Latest News - Page 1185

UPDATE: Valve is issuing a new firmware update to address the drift issues:

Gamers are reporting stick drift on Valve's new Steam Deck handheld-PC hybrid.

Anything with a joystick is susceptible to stick drift, including the $69.99 DualSense (ours drifted in the first week) and the "best in class" thumbsticks used in the Steam Deck.

Bandai Namco is paying game developers an extra $5000+ a year as an incentive to stay with the company.

With tons of game company buyouts and acquisitions, the two most valuable commodities in the games industry are now content and the developers responsible for the content. Buying a franchise like Destiny doesn't mean much without also buying Bungie to manage it. These acquisition sprees have led to high turnover rates as more developers leave and join other studios. Bandai Namco wants to preserve its developers, so that's why it's offering a big raise (similarly, Sony has also allocated over $1 billion as an incentive plan to retain Bungie employees).

Bandai Namco confirms it will give all employees a $435 /month ($5,220 /year) raise to help retain current talent. The Japanese games-maker is paying extra for new graduate students, who will earn a $505/month ($6,000/year) bonus raise.

Ohhhh Elden Ring! in sugary candy form.

Elden Ring is absolutely huge right now. Everyone's talking about it, there's a billion YouTube videos on gear, builds, and rune farming, and it's utterly consuming our collective souls. Now it can consume your bad junk food habits, too.

Trolli, the confectioner known for its sour gummy worms, has created Peachie Elden Rings to celebrate the game's monumental success. There's no code or anything in the bag, and Trolli's USA branch says they actually aren't for sale to the general public. Bummer. Gaming personality Geoff Keighley apparently received a few promotional bags of the candy to commemorate the game, which makes sense considering Keighley nabbed the Elden Ring reveal for The Game Awards.

George R. R. Martin celebrates Elden Ring's success in the best way: With a custom Malenia hat.

Elden Ring might be FromSoftware's most successful game yet. It's one of the best-reviewed games of all time (Open Critic 96, Metacritic 97) and having played it myself, I can say the hype is real. Now famed fantasy scribe George R. R. Martin is getting in on the fun.

The Game of Thrones writer actually helped Miyazaki and FromSoftware create Elden Ring's lore and world, and it certainly shows. While Martin says he played a "small part" in the game's worldbuilding, anyone familiar with GRRM's work will notice his signature style while playing the game. Take the naming schemes of areas, for one; Gatefront, Stormhill, etc, alongside the deeper, more mythical lore of Marika, the Elden Ring's corruption-of-power parallels to Lord of the Rings, and the curse that spread throughout the Lands Between.

Mention of a new DLSS-enabled Switch model has reportedly been found in the recent NVIDIA leak.

NVIDIA's recent data breach may have unearthed details about Nintendo's upcoming 4K-ready Switch model. The code indicates the Switch will support DLSS, NVIDIA's powerful and flexible supersampling technology, in order to hit 4K gaming.

The leaked code makes three possible references to the Switch: "nvndlss.cpp," "nvn_dlss.cpp," and "nvn_dlss_backend.h". For reference, NVN is the name of the graphics API used for the Nintendo Switch.

The Sixth Assessment Report comes from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report titled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was released on February 28th, 2022, and it is the second installment of the latest climate assessment by the IPCC. The previous installment focused on the recent climate science, whereas this installment examines the impacts climate change has on people and ecosystems. A third installment is due to follow, which will evaluate options for dealing with climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions in the future.

A study on Bitcoin's impact titled "Revisiting Bitcoin's carbon footprint" has been published in the journal Joule.

A research team from the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany has found that as Bitcoin miners have been forced out of China, the move to the United States and other countries has increased the amount of fossil-fuel-based electricity used for mining the cryptocurrency. Consequently, as the carbon emissions associated with Bitcoin mining increase, so too has its carbon footprint.

When they first began, China was initially receptive to Bitcoin mining operations, which took advantage of China's extensive hydroelectric facilities during warm months and somewhat reduced its climate impact. China has since restricted Chinese banks from using Bitcoin and shutting down mining operations. The researchers could see where the mining operations had relocated to by using IP addresses.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return home after almost a year-long spaceflight.

