Latest News - Page 1205

Sony's once-mighty PlayStation 4 console has petered out considerably as the company delivers the lowest shipment figures for the second quarter running.

Sony just published megaton results for Q3'21, raking in $7.1 billion in revenues (second highest quarter in PlayStation history) and $817 million in operating profit (the best Q3 in history), all driven by strong software and hardware sales.

Sony also set a not-so-impressive record in the period by shipping less PlayStation 4 consoles than any other holiday period in the platform's history. The games-maker only shipped 200,000 PS4s during Holiday 2021. This is the second quarter in a row that Sony shipped this particular low PS4 volume.

I personally signed up for SpaceX Starlink satellite internet a few weeks ago and will have my connection by the end of Q1 2022 hopefully, but as I went to check the SpaceX website I noticed something new... Starlink Premium. A quick Google search and yeah, it was just unveiled a couple of hours ago.

SpaceX's introduction of Starlink Premium offers a higher-end satellite internet service, offering faster speeds of 150Mbps through to a much faster 500Mbps -- with 20-40ms latency -- while upload speeds are bumped to 20Mbps to 40Mbps. This is compared to the 50Mbps to 250Mbps on the regular Starlink service on the download speeds, while uploads are just 10-20Mbps on the regular Starlink.

But... the regular Starlink service costs you $99 per month while Starlink Premium costs $500 per month -- 5x the cost, as well as the huge $2500 for the beefier antenna and other required hardware. You'll also need to plonk down a $500 deposit for Starlink Premium.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications describes the discovery.

The researchers were able to change the magnetic properties of nickel phosphorus trisulfide (NiPS3), by way of a quasiparticle known as "excitons." An exciton refers to an electron and a "hole" left behind where the electron was when it moves after absorbing energy from an incoming photon of light. Quantum mechanics mean the electron and the hole remain connected.

A new study published in the journal Cell Reports describes the process.

Most living cells require vitamin B12 to function, including the bacterial cells found in your gut microbiome. Researchers from the University of California Riverside (UCR) have found that beneficial gut microbes can share the ability to acquire vitamin B12 with one another through bacterial sex, or bacterial conjugation.

The megaflash occurred in the United States on April 29th, 2020.

The lightning flash spanned 768 kilometers (447.2 miles) across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that this distance is equivalent to that between New York City and Columbus, Ohio, or between London, England and Hamburg, Germany.

This flash breaks the previous world record set in southern Brazil on October 31st, 2018, by approximately 60 kilometers. Another world-record was also certified in the latest WMO statement for the longest duration flash. The flash that broke the previous record occurred over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18th, 2020, and lasted for 17.1 seconds, breaking the previous record by 0.37, which was also set in northern Argentina, on March 4th, 2019.

A study confirming the asteroid's existence has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The asteroid is dubbed 2020 XL5 and is the second confirmed transient Earth Trojan asteroid. These asteroids are found orbiting the L4 or L5 Lagrangian points, highly gravitationally stable points in space. Newton's laws of gravity result in five of these points in the Earth-Sun system, where the gravitational forces acting on an object cancel out.

The asteroid is expected to stay at the L4 Lagrangian point for four thousand years. 2020 XL5 is estimated to be approximately 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) in diameter, compared to the first-identified Earth Trojan 2010 TK7, which has a diameter of ~380 meters. The shared orbit between the L4 point and Earth could allow spacecraft to visit the asteroid with a low energy budget.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been scouring the Martian surface since 2012.

The rover has detected a rich carbon signature associated with biological processes on Earth amongst samples collected from the Gale Crater. The samples were analyzed using the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments, but the detection doesn't directly point to any ancient life on Mars.

NASA has taken to its Perseverance Twitter account to post an image of a rock that was recently sampled by the Mars rover.

At the end of last month, NASA explained that its Mars rover named Perseverance was "constipated" with nasty martian pebbles causing numerous problems for collecting new samples. After some time, the Perseverance team decided it would perform rotational tests of the carousel to dislodge the rocks, and those rotational tests were a success. Additionally, the space agency also emptied the contents of Sample Tube 261.

