Latest News - Page 1140

The single largest acquisition in the history of video games has been accepted by shareholders...and now it's up to the FTC.

The Microsoft-Activision deal is one step closer to going through. Today, the overwhelming majority of Activision-Blizzard stakeholders have voted yes to Microsoft's share buyout offer. As per an SEC filing, 98% of company shareholders (539.332 million) voted in favor of the buyout.

Microsoft has bid $95 a share to acquire all of Activision-Blizzard's stock, representing a massive deal worth $68.7 billion. The deal is expected to close by June 2023 if it can clear the FTC, which has been emboldened to crack down on industry-shaking mega-mergers.

AMD's next-gen Navi 31 GPU isn't too far away now, scheduled to debut later this year in Q4 2022 -- and will be the first consumer-focused MCD (multi-chip die) GPU for gamers and enthusiasts.

The new Navi 31 GPU and its "MCD" die will be made on 6nm, with some serious performance beef against not just the Navi 21 that it will replace (the GPU that powers the Radeon RX 6900 XT and soon-to-be-released Radeon RX 6950 XT) but also NVIDIA's current, and possibly even next-gen GeForce RTX graphics cards.

AMD's new Navi 31 GPU will be a multi-chip die, similar to the chiplet technology used on the Zen CPU architectures by AMD. In his latest leaks, Tom @ Moore's Law is Dead is continuing what I thought was established -- RDNA 3 will deliver twice the performance over RDNA 2, as RDNA 2 was over double the performance of the original RDNA GPUs.

Meta's Reality Labs division has reported billion-dollar operating losses for six consecutive quarters, showing that Meta's new ambitious plans for the metaverse may not pay off any time soon.

The metaverse is an expensive new frontier. Meta Technologies Inc. wants to pioneer the nebulous metaverse, and is spending billions to lay down foundational technologies for the new inter-connected, commercialized and consumer-friendly social infrastructure. This will be a long-term strategy will many more years of expenses, as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't expect the metaverse to mature until the 2030s.

Meta's Reality Labs division is doing much of the heavy lifting for its metaverse ambitions. Reality Labs, which includes VR headsets, AR technologies, and new software platforms like Horizon Worlds, is a big part of Meta's R&D investments due to its experimental focus on XR.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks the metaverse will usher in a "very exciting 2030s".

One of the richest men in the world has a purely ambitious plan for the future of work and play: A new, inter-connected social computing platform for commercial enterprise, consumer leisure, and interactivity that beams directly to proprietary hardware. It's called the "metaverse," and Meta is investing heavily into what it believes will be the primary platform throughout the next decade.

When asked about investments into the metaverse, Zuckerberg said that Meta's high expenses are a result of foundational spending for the metaverse, and that the company is in for the long haul: "Maybe primarily, this is laying the groundwork for what I expect to be a very exciting 2030s when this is sort of more established as the primary computing platform at that point. I think that there will be results along the way for that, too. But I do think that this is going to be a longer cycle."

Internal sources familiar with Bethesda's plans have apparently debunked recent rumors on The Elder Scrolls VI, a new Mandalorian MMORPG, and other in-production games.

YouTuber Skullzi recently posted up a supposed list of Bethesda's latest projects, including new info on The Elder Scrolls VI. The list is pretty eye-opening. Skullzi's sources say ZeniMax Online is working on a new Mandalorian MMORPG, that a Quake reboot could be in early negotiations, the original cRPG Fallout and TES games are getting remastered by inXile, and some details on TES VI.

Sources have told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that reports are inaccurate--in fact, they're "bullshit".

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has launched on April 27 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, taking four astronauts and new cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Falcon 9 recently lifted off, transporting NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. The astronauts will remain aboard the floating laboratory for six months, where they will conduct experiments and progress through their science mission. Along with the astronauts was cargo that included a biobank that contained DNA samples from 500 different species and 2,000 different humans.

The collection of DNA samples comes from space and genomics company LifeShip, which also plans on eventually sending DNA to the surface of the moon. The capsule that contains the samples is designed to shield the DNA from radiation to avoid any degradation. In an email statement, LifeShip wrote, "It's humanity's first off-world genetic seed bank!", and described the DNA container as a "genetic time capsule". Below is why LifeShip believes its necessary to send DNA off-planet.

NASA's database that logs near-Earth objects has listed an asteroid that could be up to 2,560 feet in diameter.

The asteroid is dubbed 2008 AG33 and is estimated to be anywhere between 1,150 and 2,560 feet in diameter. NASA's database indicates that the large asteroid that may be twice the size of the Empire State Building will safely pass Earth at a distance of about 2 million miles on April 28. Furthermore, the space rock will zoom past our planet at a ridiculous speed of 23,264 miles per hour.

