Minecraft Snapshot 25w42a Brings Spear Upgrades and Underwater Visual Enhancements

Minecraft’s latest Snapshot 25w42a brings exciting refinements to gameplay, visuals, and enchantments ahead of the upcoming Mounts of Mayhem update. Players can now apply both Lunge and Mending enchantments to the Spear, a long-requested change that boosts flexibility and durability during combat and exploration.

The snapshot also enhances underwater visuals, introducing smoother fog transitions that better blend across biomes. This change creates a more immersive diving experience, allowing players to explore ocean monuments, coral reefs, and deep-sea caves with greater clarity and atmosphere.

Additionally, the “Oh Shiny” advancement has been updated to include the Golden Spear and Golden Nautilus Armor, giving collectors and completionists new goals to pursue. Zombie Horses can now be leashed after dismounting their rider, while Nautilus and Zombie Nautilus are now controllable on both land and water.

On the technical side, the snapshot updates Data Pack version 90.0 and Resource Pack version 70.1, paving the way for smoother mod and resource integration. Overall, Snapshot 25w42a adds polish, balance, and creative freedom continuing Minecraft’s steady evolution into a richer and more dynamic sandbox world.

BGMI brings regional creator voices to the battleground

Battlegrounds Mobile India is adding Special Quick Voices from Scout in Hindi, Sayip in Malayalam, and Raven in Tamil, pushing regional flavor straight into every match. Part of the BGMI 4.0 update, the voices package iconic catchphrases and reactions that players can trigger for faster callouts and swagger. Examples range from Scout’s Tere bhai ka laser spray to Raven’s Sathiyama 1 hp bro and Sayip’s Mutheeee ethaaaa adi.

The voices arrive as limited time Special Crates in the store. Sayip runs October 14 to November 22, Scout runs October 19 to December 15, and Raven runs October 31 to December 8. Community challenges and creator led events round out the campaign for India’s biggest battle royale.

DreamHack India celebrates six years with a mega gaming and pop culture festival in Hyderabad

DreamHack India returns for its sixth year, teaming up with Hyderabad Comic Con 2025 to deliver three days of gaming, cosplay, and pop culture mayhem from October 31 to November 2. The event features high-stakes tournaments across Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6, and Super Smash Bros, along with a ₹5,00,000 chess showdown and the Android PANFEST Battle Royale. Fans can relive retro classics, join the 72-hour BYOD LAN party, or compete in cosplay battles with daily cash prizes.

This year’s Tekken 8 competition is an official Tekken World Tour Dojo event, adding global stakes to the action. With NODWIN Gaming and Comic Con India leading the charge, DreamHack 2025 cements itself as India’s ultimate celebration of gaming, creativity, and community.

Sandisk Gen5 SSD earns OCP Inspired nod for AI hungry data centers

Sandisk’s SN861 PCIe Gen5 NVMe drive has been recognized as OCP Inspired by the Open Compute Project, signaling compliance with the Datacenter NVMe SSD spec and availability on the OCP Marketplace. The company positions the SN861 for fast growing AI and machine learning workloads across hyperscale, cloud, and enterprise environments, highlighting a focus on performance, capacity, and power efficiency.

Capacities reach up to 16 TB, with ultra-low latency targets and a low power profile aimed at higher IOPS per watt and lower total cost of ownership. The recognition spans U.2 and E1.S form factors. OCP praised the product across its pillars of efficiency, impact, openness, scale, and sustainability, citing enterprise readiness for demanding tasks.

Streamoid debuts CXO to fix messy product data and speed retail workflows

Streamoid has launched CXO, an AI command center that stitches together product data, design, studio, and catalog operations for brands. Announced October 15, the platform targets a common failure point: inconsistent product data that breaks search, recommendations, and analytics.

CXO groups tools into three modules. Artifax converts trends and sales signals into concept boards and factory ready tech packs. Photogenix runs shoots, enforces brand guidelines, and produces on model images and short video. Catalogix ingests and enriches item data, publishes listings across channels. Context aware agents pick models for each task, with humans editing results and training brand specific systems over time.

Early users report up to 70% faster launches and 50% lower costs. Clients include Target and Gap worldwide.

Hohem Launches iSteady X3 and V3 Ultra Gimbals with Advanced AI Tracking and Stabilization

Hohem has launched its latest flagship smartphone gimbals, the iSteady X3 and V3 Ultra, designed for creators seeking pro-level stabilization and AI precision. The iSteady X3 features iSteady 8.0 3-axis stabilization, a magnetic remote, and a three-color fill light, making it ideal for vloggers and travelers. It offers 11 hours of runtime, a 205mm extension rod, and AI tracking via the Hohem Joy app.

The iSteady V3 Ultra takes performance further with iSteady 9.0 stabilization, built-in AI vision tracking, and a touchscreen remote that streams live feed up to 33 feet away. Supporting gesture control, portrait rotation, and wireless phone charging, it’s built for filmmakers on the go.

