Latest News - Page 1208

Elden Ring won't be so mercilessly difficult this time and offer players more flexibility to tackle obstacles like bosses, environments, and exploration in different ways.

Hidetaka Miyazaki has some great news for Elden Ring players: The game's non-linear open world gives more freedom in when to fight or avoid bosses. That means players won't have to "bang their head against a wall over and over," as Miyazaki puts it. You can run off and go level up somewhere else, explore another region, or practice against smaller enemies.

In this way, Elden Ring should technically be less difficult that linear games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

Square Enix teases even more Final Fantasy 7 projects as the landmark RPG turns 25 years old.

Final Fantasy 7 is so popular that Square Enix is treating as a mini-series. Mainline games will still continue--like Final Fantasy XVI--but the FF7 Series is getting its own galaxy of products too. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is just the beginning, and both Yoshinori Kitase (producer) and Tetsuya Nomura (creative director) tease more FF7 games.

"FF7 has re-emerged as the latest game in the series once again, with titles like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier, and you can look forward to even more exciting new developments in the future," producer Yoshinori Kitase said in a recent post.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joked about watching people horde toilet paper during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout Tesla's Q4 earnings call.

The topic of hoarding toilet paper was brought up by Musk, who compared the global micro-chip shortage to the toilet paper shortages most people were seeing in their local areas across the United States and other locations around the world. Musk's comparison is between individuals hoarding toilet paper and companies over-ordering micro-chips, which he expects to become less and less of a problem as more fabrication plants are constructed.

An exoplanet around 322 light-years from Earth orbits one of the hottest stars in the universe, and while it certainly doesn't harbor any life, Earth can still relate to it.

The exoplanet is WASP-189b, and it orbits one of the hottest stars in the universe, HD 133112, at a distance of twenty times closer than Earth is to the Sun. Additionally, during the daytime, WASP-189b is estimated to reach temperatures of 5,791 degrees Fahrenheit. Moreover, the planet is comprised of gas that is estimated to be around 1.5 times the size of Jupiter.

So, how can Earth relate to a scorching hot gas planet hundreds of light-years away? In a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists found that WASP-189b may have a more complex atmosphere than previously thought as researchers measured the starlight passing through the gas giant and found unique chemical signatures. These chemical signatures indicated that WASP-189b might have atmospheric layers similar to Earth (troposphere, stratosphere, etc.)

NASA has previously stated that there are currently no dangerous asteroids on their way to impact Earth, but what would happen if one did hit?

It should be noted that asteroids impact Earth regularly, but due to their minimal diameter, they usually burn up in Earth's atmosphere before making it to the surface. Not many asteroids make it to the surface, but if one did and it was large enough, the effects it could cause may be felt across the entire planet. An example of this is the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs, which is estimated to have been 7.5 miles in diameter and traveling 27,000 mph.

Britt Scharringhausen, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Beloit College, spoke to Inverse about this topic and said we would experience fires, shockwaves, earthquakes, acid rain, blocking out of the Sun, and a winter that would last around two years. Scharringhausen explained that not all life on Earth would perish if an impact of this scale were to occur, and humans very well could be one of the surviving species.

An analytics firm has claimed that China has displayed an alarming leap in space-based technologies as the firm watched a Chinese satellite pull another satellite from orbit.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Vice chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, General Thompson predicts that China is a "tremendous threat" when it comes to space and that it could become the "leader in space" by the end of the decade. Gen. Thompson goes on to say that the U.S. needs to "adapt its approach" in order to keep up with and eventually outpace China's space development efforts.

The most recent example of China's space efforts is the Chinese satellite Shijian-21 (SJ-21), performing a "large maneuver" that saw the satellite disappear from its regular position and reappear close to an out-of-commission BeiDou Navigation System satellite. Reports indicate that SJ-21 then latched onto the dead BeiDou satellite and pushed it out into "graveyard orbit", a location in space where objects are less likely to cause any problems for satellites that are still functioning.

Bitcoin has been in a steady decline since its all-time high of $69,000 back in November, but the digital asset seems to have stopped dropping in value despite the fear-uncertainty-and-doubt (FUD) that plagues global finance markets.

There are many reasons for the continuous decrease in value for Bitcoin since November 2021, and most of them are macro factors that are playing out across global financial markets. One big macro factor is the Federal Reserve considering hiking up interest rates four times over the course of 2022 in a bid to combat inflation. Not only has the cryptocurrency markets taken a hit from this news, but so has the US stock market.

