Latest News - Page 1137

We all know the controversy Elon Musk has caused over the years, but it has reached a new point right now... and in the future, it'll make the past trolls from the SpaceX and Tesla boss look like child's play.

In a new tweet, American entrepreneur -- the last time I wrote about him was when he was providing funding to a very early Oculus VR, later acquired by Facebook, now Meta -- Marc Andreessen tweeted in reply to Rob Copeland's new article on The Wall Street Times.

The WSJ article is titled "The Shadow Crew Who Encouraged Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover" with the outlet discovering a "secret crew of billionaires and misfits egging him on behind the scenes". Andreessen replied, tweeting: "I have friends, they have acquaintances, you have a shadow crew of misfits egging you on".

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture will be fighting AMD's next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture later this year, with both GPUs rumored to provide some rather exciting upgrades in performance over the current generation GPUs.

The new NVIDIA AD102 GPU should be the chip that powers the new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 Ti and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card -- or, according to some rumors the RTX 5090 Ti and RTX 5090 -- with leaker "kopite7kimi" tweeting that AD102 could have over 100 TFLOPs of compute performance.

100 TFLOPs of power from AD102 would make it 2.5x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti, which spits out 40 TFLOPs and 2.8x better than the RTX 3090 with its 35.5 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance. Remember: pure TFLOPs doesn't mean = gaming performance, but kopite7kimi does say "Lisa and Jensen's competition will give us a 100 TFLOPs gaming war in a few months" with a key takeaway from that: 100 TFLOPs + gaming war.

As what the mainstream would call a "conspiracy theorist" it has been a wild ride -- I've never gone through so much popcorn, 17 bags so far -- Elon Musk is ramping things up (again).

The SpaceX and Tesla boss has already jumped on President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his "Laptop From Hell". If the "conspiracies" and reports on that Laptop From Hell are true, it implements the President of the United States and the people of the United States. Compromising material of the President's son, while he sits on the board of a Ukrainian-based energy company... President Trump used to mention that.

But in a fresh tweet, Elon is now jumping on the Harvey Weinstein story, Matt Lauer raping women in his office at NBC, and now Jeffrey Epstein's BFF Ghislaine Maxwell. Musk was spotted with Maxwell at a Vanity Fair party in 2014, where I've even seen posts myself questioning why he was caught in a photo anywhere near Maxwell. Especially considering someone of his wealth and power would know, he would know for SURE, what she and her kind were into.

Square Enix plans to sell its entire Western video games division to Embracer Group for $300 million. Here's why.

Today Square Enix and Embracer Group shocked the gaming world. Square Enix announced that it is selling all of its North American and European-operated game studios alongside a ton of intellectual property and franchises to Embracer Group. The deal includes Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and mobile game studio Square Enix Montreal, as well as Square Enix of America. Major IPs like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, and Thief are being sold as well.

One big question is why did Square Enix sell? An even bigger question is why did they sell these companies and franchises for so little? The answer requires a more broad look at Square Enix, its trajectory, and an examination of how well these studios have performed.

The modern Tomb Raider and Deus Ex games achieved commercial success in regards to raw sales figures, new data proves.

Despite failing to meet Square Enix's expectations, the Deus Ex duology and Tomb Raider trilogy are immensely popular games. These five AAA titles have sold over a combined 50 million copies across all platforms from 2011 to present day.

Crystal Dynamics says that the Tomb Raider trilogy, which includes the 2013 reboot, Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), has sold over 38 million copies, making up 43% of total franchise sales (the Tomb Raider series has sold 88 million).

Deus Ex and Tomb Raider developer Eidos Montreal is working on multiple new games that utilize Unreal Engine 5 for streamlined and powerful development.

Embracer is buying Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics for $300 million, and the company held a big presentation outlining each studio and their associated IPs. The stream included a look at Deus Ex and a brief discussion on what Eidos Montreal is currently creating.

According to Eidos Montreal studio head David Anfossi, the company has several new projects in dev across its teams in Montreal, Sherbrooke, and Shanghai.

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors has seen the new games Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are working on, and says the pipeline is "very interesting" and has multiple "very sizable AAA experiences" in big name franchises.

Today Embracer Group announced it would buy Square Enix's entire Western games development division for $300 million, including Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and more than 50 IPs including Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, and Thief (plus a lot more franchises).

The value is not only in the IPs, but also the game studios who have worked on them for decades, and these teams have been working on unique new projects in specific franchises including a new Tomb Raider game in Unreal 5. The developers actually presented their content pipeline to Embracer's board, which was described as "interesting," but no other details were announced.

Embracer will have an incredible 230+ game development projects in the works following its big Square Enix acquisition, but only a portion of them are AAA games.

