Latest News - Page 1152

A Facebook whistleblower has outlined some concerns with Meta's approach towards creating its metaverse and how it could impact consumer safety and privacy for users.

Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower that revealed a plethora of documents to the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Facebook's inadequate response to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation spreading across the social media, recently gave a warning about Meta's coming metaverse. For those that don't know, the metaverse is a combination of the cryptocurrency blockchain and a shared online virtual world that features its own economy with a virtual token. An extreme example of a metaverse is the movie Ready Player One.

Haugen warns that if Meta doesn't commit to transparency, access, and other accountability measures, she can see that the metaverse will feature a "repeat of all the harms you currently see on Facebook." Specifically, the Facebook whistleblower is concerned about the privacy aspect of the metaverse, the impact on users required to put more "microphones and sensors" in their homes, and how that opens up the possibility of Meta "spying on you at home".

A hacking group affiliated with the Anonymous hacking collective claimed that it had infiltrated Russia's space agency systems and seized control.

The hacking group called Network Battalion 65 (NB65) took to its Twitter account to post screenshots of server information that they then claimed was displaying the group had infiltrated the Russian space agency "Roscosmos" control system. The head of Roscosmos refuted the claims by NB65, Dmitry Rogozin, who called NB65 "scammers and petty swindlers", and said that "All our space activity control centers are operating normally."

Now reports are surfacing that state a file containing the source of the hack has been analyzed, revealing that the hacking group used 66% of the same code as Conti, a Russian crime hacking group that used ransomware to steal millions from Western companies. As NB65 used the majority of Conti's ransomware to hack Roscosmos systems, it seems that NB65 has changed Russia's own ransomware code and used it to attack the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin has named his next target while simultaneously shielding his people from the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

The announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin came during his visit to the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport located in the far east of Russia. As reported by The Moscow Times, Putin stated that Russia needs to rebuild its "moon program".

The Russian president added that the Luna 25 mission, a planned uncrewed lunar lander mission scheduled to launch in August 2022, will be completed by the third quarter of this year. At this time, Putin directed a question to the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, asking, "Are we going to make it in time in the third quarter?"

Moondust collected by NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission was recently sold at an auction as a part of a Space History Sale.

The moondust is a part of the first lunar samples collected by astronaut Neil Armstrong, according to NASA. The samples were auctioned off by Bonhams, which originally estimated that the moondust would be worth anywhere between $800,000 to $1.2 million. However, at the Space History Sale held on Wednesday in New York, the very small amount of microscopic moon dust sold for $504,375, falling very short of what Bonhams expected.

When Bonhams received the lunar samples, it was unable to verify the total weight due to the fineness of the dust. Eventually, Bonhams cited the dust in microns and that the dust was actually found in the seams of a bag that was used to transport the original lunar samples that were collected in 1969.

Hyundai has announced that it will be investing $7.4 billion in the US by 2025 to make a "suite" of EVs, upgrade its factories, and develop smart mobility technologies.

Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama (HMMA) announced it will be expanding its SUV production capabilities later this year, with the introduction of a hybrid version of the Santa Fe -- the new Santa Fe Hybrid -- that will join the Elantra sedan, Santa Fe, Tucson SUVs, and Santa Cruz Sport Adventure Vehicle on the Montgomery assembly line.

The company will begin with the electrified Santa Fa Hybrid at its Montgomery, Alabama plant in October which will see a $300 million initial investment, creating 200 jobs. I doubt we'll see the first EV roll off the production line in December 2022 exactly, as with everything these days in the post-pandemic world: delays, delays, delays.

AMD's new Ryzen 7 5800X3D is in the hands of a select few before the world's first CPU with 3D V-Cache reaches the retail market next week, and until now we thought that overclocking had been blocked... but it seems that it might not be the case.

The new AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor has 8 cores and 16 threads of Zen 3-based CPU power, with the CPU clocks hitting 3.4GHz base and up to 4.5GHz boost, with 32MB of 2D cache joined by some nifty 64MB of AMD 3D V-Cache. We have a TDP of 105W and an MSRP of $449 (the same as the Ryzen 7 5800X non-3D V-Cache processor).

The 4.5GHz boost CPU clock has been pushed up to 4.82GHz by Pieter @ SKATTERBENCHER, with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D installed in the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme motherboard. CPU voltage was at 1.306V, with a 45.5 multiplier and a BCLK of 105.99MHz. Pieter used the ASUS Voltage Suspension technology on the motherboard, and will explain it in an upcoming video.

If you've wanted the ultimate gaming bed, then Japanese gaming furniture company Bauhutte has just the thing for you with its new BGB-100FA electric bed.

This isn't Bauhutte's first gaming bed, but an evolution -- and a big one at that -- of its first gaming bed. There are motors for your legs and back, so you can have your legs elevated or sit up and work, relax, eat, or any other enjoyable in-front-of-your-PC activity.

