Latest News - Page 1606

Since the killing of George Floyd, protests have sparked across the United States against racial inequality. Unfortunately, some people are taking these protests as an opportunity to raid retail stores and steal goods.

One of the many stores that are being raided by these opportunists is Apple retail stores, as many of these people believe they can resell the stolen goods online. Unfortunately for these raiders and fortunately for Apple, the stolen goods are worth next to nothing. This is because Apple has implemented a "kill switch" for any device that is stolen. Here's how it works via Forbes:

"It has long been known that Apple operates some form of proximity software that disables a device when it is taken illegally from a store. Until now, though, little had been seen of that technology in action. Well, thanks to social media, we can now see the message that greets a looter powering up their new device: "This device has been disabled and is being tracked," it says. "Local authorities will be alerted."

As expected, President Trump's move to encourage regulators to investigate content removal on social media platforms has been met with a legal challenge.

This controversy started after President Trump Tweeted out several comments in regards to mail-in votes. These tweets were then flagged by Twitter and were 'fact-checked', which then resulted in Trump signing an Executive Order that asks regulators to chip away at legal protections that stop social media companies from being held liable for the content being posted on their platforms. Now, the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology has filed a suit against Trump for the Executive Order claiming that Trump's stance on the issue "plainly retaliatory".

According to the lawsuit, Trump's order allegedly violates the First Amendment and is designed to "curtail and chill" protected speech. Twitter also voiced its opinion on the lawsuit and, of course, supported the claims from the Center for Democracy and Technology, saying the order from Trump was a "reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law" that could "threaten the future of online speech". Above is the full statement published on the Twitter Public Policy Twitter account.

It was only a few days ago that SpaceX broke the space industry into a new era, and if you are yet to see the footage, you can find the historic moment below.

Luckily, Crew Dragon arrived safely aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and upon there arrival, the astronauts already aboard the ISS were impressed with the technology that got the Dragon there. Chris Cassidy, the current commander of the ISS even commented on the vehicle, saying "Then when we got that hatch open, you could tell it was a brand new vehicle, with smiley faces on the other side, smiley face on mine, just as if you had bought a new car, the same kind of reaction."

One of the astronauts, Doug Hurley, who was aboard the Crew Dragon commented on the experience of arriving at the ISS. The comments are well respected as both Hurley and Behnken (the other astronaut aboard the Dragon) have spent time aboard the Space Shuttle and can give a good comparison between their experiences with the Space Shuttle and Crew Dragon.

A new manga has just dropped, with it being the first that was plotted and designed by artificial intelligence (AI). The AI itself looked at, and learned the artistic style of Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka.

The AI-made manga is called "PHAEDO" and was released in the weekly comic magazine "Morning" reports the Japan Times. The AI generated character designs and basic story lines from the inspiration of the Astro Boy creator, and then it was handed to professional creators to add in things like clothing and dialogue.

Kioxia Corporation has announced that it is releasing the English version of the manga, as part of TEZUKA 2020 and the first phase of the company's new #FutureMemories brand campaign. The English version of PHAEDO will be released on Kioxia's own TEZUKA 2020 website.

Google has just had a $5 billion lawsuit slapped on its desk, with the class action lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegally invading the privacy of millions of people by tracking their internet use -- even when users were using "private" mode on their browser.

The complaint was filed in the federal court of San Jose, California, which claims Google takes data from users' browsers even if they're using Chrome's private "Incognito" mode. The complaint adds that Google scoops up all sorts of data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, other applications and website plug-ins -- no matter if you don't click an ad or not.

So even if you were searching for something weird online in Incognito mode, thinking you were safe from the prying all-seeing eye of Google, you were never safe. Google learns all about you, and everything you search for -- no matter if its private it seems according to this $5 billion lawsuit.

We all know Zoom use has exploded over the last 6 months, but now we have some official numbers.

Zoom has reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2020, where compared to the same period of 2019, Zoom customers that have over 10 employees working for them increased by 354% to 265,400. Not just that, but normal Zoom use exploded as well.

Zoom executives explain: "We peaked at over 300 million daily participants, free and paid, joining Zoom meetings in April 2020, up from 10 million in December 2019". But get this: in January 2020 the company had 100 billion meeting minutes, which by the end of April went crazy and jumped through the stratosphere to 2 trillion.

I'm pretty freaking hyped about Crysis Remastered, but between now and its release -- we have this awesome Crysis Enhanced Edition mod to check out. Scope the video below:

The Crysis Enhanced Edition mod has some pretty gorgeous graphics, with improvements made to in-game textures and its lighting system. The mod includes 8K rocks and grounds, 4K structures, screen space reflections, max particles and particle lights, indirect sky lighting, reworked indoor lights, improved fog volumes, and so much more.

You can check out the Crysis Enhanced Edition mod right here on its Remaster Studio Patrons page.

