Latest News - Page 1494

The Medium is here for both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles as well as the PC, with some nifty Dual-Reality gameplay done through a dual viewport that seems to really bring the next-gen Xbox consoles to their knees. But now Digital Foundry has done a deep dive on the performance of The Medium on the new Xbox Series X/S consoles, check it out:

Bloober Team, the developer behind The Medium, said that the Xbox Series X CPU and GPU power would let developers "go crazy" and I guess that means the most powerful console in the world being reduced to its knees and dropping to 900p.

The Medium runs at up to 4K on the flagship Xbox Series X and hovers around 1440p, while the Xbox Series S runs it somewhere between 1080p and 900p. But when you do the "dual viewport" mode -- which the game is built around (and explained in the DF video embedded above) both consoles go right into Chug Mode down into the 10-20FPS mark.

Elon Musk is in hot water right now, with the US Department of Justice investigating SpaceX over the company possibly discriminating against non-US citizens during its hiring process.

New court documents filed on Thursday by DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval explain: "The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party's interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident".

The Immigrant and Employee Rights (IER) division said it made SpaceX aware it had opened an investigation on June 8, 2020 and that it required more documents and information from SpaceX in regards to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes.

You know the world is changing when you've got politicians on both sides agreeing on something as large as the huge Robinhood + r/WallStreetBets + GameStop + AMC trade drama -- scandal -- explosion. I don't even know how to describe it anymore.

The previously super-popular trading app Robinhood halted trades -- even SELLING users GME stock without permission -- on the to-the-moon stocks of GameStop, AMC and other companies because of the huge swath of Redditors coming in from r/WallStreetBets and now all over the world. Their bets caused hedge funds to lose billions of dollars, while they made huge profits. It has already led to class action lawsuits.

Well, now we have Donald Trump Jr and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighing in on the GameStop and Robinhood fiasco. AOC tweeted: "Gotta admit it's really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino".

A new mod unlocks 60FPS in Skyrim on PlayStation consoles, but it won't work in Fallout 4.

PS5 owners can now play Skyrim Special Edition in 60FPS and circumvent Sony's maddening 30FPS limit. All you have to do is download the Skyrim @ 60fps mod, a user-created mod uploaded to the in-game console mods section. Skyrim was originally meant to run at a native 4K resolution at 30FPS on the PS4 Pro, but with the mod it can hit 1080p 30FPS+ on the base PS4.

The PlayStation 5 in particular runs Skyrim at a solid and consistent native 4K 60FPS via the console's powerful backwards compatibility mode. The PS5 has more memory bandwidth (16GB of GDDR6 RAM) and a much more powerful GPU and CPU combo that can deliver lots more horsepower. The result is a PC-like Skyrim experience in terms of performance.

Well, well, well -- that was faster than I thought.

Robinhood Markets -- the trading app that is in the headlines right now, has reportedly drawn credit lines with banks to the tune of "at least several hundred million dollars" reports one of Bloomberg's sources. Robinhood lenders include companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Bloomberg adds that the "behind-the-scenes rush to bolster Robinhood's finances adds to signs that recent market havoc is putting a strain on the company". Robinhood explained in a blog post on its website today: "As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits".

Robinhood has been in the headlines for literally all the wrong reasons, with people beyond pissed off that the trading app halted GameStop trade restrictions -- leading into a class action lawsuit, and now the Robinhood app being review bombed on the Google Play Store.

Users have bombarded the Robinhood app with one-star reviews, forcing the app down into averaging at the lowest rating on the Google Play Store. Users are rightfully angry, as they've seen their ability to buy shares of stocks that are skyrocketing completely banned from use, so over 100,000+ negative reviews for the app isn't a surprise.

There's much more to all of this story below:

We knew it wasn't going to end well with trading app Robinhood over the $GME (GameStop) shares and $AMC (AMC Theaters) shares skyrocketing because of Reddit -- and a Mr. Robot / Fsociety-fueled stick-it-to-the-man-AND-the-system r/WallStreetBets and millions of normal people around the world like you and I.

Well, now Robinhood has been slapped with a class action lawsuit claims that Robinhood "purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' [GameStop] from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market".

