Latest News - Page 1077

NASA recently released the first set of images taken by the $10 billion next-generation space telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope from Earth on December 25 and since then it has travelled to its destination approximately 1 million miles from Earth, and prepared all its next-generation instruments for scientific operations. It has been many months of Webb calibrating, but now NASA has released the first set of images ever captured by Webb and they are nothing short of amazing.

The first image, seen below, is the deepest and sharpest image of the universe ever taken. According to NASA the image is of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and it contains thousands of galaxies as well as the faintest objects ever observed in infrared light. Following the release of the first image, and the now first set of images, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to his personal Twitter account to show his support for NASA's most powerful telescope.

The very latest version of GPU-Z adds improved support for Intel's finally-kinda-launching Arc GPU series, as well as NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1630 and AMD's new Radeon RX 6700 (non-XT) graphics cards.

GPU-Z 2.47.0 has "many improvements" for Intel Arc discrete GPU reporting, as well as added or improved fake detection for graphics cards based on the NVIDIA G98, GT200, GK104. There's a fix for the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB being reported as non-LHR, and so much more.

NVIDIA's new -- and slowest GPU of 2022 so far -- GeForce GTX 1630 is supported under GPU-Z 2.47.0 as well as the new non-XT model AMD Radeon RX 6700 graphics card. The GPU-Z changelog actually mentions the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 6700 non-XT by name, but there are other Radeon RX 6700 non-XT graphics cards out there floating around in the wild.

NVIDIA is getting rid of its high-end GeForce RTX 30 series GPU family with some free games: Ghostwire: Tokyo and DOOM Eternal.

NVIDIA actually says they're giving away 4 free games with select GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs, but there are only 2 games because the other 2 are actually DLC. The free games are given away with NVIDIA's higher-end Ampere GPUs including the GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3090, and flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards. The deal includes desktop gaming PCs with the eligible GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs inside, as well as the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU inside of gaming laptops.

You'll get Ghostwire: Tokyo and DOOM Eternal, as well as The Ancient Gods - Part One and Part Two DLC for DOOM Eternal. The promotion runs from July 12, 2022, through to August 1, 2022, or while stocks last. You can read all about it on NVIDIA's post about the "PC Game Bundle" on their official website.

Redmagic has just unveiled its latest high-end 27-inch 4K 160Hz gaming monitor, which rocks a Mini-LED backlight with 1152 FALD zones, on a Fast IPS panel.

Redmagic is a sub-brand of Nubia Technology, a company that makes gaming-infused smartphones, but have just entered the gaming monitor, gaming keyboard, and gaming mouse market. The first is the new flagship 27-inch 4K 160Hz Mini-LED gaming monitor, which Redmagic says has 99% of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamut.

There's also DisplayHDR 1000 certification here, so you're going to get a bright monitor for HDR content, while Redmagic is also using ultra-high PWM backlight dimming which reduces flicker from the backlight dimming. Redmagic has a super-fast 1ms response time, with an mmWave add-on unit on one of the versions of the display, that lets you connect mobile devices to the monitor wrieelssly.

A new version of the HYDRA overclocking tool is out with HYDRA 1.2 supporting AMD's upcoming Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series, auto GPU tuning, and so much more.

The new HYDRA 1.2B PRO software has been teased by developer Yuri "1usmus" Bubliy, where it features a complete design of all features, new Curve Optimizer diagnostics (and for Zen 4) and more flexibility for AMD PBO (Precision Boost Overclocking) and HYBRID OC.

HYDRA 1.2 will also feature an automatic problem solving assistant, auto GPU tuning, unlimited GPU profiling, powerful new monitoring, and more safety. Personally (and professionally), I can't wait to try out the GPU side of things with HYDRA 1.2, but we'll be waiting a couple more months before testing the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.

Samsung currently offers its Galaxy S22 Ultra smartphone with different SoCs inside depending on the market, with some markets getting the Exynos 2200-powered Galaxy S22 Ultra, and other markets with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC.

But for their next-gen Galaxy S23 family of smartphones, rumor has it Samsung will drop the use of its in-house Exynos SoC and move into the warm, loving arms of Qualcomm and its next-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. The news is coming from analyst and insider Ming-Chi Kuo, who outlined it pretty easily:

Samsung has been losing the SoC race for a while now, and while the new AMD RDNA 2-powered GPU inside of the Exynos 2200 SoC was meant to be something great, it was a steaming pile of shit. Apple is doing kick-ass things with its A series of mobile processors, with the next-gen A16 SoC dropping inside of the iPhone 14 later this year made on the newer TSMC N5P process node.

