Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• DeepCool Reveals Electro Limited-Edition Cases and AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
• Cooler Master Redefines Liquid and Air Cooling
• NETGEAR Introduces Nighthawk Pro Gaming With Two Flagship Products to Cut Lag and Enhance Game Play
• Thermaltake New Pacific CL Copper Radiators Series – 7 New Liquid Cooling Assets
• Thermaltake Riing Plus RGB Radiator Fan TT Premium Edition - New AI Artificial Intelligence Interactive Voice Control
• ASRock Intros Ultra Quad M.2 Card
• SteelSeries Announces Rival 600 Gaming Mouse
• ADATA Shows Off “Project Jellyfish:” A Mineral-oil Based DIMM Heatspreader
• Enter a New Era of Gaming Audio with Sennheiser’s New GSP 600 Gaming Headphones
• EVGA Shows Off SuperNova 2200 Watt Power Supply At CES 2018

2017 is gone. It was a great year for Order of Battle with many new expansions being released, greatly expanding the list of available campaigns, scenarios, factions and units, as well as adding plenty of amazing new features.

But let’s look forward, to 2018: there is much more coming your way. Work continues relentlessly and without pause. The goal is to bring the beloved Order of Battle formula to new battlefields and adapt it to represent the various types of warfare waged in WWII.

Next week we will also announce something community related… if you’re a fan of Order of Battle you don’t want to miss this, so stay tuned!

And now something which all players will find extremely useful. We would like to show you an amazing tool developed by a very talented fan, Mojko.

It’s the Unit Navigator, an online tool through which you can browse and compare all the units included in the game! Making the right strategical choice has never been easier. You can read more detailed information here. Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication Mojko!

Order of Battle: World War II is completely free to try. Download it for free and try it immediately for an authentic and challenging World War II strategic experience.

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA has released the GeForce 390.65 WHQL drivers. These drivers come game-ready for “Fortnite,” including support for ShadowPlay Highlights in the “Battle Royale” mode of the game. The drivers also introduce NVIDIA Freestyle technology, which lets you apply custom post-processing effects for your game, or choose from several included post-FX filters. More importantly, the drivers introduce security updates against “Spectre” variant 2 (CVE-2017-5753) vulnerability. The drivers also provide pop-up notifications when an external GPU is connected or disconnected.

You can download the new GeForce 390.65 WHQL Game Ready Graphics Drivers from GeForce Experience and GeForce.com.

Source: TechPowerUp!

Microsoft late-Monday halted Meltdown and Spectre security patches to machines running AMD processors, as complaints of machines turning unbootable piled up. Apparently the latest KB4056892 (2018-01) Cumulative Update causes machines with AMD processors (well, chipsets) to refuse to boot. Microsoft has halted distributing patches to PCs running AMD processors, and issued a statement on the matter. In this statement, Microsoft blames AMD for not supplying its engineers with the right documentation to develop their patches (while absolving itself of any blame for not testing its patches on actual AMD-powered machines before releasing them).

“Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates,” said Microsoft in its statement. “After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown,” it added. Microsoft is working with AMD to re-develop, test, and release security updates, on the double.

Update (09/01): AMD responded to this story, its statement posted verbatim is as follows.

AMD is aware of an issue with some older generation processors following installation of a Microsoft security update that was published over the weekend. AMD and Microsoft have been working on an update to resolve the issue and expect it to begin rolling out again for these impacted shortly.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• Cooler Master Announces New Case Lineup for The First Half of 2018
• Razer Announces the No Battery, Wireless Razer Mamba HyperFlux Gaming Mouse
• Digital Storm Unveils Project SPARK Gaming PCs
• Easily Build a Quiet and Gorgeous System with NZXT’s N7 Z370 Motherboard
• Razer Introduces Nommo Speaker Line
• Vertagear Unveils the World’s First Wireless LED/RGB Gaming Chair – VIDEO
• Thermaltake New Level 20 Full-Tower Chassis Astounds at CES 2018
• Thermaltake Unveils the New View 91 Tempered Glass RGB Edition Super Tower Chassis
• Apacer Adds BLADE FIRE DDR4-3200MHz 64GB Memory To Lineup
• Alienware Launches the AW3418HW Monitor on CES 2018: 34″, WFHD, 3800R, G-Sync
• CORSAIR Launches New PSU, Coolers and Case at CES 2018
• CORSAIR Launches Full Range of Wireless Gaming Peripherals at CES 2018
• Acer Unveils 65-inch Predator Big Format Gaming Display with NVIDIA G-Sync
• ASUS Republic of Gamers Announces ROG Swift PG65 Big Format Gaming Display with NVIDIA G-SYNC
• D-Link’s McAfee-Powered AC2600 Router Automatically Protects Connected Devices
• GIGABYTE AORUS X470 Gaming 7 WiFi is the First Motherboard for Zen+
• HyperX Unveils World’s First Infrared Synchronized DDR4 RGB Memory
• MSI Brings Award-Winning Gear to CES 2018

