Latest News - Page 1051

AMD has pushed out their new Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.8.1 drivers, which are ready for the web-swinging world of Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on the PC.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.8.1 drivers have built-in support for the just-released Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on the PC, as well as Thymesia, and support for Radeon Boost using Variable Rate Shading (VRS) in Halo Infinite.

There are the usual fixed issues, with Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card owners no long getting their display flickering black when switching between video playback and gameplay windows. Video output freezing in Project Zomboid has been solved, and games based on the LOVE2D engine rendering incorrectly has been solved. If you're using a mixed reality headset, flickering black and jittery movement on "some AMD Graphics Products" including the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card have been solved with the new Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.8.1 drivers.

Qualcomm and TSMC look to absolutely dominate the flagship Android smartphone market in 2023, where we are expecting all 2023 premium Android-powered smartphones to feature a Snapdragon 8 Gen2 chip made by TSMC.

Leaker "Ice Universe" tweeted criticisms of Samsung's chip fabrication technology, calling it a "disastrous experience" and so he should: it's that bad Samsung is ditching its in-house Exynos SoCs to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen2 in their next-gen Galaxy S23 smartphones in 2023.

Normally we'd see Samsung split its Galaxy smartphones into two camps: one market with in-house Samsung Exynos SoCs and other markets with Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. But in 2023, all roads lead to Qualcomm and its next-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen2 SoC made on TSMC's next-gen 4nm process node.

NVIDIA is reportedly resuming production of its GeForce RTX 3080 12GB SKU, after production stopped some two months ago now.

The company released the newer GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card earlier this year in January, an upgraded version over the GeForce RTX 3080 10GB graphics card. The biggest two differences between the GeForce RTX 3080 10GB and GeForce RTX 3080 12GB is that firstly, the obvious difference in 12GB of GDDR6X memory over 10GB of GDDR6X memory. Secondly, the RTX 3080 12GB is an LHR "Lite Hash Rate" model, while the GeForce RTX 3080 10GB has full-speed crypto mining performance.

But now, NVIDIA faces warehouses of current-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, in the months leading up to its next-gen Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards. This is why we're hearing that NVIDIA will reportedly launch the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card first, and the GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4080 later... because there are too many higher-end GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards left over in warehouses, and now more GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics cards are being made.

AMD is weeks away from the announcement and release of its next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, which are now expected to be released on the same day as Intel's new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors on September 27.

Wccftech is reporting that according to their sources, AMD will be pushing its Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processor release to late September, matching Intel and its next-gen "Raptor Lake" CPUs. AMD is rumored to have an August 29 announcement, September 13 review NDA, and September 15 official launch... which has moved.

We're now reportedly looking at a September 27 release for Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4", which will see AMD meeting Intel on the same day as their new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPU launch. That will make for one of the biggest days in technology history: next-gen AMD and Intel CPUs and motherboards... all in the same week? I can't wait.

Intel has officially dropped native DirectX 9 hardware support for its integrated Xe GPUs on its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs, as well as its upcoming Arc A-series desktop GPUs.

In its place, Intel will be using a DX9 to DX12 emulator called "D3D9On12" from Microsoft, where it will send 3D DirectX 9 graphics commands to the D3D9On12 layer, instead of directly to the D3D9 graphics driver. As soon as the D3D9On12 layer gets the command from the D3D9 API, it will convert all of the commands into D3D12 API calls.

D3D9On12 is pretty much a GPU driver on its own, instead of a GPU driver with DX9 support from Intel. Microsoft says that the performance out of its DX9 to DX12 emulator should be nearly, if not as good as native DX9 hardware support. I don't see how native DX9 hardware support inside of Intel Xe and Arc GPUs isn't here, but DX9-based games should be able to run even on the mid-range first-gen Arc A-series GPUs.

Intel had its Arc A770 discrete graphics card at SIGGRAPH 2022 recently, with the company running its Arc A770 graphics card in Blender Cycles with ray tracing.

Intel's Director of Graphics Community Engagement, Bob Duffy, tweeted out that he was running Blender Cycles with ray tracing and live denoising running on an Intel Arc A770 graphics card, inside of an Intel NUC 11 Extreme PC. CPU-wise, it is powered by an Intel 11th Gen Core CPU.

As for the Intel Arc A770: we have the full ACM-G10 GPU with 32 Xe-Cores and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Interesting to note, given SIGGRAPH is a professional event and not for gamers, but the gaming-focused Intel Arc A770 graphics card was used... and not the recently announced Intel Arc A50 and Arc A40 workstation cards.

DOOM has been modded onto so many things at this point that I want to see how far things can be pushed, but now id Software's game-changing first-person shooter has made it onto a John Deere tractor, for real.

The current DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, with a video posted by Sick Codes on Twitter that saw New Zealand modder "Skelegant" getting DeHacked DOOM running on a John Deere tractor display. Specifically, the John Deere 4240 tractor, with DOOM modified so that you're playing in a cornfield mowing down your enemies in the tractor... so, so cool.

