Latest News - Page 1377

For some weeks now, NASA has been struggling to get its Hubble Space Telescope back online and operating at its full capabilities.

The problem arose on June 13 as the space telescopes payload computer, and since then, NASA has been performing tests to identify the piece of hardware causing the root problem. The initial hypothesis of the issue pointed towards Hubble's several memory modules, but according to an update from NASA, tests indicated that it wasn't Hubble's memory modules but a different piece of computer hardware.

NASA says on its website that the memory module errors were only a symptom of the root problem and that a team if currently designing tests to investigate the computer's Central Processing Module (CPM) and other components. "If the problem with the payload computer can't be fixed, the operations team will be prepared to switch to the STINT and CPM hardware onboard the backup payload computer." states NASA.

If you were planning on getting Starlink and using it, that possibility will soon become available to you as SpaceX has announced global operations will begin this year.

According to a statement from Starlink's President, Gwynne Shotwell, full operation capabilities will begin in September on a global scale, or at least this is the goal. Shotwell also said that SpaceX has been able to successfully deploy 1,800 Starlink satellites to their operation orbit around Earth. However, as Shotwell explains, there is a lot of regulatory work to do as the company needs regulatory approval from each individual country.

At the moment, Starlink has been approved and is providing internet service to users in eleven countries. Elon Musk also announced that SpaceX had received more than 500,000 preorders for Starlink internet access. SpaceX plans on launching 12,000 Starlink satellites for around $10 billion and also says that it will be able to keep up with the big demand for the service. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

A new study has revealed that most major geological events that happen on Earth happened every 27.5 million years.

Researchers have penned a new study in Geoscience Frontiers, and according to an analysis on 89 major geological events that have happened in the past 260 million years, most major geological events occur in intervals of 27.5 million years. So, what is a major geological event? The researchers took into account events such as extinctions, ocean anoxic events, rising sea levels, large volcanic activity, and Earth's tectonic plates shifting.

Lead author Michael Rampino, a professor in the departments of biology and environmental studies at New York University, said that the estimates aren't "exact", but it's a "pretty good estimate" that's "unlikely to be a coincidence". So, why every 27.5 million years does Earth have this geological "pulse"? The authors state in the study that the geological pulse may have something to do with the tectonic plates shifting and movement inside the mantle. The researchers also state that it could have something to do with the movement of Earth within our solar system/galaxy.

The price has Bitcoin sharply declined in recent days/weeks, and the drop in price across basically the entire cryptocurrency market can be attributed to one thing.

The price of the following cryptocurrencies plummeted on Monday; bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, dogecoin, and more, after China announced that it was targeting Bitcoin miners located in Sichaun. The effort made by China to shut down Bitcoin miners in Sichaun is a part of a nationwide effort to reduce electricity. According to Forbes, China is the number one country when it comes to Bitcoin operations, accounting for nearly 80% of all operations globally.

Additionally, Sichaun is the province that holds the second most Bitcoin mining, and due to the shutdown, Bitcoin's hash rate plummeted. According to Chinese state media, the Global Times, local Chinese authorities have said that the country's latest crackdown on the cryptocurrency has reduced China's Bitcoin production by more than 90%. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

The birthplace of stars are still somewhat of a mystery to astronomers, and as humans continue to expand our knowledge of the universe, we begin to understand more about how stars develop over long stretches of time.

Stars form in specific regions, and one of those regions is Westerlund 2, which is located around 20,000 light-years away from Earth. This star-factory region of space hasn't been observed in high resolution until now, and from the above image, we can see that the star cluster is surrounded by a bubble of gas. It was previously hypothesized that Westerlund 2 was surrounded by two bubbles of gas, but now astronomers understand that its just one.

The study's lead author Maitraiyee Tiwari, a postdoctoral associate in astronomy at the University of Maryland, said, "When massive stars form, they blow off much stronger ejections of protons, electrons, and atoms of heavy metal, compared to our sun. These ejections are called stellar winds, and extreme stellar winds are capable of blowing and shaping bubbles in the surrounding clouds of cold, dense gas. We observed just such a bubble centered around the brightest cluster of stars in this region of the galaxy, and we were able to measure its radius, mass, and the speed at which it is expanding."

Microsoft is likely waiting on major competitors to announce their games before it commits to a Halo Infinite launch date.

Microsoft and 343i have narrowed down Halo Infinite's release date and are still confident in a holiday 2021 launch, but other big shooters like Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty Vanguard might get in the way. It's likely that Microsoft is holding back Infinite's launch until after Vanguard's announcement so they can place the game in a free-ish slot during the holiday season. Holiday 2021 (October - December) will be quite congested with big competing cross-platform games like Battlefield 2042, CoD Vanguard, which should release in November, and Grand Theft Auto V's next-gen release.