Now that those hurdles have been overcome, Perseverance is back at the same location where the hurdles arose. As NASA writes in the above Twitter post, "this rock almost looked surprised that I was coming back!", referring to discarded contents of Sample Tube 261. Perseverance has successfully collected a sample from what could be one of the oldest rocks that the rover samples. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Despite the mainstream hate of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), one of the world's largest festivals is fully adopting them by offering lifetime passes to all of its concerts.

Coachella Valley Music & Arts has partnered with FTX US to release a selection of NFTs that are built on the Solana blockchain. According to the announcement, Coachella will auction off 10 key NFT's that will serve as lifetime passes to all Coachella festivals. The keys also come with perks for the Coachella 2022, such as front row access, dinner made by a celebrity chef, or on-stage access at a Sahara Tent.

Additionally, Coachella is releasing two more collections of NFTs, one will include a 1,000-piece collection that will start at $180 apiece that will allow buyers to redeem a physical photo book from the festival and the other being a 10,000-piece digital collection that starts at $60 apiece. Coachella will be auctioning these NFTs on its own website as well as the FTX NFT marketplace.

The world's biggest Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace has broken its previous record for total monthly trading volume that was set back in August 2021.

The leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has reportedly broken its record for highest monthly trading volume as data obtained by Dune Analytics indicates that the NFT marketplace had more than $4.95 billion worth of Ethereum traded on its platform throughout January 2022. Additionally, the data indicates that $79 million in Polygon was also traded throughout the month, breaking its previous record of $76 million.

Back in August, 2021, the NFT space exploded, and with it came an explosion in trading volume on marketplaces. OpenSea's previous monthly trading volume record hit $3.4 billion in August, and recently the platform also had its single best day for Ethereum NFT trading, with a staggering $233 million traded in a 24 hour period. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Michael Saylor, the CEO of software company MicroStrategy recently interviewed former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey.

During the interview, Saylor asked Dorsey how Bitcoin could assist corporations and everyday people in solving some fundamental problems, to which Dorsey says that the internet having a native currency opens many doors for "internet companies, technology companies, but more importantly for everyday people, activists, people who have questions in the world, curiosity, and recognizing that the currency systems just aren't working for them".

Dorsey, who left Twitter last year to focus on Bitcoin, mentioned Facebook, who recently re-branded to "Meta", shouldn't have been focussing its efforts on creating its own cryptocurrency and instead should have been "making Bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world."

NASA has taken to its blog to provide an update for the world's most powerful space telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope.

In a recent statement from the space agency, now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has arrived at its destination of Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a specific point in space that keeps the Earth in between the Sun and the telescope at all times, the months-long process of getting all of JWST's instruments up and running can begin.

NASA writes that the JWST team is currently preparing to turn off its heaters that have been keeping its extremely sensitive instruments nice and warm throughout its journey. JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument has an operating temperature of -449 Fahrenheit, as its designed to observe the middle of the infrared spectrum. If an object is warm on JWST, it may interfere with the observations made by the telescope, hence the operating temperature being so low.

Officials reported that a big sunspot group erupted on January 30, causing a long-duration M1-class solar and a coronal mass ejection to be hurled towards Earth.

SpaceWeather.com reports that the eruption happened during the early hours of Saturday morning and caused a large explosion on the surface of the Sun. It should be noted that the M1-class solar flare is a medium-sized solar flare and isn't going to wipe out the human race. However, flares of this power can cause communications issues for satellites as well as radio blackouts on Earth.

The solar flare came from sunspot group AR2936, and the burst lasted four hours, hence the name "long-duration". As for the coronal mass ejection (CME) - charged particles ejected from the Sun's corona - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predict that the blast will hit Earth on Wednesday, February 2, and may cause G2-class geomagnetic storms which are "low hazard". On a more positive note, the CME from the Sun could cause auroras to appear in the sky from the Arctic Circle to the northern United States.

It was only at Tesla's recent Q4 2021 earnings call just last week, that CEO Elon Musk updated the timeline in which the full self-driving "safer than human" release would happen. Musk said he'd be "shocked" if we didn't see it before the end of 2022.

