Latest News - Page 1242

NASA is gearing up for the launch of a new telescope that will be able to see further back in time than any other telescope before it.

James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA is currently running the final tests for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that is scheduled to launch no earlier than December 24. The new telescope, poised to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is the most complicated and advanced observatory ever built - truly a feat of engineering. The telescope will be capable of looking further back in time than any other telescope before it, giving researchers the opportunity to learn about the universe in its earliest stages.

NASA announced that it had to delay the launch of its next-generation space telescope that was scheduled for liftoff next week.

According to the announcement from the space agency, the James Webb Space Telescope was scheduled for launch on December 22 to no earlier than December 24. NASA wrote on its blog and social channels on December 14 that the James Webb Space Telescope team was currently working on a communication issue, which was only recently fixed according to NASA's associate administrator for science missions, Thomas Zurbuchen.

Many scientists worldwide and individuals who have worked on the James Webb Space Telescope are nervous about the upcoming launch. The telescope has faced countless delays throughout its long development and, as a result, has been quite exponentially expensive.

NASA recently announced that the Mars rover Perseverance has acquired a sample that has implications for understanding the entire planet.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that on November 12, the Perseverance rover that's stationed in the Jezero Crater took a sample from a South Seitah rock that showed evidence of "Brac", or as NASA explains, "an unusual abundance of large olivine crystals engulfed in pyroxene crystals."

After further inspection, the findings were presented at a news briefing at the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, where researchers stated that the bedrock the rover has been driving on since landing in the Jezero Crater likely formed from red-hot magma that interacted with water at some stage in the cooling process. Additionally, it was announced that the water that interacted with the rocks contain organic molecules.

Traci and Dave Gagnon met back in October 2015 in virtual form inside of Dave's "virtual office" as an avatar, and fast forward just 6 years and the couple is the first to get married in the metaverse... while getting married in real-life.

The couple met in real life after meeting during their company's global convention -- the two work for a real estate brokerage -- and then started dating in March 2019. After 3 months of romance they were engaged, and then on September 4, 2021 the couple got married in a virtual chapel in the sky.

Traci told Insider that it was the CEO of the real estate company they worked for that floated the idea of a virtual wedding and getting married "in the cloud". A sister branch of the employer who creates virtual spaces stepped in, and provided the virtual world for the Gagnon's to get married in the metaverse.

NVIDIA is preparing not just one but two new GeForce RTX 3050 desktop GPUs in 8GB, and 4GB variants according to the latest leaks.

The new GeForce RTX 3050 will launch in two versions, the first is with the GA106-150 GPU with 2560 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 while the other is will have the GA106-140 GPU with 2304 CUDA cores and 4GB of GDDR6 memory. The other rumors of the GPU inside of the RTX 3050 had it pegged with 3072 CUDA cores, so these new rumors are very different.

Not only do we have a GPU with a different CUDA core count, but multiple versions of the RTX 3050: one with 8GB, one with 4GB. We should expect NVIDIA to unveil in early 2022, where we should see the company also unveil and release its powerful new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, as well as the laptop-focused GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPUs at CES 2022 in just a few weeks time.

Uber has just announced that it has teamed with autonomous vehicle company Motional on a new partnership that will see "autonomous deliveries" on Uber Eats.

The trial will begin in "early 2022" and would see Motional (which has partner with Hyundai and Aptiv) have some, not all, food delivery options that will be delivered with a self-driving car, through the Uber Eats app on your phone. Customers will be able to choose from "a curated set of meal kits from select restaurants".

Now, while the "autonomous food delivery" through Uber Eats sounds like an autonomous car picking up your order from the restaurant, driving it to your house (or work, school, etc) and then you collect it. But the trial will see "safety operators present in the vehicle" throughout the autonomous Uber Eats food delivery trial.

TSMC has just announced its N4X process technology, which has been tailor-made for the demanding workloads of high-performance computing (HPC) products.

The new N4X process technology is the first of TSMC's HPC-focused technology offerings, which the company says "representing ultimate performance and maximum clock frequencies in the 5-nanometer family. The "X" designation is reserved for TSMC technologies that are developed specifically for HPC products".

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) enhanced its already impressive technology with features made for HPC products to create N4X, these features include:

Microsoft is expected to succeed its flagship Xbox Series X console with a beefier Xbox Series X Elite console, something we have a better look at thanks to some beautiful new renders from our friends at LetsGoDigital. Check it out:

The new Xbox Series X Elite console render was made by graphic designer Jermaine Smit aka Concept Creator and was developed in collaboration with Phone Industry. The render has some awesome LED lighting on both sides of the Xbox Series X Elite console, with a large power button and Xbox logo -- on the left, we have the Blu-ray slot, an eject button, and 4 x USB ports.

