Latest News - Page 1103

Activision, a company that made a record $8.8 billion in revenues last year, is charging $70 for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on PC and last-gen consoles.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is coming back to Steam with a hefty price tag. First Square Enix charged $69.99 for Forspoken, now Activision-Blizzard is doing the same with Modern Warfare 2. The sequel is priced at gaming's new $69.99 standard price tag that was first set by Take-Two Interactive and Activision in 2020 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Now the trend is catching on PC, too.

What's even more interesting is that there's no $59.99 SKU for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. There is no base PS4 or Xbox One SKU available in stores--instead, Activision is exclusively offering a $69.99 cross-gen bundle on PS4 that includes a PS5 version of the game as well. So gamers with a PS4 have to pay extra for a PS5 version of the game even if they don't own a PS5.

Modern Warfare 2 will introduce a new standalone Warzone BR that completely resets all progress from Warzone 2020.

Warzone 2.0 is coming later this year as a separate game, complete with its own progression system and content. Infinity Ward has confirmed that the new Warzone 2.0 will basically reboot the battle royale and that original content, unlocks, and progression from Warzone 1.0 will not carry over.

The reason for this is Warzone 2.0's massive technical overhaul. Infinity Ward and Activision have unified the engines that power both Call of Duty's mainline game and Warzone together. The Call of Duty franchise will be using a new next-gen games engine starting with Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0. Upgrades include higher resolution textures, optimization upgrades, and more.

Microsoft reiterates a major new feature coming to Xbox Game Pass subscribers that will make it even harder for Sony's PlayStation plus to compete.

The console wars have transformed into the service wars; Microsoft has won the service market with its ultra-valuable Game Pass subscription, but Sony is swooping in with its new 3-tiered PlayStation Plus. Each service has its own strengths and weaknesses. Game Pass includes day-one first-party games, and PlayStation Plus boasts a mighty 740 game library across six console generations.

Today Xbox Game Pass packed on some more muscle. Microsoft announced that Xbox games that subscribers already own will soon be available for cloud streaming. "We're excited to share that later this year, it's our intent to roll out the ability for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play, from the cloud, select games they already own or have purchased outside the Xbox Game Pass library," Microsoft wrote on the Xbox Wire.

Xbox Game Pass is coming to Samsung TVs via a native app, transforming new Samsung-branded TVs into Xbox consoles via game streaming.

Starting June 30, owners of Samsung's new 2022 smart TVs will be able to stream Xbox Game Pass games directly to their TVs. The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate application will be available in the Samsung Gaming Hub across models like the Neo QLED 8K, Neo QLED 4K, QLED and 2022 Smart Monitor Series displays. Users can connect an Xbox or other controller to their TVs via Bluetooth to jump right into the games.

Microsoft currently has 372 games available for cloud streaming including a multitude of heavy-hitting first-party and third-party titles across four generations of Xbox consoles.

The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of the risk of monkeypox becoming established in new countries.

The monkeypox virus is endemic to Africa, meaning it can resurface often. However, since about May 17th of this year, cases of the rare virus have begun appearing across Europe, and outbreaks have occurred in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and other countries. The total number of cases has surpassed a thousand, though no deaths have been reported so far as a result.

Developers that are currently exploring Apple's coming iOS 16 update have posted screenshots online revealing Nintendo controller support across the OS.

The news reported by TechSpot points out that Apple has already given support for Xbox and PlayStation controllers, and according to developers digging through the iOS 16 developer preview OS and providing screenshots of the backend, Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers can now be connected.

Notably, developers have stated that both Joy-Con controllers can be connected at once, and "you can dynamically switch between using both joy-cons as a single controller or 2 separate controllers" by simply holding the screenshot and home button at the same time. This feature is particularly helpful for mobile gamers that are wanting to play a two-player local match on a single Apple device.

TikTok has announced that it will be rolling out a new feature that is designed to stop young users from infinitely scrolling the app.

The new feature, which is very similar to what is currently present on Netflix and Instagram, will prompt users aged between 13 and 17 years old if they spend more than 100 minutes on the app in a 24-hour period. Notably, TikTok also announced that it will be rolling out an insight tool that will allow users to be able to see your screen time summary each day, how many times the app was opened, and more.

This new feature is similar to Netflix's "are you still there?" screen prompt and is intended to add a level of protection to the platform that will help prevent phone addiction. Separately, Asurion, a private insurance company that provides insurance for smartphones, tablets, and consumer electronics, recently published a study that found that the average American checks their phone 353 times a day.

