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Three new studies have been published on Mars' terrain in the journals Science and Science Advances.

Researchers from Purdue University have analyzed data from NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, which discovered grains of olivine on Mars' surface, adding some green to the endless red Martian landscape. Known as the Red Planet, scientists expected to find minerals and materials of a similar shade when Perseverance first landed on Mars. However, the rover found something unexpected after landing in the Jezero Crater, which once held a large lake when Mars had liquid water, air, and a magnetic field.

Scientists expected to find sedimentary rocks inside the crater, but instead found many volcanic rocks. Much of the rocks are composed of large grains of olivine, one of Earth's most abundant minerals, which makes up more than half of the upper mantle, and is known for tinting numerous Hawaiian beaches green. The Perseverance rover is examining samples up to nearly 4 billion years old, which have remained almost pristine.

A study on the planet titled "TOI-1452 b: SPIRou and TESS Reveal a Super-Earth in a Temperate Orbit Transiting an M4 Dwarf" has been published in The Astronomical Journal.

Researchers from the University of Montreal have an exoplanet, meaning a planet outside of our solar system, orbiting the TOI-1452 dwarf star, which is part of a binary star system in the Draco constellation, roughly 100 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet is dubbed TOI-1452 b and exists within its host star's habitable zone, where it is just the right temperature for liquid water to exist on its surface.

It is known as a super-Earth because it is about 70% larger than Earth and approximately five times as massive, but with a potentially solid surface. The planet may also mark the first discovery of an ocean planet, as its density is consistent with a world with a very deep ocean. However, it could also be a large, rocky planet with little or no atmosphere.

The California Air Resources Board voted to pass the new mandates on August 25th, 2022.

The new official state policy mandates that any cars and light trucks sold from 2035 onwards must be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), meaning they are either electric or hydrogen-powered, with no options for gasoline or diesel. The board was created in 1967 to reduce the toxic smog that hung over Los Angeles at the time, and it has since set emissions and fuel efficiency mandates that many other states have followed.

Lauren Sanchez, the climate advisor for Governor Gavin Newsom, marked that occasion as "a huge day not only for California but the entire world," with the founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis (UC Davis), Dan Sperling, saying it the mandate "is the most important and transformative action that [the air resources board] has ever taken."

The director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Dr. Lori Glaze, announced NASA's rough plans for a mission to Uranus.

Dr. Glaze spoke about the potential Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) mission during a virtual community town hall meeting on August 18th as part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's decadal survey. The decadal survey is the result of polling the scientific community on what it believes its top research priorities should be, completed every ten years.

LG has just unveiled the latest member of its UltraGear gaming monitor family, with the introduction of the new 45-inch UltraGear 45GR95QE gaming monitor.

The new LG UltraGear OLED 45GR95QE gaming monitor features a huge 45-inch curved OLED panel, with a native 3440 x 1440 resolution and 21:9 aspect ratio, joined by a 240Hz refresh rate. Heeeyyy, that sounds like Corsair's just-announced XENEON FLEX gaming monitor, which is a new 45-inch bendable OLED display with a native 3440 x 1440 resolution and 240Hz refresh rate, with the OLED panel provided by LG Display.

Yeah, it seems Corsair gets the cooler auto-bendy-awesomeness for its XENEON FLEX, which will bend at your will to a curved OLED, or bend back to a flat OLED. LG's new UltraGear OLED 45GR95QE is the very first 240Hz OLED gaming monitor from the company, with an 800R curved OLED panel and 0.1ms GtG response time it'll be damn quick.

HyperX has just entered the gaming monitor market with the introduction of its new Armada 27 and Armada 25 gaming monitors, as well as a new monitor mount being revealed at Gamescom 2022.

The new HyperX Armada 27 is the better of the two new gaming monitors, with a 27-inch 2560 x 1440 (1440p) panel and 165Hz refresh rate. The company says its new HyperX Armada 27 has DisplayHDR 400 certification, and with the 165Hz refresh rate the 1ms response time will help it be super-smooth for gamers. It's alsomost bezel-less, with two of them side-by-side looking awesome on the new HyperX Armada display mount.

HyperX's new smaller Armada 25 rolls out with a 25-inch 1920 x 1080 (1080p) panel but faster 240Hz refresh rate, but I'm not personally a fan of the 1080p 240Hz displays, but HyperX has one if that's what you're after. The monitor mount is important, as HyperX is including the desk mount in the package... making their Armada 27 and Armada 25 gaming monitors are a great all-in-one package.

AMD is just days away from revealing its next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs and in the last couple of days we've heard fresh rumors that the company would unleash new second-gen 3D V-Cache suped-up versions of its Zen 4 CPUs... and now we're hearing it'll be very early into 2023.

The new Ryzen 7000 series CPUs will be unveiled in the coming days, with the first batch of Zen 4-powered chips arriving as the Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X, and Ryzen 5 7600X. AMD isn't launching the Ryzen 7 7800X just yet, as it's keeping one of its most popular CPUs (and biggest sellers) to one-two punch Intel's upcoming 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs.

