Latest News - Page 1614

Facebook seems to be going all-in with remote working, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that the social networking giant has plans to "aggressively" ramp up hiring for remote workers.

The social networking company will also be taking applications for workers who want to permanently work from home, joining Facebook's current flock of 48,000 staff. An internal survey run by Facebook saw that 40% of its employees were interested in working from home, indefinitely.

Facebook says that within the next 5-10 years it will have up to 50% of its workforce working remotely. Zuckerberg told The Verge: "We're going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale". Financially, there are benefits of work-from-home (WFM), with Zuckerberg adding: "That means if you live in a location where the cost of living is dramatically lower, or the cost of labour is lower, then salaries do tend to be somewhat lower in those places".

The custom Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox One X console looks pretty damn awesome, but it doesn't look $2000 awesome -- right?

A new listing for the Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox One X console popped up on the Microsoft Store, and people were instantly mad. The reason? The cost was $1999, but was quickly confirmed by Xbox Social Marketing Manager for Consoles and Accessories, Josh Stein, this isn't true.

Stein replied to a tweet from Anthony Rivera, who said "This has to be a typo right?" to which Stein replied: "Not correct at all, stay tuned in June for all the details!"

I still remember buying the original Xbox all the way back in 2001, but it has taken 19 years for the source code for Microsoft's first game console to leak online.

A new report from The Verge says that the original Xbox source code has been leaked, with the leak including the kernel for the operating system, build environments, and the Xbox Development Kit. The original Xbox console ran a custom version of Windows 2000. The Verge spoke with a Microsoft spokesperson, who said: "We're aware of these reports and are investigating".

It wasn't just the original Xbox source code that was leaked, but also the source code for the near-final version of Windows NT 3.5, and that includes all the required build tools thatr will let people tinker with the older OS. Not many places or people use Windows NT 3.5 anymore, with official support ending in December 2001 -- to this day it is run on a very small number of systems.

Lexar has just unveiled its new Professional NM700 NVMe SSD, with the new storage drive coming in three different capacities: 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.

Inside, we have Lexar tapping the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface which offers some great speeds of up to 3.5GB/sec (3500MB/sec) reads, and up to 2GB/sec (2000MB/sec) writes. Lexar is using 3D NAND flash on the drive, with LDPC technology (Low-Density Parity Check) error code checking technology.

LDPC helps facilitate transfers of large amounts of data, making it more reliable and fixing errors before they arrive so that it doesn't slow the drive down. Lexar provides a 5-year warranty with its new Professional NM700 NVMe SSD drives, too. As for pricing:

We've had the official trailer to Tenet drop in December 2020, with Christopher Nolan's craziest looking movie yet looking, well, crazy. It is mysterious like many of his movies, but now a new trailer will debut inside of Fortnite:

The new trailer to Tenet will debut inside of Fortnite in the Party Royale space at 8PM ET, and will repeat every hour on the hour. Epic Games says that if you miss the trailer presentation in Fortnite, don't worry -- they will repeat it for 24 hours until 8PM ET tomorrow night.

I do find it weird, though: Christopher Nolan is a man of quality, the cinematography in his movies is absolutely top notch (see Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar) yet he will be debuting his latest trailer inside of Fortnite in low quality?

I think we've about heard it all when it comes to coronavirus, but each day brings a new surprise -- and some days, and some places it seems more than others. Now God is sending us messages in the form of coronavirus-shaped hailstones.

Residents in the city of Montemorelos in Mexico have taken to social media to post photos of recent weather events, where the formation of hailstones (at least to them) looked like the shape of coronavirus. The posts on social media have Mexicans claiming that the bad weather was an "omen" to the city of Montemorelos.

One particular post on social media said: "Yesterday coronavirus hailstone, God sent it to our home to remind us to stay put". Another post reads: "Is this a subliminal message from our creator?"

System Shock 3's ailed development has been saved by billion-dollar Chinese juggernaut Tencent, who has invested an undisclosed amount into the franchise.

Otherside Entertainment just confirmed Tencent is helping fund System Shock 3's development, allowing the troubled dev to breathe easy. Otherside admits they were squeezed for resources and somewhat corroborates the recent rumors of the sequel's troubled creation cycle. This is absolutely huge for the smaller-scale indie dev, and the game itself--with the back of Tencent the project will mature and grow in a way it couldn't before.

"We are happy to announce that Tencent will be taking the System Shock franchise forward. As a smaller Indie studio, it had been challenging for us to carry the project on our own. We believe Tencent's deep capabilities and expertise as a leading game company will bring the franchise to new heights," Otherside said in a blog post.

Razer has announced the launch of the new Blade Pro 17 laptop that is aimed at gamers, designers, and game developers. The notebook is available with a 4K 120 Hz display for creators that need high resolution and has a full HD 300 Hz option for gamers. Buyers can configure the machine with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super GPU and the 10th generation Intel Core i7-10875H CPU.

