Latest News - Page 1374

Microsoft has fully upgraded its Project xCloud game streaming server blades with custom Xbox Series X hardware.

Project xCloud's servers are now powered by custom Xbox Series X boards with Navi GPUs and Zen 2 CPUs. Microsoft also announced that all Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can use the new Xbox streaming service and access a multitude of Game Pass titles across multiple devices. xCloud is using the powerful Azure cloud as its delivery system.

This server upgrade will theoretically allow Microsoft to stream Xbox Series X-level game performance to devices like Windows 10 PCs, Android phones and tablets via the Xbox app, and Apple devices through the browser. Right now the streaming performance is capped at 1080p 60FPS, but the service is still in early phases so expected upgrades. Project xCloud console streaming is coming sometime later in 2021, and when that happens, Xbox One owners will be able to play next-gen Xbox Series X/S exclusives.

Forza Horizon 5 brings a lot of fresh new player-requested content to the series while also flexing the Xbox Series X/S's capabilities.

In a recent Forza stream, Playground Games has great news for die-hard fans: FH5 will let users paint their brake calipers. It seems like a small thing, but it's something that fans have been asking about for a long while. The devs had recently pushed back this customization option due to the sheer amount of work involved (they had to re-model each individual car). But Forza Horizon 5 is the culmination of lots of work across the board including huge new dynamic localized weather systems, new advanced physics optimizations, and a new global illumination shadow system complete with crazy high-res 12k resolution renders.

Playground confirmed the following customization options in the stream:

Battlefield 2042 will have AI bots to ensure '24/7 Battlefield mayhem,' but how many bots will fill the matches? Up to half, EA says.

EA recently confirmed that Battlefield 2042 would use AI bots to help fill out its massive 128-player multiplayer matches. Now the company tells The Verge that up to 64 bots could be included in Conquest and Breakthrough gametypes.

DICE and EA are both prioritizing actual human players, but in the event of lower populations, bots will jump in and fill the open slots. The developers want to ensure that every 128-player match actually has 128 players, whether it be all humans or a mix with AI.

The very first sounds and video footage from China's recently landed Mars rover named Zhurong have been released by the CNSA.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released the first video footage showing the landing of the rover and the opening of its parachute that lowered it safely to the surface of Mars. The landing occurred on May 15, and the Zhurong rover is stationed in the Utopia Planitia. The black and white video features the first sounds recorded, which was an objective of the mission taking place.

The videos also show a wireless camera being used as we can see the Zhurong rover driving away from the camera, making for some quite spectacular footage. According to the CNSA, Zhurong is expected to last for at least 90 days, and so far, it was driven a total of 232 meters collecting information as it goes. The CNSA received the video and sounds from the Zhurong rover through its Tianwen-1 satellite that is orbiting Mars, and in the future, we can no doubt expect more of this awesome footage to be relayed back to Earth.

In the history of the Earth, many comets have struck its surface, and some of those comets have caused absolute devastation.

One object that is probably the most famous for striking Earth is the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, dubbed Chicxulub. Now, researchers have penned a new study that explores if a comet that impacted Earth 13,000 years ago could have changed the fundamental way human civilization operated. The comet that struck Earth was the most second-most catastrophic impact since Chicxulub.

Martin Sweatman, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and his team found that the comet's time of impact correlated with significant changes in human societies. The study pointed towards preceding the Neolithic period, where humans were moving from hunter-gatherer societies to settlements where they developed agriculture, architecture, and the skills to work with stone tools.

Despite the price of Bitcoin plummeting in recent weeks, Mexico's third-richest individual has said that the cryptocurrency is the "new gold".

Ricardo Salinas Pliego is Mexico's third-richest individual and has amassed a net worth of more than $15 billion through several business interests under the conglomerate Group Salinas. Pliego showed his backing for Bitcoin on Twitter, where he confirmed the recommendation to purchase Bitcoin over fiat currencies if an investment is the goal of the buyer.

Pliego responded to Michael Saylor, the CEO for MicroStrategy, where he said, "That's totally right, Bitcoin is the new gold, but too much more portable, transport Bitcoin is so much easier than having your in pockets gold bars ... and i know that I'm going to be attacked by gold lovers". Saylors tweet referenced an interview with Pliego where he states that Bitcoin can outperform the US dollar in wealth preservation. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The second episode of the fifth season of Rick and Morty season five has just dropped, and Adult Swim has already teased the next episode.

The above promotional appears on the Swimpedia YouTube channel and shows acid rain burning Rick and Morty before they rush into the car. We then see Diesel Weasel appear, followed by what appears to be a character reference to Captain Planet. Rick then says, "Yikes, who's the chick in need of a dialogue pass?".

Captain Planet's dialogue and the character's voice also seem to be a reference to late 1980s cartoons, which was around when Captain Planet was released (1990). The next episode of Rick and Morty will air next Sunday at 11:00 pm on Adult Swim. If you like Rick and Morty, you should definitely check out Solar Opposites, which was created by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. More information on Solar Opposites and a trailer can be found here.

