Latest News - Page 1309

In something that feels like it should be branded as "only happens in Australia" -- multiple bird attacks have made drone delivery companies ground their delivery drones in Canberra, Australia.

Drone delivery company, Wing, said that it has paused its operations in the northern suburb of Harrison, while bird experts work out what is going on with the local ravens that have been striking their delivery drones. The situation can be dangerous, as a bird could easily down a drone and you don't need that crashing into the ground.

Wing explained to its customers: "We've identified some birds in the area demonstrating territorial behaviors and swooping at moving objects. While this is common during nesting season, we are committed to being strong stewards of the environment, and would like to have ornithological experts investigate this further to ensure we continue to have minimal impact on birdlife in our service locations".

DJI is about to unleash its next-gen Mavic 3 drone which looks to be their best yet, and not just their best yet -- but it could be the very best drone ever made.

We're looking at improvements across the board starting with a gigantic increase to the battery life, so flying time is at record levels, while new cameras will capture better footage than ever before. The new DJI Mavic 3 Pro drone would have up to 46 minutes of flight time, double the previous-gen Mavic 2 Pro.

We should see the new DJI Mavic 3 Pro with a second camera, so you'll be able to switch between the telephoto and wide-angle lenses from the single drone. Increased flight time, and a second camera (with its own sensor and lens) is not a bad upgrade -- it's an amazing upgrade -- and that's not all.

Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War is about to enjoy its new Season 6 update, but before that we have the new Oktoberfest Bundle.

Activision teases that you can shoot beer bullets in Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War, and that gamers need to "Grab your lederhosen and slosh your way through the battlefield". Interesting use of the world "battlefield" there, right before the launch of Battlefield 2042.

As for the new Oktoberfest Bundle, it includes the Lederhosen operator skin for Beck, two new weapon blueprints themed to booze -- the new weapons are the Hefeweizen and Kolsch, but there's also a new knife called Keg Tap. The beer bullets have a "beer tracer fire effect" which sees beer cans being fired out... pretty damn cool. There's also a new finishing move called Tapped Out, where you'll throw your enemy into the air and drop kick them in the face, also awesome.

Apple designer Jony Ive left the company back in June 2019 to open up his own company, which his first client was Apple -- but now LoveForm has signed a new multi-year partnership with Ferrari.

In a press release, Ferrari said: "The first expression of this new partnership will bring together Ferrari's legendary performance and excellence with LoveFrom's unrivalled experience and creativity that has defined extraordinary world changing products".

LoveFrom co-founders Jony Ive and Marc Newson said in a joint statement: "As Ferrari owners and collectors, we could not be more excited about collaborating with this extraordinary company and in particular with the design team expertly led by Flavio Manzoni... We see some uniquely exciting opportunities working together which we believe will yield important and valuable work".

Apple is just getting the iPhone 13 into the hands of millions of people across the world, but we're already hearing rumors of the iPhone 14.

Apple's next-gen iPhone 14 will reportedly be a "complete redesign" according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the first iPhone redesign since the iPhone X back in 2017. The just-released iPhone 13 isn't a big change over the previous iPhone 12 while the new iPhone 14 will be a big change.

Ming-Chi Kuo, the infamous Apple analyst, said that Apple would drop the notch in 2022 and that the iPhone 14 Pro would feature a hole-punch camera... just like most flagship Android smartphones. The new iPhone 14 would look more like the iPhone 4, just much bigger, with a band-style titanium outer ring, flush rear cameras, and a thicker chassis.

MSI has just kinda, accidentally confirmed when Intel will be launching its new Alder Lake CPU family as well as new 600-series motherboards.

MSI confirmed the news through its announcement that it will be giving out a free upgrade kit for LGA1700 processors for their CORELIQUID CPU coolers, with the kit being available between November 4, 2021 and April 30, 2022 -- kinda announcing Alder Lake will be launching on November 4.

Wccftech's Usman Pirzada tweeted a reply to VideoCardz which said there would be pre-orders going live a week earlier, after the Intel Innovation event. Alder Lake-S will be announced with pre-orders kicking off on October 27 while sales and reviews go live on November 4.

The official USB Type-C 2.1 specifications have been published, where it is indeed true: USB Type-C 2.1 will deliver a huge 240W of power over a tiny USB-C cable.

In order to pump 240W through that small USB-C cable you're going to need a new USB-C EPR (Extended Power Range) cable, the new EPR specification bumps up the maximum voltage to 48V. This bump to 48V is what is required to push 240W of power at 5A.

USB-C Type 2.1 devices and cables will be backward compatible, and vica versa, with USB Type-C 2.0 ports. Nothing has changed with the port at all, but there are standards on the midplate being stronger, and mandates for pins for A4-A9 and B4-B9 (power, power delivery, and legacy USB 2.0 support) must not short in order to ground during connecting mating.

