Latest News - Page 1795

A new study has been released showing that an increase in product variety can cause consumers to automatically discount an influencers positive recommendation of a certain product, despite its recommended quality.

This new research has been published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, and picks apart how recommendations for product quality affect the consumer. According to research, nearly 50% of consumers rely on digital influencers for product recommendations, and furthermore 40% of those consumers make purchases based on their recommendations.

Liao, a professor in the business school at The Chinese University of Hong Kong said "When many types of a product are available, consumers may expect an expert to find a better fit, and this consideration would then reduce consumer expectations of the product quality. As a result, the consumer valuation may decrease, which could lead to a lower profit."

Netflix has teased the release of the first full trailer for the upcoming Witcher TV series with a short but awesome clip. Are you ready for Geralt?

The above trailer has been slyly released onto the Italian Netflix YouTube channel and while the clip is only 16 seconds long there is definitely some never-before-seen scenes contained within it. Fans will most likely have to pause the video numerous times to catch the scenes, but regardless of the effort to be put in, it worth it for the scenes as they are quite awesome.

At the moment Netflix doesn't have a solid release date on the series, all we know is that its expected to launch sometime in 2019. A recent report has said that Netflix will have a strong presence at the Lucca Comics & Games event, which will have complete panels for the show and also show the first full trailer. This also means that Netflix could drop the full release date for the show in just less than two weeks time, how exciting!

A new announcement has come out from Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg regarding his views on freedom of speech. He says he will be addressing the public via a livestream tomorrow.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has taken to his official Facebook page to post a status update that says he has been writing a new speech about his views on voice and free expression. Zuckerberg says that this speech is the "the most comprehensive take I've written about my views, why I believe voice is important, how giving people voice and bringing people together go hand in hand, how we might address the challenges that more voice and the internet introduce, and the major threats to free expression around the world."

Zuckerberg continues in his post to say that this speech will contain much of what he has learned over years by focusing on these subjects. The CEO also says that this speech has taken him a lot of time to form and that its an "unfiltered take" on how he thinks about these extremely serious questions. For those interested in tuning into the livestream, Zuckerberg says that he will be going live on Facebook at 10am PT / 1pm ET.

It looks like we can look forward to Intel's new server CPU socket to be LGA 4677 with TE Connectivity, the maker of multiple connectivity solutions (and other gear) for CPU sockets, has unveiled its roadmap for future Intel server processors.

You can see in the image above we have the current-gen LGA 3647, while the new LGA 4189 socket will launch later this year and run through to 2022 in servers -- but at the top you can see the new LGA 4677 socket which will debut with PCIe 5.0 connectivity.

Intel is pushing a big upgrade in the number of pins bet ween the current LGA 3647 socket and even the impending next-gen Xeon CPU socket in LGA 4189... but LGA 4677 takes it up another level, and then adds PCIe 5.0 support on top of that. We should expect memory controller increases in the new LGA 4677 and next-next-gen Intel Xeon CPUs as well as the introduction of the PCIe 5.0 standard.

Under Armour has teamed with Virgin Galactic on some new space apparel, something that Virgin Galactic passengers will wear when they're throwing down $250,000 to fly into space.

The new spacesuit looks pretty slick, like it's ripped right out of Star Trek with a blend of Fallout 76 with Under Armour retrofitting the UA RUSH -- the mineral-infused fabric that it sells to athletes. Under Armour says that its new spacesuit will help regulate temperatures and sweat management, which is very important.

I'm digging the blue style that UA has gone with here, but an interesting fact is that the gold accents used on the suit are inspired by rays of sunlight. Under Armour adds that each iteration of the spacesuit went through heaps of testing, with UA getting pilots, spaceship engineers, medical professionals and astronaut instructors to test them out.

What does $2600 buy you in a foldable smartphone? That'd be the Huawei Mate X which is being released this month, and has one small -- but very significant tweak over what we saw when the Mate X was revealed earlier this year, and then delayed.

Thanks to a new unboxing video on the Huawei Mate X, we know that the new phone will have a button on the side which opens the latch to unlock the foldable screen. It's a nice touch, something that Samsung didn't include in its foldable Galaxy Fold smartphone which is now on the market.

Huawei is charging more than Samsung for its foldable smartphone with the Mate X costing $2600 versus the Galaxy Fold at $1980 -- but Huawei provides you with 5G connectivity and its own in-house Kirin 990 chip.

I still remember the original Postal games and how utterly over-the-top ridiculous they were, so if you're old enough to remember them you'll be (pleasantly?) surprised to hear Postal 4: No Regerts is on Steam Early Access. Check out the trailer below:

The original Postal game was even made into a horrible movie by Uwe Boll, but Postal 4 has nothing to do with that at all. Although, Jon St. John who voiced Duke Nukem will be voicing the POSTAL Dude in Postal 4, which is an awesome scoop for the devleopers. Postal 4 is an open-world sandbox-style game t hat lets you do whatever (in some cases, quite literally) what you want.

