Latest News - Page 1721

Yesterday news came out about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone being hacked by the Saudi crown prince. Now, we are learning that Bezos could have had his phone microphone enabled for months.

According to a forensic analysis of Bezos' hacked phone, Bezos could have had the Saudi government in his pocket listening for months. The report comes from cybersecurity firm FTI Consulting which are the investigators that were hired by Bezos after he realized his phone was compromised.

The report says, "FTI assesses that Bezos' device was compromised on May 1, 2018 and that the compromise resulted in gigabytes of data exfiltration that likely contained sensitive data such as personal photos, text messages, instant messages, emails, and possibly local (eavesdropped) recordings done via the phone's microphone."

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to ask the public about their thoughts on whether or not he should bring Minecraft, The Witcher, and Kerbal Space Program over to Tesla's.

Musk put out a Twitter poll that currently has five hours left as of writing this post, which asked "Want to play The Witcher game on your Tesla? (you can already watch the show on Tesla Netflix theater)". The poll has two options, "yes [tosses coin]" and "no, I have the plague". Before I tell you what the statistics are looking like, vote first!

At the time of writing this 85.4% of the people that voted clicked yes, and only 14.6% voted no. In the Twitter thread, Musk was asked by some fans if he can bring both Minecraft and a SpaceX version of Kerbal Space Program over to Tesla's as well. Musk responded to the fan that asked about Minecraft, "Agreed, v important" and to a SpaceX version of Kerbal Space Program "It's on the list". Hopefully, in the future, we see all three of these games make their way over to Tesla's.

Netflix undoubtedly wants to continue riding that Witcher hype train for as long as possible. One way to make sure that train never stops is just releasing as much Witcher content as possible.

Instead of making a Netflix original Witcher movie, rumors have begun flying and have since been confirmed about a new Witcher story. Netflix has decided to move towards an animated film, which makes sense as the development studio behind the TV show is already working on future seasons, and no doubt has a heavy workload. But an animated Witcher film can be done alongside the new seasons, and it's called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.

According to the above Twitter post, showrunner for Netflix's The Witcher, Lauren S. Hissrich will be working on the project alongside Beau DeMayo. The post also mentions that the studio behind Legend of Korra will also be working on the film. Hissrich also mentioned that she is interested in Mark Hamill playing Vesemir in the new season of The Witcher, check out that story here.

We all know and love Linus Sebastian from LinusTechTips, and the man himself and his tech channel have reached a massive milestone of 10 million subscribers. But his latest video, in my opinion, is one of his best:

The video is one of, if not his most personal yet and that is something I love more than the usual hands-in-the-air, super-fun videos. It's raw Linus, addressing a near mid-life crisis of sorts. He had some life changing events happened which made him look through the prism of life a little differently, something that I've been doing over the last year or so.

By the end of the video Linus himself says he is not immediately retiring, but doesn't rule it out -- it's something that he might eventually do, so we could see the end of Linus appearing in a majority of the videos. LTT is run by a team of talented people who can easily take the reigns, but it would be a gigantic change for the tech channel if/when that happens.

Nintendo's director behind Super Smash Bros. Ultimate announced via his personal Twitter account that throughout 2019 he managed to complete 242 PlayStation games.

Sakurai is known for his dedication towards video games, and not just in the development side of things either. Sakurai is an avid gamer, and this announcement is surprising because it proves that he doesn't just play Nintendo games either. In the Twitter thread, a follower of Sakurai's "PushDustIn" translated what the post says. Here's the translation "Sakurai has played 242 PlayStation games".

The post is taken from PlayStation's official 2019 wrap up, and something to consider is if Sakurai managed to finish 242 PlayStation games on the PS4, then how many did he do on the Nintendo Switch or PC? Unfortunately, Sakurai didn't mention what games he enjoyed the most, but we do now know that Sakurai's passion for gamers is almost unmatched.

It has been a very long and anxious wait for more Rick and Morty, and unfortunately, this article isn't going to be telling you when the rest of season 4 will be coming out. What it will tell you is that Morty's are going to be taking over the Super Bowl...

Yes, that's right. A legion of Morty's who have learned what a three-layer dip stack means will be taking over this year's Super Bowl. So, what exactly is a three-layer dip stack? If you watch the above video, you will learn that the chip company Pringles has partnered up with Rick and Morty for an advertisement about a new flavor of Pringles.

This new chip will combine three flavors; cheddar, BBQ wavy, and sour cream & onion. This new flavor creates what the Morty's call "3 layer dip stack". Funnily enough, this isn't the first time Rick and Morty have crossed over with Pringles, back in late December last year Pringles announced a new "Pickle Rick" flavor. In that teaser, they say that a new flavor will be revealed on 2/2, which is the date of the Big Game. Check out more information on that new flavor here.

Infinity Ward has just pushed out the latest huge update to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with the new patch including the Crossbow -- for free. Not bad at all.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's new update sees the exciting new crossbow introduced as a deadly one-hit kill weapon, it is treated like a marksman rifle. If you want to earn the crossbow, you'll need to compete a marksman rifle-related challenge. The best ain't free, ya know? The new update doesn't just have the crossbow, there's also more going on under the COD:MW update hood.

