Latest News - Page 1181

Elon Musk has been helping out with the conflict in Ukraine with SpaceX Starlink satellite internet connections, with both Starlink satellites and user terminals... but now, Musk has some fightin' words.

In a new tweet, the SpaceX and Tesla founder said that some international governments want SpaceX to block Russian media outlets from using Starlink satellite internet connections. Musk tweeted that SpaceX would not be complying with these new orders "unless at gunpoint".

Musk tweeted: "Starlink has been told by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist".

MSI has finally unleashed its awesome little MAG Trident S 5M Mini PC, a new cloud and mobile gaming-focused SFF gaming PC.

Inside, MSI's new MAG Trident S 5M Mini PC packs AMD Ryzen 5000G series APU, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 4K 120FPS gaming... all in an Xbox Series X-sized case. MSI also includes its Android emulator app -- MSI App Player -- giving you a free 30-day XBOX GAME PASS ULTIMATE, accessible through MSI Game Studio software.

MSI's slick APP Player lets you emulate an Android OS within your Windows OS, giving you the ability to have a completely different experience with the MAG Trident S 5M Mini PC. On one side, it's a SFF gaming PC with Windows -- on the other side, you've got Android app access and a "Joystick Mode" -- giving you great mobile gaming on the couch.

Apple is building a next-gen professional-level display, with the latest reports teasing the company is about to unveil a new 7K resolution panel.

The new Apple Studio Display will reportedly replace the current Pro Display XDR, or be added onto Apple's family of panels, with 9to5Mac reporting that Apple's next-gen display has a 7K resolution. We're being told to expect a larger 36-inch panel with a higher pixel density of 245 PPI -- compared to the 32-inch 6K panel on the current Apple Pro Display XDR -- and its 218 PPI.

Interestingly, inside of the new Apple Studio Display will pack a custom SoC with a codename of "J327" that will be a built-in Apple A13 chip. 9to5Mac says that their sources said that the "Apple Studio Display is the same J327 model - meaning that Apple has still been working on an external display with a dedicated Apple Silicon chip".

ASUS has just unveiled its new ROG Swift PG329Q-W gaming monitor, with a 32-inch IPS panel and native 2560 x 1440 (1440p) resolution -- backed up by a huge 175Hz refresh rate -- and 1ms response time. Not bad, ASUS.

Inside, ASUS deploys its Fast IPS Display technology that allows the "display's liquid crystal elements to change four times faster than established IPS panels for enhanced response". Motion blur and smearing are no issues, with under 1ms gray-to-gray response time, and vivid colors with DCI-P3 98% color gamut and 1000:1 contrast ratio.

It wouldn't be a new ASUS ROG Swift gaming monitor without RGB lighting, with ASUS including its in-house Aura Sync lighting technology. This means if you've got any other Aura Sync-enabled products (motherboard, etc) then you can tweak your RGB lighting in one easy place. There's also DisplayHDR 600 certification, that's not bad -- but it's not an OLED panel -- remember.

And so the cyber pandemic continues, with Samsung now hacked by the same team that stole over 1TB of confidential data from NVIDIA.

Samsung has been hacked by Lapsus$ with over 190GB of confidential information -- including source code for Samsung's Trusted Applet for secure operations -- you know, hardware cryptography, and more. Not only that, but the hackers have reportedly gotten their hands-on "algorithms for all biometric unlock operations", the "bootloader source code for all recent Samsung devices", and even "confidential source from Qualcomm".

The hackers made the 190GB of downloaded information from Samsung's servers as a torrent, with the hacking group saying that it would deploy additional servers to get the download speed up higher.

NVIDIA has now halted sales of its products to Russia over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, joining the likes of its competitors AMD and Intel.

An NVIDIA spokesperson confirmed the news to PCMag, but they didn't have any reasoning behind it. It's more of a "yeah, we're not selling our gear to them anymore" kind of thing. I'm not going to get into the politics of it all, as that's not our place to report on these things at TweakTown, but NVIDIA is a big deal -- so too is AMD and Intel -- and now, no more GeForce GPUs for Russian gamers.

The NVIDIA spokesperson said: "We are not selling into Russia".

Man, what an absolute mess the launch of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti has been so far... the card was meant to be unleashed in late January, and now we're in the first week of March and it's still not here.

The latest on NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is that the company will release it on March 29, just over three weeks from now. The reasons for the delay? Reportedly they've been memory-related... due to the 24GB of single-sided GDDR6X memory at 21Gbps.

There could be more hardware-related or even BIOS-level issues with the card... but with the amount of power driving through the card, Samsung's 8nm process not being the best (up against TSMC and its 7nm and lower nodes), and many other factors (the pandemic, supply chains in South Korea, etc).

NVIDIA has been slammed by a cyberattack that is causing all sorts of issues, with another one of them being GPU-related leaks to its next-gen GPU architectures... the next one, is Ada Lovelace.

The hacking group has infiltrated NVIDIA's servers, and now more information on Ada Lovelace is here. We have the full specs of NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace-based GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs including the AD102, AD103, AD104, AD106, and AD107 GPUs.

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture is expected to be deployed later this year, with the flagship AD102 GPU with the full 18432 CUDA cores and 384-bit memory bus. Next down on the list we have the AD103 GPU which should have 10753 CUDA cores, and the AD104 GPU with 7680 CUDA cores. After that there's the AD106 and AD107 GPUs with 4608 CUDA cores, and 3072 CUDA cores respectively.

We might not ever see the next-gen graphics card released this year that actually uses PCIe 5.0 power connectors, but the PSU market is gearing up for the big launch of next-gen PCIe 5.0-ready GPUs.