On the back we have 6 ports: for power, an Ethernet power, 2 x USB 3.1 ports, and 1 x HDMI 2.1 connector that is finished up with an expansion port for storage. Ventilation wise the faster flagship Xbox Series X Elite console will run hotter, so ventilation is taken care of with one on the top, and both sides as well as the back with ventilation holes that make sure under those all-day, all-night gaming sessions that your Xbox Series X Elite console runs cool.

AIDA64's latest version now supports NVIDIA's unreleased GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU and Intel's new 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" CPUs coming out in 2022.

The new AIDA64 Extreme 6.60 software is used for benchmarking, professional diagnoses, and more for professionals, engineers, benchmarkers, gamers, and more. The new AIDA64 release has optimized benchmarks for Intel's new 12th Gen "Alder Lake" and next-gen 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" CPUs.

There's also improvements for DDR5 memory modules and XMP 3.0 memory profiles, as well as support for the very latest AMD and Intel chipsets. On the GPU side of things, we have support for NVIDIA's unreleased GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, and the new desktop release of the GeForce RTX 2060 12GB.

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing a beefed-up GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card, a new model with 2GB more GDDR6X memory, more CUDA cores, and more performance across the board.

The new GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card will have its 12GB of GDDR6X memory on a wider 384-bit memory bus, which will see up to 912GB/sec of memory bandwidth -- quite the increase over the 760GB/sec memory bandwidth on 10GB of GDDR6X memory on the regular GeForce RTX 3080.

NVIDIA will be using the new GA102-220 GPU for the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB, which packs more CUDA cores than the GA102-200 inside of the RTX 3080. The new GA102-220 GPU has 8960 CUDA cores (256 more CUDA cores than the RTX 3080 GPU) with 2 more RT cores, and 8 more Tensor Cores/TMUs.

Samsung's new flagship Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra tablet is beginning to look like a beast, with new reports suggesting the new slate will rock a huge 14.6-inch WQXGA+ display which will run at up to 120Hz.

Inside, we should see Samsung using Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SoC with options of 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB of RAM that will come with 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB of storage. The huge battery would be a drain on any other tablet, but Samsung seems to be taking care of that with a huge 11,200mAh battery and super-fast 45W rapid charging technology.

We should see it quite thin, with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra coming in at just 5.5mm thick while the new slate will reportedly feature 4 cameras: 2 on the front, 2 on the rear. On the back, we have a 13-megapixel primary sensor and 6-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, while on the front we have a notch that includes a 12-megapixel primary sensor, and 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor.

MSI has one of the craziest enthusiast motherboards with its new MEG Z690 GODLIKE, which packs a huge 3.5-inch touch display that is as big as the original Apple iPhone.

You'll want to accompany MSI's new MEG Z690 GODLIKE motherboard with Intel's new flagship Core i9-12900K processor, with the 3.5-inch touch panel being removable and connected into your PC through a USB Type-C connector, good guy points for MSI for not using a proprietary connector.

This means that you can have the 3.5-inch touch panel setup anywhere: on your desk, next to your monitor, on the side of your PC, or wherever you please. The display will show you CPU and GPU temps, settings for overclockers, quick restart and shut down buttons, and more.

Former first lady Melania Trump has announced her first non-fungible token (NFT) initiative, with proceeds from the NFT going to support children aging out of the foster care system.

The new NFT is called "Melania's Vision" and finds itself as digital artwork being sold for 1 unit of SOL cryptocurrency (worth around $180) and it also includes an audio recording from Melania. Melania's Vision and other anticipated NFTs will be released on MelaniaTrump.com exclusively.

Melania's Vision is an NFT of a watercolor done by artist Marc-Antoine Coulon which "embodies Mrs. Trump's cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire". Melania Trump said in a statement: "I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative. Through this new technology-based platform, we will provide children computer science skills, including programming and software development, to thrive after they age out of the foster community".

Intel has teased a bunch of its unreleased CPUs and GPUs in its new drivers for the 11th Gen NUC, with codenames for GPUs that were previously leaked, now confirmed.

Intel's next-gen DG3 "Elasti" GPU has been confirmed, as well as the Arc Alchemist DG2 graphics cards and CPU codenames for next-gen Intel Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake CPUs. Inside, leaker KOMACHI_ENSAKA noticed mentions of "ELG" which later turned into what we know as the Intel DG3 "Elasti" GPU.

