Latest News - Page 1132

EA today announced Heroes of Middle-earth, a new smartphone game that will help boost its mobile business.

EA's next mobile game will be based on J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved fantasy series. Heroes of Middle-earth is described as a next-generation fee-to-play collectible mobile RPG that "brings the fantasy and adventure of The Lord of the Rings to existing fans and new audiences alike in a strategic, social-competitive experience".

Western Digital has just unleashed the industry's first 22TB CMR and 26TB UltraSMR HDDs to "select hyperscale cloud customers, further expanding its areal density leadership and delivering customer value by driving TCO lower".

The huge new 26TB and 22TB drives use unique OptiNAND technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA), HelioSeal, and now UltraSMR technologies. So... not only is WD already offering 26TB and 22TB HDDs but they're already teasing bigger 30TB+ drives using ePMR.

Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler said before the "What's Next Western Digital Event in San Francisco": Everything we do starts with the belief in human potential as it intersects digital innovation, and in turn, creates possibility. This possibility is fueled by a technology platform that the world's innovators are building on and enabling the best new experiences - intelligent devices, powered by the cloud, connected by high-performance networks. We have only scratched the surface on the value of data and the technologies that unlock it".

Western Digital has just announced it has expanded its WD_BLACK gaming portfolio, unveiling the new WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD at its "What's Next Western Digital Event" in San Francisco.

The new WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD is capable of a huge 7.3GB/sec (7300MB/sec) so it will go perfectly with a PCIe 4.0-capable motherboard and super-fast CPU and GPU. Western Digital's new WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, too.

Joe Macri, Compute and Graphics CTO and Corporate Fellow at AMD explained: "AMD is delighted with its continued collaboration with Western Digital to deliver exceptional gaming experiences. As games become more immersive, the expectation for fast, seamless gameplay increases".

Switzerland has been accused of hiding Russian assets by an influential United States government commission.

The Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe states on its website that its mission is to promote human rights, military security, and economic cooperation in 57 countries it operates in across Europe, Eurasia, and North America. The Commission stated that "After looting Russia, Putin and his oligarchs use Swiss secrecy laws to hide and protect the proceeds of their crimes" and that Switzerland has been a very popular and well-known place to "stash plunder".

Mark Pieth, a Swiss anti-corruption expert, testified in front of the Commission on Thursday last week and said that Swiss lawyers use legal loopholes to hide assets. Furthermore, Pieth said Swiss lawyers are creating money laundering structures that aren't covered by anti-money laundering legislation, which, in turn, has impeded banks and authorities from seizing assets. Pieth argues that these legal loopholes are a "real danger for the success of the sanctions regime against Russia".

The world's most popular cryptocurrency is continuing its downtrend in price and has now reached lows that haven't been seen since January 2022.

In late March, Bitcoin recovered in price, hitting just over the $48,000 mark, and maintained the $45,000 to $47,000 range for the first few days of April before it fell off a cliff on April 6 and began a downtrend that brought the price to below $40,000 by April 11. For the majority of April, Bitcoin maintained a side-ways but overall trickling downward trend that has eventuated into a massive sell-off on May 8 that caused the price to plummet to $33,000.

Glassnode, a blockchain data and intelligence provider generating innovative on-chain metrics, published some bearish indicators that may have influenced the now-falling price of Bitcoin. A recent Twitter post on Glassnode Alerts suggests that any Bitcoin whales holding at least 1,000 coins may be leaving the market in preparation for a further decrease in Bitcoin's price.

Just like Earth, Mars gets smacked with a nice selection of meteors that vary in size and contents. Some of these space rocks make it to the surface.

With images and data acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), researchers believe they have discovered a new crater on the martian surface. The above image was taken by MRO on July 24, 2020, and when compared to an image of the same location taken in 2018, the crater isn't there, meaning an impact happened sometime between 2018 and 2020.

The MRO launched in 2005 and has been in operation since 2006, gathering data on Mars. Over this extensive period of data collection, researchers have been able to estimate that Mars gets smacked by about 200 meteors every year. The HiRISE camera used to snap these images has injected the image with "false" color that allows researchers to more easily distinguish between different materials and textures within the image. The crater would look very different if the human viewing it was standing next to it.

Elon Musk has copped some criticism online over a short private jet trip that took him just 31 miles, or nine minutes of flight time.

