Latest News - Page 1609

Magic Leap dropped half of its staff after it charted a "new course" in restructuring itself, surviving the COVID-19 pandemic and its many effects on the world. This is also not the first time Magic Leap has been in trouble.

In an official statement at the time, CEO Rony Abovitz said the restructuring would also see an increased focus on enterprise. This was barely a month ago, and now Rony Abovitz has stepped down as CEO of Magic Leap. It seems Rony Abovitz has removed himself from Magic Leap's reality.

Anyone that has been following Magic Leap's super mysterious journey as an augmented reality startup, as it has raised billions of dollars from some of the largest companies and investors in the world -- without a consumer product. The company pivoted towards enterprise, and that's not working either -- but maybe with a new injection of funding, things will change.

The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was announced all the way back in February 2016, quickly being hyped throughout 2018 and 2019 -- and then delayed in May 2019 to fix the bad CGI of Sonic after fan backlash.

Sonic the Hedgehog was delayed into 2020 to allow the visual effects teams to tweak Sonic's look, with a re-designed Sonic shown off in the awesome trailer to Sonic the Hedgehog in November 2019 -- with a new release of February 14, 2020. That trailer cemented it: the director and team behind the movie listened, and the movie released was in far better form than the early trailer.

This has all led to today: where Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures and Sega Sammy have "commenced development on a sequel to the live-action family comedy. The sequel would re-team the filmmakers, with Jeff Fowler directing, and Pat Casey and Josh Miller writing the script".

YouTube is celebrating reaching the halfway mark of 2020 by doing something they hsould've had many years ago: built-in timestamps which the company calls "Chapters". Check out the tweet, with the video, below:

Content creators won't need to do anything special to get Chapters on their videos, they just need to write up the timestamps in the description of their video. The first chapter has to begin at 0:00 for YouTube's new Chapters feature to work, while videos need to have at least 3 chapters with over 10 seconds or longer, too.

It's kinda funny that it took YouTube this damn long to get its Chapters feature into its video service, but at least it's finally here.

3D printer fans will probably have ELEGOO's new Saturn machine on their radar -- which is about to release with pre-orders beginning on June 6. Check out the video below:

ELEGOO has just announced that its new resin printer will be up for pre-order on June 6 at 10AM EST, with a retail price of $400. The company is doing something special: the first 200 machine sold will be discounted by $100 with ELEGOO offering an early bird discount.

The ELEGOO Saturn 3D printer has a 4K monochrome LCD built-in, and a large 8.9-inch build plate for your 3D-printed creations.

You may hate his tweets. You may hate his memes. You might hate his weed and 420 jokes. You might hate that he blazed up with Joe Rogan on JRE -- but you can't deny that Elon Musk is kicking ass and firing on all cylinders when it comes to Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

Musk is about to get a hefty $800 million payday thanks to the Tesla board certifying a new financial milestone that unlocks the first grouping, or tranche of close to 1.7 million shares at a huge discount. Right now, Tesla shares are steady at $805 -- with a value of $775 million or so -- Musk gets the option of taking those shares at $350 per share.

Why is Musk getting this money? It's part of a compensation plan that was approved by shareholders back in 2018, where it splits up 20.3 million stock option awards into 12 tranches of 1.69 million shares each.

I can't believe the day is finally here, but the System Shock Remastered demo is finally here. You can download it from Steam and GOG right now.

Nightdive Studios first announced the news of System Shock Remastered back in 2016, where it hit Kickstarter on May 29, 2016. The game had its name changed from "System Shock Remastered" to "System Shock" as they considered the effort the team is putting into the game making it more of a reboot of the original game, versus just a remaster.

The developer has promised that there is "much more System Shock news coming in June", which is right around the corner.

HP's new Reverb G2 is a next-gen iteration of its previous Reverb VR HMD, and sports features like dual 2160x2160 lenses and four built-in cameras.

Today HP announced the Reverb G2, a new PC-powered virtual reality headset that packs serious power in a lightweight design. The HMD was built in tandem with Microsoft for the Windows Mixed Reality platform, but Valve also helped design the lenses and ensured Steam VR operability.

The Reverb G2 starts at $599 and is a wired headset, so it's not standalone and requires a PC to operate. On paper the Reverb G2 is similar to the original Reverb VR headset. The G2 sports include dual 2160x2160 LCD panels to deliver 4320x2160p resolution for gaming, four built-in cameras with 6DoF inside-out tracking with an "infinite" tracking area, and a lightweight 1.1lbs HMD frame with adjustable velcro straps and face cushions. The HMD runs at 90Hz refresh rates and has a 114-degree field-of-view, just like the original headset.

The Xbox Series X will play thousands of backwards compatible games across three generations, and all of them will harness the full native power of the system's 12TFLOP GPU and 3.8GHz Zen 2 CPU.

