Latest News - Page 1352

Intel will be launching its new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs in October 2021, just a few months away from now -- and we now know that they should be retaining that old faithful 24-in power connector.

The reason? Well, motherboard makers don't want to adopt the new ATX12VO standard that Intel was pushing a few months ago, but motherboard makers don't want to use it on the upcoming 600-series motherboards. Not even the new flagship Z690 chipset and its custom motherboards will have the new ATX12VO standard, we're sticking with 24-pin power connectors for a little while longer yet.

It was actually kind of expected that Intel would push the new ATX12VO standard with their new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" platform... but it seems they won't. It would've been nice, as we'd shift away from the bulky 24-pin connector to a much, much smaller 10-pin connector. This would be akin to the big change to the 12-pin connector on NVIDIA's new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition graphics cards.

Dell's brand new Aurora R10 and R12 desktop gaming PCs can't be sold to 59 million+ Americans... the reason? New power regulations in multiple US states prohibits the sale of these PCs -- meaning Dell can't ship them to you.

The reason why Dell can't ship these new Alienware Aurora R10/R12 desktop PCs is "due to power consumption regulations". California's new Energy Consumption Tier 2 began on July 1, 2021 and is much tighter on power regulations... almost too strong.

This means you can't buy a new Alienware Aurora R10/R12 desktop PC if you're in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington. Across those US states, are 59 million+ Americans that are barred from gaming on a new high-end Alienware PC.

Microsoft confirms that Game Pass subscribers are not only playing more games, but spending more too--a trend that's been established since the service debuted over 4 years ago.

The Game Pass subscription has transformed Microsoft's games business. The service is so powerful that it's sent shockwaves through the entire industry, so much that many major publishers like EA and Ubisoft are mimicking it. Since Game Pass has launched in 2017, Microsoft has seen consistent revenue growth and the service has become one of the must-have subscriptions in the world's most lucrative entertainment industry.

How is Game Pass doing today? Better than ever. In a recent earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms that Game Pass subscribers are spending more time and money on games versus non-subscribers.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms that demand for the next-gen Xbox Series X and S consoles has been higher than any other generation.

The new Xbox Series X/S consoles are the fastest-selling hardware in the history of Microsoft's games division. "Xbox Series S and X are our fastest-selling consoles ever, with more consoles sold life-to-date than any previous generation," Nadella said during a recent Q4 FY2021 earnings call. The CEO also confirms Microsoft is "all in on gaming."

Xbox gaming just reported a record $15 billion in revenues throughout FY2021, beating its previous record yearly revenues by almost $3.8 billion. Microsoft confirms that hardware sales were up 172% throughout FY21 driven by the Series X/S duo.

PAX West will require all attendees and exhibitors to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination records or a negative COVID test result.

PAX West, held from September 3-6 in Seattle, Washington, will have strict health guidelines for everyone at the event. Today organizing company ReedPop delivered a statement confirming workers, attendees, and exhibitors will have to be vaccinated for COVID-19 or negative for the virus in order to get in.

"We are pleased to announce that, in line with the recommendations of state and local public health authorities, we will be implementing a vaccination or negative COVID-19 test requirement for everyone at PAX West.

Activision shares dropped to the lowest point in the last 6 months amid recent abuse allegations, en masse employee pushback, stalled development, and news of worker strikes.

Activision-Blizzard shares dropped over 8% today as developers prepare to strike in protest against the company's abuse allegations. The games giant, who generated $8.3 billion last year, is facing a scathing lawsuit that alleges multiple instances of harassment, abuse, and discrimination of female employees.

Company executives have since responded internally to the claims, which over 2,000 employees called "insulting and abhorrent" in a recent petition.

Today Microsoft announced its FY2021 figures, showing record growth in its video games business.

Microsoft has enjoyed consistent year-over-year growth since it transformed Xbox from a console into a cross-platform service ecosystem. From the introduction of its industry-defining Xbox Game Pass service in FY2017, Microsoft has seen its Xbox segment take off not unlike its new Flight Simulator game.

This year marks the biggest spike in games revenue earnings. Throughout FY2021, Microsoft generated over $15 billion in earnings from Xbox (+37.2% year-over-year), including game and hardware sales, digital services, microtransactions, and multi-generation hardware.

