Latest News - Page 1105

In what I'm sure most people thought were crazy "conspiracy theories" that China would invade Taiwan and take control of TSMC... well, now a senior Chinese economist at a "government-run research group" (a think tank) said that Chinese authorities should seize TSMC.

Why? Chinese authorities should seize TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) if the US slaps China with sanctions as they did against Russia. Chen Wenling, chief economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges said: "If the US and the West impose destructive sanctions on China like sanctions against Russia, we must recover Taiwan. Especially in the reconstruction of the industrial chain and supply chain, we must seize TSMC".

"They are speeding up the transfer to the US to build six factories there. We must not let all the goals of the transfer be achieved". The comments were made when Chen had a speech hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University last month.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4090 is expected to be twice as fast as the second-fastest Ampere flagship -- the GeForce RTX 3090 -- but now we're hearing rumors it'll be OVER twice as fast.

In a new tweet, leaker "kopite7kimi" says that "nothing changed yet" with the GeForce RTX 4090 and that the "performance will be slightly higher than twice the RTX 3090". To clarify, he said "I mean RTX 4090 > 2x RTX 3090". Yeah, it can't get any clearer than that.

We already knew the GeForce RTX 4090 would be twice as fast, but OVER twice as fast isn't too much of a stretch. Not when we're hearing rumors that NVIDIA is testing an even faster AD102-based GPU with up to 800-900W of power. This is a TITAN-class Ada Lovelace GPU... so having headroom between "over twice as fast as the RTX 3090" and a new up-to-900W graphics card is making much, much more sense.

The future of display connectivity cables is constantly changing, with DisplayPort 2.0 monitors and graphics cards debuting later this year, HDMI 2.1a is also being introduced.

HDMI 2.1a was recently announced by the HDMI Licensing Administrator, designed to give active cables more power directly from the source device... all without needing additional power cables. This means that cables that are longer than 5M won't have as many issues, especially when driving the full 40Gbps or higher 48Gbps through HDMI 2.1 cables.

The big difference with the new HDMI 2.1a specification: the active cables can only be attached in one direction -- with one end of the cable specifically labeled to attach to the HDMI Source, while the other side will be connected ot the HDMI Sink device. If you hook the cable up in reverse, well, it won't actually work.

Samsung teased, and then announced its Odyssey Neo G8 gaming monitor earlier this year... but now the new gaming monitor has officially launched worldwide. Check it out:

The new Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 gaming monitor has a 32-inch curved VA panel, with a native 4K resolution and super-intense 240Hz refresh rate. Yep, 4K 240Hz insanity that is also driven by Quantum Mini-LED technology, with Quantum HDR 2000 and 2000-nit peak brightness. There's an ultra-low 1ms response time as well.

Samsung says that its new 32-inch Odyssey Neo G8 gaming monitor is the "world's first and fastest gaming monitor" that rocks a 1000R curved VA panel featuring Quantum Matrix Technology. The buzzwords, they get me everytime. Whoooooooooooosh: QUANTUM MATRIX TECHNOLOGY. Marketing jokes aside: this is a serious god damn monitor, with 4K @ 240Hz you're going to need a next-gen GPU to run games at 4K 240FPS. Maybe even a generation ahead of that.

Bend Studio, the developers behind Syphon Filter and the more recent PS4 game Days Gone, is developing a new multiplayer PlayStation game.

Today Bend Studio reinvented itself. Starting with a new logo, the studio outlined its decades-long history in gaming from Syphon Filter to Uncharted and Days Gone, and gave us clues on what's next on the horizon.

"We are currently working on a new IP that includes multiplayer and builds upon the open-world systems of Days Gone, but brings you a whole new world that we are extremely excited to craft for you. We cannot wait to reveal it to you when the time is right," Bend Studio's Kevin McAllister said.

SEGA developers describe the new Sonic Frontiers game as "open zone," not open world, while also confirming EXP progression systems and skill trees.

At first, Sonic Frontiers looks like the Blue Blur's very own Breath of the Wild moment. But developers are saying that's not quite right. The new ambitious Sonic Frontiers game is described as open zone. This makes sense: Sonic's in-game areas have always been zones ever since the original Genesis game.

So why is a zone and not an open world? It comes down to semantics. Sonic Frontiers is mainly an action game, not an RPG. "Open world games like Zelda or other AAA games fundamentally have RPG or adventure worlds. For Sonic, the core here is a 3D action game. Our basic idea was to have that take place in an open space. What sets Sonic Frontiers apart is this different approach to an open game world," Sonic Team creative officer Takashi Iizuka told IGN.

Halo Infinite's online co-op testing will begin next month and carry on throughout the year, 343 Industries says.

343i plans to start Halo Infinite's online network campaign co-op flighting as early as July across Xbox One, PC, and Xbox Series X/S consoles. Co-op was expected to ship with season 2's launch in May, but was delayed indefinitely due to technical complications. Co-op is planned to launch sometime in Season 2 Lone Wolves, which lasts from now until November 8.

