Latest News - Page 1841

While wide-spread pollution free energy might sound like pipe dream when thinking about how many facets of the world economy uses fossil fuels, we might not actually be that far away from it.

A Canadian group of engineers recently published a new paper detailing a method humans could extract hydrogen from oil sands and fields. This new method could enable a large-scale adoption that would ultimately cause a domino effect into energy market, making it extremely cheap to capture hydrogen instead of expensive. The researchers inject oxygen into the oil fields which then raises the temperature and liberates the hydrogen, filters are then used to separate the hydrogen from the other gases that are present.

The commercialization of this new method is already taking place and, Grant Strem, CEO of Proton Technologies has given a statement regarding the discovery "This technique can draw up huge quantities of hydrogen while leaving the carbon in the ground. When working at production level, we anticipate we will be able to use the existing infrastructure and distribution chains to produce H2 for between 10 and 50 cents per kilo. This means it potentially costs a fraction of gasoline for equivalent output".

HBO has announced a brand new Westworld virtual reality game for fans, and the best news out of the entire announcement is that its already playable.

The new VR experience is called Westworld Awakening and is produced by Survios, Kilter Films and with the assistance of Westworld's showrunners. The game is planned to arrive on the Oculus Store, Viveport and Steam on August 20, but will only be available for VR users who have headsets linked to PCs.

Westworld Awakening is based in the second season of the TV show and will let players experience 5 chapters of madness. The main character is a host called Kate and players will be by her side as she becomes self-aware and attempts to dictate the outcomes of her own life. The game is expected to last around 4 - 6 hours and will cost $30. If you are interested in checking out Westworld Awakening on Steam, visit this link here.

Firstly, because why not right? Why wouldn't you want a jacket that reflects every color in the visible spectrum? I mean, if you want to stand out a party, here if your next purchase.

Vollebak has used lasers to embed over 2 billion microscopic glass spheres onto the surface of their Vollebak black squid jacket. The design idea behind the jacket is to replicate the elements of a squid's biological survival necessities across three layers of fabric. Vollebak co-founder, Steve Tidball spoke out about the design, saying "The black squid jacket focuses on replicating the elements of squid skin that make it hyper-visible. With over two billion of them [glass spheres] embedded in resin on the jacket's surface, and over 40,000 in every single square centimeter, they're invisible to the naked eye."

He continues and says "When light hits the jacket, it travels through the curved surface of these black glass spheres and strikes the back of them, before being reflected back at the original light source and scattered away from it simultaneously, so that the fabric looks like it's emitting light." The jacket is currently priced at $995 and is available in only one color (I wonder why).

Instagram has announced a new program called "Data Abuse Bounty" that will put a price on the head of third-party apps who are found to be abusing user data.

Instagram and their parent company, Facebook has issued out a new program that will encourage researchers to track down third-party apps who are found to be abusing user data. An Instagram security engineer, Dan Gurfinkel wrote in a blog post, saying "Our goal is to help protect the information people share on Instagram and encourage security researchers to report potential abuse to us so we can quickly take action."

Instagram hasn't set a flat payment for researchers who discover nefarious third-party apps abusing data, instead they said that will pay researchers based on the impact the violent has caused against their company. The head of Instagram's engineering department, Nam Nguyen has said that "Expanding and building on the Facebook bug bounty program is a key development in our ongoing security efforts, and we are grateful to the wider security community for all they do to help keep our platforms safe."

A good real-time strategy game is extremely hard to come by in this day and age, luckily for fans who are missing sinking their teeth into a brand new RTS title, KING Art Games has your back on September 1st.

KING Art Games are the developers behind the upcoming real-time strategy game 'Iron Harvest' which is set in an alternate reality of 1920+. I've been following the progress of Iron Harvest for quite some time now, as real-time strategy games are some of my favorite games of all time. From what I've seen, Iron Harvest looks like a more than promising RTS title and is definitely placed quite highly on my "Definitely Need To Play" list.

