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Messaging apps are one of the banes of my existence. Every time I connect with someone new it seems there's some back and forth on what app we should use to communicate. Often a part of this includes explaining to folks why I don't use things like WhatsApp, due to the mix of ownership, security, and general distaste. It's a horrible conversation where I look like an elitist jerk, but it warms my heart a little to know that now, everyone who works in the US House of Representatives will have to do the same thing.

According to Reuters, a memo went around the House of Representatives staff on Monday explaining that the popular messaging app has been banned. The Meta (Facebook) owned WhatsApp messaging service has been deemed too much of a security risk to be allowed on employees devices.

The memo reads the "Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use."

The ban actually comes just in time, as Meta gets ready to add ads to make the messaging app a bit more like Instagram. This memo has likely saved many in the House of Representatives from some pretty invasive targeted advertising.

Naturally Meta is none too pleased with this development and disagrees "in the strongest possible terms," to the move to ban the app. A spokesperson from Meta also stated that WhatsApp has a higher level of security than other messaging apps that are still allowed. But it's likely not just the security level, but also the likelihood of being targeted that singled WhatsApp out for this ban.

WhatsApp being so popular, and not exactly having the best security around has made it the target of bad actors in the past. This includes Israeli spyware companies like Paragon Solutions. It also means that it's so much easier for hackers to get access via someone you know, due to the apps prevalence, especially with those not so security minded.

Other messaging apps were recommended as alternatives in the memo from the chief administrative officer. Weirdly we don't see Discord, for the gamers in the House (of reps). Instead, these include Microsoft Teams, Amazon's Wickr, Apple's iMessage and FaceTime, and my pick of the bunch, Signal.

Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app I've been using for years. It's an independent nonprofit dedicated to privacy, so there's no ads or tracking. Most importantly, they can't see your chats and neither can anyone else, so it's usually the one I push for in that "what messaging app do you use" conversation from earlier.

Hopefully this will see more people give WhatsApp the boot in favour of exploring some slightly less partial messaging providers. If it's not good enough for the United States House of Representatives, then is it really good enough for you? I don't think so! Maybe consider this the time to treat yourself to a safer, more transparent messaging system that isn't owned by one of the world's richest men.

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Intel, CPUs, and the concept of "badness" aren't necessarily things you'd want to shout about, what with numerous well-documented issues afflicting Intel's recent processors. But a new Oregon-based startup called AheadComputing is leaning hard on the Intel provenance of its founders while claiming that it is creating, "the biggest, baddest CPU in the world." And it's going to do it via IPC or instructions per clock, not cranking up the operating frequencies or throwing in more cores.

That is some statement. All four of AheadComputing's founders had long careers at Intel, dating all the way back to ye olde 386 processor through to the latest Intel Core-branded chips. What's more, AheadComputing also appointed CPU design legend Jim Keller to its board in March. That's at least a vote of confidence, even if it seems unlikely Keller will be involved in the design of AheadComputing's CPUs.

The company is very young, having launched in July last year with a plan to, "develop and license breakthrough, high-performance 64-bit RISC-V processor cores." RISC-V, of course, is an open-source instruction set that exists to present a more modern and cost effective alternative to the proprietary x86 and Arm standards.

Currently, RISC-V chips tend to be found in embedded applications and commercial devices. RISC-V has yet to make much of an impact in PCs or phones, for instance.

Exactly how AheadComputing is going to deliver on that promise of the "biggest, baddest CPU in the world" isn't totally clear beyond the focus in IPC. It's a fabless startup, which means it won't manufacture chips itself. But then the likes of AMD and Nvidia are fabless, too. It's really only Intel that designs and manufactures its own chips, and that business is coming under increasing pressure.

Apple's M4 currently has significantly better IPC than any Intel or AMD CPU. (Image credit: Apple)

According to AheadComputing's CEO Debbie Marr, "the x86 ecosystem is fiercely defending its territory but is destined to lose in the end." As for Arm, she says, "we anticipate that the ARM ecosystem will experience considerable strain in the coming years. If ARM's current customers are pressured excessively, they will consider transitioning to an alternative architecture like RISC-V."

In response, AheadComputing claims it will, "demonstrate leadership in CPU performance and performance per watt in a very short timeframe and start building the second generation of products that will demonstrate our commitment to a roadmap with large gains in performance generation over generation."

AheadComputing says it will achieve that via IPC, or instructions processed per clock, as opposed to operating frequency or adding cores. "If the performance and efficiency from the multi-core scaling era are slowing down, then it's time for the CPU designers to find a different way to use the additional gates from new process technologies. CPU designers must look towards IPC. This will require increasing the functions for each core rather than increasing the number of cores. If we do this intelligently, AheadComputing will provide performance improvements regardless of workload parallelism," says co-founder Jonathan Pearce.