Samsung Display is courting both Apple and Meta for next-gen Micro-OLED panels for their future AR and VR headsets, according to the latest from The Elec.

The company hasn't been making Micro-OLED panels so far because profits aren't great, but with the future augmented and virtual reality headsets relying on Micro-OLED panels, Samsung Display is stepping up to the plate. However, Sony will be the "first supplier" of Micro-OLED panels for Apple's "first MR device" reports The Elec.

The Elec reports: "Samsung Display had received requests from its customers to develop a MicroOLED panel, something which it had been avoiding so far due to expected low profitability. Up to now, Samsung Display had a few research staff working on MicroOLED and didn't pay much attention to it".

Danish media giant Nordisk Film (owned by parent company Egmont) has purchased Supermassive Games, the studio behind campy horror games like The Quarry and Until Dawn.

Today Nordisk and Supermassive Games announced a landmark deal that will propel a new age of horror games. Nordisk Film has purchased the remaining outstanding shares of Supermassive Games and folded the studio in its stable of wholly-owned game developers. Nordisk also owns Avalanche Studios, the devs that helped with RAGE 2, worked on various Just Cause games, and the 2015 Mad Max game.

"After taking a 30.7% stake in 2021, Nordisk Games acquires 100% ownership of UK studio Supermassive, making it the third wholly-owned studio in its portfolio," reads the press release.

Bandai Namco has reportedly been hit by hacking collective ALPHV who is allegedly holding the publisher's data for ransom.

"ALPHV ransomware group (alternatively referred to as BlackCat ransomware group) claims to have ransomed Bandai Namco," malware watchdog vx-underground said on Twitter. The group is known for stealing corporate data and selling or disseminating it out onto the internet if their demands aren't met.

Bandai Namco has yet to confirm or deny the hack, and purported leaks of new games have started rolling out. The leaks, which include likely sequels as Tekken 8, Dragonball Xenoverse 3, and a new Armored Core game, have been proven fake. The Tekken 8 logo, for example, was used in a fan video (see below) days before the leaks came out, and appeared on r/LeaksandRumors 5 months ago.

Cuphead's new Delicious Last Course DLC is one of the most popular expansions of all time.

Today Studio MDHR, the studio behind the beloved 1930's animated classic platformer Cuphead, announced that the game's new Delicious Last Course DLC has achieved over 1 million sales to date. These kinds of numbers make the post-launch content a fantastic contender among full game indie sales, and an instant best-seller in the DLC category.

It's worth mentioning that the Delicious Last Course is being sold separately at $7.99 or included in a $26.99 bundle that offers the base game + DLC. The platform availability also widens the access points for consumers, but it's still quite impressive to hit 1 million sales in less than two weeks--especially for DLC for an indie game.

GameStop, who recently fired a number of employees including content creators at Game Informer and store workers, just launched its NFT marketplace.

GameStop's NFT marketplace is now live, and as you'd expect, the online storefront has massively varying sale prices for its digital non-fungible tokens. The GameStop NFT store is in beta phases but already has over 53,000 NFTs with significantly varying buyout costs, with some commanding what can only be seen as joke prices.

Some NFTs have been listed for multiple millions of dollars--and one NFT, MetaBoy #4522, is marked up to 2 million ETH or roughly $2 billion (which has to be a troll price). When arranged by most expensive pricing, the first five pages of GameStop's NFT marketplace have million-dollar NFTs. In fact, no NFT in the first five pages is listed at less than $1,000,000.

Far Cry 6, one of the best games released in 2021, is just $12.99 on Amazon right now (check the buy link below).

Amazon Prime Day (July 12-13) has a bunch of good deals on video games, but one discount stood out to me: Far Cry 6 has been marked down to an extremely affordable $13 for Prime subscribers.

All versions have been discounted, including the PS4, Xbox One, and newer-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X/S SKUs. It's worth noting that Far Cry 6 has a free PS4 -> PS5 upgrade, and supports Smart Delivery on Xbox One/Series X which will automatically deliver the best version of the game depending on which system you own.

The new Last of Us Part I remake was apparently developed and finished without any crunch at Naughty Dog, a studio that is infamous for grueling work weeks driven by perfectionism.

Naughty Dog might have finished the first modern game that the studio didn't have to use crunch in order to complete. The studio is notorious for its brutal crunch culture which has seen employees hospitalized for stress-related breakdowns and overwork (other studios like BioWare have likewise been accused of the same). It appears things are turning around for Naughty Dog.

According to Anthony Vaccaro, a principal environment artist for Naughty Dog, the new Last of Us remake was the first major project that he didn't have to crunch in order to finish.