Taking a trip down memory lane, we have the original kickstarter campaign trailer and article which can be found here, if you are interested in a bit of history about how Iron Harvest came about. There is also the 'Tech & Controls' demo that can be found here if you are interested in seeing what the game can achieve movement and positioning wise. Finally, there is the above trailer which announces the games official release date which is scheduled for September 1st. There is also the official Steam page for anyone who wants to keep tabs on Iron Harvest, check it out here.

Gamescom 2019 - A new announcement has come out from Gamescom 2019's Opening Night Live Show and this time its a brand new turn-based strategy game published by SEGA and developed by Amplitude Studios.

Right off the bat we can see the game which is titled 'Humankind' seems to be taking heavy inspiration from Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. The game will be released onto Steam and when checking out its listing we learn that the title will feature "one million civilizations" and that players will be able to "Create your own civilization by combining 60 historical cultures from the Bronze to the Modern Age. Each culture brings its special gameplay layer, leading to near-endless outcomes."

Players will also be able to engage in real historical events, scientific breakthroughs, discover natural wonders of the world and plan out your own design to your ever-growing city. At the moment we don't have a specific release date for Humankind, all we know is that we can expect its launch sometime during 2020. For more information about the title, or if you want to keep tabs on it, check out the official Steam page for it here.

Gamescom 2019 - Kerbal Space Program is a super-popular game with countless gamers putting even more countless hours into the game, with publisher Private Division announcing its sequel, simply named Kerbal Space Program 2. Check out the cinematic announcement trailer:

Interestingly, Kerbal Space Program 2 is NOT being developed by the developers of the original game -- Squad. Instead, Seattle-based Star Theory Games is making the game, with the team made up of "engineers and designers with aerospace specialization who have worked on a variety of titles including Monday Night Combat, Planetary Annihilation, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and more".

Kerbal Space Program 2 will include multiplayer, one of the key features that shows the game has heavily evolved from its predecessor.

Gamescom 2019 - Nintendo Switch fans can now kick back and really enjoy whats coming to them, as CD Projekt RED has officially announced the release date of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition.

We have known about the Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for quite some time now, we know that the game will be shipping on a 32GB game cartridge and will be including both of the games larges DLC's - Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine. What we didn't know was when the game was going to release, and now thanks Gamescom 2019's opening night we do.

Above we have the official The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition Nintendo Switch release date trailer, which reveals that the game is expected to arrive on the handheld console on October 15th, 2019. The Witcher 3 will be running at 540p handheld and when docked it will be bumped up to 720p. If you are interested in pre-ordering the title check out my post here to see what is detailed in the package.

Valve has kicked off the Dota 2 The International tournament with an eye-popping $33 million prize pool up for grabs, with a first prize of $15 million. Second prize is still a hefty $4.3 million, while third will net $3 million.

There are 18 places with $33.5 million up for grabs in The International 2019, with 18th place still a large $83K. Valve had a huge $25 million prize pool for the 2018 competition, so we're already at $8 million over the prize pool from last year -- and up significantly from the $1.6 million from the first International tournament in 2011.

The way the prize pool works is that as fans continue to buy in-game items for Dota 2, a large 25% of these sales are injected into the prize pool for The International. The more gamers spend, the more that tournament players have in their prize pool - and these numbers aren't dying down.

NVIDIA's answer to Google Stadia is nearly here, with GeForce Now for Android announced and coming "later this year" to Android devices across the world.

GeForce Now is currently in beta form for Windows, Mac, and NVIDIA Shield owners -- with the beta ending later this year. The beta ending should hopefully line up with GeForce Now for Android arriving, with NVIDIA rolling out RTX-powered servers in both California and Germany in preparation of GeForce Now for Android.

NVIDIA will continue adding in RTX servers throughout the US and Europe as hte big launch of GeForce Now spreads out, right in time to compete with Google and its own streaming product: Stadia.

Things are really getting out of control at Respawn, with developers attacking fans and fans rebelling against the recent Iron Crown event. Respawn developers went as far as calling gamers "ass-hats" and "freeloaders", setting things on fire -- as you can imagine. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has now responded, apologizing to gamers.