The driver number of Intel DG3 "Elasti" ended in "9999" which references this driver is a "testing driver" which isn't available to the public, but now is available on Intel's official website. As for "Elasti", that is the codename to Intel's next-next-gen DG3 discrete GPU, but the driver also supports multiple Intel next-gen CPUs.

CD Projekt is prepared to pay out $1.85 million to settle a class-action securities fraud lawsuit.

CD Projekt Group has reached a settlement agreement with investors in its securities fraud lawsuit. Back in 2020, four investors took their securities lawsuits against CD Projekt Group to court regarding significant stock value drops. The lawsuit alleges CD Projekt willfully withheld information on Cyberpunk 2077's performance, and the game's controversy caused share values to plummet, thus materially harming shareholders.

The four lawsuits were combined into one, and based on previous reports, plaintiff counsel was encouraging investors that had lost more than $100,000 to join the case. This means that investors may have lost at least $400,000 during the share drop period. The $1.85 million settlement will be used to pay for attorney fees, damages, and other compensation.

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan opens his own gaming NFT marketplace, and says many game developers are interested in using NFTs in their games.

The NFT craze is upon us. While it's still the early Wild West days of fluctuating values and over-saturated markets where everyone's trying to cash out, major players like Ubisoft are throwing their hat into the ring with its new Quartz NFTs. Other publishers like EA, Square Enix. and SEGA are also interested in play-to-earn blockchain gaming. Why not? NFTs are artificially-scarce digital cosmetics that can be auctioned off for unlimited prices--players would literally do the buying and selling while publishers get a cut of each purchase.

According to Twitch founder Justin Kan, the new wave of blockchain-based monetization is just beginning. Lots of game-makers are interested in NFTs. Again, why wouldn't they be? After all, Peter Molyneux's dev studio had made over $42 million from selling "limited edition" digital land plots. This could prove to be an exciting new frontier for revenue.

343i is separating the Halo TV show from the canon storylines established with Halo books and games.

The Halo TV show will have its own separate canon, 343 Industries transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill confirms. While the show will still be based on the core Halo universe, it will diverge from the main canon in something called the Halo Silver Timeline. The reason? 343i wants to "protect" each medium from colliding with one another and cancelling each other out--in other words, there's a lot of threads and pieces to Halo lore to keep track of and things can get very messy very quickly.

"We're referring to this as the Halo Silver Timeline as a way of differentiating it from core canon, and both protecting core canon and protecting the television story. And by that I mean being able to give ourselves the chance to evolve both and for both to be what they need to be for their mediums without colliding with each other," Wolfkill says.

Eve had the world's first HDMI 2.1 gaming monitor with its Spectrum rocking 4K and up to 144Hz over the single HDMI 2.1 connector, but now the crowd-funded company is back with another tease: the world's first glossy 4K gaming monitor.

In a new post on its website and on its Twitter, Project: Spectrum has been teased as the first-ever glossy 4K gaming monitor. It might not seem like much, but traditional (see: virtually all) gaming monitors use matte displays but Eve is going to be doing things a little different with a glossy panel from LG Display.

Eve has been working with LG Display, with the South Korean giant reaching out to Eve about their new glossy polarizers. It's a first for gaming monitors, but you probably look at glossy panels all day -- TVs, laptops, smartphones, wearables, and many other devices -- have a glossy coating or glass cover (and normally has an anti-reflective film over it... just like the monitor I'm sitting in front of right now, and I'm sure you are, too).

Techland has released the full PC spec requirements for Dying Light 2 ahead of the game's 2022 release.

Dying Light 2's PC spec requirements are pretty hefty. The game will have raytracing options and aims at high-end graphics, but 4K 60FPS with ray tracing on is apparently so demanding in this game that the requirements aren't even listed on the spec sheet.

Starting from minimum requirements, Dying Light 2 needs at least an Intel Core i3-90110 or Ryzen 3 2300X CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or X 560 with at least 4GB of VRAM, 8GB of RAM, and 60GB of hard drive space. That's to hit 1080p 30FPS with low presets across the board.

Square Enix has officially barred new players from entering Final Fantasy XIV and de-listed the game from digital sale in an attempt to get the overwhelming player count under control.

Square Enix is taking drastic population control measures in its wildly popular MMORPG. The game servers are simply being pushed to their breaking point. There's too many players and not enough space, so the dev team has literally removed its cash crop from the digital market and is closing the door on new player registrations. These new regulations could result in a financial hit but are a guaranteed way to close FFXIV's borders until the situation is under control.

Free trial players also get restrictions and can only play during certain non-peak hours, and paid subscribers are prioritized. Square Enix is offering another 14 days of free play time to subscribers.