Latest News - Page 1720

The first season of The Witcher was Netflix's best first season of television ever, and within that first season is a song that took the internet by storm.

Instead of replaying that part of the show to hear the song, fans will now be able to stream it on digital music streaming platforms alongside the rest of The Witcher's soundtrack. Netflix will be releasing the soundtrack behind season one onto streaming services starting January 24th. 'Toss A Coin to Your Witcher' is already available on Spotify and Apple Music.

At the time of writing this I have already listened to most of The Witcher soundtrack. In total there are 55 individual tracks and so far each of them are fantastic. Netflix truly did a fantastic job with The Witcher soundtrack, and after season 2 is released I hope to see that soundtrack distributed on digital music streaming services as well. After more Witcher news? Check out this link here to find out more about the show.

A big story was released by The Guardian this week, and it was about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his phone reportedly being hacked by the Saudi Prince.

The original report stated that Bezos received a message from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman that contained a malicious file. Security forensics firm FTI Consulting conducted an investigation into the file and concluded with "medium to high confidence" that the Saudi Prince was to blame. If you are interested in checking out the report, a link to it can be found here.

Cybersccop, a fellow security professional, has openly said that FTI didn't go far enough into their investigation. There's also Facebook's former Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos who goes against the FTI's report, stating there was "no smoking gun". At the moment, this story has a lot of contradictory statements, with one report claiming the Saudi Prince was responsible, and other security officials saying there isn't enough evidence in the report to claim that Bezos' phone was even hacked.

DirecTV is now racing to remove a satellite from Earth's orbit because if the company waits too long the satellite could explode and turn into dangerous space junk.

In a report from Space News, DirecTV has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a temporary rules waiver so the company can bring down the Spaceway-1 satellite. In the FCC filing from DirecTV, the company explains why the spacecraft needs to be taken down immediately, here's a snippet of what was said; "In December, Spaceway-1 suffered a major anomaly that resulted in significant and irreversible thermal damage to its batteries.

The report continued, "Boeing, the spacecraft manufacturer, concluded based on all available data that the batteries' cells cannot be guaranteed to withstand the pressures needed to support safe operation of the spacecraft in eclipse operations; rather, there is a significant risk that these battery cells could burst. The risk of a catastrophic battery failure makes it urgent that Spaceway-1 be fully de-orbited and decommissioned prior to the February 25th start of eclipse season."

The Wuhan virus that is currently sweeping the news has been subjected to a bit of controversy surrounding the topic of what animals caused this virus to spread to humans.

The virus, which is called 2019-nCoV, is a coronavirus, and just yesterday, I reported on a research paper that claimed that the virus' most likely origin was snakes. Now, other scientists have said that the research team has no proof to make the claim that the virus' origin comes from snakes; instead, it should only be able to infect mammals and birds. David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, says, "Nothing supports snakes being involved".

Paulo Eduardo Brandao, a virologist at the University of Sao Paulo is currently investigating whether snakes can contract coronavirus says, "They have no evidence snakes can be infected by this new coronavirus and serve as a host for it. There's no consistent evidence of coronaviruses in hosts other than mammals and Aves (birds)." It seems that there is a lot of confusion towards what animal has caused this outbreak, and at the moment, no one really knows which animal it is. Only time will tell. For more information on this topic, check out this article from Nature here.

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S20 family of smartphones are not really a mystery with all the leaks, but now we have another confirmation of its 100x camera -- something Samsung will call 'Space Zoom'.

Now there's some official press renders of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G, which confirms the 100x camera that Samsung will call its 'Space Zoom' camera. We don't know much about how it works, but we know that the flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra will pack a 108-megapixel camera with '100x Space Zoom'.

The rear-facing camera rig on the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is hectic, and takes up a gigantic chunk of the top half of the phone. Samsung will have 10x optical zoom and then the mysterious 100x digital zoom AKA 'Space Zoom'. We will know more about Samsung's new Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra smartphones at Unpacked 2020 on February 11.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was one of the biggest releases of last year, and now we have some data that highlights its success on the PC -- and more so, its boosted success on Steam.

SuperData's latest report shows us that Red Dead Redemption 2's sales more than doubled once it reached Steam, with SuperData's report also shows that Rockstar Games' announcement that it was coming to Steam meant that people held off buying it on the Epic Games Store.

The report reads: "Digital unit sales more than doubled from 406K in November to 1.0M in December. The game became available on Steam on December 5, one month after releasing elsewhere including the Epic Games Store and Rockstar Games Launcher. This brief exclusivity window was advertised in advance, so many players simply waited a short period to play the game on their preferred launcher".

Samsung will be unveiling its new flagship Galaxy S20 family of smartphones at its Unpacked 2020 event on February 11, where we will also be introduced to the new Galaxy Z Flip foldable smartphone.

The new Galaxy Z Flip smartphone has received a few more details in the last day or so, with a new report suggesting it will have "Ultra-Thin Glass" with a Dynamic AMOLED display underneath. There will still be a crease in the display, just like Samsung's flagship Galaxy Fold, but it will have a much, much smaller footprint.

