Latest News - Page 1833

Spotify seems to be encouraging its user base to jump into creating their very own podcasts with a new button that has been leaked online.

The news comes from leaker Jane Wong who spotted the new button its Spotify's podcasts library. From the screenshot we can see if you press on Podcasts, then click on shows you will see the 'Create Podcast' button. Looking at the button description, we see that Spotify will allow for users to create their own podcast using Anchor, which is a podcast creation technology company that Spotify acquired earlier this year.

Spotify seems to be testing this button in select countries as I went to my own Spotify to check it out and it wasn't available. According to Spotify who spoke to The Verge, "We are always testing new products and experiences to improve the overall Spotify experience. Some tests will eventually make way for upgrades to our product, others are only tests. We have no further news to share at this time."

Microsoft, along with The Coalition have released the final system requirements for their upcoming Gears of War 5 title. The official PC system requirements are located below for both 'recommended' and 'minimum' PC's.

Right off the bat, Gears of War 5 will require 80GB of free HDD space, so clear off any old games you have on your hard drive before installing. A side note to the games size, this 80GB is not including the HD Texture Pack which can be assumed to increase file size considerably, especially if these textures are 4K.

Moving on, minimum graphics card requirements sit at the AMD Radeon R9 280 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760. Recommended are the AMD Radeon RX 570 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. Obviously if you have a graphics card that is much newer than these models than the game will perform much better and you won't have to worry. For the official 'minimum' and 'recommended' requirements, check out the entire article below.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that they will be debuting a 'dark mode' feature for iOS and Android devices who use Outlook and Office.

The news was confirmed through an extremely cinematic trailer which has been released onto the official Microsoft Office 365 YouTube Channel. The trailer gives us some quick looks what the the 'dark mode' will look like on both desktop, iOS and Android devices.

According to Microsoft Office's head of design, Jon Friedman "A cross-company design collaboration propels us to seamlessly bring Dark Mode to the broader M365 product suite, and today marks the initial rollout of Dark Mode on Outlook for iOS and Android, as well as Office.com! The upcoming launch of iOS 13 will then extend this rollout to Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, and To-Do on mobile."

NASA has announced a new contest to engage students in, this contest will allow for students from public, private and home schools to name the Mars 2020 rover.

The premise of this contest is to encourage students into joining the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The contest is called 'Name the Rover' and will require students to write an essay and submit it to NASA for evaluation. Whoever is deemed the winner of this contest will be able to name the rover and also be invited to see the spacecraft launch in July 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine talked about the contest and said "This naming contest is a wonderful opportunity for our nation's youth to get involved with NASA's Moon to Mars mission. It is an exciting way to engage with a rover that will likely serve as the first leg of a Mars Sample return campaign, collecting and caching core samples from the Martian surface for scientists here on Earth to study for the first time."

Humans will forever be on this discovery chase of finding life outside of our own planet, and to do that we must invent the instruments that will make it much easier to detect potential life on other planets. Astronomers from the McGill University have just taken that step in the right direction.

These two McGill University students, Evelyn Macdonald and her supervisor Prof. Nicolas Cowan have devised a "fingerprint" for Earth. Both of the astronomers have used over a decade of observations of Earth's atmosphere which has been taken by SCISAT satellite that is currently monitoring the planet. With this data the astronomers constructed a transit spectrum of Earth, or a"fingerprint" containing information about Earth's atmosphere in infrared light.

Better known as a "bio-signature", the "fingerprint" also contains information about our ozone and methane levels which scientists expect to be the basic building blocks of life. Prof. Cowan said "A handful of researchers have tried to simulate Earth's transit spectrum, but this is the first empirical infrared transit spectrum of Earth. This is what alien astronomers would see if they observed a transit of Earth."

Yacht Club Games, the developers of Shovel Knight have announced a sequel for their extremely popular indie title. The sequel is called 'Shovel Knight Dig' and will take players (unsurprisingly) underground.

Above we have the Shovel Knight Dig trailer which reveals to us that Shovel Knight Dig will be a co-developed title. Not only are Yacht Club Games involved, but so is Nitrome, a fellow indie games developer based in London. Shovel Knight Dig has been in development for about a year now, and players should know that their main foe in this game will be Drill Knight who appears at the start of the trailer.

It has also been confirmed that Jake Kaufman will be returning to the sequel as the games soundtrack composer, this should please fans from the last game as the soundtrack was simply incredible. Yacht Club Games says that there will be new foes for players to battle against, new game mechanics, locations as well as some "familiar faces" to dig into. At the moment there isn't an announced release date yet, but we can assume that the title will be at least released on the Nintendo Switch

Ever wondered what it would take for someone in real-life to turn into the Joker? Well, you will have a chance of exploring that when the upcoming Joker film releases.

