Latest News - Page 1361

Japan has just set a new world record for the fastest internet speed, absolutely obliterating the previous record by nearly double.

According to a paper presented at the International Conference on Optical Fiber Communications in June 2021, Japan has successfully managed to hit a data transmission rate of 319 Terabits per second (Tb/s) on a line of fiber optic cables that are more than 1,864 miles in length.

It is no understatement to say that data transfer speed is absolutely insane when you consider that the previous record set in 2020 was 178 Tb/s, and the previous record before that was 44.2 Tb/s. For reference, NASA uses a speed of 400 Gb/s, which is tiny compared to what engineers are pushing in Japan.

What is the future of Netflix? And how will the company retain its viewer-base with so many new streaming platforms popping up?

Netflix is looking ahead and thinking of new ways to keep customers on its platform, and now we have an idea of where the company is heading. Netflix has confirmed to IGN that it has hired ex-EA and Facebook executive Mark Verdu to lead its new game development department. Verdu was previously in charge of bringing new games and developers over to the Oculus VR at Facebook. At EA, Verdu oversaw mobile games such as SimCity, Plants vs. Zombies 2, and more.

At the moment, there has been no official word from Netflix on what the new game development department will be creating, or how the company plans on distributing the games on its platform. It isn't clear if Netflix plans on developing its own in-house games, or plans to license games from third-parties that can then be played by subscribers to its platform.

A Florida man felt he was being harassed by a drone near his property and decided to take the matter into his own hands by shooting the drone down.

Wendell Goney, 50, took aim and shot his .22-caliber rifle at a drone that was owned by Lake County Sheriff's Office located in Mount Dora, Florida. According to a report from Orlando Sentinel, Goney believed that the drone was attempting to harass him, so he shot it down and watched as it slammed into a nearby structure before catching on fire.

Sentinel reports that the drone wasn't there to harass Goney but was actually investigating an area that recently experienced a burglary. It should be noted that Goney has run into law enforcement as he was convicted of aggravated assault against an officer back in 2013. Now, Goney faces a slew of new charges, such as possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and criminal mischief. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called a lawyer representing Tesla shareholders that he was a "bad human" and that some of his questions were "tricky and deceptive."

Musk appeared on trial to defend Tesla's acquisition of SolarCity in 2016, a solar power company that was founded by Musk's cousins, which later became Tesla's solar power division, Tesla Energy. Tesla shareholders filed a lawsuit against Musk in 2017, claiming that Musk had pressured Tesla board members to effectively bail out SolarCity in a $2.6 billion deal. Reuters reports that at the time, Musk held a 22% stake in the firm.

According to CNBC, Musk has denied that he benefited from the deal, saying, "Since it was a stock-for-stock transaction and I owned almost exactly the same percentage of both, there was no financial gain." During the court session, Musk frustrated opposing attorney Randall Baron who said to Musk that he was holding up the trial by giving long responses to his questions. Musk replied by saying, "I think you are a bad human being", to which Baron asked Musk if he was being "derisive".

Ransomware has become a big deal with the recent attack on the US by a Russian-linked hacking group that was carried out on July 4.

Atlas VPN, a free VPN app, has posted an update to its blog where it states that with data it has acquired, "31% of businesses in the US are forced to close down as a consequence of falling victim to ransomware attacks." For those that don't know, ransomware is a form of malware where an individual threatens to publish personal data of a victim that is then forced into paying the individual, either for access to the data or for it not to be published.

Atlas VPN states that the data provided here has been sourced from Cybereason, who surveyed 1,263 cybersecurity professionals in April 2021. Of those 1,263 cybersecurity professionals, it was found that companies between 500+ employees were most likely to fall victim to ransomware (30%), followed by companies with 250-500 employees (23%), "100-249 employees (25%), 50-99 employees (11%), 10-49 employees (10%), and fewer than 10 people (1%)."

SoftBank Robotics created Pepper, a humanoid robot, with the aim of it being used as a friendly face for the elderly, and used across public places like train stations, shopping centers, airports, and more.

But the humanoid robot keeps getting fired from its job, with production on the robot now stopping and only being made-to-order by SoftBank. The company made 27,000 units with Pepper priced at $1790, but with multiple small, and big companies buying the humanoid robot and having it fail -- being fired from its jobs.

Plastics manufacturer, Nissei Eco Co., which also has a funeral business, hired the child-sized robot and then dressed it in Buddhist clergy robes. The company programmed the humanoid robot to chant scriptures, which if it worked, would've been a tech-infused-with-religion approach -- but it didn't, and the company ended its lease with Pepper and sent it back to SoftBank Robotics.

Samsung's next-gen Exynos 2200 mobile processor is in the works, and according to the latest leaks, we're to expect the next-gen SoC to use AMD's next-gen codename Voyager GPU based on the RDNA 2 architecture.