In a recent Dropped Frames show on Twitch, Xbox's Phil Spencer discussed what's going on with the release schedule:

Lenovo has just unveiled its latest ThinkPad and ThinkVision family of laptops, with the redesigned and re-engineered ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen44 packing some huge power in a tiny footprint.

The new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen4 laptop comes with Intel's latest and greatest 11th Gen Core CPU, where you can configure it with up to the Intel Core i9 processor -- up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, and up to NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

There's a 16-inch 16:10 display inside, offering up to 4K and Dolby Vision support -- there's dual noise-cancelling microphones, a Dolby Atmos Speaker System, and weighs in at under 4 pounds (1.81kg). It's also very thin, at just 17.7mm -- with multiple layers of reinforced carbon fiber you have a thin -- and light (and very powerful) Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen4 laptop.

ASRock has just teased its new 10 liters concept PC, which sees the company attempting to redefine the high-performance Mini PC... check it out:

The new ASRock DeskMini Max supports AMD's very latest Ryzen CPUs and APUs all the way through to the flagship Ryzen 9 5950X processor, which offers 16 cores and 32 threads of CPU power -- all in a tiny PC. You can't just offer a flagship 16C/32T processor without copious amounts of RAM and GPU horsepower, right?

ASRock can configure up to 128GB of DDR4 U-DIMM memory in its own in-house proprietary motherboard, and on top of that you can throw in a discrete GPU for some serious Mini PC gaming and productivity horsepower.

Microsoft debuted its new Designed for Xbox program is extending to gaming monitors and TVs with the largest of them being the new Philips Momentum 55-inch 4K 120Hz TV.

Philips offers the large 55-inch 4K 120Hz panel that is still described as a monitor by the way, as a "TV and soundbar in one". The 4K 120Hz resolution and refresh rate are driven by HDMI 2.1 and goes directly into Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X and S consoles, with a dedicated Xbox picture mode.

The dedicated Xbox picture mode will blast out HDR that should be bright enough to make you squint in a dark room, with DisplayHDR 1000 certification. The Philips Momentum 559M1RYV is capable of not just 4K 120Hz but up to 4K 144Hz -- up to 1200 nits brightness, and packs 3 x HDMI 2.1 ports as well as a DisplayPort 1.4 connector.

Microsoft has just unveiled its new Designed for Xbox family has monitors and TVs in its arsenal, with HDMI 2.1 powering 4K 120Hz support for the next-gen Xbox Series X/S consoles.

The new monitors and TVs that will have a "Gaming Features for Xbox" badge that will see the displays having variable refresh rates (VRR), HDR support, 4K 120Hz minimum -- driven by HDMI 2.1 -- all for the very best the Xbox Series X/S can offer.

First up we have the largest of them all, the new Philips Momentum is a 55-inch TV with full 4K 120Hz through HDMI 2.1 connectivity. Philips has a dedicated Xbox picture mode, DisplayHDR 1000 support -- so it'll be nice and bright, and will be available later this summer for $1599.

NVIDIA and Bethesda have teamed up for a kick ass exclusive new DOOM Eternal bundle, to help celebrate the release of the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and the new Game Ready drivers which add RTX ray tracing and DLSS technology support in DOOM Eternal.

The new DOOM Eternal GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Demon Slayer Bundle starts from $1450, and will include NVIDIA's latest flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition graphics card, a DOOM Eternal game code, a $100 gift card, and more.

There are only 300 "winners" in this new bundle, which is an open reservation raffle -- it begins today at 5AM MST and ends on 7th of July at 11:59PM MST. The 300 winners of the DOOM Eternal GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Demon Slayer Bundle will be notified over email on July 8 and is open to gamers in the US, Canada, EU, and Australia.

Warren Buffett has announced that he will be stepping down as a trustee from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, saying that he has been an "inactive trustee" for years.

In his comments with the annual contribution of Berkshire Hathaway shares to five foundations, Buffett said: "For years I have been a trustee - an inactive trustee at that - of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire's".

The news couldn't come at a worse time: Bill and Melinda Gates just announced their divorce, Jeffrey "I didn't kill myself" Epstein possibly blamed for their divorce, and now Warren Buffett distances himself from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So by now, you've probably heard that John McAfee has died -- by suicide according to authorities, but minutes after the news went worldwide his Instagram account posted an image of the letter "Q".

Why the letter Q? Well, one of the largest "conspiracy theories" of all time is Qanon -- and McAfee was no stranger of controversy, so this should come as no surprise. Q hasn't posted since earlier this year when President Biden began assuming his role, but the media has used the Qanon boogeyman ever since... and now out of nowhere, McAfee is dead and his Instagram account posts "Q" minutes after.