That latter point could be critical. When Intel's plans for 10 GHz-plus computing hit the wall towards the latter end of the 2000's, the company dramatically changed tack in favour of multi-core computing as a way to add performance in the absence of substantial clockspeed improvements.

Adding lots of cores isn't always the best way to improve performance. (Image credit: Intel)

The problem with adding cores is that it relies on multi-threaded workloads. That's fine for many tasks, like 3D rendering. But it's not a magic bullet for every computational task. Indeed, that's why AMD's eight-core Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the weapon of choice for PC gaming, currently. Adding another eight cores in the form of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D typically doesn't do a whole lot for gaming performance.

Whatever, aside from that focus on IPC as opposed to adding cores, AheadComputing isn't going into any detail. For sure, it will be years before the company's CPU core designs have any chance of showing up in a device you can actually buy.

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But the focus on IPC is still interesting. Right now, Apple's M Series CPUs offer the best IPC in a consumer chip by absolutely miles. The latest M4 easily outperforms anything from Intel or AMD when it comes to a single software thread, despite running at significantly lower clockspeeds. Metrics vary, but the M4 probably has a lead of at least 30% in terms of pure IPC versus the best AMD and Intel CPUs, and quite possibly more.

Personally, if you offered me a CPU with either 50% more IPC or 50% more cores, I'd take the IPC every time. That will deliver in almost any circumstance, while multi-core CPUs can be a bit more hit and miss. Aiming for improved IPC also tends to make for better efficiency, which is great for mobile PCs.

Anywho, for now we'll have to chalk AheadComputing down as a slow burn. The company has strong provenance, but it's anyone's guess as to whether it will, in reality, make an impact. My best guess is that if it manages to come up with an interesting core design, it'll get snapped up by one of the big boys, just as the startup Nuvia was bought by Qualcomm and its Oryon CPU cores ended up in the new Snapdragon X chips.

And all of that is before you even begin to ponder the odds of any RiSC-V chip making an impact on the PC. Industry watchers have been predicting Arm chips would take over the PC for decades. That still hasn't happened.

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Almost every graphics card vendor makes an all bells and whistles version of a particular GPU. It might be one that's heavily overclocked or one that follows a particular theme, but nearly all of them have a decent enough cooler to keep things well under control. Asus, on the other hand, might reckon it has them all beat because it's teamed up with Noctua once more to create what possibly might be the coolest and quietest RTX 5080 you can buy.

Previous collaborations between the two companies created the likes of the GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC Edition, and for Nvidia's last generation of GPUs, Asus and Noctua produced a very similar-looking RTX 4080 Noctua Edition. Sporting just two of the famous brown-and-beige fans, the cards were known for being very cool and quiet, albeit being seriously thick.

The Asus RTX 3070 Noctua Edition lording it over a normal graphics card. (Image credit: Future)

At this year's Computex event, Asus proudly displayed its newest Noctua collab: a GeForce RTX 5080 with what must be one of the chonkiest coolers I've seen in a long time. That's because it's host to three Noctua fans, rather than the usual two.

Given that a normal RTX 5080 has a TGP (total graphics power) of 360 W, all those fans might seem sensible, but RTX 4080 isn't that far behind, at 320 W. Asus' RTX 5080 Noctua Edition does have a higher boost clock than the Founders Edition, though, running up to 2,730 MHz compared to the standard 2,617 MHz.

But that's a mere 4% overclock, so perhaps it's possible to squeeze even more out of the RTX 5080 Noctua Edition. After all, Dave, our hardware head honcho, managed to get over 500 MHz more out of an RTX 5080—an overclock of 40%!

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I have to say that while I'm a fan (pun sort of intended) of Noctua's classic colour scheme, and I really liked the chunky look to the RTX 3070 Noctua card, I feel a bit disappointed with the new RTX 5080 Noctua Edition.

Sure, it's about as thick a graphics card as you could ever want, requiring four slots in your chassis, but that brown shroud hides too much of Noctua's lovely fans.

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The original Noctua Editions all have a gloriously cobbled-together affair to them, as if you'd strapped the luxury fans to the heatsink yourself. This new one just seems like any other Asus RTX 5080, just brown in colour, and that's a real shame.

I reckon Asus and Noctua should make something truly spectacular, no matter how ridiculous or expensive it turns out to be.

High-end graphics cards are already priced into the realms of ridiculousness, so a quadruple or quintuple Noctua-equipped RTX 5090 would sell just as well as any other 5090. Mind you, it might be so chonky that you'd never fit one inside your PC without doing some serious metal work.But that's fine by me. Ultra-chunky, ultra-brown, ultra-beige. The perfect Noctua collab.

