Latest News - Page 1676

Phishing scams are currently one of the most common ways to scam someone, and while you'd probably think that it would never happen to you, it just happened to the Puerto Rico government.

In a new report by the Associated Press, the Puerto Rico government transferred funds equating to over $2.6 million dollars to a phony bank account through a phishing scam. The incident was discovered just this past week, and at the moment, government officials are working with the FBI to recover the stolen funds.

So how did this happen? According to Ruben Rivera, who is the finance director of Puerto Rico's Industrial Development Company, the department received an email that said that a bank account that was tied to government payments needed changing. In response to the email, officials transferred the funds into the changed bank account, which they later discovered was fraudulent.

Closer to the end of last year, we heard about an incredibly rare hybrid console called the "Nintendo PlayStation". The console was manufactured back in the 1980's and is now going on auction for a not-so-surprising amount.

If you don't know about the Nintendo PlayStation, please check out this post here to get some history on it, then head back to this article to read about the auction price. The hybrid console is being sol on Heritage Auctions, and due to its ridiculous rarity (only 200 units), the price is mighty steep. At the time of writing this post, the hybrid console is sitting at $260,000, with the next minimum bid having to be at least $312,000.

When I woke up this morning, I checked the bidding price, and it was sitting at $145,000, now just two hours later while I'm writing this post it has climbed $100,000+. At this rate, the Nintendo PlayStation could be sold for half a million dollars after the bidding closes in 21 days. If you want to sell your house to buy this console, feel free to check it out and bid here. On a personal note, when this console is sold, I hope the owner donates it to the National Videogame Museum, where it can be preserved as an artefact of gaming history.

Amazon is extremely upset over losing a $10 billion dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract to Microsoft. So, as any good business would do, they claim it bias.

According to a new report from CNBC, Microsoft's contract with the Pentagon is has now been paused because Amazon believes that President Trump has a bias towards Microsoft. Amazon's argument is that President Trump personally doesn't like Bezos or Amazon, and through his supposed dislike, he influenced which company would get the contract.

Now, the judge that is ruling the case has put the contract on pause to hear out Amazon's beliefs. Here's Amazon's statement, "The question is whether the president of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends." CNBC also says that Amazon has said it would pay out $42 million for any "costs and damages" that are resulted from this contract being put on pause.

Facebook Gaming has announced a newly secured gamer to join their platform, and it isn't who you would expect either as she didn't get her name from gaming, but instead fighting on the global stage.

This gamer is Ronda Rousey, who is known for her participation in the UFC and a former WWE world champion. Rousey took to her YouTube Channel to announce that she will be exclusively streaming video games on Facebook as of February 18th. At the moment, Rousey has more than 11.2 million Facebook fans, which answers the question as to why Facebook would want a UFT fighter gaming on its platform.

Rousey's stream is titled "Baddest Stream on The Planet" and her first livestream is scheduled in for February 18th at 3 PM PST. This isn't Rousey's first appearance in the gaming scene either, as she is the voice of Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 11. If you want to read up on more of that, check out this article here.

If you haven't yet seen Microsoft's Flight Simulator, then you are in for a treat because it's one of the best looking games out there at the moment.

At the moment, the game is still alpha, which means it's not close to being finished, but yet it still looks incredible. Today, we are going to be looking at a bunch of screenshots that were taken by alpha testers of the game, and boy, does it look next-gen. If you don't know much about Microsoft's Flight Simulator, I'll give you a quick rundown of the game.

In Microsoft's Flight Simulator, players will be able to take control of a range of different aircrafts and soar through the skies in a highly detailed realistic world. Flight Simulator will also use a huge amount of data from Bing Maps, and through Microsoft's cloud, it will be streamlined directly into the game to give you photo-realistic models of Earth in real-time. For more information about Microsoft's Flight Simulator, check out this link here.

Microsoft and Sony will be launching their next-gen consoles in late 2020 with an expected price of $499 each, with Bloomberg publishing a new report saying Sony is struggling with PlayStation 5 pricing over increased manufacturing costs.

According to the new report, manufacturing costs for the PlayStation 5 have reached "around $450 per unit" which is "forcing a difficult price-setting decision in its battle" with Microsoft and its next-gen Xbox Series X console. Normally Sony finalizes the pricing of its new PlayStation console in February (like, around now) and then mass produces it in the spring.

But, according to Bloomberg's sources Sony is taking a "wait-and-see approach". Rewinding back to 2013 and the release of the PS4 which retailed for $399 and cost $381 or so to manufacture (IHS Market estimations) -- a $450 manufacturing cost on the PlayStation 5 would see Sony having to retail it for at least $470 to match the $20-or-so profit per console of the PS4, so we should expect a $499 retail pricing on the PS5.

NVIDIA completely pulled out of Mobile World Congress before the MWC organizers GSMA canceled the event, all over coronavirus.

The coronavirus outbreak and fears globally have also pushed NVIDIA to reduce its revenue outlook for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 by $100 million over the disease outbreak. NVIDIA's earnings reports for fiscal year 2020 were stellar, with revenues of $10.92 billion -- down 7% from the previous year.

