Latest News - Page 1371

Sony today announced the director's cut of Ghost of Tsushima, a GOTY bundle that includes DLC as well as next-gen optimizations with a $69.99 next-gen price.

Sony is going all-in on the new $70 premium MSRP for PS5 games. This new price hike doesn't just include new PS5 games, but re-releases that've been enhanced for the new console. Ghost of Tsushima is the latest PlayStation game to get the new price adjustment.

Ghost of Tsushima's new director's cut is coming to PS5 with a bunch of new content and feature upgrades. Sony is justifying the new $70 price tag by adding more value, including a new Iki Island expansion, as well as a slew of next-gen exclusive optimizations like ultra-fast loading (GoT already loaded in a blink of an eye on PS4), haptic feedback on the new DualSense controller, 3D audio via the Tempest engine, new 4K resolution options and 60FPS.

Today the tech wizards at Insomniac Games rolled out a new patch that improves ray traced reflections in Spider-Man Miles Morales on PlayStation 5, but the results aren't super noticeable.

Miles Morales is basically the best-looking game of 2020, and the ray-traced visuals on PS5 ensured the console launched with a bang. The game already looks incredible and the ray tracing effects are superb--there's full reflections in windows, puddles, oceans, etc. Now Insomniac has rolled out a patch to make things look even better in the Performance RT mode, which offers 60FPS gameplay with ray tracing turned on.

Version 1.10 (PS5)

Thanks to a recent acquisition, future Rockstar games like GTA 6 could have facial animations that rival L.A. Noire.

Take-Two Interactive has purchased leading motion capture company Dynamixyz for and undisclosed sum. The buyout will supercharge Take-Two's massive slate of games with ultra-realistic animation technology, including upcoming games like BioShock 4, Grand Theft Auto 6, and annualized NBA 2K sports games.

Dynamixyz's proprietary facial motion capture software is based on machine-​learning technology (both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are capable of ML), and the company has robust hardware and rendering systems with high-end 3D processing. This acquisition will have a direct affect on games development and give Take-Two direct first-hand access to some of the most powerful animation know-how in the entertainment industry.

Like every game that Activision-Blizzard makes, Diablo IV will have microtransactions. Now we have a better idea of how they will work.

Blizzard has already confirmed Diablo IV will have cosmetic microtransactions, and a recent dev update gives us a look at how much work is being done for character appearances. Live games live or die based on two things: engagement, and monetization of said engagement. It's important that a game can pull in players and keep them, but also monetize them over time with in-game items, subscriptions, and expansions--and sometimes all three at once.

Diablo IV is no different in this regard, but it's a big departure from Diablo II and Diablo III--at least the latter Reaper of Souls era of D3 after the Real Money Auction House kerfluffle. An incredible amount of work is being put into Diablo IV's development, and Blizzard is adding a massive new character customization system that you'd typically find in singleplayer RPGs to ensure gamers have plenty of exposure to cosmetics (both in-game and paid).

A non-fungible token (NFT) titled "This Changed Everything" has sold for much less than anticipated when considering its historical value.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a co-inventor of the World Wide Web, has created and sold an NFT for the source code of the World Wide Web. The auction for the digital artwork was hosted on Sotheby's and shows a time-stamped file of the 9,555 lines of source code on a high-res image. The digital artwork also includes a 30-minute animation of the code being written and a letter from Berners-Lee.

Considering the significance the World Wide Web had on modern-day life and how much of an integral piece of code it is in the history of the internet, the NFT only sold for $5.4 million. While that still is a substantial amount of money, it's not that much compared to digital artist Mike Winkelmann's Beeple, which sold for over $69 million.

Astronomers have announced that they have detected the very first merger of a black hole and a neutron star.

Due to humans not being able to see the merger happen with our naked eyes, a few videos have been published to show the public what happened visually. Firstly, a neutron star is an extremely dense object that is leftover remnants of a star that has gone supernova. As for a black hole, a black hole is also extremely dense, but they are a region of spacetime.

Black holes have such a strong gravitational pull that not a single thing can escape it - not even light. When a black hole consumes a neutron star, it gives off gravitational waves, which Albert Einstein discovered in 1916. In 2015, researchers in the United States identified the first gravitational waves using the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory when two black holes collided.

What is a white dwarf? Simply put, it's what stars such as our Sun become after they have expelled all of their nuclear energy.

Now, astronomers have located a white dwarf that has seemingly taken the cake for being the smallest yet most massive white dwarf ever observed by astronomers. The study was published in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature, and according to the study's lead author, Ilaria Caiazzo, the Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech, this white dwarf is "packing a mass greater than that of our Sun into a body about the size of our Moon."

This white dwarf, like many other white dwarfs that have been discovered, was once like our Sun. The Sun will swell into what is called Red Giant in 5 billion years, and from there, it will begin to reduce in size and eventually compact down into a white dwarf. Phys.org reports that 97% of all stars become white dwarfs.