Jeremy Chrysler took to Twitter in October 2020 to bring up the issue of carbon dioxide concentrations spiking in his Tesla.

A recent promotional video posted to Tesla's Twitter account showing off the HEPA filter featured in the Model Y, Model S, and Model X that allegedly "removes >99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and any airborne particles." Chrysler replied to the video with a retweet of his 2020 tweet, highlighting the spike in carbon dioxide concentration when using the air conditioner to recirculate air.

Chrysler measured the carbon dioxide concentrations in the car with and without recirculation and noted a steep climb from an ambient concentration of between 400 and 500 parts per million (ppm) to over 2,184 ppm in under ten minutes. The levels significantly dropped once Chrysler turned off recirculation. However, they did not return to baseline in the time frame shown.

A new report from the Washington Post has revealed that Twitter's board will go along with the demands made by Elon Musk to investigate the platform's true number of bot accounts.

The new report from WAPO has revealed that the board will give Musk the full "firehose" of data that consists of more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to an individual close to the matter who discussed it with WAPO under the condition of remaining anonymous. The spotlight on Twitter's userbase and its percentage of fake accounts came under fire when Musk announced that the deal to purchase the platform for $44 billion was on hold until Twitter could prove that less than 5% of total users on Twitter are bots.

The individual who spoke to WAPO said that the "firehose" of data is already being accessed by approximately 24 different companies, who pay for access to the pool so they can see a real-time record of tweets, what devices those tweets came from, and information about the account that wrote the tweet. If Musk gets access to Twitter's data stream and is able to prove the platform has more spam accounts than what Twitter has previously stated, it may be enough grounds for Musk to renegotiate the agreed-upon price.

A study on the microplastics discovered titled "First evidence of microplastics in Antarctic snow" has been published in the journal The Cryosphere.

Researchers from the University of Canterbury have uncovered microplastics in fresh snow in Antarctica that was collected in late 2019. Research on microplastics has shown their negative impact on the health of environments due to limiting the growth and reproduction of organisms, and their general biological functions, including those in humans.

A brand new telescope in the Indian Himalayas has been commissioned at the Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES).

The telescope is known as the International Liquid-Mirror Telescope (ILMT) and is "the first liquid-mirror telescope designed exclusively for astronomical observations." It joins another four-meter class telescope at the observatory, the Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT), which are both the largest aperture telescopes in the country.

The telescope was built by Indian, Belgian, and Canadian astronomers and employs a 4-meter (13.1 feet) diameter rotating mirror made up of liquid mercury. Mercury is a reflective liquid, which the astronomers laid in a thin film and curved into a parabolic shape, allowing it to focus light. The mercury is protected from the wind by a thin transparent film of mylar.

Google has tripled a previous world record it set for calculating digits of pi only three years ago.

Google Cloud was used to calculate 31.4 trillion digits of pi in 2019, a world record later broken in 2021 by the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, which calculated another 31.4 trillion digits. On June 9th, 2022, Google has now announced that it has reclaimed the record, using Google Cloud once again to calculate 100 trillion digits of pi.

Google Cloud's compute service, Compute Engine, has gotten faster in the years since it first crunched a record number of digits of pi, thanks to recent upgrades such as the "Compute Engine N2 machine family, 100 Gbps egress bandwidth, Google Virtual NIC, and balanced Persistent Disks."

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that its James Webb Space Telescope has been struck by a micrometeorite.

The space agency recently published a report that states Webb was struck by a micrometeorite between May 23 and May 25. The micrometeorite struck Webb's primary mirror, and NASA has said that the telescope is still performing at a level that is beyond its intended mission requirements despite there being a "detectable effect in data". Notably, NASA writes that micrometeorite impacts are an "unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft" and that Webb engineers anticipated that impacts such as these would be common.

Engineers behind Webb constructed the next-generation space telescope to be capable of withstanding micrometeorite impacts. However, the micrometeorite that recently impacted Webb was larger than what was simulated on Earth, and over the course of Webb's life, it will undoubtedly continue to be hit with micrometeorites that will "gracefully degrade telescope performance," according to Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard.

Facebook is currently sending out settlement checks to its users, and these checks are close to $400. Here's how you may get one.

The free money from Facebook comes from a law in Illinois that is called the Biometric Privacy Act, which basically prevents companies from selling, storing, or collecting biometric data such as fingerprints or face scanning without obtaining consent from the user. As you can probably imagine, Facebook was sued over this law, which turned into a massive class-action lawsuit that resulted in the company creating a $650 million fund to compensate individuals that had been affected.