Still, NVIDIA's recent Q4 2019 revenue ended on January 26, 2020 saw them pull in $3.11 billion -- up a huge 41% from the previous year with its $2.1 billion. This is all thanks to its gaming technologies like GeForce graphics cards and NVIDIA's big push into AI.

Larry Dean Harmon of Akron, Ohio has been arrested for operating a cryptocurrency laundering service, where he moved a hefty $300 million through Bitcoin in a "tumbling" operation.

Harmon partnered with underground marketplace AlphaBay on an operation called Helix, which was known for its illegal activity that included drug deals (and I'm sure much more) according to the Department of Justice. Harmon exchanged over 350,000 bitcoins on Helix between the years 2014-2017, with the act of "tumbling" seeing people turn their cryptocurrency transactions to hide them from illegal activities like drugs, guns, and much more evil activities.

Don Fort, chief of the IRS Criminal Investigations division said in a statement: "The brazenness with which Helix operated should be the most appalling aspect of this operation to every day citizens. There are bad actors and then there are criminals who facilitate hundreds of other crimes. The sole purpose of Harmon's operation was to conceal criminal transactions from law enforcement on the Darknet, and because of our growing expertise in this area, he could not make good on that promise".

I didn't think this would ever come officially from Warner Bros. but here we are -- there's a Batman-themed restaurant opening in London called Park Row, named after the neighborhood in Gotham that houses Batman's crazy enemies.

Park Row will be located in the heart of London so that restaurant visitors will feel like they're actually entering the Batcave when they arrive, with different areas in the restaurant catering to different characters and themes from the Batman universe. There's even a library themed after Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler, and an "old Gotham city" villains theme with a speakeasy feel.

Harley Quinn gets her own space of course, while the largest section of the Batman-themed restaurant goes to the "Penguin's Lounge" which has live shows, and even a gigantic penguin ice sculpture. Each section will have its own individual menu with prices averaging at around $58 per person, but there is an expensive part of the restaurant -- of course, with the "Monarch Theater" designed by Ab Rogers Design, with prices averaging at $155 per person.

It looks like NVIDIA is up to something a little sneaky here, with a new listing submitted to the Eurasian Economic Commission which teases what looks like a new GeForce GTX 1650 model.

The new listing is by MSI and teases the GeForce GTX 1650 which right now, packs GDDR5 memory, while the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER is faster GDDR6 memory. The new models would see the GeForce GTX 1650 packing GDDR6 memory, but they wouldn't be a cluster f**k like the recent jebaiting to themselves that AMD did with the Radeon RX 5600 XT and last-minute BIOS changes.

We could see NVIDIA seeing AIB partners phasing out the older GDDR5-based GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards with the newer GDDR6-based ones, but that's something we'll have to wait and see about over the coming weeks.

Valve has fully revealed the exact release date of Half-Life: Alyx, with a release of March 23, 2020 -- after teasing "March 2020" during its reveal last year.

You'll want to buy a new Valve Index VR headset to play Half-Life: Alyx in its best form, as you cannot even play the game in a non-VR state. It's a VR exclusive experience, so you'll need a HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or Valve Index VR headset to play Half-Life: Alyx when it drops on March 23.

Valve also revealed 3 new screenshots of Half-Life: Alyx alongside the confirmed release date, something I've got for your viewing pleasure below. The company also took out some time to address pre-order bonuses for anyone who purchased a Valve Index will begin "rolling out the week of March 2nd, beginning with Steam VR Home environments inspired by locations in Half-Life: Alyx. We will have more information on upcoming Valve Index availability soon".

Google will pay $160 million across the years for exclusive streaming rights to Activision-Blizzard's esports tournaments, sources familiar with the deal tell The Esports Observer.

Activision-Blizzard recently signed a huge deal with Google to only stream its lucrative esports events like The Call of Duty and Overwatch Leagues on YouTube, cementing a unique synergy between the two media titans.

Under the plan, Google will pay Blizzard $160 million over a three-year span for exclusivity. For reference, that's about the cost of one huge AAA game or two bigger AAA titles that Google could be using to make Stadia games. (The tech giant is still investing in new exclusive first-party Stadia games, however.) The deal will benefit both companies tremendously: Activision-Blizzard gets a payout and enjoys the massive power of YouTube's accessibility and userbase, and Google gets more views and engagement, which in turn translates to more ad revenues. (YouTube made $15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019.)

The Netflix Effect helped massively surge Witcher 3 game sales to a new mass audience of gamers.

According to the NPD Group, full retail copies of The Witcher 3 skyrocketed by 554% in Holiday 2019 thanks to the Netflix adaptation of the series. This was to be expected, especially given the Netflix Effect's potency for transmedia content. The idea was simple: Use The Witcher TV series as an entry point to the franchise and captivate audiences on a mass-market level, then users who liked it would continue the experience by buying The Witcher 3 game and the associated books. Turns out a lot of people liked the show.

