Andrew McDonald

What's driving the day in Westminster. Politics and policymaking in the UK capital.

The Aorus 16X is the gaming laptop of the future – or at least Gigabyte would hope you’d think so. Aorus has gone all in on “AI”, with these machines literally being called “AORUS AI Gaming Laptops”, as part of their “RE:DEFYNE” scheme. Just as a side note – all these buzzword/deliberate misspelling tags just annoy me, I don’t know about you, but anyway, despite such a hefty marketing presence, the actual “AI” features Gigabyte offers here are really pretty minimal. It’s just three items in the Gigabyte Control Center app, as part of the “AI Nexus” section. Actually, if I’m going to be blunt, the only thing remotely close to “AI” here is the Stable Diffusion GUI that’s an optional extra download. The other two “AI” things are basically just two versions of the standard laptop performance modes. One for GPU management, and one for power limits and fan curves like usual. These existing modes now have “AI” options which… just switch between modes based on what programs are open. Yeah. That’s not “AI”. That’s bog-standard programming – it’s pretty likely they just maintain a whitelist of types of apps to trigger a change in mode, and maybe monitor things like GPU and webcam usage to know if it should put you in “gaming” or “meeting” mode.

Report provoked a flurry of questions for the British government Monday afternoon.

Gaming laptops have two graphics cards onboard. One is the powerful one for gaming – the dedicated GPU, or dGPU for short – and the other is the low power one built into the CPU itself – called the integrated GPU or iGPU for short. For the sake of battery life, the iGPU is the one that runs your displays basically any time you aren’t gaming, and the dGPU is literally turned off. When you fire up a game though, the dGPU takes over, and renders your game as fast as it can. The problem with having two graphics cards connected to one display is a bit of a tricky one to solve though. NVIDIA came up with “Optimus” over a decade ago now to do just that. Basically, the dGPU’s video signal was routed THROUGH the iGPU, and then to the display. Optimus would control which GPU was the one doing the rendering.

UK's top diplomat will raise attack on convoys with Israeli government. LONDON — Israeli “extremists” must stop attacks on convoys carrying aid to Gaza, Britain's top diplomat warned Tuesday.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer clashed over prisons and defense — but no MP crossed the Commons floor.

Schools in England have been told not to teach children about gender identity.

Labour leader channels Tony Blair with moody black and white photo — and six big post-election promises.

Good afternoon. This is Andrew McDonald. FRIDAY'S CHEAT SHEET — Jeremy Hunt attacked Labour for making apparently unfunded spending pledges.

THIS is the Logitech G203. I bought it for just £12.59 and it is possibly the best selling gaming mouse on Amazon. Considering you get a whole, complete, working, and name-branded gaming mouse for that sort of cash, why would you ever want anything else? Well, a whole lot of companies think they know why. Something like THIS, the Endgame Gear OP1 8K, costs over FIVE TIMES AS MUCH as the G203, and yet, for the right person, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this over that. Why? Well let me explain!