Latest News - Page 1214

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hasn't moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock for another year.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project, including Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1947, they introduced the Doomsday Clock to symbolize the world's proximity to catastrophe. Now, on the 75th anniversary of the clock's unveiling, the position of its hands stays unchanged from 2020, when they were moved to 100 seconds to midnight.

Axiom Space has been contracted to build the new orbital film studio.

It will be the first space-based "multipurpose entertainment and content studio," attached to the International Space Station (ISS) as a new commercial segment. Based out of the United Kingdom, Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) contracted Axiom Space to build the SEE-1, an inflatable module that will serve as the new segment.

A new report released by the Bank of Russia indicates that the central bank is advocating for a blanket ban on cryptocurrency trading and mining.

Russia's central bank argues that cryptocurrency investments is a danger to the financial system that millions of Russian's use. Additionally, the report goes on to push that financial institutions and commercial banks should sever themselves from cryptocurrency and be prevented from allowing transfers of fiat into cryptocurrency.

The Bank of Russia didn't stop at cryptocurrency trading and investing, it also took aim at cryptocurrency mining, stating that it should be prohibited. The report cites energy concerns for cryptocurrency mining, and currency Russia is the third-largest country for cryptocurrency mining when it comes to global hash rate distribution. At the moment, cryptocurrency remains legal in Russia, but it seems that the Bank of Russia won't stop pushing until its banned.

Digital assets are making a slow climb into everyday life as more people adopt cryptocurrencies in various forms.

Cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital published the first annual Crypto Confidence Survey that found 61% of individuals that participated in the survey are likely to purchase some form of cryptocurrency throughout 2022. The results from this most recent survey have increased substantially when compared to 2021's survey that found 27% of Americans planned on investing in cryptocurrency throughout 2021.

The survey also found that individuals would prioritize purchasing cryptocurrencies over traveling on a plane, purchasing a new car, buying a house, or even starting a romantic relationship. Additionally, 66% of survey participants indicated that cryptocurrency should be taught in schools and be a part of the educational system. 33% of participants believe that cryptocurrency educated should begin in middle school.

The co-founder of Reddit has predicted that in five years, 90% of people won't play games unless they are paid for it.

The Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian appeared on the "Where It Happens" podcast, where he said that 90% of people won't play a game "unless they are being properly valued for that time". Ohanian continued and predicted that in five years, people will have their time "valued properly", and that instead of people playing games as they are now and their data being harvested for advertisements, the people will become the harvesters as they are rewarded for spending their time.

Ohanian predicted that 90% of gamers will be playing some Play-to-Earn game on the blockchain that will reward players with in-game items, perhaps in the form of loot or tokens that have intrinsic value in the real-world. Depending on the game being played, these tokens or items could then be traded for cryptocurrency stable coins that are pegged to the value of the US dollar, for example - USDC.

One lucky miner received a very handsome reward for participating in a relatively small Ethereum mining pool.

The miner was using the 2Miners: Solo pool on January 17 when they were awarded with 168 Ethereum (ETH) for successfully mining one block. Cointelegraph reports that the average reward for successfully mining one block is around 4 ETH, or about $11,965. The miner was using a pool that has around 854 miners online pushing 1.5 Tera hashes per second, which equals out to each miner putting forward 1.85 Giga hashes per second of GPU power.

Despite these jackpot rewards from mining blocks, average daily Ethereum profitability has been on a decline since May 12, 2021 as the all-time high peaked at $0.282 and is now around $0.0474, according to BitInfoCharts. The reason for this decline, in part, is because of EIP-1559 which burns fees instead of distributing them out to miners.

AMD has launched its new Navi 24 GPU with barely a whimper, powering the new Radeon RX 6500 XT -- of which I'll have my review up soon, my card only arrived a few hours ago -- and now an AMD staffer has cleared up how the company will be deploying its Navi 24 GPU.

