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SpaceX is on its way to ferrying humans to the International Space Station, and the private space exploration company has just reached a new milestone.

SpaceX has just reached a new milestone in their quest to be able to ferry humans back and forth from International Space Station to Earth. Just a couple days ago, the Space exploration company live-streamed an in-flight test of Crew Dragon's launch escape system at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The above video (which I have skipped to 40 seconds before the initial launch) shows the Dragon capsule attached to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. As the timer ticks down and the launch sequence begins, we can see Falcon 9 blasting off from its launch platform. As expected, the Falcon 9 rocket broke apart and exploded right after the Dragon detached and begun free-falling back down to Earth. Parachutes were then deployed on its re-entry before it safely landed in the Atlantic ocean.

Facebook has taken one on the chin, as recently the big company incorrectly translated the Chinese President's name into something extremely rude.

Facebook has openly apologized for displaying Chinese President Xi Jinping's name as "Mr. Sh*thole" when translating it from Burmese to English. So how was this translation error realized? China's President was visited by Myanmar's President and was required to sign a bunch of new agreements. Translations of these new agreements were then published on Burmese state counselor Aung San Suu Kyi's Facebook page.

When readers translated the statements from Burmese to English, they were shocked at the multiple references to Xi Jinping's name and the wording "Mr. Sh*thole". Facebook has since apologized for the error, claiming it happened due to "technical issue". The company also said that Xi Jinping's name wasn't present in their database, so they took a wild stab in the dark at translating it and failed.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has tweeted out that he and his team are currently in Japan talking with game studios and publishers about 2020, and beyond.

Spencer tweeted: "Great to be back in Japan with the team talking and listening to amazing studios and publishers about 2020 and beyond. Really strong energy and excitement here about gaming's future". Microsoft hasn't been as tight in Japan as Sony has in its home country, but we could see that change in 2020 and beyond once the Xbox Series X launches later this year.

Microsoft having a larger influence in Japan going forward only makes sense, especially as it will want to battle Sony wherever it can against the PlayStation 5 with its new Xbox Series X console. Maybe Spencer and his team were there to talk with Japanese game studios about a possible acquisition? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The games marketplace is about to get even more fractured as Google joins the likes of Epic Games in buying timed exclusive titles.

Google will use its cloud billions to secure timed exclusivity deals for its Stadia game streaming service. The company announced its plans in a recent blog post, confirming over 10 games will be temporarily exclusive to Stadia throughout 1H 2020. Neither the games nor their exclusivity windows were revealed.

"Looking at our upcoming lineup, we are tracking more than 120 games coming to Stadia in 2020, and are targeting more than ten games in the first half of this year alone that will be only available on Stadia when they launch. We're working with our partners to share more on those games soon."

Nintendo just filed a new patent that's basically a stumpy 3DS stylus attached to a JoyCon rail...and it looks rather unwieldy to hold.

The documents are pretty straightforward and clearly illustrate the device's functionality. The peripheral simply a rounded touch pen stylus fused to the top of a slide-on JoyCon. Its use case is touch-compatible games like Mario Maker 2 and Darkest Dungeon, as well as menu navigation and possibly other unannounced Switch games, possibly including a new Mario Party, Mario Paint, or 1-2 Switch gimmick release.

The proposed touch pen would fully utilize and communicate with JoyCon's internal sensors, which include gyroscopic tracking, vibration, and accelerometer for immersive game interaction.

Rockstar just got a huge 37.6 million pound tax cut in the UK in 2019, more than double than last year. This could signify that the number of games Rockstar is working on has increased.

Rockstar North's Edinburgh-based office benefits tremendously from the UK's Video Games Tax Relief program, which gives tax breaks to games-makers who release "culturally British" games that have a strong impact on the country's earnings. The idea is to give devs like Rockstar tax cuts to fund development projects that turn around and make big bucks upon release (case in point, GTA V has made over $6 billion to date).

In the 2018-2019 tax year, Rockstar's tax cut doubled to 37.6 million pounds. In that period Rockstar only released one game that qualified for the program, Red Dead Redemption 2, sending a clear message that new, possibly bigger games were in development throughout the year. Piecing this info together makes everyone assuming Grand Theft Auto 6 is in dev (it likely is) but it's also possible Rockstar's volume of games has increased too.

Dying Light 2 has been delayed from its initial Spring 2020 launch to an undetermined timeframe, Techland today announced.