Vande Hei came aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on April 9th, 2021, and is scheduled to return to Earth on March 30th. That would mark 355 consecutive days spent in space, breaking the record currently held by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who flew aboard the station for 340 days.

Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth from the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, an awkward predicament given the recent strong sanctions imposed on Russia, particularly its space program. NASA says civil space co-operation will continue between the U.S. and Russia, though the head of Roscosmos hasn't been as optimistic.

A study on the Earth's core titled "Superionic iron alloys and their seismic velocities in Earth's inner core" has been published in the journal Nature.

Scientists have thought of Earth's core to consist of a dense ball of solid iron alloy surrounded by a molten outer core. Computer simulations run as part of a new study suggest the inner core may instead exist in a "superionic state," where hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon molecules continuously swirl throughout a giant lattice of iron atoms.

The Mars Curiosity rover found the flower on February 25th, 2022, or Sol 3397 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 10:59:54 UTC.

The rover team confirmed that the flower-like object seen in the photo is a mineral formation formed from minerals precipitating from water. These kinds of structures are known as diagenetic crystal clusters, which Curiosity has spotted in the past. This latest example has been named the "Blackthorn Salt."

The image is a composite image made from two to eight images taken by the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The rover sometimes performs a focus merge on images like this one, where images of a subject that has been photographed at different focus positions are merged to bring all of its features into focus.

Russia has been hit with sanctions following its invasion into Ukraine and has now said it may have to take trillions from its citizens.

As a result of Russia beginning its invasion into Ukraine, the world has imposed harsh sanctions on the nation, crippling its economy to the point where officials are talking about needing to seize funds from the population. The Russian dollar "Ruble" has been in free-fall since the sanctions were imposed, crashing to record lows. The State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Nikolai Arefiev, has said the Russian government might seize Russian residents' funds in the event of an economic collapse.

Russian troops invading Ukraine have reportedly destroyed the world's largest aircraft called the Antonov AN-225.

According to Ukrainian authorities, the world's largest aircraft, which was nicknamed "Mriya," or "dream" in Ukrainian, has unfortunately been destroyed while it was getting repairs done in a hanger at Hostomel airport that's located in the northwest of Ukraine's capital Kyiv. Russian invading forces reportedly attacked the area and destroyed the hanger along with the Antonov AN-225.

The aircraft features six engines, has a wingspan of 289 feet, and was originally constructed by transport Soviet space shuttles. The aircraft has been in operation since 1988 and also held the record for the largest and heaviest aircraft ever built, but furthermore, it also held the record for the heaviest single-item payload at 418,830 pounds and the heaviest payload ever lifted at 559,580 lbs. The Antonov company took to Twitter to announce that it couldn't verify the condition of the aircraft until it was "inspected by experts".

Ukraine recently called upon all major cryptocurrency exchanges to block Russian addresses, and now the world's largest exchange has responded.

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has responded to the request made by Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, by saying it will not "unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts", according to a spokesperson for Binance. Additionally, the spokesperson told CNBC that Binance "cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so."

The spokesperson explained that the sole purpose of cryptocurrency is to move away from centralized financial control, and that banning to "unilaterally decide to ban people's access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists." However, the spokesperson said that Binance will be working to ensure that action is taken against those who have had sanctions put on them, while also focussing efforts on protecting innocent users.

Ukraine has asked the world to donate to its government in various ways to contribute towards repelling the recent invasion by Russia.

The cryptocurrency community has rallied behind Ukraine's plea for funds for its military as reports from Cointelegraph reveal that more than $37 million in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Tether (USDT) have been sent to various Ukrainian charity wallet addresses. Reports from the publication reveal that the largest wallet address containing the most funds is the "Reserve fund of Ukraine," which is currently backed by the country's own cryptocurrency exchange called Kuna. The wallet contains more than $13 million in the aforementioned cryptocurrencies.