Samsung will reportedly use a much smaller display on the front of the Galaxy Z Flip, with the smaller display used to show users battery information, and more. The smaller display on the front of the Galaxy Z Flip would also be used as a viewfinder for the rear-facing cameras for those ever-important selfies, as well as notifications.

AMD is kicking off the new decade with a collaboration with Corsair on its new Vengeance gaming PC, which is powered by all-AMD goodness packing a kick-ass Ryzen 7 3700X processor and Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card.

Corsair has its new Vengeance 6100 series systems with the Vengeance 6180 and Vengeance 6182 gaming PCs packing AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, meaning we have 8 cores and 16 threads of CPU power. Both of the new Corsair Vengeance 6100 series PCs also include the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card.

Since it's a Corsair gaming PC, the cooling is handled by Corsair using their in-house H100i RGB Platinum AIO cooler, which is then installed into the Corsair Crystal Series 280X RGB case. You'll also find the rest of the components to be from Corsair too, with 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4-3200 RAM, a Corsair RM650 PSU, and a 2TB HDD.

ASUS has just taken the wraps off of its beyond-enthusiast flagship TRX40 motherboard, introducing the new ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha which packs just about everything apart from the kitchen sink.

The new ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha motherboard has been designed to house the ridiculous AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor, packing an equally insane 64 cores and 128 threads of CPU power. The board has some crazy amounts of power coursing through its veins (or is that PCB) with ASUS packing in 3 x power connectors: 8+8+6-pin PCIe power connectors are required on the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha motherboard.

ASUS supports up to 256GB of RAM on the board with up to 4733MHz supported, 4 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots and a huge 5 x Gen 4 M.2 slots for mass amounts of ridiculously fast storage.

The hoopla of the Radeon RX 5600 XT is all here with it leading into me writing an article about how much of a mess the launch itself was, but now AIB partners are unleashing faster Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards which benefits us all.

The latest with a new custom Radeon RX 5600 XT is ASUS, introducing its new Radeon RX 5600 XT ROG STRIX TOP graphics card. ASUS has 3 different custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards, starting with the TUF X3, and then the already-introduced ROG STRIX OC model and now joined by the new ROG STRIX TOP model.

ASUS will have 1660/1670MHz game clock on the GPU, while the boost GPU clocks will hit 1750/1770MHz -- identical GPU clocks between the ROG STRIX OC and ROG STRIX TOP models. The difference? The 6GB of GDDR6 memory boosted up to 14Gbps for the ROG STRIX TOP model, an increase from the 12Gbps frequency on the ROG STRIX OC and TUF X3 models.

Microsoft's new Xbox Series X is getting more and more detailed, with a new video from Italian designer and newly-minted LetsGoDigital staffer Giuseppe Spinelli now made into gorgeous 3D renders.

My previous post on the Xbox Series X renders from LetsGoDigital had USB Type-C connectors, but these new ones do not. These renders, if you'll notice, see the USB Type-A port on the front of the Xbox Series X console is not labelled 'SS' which means it is not a SuperSpeed port.

On the back of the Xbox Series X render we have a HDMI output, 2 x USB ports (both SuperSpeed), an Ethernet connector, digital optical audio output, and the power connector at the bottom.

Sony is working on a new horror IP for its next generation PlayStation 5 console, with new rumors teasing that the new horror game is being worked on "by a very well respected horror game director".

The new rumor is coming from entertainment insider Emre Kaya, who looks to have a fresh contact at Sony and some big, big news. The new "horror IP" is headed to the PlayStation 5, but the follow-up tweet with a GIF of legendary (and PlayStation exclusive) game developer Hideo Kojima is a huge hint.

This isn't confirming that Kojima himself is making the new game, but we could see a next-gen version of Silent Hills for example. Whatever it is, a new horror game with a totally next-gen console that has all sorts of new technology and features that will provide some of the best lighting, shadows, and possibilities in a game yet? Color me excited.

In four years time, Eric Barone's charming pixellated farming sim has become a titan in the games industry, conquering other indies on sales charts and even beating some AAA games too.

Stardew Valley has sold over 10 million copies across its six available platforms, making it one of the most successful indie titles in gaming. The figure was nonchalantly added to the game's presskit page: "Since release, the game has sold over 10 million copies worldwide."

These numbers are absolutely massive for any game, whether it be an independent creation like Barone's or a high-budget AAA RPG like Final Fantasy XV (yes, Stardew Valley beat FFXV's sales and even Battlefield V's). Sure it helps that Stardew Valley is sold on practically every device you can play games on, including Switch, PC, consoles, and mobile phones, but the game's Harvest Moon-esque charm has enraptured and engaged millions worldwide.

Modern Warfare has pulled in over $78 million from digital spending one month, proving Activision's new anti-season pass model for Call of Duty is doing tremendously well.