We heard from leaker Moore's Law is Dead that AMD was working on Zen 4 V-Cache, with the second-generation 3D V-Cache to debut in the form of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 7 7850X3D.

Intel has just detailed its XeSS technology that will be launching alongside its upcoming Arc GPU desktop graphics card family, which drops next month. Ahead of that, we've got some juicy new details on Intel's upcoming XeSS upscaling tech.

In a new demo, Intel's Ryan Shrout and Tom Peterson use an Intel Arc A770 graphics card running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1440p and at maximum graphics settings, with ray tracing enabled. Tom ran his PC with XeSS on the "Balanced" preset, while Ryan was running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the native 2560 x 1440 resolution with XeSS disabled.

XeSS on "Balanced" was running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at around 60-80FPS for the most part, while natively, the Intel Arc A770 was pushing out less than 60FPS, and spent most of its time at 40-50FPS or so.

Skull and Bones has been detailed by Ubisoft during Gamescom 2022, where we learn the PC specifications which include support for all major AI upscaling technologies.

Ubisoft has announced that Skull and Bones will feature uncapped FPS on the PC, as well as HDR support, multi-monitor and ultra-wide monitor support, ray tracing (Ray-Traced Global Illumination or RTGI), and even an in-game benchmark which will help people like me test the hell out of the NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS upscaling support.

PC requirements have been announced, where if you want to run Skull and Bones at its max with 4K 60FPS+ then Ubisoft is recommending a pretty modest Intel Core i5-11600K or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor, just 16GB of RAM, and 65GB of SSD storage. For the GPU they're recommending the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB with DLSS enabled and set to "Balanced" or the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB with FSR enabled and set to "Balanced".

Apple has now officially confirmed it is hosting an event on September 7, where we'll be introduced to the new iPhone 14 family of smartphones, and I'm sure much more.

The company has announced its new "Far Out" event for September 7 at 10AM PST, at the Steve Jobs Theatre on Apple Park in Cupertino, California. Apple being Apple, there isn't much more meat on the bone here in terms of news or announcements... but we know that the month of September = is new iPhone month.

As for the new iPhone 14, Apple is expected to nix the smaller 5.4-inch model when it comes to the new iPhone 14, upgrading to a larger standard 6.1-inch display on the regular iPhone 14, and a larger 6.7-inch display on the iPhone 14 Pro.

Plex has millions of users around the world, with the company explaining in an email sent out to users that they discovered suspicious activity in one of their databases.

The company started an investigation into the incident, where they discovered that someone had access to a portion of their data. Plex said that this data includes users' emails, usernames, and their encrypted passwords and even though the account passwords could've been accessed, Plex says that they "were hashed and secured in accordance with best practices, out of an abundance of caution we are requiring all Plex accounts to have their password reset".

Plex says that users should rest assured that their credit card and other payment details aren't stored on their servers, and were "not vulnerable in this incident". The company is now requiring that all of its users reset their passwords immediately, and to address the issue at hand -- how the hacker got access to Plex's systems -- they're working through all of their security systems and further hardening them to prevent further incidents.

Samsung Germany has asked a customer to physically smash his Samsung 980 PRO SSD with a hammer, or drill through it, before returning it for RMA... and we're totally not joking around.

It seems that things are serious in Samsung Germany when it comes to making sure your data is completely protected, where Igor's Lab reports on a story about a user that was sent through a bunch of hoops in order to get his Samsung 980 PRO SSD replaced. It started out with the usual serial number, proof of the failure itself, what steps you've done to try and fix it, and more.

A diagnostic scan through Samsung Magician was run, showing that the Samsung 980 PRO SSD had indeed had multiple errors on the NAND flash. From there, the drive is usually returned... but that's not what happened here. Samsung Germany and the customer in question talked over the phone, and after writing an explanation as to why the SSD couldn't be returned as it is, things got weird.

Destiny 2's new Lightfall expansion features some new fearsome foes, including a new Pyramid-enhanced Cabal and a brutal Darkness-infused mini-boss.

Destiny 2's legendary campaigns will come back with Lightfall, which is set to be the most explosive yet. The campaign introduces new enemies to conclude the Light vs Dark saga; Calus has joined the dreaded Witness as a disciple, bringing his newly upgraded Cabal forces to invade the untouched future-city of Neoluma. Calus' forces have been infused with new Pyramid tech to punish Guardians with on the field of battle.

Read Also: Destiny 2 Lightfall: New darkness strand subclass adds grappling hook

Connection and communication are vital for any live game's success. Now Destiny 2 is getting a feature that will help solidify both of these critical components.

Destiny 2 is getting a built-in LFG (looking for group) feature that will let players quickly find other users to tackle activities in the game. From campaign missions to strikes and complex raids, gamers will be able to make custom listings on the LFG board where other people can join. There's even tags like "just chilling" and "experienced Guardians" to give users an idea of what to expect from the session.