New reports are indicating that Spotify is thinking about expanding its business portfolio into ticket sales for events.

According to a report from The Information, Spotify is "considering" expanding its business and that Spotify is thinking about taking a ticket sale route. The Information puts forward the idea that Spotify is interested in using its data to create more avenues of revenue and plans on doing this by helping musicians plan events in places that promoters may not think are viable.

The Information also mentions that Spotify may be looking to take this avenue to show that it is willing to invest in artists' careers. Furthermore, the move would create a feature of interest that other competing music streaming platforms won't have. The Black Keys and Leon Bridges have already appeared in prerecorded virtual concerts by Spotify that the company sold $15 tickets to, which means Spotify has already stepped foot in this area. However, the last point is no verification of Spotify officially making this business shift.

New evidence supporting the theory that Mars once had conditions to support life has been published in a study.

An international team of researchers has published a new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, and according to the paper, the team of researchers found evidence of glauconitic-like clay on Mars. While it may seem boring to everyday people, the discovery of clay is quite a big deal. Glauconite, an iron potassium phyllosilicate mineral, can only form in stable conditions over thousands of years.

Through their analysis, the researchers also found that the temperatures of Mars when the clay formed were between -3 (26 F) to 15 degrees Celsius (59 F). Additionally, the analysis revealed that the pH levels in the water that is believed to be in the Gale Crater were neutral. While all of this evidence points towards the right conditions for Mars to support life billions of years ago, it remains unclear how long that life would have lasted over time. Given that life was even there in the first place.

Right now, Hubble is fighting for its life as NASA engineers are working around the clock to bring the famous space telescope back online.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990. Since then, it has been at the forefront of space imagery, providing researchers and everyday people with incredible pictures of the cosmos. According to NASA, Hubble is still one of the space agency's most important missions and, from the scientific community's perspective, "the most powerful telescope available" despite its age.

Now, NASA is attempting to figure out the glitch that has taken the space telescope offline. So far, NASA has attempted to bring it back online four times - each attempt being a failure. If the problem cannot be solved, Hubble should be able to switch to its backup computer. However, if the switch to its backup computer happens, more problems could present themselves since the space telescope hasn't been serviced since 2009. Below you will find just some of the incredible images Hubble has snapped of the cosmos.

New reports are indicating that a George Soros investment firm has been given the thumbs up to begin trading cryptocurrencies.

People close to the matter spoke to author Michael Bodley regarding Dawn Fitzpatrick, the chief investment officer for Soros Fund Management, a private investment firm founded by George Soros. The sources said that Fitzpatrick has given the go-ahead for the firm to begin trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The sources decided to remain anonymous but revealed that the trading has occurred in the last few weeks.

Additionally, the sources claimed that Fitzpatrick and her team have been investigating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets for a prolonged period of time and that this latest venture is much more than just testing the waters with digital assets. The adoption by Soros, if it is true, maybe a good thing for the price of Bitcoin, but it also could be very bad, as Soros is famous for shorting the British pound in 1992 where he earned $1 billion profit in a single day, making him his reputation we know today by assisting the in breaking of the Bank of England.

Sir Richard Branson is making big moves with his company Virgin Orbit as the company has performed its second successful satellite test.

According to Virgin Orbit's CEO Dan Hart, the company has successfully completed its second satellite mission for 2021 this past Wednesday. Hart has said that the company is now ready to begin "ramping up" and expanding its operations to a global scale. Here's what Hart said, "We're on a really good trajectory to have another flight this year, and then double that cadence and have six flights next year and then increase from there."

For those that don't know, Virgin Orbit is taking a different approach to rocket launches, as it launches its rockets on the back of a modified 747 aircraft named "Cosmic Gift" instead of from the ground like many of its competitors. Branson has said that the company's approach to rocket launches is "completely and utterly unique". Currently, Virgin Orbit is working on getting agreements in place to fly out/in from. Hart also revealed, "We can turn any airport into a spaceport".

The global VR headset market is starting to heat up a little bit. Recently, a Russian state corporation called Roscosmos revealed a high-end VR headset with specs that would rival the best on the market.

According to Holographic.space, a Russian tech news website, Roscosmos announced its plans to make a VR headset in February. In June, the company brought its first prototype to the Startup Village conference in Skolkovo, Russia. It also announced its plans for a second device.

The first headset, the Roscosmos XR-1, is intended as a test platform for Roscosmos' technology. The headset's specifications include dual 1440x1444 displays that operate at 90Hz or 120Hz with a 105-degree FoV.

It looks like NVIDIA is preparing to add a new mode to DLSS with the rumored Ultra Quality mode for DLSS 2.2.9.0 spotted in some Unreal Engine 5 documentation.

