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CES 2018 - Nissan will be showing off the latest in its car technology at CES 2018 next week, with Nissan to unveil new software that comes from the medical field, and is capable of translating drivers' thoughts into actions where it would improve vehicle responsiveness.

This new software monitors drivers' brain wave activity to anticipate the intended movement, like turning the steering wheel, indicating, or braking. Nissan says that this system is 0.2-0.5 seconds faster than the driver, which is impressive on its own.

Nissan's new B2V technology is meant to make the driving experience better, with semi-autonomous technology like this increasing reaction times to the countless actions required when behind the wheel.

Shaun Escayg spent seven years working at Naughty Dog, but now it appears he's switched over to Square Enix's big new Avengers game.

Tomb Raider dev Crystal Dynamics is currently developing a new original Avengers game as part of a big multi-year agreement between Marvel and games publisher Square Enix. The project, which has been under wraps for a while, represents another huge partnership like EA's current exclusive rights to Star Wars games, so it's only natural that top-tier talent in the games industry are getting recruited for the game. Now Crystal Dynamics has snagged Shaun Escayg, who spent nearly a decade working with Naughty Dog on some of the studio's best games, including The Last of Us, and Uncharteds 4 and Lost Legacy.

Escayg didn't outright confirm he's working on the project, but he did share a particular picture on Instagram that pretty much points the way. He also announced his departure from Naughty Dog on Twitter:

Following its delisting from the NYSE and subsequent bankruptcy filing, peripheral-maker Mad Catz is back for 2018 (and possibly beyond).

Mad Catz was believed to be dead after months and months of tumultuous financials, but now the company is back under a slightly new banner called Mad Catz Global Limited, and plans to release a slew of new gaming hardware peripherals for 2018. In fact the company has announced a trio of new hardware: the Rat Air mouse, the RGB-lit Strike 4 mechanical keyboard, and the Freq 4 gaming headset. All of these new devices (and possibly more) will be shown off at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.

"We couldn't be more excited than to begin 2018 by announcing the return of Mad Catz to the global gaming arena," said Mad Catz director of sales and operations, Selena Chang, in a recent press release.

Turok is finally coming to the Xbox One, at least according to new PEGI ratings.

Night Dive Studios, who are currently remastering the first two original Turok games, have yet to formally announce a release date for the duo's Xbox One release. Right now the remasters are available on PC but console gamers have been waiting a bit to jump back into that weird Jurassic world for some dino-slaying action. The devs have only delivered a tentative "coming sometime soon" timeline, but thanks to the PEGI ratings board, it looks like the remasters are coming soon.

Originally spotted by deals wizard Wario64, PEGI rated Turok for Xbox One two days ago, meaning the game should be coming out soon (maybe in a few weeks, or a few months...but soon). As someone who grew up with the original Turok on Nintendo 64, I can say it'd be cool to jump back in and relive some of those old moments...and I'm curious to see how the graphics hold up on the Xbox One.

Following the big announcement that the Switch is now the fastest-selling console of all-time in the United States, the Japanese console-maker also shares some impressive stats for its first-party games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario: Odyssey.

According to Nintendo's latest figures, more than half of current Switch owners have purchased Super Mario Odyssey. The company says 60% of Switch users own the game, but we're not sure if this is based on the current 10 million console sales milestone or standard "over 4.8 million sales" ten-month figure. If it's the former, that means about six million gamers own Super Mario Odyssey, which is a huge sales figure for the plumber's latest adventure.

Similarly, Zelda: Breath of the Wild enjoys a 55% attach rate with Switch owners, which could put the number as high as 5.5 million copies sold.

According to internal sales figures from Nintendo, the company's new Switch handheld-console hybrid has become the all-time fastest-selling video games console in the United States.

Since its release in March 2017, the Switch has sold 4.8 million units in a 10-month period, making it the fastest-selling system in the U.S. The Switch's fast pace actually beat sales of Nintendo's ultra-popular yesteryear Wii console, which shows just how big this momentum actually is. Nintendo would've likely sold far more units if it weren't hit with supply issues early into the Switch's production and shipment cycle, but the company asserts that these kinks will be worked out with time.

To date the Nintendo Switch has sold more than 10 million units globally, and company President Tatsumi Kimishima hopes the console can reach 20 million sales by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2019.