"With Halo Infinite campaign network co-op arriving later this year, we're planning to flight it to Halo Insiders in July," 343i said in a Facebook post.

How difficult is it to find legendary gems in Diablo Immortal? Pretty tough. Here are the drop rates for legendary gems, and how much you may have to pay to get them.

Diablo Immortal's microtransactions are causing lots of controversy among core fans and newcomers alike. The endgame has been exposed as an incredibly layered pay-to-win style system wherein players are strongly pushed towards buying Legendary Crests for real money in order to find high-powered gems that can boost items and equipment. While not entirely necessary for PVE, winning PVP battles is largely determined by the extra buffs provided by these specific gems.

The legendary gems are exceedingly rare and come in multiple grades, ranging from 1-star to 5-star. Gamers have compiled a list of drop rate probabilities for each grade, and we've put that into a simple table for convenience.

E3 will return in 2023, the ESA has promised.

E3 isn't dead after all. The Entertainment Software Association confirms the industry's most renown trade show will return in 2023 with bot a digital and in-person event. E3 skipped 2022 and led many publishers like EA and Ubisoft to also skip Summer-themed showcases. 2022 has continued COVID-19 disruptions, watering down hype. The not-E3 vacuum has been filled by Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest, and mainstays like Microsoft are promising its annual Xbox event, but there's an air of caution as this era of delays becomes more realized.

"We're excited about coming back in 2023 with both a digital and an in-person event," ESA president and CEO Stan Pierre-Louis told The Washington Post in an interview. "As much as we love these digital events, and as much as they reach people and we want that global reach, we also know that there's a really strong desire for people to convene - to be able to connect in person and see each other and talk about what makes games great."

Hideo Kojima's next game is reportedly a horror project called Overdose, sources have told Tom Henderson.

Several years after P.T. and the cancellation of Silent Hills, it looks like Kojima's next game has returned to horror. Sources have reportedly send known leaker Tom Henderson footage of Kojima's upcoming terror-filled project, which is codenamed Overdose. The footage was brief but spoke volumes; it reportedly showed Margaret Qualley, who portrayed Mama in Death Stranding, as a lead character in a blue dress.

If accurate, Overdose will have a cinematic look and feel similar to Death Stranding, featuring high-end motion captures. Kojima has been working with Kojima Productions' new LA-based studio, which is also using Sony's advanced motion capture technology. Kojima has said his new game would be a "radical project" that pushes a "new era of experimentation" and "challenge different mediums".

The U.S. Air Force recovered the hypersonic sled as part of its Hypersonic Sled Recovery (HSR) project.

The 846th Test Squadron conducted testing of the hypersonic sled at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in late March 2022. The reusable sled was stopped after reaching speeds of 6,400 feet per second on a monorail, equivalent to about Mach 5.69, or almost 5.7 times the speed of sound. The test was performed on the Holloman High Speed Test Track (HHSTT) and was the fastest sled recovery in more than thirty years.

According to the Air Force, the HHSTT "is the only sled track capable of recovering sleds with test articles from velocities over Mach 5." The vehicle's high-performance braking systems allow it to be recovered for analysis and reuse, which is less often the case with hypersonic aircraft tests. The sled tests bridge the gap between full-scale flight tests and laboratory experiments.

Plans for the taser-equipped drone were being developed by Axon, formerly known as TASER International.

Axon announced on Monday, June 6th it was halting its plans for a taser-equipped drone after nine members of its artificial intelligence ethics board resigned, remarking they had "lost faith in Axon's ability to be a responsible partner." Axon announced last week they were working on drones that would be equipped with the company's Tasers and fly in schools to "help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook, or Columbine."

Eight board members voted against Axon moving ahead with the creation of a Taser drone, with four in favor, with the majority citing concerns over weaponized drones being used in already over-policed areas. Following the recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Axon publicly announced the drone's development.

A study on the cancer treatment titled "PD-1 Blockade in Mismatch Repair-Deficient, Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer" has been accepted from publication in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) is conducting a new trial administering the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab, sold under the brand name Jemperli, to patients with rectal cancer tumors. Only twelve patients have seen positive results as the trial is currently ongoing. However, every patient so far has entered remission following the treatment, and no tumors returned by their six-month check-ups.

All of the patients had tumors with genetic mutations known as mismatch repair deficiency (MMRd), making them less responsive to chemotherapy or radiation treatments and increasing the need for surgical removals. However, it also makes cancer cells more vulnerable to the immune system, especially when supported by immunotherapy drugs.

A new video tweeted out by Elon Musk provides an update on some of the accomplishments of SpaceX up to this point and some plans for the future.

In the video, an animated segment shows off how Starship will deploy SpaceX's next generation of Starlink satellites, Starlink V2.0. A small slit is shown opening up near the top of Starship, allowing Starlink satellites to be deployed two at a time, with Starship's partially transparent body showing a stack of the satellites within and ejecting those at the bottom before the rest of the stack moves down.

