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Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, Warzone 2 may be revealed tomorrow

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 10, 2022 4:07 PM CST

UPDATE: Infinity Ward teases a reveal tomorrow:

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, Warzone 2 may be revealed tomorrow

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II could be revealed tomorrow alongside the rumored Warzone 2, rumors indicate.

It looks like Activision is gearing up for a big Call of Duty reveal tomorrow. Multiple sources including Tom Henderson have said an embargo on Warzone 2 lifts tomorrow.

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Continue reading: Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, Warzone 2 may be revealed tomorrow (full post)

YouTube made $28 billion from ads in 2021, more than PlayStation

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 10, 2022 3:00 PM CST

YouTube made more money from ads in 2021 than Sony did from PlayStation games.

YouTube made $28 billion from ads in 2021, more than PlayStation

Alphabet recently reported its Q4 earnings, and one of the most surprising figures was YouTube ad revenue. According to data provided by Google, the popular video platform has generated $28.84 billion in total ad revenue through 2021. That's more than the $24.51 billion that Sony made from PlayStation gaming in 2021.

YouTube ad revenue was up nearly 50% year-over-year, driven by record engagement and viewership.

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Continue reading: YouTube made $28 billion from ads in 2021, more than PlayStation (full post)

YouTube NFTs: Creators may soon monetize video & art NFTs on new store

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 10, 2022 1:52 PM CST

YouTube may soon let creators create, mint, and drop officially-branded NFTs in a new possible monetization program.

YouTube NFTs: Creators may soon monetize video & art NFTs on new store

YouTube has a grand vision for the web3 metaverse. It's a new realm that merge advertising, immersion, and blockchain in a cohesive ecosystem that's monetized across all segments. That also includes new ways for creator revenue streams--and subsequently, company revenue streams.

In a recent blog post, YouTube says it is exploring the idea of opening a new NFT marketplace where YouTubers can sell their own digital content including limited-edition videos, art, and more. The vision is in early phases and no store has been established yet.

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Continue reading: YouTube NFTs: Creators may soon monetize video & art NFTs on new store (full post)

YouTube is embracing the metaverse, starts with gaming

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 10, 2022 1:23 PM CST

YouTube could help shape the metaverse, interactive entertainment's latest buzzworthy trend.

YouTube is embracing the metaverse, starts with gaming

YouTube today announced that it is committed to the metaverse. The world's leading video-on-demand platform wants to inject a new level of immersion into YouTube entertainment. Exact plans are unknown, but YouTube says it will start its metaverse plans with video games.

"We're thinking big about how to make viewing more immersive. The first area in which you can expect to see an impact is gaming, where we'll work to bring more interactions to games and make them feel more alive. It's still early days, but we're excited to see how we can turn these virtual worlds into a reality for viewers," YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan said in a blog post.

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Continue reading: YouTube is embracing the metaverse, starts with gaming (full post)

KIOXIA throws party, celebrates 35th anniversary of NAND flash memory

Anthony Garreffa | Storage | Feb 10, 2022 8:00 AM CST

Can you believe it has been 35 years since the creation of NAND flash technology? We've come a gigantic distance in that time... not just in the cost of NAND flash, but how many more facets NAND flash crawled into when it comes to the foundation of our very lives.

KIOXIA throws party, celebrates 35th anniversary of NAND flash memory

Back when you visited libraries to get information in the 1990s, the cost of storage was $10,000+ per GB (gigabyte) of storage and the die density was 4Mb. There was around 1/16 of a song could be stored on a 4Mb NAND die, and 1/8 of a photo could be stored on the same NAND die.

But today... well, we're looking at around $0.20 per GB (gigabyte) of storage and die density of 1.44Tb. Back in the 90s we had just 1/16 of a song on 4Mb NAND die, we now have 20,000 songs on 1.33Tb NAND die, while 1/8 of a photo was all you could store on 4Mb NAND in the 90s you can store a huge 39,000 photos on a 1.33Tb NAND die.

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Continue reading: KIOXIA throws party, celebrates 35th anniversary of NAND flash memory (full post)

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now home to the Ukrainian military

Adam Hunt | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 5:24 AM CST

The Ukrainian military has started conducting military exercises within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now home to the Ukrainian military

The soldiers have taken to Pripyat, the city nearest the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, to conduct drills such as clearing buildings, targeted mortar fire, staged evacuations, and more. Before beginning the training exercises, workers with Geiger counters assessed the area to ensure there were no radioactive hotspots, with one soldier saying, "it has all been checked and it doesn't present a danger."