An artificial intelligence (AI) powered system has been developed that can reportedly clone pigs better than humans can.

A new report by the South China Morning Post has revealed that a new AI-powered system created by researchers from the University of Nankai's College of Artificial Intelligence has already created seven piglets via surrogate. The new system created the piglets without any human intervention, and according to the researchers behind the project who spoke to the publication, the system may pave the way forward to commercialized cloning.

Notably, most cloning processes consist of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is a laboratory strategy that involves a scientist manually transferring cells and their nuclei, which can take hours. The manual process also involves a lot of injuries for the cells, which is AI-system dramatically reduces as it can "can calculate the strain within a cell and direct the robot to use minimal force to complete the cloning process," according to Liu Yaowei, who spoke to the publication.

The Colombian military have used a remotely operated vehicle to uncover the remains of a legendary San Jose galleon.

Military sent down the remotely operated vehicle four separate times, which went to a depth of approximately 3,100 feet located off the Caribbean coast. Each of the missions was performed with observations by the Colombian navy and yielded different results.

From the images taken by the vehicle, we can see a part of the bow and hull of the ship, which is covered in algae and shellfish. Authorities believe the San Jose galleon was owned by the Spanish crown and was sunk by the British navy in 1708.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to light up YouTube over the abundance of spam accounts on the platform.

Musk posted the above meme on June 8, has moved the spotlight from Twitter's number of fake accounts to YouTube, and while Twitter is still being investigated for the true number of fake accounts on its platform, now individuals are discussing YouTube's similar problem. Musk made fun of YouTube's policies for when someone swears on the platform and the seeming inaction Google/YouTube has taken at curbing the ever-growing problem of obvious scams that riddle the website.

In response to Musk's meme, Trung Phan, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, posted a meme that depicts Elon ignoring Twitter and "checking out" YouTube as a replacement. In response to this fantastic meme, Musk posted the suspicious eyes emoji. Notably, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, replied to Musk's meme and wrote that he had seen thousands of fake advertisements on YouTube that claim he is giving away free money, and that he has been "screaming at [YouTube] for forever" to fix this problem.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that the agency and SpaceX will both be standing down from this week's Falcon 9 launch.

The mission named CRS-25 was a planned cargo mission headed for the International Space Station (ISS), and according to NASA's blog post, a major issue was identified during the loading process of the Dragon spacecraft. NASA states that "elevated vapor readings of mono-methyl hydrazine (MMH) were measured in an isolated region of the Draco thruster propulsion system", which is the fuel used by the Dragon spacecraft to course-correct itself as it's approaching the ISS to dock.

CBS News reported that NASA informed astronauts aboard the ISS that CRS-25 would now launch no earlier than June 28 (it was previously scheduled to launch on June 12). Notably, the space agency writes that an investigation has been launched into the fuel leak, and once the exact source of the leak is identified, both NASA and SpaceX teams will announce a new launch date. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is considering craving out SpaceX's Starlink program and making it a publicly traded company.

The SpaceX CEO has previously been asked if he will ever decide to make Starlink a publicly traded company, and he said that he didn't know exactly when it would happen as he is concentrating on making Starlink financially stable before going ahead with an IPO (Initial Public Offering). Notably, an audio recording taken from a June 2 SpaceX meeting revealed that Musk might offer shares for Starlink in three to four years, depending on the financial stability of the project at the time.

Furthermore, Musk was asked back in March 2020 about Starlink eventually going public, where he replied that he was "thinking about that zero" and was more so concentrating on avoiding bankruptcies that almost every other satellite constellation company has suffered from. More recently, Musk revealed on Twitter in February 2021 that Starlink would go public once "we can predict cash flow reasonably well", and that "SpaceX needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable."

A team of astronomers have uncovered some interesting facts about Jupiter that have led researchers to learn more about the origin of the largest planet in our solar system.

The team has penned a study that was published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal on June 8 that details observations made of Jupiter's gaseous envelope. The researchers found that Jupiter's gas isn't composed of one substance and that the inner part of the planet is made up of more metals than the outer part. Notably, the team found that Jupiter's inner metal parts consist of between 11 and 30 Earth masses, which is approximately 3-9% of the total mass of the planet.

Using data from NASA's Juno mission that arrived at our solar system's largest planet in 2016, the team studied the distribution of metals in Jupiter's atmosphere, which has provided some insight into how the planet originally formed over the course of millions of years. The team was led by Yamila Miguel, who said that previously researchers believed that Jupiter's envelope was similar to boiling water, where elements were completely mixed, but the new findings has found there is some gradient structure to its element distribution.