Latest News - Page 1146

Sony is reportedly working on its own advertisement platform that will inject ads into PlayStation games, complete with incentives to view the ads.

In a quest to maximize revenues by any means possible, Sony is currently developing an ad tech platform that will place in-game advertisements into PS4 and PS5 games. Sony plans to organically blend ads into games an non-intrusive way to make advertisements seem as if they're part of the game (for example, on signs and billboards).

Video game developers have traditionally created fake and offbeat commercial brands for their games. In-game areas like shopping malls, food marts, and cities typically feature humorous logos and made-up companies (look at Grand Theft Auto, for example).

Elon Musk has secured the required $46.5 billion in funding for his acquisition of Twitter, according to a filing with US regulators on Thursday.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO will be ponying up $33.5 billion on his own, which includes $21 billion in equity and $12.5 billion in margin loans. The richest man on the planet still requires regular banks, with financial firms like Morgan Stanley agreeing to cough up $13 billion in debt against Twitter, according to the filing.

Twitter has been tripping over itself to not let this happen, going as far as introducing a "poison pill" so that someone like Musk couldn't buy the social networking giant. Well, spoiler alert... I think it's about done. The second-largest shareholder of Twitter has just secured $46.5 billion in funding to do what you should do when you're obscenely rich -- whatever the hell you want to.

Will Nintendo introduce a third Switch Online pricing tier for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles?

Nintendo is reportedly working on new Game Boy Advance and Game Boy emulators for its Switch Online service. The company has yet to make anything official, but dataminers have leaked system emulator files onto the internet.

The emulators, referred to as Hioyoko (Game Boy) and Sloop (Game Boy Advance) in the files, are in development at Nintendo Europe Research Division (NERD). Nintendo is actually using homebrew tech like EZ-Flash to load save states onto the consoles to test the emulators. Nintendo has tested 30 Game Boy Advance games so far. Only four playable games were found on the Game Boy emulator.

The new Switch Online NES games have leaked out, and they include some of the best games on the old-school system.

Dataminers have uncovered new games that are coming to Nintendo's premium Switch Online subscription. The list includes heavy-hitting NES games like Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Mega Man 1-6, and Tetris. Other titles like Pac Man, Galaga, Lode Runner and Kung Fu are also on the list.

According to Twitter user orcastraw, the build date of the collection is from 2019 and there's no guarantee that some games will make the final cut. A portion of the titles are placeholders and don't have finalized information. There's also no indication when (or if) the games will be released onto the service.

Following massive success of the Sonic 2 film, controversy is now stealing Sonic The Hedgehog's spotlight.

2022 is the year of Sonic...or it was before Sonic Origins. SEGA is celebrating the Blue Blur's 30th anniversary with a special five-game remaster collection called Sonic Origins, which packs in Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic CD in one mega-bundle.

There's just two issues: The collection costs $40, and SEGA has carved up modes and content in multiple SKUs. Fans aren't happy with Origins' fragmented business model which includes the Standard Edition for $39.99, which only includes the base game, and the Digital Deluxe Edition for $44.99 that includes extras like hard missions, character animations, and music tracks.

Oxitec has successfully released its genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida with plans for California underway.

Oxitec has released almost five million engineered Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the Florida Keys over seven months. The genetically engineered male mosquitos carry a gene that is lethal to female offspring, causing them to die before they can reproduce. Male offspring born from the engineered males mating will inherit the gene, causing future generations of females to die off, leading to an overall reduction in the population size.

Oxitec collected over 22,000 eggs laid by wild female A. aegypti to bring back to the laboratory for analysis. They confirmed that all females that inherited the lethal gene died before reaching sexual maturity. The gene persisted in the wild population for two to three months, or about three generations of offspring, before disappearing. No mosquitos carrying the gene were found more than 400 meters (1312 feet) from their release point.

A pre-print paper on humanity's timeline titled "Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization" has been published on arXiv.

Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed the Kardashev Scale in 1964, a scale that categorizes civilizations into three types: planetary, stellar, and galactic, or Types I, II, and III, respectively. Each category relates to the extent of energy that the respective civilization can harness, with Type I being able to harness all of the stellar energy that reaches its home planet, Type II harnessing all of the energy of its host star, and Type III harness the energy of its host galaxy.

Carl Sagan further popularized the idea and expanded on the concept by adapting it to a continuous scale rather than three discrete stages. Humanity reaching Type I status would mean harnessing 10¹⁶ watts, the average amount of solar energy that reaches Earth. Currently, we use about 10¹³ watts, which on Sagan's scale puts our civilization at roughly 0.73.