The new rumor is that Samsung's next-gen Pamir SoC will be built on the new 4nm process, with the GPU side of things in the form of the Voyager GPU built with Samsung and AMD working together on the mobile GPU based on the RDNA 2 architecture.

We're to expect Samsung's next-gen SoC with the mobile RDNA 2 architecture to debut in early 2021, which will compete against Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 895 which is expected to use the ARM-based Adreno 730 GPU, and also made on 4nm node from Samsung.

Sabrent is nearly ready to unleash its insanely huge and equally as insanely fast Rocket 4 Plus Destrroyer SSD into the world, which will wink all other SSD battleships -- with 32TB of PCIe 4.0 storage offering a bandwidth-explosive 28GB/sec.

Yeah, that's 28GB/sec (or 28,000MB/sec) run by our own in-house Storage God, Jon Coulter, who has hands-on with Sabrent's wicked-fast Rocket 4 Plus Destroyer SSD. What we have here are 8 x Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSDs on Highpoint's new FnL AIC NVMe RAID card.

Each Sabrent 4TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD costs $1000, so 8 of them on-board the Rocket 4 Plus Destroyer means $8000 in SSDs and an even $10,000 or so I'd say with the Highpoint FnL AIC NVMe RAID card... but you're getting 32TB of storage at up to 28GB/sec... damn.

You might not be able to buy a GPU right now, but that doesn't stop some retailers from selling them -- even the non-LHR models -- to crypto miners.

Vietnamese retailers have secured themselves some ultra-rare ASUS ROG Strix GUNDUM GeForce RTX 3080 graphic cards, but the non-LHR (Lite Hash Rate) models so they're not crypto mining gimped. This means they're highly sought-after mining GPUs but get this, they cost $2300 each.

VideoCardz made a point here in their article by writing "This probably wouldn't be newsworthy if not for the fact that the ASUS ultra-rare GUNDAM series were used for those rigs" and they're right. I would've written about it anyway because I like to cover as much as I can in the GPU and crypto mining worlds -- but these are ultra-rare, ultra-expensive, super-hard-to-get GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards... and they're being used for crypto mining.

Razer has just announced some big upgrades to their Blade 17 and Blade 15 gaming laptops, packing Intel's new 11th Gen Core H-series processors, and more.

You can now configure the new Razer Blade 17 gaming laptop with a flagship Core i9-11900H processor, offering up 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 4.9GHz -- joined by NVIDIA's flagship laptop GPU in the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU.

You can of course configure the Razer Blade 15 and Blade 17 gaming laptops with two PCIe 4.0 SSDs -- that I would highly recommend, for ultra-fast transfer speeds and load times. You've got kick-ass THX Spatial Audio here, but I would suggest buying the Razer Nari Ultimate wireless headphones (with haptic feedback + THX Spatial Audio).

Elon Musk is a big gamer and seems interested in the gaming chair market, at least with sharing memes about comparisons between toddler car seats and gaming chairs.

The meme shared by Musk had the attention of Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan almost instantly, within minutes the Razer CEO and fellow gamer and enthusiast said "maybe we should make a toddler car seat too?". Funnily enough, I mentioned noblechairs in my post, which was up and online minutes after Elon's tweet.

In my post, I mentioned the noblechairs Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team - 2021 Edition gaming chair, and then a mockup of a noblechairs x Tesla gaming chair was tweeted to Elon. Man, it looks so good -- so good, that noblechairs themselves replied, tweeting "What an EPIC look!" adding that a Tesla gaming chair is "certainly doable".

Diablo II Resurrected is shipping with a bunch of quality of life improvements to make things a lot better for die-hard players, especially those that want to collect, trade, and make progress in their Holy Grail.

Storage space has always been an issue in Diablo II, and the best mods offer practically infinite stash tabs to ensure you simply never run out of room for all the uniques, gems, charms, and whatever else you find.

While Diablo II Resurrected won't offer infinite stash space, it will offer a lot more than Lord of Destruction--four times the storage, to be exact. Vicarious Visions confirms that D2R's new shared stash will have 3 pages with 300 slots for your best findings. That's 400 slots total including your personal stash.

Black Ops Cold War's new Season 4 Reloaded update will include high-resolution multiplayer texture packs on PlayStation 5.

Treyarch plans to release a big 30GB pack with high-res 4K textures for Black Ops Cold War's multiplayer modes. The packs will be split up into three parts: multiplayer (17.7GB), zombies (8GB), and Dead Ops (3.76GB). The devs have confirmed the packs on their official Trello roadmap board and the game's official patch notes.

"And on PlayStation 5, players will be prompted to download new High Resolution Texture Packs at the start of Season Four Reloaded for the best visual experience going forward. These will no longer be installed by default on PlayStation 5 and will need to be downloaded manually for Multiplayer, Zombies, and Dead Ops Arcade 3. If you skip the download upon boot-up, these packs will be available for later download via the in-game Store," Treyarch says.