The outrage was sparked when the ElonJet Twitter bot account, which Musk has attempted to bribe to be shut down in the past over people using it to meet him at his landing locations, published a post that revealed Musk's jet took off from San Joe, California, US and landed in San Francisco. Many Twitter users were quick to point to the carbon emissions caused by Musk's private jet flight and his overall public message of reducing the reliance on fossil fuels.

Notably, text messages between Musk and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates revealed that Gates holds a $500 million short position against Tesla. Gates was attempting to meet with Musk to discuss climate philanthropy prospects. Musk replied by saying, "Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change."

Elon Musk has picked up quite a bit of heat lately following his purchase of Twitter and leaked text messages between him and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Despite the controversy and contentious arguments that can be made with the purchase of Twitter, Musk has picked up an even bigger unreasonable problem. Posting to his personal Twitter account, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO revealed a message that was sent to Russian media outlets from Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin that condemns Musk for sending Starlink satellites over Ukraine.

The short message states that based on Russian information, the delivery of Starlink satellites was carried out by the Pentagon. As a result, Elon Musk is "involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment. And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult - no matter how much you'll play the fool." Musk wrote in the caption, "The word "Nazi" doesn't mean what he seems to think it does."

Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been hinting at some of the changes that will be coming to the world's second largest social media platform.

With many hints towards Twitter account verification changes, free speech restraints relinquished, and more published to Musk's personal Twitter account, many have been wondering what Musk's expects to get out of owning Twitter. Now, The New York Times has acquired Musk's pitch deck that includes his presentation to investors as well as his financial targets for the company.

Musk claimed in the pitch deck that he would be able to increase Twitter's annual revenue by four times to $26.4 billion by 2028, with its revenue in 2021 being $5 billion. Notably, Musk plans to slice Twitter's reliance on advertising to 45% of its total revenue, with it being 90% in 2020. Furthermore, in 2028 Twitter's advertising will be pulling in $12 billion and subscriptions such as Twitter Blue would generate $10 billion.

Have you ever wondered what a bullet from a 9mm would look like flying through an egg? The Slow Motion Guys have captured that in staggering amounts of frames per second.

In a new video released to The Slow Mo Guys YouTube channel, Gav and Dan revisit a video that was uploaded to the channel 11 years ago where Gav demonstrated the difference in frames rates by writing on the mugs and shooting at the respective numbers. The highest frame rate in that 11 year old video was 10,000, and is where the egg shooting video begins with the maximum recorded frame rate being 1 million frames per second (FPS).

The eggs are positioned in the same location and a 9mm bullet is fired. The slow motion camera records the impact and each level of frame rate showed revealed different aspects of the collision. At the higher frame rates the bullets wobble from piercing through the egg can be more clearly seen, and moving into the 100,000's of FPS smaller pieces of shell can be seen as well as the shadow from the shockwave of air.

Elon Musk is really pushing it... he was stirring things behind the scenes before he purchased Twitter, but since slapping down billions and billions of dollars... Musk is now tweeting: "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya".

Why... why would the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and soon Twitter say "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya". He has been coming out against the Illuminati, secret societies, Bill Gates, the WHO (World Health Organization), Ghislaine Maxwell, the mainstream media, and everyone in between.

In a recent tweet from April 23, Musk posted a picture of Bill Gates next to a pregnant man emoji, following it up quickly with a picture of 6 people in cloaks and saying "shadow ban council reviewing tweet". But then a much more recent tweet on May 2, Marc Andreessen said that there was a "secret crew of billionaires and misfits egging [Elon Musk] on behind the scenes".

The interesting ASUS x Noctua GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card has been teased for a while now, but there's some official photos of the card and it gives us some greater details on the custom RTX 3080.

Interestingly, the company is using the RTX 3080 10GB variant -- not the RTX 3080 12GB -- for the new ASUS x Noctua GeForce RTX 3080. For the cooler, the custom Noctua cooler uses a dual 12mm fan cooler that should keep the card very cool.

Very cool, because it's a gigantic quad-slot design... from the front it doesn't look thick but man, it is thick. There are a few other thick RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards out there, but nothing like this with a Noctua cooling solution. It also looks cool, and should also be cool.

ASUS is about to enter the SSD business with its ROG Strix SQ7 SSD, which will be offered in up to 1TB capacity (maybe only 1TB at first) and on the fast PCIe 4.0 x4 standard.

