Latest News - Page 1261

AMD has unleashed its highest-end Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled Edition graphics card for the DIY market in Europe.

The Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled Edition graphics card sees AMD using a pre-binned Navi 21 XTXH GPU, with some of the very highest RDNA 2 GPU clocks in the wild. AMD explains: "AMD will be making a limited number of Radeon RX 6900 XT liquid-cooled reference design graphics cards available to select system integrators".

"System integrators are a critical part of the gaming ecosystem and offering this model through their channels helps ensure that as many of these products as possible get into gamers hands".

A new MMORPG based on a Marvel IP is currently in development...what could it be?

Dimensional Ink, the studio that helped make big live service games like Star Wars Galaxies and the 10 year-old DC Universe Online, is developing a new MMORPG based on the Marvel universe. The news was discovered in an earnings report from Swedish games-maker Enad Global 7 (the parent of Dimensional Ink, Daybreak Games, and others).

The brief confirms the new MMORPG is a AAA-class project that takes place in an undisclosed Marvel property. Dimensional Ink boss Jack Emmert will lead development at the Austin-based studio (Dimensional Ink used to be Daybreak Games Austin and was re-branded in January 2020).

Sony Interactive Entertainment is being sued for alleged gender pay discrimination.

Ex-Sony employee Emma Lee Majo has filed a class action lawsuit against the company that alleges widespread and global gender pay gaps. Majo, who served 6 years as an IT Security Risk Analyst at Sony, says that the billion-dollar firm favors males with promotions an higher pay for the same jobs that women held.

"Sony tolerates and cultivates a work environment that discriminates against female employees, including female employees and those who identify as female. Female employees are subjected to continuoing unlawful disparate treatment in pay and work opportunities,"the lawsuit claims.

Activision-Blizzard has formed a new Workplace Responsibility Committee as part of its ongoing response to troubling abuse and misconduct within the company.

Activision released a press release detailing its new internal committee focused on holding management accountable for new cultural reforms. The Workplace Responsibility Committee will task Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick and the Chief Compliance Officer with establishing new policies aimed at stamping out harassment and the sexual abuse allegations that currently surround the billion-dollar firm.

The committee will serve as a middle man between chief executives and the board, frequently delivering reports and updates to the board of directors (who fully support CEO Bobby Kotick).

Fortnite mogul Tim Sweeney says the nascent and ambiguous Metaverse could become a trillion-dollar industry.

Right now video games are the most lucrative part of the entertainment industry. Analyst firm Newzoo predicts gaming will make $175 billion in 2021, and $200 billion in 2023. But what happens if the entire entertainment industry melds together with one another with a pinch of social networking too?

That's essentially the driving force behind the Metaverse, gaming's newest buzzword that's being bandied about by the likes of Facebook (who believes so strongly in the Metaverse they changed their name to Meta), Google, Microsoft, and Epic Games (and a concept originally envisioned by novels like Ready Player One). The Fortnite-maker has ambitious plans for the Metaverse and is buying up key companies like Harmonix to "make music for the Metaverse."

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls for a single storefront that works across all platforms...but that's very unlikely to happen.

Epic's Tim Sweeney has a wildly ambitious idea to unify and centralize video games under one store. The idea is to make a digital marketplace--like, say, the Epic Games Store--where game purchases carry across all platforms. It could go even further with cross-over purchases; think of it as a storefront that supports Play Anywhere: Buy a game once on PC, play it on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and even mobiles.

"What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms," Sweeney said at the Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness in Seoul, South Korea.

PureVPN reached out to us with an epic Black Friday deal for its VPN service. You can get an incredible 5 years of VPN for just $79. However, TweakTown readers have also been offered an additional 10% discount using code "discount10", bringing the total price down to just $71.10, or $14.22 per year and only just over $1 per month.

Why choose PureVPN? Besides, the great Black Friday deal we have for you right here, here are some other reasons:

And you can use their VPN app on all your devices, including Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad, Linux, Chrome and Firefox.

CDKeysales reached out to us with some great deals for its Black Friday sales event. Below, you will find some epic deals on not only Windows 10, but also Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 11. There's also some hot deals on Microsoft Office (2016 and 2019), as well as some super bundle deals for Windows and Office together. Happy shopping!

Applying the TT25 35% off discount code is very easy. As you can see below, just click "Buy Now" on the product you wish to order and then in the checkout area, just type in "TT25" into the Promotion Code text box and click "Apply". The 35% discount will then be applied to your order.