The Lyrid meteor shower will be the first significant meteor shower since the Quadrantid in January this year.

The Quadrantid meteor shower took place on January 3rd, and now, 109 days (over 15 weeks) later, the April Lyrids will peak in the morning hours of April 22nd. While many meteor showers and shooting stars are witnessed throughout the year, the Quadrantids and Lyrids represent two of the ten 'principal' meteor displays.

The Lyrids are considered one of the weaker principal displays, with about 10 to 20 meteors per hour being visible at most. If poor weather prevents you from viewing the Lyrids in your area, the shower still occurs with about one-quarter of its peak strength for two days on either side of the maximum peak on the 22nd.

Saturn, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and the moon are all set to align in the sky on April 23rd.

The orbits of each planet have coincided to allow them all to appear in the same portion of the sky when viewed in the northern hemisphere, starting with Venus, Mars, and Saturn in late March. Jupiter joined the group around mid-April, and Mercury will join around mid-June this year to create an alignment of five planets. 2020 was the last time five planets aligned in the night sky, with preceding alignments in 2016 and 2005.

On April 23rd, the moon will be in its last quarter phase and situated to Saturn's right in the night sky. To Saturn's left and below will be Mars, followed by Venus, and then Jupiter. The alignment will be most visible in the northern hemisphere, about an hour before sunrise.

Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield spoke to Futurism about the future of cannabis in space and aboard the International Space Station.

Being intoxicated or inebriated in space would be too much of a liability presently, as the people consistently in space are responsible for too much. But in the future, as more space stations become operational and the price of space tourism continues to fall, it's feasible that recreational vacations in space involving the consumption of cannabis or alcohol could be possible.

A study on the new stellar explosion titled "Localized thermonuclear bursts from accreting magnetic white dwarfs" has been published in the journal Nature.

Astronomers have used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) to observe a new kind of stellar explosion, dubbed a micronova. They are extremely powerful events but still significantly less energetic than conventional stellar explosions, known as novae. They last only several hours and can burn through about 20,000,000 trillion kilograms, or 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza, worth of stellar material.

Earth has experienced two radio blackouts in two days that can be sourced back to an action sunspot region releasing multiple solar flares.

On April 20, officials recorded around 19 solar flares in 24 hours coming from an active sunspot region, and the barrage seemingly isn't stopping, with reports indicating the sunspot group called AR2993-94 released a very large M9.6 class flare. Unfortunately, the sunspot group was almost directly Earth facing when the flare occurred, which resulted in a shortwave radio blackout over southeast Asia and Australia (again).

The strong X-class flare that was reported on April 20 caused the same level of radio blackout across the same regions of the planet. The US Air Force reported that the April 21 solar flare caused a Type II solar radio burst. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported, "Additionally, Type II and IV radio sweeps were detected by the USAF Radio Solar Telescope Network (RSTN), with an estimated velocity of 1132 km/s".

Sun has been on a rampage with activity lately, releasing a succession of solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

On April 20, officials confirmed that in a 24-hour period, an active sunspot group flared 19 times, with six of those flares being M-class (moderate) explosions followed by a very powerful X2.2 (strong) class flare. These flares came from a region just beyond the southwest limb of the Sun, "likely former Region 2992," according to the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Notably, the large flare of the barrage that was released came from a sunspot located on the edge of the Sun, meaning that Earth didn't experience the full force of the blast. Officials at the US Air Force confirmed that the flare caused a Type II solar radio burst. NOAA reported that it impacted large portions of the sunlit side of the Earth; southeast Asia and Australia. Throughout this time, radio operators would have noticed a loss of connection at frequencies below 30 MHz for about an hour.

A four-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was fulfilled by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), providing nearly 1,600 pages of unclassified documents to Motherboard.

These 1,600 pages of documents contain various scientific research papers, old contracts, presentations, briefings between individuals about certain programs, and memos. Additionally, Vice reports that the documents contain information on what the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP), an arm of the DIA, was researching.

The AAWSAP and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), another arm of the DIA, as explained by a DIA spokesperson, "[AATIP] was the name of the overall program. [AAWSAP] was the name of the contract that DIA awarded for the production of technical reports under AATIP." According to the documents, the focus was put on invisibility cloaking, traversable wormholes, antigravity, negative energy, gravity communications, and nuking the moon to create a tunnel from one side to the other.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between the United States and the Kremlin have increased, but apparently, it hasn't affected the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Despite the strange and aggressive threats from Russia's space agency "Roscosmos" head Dmitry Rogozin, who threatened to crash the ISS into the US, NASA has been very firm that a working relationship has been maintained between Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts that are currently aboard the ISS. Recently, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that the "working relationship" is enduring despite "all the slaughter we're seeing daily".

