Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a super interesting new system, which is capable of building drones, robots and other electronic devices all on its own.

Introducing, the LaserFactory:

MIT's interesting new LaserFactory is a two-part system that uses not just the machine itself, but also software for designing electronic devices. This makes it much easier, as it shows in the video above, to make electronic devices at a much faster rate.

NVIDIA's new mainstream GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card wasn't a secret, with the company revealing the card during CES 2021 -- but now we have a firm release date: February 25, 2021.

Our friends at Wccftech report that the GeForce RTX 3060 will go live on February 25 @ 6AM PST, with global retail outlets kicking off sales starting at $329. We should expect various custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards to be released, with varying prices -- which will also come down to how many of them are available given the massive GPU shortages worldwide.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3060 rocks the Ampere GA106-300 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node, 3584 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6 @ 15Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus with up to 384GB/sec of memory bandwidth. We have a 170W TDP on the card (down from the 175W on the RTX 3060 Ti) and price that starts at $329.

The last we heard about Apple and securing 5nm chips from TSMC in 2021 were previous rumors that it had 80% of the 5nm capacity from TSMC in 2021 -- but new reports suggest Apple has over 50% of the 5nm supply from TSMC this year.

New information from Counterpoint Research says that TSMC started mass production of its 5nm process in Q1 2021, with competitor Samsung following through but they were 6-9 months behind. Counterpoint Research says: "Apple is the top customer (with all orders to TSMC) in 5nm this year (see Exhibit 1), including both for iPhones (A14/A15) and the newly released Apple Silicon".

Counterpoint Research continued: "Qualcomm will be the second-largest 5nm customer as the iPhone 13 may adopt its X60 modem. TSMC is expected to book $10-billion revenue from 5nm in 2021".

The last 12 hours have been one of the wildest rides for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular, with Elon Musk and Tesla Motors announcing it will accept Bitcoin as payment in the future, and that Tesla is purchasing $1.5 billion of Bitcoin. Hell, it's even had crypto exchanges glitching out.

Apple is now in the headlines with a "clear opportunity" to offer a buying and selling mechanism for cryptocurrencies, according to a new research report from RBC Capital Markets. The report said that it would let Apple quickly dominate with market share, and with its world-class software and secure iOS ecosystem.

RBC analysts said in the report: "If the USA owns the most crypto assets (be it Bitcoin or other assets), it would not make logical sense in our view to ban it".

Elon Musk knows how to make an impact, with the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO tweeting about Dogecoin and seeing the price skyrocket towards the moon -- and then, he announced through Tesla that the EV giant would be accepting Bitcoin as payment in the future.

The news of Tesla accepting Bitcoin as a payment, along with the fact that the company revealed it purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin saw the cryptocurrency surge from around $40K to $44K almost instantly. It has barely been 12 hours and in that time cryptocurrency exchanges were having technical issues dealing with the amount of traffic on their platforms.

Kraken, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, had to temporarily disable sign-ups after they had a huge surge of traffic after the Elon + Tesla one-two punch to the moon for Bitcoin. Other crypto exchanges like Gemini and Binance had similar issues, with a Kraken spokesperson explained in an email to Reuters: "The recent run-up far exceeded anticipated increases in demand, up over five-fold from previous all-time highs".

Expanscape is showing off its new prototype laptop that packs not just a single screen, but rather it has 7 displays that offers some true next-gen workstation on-the-go multi-tasking.

The Expanscape Aurora 7 prototype packs 4 x 17.3-inch monitors each at 4K -- 2 are in portrait mode, 2 are in landscape mode -- but then it is flanked with 3 x 7-inch screens with 1920 x 1200 native resolutions. All of the 7 displays are at 60Hz, with the entire system weighing in at around 12 kg (26 lbs).

Gamers won't be interested in something like this, but Expanscape is aiming more at security operations centers, data scientists, content creators -- and I'm sure stock and cryptocurrency traders. It's a monstrous laptop with some seriously powerful innards, too.

GTA V sales are now up to 140 million across two console generations, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirms in a recent Q3 earnings report.

13 years after its initial release, GTA V is still a sales revenue monster. Take-Two announced the game has now shipped 140 million copies across PS4, Xbox One, PC, and older-gen hardware like the PS3 and Xbox 360. That's a +5 million sales increase over last quarter, and GTA V has now consistently sold 5 million units every quarter for three periods.

GTA V and Grand Theft Auto Online both impacted the $814 million net bookings earned in Q3'21. GTA Online helped buffer the massive $472 million in microtransactions that Take-Two earned during the period, whereas GTA V full game sales pushed the remaining $341 million from software purchases.

Final Fantasy XIV is coming to PlayStation 5 with some big optimizations and free upgrades.

