Latest News - Page 1198

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is nowhere to be seen, now may be coming out at some point in the future -- possibly, (call me) maybe -- who the hell knows. But the PCB has reportedly been spotted, at least for NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition.

In a new filing listing with the Eurasian Economic Commission, there is the "PG136C" PCB which should be for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition. NVIDIA uses the PG136 or PG132 PCB reference board designs for the GeForce RTX 3090 -- PG136 is for the RTX 3090 Founders Edition, while PG132 is the reference board for AIB partners and their custom RTX 3090s -- and there's a big difference.

PG136 has the awesome, smaller V-shaped PCB design that's used on NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, rocking the exclusive (and much smaller) 12-pin PCIe power connector. PG132 on the other hand is available with only dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors (and some custom RTX 3090s have triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors).

Here are the top-selling first-party PlayStation games on PS4, PS5, and now PC.

Sony's first-party games are big blockbuster system-sellers with dramatic storylines, explosive action, and an emphasis on singleplayer. Games like The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War have all defined an entire generation of console gaming. But how much have each of them sold?

Based on data provided by Sony in public earnings documents and reports, and figures from analysts, we've compiled a list of all the current known first-party PlayStation game sales. Do note that some of these sales figures are very outdated and reflect numbers that have remained static in Sony's quarterly and annual filings.

Horizon Zero Dawn is now one of Sony's best-selling PlayStation games of all time.

Sony's move to PC is paying off. Horizon Zero Dawn, one of the initial first-party PlayStation exclusives to cross over to PC, has now sold in a combined 20 million units across PS4 and PC. The news indicates a substantial spike in overall purchases and that the PC market is avid to consume games previously only available on PlayStation.

Back in 2019, Sony had announced HZD was at 10 million units. That's more than double the number of sales in 3 years' time, which is no small feat for an older evergreen game. The steep discounts, sales, and new PC release all helped to supercharge those numbers.

The rumors and reports were true: Modern Warfare II is officially coming in 2022.

Today Activision officially confirmed this year's Call of Duty game is Modern Warfare II, and that a new Warzone iteration is coming alongside the mainline game.

Not a lot of exact details weren't given, but the new version of Warzone was built from the ground up alongside Modern Warfare II. The new Warzone was made on Infinity Ward's new next-gen engine (which utilizations cutting-edge technology and optimizations including high-end AI, graphics, and physics simulations).

Sony's PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in the United States in January 2022. The reason? The PS5 was more available than the Switch or Xbox Series X/S.

Today the NPD Group announced January 2022's games earnings to interesting results. Total video game spending was down 2% to $4,68 billion, but hardware spending was up a mighty 22% to $390 million. Last month actually had the highest hardware dollar spending since 2009.

The PS5 was the most popular system in January, out-selling competitors in both revenues and unit sales. The Xbox Series X was in second place, followed by the Nintendo Switch.

A study on the new material has been published in the journal Cellulose.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have engineered a new composite material made from cellulose and synthetic polymer. Cellulose fibers give all plant cells their structural rigidity and comprise cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs). On a nanoscale, these CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar.

The CNCs make up 60 to 90 percent of the composite, the highest fraction achieved to date, with the rest made up of synthetic polymer. The microscale structure of the composite is similar to a brick-and-mortar structure. The researchers say the composite is stronger and tougher than some types of bone and harder than typical aluminum alloys.

The study uncovering canine's ability to detect COVID-19 was published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to only a measly 6 million scent receptors in humans. Forty percent more brain space in dogs is devoted to analyzing odors than humans, allowing them to detect compounds with even greater sensitivity than some analytical instruments. They detect smells from volatile organic compounds associated with a given source.

Certain volatile organic compounds, known as biomarkers, are created and exhaled by human patients afflicted with diseases like cancer or diabetes and can be detected by trained dogs. Researchers from the Florida International University confirmed that dogs could be trained to detect COVID-19.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Health on the toxic chemical's prevalence.

