Latest News - Page 1160

A US satellite company has captured a haunting aerial image of a mass grave site in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

Photographed on March 31.

The satellite images were captured by Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite, which has photographed several locations across Ukraine and even showed Russia's military advancement towards Kyiv. Now, the Worldview-3 satellite has been used to photograph on March 31, a newly created makeshift graveyard built on the grounds of the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints.

The scientist that was busted for creating what could be considered the first gene-editing human babies has recently been released from prison.

A story emerged in 2018 about a scientist that used a technology called CRISPR that is designed to identify a specific bit of DNA within a cell and alter it. Additionally, the CRISPR technology is capable of turning specific genes on and off, and due to this technology's incredible power, many scientific and ethical concerns have been raised, especially after Chinese scientist He Jiankui was found guilty of using CRISPR to edit the genes of IVF embryos that were planted into a woman's uterus that later birthed into twin girls.

The scientist altered the genes of the twin girls to be resistant to infection of HIV, which the father of the children had. He Jiankui lost his position at the Southern Universe of Science and Technology in China, and was convicted in December 2019, where he was imprisoned for around three years, according to TechnologyReview. The publication reports that He has been released from prison, according to people "familiar with the situation" and that when recently called, he said, "It's not convenient to talk right now".

NASA's database that tracks all of the detected space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth indicates that an asteroid with an estimated diameter of about a mile is due to approach Earth soon.

NASA's Center for Near-Earth Studies (CNEOS) database lists the asteroid called 7335 (1989 JA), and states that its estimated diameter based on past measurements is 1.8 kilometers or 1.1 miles. The asteroid was first observed in 1989 by Helin, E. F. at Palomar and was last observed on March 26, 2022. 1989 JA will be the largest asteroid to approach Earth in 2022, and NASA expects that it will safely fly past our planet at a distance of 2.5 million from Earth or 0.02690 astronomical units.

Before 1989 JA arrives near Earth, another large asteroid called 2008 AG33 will approach Earth on April 28, and that asteroid is estimated to be anywhere between 1,083 feet and 2,428 feet in diameter. 2008 AG33 will be traveling at around 23,200 miles per hour when it flies safely past Earth at a distance of around two million miles.

An asteroid that is estimated to be one of the largest space rocks to approach Earth throughout 2022 will be making its close approach to Earth this month.

The asteroid is called 418135 (2008 AG33), and according to data from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Studies (CNEOS), the space rock will be making its closest approach with Earth on April 28 at 2:46 AM UTC, where it will come within two million miles of Earth. While two million miles is certainly quite a distance, in astronomical terms, it's relatively small, with the moon being an average 238,000 miles away from Earth and Mars being 140 million miles from Earth.

2008 AG33 is estimated to be anywhere between 1,083 feet and 2,428 feet in diameter, and if the asteroid's higher estimate is more accurate, it would mean that 2008 AG33 is as wide as two Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. If its diameter is closer to 1,083 feet, it would mean it's the same size as the Eiffel Tower. NASA's database reveals that there is an even larger space rock on its way, with its diameter estimated to be 1.1 miles across.

US and Ukrainian officials have claimed that abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been re-taken by Ukraine.

Within the first days of Russia's invasion it took the Chernobyl nuclear power plant causing major concern across Europe for the safety of the plant and the busted nuclear reactor that caused one of the worst nuclear disasters ever. Since Russia's invasion officials have reported interruptions with monitoring the reactor and that radiation levels around the plant have dramatically spiked due to forest fires.

Now, reports are surfacing that Russia has pulled out of Chernobyl and that on April 2 at 11:00 the Ukrainian flag was raised over the defunct power plant. The retreat from Russia follows reports of numerous Russian troops suffering from radiation poisoning with Ukrainian officials saying that they inhaled radioactive dust and were unaware of the dangers of the area.

ZOTAC has just revealed its new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti PGF OC graphics card, a new China-exclusive absolute behemoth of a GPU... clocking in at a huge 4-slot card.

The new ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3090 Ti PGF OC graphics card has the same GPU specs as the ZOTAC RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme, with a GPU boost clock of up to 1890MHz and default TDP of 450W. But, the AMP Extreme can enjoy a modified 495W of power with overclocking... we should expect the same with the RTX 3090 Ti PGF OC model.

But man... is the new ZOTAC RTX 3090 Ti PGF OC a big boi, with a huge 4-slot design that towers over the 3.5-slot design of the ZOTAC RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme GPU. The 4-slot design makes it the biggest custom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti on the planet so far... and they're all chunky beasts as it is.

Intel is working on its next-gen NUC Studio 12 Pro according to the latest rumors, which is going by codenamed "Wall Street Canyon".

The new Intel "Wall Street Canyon" NUC would be going head-to-head with Apple's new Mac Studio, but it won't be at the same time. Apple makes its new M1 Max and M1 Ultra (which is 2 x M1 Max SoCs glued together) on TSMC's new 5nm process node, while Intel... well, it doesn't have an SoC anywhere near worthy of competing.