The animation confirms what was spotted last month on Starship to be what was described as a "pez dispenser type door" for deploying Starlink satellites. With similar comments being made on the latest video, even Musk has acknowledged the similarity, suggesting that "maybe we should make an actual Starship model that dispenses pez for our merch store."

A study on Dyson spheres titled "Infrared and Optical Detectability of Dyson Spheres at White Dwarf Stars" has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ben Zuckerman, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), suggests that aliens may be inhabiting Dyson spheres encircling white dwarf stars throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Therefore, such spheres and stars are where astronomers should focus their search for extraterrestrial life.

A Dyson sphere, named after physicist Freeman Dyson, allows a sufficiently advanced civilization to harness all of the energy output of its host star by building a megastructure around it to capture the solar energy. Zuckerman argues that of the stars an alien civilization could build a Dyson sphere around, white dwarf stars would be the most likely, which make up about 6% of all known stars in the Milky Way.

Bitcoin's price continues to operate in the $28,000 to $32,000 range, but some analysts believe there is something in store for Bitcoin throughout the summer.

As reported by CoinTelegraph, social media analyst Wolf has provided correlated evidence that if the S&P 500 flips its 21-month exponential moving average (EMA) support and continues an uptrend, Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market as a whole will follow in an upwards fashion as well. Wolf explained that Bitcoin slowly follows behind then S*P, but if the stocks 21EMA is held, Bitcoin is due to "recover pretty soon".

Furthermore, commentator Bob Loukas took to Twitter to give his point of view on the cryptocurrency market, saying that the coming summer in crypto will likely be "boring," as the "heavy selling is done" and now is the "period where only smart money accumulates". Loukas added that now that all of the "weak hands have turned over, higher prices will be needed," and a new cycle can start. Loukas projects that the new cycle will begin later in 2022.

It was only a few days ago that Elon Musk postponed Tesla AI Day while also teasing the reveal of the coming Tesla bot named Optimus.

Musk announced that Tesla AI Day would be held on August 19, 2022, but recently took to his personal Twitter account on June 3 to announce that the event has been pushed back to September 30. The Tesla CEO also teased the reason for the delay, explaining the company "may have an Optimus prototype working by then", which will seemingly be revealed at the show.

Previously Musk has explained that the Tesla bot is designed to perform any task that humans don't want to do, or any job that is too monotonous for humans to enjoy doing. Furthermore, Musk has said that Optimus, when it is in working order, will "upend our idea of what the economy is" and "it may be hard to imagine it, but as you see Optimus develop, and we will make sure it's safe, no Terminator stuff, it will transform the world to a degree even greater than the car".

NASA has captured several astronauts enjoying a pizza party with some not-so-good-looking homemade pizzas 250 miles above Earth.

The space agency has posted the images to its International Space Station Laboratory Twitter account and wrote that astronauts aboard the space station recently enjoyed a pizza party in space. The ISS National Lab Twitter account explained that the astronauts cooked their own pizzas with a selection of very few ingredients that can be seen in one of the images.

As pointed out by Futurism, the pizzas seen in the images certainly don't look very appetizing, but considering the ISS's location 250 miles above Earth and the fact that astronauts aboard the station aren't privy to luxurious foods, it seems, at least from the images, that the pizzas were thoroughly enjoyed despite their appearance. For those wondering if these are the first pizza's ever eaten in space, they aren't, as Pizza Hut delivered a six-inch pizza to Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachov in 2001.

Mobile phones have become a massive part of almost everyone's lives, but have you ever wondered how many times you check your phone in a day?

Asurion, a private insurance company that provides insurance for smartphones, tablets, and consumer electronics, published a study back in 2019 that found the average American checks their phone at least 96 times throughout a 24-hour period, which accounts for approximately 8 hours of sleep. 96 times a day means the individual was checking their phone once every 10 minutes.

A follow-up to that study was recently released and found that 96 times a day has drastically increased to 352 times a day, which has taken that 10-minute figure down to just once every 3 minutes. Notably, the study consisted of 2,000 American adults of a variety of different ages. Furthermore, the study found that out of all participants, 20% were unable to go without their phone for more than a few hours and that 75% of the participants reported taking their phone with them to the bathroom.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is currently investigating how many illegitimate Twitter accounts are present on the platform.

Musk is currently working his way through acquiring Twitter after the Tesla CEO announced the purchase for $44 billion. Now, Republican Attorney General (AG) of Texas, Ken Paxton, has released a new press statement that declares an investigation has been launched into Twitter to uncover the true number of bot accounts on the platform.

Twitter states in its regulatory filings that out of the platform's total number of users, fewer than 5% of them are bots. The attorney general of Texas, along with Elon Musk who is independently investigating, will attempt to find out the true number of bot accounts, which Paxton's press release states, "may, in fact, comprise as much as 20% or more" and "the difference could dramatically affect the cost to Texas consumers and businesses who transact with Twitter."