New South Wales residents down in Australia got quite the sight overnight, with many Australians thinking they're looking at a UFO scooting across the night sky.

It looks very similar to other spirals and objects that look similar in the sky, that normally get blamed on rockets -- with this one being no different. China reportedly launched its new Long March 3B rocket at around 6:20PM local time in Sydney last night, and then the "rocket" was seen over Sydney "about 30 minutes later" according to local news outlets.

China's new Long March 3B rocket reportedly crashed down into the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka and north of the Maldives. China's Manned Space Engineering Office reports that most of the 22-tonne spacecraft burned up during re-entry, and is what the media (at least in Australia) is blaming for what thousands of Aussies thought was probably a UFO, portal or something similar opening up in front of their eyes.

If you think you've ever paid too much in fees for a cryptocurrency transaction, I don't think you can beat paying $23,300,000 in Ethereum for just $100,000 in USD Tether. That's exactly what Bitfenix just did...

Bitfenix just paid $23.3 million in Ethereum to transfer $100,000 USDT to DeversiFi's wallet, with a DeversiFi spokesperson confirming the news: "At 11:10 UTC on the 27th September, a deposit transaction was made using a hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee".

It seems that this could be a huge mistake, and someone at Bitfenix has just f***ed up so badly it has cost $23 million+ which means it's a record-breaking cost for a transaction. The cryptocurrency community thinks that this was a huge mistake for Bitfenix, especially when DeversiFi is meant to be a platform that lets users access DeFi to invest, trade, and send transactions without "paying gas fees".

Nintendo's new premium $350 Switch OLED console has the same exact JoyCon controllers as the original models, the company confirms to Axios Gaming.

The new Switch OLED doesn't feature improved JoyCon controllers and are still susceptible to analog stick drift. The Switch OLED's JoyCon sticks are 100% exactly the same as those used in the 2017 and 2019 Switch revisions, as well as the Switch Lite handheld-only system. In 2019, two years after the Switch's launch, Nintendo addressed the JoyCon drift controversy by offering to repair affected controllers for free.

Read Also: Switch OLED specs compared: New model vs Lite vs 2017 launch Switch

UPDATE:Activision-Blizzard has settled the lawsuit and has agreed to pay $18 million in an escrow account for anyone who was discriminated against. See the filing here.

Establishing a Settlement Fund and General Provisions

1. Defendants will provide a total fund of $18,000,000 to be available to Eligible Claimants to resolve this Action. Within thirty (30) calendar days of the Effective Date, Defendants will cause that sum to be deposited into the Settlement Fund and provide the EEOC with written verification of that funding within seven (7) calendar days of deposit.

Anyone with a PC or an Xbox can play this weekend's Halo Infinite technical preview.

343i has announced that the second Halo Infinite technical preview multiplayer test from October 1 - October 3 will not require Halo Insider sign ups. Anyone will be able to participate in the test regardless if they're a Halo Insider or not. All you need to do is download the Xbox Insider app on PC or Xbox.

This weekend's test will include both 4v4 social arena and crazy 12v12 big team battle gametypes, complete with slayer, capture the flag, and zone capture modes. You don't want to miss this one. It'll be full of absolutely carnage on all platforms, especially now that players are finding creative ways to abuse the grapple shot and repulsor equipment.

It looks like Horizon Forbidden West will borrow from games like Far Cry 6 by adding skills and other bonuses to outfits.

Aloy's outfits in Horizon Forbidden West have been overhauled to provide more freedom and power to players to min-max specific build types. The armor pieces will now have skills as well as perks attached to them, Guerrilla Games confirms.

"Horizon Forbidden West will have a range of outfits for Aloy to benefit from; similar to and perhaps familiar from the first game, outfits allow for protection against a variety of dangers that Aloy encounters and can be purchased from Merchants or found in the world. A new addition to the system is that outfits in Horizon Forbidden West have skills attached to them, so players can boost their abilities in different ways."

Global entry! We have teamed up with Sabrent to give away some of its awesome Rocket 4 Plus SSDs!

But these aren't just any standard SSDs, these SSDs exceed the SSD speeds of 5500MB/s required for the PlayStation 5 as set by Sony. In fact, with its TLC NAND flash and PCIe Gen 4 technology, they are capable of 7000MB/s read and 6600MB/s write - well exceeding the requirements set by Sony for the PS5.

The winners won't only get an awesome new Rocket 4 Plus SSD, they will also receive Sabrent's PS5 heat sink. A specifically designed heat sink by Sabrent which fits perfectly in the PS5 and help keeps your SSD cool and running its best during long gaming sessions. So, if you're looking at expanding your console's storage capacity, you are in luck here. We have three SSD and heat sink combos to giveaway - 1x 1TB + heat sink, 1x 2TB + heat sink, and 1x 4TB + heat sink.