Get this, with the new limits that Robinhood has introduced -- its users will not be able to buy new stocks of companies such as GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry -- the very stocks that WSB is pumping right now. You will be able to close out existing trades, but you won't be buying any $GME, $AMC, or $BB in Robinhood right now.

Naughty Dog's ultra-violent and controversial opus sequel now has more total awards than CD Projekt's best-selling RPG The Witcher 3.

The Witcher 3 is hailed as one of the best games ever made for its RPG storytelling, compelling characters, and gritty fantasy world. The Last of Us II is likewise hailed for similar things, including its riveting story arc of blood and revenge, its varied cast of characters, and ambitious in-game detail. It's hard to compare the two directly--they're too different games--but one metric stands out: Total accolades.

According to GameAwards.net, The Last of Us Part II now has more awards than The Witcher 3. Naughty Dog's sequel sits at 265 awards, whereas The Witcher 3 is at 260. Each game's Metacritic also seems relevant--The Witcher 3 sits at a 92 on PS4 and The Last of Us Part II is at 93 on PS4. It's worth mentioning The Witcher has a 93 on PC, though.

The huge financial drama surrounding the US markets right now with Reddit and its fully viral r/WallStreetBets pushing GameStop and AMC shares through the roof. Well, Robinhood is stopping retail investors from getting in on the wave, and even selling their shares automatically.

Robinhood users began noticing their $GME shares being sold without warning, with Robinhood alerting users that due to "recently volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only. However, due to unreasonable risk involved in brokering your position, we have closed your 4,500 shares of GME for an average price of $118.93 on January 28th, 2021 at 11:24 AM".

The notice from Robinhood continues: "Your trade confirmation will be available in your order history on Robinhood in one trading day".

The U.S. Senate will soon weigh in on the eye-opening (and wallet-draining) stock situation booming the market right now.

Individual day traders on the u/wallstreetbets Reddit forum are taking on Wall Street. The upstart sees thousands of traders clash with billion-dollar brokerage and investment firms in a bid to help equalize the market, and short-sellers in particular are being punished. The result of this clash has skyrocketed GameStop stock by more than 600% in a week's time, and AMC stock briefly surged 300% to over $19 today before mellowing out at $9.77.

This bruhaha has caused lots of controversy. Major traders like Robinhood temporarily restricted buying and selling of these volatile stocks. This move was believed to help give brokerage firms time to cover their short positions--or to basically stabilize and freeze trading to give the billion-dollar firms time to buy back their stocks and cover their short bets (here's a primer on what short sales are).

Control's next-gen Ultimate Edition is coming out soon, and will be free on PlayStation Plus next week. Here's what to expect from the game's two performance modes.

Like most next-gen games, Control on PS5 and Xbox Series X has two modes that prioritize either graphical fidelity and visuals or in-game performance. The Series X is locked at just the performance mode and won't be able to maintain ray tracing. Luckily, Control will shoot past 1080p for both of these modes.

It was rumored but now it seems to be confirmed -- Intel is BFFs with TSMC -- from a DigiTimes report that RetiredEngineer tweeted about. The report teased: "Intel signed a contract to outsource CPUs to TSMC using 3nm. Crisis of shortages and process falling behind will be resolved by the end of next year".

Yep, it's happened -- Intel is outsourcing manufacturing of its CPUs after the clusterf*** that it has been over the last few years and into the talented hands of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). RetiredEngineer provided a translation of DigiTimes report, which highlights some juicy facts:

You can see there DigiTimes reports that its sources in the semiconductor industry say that Intel and TSMC have "already concluded negotiations on an outsourcing agreement. Unlike in the past where non-core products were outsourced to TSMC, the scale of these new orders are larger than expected, and will use TSMC's 3nm process slated to enter mass production in the second half of 2022. Intel is set to become TSMC's second largest customer, next to Apple. The cooperation between the two will continue through the 2nm generation, Intel would not comment on market rumors".

NVIDIA has removed listings of their Founders Edition graphic cards in European stores, which seems to be a sad day indeed.