Sick Codes is an Australian who lives in Asia, and isn't just getting DOOM running on a John Deere tractor, he's created a new jailbreak that provides him access to the tractor's internal systems. What does this mean exactly? Well, it allows farmers that own John Deere tractors to perform repairs on their expensive machinery, as John Deere itself has software that actually blocks people from repairing the tractors themselves. Pretty sick.

The SFX masters at Weta Workshop are working on a new Lord of the Rings game and you should be very excited.

Before today I didn't know who Weta Workshop was, but a bit of investigation has unearthed one of my new favorite companies (at least in what they've created...sadly there's a culture of workplace misconduct at Weta). Weta Workshop is a New Zealand-based SFX and prop company who has made some of the most iconic and dazzling visual setpieces in cinema and TV history, helping solidify decades of entertainment; they created armors for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings epics and worked on countless projects like the old Hercules and Xenia shows, Hellboy, The Last Samurai, District 9, Elysium, Mad Max Fury Road, Dune, and many more.

Today Weta announced that it is working with Private Division, the same publishing branch that brought The Outer Worlds to market, on a new Lord of the Rings game. The project is in early development and won't be ready until Take-Two's FY24, which ends in March 2024. Weta says the game will be very unique and unlike anything gamers have experienced in the world of Middle-Earth before.

Rockstar Games earnings are expected to dip this year and this signals GTA 6 won't release release until after March 2024.

Rockstar Games is expected to make less than $1 billion in net bookings during Take-Two Interactive's FY23 period, executive management for the company announced during a recent earnings call. While the numbers weren't clearly outlined, a quick bit of math gives us some figures.

Take-Two says it expects to make $5.8 to $5.9 billion from net bookings in FY23, and that Rockstar Games should make up roughly 17% of earnings. This puts Rockstar's share of net bookings in the range of $986 million on the low-end and $1 billion on the higher-end. What's interesting is that these are net bookings, not net revenues, and on average net bookings are typically higher because these figures include full online content revenues from games like NBA 2K, GTA Online, and Red Dead Online.

The new bipedal, humanoid robot has been developed by Chinese company Xiaomi and unveiled at a launch event in Beijing.

Named the CyberOne, its reveal followed Xiaomi's presentation for a new foldable phone, thinner than Samsung's and only available in China. The robot joined Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun on stage, walking over to him to hand him a flower. The humanoid robot adds to Xiaomi's growing robotics line-up, known as its Cyber series, which includes the Cyberdog released last year, a robotic dog sharing a similar design to Spot, Boston Dynamics' robot dog.

The CyberOne stands 177 centimeters (5 feet 9.7 inches) with a wingspan of 168 centimeters (66 inches). It supports up to 21 degrees of freedom in motion, which, paired with a response time of 0.5 milliseconds per degree of freedom, allows it to simulate human movements completely. Visually, the CyberOne also shares some strong design similarities with renders of the upcoming Tesla Bot, also known as Optimus.

A paper on Gaia's new data titled "Gaia Data Release 3: Astrophysical parameters inference system (Apsis) I -- methods and content overview" is available on the arXiv preprint server.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the third dataset from its Gaia mission, which maps the stars. The mission has identified stars of similar mass and composition to our Sun, which provides insight into the timeline of the Sun. Gaia also captures information about a star's apparent brightness and temperature and can also derive a star's absorption and emission spectra.

When a star's light is split with a prism, the colors of light that separate out correlate to the presence of various elements in the star. Astronomers from the late 19th and 20th centuries realized these spectra could be ordered in a way that correlates with the temperature. Additionally, they discovered the width of the lines along the spectra indicated the star's luminosity and age.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to congratulate his employees on hitting a new milestone in terms of manufactured vehicles.

Elon Musk took to his personal Twitter account to congratulate his staff on manufacturing three million Tesla vehicles and his Shanghai factory for reaching its one-millionth car. Musk's congratulatory announcement follows the CEO discussing the difficulties of running a vehicle manufacturer and the logistical nightmare it is to keep the production line moving. In July, Tesla reported delivering 254,695 vehicles to vehicles to customers, an increase of 26.5% year-over-year.

To put into perspective how many three million cars made is, Toyota delivered more than 10 million vehicles throughout 2021. Musk recently described the Tesla Berlin and Austin factories as being "money furnaces" that were losing "billions of dollars" due to supply chain issues that tied up materials in different locations, causing the vehicle production line to come to a grinding halt. However, Tesla has said that it plans on increasing its vehicle deliveries by 50% every year forward.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old high school student that used Bitcoin to pay for fake bomb threats to be sent to a local high school.

Joseph Garrison admitted that he was responsible for the bomb threats, and according to Fox47, authorities analyzed the students' digital wallets and found that there were multiple payments right before the bomb threats were issued. The teen used paid an online contact that specialized in threat calls and took Bitcoin as payment.

The calls were made to Vel Phillips Memorial High School from February 28 to March 4, but after the analysis of Garrison's digital wallets, it was discovered he made payments before threats were made to several different schools, some outside of Wisconsin.