The built-in Microsoft Edge web browser on the Xbox Series S and Series X consoles can now competently run emulators and ROMs.

According to Modern Vintage Gamer, the updated Edge browser on Xbox Series S/X consoles is now a great way to play retro ROMs and emulators without having download the console's Dev Mode app. This means you can run free javascript-based games natively within the browser without any downloads, including old-school MS-DOS games.

Some emulators like N64 js require you to load the ROMs directly and the Edge browser doesn't allow access to console files, so as MVG notes, you'll have to host the files from another website. Games from the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 era seem to run flawlessly without FPS drops and hitches that can be found in other emulators--it's just seamless play without much setup involved.

Horizon Forbidden West will be a big marquee PlayStation 5 game when it launches in February 2022, but the devs promise it'll play and look great on PS4 too.

Aloy's new sequel adventure is a cross-gen game coming to both PS4 and PS5, and the next-gen version will feature high-end optimizations like 4K visuals, ultra-fast loading, and DualSense haptic feedback. To make sure the PS4 version lives up to the hype, Guerrilla is teasing "unexplored resources" to help boost realism on the 7 year-old console.

"We actually developed and tested the game simultaneously on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, because it's very important to us as a studio to ensure PlayStation 4 players get an equally immersive experience," lead character artist Bastien Ramisse said in a PlayStation Blog post.

Intel's new Alder Lake CPU is about to launch, where it's currently looking to launch November 4 -- but Meteor Lake isn't too far off in the distance and now we have some new rumors.

We're to expect Intel's next-gen Meteor Lake CPUs towards 2023, where they will be rumored to rock a VPU. The VPU will take on-die space next to the CPU cores, and will act like the Neural Engine that Apple has in its M1 processor. But now Tom from Moore's Law is Dead is underscoring that Meteor Lake will have a VPU, and that Intel could use it for great effect -- maybe not now, but in the future, definitely.

Tom makes the argument that the VPU inside of Meteor Lake, it could be used to upscale video -- with Tom using an example of bandwidth-throttled situations seeing your Netflix quality going down. If this happens on an Intel-powered system, then the VPU could be used to upscale 1080p to 4K for example, which makes sense.

Researchers currently have two ways of determining the size of a meteor hitting Earth; observing the impact and measuring the size of the crater the meteor leaves behind.

The largest crater that has ever been discovered on Earth is known as the Vredefort Crater, located in South Africa. The meteor that caused the crater, which stretches some 190 miles in diameter, is estimated to be around 6 miles wide. The largest meteor to have entered Earth's atmosphere is called the Chelyabinsk meteor, and it exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk that was home to more than one million people in 2013.

The Chelyabinsk asteroid was just 50 feet in diameter and exploded with a force the same as 440,000 tons of TNT exploding. As meteors enter the atmosphere, they begin to heat up, catch fire and break apart. As Chelyabinsk approached the surface of Earth, it exploded just 18 miles above the surface, damaging more than 7,200 buildings and injuring more than 1,200 people. The government estimated that the repair costs to be around $33 million.

Researchers have claimed that they have identified and isolated cells from a dinosaur that lived 125 million years ago.

The research comes from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature. Researchers have said that they have found organic molecules and fossilized chromatin in the cartilage of Caudipteryx, which was a dinosaur that is believed to be around the size of a peacock. According to the researchers, two types of cells were found; healthy cells and cells that were decaying when the dinosaur was dying.

Additionally, the researchers noted that cells were most likely "exquisitely preserved" by silicon dioxide that was in volcanic ash that covered the dinosaur's body. LI Zhiheng, Associate Professor at IVPP and co-author on the study, explained, "Geological data has accumulated over the years and shown that fossil preservation in the Jehol Biota was exceptional due to fine volcanic ashes that entombed the carcasses and preserved them down to the cellular level."

NASA has released a new image onto the Hubble Twitter account that showcases a spectacular cosmic view of our Milky Way galaxy.

NASA has taken to its official website to explain the absolutely incredible image that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured. The image above is of a globular cluster officially named ESO 520-21, but also goes by the name Palomar 6. A globular cluster is a densely packed collection of ancient stars, and as for Palomar 6, this globular cluster is located close to the center of the Milky Way.

Researchers used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Survey to take this phenomenal image. Looking at the image, you can see that some of the stars have a red hue bleeding out from the X shape that is being made. NASA explains as light travels back to Earth, interstellar absorption influences the wavelengths of light, which can change the colors of astronomical objects, making it difficult for researchers to determine the properties of those objects accurately. Astronomers have dubbed this process "reddening".