Nvidia is also the company with arguably the sharpest elbows in the business. It is nothing if not incredibly pushy. But here’s the thing. That corporate culture of pushiness is not only Nvidia’s most obvious flaw, but also its greatest strength. It’s two sides of the same coin.

The same impetus that motivates Nvidia to innovate relentlessly, to roll out new technologies more aggressively than the competition, also sees it seemingly attempt to actually flatten that competition and engage in some at least questionable commercial practices. 

Latterly, that has most obviously meant frankly offensive graphics card pricing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

Upscaling with DLSS

First, let’s consider some of the good stuff Nvidia has done. Take DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling (opens in new tab). When it first rolled DLSS out in 2018, it felt like a classic Nvidia move, a technology of debatable real-world value that existed as much for marketing purposes as to improve the gaming experience.

But several iterations on and it’s hard to imagine high-end gaming without DLSS. It has become a fantastic tool for improving performance and image quality. Scaling is now a core feature of GPU technology. And with frame generation in DLSS 3 (opens in new tab), Nvidia has raised the bar yet again. Without Nvidia, scaling would barely be a thing at all and every major company is now following its lead.

Adaptive Sync with G-Sync

Nvidia was also critical in making adaptive refresh a default technology, too, with its G-Sync platform. Typically, Nvidia originally engineered its take on adaptive sync to lock users into the Nvidia ecosystem and drive GPU sales, a move that was as technically unnecessary as it was completely in character.

But here we are roughly 10 years on from the first Nvidia G-Sync (opens in new tab) announcement and you can’t buy a gaming monitor or GPU that doesn’t support adaptive refresh. Likewise, the ubiquity of adaptive refresh has forced Nvidia to enable broad compatibility with industry standards for its GPUs alongside its own proprietary G-Sync tech. Ideally, it would have made G-Sync open from the get go, but the end result is still a clear benefit for gamers.

Ray tracing

And what of Nvidia’s push into ray-tracing technology? At launch, with the RTX 20 series (opens in new tab), ray-tracing fit the tried and tested Nvidia technology template. Shiny shiny, totally locked down to Nvidia hardware, dubious real-world benefits. 

Three generations on and maybe ray-tracing still isn’t hugely compelling in terms of its impact on actual image quality in today’s games. But  it’s being used in more and more games, and while it may not be a thing to hang a game around these days it’s become almost the default high-end lighting setting in a modern game’s config options. It’s also surely on the way to replacing rasterization as the core technology for rendering lighting in games. 

And we’re equally sure that process wouldn’t be nearly as far along without Nvidia. No-one else was going to take the plunge and bear the weight of early adoption to get to the point where every single GPU maker is now focusing on making sure that ray tracing capabilities are a core component of their design.

Intel made sure (and maybe regretted putting so much emphasis on it) for its first generation of Arc GPUs, and AMD is improving its own ray tracing performance with every new generation of Radeon cards.

AI

You can say the same for AI technologies in a broader sense. For now, it’s a little tricky to see how Nvidia’s big push into AI directly benefits PC gaming beyond the role it plays in DLSS—and even that is debatable given AMD has managed to produce fairly competitive scaling technology without using AI. But if history tells us anything, it’s that when Nvidia leans into something, it usually ends up being very important.

There are plenty more areas of innovation we could debate, such as the doomed efforts around SLI and multi-GPU gaming, as well as stereoscopic 3D. It’s regular funding of research has also lead to the pancake lenses which are starting to be used in VR headsets to make them smaller, more comfortable, and with sharper visuals. 

But what of Nvidia’s more ambiguously shady antics? Well, some would argue that its attempts to align certain games with Nvidia hardware has been bad for PC gaming in general. There has also been some public consternation about its marketing practices with manufacturers, which eventually lead to Nvidia shuttering its GeForce Partner Program in 2018 to put an end to what it described as the “rumors, conjecture and mistruths” (opens in new tab) surrounding the program.

EVGA also recently publicly went on record about the reasons for its own departure from the graphics card market, citing working with Nvidia as a contributing factor in its decision.

You cannot have Nvidia’s yin without its yang.

Nvidia also has a rather ugly track record when it comes to attempts to punish media outlets for not subscribing to its preferred narrative. Banning YouTube channels from the review cycle (and then hastily unbanning them (opens in new tab)) for not giving ray-tracing enough coverage is exactly the sort of pointless, counterproductive, and petulant behaviour that tarnishes the Nvidia brand.

Nvidia’s product positioning can sometimes seem expressly intended to offend gamers, too. Nvidia pushed things so far with the RTX 4080 12GB recently, the backlash forced Nvidia to cancel the card (opens in new tab) before it had even been released.

As an outsider, much of if not all of this seems to derive from the character and energy of Nvidia’s iconic founder and CEO. Without direct personal experience of Jen-Hsun Huang, character commentary is by definition derivative and speculative. But the man certainly seems to ooze a very specific sort of passionate, though combative energy from every pore. It’s not hard to see the parallels between Huang’s persona and how Nvidia the corporate beast goes about things.

All of which is really to say that while it might be terribly easy to dislike Nvidia at times, not only is it a fantastic company that has pushed gaming technology forward in a manner few others can match, but those benefits are a consequence of the very same factors that make Nvidia seem like the villain at times. You cannot have Nvidia’s yin without its yang.

Right now, with GPU prices sky high, admittedly it’s maybe hard to fully appreciate the benefits Nvidia brings. But in the long haul, and as much as it pains me to say this, we’re all better off thanks to Nvidia, warts and all.

Turning a few early yellows into greens sometimes leaves me a bit stumped when everything else is grey—now what? Luckily for me, I’d stumbled upon the right sort of greens in the right places this time, and they left me with little guessing room for anything other than today’s answer.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Thursday, February 16

A conjurer, sorcerer, or fairy godmother would probably use this power to perform special tricks. Today’s answer is almost always the “M” in “MP” when the term appears in any sort of fantasy role-playing game. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

No, there is no double letter in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If you’re new to the daily Wordle puzzle or you just want a refresher after taking a break, I’ll share some quick tips to help you win. There’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day. 

• A mix of unique consonants and vowels makes for a solid opening word. 
• A tactical second guess should let you narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• There may be a repeat letter in the answer.

You’re not up against a timer, so you’ve got all the time in the world—well, until midnight—to find the winning word. If you’re stuck, there’s no shame in coming back to the puzzle later in the day and finishing it up when you’ve cleared your head. 

Today’s Wordle answer

What is the Wordle 607 answer?

Save your win streak. The answer to the February 16 (607) Wordle is MAGIC.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Keeping track of the last handful of Wordle answers can help to eliminate current possibilities. It’s also handy for inspiring opening words or subsequent guesses if you’re short on ideas for the day.

Here are the last 10 Wordle answers:

• February 15: SALSA
• February 14: SOUND
• February 13: USAGE
• February 12: GIANT
• February 11: DEBUG
• February 10: HEADY
• February 9: STAGE
• February 8: FLAIL
• February 7: APPLE
• February 6: NINTH

Learn more about Wordle 

Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes every day and the aim is to figure out the correct five-letter word by entering guesses and eliminating or confirming individual letters.

Getting off to a good start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ARISE—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good tactic. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips (opens in new tab), and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle (opens in new tab), refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures (opens in new tab). Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

There’s a lot of questions about this brave new world of AI and important issues around ethical concerns and the future of this tech. The use of AI generated art (opens in new tab) plus the release of ChatGPT to the general public, or whoever can afford it (opens in new tab), has brought all of this to the forefront. It has experts like Turing Award winner John Hennessy (opens in new tab) expecting the AI singularity to be upon us much faster than we ever expected.

“The AI revolution is upon us. It’s stunning,” Hennessy said Monday at the TechSurge conference (thanks, Cnet (opens in new tab)). “It’s awakened in everybody a sense that maybe the singularity… this turning point where computers really are more capable than humans, is closer than we thought.”

In its current form AI can look impressive, but a lot of this is due to its single-minded training. If you force an AI to look at uncountable images, it’s expected that it should be able to output some of its own. Of course, there’s contention around the ownership of what’s created given it’s used the hard work of many artists (opens in new tab) that have been fed into the machine. This can make a very good art-copying machine, but it lacks the versatility of human creativity. 

That’s why right now, most experts like Hennesey see AI as a tool to add to the human arsenal, rather than replace it. AI’s not to be trusted to produce results on its own, as we have seen time and time again, but with some supervision can be used to aid in creation.

“I may not get a video that’s perfect or a PowerPoint presentation or a paragraph that’s perfect. But maybe I get something I can really work with, then use some human intelligence to make it even better,” Hennessy said.

This current form of AI is why Google likely hadn’t released its own Bard AI (opens in new tab) until ChatGPT was already dominating internet headlines. In truth, there likely hasn’t been enough care taken with releasing AIs into the world as we’ve seen with the ability to teach them bigoted concepts or produce illicit content like malware (opens in new tab).