Call of Duty's new monetization scheme is pulling in serious cashflow. According to analyst firm SuperData, Modern Warfare made $78.8 million from player spending on microtransactions and battle passes across consoles and PC. The game generated these revenues in December alone, putting it just $20 million shy of what Black Ops 4 made in an entire quarter.

Modern Warfare conquered December 2019's top-grossing charts, marking a dynamic shift for the franchise insofar as digital in-game purchases. Activision has invested tremendously in this new engagement model, which sees lootboxes being eradicated and content being added to the game for free with exclusive features like skins and CoD Points gated off by battle passes.

Hideo Kojima wants to stay busy in between big game releases, and plans to create smaller-scale projects to fill the void.

Kojima games typically take a long time to make. Metal Gear Solid V took about 5 years to make, and Death Stranding was in dev for roughly 4 years. That's a long time not to release anything, especially for an indie studio. Kojima wants to change that and plans to focus on shorter episodic experiences in between huge AAA titles. But what exactly will Kojma Productions work on?

Speaking to Famitsu, Kojima says he's open to creating all sorts of things--even manga and anime. This isn't the first time Kojima has talked about transmedia content. A bit ago he said KojiPro would make smaller films, possibly kicking off a whole new era of interactive film-game hybrids for Sony's new PlayStation Productions label.

Housemarque turns 25 this year, and to celebrate they plan to reveal their big new game that's been 3 years in the making.

Resogun and Alienation dev Housemarque has spent the last few years working on a singular project, and secured a big partner to help make it happen. Now in Summer 2020 that game will be revealed. The indie team is mostly known for making smaller-scale games for PS4, but this new experience aims to break into AAA territory with huge ambitions. The new project is actually so big that Housemarque has everything else on hold, including Stormdivers.

"We are working on our biggest and most ambitious title yet and have amazing support from our yet-to-be announced partner," said Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen. "We have now spent almost three years working on this game, and now we are in full scale production and super excited to reveal more in the coming months."

Daybreak Game Company, the team behind a number of free-to-play hits like Everquest II, today announced a new three-pronged plan to handle its biggest franchises.

Daybreak (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) has formed three new game studios that will each initially focus on one game at a time. First there's Dimensional Ink Games, who will continue supporting the popular DC Universe Online MMORPG with tons of free content updates. The studio is being helmed by Star Trek Online and Neverwinter alum Jack Emmert.

Daybreak's second studio is Darkpaw Games, who will continue supporting Everquest I & II with updates, as well as work on a brand new Everquest title. "Darkpaw's mission is to continue to expand upon the unique and amazing fantasy adventure that is EverQuest and EverQuest II and develop the next innovation for the franchise."

Nintendo has announced the next major update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, update 7.0.0. This new update will contain the next DLC fighter Byleth and a bunch of changes.

Nintendo has been following the pattern of adding a new DLC fighter with each significant update that rounds off to a whole number. For example, update 3.0.0 contained Joker, 4.0.0 contained Hero, 5.0.0 had Banjo & Kazooie, and 6.0.0 had Terry Bogard. It only makes sense that Nintendo is going to be following the same sequence, and considering Nintendo said that Byleth would be released on January 28th, I'd say that's when patch 7.0.0 will drop.

It's not unusual for Nintendo to make some fighter tweaks when adding in a major update as well. Nintendo does usually make slight changes to a range of different characters as well as fixes some bugs that may have been noticed by either players or the development team. I will follow up with another article when Byleth drops and all the tweaks that Nintendo makes to the rest of the cast, if there is any.

Google has helped out Janelia Research Campus with its recently released breakthrough in being able to map the brain.

Above is now the largest and most highest-resolution map of brain connectivity we as humans. The video was published on the Janelia website, and showcases a 3D model of 25,000 fruit fly neurons on a range of different cellular structures in various parts of its brain. So how was this done? The research team sliced the fruit fly's brain into extremely thin pieces and imaged those slices using electron streams from an electron microscope.

The team then stitched the image back together and created a brain map of the fruit fly. While this achievement might sound minuscule because the map is of a fruit fly and not a human - the achievement still harbors high levels of recognition as this is still a large step towards understanding the brain. Scientists can now trace individual neurons back to their source of functionality. It should be noted that a fruit fly has 100,000 neurons in its entire brain, while 25,000 is still small when compared to the total, it's still a big step forward.

China is currently under threat by a never-before-seen coronavirus, and as the virus is spreading around the globe, researchers think they have figured out what animal it has come from.

The virus, which is currently spreading in China, is called 2019-nCoV, and its a coronavirus. The virus broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the South China Seafood Wholesale Market. Researchers were quick to understand that the virus came from animals and then was being transferred 'human-to-human'. What they didn't know until now was what animal it came from.

In a new study published in the Journal of Medical Virology, researchers conducted a detailed genetic analysis of the virus and compared it to other known viruses, their origins, and their host species. What was concluded is that 2019-nCoV is a combination of coronavirus found in bats and another coronavirus of unknown origin. The researchers also found that the virus was most likely found in snakes before it made contact with humans.