Square Enix recently dropped some big Final Fantasy XIV bombshells. The company's immensely profitable MMO is coming to PlayStation 5, a free open beta for the PS5 version is dropping alongside Patch 5.5, and the new patch update adds a bunch of new quests, a new raid, tweaks for jobs, and other features. Plus there's Endwalker, a brand new expansion that closes the Hydaelyn saga and sets the stage for a new era.

As expected, Final Fantasy XIV is getting upgraded on PS5. The enhancements include boosted native 4K resolution and "significantly improved" frame rates. Sadly no exact FPS was outlined, but expect to see at least 60FPS offered. FFXIV could also get performance/quality modes in its settings menu.

Sony will introduce the PlayStation 5 to mainland China in Q2 2021, possibly coinciding with a new console stock refresh.

Today Sony Interactive Entertainment China announced it will launch the PS5 in the region sometime in the second quarter. No exact launch date was outlined, but Sony has been planning this rollout since December 2020.

Just like the Nintendo Switch, which launched in partnership with Tencent, the Chinese PS5 will be a special model made just for overseas consumers. As Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notes, the China-based PS5 should be region-locked with restrictions set in place that reflect the country's strict gaming laws. No information on launch games or services was made available by SIE China.

The ESA has cancelled its plans to hold a physical E3 2021, and will instead stream the showcase online.

Rather than cancelling E3 like it did in 2020, the ESA is pivoting and making E3 2021 an all-digital show. Exact plans haven't been confirmed, but sources say the ESA is currently pitching ideas to major publishers and developers to help fill out the event.

E3 2021 is still planned from June 15 - 17, 2021, and it should culminate in a number of special reveals and streams. However, Geoff Keighley won't be involved this time either. Keighley will instead focus on the Summer Game Fest, an event that started in 2020 to help celebrate a myriad of games. That means we won't get the excellent E3 Coliseum events where developers talk candidly about their upcoming games.

Animal Crossing New Horizons has now sold more than 30 million copies in less than 40 weeks on the market. It could soon become the top-selling game on the Switch.

Ever since we started charting Nintendo's top 10 game sales since Q4'20, we've seen multiple Switch games slowly taper off. Everything changed when Animal Crossing New Horizons exploded onto the platform in 2020. Since then, Animal Crossing has sold nearly 1 million copies every week since launch, and has slightly slowed down throughout the year.

Right now, Animal Crossing is the second best-selling game on the Switch, second only to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Within just 40 weeks on the market, Animal Crossing has amassed a staggering 31.18 million copies sold on the Switch. A quick bit of math shows that nearly 40% of all Switch owners have purchased Animal Crossing. For comparison's sake, it's taken Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 190 weeks to claim the Switch's software throne with 33.41 million copies.

Tesla has announced that it has purchased $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, with the information coming from Tesla Motors' filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The news sent the price of Bitcoin off on a trip to the moon, skyrocketing from $39,500 or so right through $40,000 and right into $43,000 at the time of writing -- a rise of over 13% so far. Dogecoin is also rising by around the same amount, a coin that Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been tweeting lots about lately.

Musk recently added #Bitcoin to his Twitter profile, but the news of Tesla actually accepting Bitcoin as a payment method is the huge news here. This is a gigantic step for the company, for Bitcoin, possibly for Dogecoin with Musk continuing to pump it on his Twitter, and for cryptocurrency in general.

Antarctica is one of the few places on Earth that is yet to be spoiled by humans, which is why many scientists and researchers are using it to study Earth's history.

Researchers and scientists have been planning for some time to drill through the overlying ice sheet. The main goal the researchers have is to drill through the ice and sample the untouched waters of a hidden lake that is located beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. According to Dr. John Priscu, "We joined up with NASA, and using satellite images, we could see flat spots all over the continent, and this is where the ice sheet floats over these lakes."

The researchers began their drilling, and as the drilling commenced, NASA snapped "something rising above the ice". According to Dr. Priscu, "We got to the bottom, and there was a lake there. 30 years of ideas, thinking this isn't a dead place, over 12 years of suggesting about the presence of lakes and rivers and there they were." Dr. Priscu also said that the researchers have gathered both indirect and direct evidence of "beautiful river systems like you would see coming out of the Rocky Mountains."

PNY has just unveiled its new custom, and super-small GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card which I'm sure has one of the longest names for a graphics card that I've ever seen.

This is the PNY GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 Gaming REVEL EPIC-X RGB Single Fan Edition graphics card -- yeah, the PNY GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 Gaming REVEL EPIC-X RGB Single Fan Edition. What a mouthful of a name, huh?!

We have a Mini-ITX card here, the first Mini-ITX GeForce RTX 3060 from PNY but the third RTX 3060 the company has released so far. PNY has a base GPU clock of 1627MHz and a boost GPU clock of 1852MHz -- there's also 12GB of GDDR6 memory here on a 192-bit memory interface that provides up to 336GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Samsung is continuously reaching for the stars with its Galaxy smartphones, with the new Galaxy S21 here and the flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra topping out at 8K 24FPS video shooting abilities... but the new Galaxy S22 is rumored for beyond-cinema 8K 60FPS video shooting abilities.

