Latest News - Page 1044

The first virtual AI-powered rapper was signed to a major record label and then quickly dropped after community backlash over "offensive" stereotypes.

Capitol Records signed virtual AI rapper FN Meka, created by Anthony Martini and Brandon Le from Factory New, only ten days ago. The announcement poised the rapper as the "world's first augmented reality artist to sign with a major label". Factory New claimed that it was the first of its kind, next-generation music company that specializes in creating virtual beings.

The recent signing kicked off a new wave of community criticism over FN Meka using racial stereotypes such as using the N-word in the 2019 song Moonwalkin, as well as an Instagram post where Meka was being beaten by a police officer while in prison. In response to the community criticism, Capitol Records announced on Tuesday that it has "severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately," while offering its "deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity".

Millions of people have taken to alternative social media platforms to report a glitch with Facebook's news feed.

In the early hours of August 24, thousands of people have taken to Twitter to report a strange bug in their Facebook news feed, with many Twitter posts featuring screenshots or screen recordings of their entire news feed being memes random Facebook users have posted to celebrity Facebook pages such as Joe Rogan, President Joe Biden, Harry Styles, Eminem, Ariana Grande, The Weekend and more.

It seems that the homepage has glitched for a certain percentage of users, as I can personally report no changes in my Facebook news feed. However, the glitch does seem to be widespread and is affecting a large percentage of people with hashtags such as "#Facebook" growing on Twitter. According to Down Detector, the problems are spread across desktop and apps, with 76% of the bug-reporting participants indicating problems with the News Feed, 18% with the app, and 6% with the website.

Social media superstar Andrew Tate has been removed from all main social media platforms and is now given his "final message" via his website.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook have all unanimously decided that there is no place for Andrew Tate on their platforms, as all of the main social media cite violations against their Community Guidelines. Tate has been removed from all of the aforementioned social platforms, with the kickboxer turned internet superstar growing now posting an hour-long "final message" to his fans on his website.

Tate's content largely gained internet fame from its inherit controversial nature sourced from his opinions on sensitive topics such as gender roles and the fact that Tate ran an affiliate marketing scheme that incentivized members of Hustler's University, a money-marking educational group that cost $49.99 a month, to recruit new members via social platforms through repurposed Tate-centered content. With Hustler's University even going as far as to recommend members use controversial content for "better results".

A woman has filmed what she claims to be a black UFO hovering above a city in Mexico, and the video has since been viewed thousands of times.

TikTok user "xixsteph" or Stephany posted the above video three days ago, and it has since been viewed nearly 200,000 times. The video shows a recording of a black object hovering in the sky near Merida, Mexico, at 7:30 pm, with Stephany even zooming in on the object to reveal a unique-looking snowflake shape. Most citizen UFO videos are terrible in quality, or the focused object is extremely hard to see, but Stephany's footage is overall very smooth and high quality. But is this a UFO?

The video was posted to the /r/UFO subreddit, and the community of UFO hunters began to quickly debunk the footage while simultaneously praising its quality. Moderators categorized the video as "likely identified," with many users reporting that it's a helium balloon that has an interesting shape, with one user writing that there was a recent balloon festival happening near Merida, the vibrant capital of the Mexican state of Yucatan.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a new image captured by the famous Hubble Space Telescope.

Being 30 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has achieved much during its time in operation, and while being far superseded by the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble can still produce some incredible images. The ESA has taken to its website to showcase a new image of globular cluster NGC 6540. The photograph was snapped with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys and reveals thousands to millions of stars all bound together by gravity.

NGC 6540 is located within the constellation Sagittarius, and the above composite image displays many bright stars that are defined by their diffraction spikes, which is the cross-shaped pattern seen across various stars. Notably, these cross-shapes are an imaging artefact that is caused by Hubble and not the star.

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is a treasure for PC gamers, but what about pushing it to its limits? That's exactly what we did, running the game at the enthusiast-level 8K resolution: 7680 x 4320, or 4x the pixels of 4K and 16x the pixels of 1080p.

Running a game as good-looking as Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered at 8K requires considerable grunt, so we ran the very best GPU silicon on the planet from both sides of the camp: including the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT as well as NVIDIA's brutally fast GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, GeForce RTX 3090, and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards.

AMD and NVIDIA's fastest GPUs can run the game at 8K with the help of FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2.4 enabled, but NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is the only graphics card capable of running Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered with ray tracing enabled (which looks awesome, by the way) with a commanding 55FPS+ average at 8K with DLSS 2.4 enabled and set to "Ultra Performance".

Intel has revealed more details on its upcoming 3D Foveros packaging technology, which it will be using to built its next-gen Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake CPUs of the future.

The company discussed more details on its packaging technology during Hot Chips 34, where we're finding out about all the new exciting GPU technology from the likes of AMD, NVIDIA, Chinese GPU maker Birentech, and more. Intel talked about the work it has been putting into the development of its 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPUs, with its new 3D Foveros packaging technology.