AMD has burst a new hole into the CPU market with Ryzen, where in a few generations it has made some serious damage on Intel's turf -- the company is about to do the same to the GPU market against NVIDIA, and now it could do the same thing to the mobile market with a new SoC against Qualcomm.

A new leak picked up by 'HansDeVriesNL' on Twitter teases the AMD Ryzen Mobile Platform, which is based on the ARM Cortex cores and the first model we're seeing here is the Ryzen C7 SoC and it packs some serious hardware chops. We're looking at an 8-core SoC on TSMC's new 5nm node, and packing AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 architecture on the GPU side of things.

In the leaked deck, it says we're to expect something that hasn't been announced yet (on top of the AMD Ryzen C7 SoC itself) in the Radeon RDNA 2 Mobile GPU. In this leak, the RDNA 2 Mobile GPU is 45% faster than Qualcomm's own Adreno 650 GPU, and it would be the first mobile GPU with real-time hardware accelerated ray tracing and variable rate shading.

SEGA isn't making the Dreamcast 2, nor is it teaming up with Microsoft to release the SEGA Series X. No, the earth-shattering news is a Game Gear micro mini-handheld console.

Today SEGA confirmed the Game Gear Micro, a miniature retro handheld that assumably comes pre-loaded with old-school games. While SEGA did announce the hardware, it didn't give any actual information on what's included, and instead dropped a general banner confirmation.

The news comes shortly after gamers discovered a new SEGA touchscreen patent which is likely to be included in the Game Gear Micro. Expect the device to similar touchscreen functionality as a cell phone, which could drive up the price of the handheld. No games, pricing, or availability has been revealed, but SEGA will announce new details in three hours.

Diablo 4 might not have a release date, but that doesn't mean that the hype for it is not real -- with a new 20-minute gameplay clip of Diablo 4 shown by 'GAMEPLAY PS' on YouTube. Check it out:

The new Diablo 4 gameplay footage shows the huge Barbarian character, completing the quest 'A Light in the Dark'. In this video it is just raw gameplay with no one talking over it, so we get a great look at the gameplay and those gigantic and deep hits that the Barbarian places on countless enemies.

It would've been nice to have had a higher-res upload, as the video itself is in 4K but it doesn't appear that the video itself is rendering in 4K. Still, for what it is -- most likely some Diablo 4 beta goodness -- it looks good.

AMD along with its technology partner in Penguin Computing Inc. which is a division of SMART Global Holdings, Inc. have announced that they are lending AMD-powered, high-performance computing (HPC) resources from the AMD HPC Fund for COVID-19 research.

The high-performance computing systems will be used by New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Rice University. Others will follow, but these three were the first out of the gate from the AMD HPC Fund. AMD will also contribute a cloud-based system that is powered by AMD EPYC and AMD Radeon Instinct hardware on-site at Penguin Computing.

In total, AMD is donating a rather huge 7 petaflops of compute performance to the fight against COVID-19. AMD president and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, said: "High performance computing technology plays a critical role in modern viral research, deepening our understanding of how specific viruses work and ultimately accelerating the development of potential therapeutics and vaccines".

Intel didn't get to have another water chiller moment at Computex 2020 after its Computex 2018 mess, but that doesn't mean the company got away with Computex this year -- at least virtually, unscathed.

Intel CEO Bob Swan took to a YouTube guest spot in a Virtual Computex, where he had some interesting things to say. With AMD coming into the CPU market like a wrecking ball with its Ryzen CPU family, Swan is now saying that consumers and gamers shouldn't worry about benchmarks because coronavirus is here. Yeah, I'm being serious.

Swan said: "We should see this moment as an opportunity to shift our focus as an industry from benchmarks to the benefits and impacts of the technology we create. The pandemic has underscored the need for technology to be purpose-built so it can meet these evolving business and consumer needs".

Capcom confirms Resident Evil 3 Remake won't get any story DLC, and the included RE: Resistance multiplayer mode is the only future content that'll release.

RE3 Remake is complete. There's no updates or singleplayer DLC coming down the line. When asked if the game would get any DLC in the future, game producer Peter Fabiano delivered a curt response: "Resident Evil 3 is a finished product."

This was to be expected. RE3 Remake was in development for 3 years, and was made simultaneously alongside RE2 Remake. Capcom tacked on a live service game into RE3 in an effort to monetize with lootbox-style cosmetics. It's this mode that'll shift over time, not the base campaign. Capcom received lots of criticism for this move from gamers, but it fits right in with the company's major push into online gaming.

Square Enix's HD Games segment just got a sizable ¥5.7 billion write-down, and outright mentions a $31 million disposal cost for a new Luminous Productions game.

Like many games publishers, Square Enix has been disrupted by COVID-19. Due to the virus, the company shipped and produced less copies of Final Fantasy 7 Remake than expected, leading to 3.5 million sales at launch, less than the original projections. Square Enix president Yousuke Matsuda says he's happy with the game's performance, but notes the disk sales missed revised internal estimates. This reduction came after a 36% drop in game sales volume in FY19, which in turn led to a whopping 55% drop in total HD Games revenue throughout the year.