The chemical 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is one of the two ingredients used in making Agent Orange, which the United States military used during the Vietnam War to destroy forests and crops, but that inadvertently caused illnesses for millions of people. Used worldwide as a herbicide and defoliant, researchers from the George Washington University (GWU) have found that for 14,395 study participants, nearly 33 percent of their urine samples contained detectable amounts of 2,4-D.

The new coating is described in a study recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) developed the coating, which is inexpensive and non-toxic, able to be applied to virtually any fabric. It decreases the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 disease, by up to 90 percent. The coating is also able to kill Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

A new paper on the curious fish has been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from Harvard University and Emory University have developed a fully autonomous biohybrid fish using cardiac muscle cells derived from human stem cells. The cells can recreate the muscular contractions of a beating heart, allowing the fish to swim and bringing scientists closer to developing artificial cardiac muscle pumps to treat heart disease.

The publisher behind one of the biggest game franchises of all-time Grand Theft Auto has recognized the massive potential in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive has acknowledged the growing NFT space, and according to Take-Two Interactive CEO, Strauss Zelnick, who to spoke to Nintendo Life, the company is "highly convinced there's an opportunity for NFTs to fit with Take-Two's offerings in the future". The publisher's CEO continued to explain that Take-Two believes in collectibles, but the current NFT space is plagued with "speculation" which is causing the publisher to "stay away" for now.

Take-Two Interactive has now joined other companies such as Ubisoft into slowly moving into the NFT space, with Ubisoft pioneering the move by being the first major gaming company to launch in-game NFTs, even despite the public disapproval from many gamers. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

A billion-year-old black rock that was expected to be purchased for millions was bought at an online auction on Wednesday.

The black rock is a 555.5-carat black diamond called "The Enigma," and it was recently sold at an online auction held by Sotheby's on Wednesday for $4,292,322. Sotheby's decided to keep the buyer anonymous, but disclosed that the purchase of the extremely expensive black diamond was made in cryptocurrency. After the auction, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Richard Heart claimed on Twitter that he was the individual who purchased the ancient black diamond, saying that it would be renamed to the "HEX.com diamond".

The Guinness World Records declared The Enigma the world's largest cut diamond, and it's even larger than the Golden Jubilee that's 545.67 carats. So, what makes it so expensive? The Enigma is a carbonate, the toughest type of diamond when it comes to hardness, and extremely rare as they are believed to have originated from space due to them containing a mineral called osbornite that is only found in meteors.

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange when it comes to trading volume has made a very large investment into media.

According to a report from CNBC, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has invested $200 million dollars into becoming one of the two biggest owners of Forbes. The strategic investment has gained Binance two new directors out of nine total board seats, and according to Forbes CEO Mike Ferdele, "With Binance's investment in Forbes, we now have the experience, network, and resources of the world's leading crypto exchange and one of the world's most successful blockchain innovators."

The move is just one of many cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance are making towards bringing more awareness to the cryptocurrency space. Crypto.com is a better example of spending large quantities of money on marketing to raise awareness as the crypto exchange has already spent millions on sports sponsorship's, acquisitions, and even re-branding the Staples center to the Crypto.com center.

Authorities have sentenced a teenager to five years in prison and a $400 fine for planning to blow up a Russian government building constructed by the teenagers in Minecraft.

16-year-old student Nikita Uvarov was sentenced on Thursday by the Eastern District Military Court and was found guilty of terrorism and, more specifically, conducting training exercises to carry out criminal activity, per Uvarov's lawyer, Pavel Chikov. Uvarov, along with two other males of similar age, constructed replica buildings of the Kansk police department, and a local headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). The group of teenagers planned on virtually blowing these buildings up to demonstrate how the real buildings would explode.

Russian authorities were able to gain access to online discussions between the teenagers, which is where they found the group had discussed anarchism, pyrotechnics, and criticisms of the FSB. Additionally, authorities located through the online communications with the group the plans for the virtual detonations of the buildings. Russian publication Novaya Gazeta writes that the group of teenagers had been learning about explosive manufacturing since 2019.

According to a trademark attorney, the fast-food chain, McDonald's has added Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to its menu.

