Latest News - Page 1129

The passenger Darren Harrison from Lakeland, Florida, was caught in a sticky situation when his pilot had a medical emergency while he was flying over the ocean.

Harrison can be heard over radio communicating to air traffic controllers and informing them that "I've got a serious situation here" and the "pilot is incoherent, he's out". Immediately air traffic controllers can be heard asking Harrison if he knows where he is, and he responds with, "I have no idea. I can see the coast of Florida in front of me, and I have no idea". The air traffic controller spoke very calmly to Harrison and instructed him to keep the wings of the plane level and to try to follow the coast while officials located the plane.

The passenger gave the air traffic controllers his cellphone number as communications via radio were fading out. Once located, Robert Morgan, a 20-year veteran air traffic controller, and flight instructor, guided Harrison back to Palm Beach International Airport, talking him through every step of the landing process using a photograph of the cockpit inside the model of the plane Harrison was flying. Harrison was able to make it back on the ground safely and actually impressed air traffic controllers with his near-perfect landing.

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has come out and approved of Elon Musk's decision to bring back former President Donald Trump's Twitter account.

The Twitter co-founder praised Elon Musk for his choice of reinstating Trump's Twitter account, which was banned under inciting violence following the January 6 capital hill riots. Dorsey took to Twitter on Tuesday to say that generally, permanent bans are a "failure of ours and don't work", while going on to list exceptions where permanent bans don't solve an issue such as child sexual exploitation, spam, scams, network manipulation, and more.

Notably, the Twitter co-founder directed attention to his Twitter thread, where he explained why the company decided to ban Donald Trump's Twitter account. According to Dorsey, the decision to ban the president "was the right decision" motivated by "the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter." Despite Musk stating that he would reverse the permanent ban on Trump's account, the former president only stated at the end of last month that he won't be returning to Twitter and will be staying on his own social platform Truth Social.

A new report from Newsweek puts together an interest factor between each of the Russian oligarchs that have mysteriously died throughout 2020.

The new report from the publication points out that at least seven of the Russian oligarchs have died of strange circumstances throughout 2022, and while there are few links between the deaths of each of the individuals, there are two noticeable commonalities. All of the seven oligarchs didn't publicly oppose Russia's President Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine, or receive any sanctions that were imposed on many Russian oligarchs following the invasion that began on February 24.

Notably, only one of the Russian oligarchs died before the Russian/Ukraine war began, and his death was less than a month from the commencement date. Leonid Shulman, who was the head of transport at Gazprom Invest, reportedly committed suicide in a cottage bathroom in Russia's Leningrad region on January 30.

The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently appeared in front of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense to testify on next year's defense budget.

Republican Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky asked Austin about a hypothetical scenario where Russia launched an attack against a NATO country, Poland, or any other surrounding country. Austin replied clearly that Russia committing an attack against any country that is a member of NATO would be a "game changer," but not something that he believes Putin and his calculus wants to carry out.

The Secretary of Defense explained that together NATO forces amass 1.9 million and include the most advanced aircrafts, ships, weapons, and more. Furthermore, Austin said that if Putin engaged with a NATO member, tensions in the overall situation would increase drastically and likely convert into "another type of competition that no one wants to see."

The European Space Agency (ESA) has taken to its website to showcase new images of Mars and its network of long grooves in its surface.

Posted to the ESA website on April 28, 2022, the space agency explains that the features seen in the above image are involved in a large fault system that is called Tantalus Fossae. The Tantalus Fossae was formed when the nearby Alba Mons volcano rose out of the ground.

The indents on Mars' surface are called "grabens" and are also present on the other side of the volcano. These grabens stretch as far as 621 miles, and can be up to 6 miles wide and 1,100 feet deep. Below is a topographical view of the region, which displays a legend that indicates the depth of the terrain in meters. Red terrain is far lower than the terrain in the northern right-hand corner of the image.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has programs to create hypersonic missiles, and programs to destroy them.

DARPA has completed Phase 1 of its Glide Breaker program, which aims to develop an "interceptor for hypersonic threats." Phase 1 was dedicated to developing and demonstrating a divert and attitude control system (DACS) that would enable an intercepting kill vehicle to destroy a hypersonic weapon threat during its glide phase. Phase 1 saw the fabrication and demonstration of two DACS prototypes that could meet the desired performance objectives.

