Latest News - Page 1139

The crisis in Ukraine is creating so many more issues than when it first started, with the US Army providing around 25% of its Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles over the last couple of months to Ukraine... and that's causing a major issue for the USA.

During a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the health of the defense industrial base, former Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment Ellen Lord said that according to public-domain sources: "We have probably given Ukraine a quarter of our stocks" of Stinger missiles, but "we cannot, within the next couple of years, produce more, because we have a problem with the government not paying to maintain production capacity".

Not only that, but Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes explained: "We've been working with the DoD for the last couple of weeks, we're actively trying to resource some of the material, but unfortunately, DoD hasn't bought a Stinger in about 18 years and some of the components are no longer commercially available. So we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile".

VIPER GAMING has just unveiled its new VENOM DDR5 performance memory, available in 16GB and 32GB kits with speeds ranging between DDR5-4800 and DDR5-6200.

The new VIPER VENOM DDR5 RAM comes in both RGB and non-RGB memory kits, with 16GB and 32GB kits of DDR5-4800, DDR5-5600, and DDR5-6200. You've got the option of RGB and plain non-RGB if you wanted, with enthusiasts and overclockers ready to use the new VIPER VENOM DDR5 memory with their new Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU and Z690-based motherboard.

Roger Shinmoto, Vice President of VIPER GAMING explained: "Our VIPER Gaming fans waited quite a while for quality DDR5. The VIPER VENOM DDR5 is the first DDR5 DRAM that we distributed for hardware enthusiasts, hardcore gamers, and case modders addicted to unparalleled system performance and stability. VIPER's engineering team has put countless efforts to guarantee excellent compatibility and higher reliability across Intel®'s latest platforms, currently".

COLORFUL has just announced its new CVN Guardian DDR5 memory, ready to rock and roll with Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs and Z690 motherboards.

The new COLORFUL CVN Guardian DDR5 memory comes in DDR5-4800, DDR5-5600, and DDR5-6000 speeds all in 16GB modules (single stick 16GB, so you'd need to buy two if you want 32GB, four if you want 64GB DDR5 RAM).

The company designed its new CVN Guardian DDR5 memory to go hand-in-hand with its COLORFUL CVN Series motherboards: available in the CVN B660M GAMING FROZEN, and CVN Z690 GAMING FROZEN. These motherboards will match the aesthetics of the new CVN Guardian DDR5 memory, and look killer in a gaming PC.

GRAID Technology has just announced its monster new SupremeRAID SR-1010, which the company claims is the world's fastest NVMe and NVMeof RAID card for PCIe 4.0.

Inside of the new SupremeRAID SR-1010 is the NVIDIA Ampere GA106 GPU, which provides some rather wicked speed increases over the previous NVIDIA T1000 GPU inside of its predecessor, the SupremeRAID SR-1000. The new SupremeRAID SR-1010 arrives on a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, with up to 110GB/sec sequential reads, and up to 22GB/sec sequential writes... pure insanity.

Just for comparison sake: a regular 2.5-inch SSD is pushing somewhere between 500-550MB/sec (0.5GB/sec) while a regular NVMe M.2 SSD on PCIe 3.0 will do 1GB through to 3.5GB/sec... while Sabrent and others offer PCIe 4.0 drives that are cranking in the heights of 7.5GB/sec.

Ads may be coming to the dedicated video games industry in more ways than one.

Fearful of subscriber losses, nearly every streaming service is adding lower-cost ad-supported tiers as a catch-all for consumer choice. Microsoft and Sony could follow suit and offer cheaper, value-oriented gaming subscription tiers to ad tolerant users.

Higher-priced gaming services like PlayStation Plus Premium ($17.99/month) and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($14.99/month) could see a price reduction in exchange for ad breaks or interstitials before gaming sessions, surveys, or perhaps specific versions of games altered to include in-game advertisements (such as product placement ads on billboards).

Meta's multi-billion dollar advertisement empire is funding the company's ambitious vision for the metaverse.

It's no secret that Meta Technologies Inc (formerly Facebook) makes nearly all of its money from advertisements. The company has made over 97% of its earnings from advertisements for the past 14 quarters in a row, raking in as much as $32 billion from ads.

Meta is using these deep coffers to invest heavily into its metaverse plans. Meta has spent $16 billion on its Reality Labs division over the past six quarters, the department that's currently experimenting with multitudes of technologies for the nebulous metaverse.

Modern Warfare 2 will get revealed soon and it will bring a "new era for Call of Duty."

We're officially in critical hype mode for Modern Warfare 2, which has been confirmed to be this year's Call of Duty game. Yesterday, Activision and developer Infinity Ward revealed the game's official logo with stylish lime-green accenting that symbolizes night-vision goggles, suggesting many night ops missions.

The comments about a new era aren't just for the game itself, but also refer to the upgraded Warzone that will ship alongside Modern Warfare 2. Activision has said the new Warzone experience will deliver "groundbreaking innovations."

Sony has officially announced that PS Plus and PS Now subscription stacking has been turned off ahead of the big new PlayStation Plus service revamp.

PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now subscription stacking have been disabled, Sony today confirmed in a FAQ. Sony has announced that PS Plus and PS Now vouchers can no longer be redeemed until the new PlayStation Plus service goes live on June 13 (in the U.S.). Once the new three-tier PS Plus service is live, gamers can then redeem their codes and choose between the three tiers at pro-rated rates.

This effectively removes the option for users to stack individual subscriptions and get grandfathered into PS Plus Premium. Sony has said that all existing PlayStation Now subscribers will convert over to the $119/year PlayStation Plus Premium tier that offers 740 games across six PlayStation generations. Users who are subscribed to both PS Now and PS Plus will also be converted.

Microsoft has plans to widen ads in its video games ecosystem, a move that could tack on billions of dollars to its already-bustling ad business.

Microsoft is creating a new ad tech infrastructure that will delivery more advertisements in its gaming space. This initiative will be powered by Xandr, aka App Nexus, a leading ad tech company that Microsoft purchased from AT&T in 2021.

"As the digital landscape evolves in a post-cookie world, Microsoft and Xandr together will help shape the digital ad marketplace of the future," Microsoft said at the time. "Xandr provides a data-enabled technology platform with tools that help power a diverse ecosystem connecting marketers and media owners through first-party, data-led advertising solutions across its network."

Following the defamation suit between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, a petition has acquired millions of signatures to remove Heard from Aquaman 2.

The sequel to James Wan's Aquaman only recently wrapped up shooting in January of this year and is expected to be released in March 2023. However, individuals that have seen the stories that have come out of the defamation trial that describe Depp and Amber's relationship have caused a united online effort to cancel Heard from Aquaman 2, with a Change.org petition already receiving two million signatures.

The petition has a goal of three million signatures, which is where signees hope Heard will be removed from the coming film. The creator of the petition has written in its description that Heard shouldn't be allowed to play her role as Princess Mera, as she has been "exposed as a domestic abuser". Notably, the petition was originally created in 2020, and when Heard found out during that time it had 1.5 million signatures, she dismissed it as "Paid rumors and paid campaigns on social media".

Meta, formerly Facebook, recently took a massive hit as its stock price dropped by more than 25%, wiping out more than $230 billion in market value, marking the biggest one-day loss ever by a US company.

The drop in share price came after the company released its fourth-quarter performance results that showcased a decline in daily active users, from 196 million to 195 million. This and other statistics hardly impressed investors. Furthermore, Facebook was suffering from Apple's software change allowed users to opt-in or out for their data to be gathered for advertising. That change crippled Facebook's revenue as it limited advertising, according to Meta.

When $230 billion was wiped out in market value, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg personally lost about $29 billion, knocking him from his number 9 spot among the world's 10 richest people. Zuckerberg owns 13% of Meta, and according to CNN, Zuckberg's ranked at number 18 on Bloomberg's Billionaire Index with a net worth of $65 billion, and by the end of the Thursday or start of Friday, Meta's stock would have increased by more than 19% in a single day. Making Zuckerberg's stock value rise by $11.5 billion.

SpaceX has taken to its Twitter account to share new footage of the Dragon capsule firing its thrusters towards the International Space Station (ISS).

The video displays numerous of the Crew Dragon spacecraft's Draco thrusters, as mentioned by SpaceX in the posts caption. The Crew Dragon capsule carried four astronauts to the ISS as part of NASA and SpaceX's Crew-4 mission that launched on Wednesday, April 27 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Dragon capsule also transported cargo to the ISS and one piece of cargo was a genetic seed bank containing DNA samples from various species and humans. The Crew-4 mission marks SpaceX's sixth time it has taken a crewed mission into orbit and the fourth crewed mission to the ISS. Notably, the Dragon capsule is capable of autonomously navigating itself to dock with the ISS, meaning the astronauts onboard can sit back and enjoy the truly incredible ride.

On the morning of April 27, a small flaming meteor dashed across the sky with about thirty eyewitnesses, but many felt its boom.

NASA has taken to its blog to detail the event, and the space agency explains that the fireball was a meteor estimated to be about a foot in diameter entering Earth's atmosphere over southern Mississippi. The meteor was first spotted about 54 miles above the Mississippi River near the town of Alcorn, and according to NASA, the 90-pound space rock was traveling 55,000 miles per hour throughout the atmosphere, disintegrating and fragmenting as it pushed deeper.

As the meteor heated up from friction and fragmented, NASA estimates it generated the same amount of energy as 3 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene), "which created shock waves that propagated to the ground, producing the booms and vibrations felt by people in the area," writes NASA. Notably, as the fireball heated up, it shone bright, and at its peak, it was ten times brighter than the full moon. Eventually, the fireball fully disintegrated about 34 miles above a swampy area close to Minorca in Louisiana.

In the first few days of this month, NASA outlines what skywatchers can expect out of the month of April, and to close out the last few days of April, skywatchers can expect a planetary conjunction.

As explained in NASA's blog post from April 1, Jupiter and Venus will be meeting in a planetary conjunction on the morning of April 30. Skywatchers will see what appears to be the two planets colliding into each other due to the glare. As the conjunction reaches its pinnacle, both the planets will merge into one blur of light that will produce a "spectacular glow", according to NASA.