Since Russia's invasion began, NASA and other prominent space agencies from around the world have separated themselves from Roscosmos, with NASA publicly stating it's maintaining a stance of diplomatic negotiations with Russia. Futurism reports that the recent comments from Nelson are the first time the NASA administrator has publicly condemned Russia's actions in Ukraine.

A potato-shaped solar eclipse has been captured by NASA's Perseverance rover, providing data to planetary scientists looking to understand the gravitation relationship between Mars' moons and its interior.

Perseverance's Mastcam-z camera was used to capture the solar eclipse on April 2, which lasted for just over 40 seconds. The new footage breaks records for being the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse, according to NASA. Furthermore, the new observation will add to the 18-year-old pile of Phobos solar eclipses that were first recorded by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

With this data, researchers are able to learn more about how the moon's tidal force impacts the interior of Mars, crust, and mantle. Notably, Phobos is a doomed moon as it's expected to eventually crash into the surface of Mars in around 10+ million years. NASA writes on its website that observations such as the one recently acquired by Perseverance allow NASA scientists to understand better Phobos' "death spiral", which will lead to a more accurate prediction of its doomed timeline.

AOC has just announced its latest premium gaming display, with executive lifestyle brand Porsche Design and AGON by AOC, and the introduction of the AGON Pro PD32M "Porsche Design".

The new AOC AGON Pro PD32M "Porsche Design" rocks a 32-inch 4K 144Hz Mini-LED panel with DisplayHDR 1400 certification. The 31.5-inch panel has a native 3840 x 2160 resolution (4K) which is about the starting point where 4K is useable (without being too small), while you've got a gaming-ready 144Hz refresh rate.

AOC is tapping a slick and beautiful Mini-LED panel, with a 1ms GtG response time meaning that you're going to get wicked image quality, and it's going to be super-fast. Stefan Sommer, Global Head of Marketing at TPV said: "With our long-standing partner Porsche Design, we have again created an iconic and highly capable gaming monitor that combines the best of both worlds. As a true multi-purpose device, the PD32M comes with features that will appeal to skilled and ambitious gamers as well as content creators, enabling them to enhance their performance and productivity".

I'm one of the biggest Superman fans that you'll ever meet, but it is depressing that there hasn't been a good Superman game... ever. The closest we have is this extraordinary new Superman 'flying game' powered by Epic Games' next-gen Unreal Engine 5 technology. Check it out:

The project was made by a single developer, Tyson Butler-Boshcma, who used the absolutely mind-blowing The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience demo. With the photorealistic Unreal Engine 5-powered The City Awakens demo as its backdrop, entering in Superman and some amazing flying... and it just shows how pathetic Warner Bros. has been -- outright spitting on the Superman franchise, as they have post-Snyder -- at not even attempting at making a new Superman game.

A single developer can impress by throwing in Superman into Unreal Engine 5, with Tyson explaining: "This project was built simply as a test for what a future Superhero game like Superman might be like in a large scale modern city running on UE5. I dream of a modern Superman game and with the release of UE5, seemed like fertile ground for some experimentation with the amazing packages Epic has made available".

AMD has just launched its low-power RDNA 2 graphics card without much fanfare, with the introduction of the new Radeon RX 6400.

The new AMD Radeon RX 6400 is powered by the Navi 24 GPU, which is made on TSMC's new 6nm process node. AMD's new Navi 24 GPU has 768 Stream Processors, with a base GPU clock of 1923MHz and boost GPU clock of 2039MHz.

4GB of GDDR6 is used, spread out on a smaller 64-bit memory bus which spits out 112GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Now that the card is out in the wild, reviewers have got their hands-on it and thanks to Expreview and DIYZOL, we see the new Radeon RX 6400 sits nicely between the slightly higher-end Radeon RX 6500 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 (at least in synthetic tests).

Netflix can't blame losing 200,000 subscribers from its 200,000,000+ strong base of monthly subscribers for the disastrous 35%+ drop of its stock on the opening bell this morning.

SpaceX and Tesla boss -- as well as Twitter enthusiast and board member, Elon Musk -- said that a "woke mind virus" is the biggest threat to civilization. Musk said Netflix had been neglecting its viewership, focusing too much on "woke issues". Anyone that has watched Netflix over the last few years can agree.

Netflix is competing with other streaming giants in the space now, with Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount, and more. The mainstream media wants to blame the Ukraine conflict, but they can't use that as the new pandemic and lay blame for all economic issues because of it. I won't. Because the cost of living and the Ukraine conflict were screwing Netflix, all streaming giants would be suffering.