The agency is now seeking proposals for Phase 2 of the program with a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). Phase 2 will involve "wind tunnel and flight testing of jet interaction effects." This testing will allow models to be validated and inform future designs. DARPA noted that Phase 1 participation is not a prerequisite for proposals submitted for Phase 2.

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the US government is investigating Elon Musk.

The report from the WSJ details an investigation opened by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) over Musk's recent $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Notably, the SEC is concentrating on a public form that investors are required to file before they purchase more than 5% of a company. The public form acts almost as a notification to current shareholders as well as companies that potential influential investor may be looking to gain control of the company.

The publication reports that Musk's 5% disclosure letter was ten days later than it should have been, and as a result, it saved him $140 million as share prices could have possibly been higher if the public had been aware that Musk already owned 5% of the company. Despite Musk's disclosure letter being late, reports indicate that the SpaceX and Tesla CEO would still be able to follow through with the purchase of Twitter as the board of directors unanimously approved of Musk's offer, leaving the SEC with little power to operate.

A paper on the artificial intelligence (AI) traffic system titled "Fully-Autonomous, Vision-based Traffic Signal Control: from Simulation to Reality" is being presented at the Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS 2022).

Researchers from Aston University have developed an AI system capable of managing traffic flow through intersections with traffic lights. The system uses deep reinforcement learning, allowing it to understand when it isn't performing well and adjust accordingly, and continue to improve when making progress.

The current main form of traffic light automation uses manually-designed phase transitions triggered by cars passing over magnetic induction loops embedded in the road. The AI system uses this data and is fed with live camera footage to react to traffic conditions more quickly and adjust traffic lights accordingly.

The last time that I was reporting on Google's next-gen Android-powered slate: Pixel C, was all the way back in 2015. Well, Google isn't finished with the tablet market... and they're not afraid to show it.

Google has just given the world a sneak peek at their "upcoming Pixel tablet", which is a next-generation Android-based tablet "powered by Google Tensor" and "designed to complement your Pixel phone". Interesting. We should see Google unleash their second-generation Tensor chip inside of the upcoming Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones, and now the upcoming Google Pixel tablet.

It looks like Google will be using a single camera sensor on the back, and a selfie camera up front. There are no more details on the camera sensors, but we're also a year away from launch. I'm sure things are going to change radically between now and then, and Google won't want to show off too much.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4090 is once again in the headlines, with new leaks on the GPU teasing that the next-gen AD102-300 GPU will have 24GB of GDDR6X memory @ 21Gbps.

In new leaks from "kopite7kimi" we're being told that the GeForce RTX 4090 will use the same AD102 GPU as the higher-end GeForce RTX 4090 Ti, but will have some things cut down of course. Even in its cut down form, AD102 will still offer a 71% increase in CUDA core count over GA102 (the GPU that powers the RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090, RTX 3090 Ti).

kopite7kimi says that the RTX 4090 that is getting more leaked details is the "PG137/139-SKU330" which uses the "AD102-300" GPU, has 24GB of GDDR6X memory at 21Gbps, and of course: 600W of power. But the new RTX 4090 isn't the only GPU that the leaker is providing more details on, but also the upcoming RTX 4070, too.

Intel has had a lot to show off at its "Intel Vision" event, where the company showed off its upcoming 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPU in "standard" and "high-density" die packages.

The next-gen Meteor Lake CPU will be quite different from Alder Lake and even Rocket Lake (13th Gen Core) that comes out later this year, where the 14th Gen Core CPUs don't have a PCH die. Instead, it packs it onto the same chip in a beautiful tiled architecture design.

The main die actually packs at least 4 tiles, and could feature even more -- when it comes to the GPU, we're looking at Intel using a new tGPU (Tile-GPU) design. AMD calls this "chiplets" while Intel calls them "tiles" with Intel revolutionizing its entire stack of future CPUs and GPUs with the tile-based approach.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is getting an update later this month, which will be something truly special for Top Gun fans -- the new Top Gun: Maverick movie tie-in expansion -- drops on May 25.

The official Xbox account tweeted: "Attention flight simmers! This is your captain speaking. The Top Gun: Maverick experience is taking off 5/25 in Microsoft Flight Simulator! Don't have your own call sign yet? Create one today!"