Bauhutte also sells the BHD-1200BD Bed Desk, which you'd totally have to buy with the BGB-100FA electric bed so that you can do literally everything at your PC. The only annoying thing you'd have to do at this point is get up and go to the bathroom... maybe we can expect some -- uhhhh, bathroom capabilities -- with the next iteration of the electric gaming bed.

Intel has been enjoying the spoils of having DDR5 on its consumer platform for a few months now, with the high-end Z690-based motherboards rocking DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 support, and now AMD is talking up what it has in store for DDR5.

In a recent Meet the Experts webinar, AMD's in-house memory expert said that its next-gen Zen 4 "Raphael" CPUs would have feature optimizations for DDR5 memory overclocking. AMD has been working with Samsung on these new DDR5 enablement on the server side of things, and it looks like we're all going to benefit from this collaboration.

Joseph Tao, Memory Enabling Manager at AMD explained: "Our first DDR5 platform for gaming is our Raphael platform and one of the awesome things about Raphael is that we are really gonna try to make a big splash with overclocking and I'll just kinda leave it there but speeds that you maybe thought couldn't be possible, may be possible with this overclocking spec".

ASUS has just announced a new member of its ROG Thor II Platinum PSU range, with the introduction of the new ROG Thor 1600W Platinum PSU.

The new ASUS ROG Thor 1600W Platinum PSU is the highest-end PSU in the ROG Thor II PSU family from ASUS, where you'll have 80 Plus Platinum certification, meaning you'll get 90% efficiency at 100% load. There's a beautiful black and silver design, with ASUS using an OLED screen on the side... because why not.

I don't know why you'd want to spend a huge chunk of coin on this PSU, considering it doesn't have any native 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector. You'll need to use the adapters (1 x 16-pin to 3-4 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors) which is going to be annoying. But things are confusing: ASUS confirms on its product page that the "each ROG Thor 1600W Platinum PSU is bundled with a 16-pin PCIe cable that can pipe up to 600W of power to PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics cards. Get ready for the future of power delivery".

Lambda has teamed with Razer on its beasty new Lambda Tensorbook, which is reportedly the world's most powerful laptop ever made... for deep learning.

Inside, you've got some hefty mobile hardware with Linux and Lambda's deep learning software. There's also the Lambda GPU Cloud installed which gives engineers the required software tools and compute performance they need to develop, train, and sample deep learning models in-house.

As for Lambda, the company has been at the forefront of deep learning infrastructure, building deep learning systems for the world's largest R&D teams. The research and development teams across the world tap Lambda's GPU clusters, servers, workstations, and cloud instances to train their neural networks for things like cancer detection, autonomous aircraft, drug discovery, self-driving cars, and so much more.

LG has just unleashed its new C2 OLED TVs that were originally announced at CES 2022 (the Consumer Electronics Show) in January. They're now for sale, which means LG's smallest OLED is now ready to rock and roll.

The new LG 2022 C2 OLED TV series begins with the 42-inch model, but there are 48-, 55-, 65-, 77-, and 83-inch C2 OLED TVs for $1400, $1500, $1800, $2500, $3500, and $5500 respectively. The 55-inch through to the 83-inch C2 OLED TVs are 20% brighter than their predecessors, as they're based on LG's brand new OLED.EX panels.

Each of the new LG C2 OLED TVs are native 4K, super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and 4 x HDMI 2.1 ports that are upgraded over their predecessors: the full 48Gbps of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, up from the 40Gbps on the previous models. We also have LG's new α9 Gen5 processor, updated webOS 22, and support for Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG.

Prompted by a three-year investigation from government watchdog agency the Competition and Markets Authority, gaming's Big Three have all adjusted their auto-renewal policies in the United Kingdom.

At the behest of a CMA investigation started in 2019, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have changed subscription auto-renewal charging policies in the UK. Microsoft and Sony will no longer charge consumers indefinitely if they are not logging in and using associated services like Xbox Game Pass, Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Now, and PlayStation Plus.

Sony's policy sees the company contacting users and reminding them to turn off auto-billing, which will be manually turned off if users are inactive for 24 months.

The Embracer Group has made its 72nd acquisition with the purchase of Beamdog, the team behind console ports of some of gaming's biggest RPGs.

Apsyr, the developer behind the upcoming KOTOR remake, has acquired Baldur's Gate developer Beamdog in a convergence of RPG mastery. Aspyr is currently working closely with Beamdog to publish its new all-original IP MythForce.

"Beamdog's team of 80 artists, designers and developers has relationships with top licensors, including Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, as well as an impressive catalogue of RPG titles. Through the acquisition, Aspyr will add a veteran North American development team, which will continue to be led by Oster," reads a press release.

The Witcher 3's next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X/S version has been delayed indefinitely, CD Projekt RED today announced.