VideoCardz reports that NVIDIA doesn't sell its graphics cards through its webstore in all EU countries, where it sells them through external stores. NVIDIA lists the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition on its Polish website, but they're completely sold out.

No other EU webstores have Founders Edition graphics cards listed, but there's no reason behind the move by NVIDIA. The company could have no stock right now and removed them temporarily, or it could be a sadder affair and FE cards are finished in Europe and won't be sold again.

We now have a much more solid number in terms of how many GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards that scalpers have purchased, and sold for profit: nearly 50,000 cards.

The news is coming from Chicago-based data engineer Michael Driscoll that reports that 49,580 Ampere GPUs were sold between eBay and StockX alone. Driscoll breaks this down into $61.5 million in sales on eBay and StockX with $15.2 million profit and $6.8 million for eBay, PayPal and StockX.

You can read the entire post by Driscoll here.

We knew that ASUS ROG had teamed with IKEA on a new range of "affordable gaming furniture", but now we have our first look at theh products thanks to a new leak ahead of their launch.

ASUS is expected to fully unveil the new IKEA x ASUS ROG lineup on January 29, but the IKEA China store has listed all of the products ahead of launch -- which works for us. We now get a look at the UPSSPEL gaming desk, a new ROG-themed pegboard, a moving ROG-themed cupboard, and so much more.

The IKEA x ASUS gaming desk.

ASUS has revealed yet another custom GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card, with the introducton of the new Megalodon series -- exclusive to the China market.

The new Megalodon series is launched powering both the GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, with an aesthetics that takes queues from both the ASUS ROG Strix and TUF Gaming series of graphics cards. The cards have a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, too.

ASUS is using the normal display connectivity of 3 x DP 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.1 output, with the cards only available in the Chinese market unfortunately. We don't know too much about the GPU clocks, but with a single PCIe power connector I don't think even the higher-end RTX 3070 Megalodon will be overclocking that hard.

We knew that AMD was preparing to launch its new Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors in March 2021, but now we have some solid pricing on the flagship Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX chip that will cost $5489.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX packs a huge 64 cores and 128 threads, but with the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X around it's not something we haven't seen. The new PRO version is also 100MHz slower on its base clock (4.2GHz on 3995WX versus 4.3GHz on the 3990X).

Now we have official pricing on AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO series, which will be as follows:

If you've managed to find a new Big Navi-based Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card, and were hoiping to overclock it with MSI Afterburner -- you were out of luck. Until now.

The newest version of the infamous overclocking tool packs support for the Radeon RX 6000 series, which includes the Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT, and the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT. MSI Afterburner 4.63 Beta 5 will not let you overclock your RDNA 2-powered Big Navi card if you don't have Radeon Software set to "Manual" mode to overclock your graphics card.

After that, MSI Afterburner will take care of the overclocking of your Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card. There's even a new Big Navi themed skin for MSI Afterburner, which looks awesome.

I can safely say I've never seen this before.

A modified NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card has been tweaked to work from a laptop and its NVMe M.2 slot, from an AMD Ryzen 4600U-powered Kosin Air 14 laptop.

The modder removed the installed NVMe M.2 SSD that was inside of the laptop, attached an M.2 to PCIe adapter cable, and then connected up his GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. It wouldn't be a "mod" without some physical modding, right? The modder also drilled a hole in the laptop so that the required cable could run outside of the chassis itself.

I'm sure by now you've heard all about the GameStop share price insanity fueled by Reddit and the r/WallStreetBets subreddit -- if not, I've got some links for you below. If so, things just went up another notch.

The r/WallStreetBets subreddit has had its moderators overloaded since the subreddit exploded in popularity, so much so that it has even seen the official Discord server for r/WallStreetBets being banned for "hate speech". Reddit temporarily turned the lights off to r/WallStreetBets for around an hour not too long ago, making it private -- but now r/WallStreetBets is back.

A post on r/WallStreetBets explains: "The situation here is delicate. Obviously, with the deletion of discord due to ToS violations, the moderators here are dealing with an existential threat to our community. While in the past, automated moderation using bots has been effective for dealing with human users violating the WSB sub ToS, I think a has been reached where the quantity AND quality of posts, primarily by bot accounts, has likely overwhelmed our moderator resources".