Near an abandoned French farm in 1918 field telephones crackled with orders in a language that baffled German eavesdroppers—and the code talkers were born

By Richard Selcer @ Historynet.com

During World War II the United States used American Indian code talkers to thwart enemy decoding of battlefield radio and telephone traffic. The exploits of these men—almost all of whom were Navajos serving with the Marines the Pacific—are justly famous, thanks to several popular written histories and the 2002 film Windtalkers.

Yet few people realize that U.S. reliance on code talkers during wartime did not originate with Navajos on some jungle-covered South Sea island. It was, instead, on the shell-pocked Western Front battlefields of World War I that American Indians—mostly Choctaws in Army uniforms—were first tasked with transmitting crucial military communications in languages the enemy could not decipher.

Read on…

We have a bit more information in regards to the Meltdown security exploit which primarily affects Intel’s CPUs, but also has been confirmed to affect some ARM CPU designs. Also the Spectre exploit that every high-performance processor ever made – Intel, AMD, ARM, and POWER – is thought to be vulnerable to. Intel has begun issuing updates for all types of Intel-based computer systems, and Microsoft has issued patches via Windows Update (Windows 10 only). Also there are a few news stories about when and if Intel knew of these security issues for an extended period of time.

• Intel Issues Updates to Protect Systems From Security Exploits
• Microsoft Starts Rolling Out Emergency Patches to Fix Disastrous Chip Bugs
• Intel Aware of CPU Flaws Before CEO Brian Krzanich Planned $24M Stock Sale
• Intel Released “Coffee Lake” Knowing it Was Vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown
• Intel Hit With Three Class Action Lawsuits Related to Security Vulnerability
• AMD Issues Statement Regarding Processor Security
• AMD Big Winner from Chip Flaw Fiasco – More than $11 Billion in Intel Stock Value Wiped Out
• ARM Processor Security Update
• Apple’s Response to Meltdown and Spectre Exploits
• Amazon Rolls Out Patches for Meltdown Exploit
• Google Android Security Bulletin
• Google Updates its Cloud Infrastructure
• Potential Impact on Processors in the IBM POWER Family

Source: TechPowerUp!

Making good on its post-New Year promise, AMD late Thursday released its first Radeon Software Adrenalin iteration for the year, version 18.1.1 Alpha. Being flagged “Alpha,” these are very early drivers, the use of which are not backed by any warranties. They’re not fully tested to work by AMD.

Version 18.1.1 Alpha addresses critical bugs that caused some of the older games to break following Adrenalin 17.12 release. The games, which are nearly a decade old, are AAA blockbusters which are based on the older DirectX 9 API. A number of older DirectX 9 games, such as EA’s “Command & Conquer 3,” “Command & Conquer 4″ series, “Battle for Middle Earth 1-2,” and “The Witcher Enhanced Edition” had simply refused to start following the 17.12 driver update.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Alpha drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

New trailer reveals first playable faction leader, plus new details and victory conditions revealed

Alfred the Great’s victory at the Battle of Edington, in which he stood fast against the Viking invaders and changed the future of the British Isles, marks the player’s historical starting point of 878 AD in the forthcoming game Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia.

See King Alfred alter the course of history in the first in-engine cinematic trailer HERE.

Like Alfred, each playable faction leader will face a series of unique events and branching dilemmas based on historical events. The choices made will have far-reaching and impactful consequences allowing players to write their own story and re-write history.

Players can attempt to achieve victory in a number of ways: by aggressively expanding through force of arms, by increasing their faction’s fame through construction, advanced technology and influence, and by completing a series of unique objectives based on their chosen faction’s history. A final, ultimate victory condition can also be aimed for, presenting the player with a unique and significant late-game challenge.

Further new details on Thrones of Britannia can be found on the games Steam page.

What To Know About New Exploits That Affect Virtually All CPUs

By Ryan Smith @ AnandTech

Security researchers working for Google’s Project Zero group, along with other research groups and academic institutions, have discovered a series of far-ranging security risks involving speculative execution. Speculative execution is one of the cornerstones of high-performance execution on modern CPUs, and is found in essentially all CPU designs more performance than an embedded microcontroller. As a result, essentially every last high-performance CPU on the market or that has been produced in the last couple of decades is vulnerable to one or more of a few different exploit scenarios.

Read on…