RT reports that trademark attorney and founder of Gerben Intellectual Property, Josh Gerben, has tweeted that McDonald's has filed to register ten trademarks within virtual reality, some of those trademarks are for operating a virtual restaurant that features home delivery, and "providing on-line actual and virtual concerts and other virtual events." Gerben also writes that the applications request approval to provide "downloadable multimedia files" that include artwork, audio, video as well as NFTs.

It seems that McDonald's is joining other companies and big brands such as Nike, Walmart, Adidas, and others in taking the steps to prepare for the explosion that will be the virtual world or metaverse. McDonald's, as well as Panera Bread, are moving towards trademarking their products for virtual use. It's possible that as the metaverse becomes adopted and more people are within the virtual space, we could see virtual avatars going to a virtual McDonald's restaurant and getting food as an in-game activity.

A new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics details the discovery of a new planet orbiting one of the Sun's neighboring stars.

The Sun's closest star is called Proxima Centauri, and the planet that was recently discovered orbiting this star is called Proxima Centauri d. The new planet was found using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope based in Chile, and what makes this new planet so interesting to researchers is that it resides in what is called the "habitable zone" of the star, meaning may potentially harbor liquid water and perhaps life.

Researchers found that the new planet orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of around four million kilometers, taking the planet just five days to complete one orbit of the star. Proxima d isn't the first planet discovered orbiting the Sun's closest neighbor, as in 2016, researchers found a planet that has a mass close to Earth's, now dubbed Proxima b. This planet takes 11 days to complete an orbit around its host star. Additionally, another planet called Proxima c was found to be the smallest out of the three with a mass that's a quarter of Earth's.

A report filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) states that Elon Musk's Neuralink caused "extreme suffering" in monkeys it was tested on.

The complaint was filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and details experiments carried out on monkeys at the University of California at Davis from 2017 to 2020. The group behind the complaint has accused Neuralink and the university behind the experiments of nine violations of the US Federal Animal Welfare Act.

The complaint claimed that Neuralink caused "many, if not all, of the monkeys, experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive head implants during the experiments". Adding the Neuralink implant "produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research."

SEGA's latest Q3'22 financials show that its massive F2P games are mostly popular in Japan while other worldwide regions buy up full games.

SEGA makes quite a bit of revenue from F2P games like Phantasy Star Online 2 and its Hatsune Mike titles. Predictably enough, most of these earnings come from Japan as other regional worldwide markets like North America, Europe, and Asia predominately spend on full game sales.

According to data provided by SEGA, the company's F2P sector is incredibly healthy and typically comprises anywhere from 30% to sometimes 50% of its quarterly video games revenues. While its F2P offerings are immensely concentrated on the Japanese market, the company made $129 million from free-to-play in Q3, showing SEGA is mostly dominant in one specific region.

Introducing Nintendo Switch Sports, a new iteration of the Wii Sports series.

Yesterday Nintendo made a megaton announcement: Wii Sports is coming back with revamped controls for the Nintendo Switch. Wii Sports was the best-selling Nintendo game of all time with over 85 million units sold and that powerful engagement is coming to the new Switch generation (albeit many years late...this should've definitely been a launch pack-in game).

Nintendo Switch Sports comes with six games, all of which feature JoyCon motion control support in various ways. Gamers can strap the JoyCon to their leg to track kicking motions in Soccer, for example. There's four new games plus the classic bowling and tennis from the Wii era.

No Man's Sky is coming to Nintendo Switch...and Hello Games still doesn't believe it was possible.

Yesterday's Nintendo Direct was absolutely bursting with news, and one of the biggest games on the market is coming to the small Switch handheld. No Man's Sky, one of gaming's biggest comeback stories, is launching over to the Switch in Summer 2022. Releasing on the Switch will give Hello Games a nice sales boost--the platform has sold over 100 million units to date.

According to Hello Games, the Switch version has been in development for several years and it was a tough process. The studio said getting No Man's Sky to run on the lower-end Tegra X1 hardware was a "moonshot."