Infinity Ward has squished a bunch of bugs, fixed player collisions (something that's been pissing gamers off since it was "accidentally" added") and even another 5 new custom loadout slots for multiplayer. The game mode rotation should "work properly" after the launch, and a bunch more you can read about here.

Nike's original self-lacing shoes gave Back to the Future fans as close to what they wanted: self-lacing shoes that Marty McFly had in 2015, with the original Adapt BB shoes dropping in January 2019.

But now Nike is preparing the next-gen self-lacing Adapt BB 2.0 shoes, designed by Ben Nethongkome. The new shoes feature fore-foot Zoom, compared to the Cushion used in the original Adapt BB shoes. The midsole stack height has been re-jigged for improved heel-to-toe movement, too.

You can see from the above photos that the design of the Nike Adapt BB 2.0 shoes is been improved, and they look awesome. The shoe is also even easier to put on, with early adopters of the original Adapt BB shoes saying that while they were awesome (come on, self-lacing shoes) they were annoying to put on.

Valve hosted a Reddit AMA highlighting a bunch of new details on Half-Life: Alyx for us to goss over, with the team saying that the game is completely finished.

Valve said: "With the exception of some tweaks to the absolute final scene, the game is done. Lots of us at Valve, as well as playtesters, have played through the entire game multiple times. Right now we're primarily polishing and fixing bugs, which is where we'd hope to be at this point in the development cycle. We're confident we'll hit our intended release. (We let the Valve Time happen before we announced Half-Life Alyx)".

This is great to see, as it means Half-Life: Alyx should be one of the only AAA games of the last few years that hasn't been delayed. It's right around the corner, with the developer making all Half-Life games free-to-play ahead of Half-Life: Alyx's launch.

If you haven't read about how much of a mess AMD's launch of the Radeon RX 5600 XT was, well... I have an entire article dedicated to the issues here. But now, MSI is leading the pack by teasing its new Radeon RX 5600 XT GAMING Z graphics card.

MSI's new Radeon RX 5600 XT GAMING Z graphics card has been announced, something that will have higher GPU clocks and its 6GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at the higher 14Gbps by default. The original Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card, pre-NVIDIA-double-jebait and the VBIOS debacle we'll all remember and laugh about for years to come, was meant to have its GDDR6 clocked at 12Gbps.

MSI is now effectively saying "yeah, we know that the card now has 14Gbps so how about we just throw everything up to 11 and make it the GAMING Z variant'. That is cool with me, and it'll be a hell of a lot easier on consumers, as they'll just get what should amount to the fastest custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card on the market.

Valve has just completed a Reddit AMA session for Half-Life: Alyx, where the world has found out a bunch of new details on what should be the best VR game ever released. To bring you up to speed, check out the Half-Life: Alyx announcement trailer below:

One of the most concerning things about Half-Life: Alyx is whether it will be delayed from its March 2020 release, and the answer to that is: no. Valve confirmed the news during its Reddit AMA, saying: "With the exception of some tweaks to the absolute final scene, the game is done. Lots of us at Valve, as well as playtesters, have played through the entire game multiple times".

The developer continued: "Right now we're primarily polishing and fixing bugs, which is where we'd hope to be at this point in the development cycle. We're confident we'll hit our intended release. (We let the Valve Time happen before we announced Half-Life Alyx)".

The Matrix 4 and John Wick 4 are both due out on the same day on May 21, 2021 -- which should be the biggest day in cinema history, especially for actor and franchise leader of both these movies: Keanu Reeves.

Keanu Reeves will return to his role as Neo while Carrie-Anne Moss is making a return, which should see her playing Trinity again -- but Agent Smith will not be appearing in The Matrix 4. Agent Smith actor Hugo Wearing confirmed he will not be appearing in The Matrix 4, telling Time Out: "I'm not, no...".

Weaving added: "It's unfortunate but actually I had this offer [for upcoming movie The Visit] and then the offer came from The Matrix, so I knew it was happening but I didn't have dates. I thought [I] could do both and it took eight weeks to work out that the dates would work - I held off on accepting [a role in The Visit]".

The last few days have been pretty big for graphics cards, with leaked specs on the purported Ampere-based NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards but now there's some juicy leaks on AMD's upcoming Big Navi GPU.

We should expect to see AMD's new 'Big Navi' arrive as the flagship Radeon RX 5950 XT, with rumors stating it'll rock 80 compute units, 5120 stream processors, and up to 17.5 TFLOPs of compute performance. The new RDNA2 architecture will also provide AMD with the ability of hardware-based real-time ray tracing technology, just like NVIDIA's Turing (and future Ampere/Hopper GPU architectures).