Brawlout, a Super Smash Bros inspired fighter recently was released onto the Nintendo Switch and actually had quite an impressive opening, attracting over 50,000 players within the first two weeks of its release.

The resemblance between Brawlout and Super Smash Bros is quite uncanny as some of Brawlout's characters feature almost identical move as some characters in Super Smash Bros.

While there might be similarities between Brawlout and Super Smash Bros, this hasn't stopped Nintendo Switch owners from buying the game and having some Super Smash-like games before the inevitable (please, please Nintendo gods) release of Super Smash Bros on the Nintendo Switch.

Monster Hunter: World will be hitting consoles in the next couple of weeks, but PC gamers will have to wait a little longer as the developer has taken to Twitter saying that the PC port of the game won't be released until Autumn.

The official Twitter account of Monster Hunter tweeted the news yesterday, where they said: "#MHWorld is currently being optimized for PC and is planned for an Autumn 2018 release!"

Now that the developer has nearly an entire year until the promised PC port of Monster Hunter: World, we should expect a much smoother and more optimized game. There have been plenty of multi-platform games that have launched over the last few years that have required not just day-one updates, but 50GB+ updates that fix the PC ports up after they are released.

It looks like we are to expect graphics card prises to rise in the next few months, with these inflated prices lasting throughout most of 2018, something that is being amplified by cryptocurrency mining.

According to DigiTimes, graphics card vendors are expected to increase the price of mid/high-end graphics cards by $5-$20 in the "near future to reflect increasing product costs caused by the tight supply of memory devices and GPUs". DigiTimes continued, saying: "Since demand for graphics cards from the cryptocurrency mining segment has not waned as quickly as expected, GPU supply remains tight in the first quarter of 2018".

The site adds that companies like ASUS, GIGABYTE, and MSI all "benefited from the cryptocurrency mining demand and their shipments dropped only mildly in the fourth quarter of 2017", adding: "Meanwhile, graphics card upgrade demand has been picking up in the gaming sector thanks to the recent release of the blockbuster game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Demand has been especially strong from China due to the game's strong popularity".

AMD is expected to launch its next-gen Ryzen 2 processors and new 400-series chipset in March, according to retailers in Japan, who are citing upstream suppliers, according to the latest rumors.

Until now, previous rumors stated that AMD would be launching their new Ryzen 2 processors and 400-series chipsets in February. But the new Pinnacle Ridge architecutre will be expected to launch as optical shrinks of the current-gen Summit Ridge tech, down to the spiffy new 12nm process.

AMD's new Ryzen 2 processors will be built on the same socket AM4 package, and should work with existing 300-series motherboards with BIOS updates from manufacturers. The new 400-series motherboards should support current-gen Ryzen processors out-of-the-box as well as the upcoming Raven Ridge APUs, which 300-series motherboard owners will need an update for.

CES 2018 - Samsung has kicked off CES 2018 a little earlier this year with a quick reveal of their next-gen mobile processor, Exynos 8910, which will be a direct competitor to Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 845 that the company detailed last month in Hawaii.

Samsung's new Exynos 9810 processor packs 8 CPU cores that are divided into two CPU clusters, with the first being 4 high-performance CPU cores clocked at 2.9GHz, while the other 4 cores are energy-efficient CPU cores. Samsung says it has made considerable improvements to the CPU architecture, improving cache memory as well.

The company is teasing a huge 2x increase in single-core perofrmance, while there's an even bigger 40% performance jump for multi-core performance compared to its predecessor. Samsung is also tapping neural networks to improve deep learning algorithms, meaning Exynos 9810-powered devices will be even better at recognizing people and specific elements in photos... perfect for the CIA.

Battlegrounds players on PC will be receiving a small update today that they are encouraged by PUBG Corp to download immediately as this small patch will be fixing the client crashes while in the menu of the game as well as the long-range hits not registering properly.

PUBG was recently updated to v1.0 and ever since it has been filled with problems, with gamers complaining about server lag and rubber banding amongst other problems, but the developer has been quick to smooth out these issues to provide a better Battlegrounds experience.

As the 1.0 patch hit the live servers, Battlegrounds' momentum didn't seem to be slowing down, as a new record milestone of 3 million concurrent players had been reached.

