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Nintendo recently debuted an updated model of the Nintendo Switch and while it was advertised that the updated console only came with improved battery life, some other improvements have been found.

According to the Digital Foundry, the improved Nintendo Switch (model no. HAC-001(-01) has a battery improvement of around 60 - 70 percent, when compared the previous model. While that might of been the only reason users would consider purchasing this new model, there is also other improvements. Digital Foundry discovered that the new Switch actually has performance improvements as well, they tested games such as Fast RMX, Mortal Kombat 11, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and found that it runs games at 2 - 3 frames faster.

When talking about heat, the new model doesn't run any cooler than the previous model. This new model comes with an upgraded Tegra X1 processor, but not an upgraded screen. Digital Foundry claims to have imported this new model Switch from Hong Kong, and found that the screen had a pinkish "color temperature" to it when the previous model that had a warm blueish tint to it. It seems that Nintendo is suffering from screen lottery, due to the company using multiple manufacturers to build their screens. This is quite rough for Nintendo.

Two NASA astronauts have taken a leap outside the International Space Station and begun a walk to install a brand new loading bay for future visiting space crafts.

The walk lasted for 6 hours and 32 minutes and astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan worked together to install the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to the space facing side of the station. This successful installation will serve as a literal parking spot for future NASA, SpaceX and Boeing spacecrafts.

This marked the first time Morgan has ventured out into the infinite abyss via a spacewalk, and according to Mike Barratt, spacecraft communicator in Mission Control, "Welcome to the club, you did a brilliant job." The ISS crew aboard is currently doing experiments and stem cell differentiation in a zero gravity environment. With this hopeful new found knowledge, NASA, SpaceX and Boeing believe this information will be able to assist the human-race level push to land on Mars.

Astronomers have located three Earth-sized planets which are orbiting a neighboring star that is about 12 light-years away.

The scientists estimate that all three of the discovered planets are to be at least 1.4 to 1.8 times the mass of Earth, and that they orbit their star every three to 13 days. To give a digestable example of how short this is, in our solar system, Mercury has the shortest orbit of our Sun at just 88 days. The most interesting part of this three planet discovery is the planet that has been titled as 'planet d', scientists are most interested in this planet because it falls within the star's habitable zone with the possible chance of water existing on the surface.

Ignasi Ribas, a co-author on the new paper and a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain said "We are now one step closer [to] getting a census of rocky planets in the solar neighborhood". It is extremely difficult to determine if 'planet d' harbors the requirements for life to exist, as scientists need to account for the past of the star its orbiting. It could be possible that the star has ejected large amount of radiation at 'planet d', essentially ruining any possible chance of the planet having a habitable atmosphere.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare isn't far away, so to keep us hyped N-Gamz has released a new 24-minute gameplay video from the PC version of the game. Check it out below:

It is labelled as ray tracing, but it is not using RTX at all. The video of COD: Modern Warfare was run on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, and I'll give you a warning -- this person is not very good at playing the game, at all. I think I just grinded away a layer of my teeth cringing at this. Still, a good 24-minute look at the game nonetheless.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will support RTX-based ray tracing features (which NVIDIA detailed more of at Gamescom 2019 this week), which looks absolutely awesome -- highlighting the power of the GeForce RTX line of graphics cards. The game will also feature uncapped framerates, an FOV slider, advanced controls, HDR, and so much more.

It looks like YouTube algorithms are going on the fritz, with its automated system flagging and taking down a bunch of videos of robots fighting and mistaking it for animal cruelty.

Some of the videos, of which included BattleBots contestants, were taken down with a message that read: "Content that displays the deliberate infliction of animal suffering or the forcing of animals to fight is not allowed on YouTube".

It's funny... a robot (AI) thinking that two robots (like itself) fighting is animal cruelty. Does this mean YouTube's AI is growing empathy, and doesn't like to see one of its own being battled to the death? Maybe.

Engadget talked with a YouTube spokesperson who explained: "With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it. We also offer uploaders the ability to appeal removals and we will re-review the content".

