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NASA has taken to its blog to reveal its plans for removing the unwanted martian pebbles located in a Mars rovers bit carousel (the place where samples are stored).

Jennifer Trosper, the Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has taken to the NASA Science Mars website to outline the agency's plan for removing the debris. Lopez writes that the team has performed a diligent analysis of the carousel and the ground located directly beneath Perseverance, and has sent commands to the rover on January 12 that instruct Perseverance to point the Tube 261 at the floor and release its contents.

Additionally, Lopez writes that the team has also sent up instructions that will command Perseverance to perform two rotation tests of the bit carousel, both the smaller and the larger test will commence over the weekend. The team has instructed the rover to take under-chassis images and expect that the data from the tests and the images will arrive on Earth by January 18.

In September 2021, El Salvador announced that Bitcoin (BTC) and the US dollar were now recognized as legal tender throughout the nation, marking the very first county to accept BTC as a legal currency.

Since the adoption of Bitcoin, El Salvador has been purchasing large swaths of Bitcoin and making announcements of its purchases. A goal of adopting Bitcoin was to offer digital banking to millions of individuals in El Salvador that are unbanked or don't currently hold a bank account. El Salvador's government partnered with digital identity provider Netki to create the BTC wallet Chivo that has now onboarded more than 4 million new users, according to a recent announcement.

As an incentive for people to start using Bitcoin as a currency, the government rolled out a $30 airdrop in BTC to anyone using the Chivo wallet. The announcement claims that the rollout of the new BTC wallet has onboarded 70% of the previously unbanked population throughout El Salvador, and now BTC is being used regularly to pay for meals at restaurants, shopping, and retail stores. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The astronaut behind the famous gorilla video on the International Space Station explained how his first attempt smuggle attempt didn't go as planned.

Even in space, humans perform practical jokes on each other, and sometimes that means smuggling different items onto the International Space Station (ISS). Futurism reports that many different items have been smuggled onto the ISS throughout its operational time. Items such as alcohol, cigarettes, and even cremated remains on a famous Star Trek actor. Another item that was once smuggled onto the floating laboratory was a gorilla suit, but the astronaut that was trying to get it on the ISS didn't get it there on his first attempt.

In an interview with People, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly explained that his identical brother Mark Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut, attempted to send his brother Scott, who was on the ISS, a gorilla suit in 2015. However, that suit ended up being destroyed in a massive explosion when a SpaceX Falcon 9 didn't quite make it to the floating lab. Mark didn't give up there. "The next time I was on the phone with my brother, he goes, 'I'm sending you another gorilla suit,'" Scott told People.

An asteroid that is thousands of feet in diameter will be making its closest approach with Earth today, and you can watch it pass by live.

A livestream will be hosted by Italy's Virtual Telescope Project that is located in Rome. The livestream will focus on asteroid 7482 (1994 PC1) as it makes its closest approach with Earth at a safe distance of 1.2 million miles, marking the closest it will come to Earth for the next 200 years.

According to data provided by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is operated by NASA, asteroid 7482 is estimated to have a diameter of 3,400 feet, or half a mile wide, and is traveling at 47,000 mph. NASA explains that the asteroid is "very well known and has been studied for decades by planetary our defense experts". If you are interested in seeing where the asteroid is in the solar system, check out the NASA Eyes website here.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful observatory ever built and was recently launched on December 25, 2021.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is slated to be the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope currently orbits the Earth, but the JWST has a much further destination planned out. NASA and accompanying space agencies have sent the JWST to a special place in the solar system known as the second Lagrange point (L2). This point in space is 930,000 miles away from Earth in the opposite direction of the Sun and has been selected due to balanced gravity in the area.

Gravity from the Sun and Earth is balanced in the five Lagrange points, which means the observatory will stay in a fixed position while using a very small amount of energy. Once Webb reaches this location, it will be locked into orbit with Earth. NASA recently stated that Webb has completed just over 91% of its journey to L2 and is currently 23 days into a 29-day trip. NASA expects the observatory to arrive at L2 on January 23.

AMD looks to be preparing a new Radeon RX 6000 series GPU refresh with faster 18Gbps GDDR6 memory, with a purported Radeon RX 6950 XT, Radeon RX 6850 XT, and Radeon RX 6750 XT graphics cards.