The game is ridiculously over-the-top in typical Postal fashion, where you get the iconic Shovel, Gas Can, and even the famous boomerang Machete. The OTT style of Postal 4 continues with its urine obsession, where you can use your urine to give golden showers to the residents of Edensin. You can also fill your Spurt'n'Squirt with other liquids, including gasoline to use it as a makeshift flamethrower... where I guess, you can then urinate on people after they're on fire to put them out. Awesome.

There was a bunch of hype around the news that Superbad and Wolf of Wall Street star Jonah Hill being offred a role in Matt Reeves' upcoming The Batman, but Hill has "moved on from the project" reports Variety.

We don't know why Hill passed on the role in The Batman, with insiders telling Variety that "when the news was initially reported, it was very early in the negotiations and that a deal was far from closing". It was barely 24 hours ago that Zoe Kravitz was confirmed as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, who will join Robert Pattinson in the titular role.

Matt Reeves and Warner Bros. will now have to re-think what they're going to do with the role that Hill was reportedly up for, which was either the Penguin or Riddler. They will have to find a new actor to take on those role/s, but I was actually kind of keen to see what Jonah would've done in either of those roles.

Corsair has just updated its Corsair ONE family of gaming PCs, adding the new Corsair ONE i145, ONE i64, and ONE PRO i82.

Starting with the new Corsair ONE PRO i82 which can be configured to be quite the beast of a gaming PC, with Corsair offering up a HEDT monster with an Intel Core i9-9920X (12C/24T) processor and X299-based motherboard.

Inside, you can configure the Corsair ONE PRO i82 with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (heck, even the $2499 monster TITAN RTX) while Corsair provides up to 64GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and a 750W Platinum-rated SFF power supply.

I don't even know how to start this story, but a Dutch family was found to be living inside of a hidden room in their farmhouse -- for, get this... 9 years. The family was "waiting for the end of time" according to BBC News.

The family included the 58-year-old father and 6 of his sons aged 18-25, but then one of them escaped and fled to a nearby pub. The boy downed 5 beers (I'd be drinking more if I thought the world was going to end) and told the bar owner that he had escaped and needed some help.

BBC News reports that police officers then visited the farmhouse and searched it, discovering a hidden staircase that was behind a cupboard in the living room. Going down the staircase let them to a secret room where the family was hiding out for "the end of time". The 58-year-old man was arrested, and is now under investigation after refusing to cooperate.

We all know that battle royale games are the new VR, which was the new 3D -- but with Apex Legends and PUBG dominating the battle royale space, there's always room for more... I guess?

Enter RAN: Lost Islands which will arrive later this year through Steam Early Access , set in medieval times making it a huge departure from trhe world of sniper rifles, charge rifles, shields, and chicken dinners. You'll have flintlock pistols, swords, ship-versus-ship combat, horses, and freaking gliders.

Jolly Roger Game Studio is behind RAN: Lost Islands, with the developer explaining: "In RAN: Lost Islands, mastery of quick action and strategy rules the day as an arsenal of period weapons from different factions, and an exhilarating mix of traditional combat controls and combo techniques add high replay value and depth".

Some of my very fondest gaming memories took place on the Nintendo 64, but now over 150 games have received AI-enhanced HD texture packs including Duke Nukem 64, Mario Kart 64, and many others.

The folks over at Gaming Revived have, well, revived some classic Nintendo 64 games using TopazGigaPixel in order to upscale the original textures of classic Nintendo 64 games. It's not perfect, with some parts of the game and textures looking worse in some cases, while other parts look much better -- including the UI in some of the games looking much better.

Most of the AI-enhanced HD texture packs for the Nintendo 64 games are around 1-2GB a pop, which isn't too bad at all. The HD texture packs work with RetroArch using Mupen64-Next "Core" and its most recent release, but they also work with Project64 as well as Mupen64plus through GlideN64 3.0 or GlideN64 4.0. Grab the AI-enhanced HD texture packs here.

Admit it -- you've always wanted to see what a Tesla vehicle would look like in a crash test environment, and now you've got your chance.

Tesla has provided an insider look at its internal Crash Lab, where it crashes its electric vehicles to find out how it can make its vehicles even safer. Before using actual Model 3 vehicles, Tesla Motors will (like any other automaker) use computer modeling to find issues with its cars before smashing them at high speeds into walls.

Tesla's latest Model 3 has specially-designed front passenger airbags that in the case of an accident, will wrap the passenger in the airbag to keep them from smashing into the interior of the Model 3. Tesla claims that its Model 3 vehicle is one of "the safest cars on the road".

I don't know how things could get worse for Activision-Blizzard, where the drama all started when the World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch developer banned Ng "Blitzchung" Wai Chung from Hearthstone, forcing him to forfeit his winnings from the Hearthstone tournament.

Blizzard slowly backed away from this and lessened his ban and gave back his prize money, while handing out 1000-year bans on its forums for anyone speaking up about Hong Kong. But then the developer cancelled the huge Overwatch for the Nintendo Switch launch event at NintendoNYC, and now... well now... they're back again by handing out 3 new suspensions to American University Hearthstone players over holding up a sign during a livestream that said "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz".