Below you can see a couple of screenshots of Windows 10 activated using one of the keys provided by CDKeysales.

In a newly released data dump by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, what we thought of as satellite galaxies to the Milky Way are not all they seem.

For decades scientists have believed the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way to be satellites, galaxies orbiting our own that have been doing so for billions of years. However, new data from ESA's Gaia mission has been used to calculate the movements of these galaxies, revealing they aren't orbiting the Milky Way at all.

Researchers computed the three-dimensional velocities for forty dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way, then used them to calculate the galaxy's orbital energies and angular (rotational) momentum. They found the galaxies to be moving significantly faster than other giant stars and star clusters known to orbit the Milky Way. The research team concluded that the dwarf galaxies could not yet be orbiting the Milky Way, as it would have attenuated their orbital energies and angular momentum.

The Russian cargo ship "Progress 78" has departed the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up space for the inbound Prichal module.

Also known as Progress MS-17, Progress 78 launched on June 29th, 2021, to the ISS, delivering over 3,600 pounds (1,630 kilograms) of supplies two days after it launched. Progress 78 undocked from Russia's Nauka science module at 11:22 UTC, November 25th, set on a destructive trajectory into Earth's atmosphere. A new Russian docking port module named Prichal (Russian for "pier") is set to take its place, launching toward the ISS on November 24th.

Prichal's role will be for "testing architecture for potentially permanent settlements in space" according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. Another Progress spacecraft is bringing the Prichal module to the ISS, after which it will undock from Prichal and meet the same fate as Progress 78. Progress 78 was expected to burn up upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific ocean, roughly four hours following undocking.

HyperX has selected a handful of its gaming keyboards, mice, and headsets to be discounted hugely on Amazon for Black Friday.

Of the mice available, you can pick up models from HyperX's Pulsefire line ranging from $64.99 to $19.99, including the Pulsefire Dart, Pulsefire Haste, and Pulsefire Core. All come with full RGB customization and at least six programmable buttons, enabled by HyperX's Ngenuity software.

HyperX's Cloud headset line is also up for grabs, with the Cloud II Wireless, Cloud Alpha, CloudX, Cloud Core, and Cloud, with prices ranging from $129.99 to $39.99.

New research has been published in Nature Communications, describing how a team of scientists from the University of Manchester used gene editing to manufacture new antibiotics.

The team used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create new non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) enzymes, critical in the natural production of antibiotics like penicillin. Previously, manipulating these enzymes to create more potent antibiotics that are less susceptible to growing microbial antibiotic resistance has been a challenge.

The UK government has estimated that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will lead to 700,000 deaths each year globally and predict this will climb to 10 million by 2050, costing the global economy ~$100 trillion.

The huge deals in the lead-up to Black Friday continue, where on Amazon, you can now find HTC Vive's and their accessories for discounts up to 41% off.

The HTC Vive Pro Eye is available in a complete kit, including the two controllers and two base stations, with the option to add in a Vive tracker, or you can opt for the headset on its own. The Vive Pro is also available in all the same configurations but lacks the built-in eye-tracking of the Vive Pro Eye.

Alternatively, the Vive Cosmos Elite comes in a complete kit, including two controllers and two base stations, with the option to purchase it as a standalone headset.

Black Friday is around the corner and to lead into the sales madness Amazon has slashed prices across a select range of microphones.

A good quality microphone is a staple part of any streaming setup, and while you can take a cheaper microphone and tweak it to sound like a higher-end microphone, sometimes it's just better to pick up a reputable brand of microphone that you know is going to be acceptable quality.

Blue Microphones certainly comes to mind when the topic of high-quality microphones is brought up and Amazon has discounted a large range of its microphone solutions by up to 25%. Amazon's early Black Friday deals feature discounts for popular Blue products such as the Blue Yeti, Blue Yeti X, Blue Yeti Nano, and Blue Snowball iCE. In the entirety of this article you will find the best deals for Blue's range of on sale products.

A team of researchers has stumbled across a mammoth tusk deep beneath the ocean surface, which is perfect for preserving fossils.

A team of researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute was exploring an underwater mountain off the coast of California back in 2019 when they discovered what looks like a wood log. 10,000 feet below the surface, the research team found a 3-foot mammoth tusk fossil that had been preserved by the cold temperatures of the deep sea, much like how food is preserved by being frozen.