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Continue reading: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is now home to the Ukrainian military (full post)

The World Wildlife Fund has canceled its NFT project after only a day

Adam Hunt | Cryptocurrency & Mining | Feb 10, 2022 5:02 AM CST

The World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF-UK) has back-pedaled its recent NFT project launch.

The World Wildlife Fund has canceled its NFT project after only a day

The WWF-UK launched an NFT collection dubbed "Tokens for Nature" last week in an effort to support conservation work, and following immediate controversy and backlash, the group has since decided to "bring [the NFT] trial to a close." The NFT project used the Polygon blockchain, based on Ethereum, but supposedly more environmentally friendly.

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Continue reading: The World Wildlife Fund has canceled its NFT project after only a day (full post)

Music tastes linked to personality traits worldwide, new study finds

Adam Hunt | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 4:43 AM CST

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology describes the association.

Music tastes linked to personality traits worldwide, new study finds

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used 356,649 participants from 53 countries across six continents to assess correlations between musical preference and personality traits. Certain personality traits were correlated to certain musical tastes, and those correlation patterns were largely unchanged across the world.

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Continue reading: Music tastes linked to personality traits worldwide, new study finds (full post)

World's largest fusion facility breaks energy record by almost triple

Adam Hunt | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 4:22 AM CST

European researchers set the record at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Culham near Oxford, United Kingdom.

World's largest fusion facility breaks energy record by almost triple

The fusion project produced stable plasmas with an energy output of 59 megajoules using deuterium-tritium fuel during a five-second discharge, equivalent to 11 megawatts. The experiments conducted were the first of their kind in over twenty years, as the JET facility is the only power plant currently capable of operating using this fuel.

The facility's goal is to replicate fusion as it occurs in the Sun, where deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, fuse together and release massive amounts of energy in the process. Tritium is rare and difficult to handle, so most plasma experiments usually involve hydrogen or deuterium.

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Continue reading: World's largest fusion facility breaks energy record by almost triple (full post)

First-ever images of Venus' surface taken with visible light

Adam Hunt | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 4:01 AM CST

NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, captured the latest images.

First-ever images of Venus' surface taken with visible light

The Parker Solar Probe has captured the first images of the Venusian surface using visible light. Normally the planet's surface is obscured by thick cloud cover, but recently the probe was able to use its Wide-Field Imager (WISPR) to image the nightside of Venus in the same wavelengths that the human eye can perceive.

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Continue reading: First-ever images of Venus' surface taken with visible light (full post)

How often does NASA's asteroid detector scan the sky?

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 3:34 AM CST

Researchers from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii operate ATLAS, NASA's asteroid monitoring system, and it has recently been given some upgrades.

How often does NASA's asteroid detector scan the sky?

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) originally consisted of two telescopes located in Hawaii but has now doubled the number of operating telescopes to four, with the two new telescopes being located in Chile and South Africa. With two new telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, ATLAS is now able to see the entire sky and scan it every 24 hours for any potentially hazardous objects.

Space.com reports that the image that ATLAS is able to obtain in a single exposure is 100 times larger than the full moon from the perspective of standing on Earth's surface, adding that this increase in observational capabilities will give Earth greater protection in being able to spot any potentially hazardous objects preemptively. At the moment, NASA knows of around 28,000 asteroids, and since operations began in 2017, ATLAS has spotted 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets.

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Continue reading: How often does NASA's asteroid detector scan the sky? (full post)

Did NASA's Mars rover snap a photo of an alien sun-baking on a rock?

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 3:03 AM CST

A blog post from a UFO expert has recently gained traction online as he claims that NASA's Perseverance rover has captured an image of life on the surface of Mars.

Did NASA's Mars rover snap a photo of an alien sun-baking on a rock?

The photograph of the alleged "life" comes from a panorama image that NASA's Perseverance rover snapped by in April 2021. According to Scott Waring of the blog UFO Sightings Daily, the photograph is a "person laying down watching the NASA Mars rover from a safe distance away", adding that the person is "1 foot tall and is laying down, pinkish upper chest, neck and face, radish hair, wearing a dark suit, but has a grey object over one shoulder...looks like a backpack of some sort. There are even footprints behind the person leading up to the location they chose to lay down at."