Intel's new Foveros packaging technology is a next-gen inter-die chiplet packaging technology that Intel will be splitting into 3 different ways: The standard design for high-yield, high-volume production, Foveros Omni that mixes and matches tiles in the base die complex, with up to 4x interconnect bump density, and finally there's Foveros Direct that has 16x interconnect density, with lower latency, higher bandwidth, and lower power/die requirements.

Birentech has rolled out some new details on its new Biren BR100 GPU, with the Chinese company revealing more on its powerful new GPU at Hot Chips 34.

The new Birentech BR100 GPU uses an in-house GPU architecture, baked onto the 7nm process node and packing 77 billion transistors in total. Quite the hefty monolithic GPU from Birentech, competing directly against AMD and NVIDIA.

The BR100 GPU inside is fabricated on TSMC's 2.5D CoWoW design with 300MB of on-chip cache, with 64GB of HBM2e memory with 2.3TB/sec of memory bandwidth on the PCIe 5.0 x16 (CXL interconnect protocol). Birentech is using two chiplets on its BR100 GPU, with each of the GPU chiplets packing 16 SPCs (Streaming Processing Clusters). BR100 has a 550W TDP, and comes in an OAM module.

NVIDIA announced its new Grace CPU and Grace Superchip CPU earlier this year at GTC 2022, but now the company has unveiled new details on its new Grace CPU, Orin SoC, and NVLink chip interconnects at Hot Chips 34.

The new NVIDIA Grace CPU is the first CPU from NVIDIA, packing 72 Arm v9.0 cores that support SVE2 and multiple virtualization extensions including Nested Virtualization and S-EL2. NVIDIA is fabricating its Grace CPU on TSMC's new 4N process node: an optimized version of TSMC's 5nm process node, made exclusively for NVIDIA... just like its new Hopper H100 GPU.

NVIDIA designed its new Grace CPU to be used in conjunction with its C2C (Chip-To-Chip) interconnect, where NVLINK is used to make the Superchips, removing all bottlenecks that you'd get with regular cross-socket configurations.

Intel needs 7000 workers to construct what it calls the "largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet", which will be built and operational in Ohio, USA in the future.

In a new report from the Associated Press, we find out that Intel needs 7000+ workers for its new fabrication plant in Ohio, which will cost $20 billion to make... but there are other issues that Intel is facing. A labor shortage is hurting the construction industry that is making it hard on the company to hire the people necessary for construction.

On top of that, the company is also facing more competition for workers that could have flow-on effects on the home building industry in Ohio, which is required for the continuously expanding workforce that Intel is trying to attract for its new plant. Not only are workers required, but they will bring families and form new communities... new houses are required, but workers are constructing the $20 billion plant for Intel.

The world of John McAfee continues to expand, even after his purported 'suicide' with McAfee's ex-girlfriend stating in a new Netflix documentary about the infamous anti-virus creator... he's not dead.

John McAfee reportedly committed suicide in a Spanish jail in 2021, mentioning Jeffrey Epstein before his suicide -- Epstein, "suicided" himself in jail supposedly, but CCTV cameras outside of Epstein's cell "malfunctioned" you see -- McAfee dying in a Spanish prison is much easier to fake. In the new Netflix documentary Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, McAfee's ex-girlfriend Samantha Herrera, said she received a call from John a few weeks ago.

John McAfee said: "It's me, John. I paid off people to pretend that I am dead, but I am not dead".

AMD's new Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors will launch next month, so now that retail versions of the CPUs are hitting reviewers, engineering samples (ES) variants are hitting the black market.

An alleged AMD Ryzen 5 7600X "Zen 4" engineering sample (ES) has turned up on the Chinese black market, with the seller noting the CPU has a base clock of 4.4GHz, much lower than the retail specs. AMD is expected to have a 4.7GHz base clock on the Ryzen 5 7600X processor, while boost clocks are expected to reach 5.3GHz on the retail CPU.

AMD's new Ryzen 5 7600X engineering sample (ES) processor is listed for 9999 RMB, which works out to just under $1500 without shipping. The price isn't solid as the seller requests direct contact with them before the purchase is made final and you get the engineering sample Ryzen 5 7600X chip sent to you. I don't know why you would when it requires a new AM5 socket motherboard... which you can't buy just yet.

The Game Awards will return in early December 2022, complete with an IMAX showing and a brand new award category.

Geoff Keighley's annual awards show is coming back for its 9th consecutive run (has it been that long already?) and as usual, Keighley is promising "spectacular game announcements and world premieres." The Game Awards 2022 will be held on December 8 in the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, and will be streamed across services like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and even TikTok. The show will also have special IMAX screenings for gamers and fans that can't attend in person.

The big news is TGA 2022 will now have a brand new Best Adaptation awards category. This includes transmedia adaptations of video game franchises including movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, comics, and other sources of entertainment that "authentically adapt the source material."