The full HD display is 17.3-inches in size, covers 100% of the SRGB space, and is custom calibrated for color. It's coated with an anti-glare, matte finish. The 4K display option has a 120 Hz refresh rate, and it also covers 100% of the Adobe RGB space. The Core i7-10875H processor can operate at speeds of up to 5.1 GHz with Turbo Boost and has a 16 MB cache.

The high-end RTX 2080 Super GPU offers 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and has more ray tracing cores promising up to a 25% increase in performance over the original RTX GPUs. To keep the high-end hardware running cool inside the notebook, the Blade Pro 17 uses a unique vapor chamber cooler paired with a dual-fan system for active cooling. Razer promises that the cooling system delivers the cooling performance needed to keep the machine performing without generating uncomfortable amounts of heat or noise.

Take-Two Interactive wasn't kidding when it said its new games slate was the biggest in its history. The company is currently working on 93 new games (yes, ninety-three), but it's careful to say not all of these titles will actually launch.

In its latest FY20 earnings report, Take-Two confirmed a gigantic 93-game slate. It seemed beyond belief. Ideally, GTA parent company wants to launch 93 games in the next 5 years. Obviously this includes the entire spectrum of game type and platform. We'll see re-releases, remasters, streaming-only games, F2P games, mobile games, and the big AAA heavy-hitters like GTA 6 and BioShock 4.

"Across our internally owned labels and outside development studio partners, we currently have 93 titles planned for release over the next five years through fiscal 2025," Take-Two President Karl Slatoff said.

Take-Two's free GTA V giveaway stunt on the Epic Store is expected to help boost Take-Two's microtransactions by 75%.

As soon as I heard about the free GTA V giveaway on the Epic Store, I knew microtransaction spending was about to jump. It wasn't hard to figure out. The idea here is make the game free to everyone, give them a bunch of GTA Online cash, and get them hooked. Once everyone's hooked, they're more likely to keep playing and pay money for more GTAO cash. And it'll work, too. Take-Two is counting on it.

In its recent earnings report, Take-Two says Q1'21 microtransactionss should jump by 75% year-over-year, and guess which game will contribute the most? Take-Two earned $313.78 million from in-game spending in Q1'20. A quick bit of math shows Take-Two expects to make $549.12 million from mTX in Q1'21.

ASUS has unveiled a new series of mainboards that are aimed at supporting the latest AMD processors. Sitting at the top of the line is the ROG Strix B550-E Gaming mainboard. The E version of the board is aimed at gamers wanting to use AMD Ryzen processors using the AM4 socket with dual or triple expansion cards. The CPU socket is flanked by a 14+2 power stage VRM for reliable performance.

The board also supports reinforced PCIe x16 SafeSlots for heavy GPUs in SLI or CrossFireX modes. The board has six fan headers an AIO and pump headers to allow for setups as simple or intricate as the gamer wants. Automatic fan speed detection is supported using Q-Fan software controls with multiple presets to keep temperature and noise levels down.

A pair of SSDs up to 110mm long can be fitted into the dual M.2 slots that are both covered by heat sinks to prevent thermal throttling under load. The board also features Intel-power 2.5 Gb Ethernet and Wi-Fi 6 controllers. Bluetooth 5.1 is also integrated along with the trio of three USB ports, including a single Type-C and two Type-A ports.

Take-Two's latest yearly earnings jump across the board as it rides a big digital wave of game sales and monetization.

Grand Theft Auto owner Take-Two Interactive just released its Fiscal Year 2020 earnings report, and the results are fantastic. Thanks to heavy-hitters like NBA 2K20 and GTA V as well as the myriad of multi-platform titles, Take-Two generated consistent high earnings like a well-oiled money-making machine.

Take-Two pulled in $3.08 billion in net revenues during the yearly period, driven mostly by sharp upticks in digital game sales and a surge in microtransactions.

We already know that both AMD and NVIDIA will be launching next generation graphics cards later this year, where we have already heard rumblings of NVIDIA launching its next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and other RTX 30 series cards at Computex 2020 in September.

Now we have DigiTimes with a report that teases: "With AMD and NVIDIA set to launch their next-generation GPUs in September, graphics cards vendors are expected to cut prices for older-generation products, stimulating demand further in third-quarter 2020".

There are some things to note here, as DigiTimes didn't say anything about gaming-focused graphics cards... but we all know that they're coming. We should expect to see NVIDIA unveil a slew of new Ampere-baed GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards towards the later half of the year -- with previous rumors pegging September 2020 for a Computex release.

Intel has made a killer acquisition today with the company acquiring Rivet Networks, the company behind Killer NIC networking products.

