Latest News - Page 1373

CD Projekt Group's securities fraud lawsuit is moving forward and the company has received official claims from plaintiff's representation.

CD Projekt Group is getting sued in a class-action lawsuit that alleges securities fraud. Shareholders allege that CD Projekt purposefully withheld Cyberpunk 2077's controversial performance on PS4 and Xbox One, which led to a significant controversy that plummeted stocks. Investor losses from the stock dive are the catalyst for the securities fraud claims.

Now CD Projekt says it has received a copy of the claims made by the plaintiffs. Four securities fraud lawsuits have been filed, but the cases have been combined into one case in order to expediate the process.

Sony has purchased Returnal developer Housemarque and will fold the Helsinki-based studio into its PlayStation Studios banner.

Housemarque is now part of PlayStation Studios and bumps Sony's first-party development talent to 13 teams. The exact purchase price or terms aren't known and Sony didn't reveal exactly how much it paid for Housemarque.

"The day-to-day operations will continue to be run by Housemarque's current management team in conjunction with PlayStation Studios External Development team. Terms of this transaction including the acquisition cost are not disclosed due to contractual commitments."

After a record year of earnings, Sony investors want the company's board of directors to stay exactly the same.

Shareholders recently voted to keep Sony's CEO, CFO and board of directors in power, with Sony Corp. CEO Kenichiro Yoshida receiving 9.8 million votes (98% of voting rights) in favor of him staying on to lead the company.

The motivations are quite clear. Sony set a new high earnings watermark with FY2020's performance, which delivered over $11 billion profits on $84.82 billion revenues. PlayStation revenues hit the highest point in games industry history with $25 billion generated from hardware, software, and network sales. Shareholders also enjoyed a higher EPS of $8.96 per share as of FY20's end.

A new report published on the NASA website reveals the space agency's small helicopter has completed another flight.

According to the post, the helicopter stationed on Mars named Ingenuity has completed its 8th flight and traveled for 78 seconds for a total of 525 feet. The completion of the flight has marked the third flight in the Operations Demonstration Phase of Ingenuity which consists of operators pushing the helicopter to its limits to understand better how aircraft operate on Mars.

NASA operations lead Teddy Tzanetos shared details, saying, "This marks the third flight in the Operations Demonstration Phase of Ingenuity, in which the team will continue to push the flight envelope of the aircraft while learning valuable operational lessons. Up next for the Ingenuity team is to tackle the only remaining flight software update, which will update a large portion of the Ingenuity's navigation-computer software."

While it may look like the astronauts are just rocking out with some awesome low-gravity dance moves, the "dance" actually has significance other than looking groovy.

The latest spacewalk aboard the International Space Station (ISS) happened on June 25 where Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Shane Kimbrough of NASA stepped outside of the ISS to install more solar arrays. The astronauts have installed six new solar arrays in an effort to upgrade the ISS's power station.

Before the spacewalk can commence, the astronauts must perform what is described by Pesquet as the "spacewalk dance". Pesquet then backed up his play-on-words with a more specific explanation of what the "spacewalk dance" is and why it's necessary before a walk is initiated. Here's what he said, "We were not really dancing but purging our bodies of nitrogen. We breathe pure oxygen and slowly all the nitrogen in our bodies is replaced by oxygen, which is safer when going from high pressure (Space Station) to low pressure (spacesuit). Mild exercise makes us breathe more oxygen and gets rid of the nitrogen quicker."

A team of MIT researchers has managed to train a neural network to understand what action a human is performing on a piece of carpet.

The "intelligent carpet" is made out of 9,000 sensors, specially designed pressure-sensitive film, and conductive threads. The researchers specifically didn't include any cameras in the design due to the apparent growing concern for cameras invading privacy. The MIT team then synchronized the visual feed and the electric signal data, and with this synchronization, they then trained a neural network to be able to identify human actions performed on the carpet.

Yunzhu Li, a Ph.D. student a co-author of the paper, suggested that the carpet could be used for "workout purposes" as users could form workout actions on the carpet and then receive information such as calories burned, reps performed, etc. The carpet does have limitations as most of the pressure information provided is sourced from the lower body. Additionally, the researchers want to be able to provide accurate detection for two people using the mat as well as the height and weight of users.

Astronomers believe they have found the largest comet ever, with estimates putting it 1,000 times bigger than a typical comet.

Comets are different from asteroids, as comets have a clear tail that can be seen. Additionally, comets commonly consist of ice, dust, and organic compounds, while asteroids are made of metals and rocky material. Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania found what is believed to be the largest comet ever discovered, measuring in anywhere between 60 and 120 miles in diameter. It should be noted that the typical diameter for a comet is 6 miles.

