Latest News - Page 1806

Epic Games may get sued for not telling players how addictive Fortnite can be, especially when it comes to minors.

Fortnite, a game that's earned Epic Games billions from massive replayability and status as a social sensation, is described as one of the most addictive games on the planet. One Canadian law firm is making a case that Fortnite's dopamine-releasing effects are similar to cocaine addiction, thereby making the game a potential health hazard and/or risk.

Canadian law firm Calex Legal wants to sue Epic Games on the grounds of not properly informing players and users of addiction risks. The firm will represent the parents of two minors who have had their lives transformed by the battle royale game. "We dug into it and we realized there was a strong case for it," Calex Legal attorney Alessandra Esposito Chartrand told the CBC.

We've all seen HBM deployed on various GPU's primarily from AMD starting back in the days of the FURY and FURY X. However the market for HBM has grown quite a lot and is used for not just GPU but similar devices such as compute accelerators and FPGAs

Samsung today announced that they have developed an industry first in the new 12-layer 3D-TSV (Through Silicon Via) design. The design uses 60,000 TSV holes to enable the stacking of DRAM chips in a vertical configuration. The TSV holes are stated to be one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair.

This new tech can allow for the new stacking of 12 DRAM chips through these holes on much thinner slices allowing the package to occupy the same 720micron thickness. This means that theoretically, an existing design using 8-layer tech can now equip up to 48GB or even up to 96GB of HBM dependent upon bus width. In the case stated above, that would be 2048-bit or 4096-bit, but this could also mean refinement for lower density packages for applications not requiring high density such as consumer GPUs.

PlayStation 4 games can now be played on all Android devices, and are no longer exclusive to Sony Xperia phones.

It used to be PS4 remote play on mobile was only available to Xperia devices. Today that changed as Sony rolled out a big new system software update for PS4 that expands features, namely allowing gamers to stream PS4 games remotely from consoles to devices running Android 5.0 and above.

In conjunction with PlayStation Now's ability to stream games to mobile devices, this feature is invaluable to Sony to fend off Microsoft's advances with Project xCloud, which has its own Xbox-to-mobile remote streaming option.

Users of Windows 10 are no stranger to updates causing issues. But, a recent update has really shown just how bad it can go.

That's right, a recent update labeled KB4524147, which is supposed to fix some Internet explorer and printing bugs. Has instead gone YOLO on users start menu causing an error prompt reading as the user describes "Critical error start menu not working, sign out ... or something like that ." rendering PC's far harder to navigate.

This story cropped up on the Microsoft forums, where it has been advised by some to 'reinstall the start menu'. Unfortunately from reports spanning several outlets, this solution is to no avail. The only sure-fire solution to this bug should you experience it would be to remove the update entirely. If you have this issue the advised solution was to try reinstalling the start menu which instructions we have copied below.

Intel's recent announcement of Cascade Lake-X processors and the coming massive price drop, you can bet there will be a much higher HEDT demand this time around. With the 18 core unit dropping from $2000 to sub $1000, you can bet that the X299 platform just became far more obtainable for a large part of the enthusiasts market.

GIGABYTE has released the newest in their X299 lineup, labeled the X299X series. Don't let the name fool you; all of the same parts are still in place with the chipset backbone being X299. Beyond that, GIGABYTE worked to improve connectivity and capability of their X299 based parts in the new X299X offerings.

All of the X299X offerings feature the same 70A power stages for power delivery to ensure you can push all of the new Cascade Lake-X CPU's to the limit of your cooling. These boards also enhance the memory capability and support in lockstep with the new CPU's supporting up to 256GB DDR4.

Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel will be a titular heroine of Crystal Dynamics' big new Avengers live service game.

Square Enix makes good on its promise to add more superheroes to Avengers' roster. This time the hero pool expands with Ms. Marvel, complete with her ass-kicking abilities: In the new trailer, we see Kamala stretching out her limbs to dish out devastating hook kicks and smash foes with her gigantic hands. Her abilities aren't just for fighting though. She can use her extending limbs as a kind of grappling hook to grab nearby ledges to escape attacks.

Crystal Dynamics' Avengers game is set in its own unique alternate timeline, but each characters' origin stories still match up with the comic source material. Players will get to live through Kamala's humble beginnings and experience her transformation into the mighty Ms. Marvel. She's described as a fan-girl of the Avengers squad, but she's actually the glue that holds them all together by discovering proof that the A-Day catastrophe was a setup.

Hulu will now let subscribers download shows and movies for offline playback.

Hulu's new offline download feature mirrors Netflix and is now live, but not for everyone. To download right now you'll need an iOS device and a $12 a month ad-free plan. Android support will be added later down the line (but we don't know exactly when).