A study on oxygen and magnetism titled "Magnetic phase separation in microgravity" has been published in the journal npj Microgravity.

An international team of researchers has found a new way to produce oxygen in space for astronauts to breathe, such as on the International Space Station (ISS) and other space vehicles. The method NASA currently uses aboard the ISS is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolytic cell. The gases have to be removed from that system so they can be utilized, which requires a centrifuge to separate the gases from the electrode and liquid electrolyte of the water electrolyzer system.

However, such a centrifuge is typically large, has a lot of mass, and requires significant power and maintenance. A recent analysis by a NASA Ames researcher indicated that the current infrastructure for creating oxygen in space "wouldn't make any sense to use" for a trip to Mars. Researchers have now found that gas bubbles can be separated from electrode surfaces using simple neodymium magnets in simulated microgravity conditions.

A new report has revealed that TikTok officials kept a "kill list" of staff members they wanted to be pushed out of a TikTok office.

The report from the Financial Times details four anonymous employees that spoke to the publication regarding a list that included the names of several staff members at the London TikTok office, with some of the names on the list only being at the company for a few weeks. Notably, the unnamed employees said that TikTok would sometimes hire replacements before letting the individual go from the company and that senior officials would intentionally create a hostile work environment.

BusinessInsider contacted TikTok for comment and a spokesperson for the company said that if any list such as the one detailed by the employees exists, it would not be "condoned or in accordance with our internal policies on probation and performance management." The Financial Times report also details one employee that stated senior officials singled her out which led her to self doubt about her ability. This employee described the environment as "If they don't like you, they gaslight you or make your job untenable."

A study on tinnitus titled "A randomized single-blind controlled trial of a prototype digital polytherapeutic for tinnitus" has been published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.

Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand have developed a new smartphone-based therapy for treating tinnitus patients. Their clinical trial involved 61 patients, who were separated into a group of 31 that received the new "digital polytherapeutic" and a group of 30 that used a popular, generic app for producing white noise. After 12 weeks, the group receiving the polytherapeutic treatment showed significant improvement, while those using white noise did not.

A study on the bioengineered cornea titled "Bioengineered corneal tissue for minimally invasive vision restoration in advanced keratoconus in two clinical cohorts" has been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Researchers from Linkoping University in Sweden have developed a bioengineered version of the human cornea, the clear, protective outer layer of the eye. Their version is made from collagen sourced from pig skin and purified for its resemblance to the proteins found in the human cornea. It is an alternative option for transplants compared to those sourced from deceased human donors, which can only last for five to seven days without specialized cold storage.

A small trial by the research team involved 20 patients with a corneal condition known as keratoconus, resulting in 14 of whom were legally blind, and the rest visually impaired. The implant restored or improved sight in 20 individuals, with three previously blind participants having 20/20 vision two years after the operation. Over 12 million people worldwide have blindness due to damage to the cornea or corneal disease, and only 1 in 70 patients can receive a corneal transplant to correct this.

A security researcher has warned that because Starlink satellites are widespread, they are at risk of hardware hackers.

Lennert Wouters explained on Blackhat.com that he performed the first black-box hardware security evaluation of the SpaceX Starlink UT, which uses a custom quad-core Cortex-A53 System-on-Chip (SoC) that runs a verified boot based on the ARM trusted firmware (TF-A) project. Wouters writes that he was able to bypass firmware signature verification during the ROM bootloader execution through a voltage fault injection.

The process of the hack was broken down by Wouters, who is a security researcher from Belgian university KU Leuven, in a conference in Las Vegas this week. The security researcher explained that he constructed a small homemade circuit board out of many off-the-shelf items and added them to his Starlink dish. The devices allowed hackers to execute a code that would grant them access to the entire Starlink network while also revealing parts of the systems that weren't available before.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has the third largest diameter in the solar system, yet it's commonly overlooked and joked about due to its name.

James Webb Space Telescope project scientists and NASA veteran Heidi Hammel knows all too well about the jokes and laughter that Uranus' name has caused in the classroom, with Hammel even stating that the chosen name for the large blue planet is "definitely distracting". The NASA veteran worked on the Voyager 2 mission and said that for a while, she attempted to educate people on the correct pronunciation of Uranus, which she later gave up on after discovering the word 'urinous' which means "relating to, like, or having the qualities or odor of urine."

Now when Hammel discusses Uranus, she tells the class a few jokes about the planet to get the laughter out of the way so the science can begin. So, why has Uranus been named such a way? The planet was discovered by Sir William Herschel on March 13, 1781, with German astronomer Johann Elert Bode's observations solidifying the discovery.

Multiple publications have reported that the situation around the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is growing worse as Russian forces tempt fate by bombing the area.

Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' watchdog for nuclear energy, said on Thursday that the time is a "grave hour", with IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warning the public that multiple parts of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were destroyed from bombing runs conducted by the Russian military. The director general said the plant is now risking an "unacceptable" potential radiation leak.