Samsung might have delayed its first foldable smartphone until September, with the re-release of the Galaxy Fold but that doesn't mean the South Korean giant is not forging ahead with more foldable smartphones.

In a bunch of newly-surfaced patents we see a new foldable smartphone with a 'sliding mechanism' shown off by Samsung, which the great folks at LetsGoDigital turning them into color renderings. These renderings give us a bet ter look at what to expect, with that sliding mechanism looking like it could be a real game changer for foldable smartphones.

It seems you will be able to adjust your display height in multiple stages, depending on the task at (or is that in) your hand. You can have it in half like a clam shell, down a little lower if you're listening to music and want to use the rear-speaker (this is a kick ass idea on its own).

The screen can be pulled up higher on the sliding mechanism for video calls, where you want the screen a bit bigger - but if you want it 'all the way' big then you will surely have a gigantic large candybar-style phone. I love the design of this over the current Galaxy Fold... and I hope it's something we start to see more of in 2020.

Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has been placed on leave abruptly from the secretative AI-focused division of Google, with the reason being controversy "over some of the projects he led".

WTF was Suleyman working on for him to be placed on leave, from DeepMind of all places?

Suleyman, until he was ejected from the company, was working on the "applied" division of DeepMind. This division looked for practicval uses for DeepMind's research into health, energy, and other industries. Suleyman was a big public face for DeepMind, with a DeepMind spokeswoman explaining: "Mustafa is taking time out right now after 10 hectic years".

He co-founded DeepMind back in 2010 with CEO Demis Hassabis, and within 4 years they attracted the bank accounts of Google which acquired DeepMind for $500 million. Google acquired DeepMind for its work into AI, and then post-acquisition DeepMind was pushing into health care research which led to the company opening a dedicated division to the health care industry. DeepMind Health was created out of this with a staff of 100.

Valve has just kicked the door down in China, teaming with Perfect World on developing Steam China -- yes, Steam... in China. It's quite self-explanatory. Check out the crazy Steam China Press Demo video below:

Steam China being co-developed with Perfect World gets around some of these Chinese censorship, as the platform has been created from scratch with Chinese consumers in mind. The games on Steam China will be localized, the content servers for downloading games will be based in China, with the entire application complying with all Chinese laws.

Chinese law dictates which games can be sold, hosted, and played in the country -- with Steam China launching with a very limited amount of titles when it launches. Just 40 games are expected, with some of them including Two Point Hospital, Dead Cells, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV, and FTL.

AMD has had a super-successful year this year with the launch of its next-gen Zen 2 architecture and it powering the next wave of CPUs from the company in the form of the Ryzen 3000 series and just-released EPYC 'Rome' server CPUs with up to 64C/128T.

Not only that but the company has pushed out the new Navi-based GPU with the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards, with all of the new Zen 2-based CPUs and Navi-based GPUs made on the 7nm node. One of the things absent from the new RX 5700 series cards is multi-GPU support, something that Vega could do with CrossFire, but Navi can't.

In a recent chat with the press at the Hot Chips press conference, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su replied to a question regarding the future of multi-GPU technology. She said: "To be honest, the software is going faster than the hardware, I would say that CrossFire isn't a significant focus".

So there you have it... CrossFire is not a significant focus for AMD, while NVIDIA continues to make at least half of its graphics cards with SLI/NVLink support. I've done some testing on the RTX 2070 SUPER in NVLink, the RTX 2080 SUPER in NVLink, and RTX 2080 Ti in NVLink and there are some games that really eat up all that GPU horsepower.

It was just yesterday that we reported on the V-shaped PlayStation 5 developer kit that was teased through a patent, and now game developer Matthew Stott has confirmed it.

Stott said in a tweet linking to the V-shaped PS5 that "it's a dev kit we have some in the office", referencing the new PlayStation 5. Stott says he has some in the office, meaning if he has a few that bigger developers would have the same if not many more.

Just how many PS5 developer kits are in the wild right now? I wonder if Sony will force him to take his tweet down, but the internet being the internet means it's here forever. It looks like the V-shaped PS5 is indeed real, let's hope that style continues through to the final design, because I think it looks rad.