We don't know what to expect in the Top Gun: Maverick expansion, but I would dare say that it's going to involve aircraft from the movie... maybe some of the stars of Top Gun like Tom Cruise, and more. Microsoft and developer Asobo Studio said that gamers will be able to "experience first-hand what it's like to be a U.S. Navy Top Gun".

Sony is planning to ship more PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year than any other console in PlayStation history.

Sony's plans for a big PS5 sales blitz are still active. The company has announced that it expects to ship 18 million PlayStation 5 consoles through Fiscal Year 2022 (present - March 2023). Sony had originally announced this massive shipment strategy during an investor's meeting in May 2021, where it implied 20 million+ PS5 sales targets.

The PS5 has currently shipped 19.3 million units worldwide. If Sony's plan is successful, total PS5 shipments would skyrocket to 37.3 million by March 2023. This is well below Sony's original implied 45 million PS5 target.

Non-Sony published games dominate sales on the PlayStation Store and retail, with 86% of all games sold in Fiscal Year 2021 being third-party titles.

Sony's recent earnings figures reinforce some key factors of its business, including how the mighty gaming empire relies heavily on games not developed by the platform-holder.

According to the data, Sony sold a total of 303.2 million games on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 across digital and and in-store channels. While Nintendo makes most of its game sales from first-party, Sony is much different; the split is significantly in favor of third-party games. In fact, 86% of games sold in Sony's FY21 period were third-party (259.3 million) and 14% were first-party (43.9 million).

Sony's latest financial report gives an update on PlayStation Plus subscriber counts, revealing a dip as network services revenues increase.

PlayStation Plus subscribers have dropped to 47.4 million as of Q4 FY21, down some 600,000 users from the all-time high of 48 million subscribers set in Q3.

Other key performance indicators from Sony's documents show that most online PlayStation gamers still are not subscribed to PlayStation Plus. Our records show that 55%, or more than half of PlayStation's total monthly active users, aren't subscribed to PS Plus.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 continues being held back by supply constraints.

The PlayStation 5 has shipped a total of 19.3 million units as of March 31, 2022, Sony announced in its latest earnings report. The company shipped 11.5 million PS5s throughout Fiscal Year 2021 as compared to the 14.9 million PS4s shipped in the same launch-aligned period.

The demand for the console has skyrocketed but Sony is unable to meet demand as critical chip supplies remain scarce, however inventory is expected to improve throughout FY22 (now through March 2023).

Sony made nearly $7.6 billion from add-on content throughout its last fiscal year, showing the true might of free-to-play and live service games.

Sony's latest FY2021 financials reinforce key trends about the PlayStation business. The gaming platform is largely propped up by microtransaction revenues generated in mega-hit F2P games like Fortnite, Call of Duty Warzone, and Apex Legends.

In fact, PlayStation made $7.593 billion from add-on content throughout Fiscal Year 2021, a metric that includes microtransactions, in-game purchases, virtual currency purchases, expansions, and DLC.

Sony's latest PlayStation console duo has sold nearly 2 billion games to date.

According to data provided by Sony and compiled by ResetERA's ArmGunar and us, the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles have sold a combined 1.888 billion games worldwide across physical and digital channels. As per Sony's game revenues data, the bulk of these sales were from digital and were made from Sony's PlayStation 4.

Sony sold 303.2 million PS4 and PS5 games throughout FY2021, down 10% from last year's astronomical highs.

Sony has shipped fewer PlayStation 4 consoles in FY2021 than it has in any other period in history.

After seven long years, the PlayStation 4's cycle is starting to wind down. Due in part to market saturation and to make room for the new PlayStation 5, Sony's last-gen console shipments are significantly petering down to the hundred-thousands mark.

Throughout FY2021, Sony shipped a total of 1 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide. Last year, the same year the PS5 released, it shipped 5.8 million PS4s.

Gotham Knights has been cancelled on PS4 and Xbox One, is now exclusively releasing for next-gen consoles for $69.99 MSRP.

Today WB Montreal revealed a bunch of new gameplay footage and details for Gotham Knights, its new Batman action RPG that doesn't have Batman in it. One of the updates will actually squeeze out a sizable market and reduce the overall sales of the game.

According to the developers Gotham Knights won't be releasing on last-gen hardware and will only be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Back in 2020, WB Games had released a fact sheet with a promised launch on PS4 and Xbox One.