If you're not into Qanon at all -- it can be reduced into a high level team of people in the government with Q level clearance. They've been posting "drops" since 2017 on 4chan, and have gone radio silent since December 9, 2020. Since then, Q has been silent -- even through President Trump stepping out of the White House, and President Biden assuming office.

WB Games studios like Netherealm, Avalanche, Monolith, and WB Games Montreal won't be sold off, a recent press release seems to confirm.

WarnerMedia is merging with Discovery to form a huge new mega-company. So what happens to the WB Games division that includes franchises like Mortal Kombat, Batman, and Superman? The games division will still be part of WarnerMedia and the parent will not sell its biggest studios or IPs.

Today WarnerMedia sold off its first games studio following the merger deal with Discovery. EA bought mobile dev Playdemic from WB for $1.4 billion in cash. This apparently is the only studio that will be sold:

KIOXIA has been working closely with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on the best-in-class storage solutions for the last few years, but during the new virtual event, HPE Discover 2021, we have some new products to look forward to.

First off, KIOXIA unveiled its new series of PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the first-ever 24G enterprise SAS SSDs, and a class of value SAS SSDs that will "drive the transition away from SATA SSDs". The new KIOXIA CM6 and CD6 Series PCIe 4.0 U.3 NVMe SSDs -- which will deliver 2x the performance over their PCIe 3.0 predecessors and are an insane 12x faster than traditional SATA drives.

Alvaro Toledo, vice president of SSD marketing and product planning at KIOXIA America, Inc said: "HPE is one of our long-standing customers, and together we are highly focused on empowering organizations to increase productivity and maximize IT resource utilization. KIOXIA enables HPE ProLiant servers with SSDs for most applications - for today or tomorrow. Together, we are making digital transformation a reality for enterprises."

John McAfee is dead.

The Antivirus creator was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona, Spain -- with local authorities stating that McAfee took his own life through suicide.

McAfee had just had the Spanish high court to extradite him to the US, after he was arrested in October 2020. McAfee said during the recent extradition hearings that the accusations the media have said about him were politically motivated, with the IRS pressing charges against him through to his 2020 US presidential run with the Libertarian Party.

After buying Glu Mobile and Codemasters for a combined $3.3 billion, EA makes another billion-dollar power acquisition.

EA is going all-in on mobile. The company recently bought Glu Mobile for $2.1 billion in an effort to solidify its smartphone gaming business, and Glu is expected to be the literal glue that holds this business together as developers focus on a myriad of projects.

"We are forming a powerful growth engine that will expand our current games and deliver more amazing new experiences across sports, lifestyle, mid-core, and casual for players everywhere," EA said in a press release.

The new Aliens Fireteam Elite shooter authentically captures H.R. Giger's bizarre art that inspired the classic horror franchise.

Action is at the core of the new Aliens Fireteam Elite third-person shooter, but the scenery is lifted straight out of a feature-length film. The environments pay great respect to the macabre paintings and bio-mechanical designs of H.R. Giger, who's responsible for the original Alien costume as well as the ship on LV-426. Giger's work was just as instrumental to the Alien franchise as McQuarrie was to Star Wars, and his art has defined the series ever since.

Aliens Fireteam Elite has lots of nods to Giger's work, and rightly so given his dark imagination set the tone for the films. Many of the environments feature Giger's curved metallic frames, glistening organic walls, and terrifying feline grace of the aliens themselves. Overall this game looks like the ultimate Alien multiplayer experience.

In a bizarre move, Facebook has removed the ability for Oculus Quest users to cast their gameplay experience directly to-checks notes-Facebook from the headset. You now require a computer to stream your Quest.

Facebook started rolling out the v30 update for Oculus Quest and Quest 2 users last week. The new update brings a handful of new features, including multitasking in Infinite Office and tools for people who have trouble seeing specific colours. But, strangely, the update also removed the button to cast your gameplay directly to your Facebook feed.

A Facebook representative provided a statement to UploadVR that confirms the change but doesn't adequately explain the reason. Facebook said that its users prefer to use local casting tools, so it is increasing its focus on local casting tools.

Cyan Worlds today announced the PC VR release window for the total overhaul of its classic puzzle mystery game, Myst. Unfortunately, we don't have an exact date, but we know it's coming in the next three months.

Cyan released the remake of Myst on the Oculus Questlate last year, and since then, the company has been quiet about when we might expect a PC VR version. Of course, we knew it would eventually be available, but until now, we had no idea when. Now we know the game will be available in Q3 2021.

The PC version is currently listed on Steam, and you can put it on your wishlist today to make sure you don't miss the launch. The Steam version of the game will be playable in both 2D and VR modes. There will also be a Mac version that doesn't support VR because Apple doesn't currently support VR headsets on its computers.