New information is coming from leaker "Wjm47196" that posts on Chiphell, where it is teased that the Radeon RX 6x50 XT model graphics cards will be powered by the Navi 21 and Navi 22 GPUs and might "replace" the existing Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs.

The new Radeon RX 6000 series GPU refresh would have a larger upgrade in the form of faster 18Gbps GDDR6 memory, which is already deployed on AMD's flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled Edition -- oh, and AMD's upcoming mid-range Radeon RX 6500 XT. Samsung recently unveiled its spiffy new 20Gbps and 24Gbps GDDR6 memory modules, where AMD could be using this faster GDDR6 and downclocking it to 18Gbps.

Samsung has finally, through the flames of drama, officially announced its next-gen Exynos 2200 processor. The company is saying that this new "game-changing" SoC is powered by an AMD RDNA 2-based "Xclipse" GPU.

Samsung's new Exynos 22 is a "freshly designed mobile processor" with an AMD RDNA 2-based Samsung Xclipse GPU, with the "most cutting-edge ARM-based CPU cores available in the market today and an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU), the new Exynos 2200 will enable the ultimate mobile phone gaming experience, as well as enhancing the overall experience in social media apps and photography".

Thanks to the RDNA 2-powered Samsung Xclipse GPU, we have hardware-accelerated ray tracing (RT), as well as variable-rate shading (VRS) -- these technologies have been reserved for PC gamers, and only just recently with the next-gen consoles -- and now Samsung has it in your hands.

NVIDIA has just enabled GPU Select Processor (GSP) on certain GPUs with its new 510.39 driver, with select Tesla and Data Center GPUs based on the Ampere and Turing GPU architectures.

GSP will offload tasks that are otherwise handled by the CPU, over to the GPU -- these tasks include GPU utilization and management tasks -- but you can still force-disable GSP if you want. You will lose some display-related and power management features, but those features aren't built into GSP at this time.

NVIDIA explains: "Some GPUs include a GPU System Processor (GSP) which can be used to offload GPU initialization and management tasks. This processor is driven by the firmware file /lib/firmware/nvidia/510.39.01/gsp.bin. A few select products currently use GSP by default, and more products will take advantage of GSP in future driver releases".

NVIDIA is expanding its CPU business with the announcement of a new CPU group in Israel, which will help NVIDIA continue to dominate the HPC market.

It was only in April 2021 that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced their next-gen ARM-based "Grace" CPU, which will be released in early 2023. The new CPU group will be working with other teams in Israel that are already working on high-speed networking, HPC technologies, and NVIDIA's own Data Processing Units.

NVIDIA CTO Michael Kagan said: "Israel, with its unique wealth of talent, is a key player in the global tech ecosystem, and we are excited to be creating a new CPU group here. We look forward to further growing our local R&D activities both in this area and in our extensive work supporting the local ecosystem through unique programs for startups and developers".

NVIDIA is preparing a new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card, with a new GA103-200-A1 GPU that will reportedly feature the same specs as the higher-end GA104 GPU.

The new GA103-200 GPU is a big deal here as it is different to the GA104 GPU that powers a large range of NVIDIA's current-gen Ampere GPUs: RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060, RTX 3070 Lite Hash Rate, RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate. This is now the third variant of the GA103 GPU, and we might actually have a huge supply from NVIDIA which would be great at this price point of the (insane) market.

We're finding out about the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with its GA103-200 GPU (with its 7680 CUDA cores) from the new 511 Studio driver NVIDIA pushed out, which had a new device ID of 2414 -- matching the PCI Device family of NVIDIA's GA103 GPU -- the new GPU making the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU.

Microsoft makes acquisition history for the second time with its near $70 billion buyout offer for Activision-Blizzard.

Trillion-dollar tech titan Microsoft intends to buy Call of Duty publisher Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Microsoft is offering to buy all Activision-Blizzard shares at a 45% premium.

Suffice it to say this is the single largest video games acquisition of all time and beats the previous record holder (Take-Two's $12.7 billion offer for Zynga) by a staggering $56 billion, or 440%.

Activision-Blizzard CEO and President Bobby Kotick will leave the company after Microsoft's buyout goes through.

Bobby Kotick will depart Activision once Microsoft's acquisition buyout closes, multiple sources have told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The news comes months after Kotick promised to resign if he couldn't fix the company-wide issues and toxic workplace culture.

