Latest News - Page 2135

CES 2018 - Intel is about to reveal their next-gen Core CPUs powered by Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics, featuring 4GB of HBM2 and HBCC.

Inside, there are two graphics subsystems on the single package courtesy of Intel using the Radeon RX Vega M on the left with 4GB of HBM2/HBCC on a 1024-bit bus, with 24 Compute Units and support for up to 6 displays. The GPU supports up to 4K, and has support for DisplayPort 1.4 w/HDR, HDMI 2.0b and HDR10.

On the right, the Intel side of things has an Intel Gfx Display Engine with support for 3 displays at up to 4K, and support for Intel Quick Sync Video which provides VP9, HEVC, and H264 hardware encoding/decoding.

Intel has just launched its new 8th-gen Core processor,with a few different SKUs. We have the 8th-gen Core Mobile processor in U, G, and H variants (mainstream, thin/light with discrete GPU, and highest performance).

These new CPUs will be more detailed in the coming days, but for now, this is the skinny:

U: Mainstream Mobility

Yesterday, Apple released a press release detailing its success over the festive season, more specifically the App Store pulled in $300 million on New Years Day alone.

During the festive week starting on Christmas Eve, Apple broke its last standing record of customer purchases made within the App Store, with$890 million spent in a seven day period. Phil Schiller, Apple marketing chief reacted to the sales record saying that he was "thrilled" to see customers venturing out and finding new apps and games to enjoy.

Topping the charts for the most downloaded app was the augmented reality game Pokemon GO, with Apple saying AR titles are among some of the most popular apps on the App Store at the moment, with titles including CSR Racing 2, Stack AR, Kings of Pool, Amazon, Wayfair, Night Sky, Pitu, and Snapchat adding to the mass downloads over the holiday season.

Intel has finally released a full list of all of their processors that are open to the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws, with virtually all Intel CPUs at risk.

The chipmaker has worked closely with AMD, ARM Holdings, and multiple operating system makers in order to push an industry-wide approach to fixing this problem. Intel will soon have an update for 90% of their processors, something that should drop in the next few days.

There is plenty of choices when it comes to new games on the Nintendo Switch, now another another game is going to be thrown into the mix, as The Game Bakers 'Furi' will be hitting the Nintendo eShop next week.

Furi originally released on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC has now been ported over the Nintendo Switch with a little added bonus. The Game Baker is adding all previous content since its original release back in 2016, this includes the "One More Fight" DLC but also a special touch for those gamers that want a true challenge.

Furi on the Switch will be the only console port to feature a speed run mode, making the already difficult game that much more harder, attracting the more seasoned players for a real challenge. The Game Bakers describe Furi's anticipated release on their blog as "entirely feature complete" and continued on by saying "The Switch edition includes the boss roster-expanding "One More Fight" DLC, the option to speedrun its ultra-challenging Furier difficulty mode (never before available on console), and all improvements and updates previously added to the game."

When Razer launched their gamer-focused Razer Phone late last year, we found out that it was powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, had 8GB of RAM, and even Dolby Atmos certified speakers.

Razer Phone stood out from the competition by being the world's first 120Hz smartphone, but until now, there wasn't much support in the games department that supported 120Hz on the Razer Phone.

The company has tackled this issue by deploying a list of games that have been optimized to run at 120Hz. This is a list of just some of the games that are now 120Hz optimized, with a full list available on the Razer website.

Litterati is a recently launched unique app, the goal of the app is to clean the planet, to create more motivation for people to participate the app is also a fun game.

Literrati is the brain child of Oakland entrepreneur Jeff Kirschner, a father that had a light bulb moment when hiking with his daughter and came across litter that had been dumped in a creek. Kirschner's four-year-old daughter said "Daddy, that doesn't go there", and with that innocent remark, Kirschner was inspired to create what would eventually become Litterrati.

Kirschner explained his story with CNN last year, where he said: "It was an innocent but insightful comment and it got me thinking. It reminded me of when I was a kid at summer camp, and before visiting day everybody would go pick up five pieces of litter -- it didn't take long to clean up the whole camp".

Despite coming out just two months before 2017 ended, Sledgehammer Games' latest Call of Duty entry storms the download charts on Sony's PlayStation Network.

Per recent figures on Sony's PlayStation Blog, Call of Duty: WWII was the top downloaded PS4 game of 2017, which says a lot about what gamers actually want in the series. While Activision was quick to tout the game's huge sales figures--CoD: WWII made over $500 million in its opening weekend, putting it close to Black Ops II's astronomical numbers--other sources have corroborated the title's massive success. NPD analyst Mat Piscatella affirmed Call of Duty: WWII is the best-selling game of 2017 in the U.S., and Activision has since confirmed the game has made over $1 billion in earnings just a month or so after launch.