Intel's new Wall Street Canyon NUC would have an Alder Lake-based 12th Gen Core CPU, with 5 different SKUs rumored for the new NUC Studio 12 Pro so far. These include the Core i3-1220P, Core i5-1240P, Core i5-1250P, Core i7-1260P without vPro, and the Core i7-1270P (12C/16T and Iris Xe 96 EU) with vPro.

NVIDIA is cozying up very tightly with TSMC leading into its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU launch later this year, which will power the new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards... with new reports teasing TSMC will be the sole supplier of NVIDIA's GPUs in 2022.

We all know the issues that NVIDIA has been facing with its current Ampere GPU architecture, which is being fabbed by Samsung on their custom 8nm process. The new GA102 powering the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is chewing upwards of 500W, with some custom models offering up to 1275W of power. This is all a big test for the next-gen GPUs, which are looking at using 600W+ of power.

The inefficient Samsung 8nm node can't compete with TSMC 7nm let alone TSMC's new 5N process node, which should see NVIDIA's new Ada Lovelace GPU call home in 2022 and beyond. NVIDIA isn't a stranger to TSMC, it's just been making most of its GeForce GPUs with South Korean rival Samsung, and it hasn't gone so well -- so the big switch back to TSMC is happening -- and a lot of money is exchanging hands, I'm sure.

Minisforum has just launched its new B550 Mini-PC with the option of two AMD Ryzen CPUs, the space for a discrete GPU, up to 64GB of RAM, and so much more.

The new Minisforum B550 Mini-PC system packs the AMD B550 chipset, with the Ryzen 7 4700G (3.6GHz base, 4.4GHz boost CPU clock) or the Ryzen 7 5700G (3.8GHz base, 4.6GHz boost). There's a regular AM4 socket so you can upgrade the CPU up to a 65W TDP model (so, no support for the 5800X, 5900X, or 5950X).

Inside, you've got support for up to 64GB of RAM, 2 x M.2 2280 SSD slots, and depending on the CPU you put inside of it -- PCIe 4.0 support, so if you put in a discrete GPU -- making it a lean, mean machine. The discrete GPU uses an expansion dock that is connected with the compute and discrete GPU, which looks awesome anyway.

AMD was gearing up for its big RDNA 2 refresh on April 20, but that has been delayed according to the latest rumors -- with a new RDNA 2 refresh launch of May 10 -- just over a month from now.

We can expect AMD to unleash a trio of new all-black Radeon RX 6000 series refresh GPUs, led by the new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card. After that, we'll have the Radeon RX 6750 XT and the lower-end Radeon RX 6650 XT graphics cards.

AMD will be splashing out with faster GDDR6 memory clocked at 18Gbps, up from the 16Gbps GDDR6 on the Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. The new flagship Radeon RX 6950 XT rocks a huge design just like the current Radeon RX 6900 XT has, but we should expect a big chunk of performance on top of the RX 6900 XT (like the new RTX 3090 Ti offers over the RTX 3090).

Halo developer 343 Industries says it does not have plans to add a battle royale mode into Halo Master Chief Collection, but new content is coming soon.

Halo Infinite needs some new modes. Fans are starting to agree that Dr. Disrespect might've been right when he said Infinite should have a BR mode: "The people saying Halo doesn't need a battle royale said Battlefield didn't need one. Now look at where that game is. You have to have one." But what about Halo MCC?

343i has said on three separate occasions that Halo Infinite isn't getting battle royale. Now 343i's communication director Brian Jarrard says the Master Chief Collection won't get it either.

Elon Musk owns a 9.2% stake in the second-largest social media company in the world -- Twitter -- sending Twitter shares up 25% when the news broke an hour ago.

A new filing shows that SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk owns 73.5 million Twitter shares, which are valued at around $2.9 billion. The shares are held by the Elon Musk Revocable Trust, of which Musk is the sole trustee.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note: "We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter".

Intel's new desktop Arc Alchemist GPUs are only a few months away, and thanks to their recent presentation video of their Arc Control panel, desktop GPU details appeared.

Intel is rolling out a new GPU monitoring suite for its Arc Alchemist and Xe Iris desktop GPUs called Arc Control, with the recent presentation teaing the new "Performance Tab" for GPU monitoring and basic overclocking (OC) tools. In the quick sneak peak, Intel had a live performance monitoring panel showing the GPU power, GPU clock, and VRAM clock of the GPU inside of the PC.

We don't know which GPU that Intel was using in the machine, but it would've been an Arc Alchemist desktop GPU of some kind -- with a GPU boost clock of 2250MHz, GPU power (not the entire card, but the GPU only) at 175W and the GDDR6 memory clocks at 1093MHz. None of the new Arc Alchemist mobile GPUs have a power draw of 175W, with the Arc A770M maxing out at 150W. But remember, the 175W is GPU power draw alone... not the entire card... meaning we're looking at 200-225W+ full power for the whole card.