Zampella said in his tweet: "On Friday, we gave Apex fans an update on how we were changing the Iron Crown event. Some of the team then joined a discussion with our community on Reddit, and things got to a pretty bad place. Some of our folks crossed a line with their comments, and that's not how we want Respawn to be represented. I apologize to any of our fans that were offended".

He continues: "I will always stand behind the team here at Respawn and support them on speaking out against some of the toxic and nasty comments aimed at their families and loved ones. But we shouldn't contribute to it when we do comment, and add to the very thing we want to prevent. Last week we didn't do that, going forward we will be better. Having an open, healthy relationship with our community is incredibly important to all of us at Respawn".

NVIDIA talked with CD PROJEKT RED about Cyberpunk 2077 in a little more detail at Gamescom 2019, with Cyberpunk 2077's Lead Quest Designer, Pawel Sasko, talking all things Cyberpunk in the video below:

The video goes for over 3 minutes, with the RTX portion of the video only a tiny portion which is unfortunate. I would've loved to have seen more RTX-powered footage of Cyberpunk 2077, but I guess we'll have to wait a little while longer.

The footage CDPR showed off at E3 2019 to the VIP guests in their suite (of which I was privy to see) looked great without RTX enabled, but I would like to see much more RTX-powered gameplay footage of Cyberpunk 2027, and ASAP. Maybe we'll see something new at PAX West which is August 30 through to September 2, cybernetic fingers are crossed for that.

Cerebras Systems just unveiled the largest chip ever at Hot Chips 31, which is a A Symposium on High Performance Chips hosted yearly with the biggest companies in the tech space involved.

The new Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine chip from Cerebras has a huge 1.2 trillion (1,200,000,000,000) transistors compared to the largest GPU in NVIDIA's GV100 and its 21.1 billion (21,100,000,000). NVIDIA requires just 815 square millimeters of die space for its GV100 and 21.1 billion transistors, while Cerebras Systems requires a huge 46,225 square millimeters of silicon.

Cerebras' new chip is so big that in comparison photos, the company compares its new 1.2T transistor chip side-by-side with a freaking keyboard. Yes, this new chip is as big as a desktop keyboard.

NVIDIA went on an RTX rampage at Gamescom 2019 with the company unveiling a bunch of new real-time ray tracing infused game trailers like Minecraft with RTX, Watch Dogs: Legion getting RTX -- and the first fully loaded RTX game: Control.

The new trailer above is from Gamescom 2019 which has kicked off in Cologne, Germany and comes in at just under 1 minute. There's not much more to say about Control if you haven't looked into it already, but it's from developer Remedy Entertainment that made one of my favorite games; Max Payne as well as Alan Wake and Quantum Break.

Control runs on the latest version of Remedy's in-house Northlight engine, with the full set of RTX real-time ray tracing features. It looks great in-person, with my hands-on time with it at E3 2019 leaving me wanting more -- I now have it here on my PC but can't talk about it just yet. All I can say is it sure does look great and I can't wait to sink my teeth deeper into Control.

Alienware has just unveiled its new Aurora R9 desktop today with a super-sleek, rounded aesthetic that looks out of this world. The new look is part of an extension to Alienware's "Legend" design that started earlier this year with the Area-51m.

With the Aurora R9 desktop PC, we have an awesome-looking system that doesn't look too crazy, but it definitely stands out. The entire front is curved, and looks like a Dyson bladeless fan, except there's a hardcore gaming PC inside of it. It can be specced pretty high, up to the RTX 2080 Ti and 64GB RAM.

Alienware says that it built the new Aurora R9 with improved airflow in mind, so the new rig has been built with less obstruction than the previous design meaning airflow increases leading to cooler temps. Alienware says these changes have reduced temps by 8% which is not bad at all.

As gaming's biggest publishers focus on live services and microtransactions, Sony plans to double-down on singleplayer story-driven experiences.

