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A newly released image taken by an advanced telescope in Hawaii has shown the distant fate of our humble Milky Way galaxy.

The new image was snapped by the Gemini North telescope located in Hawaii and operated by the National Science Foundations' NOIRLabs. The image showcases a gorgeous galaxy merger between two interacting spiral galaxies called NGC 4568 and NGC 4567. These galaxies have been on a collision course for millions of years, and researchers estimate that in about 500 million years, they will complete the merger into one singular elliptical galaxy.

As explained by the researchers, the image of this galactic merger is a window into the future of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which is set to merge with our closest neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Scientists estimate that the merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda will take place in approximately 5 billion years. Notably, the recently published image shows the glowing remains of a supernova that was detected by researchers in 2020.

Meta has released a beta version of its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, and individuals have asked it what it thinks about the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Many publications have already asked the chatbot what it "thinks" about Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and overall the responses have been mixed, with some of the replies stating that Zuckerberg is a "bad person" and that "he's a good guy". Notably, BlenderBot 3 is just a "conversational prototype" that is designed to converse like a human on nearly any topic that it's prompted with.

As for its thoughts on Zuckerberg, the BBC asked the chatbot, and it replied by saying, "Our country is divided, and he didn't help with that at all. His company exploits people for money, and he doesn't care. It needs to stop!"

Unity teased its new real-time demo at SIGGRAPH 2022, with Lion debuting in the glorious 4K resolution and running at 30FPS on the Sony PlayStation 5.

The new Lion demo from Unity utilizes a bunch of Unity Engine features including some real-time hair and fur rendering, powered by Weta Digital's new Wig hair and fur tool. Remember Unity purchased Weta Digital in late 2021, where Unity Technical Artist Sara Hansen explained the use of their tools in the new Lion demo: "Wig is a different way of working - it's actually the fastest grooming tool that I've ever used".

"A high-quality hero groom - which would take me several months in another grooming package - is much faster to create in Wig. It takes just a couple of weeks, and some grooms go from weeks to create in other tools to only one or few days in Wig, and at far better quality levels and with greater artist controllability... Even when you have to react to detailed art direction feedback notes, like adjusting a specific strand from a reference shot, it's easy to author in Wig".

XMG has formally announced its new NEO 17 and NEO 15 gaming laptops, packing the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU.

The new XMG NEO 17 gaming laptop features an interesting 16:10 aspect ratio display with a native 2560 x 1600 resolution, CHERRY's MX ULP Tactile switches on the keyboard, the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, and up to NVIDIA's fastest GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile GPU.

Inside, the XMG NEO 17 gaming laptop has the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, and 3 x GPU choices from NVIDIA: the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3080, and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. The flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile GPU has 16GB of GDDR6 memory and a 175W TGP (split into 150W + 25W through Dynamic Boost 2.0 technology) but can be run at full power permanently, for the ultimate in performance, all the time.

Epic Games has published a gigantic Unreal Engine 5.1 roadmap, which has a laundry list of improvements that are coming to developers.

One of the major issues is the stuttering issues that caused headaches for developers using Unreal Engine 4+ for their games, with Unreal Engine 5.1 receiving an Automated PSO Gathering feature that will solve the issue once and for all.

Epic Games explained: "With the increasing emphasis in UE5 on DX12 and Vulkan, we're focusing attention on solving the problem of runtime hitches caused by Pipeline State Object creation, which is inherent to those RHIs. The previous solution required a PSO pre-caching process, which could be burdensome for large projects and still leave gaps in the cache leading to hitches".

AMD and NVIDIA are both about to announce and release their next-gen graphics cards in the coming months, but before then we've seen pricing on both sides of the GPU camp drop significantly... thanking the GPU gods.

We've already seen EVGA slice and dice the price of its high-end GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 by $1000, dropping it from $2149 down to $1149... but now the AMD's second-fastest Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, and NVIDIA's third-fastest GeForce RTX 3080 Ti are both experiencing healthy price cuts which are now dipping their toes in -30% below MSRP territory.