Here's DOOM like you never thought possible back in the 90s when id Software exploded onto the scene with its game-changing first-person shooter... now with ray traving:

A modder who has also added ray-tracing through path tracing into games like Half-Life and Serious Sam: The First Encounter, has now injected ray tracing into the original DOOM and the results are surprising. It looks fantastic next to the original DOOM, giving it a totally new vibe while remaining the same DOOM we all know and love.

The side-by-side comparison is great, as it makes the ray-traced version of DOOM stand out from the original. We've already seen similar, with Quak II RTX released onto Steam and is fully ray-traced, including the 3 levels from the original shareware version of the game. But DOOM with ray tracing on its own is still impressive, as it doesn't have a team of developers behind it. Makes me want to go back through and replay DOOM with ray tracing enabled.https://github.com/sultim-t/prboom-plus-rt/releases

A new Halo Waypoint blog post makes it clear that fans will be waiting quite some time for more Halo Infinite updates and news.

343i has been as transparent as possible regarding new Halo Infinite content. The studio announced that season 2 Lone Wolves is coming on May 3. Lone Wolves brings two new maps--Catalyst for arena and Breaker for BTB--and a handful of classic modes like multi-team and king of the hill are returning. Online campaign co-op has been delayed to "later in season 2". Other than those details, 343i doesn't have a whole lot of concrete info to share.

The latest Halo Waypoint post did two things: First, it relayed all the lessons 343i has learned from season 1 and the content coming in season 2. Secondly, the post pretty much told fans to get used to waiting.

Sony is currently selling a 1-year PlayStation Now subscription for $59.99 that will convert into its new higher-priced PS Plus Premium sub.

Sony is combining PS Now and PS Plus subscriptions together in a new 3-tiered model. Existing PS Now subscribers will carry over to the most expensive tier, PlayStation Plus Premium, which offers 740 games across six console generations.

Deal wizard Wario64 found an impressive deal that could save PlayStation gamers some serious cash. Right now Sony is selling 12-month PS Now memberships for $59.99 that will convert into PlayStation Plus Premium subscription that retails for $119 a year.

A study on the speeds of sound on Mars titled "In situ recording of Mars soundscape" has been published in the journal Nature.

The Perseverance rover on Mars has recorded over five hours of sound using its microphones after landing on Mars in February last year. Perseverance recorded sounds made by the flying Ingenuity helicopter that accompanies the rover and sounds from its laser that it uses to analyze the chemical composition of Martian rock samples.

The research team found that sound travels roughly 240 meters per second on Mars, compared to 340 meters per second on Earth. Mars is expected to have a slower speed of sound, as its atmosphere is about a hundred times thinner than Earth's, with carbon dioxide making up 95% of it compared to 0.04% carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, which also results in sounds becoming roughly 20 decibels weaker.

Reports have alleged that Russian forces are using landmines to target soldiers in Ukraine.

Landmines are currently prohibited in combat under the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, otherwise known as the Ottawa Treaty. The convention was instated in 1997, with over 150 countries signing on, including Ukraine. However, Russia was not one of them.

The landmine in use by Russia is the POM-3 "Medallion" landmine, a supposedly "smart" landmine that can only target soldiers and not civilians. Their restricted targeting is allegedly due to specialized seismic sensors used to activate them. Members of a non-governmental organization (NGO) known as the Ukrainian Deminers Association have located mines in Ukraine that are known to be in Russia's arsenal.

The Ingenuity Mars helicopter that accompanies the Perseverance rover has been spotted by a satellite orbiting the Red Planet.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spotted Ingenuity with its HiRISE camera, which can capture 28-gigabit images in only six seconds. Ingenuity's rotors only span four feet (1.2 meters), making the image an impressive capture. HiRISE is often used to track the status of assets on Mars.

Currently, the Perseverance rover is located on fractured bedrock, which makes up the Maaz Formation. The rover is traversing over the formation, which is likely of volcanic origin, to reach a deltaic deposit several kilometers to the north.

The number of Bitcoins mined has just passed another milestone on its way to the final one.

Only 21 million Bitcoins can ever be mined, a hard cap that the cryptocurrency was designed with. More than a decade after the first Bitcoin was mined, the milestone of 19 million Bitcoins mined has been reached, just over 90% of all those that will ever exist.

It is expected that the final Bitcoin won't be mined for over a hundred years, as the rate of new Bitcoins being mined becomes slower with time. When it is inevitably mined, miners will no longer be rewarded with Bitcoin. Despite 19 million coins having been mined, it's not clear there are that many in circulation, as analysis has found about 3.7 million Bitcoins that haven't been involved in any transactions for at least five years.