But what about performance? 80 compute units is double the 40 compute units found in the Radeon RX 5700 XT, but would that translate to double the performance? Probably not. The Radeon RX 5700 XT has a TDP of 225W, so AMD would have to be careful with GPU clocks and most-likely reduce GPU clock speeds down to somewhere around 1500-1700MHz to keep the card from chewing through too much power.

Even with Hellblade II: Senua's Saga on the way, Ninja Theory just announced a new experimental thrillride set deep in the heart of a fractured mind.

Ninja Theory just revealed Project Mara, a nebulous and cerebral horror game that really crawls under your skin. The entire purpose for the game is to exhibit mental illness as a kind of interactive experience that forces everyday users into the dark, inky depths of a tortured psyche. It looks a bit like a modern-day Senua without the mystical lore and Nordic mythology, and only features one character in a single location.

"The game only features one character and one location. It's an experimental project and a showcase of what can become a new immersive storytelling medium," Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades said in a development diary video.

Tencent wants to buy Conan Exiles developer Funcom, and the developers wholeheartedly agree with this proposition.

Tencent wants to wholly-own Funcom, and it just put in an offer to buy every share from Funcom's current investors. Funcom is excited about the opportunity and has urged investors to sell their stock. Tencent is currently offering roughly 326.04 million Norwegian Krone ($36 million) to complete the buyout, which is over 27% of the current share closing price.

If bought it, Funcom will retain full independence and no staff re-organizations will happen, similar to the seamless operations of Riot Games and Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games.

Rumor has it CD Projekt RED delayed Cyberpunk 2077 because they're having trouble optimizing the game on current-gen systems, namely the Xbox One.

Older systems like the rather weak 2013 Xbox One launch model might be the culprit behind Cyberpunk 2077's five-month delay. The report comes from Polish film director Borys Niespielak, who may have knowledge about the goings-on at CD Projekt RED. On a recent podcast, Niespielak says Cyberpunk 2077's performance is "extremely unsatisfactory" on original Xbox One systems due to the limited hardware.

This is interesting because Cyberpunk 2077 was built from the ground up for current-gen systems. CD Projekt RED says Cyberpunk 2077 will be their "crowning jewel of the current generation," and the big delay could indeed be used to pare things back for weaker console hardware. Based on everything we know, it's easy to see why Cyberpunk 2077 could be overwhelming for lower-end systems.

Nintendo is reportedly working on a new Switch revision with a custom processor, but it may not actually deliver higher-end 4K gaming.

Nintendo's rumored Switch Pro may not be a huge leap over the current Switch hardware. A new report suggests the new souped-up Switch may be a softer revision in terms of capabilities and will instead move to a new customized Volta-based SoC from NVIDIA, possibly based on the 12nm Xavier chip. The info seems shaky at best and basically reinforces things we've already speculated about, but it does make an interesting point: Nintendo may not release a beefier Switch as to not fragment its userbase.

Instead this new Switch Pro revision could be the start of something bigger, perhaps a soft iterative upgrade similar to the Xbox One S over the original Xbox One, instead of going all-in with a powerful Xbox One X-esque model. Nintendo has already revised its base Switch to use a new 16nm Tegra X1+ SoC to fix a hardware vulnerability (the Switch Lite also uses this chip) without actually changing any raw perf specs. Only battery life and thermals changed--GPU and CPU clock speeds remained the same.

The Xbox Series X may use a DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with up to a 2TB capacity that delivers up to 3.75GB/sec read and write speeds, all built with Phison's newer PS5019-E19T flash memory controller.

A bit ago we reported the Xbox Series X could use Phison's potent flash memory controllers--custom chips that communicate with a host CPU--to enable high-end transfers. Now Xbox Series X's flash controller has apparently been identified as Phison's PS5019-E19T chip, giving us an idea of the system's max storage performance and what to expect from the console.

The news comes from Phison software engineer Jerry Lou's LinkedIn page, which specifically outs the Xbox Series X's solution:

Two photos of an Xbox Series X prototype devkit build have leaked online, showing rear ports, ventilation, and console dimensions.

An early prototype for Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console has apparently been spotted online, giving gamers an idea of what to expect from the new system's look and proportions. Of course this isn't the final hardware and things could change from now until Holiday 2020, but the prototype reinforces the original footlocker shoebox-shaped design shown off by Microsoft at The Game Awards 2019.

The prototype has all of the ports described by recent source info--HDMI out, 2x SuperSpeed USB ports (with 1x USB 2.0 in the front), a power port, SPDIF audio port, ethernet, and a strange vertical slit that's likely for developer testing.

Microsoft's new Xbox Series X console has been shown off in the best detail so far, with the great folks at LetsGoDigital recently hiring Italian designer Giuseppe Spinelli, who has made this gorgeous render video of the Xbox Series X console.

The new video is available in the glorious 4K resolution, where we get a look at all of the inputs and outputs that we are to expect from the new Xbox Series X.

This will include 2 x USB Type-A ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI out, optical audio out, and the power supply connector. The 3D visualization itself shows a super-fast USB-C port, but this can change before consumers see the real Xbox Series X.