"It can be really challenging to get through the hard content solo, and making it easier to find people to play with is going to make it so much easier for people to get into Destiny," Bungie said. "It will make the game so much more social, and I really think it's going to make Destiny players feel like they're on one team."

Sony has accelerated its plans to adapt more of its PlayStation gaming IPs into films and TV shows, and two new projects have been discovered.

Sony wants to synergize all of its business units into one cohesive money-making machine. Under PlayStation Productions, Sony's Music, Pictures, and PlayStation brands are all coming together to create immersive new transmedia experiences based around wholly-owned PlayStation IP. While gaming is the major breadwinner among entertainment sectors, Sony is branching out with tremendous success--the Uncharted movie, which started off as a fledgling project that Tom Holland wanted to make after playing the games, has generated over $400 million.

Sony has a number of big-budget movies and TV shows currently in development. According Sony Pictures' Tony Vinciquerra, Sony is planning 11 different shows and films under its PlayStation Productions label with various industry talent attached (only 9 of these projects are known).

Atomic Heart gets a new combat trailer that shows off impressive combat, creative bosses, and a unique world.

Atomic Heart is kind of a rare breed. Developed by Russian studio Mundfish, the game is an eclectic mix of Fallout, BioShock, Dead Island, and even Call of Duty elements. It's like someone put all of these franchise into a blender and injected some off-the-wall carnage and explosive combat to deliver what looks to be one of the most fun games in the last few years.

The new combat trailer exposes a lot of the fun factor the game should offer, including awesome powers that can deliver destructive combos, tons of guns that unleash pure mayhem, and a rather enjoyable 1950s sci-fi style that both embodies the idealistic retro futurism and blends the harsh industrial hardness of the Soviet Union. Throw in some interesting enemies, hulking automaton bosses with the hammer-and-sickle stamped on them, and other strange robots and there's a unique recipe that could cook up something special.

Bungie is breaking barriers with Destiny 2 and hints at the future of the live game beyond the Light vs Dark saga.

Destiny 2's new Lightfall expansion is so different than what I was expecting. Rather than being a somber punctuation to a years'-long saga full of interstellar witchcraft, death and loss, and an intricately-weaved plotline, it's a bombastic and colorful explosion of mayhem. It looks, well, very fun...and it could hint at what's to come from Bungie.

One of the most interesting things about Lightfall is how Bungie coalesced a new civilization, destination, and city out of nothing. Destiny 2's Lightfall expansion will introduce Neoluma, a new capital city on Neptune that features a brand set of NPCs called Cloudstriders. Bungie says Neoluma was a "hidden city" that no one knew about before now, and that the Cloudstriders are an alternate form of humanity.

Microsoft wants to buy Activision for one reason above all else: Mobile gaming.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg TV's Emily Chang, Xbox's Phil Spencer outlined the rationale behind Microsoft's huge $68.7 billion buyout offer for Activision-Blizzard. The simple answer is mobile games first, and PC gaming second.

"When we were thinking about on the idea on what we are capable of today and where do we need to go...the biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. 1.5 billion people play on mobile phones and regretfully Microsoft is not a place where we have a native platform as far as gaming. Coming from console and PC we don't have a lot of creative capability that has built hit mobile games," Spencer.

Sony is increasing the PlayStation 5's price tag in key regions like Canada, Europe, China, Mexico, and Japan--basically everywhere except the United States.

Today Sony made one of its most unpopular decisions in gaming since the PS3 era. The gaming giant is raising the price of the PlayStation 5 to reflect market inflation across the globe. Sony is one of the many Japanese games companies that saw their earnings slide as consumers pared back game spending. PlayStation's operating income dropped by nearly 50% in converted yen-to-USD rates in the Q1 period.

To make up for this drop, and to maximize hardware earnings, Sony is raising the price of the base and digital PS5 systems. The price hike, which is effective immediately except for Japan, comes months before Sony prepares the largest shipment of PlayStation 5 consoles in the history of the entire brand. Sony wants to ship 18 million PS5s during this fiscal year and plans to make Holiday 2022 the big season for PS5 availability.

Corsair has just revealed its super-interesting XENEON FLEX OLED gaming monitor, the world's first bendable ultra-wide gaming monitor with a large 45-inch bendable OLED panel provided by LG Display.

The new Corsair XENEON FLEX was unveiled at Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, Germany where it is using the very latest in W-OLED technology which the company says will provide phenomenal image quality, black levels, and response times. The large 45-inch 21:9 aspect ratio OLED panel has a native resolution of 3440 x 1440, and super-fast 240Hz refresh rate (as well as having all of the benefits of an LG OLED panel).

Corsair's tapping LG's very latest W-OLED display technology, with the panel finished with a specially formulated anti-reflecting coating that reduces both glare and reflections, you're in for a visual treat right from the start. Corsair's new XENEON FLEX's self-lit OLED pixels are capable of blasting out brightness levels of up to 1000 nits, with a 1,350,000:1 contrast ratio.