The new next-gen Xbox Series X also has serious next-gen backwards compatibility boosts that can significantly improve in-game performance. The Xbox Series X will natively enhance all backwards compatible games to massive levels, doubling frame rates (if a game runs at 30FPS base, it'll run at 60FPS on XSX, and up to 120FPS for games that normally hit 60FPS), simulating HDR visuals, tapping the built-in 2.5GB/sec PCIe 4.0 SSD for ultra-fast load times, and raising fidelity up to native 4K.

Microsoft previously confirmed Gears of War 4 Ultimate hits native 4K on the XSX without any upgrades from developers.

BIOSTAR has unveiled a pair of new H410 series motherboards designed to run the latest 10th generation Intel processors. The boards include the H410MHG and the H410MH. Both boards are aimed at business or casual users and are built with high-grade materials and functionality suitable for different uses.

Both boards are designed for the Micro-ATX form factor and feature USB 3.2 Gen1 ports with performance and connectivity needed for multiple devices. Integrated storage technologies include PCIe M.2 10Gb/s, offering 1.8 times more bandwidth compared to the SATA M.2 6Gb/s along with lowered latency.

Both the motherboards support up to 64GB DDR4 RAM with clock speeds up to 2933 MHz. Both also support gigabit LAN. The BIOSTAR H410MHG has TPM technology improving equipment effectiveness with an emphasis on proactive and preventative maintenance and provides a safe working environment. That board is built to suit government agencies and other commercial applications. It also includes a 4K HDMI connector.

Raspberry Pi 4 fans can get an upgraded version that just launched that offers up to 8GB of RAM. With the additional RAM version, the Pi 4 can now be had with 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB of RAM. The Pi 4 is almost a year old and has sold 3 million units so far. Over the nearly 12 months since launch, there have been a couple of minor board revisions.

The rumored 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 is now available and costs $75. The 2GB version of the same board sells for $35. The BCM2711 chip used on the Raspberry Pi 4 can address up to 16GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM. The developers behind the board say that the barrier to offering the larger-memory version was the lack of an 8GB LPDDR4 package.

Pi.org says that its partners at Micron unveiled a suitable part earlier this year. The Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM is available right now. Eben Upton from Raspberrypi.org wrote, "If you're a power user, intending to compile and link large pieces of software or run heavy server workloads, or you simply want to be able to have even more browser tabs open at once, this is definitely the Raspberry Pi for you."

I'd like to preface this comparison by saying it's not nearly as dynamic as I'd like it to have been. There's many other companies that make much more in microtransaction and monetization revenues than the ones listed here. And even the ones listed in the graph come with some caveats, which we'll go over below.

Live services are a billion-dollar business and the GaaS model won't go anywhere anytime soon. It's just too profitable. All of gaming's biggest publishers do it, from overseas titans like NetEase and Nexon to Western giants like Activision and EA. But how much do these games actually make every year? Quite a bit. We've compared some of the top earning companies that monetize both F2P and premium games.

NetEase leads the charge with over $6 billion generated from games in 2019, the bulk of which is from microtransactions, but this also includes full game sales. The company has stated in its filings that a "significant amount" of its games earnings come from monetized F2P titles, so we felt more comfortable including them on the list.

If you are scared of 5G radiation then you really need to look at buying this $416 product called 5GBioShield, from a UK-based company that says when the 5GBioShield is plugged in, it'll emit a protective shield with a 40-meter diameter that cancels out 5G radiation.

The company explains its 5GBioShield: "It harmonizes all harmful frequencies into life affirming frequencies". The drive itself is pwoered by "quantum nano-layer technology" that 5GBioShield says will "balance the imbalanced electric oscillations arising from all electric fog induced by all devices such as: laptops, cordless phones, wlan, tablets, etc".

But that's when IT security company Pen Test Partners steps in, as they purchased and tested the 5GBioShield. The firm said that the USB drive was "virtually identical" to a normal USB flash drive that you can buy wholesale form China for just $6. Yeah, there's nothing special going on -- it's like the Alex Jones of USB sticks.

Everyone, including the President of the United States, was excited for SpaceX's first astronaut launch to the International Space Station, but at the last minute, the launch was canceled.

Elon Musk's space company, SpaceX, was scheduled to launch its first-ever crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 27th, but unfortunately, the launch was delayed just 20 minutes before liftoff due to bad weather rolling in. The launch has now be rescheduled for May 30th at the earliest, and hopefully, on May 30th, there are clear skies.

If there aren't clear skies on May 30th, SpaceX has said that it will attempt to launch again on May 31st at precisely 3 p.m EDT or 1900 GMT. The two astronauts that SpaceX plans on sending are NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. This mission to the ISS will mark the first orbital human spaceflight from the U.S since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011.

The day is here: HBO Max has officially launched, with the new subscription service costing $15 per month and competing directly against Disney+ and Netflix. You can read everything you need to know about HBO Max here.