These disruptions--and more--have prompted Square Enix's recent $52 million write-down in its content production account. This specific area of business includes games currently in development.

As the United States wrestles racial reform and civil upheaval, games-makers are delaying their biggest events so they don't steal the spotlight.

A bit ago Sony postponed one of gaming's most anticipated reveals--the PS5 event--to an unknown date. "We want to stand back and let more important voices be heard," Sony said in a statement. Now CD Projekt RED is doing the same with its planned Cyberpunk 2077 stream.

CDPR has delayed its Night City Wire event to June 25, two weeks after the original date.

Lenovo says that more than 250 million computers are sold each year, and 2.87% of those, roughly 7.2 million machines, are running Linux. Lenovo says that Linux used to be thought of as a niche operating system for IT users, but it is increasingly being used by data scientists, developers, application engineers, scientists, and other users. With Linux use growing, Lenovo is working to certify its entire workstation portfolio for top Linux distributions from Ubuntu and Red Hat.

Lenovo says that every model in every configuration in its workstation portfolio will be certified. Lenovo says that while many users prefer to customize their machines on hardware without an OS or by wiping an existing OS and installing Linux, that can cause uncertainty with system stability, restrict performance, compatibility, and user productivity, and IT support for the devices. Lenovo will remove that barrier for deployment with enterprise-grade hardware within a Linux software ecosystem.

Historically Lenovo certified only certain products within a limited subset of hardware configurations to work with Linux. The new move will see the entire portfolio of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations certified for both Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu LTS. The latter is a long-term enterprise-stability version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.

Video of THQ's cancelled Avengers co-op game has surfaced, showing an interesting glimpse at what could've been.

Crystal Dynamics aims to make the definitive Avengers game in 2020, complete with online play, chaotic battles, and tons of customization. But back in 2011, THQ was making their own superhero project for Xbox 360. THQ's game was a first-person multiplayer experience starring Captain America, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor.

But a quick glance shows why the game was cancelled. The FPS mechanics look pretty wonky, especially melee-based characters like Hulk and Cap. All we really see are giant fists bashing enemies the whole time and Cap's shield just flailing around. It looks pretty fun to play as Iron Man or Thor, though, but it still seems off. There's a lot of Skyrim-style wild spam attacks hacking-and-slashing.

Epic Game Store freebies are having an unintended effect: Massive awareness is boosting game sales on competing platforms.

According to Epic boss Tim Sweeney, giving away free games is a net benefit for developers and Epic as a whole. Epic gets more sign-ups and users who are more likely to stay in the ecosystem, and devs get exposure on the store's huge 85 million strong userbase. This exposure is actually leading to full game sales on other storefronts, Sweeney says, which is quite similar to the Game Pass Effect.

"People have discovered a lot of great games [from Epic Store free games]. It's been a benefit for game developers. Most developers who launch their games for free on the store found that their sales on Steam and on console platforms actually increased after they went free on Epic because of increased awareness," Sweeney said in a recent interview with Gamespot.

Around the world, many motorsports have been postponed, and races have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. In Australia, the Supercars races have been moved to virtual events for the foreseeable future. LG is a sponsor of a driver for this year's BP Supercars All Stars Eseries virtual racing event. The season is a 10-week online simulation with Supercar drivers competing in races from their homes.

LG says that asking an athlete, like a sports car driver, to relearn their sport online isn't an easy task. Learning to drive in a virtual event is particularly hard for supercar drivers with no experience with racing sims. Rick Kelly, team principal, co-owner, and driver for Kelly Racing, felt the challenge of adapting to racing off of the track in the virtual world.

LG Electronics Australia is an official partner for Kelly Racing Supercars team for the 2020 season and helped Rick to create an enhanced simulation experience at home. LG provided Kelly Racing with home entertainment technology that included a trio of 55-inch C9 LG OLED televisions that were specially calibrated for racing simulation. Using those screens, Kelly was able to build a simulator that allowed him to create a familiar driving experience similar to being inside of a real supercar.

An internal memo has surfaced that shows plans Apple has for an older MacBook model. The memo shows something that will affect anyone still holding onto a 15-inch MacBook Pro from mid-2012. That model was the first MacBook to feature a Retina display and had a significantly thinner design compared to the notebooks that came before.

The internal memo, obtained by MacRumors, shows that this particular MacBook Pro will be marked as obsolete globally on June 30, 2020. That would make the obsolete date about eight years after the notebook initially launched. By marking the notebook as obsolete, it's no longer eligible for hardware service under any condition.

This particular machine was classified by Apple as "vintage" in 2018 but was still able to get service if needed, subject to parts availability. While owners of the mid-2012 MacBook Pro might want to upgrade as even the most basic of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro models have much better performance, owners can opt to repair the machine themselves.