In a new tweet, tipster Mauri QHD reports that the new Galaxy S22 will be able to shoot 8K 60FPS video -- but for only 5 minutes. The reason? It "gets too hot to the touch" so even if we do see 8K 60FPS video shooting on Samsung's next-gen Galaxy S22 family of smartphones, it's going to be a journey to get there.

We might have to wait it out until the Galaxy S23 series in 2023 for full 8K 60FPS video shooting without 5-minute limits. The other issue is that even shooting 8K 24FPS video on the Galaxy S21 will take up 600MB per minute of footage, which means 3GB per 5-minute video. 8K 60FPS is going to be bigger again, so hopefully the new Galaxy S22/S23 also have 1TB+ storage by then.

EMTEK has just revealed a very interesting graphics card, with the South Korean AIB unveiling its new GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition graphics card, check it out:

The card has an old-school blower-style cooler with all that grunt underneath the GeForce RTX 3090 still there with its huge 24GB GDDR6X framebuffer. The card has a semi-custom design, with EMTEK using the NVIDIA reference RTX 3090 board with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Where EMTEK has done things differently with its GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition graphics card is that it used a daughterboard to have the dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition uses the single 12-pin PCIe power connector, but EMTEK went with the daughterboard at the end of the card.

LG revealed its new 27GP950 UltraGear gaming monitor at CES 2021 just a few weeks ago, with its 27-inch Nano IPS panel rocking a native 4K resolution and huge 160Hz refresh rate -- now we know when it launches: April 2021.

The upcoming LG 27GP950 UltraGear has a 27-inch 4K Nano IPS panel with 1ms response, and a 144Hz refresh rate out of the box that can be overclocked up to 160Hz. It has HDMI 2.1 connectivity, so you can connect your next-gen PS5 or Xbox Series X/S console into it.

You're going to need some serious GPU horsepower to drive 4K @ 160FPS... even a flagship GeForce RTX 3090 or Radeon RX 6900 XT isn't going to handle that in most games. You'll find esports games like Overwatch, League of Legends or CS:GO might be alright -- but you won't be playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and at 160FPS on any graphics card on the planet -- from this year, probably next year, and probably into 2023.

We know that EA DICE is hard at work on Battlefield 6, which is dropping in Spring 2021 and has been designed for over 128 players with 32v32 being standard in previous leaks. Well, check out this latest leak:

Battlefield 6 will reportedly have full unscripted skyscraper destruction for the first time ever, with industry leaker Tom Henderson teasing it in a couple of tweets. You can see that the tweet has a picture of some buildings with some snipers on top of them, and then the buildings are destroyed.

The sniper is then just standing there... with no more cover -- this would be the point behind the full unscripted skyscraper destruction. I still remember hearing the first rumors of Battlefield 6 in June 2020 and said that the thing I was most excited to see in Battlefield 6 was the "return, and market domination of a next-gen Levolution technology that DICE made famous in Battlefield 4 back in 2013. The video above makes it feel like so long ago now, but it would be great to see a truly next-gen upgrade to destruction in Battlefield 6".

I think these plans are changing far too much, but another day -- another rumor for the purported, indefinitely postponed GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. New rumors suggest it's coming in April 2021 with 12GB of GDDR6X memory.

Leaker kopite7kimi posted on Twitter saying back in December 2020 that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti specs he'd been hearing from his sources said the card would rock 10496 CUDA cores and 20GB of GDDR6X memory. But he has said that "things have changed" and the new "current spec" if 10240 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR6X memory.

The changes there see 256 CUDA cores cut down from the previously rumored GeForce RTX 3080 Ti specifications, and a big drop from the 20GB of GDDR6X on the previous specs from late 2020, to just 12GB of GDDR6X with the new specs. This is 2GB more than the RTX 3080 (10GB GDDR6X) and 12GB less than the RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X).

Chinese mining firms have been moving their crypto mining farms over to Iran because electricity prices are so cheap in Iran (1.8 to 2.2c per kWh) but now Iran is hosting some major farms, they're experiencing blackouts.

Iran is now home to 14 massive crypto mining farms that consume 300 megawatts of power, which if you compare to a city with 100,000 residents -- it's about the same power consumption. The University of Cambridge says that Iran is included in the 6 most popular places in the world to mine cryptocurrency.

If you can't find NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards cards right now, these pictures are going to make you cringe so bad it's not funny. It seems that NVIDIA and its AIB partners have zero issues pumping cards out for crypto miners, while gamers cower in the dark waiting for Ampere cards that they ordered many months ago at launch.