Bernstein said, "We have the privilege of having discovered perhaps the largest comet ever seen - or at least larger than any well-studied one - and caught it early enough for people to watch it evolve as it approaches and warms up. It has not visited the Solar System in more than 3 million years." Astronomers were able to spot the comet 20 astronomical units away from Earth due to how much sunlight it was reflecting, a testament to its immense size.

SpaceX is moving forward with rolling out its Starlink satellites that are poised to bring internet access to rural areas around the world.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to his Twitter account to announce that Starlink has passed a strategically "important threshold of 69,420", making a clear reference to the internet humor surrounding the numbers "69" and "420". Musk goes on to say in a follow-up tweet that "All 72 orbital planes activate in August, plus many other improvements, enabling global coverage, except for polar regions, which will take another 6 months."

On top of that great information, a Twitter user named Viv asked Musk when airline Wi-Fi would be available with Starlink, Musk replied to the question by saying that there is regulatory approval that needs to be dealt with and that it needs to be "certified for each aircraft type". Musk says that efforts are currently being focused on the "737 & A320, as those serve most number of people, with development testing on Gulfstream."

The world of cryptocurrency has seen better days as of late after China announced its crackdown on the main digital currency, Bitcoin.

China announced its ban on Bitcoin, and in the following weeks, the value of the Bitcoin steadily dropped for most of May and June. The price dropped all the way down to $30,000 from a high in April of $63,000. Some positive news for the cryptocurrency is coming out of Mexico as the nation's third-richest individual has said that he is currently "working" to get his bank to accept Bitcoin.

The announcement comes from billionaire and cryptocurrency advocate Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who has openly backed Bitcoin and even recommends any investor to have Bitcoin in their portfolio. Salinas personally holds 10% of his liquid portfolio in cryptocurrency, and according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Salinas' net worth has risen $2.8 billion in 2021 to $15.8 billion.

In recent images and videos of Kim Jong-un, it appears the leader has slimmed down, but according to the country's state television, he is "emaciated".

For those that don't know, "emaciated" defines as 'abnormally thin or weak, especially because of illness or a lack of food.' The state television is forbidden to comment on the leader's personal live, which suggests that the comment was pre-planned. If the comment made in a report by KCTV was pre-planned, it would seem that Kim Jong-un has dropped the weight and the comment to show his devotion to his nation that is currently suffering from food shortages on top of an apparent economic struggle.

Here's what a resident of the capital that remained anonymous said in the KCTV report, "Seeing our respected general secretary looking emaciated breaks our people's hearts the most. Everyone is talking about how their tears welled up immediately." It seems that the drop in weight by the leader is an effort to portray that he is just like the struggling people living in the streets of his country, who are, by his own admission, experiencing a "tense" food situation.

A statement on Saturday revealed that Binance has been banned in Britain by the UK regulator watchdog.

The announcement comes from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who stated that Binance was "is not currently permitted to undertake any regulated activities without the prior written consent of the FCA." The FCA didn't exactly state why the exchange has been banned, but Binance Markets Limited has until June 30 to notify the FCA that it will comply with its demands and also notify users in the U.K. of the now imposed restrictions.

However, a Bianace spokesperson stated to CNBC, "The FCA U.K. notice has no direct impact on the services provided on Binance.com ... Our relationship with our users has not changed. We take a collaborative approach in working with regulators, and we take our compliance obligations very seriously. We are actively keeping abreast of changing policies, rules and laws in this new space."

Magic Leap is preparing to launch its second-generation headset, presumably called Magic leap Two, near the end of the year. The company's new CEO has gone on record saying the headset would be smaller, lighter, faster, and cheaper than the outgoing device.

Peggy Jonhson, Magic Leap's new CEO, spoke with Venture Beat recently, and in the interview, she stated multiple times that the next Magic Leap headset would be half the size and 20% lighter than the old headset. The Chief Executive noted that all-day wearability was a goal in the development of the device.

What was once a rumor has now been confirmed: Intel will be adopting HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and will be deploying it with its next-gen Sapphire Rapids CPU.

Intel's upcoming Sapphire Rapids CPUs will be deployed in two variants: one without HBM, and other variants with HBM. The new HBM-powered Sapphire Rapids CPUs are codenamed SPR-HBM, and will not be launching at the same time as the Sapphire Rapids CPUs without HBM.

Intel confirmed the news to AnandTech, where the company said: "Intel has stated to AnandTech that they are committed to making HBM-enabled Sapphire Rapids available to all enterprise customers and server vendors as well. These versions will come out after the main Sapphire Rapids launch, and entertain some interesting configurations. We understand that this means SPR-HBM will be available in a socketed configuration".