The Joker stars the brilliant actor Joaquin Phoenix, and despite not being based on the Joker comic books at all, the movie is gearing up to be unique, cinematically beautiful and full of acting talent. Above we have the final trailer before the film hits theaters, and just like a good trailer is meant to do - it shows off barely any story but still entices the audience to find out what the movies about.

Todd Phillips has directed this film and according to recent interview with Total Magazie, Phillips says that depending on the audiences reaction that he would love to do a sequel of some sort. Phillips must of loved working with Phoenix on this film, here is what he had to say about the actor "There's nobody like him. If he was willing to do it, and if people show up to this movie, and Warners came to us and said, 'You know what? If you guys could think of something...' Well, I have a feeling that he and I could think of something pretty cool."

Gearbox has just unveiled the PC requirements for Borderlands 3 that is right around the corner, with the minimum and recommended specs unveiled as well as what to best run it at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

But the more interesting thing is the customization and options that Gearbox gives you in Borderlands 3, with a huge laundry list of options to choose from. Some of the highlights for me are the display stats option which lets you display FPS, CPU, and GPU stats -- as well as the FidelityFX sharpening for Radeon gamers.

The biggest note here is that Gearbox is recommending AMD CPUs and AMD GPUs by default and highlighting them, as the developer teamed with AMD on optimizing and injecting AMD features and tech into Borderlands 3. You'll need a somewhat hefty 75GB of HDD space and at least 6GB of RAM to play Borderlands 3, with detailed system requirements below:

DARPA is on the look out for a new underground military tunnel or base, putting out a request for university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels.

Why? Well, for research and experimentation purposes of course. DARPA is desperate, posting the request on August 20 and saying it wants responses by August 30 by 5PM ET. I guess the world might be ending on September 1, eh?

DARPA said that their ideal space would be a "human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks w/ complex layout & multiple stories, including atriums, tunnels & stairwells. Spaces that are currently closed off from pedestrians or can be temporarily used for testing are of interest".

Samsung didn't have the best time when it released its first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, which was met with awe and criticism -- and then quickly pulled from release and pushed into September.

The upcoming September release of the Galaxy Fold will roll directly into 2020 with Samsung not slowing with its foldable smartphone plans, and now LetsGoDigital have "come across" various Samsung patents for some crazy foldable phone designs. The site has done what it does best and offered a bunch of slick 3D renders of designs that Samsung could use with the Galaxy Fold 2 smartphone.

In this render, we can see the Galaxy Fold 2 possible folding vertically -- which would be very different, and very awesome. As long as there is no big crease in the middle, we could have it not being too thick and still feeling like a normal smartphone in your pocket.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is about to get a massive injection of new user-created maps, with over 6.6 million user-created "Forge" maps being pumped into the game.

The official Halo Twitter account tweeted the news, saying that the 6.6 million user-created Forge maps and game types have been crafted over from legacy Halo games like Halo 3, Halo: Reach and Halo 4 into higher-quality remastered form for Halo: MCC.

343 Industries is spearheading the move, using gamer-created maps and sprucing them up for Halo: Master Chief Collection. This means that your favorite map from the Xbox 360 versions of Halo 3, Halo: Reach and Halo 4 can be enjoyed with a fresh dab of paint.

Google is ramping for the release of its next-gen Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL handsets, and now we have a tease of the purported Google Pixel Watch from the good folks at LetsGoDigital.

The company filed the above patent back in mid-2017, but on August 27, 2019 the patent was published on the official USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) database. The patent includes a bunch of details on the 'smartwatch with built-in camera' giving away the most obvious thing -- it has a built-in camera.

We can see the round watch face style case with what appears to be analogue hands, which is an interesting style. The built-in camera would be an interesting thing to see, which could have Google using an under-screen camera or maybe have a slight gap in the screen at the top for a small camera. I wonder what applications and use cases there would be for that? Face recognition for payments on-the-go?

AMD looks to be working on a lower-end version of Navi with a new Navi 14 GPU showing up on Compubench, with 24 CUs that would put it into the Polaris 11 (or Polaris 21).

In total there are three different Navi 14 listings in Compubench, with 3GB, 4GB, and 8GB models. The internal name is Navi 14 but we should expect it as a Radeon RX 5600 series (or even RX 5500 series). Navi 14 has 24 CUs with 1536 stream processors, and what should be GDDR6 memory.

The three Navi 14 GPUs listed on Compubench:

XFX has officially launched the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC II, with the new THICC II variant from XFX is another custom Navi card that out of the few on the market, looks like the best.