First Final Fantasy VII Remake, then Avengers and Cyberpunk 2077, and now Techland's ambitious zombie apocalypse sequel Dying Light 2 is the next casualty of delay season. The devs don't currently have an actual revised release window and need more time to refine and polish the experience. We suspect Techland is currently adjusting and optimizing Dying Light 2 for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

"We were initially aiming for a Spring 2020 release with Dying Light 2, but unfortunately we need more development time to fulfill our vision. We will have more details to share in the coming months, and will get back to you as soon as we have more information," said Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka.

A new 4Chan post may show off the PlayStation 5 devkit UI, complete with storage and a basic PS4-style square tile setup.

The apparent "leak" isn't much to go on, but the setup looks somewhat genuine. We've edited the photo to block out the username in the upper left hand corner, but the original image has roughly 891GB out of 1TB storage available, indicating the system's on board SSD indeed has a devbuild game installed. The 0.100.020 system firmware is also visible.

The user interface is rather simplistic and mirrors a PlayStation 4's general interface. It's functional but very unfinished, missing key components like social PSN features, screenshots, and the general flowing verticality of the current PS4 UI. but remember this is supposedly a devkit, not the final PlayStation 5 system UI. Expect many revisions before the PS5 releases in Holiday 2020.

PowerColor has just announced that the first batch of its new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards will not have the improved BIOS out of the box, but have cranked the GDDR6 speeds up on their cards.

We will see two different custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards from PowerColor, the first is the new Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Devil with higher GPU clocks, and the new Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon graphics card. Both of these cards feature 6GB of GDDR6 memory at 14Gbps on a192-bit memory bus for 336GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

PowerColor will have the GPU clocks on its faster Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Devil graphics card at up to 1660/1750MHz for game and boost clocks, respectively. The Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon GPU clocks will be up to 1560/1620MHz for game and boost clocks, respectively.

I still remember playing the hell out of Kingpin: Life of Crime all the way back in 1999, but now it is coming back in the form of Kingpin: Reloaded.

Kingpin: Reloaded was announced on Twitter for PAX South 2020, with developer 3D Realms tweaking the iconic game with a bunch of features and new tech. We have 4K 60FPS and UltraWide monitor support, "classic" and "enhanced" modes, and improved graphics.

The game will be "re-balanced and polished", pack a new quest system and will launch on the PC, Xbox One, PS4 and even the Nintendo Switch. There's no release date for the game just yet, but Kingpin: Reloaded will drop sometime this year.

AMD is about to unleash their Radeon RX 5600 XT onto the world, with AIB partner ASUS unleashing two of its custom Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards in the ROG Strix and TUF Gaming variants.

Starting with the flagship ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 5600 XT O6G, which comes in a large triple-slot design with DirectCU III cooling and 3 x Axial-Tech fans.

ASUS has idle fan stop that disables the fans when the card isn't being stressed, RGB lighting (of course), and 8+6-pin PCIe power connectors.

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S20 family of smartphones are right around the corner, with detailed specs leaking out over the last few days that paint an amazing picture of what the flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra will end up as. The camera system itself will be a stand out feature, something we're learning more and more about as the days go by:

But now a new photo of the rear-facing camera setup has been spotted, with the new Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G camera rig shown in dual shade (grey matte + black). The '100X' sticker on the back will reportedly make it into consumer handsets and will be printed alongside the Periscope camera.

I don't like the idea of a big '100X' branding on the back of the Galaxy S20 Ultra, but then again this is going to be a huge monster upgrade over the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+, so Samsung most likely wants to bring attention to the fact you're rolling around using a Galaxy S20 Ultra smartphone.

Sigh.

Joe Biden, the former Vice President (to President Obama) and now 2020 candidate for President of the United States, has illuminated us on his thoughts on game developers in Silicon Valley.

The beyond out of touch Biden was interviewed recently by The New York Times, where he was asked about the Obama administration and its legacy on Silicon Valley regulation. Biden commented on this subject about his talks with Silicon Valley leaders and their discussions on intellectual property rights, where he talked about a discussion he had with a game developer.

5G smartphones might feel like they're few and far between right now, but there are many more of them on the way -- and Chinese giant Huawei is promising 5G-enabled smartphones for below $150 by the end of 2020.

Huawei sees a big market for 5G smartphones going forward, so offering budget-friendly super-fast 5G-enabled smartphones in the Chinese market is going to be a big deal. Sure, the Western market might be able to afford $1000+ smartphones but the Chinese market is a very different one, a market where sub $150 is very important.

I would expect a very budget-specced handset for under $150 with 5G connectivity, with Huawei to most likely use its in-house Harmony OS on these new sub-$150 5G-enabled smartphones. Harmony does not have anywhere near the feature set of Google's own Android, but for entry-level and mid-range smartphones it should be fine.