Elon Musk has been a center point for the cryptocurrency market for some time now, and after the events of Tesla accepting and then denying Bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles, some people have questioned Musk's motives for being involved in the cryptocurrency market.

One individual who has questioned Musk's motives is CEO Alex Mashinsky, the head of a centralized cryptocurrency lending platform called Celsius. Mashinsky says that Musk isn't helping the cryptocurrency community and suggests that he is manipulating the market by saying that he is a "tourist" that visits and leaves the the land of cryptocurrencies.

Additionally, Mashinsky says that Musk is the one benefiting from accepting Bitcoin as payment for its vehicles and not the person doing the purchasing. Here's what Mashinsky said, "If the richest guy in the world is willing to exchange a Bitcoin for a Tesla, you have to ask yourself, who is getting the good deal? The minute you buy that Tesla, it's worth less than what you paid for it, but Bitcoin is going to continue to increase in value. So that transaction is good for Elon, but it's not good for you."

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) is suffering, and everyone that is involved in the cryptocurrency market has felt its effects.

However, the suffering of BTC's price may come to an end relatively soon, or at least according to Celsius, a centralized cryptocurrency lending platform CEO Alex Mashinsky. The Celsius head has pinned BTC to reach $160,000 before the end of the year, saying to Cointelegraph that "we haven't seen the highs yet for 2021". Additionally, Mashinsky said that in the past, he called that the price of BTC will correct and that this happens when "When you go too high, too fast".

Mashinsky goes on to use a metaphor for the price of BTC, saying that BTC is much like a spring "Bitcoin is like a spring - we stretch it too much and we put too much leverage. Too many people got greedy." Using Mashinsky's metaphor, it seemingly appears the current stage of the market is after the spring has reached the apex of its stretch and has now recoiled back to its normal tension. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will soon be turning 50 (June 28), but what he wants for his birthday is somewhat out of reach.

As you can imagine, having the wealth that Musk has, there isn't much that he couldn't buy for a birthday present to himself. Unfortunately, the thing that Musk desires most for his birthday he won't be able to get, or at least for a couple of weeks. Musk was asked by a Twitter user what he wants for his birthday, and Musk replied simply, "Starship Super Heavy".

Musk seems to be referring to an orbital flight of Starship Super Heavy and not actually having an extremely large rocket being shipped to his address because that would be ridiculous? Right? If he is referring to an orbital flight of Starship Super Heavy, he will have to wait a few more weeks, as SpaceX is aiming for an orbital test for July, according to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. If this is the present Musk is after, it will have to be a belated one, but a fantastic one nonetheless!

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be holding what has been dubbed at "The B Word" summit in the coming weeks, and there will be a special guest appearance.

Dorsey announced the news of "The B Word" summit on his personal Twitter account, where he posted a link to the website that says the summit will be focused around bringing thought-provoking Bitcoin information to the masses. The summit also aims to "demystify and destigmatize mainstream narratives about Bitcoin" and also provide reasons why institutions should embrace as well as bring attention to the parts of the network that require support.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk jokingly replied to the initial tweet by Dorsey with a fantastically lame pun "Bicurious?" to which Dorsey said, "Bizarre! Let's you and I have a conversation at the event. You can share all your curiosities..." Dorsey went on to say that Musk and he should have "THE talk", and Musk agreed. "The B Word" summit will be a live event and commence on July 21. For more information, check out this link here.

Iran has just granted permission for 30 crypto mining farms to operate across the country, while on the other hand clamping down on crypto mining farms.

Iran's Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade has exempted 30 crypto mining farms to operate, issuing them all licenses. The crypto mining farms that were granted permission to crank up their hash power, with 6 licenses in the Semnan province, while Alborz, Mazandaran, East Azarbaijan and Zanjan each receiving 4 licenses. There's only a single crypto mining farm prohibited to operate in the Tehran province.

The country has been fighting power shortages and blackouts, blaming them on crypto mining since 4.5% of all global Bitcoin mining between January and April 2021 place in Iran, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The Iranian government says that 85% of Bitcoin mining in the country is done so illegally, with licensed Bitcoin mining farms shutting down their operations voluntarily last month to lower the pressure on Iran's electricity grid.

You might be struggling to find one of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards, but that doesn't stop the constant flow of custom GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards from being unveiled.

AX Gaming Renegade has just announced two new Ampere GPUs in the form of the AXGaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti X3W, and the new AXGaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti X3B graphics cards.

The AXGaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti X3W has a triple-fan cooler and dual-slot design, almost identical to the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3080 Ti X3 OC dual-slot graphics card that I reviewed not too long ago.

NVIDIA is preparing an even higher-end Ampere GPU beast, with the introduction of the Ampere A100 PCIe accelerator with 80GB of super-fast HBM2e memory.

