Activision is about to unleash a huge update for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, but also for battle royale mode Warzone with Season 2 on the way.

The company goes into great detail about what's coming in an official blog post, with changes coming to Warzone including new points of interest on Verdansk. There could be some more underground changes for the map, with rumblings around certain parts of the map that could lead to more clues.

Activision explains: "Operators within the vicinity are recommended to exercise extreme caution, as the ship is carrying unknown cargo, and its crew are not able to be contacted. Meanwhile, within Verdansk, something major is beginning to rumble deep underground. Although other reports on these new locales are still classified, we'd advise to explore these areas at your own risk".

NASA has successfully landed its Perseverance rover on Mars, with ground controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California celebrating the news just hours ago.

The Perseverance rover took just over 11 minutes to land on the Red Planet, with NASA reaching the tip of Mars' atmosphere at 3:48PM EST (8:48PM GMT). It was at this point that NASA refers to as the "seven minutes of terror" which is the time between the entry, descend, and landing of the Perseverance rover.

Once the rover had landed on the surface of Mars, it took 11 minutes and 22 seconds for the signal of its confirmed landing to transmit between Mars and back here to Earth. That journey is pretty long though, at close to 300 million miles... a journey that NASA started back on July 31, 2020.

NVIDIA will be releasing its new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card next week, and with it there will be a significant new driver release that destroys crypto mining performance by up to 50% on some algorithms.

The upcoming release of the GeForce RTX 3060 would've been very popular for crypto miners, as it would offer a card that is the most power efficient Ampere offering yet -- and it won't cost as much as the higher-end GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards.

But it seems NVIDIA will be discouraging crypto miners in a big way with new GeForce drivers coming that will automatically detect mining-specific algorithms, and then limit the hash rate performance by 50%. NVIDIA seems to make this specific about the GeForce RTX 3060, but I wonder how long it'll be until all GeForce graphics cards are gimped from mining.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 can get pretty hot, but how just how hot does the card get if it is passively cooled... with no fans at all? Not that hot, actually.

The folks at Turemetal which is a brand that specializes in fanless PC systems, posted some photos of their Turemetal UP10 case with a passively-cooled NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. This isn't the first totally fanless GeForce RTX 3080 but it is the first that has an entire PC passively cooled and running super stress tests like Furmark.

Inside of the Turemetal UP10 case is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor with a 65W TDP, and ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The entire system is using around 410W of power, with the CPU and GPU both using custom heat spreaders that are then connected to a huge heat sink with what feels like 100+ heat pipes.

We all know how impossible it is to buy a graphics card these days, fighting between a lack of supply, scalpers, the COVID pandemic, supply chain issues, and especially cryptocurrency miners.

Well, NVIDIA has just announced its new Crypto Mining Processor HX series, new cards that are made specifically for crypto mining and more specifically Ethereum mining. There are 4 new CMP HX cards announced: the 30HX, 40HX, 50HX, and 90HX with varying levels of mining performance, power consumption, power connectors, memory sizes, and availability.

Starting with the new NVIDIA CMP 30HX with its 26MH/s Ethereum mining power at 125W, this will require just a single 8-pin PCI power cable and have 6GB of VRAM. The higher-end 40HX ups the Ethereum hash rate to 36MH/s at 185W, uses the same single 8-pin PCIe power cable but ups the VRAM to 8GB. Both of these CMP mining cards will be available in Q1 2021.

Diablo II Lord of Destruction was so big that it practically counted as a sequel, but it wasn't the only expansion Blizzard North was working on.

On the eve of Diablo II's expected remaster announcement, original Diablo developer David Brevik shared a bit of recent news on what could've been for the ARPG classic. It turns out Lord of Destruction was actually one of two expansions the team had been planning. Brevik said he was designing a second expansion before LOD's transformative 1.10 update, but the progress never manifested--Brevik had only created a design document. No actual levels, characters, items, or animations had been made.

At the same time Brevik was putting together the expansion's framework, Blizzard North had been designing their own Diablo III, a dark and medieval game that would've been very different from the cartoony version Blizzard launched in 2012. The Blizzard North breakup interrupted progress as key developers like Brevik left the company due to differences with Vivendi, who then owned Blizzard.

Bungie has opened a new business studio in the Netherlands that will exclusively focus on publishing and marketing.