Only a select number of shows can be downloaded, too. Right now the list includes Hulu Originals and higher-profile titles like Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, and ER. Subscribers can choose to download shows and films in Standard or High quality for data control.

MSI has created some amazing boards over the past few chipset generations. Like most board manufacturers, MSI has also ramped up the RGB game in the process to ensure relevance with enthusiasts users and industry demands.

Until now, one of the few board models to go sans RGB has been the 'Dark Series' by EVGA. MSI noticed the desire by many enthusiasts to build custom rigs based on powerful overclocking friendly boards without the need or want for RGB.

Enter the MSI MEG X570 Unify which comes out of the gate sporting some powerful specs such as 2.5G wired LAN and 802.11 AX for equally speedy wireless networking. On top of this, MSI also employs a 14 phase power design (real or doubled phases is unknown at this time). For the most part, the MEG X570 Unify model board seems to closely parallel the popular MSI MEG X570 ACE motherboard.

Kingston is a well-known name in the memory game, but some may not be aware that they also hold a powerful position in the SSD storage space as well.

Kingston has been in the flash storage game since the onset of the consumer SSD. Many may think of Samsung when thinking storage, without realizing that an industry stalwart such as Kingston while being the less celebrated holds a lot of the cards in the market.

According to a recent report from TrendFocus, Kingston has already surpassed the 13.3 million unit sales in the first half of 2019. 13.3 million in an economy of scale may not seem like much, but in reality, that is 11.3% of the total SSD purchases globally. Kingston's market presence goes into every facet of the PC flash storage realm from base consumer 2.5" drives which they currently are reported to hold over 27.3% of the market share. To the enterprise/data center market which Kingston is already within and picking up steam.

Last week we revealed a leak about Intel's upcoming 10th generation HEDT processors and their improvements and additions, but there was more to the story than that. Intel also briefed us on upcoming revamped Xeon-W 2200 series CPUs as well as improved pricing on some of their mainstream 9000 series processors.

The new features of the new CPUs include up to 4.8GHz Turbo speeds, up to 1TB of DRAM, which is double the amount of the previous generation, higher DRAM speeds up to 2933MHz, new deep learning ISA, support for Intel's 2.5G LAN controller, and support for Intel's new WIFI 6 controller. The new CPUs will work with the same motherboards the previous generation used.

In regards to performance increases, we see huge improvements especially when it comes to deep learning. Intel's new DL Boost ISA and improved frequencies basically double performance when it comes to AI inference. When it comes to other workloads we see large boosts in editing, rendering, and compiling.

Microsoft is still baking its next-gen Xbox Scarlett console, something that should be seeing developer kits in developers' hands by now, but now we are being presented with a new patent that suggests a new VR device that looks very interesting.

Wccftech saw that 'WalkingCat' on Twitter found a couple of US patents that show a 6DoF input device, an interesting VR floor mat activity region (mmhmm), motion controllers, a new Xbox Stylus, VR headset, and Xbox Kinect camera. This might not be real and could just be something Microsoft was cooking in the background and will never see the light of day, though.

However, Sony is cooking up its PlayStation 5 console and should see the company unveil the next-gen PSVR 2.0 headset that Microsoft might combat with a new Xbox Scarlett-based VR headset (and activity mat, camera, etc).

AMD has just made its new Radeon RX 5500 XT and Radeon RX 5500 graphics cards official, with three SKUs in the RX 5500 family of graphics card including some mobile options.

The new Radeon RX 5500 series will be offering Radeon RX 480 levels of performance from AMD, while competing against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. The Radeon RX 5500 series will usher in the very first mid-range graphics cards using next-gen GDDR6 memory, a big upgrade over the GDDR5 used on mid-range graphics cards right now.

We will see AMD using a 128-bit memory bus on the GDDR6 memory, with the Radeon RX 5500 XT coming with 8GB of GDDR6 memory while the RX 5500 has 4GB of GDDR6 memory. Both cards are on a 128-bit memory bus, with both the RX 5500 XT and RX 5500 offering 224GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

NASA are currently working their way towards developing a brand new electric aircraft that could stand as a fuel-and-cost efficient alternative to normal commercial aircrafts.

At the moment, commercial air travel accounts for an approximate 4 to 9% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases, that number is also on the rise as more and more planes enter our atmosphere. NASA plans to nip that problem in the bud with a new electric aircraft design that utilizes light-weight and compact inverters. Inverters are the central component in an electric system and provide power to the electric motor.

Traditionally, the requirement of these inverters comes with the diminishing return of how large and bulky they are, and since weight is such a critical factor in aviation NASA have begun research into developing smaller and more power efficient inverters. NASA has signed a $12 million contract with General Electric to develop a new inverter the has the power of generating a megawatt of electricity, but is only the size of a brief case.

