release date yet, but we do have a swanky promo image.
TSMC Calls BS on Intel Joint Venture Reports

6 days ago | extremetech.com | Josh Gulick |Devesh Beri |Jon Martindale

Credit: TSMC TSMC’s CEO, C.C. Wei, denied reports that the company was in talks with Intel about a joint venture. He addressed the issue yesterday during the company's earnings call, during which it announced that it had a net revenue of $25.53 billion in the first quarter of 2025.