Musk said: "I would be shocked if we do not achieve Full Self-Driving safer than human this year. I would be shocked".

But now, Tesla is recalling 53,822 of their cars to remove the "rolling stop" feature that is causing issues. Tesla's current flock of Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X electric cars running firmware version 2020.40.4.10 or newer that are in the "full self-driving" beta program.

ASRock is about to unleash a monster... well, not-so-monster entry-level Navi 24-powered Radeon RX 6400 Challenger graphics card, but in Mini-ITX form.

The new ASRock Radeon RX 6400 Challenger Mini-ITX graphics card will be powered by the new Navi 24 GPU, which is made on the fresh new 6nm process node by TSMC, and will just 4GB of GDDR6 memory. The new AMD Radeon RX 6400 was never meant to see the light of day in the DIY market, but it looks like OEMs and system builders will be using the RX 6400.

We're hearing about the new Radeon RX 6400 through new listings with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) and some new filings from ASRock. The new ASRock Radeon RX 6400 Challenger Mini-ITX will not require any PCIe power connectors, and will solely be powered by the motherboard. We'll know more details in the coming weeks, I guess.

Craob X is a new concept laptop that has been teased as a totally portless laptop, that is also wirelessly charged -- check it out:

Inside, we have Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU in the form of the Core i7-1280P processor, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. As for the display, we have a 13.3-inch 4K display with Intel Iris Xe GPU and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. Once again, all wireless, without a single port to be seen.

There's a punch-hole camera on the 13.3-inch 4K+ bezel-less display, while an impressive magnetic charger will sit on the back of the Craob X laptop that will power the laptop -- as well as packing some USB Type-A and USB Type-C ports, Thunderbolt connectivity, MiniJack, SD card slot, and a charging port.

NVIDIA has released its latest batch of GeForce drivers, with the introduction of the GeForce Game Ready 511.65 WHQL drivers offering Game Ready support for Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

NVIDIA explains its new drivers: "This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for Dying Light 2 Stay Human, which utilizes NVIDIA DLSS to maximize performance and features several DirectX 12 Ultimate ray-traced effects. In addition, this new Game Ready Driver offers support for the latest new titles and updates including Sifu".

Not only that, but there's also built-in support for NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU. These new gaming notebooks will be floating out into the market over the coming months, with the new GeForce Game Ready 511.65 WHQL drivers ready to go.

Lukos has come out of nowhere announcing a very... well, let's just say interesting portable gaming monitor. The new Lukos Ultrawide 4K monitor is a new 14-inch IPS-based monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio and a very weird 3840 x 1100 resolution display.

The company does claim that the 3840 x 1100 panel has 100% sRGB and a 2ms response time, while gamers won't be too happy with the suck-ass 60Hz refresh rate. Lukos' new Ultrawide 4K monitor can support 2 and 4 multi-view features, where you can plug 4 different inputs into the monitor.

Lukos' new monitor can accept either four different 1920 x 550 streams or dual 1920 x 110 streams at the same time. If you wanted to use it, well then you could use it as a streamer... or as someone who loves to have data in front of them, you could have CPU and GPU temps displayed right in front of you -- so that 60Hz refresh rate doesn't matter too much.

EA recently spent more than $3 billion to acquire Glu Mobile and Codemasters, but it's not done with acquisitions just yet.

The interactive games industry is currently in a content feeding frenzy. Buyouts and acquisitions are running rampant, with acquisitions hitting $85 billion in January 2022 alone between Activision-Blizzard (acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion), Zynga (acquired by Take-Two for $12.7 billion), and Bungie (acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion). Gaming's biggest companies are getting snapped up left and right.

Electronic Arts is one such company that could either be a builder or consolidator. The publisher is currently open to new acquisitions and will be "looking at everything," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen says.

EA has confirmed its new Skate 4 game will support user-generated content.

EA says its new Skate project will "launch soon," and that UGC, or user-generated content, will be at the very center of the new game. It's likely the title will have a park editor similar to Skate 3 that allows gamers to create and share their own unique and custom skate parks online.

The full quote from Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson can be found below, transcribed from the Q3'22 earnings call: