Latest News - Page 1718

Boeing has taken to its website to announce that it has completed its first test of the world's largest twin-engine jet.

In the press release, Boeing has detailed that the new Boeing 777X jetliner has successfully entered the next phase of testing. The jetliner took off from Paine Field in Everett, Washington, at 10:09 a.m and managed to be in the skies for a massive 51-minute flight before landing back down safely at Seattle's Boeing Field.

The 777X is the largest twin-jetliner every created, measuring in at roughly 252 feet in length and 235 feet across. According to Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, "Our Boeing team has taken the most successful twin-aisle jet of all time and made it even more efficient, more capable and more comfortable for all. Today's safe first flight of the 777X is a tribute to the years of hard work and dedication from our teammates, our suppliers and our community partners in Washington state and across the globe."

U.S. Congressman has called out Tesla regarding the automotive company's "Autopilot" feature, asking them to "re-brand and re-market."

U.S. Senator Edward Markey said in a statement that the "Autopilot" feature is incorrectly named and is, in fact, a misleading title. Markey also stated that "Tesla promotes confusion about the capabilities and limits of its driver assistance system with an inherently misleading name - 'Autopilot' - that encourages users to over-rely on the technology." Markey also went further and said that the "Autopilot" branding "significantly undermines all of the user manuals and subsequent instructions that Tesla issues to its customers" regarding that the vehicle is, in fact, not fully autonomous.

In the statement from Markey, the Senator suggested that Tesla decides to "re-brand and re-market" the feature so that customers are fully aware of what its capable of. This isn't the first time Markey has recommended Tesla fix some of their safety features, as the Senator asked the company back in November to address some issues. Tesla responded to the Senator back on December 20th, 2019.

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Genesis 7 has just concluded, and against all the odds Marss has beaten the top Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player, MKLeo.

At the time of writing this, there are currently 78,000 players watching the tournament on Twitch.tv, and against what fans expected, Marss took out the championship with Zero Suit Samus. Marss went up against MkLeo, who played his notorious Joker. Marss ended up smashing MkLeo, going three games to zero.

In other Super Smash Bros. Ultimate news, Nintendo recently announced the fifth DLC fighter to close out the first Fighters Pass. That character is a Fire Emblem: Three Houses representative, Byleth. Byleth will be arriving in the live game with version 7.0.0, which is expected to drop on January 28th.

In less than two weeks we'll know all about the Samsung Galaxy S20 family of smartphones, like we haven't already from all the leaks -- but one thing we don't know about yet is price.

According to a new leak, we should be expecting some seriously expensive smartphones from Samsung with the new Galaxy S20 family starting at $899. Samsung's new Galaxy S20 4G will reportedly cost $899, while the S20 5G is $999. Moving up from there we have the Galaxy S20+ 5G at $1099 while the flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G will reportedly cost $1349.

Samsung might even have 4G versions of the Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra for all we know, which would reduce the price from the $1099 and $1349 to maybe $999 and $1249 -- but that's something we'll have to wait until February 11 at their Unpacked 2020 to find out. Until then, check out my detailed coverage on Samsung's new Galaxy S20 range of smartphones here.

I think the hype train for Samsung's new Galaxy S20 has been going for months now, but it feels like it is speeding up and faster than ever before as the days pass. Now, we have our first 'official' photo of the new Galaxy S20 and the new Galaxy Buds+ that you'll get for free if you pre-order the phone.

Notorious leaker Evan 'evleaks' Blass has leaked out a bunch of official images for the Galaxy S20 family of smartphones, along with a promotional shot that sees Samsung giving a free set of the Galaxy Buds+ if you pre-order the Galaxy S20+ or Galaxy S20 Ultra smartphones.

There's nothing new with the shots other than confirming what we have already seen from the slew of leaks on the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra. But we do have some official goodies confirming the insane 108-megapixel camera on the Galaxy S20 Ultra and its 100x "Space Zoom" feature, and the higher-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, up to 16GB of RAM (!!!) and 120Hz displays.

EVE Online is a super-popular game and while it doesn't have 50 million active players in games like Fortnite, Apex Legends and League of Legends -- it has a rabid, and very dedicated player base.

Well, in EVE Online right now developer CCP are donating all donations in their "PLEX for Good" event towards the devastating Australian bushfires. CCP are asking EVE Online players to donate any spare in-game currency to an official CCP-owned character, and at the end of the PLEX for Good event they will convert it into real-world money, and donate it to the Red Cross.

And then in steps Scott Manley, a YouTuber and former EVE Online player that was eyeing off Kelon Darklighy's super-rare ship -- and opened bidding at 1 million PLEX, which converts into 3.5 trillion ISK which then converts into an insane 160 years of EVE game time. This is worth around $40,000 and is what is making the big headlines. If the transaction goes through, it would represent the largest single-ship transaction in EVE Online's entire history.

Motorola is edging closer to the release of its foldable Razr smartphone, with the company pushing out a new support video dubbed 'Caring for Razr', check it out:

In the video, Motorola says that Razr smartphone owners will have to get used to bumps and lumps as the company says "bumps and lumps are normal" on the plastic screen. Motorola adds that you should not be using screen protectors or sharp objects on the screen, so like Samsung's foldable Galaxy Fold -- do not use your nails on the screen.

Motorola also warns future Razr foldable smartphone users to fold up their Razr phone before they put it in their pockets, the only warning where I'm left scratching my head -- would someone really put an unfolded Razr in their pocket? Probably. As for now, Motorola will begin shipping pre-orders of the Razr in early February, with the phone costing $1500.

Samsung is ramping up to the launch of the Galaxy S20 range of smartphones, with the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy S20 Ultra all to be unveiled on February 11 at the Unpacked 2020 event. Samsung's flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra will have a huge 108-megapixel camera with a 100x 'Space Zoom' feature.

But now it's time for some leaks on the larger Galaxy Note 20 smartphone, which should be unveiled later this year -- and leaker @IceUniverse on Twitter has tweeted out the purported design of the body of the upcoming Galaxy Note 20. We should expect the Galaxy Note 20 to be a larger version of the Galaxy S20 in terms of design, retaining its rectangular section of next-gen cameras.

The button placement, USB-C charging port and S-Pen stylus haven't moved from the current-gen Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ smartphones, but inside we should expect all-new tech. Samsung will use Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 processor as well as their own in-house Exynos 990 chip -- both with 5G connectivity. We should expect Samsung to also use a glorious 120Hz panel inside of the Galaxy Note 20 just like the upcoming Galaxy S20 family of smartphones.

NVIDIA's monster Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card has now been crammed into a small passively cooled version by PNY, with the company unveiling a new Quadro RTX 8000 and Quadro RTX 6000 which are both passively cooled.

The two new cards are both maxed out at 250W TDP, but have reduced base and boost GPU clocks as well as their GDDR6 memory clocks reduced to lower the TDP and have it passively cooled. The cards both arrive in a dual-slot design, with boost clocks reduced by 8% down to 1620MHz (down from 1770MHz) while the base clocks are reduced to 1230MHz (down from 1395MHz) which is a 12% reduction.

NVIDIA crams an insane 48GB of GDDR6 memory on its Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card, with PNY clocking it down to 13Gbps from 14Gbps which reduces memory bandwidth to 624GB/sec down from 672GB/sec on the regular air-cooled Quadro RTX 8000.

A new GDC 2020 survey shows developers still don't agree with Steam's 70-30 revenue split.

Unless your game makes millions of dollars, Steam keeps 30% of all sales revenues for everything sold on the platform and developers pull in 70%. This number is further dissected when publishers are involved.

According to the latest GDC State of the Industry survey, most developers think Steam's 30% cut is quite archaic. Roughly 25% of respondents, or 1,000 developers, think Steam's revenue split should be 85-15 in their favor. This is the same split the Epic Games Store offers devs.

Mass Effect 2 celebrates its 10th anniversary today, showing us how far the series has come (and how much it's changed).

If the original Mass Effect was good, then Mass Effect 2 was great. It's still among my favorite BioWare games, only second to Dragon Age: Origins, but definitely the best Mass Effect title ever made. The sequel had it all: Intrigue, mystery, a kind of dark sci-fi allure that made you want to explore its hidden depths, interesting characters (with the exception of Jacob) that you felt bonded to and wanted to actually get to know. The Illusive Man (probably one of the best NPCs ever made), Jack's harrow backstory, the suicide mission...Mass Effect 2 had it all.

The best part of the game was that it's a middle ground that promised more to come. Mass Effect 2 is a bridge rather than the end, and keeps you wondering. It doesn't squash or resolve the potential like many other sequels, but ignites your imagination to what's to come. The reapers are on the way--they're not here yet--and the sense of unease and anxiety is palpable.

Valve's new VR-exclusive Half-Life game promises to deliver tons of freedom, reactivity, and immersion.

The reveal trailers and gameplay footage has already show just how interactive Half-Life: Alyx is. Gamers can pick items off of shelves and throw them at enemies, scour nearby ruins for materials for makeshift high-tech weaponry, and even search drawers for ammo. Everything looks realistic and more importantly reactive to what players actually do, throwing them into chaotic gunfights where twitch reflexes are just as important as Portal-esque experimentation and environment manipulation (those gravity gloves look amazingly fun).

Now in a recent Reddit AmA, Valve reveals more pieces of the dynamic puzzle that is Half-Life: Alyx. VR brings a new dimension of immersion by simply virtue of the medium itself, but the new Half-Life game was built specifically for the platform and should be virtual reality's killer app while also representing the culmination of Valve's SteamVR efforts.

Why didn't Valve ever talk about Half-Life 3? Simple: A new Half-Life game hasn't been in development for quite some time.

Half-Life: Alyx marks Valve's return to proper games development, and more importantly, a return to the series altogether. But why did it take so long? Why didn't we ever hear about any other Half-Life projects? According to Valve's recent Reddit AmA, these projects simply didn't exist until now. Half-Life was pretty much in stasis for the longest time as Valve focused on its VR hardware endeavors and managing the billion-dollar Steam storefront.

"We didn't talk about Half-Life for a long time because we weren't actively working on a Half-Life game. Once Half-Life: Alyx became a reality internally, it was already clear to us that this was something we wanted to involve the community in. We're going to be doing more of this in the next few weeks as we prepare to launch it," the devs said in the AmA.

Bluepoint Games' new PlayStation 5 project will be even more titanic than Shadow of the Colossus.

The so-called masters of remasters at Bluepoint are working on something big for the PlayStation 5. No one knows what it is just yet (rumor has it they're working on a Demon's Souls remake) but we do know it's their crowning achievement. This speaks volumes given Bluepoint's strong pedigree with Shadow of the Colossus, The Nathan Drake Collection, and Titanfall on Xbox 360. The dev team has swelled to 90 people to help manifest this new project.

"Established in 2006, with a team now over 90 people, Bluepoint has developed a history of delivering the highest quality remasters and remakes in the industry. But that's not enough for us. Our latest project is the largest in our history, and aims to define the visual benchmark for the next generation of gaming hardware," reads Bluepoint's updated website.

If you thought the US smartphone market was the largest in the world, well you were wrong -- twice. First, China is the largest smartphone market in the world and now India has dethroned the US.

According to a new report from Counterpoint Research, India overtook the US and is now the second-largest smartphone market in the world with 158 million smartphones shipping into India in 2019 alone. The reason for this gigantic surge and overtaking of the US market is thanks to Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo.

In fact, 72% of smartphones shipped to India were Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo. But what about Apple and Samsung? Samsung still holds 21% of the Indian smartphone market, while Xiaomi commands 28% winning 5% of the smartphone market in 2019 from Samsung. Realme is the real surprise here, going from 3% to 10% which is a 255% increase year-over-year.

I'm sure that you have all heard about Coronavirus by now, with China shutting down cities and conspiracy theories spreading, but now game sales are spiking because of it. Game sales, you ask?

You might remember (or even play) Plague Inc: Evolved, an outbreak management simulation available on Steam and mobile that was made by Ndemic Creations. The Steam player count has spiked just like cases of Coronavirus, with the developers coming out and saying that people shouldn't be using their game as a basis for real-world disease control... like people needed to know this.

Using data on the Steam Charts we can see that in the last 30 days that Plague Inc: Evolved peak players have increased by 84% to 15,823 players up from 1988 players back in December 2019. This is the highest peak players the game has ever had, highlighting the fact that Coronavirus is spreading on Steam faster than it is in real life.

Samsung has filed a new patent for its 2020 model of its Odyssey mixed reality headset. Based on the patent, Let'sGoDigital has created some images of what it looks like.

The report states that Samsung Electronics filed the patent in China with China National Intellectual Property Administration or CNIPA. The filing was dated back to early 2019, and then the CNIPA approved the patent on January 17th, 2020.

The patent included eight images of the new design, which show some clear changes when compared to Samsung's older mixed reality headsets. Right off the bat, we can see that the new patent designs for the 2020 model come with a larger, more robust head strap, no rotary wheel, and adoption of a mesh-like material. The patent also included two separate colors, which can be seen in the images.

Marvel fans have started a new petition to replace Captain Marvel actress, Brie Larson, with a "woman of color". The petition has got more traction than you'd think.

The petition which has been started on ThePetitionSite details that Brie Larson must step down from her role as Captain Marvel to prove that she is an ally of social justice. The description for the petition also states that if Larson stepped down, she should be replaced with "Monica, the original female & BLACK Captain Marvel instead of white-washing characters for the benefit of the straight, white men running Disney."

At the time of writing this, the petition has already gathered 27,897 signatures and is well on its way to its goal of 30,000. Kevin Feige, the head of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), has stated that Captain Marvel will be an extremely important part of the MCU moving forward. This makes me think that this petition won't be changing anything, especially since Larson has established herself in the role of Captain Marvel in several MCU movies.

This year will be known as the year of foldable smartphones really taking off, with Samsung already dominating the foldable smarpthone market with its Galaxy Fold and soon to be Galaxy Z -- which folds out like a Z, oh and the Galaxy Z Flip.

But don't forget that Motorola will be shipping its cheaper Razr, a new foldable that will see pre-orders from Verizon and Walmart shipping this month. Motorola's new foldable Razr smartphone is 'just' $1500, packing Qualcomm's mid-range Snapdragon 710, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of RAM compared to the Snapdragon 855 inside of the Galaxy Fold.

Motorola's foldable Razr smartphone packs a foldable 6.2-inch pOLED as its main display, while there's also a 2.7-inch OLED external display.

Back in December, hackers were wiping out and stealing Fallout 76 player inventories en masse. Now Bethesda has restored those items.

Fallout 76 is no stranger to hacking, but one nefarious spree deleted gearsets and inventories for lots of players, a move that threatened to basically destroy the game's playerbase. Thankfully Bethesda had a backup plan. The team cloned previous versions of gamers' characters to replicate their compromised gear and return it back to the owners. The clone can then be used to transfer the gear to a user's main.

"A clone of your character will be restored on January 22, 2020. Once restored, this character will have the entire inventory of items, gear and scrap (100% of your stuff) that it posessed on December 20, 2019," Bethesda wrote in a support ticket.