"December physical sales for the game were 554 percent higher than December 2018, and still 63 percent higher even when excluding the Nintendo Switch platform," NPD Group executive director Sartori Bernbeck said. This spike was the perfect convergence of many things: The Netflix show, the Switch port, and of course annual sales across digital and physical retail outlets.

Square Enix wants to use AI neural networks and machine learning to help identify bugs and glitches and take some of the stress from QA testing.

While cruising Square Enix's job listings I found something rather interesting: The company's Advanced Technology Division, which is responsible for high-tech R&D, is hiring an AI-based QA automation researcher with the aim to "efficiently reduce the amount of manual labor on game QA."

Right now the listing is just for R&D, meaning we shouldn't expect it to translate to games any time soon. Given Square Enix's penchant for years-long development cycles and long-winded, expansive, and finely-articulated experiences, any effort to help QA will ship games faster. The sooner bugs are identified, the sooner devs can squash them and optimize the game, and the sooner it hits store shelves.

League of Legends is one of the biggest games ever created with a player base of over 100 million players. So how much carbon are those players generating?

In a new study, it has been estimated that League of Legends' 115 million players throughout 2019 resulted in around 3,139,385 tonnes of CO2 emissions, based on the average player game time. This amount of output of CO2 is estimated to be around the same as charging 400,372,745,210 smartphones or driving 7,790,037,221 miles.

Both gaming companies and consoles manufacturers are working towards minimizing their carbon footprint, and with study's such as these and others coming out estimating how much carbon they are producing, they are really putting them in a not-so-good spotlight. I don't know if a few studies will push big game companies such as Riot Games to implement a carbon reduction strategy, but it's a start, I suppose.

Avast Antivirus is one of the largest free Antivirus software's you can download on the internet, and now an investigation is being conducted into the company for reportedly selling user data.

According to Dark Reading, the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection is now investigating the actions of the Prague-based antivirus software company, Avast. The investigation is to find out whether or not Avast has been selling personal information from its user base to companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Home Depot.

The data that is suspected to have been sold off to these companies is browser history of users, online map searches, YouTube viewing habits, and more. Back in January, Motherboard and PCMag found evidence of Avast collecting data and selling it through its subsidiary company called "Jumpshot". Since this was discovered, Avast as closed down its Jumpshot division.

At the moment, SpaceX is gearing up for the first crewed flight to the International Space Station with their Dragon spacecraft.

According to recent reports, paperwork is the main problem before SpaceX is given the green light to take astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. While it hasn't been publically announced, Ars Technica says that NASA is currently working towards a May 7th launch of Crew Dragon, but that date is lucrative.

Above is a video SpaceX released onto their official Twitter account. The video is of the Dragon spacecraft, and according to the post, it's currently undergoing electromagnetic interference testing. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk originally said that Dragon should launch within the second quarter of 2020, and judging on recent reports, that estimation is quite accurate. Dragon will take to the skies sometime in April, May, June. May is most likely the month when a launch will happen.

The release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's 7.0.0 update, which added the new DLC character Byleth also added some fan-favorite skins for Mii Gunner - Cuphead.

In celebration of Cuphead making it over to Nintendo's representative fighter, a new spirit board event is being held in their honor. The new event will run for five days and add four new spirits from Cuphead to the spirit board. Players will be able to pick up these spirits starting on February 14th.

In other Super Smash Bros. Ultimate news, a recent rumor surfaced online in regards to Kingdom Hearts' main Sora, not making it as a DLC fighter. The rumor suggested that it was Disney's fault and not Nintendo's for not letting Sora be apart of the games Fighter Pass. More on that story can be found here.

It has been a staggering eight years since .com domain prices have moved either up or down, but that could all soon change as a new agreement is about to fall into place.

Since 2012, .com domain prices have been sitting at $7.85, but ICANN who is responsible for overseeing top-level internet domains is right in the middle of a new agreement with Verisign who has a contract to oversee .com domains. In this new agreement, Verisign will be allowed to increase the price of .com domains by up to 7% every year for the next 10 years. Excluding the years 2024 and 2025.

ICANN isn't the ones forcing the hand of Verisign, they come from a present agreement between Verisign and the Commerce Department which also has a finger in overseeing .com domains and their prices. According to a blog post by ICANN CEO, Goran Marby, ICCAN is "not a price regulator and defers to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Justice for the regulation of pricing for .COM registry services."

A new report has come out from The Wall Street Journal that claims Amazon CEO and founder; Jeff Bezos has bought the most expensive property in Los Angeles.

Amazon founder has reportedly bought the Warner Estate, the most prestigious property in all of Los Angeles from David Geffen for $165 million dollars. Bezos' net worth is currently sitting at around $131.9 billion, which means that if he did purchase the estate from Geffen for $165 million, that's only one-eight hundredth of his net worth.

The Warner Estate was built in the 1930s for Jack Warner, who was the former president and driving force behind the now-massive Warner Bros. Studios. The estate took around a decade to be built and features everything you could dream of; terraces, guest houses, golf courses, pools, tennis courts, and a lot more.