The GA100 GPU inside of the NVIDIA Ampere A100 PCIe accelerator rocks an incredible 54 billion transistors, on an 826mm die -- with the original A100 offered with 40GB of HBM2e memory, the newly-upgraded A100 rocks double the framebuffer with 80GB of HBM2e memory deployed.

NVIDIA already has an 80GB model of the A100, but that's variant with an SXM connector -- this is the PCIe model, now with 80GB of HBM2e memory. It's not official just yet, but NVIDIA is already referring to the new Ampere A100 PCIe accelerator with 80GB of HBM2e memory -- right on NVIDIA's own Data Center documentation.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is still many years away, so expect headlines and stories for many years to come -- with Battlefield 2042 leaker Tom Henderson providing more details on the next-gen GTA 6.

In his latest video, Henderson talked about the very latest he's heard on GTA 6 and that it won't be released for a few years yet -- 2024-2025 at the earliest. The reason? Grand Theft Auto V and GTA: Online are so damn huge, and especially GTA: Online makes Rockstar Games so much damn money, they would be silly to not keep GTA 6 in the oven for a couple more years.

GTA 6 would be released on next-gen consoles and PC only, with previous-gen consoles missing out and I'm sure that'll have to do with the next-gen graphics the game will have, and the sheer size of the game world itself. GTA 6 will reportedly be a modern GTA title, and the main driving reason behind that is GTA: Online.

Can you feel that? We're getting closer to Intel catching up to where AMD was a few years ago, with Intel's first-ever 7nm CPU not too far away now with Meteor Lake being teased again.

The latest on Intel's new Meteor Lake CPU is from the LGA18xx socket it will use, with @momomo_us sharing a new LGA17xx/18xx CPU socket. Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" and 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs will be using the new LGA1700 socket, while Intel's next-gen 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" will move to the LGA18xx socket.

We heard about the new LGA1800 socket from Igor's Lab not too long ago, with Intel's new CPU socket introducing a new mounting system. We could see Intel not forcing consumers into that rabbit hole, and instead the new LGA1800 socket is for another series of CPU... we just don't know any of it for sure just yet.

WD has just found itself in a dangerous spot: the WD My Book Live NAS is destroying users' data because of "malicious software". So if you own a WD My Book Live NAS or My Book Live Duo, disconnect it from your network right now.

Why? In a new post on Western Digital's own community forum, the storage giant explains that some of their My Book Live NAS drives have been "compromised by malicious software". What happens because of that? Well, some users are seeing their WD My Book Live NAS factory resetting... erasing all of their data.

The last firmware update for the WD My Book Live NAS was a considerable time ago: back in 2015, but now users are losing their data in one of the worst ways possible.

Bitmain is about to unleash its new ASIC crypto mining rig with some serious horsepower behind it, with Bitmain teasing it will have 9500MH/s of power to mine Dogecoin, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies.

The most profitable scrypt miner on the market right now is the Innosilicon A6+ LTC Master, which has 2200MH/s of hash power -- Bitmain has a gigantic upgrade here on its hands with the new Antminer ASIC which has 9500MH/sec of hash rate power -- close to 4x.

Bitmain's new Antminer ASIC was revealed during the week, with China-based journalist Colin Wu having the exclusive. He revealed on Twitter: "On June 19th, Bitmain released the new Litecoin/Dogecoin mining machine L7, with a hashrate of 9500MH/s and 3425W, equivalent to 19 sets of L3+, and the price is $15000, overseas purchase price is reduced by 13%. The delivery time is November 2021".

Seagate has just announced its new FireCuda 530 SSD which rocks some ridiculous read and write speeds, all thanks to the very latest 3D TLC NAND flash and Phison's kick-ass 8-channel PS5018-E18 controller.

The new Seagate FireCuda 530 SSD is capable of pumping up to 7.3GB/sec (7300MB/sec) sequential reads and up to 6.9GB/sec (6900MB/sec) sequential writes. Seagate will be making its new range of FireCuda 530 SSDs in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with prices starting at $140 through to $950.

Seagate is also offering a variant of the new FireCuda 530 SSD with a heat sink crafted by EKWB in the form of a finely-textured aluminum block, which is also wicked-thin which will allow it to fit into more systems versus taking up oh-so-so much space on your motherboard.

Fallout 4 lead designer Joel Burgess shares a heartwarming story about River, the German Shepard that played and inspired the game's beloved doggo companion.

Like most games, Fallout 4 used motion captures of animals for their game, especially for Dogmeat. Sadly, the German Shepard who portrayed Dogmeat has passed away. Her name was River, and in a rare peek behind the curtain of the games industry, Bethesda's Joel Burgess talks about what it was like to have River at the offices, how her lovable personality helped shape Dogmeat's character, and why she was chosen for the role.

"The Dogmeat team was just a handful of us early on - as River stole hearts around the studio, however, more and more folks found ways to pitch in and help bring her personality into the game," Burgess said.