XFX is no stranger to custom Radeon graphics cards, but it has been dormant for what feels like forever from its beautifully-designed custom AMD cards. The new THICC II design is a re-work of the great work on the XFX double dissipation custom card, something that used to be a thing back in the Radeon R200 series family.

The company is using a 2.7-slot design with XFX tapping its own Ghost Thermal 2.0 cooler which promises great thermals and noise, with 35% less fan noise, it'll also be quiet. XFX uses 2 x 100mm fans to keep the Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC II nice and cool (and quiet).

Remedy Entertainment blew gamers and enthusiasts away with its release of Control a few days ago, and while it has only been a few days, modders are already hard at work on getting changes into the game.

A new mod has surfaced for the game, which adds an FOV slider into the game that works with both DX11 and DX12, while another mod removes motion blur from the game -- but only for the DX11-powered version of Control.

The first mod with the FOV slider is easy to use, as you just press F1 to increase the FOV while pressing F2 decreases the FOV, and finally pressing backspace will revert back to the default FOV.

KFC offered up its plant-based meat-free chicken nuggets collaborating with Beyond Meats for its Beyond Fried Chicken test, exclusive to one of its stores in Atlanta -- well, that 'chicken' sold out in 5 hours flat.

Interestingly, KFC said it sold as much of the meat-free chicken it did in those 5 hours than it sells popcorn chicken in a week. KFC said it would be looking at the results of its meat-free chicken sales and reception, but didn't indicate whether we'd see a bigger test or nationwide rollout.

With its popularity, KFC would be silly to not continue this trial at least -- it seems popular. Beyond Meat also gets a bunch of that limelight, and now they have headlines of selling out their meat-free chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken of all places.

Sharp will unveil and detail its larger-than-life-and-your-wallet-too 8K TV at IFA 2019 next week, with the company to unveil the world's largest 8K TV at a huge 120 inches.

We should expect Sharp to use a 120-inch LCD panel on its new 8K TV but outside of that, not much is known -- except for one thing: 5G connectivity. Sharp will be including 5G connectivity into its new 8K for reasons unknown, but it wants to see these new TVs used to display works of art.

I don't know why anyone would need 5G in their TV, but I guess when you're spending this much on a new display then the tiny investment per 5G chip for the 8K TVs wouldn't add that much to the price. I think I'd rather have a Shield TV or something else built-in, or hell even a built-in Chromecast Ultra.

After criticism over how gender and trans issues are handled in Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED eliminates the barriers between male and female player characters in the new game.

Cyberpunk 2077 will no longer have binary gender options; instead V. is now gender neutral and gamers choose a body type in the character customization screen rather than a hard line male or female definition. The sci-fi FPS RPG's customization has expanded greatly as a result, CDPR says, opening up immersion and accessibility to all kinds of gamers.

"Our character creation menu, for instance. Compared to the last demo we now give you so many more options. You don't choose your gender anymore. You don't choose, 'I want to be a female or male character' you now choose a body type," Cyberpunk 2077 senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers told MCV.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment opens a new studio in San Diego that'll focus exclusively on free-to-play mobile games.

On the heels of its strong monetization in games like MK11 and Shadow of War, WB is eager to tap the billion dollar free-to-play mobile market. It's a bustling segment that made 80% of 2018's total yearly revenues (per SuperData). Everyone wants a piece of that $87 billion dollar pie, including WB.

WB Games already has some big mobile successes including the Game of Thrones: Conquest title and Harry Potter Wizards Unite. The idea here is to get steady recurring revenues from mobile games to help big-budget projects like the new rumored live service Justice League game from Rocksteady, WB Games Montreal's new project (maybe Batman Court of Owls), and the upcoming Harry Potter RPG from Avalanche.

NBA 2K20's newest trailer is filled with lottery-style gambling-esque mechanics, including random card packs straight out of Magic: The Gathering, spin wheels, and even slot machines.

NBA 2K games are huge cash crops for Take-Two. Last quarter, NBA 2K19 became its best-selling sports franchise of all time and helped rake in $313 million from microtransactions. NBA 2K's MyTeam mode, which is a lot like FIFA Ultimate Team, is the main driver for this success.

Today 2K dropped a new trailer for NBA 2K20's MyTeam that perfectly illustrates its lootbox-style monetization. It exposes very luck-based mechanics that're reminiscent of a casino, with star NBA players to illustrate just how big you can win from its Triple Threat slot machines, card packs, and a new spin wheel straight out of a game show. The game's engagement hinges on allowing users to build a fantasy dream team of players, but it comes at a cost: either grinding for in-game currency to unlock and then upgrade the players via card packs, or paying money directly for the Virtual Currency itself. There's apparently lots more opportunities to win and earn VC this time around, though.