Well, now the official specifications of the new PCI-Express 5.0 cable for next-gen GPUs has been leaked, with data approved by Intel who are part of defining the ATX specs. We now know there should be up to four different power settings, with the PCIe 5.0 power cable supporting 150W, 300W, 450W, and a huge 600W over a single 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power cable.

It looks like the binary configuration of the Sense0 and Sense1 sideband signals, but when both of the signals are grounded, the GPU will have up to 375W of power pumped into it, with a maximum of up to an insane 600W of sustained power.

Indie developer Miquel Camps Orteza created an actual playable video game based on Red Hot Chili Pepper's iconic music video.

Californication might be one of the most memorable music videos of all time. It came out during those early days of 3D gaming and everyone who grew up during the time (including me) wanted an actual video game based on the video.

Now one aspiring game developer has delivered an actual playable version of RHCP's Californication, and you can download it now.

SEGA has joined other game developers in donating directly to Ukrainian relief funds.

Japanese games-maker SEGA is the latest video games company to raise funds for Ukraine. The Sonic developer shared an update on Twitter that pledged support for the beleaguered Eastern European country:

"SEGA is making a meaningful donation and is matching donations from its staff to various Ukraine-focused humanitarian aid causes. This money will go towards desperately needed help for those affected."

343i is adding three new game modes to Halo Infinite to keep things interesting.

Halo Infinite released in December 2021 without fan-favorite game modes and features. Campaign co-op wasn't available for the first time ever, and key multiplayer modes like king of the hill--which is tremendously fun--were missing. Now 343i confirms some of the missing modes are coming to Halo Infinite when season 2 releases in May 2022.

The new modes include:

Halo Infinite's campaign co-op won't be available at the start of season 2.

343i has finally announced new details on Halo Infinite's upcoming features, including co-op, forge, season 2, and bug fixes. 343i can't fix everything at once, and the studio has a prioritization hierarchy that looks like this:

Co-op isn't at the very top of the list, and there's a lot involved to get co-op running on five separate Xbox consoles. The studio says Halo Infinite's online/split-screen campaign co-op play will not be available when Season 2 begins on May 3.

Reports of destruction of the world's largest plane, the Antonov An-225, came earlier this week.

A tweet by ELINT News confirms the destruction of the An-225 cargo plane, showing video of the aircraft under a damaged hangar amongst destroyed military equipment at Gostomel airport north of Kyiv in Ukraine. The plane, named Mriya ("dream" in Ukrainian), was built during the Soviet era and was 275 feet long with a wingspan of 290 feet.

It was purchased by Antonov after the collapse of the Soviet Union and used to transport enormous air cargo, such as the two 138-feet wind turbines it transported in 2010 from China to Denmark, the longest pieces of air cargo ever. It was at Antonov's facility at Gostomel for maintenance when the Russian attack on the site began. The Ukrainian government has since vowed to rebuild the aircraft once the war is over.

The project will be coordinated by the United States Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).

Uploaded to the AFRL YouTube channel is the above video on the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS). The plans in the video entail a probe that will patrol cislunar space, the expansive area around Earth that extends beyond the Moon's orbit.

An assortment of private satellite companies are sharing images of the Russian invasion into Ukraine taken from space.

Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite captured high-resolution images of a 40-mile-long (64 kilometers) Russian convoy moving into Ukraine on February 28th, four days after the invasion began. The company has since georegistered the data from its satellite imagery to generate a 3D model of the area around the convoy.

The video stitches together its satellite imagery into one continuous view, conveying the scope of the massive convoy. According to Maxar, the data "has an absolute accuracy in all directions of 3 meters [10 feet], which means that objects seen in the video are physically within that 3 meters zone in the real-world. This unique view, created with space-based data, allows viewers to have a better understanding of the on-the-ground situation when the area is not readily accessible."

Nuclear experts have given their assessment of the possible dangers to Nature.

Russian military forces have captured Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant near Enerhodar in the southeast of Ukraine. A building at the plant had been struck by shelling and caught fire, but the fire was extinguished without any direct harm to the reactors. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported that the detectors at the site continue to report normal radiation levels.

Zaporizhzhia's reactors have a modern VVER (the Russian acronym for water-water energetic reactor) design. Each reactor is enclosed in a pressurized steel vessel, in turn, housed within a massive reinforced-concrete containment structure. Michael Bluck, director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London, says the plant has multiple safety backup systems.

The identity and owner of the rocket has been a subject of the debate since its crash course towards the moon was confirmed.

Calculations of the rocket's trajectory by astronomer Bill Gray indicated that the rocket would strike the Moon's surface on March 4th at 12:25 UTC on the far side of the Moon, where it couldn't be directly observed to occur. Gray estimated that the impact would result in a crater about "10 or 20 meters across."

Electronic Arts condemns Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and has enacted a temporary sales ban in the region.

EA has joined Microsoft in banning the sale of its products in Russia and Belarus. The gaming giant announced the news in a recent update post where it calls the war on Ukraine "shocking" and "deeply troubling."

"We have made the decision to stop sales of our games and content, including virtual currency bundles, in Russia and Belarus while this conflict continues," the post reads.

Nintendo may have enacted a temporary sales ban of games and services in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian gamers can no longer purchase content and services on the Nintendo eShop. The regional eShop support page confirms Nintendo's payment processor has temporary restricted the ruble, Russia's currency, as a valid form of payment.

This is likely due to economic sanctions against Russia that have blocked seven major banks from accessing SWIFT, a messaging system that instructs worldwide bank transactions (such as the digital purchases used in the eShop). Nintendo serves Russia as part of its Nintendo of Europe subsidiary.