AMD Linux NPI SW Architect John Bridgman explains: "The primary use of Navi 24 will be in laptops paired with a Rembrandt APU, which has full video functionality and Gen4 PCIe. My impression was that it was just encode that was limited in Navi 24, not decode - still not sure if that limitation is real or just a typo on the product page. Trying to find out a definitive answer".

The reason Bridgman addressed the video functionality on Navi 24 is that the GPU itself doesn't support H264/265/AV1 encoding -- which is a big deal, something all Navi 24 GPUs -- the workstation-focused GPUs in the PRO W6400, W6500M, and W6300M, and the new W6400.

AMD has officially launched its new low-end workstation GPU with the introduction of the Radeon PRO W6400, which is based on the Navi 24 GPU and packs 4GB of GDDR6 memory.

The new AMD Radeon PRO W6400 workstation GPU is based on the Navi 24 GPU which is made on the 6nm TSMC process node, the first in workstation GPU on 6nm, with 4GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit memory bus. The Navi 24 GPU has 768 Stream Processors, so you won't be taking this into your work at Pixar and booting up your dailies, but the Radeon PRO W6400 is here.

AMD is only providing 4 x PCIe 4.0 lanes wired to the GPU, even though the Radeon PRO W6400 workstation card arrives with a full-sized PCIe 4.0 slot. The new Navi 24-based Radeon PRO W6400 workstation GPU slots under the higher-end Apple Max exclusive Radeon PRO W6000X series -- as well as the Navi 21-powered W6800, Navi 23-based W6600, and Navi 24-based W6400 -- the new Navi 24 GPU skips over the Navi 22, which we might eventually see later in the year.

Nearly 18 months ago now I wrote a news article titled "TSMC is so ahead of the game, Samsung might not catch up until 2030" and yeah... well, it will be 2030 before Samsung can catch up to TSMC and its dominant foundry business.

A new report from DigiTimes and their industry insiders said that Samsung will be mass-producing 4nm chips for Qualcomm, and will be getting into a better position to fight TSMC as we lead into 2030... some 8 years from now. Samsung recently announced a rather gigantic $151 billion investment into its chip manufacturing business through to 2030.

The DigiTimes report said: "Samsung Electronics recently announced its wafer foundry now serves over 100 customers. Based on current conditions, the wafer foundry market in 2022 looks to be just as hot as it was in 2021. As a result, the South Korean industry is optimistic about Samsung's wafer foundry, which is about to enter a full-scale growth stage. However, Samsung is still relatively new to the automotive and AI chip fields".

Microsoft's CEO of Gaming Phil Spencer confirms Call of Duty will not be Xbox exclusive any time soon and will still come to PlayStation systems.

Following a long day of debating on COD's exclusivity, Xbox gaming boss Phil Spencer finally delivers the verdict: Call of Duty will remain on PS4 and PS5.

"Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony. I confirmed our intent to honor all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard and our desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony is an important part of our industry, and we value our relationship," Spencer said on Twitter.

Microsoft's rich coffers are paying for its $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard buyout, but Sony only has a fraction of that to spend on acquisitions.

Following Microsoft's huge Activision-Blizzard buyout, now is a good time to remind everyone about Sony's current trajectory. Sony's board of directors and shareholders have authorized the expenditure of only 2 trillion yen, or $18 billion USD, for strategic investments across a three year period. This is part of Sony's Fourth Mid-Range plan that lasts until FY23.

The spending plan includes buyouts and acquisitions of video game, entertainment, and software companies, as well as share buyback repurchases and capital investments in companies like Epic Games.

Is Call of Duty now exclusive to Xbox? Will the franchise sill come to PlayStation? How long is Activision's marketing deal with Sony? These are major questions that will determine the future of Call of Duty, Microsoft, Activision, and Sony.

Everyone wants to know whether or not Call of Duty is coming to PlayStation consoles after Microsoft buys Activision-Blizzard. Why spend $68.7 billion to release games on a competing platform? Money, for one--Call of Duty is a thunderous success on PlayStation hardware, and Sony has shipped over 116 million PS4s to date. That kind of install base mixed with powerhouse game sales equals lots of revenue.