NVIDIA will be launching its next-gen Ampere GPU architecture this year, where we should see the new GPU introduced at NVIDIA's own GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in March 2020. But what about the gaming side of things? I've also got some rumored specs on NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card here.

Well, according to analysts at Citibank, the semiconductor market is going to be strong throughout 2020. Harsh Kumar from Citibank writes: "In our view, 2020 appears to be a major recovery year for the semiconductor market. Inventory levels are low across the board, and with a soothing trade narrative, we expect a strong pick-up in demand".

After the cryptocurrency mining boom and subsequent bust, NVIDIA was left with a ton of graphics cards on the market just as they ramped into the launch of the Turing GPU architecture and GeForce RTX 2000 series graphics cards. Sales were not too strong, and while they did sell well -- it was not as well-received with gamers as the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards.

NVIDIA will be launching its next-generation Ampere GPU architecture and new GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards later this year, but it now appears as have some juicy new specs to devour from the latest rumors.

MyDrivers is reporting on two new GPUs in the Ampere family of GPUs: GA103 and GA104. Long-time nerds and enthusiasts will note that the GA103 is an interesting entry, as we would've expected GA102 and GA104, but GA103 is reportedly powering the upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 and has some beast specs with it.

GA103 will reportedly pack 3840 stream processors, 60 SMs, and 10/20GB of GDDR6 on a 320-bit memory bus. The 10/20GB VRAM option there is an interesting one, as we haven't had a card with 20GB of VRAM before. Moving onto the GA104, we have 3072 stream processors, 48 SMs, and 8/16GB GDDR6 on a 256-bit memory bus -- this will take form in the GeForce RTX 3070.

Intel is still a while away from entering the discrete GPU battle with its DG1 graphics card, with the first-gen Xe GPU architecture demoed back at CES 2020 earlier this month with the Xe Low Power 'DG1 GPU'. I've also got some rumored specs on NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card here.

The first Intel Xe based discrete graphics card was always going to be a low-end part, but the second one is going to pack a much more powerful GPU punch. Intel's high-end DG2 GPU is now rumored to be packing the second-gen Xe GPU architecture, but interestingly be made on TSMC's own 7nm node -- not Intel's in-house 7nm.

Intel's new DG2 GPU would arrive in 2022, with the company using TSMC's 7nm process node over Intel's in-house 7nm EUV tech. This would be a move made after the continuous tripping over Intel has experienced with its troubled 10nm node, and Intel does not need a repeat of that mess as it's just getting on its feet in the GPU market.

We know that Metro Redux is coming to the Nintendo Switch, but now we know what resolution and frame rate to expect from Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light Redux.

Metro Redux will be running at just 720p 30FPS on the Nintendo Switch in portable mode, while Wccftech reports that it will run at up to 1080p in docked mode. The game will most likely be using dynamic rendering based on system load, meaning the resolution will dynamically adjust on-the-fly.

We don't yet know what type of graphic detail to expect, but the Nintendo Switch isn't the most powerful console on the market, hell there are smartphones with as much grunt these days. Metro Redux on the Nintendo Switch will have both Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light, as well as all of the DLC released for those games.

It looks like one of the biggest PlayStation exclusives could be coming to the PC, with developer Naughty Dog looking for a new Graphics Programmer.

The Last of Us developer is looking for someone familiar with DirectX 12, Vulkan, and other graphics and compute APIs -- but the main thing is that the new staffer will need to be familiar with both AMD's GCN architecture and NVIDIA's CUDA architecture.

We should expect The Last of Us Part 2 to be made for Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console, with all sorts of new graphical bells and whistles... but this new hint could see a huge release on the PC. Given what has been happening lately with PlayStation exclusives coming to the PC, The Last of Us Part 2 being dropped on the PC would be a big deal for Sony and PC gamers.

Thanks to our friends at Disney Home Entertainment, we have five Blu-ray copies of the new release blockbuster 'Maleficent: Mistress of Evil' to give away!

Directed by Joachim Ronning, 'Maleficent: Mistress of Evil' carries on the story of Disney's most iconic villain. The years have been kind to Maleficent and Aurora. Their relationship, born of heartbreak, revenge and ultimately love, has flourished. Yet hatred between man and the fairies still exists. Aurora's impending marriage to Prince Philip is cause for celebration as the wedding serves to unite the Kingdom of Ulstead and the neighboring Moors. But, when an unexpected encounter introduces a powerful new alliance, Maleficent and Aurora are pulled apart to opposing sides in a Great War, testing their loyalties and causing them to question whether they can truly be a family.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles, send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com and correctly answer the following question before the competition closes on Jan 25.