Notably, the moon is approximately 240,000 miles away from Earth, which really puts into perspective how far away 2008 AG33's close approach is from Earth. However, two million miles is a very short distance when discussing celestial objects, as some stars and planets are located millions of light-years away. 2008 AG33 will pass Earth every seven years as it proceeds through its orbit around the sun.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) confirmed the first known instance of the H3N8 strain of avian flu in a human patient.

A four-year-old boy from the Henan province was hospitalized earlier in April with a fever and other symptoms and has since tested positive for the H3N8 strain. H3N8 first emerged in the North American waterfowl in 2002 and has been known to infect horses, dogs, and seals.

According to the NHC, the case is a "one-off cross-species transmission, and the risk of large-scale transmission is low." However, it has issued warnings to the public to stay away from sick or dead birds and seek immediate treatment for fevers or respiratory symptoms.

Private space company Launcher demonstrated its E-2 rocket engine's capabilities on April 21st, 2022.

The E-2 is a "closed cycle 3D-printed, high-performance liquid rocket engine" that Launcher has developed for its Launcher Light launch vehicle, which has its inaugural launch scheduled for 2024. The Launcher Light will reach low-Earth orbit using only one E-2 engine while carrying a payload of 150 kilograms (330 pounds).

The successful test-fire of the engine was conducted at the NASA Stennis Space Center, producing ten metric tons of thrust (22,046 lbf, or pounds of force) and 100 bar (1,450 psi) of combustion pressure. The engine uses liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene fuel in a 2.62:1 ratio.

Four planets aligned with the moon in the night sky on April 23rd, and now two space stations have joined the club.

Both the International Space Station and China's Tianhe-1 station joined Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn, in the night sky only four days later, on April 27th in a photograph taken by Italian astrophysicist Gianluca Masi. Masi left his home in Rome at 4 a.m. to capture images of the aligned planets, with the moon visible and each of the space stations, which he knew would cross the same region of the sky within about fifteen minutes of each other.

Facebook is under pressure from several regulators worldwide to change how it handles users' data.

A leaked internal document written in 2021 obtained from Facebook by Motherboard shows that Facebook was "surprised" by a "tsunami of inbound regulations," and privacy engineers on its Ad and Business Product team are sounding alarm bells within the company to institute change to prevent trouble with regulators. The document uses the acronyms 3PD, 1PD, and SCD to refer to third-party data, first-party data, and sensitive categories data, respectively.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has returned to the scene of Perseverance's landing on the Red Planet just over a year ago.

The panoramic view shows the backshell of NASA's Perseverance rover to the left of the image center. The supersonic parachute used to carry the rover down to the planet's surface is visible on the far right. When Perseverance landed on February 18th, 2021, it jettisoned both the backshell and parachute at an altitude of 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers).

The backshell and parachute impacted the surface at about 78 miles (126 kilometers) per hour. Images of the components were requested by engineers working on the Mars Sample Return program to help inform them of the components' performance throughout Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing.

Since Elon Musk's official purchase of Twitter, many individuals have been asking the SpaceX CEO questions about what he will do to the platform when the deal has closed and what he should investigate internally once he has taken the reins.

Dave Rubin, a conservative political commentator who hosts "The Rubin Report," took to Twitter to ask Musk to investigate The New York Times, Forbes, and other media outlets for buying "their Twitter followers to fake influence." Rubin then pointed out that The New York Times Twitter account has 53 million followers but only gets about 50 retweets per post, indicating a severe lack of user engagement despite the extremely high follower count.

The very same principle applies to Forbes' Twitter account, which has 17.8 million followers but only receives about fifteen retweets per post and about ten comments. Notably, Rubin didn't provide evidence of these media outlets directly purchasing followers but has pointed out an interesting metric nonetheless. Furthermore, Musk has responded to the call for an investigation to be launched by replying, "Yeah, I noticed that too. Pretty weird."

Since his purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk has been launching off several tweets about what he believes Twitter needs to be in the future, revealing some of the ethos he will be bringing to the company.

Earlier this week, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $46.5 billion, citing that free speech is the "bedrock of a functioning democracy" and that "Twitter is the digital town square". When the deal was struck, Musk said that he wanted to "unlock it" by implementing changes such as making the social media platform open source and making it "politically neutral".

The now Twitter owner seeks to make Twitter a publicly trusted platform, and recently revealed how he intends to do that. Musk to his personal account on April 28 to write that "For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally". Jokingly, Musk said that his next big company purchase will be Coca-Cola as he desires to put the cocaine back in the drink. More on that story below.