After tons of requests from fans, Ubisoft is finally adding in one-handed swords to Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

AC Valhalla had a ton of weapons at launch: Two-handed claymores, spears, axes, and you could even equip two shields at once. The arsenal was missing something big, though: One-handed swords. Including new weapons isn't an easy task and takes lots of work from developers, who have to make textures, animations, and other effects for each individual blade. But months after release, single longswords are being added with the new Sigrblot Festival update.

Valhalla's latest v1.3.0 update adds a bunch of new features including one-handed swords and a level-scaling system. The NPC scaling options will hopefully add more challenge and variety to combat, and have four difficulties:

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has said to NASA's administrator that his company will waiver $2 billion in payments from NASA.

According to an open letter sent to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has said that his company is willing to waiver $2 billion in payments from NASA for this financial year and the next two in return for a fixed price contract for the construction of a lunar lander. This offer from Bezos is a hail-mary attempt to get a reversal on NASA's decision to award a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

The letter reads, "This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments". Adding, "This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up." Blue Origin feels as if it was cut out from being an option for the $2.9 billion contract that was given to SpaceX and that NASA moved the goalposts at the last minute, according to a Blue Origin spokesperson that spoke to Engadget.

NASA has announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has located one of the biggest signs of life on a distant moon in our solar system.

NASA has announced via its website that the Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of one of Jupiter's moons. The moon is named Ganymede, and according to NASA, a team of scientists re-examined archived data on the moon and found that observations made back in 1998 weren't matching what scientists were expecting.

After examining all of the data, researchers found that when it reaches noon on Ganymede, the moon's ice surface becomes so "sufficiently warm that the ice surface releases (or sublimates) some small amounts of water molecules. In fact, the perceived differences in the UV images are directly correlated with where water would be expected in the moon's atmosphere", per NASA.

Yesterday, reports surfaced about Amazon offering cryptocurrency payments to shoppers on its platform, and now Amazon has officially commented.

To give some context, on Jul 22, Amazon posted a job listing for a digital currency and blockchain product lead, leading people to believe that Amazon was in the midst of exploring the cryptocurrency space. Four days after the listing was posted, London's City A.M newspaper published a story that claimed an insider informed the newspaper that Amazon was "definitely" going to support Bitcoin payments and that it will launch a native token.

As you can probably imagine, the news caused the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket, gaining around 15% in less than three hours, per Wu Blockchain. Now, an Amazon spokesperson has told Reuters that the company isn't planning on accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment by the end of the year and that the "speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true."

NASA's Martian helicopter has taken my flights during its time of the Red Planet, but how far has it traveled in total?

According to a post from the NASA JPL Twitter account, NASA's Mars helicopter named Ingenuity recently completed a flight that pushed its total distance traveled to the 1-mile mark. The flight that pushed Ingenuity to the new milestone was over an area called "Raised Ridges," and according to NASA, it's the most complex flight for the small helicopter yet.

Additionally, NASA says in the post that this flight to Raised Ridges will feature ten distinct waypoints and also a record altitude for Ingenuity at 40 feet. The goal of Ingenuity checking out Raised Ridges was to provide NASA with enough images of the terrain so the space agency can decide if the area is worth a visit from the Perseverance rover. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Drones have fast become one of the newest forms of surveillance and weapons for military personnel.

Naturally, when a weapon is developed, defense against the weapon is developed as well. Introducing, HELMA-P, a new turret system that uses lasers to knock drones out of the sky. HELMA-P stands for High Energy Laser for Multiple Applications - Power, and as noted by Interesting Engineering, it resembles a one-eyed WALL-E.

However, I don't believe its intentions are as pure or kind-hearted as WALL-E's as HEMLA-P is designed to take out drones with its lasers. HEMLA-P is equipped with optical sensors that give it the ability to track drones mid-air, and two-kilowatt lasers that are designed to destroy them. During its testing, HELMA-P successfully shot down 37 drones with 100% accuracy. The new system was developed by two French companies, CILAS, and Ariane Group.

If you live in an area with heavy rainfall and the chance of flooding, it may be time to consider buying a Tesla, at least according to these videos.

It should be noted that none of the Tesla electric vehicles have an official "boat mode", but that doesn't mean that the cars can't drive when surrounded by water. A video released by Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley shows a Tesla owner in China driving through a body of water where the water on the road comes up to the windshield of the car.