"Call of Duty WWII was November's best-selling game overall, and instantly becomes the best-selling video game of both 2017 year-to-date as well as the rolling 12 month period ending November 2017," NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella wrote in a recent report.

It appears HTC is teasing a new re-vamped version of its Vive virtual reality headset ahead of the bit Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Despite not really taking off as a majorly accessible gaming device, the Vive (and the Oculus Rift for that matter) aren't going anywhere any time soon. VR is here to stay, even if it's still not fully matured as a big part of the games and interactive industry, and now the Vive-makers at HTC have pretty much said a new headset is on the way.

In an extremely well-timed Tweet, HTC made a pun regarding New Year's resolutions with a Vive graphic thrown in for good measure. This pretty much leads us to believe that a new headset is on the way with expanded resolution. This could be the new next-generation Vive headset people have been talking about for a while, or it could be a refresh that pushes the OLED panel resolution past the 2160 x 1200 of the original.

Back in May of this year I predicted BioWare's new IP, now known as the mech-shooter Anthem, would be monetized in some form with microtransactions. Now key analysts are aligning with my predictions in an effort to gauge how the monetization pattern will go: will it be traditional gear-based lootboxes, or cosmetic-only--or a mixture of both?

EA is no stranger to service games. A good portion of its modern release slate have online-based components of some kind, many of which are near-perfectly monetized with a successful engagement model that not only fuels the billion dollar games industry, but churns the publisher's big money-making wheel. So it's no surprise that BioWare's big new IP, which should big the biggest project it's ever done (an online-based shooter with genre-melding and action-based mechanics that seems to be primarily multiplayer-focus), will likely tap this model: after all EA has probably poured tens of millions into the project. Also remember that Anthem should be a big Destiny competitor, and that means long-term engagement (which further means long-term monetization).

So what are the best ways to monetize for the long-term? The most profitable, of course, are randomized lootboxes. Based on the E3 2017 trailer, Anthem is absolutely prime territory for randomized lootboxes filled with upgraded gear, meaning cosmetics probably wouldn't be the best way to monetize in terms of maximum returns and longer engagement. The trailer showed a bit of RNG when a character opened a chest and got the rare Jarra's Wrath, and as soon as I saw that, I knew MTX would be in for sure. Also remember BioWare has past experience monetizing outright lootbox gear drops in games like Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. But it's not 100% guaranteed to have gear-based lootboxes, and EA could go with a mixed cosmetic-and-gear approach in an effort to curb its Battlefront II controversy...but Anthem also launches a long ways away (in Fiscal 2019, which is from April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019).

Not too long ago Amazon announced their very own personal stylist for consumers, Echo Look, and now the company has secured another patent application that could see the retail giant release a "smart mirror".

Jeff Bezos must have an eye for fashion as Amazon's new patent seems to be some sort of personal fashion guide that would act as an assistant that helps consumers pick outfits for specific occasions, and has so far been kept under wraps by Amazon.

The patent application lists that the "smart mirror" has "system of cameras, projectors, and mirrors to layer digital images onto a reflection of your body in a mirror." The official description lists it as a"display device", and has the ability of producing a "pattern of illumination and non-illumination on the screen so that the illuminated portions of the screen substantially transmit through the mirror."

An ex-NSA contractor, Harold Martin has agreed to plead guilty to what could be the biggest theft of classified data in US history. Martin could face up to 10 years in prison for the single count of illegal retention of national security information.

Martin has been accused of stealing a massive 50TB of classified data from the NSA over the course of the 20 years that he was working there as a contractor. The government has not said what was done with the stolen data, but it is believed that the data stolen included elite hacking tools that Martin stole while working for Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp, the very same firm that employed the whistle blower Edward Snowden.

According to Reuters, the stealing of classified information has caused Martin to be charged with a total of 19 other offenses, as it is alleged by the indictment that Martin also stole documents and information from US Cyber Command, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office.

CES 2018 - Netgear have just announced their new Orbi Outdoor Satellite which will allow users to stay connected to their internet while outside and not have to worry about the elements damaging their portable extenders.

The Orbi Outdoor Satellite is specifically designed for outdoor use as the device will extend your Wi-Fi signal by an additional 2,500 square feet. To eliminate fears of an outdoor Wi-Fi device being damaged by the elements, Netgear have made the Orbi Outdoor Satellite completely water and dust resistant.