AI ready companies sprint ahead as Cisco warns of rising infrastructure debt

Cisco’s latest AI Readiness Index draws a stark line between leaders and laggards. A small cohort of Pacesetters is three times more likely to push pilots into production and 72% more likely to report measurable value. They treat AI as core strategy, back it with budgets, and design networks that scale for heavier, always on workloads.

Ambition is racing ahead of foundations. Ninety one percent plan to deploy AI agents, and 41% expect them to work alongside employees within a year, yet many lack centralized data, sufficient GPU capacity, and secure, flexible networks. Cisco labels the gap AI infrastructure debt, a build up of deferred upgrades that drags returns and raises risk. The takeaway is blunt. Value follows readiness.

NVIDIA and MediaTek unveil desktop AI powerhouse with DGX Spark

NVIDIA and MediaTek have unveiled the DGX Spark, a personal AI supercomputer powered by the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip. The system delivers one petaflop of AI performance by pairing a 20-core Grace CPU with the latest Blackwell GPU and 128GB of unified memory. Built with MediaTek’s power-efficient design, the Spark runs on a standard outlet yet handles massive AI models up to 200 billion parameters. Two units can link for even larger workloads. Vince Hu, Vice President at MediaTek, said the launch makes advanced AI computing more accessible from edge to cloud. The DGX Spark goes on sale today, bringing data center performance to the desktop for researchers, creators, and developers worldwide.

Oracle and AMD push AI limits with 50,000 GPU supercluster launch

Oracle and AMD have announced a massive expansion of their partnership, unveiling plans for the first publicly available AI supercluster powered by 50,000 AMD Instinct MI450 GPUs. Launching in Q3 2026, the system will run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and use AMD’s new Helios rack design featuring next-generation EPYC CPUs and Pensando networking. The collaboration aims to give enterprises the compute scale needed to train multi-trillion-parameter AI models.

Mahesh Thiagarajan of Oracle said the alliance combines “the latest AMD processor innovations with OCI’s flexible platform.” AMD’s Forrest Norrod added that the partnership delivers “open, optimized, and secure systems built for massive AI data centers.” The move underscores how hyperscalers are racing to expand AI capacity ahead of the next wave of generative applications.

NetApp unveils AI data engine and AFX storage to feed models at scale

NetApp launched a deeper AI data stack, pairing a new AI Data Engine with its disaggregated all-flash AFX system to turn scattered enterprise data into an AI-ready foundation. Built on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, the engine unifies ingestion, vectorization, semantic search, and policy controls under one pane, cutting the grunt work between data lakes and inference. AFX decouples performance and capacity, scales across clusters, and is certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. Optional DX50 control nodes add a global metadata layer, while ONTAP brings familiar data management and cyber recovery. NetApp also advanced its Azure story with an Object REST API for Azure NetApp Files and new FlexCache features that extend a unified namespace across hybrid and multicloud.

Oracle puts data to work with new AI Data Platform

Oracle unveiled its AI Data Platform at AI World in Las Vegas on October 14, bringing general availability to a unified stack that links enterprise data, applications, and generative models. The platform blends automated ingestion, semantic enrichment, and vector indexing with tools on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Autonomous AI Database, and OCI Generative AI. It aims to move projects from raw data to production faster while keeping governance intact.

Zero ETL and Zero Copy connect finance, HR, supply chain, and other systems across multicloud and on premises. Agent Hub coordinates AI agents using open standards like A2A and MCP. Oracle also tapped NVIDIA accelerated computing for training and inference. Accenture, Cognizant, KPMG, and PwC pledged more than $1.5 billion to develop use cases.

IoT moves to the main stage as AI supercharges rollouts

Enterprises are treating connected devices as core infrastructure, not experiments. In Verizon’s 2025 IoT Market Insights, 66% already run cellular IoT, 81% see clear value in 5G, and 74% plan to use RedCap or eRedCap, signaling cheaper, simpler radios are on the way. AI is the accelerant. Seventy percent say it sped deployments, 84% call it essential, and 82% pair AI with camera and video to make faster decisions. Scale is jumping too, with deployments over 10,000 devices expected to more than triple from 2025 to 2026. Still, security is the top headache for 43% of respondents. Sector snapshots show momentum in transportation fleet management, retail personalization, and remote patient monitoring in healthcare.

TeamViewer and Salesforce fuse AI and remote connectivity for next-gen IT service

TeamViewer has integrated its Digital Employee Experience (DEX), remote connectivity, and AI tools with Salesforce’s new Agentforce IT Service, creating a smarter, faster approach to IT support. The integration allows IT teams to monitor and fix issues across devices in real time, automate routine resolutions, and step in remotely through TeamViewer Tensor without leaving Salesforce.

Adding TeamViewer Intelligence gives Agentforce users agentic AI that anticipates problems and documents every fix for full transparency. “This partnership transforms IT from a reactive model to a proactive, conversational solution,” said Alex Wallner, CEO Central Europe at Salesforce. TeamViewer CEO Oliver Steil added that it enables IT teams to “resolve issues with greater precision and anticipate needs proactively.” The integration launches ahead of Dreamforce 2025.