To celebrate Prime Day, Amazon is giving away a bunch of PC games for Prime subscribers.

If you're an Amazon Prime member, don't forget to take advantage of the new Freeloading promo that offers a ton of PC games for the low cost of free-99. The Prime Day Freeloading offer lists a ton of smaller-scale indies and a handful of memorable games including the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which is a fully-fledged remastering of the original ME trilogy with a bunch of QoL adjustments and big visual overhauls.

Other noteworthy free games include Need For Speed Heat and Grid Legends, both of which require EA Origin account linking to unlock. There's also a handful of Star Wars games like Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, and Star Wars Republic Commando (oddly enough, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight isn't included, but that game seldom is for some reason).

The iconic music livestream stopped on July 10th, 2022.

The stream had amassed over 688 million views after starting on February 23rd, 2020. The Lofi Girl channel received a DMCA takedown request by FMC Music, a Malaysian company, leading YouTube to take the video down and issue one copyright strike to the channel. A second stream by the channel was also taken down on the same day, which had amassed 129 million views, and began streaming only three days after the other, back in 2020.

Lofi Girl claims they are "false copyright strikes," marking another episode in the ongoing saga of abuse of YouTube's copyright system. YouTube confirmed on July 11th that the takedown requests were malicious and subsequently terminated FMC Music's account. Though the strike has been removed from Lofi Girl's channel, and the videos will be reinstated, a new stream will need to begin, marking the end of an era for one of the platform's biggest ongoing livestreams. The new live stream will be going live here, if you're interested.

A meteor was spotted in the sky over Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand's North Island and South Island, during the daytime hours on July 7th, 2022.

Witnesses described the meteor as a "giant bright orange fireball" that produced a "trail of smoke that hung around for a few minutes." The fireball is presumed to have been caused by a small meteor, up to a few meters wide, that fragmented in the atmosphere, producing a sonic boom as it exploded with the power of 1,800 metric tonnes of TNT.

The shock wave generated by the fragmented meteor was detected by GeoNet, a network seismometers used to detect earthquakes, which recorded sound waves produced as a result. The event also produced a bright flash of light that was recorded by satellites used to detect lightning globally. The meteor likely fragmented over the ocean, and fragments of it will therefore be unrecoverable.

Kyoto University and Kajima Corporation have presented concept plans for Moon and Mars bases.

The major downside of the ambitious plans is that the bases are only expected to become feasible to implement in the 22nd century at the earliest. The "artificial gravity living facilities" will provide a safe habitat for humans on both the Moon and Mars and will create artificial gravity by harnessing centrifugal forces created by rotating the entire base.

A study on the modified worm titled "Nematode surface functionalization with hydrogel sheaths tailored in situ has been published in the journal Materials Today Bio.

Researchers from Osaka University have found a new use for a type of nematode, which are microscopic unsegmented roundworms, particularly the Anisakis simplex species. The Japanese researchers equipped the worms with "hydrogel sheaths," allowing them to be loaded up with cargo. A. simplex is usually found in marine environments, but if ingested, they can colonize inside humans, where they have been shown to develop a taste for cancer cells.

A study on the Earth's formation titled "Stochastic accretion of the Earth" has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have used a new modeling approach to determine a likely pathway through which Earth came to be. The prevailing theory until now suggested that Earth formed from chondritic asteroids gradually conglomerating. However, according to planetologist Paolo Sossi of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, "the problem with this theory is that no mixture of these chondrites can explain the exact composition of the Earth, which is much poorer in light, volatile elements such as hydrogen and helium than we would have expected."

When stars form, leftover dust and gas surrounding the star make up a protoplanetary disk, which gradually aggregates into concentrated pockets. In what's known as the accretion model, matter clumps together, held in place by electrostatic forces, and then gravitational forces begin to hold matter together as larger objects form, such as planetesimals, which can go on to become a planet.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition graphics card has just dropped down to $1599 on Best Buy, which is a decent $400 cheaper than the MSRP of $1999 when it launched back in March 2022.

In a world where there were listings just months ago for the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, listed for close to $5000, as well as the ASUS ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 3090 Ti which was online for over $4000. Even the GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 Ti EX Gamer appeared online for $3840.

Best Buy is an official NVIDIA partner, as they're the only place that you can buy NVIDIA's in-house GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition in the US. NVIDIA hasn't dropped the price of its GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE, but rather Best Buy has slapped $400 of discount on it -- but do you think Best Buy is doing that without NVIDIA's permission -- for their best GeForce GPU, and a Best Buy exclusive in the US at that. Nah, they know. But the bigger question is why?