Researchers suspect that the tusk was from a large Columbian mammoth that was likely a creature that came from crossbreeding a woolly mammoth and another species of mammoth. As for the exact age of the creature, researchers are working on analyzing the radioisotopes, which can be indicators for finding out an approximation of how old a specimen is. ScienceAlert reports that the mammoth tusk is "much more than 100,000 years old."

NASA's highly anticipated next-generation space telescope titled the James Webb Space Telescope is getting extremely close to launching.

Earlier this week, NASA announced that the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had to be delayed due to a "A sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band - which secures Webb to the launch vehicle adapter - caused a vibration throughout the observatory". NASA explained in its announcement that engineers were working on testing if the telescope was damaged, and now the agency has given an update.

"Engineering teams have completed additional testing confirming NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is ready for flight", writes NASA. The space agency explains that JWST underwent "additional testing" and that a "NASA-led anomaly review board concluded no observatory components were damaged in the incident." Additionally, the update states that NASA has given approval for the fueling of the observatory to begin. Fueling operations will begin on Thursday, November 25, and take about 10 days to complete. NASA is targeting December 22 for the launch of the JWST.

The Sun has released a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, and Earth will get impacted by a small portion of it.

Spaceweather.com reports that one of the plasma filaments located on the Sun's southern hemisphere snapped and collapsed, pushing a large amount of particles out at a wide-angle. The majority of the burst is expected to head south past Earth, but a small portion will still impact our magnetic field, which has resulted in forecasters predicting minor G1-class geomagnetic storms for November 27.

When the plasma filament snapped, a "canyon of fire" was carved into the surface of the Sun that was visible for more than 6 hours after the event. Additionally, the blast that is headed our way may be powerful enough to cause Arctic auroras, which always makes for an incredible photography opportunity. In other Sun-related news, a satellite is going to perform its riskiest fly-by of Earth yet on its way to the Sun, check out that story here.

Five astronauts aboard the International Space Station have discussed what Thanksgiving means to them and what they will be doing to celebrate.

Five of the seven NASA astronaut crew gathered around a camera to let the world know that they will be celebrating Thanksgiving while traveling aboard a floating laboratory that is currently orbiting the Earth at around 17,150 miles per hour. NASA astronaut Raja Chari explained that even though it's Thanksgiving, the astronauts are still required to perform their 90 minutes to two hours of daily exercise in order to maintain health during their six-month stay aboard the station, but there is something good to look forward to when it comes to dinner.

As with most Thanksgiving celebrations, the food is an important part, and the International Space Station is no different. The astronaut's joke about how they won't be doing any cooking as all of the food aboard the station just needs to be reheated. The crew will be enjoying a wonderful meal of crab bisque, candied yams, and cherry blueberry cobbler, as well as turkey. Additionally, the crew will be performing their Thanksgiving treadmill sessions which are referred to as the "turkey trot".

The very first fully-scaled mission to test a specific technology that would be used to defend Earth in the event of an asteroid or comet hazard has been launched by NASA.

NASA dubbed the mission the "Double Asteroid Redirection Test," and it involves sending a vending-machine-sized spacecraft to collide with a Great Pyramid of Giza-sized asteroid in an attempt to change the asteroid's orbit around its larger companion asteroid. NASA's spacecraft will be traveling at 15,000 mph, or 4 miles per second, when it collides with the asteroid named Dimorphos.

The results from this test will then be used to prepare for an asteroid threat, and if one ever presents itself, which it currently hasn't, researchers will have a much better idea of to handle the situation by taking already tested methods. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said, "At its core, DART is a mission of preparedness, and it is also a mission of unity. This international collaboration involves DART, ASI's LICIACube, and ESA's Hera investigations and science teams, which will follow up on this groundbreaking space mission."

NASA's next-generation space telescope that is pinned as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is teed up to unlock the secrets of the universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development for many years now and has experienced many delays for numerous reasons. The delays have driven up the cost of the space telescope, but now it's finally nearing the end of the road to completion as it's scheduled to launch next month.

In a video posted to the Interesting Engineering YouTube channel, it's explained how important space telescopes are to developing our understanding of the universe and how the James Webb Space Telescope is "currently the most advanced piece of observational equipment ever built." With the JWST, astronomers will be able to observe what the universe was like as far as 250 million years after the Big Bang, which may be further back enough to unlock some secrets of the universe.