Photo: Marek Okon

Today Sony bought Insomniac Games and added the Spider-Man developer to its stable of first-party developers. This sets the company up to deliver even more high-profile exclusives on its next-generation PlayStation 5 console, which arms developers with mighty Zen CPU and Navi GPU processing power, a super-fast SSD, and ray tracing for improved visuals.

Gamescom 2019 - Bungie today announced Season of the Undying, the first season for Destiny 2's big new Shadowkeep expansion.

Soon Destiny 2's new $35 Shadowkeep expansion will be the gateway to all future seasonal content. Shadowkeep's first seasonal event, Season of the Undying (technically Destiny 2's Season 8) is centered around the time-travelling Vex, but no other official details have been confirmed. The new trailer is cryptic and mysterious in pure Bungie, offering intriguing glimpses of lore and content we can expect from the season.

"We say the Black Garden is the birthplace of the Vex. But it was not the beginning. It was the reason. The life in the Garden called out a question. The Vex are the answer. They will do anything to protect the Garden. In these things there is symmetry. The gateways have opened. The Vex are coming. The Garden of Salvation is only the beginning."

Gamescom 2019 - PS4 gamers will get to try out Modern Wafare's new fast-paced 2v2 Gunfight mode in an exclusive alpha test.

The new Modern Warfare alpha test is set to begin this Friday, August 23, will be free for all PS4 gamers worldwide, and stars Infinity Ward's new chaotic Gunfight mode. Gunfight is 2v2 team-based deathmatch with strong emphasis on frenetic action and twitch reflexes, and takes place across five small-sized maps: Stack, King, Speedball, Docks, and Pine. Infinity Ward will use the alpha test to gather valuable network feedback.

As for the rest of the game, Infinity Ward shared some more details on what Modern Warfare will offer when it drops on October 25, especially when it comes to multiplayer. "Our overall goal for MP this year was to create the ultimate multiplayer playground. So we've got all sorts of shapes and sizes of experiences, we've got our smaller, tighter and faster 2v2 maps, we've got our more traditional 6v6 maps, and we've also got experiences on our larger-scale maps that're going to support upwards of 100 players," said Infinity Ward producer Dino Verano.

Gamescom 2019 - Death Stranding's cryptic Bridge Babies get decoded in a new character story trailer.

Today Hideo Kojima brought lots of Death Stranding tidbits and footage to Gamescom, including magical pee and more backstory on the game's mysterious fetus baby-tanks. The so-called Bridge Babies are essential to the game's plot, and are essentially the keys to the doorway between the living and dead worlds.

The BB's, or Bridge Babies, are kind of like batteries. They power Sam's sensors to detect the shadowy BT monsters, and like batteries, they have to be recharged...in their mother's womb. Every BB has a "still-mother" that's brain dead, and the BB's periodically have to be returned to their mother's womb in the United Cities of America's capital citadel. The pods are a simulation of the still-mother's womb, but they're not perfect, and Sam has to frequently sync the pod to the Chiral Network (the main framework that ties players to the world).

Since 1985, Fry's Electronics, a brick and mortar Silicon Valley headquartered electronics chain, was the go-to place for DIY system builders. The stores founded by John Fry were modeled like grocery retailing, but to sell computer and electronics supplies. Fry's Electronics, like most brick and mortar stores these days is having a tough time due to fierce online retailer competition. It seems that they may be closer than ever to facing the fate of other brick and mortar retail chains, like Toys"R"Us, K-Mart, and Sears.

Over the last two years, we have observed significant gaps in their product stock, and over the last six to twelve months entire product lines missing for extended periods of time. Examples include the OEM versions Microsoft Windows 10, internal hard drives, or motherboards which most stores have not had in stock consistently for the last six months. One thing we have heard across multiple stores from employees is that sales have been struggling. Our own visits to the stores have shown entire isles which used to be well stocked, completely devoid of any products.

Over the last few days, two videos have surfaced which you can watch here and here. These videos show a similar situation of product stock in the Arizona based locations.