Some analysts believe that the "bottom" for Bitcoin's price has already arrived ($35,000 to $38,000 range), with technical analyst John Bollinger writing on Twitter on January 25, "It's time to start thinking about a bottom in cryptos." Bollinger goes on to say that his personal plan is to wait for this bottom to be apparent and re-enter the market once it's confirmed that the downtrend has stopped.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has suggested via his blog that NFTs should evolve into being "soulbound" like items in World of Warcraft (WoW).

Buterin took to his website on January 26 to discuss the topic of "soulbound" NFTs, and comparing NFTs to items in World of Warcraft. Buterin explains that NFTs in their current form are similar to items in an MMORPG such as WoW as they "social signaling value: people who have them can show them off, and there's more and more tools precisely to help users do that". An example of this would be Twitter recently integrating NFTs and allowing for users to display them as a profile picture.

The Ethereum co-founder goes on to explain that when someone shows off a current NFT that can be purchased or obtained by doing "X" there is no way of knowing that person who is selling the NFT obtained it by doing "X", or just paid someone else for it. Buterin suggests the "proof of attendance protocol (POAP)", which, as he explains, is a protocol that "represents the idea that the recipient personally participated in some event."

Officials have confirmed that the Sun has released a blast and a solar flare directly towards Earth, impact is expected to occur very soon.

SpaceWeather.com has reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has confirmed that the big sunspot called AR2936 has quadrupled in size over the last two days. Additionally, AR2936 is now facing towards Earth, with NOAA forecasters predicting a 20% chance of an M-class flare hitting Earth and a 5% chance of the more-powerful X-flare.

Now, reports indicate that in the early hours of January 30, a long-duration M1-class solar flare occurred, causing a coronal mass ejection (CME) to be hurled toward Earth. SpaceWeather.com writes that the CME is expected to arrive sometime between February 1-2. Officials forecast that moderate to low-level geomagnetic storms will happen upon impact, which may cause some issues for satellites. More positively, the CME impact can also cause auroras.

China is planning on rolling out blockchain technology across businesses and government organizations - the process is being fast-tracked.

According to a notice published by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), a large in-house effort is being made by the CAC with other government agencies and regulatory authorities to create the infrastructure needed to "form a large-scale production-level cross-chain data exchange support capability, and promote the formation of a multi-party collaborative blockchain industry ecology." The effort will span across 15 zones and 164 entities.

As Cointelegraph reports, China plans on this blockchain infrastructure initiative to effect the following; "manufacturing, energy, government data sharing and services, law enforcement, taxation, criminal trials, inspection, copyright, civil affairs, human society, education, healthcare, trade finance, risk control management, equity market and cross-border finance."

NVIDIA's next-gen Hopper GPU architecture has been teased once again, with the flagship GH100 GPU reportedly going to be an absolute silicon monster that measures in at up to a huge 1000mm² die.

The news is coming from leaker "kopite7kimi" on Twitter, where kopite7kimi tweeted: "GH100 has a huge single die of slightly less than 1000mm²" with a follow-up tweet adding "DO NOT overreact. We know the actual die size will be significantly smaller than the package size. But GH100>GA100 is confirmed".

Up until now, it was thought that NVIDIA's new GH100 Hopper GPU would be a multi-chip module (MCM) design, like AMD's upcoming RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs -- but no, it seems Hopper GH100 will be a monster single-die design -- while GH102 will reportedly be an MCM design.

BOE is a company you probably haven't heard of, but Beijing Oriental Electronics Group Co., Ltd (BOE) have just announced that it is developing the world's fastest gaming panel... at 500Hz.

As for BOE, the company is one of the largest manufacturers of LCD, LED, and OLED panels and have been opening up manufacturing facilities across China like 7/11 opens up stores at every corner. The company has as many as 19 research and development (R&D) labs in 19 different countries, impressive.

The company is now coming out loud and proud about their latest breakthrough, with a new 27-inch 1080p monitor with an 8-lane eDP connection, 1ms response time, and true 8-bit color gamut support. Oh, and we can't forget to mention the 500Hz refresh rate meaning that yes... you can drive up to a retina-busting 500FPS.

Palmer Luckey is unstoppable right now, where he changed the world by introducing mainstream VR headsets to the world selling his VR startup -- Oculus VR -- to Facebook many years ago now for over $2 billion. But now, his latest company -- Anduril Industries -- is taking domination to the skies, literally.