Notably, the space agency explains that the "merger" is actually an illusion as Venus and Jupiter are many millions of miles apart. This illusion is caused by an alignment of Jupiter, Venus, and Earth and only happens when the alignment is absolute. NASA also states that this magnificent celestial event will continue into the morning of May 1, but the positions of Jupiter and Venus will be reversed.

Next month there is an upcoming astronomical event where the moon will appear completely full in the night sky.

According to reports from space.com, the next full moon is scheduled to happen on Monday, May 16 at 12:14 am and will also feature the first total lunar eclipse of 2022. As the next full moon will occur in May, it's also called the Flower Moon, with April's full moon being called the Pink Moon and June's the Strawberry Moon. Notably, the May full moon will feature a total lunar eclipse that occurs when the shadow of Earth is cast directly onto the surface of the moon.

A lunar eclipse only occurs when the Sun, Earth, and the moon are exactly or very closely aligned with Earth's position in-between the Sun and the moon. Furthermore, a lunar eclipse only occurs on the night of a full moon; hence it's featuring with May's upcoming Flower Moon. So, why does the moon go blood red during a lunar eclipse? The moon turns a red hue due to Earth blocking all of the sunlight.

A new study has linked overexposure to Wi-Fi radiation and cell phone use to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

The new study has been published in the journal Current Alzheimer Research, and according to a recently released press release, its generally agreed that Alzheimer's is caused by a large buildup of calcium in the brain. The study states that electronically generated electromagnetic fields (EMFs) may be contributing to the buildup of that calcium. These EMFs are emitted from devices such as mobile phones.

"EMFs act via peak electric and time varying magnetic forces at a nanosecond time scale. Any of these may produce the ultimate nightmare - extremely early onset Alzheimer's Disease," said Martin Pall of Washington State University, who authored the study. Furthermore, the study states that young individuals that are exposed to "cell phone or Wi-Fi radiation" for many hours per day are at risk of developing "digital dementia".

Ex-Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime supports NFTs, and he has a compelling and unique vision in favor of blockchain gaming.

Reggie "The Regginator" Fils-Aime has an interesting idea about NFTs. As president of Nintendo's America branch through some of the most transformative eras in gaming, Fils-Aime witnessed tectonic shifts in the industry. First with the Wii, and then the 3DS handheld hybrid, and finally the Switch. Along the way, Fils-Aime also saw Nintendo's push towards services, namely with Switch Online.

Now Fils-Aime sees big opportunity with NFTs and blockchain, and has laid out an ambitious vision that could actually appeal to gamers. The idea is simple: Spend your entertainment time to make money. What if you could sell the content, characters, and equipment you unlocked in a game to someone else? You could, in theory, monetize your time investment. Spend hundreds of hours in a game to progress, and then sell your progress to someone else who doesn't have the time.

AMD has been featured considerably in new leaks from Moore's Law is Dead, with Tom providing some more details on AMD's next-gen Instinct MI300 accelerator.

The new AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator will be the next-gen datacenter-focused GPU, where we should see multiple versions of it hitting the market. In the new leaks, the fact is made clear: "the first thing that needs to be made clear is every source tells me (Tom @ MLID) there are many variants of MI300. The one I am detailing today is just one I'm familiar with".

With the most confidence in the leaks, we're being told to expect that each 6nm die has connections for two stacks of HBM3 memory, with 12+ metal layers in total. The 6nm dies were built to "work with multiple products" that can be stacked on top. The MI300 design itself has a bottom layer that should be occupied mostly with a huge interpose (around 2750mm2 which is insane). On top of the interposer is reportedly a "series of rectangular 6nm tiles that house I/O controllers, IP Blocks, "and likely cache" of around 320-360mm2 per 6nm tile according to Tom.

Meta's latest financials reveal how many people use Facebook every day, and the answer is surprising.

Facebook is absolutely huge and is easily the largest social media platform on the market. A quarter of the world's population, or 25% of people on planet Earth, log into and use Facebook every day.

The numbers show that more people are using Facebook than ever before. A record-breaking 1.96 billion people used Facebook on a daily basis through January and March 2022. That's a substantial yearly increase of 4.4% in users, or 82 million people

Elon Musk buying Twitter has ruffled more feathers than President Trump could've done, short of doing a Tony Stark and saying "fuck it, yeah... I'm Q".

Musk's adventures in securing Twitter have set the minds of even the likes of The New York Times, which announced it was preparing a TV documentary about the SpaceX and Tesla CEO. The upcoming film is called "Elon Musk's Crash Course" and is the latest in FX and The New York Times' collaborative documentary series "The New York Times Presents".

The new documentary "Elon Musk's Crash Course" is directed by Emma Schwartz, and will be an "expose into Musk's company Tesla, and its work on self-driving cars". The doco will include reporting from both Cade Metz and Neal Boudette of The New York Times, and will deep dive into Tesla's Autopilot program, which has resulted in multiple deaths that "Musk and the company has yet to publicly acknowledge, and details Musk's efforts to kill government investigations into the incidents. Several former Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary, speaking out against Musk for the first time".