Our friends at Wccftech have noticed that the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT Phantom Gaming D graphics card is now just $699, down -30% over its $999 MSRP. If you don't want to go with ASRock, Newegg has a listing for the GIGABYTE Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING OC graphics card, also $699... down from its usual $899 pricing on the site. Not bad, not bad at all...

It looks like today is list AMD's next-gen products day, where we have heard about Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processor pricing, and now we have some early pricing on MSI's next-gen X670E and X670 motherboards.

The pricing tease on MSI's upcoming 600-series motherboards is coming from "momomo_us" on Twitter, where we see some pricing on MSI's upcoming MPG X670E Carbon Wi-Fi motherboard, and PRO X670-P Wi-Fi motherboard. As for pricing, MSI's next-gen MPG X670E Carbon Wi-Fi motherboard is listed at 562 EUR which without VAT (Value Added Tax) converts to around $474 USD.

MSI's new PRO X670-P Wi-Fi motherboard was listed for around 374 EUR which converts to around $316, which is its cheapest price out of all of the listings. The cheapest that the MSI PRO X670-P Wi-Fi is listed for is 374 EUR, the second listing is 416 EUR, the third is listed for 426 EUR which converts to $316, $351, and $359 respectively.

Buying original Windows and Microsoft Office at a great price is no longer an impossible task. For example, with GoDeal24 Office Sale, you can buy a permanent Office 2021 Pro license from $13.52 or an official Windows 10 Pro license for $7.42! Save money when buying Windows OS and Microsoft Office.

This is the best opportunity to buy original keys for Windows and Office at amazing prices. But how did GoDeal24 achieve such competitive prices? The process is completely legal because the company buys keys in bulk from companies that no longer need them. GoDeal24 verifies that all purchased licenses are valid before selling them. On the other hand, GoDeal24 does not have a physical office or warehouse. So you can buy Windows 10 or Microsoft Office licenses at a very reasonable price.

You can purchase a permanent version of Office 2021 at once. Office version 2021 will feel familiar to those who have used the latest version, with a low learning curve. Resuming work after an upgrade is a breeze, and there are enough new features to make the upgrade worthwhile. GoDeal24's makes it possible for most users to buy Office 2021 at the lowest possible price. So you can get a 100% genuine Office 2021 key at a discounted price as low as $13.52!

AMD's next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors have been listed by a Canadian retailer, with the pricing coming in at under $1000 for the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X processor.

Canadian retailer PC-Canada lists the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X, and Ryzen 5 7600X processors as all out of stock obviously, since AMD hasn't launched them just yet. We are probably looking at placeholder pricing for now, but we should expect pricing to be very close to these numbers on AMD's upcoming Zen 4 chips.

We are looking at around $892 for the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X, compared to the current-gen Zen 3-based Ryzen 9 5950X costing around $546 on Amazon right now (discounted by 33% from its original $799 list price). The second-fastest Zen 4-based CPU is the Ryzen 9 7900X which costs around $800. After that, we've got the Ryzen 7 7700X which is listed for around $480, while the Ryzen 5 7600X is listed for around $330.

Intel kicked off its Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt in early 2021, and a rather large 18 months later we have no Arc graphics cards in the wild... meaning no Intel Arc graphics cards to give away to Arc Scavenger Hunt winners.

The company is now offering an alternative prize because there are simply no Intel Arc GPUs, so instead of an Intel Arc A7-series graphics card (Intel was giving Grand Prize winners an Intel Arc A770, while the first place prize was an Intel Arc A750) winners can now opt for an Intel Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K processor.

Intel sent an email to its winners, explaining to a Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt Top 300 prize winner that they would be provided with an alternative to the original hardware prize, in addition to the standard merchandise and swag prizing. The company confirms that the winners only have a few days to decide -- up to August 19 -- if you want to switch over your Arc GPU to an Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU.

Red Dead Redemption 2's total sales hit 45 million since the game released in 2018.