This isn't the first time a Tesla owner has challenged the waters in the area, as another Tesla driver tested his luck in a flooded area that had water levels coming up over the back tires. Tesla vehicles are designed to be waterproof (to a degree), which makes sense when you consider that all of the company's vehicles are electric. Perhaps the idea of driving them through water came from a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said, the "Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time".

NASA has announced that it will be choosing SpaceX to launch its new alien-hunting mission to a distant moon.

NASA has announced that it awarded SpaceX with a $178 million launch contract for its Europa Clipper satellite mission. The mission will send the Clipper satellite to Jupiter's ice-covered moon named Europa in search of alien life. NASA plans on flying past the distant moon 45 timers, and with each pass, the satellite will observe the moon and relay any data back to Earth.

Originally, NASA planned on using Boeing's Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle for the mission. However, due to scheduling problems, NASA has selected SpaceX to power the mission, and by choosing SpaceX, the space agency will save as much as $1.5 billion in total. SpaceX will be using its Falcon Heavy to launch Europa Clipper in 2024, and it will take six whole years for the satellite to reach the moon. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

An international research project will be exploring the cosmos in search of "extraterrestrial technological civilizations".

The project is called the Galileo Project and is led by Avi Loeb, a Professor of Science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. The objective of the project is to investigate and acquire any evidence of past or still active "extraterrestrial technological civilizations" or ETCs. The multi-institutional team of scientists will analyze data from astronomical surveys and telescope observations of the cosmos.

With the provided data, the research team will then craft new algorithms using artificial intelligence to establish if there is any evidence of interstellar travelers, alien-built satellites, and unidentified aerial phenomena. Loeb said in the statement, "Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. We now must 'dare to look through new telescopes,' both literally and figuratively."

ZOTAC has just released its latest custom graphics card, with the release of the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3080 Ti X-Gaming Naraka Bladepoint Edition.

Naraka Bladepoint is a game that is about to come out, an online game with up to 60 players in a battle royale showdown. It's a Chines game that will be launching globally, with gamers able to play it on both Steam and the Epic Games Store starting on August 12.

ZOTAC teamed with developer 24 Entertainment on the fully custom ZOTAC RTX 3080 Ti X-Gaming Naraka Bladepoint Edition graphics cards, which the design is ripped right out of the game.

Clubhouse was all the rage... if you could get into it -- but it seems that those who did, have now had not just their phone number leaked but the phone numbers of their entire synced contact list.

3,800,000,000+ phone numbers have just leaked onto the Darknet, yeah -- 3.8 billion phone numbers.

The full phone number database of Clubhouse hit the Darknet, up for sale to the highest bidder. This means that even if you didn't join up or use Clubhouse, your phone number is probably included in that list on the Darknet. The reason is that all Clubhouse users' phone contacts were synced into the "secret database" of Clubhouse.

Aftershock PC has just opened up a gigantic new HQ in Melbourne, Australia -- with the Singaporean brand expanding its operations Down Under in a big way... one would say, causing aftershocks in the custom PC making business in Australia.

In a new post on their official Facebook page, Aftershock PC said that their new 40,000 sqft facility will allow them to make some of the most EPIC PCs on Earth. I personally visited the Aftershock PC offices in Melbourne, Australia a few years ago but this new HQ absolutely blows their previous HQ out of the water.

Aftershock PC explains: "Located in the heart of Melbourne, the new 40,000 sqft facility will allow us to produce some of the most EPIC PCs on the planet. As a proud Singaporean company, its been just over 3 years since we've expanded regionally, and our mission to bring our local Singaporean brand and flavor of custom PC building with quality service beyond our shores has been a blast".

Intel is doing some much-needed changes to its node naming scheme, shifting away from its just-introduced 10nm Enhanced SuperFin nomenclature with the introduction of Intel 7.

Intel 7 was previously referred to as Enhanced SuperFin, and will have 10-15% performance-per-watt improvements, FinFET transistor optimizations, and is currently in volume production. The new Intel 7 node will arrive with consumer-focused 12th Gen "Alder Lake" CPUs as well as data center-bound Sapphire Rapids CPUs.

During its Intel Accelerated event, the company kinda confirmed that its next-gen Alder Lake CPUs will have a hybrid design. This means we're looking at 8 high-performance cores (Golden Cove) and 8 efficiency optimized cores (Gracemont). We expect Intel to launch its next-gen 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs with Microsoft's launch of its next-gen Windows 11 operating system... but it looks like Intel will be launching its next-gen CPU on October 27.