U.S. Special Operations Command has chosen Anduril Industries to write a $1 billion cheque for Anduril's counter-drone systems integration. The video above shows them off, and they are mighty impressive. The entire counter-drone system is powered by the Lattice OS, a Sentry tower, and a tiny unmanned drone called Anvil.

Once the AI and sensors are inside of the Sensor tower, a human operator far away (even in another country) presses a button and the Anvil drone flies away to intercept the enemy drone. The enemy drone might have explosives on it for example, so before it can reach its target, the Anvil drone straight up flies into it at huge speeds -- resulting in the enemy drone crashing to the ground.

The new Halo TV show will premiere in March exclusively on Paramount+.

The release date for the new Halo TV show was recently outed in a new CBS promo and it's great news: Master Chief will debut on the silver screen on March 24, 2022 on the Paramount+ streaming service.

Halo series steward 343 Industries has been quite open about the new show. It takes place in a divergent "Silver timeline," which runs parallel to the lore and canon established in the games and novels. The idea here is to make Halo more adaptable to the small screen and give creators more liberties to shape the series while trying something new in the process.

NBC Universal outlines the current state of its Peacock streaming service and discusses future plans.

Comcast's latest Q4 earnings report outlines strong revenues and a confident roadmap for its content services, including Peacock. NBC Universal's streaming service Peacock currently has 9 million paid subscribers since launching in 2020, which extremely low compared to Netflix (221.8 million) and Disney+ (118 million).

Peacock isn't playing by Netflix's or Disney's rules, though. The service has three options: A free tier with ads, a $4.99 paid tier with reduced ads, and a premium $9.99 tier with no ads. Peacock Premium offers exclusive access to megahit shows like The Office whereas the free tier is limited. Comcast believes strongly in this premium-free combo.

New box art for Cyberpunk 2077 has reportedly been spotted on the PlayStation Store's backend database, hinting at an incoming PS5 version.

Back in October, CD Projekt announced Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen versions would be delayed to Q1 2022. This period is from January thru March 2022 so that means Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S should launch sometime in February or March.

Now it looks like the next-gen version is right on track. New icon artwork for Cyberpunk 2077 has been unearthed by dataminers who comb the PlayStation servers for info on upcoming game releases. CD Projekt has not yet uploaded metadata like file size for the PS5 build--once that happens it indicates that progress has been made and some time of build has been uploaded.

Support studio Certain Affinity is reportedly working on a brand new all-original gametype for Halo Infinite that will appeal to recreational players.

Halo Infinite Firefight or some variant of PvPvE game mode could be coming to the budding service game. Sources tell Windows Central's Jez Corden that Certain Affinity is making a new Halo Infinite mode aimed at casual gamers.

The gametype is big enough to have its own codename (Project Tatanka) and may serve as the middle ground between the easy Bot Bootcamp playlist and the more competitive playlists. The mode is meant to onboard new players who may not be familiar with Halo's gameplay and would rather enjoy a more low-stress experience, possibly something like the unranked, non-competitive camaraderie that formed from Halo 3's customs matches years ago.

A new Halo Infinite BTB fix has been playtested and is waiting to be greenlit by Xbox's QA teams.

After 3 months of malfunctioning matchmaking and one failed update, Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle is still having issues. 343i is on the case and says a new patch is currently in certification...but it won't be ready until February 3 at the earliest. For now BTB will still remain broken, but the devs will remove challenges from BTB starting February 1.

"Using the telemetry we received from the hotfix on January 19, we were able to make a new build with an update that we believe should address the core issue impacting the BTB playlist. The studio ran a successful playtest today and plans to send it off for certification on Monday," Halo community manager John Junyszek said in a forum post.

A study has been published on the new app in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The app was developed by a research team from the University of California Santa Barbara, which uses a smartphone camera in conjunction with a diagnostic kit to accurately diagnose COVID-19 and flu virus infections. The app and methodology are freely available, and the app can achieve a diagnosis within 25 minutes.

The University of Surrey and Space Power are collaborating to solve the problem of keeping satellites powered.

The team is working on a new space infrastructure project to develop laser technology that can beam solar power between satellites. The goal of the technology is to provide power to satellites that are in shadow and cannot receive solar energy directly from the sun at a given time. The collaboration aims to be able to commercialize the technology by 2025.

The project is part of the Space Research and Innovation Network for Technology (SPRINT) program. It will see a plug-and-play system developed that satellite manufacturers can incorporate into their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.