Latest Technology Content

Phoenix Labs has announced that their monster hunting title Dauntless will be debuting its open beta today. The developer has also released open beta trailer for everyone to enjoy.

Those that are not aware, Phoenix Labs is a independent developer that harbors former developers from massive studios such as Riot Games, BioWare and Capcom. Players that choose to participate in the open beta for Dauntless will be put into the role of the Slayer. The slayers soul role in the game is to defend humanity against the invading monsters known as the Behemoth's.

Jess Houston, CEO and Co-founder of Phoenix Labs has commented on the titles open-beta debut, here is what he had to say: "Open Beta is an exciting next step for us, but it is just the beginning for what we have planned for Dauntless. For the past four years we've been dedicated to creating the next, great online game for players to share together, and Open Beta is the next huge step in fulfilling our promise. We will be continually adding content and updates to Dauntless and incorporating feedback from our passionate community. We are committed to providing more and more reasons for players to come back to Dauntless for years to come."

FromSoftware, the developers behind the critically acclaimed franchise Dark Souls, have released Dark Souls Remastered a whole day early for Steam users.

For those that are not aware, Dark Souls Remastered does feature some slight changes even though it is mostly a graphical/performance improvement. Players will be glad to know that multiplayer now supports up to six participants as well as the title now runs at a smooth 60FPS instead of the measly 30FPS that it was originally running at.

Graphical wise, Dark Souls Remastered features improved lighting and texture work and for those that have already purchased the original and now de-listed Prepare to Die Edition on Steam, will receive a 50% discount on Dark Souls Remastered. Dark Souls Remastered launched a day early for Steam users, console fans will have to wait a whole day longer to get their hands-on the famously difficult title. Dark Souls Remastered is $39.99 USD on the Steam Store.

Gearbox has taken to their Twitter to announce that their title Borderlands 2 is now 75% off on the Steam store as well as completely free-to-play for the remainder of the weekend.

Players that wish to jump into the Borderlands 2 action with a few friends or solo can pick up the title from the official Steam Store page here.

Gearbox has decided to run the discount deal for the remainder of the weekend and more specifically until May 29th.

Amazon have their evil tentacles in as many places as you can imagine, including a huge $10 billion deal with The Pentagon, so the news of a 1984-style facial recognition technology system shouldn't surprise you, at all.

The new surveillance system is reportedly called "Rekognition", with Amazon having a huge library of "tens of millions of faces" that will see it track up to 100 individuals in a given image, and then analyze their identity. Don't worry about your privacy as this is all for security and your personal safety.

Don't think that Amazon's super-secret Rekognition system is just a pipe dream, it is already deployed in some US cities. Washington County Sheriff's Office is already using Rekognition to reduce the time suspect identification takes, down from multiple days to a few minutes.

Gamers all around the world were excited for the future of mobile gaming on their smartphones and tablets with Valve's touted Steam Link app, but Apple being the courageous company they are have rejected the app on iOS over "business conflicts".

Valve has since released a statement where the Half-Life developer said that Apple approved Steam Link for release on May 7, but in the end rejected the app because there were conflicts that the iPhone maker didn't see in their first review of Steam Link.

Valve said: "On Monday, May 7th, Apple approved the Steam Link app for release. On Weds, May 9th, Valve released news of the app. The following morning, Apple revoked its approval citing business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team".

They continued: "Valve appealed, explaining the Steam Link app simply functions as a LAN-based remote desktop similar to numerous remote desktop applications already available on the App Store. Ultimately, that appeal was denied leaving the Steam Link app for iOS blocked from release. The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we're clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future".

NVIDIA has just released a new set of Game Ready drivers, with the GeForce 397.93 WHQL drivers delivering optimizations for State of Decay 2 and The Crew 2 beta, and more.

The Crew 2 beta test will happen between May 31 and June 4, while the full game is released on June 29, so we get some time with our GeForce graphics cards before the full release in official driver support form. NVIDIA has also added or updated SLI profiles for both DRG Initiative and Star Wars: Battlefront II.

There are a bunch of fixes, which you can read in the full patch notes here. You can grab the new GeForce Game Ready 397.93 WHQL drivers here.

The price of Bitcoin has been sinking for a few solid days now, so it comes as a surprise that hte US Department of Justice is looking into criminal traders who might be manipulating the price of BTC and other cryptocurrenices.

Bloomberg reports from its wources that the DOJ investigation will target practices that have been regulated out of futures and equities markets. Illegal practices happen, where traders will submit false orders and then cancel them at the last minute, or they'll trade big numbers with themselves to create the look of (false) demand.

The site added: "Authorities worry that virtual currencies are susceptible to fraud for multiple reasons: skepticism that all exchanges are actively pursuing cheaters, wild price swings that could make it easy to push valuations around and a lack of regulations like the ones that govern stocks and other assets".

Fortnite is in a constant state of flux for all the right reasons, with developer Epic Games planning some huge changes for the game on all platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4, and iOS.

Epic has said that its fifth State of Development is a tease into future content, with changes to be made to controllers, quality of life improvements, more Limited Time modes, and a new Playground mode that will lets players respawn on the way. Starting with Playground, which is a new Limited Time mode that will load you into the Battle Royale map with more time to explore.

There are more resources, all treasure chests and ammo crates are on offer, and gulp... friendly fire is enabled, with immediate respawns. As for the controllers, Epic is taking the feedback about Builder Pro being inconsistent to heart, making huge improvements along the way.

Qualcomm has just unveiled its new Snapdragon 710 processor, which is a slight bump on the Snapdragon 700 series that the co many unveiled earlier in the year.

The new Snapdragon 710 is better than the mid-range Snapdragon 600 and 700 series designs, with Qualcomm touting double the AI performance compared to the Snapdragon 660. We have the X15 LTE modem and Spectra 250 image processor, lower on the tech tree than the flagship X20 modem and Spectra 280 processor inside of the Snapdragon 800 series.

As for the X15 modem we can expect up to 800Mbps over LTE, with the Snapdragon 710 including 10-bit color support as well as it being the first Qualcomm chip to support 4K HDR playback, a first for Snapdragon outside of the flagship 800 series.

Acer has just unveiled its new, and super-massive 17.3-inch gaming notebooks in the form of the new Predator Helios 500 range, which can pack the latest Core i9 processor from Intel.

The highest-end Predator Helius 500 can be configured with an Intel Core i9-8950HK, which is a 6C/12T chip from the Coffee Lake architecture, while NVIDIA backs the beefy CPU up with the GeForce GTX 1070. The CPU and GPU are cooled with Acer's own Dual AeroBlade 3D cooling system that packs all-metal fans that improve cooling, and opens up the floodgates for overclocking.

You can configure the gaming notebook with up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, with Acer including an Intel Optane SSD as well as providing ports for PCIe SSDs. The 17.3-inch display comes in either 1080p or 4K, with up to 144Hz refresh with G-Sync for the 1080p option. There's a 2.1-channel audio system with a built-in subwoofer on offer, with Acer TrueHarmony and Waves MAXXAudio.