Month: September 2024

The long-troubled production of a Minecraft movie looks to finally be underway, with a report from film industry outlet Productionlist saying that it’s scheduled to start principal photography—that is, start making the movie proper—on August 7th, 2023 in New Zealand.

The film will be directed by Napoleon Dynamite and Masterminds director Jared Hess. Perhaps more surprising is that it’ll star Jason Momoa, though we don’t know as who, with other rumors saying that Pedro Pascal will star as Steve. Supposedly very funny man Matt Berry, of TV series Toast of London and What We Do in The Shadows, will also make an appearance.

That’s right though, folks: Joel from The Last of Us, aka The Mandalorian, could also be Minecraft Steve. Talk about multiverse movie potential right there.

We don’t know the plot of this film adaptation, though many outlets are reporting the plot to be that of one of the two earlier, cancelled attempts at a Minecraft movie. I expect at the very least a repeating jumpscare gag involving the hissing noise of a Creeper about to explode.

Not that Minecraft really has a plot in the first place, which is probably why it has been so …

Windows updates often feel like a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. Who among us hasn’t been waylaid by a huge update package download—or chosen the “update and shutdown” option at the end of a long day only to sit watching a painfully slow percentage indicator lurch forward? Now Microsoft has announced it’s changing things up, with “checkpoint cumulative updates” that promise to speed up the process considerably.

Windows 11 version 24H2 has been available in the Windows Insider program for a while now but is scheduled for a main release at some point towards the end of this year. Microsoft says that as part of the update, it’s introducing update features and security enhancements through smaller, incremental download packages that only contain the changes since the previous update.

Essentially, up until now Windows updates have tended to grow in size, with a download package that contains files you may not necessarily need (via Windows Latest). Provided you’ve been incremental updating your system (as you really should, to maintain a safe OS), from 24H2’s release you’ll only need to download and install updates with exactly what’s needed, rather than th…

I’m sometimes asked why we don’t often recommend Gen 5 NVMe drives (although, to be fair, we do recommend one). Alright, I don’t get asked it that often I guess, but the answer remains the same as it was when they first came out—they’re very fast, but so are Gen 4 drives, at least for gaming. 

More than that, they’re pricey, again compared to Gen 4. And then there’s the kicker—they also have a tendency to run very, very hot.

Team Group’s Computex 2024 booth had some fresh examples of the speedy little drives, including a T-Force Pro SSD with a quoted 14,173 MB/s read and 12,757 write rate, apparently soon to be available in 8 TB configuration. I asked how much it might potentially cost, and one of the booth reps laughed knowingly, before shaking their head.

That’ll be rather expensive then. Just a hunch. Anyway, speedy, pricey. Same old story, really. But what about the heat?

Well, Team Group does appear to have been iterating on cooler designs to beat the heat from Gen 5 drives, with some potential pre-production ideas on display. The problem is, none of them really get around the fact that to get the most out of a top spec Gen 5 drive, …