Killer-branded NICs are pretty kick ass, and can be found inside of the best laptops from the likes of Alienware, Dell, HP, and others. Any gamer will know that Killer NIC-powered gaming rigs have gaming-focused features that keep lag at a minimum, network prioritization for your games, and more.

Intel has been competing against Rivet Networks for a while now, but this now ends now that Intel owns the company and all things Killer. We should see future Intel chipsets and platforms (laptops, NUCs) with Killer-infused networking connectiviy (be it wired, or Wi-Fi).

Intel might have just launched its new 10th Gen CPUs with the new flagship Core i9-10900K processor, but you didn't think AMD would take it sitting on their hands this time around, did you?

AMD's third-gen Ryzen 9 3900X processor can now be found on Amazon for just $410, its lowest price yet: offering 12 cores and 24 threads of Zen 2 processing power. AMD launched the Ryzen 9 3900X at $500 so this price drop to $410 is pretty hefty, while Intel intros its new Core i9-10900K at $500.

You're getting a 12C/24T with the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X having its base CPU clock at 3.8GHz and its max boost clock of 4.6GHz -- this lags behind Intel's new Core i9-10900K, a 10C/20T chip, but has its Turbo Boost Max 3.0 ceiling of 5.3GHz. Hell, someone has already pushed it right up to the dizzying heights of 7.7GHz using liquid helium cooling, too.

Sony is ramping rather quickly into the launch for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, with some more news nuggets on what could be one of the biggest launch games of all time: Gran Turismo 7.

We've been hearing about Gran Turismo 7 for a while now, with it rumored to be a PlayStation 5 launch title -- and now the Gran Turismo 7 logo has been teased on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The post asks: "What racing game are you most looking forward to in 2020?"

It seems like an accidental leak from Australia-based professional racing cockpit manufacturer Next level Racing, which is an official PlayStation licensee... making a rather big boo-boo. The social post includes logos to Automobilista 2, F1 2020, and DiRT 5 -- but the third logo you can see there is for Gran Turismo 7.

Antec has just unveiled its new Katana DDR4 memory, which the company designed with the inspiration of a Japanese Samurai sword and its blade.

The new Antec Katana DDR4 memory has a slick style with some not-so-over-the-top RGB lighting at the top, with Eric Chen, the Vice President of Antec, explaining: "With our Katana memory modules, Antec aims at enthusiasts buying their stylish gaming cases and looking to add stylish designed components by the same brand".

Chen continues: "Katana shows off a metallic shine on the silver lighting bar, while, lit up, Katana glows with soft and harmonious light effects". Antec took home a 2019 iF DESIGN AWARD for its design on the Katana DDR4 RAM. You will have RGB lighting control of the Antec Katana DDR4 memory with ASUS Aura Sync, MSI Mystic Light, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

Samsung has just announced a new version of its popular Galaxy S20 smartphone, something that has been made exclusively for the US military and federal government.

The new Samsung Galaxy S20 Tactical Edition might sound like an unlock in Call of Duty, but it's a new smartphone that meets the needs of the US military and federal government. How so? It has two layers of encryption that are near impenetrable, so much so that the Galaxy S20 Tactical Edition can house top secret data, and connect to tactical radios and mission systems -- all out of the box.

Samsung is including some nifty combat-related ease-of-use in the Galaxy S20 Tactical Edition, where one particular mode lets you turn the display on and off if you're wearing night vision goggles. Another mode is more stealth, disabling LTE and turning off all RF broadcasts that would make sure no one can listen in on your comms.

We all know the story of the Titanic, with James Cameron's mega-hit movie making billions at the box office -- but the history is well known on the Titanic, and now it's about to get even more interesting. Maybe they just need to turn back time.

An underwater salvage company has been approved to slice into the Titanic wreckage, where they want to salvage the Marconi telegraph from the ship at the bottom of the ocean. Why do we need the telegraph machine from the Titanic? It could have locked away in the depths of the dark ocean some missed warning messages and even distress calls sent from the ship before it sunk.

Judge Rebecca Smith of the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., made some changes to a court order from 2000 that stopped any company from cutting into the hull of the Titanic looking for diamonds. Judge Smith explains: "The Marconi device has significant historical, educational, scientific and cultural value as the device used to make distress calls while the Titanic was sinking".

Intel launched its new flagship Core i9-10900K processor yesterday, and within the first 24 hours it was already put to the test and pushed well past its regular 5.3GHz all-core overclock.

Overclocker 'Elmor' has pushed his Core i9-10900K all the way to 7.7GHz, or exactly 7707.62MHz -- on all 10 cores of the Core i9-10900K. Elmor kept his Core i9-10900K processor cool enough for the huge overclock with liquid helium cooling, and throwing 1.194V into the chip.

Elmor used an ASUS ROG Maximus XII APEX motherboard, and a single stick of DDR4-4600 RAM. He also used Windows XP for his legendary overclock of the Core i9-10900K at 7.7GHz, too.