Sony has revealed its new premium answer to the Xbox Elite controller.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 DualSense Edge is a new high-end controller aimed at enthusiast gamers, complete with paddles, customizable buttons, and swappable analog sticks. The news comes weeks after the controller was originally leaked by Tom Henderson, and folds into Sony's plans to blend gaming with esports with its new INZONE lineup of hardware.

"Designed to give you an edge in gameplay by allowing you to create custom controls, the DualSense Edge wireless controller invites you to craft your own unique gaming experience tailored to your playstyle," Sony said in a recent PlayStation Blog post.

Destiny 2's new subclass isn't poison; it's a new Darkness power called Strand.

Destiny 2's big new Lightfall expansion is coming in February 2023. Unlike other expansions, Lightfall is a big, bombastic and colorful macho hero power fantasy straight out of the 1980s. It's something that you'd see in an old action flick with a significant sci-fi bent, and the best part about the expansion is the brand new subclass.

Destiny 2's new subclass is called Strand, and it takes direct inspiration from The Matrix and Doctor Strange. Strand essentially lets you manipulate the fabric of reality with green, glowing light; guardians will have a brand new grappling hook that can hook onto any point in any environment--even free-floating air--and also has offensive mix-and-match abilities for disabling foes, damaging them with explosive attacks, and more.

Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi has opened up a little bit about his new upcoming game, and it sounds pretty damn good.

In a recent interview with 4Players, Nagoshi delivers some interesting tidbits on his first game for NetEase. The Yakuza series mastermind says his new game will take inspiration from Quentin Tarantino's films, who are jam-packed with a unique auteur style that somehow blends tons of cinematic homages with stark originality.

Nagoshi specifically mentions that his game may take the choice bits and pieces from Tarantino's works--the more memorable quirky humor mixed with a certain degree of violence. While not explicitly mentioned, Nagoshi seems to lean more towards Pulp Fiction's camaraderie, storytelling, and mobster crime than Kill Bill's blood-spraying mayhem.

This year's International Military-Technical Forum, also known as Army 2022, held at the Patriot Congress and Exhibition Centre near Moscow, Russia, saw multiple new technologies and designs unveilke.

One such design at the expo was a physical model of Russia's planned space station, the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS). Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has been vocal about potentially severing ties with the International Space Station (ISS), which it jointly operates, since late February 2022 after other nations imposed sanctions on the agency and Russia itself following the nation's invasion of Ukraine.

Those threats were issued by the previous head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. However, Rogozin has since been replaced by Yuri Borisov after Borisov was appointed to the position by President Vladimir Putin. Recently, Borisov announced that Russia would leave the ISS after 2024 while working on its own space station in the meantime. NASA says it has yet to receive official confirmation from Roscosmos as to whether it will continue with the ISS until 2028, as was previously understood.

A study on the black hole jets titled "Collimation of the kiloparsec-scale radio jets in NGC 2663" has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Researchers from Western Sydney University have discovered one of the largest known black hole jets, coming from the NGC2663 galaxy situated at a relatively close distance of 93 million light-years away from Earth. It contains approximately ten times the number of stars found in the Milky Way galaxy and a central black hole with jets shooting out from it in opposite directions.

The team observed NGC2663 as part of its Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey. They used the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO's) collection of 36 linked radio dishes in Western Australia that comprise the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), which work together as a single, giant telescope. The radio waves detected from the galaxy revealed jets shooting material out from its black hole, spanning over a million light years from end to end, making them about 50 times larger than the galaxy itself.

A study on the new material titled "Electrical control of glass-like dynamics in vanadium dioxide for data storage and processing" has been published in the journal Nature Electronics.

Researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) were experimenting with vanadium dioxide (VO₂), a material used in electronics, and its transition between phases. In doing so, they made a chance discovery that shows the compound can "remember" the entire history of external stimuli that have affected it.

VO₂ exists as an insulator at room temperature but quickly transitions into a metal at 68 degrees Celsius (154.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and Ph.D. student Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo at EPFL's Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab) was investigating how long it takes for VO₂ to transition between states. Applying an electric current to a sample of VO₂ causes its lattice structure to change as it transitions between states, and removing this current causes it to revert to its initial state.

A study on the brain stimulation titled "Long-lasting, dissociable improvements in working memory and long-term memory in older adults with repetitive neuromodulation" has been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Researchers from the University in Massachusetts have used weak electrical currents to repeatedly zap the brains of adults over 65 over several days, demonstrating improvements in memory that lasted for up to one month. Their research builds on previous studies that suggest that separate brain regions handle long-term and working (short-term) memory.

Stimulating a region near the front of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with high-frequency electricity improved long-term memory. At the same time, the inferior parietal lobe, found further back in the brain, was best stimulated by low-frequency electricity to produce improvements in working memory. The brain was electrically stimulated using a non-invasive method called transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), which places electrodes on the scalp to deliver electrical currents.