But there's a chance Microsoft could keep Call of Duty off of PlayStation platforms in an effort to push Game Pass subscriptions. Quality content is a compelling reason to buy a subscription. Exclusive content is a better one.

Activision-Blizzard has issued a new SEC filing that explains terms and logistics to its developers and employees.

Why is Activision selling to Microsoft in a huge $68.7 billion deal? According to a new Securities Exchange Commission document, it's a simple matter of opportunism. "This is the right transaction, with the right buyer, at the right time," Activision said in the report.

Sony could lose hundreds of millions of dollars if Call of Duty becomes exclusive to Xbox platforms.

Microsoft's recent $68.7 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard has prompted a big question: Will Call of Duty still come to PlayStation? The answer isn't quite simple. But the numbers are: Key financial experts like CitiGroup estimate that Sony will lose 10 billion yen to 30 billion yen ($87.5 million to $262.6 million) if Call of Duty doesn't release on PlayStation systems.

Activision's megaton franchise contributes hundreds of millions in distribution payments to Sony, Microsoft, and other platform-holders like Valve every year. The annualized release cadence is a dependable source of third-party earning contributions for Sony. It could also be the same for Microsoft, who would pocket Activision's 70% cut of all Call of Duty game sales and revenues.

Sony believes that Microsoft will honor Activision's existing contractual obligations and keep specific games coming to PlayStation platforms.

Future Activision games won't be full Xbox exclusives and avoid PlayStation platforms, at least that's what Sony thinks. Following huge $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard buyout, Sony believes that Microsoft will honor its existing contracts that were signed by Activision before the deal closes--which is something that Xbox CEO of Gaming Phil Spencer has already confirmed will happen.

"We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform," Sony told The Wall Street Journal.

Three new studies published today in the journal Nature show independent achievements of highly reliable and robust quantum computing.

A team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) achieved a 1-qubit operation fidelity of up to 99.95 percent and a 2-qubit fidelity of 99.37 percent. Their approach used silicon embedded with phosphorus atoms via ion implantation, a method used in producing all existing silicon computer chips, allowing their quantum breakthrough to be "compatible with the broader semiconductor industry."

NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission will soon be another step closer to launching for real.

Artemis 1 intends to launch an uncrewed spacecraft toward the moon later this year and has an upcoming "wet dress rehearsal" scheduled for late February. A simulated countdown will ensure the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are working as expected. The Orion spacecraft has flown only once before, and the Artemis 1 launch will mark the SLS rocket's first flight.

Since the new year, engineering tasks have readied the spacecraft, with the crew access arm for the Orion spacecraft being tested successfully on January 11th. The SLS also completed core stage engineering tests by January 14th, after replacing one of its four RS-25 engine controllers.

The Shiyan 13 test satellite has a currently unknown mission.

The satellite was launched from the northern Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC) on January 17th at 10:35 a.m. local time (02:35 UTC) aboard a Long March 2D rocket. The launch site temperature was recorded at -37 degrees Celsius (-35 degrees Fahrenheit), requiring the launch team to add "product sealing measures" to the rocket to ensure a successful launch.

"The Experiment No. 13 satellite is mainly used to carry out space environment detection and related technology experiments," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) wrote in a statement.

The new study was published in the Geological Society of America's journal Geology.

The study focuses on the eruption of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines, which began a series of eruptions starting in January 2020, 43 years after its last eruption. The plume of volcanic ash rising led to thousands of land-to-ground lightning strikes occurring over several hours.

The electrical activity arises after the plume rises high enough in the atmosphere to freeze. Radio waves produced by lightning can be detected with remote sensing tools quickly, allowing scientists to collect data quickly. Along with lots of social media posts with pictures and videos of the event, scientists identified a "highly electrified region at the base of the umbrella cloud."

A new study on the observation has been published in the journal Nature.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observed the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10, found 30 million light-years away in the constellation Pyxis. Hubble saw a gas outflow from the black hole at the center of the galaxy reaching into a star-forming region 230 light-years away andfostering the growth of stars, rather than suppressing it.