Doom Eternal could be coming to raze hell on VR headsets, and it might be a big announcement for Quakecon 2021.

The Australian ratings board just classified a mysterious id Software game with the curious designation 2021B. The same ratings authority listed Doom VFR as 2021A, so speculation insists the game could be Doom Eternal VR. The game is listed as a multi-platform experience and isn't explicitly listed as VR, however.

Nothing's been confirmed at this point. The new project might be more Doom DLC or perhaps a new game. id says they've had plans for more Doom content for a while now.

It seems like Intel has just kicked off the Xe-HPG graphics card marketing campaign, also confirming that it has begun shipping its next-gen DG2 family of GPUs.

The company has started inviting Odyssey Cardholders to register, where they might get their hands-on some Intel Xe-HPG related swag. Intel kicking off its journey and asking for gamers to join the company on its Odyssey, with the company saying they're "heading toward a milestone moment, the pending release of the Xe HPG microarchitecture from Intel".

Intel explains: "Thank you for joining Intel on this Odyssey. We are soon heading toward a milestone moment, the pending release of the Xe HPG microarchitecture from Intel. Some of you received an Odyssey card and were the first to engage with Intel on this journey".

Microsoft is now pushing out its first Windows 11 Preview Build, and with it the company is admitting fault with its "PC Health Check" app and addressing users' concerns with it.

In a new post on its official blog, Microsoft explains: "The intention of today's post is to acknowledge and clarify the confusion caused by our PC Health Check tool, share more details as to why we updated the system requirements for Windows 11 and set the path for how we will learn and adjust".

The post continues: "PC Health Check app was intended to help people check if their current Windows 10 PC could upgrade to Windows 11. Based on the feedback so far, we acknowledge that it was not fully prepared to share the level of detail or accuracy you expected from us on why a Windows 10 PC doesn't meet upgrade requirements".

TEAMGROUP has released its next-gen ELITE DDR5 memory nice and early, with the new DDR5 RAM hitting Amazon and Newegg and selling out virtually instantly.

TEAMGROUP ELITE DDR5-4800 kits debuted on Amazon and Newegg with 32GB on offer, in the form of 2 x 16GB sticks of DDR5-4800 RAM. The 32GB kit of DDR5-4800 costs $310.99 but they sold out instantly -- and even if you got one, you couldn't use it as there are no motherboards you can buy that support DDR5 today.

The new DDR5 RAM will be running at just 1.1V, and will have on-die ECC support PMIC (Power Management IC) which increases efficiency. The DDR5-4800 memory from TEAMGROUP has latencies of CL40-40-40-77 and will require a next-gen Intel Alder Lake-S platform which will debut in October alongside Microsoft's next-gen Windows 11 operating system.

If you're an AdBlock or AdBlock Plus user then you might have noticed something weird going on with your web browsing experience over the last few days.

AdBlock and AdBlock Plus users have had the content of major websites wiped from their web browser, with these sites including the likes of Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia, and others. The company has said that the problem "has already been fixed" without detailing exactly what happened.

It is definitely an interesting "error" to happen, so maybe it was a trial run for something AdBlock has planned for the future. Or maybe it was just one of those niggly bugs, that happens to wipe content from users' web browsers for some of the latest websites on the internet.

Microsoft has followed through with its promises of releasing the first Windows 11 Preview Build for its Insiders on the Dev Channel.

Windows 11 Build 22000.51 is available and while this is the very latest version of Microsoft's operating system, it won't pack all of the new features and functions that Windows 11 will have when it releases officially later this year. But, there are still some great things to play around with inside of Windows 11 Build 22000.51 now that it's out.

Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc of the Windows development team wrote explains: "As we finalize the product over the coming months, we will work with you to validate the experience. You will get to try many, but not all, of the new features we showed last week in this early preview".

Intel has teamed with storage champion Sabrent on a super-fast new NUC 11 Pro, which packs a PCIe 4.0-based NVMe M.2 SSD from Sabrent that pushes 5GB/sec reads.

Inside of the new Intel NUC 11 Pro Mini PC NUC11TNKv7 you'll find an Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor, which offers 4 cores and 8 threads at up to 4.8GHz. There's 16GB of DDR4-3200 SO-DIMM memory, which is upgradeable to 64GB -- while there's integrated graphics on the GPU side of things.

Sabrent has provided their world-leading Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD inside of the new Intel NUC 11 Pro, which is capable of 5GB/sec (5000MB/sec) reads and up to 4.4GB/sec (4400MB/sec) writes. The stock NUC 11 Pro packs a 512GB M.2 SSD based on the SATA III standard -- the TS512GMTS430S -- which offers up to 560MB/sec reads and up to 500MB/sec writes.