Most other Wi-Fi extenders provide users with a slower connection speed, but Netgear's Orbi Outdoor Satellite won't have this issue. Netgear have deployed some proprietary technology called FastLane3, which is capable of dedicating bandwidth between the Orbi Wi-Fi and your router, giving your outdoor devices the best connection speed possible.

Now that Wi-Fi is almost a necessity, nothing is more annoying than walking into a room in your home that is just out of reach of the signal to router, with iRobot soon updating the Roomba app with the ability of letting owners of use their Roomba to see which rooms are Wi-Fi dead zones, and which are not.

Your Roomba will be able to map out the problematic Wi-Fi areas within your home, and combined with mapping out floor areas and specific route planning, Roomba devices will have more efficiently navigate from room to room within homes.

Roomba device will be able to map out the strengths of certain areas within users homes, and once Roomba owners update their devices, people struggling with Wi-Fi signals in certain areas of their homes will be able to adjust their Wi-Fi settings accordingly, mostly eliminating Wi-Fi dead zones in their houses.

Mophie has just unveiled what a lot of travelling business and workstation users will love: their new powerstation AC external battery that is capable of charging laptops.

As you can see in the video above, Mophie's new powerstation AC has up to 100W of AC power output, pumping over 15 hours of battery life into your smart devices. There's AC power output and USB-C PD fast-charging, which is something you'll need with its huge 22,000mWh of battery power.

You can charge up specific laptops like Apple's new MacBook and MacBook Pros with the USB-C port, as they only draw 30W. Larger laptops that draw up to 90W will drain the Mophie powerstation AC in less than an hour, so you won't be able to fully charge a higher-end USB-C laptop without draining the powerstation AC completely.

In a world where PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds comes out of nowhere and racks up over 30 million sales, over 3 million concurrent gamers and over $600 million in sales in less than a day, it can make other sales of other games not seem so great.

Case in point is the lovechild of Wing Commander, the legendary and ambitious Chris Roberts with Star Citizen, a game that was born on Kickstarter before jumping into crowdfunding from its fans directly, in which it raised $34.91 million in 2017. This number is down from the slightly-higher $36.11 million from 2016.

Star Citizen raised $17.25 million on Kickstarter, and since that point that made $175.9 million - far less than the $600 million and very quickly growing of PUBG, especially now that it's on the Xbox One/X and planned for "all platforms" in the near future. We can expect PUBG to reach $1 billion in sales in the next couple of months, if not sooner at this rate.

While it seems Bitcoin is cooling off after hitting new records in 2017, it's time for Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) to shine.

Ethereum has breached $1000, reaching a new record high price of $1044, an 8.9% rise in the last 24 hours. There are 96.8 million Ethereum coins circulating, with a new market cap of a huge $101 billion.

Ripple (XRP) sets a new all-time record price of $3.17

CES 2018 - LG is pushing more and more into the world of robotics, something it seems to be doubling down with at CES 2018 with their new CLOi branded robotics line.

LG's exciting new CLOi line of products come in three models for commercial use: Serving Robot, Porter Robot, and Shopping Cart Robot. Starting with the Serving Robot, we should expect to see LG's first robot creation at hotels, airport lounges, and even restaurants. This robot will deliver drinks and meals to customers with its built-in sliding tray - but hopefully it won't need a tip.

The Porter Robot will be used in hotels for express check-in and check-out, with payments accepted by the robots that will reduce waiting times. LG's new Porter Robot will even carry your suitcase around, but I'm sure it'll be carry-on size only and not your huge suitcase, or two, or five.

Opera has just pushed out a new browser update, with v50 of its popular browser coming out in the next few hours that will stop sites from hijacking your CPU to mine cryptocurrency.

There are already extensions released for both Chrome and Firefox that block hijacking scripts, but Opera is the first to block cryptomining within its built-in ad blocker. Impressive stuff, especially as Opera is my browser of choice (I'm all-in with Google for everything else).

Ripple (XRP) sets a new all-time record price of $3.17

Tesla's new mid-range Model 3 electric vehicle is right around the corner, with the car giant using the new Model 3 to make the quickest trip across the United States in an electric vehicle.

The Drive editor Alex Roy used Tesla's new Model 3 to drive from Redondo Beach, California to Manhattan, New York in 50 hours, 16 minutes, and 32 seconds. Roy made the journey with Model 3 owner Daniel Zorrilla, beating out his own time in 2016 when he used the Model S and Autopilot in 55 hours.

Even with the super-cold weather hitting most parts of the US right now, the Model 3 had its heater blasting away reducing the miles the electric vehicle could drive without charging. Still, it was able to complete the cross-country journey in just 50 hours, using $100 to charge their Model 3 in that time. Damn impressive.