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While OLED gaming monitors might be a stretch goal for many of us, miniature versions are already being crammed into VR headsets. Much like their bigger, desktop-dwelling cousins, however, the price can be pretty prohibitive. Pimax may be bucking that trend, as it's announced the Dream Air SE, a lighter weight, slightly lower-specced version of its Dream Air Micro-OLED VR headset with a much cheaper pre-order price than the standard model.

It's still $899 for the Lighthouse version, which comes without controllers. Boo. Still, that's a full $1,000 cheaper than the non-SE controllerless version, and what you're getting in the headset itself is still pretty impressive.

Two 2,560 x 2,560 resolution Micro-OLED panels sat behind tailored pancake lenses, for a start. That's not quite as impressive as the 3,840 x 3,552 resolution Sony versions you'll find in the standard Dream Air, but the SE should be much less hardware-demanding as a result. And it's still a fair few more pixels than the 2,064 x 2,208 you'll find in each LCD panel of our current best VR headset pick, the Meta Quest 3.

Plus you get integrated audio and eye tracking, and the whole headset weighs less than 150 grams, which makes it significantly lighter than many traditional headsets I've strapped to my skull over the years. It's a downright gorgeous-looking design, too, if you're into the "I-just-fell-through-an-Apple-factory-in-Cyberpunk-2077" aesthetic.

Should you wish for the luxury of included controllers (and Pimax's camera-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping technology, negating the need for a base station tracking solution), you'll be looking at a total cost of $1,199. The best VR headsets we've tested to date are significantly cheaper than that, but none of them come with Micro-OLED screens, and they don't come cheap.

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That price isn't exactly chump change, granted—but compared to the $2,099 you'd pay for the controller-including regular Dream Air (or the ludicrous $3,499 you'd pay for an Apple Vision Pro), I'd say it's a relatively reasonable sum.

If that's still too pricey a proposition to pay in one go, you could take a look at the Pimax Prime membership program, which lets you pay off the base price of a headset before paying instalments on the rest, with a discount available for the one-off payment in relation to the standard retail price.

It's all a bit overcomplicated if you ask me, but if Micro-OLED VR is where your dreams lie but the price is holding you back, it's probably worth considering.

I haven't had a chance to get hands-on with the Dream Air myself, but I did visit the Pimax booth at CES 2025 for a play around with its Crystal Light VR headset, and the results were impressive.

Virtual reality

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I've never been particularly sold on VR in general, but as a newly-discovered flight sim fan I have to say it really adds something to the experience of bombing around in a fighter jet in DCS World.

Plus, our main critique of the Pimax Crystal Light is its overall bulkiness. The Dream Air and Dream Air SE look downright svelte by comparison, which matters when you plan on wearing something attached to the front of your face for a sweaty, adrenaline-filled gaming session.

Now, where did I put my wallet? Oh, that's right—I've locked it away to prevent myself from buying more gorgeous tech I don't necessarily need. Want, though? Most definitely.

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Last year, Wizards of the Coast announced that when the three core books that formed Dungeons & Dragons' updated 2024 ruleset were out, the essence of those rules—the System Reference Document, or SRD—would be made available under a Creative Commons licence. And now, it has.

This is a big deal because, while D&D's 5th edition rules SRD was previously available under the terms of the Open Gaming Licence, or OGL, it was potentially subject to revision. Letting the basics of the most popular tabletop RPG be used by third-party developers—who could sell their creations and retain the rights to them—had made more niche publications like Weekend at Strahd's and the Uncaged series possible. But when a draft of a possible restriction to the OGL leaked a couple of years ago, the community reacted with outrage.

Releasing this new SRD, version 5.2, under the Creative Commons—specifically the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY-4.0)—means it can't be taken back. And third-party publishers citing it only need to include a single sentence rather than the whole chunk of text the OGL required.

SRD 5.2 also includes more stuff than SRD 5.1 did. It contains multiple feats rather than just one, for starters. It also includes the 2024 update's weapon masteries, 20 more spells, 15 magic items, rules for playing a goliath or orc, and a bunch of additional monsters—the 2024 version of the Monster Manual added a fun rule where a troll's arm or leg could get cut off mid-fight and keep attacking you, which is now part of the SRD, as are rules for Bugbear Stalkers, Swarms of Crawling Claws, Vampire Familiars, and more.

What's not in the SRD are rules for trademarked monsters like illithids and beholders, or the artificer class, rules for bastions, or for playing an aasimar (a person who is part-celestial being, and a counterpart to the tiefling's part-fiend). "These exclusions are based on brand identity protection, licensing strategy, and intellectual property rights", Wizards of the Coast explained in its FAQ.

It's still a chunky 361-page PDF. If you're not looking to create your own D&D material but would just like to learn how to play, Wizards of the Coast also uploaded the new D&D Beyond Basic Rules to give you a way in if, say, you've put 100 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 and would like to take this thing out for a spin around a table with your friends.

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