“Google was hesitant to productize this because it didn’t think it was really ready for a product yet. But I think as a demonstration vehicle, it’s a great piece of technology,” Hennessy, who also happens to be chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, said. “You don’t want to put a system out that either says wrong things or sometimes says toxic things. Right. There’s a level of caution about this.”

But Hennesey, like some other big names in tech (opens in new tab), mostly speaks with optimism for the future of AI. He describes machine learning as being able to programme with data rather than code, which is a pretty powerful use case across almost any industry. Given its proven ability to scale up and continue to produce impressive leaps, experts are expecting AI to impress upon the singularity much faster than we expected. This means we might be seeing AIs that are comparable to human intelligence within the next 20 years.

“Some of us thought that point at which we’d have artificial general intelligence was 40 or 50 years away. I think everybody’s horizon has moved in by probably 10 or 20 years,” Hennessy said. “These models keep getting bigger, and every time we make a jump up in the size of the model, we seem to be able to do new tasks. We don’t know where that’s going to plateau yet.”

The three unforgivable curses can’t be learned through main quests or professor assignments like every other spell can. They are also the only spells that are not only optional, but can be actively rejected. You have to go out of your way to learn these powerful curses, and if you do, you’ll probably find many of the game’s later combat sequences much easier.

Here’s how Hogwarts Legacy unforgivable curses work, how to learn them, and how to change your mind if you reject them.

Hogwarts Legacy unforgivable curses: How to learn them

Unlike all of the other optional spells in Hogwarts Legacy, the three unforgivable curses have to be learned through Sebestian Sallow’s relationship sidequests. The “In the shadow of” questline follows Sebastian’s mission to find a cure for his sister’s curse by any means necessary. Interestingly, you always have the option not to learn a curse and keep it locked on your spell list instead (though there is a way to still learn them later). Here’s when you can learn each curse:

• Crucio: Optionally learned during the quest “In The Shadow of the Study” if you ask Sebastian to teach you.
• Imperio: Optionally learned during the quest “In The Shadow of Time” if you accept Sebastian’s offer to learn it.
• Avada Kedavra: Optionally learned during the quest “In The Shadow of the Relic” if you accept Sebastian’s offer to teach you.

Hogwarts Legacy unforgivable curses: How they work

Crucio

What it does: Curses target, increasing damage dealt to them while active. Medium cooldown.

During “In The Shadow of the Study”, the search takes you, Sebastian, and Ominis Gaunt to a secret tunnel below Hogwarts leading toward Salazar Slytherin’s Scriptorium. It’s here where the first unforgivable curse, Crucio, becomes available.

Imperio

What it does: Turns the target enemy into an ally temporarily. Medium cooldown.

Later on during “In The Shadow of Time”, Sebastian offers to teach you Imperio to aid in clearing out a monster-filled catacomb. You can say no and still complete the quest as designed.

Avada Kedavra

What it does: Instantly kill the target. Long cooldown.

Yea, pretty hardcore. In one of the final missions of the questline, “In the Shadow of the Relic”, Sebastian once again offers to teach you another curse. Considering this one is the Killing Curse, and arguably the most powerful spell in the game, think carefully about that one.

Where to relearn unforgivable curses

If you accidentally refuse to learn an unforgivable curse or, like me, reach Hogwarts Legacy’s endgame and just want to fiddle with every spell possible, there is a way to learn each curse after their initial quest. 

Once you complete Sebastian’s questline, you can talk to him in the Undercroft and he will happily teach you any of the three curses you might’ve missed. You’ll still have to do the spell unlocking minigame for each one and keep in mind that once you learn them, you can’t unlearn them.

Considering the game never actually judges you for using the curses and, frankly, you do a lot of heartless murdering throughout Hogwarts Legacy whether you curse people or not, you should probably just take the powerful spells and never look back, unless you’re roleplaying an upstanding citizen.

Hogwarts Legacy currently has no way for your witch or wizard to swap their talents (opens in new tab) around, or reset them. Once you’ve made a decision to invest in one of the game’s talent trees, you’re stuck with it.

But tucked away in the game’s files is a bit of code that reads: “RPG_PotionAbility_TalentReset.” This potion causes the “RPGTriggerEffect_TalentReset” and is located under the “TalentReset” folder, according to EIPGaming (opens in new tab). The potion even has a sparkly purple texture file associated with it. It isn’t used for anything in the game though, and seems to be either cut content or potentially a developer tool.