Kotick will continue his role as CEO until regulatory approval has been made on the deal, which is expected to be finalized during Microsoft's FY22 period (June 2022 through July 2023).

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With over 400 games and counting, it's easy to see why Xbox Game Pass has nearly doubled its subscribers in the last two years.

As part of its announcement on the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, Microsoft revealed a big jump in Game Pass subscribers. The all-you-can play service has attracted 25 million users as of today, making it one of the most powerful video game subscriptions on the market and representing a 150% jump in total subs in almost two years.

The service has yet to be profitable at Microsoft and is a multi-decade investment that serves as both an entry point and a destination to its gaming ecosystem. Xbox Game Pass is synergistic in that it not only fuels repeated subscriptions, but also monetization via free-to-play live service games and full game sales. The value proposition alone is undeniable: The service offers access to 440 games total across four generations of Xbox that are made available across PC, consoles, and now mobile phones.

Xbox Game Pass has hit a huge new milestone of 25 million active subscribers, Microsoft today announced.

Microsoft is buying Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the largest acquisition in video games history. Nestled in the press release announcement was an update on Xbox Game Pass subscription numbers. Game Pass is now at 25 million subscribers, up a thunderous 150% over nearly two years.

"The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft's Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass, which has reached a new milestone of over 25 million subscribers," the press release reads.

Microsoft plans to buy Activision-Blizzard in a massive $69 billion deal to bolster the Xbox service ecosystem. But not every Activision game will become an Xbox exclusive.

Today Microsoft shook up the video games industry. Like Bethesda before it, Microsoft is also buying Activision-Blizzard in the largest acquisition in the history of the games market. The deal was made specifically to secure billion-dollar content like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Overwatch, an Diablo as Xbox ramps up towards the multiverse.

According to reports from Bloomberg, not every future Activision-Blizzard game will become an Xbox exclusive. Some games will also release on PlayStation, but a portion of games will indeed be kept off of Nintendo and PlayStation platforms. It's likely that Call of Duty titles will still release on PlayStation platforms--at least existing titles like Warzone and Overwatch will remain the connective free-to-play tissue that binds PlayStation, Xbox, and PC together in a billion-dollar powerhouse synergy.

In a huge surprise announcement, Microsoft has announced it will be acquiring Activision-Blizzard in a monster $70 billion deal -- all-cash, by the way.

Once the deal is all over, it will make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company in revenue, where it will only be behind Sony and Tencent. Activision-Blizzard is home to some of the largest game franchises on the planet, including Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and so much more.

Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick -- drama surrounding him, and the company -- will remain as CEO where he and his team will "maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company's culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming".

The new research comes from Leiden University, which received a grant from the Netherlands Trade Union Convention (FNV).

Following a series of behavioral experiments simulating three different forms of social security, the researchers concluded that basic income would not necessarily mean that people would work less. The researchers also found indications that individuals with a basic income are more likely to find a job that is better suited to them.

A new study on the satellites' impact has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers are concerned about the effect that SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation could have on their scientific observations as the constellation grows in size. Currently standing at almost 1,800 satellites orbiting at an altitude of roughly 550 kilometers (341 miles), SpaceX plans to expand the constellation to 10,000 satellites by 2027.

A team of researchers analyzed archival images taken by the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), operating out of Caltech's Palomar Observatory, which scans the entirety of the night sky every two days, cataloging changes. In images taken between November 2019 and September 2021, researchers identified 5,301 satellite streaks. They are most apparent during twilight observations taken at dawn or dusk, the most critical time in finding near-Earth asteroids.

The rare 555.55-carat black diamond is dubbed "The Enigma" and is believed to have originated in outer space.

The auction house Sotheby's Dubai will be auctioning off the 55-faceted diamond in London in February. It expects the diamond will be sold for at least 5 million British pounds ($6.8 million), and they intend to accept cryptocurrency as a possible payment.

Black diamonds are also known as carbonado and are found naturally only in Brazil and Central Africa. Their origin is unknown, and six different hypotheses have been proposed, two of which refer to cosmic origins. They may have formed inside a giant star that then became a supernova, flinging the material toward Earth. They may also have come from asteroids, either directly or due to a collision with another interstellar object.