Following controversy, revenue woes, and internal restructuring, Crysis and Cryengine games developer Crytek might be looking to sell itself to the highest bidder.

Crytek is reportedly in discussions with third parties on a possible acquisition sale. According to German website Bild, Tencent has made an offer of 300 million euros for Crytek. However many have questioned the source's veracity due to its tabloid-style reporting.

The reality is that Crytek has been looking into possible buyout deals for a bit now, industry sources like Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad say. Over the years, Crytek has closed all but three branches due to restructuring and revenue losses--its headquarters in Coburg, Germany, and two subsidiaries in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Battlefield 2042's chaotic 128-player multiplayer (64v64) might be skipping last-gen consoles, but major innovations like map-smashing weather effects will still be available on PS4 and Xbox One.

Today DICE revealed a bunch of new info about what last-gen players can expect from Battlefield 2042. Apart from next-gen graphics, fast loading times, and haptics, and map/player size, the experiences apparently won't be dramatically different--at least content-wise. We won't know how the performance of each system differs until release time.

DICE says the last-gen flavor of Battlefield 2042 will still have the crazy world-breaking storms and weather, which includes EMP storms, massive dust storms, and tornadoes. The devs say that map sizes have been reduced to accommodate the 32v32 player cap on PS4 and Xbox One.

Halo Infinite will borrow one of Apex Legends' most useful features for team play.

343i is updating the Halo franchise with modern FPS features including a ping system. According to a 343i spotlight post, Halo Infinite will utilize ping similar to Apex Legends for team communication. This will allow gamers to instantly and easily relay visual on-screen information without having to type or voice chat via a waypoint. Users can mark a specific location like a weapon, vehicle, sniper roost, or even chokepoint to add more tactical strategy to Infinite's multiplayer.

Oddly enough 343i hasn't really mentioned this feature before. This is definitely something that changes the playing field. Halo does have on-screen indicators including where teammates died, if a bomb has been armed or your flag has been stolen, but this is a new level of interaction.

DICE confirms Battlefield 2042's cross-play is separated across console generations and PC.

Battlefield 2042 will not support cross-gen cross-play at launch, DICE has confirmed. The game's cross-platform multiplayer won't allow PS4 or Xbox One players to play with PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or PC players.

The reason is quite simple: Last-gen only supports 32v32 multiplayer with maps with reduced sizes. Next-gen consoles and PC support the chaotic 128-player (64v64) action in Battlefield 2042's All Out Warfare modes (Hazard Zone and Conquest). DICE says that PC and console players can both avoid playing against one another.

Cardano (ADA) is getting more attention from both retail and institutional investors, according to a report from NewsBTC.

The report states that retail and institutional investors are becoming more attracted to cryptocurrency due to its energy footprint. Since ADA is a proof of stake blockchain, it requires much less energy to run, unlike other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Tesla recently stopped accepting Bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles, citing the energy costs of mining Bitcoin.

NewBTC states that ADA has attracted more than $24 million in investments from institutions and that the coin is one of the leading cryptocurrencies to get the attention of investment funds that are willing to open to their wallets. At the moment, 70% of the entire ADA supply is currently being staked, and the price of the coin is sitting at around $1.20. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

A cluster of bright lights has been spotted on a live stream from the International Space Station (ISS), sparking a viral discussion on whether or not they are UFOs or not.

Reddit user tyrannosnorlax posted on the r/UFOs subreddit asking the community what was spotted during the ISS livestream. The Reddit user then goes on to update the post with more information regarding plausible explanations for the mysterious lights, suggesting that they were city lights. However, that isn't the most likely explanation for the lights, as observing city lights from space looks like this.

Tyrannosnorlax returned to the post for a final update, saying that the lights weren't UFOs but are most likely squid fishing lights. As explained on the NASA Earth Observatory website, fishermen that are hunting for squid use bright lights to lure the squid in, and the color of these lights can vary in color. When observed from the ISS, these fishermen appear in clusters, as seen in the below image.

An individual has filmed a woman duct-taped to a an American Airlines plane seat after reportedly having a mental breakdown mid-flight.

TikTok user @lol.ariee was aboard American Airlines Flight 1774 that was heading to Charlotte, North Carolina, from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, when a woman on-board flight began to cause a commotion. @lol.ariee explained in a follow-up video that all flight attendants were running up and down the aisles but weren't telling anyone what the problem was. The pilot of the plane then informed everyone that there was "a bad situation on the plane".

@lol.ariee continued and said that a flight attendant eventually told passengers that a woman was experiencing a mental breakdown and "had an outburst". This "outburst" was an attempt to get off the plane as she was saying, "She was saying, 'I need to get off this plane,' and she went up to the exits and started banging on the doors, saying, 'You need to let me off this plane!'" @lol.ariee said.