Nearly four years after launch, Red Dead Redemption 2 has achieved powerful sales figures across all platforms. As of June 30, 2022 during Take-Two Interactive's Q1 FY23 period, Rockstar's cowboy epic has sold 45 million copies combined across digital and physical channels.

These gains are up 1 million units quarter-over-quarter and 7 million units year-over-year, and continue RDR2's trends of selling 1 million units between Q4 and Q1 periods. These sales may punctuate a sunsetting of Red Dead franchise content for some years to come; Rockstar has effectively stopped updating Red Dead Online with new meaningful content so it can focus almost exclusively on Grand Theft Auto 6, and RDR2's campaign is practically set in stone with no expansions in sight.

Looking for cheap Resident Evil games to get your horror fix? Capcom has answered the call with this awesome must-have RE bundle.

Capcom has teamed up with Humble Bundle to offer one of the best Resident Evil collections I've ever seen. Gamers can pay just $30 for some of the most terrifying games on the market today, including both the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 remakes, the Texas Chain Saw Massacre-inspired Resident Evil 7, and other yesteryear games.

The bundle packs in eight mainline Resident Evil games alongside RE Revelations 1 & 2 and all purchases will help with Ukrainian relief efforts as Russia continues its ongoing war in the beleaguered country.

Global entry! We have teamed up with Sabrent to give away two of its newest products. The details on each are listed below, and both would make for a great addition to an upcoming gaming PC build.

One winner will take home a 32GB Sabrent Rocket DDR5 16GB 4800MHz dual-channel memory kit (worth $270). We recently reviewed these memory modules and found them to be able to hit a very impressive 6800MHz OC at C40.

It seems like DDR4 has ruled the roost forever. Finally, new motherboards and architectures have allowed memory to grow wings with the advent of DDR5. Improved clock speeds promise up to twice the bandwidth of DDR4, all with lower voltage for better efficiency. To further help with that last bit, DDR5 has on-board power management to reduce motherboard cost and complexity.

Chinese games juggernaut NetEase is attracting some of gaming's top talent as the industry pivots towards free-to-play live games.

Free-to-play mobile markets are big money-makers for gaming, and major publishers like Take-Two, EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft want in on the action. Even Sony, who isn't accustomed to standalone free-to-play service games, wants to release 12 live games by 2025. This has triggered even stronger competition in a space dominated by monetization giants like NetEase and Tencent, and as a result, these overseas titans are pushing back by creating new dev teams that attract some of gaming's biggest talent.

Just a bit ago, Hiroyuki Kobayashi left Capcom after nearly three decades to join NetEase. Kobayashi served as producer at Capcom for 27 years and helped create and ship some of the company's most popular and best-selling games across franchises like Dragon's Dogma, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. Kobayashi will serve as a producer at NetEase to help fuel the publisher's mighty live game efforts.

Netflix is spending even more on video games throughout 2022, but the plan may not actually pay off as intended.

As Netflix loses more subscribers than it ever has before (it lost nearly 1 million subscribers in Q2) the company is exploring new ways to spark subscriber growth and retention. The streamer is taking inspiration from the games industry for its latest business proposition.

The plan is simple: Netflix wants to give all subscribers a bunch of games. As an added perk, paying Netflix subscribers get free access to two dozen mobile games and there's plans to expand to consoles and PCs in the future. Netflix is also bumping the number of available games to 50. Netflix has purchased indie studios to make quality-driven first-party games for its service and promised no in-game microtransactions (although on the same token it plans to add advertisements to lower-cost Netflix subscriptions).

Blizzard has already confirmed Diablo IV will have cosmetic microtransactions, but new surveys may have confirmed a battle pass for the game.

Diablo IV may be the latest Blizzard game to get a battle pass. The developer has announced that Diablo IV will rely on cosmetic microtransactions despite being a full-priced premium game, but unlike Diablo Immortal, the new sequel will not sell items or content that have tangible effects on gameplay. Yet that doesn't mean Diablo IV won't have its own premium currency scheme to maximize spending and encourage multi-bundle purchases--a tactic that EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and of course Blizzard have all used to make billions of dollars every year.