The company is new to the SSD market and has just teased its ROG Strix SQ7 SSD on its ROG Taiwan social channels, with a sleek-looking SSD. There's no heat sink here, just the bare SSD in up to 1TB capacity on the M.2 PCIe Gen4 interface.

Sure, we've got PCIe 5.0 here now... so a bleeding-edge company like ASUS looks like they're behind the race with a PCIe 4.0 SSD in the second half of 2022, while they also sell PCIe 5.0-capable Z690-based motherboard. It's a pity, but that will change with time. Speaking of time, ASUS will be showing off its new SSD either at its just-announced "Boundless" event on May 17, or at Computex which is barely weeks away now.

NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card has a high TDP by default, with 450W at default... but now we have professional overclockers pushing it up to a huge 890W power limit.

MegaSizeGPU has uploaded a screenshot to Twitter from GPU-Z teasing the insane 890W power limit on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. The screenshot is proof that the GPU had a power limit of 890W, which is virtually double the 450W default TDP... crazy stuff, all from a custom XOC BIOS.

This isn't for you or I, but rather extreme overclockers who are pushing their modified GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards to the absolute limits with a special XOC BIOS. MegaSizeGPU was rocking the custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti OC Edition graphics card, with the special XOC BIOS and insane 890W unlocked power limit.

Outriders developer People Can Fly has updated its multi-game pipeline with a bunch of new details.

People Can Fly is currently working on a bunch of new games. The studio is developing five titles, including Project Gemini with Square Enix, Project Dagger with Take-Two Interactive, one project that will be self-published, and two games in early concept phases.

The developer has outlined its slate of games with tons of fine-tuned information on what's to come, including its upcoming Gemini and Dagger titles.

Sony may have accidentally revealed expanded co-op for WB Montreal's new Gotham Knights game.

According to the PlayStation Store listing, Gotham Knights will feature four-player network co-op in one session. The developers at WB Montreal had previously confirmed that only two players could join in the same group. In fact, the entire in-game crime city world of Gotham was built specifically for solo or paired play.

"Focusing more on the idea of the immediate team-up of two allowed us to say, 'OK, we can build a world that works perfectly well for either solo play or pairing off,'" creative director Patrick Redding told IGN in 2021.

Square Enix's primary motivation for selling its Western games division was not NFTs or blockchain.

Square Enix plans to sell Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and its Canadian mobile division to Embracer Group for $300 million. The deal includes a ton of IPs like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, and Thief--among many more. We've gone over why the deal was made, but the condensed reason is that they want to avoid risks.

Making AAA games takes hundreds of millions of dollars. Case in point: Square Enix spent a record $700 million+ on game dev in FY21. Sometimes those games don't break even and you lose a lot; Square Enix, for instance, lost an estimated $200 million on Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Canada passed laws on April 28th, 2022, allowing crimes committed on the moon to be prosecuted.

An amendment to Canada's Criminal Code to allow the change passed with members of parliament voting 181 to 144 in favor. The nation had already expanded its jurisdiction to include the International Space Station (ISS), allowing it to prosecute Canadian astronauts who committed crimes aboard it. Consequently, crimes committed on either the ISS or on the moon will be treated the same as those committed in Canada.

The amendment comes alongside increasing space flights year after year and ahead of NASA's crewed Artemis II to the moon, which will see astronauts return to the moon for the first time in over half a century, and that will include a Canadian astronaut on the journey.

SpaceX's President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), Gwynne Shotwell, made the prediction on CNBC in a recent interview.

Shotwell believes that astronauts will land on the surface of Mars before the end of the 2020s, likely by taking SpaceX's Starship, which features heavily in the company's plans for Mars. Starship is currently committed to several moon missions once it becomes operational following its upcoming orbital flight test should it pass the Federal Aviation Administration's environmental assessment.

Hyundai is building a new Research, Development and Lab Center in Bozeman, Montana, to develop the vehicles.

The lab is being built by a unit of Hyundai called the New Horizons Studio (NHS), which focuses on developing Ultimate Mobility Vehicles (UMVs). The all-new Bozeman lab represents a $20 million investment in Hyundai's Progress for Humanity vision, will serve as the NHS headquarters, and where UMVs will be prototyped and field tested.

The NHS mission is to create vehicles that can traverse over any terrain, including those that are "challenging for conventional ground vehicles." These vehicles would be suited to applications such as natural resource management, disaster management, logistics, construction, mining, and space.