Despite a complete lack of evidence for the claims, the post from Waring gained traction online and was shared around bunch. So, did NASA's Perseverance rover accidentally capture a still image of life on Mars? The short answer is no, and there are a few simple reasons why. The surface of Mars is inhospitable to life as it contains no water and only traces of oxygen, meaning that no life can exist on its surface, not even microscopic life.

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Continue reading: Did NASA's Mars rover snap a photo of an alien sun-baking on a rock? (full post)

NASA is scared for SpaceX's 30,000 Starlink satellites, here's why

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 2:37 AM CST

NASA has recently brought up some concerns regarding SpaceX's plan to put 30,000 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.

NASA is scared for SpaceX's 30,000 Starlink satellites, here's why

At the moment, SpaceX has been approved by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 12,000 of its Starlink satellites, with the company pushing for approval on its "Gen2" expansion that would increase the number of Starlink satellites in orbit from 12,000 to 30,000. Recently study's have been published outlining the exponential growth of Starlink satellites photo-bombing astronomers' images, and how the number of photobombs will only increase as SpaceX continues launching more satellites.

Now, NASA has said in a statement to the FCC that it "has concerns with the potential for a significant increase in the frequency of conjunction events and possible impacts to Nasa's science and human spaceflight missions". The space agency cited that there are around 25,000 objects being tracked on-orbit, and 6,100 of those are below 372 miles. If SpaceX were to go ahead with the Gen2 rollout, it "would more than double the number of tracked objects in orbit and increase the number of objects below 600km over five-fold".

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Continue reading: NASA is scared for SpaceX's 30,000 Starlink satellites, here's why (full post)

SpaceX Starlink satellites caught on video plummeting to a fiery death

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 2:02 AM CST

SpaceX recently announced that the majority of the batch of Starlink satellites launched on February 3 will die in fiery death as they reenter Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX Starlink satellites caught on video plummeting to a fiery death

According to Elon Musk's company, 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites that were launched on February 3 were interrupted by a geomagnetic storm in Earth's upper atmosphere on February 4 that caused unexpected atmospheric density that resulted in "atmospheric drag" on the satellites. This "atmospheric drag" caused the satellites to fail to reach their intended altitude and plummet back down to Earth for fiery deaths.

The event was caught on video by the Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe, and it shows the satellite debris burning up in the atmosphere upon reentry over Puerto Rico on February 7. As SpaceX has previously stated, Starlink satellites are designed to burn up completely upon reentry, meaning none of the debris would reach Earth's surface.

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Continue reading: SpaceX Starlink satellites caught on video plummeting to a fiery death (full post)

Scientists want to use these giant lasers to launch spaceships to Mars

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 1:32 AM CST

A team of researchers have devised a plan that includes using lasers to power up a spacecraft that could be used to resupply Mars colonists.

Scientists want to use these giant lasers to launch spaceships to Mars

There are many challenges the human race faces when it comes to colonizing Mars, and one of them is how Earth is going to resupply colonists in a short time frame. At the moment, it will take around seven months to reach Mars, but a newly proposed idea from a team at McGill University may be able to reduce that time to just 45 days. The researchers suggest using a 10-meter wide laser array located on the surface of Earth to heat up hydrogen plasma on an orbiting spacecraft.

The lasers would heat up the hydrogen plasma until there is enough superheated hydrogen gas to propel the spacecraft all the way to Mars. This form of propulsion is called "laser-thermal propulsion". The researchers detail in their paper that the supply ship could use Mars' thin atmosphere as a way of slowing the spacecraft down through a maneuver called an "aerobrake". If this can be achieved, it would mean that the craft wouldn't need any chemical fuel onboard to slow down as a traditional spacecraft would.

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Continue reading: Scientists want to use these giant lasers to launch spaceships to Mars (full post)

Astronomers witness 'zombie' star devouring dead planet remains

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 1:04 AM CST

Researchers have found unexpected elements in the atmosphere of a neighboring white dwarf star and have suggested that they could have come from a recently consumed dead planet.

Astronomers witness 'zombie' star devouring dead planet remains

The new study published in the journal Nature details a white dwarf star called G29-38 that's located 50 light-years away from Earth within the constellation Pisces. White dwarf stars are the cores of once-living once stars such as the Sun. These celestial bodies are extremely dense, with a surface gravity about 100,000 times stronger than Earth's.