News has come out from the International Space Station (ISS) regarding the astronauts aboard completing the first of five spacewalks.

Astronauts Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan have just returned to the ISS after changing over a pair of old batteries. The astronauts were required to install a new pair of batteries that arrived at the ISS just this past week. The new batteries are lithium-ion, and are going to be a massive upgrade from the ISS' twelve old nickel-hydrogen batteries. The newly installed batteries are twice as good as the old ones, and are expected to last for the remainder of the ISS' life.

You are probably wondering what the batteries are powering, they are directly linked to the ISS' solar power network and since 2017 astronauts aboard the ship have been upgrading them. At the moment the astronauts aboard need to do another four more spacewalks to complete the transition from the old batteries to the new. The new batteries are so powerful that one is needed for every two of the old ones. Best of luck for the remainder of the spacewalks!

We finally have the release date for the highly anticipated Rick and Morty season 4 that fans have been so ever patiently waiting for.

A new trailer has been released onto the official Rick and Morty Twitter account showing off glimpses from the 5 new episodes that will be arriving Sunday, November 10th. Rick and Morty fans should grab their lab coats and buckle up for what seems to be some of the craziest adventures yet.

Close to the end of the trailer we hear the narrator say that these 5 new episodes are half the season that fans "deserve". From this comment we can expect that the new season will be 10 episodes in total, with perhaps some bonus ones. Season 4 of Rick and Morty will bless the eyeballs of viewers on Sunday, November 10th at 11:30pm.

I still remember growing up and my Dad was utterly obsessed with Star Trek: The Next Generation (and Voyager, and all of the rest) and now -- the adventures continue with Star Trek: Picard.

Patrick Stewart returns to his iconic role of Jean-Luc Picard, who comes out of retirement to return to the Captain's chair in Star Trek: Picard. The new series has a premiere date finally, with Star Trek: Picard debuting on CBS All Access on January 23, 2020.

Star Trek: Picard enjoys a new NYCC trailer that I've embedded above, so make it so and click it (geddit?).

NVIDIA is reportedly preparing its new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card, with Igor at Igor's Lab with a scoop on the GTX 1660 SUPER's clock speed.

Igor reports that the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER will have its GPU clocked at 1785MHz and that it will beat the unreleased, and unannounced AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card. The purported GTX 1660 SUPER will fall just under the purported RX 5600 XT, too.

The current GeForce GTX 1660 has 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 8Gbps, while the higher-end GTX 1660 Ti has 6GB of GDDR6 at 12Gbps. The new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER will reportedly have 6GB of GDDR6 memory at a higher 14Gbps, and a GPU boost clock that is closer to the GTX 1660 Ti, too.

AMD has teased the world with some more news on its next-gen EPYC processors, with the new chips to be based on its next-gen Zen 3 and Zen 4 cores. The news was unleashed at the HPC-AI Advisory Council UK conference.

The new road map shows the current EPYC Rome CPUs going into production in the middle of 2019, which they have -- and are now being installed into datacenters and servers worldwide. The next-gen EPYC 'Milan' CPUs taped out in Q2 2019, and will go into production this time next year (Q3 2020).

EPYC Milan will use Zen 3 cores and be on the 7nm+ node with up to 64 cores, and TDPs of between 120-225W depending on the processor. But it's the next-gen Genoa that has us excited, with the new EPYC 'Genoa' chips arriving sometime in 2021 and are in the "definition phase".

The fight between Disney and Netflix is really starting to fire up, with reports surfacing from CNBC that Disney will be stopping ALL ads for any Netflix-related content on all of the properties it owns... except for ESPN.

CNBC reports that a Disney spokesperson said: "The direct-to-consumer business has evolved, with many more entrants looking to advertise in traditional television, and across our portfolio of networks".

Netflix will be enemy #1 for Disney, at least for now -- but eventually, Disney will ban ads from all competitors big and small as it leads into the launch of its own streaming service in Disney+.

Joker released a few days ago and enjoyed a huge opening weekend, so much so that the Joaquin Phoenix vehicle is now the record holder for the largest box office opening in October.

The new Joker movie dethroned Venom from 2018, which opened in October with $80.3 million -- and now Joker is the fourth-largest opening of an R-rated movie, ever. The three other movies ahead of it are Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and It -- which all opened with over $100 million.

In overseas markets Joker was also very successful, with the movie opening to $140.5 million across 73 markets outside of the US. The movie has been met with rave reviews with critics and moviegoers alike, but I have been on holiday (until now) and haven't seen it (but can't wait to).