Today sees Bungie one step closer to its ambitious plan. The Halo and Destiny developer is shifting from an indie powerhouse beholden to Activision into its own self-contained force, and soon the company will become both a developer and publisher, not unlike Electronic Arts. The new publishing division is helmed in Amsterdam, and will handle the vital business operations of marketing and distribution. The division will "support multiple project teams, including those outside of the Destiny Universe."

After the Activision split, Bungie hasn't really had to ship its own games outside of physical collector's editions. All of Destiny 2's updates thus far have been digital add-ons. Soon, though, the company will have to secure deals to ship new games--the first of which is a brand new IP set for a tentative 2025 launch. This new IP could be called Matter and it may be an RPG with live services.

Today EA secured one of the most dominant racing forces in the industry and adds even more billion-dollar might to its empire.

EA has officially acquired Codemasters for $1.2 billion, and key franchises like Grid, F1, Project Cars, and Dirt are now owned by the live services titan. EA promises that its Need for Speed IP isn't going anywhere, and that the buyout will lead to a "regular cadence" of racing titles.

"With this critically acclaimed portfolio, Electronic Arts and Codemasters will be positioned to bring fans a regular cadence of new and exciting racing content, in addition to reaching across more platforms and more regions of the world,"EA said in a press release.

According to newly leaked press materials, the Burning Crusade expansion is World of Warcraft Classic.

Blizzcon 2021 goes live tomorrow, but Blizzard has sent out press materials early that confirm some exciting updates. The old-school WoW Classic experience is expanding with The Burning Crusade, bringing all the content of the original 2007 launch including Blood Elves, Draenei, and Outland. Burning Crusade will be available free to all existing WoW subscribers.

Activision-Blizzard has noted extremely positive results from WoW Classic insofar as engagement and continued subscriptions. Expect to see many more classic expansions roll out in the coming years.

Apple has already impressed with its M1 SoC but its next-gen M1X is looking to really ramp things up in every department: CPU, GPU, RAM support, and more.

The next-gen Apple M1X will reportedly have a 12-core CPU up from the 8-core CPU in the M1 chip -- with the 12-core CPU being clocked at up to 3.2GHz. The 12 cores will be split in to 8 x Firestorm performance cores, and 4 x Icestorm power-efficient cores.

As for GPU cores we're looking at the Apple M1X reportedly packing a 16-core GPU, double the 8-core GPU inside of the M1 with the 16-core GPU including 256 execution units. We should expect double the GPU performance out of Apple's new M1X chip over the original M1 from the doubling in GPU cores and execution units.

Manus today revealed the Manus Pro Tracker, a SteamVR tracking puck for the enterprise market. These will be the third option for SteamVR tracking puck on the market this year.

The Manus Pro Tracker is a lot like the HTC Vive Trackers, which have been on the market for several years, but with an improved industrial design more suited to professional use cases.

The new Manus Pro Trackers are smaller than the Vive Trackers, and Manus said they weigh 40% less than Vive Trackers. The reduced weight helps to increase mounting stability, which in turn increases tracking accuracy.

Samsung has just announced its new adventure into HBM technology, with the introduction of HBM-PIM with the 'PIM' standing for processing-in-memory. But what the hell does that mean?

The new HBM-PIM technology allows for some programmability inside of the memory layer, thanks to an embedded "DRAM-optimized" AI engine inside of the memory banks. This new AI engine is called a PCU or Programmable Compute Unit, which will handle the data between your CPU and memory in a parallelized way.

This is because most computing systems of today are based on the von Neumann architecture, which separates processor and memory units to do millions of individual processing tasks. This can be congested as you can imagine, so HBM-PIM provides processing power directly stored on a DRAM-optimized AI engine inside of each memory bank.

The rumblings of Apple's future foldable iPhone have been coming in larger numbers over the last few weeks, with a new rumor that Apple has LG helping it with display tech for its foldable iPhone.

DigiTimes reports that LG will be collaborating with Apple on its foldable iPhone with its future foldable OLED technology, instead of Samsung which was the company most thought Apple would use for the display side of things on the foldable iPhone. It seems LG will instead be helping with the foldable iPhone development with some foldable OLED panel tech.

The new report is just that -- LG is reportedly working with Apple on the foldable iPhone, but we don't know anything apart from that. It's been reported that there are a couple of foldable iPhone prototypes in the wild, one of them being a clamshell design similar to the Galaxy Z Fold from Samsung.