The wallet containing the second-largest amount of donations is the "Come Back Alive" wallet that is owned by a non-government organization that has pledged the funds will be used to assist the Ukrainian Armed Forces in any way they can. This wallet contains about $7.2 million in BTC. Following the Come Back Alive wallet is the UkraineDAO, which is controlled by Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova, who is a part of a Russian feminist protest music group. This group intends to create a single NFT flag that would be used to fund civilian organizations in Ukraine.

The head of Russia's space agency recently suggested that Russia could let the International Space Station plummet down to Earth.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, recently stated that the sanctions on Russia recently implemented by the United States over Russia's invasion into Ukraine were blocking cooperation between the two nations. Rogozin tweeted that "If you block cooperation with us, then who is going to save the ISS from an uncontrolled descent from orbit and then falling onto the territory of the United States or Europe?"

NASA issued a statement following the remarks from the head of Russia's space program, saying "The new export control measures will continue to allow U.S.-Russia civil space operations. No changes are planned to the agency's support for ongoing in-orbit and ground-station operations."

A team of researchers has found a new crater that seems to now be the largest impact crater on Earth that formed within the last 100,000 years.

The newly discovered crater is located in Northeast China and looking at the above image, a crescent-shaped geological structure can be seen that researchers have called the Yilan crater. A description of the crater has been published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science and states that the geological structure was confirmed to be an impact crater caused by an asteroid between 46,000 to 53,000 years ago.

The crater has a diameter of about 1.15 miles, and beneath the 328 feet of lake and swamp that shrouds the impact zone, is close to a 1,000-foot-thick slab of brecciated granite, which is mainly composed of unconsolidated granite fragments. The rocks beneath the surface display classic evidence of a meteorite impact, as researchers found "shocked quartz, melted granite, glass containing holes formed by gas bubbles, and tear-drop shaped glass fragments-all indications of a high-intensity impact event", according to NASA.

The United States recently implemented new sanctions on Russia after the nation began its invasion into Ukraine.

These sanctions were designed to "degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program," according to US President Joe Biden, and were interpreted by the head of Russia's space program Dmitry Rogozin as an effort to "destroy cooperation on the ISS", and even resulted in Rogozin subtly threatening to crash the ISS into the US.

NVIDIA should hopefully be unveiling its next-gen Hopper GPU architecture at its upcoming GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in March 2022 -- but now we're hearing about its successor -- the next-next-gen Blackwell GPU architecture.

Where is this news coming from? Well, that would be from NVIDIA being recently hacked, where one of the files refers to "ARCH_BLACKWELL" which would see NVIDIA's next-gen GPU architecture named after David Harold Blackwell, an American statistician and mathematician specializing in statistics, game theory and information theory.

The first mentions of Blackwell turned up in July 2021, with leaker "Kopite7kimi" tweeting out the Blackwell GPU architecture tease. NVIDIA has only mentioned "Ampere Next" and "Ampere Next Next" but we should see those GPUs as Hopper and Ada Lovelace, but now we have Blackwell thrown into the next-gen GPU mix.

Sony's Twisted Metal TV show adaptation will premiere on NBC's Peacock streaming service, Deadline reports.

The new Twisted Metal TV show will be a rip-roaring comedy with Marvel star Anthony Mackie (Falcon) leading the cast and Cobra Kai writer Michael Jonathan Smith penning the series. NBC has ordered a season to bolster its Peacock streamer, and Sony's own PlayStation Productions and Pictures divisions are teaming up with Universal Television to produce.

The show is set in the familiar Mad Max-ian post-apocalyptic world established by the original games, and will feature iconic characters like Sweet Tooth. It's possible the series will release at the same time as the new Twisted Metal game that's currently in development.

NetMarble has created its very own blockchain to host its upcoming P2E blockchain games.

With $2.2 billion earned in 2021, South Korean mobile games titan NetMarble is one of the biggest games companies on the market. The developer makes billions every year from online-driven mobile games like A3: Still Alive, Ni no Kuni, and Lineage II. Now it's jumping headfirst into the blockchain market.

NetMarble has created its own proprietary blockchain platform called MBX to serve as the base for its new dapp (decentralized application) video games. The publisher plans to release six blockchain games in 2022, with the first releasing in March. MBX is built on the Klatyn blockchain and will utilize a new MBX-based cryptocurrency.