Obviously the Hearthstone players knew this was going to land them in hot water, with the players quitting the team after the protest. This didn't happen overnight, but rather it took place over a week ago and only saw Blizzard bring the ban hammer down recently.

Elon Musk must never sleep -- I think that much is a given, with SpaceX filing the necessary paperwork with the International Telecommunications Union (which governs the international use of global bandwidth) for its Starlink initiative. Starlink is SpaceX's grand plans of launching the world's largest low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation.

SpaceX wants to send 30,000 satellites into orbit for its Starlink global broadband constellation, with the private space firm already approved to launch 12,000 satellites. SpaceX needs more because it wants to ensure great network speed and wants to meet demand "responsibly".

In a statement to TechCrunch, a SpaceX spokesperson explained: "As demand escalates for fast, reliable internet around the world, especially for those where connectivity is non-existent, too expensive or unreliable, SpaceX is taking steps to responsibly scale Starlink's total network capacity and data density to meet the growth in users' anticipated needs".

In a massive win for Bitcoin, authorities were able to use the Bitcoin ledger to locate and apprehend an enormous child porn website operator and 337 pedophiles from several countries.

To many who are not well versed in how cryptocurrency works, it has always had a veil of shrouded secrecy or nefarious undertones. In reality, transactions via Bitcoin are far more traceable than cash transactions. I'm sure this will come to a surprise for many of you, but as the story progresses, I will do my best to explain how this all works in a basic form.

The dark web child pornography site labeled "welcome to video" was operated by a Korean citizen identified as Jong Woo Son. Washington D.C.investigators just uncovered this information as they were able to trace and deanonymize Bitcoin transactions to the dark web based website.

Riot puts the squeeze on Blizzard with a new Diablo-like ARPG set in the League of Legends universe.

Riot Games is making a ton of new League of Legends games outside of the MOBA camp. New titles include a tactical hero shooter that's like Counter-Strike meets Overwatch, a new standalone LoL MOBA game for consoles and mobiles, a fighting game with League characters codenamed Project L, the Legends of Runeterra card game, and even a point-and-click multiplayer game that borrows Diablo's isometric view.

The new Diablo-like ARPG is codenamed Project F, but Riot says it won't be ready for a long time (hey just like Diablo IV, am I right?). Next to no information was revealed on the game, and we only got one small sliver of gameplay. But it was enough to confirm an isometric view, which could mean lots of grinding for loot, taking on huge bosses, and distinct character classes that mesh with the League roster. We also saw three friends teaming up so expect it to be a three-player game.

Blizzard is under an incredible amount of pressure right now. It's being challenged on all fronts: By gamers for the China fiasco, by its own internal developers for the same, and now by Riot Games. But they have one big opportunity to turn everything around--Blizzcon 2019.

We've all heard about Blizzard's Hong Kong controversy. It caused a PR nightmare and even tanked developer morale. It doesn't help that Overwatch on Switch is a technical mess. Even as Blizzard faces turmoil on the inside, it's also being attacked on the outside by billion-dollar titans like Riot Games. Riot basically just challenged Blizzard to a duel by announcing no less than eight new League of Legends projects at the game's 10th anniversary event. Two games in particular are obvious jabs at Blizzard: a Diablo-like ARG codenamed Project F, and a tactical hero shooter called Project A.

Blizzard could turn everything around, though, and get the conversation back on track. Reports say Blizzard is planning some huge reveals at Blizzcon 2019 to distract the industry from recent controversy. Now with Riot's declaration of war, the pressure is on in full force. Blizzard needs to go bigger than it ever has before and hold nothing back.

Sony's next-gen DualShock 5 controller may connect directly to cloud servers for lower latency and PlayStation Now gaming.

The PlayStation 5 is coming in December 2020, and it'll have a brand new controller. Sony confirmed the DualShock 5 will have new-and-improved triggers with enhanced haptic and tactile feedback, making every pull feel nuanced and immersive (a far cry from the DualShock 4's floating triggers). But the controller could also have interesting connectivity options that bypass the console entirely.

According to a recent patent published in September, Sony's DualShock 5 might be like Google's Stadia controller and connect right to the internet without using the PS5 as a middle-man. This has far-reaching practical implications for the PlayStation ecosystem, and could lead to widespread PS Now availability using DualShock 5 as an entry point to a standalone streaming platform that's also a controller for PS5/PC gaming.

Sony's ultra-powerful next-gen PlayStation 5 could one-up Xbox backward compatibility and support five generations worth of PlayStation games.

PS4's lack of backward compatibility was always a sore spot for Sony. But with the PS5, they're apparently going all out. Sony already confirmed the PS5 will natively play digital PS4 games and game discs. Now we have reports it could also play PS1, PS2, and PS3 game discs too.

The latest comes from well-known PlayStation insider PSErebus, who warns gamers not to sell their older game discs, strongly hinting widespread backward compatibility is in the works. It looks like Sony is making good on bringing its ambitious backward compatibility patent to life. "Do not dispose of, trade or sell your PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 games," Erebus wrote on Twitter.