Embracer Group is buying Square Enix's entire Western division for $300 million, including Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and mobile game dev Square Enix Montreal. All of these studios are working on new projects, including a new Tomb Raider game in Unreal Engine 5 and F2P mobile titles, and post-acquisition, Embracer's total number of game dev projects will jump to 230+.

Our records show that Embracer Group had 216 game dev projects in the works as of December 2021. The new numbers show a 14 project increase. This implies that these new studios could be working on multiple projects a piece, and could also include new games being announced by existing teams.

The GPU rumor game has changed considerably over the last couple of years, in a pandemic-fueled Twitter and YouTuber frenzy that has seen the hype, specs, hype, rumors, and hype reach new bounds. Navi 31 is in the middle of it, with some fresh new leaks that water down AMD's next-gen MCD-based GPU design.

Industry leaker "Greymon55" has tweeted out a fresh rumor, as well as deleting his previous tweet referring to AMD's next-gen Navi 31 GPU having ~92 TFLOPs of compute performance. Greymon55 has tweeted just now, with a simple:

What does that mean? GPU cores on AMD's next-gen RDNA 3-based Navi 3X GPUs, in order: Navi 31, Navi 32, and Navi 33 with 12288, 8192, and 4096 GPU cores respectively.

A 17-year-old's movements around Walt Disney World in Florida were tracked by an unknown Apple AirTag that caused panic for the family.

Madison Gaston and her mother, Jennifer Gaston, discovered the presence of the unwanted AirTag when Madison received a notification that informed her that she was being tracked on their way back to their car. The notification said that Maddison had been tracked over the course of four hours, 7.09pm to 11.33pm, and showcased all of the locations she went across the park.

Notably, AirTag's have a feature that is designed to stop "unwarranted tracking", and that feature is alerting a nearby iPhone that the AirTag is nearby/with them. Once Maddison and her mother arrived at their car, they looked for the AirTag on their person and inside the car. After failing to find the AirTag, the two locked their car doors and drove away. Maddison refreshed the tracking and saw that Apple's "helpful" tracking device remained in the parking lot where they were previously parked.

The US Naval Institute (USNI) learned that Russia was using dolphins to protect its navy in the Black Sea. The reports were confirmed by satellite images.

New satellite images from Maxar Technologies reveal what is being reported as dolphin pens located at the entrance of a key port in the Black Sea. According to the USNI website, there are two dolphin pens that were moved to the harbor in February and contain trained dolphins that are most likely there to prevent any Ukrainian divers from entering the harbor to destroy any ships.

The images were analyzed by H I Sutton, who specialized in marine mammal pens and wrote for the USNI. Sutton said that dolphins were "the most obvious type of mammal" that Russia would be using to protect its navy fleet. Sutton went on to say that Russia has previously used dolphins in war and recounted that the Kremlin deployed them in Syria in 2018 to counter enemy divers, gather objects from the seabed, and conduct military intelligence operations.

Despite having restrictions on his tweets, Elon Musk has taken center stage once again to reveal his stance on direct messaging (DMs) on Twitter.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO took to his personal Twitter account to reveal that he supports end-to-end encryption-style DMs and then referenced the messaging platform Signal. Musk went on to write that he believes Twitter should have this messaging service "so no one can spy on or hack your messages".

At the moment, administrators at Twitter with the appropriate level of system access can view a message sent between two individuals, and by proposing end-to-end encryption, Musk is saying that Twitter shouldn't be allowed to read the messages users are sending. Essentially, when a message is sent from the user's phone, it arrives on the Twitter server encrypted and is then transferred to the receiver's phone, where its deciphered.

It's hard to understand just how truly big something is without seeing it, or at least having something to compare it to.

Understanding how large objects can be in space is a common problem for some people and a truly understandable one to have as our brains struggle to create an accurate representation of a planet that has a diameter of millions of miles. This is why scale is very important in trying to accurately represent the size of an object, and when combining that with a little bit of animation, you get a video that can change the way you view our solar system.

Planetary astronomer James O'Donoghue from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently tweeted out a video showcasing objects within the solar system and their relative size to each other. The video begins with the Ceres dwarf planet and shows the moon, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and finally our massive star we call the Sun. As pointed out by ScienceAlert, even if you know the approximate size of the planets in our solar system, the size of Saturn, Jupiter, and the Sun is still shocking.

A few days ago, NASA reminded everyone that the first solar eclipse of 2022 was inbound and was going to be a partial solar eclipse.

The solar eclipse phenomenon happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, causing the moon to appear as a black ball in the sky taking chunks out of the Sun that is millions of miles behind it. 2022's first solar eclipse occurred on April 30 at 2:45 pm, and Southern Hemisphere skywatchers in regions such as South America, Antarctica, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were able to gaze upon the sight for about four hours.