Due to the extreme gravity, any heavy elements, such as iron, calcium, and magnesium, sink beneath the surface of the star relatively quickly, meaning that detecting any would suggests an event occurred recently. Researchers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to hone in on G29-28, isolating the white dwarf's X-ray signature and detecting approximately 1,800 tons of matter being sucked into the white dwarf every second. This observation marks the first time researchers have isolated X-rays emitted by a white dwarf.

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Continue reading: Astronomers witness 'zombie' star devouring dead planet remains (full post)

Scientists confirm this comet is the biggest any human has ever seen

Jak Connor | Science, Space, & Robotics | Feb 10, 2022 12:32 AM CST

A team of researchers has penned a newly published paper about the biggest comet that has ever been observed by a human.

Scientists confirm this comet is the biggest any human has ever seen

The new paper has been published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters and details Comet 2014 UN271, or Bernardinelli-Bernstein, which was first observed back in 2014 when astronomers spotted it out as far away as Neptune. As the comet came closer to Earth, astronomers estimated that it could have a diameter as large as 230 miles, but according to the newly published paper, that estimation may be slightly off.

An international team of astronomers measured the amount of micro radiation that wasn't being emitted by dust coming off the surface of the comet and found that for the comet to be emitting as much light as it currently is, it would have to have a diameter of 85 miles. Notably, the estimation from the newly published paper (85 miles) falls incredibly short of the previous estimation (230 miles), but the 85-mile measurement still makes comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein the largest comet ever observed by a human.

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Continue reading: Scientists confirm this comet is the biggest any human has ever seen (full post)

'Bored' security guard ruins $1 million painting by drawing eyes

Jak Connor | Business, Financial & Legal | Feb 10, 2022 12:02 AM CST

A famous painting has been ruined by a "bored" security guard during his very first shift at a Russian gallery.

'Bored' security guard ruins $1 million painting by drawing eyes

A security that was on his first day of the job was "bored" and decided it would be a good idea to deface a famous painting by artist Anna Leporskaya. The security drew eyes on the "Three Figures" painting during an abstract art exhibition at the Yeltsin Center located in the city of Yekaterinburg, western Russia. The security guard has not been named as of the time of writing this article, but it's believed that he is 60 years old and works for a private security company.

Authorities have opened an investigation for vandalism which could lay a $500 fine at the security guard's feet or a one-year correctional labor service. As for the painting, it has been sent off to an art restoration expert at State Tretyakov Gallery, who reportedly said that the painting could be restored for $3,700 USD with no long-term damage to the original piece. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

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Continue reading: 'Bored' security guard ruins $1 million painting by drawing eyes (full post)

GTA 6 may emphasize singleplayer: We never said singleplayer was dead

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 9, 2022 3:48 PM CST

Singleplayer is still very important to Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive. So what does that mean for GTA 6?

GTA 6 may emphasize singleplayer: We never said singleplayer was dead

The last we heard is that GTA 6 could launch with a more compact singleplayer story mode that expands over time with online updates. After years of billion-dollar earnings with GTA Online, Rockstar has started to lean into singleplayer content with GTA Online's new The Contract expansion which features story content with original GTA V characters and can be played solo. Is this the beginning of a new hybridized setup for Grand Theft Auto 6?

We don't know for sure, but Take-Two Interactive still believes in singleplayer. That's surprising considering Take-Two earned over $551 million from in-game spending in the holiday quarter--microtransactions have been very good to the publisher.

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Continue reading: GTA 6 may emphasize singleplayer: We never said singleplayer was dead (full post)

New Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope, not open-world

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 9, 2022 3:15 PM CST

The next Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope than Origins, Odyssey, and especially Valhalla.

New Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope, not open-world

Ubisoft is planning a new standalone Assassin's Creed game for 2022 or 2023 that will star Basim, sources tell Bloomberg. The game will be more compact with greater emphasis on stealth and a diminished focus on exploration.

The new game, codenamed Rift, was originally set to be an expansion to Assassin's Creed Valhalla and soon ballooned into a full game. Valhalla has already expanded with two years' worth of content to carry the franchise into 2022 with the new more recent Dawn of Ragnarok expansion.

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Continue reading: New Assassin's Creed game will be smaller in scope, not open-world (full post)

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