The launch hasn't been perfect, but the library is better than most on day one -- offering a gigantic library of content in the form of cartoons, TV shows, and movies from Warner Bros. At $15 per month, it's the most expensive streaming service on the market, but it has lots of content to binge -- HBO Originals coming soon, and exclusives like Zack Snyder's Justice League.

You can binge every single series of Friends, or The Big Bang Theory -- or dive right into some of the largest movies WB has in its catalog. This includes DCEU movies like Aquaman and Wonder Woman (others to come) as well as the Harry Potter movies, and so much more.

I'll remember the moment that Zack Snyder alongside Henry Cavill announced that Zack Snyder's Justice League was coming to HBO Max in 2021. It was a moment that will live with me forever.

But one of the concerns is the financing of getting it finished, as Snyder might have hours of footage to use -- but he'll need to make some adjustments to get the movie in a final state. During the recent episode of the Recode Media podcast, WarnerMedia and HBO Max boss Bob Greenblatt said it would cost far more than the reported $30 million to finish off Zack Snyder's Justice League.

Greenblatt said: "It isn't as easy as going into the vault and there's a Snyder Cut sitting there to put out... Zack is actually building it and it's complex, including - and I don't wanna get into too much detail that we haven't already talked about yet - but, new effects shots. It's a radical rethinking of that movie and it's complicated and wildly expensive. Which is, of course, a number I won't quote... I'll just say I wish it was $30 million and stop there".

Intel hasn't updated its retail CPU cooler in over 10 years, so I guess the company decided to celebrate the 10th Gen Core CPU family release with a slightly re-designed cooler.

The new Comet Lake CPUs when purchased in retail form will come with an Intel stock cooler, which for many years now has had a black-and-silver color scheme. Well black and silver no more, as Intel has moved to an all-black color scheme, seemingly turning its back on the color silver on its coolers -- at least for this generation.

Intel only includes a CPU cooler with the non-K series processors, so you'll only find these new all-black heat sinks in both the 35W T-series processors and the 65W non-K chips. The cooler itself remains unchanged, with the same circular design and fans in the middle with a shroud (that is now just a little thicker).

Today is the day that HBO Max launches and today is the day news took a giant leap of a new rumor: Henry Cavill is set to return in the role of Superman in future DCEU movies.

The news is coming from exclusive sources of Deadline, who said that Cavill is in talks to return as Kal-El. Deadline writes: "While there is not a Man of Steel sequel in the works, we're hearing that Henry Cavill is in talks to reprise his role as Superman in the Warner Bros. DC Universe".

But what is more interesting is how Cavill will return as Superman, as there is no announcement of Man of Steel 2 yet -- a sequel to Man of Steel from 2013 which kicked off the DCEU and was directed by Zack Snyder's Justice League director, Zack Snyder. Snyder also directed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice released in 2016.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has announced that it has raise $84 million in a second round of Series A funding, with the MIT spin off using the funds to continue its work on commercializing fusion energy.

The company has now raised $200 million since it first opened its doors in 2018, with the first round of funding seeing CFS secure $115 million in June 2019. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is all-systems-go towards meeting its goal of making commercial nuclear fusion a reality, and that could be much sooner than you think.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems boss Bob Mumgaard explains: "We're in a unique position where it's still something that's far enough in the future that any of the recovery models are not going to affect the underlying needs that the world still has a giant climate problem".

Microsoft is ramping right up into the launch of its next-gen Xbox Series X console, with Phil Spencer having a chat with the now ex-Nintendo America boss Reggie Fils-Aime on the Talking Games podcast. Check that out below:

In the chat, Spencer reiterates that Microsoft's supply chain is healthy and that they should be able to feed enough Xbox Series X consoles out to the world to all those hungry next-gen console gamers. Spencer said: "In our supply chain, we feel good about the hardware side. Feels like we'll be able to get enough units"

He continued: "And you know, we're pretty committed, as we've talked about to a worldwide launch, which regretfully, we didn't do with Xbox One. You remember watching that from Nintendo campus. It took us months and months to hit some of the incredibly important markets and worldwide launch is important to us".

Hello Games seems intent on not adding microtransactions to No Man's Sky, and is pulling some strategically-timed maneuvers to still make money from No Man's Sky.

No Man's Sky is one of the most interesting live games in the industry. It's a premium game that doesn't bake monetization into its online multiplayer hooks. The game brazenly defies what I call the Engagement Cycle by releasing massive game-changing expansions for free--something that any other publisher would nickle and dime you for--and instead relies on full game sales. So how does No Man's Sky dodge monetization so easily? It's actually pretty tactical.

Soon No Man's Sky will be available on Game Pass on both Xbox One and PC. This is absolutely huge for any game, especially one with a live audience. Game Pass has 10 million subscribers who will all instantly get access to No Man's Sky across two platforms. Not only will Hello Games make money from Game Pass subs, but the service is proven to actually spark full game sales of the titles that're available. After playing on Game Pass, users are eager to permanently own the titles they like.