During the partial solar eclipse, only a small portion of the Sun was obscured by the moon's orbit, and the viewer's location would also impact the severity of the obscurity. Notably, at 4:41 pm EDT, the moon blacked out about 64% if the Sun for viewers located near the southern tip of South America. The next partial solar eclipse is scheduled to happen on October 25 and will be visible over Europe, western Asia, and northeast Africa.

Embracer Group has entered into an agreement to purchase Crystal Dynamics, Eidos, and Square Enix Montreal game development studios from Square Enix, including access to dozens of franchises.

Embracer is about to buy some of the biggest IPs and game studios in the industry. Embracer has offered $300 million for Crystal Dynamics, Eidos, and Square Enix Montreal alongside big IPs like Deus Ex, Thief, Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, and "50 back catalog IPs". Square Enix has agreed to sell for this price.

"The acquisition brings a compelling pipeline of new installments from beloved franchises and original IPs, including a new Tomb Raider game," The press release notes. This acquisition will add 1,100 employees to Embracer Group's multi-thousand headcount and supercharge its IP count to over 230 franchises.

Famed investor Warren Buffet has taken another shot at the world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.

The 91-year-old investor spoke with Charlie Munger, another famed investor that has openly spoken out about his distaste for Bitcoin, at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting on Saturday. Buffet said that even if all of the Bitcoin on the planet was offered to him at a price of $25 dollars, he wouldn't buy it. The same sentiments were echoed by Munger, who described the cryptocurrency as "stupid", "evil," and something that causes its owners to "look bad".

Buffet explained that he won't get involved in Bitcoin because the cryptocurrency doesn't produce anything, and its value is purely determined by someone willing to purchase the cryptocurrency at a higher price. Furthermore, Buffet said that instead of purchasing Bitcoin, he would prefer to invest in the US's farmland or housing in the form of apartments. Both Buffet and Munger have previously voiced their distaste for Bitcoin, with Munger even describing the cryptocurrency as a "venereal disease".

One of the most legendary stories to come out of the Ukraine and Russia conflict is the notorious tale of the "Ghost of Kyiv".

The tale began circling the internet in the early weeks of Russia's attempt at invading Ukraine's capital of Kyiv and involved a Ukrainian fighter pilot nicknamed the "Ghost of Kyiv" as his identity was hidden. This fighter pilot was rumored to have taken out as many as 40 Russian aircraft and was later shot down on March 13, according to the Times of London. Last week many publications reported the fighter pilot's name was 29-year-old Major Stepan Tarabalka.

Now, Ukraine's Air Force Command has said while Tarabalka is a real war hero that was killed in battle, he wasn't the "Ghost of Kyiv" as the story was made-up. Taking to Facebook and Twitter, Ukraine's Air Force Command states that the "Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!" and "embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots of the Tactical Aviation Brigade who are successfully defending #Kyiv and the region."

A new study has confirmed that on some asteroids, the seeds of life are present, which means life could have been brought to Earth and not developed on the planet.

The quest to find the origin of life has been one scientists and researchers have been progressing in for many years, and now a newly published study hopes to fill a gap in that research. The new paper published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications journal explains that all living things have DNA and RNA, and DNA and RNA are made up of five information components named nucleobases.

A team of researchers that consisted of scientists from Japan and the US studied three carbonaceous meteorites that fell to the surface of Earth in Australia, the US, and Canada. The researchers were able to discover two new nucleobases in the meteorites, cytosine, and thymine. Previously researchers were only able to discover three out of the five components, meaning this research has put the last puzzle piece in place.

A "fictosexual" man in Japan married a hologram of the pop singer of his dreams four years ago now, but he's no longer happy with her... as he can't communicate with his wife.

Japanese newspaper The Mainichi talked with Akihiko Kondo, who said he had reached a technical roadblock with Hatsune Miku after the company that made, and provides the AI and hologram to communicate with her was no longer providing him with the service.

Kondo said: "It's not that people can't live in society because they're engrossed in a two-dimensional world, but rather, there are cases where people become captivated as they search for a place for themselves in video games and anime, because reality is too painful for them. I was one of those people".

Nightdive Studio is hard at work on a remake of one of my favorite games of all time -- System Shock -- with work on the game "largely complete".

The upcoming System Shock remake has been tweaked from the ground up after securing $1,350,700 from their original Kickstarter goal of just $900,000. Nightdive Studios began its work on the System Shock remake on the Unity Engine, shortly after the team switched over to Epic Games' Unreal Engine... as well as adding important members to the development team.

Some of those new members of the development team were veterans of the industry, who worked on games like Fallout: New Vegas, Mass Effect, and BioShock. Nightdive Studios has now said that they've passed the pre-beta point in the development of the System Shock remake, with a release keyed for later this year. But what about the console versions? They're still in development, with the team working on those versions right now.