According to newly leaked surveys sent to gamers in Germany, Blizzard may also include battle passes in Diablo IV to complete the monetization trifecta (mTX, in-game currencies, paid passes). Blizzard has already confirmed Diablo IV will also have paid expansions. The new developments basically show Diablo IV will have every monetization structure possible outside of pay-to-win options.

Samsung's next-gen 990 PRO SSD has been listed by the PCI-SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group) confirming Samsung's PCIe 5.0-ready SSD of the near future.

We saw the first tease of Samsung's next-gen 990 PRO SSD nearly two weeks ago now, which appeared in the customs database with the Samsung 990 PRO PCIe 5.0-powered SSD in both 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the model numbers: MZ-V9P1T0 and MZ-V9P2T0. We should expect much bigger Samsung 990 PRO SSDs in the future, but the 1TB and 2TB capacities were teased first.

But now, the PCI-SIG listing teases that the Samsung 990 PRO SSD will use an M.2 interface, but we don't know which capacity PCI-SIG is testing. Samsung has already launched its enterprise-class SSDs with their first PCIe 5.0 SSD being the Samsung PM1743 SSD, which uses Samsung's own in-house 6th Gen V-NAND technology. Samsung's PM1743 SSD has sequential read speeds of up to 13GB/sec (13,000MB/sec) and sequential writes of up to 6.6GB/sec (6600MB/sec). We're looking at improved power efficiency, with around 608MB/s per watt, which is a decent 30% improvement over its predecessor.

AMD will be attending Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, Germany this year... in-person after a two-year hiatus driven by the pandemic. The last time a GPU was launched there was in 2018 when NVIDIA unleashed its Turing-based GeForce RTX 20 series graphcis cards.

The news is coming directly from Milosz Bialas, the Senior Developer Relations at AMD who has tweeted that AMD is attending Gamescom 2022, and he is going as well. There's nothing official in terms of what to expect from AMD, given that they're driving into the launches of their next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, and Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards powered by the next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture.

As for Gamescom, it runs between August 24 and August 29 in Cologne, Germany. During the event, we have hardware announcements, game unveilings and so much more. I was there in-person for Gamescom 2018 thanks to NVIDIA, and it was one of the best events I've attended. It was truly an awesome experience, but now that AMD is going... right as they're leading into new hardware announcements... I don't think we could be more excited.

AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards will begin their journey into our lives, benchmark charts, and hearts later this year... but in flagship Navi 31 GPU form first, and then comes Navi 32 aka "Wheat Nas".

The next-gen Navi 32 GPU is codenamed "Wheat Nas" with some new purported details on the smaller version of Navi 31, which will be re-using the same MCDs (Memory Chiplet Dies) as the Navi 31. AMD will be using its flagship RDNA 3-based Navi 31 GPU for desktop Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards (Radeon RX 7900 XT, and others) while the Navi 32 GPU will be offered in mobile, and high-end desktop GPU form as well.

Angstronomics reports that Navi 32 was planned with 128MB Infinity Cache (as a 1-hi version) but AMD is reportedly going with just 64MB of Infinity Cache for Navi 32, down from the 128MB on the upcoming Navi 31 GPU. While the current-gen RDNA 2-based Navi 21 has 128MB of Infinity Cache, and Navi 22 has 96MB of Infinity Cache, meaning Navi 32 comes with less Infinity Cache than Navi 22... interesting.

THQ Nordic has revealed that it will be publishing the new South Park game that's in development.

In 2021, Comedy Central announced a $900 million South Park deal that includes a brand new 3D South Park game developed alongside South Park studios. Then in January developer Question Games put up a job listing confirming they are working on a new Unreal Engine-based South Park game.

"Question and South Park Digital Studios are seeking a Lead Level Designer for work on a new video game set in the world of South Park," the still-live job listing reads. Given the developers involved we predicted the game could be a first-person shooter and possibly a spiritual successor to South Park 64.