The upcoming free next-gen release of The Witcher 3 has been pushed back to an undetermined period of time. CD Projekt RED says it is now taking over development of the project and is currently trying to figure out how much work is left on the project. Saber Interactive, who ported The Witcher 3 to Switch, has done the bulk of the next-gen game's development.

"We have decided to have our in-house development team conduct the remaining work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We are currently evaluating the scope of work to be done and thus have to postpone Q2 release until further notice. We'll update you as soon as we can. Thank you for your understanding," the company said.

Following Elden Ring's soaring success, Bandai Namco wants to work fantasy author Brandon Sanderson on a new video game...but Sanderson is already involved in a game project.

Some weeks ago, Bandai Namco sent Mistborn and Stormlight Archive author Brandon Sanderson a special Elden Ring package that included a sword, a cloak, the game, and other collectibles. In the package was a note saying the publisher would like to collaborate with Sanderson on a new game, no doubt prompted by Elden Ring's amazingly successful input from George R.R. Martine.

"They are interested in perhaps doing something together. I am as well," Sanderson said in a recent podcast.

AMD is still a month away from releasing its RDNA 2 refresh GPUs which will be led by the new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT, and now the custom GIGABYTE variant has been spotted.

GIGABYTE's upcoming Radeon RX 6950 XT GAMING OC graphics card was spotted on an Australian retailer website for AUD $3241 which works out to around $2400. It's not a full listing, as it's just a placeholder -- the listing is for the Radeon RX 6900 XT variant -- but you can see the product code GV-R695XTGAMING-OC-16GD.

If you compare that against the Australian retail pricing of the custom GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GAMING OC which costs AUD $3339 at Scorptec... which means we should expect similar pricing of AMD's new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT as we see around the world for NVIDIA's new suped-up GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card.

No Man's Sky was quite the mess when it launched, but you've really, really got to give it to the team at Hello Games... they have delivered, and then delivered, and continue to deliver new content into No Man's Sky at a rate that other developers should admire. The latest, is called Outlaws.

The new Outlaws update for No Man's Sky gives players missions where you can secure black market technology, and other goods from ships by being a pirate. It is a different element to the game, a completely different element, and brings Star Wars + Star Citizen + Sea of Thieves vibes into the game.

No Man Sky's new Outlaws update introduces a plethora of new things: outlaw space stations, cloth simulation (which looks great), an outlaw story, smuggling, solar ships, you can recruit wingmen, there are plentary frigates, improved space combat, forged passports, more ship slots, bounty missions, and planetary pirate raids. Who can complain about that, especially given it's free.

An unconfirmed video that has appeared on some news outlets suggests that Russia is moving military equipment to the Finland border.

The footage is unverified by Ukraine officials but shows Russian military vehicles on the move, which Newsweek reports to be K-300P Bastion-Ps, coastal defense missile systems. The video was uploaded by the Twitter user OSINTdefender spans 43-seconds, and the individual filming makes sure to showcase the nearby street sign that is directions to Helsinki, the capital of Finland.

Since the video is unverified, some people are speculating that it could be Russian propaganda deliberately released by the Kremlin. Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917 and is now preparing to make a historic decision to join NATO "before midsummer", a move that Russia has warned Finland against doing while also suggesting there will be some level of consequences if Finland follows through.

The United States government is expected to announce a new weapons assistance package for Ukraine as soon as Wednesday, according to an exclusive report from Reuters.

The publication states that US President Joe Biden is expected to announce in the coming day/s a new $750 million weapons aid package aimed at providing relief for Ukraine and its fight against Russia. Two unnamed US officials close to the matter told Reuters that the equipment would be funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, which essentially gives the US president the power to transfer articles and services from US stocks without official approval from Congress.

Furthermore, one of the officials told Reuters that the specifics on what types of equipment will be included in the package have yet to be determined but would likely have similar content to past supply packages that the US has sent (ground to air artillery systems, defensive anti-aircraft Stinger, anti-tank Javelin missiles, ammunition, and body armor.) Since February 24, the White House has provided $1.7 billion in aid to Ukraine, and with this coming new package, the total will be brought to $2.4 billion.

Who are the most stressed people in Australia? That would be young, male, rebellious, and likely to be gamers according to a new analysis by media monitoring and social analytics platform Meltwater.

The analysis comes from the profiles and social media posts of over 13,000 Australians who have talked about being stressed out on social media in 2021, with Twitch users and gamers the most stressed out of them all. 61% of them are male, with 30% of them aged 18-14 years old.

Melbourne seems to be a hot spot, and it's no wonder the way the Victorian government treated millions of Victorians throughout 2021 under the "leadership" of Dan Andrews... with 30% of those stressed gamers coming from Melbourne, Victoria. It's not just gamers that are stressed out in Australia, but also writers and members of the media... while political activists (which Meltwater adds are "mainly climate activists").