On April 22, NASA took to its blog and social channels to showcase an image captured by its Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.

The photograph was captured on February 25, 2022, and features a large oval-shaped shadow on the left-hand side. This shadow is being created by Jupiter's largest of four moons, Ganymede, that is passing between the sun and Jupiter. NASA explains that Ganymede orbits Jupiter at an approximate distance of 666,000 miles and that the Juno spacecraft orbits the large gas giant at a distance of 44,000 miles, which is about 15 times closer than Ganymede.

Furthermore, the space agency explains that Jupiter's four moons frequently pass between the planet and the sun, resulting in shadows such as these being cast. Over the course of seven days, Jupiter's largest moon will pass once, Europa will pass twice, and IO four times, according to NASA. The above image was captured with Juno's "JunoCam". For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Following Elon Musk's official purchase of Twitter and the long process of closing a multi-billion dollar deal, Musk has found himself in the middle of some controversy.

Musk only recently purchased Twitter, and as a part of the 95-page-long agreement, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO agreed to put restrictions on any future tweets until the deal was closed. The restrictions that Musk signed on for was that any future tweets wouldn't "disparage" Twitter or any of its representatives.

Twenty-four hours after the agreement was signed, Musk posted two tweets; one was a reply to podcast host Saagar Enjeti flagging, who posted an article that claimed Twitter's legal head, Vijaya Gadde, was "emotional" and cried during a meeting where the deal was being discussed. Enjeti described Gadde as Twitter's "top censorship advocate", which was a call back to the role Gadde played in Twitter's decision to stop the New York Post from publishing a story about President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

Elon Musk only recently purchased Twitter earlier this week and is now already talking about the next big company he is planning on buying.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has taken to his personal Twitter account to announce that the next company he will be buying is Coca-Cola, as he wants to "put the cocaine back in". Musk posted the tweet on April 28 and was asked by his followers if he could purchase Fox to create another season of Firefly that ended on 2003. Musk replied to the question by saying that it would be great if there was "Some sci-fi that actually features sci-fi", followed by calling Battlestar Galactica a "great show!".

From the tone of how the tweet is read, I think it's safe to assume that Musk doesn't actually intend to purchase Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in the drink, as he has previously stated during interviews that he isn't a drug user and the entire idea being overall illegal/preposterous. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO just made a public joke, nothing more, nothing less.

On April 26, the European Union commissioner took aim at Elon Musk over his purchase of Twitter and what the future entails when it comes to content moderation.

The EU's commissioner Thierry Breton reminded Musk that the second largest social media platform doesn't need "less moderation", which is contrary to Musk's sentiments leading up to an after the purchase of Twitter with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO pushing for free speech as he believes its "the bedrock of a functioning democracy".

Breton spoke to the Financial Times and said that Musk needs a "reality check" if his push for free speech on the platform results in less content moderation and warns that if Twitter doesn't uphold the European Union's rules for content the platform risks being banned across Europe. With the EU's commissioner warning Musk to tread lightly, the same question can be raised for the US's own rules and regulations when it comes to content guidelines.

A man has engineered artificial intelligence into a common household item which later turned on him to seemingly kill him.

Lucas Rizzotto is a YouTuber that runs his YouTube channel called Lucas Builds The Future, and in one of his recent videos he engineered and documented the process of recreating an imaginary childhood friend through artificial intelligence he programmed into a microwave. Rizzotto purchased a new microwave and implemented text-based artificial intelligence "GPT-3", which was developed by OpenAI, an AI research company founded by Elon Musk.

The GPT-3 artificial intelligence has been designed to interpret and mimic human language, and with its received data, it can form original sentences when given the correct prompt. Notably, the GPT-3 has already been fed a large swath of data from news articles, Wikipedia pages, and more. So far, the AI has already proven capable of creating poetry, news posts, and entire conversations between fictional characters.

NVIDIA has provided some new optimizations for the most popular 3D applications in its new April Studio Driver suite, with optimizations for Unreal Engine 5, Cinema 4D, and Chaos Vantage.

The company goes a little further, highlighting that its second-fastest GPU -- the GeForce RTX 3090 -- is faster than AMD's fastest consumer CPU, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, in Maxon Cinema 4D 26 Redshift Renderer... by quite a lot.

The GeForce RTX 3090 screams through the render in just 6 minutes and 51 seconds, while the Zen 3-powered 64-core, 128-thread Ryzen Threadripper 3990X takes much, much longer: 65 minutes. That's a significant difference, but it's also a single piece of rendering software. Still, of course, NVIDIA is going to be screaming from the roof tops that its GPU is faster than its competitors... GPU, and CPU.