ZOTAC stepped in a huge puddle of sh*t a few hours ago, happily posting and endorsing the huge of its GPUs with huge crypto mining farms and then tagging it with #PcGaming... yeah. It was removed, but the internet being the internet means it's forever:

In the picture you can see that ZOTAC is showing off a crypto mining rig that is powered by a bunch of their own GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge graphics cards and then ZOTAC used a bunch of hashtags that are for PC gamers. These hashtags include #PcGaming, #Gaming, #Gamers, #Tech, #PcHardware, #PcComponents, #PCMR, #PcMasterRace, and #RTX.

It seems ZOTAC has no issues with miners... and maybe that's why I can't get anymore samples out of them. I've tried, but they told me they don't have the stock... meanwhile other AIBs are sending more review samples than ever before. Maybe ZOTAC is happy to keep them all, because they're racking up those mining $$$.

Today's Nintendo Direct didn't live up to expectations, but Nintendo gives a potential update window for one of the Switch's most anticipated game.

Back in September 2020, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said gamers would have to "wait a big longer" for news on the big Breath of the Wild sequel. Fast-forward five months later, and Nintendo still doesn't have news to share. But we did get a promise of an update later this year (hopefully):

"I'm sure a lot of you saw me and thought there might be news on the sequel to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately, we don't have anything to share right now. We apologize. Development is proceeding smoothly and we should be able to bring you some new information this year," Aonuma said in the most recent Nintendo Direct show.

Today's Nintendo Direct showcase had a few big announcements, but no details on a Switch Pro were revealed.

Today was the first Nintendo Direct in 533 days and it was a bit of a disappointment for anyone expecting colossal things. Gamers didn't get any huge earth-shattering reveals like a new Switch Pro model, nor did we get big Metroid or Zelda collections to celebrate both franchises' 35th anniversary. No Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 news, either.

So what did we get? The big headlining news was Apex Legends' March 9 release date on Switch, details on Octopath Traveler 2, Fall Guys, a surprise Ninja Gaiden 3-pack remaster collection,, Splatoon 3, a new Mario Golf game, and a fully-fledged Skyward Sword HD remaster on Switch complete with JoyCon-adapted controls.

Kingdom Hearts is finally coming to PC...as an Epic Games Store exclusive.

Square Enix has teamed up with Epic Games to bring its beloved Kingdom Hearts series to PC for the first time. The franchise will skip Steam for an unannounced period of time and will be available on the Epic Games Store on March 30, 2021. Square Enix didn't reveal when or if the series will drop on Steam.

The press materials don't mention exclusivity terms (if there even are any), and the only exclusive is a custom keyblade for Sora to use in Kingdom Hearts III: "Those who purchase KINGDOM HEARTS III + Re Mind (DLC) will receive an exclusive Epic Games Store "Elemental Encoder" Keyblade to use in-game."

Nintendo is finally releasing a new Direct showcase--the first since September 14, 2019.

It's been a long time since the last main Nintendo Direct stream--533 days to be exact--and today's show has a lot of anticipation behind it. Gamers might want to tamper their expectations, though. Nintendo has dropped a few clues on what to expect:

That's it. That's all we get. There's lots of speculation running around about a possible 35th anniversary Zelda event or collection of games, as well as Metroid, who also turns 35 this year. Then we have the usual indie reels that could show off more info on Silksong. As for big mainline AAA Switch games, or a Switch Pro confirmation, that seems iffy at best.

As an Australian, I have just awoken to some world-changing news: Facebook and the Australian government are having a blue -- a fight, they're having a fight.

Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law is swinging its 1984 powers around, with the federal government forcing social media companies to pay for news content -- Google buckled under pressure and coughed up the money, but Facebook didn't and now things are changing.

Facebook has now seen the end of Australian news publishers being able to post their stories on Facebook, while international news won't be seen on Australian users' walls nor will they be able to be shared by Aussies on Facebook. Across the pond, everyone else won't be able to read or share any Australian content on Facebook.

Can you believe it's barely a month until Zack Snyder's Justice League is streaming on HBO Max, and we see what Snyder's original vision of the movie would've been -- and some more. Well, now we can listen to some of the score from the movie, listen to this:

This is the track "The Crew at Warpower" from Zack Snyder's Justice League, with Junkie XL handling the score to the movie. Junkie XL or Tom Holkenborg, worked with Hans Zimmer on Snyder's previous movie in the DCEU with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

I've listened to it a few times before writing this post and I'm really enjoying what Junkie XL has here so far with his score to Zack Snyder's Justice League. The movie is a lengthy 4 hours long so it'll be interesting to see how long and how many tracks there are for the soundtrack for Zack Snyder's Justice League.