The reference to DLSS and its new Ultra Quality mode was spotted by a Redditor, and would offer improved image quality over the Quality mode that DLSS offers right now. AMD just launched its new FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) with an Ultra Quality mode, so NVIDIA seems to be responding to that with its own Ultra Quality mode.

AMD and its in-house FSR technology will scale the resolution by 1.3x under the Ultra Quality mode, compared to 1.5x with Quality -- the same 1.5x scaling that NVIDIA DLSS does with its Quality mode. NVIDIA's new Ultra Quality mode for DLSS will offer the highest image quality possible, better than the native resolution of your monitor -- but with more performance.

SpaceX will have its ambitious Starlink satellite internet service available globally in August 2021, just over a month from now -- globally, apart from the North and South Poles.

The news comes from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who said during the recent virtual Mobile World Congress 2021 that Starlink is "operational now in about 12 countries, and more are being added every month". Musk added: "We are on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12 months".

Elon has to of course comment on the simultaneous active users on Starlink exceeding the "strategically important" threshold of 69,420 on June 25, 2021. In some follow up tweets, Musk added that all 72 orbital planes activate in August, "plus many other improvements" that will be "enabling global coverage, except for polar regions, which will take another 6 months".

I was just uploading some photos from an article I just finished writing: using 4 x 4TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs in an ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Card V2 for some Chia crypto coin mining... when I posted the photos to Twitter, came back 1-2 minutes later and my feed was dead.

Twitter itself was fine, but checking profiles of my friends, companies, and everything in between turns up with "Something went wrong. Try reloading". I tried refreshing the page multiple times, not just the official TweakTown Twitter, but as I said multiple friends, companies, and other Twitter pages are all showing the same issue.

Down Detector reports that there was a huge uptick in people having issues loading Twitter in the last 15 minutes or so, and even when I Google searched "Twitter down" for this article, there was no news on it at the time of writing.

Xiaomi has just revealed its latest Mi Notebook Pro X laptop which is rolling out with NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Laptop GPU and a beautiful new 3.5K OLED display.

The new Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X 15 laptop rolls out with a 15-inch 16:10 OLED panel and native 3452 x 2160 resolution display. The 3.5K OLED display has a refresh rate of just 60Hz but this isn't a bleeding edge gaming laptop with a super-fast 120Hz refresh rate display.

Inside, Xiaomi is using Intel's new 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPU with the base Core i5-11300H which boosts at up to 4.4GHz through to the new Core i7-11370H that boosts at up to 4.8GHz. GPU wise you've got the option between NVIDIA's GeForce RTX RTX 3050 Laptop GPU or GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU.

Robinhood has been ordered to pay $70 million in penalties over their outages, as well as misleading communication and dodgy trading practices.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a self-regulatory organization that oversees brokerage firms and their registered representatives -- slapped Robinhood with a $70 million fine. This is split between a $57 million fine and $13 million in restitution to thousands of customers.

FIRNA explained: "FINRA considered the widespread and significant harm suffered by customers, including millions of customers who received false or misleading information from the firm, millions of customers affected by the firm's systems outages in March 2020, and thousands of customers the firm approved to trade options even when it was not appropriate for the customers to do so".

Apple debuted its new 2021 iPad Pro 12.9-inch with a beautiful new Mini-LED display, but rumor has it the new 2022 iPad Air and 2023 iPad Pro will reportedly use an OLED display -- and at up to the super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

According to the next-gen 2022 iPad Air (also known as the iPad Air 5) and it will reportedly feature a 10.8-inch rigid OLED display, while the new 2023 iPad Pro will shift from the mini-LED display inside of the just-released 2021 iPad Pro 12.9-inch to a higher-end OLED display.

The Elec is reporting that Apple will be rolling out new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPads with flexible OLED technology, with Apple reportedly moving over to LTPO OLED displays on the 2023 iPad Pro with 120Hz refresh rates on offer. The refresh rate will dynamically change depending on what is happening on screen, which will provide the best of both worlds: out of this world image quality, super-smooth refresh rate and kick ass battery life.

COLORFUL's new uber-premium iGame GeForce RTX 3090 KUDAN was unleashed into the world recently, with the first samples of the most prestigious RTX 3090 yet going out to reviewers.

The new COLORFUL iGame RTX 3090 KUDAN sells for at least $5000 in China, with just 1000 made it will be a very exclusive run. Well, the card itself is beautiful -- CNC machined aluminum shroud with black/silver aesthetics and a huge triple-slot, triple-fan cooler that should keep the RTX 3090 KUDAN as cool as possible.

There's a hybrid cooling design used here with a 240mm radiator, which COLORFUL includes a pump and hard-sleeved tubes that are plugged into the inlet/outlet on the card. You can move the tube ports when you're installing the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3090 KUDAN graphics card into your system.