Pokemon GO has finally been confirmed to be on its way to one of the largest gamer bases on the planet, China. John Hanke, the CEO of developer Niantic has told Financial Times that the game is on its way to the country but unfortunately did not reveal any specific time.

John Hanke's development company Niantic is currently working with NetEase to bring Pokemon GO to China. NetEast, the Chinese games company that has previously worked with massive titles such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Overwatch and has successfully brought them to China despite the countries extreme regulations.

"We absolutely intend to bring our existing games into China, beyond that, there are opportunities to build games in China, both for China and for the world." said Hanke.

Psyonix, Rocket League developer, has announced on Twitter that their very unique sports car racing game has surpassed a massive 40 million players across all platforms.

For those of you that don't know, Rocket League is a physics-based multi-player game in which players can choose from a variety of vehicles each equipped with unique boosters that propel the cars into scoring goals. Much like a soccer game but with vehicles Rocket League was released in 2015 and has been one of Steam'S most popular games since, currently it is on sale for 40% off over the course of the new year and festive season, coming in at a very cheap $11.99.

"Rocket League now has 40 MILLION players worldwide! Thank you to our ever-growing community for helping us start the new year with such a fantastic milestone."

In the East African country of Rwanda, drones are flying through the sky with medical supplies like blood, thanks to a partnership between the Rwandan health ministry, and drone startup Zipline.

Zipline has already used drones to deliver over 5500 units of blood to aid crews working through remote areas, where medical supplies are near-impossible to f ind. The service is working with 12 hospitals that are all being accessed by the drone network, with these hospitals now able to provide treatment and life-saving aid to over 5 million people.

Drone deliveries make sense when you think that hospitals need a constant flow of fresh supplies on a regular basis, but without the proper infrastructure available, taking to the skies is the next best - and even better, thing.

If there's something I want to see in the next few years, it would be proper next-gen rollable displays, something that Samsung has been experimenting with for years.

The latest comes from Let's Go Digital, which after a patent filed in mid-June 2017, shows a new device that looks like a scroll, which packs a rollable display. Samsung's purported device would see you pull an OLED display out of a scroll-like device, rocking a fingerprint sensor on the side.

Something like this would change the tablet world as we know it, as these device would eventually receive thinner and better displays as technology progresses. The biggest hurdle would be batteries, and how thick this rollable 'tablet' would be in your pocket.

It was just 24 hours ago that I wrote a story covering Intel CPUs were exposed to a massive security flaw, something that had to be patched at the operating system level, and now most of Silicon Valley has responded.

These security vulnerabilities have been named Meltdown and Spectre, with a website dedicated to them available here. Strangely, there was an NDA placed on this website until January 9, but the NDA has been lifted and the site made live.

Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.

There's a new plan being hatched between the Canadian government and AI firm Advanced Symbolics, where they have announced a new partnership that will work on predicting the rise of regional suicide risk by monitoring social media posts.

Advanced Symbolics will use their AI technology to predict which areas in Canada might see rises in suicidal behavior, something that includes in their contract documentation: "ideation (i.e., thoughts), behaviors (i.e., suicide attempts, self-harm, suicide) and communications (i.e., suicidal threats, plans)".

The Canadian government can then use this to spend more money on mental health resources in the right places, when needed. The project will start later this month, ending in June, with the AI firm monitoring social media accounts for three months during this trial period. After which, the Canadian government will see how successful the pilot was, and continue.

It was only a few days ago that I reported that Ripple (XRP) had reached a new record high price of $2.17, but that was a few days ago and in the crypto market, that's an eternity.

XRP has reached a new record high price of $3.17, with a record market cap of a massive $122 billion. There are over 38 billion XRP in circulation, with a total supply of just under 100 billion XRP (the Ripple team hold 60% of XRP). These prices aren't cooling down, with more and more interest and investment into XRP.

Ethereum closes in on $1000, momentum isn't stopping

Just as I was going to sleep last night (around 10 hours ago now), the price of Ethereum was quite steady at $880-$900 or so, but it has reached a new high of $974. This is after it reached its record high price of $870 just a few days ago.

Ethereum's market cap is now a huge $92 billion (at the price of $965, at the time of writing) with 96 million ETH in the world right now. My 1.4GH/s Ethereum mining farm is still going well, and even better with these record high prices, while most of the alt coins are enjoying a sea of green in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum reaches new record all-time high price of $870